Sincere thanks to the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell for saying I “may be on to something” in dissing Eddie Murphy‘s energetic-but-far- from-profound Dreamgirls performance and the notion that he’s got the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked. This is probably true, but it may not be. And all I was trying to do was articulate a widespread but unarticulated disdain for the guy — trust me, the Murphy dissers are out there in force.

It’s such a pleasant thing to be misinterpreted, and to have the words that you’ve carefully assembled in order to make a precise point ignored. I really recommend it because at the very least, it shows you who the real jackals are. Topping the list are those who’ve tried to link the Murphy diss to that “bling” riff I wrote a couple of months ago. (Hint, hint…I’m an unconscious racist.) I’m going to try this again (and remember what your teachers told you about reading carefully and taking notes): dissing the “blings” was a flip-off critique of sartorially gaudy get-down types who are guilty of a kind of nocturnal insecurity and/or pretentiousness.

Men and women who flash the cash and strut around in hotel lounges and hard-to-get-into clubs wearing cheap-ass sequined T-shirts and way too much jewelry on their fingers and around their necks are looking to enhance their cred on some level by putting put on a show for their peers. The “bling” mentality has, of course, been around for centuries. Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald certainly wrote about the 1920s variety, and if they were around today they’d be saying the same things about present-day offenders. And in these present-day writings, they would no doubt observe…naahh, leave it alone.

An Eddie Murphy jab coming from someplace else! Radar‘s Jeff Bercovici has written that “a well-placed Hollywood insider” is predicting that David Geffen‘s Oscar strategy for Dreamgirls strategy “will not result in an Oscar for Murphy, noting the way the actor has alienated Academy voters by complaining in public about not getting paid enough for Dreamgirls. Says the insider, ‘You got paid for Norbit, you stupid prick.'”

The other half of Bercovici’s item says that “a source close to Jack Nicholson says the Departed star has been complaining about Geffen’s over-the-top campaigning for Dreamgirls. According to the source, Nicholson believes Geffen strong-armed Academy members into nearly shutting out The Departed‘s cast in the acting categories. (The exception is Mark Wahlberg, who is up against Dreamgirls‘ Murphy in the supporting actor category.)

“What particularly annoys Nicholson, adds the source, is the cynical way Geffen used the promise of an Oscar nomination to get Murphy to settle for less than his usual rate.”

The end-of-the-item residue is a bit muddled, but the linkage is more or less established: a vote against Murphy is a vote against a manipulative billionaire’s “over-the-top” Oscar strategy, which is also a vote against Geffen himself. Academy members, it’s in your hands. If I were voting I would say to myself, “No question about it — Geffen wants all the Dreamgirls Oscars he can get, and I, being a member of this industry and naturally susceptible to the animal-kingdom impulse to show obeisance before power, am going to vote to support Geffen’s latest power lunge.”

The Oregonian‘s Shawn Levy recently pointed out the divide between “boy” nominations and “girl” nominations. The girl noms are for Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Best Original Song and Best Makeup — the boy noms are for all the others. Not surprisingly, of the eight nominations earned by Dreamgirls, six came from the girl side of the ledger — three Best Songs plus Makeup, Costume Design, and Art Direction. The boy noms handed to Bill Condon‘s film are Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy‘s in their respective Best Supporting Actor categories.

Likewise, Hollywood Wiretap columnist Pete Hammond has written in his latest entry that “with the technical categories mostly at odds with the Best Picture nominees, there has never been a greater gap within the organization, or so it seems. It’s a kind of blue state (actors, writers, directors, producers) vs. red state (editors, sound mixers, art directors, etc.) divide.”

“Is it really time to talk about missteps?” Sasha Stone has written in response to a David Poland “Hot Button” piece that summarizes ’06 as “the Year that The Blog Rose” but which lightly admonishes N.Y. Times Oscar guy David Carr.

“Maybe it’s time to talk about those sage words of wisdom by our patron saint William Goldman: ‘Nobody knows anything,'” Stone retorts. “Not the mainsteam media, not the critics, and most definitely not the blogger who proclaimed six months out that DREAMGIRLS WILL WIN BEST PICTURE, and [who] shot down anyone who suggested other possible scenarios, at once digging an impossibly deep hype hole for the movie to have to struggle out of.

“Poland scoldsCarr, but one of the most obvious differences between the former and the latter is that when Carr gets something wrong, he admits it with glorious self-deprecating prose. When Poland gets something wrong, he assumes a rewritten history and slithers on. To paint Carr and all of mainstream media with a sullied brush, and then put him into that picture so far above the fray, is a very Poland-esque diversion. Sometimes this blogger wonders if he actually believes the stuff he writes, or if he doesn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t have a touch of the old P.T. Barnum.”

February is usually a crap month, but some decent attractions are being offered over the next few weeks. It’s worth visiting Factory Girl on February 2nd, certainly for Sienna Miller and Guy Pearce‘s performances as Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol. (Even Hayden Christensen, playing a close approximation of Bob Dylan, is pretty decent.) If you live in a big town, The Lives of Others, a masterful, deeply moving drama, is the one to catch on 2.9. Billy Ray‘s Breach is apparently the one to see on 2.16; two above-average French films, Days of Glory and Avenue Montaigne, are also worth visiting; Craig Brewer ‘s Black Snake Moan, a pulpy Southern-fried redemption drama, is the only 2.23 release I’ve seen — it played much better than expected at Sundance. That’s six films — a good month for DVDs

No one deserves to win the Best Cinematography Oscar more than Emmanuel Lubezki, the dp of Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. His shooting of that futuristic thriller isn’t just striking or painterly or what-have-you, but legendary. The sheer brilliance of those three (or is it four or five?) long uncut action sequences are not just exciting or breathtaking — they signify a turning of the page. No serious action film will be shot in quite the same way hence; Children of Men has heightened the bar.

Children of Men cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki in lobby of W Hotel — Tuesday, 1.30.07, 8:25 pm

Lubezki and Cuaron’s decision not to shoot master shots or close-ups (a heretical practice by the standards of most cinematographers) is a key part of an approach to cinematography that, they decided, would make Children of Men visually exceptional in two ways. One was to ape the Stanley Kubrick/Full Metal Jacket kind of photography (intricate choreography, long uncut scenes, hand-held) that we’re all familiar with, but also with a shooting style that not only allowed for but embraced accidents, like the splattered blood on the lens during the final battle sequence.

Lubezki deserves the Oscar, I feel, for those blood spots alone. Cuaron, he says, didn’t like the spots at first and had to be persuaded that they weren’t a mistake that needed re-doing, but, as Lubezki puts it, “God-sent.”

It’s obvious after speaking with Lubezki, who also shot Terrence Malick‘s The New World and Michael Mann‘s Ali, that he’s not into your father’s cinematogra- phy. He doesn’t believe in shooting films that are awesome to look at in the traditional Freddie Young sense– films that stand out for their drop-dead handsomeness — as much as ones that put the viewer into the action in a way that feels raw and immediate, but with images that feel extremely controlled and well-tuned.

We met at Westwood’s W hotel two the night before last and talked about everything. I loved hearing how he and Cuaron managed that first extended shot in Children of Men in which five people in a van are attacked by marauders and have to run for it — a shot that required an elaborate rig built on top of the van, but which ends with the van driving away with the rig having disappeared. (The secret obviously involved a “digital switch” — Lubezski wouldn’t reveal the particulars.) And I loved hearing that Lubezki has been as frustrated with cruddy sound, light and focus levels in out-of-the-way commercial theatres as I have.

At W Hotel check-in area Tuesday, 1.30.07, 8:29 pm

I loved hearing his view that “coverage” — a standard requirement to shoot masters and close-ups to complement the shooting of each scene — “is almost the worst thing that’s happening to film right now…it’s like a formula and the shots don’t mean anything any more….you can cut a lot of movies together and they all look the same…I think we’re abusing it.” He says he;s getting more excited these days by hand-held internet videography and particularly “Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone,” the Yahoo-funded site that’s all about a guy going from one conflict area to another and shooting raggedy-ass video footage.

Lubezki’s visual influencers and heroes, he says, include Max Ophuls, Roberto Rossellini, Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles. And he didn’t agree with everything that happened on Children of Men, he confides. He didn’t want the film to end with the arrival of the rescue ship, called “Tomorrow,” but with the rowboat just floating on the sea. “I’m still so close to the movie, and I have my own problems with the movie, that it’s going to take me a couple of years to see it objectively,” he explains.

I so loved listening to the rough cut of the interview recording that I decided not to edit it. (Okay, I shortened it slightly but only because the conversation was starting to digresses too much toward the end.) Anyway, here it is. You need’t listen with a good sound system, but it’ll sound better if you do. The ambient noise doesn’t get in the way much. Lubezki ‘s gentle, softly-accented voice comes through fairly clearly all through.

Taken by Lubezki with my own Canon PowerShot A540, with lighting provided only by a small candle

What if William Monahan‘s The Departed sequel was about Irish gangster zombies? A kind of ghost story? Mark Wahlberg‘s character rejoins the undercover/covert branch of the Staties, and as he begins to investigate a series of bizarre killings…naah, that sucks. In fact, Wahlberg’s guy being the lead isn’t much of an idea in itself. There’s really no reason to remake this other than to make money, which is a terrible reason from the get-go.

Traction on the Stop Eddie Murphy movement is starting to happen….maybe. I’ve made it clear from a personal perspective that I’d like to see him denied the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his Dreamgirls work, but there might be more happening than just that. People aren’t exactly lighting torches and preparing to march on Versailles, but…

Two days ago (i.e., the day after Monday’s Murphy-dissing piece in this column), I was interviewed by a N.Y. Post guy who’s writing a story for Sunday’s edition about Murphy’s supposed political weaknesses, the perception that he’s more than a bit of an egoistic asshole, how he’s never made anything other than mainstream big-buck comedies, how he’s never tried to stretch or risk anything in a smaller-budgeted film, plus the ongoing Norbit effect (i.e., that one-sheet image reiterating who Murphy is and challenging the notion that he’s somehow turned a corner with his Dreamgirls performance) upon Academy voters.

Murphy encapsulates everything that is smug, arrogant, closed-off and reac- tionary about today’s Hollywood elite. Denying him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar would be, no exaggeration, an affirmation of positive, open-hearted values. It would amount to the Academy saying en masse, “We will not reward insecure downmarket egotists, no matter how successful their films have been….we’re not necessarily refusing to celebrate movie stars who ride around in big fat SUVs and wear jet-black shades and live behind electrified iron gates, but we chose not to this time.”

As the recent Murphy profile in Entertainment Weekly says, “[Murphy] carries some baggage: a reputation for being prickly and egotistical, rumors of odd idiosyncrasies, a couple of high-profile tabloid scandals.

“Even with the tremendous acclaim for his work in Dreamgirls, some believe he won’t fully stabilize his bumpy career until he overcomes a long-standing image problem. His defenders dispute that idea, saying that with cumulative career box office grosses in the neighborhood of $3 billion, Murphy has a vast reservoir of goodwill in Hollywood and among moviegoers.”

Mark Steven Johnson‘s Ghost Rider (Columbia, 2.16), the Nic Cage/Marvel comics motorcycle action fantasy, is tracking very strongly right now. General awareness is 55, definite interest 40, first choice 13. For a film opening two and a half weeks from now, those are very good numbers. Pic is going to float and then some. Look for a minimum $30 to $35 million opening weekend.
This coming weekend is Super Bowl weekend, which means Sunday is going to be a wipeout and even Saturday may be affected with pre-Super Bowl parties and all. Michael Lehman‘s Because I Said So (Universal, 2.2.07) may do modest business….numbers are mezzo-mezzo to decent…59. 31, 12. Danny and Oxide Pang‘s The Messengers (Columbia, 2.2.07) is at 54, 30 and 9.
Hannibal Rising (MGM/Weinstein Co., 2.9) is at 56, 29 and 5. Modest, nobody’s in it, and it’s MGM. Eddie Murphy’s Norbit (Dreamamount, 2.9) will do decent business…72, 35 and 6. Music and Lyrics (Warner Bros., 2.14) looks like a modest opener — 53, 29, 4. Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girl (Lionsgate, 2.14) is at 29, 35, 4 — Perry’s fan base will turn out and it should will open fairly well, perhaps very well.
Billy Ray‘s Breach (Universal, 2.16), which I hear is rather good, isn’t tracking all that well so far…29, 24 and 1. Bridge to Terebithia, a kids’ films, is at 55, 27 and 5 — for that kind of picture, these are good numbers. Ghost Rider, as mentioned, is going to be explosive. The Abandoned is at 11, 15 and no first choice at all. The Astronaut Farmer — 34. 20 and 1.
Three 2.23 openings: Black Snake Moan is at 36, 27 and 2. New Line’s Number 23 us tracking at 36, 28 and 2….not much action for a Jim Carrey film. And Reno 9.11 is at 43, 27 and 1.

I’ve asked two or three veterans of the scene, and apparently there’s no precedent for the big Three Amigos press party next week for Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Babel) and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men). No precedent, I mean, for three distributors banding together and co-founding and co-staging the same event. I’m guessing that the trio got together and cooked it up, and then went to their respective distributors and said, “Let’s do this.”

The impetus for the wonderful bile in John Cook‘s Sundance-dissing piece in Radar — and a very well-written thing it is — is that Cook (a) didn’t know enough well-connected publicists, and (b) he wound up going to the wrong parties. It’s also apparent (to me anyway) that he didn’t fall in love or at least get laid. I fell in love up there (with Once, I mean), and it made all the difference in the world.

“The Sundance Film Festival is about independent cinema in much the same way the quadrennial Republican and Democratic national conventions are about democracy,” Cook observes. “Which is to say, the Sundance Film Festival is not about independent cinema. It is about status, and money, and self-regard; it’s an annual industry junket and trade show.
“The 400 or so major screenings, mind you, are not for the benefit of audiences but of fat-pocketed distributors — many of them divisions of the Hollywood studios that Sundance disingenuously poses in opposition to — eagerly searching out the next Sex, Lies and Videotape or Little Miss Sunshine.
“The relative quality of available celebrity notwithstanding, the organizers of Sundance were on a relentless campaign this year to promote the notion that the festival is about art and cinema, and that the attendant clusterfuck of swag lounges and Hummer limos and party girls dressed up like Eskimo hookers are contrary to its principles.
“Much of what happens in Park City is beyond the control of Sundance. But the festival’s arch posturing against commercialization, with Robert Redford inveighing against the swag lounges on Main Street designed to get luxury brands onto the pages of Us Weekly, is too much to take in the face of the omnipresent logos of festival sponsors Volkswagen, Hewlett-Packard, and AOL.
“And the dismissive sniffing about ‘celebrity coverage,’ which Sundance’s chief press handler, Levi Elder, accused me of contemplating when I applied for credentials, becomes petty and egregiously hypocritical when one considers the fact that the fest is programmed deliberately with films featuring stars — Winona Ryder, Heather Graham, Mandy Moore, John Cusack — who are trotted out at screenings to stand on fake, tented-off “red carpets” to be photographed in front of backdrops festooned with those aforementioned corporate logos.
“Better passes translate, roughly, into less waiting. And for the press, the arbitrary, merciless decisions of publicists — 150 credentialed publicists were in attendance — tended to induce a state of what psychological researchers call learned helplessness.
“Waiting outside for admittance to a press conference one afternoon, among a throng of perhaps 30 other journalists, I was rescued, Schindler’s List-style, by a publicist who burst from inside the building, surveyed the crowd (or, to be precise, our badges), and selected three of us who were allowed to come inside.
“I never learned why, but decided from then on that good things would happen to me if I meekly made sure I was always in eyeshot of a publicist. And when they shined upon you, all the bitterness you previously felt about the better-credentialed prima donnas would melt away, and any sense of solidarity with your freezing, milling brothers and sisters in the cold would dissolve into condescension. See you, suckers!

“Little Miss Sunshine is about as quirky as xXx: State of the Union,” writes Radar’s John Cook. “It’s a Sundance genre picture, manufactured with the same empty, production-line cynicism as a Jerry Bruckheimer film, except where studios call for a shower scene with the heroine, Sundance calls for an indie-rock soundtrack. And where studios demand Third Act explosions, Sundance calls for a comically dysfunctional family that somehow rights itself. And where studios demand a happy ending, Sundance demands, well, a happy ending.
“There’s been a Little Miss Sunshine in virtually every Sundance going back for years√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Ǩ¬ùthere’s youthful angst, coming of age, miscommunication, and, usually, a long shot of a sad high-school kid riding a bicycle down a suburban street.
“This year it was Rocket Science, the coming-of-age tale about a high-school kid from a wacky family who overcomes a debilitating stutter and learns something about himself. It’s a perfectly good movie, but it’s exactly what would happen if Brad Grey called CAA and said, “Gin me up a Sundance picture.”
“Last year it was Little Miss Sunshine. The year before, it was Thumbsucker, the coming of age tale about a high school kid from a wacky family who overcomes a debilitating etc., and The Squid and the Whale, the coming-of-age tale about a high school kid from a wacky family who overcomes a debilitating etc. Before that it was Garden State. It goes all the way back to Reality Bites in 1994.
“Some of these are fine films, but they are the products, in their own way, of the same lack of imagination and marketing-driven choices that, according to Redford et. al., are slowly destroying Hollywood.”