As long as we’re comparing big-time Presidential politics to Oscar campaigning, allow me to resurrect an idea I floated last year that everyone ignored: holding Great Oscar Debates.
“Nobody disagrees with the notion that Oscar campaigning has become a lot like running for the White House,” I began, “so why not accept this and stage a special annual series of Academy-sponsored debates at the Academy theatres in Beverly Hills and New York?
“Not so much in the manner of the big-candidate debates that (usually) happen in a Presidential election year, but those sometimes stirring speeches that are given at the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions by party leaders, political allies and friends. Well-known filmmakers, industry figures, esteemed film critics and Academy members could get up in front of a mike and explain why they believe this film or that nominee is especially deserving.
“The speakers would offer impressions, career histories, political considerations… whatever. The same views that are routinely shared after screenings and at parties, only with more people listening and with a bit more sobriety all around.
The idea would be to cut through the mental-cobweb impressions, through the party chit-chat and the DVDs and the trade ads and the hate rants. It seems to me that specific, impassioned, thought-out reasons to vote for this person or that film would sharpen the focus.
“Presidential debates are about candidates trying to tell it straight and cut through impressions created by TV ads and prejudices thrown at the voters. Why shouldn’t the same goal at least be attempted in the Oscar realm? The town obsesses over this darn thing for three or four months out of the year and millions are spent on campaigns, so why the hell not?
“The Academy could stage the debates over a two- or three-day weekend at the Academy theatre right after the nominations are announced. It could be a weekend-long festival atmosphere type of thing — food, mingling, film clips, and discussion groups along with the various speakers.
“Every nominated person or film would be examined and toasted in some detail, and nominees would be forbidden from attending — only friends, colleagues and publicists could do the pitching. And no negative stuff.
“Oscar arguments happen left and right online, of course, but there’s something about live dialogue that cuts through the crap. Every time I get into a friendly dust-up with friends about this or that Oscar contender, I come away with a clearer head.
“The whispering campaigns (like the one mounted against Paradise Now, or the one that went around a few years back about John Nash, the protagonist-hero of A Beautiful Mind) would almost certainly make less of an impression if the “issues” could be fully aired in a live setting.
“People don’t fill out their Academy ballots after thinking things through to the bottom like a Yale mathematician — Oscar favorites are usually emotional gut calls. But perspective and examination can’t hurt the process, and a weekend of Great Oscar Debates would shed light on the short films and the sound-editing nominees and other low-profile contenders.”

The longer Oscar season goes on, the harder it is to make supposedly on-target Oscar Balloon calls and — this year — offer similarly shrewd predictions for The Envelope‘s Buzzmeter. You get sick of it after a while, for one thing. And you can’t abstain 100% from putting in films and performances that you know are superior grade, even if you know deep down they probably don’t have a chance of being nominated. And you can’t discount the notion that we’re on a moving train. You can smell the coffee like anyone else and predict Forrest Whitaker and Helen Mirren to win for Best Actor and Best Actress, etc., but if you don’t draw from the heart and follow your instincts, it starts to feel foul. The more uniform the predictions, the draggier this game gets.

Sylvester Stallone, whose Rocky Balboa opens today, has apparently accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, and he’s making that known. I don’t know how to react to this, but it feels a little weird. I know Stallone slightly — I worked for him in the Rambo II days as an employee of publicists Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson, who had him as their #1 client at the time, and then I interviewed him on the set of Cliffhanger for a N.Y. Times piece in ’92 — and I can’t think of a less-likely convert. But whatever works.
Defamer‘s Mark Lisanti says it pretty well: “We suppose that it would be a little cynical of us to suggest that an opportunistic Stallone showed up to chat with Pat Robertson about how he’s put his career in God’s hands just to drum up some business from the Passion of the Christ crowd. At least (as far as we know) the actor didn’t go so far as to claim that he wrote the original script in the margins of a Bible while sitting in the confessional at his church, or relate an anecdote about how he finally won the fight with writing partner Jesus that resulted in Rocky being a scrappy, underdog boxer instead of a humble carpenter.”

Little Miss Sunshine costar Alan Arkin was feted last night (12.19) by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Fox Searchlight, and it’s probably safe to say that everyone there realized (or was reminded of) the same two things. One, Arkin’s comic personality is undiminished — he’s still harboring the confessional, neurotic, New York Jewish worry-wart aspects — and two, keeping in touch with this side of himself has made his acting vital and alive and, when he feels like turning on the spigots, funny as hell.

At Tuesday night’s Alan Arkin tribute at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade theatre (l. to r.): Little Miss Sunshine costars Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Arkin; Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice

I was there and recorded his on-stage chat with associate director of programming Kent Jones. I didn’t think to start recording until about 10 minutes in, but there’s plenty of good stuff here. (Jones’ question at the very beginning sounds a little faint, so here it is: “What was it like to make the transition from theatre to film?”)

The event, of course, was about reminding everyone that Arkin is both touching and a riot as Sunshine‘s ornery, heroin-snorting grandfather. His performance feels like a near-lock for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, or so it seems to me. I was just as enamored of Steve Carell and Paul Dano‘s work in Sunshine, but Arkin delivers the heart and the biggest laughs. Plus he’s long overdue — he was nominated for Best Actor in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (’66) and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (’68) but lost both times.

Asked to define the difference between comedy and tragedy, he quoted an old Mel Brooks line: “A tragedy is I’m walking down a street and I fall into a manhole. A comedy is you’re walking down a street and you fall into a manhole.”

He talked about Catch 22, in which he starred as Joseph Heller‘s reluctant bom- bardier Yoassarian, in mostly disparaging terms. He hasn’t seen it in years but remembers it as a muddled effort that he didn’t much care for. Photography, lighting and production design concerns took forever to set up, he said (it took almost an entire week for a shot of him walking up an outdoor staircase in Rome), he felt off-balance about how to play his part, and director Mike Nichols had an “imperious” air about him.

Arkin’s biggest regret, financially speaking, was getting cast by director Steven Soderbergh in Ocean’s 11, and then getting sick and regretfully backing out. The role was filled by Carl Reiner, who benefitted big-time because of the hefty salary times three.’

He said that his next film, which will roll film in Alberquerque in Feburary, is Sunshine Cleaning, a comedy about a dad who runs a crime-scene cleaning business and his two daughters, to be played by Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) and Amy Adams (Junebug). Christine Jeffs (Rain, Sylvia) will direct from a script by Megan Holley. Peter Saraf (Little Miss Sunshine) is producing. Arkin called it “a sweet little script — no blue screen, no franchise.”

Working with director Norman Jewison on The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming “was so wonderful [that it] ruined me for the next bunch of films,” Arkin said.
Asked by an audience member to name his three favorite characters, the 72 year- old actor said, “I can hardly name three characters I played any more. I can’t remember anything and I’m proud of it. I can’t hear anything and I can’t remember anything…and it’s fun! I used to be the most comfortable with foreigners and outsiders because I felt like an outsider myself. Now I feel most comfortable playing morons who spout philosophy. The character in Little Miss Sunshine, I could play him for the rest of my life — a foul-mouthed moron who has answers to everything.

“I used to suffer with my characters. I used to pace the room and live with them 24 hours a day. Now I just want to have a good time. Jean Renoir once said, I used to have great messages to send to the world. Now I just want to send the world my love. Anything else is just dumping on people.”

“Paying people to be your therapist doesn’t work because at the end of the day you’re standing in the same mode. This crazy profession is nuts…the emotional life of the character [you’re playing] has to affect you in some way. Andy Garcia once told me I can’t become a peaceful person…if I do, how can I play the darker colors? Yeats said the same thing — going into analysis would hurt his raw material too much.”

After the interview ended and Little Miss Sunshine began to screen, Fox Searchlight publicists herded everyone (Arkin and his family, Jones, Sunshine costar Abigail Breslin and her parents, Fox Searchlight president Peter Rice, Saraf, myself, director-writer James Toback) over to Shun Lee for a big delicious dinner that lasted a couple of hours. A great evening all around.

MSNBC freelancer Patrick Enright hasn’t caught Ben Stiller‘s latest film, Night at the Museum (which screens today at 3 pm, which in itself is usually a bad sign — films shown to the press during daylight hours are usually simple-ass family fodder) but he’s come up with an interesting theory that explains Stiller’s lamentable decline.

Three or four years ago, he recalls, Stiller’s comedies began to be less and less funny, with more than a few being flat-out difficult to sit through (Duplex, Envy, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, et. al.). And Enright’s theory is that Ben’s kids did it.
Don’t dismiss this to quickly as some cruel journalistic riff. Kids always make artist-parents more open to doing this or that job for the money, as cash fortifies the nest. I’m a parent and know whereof I speak — it’s a very natural, probably inescapable impulse. Why do you think Heath Ledger is playing the Joker in Chris Nolan‘s next Batman film?
“Some wags might be tempted to attribute your career implosion to bad management or drugs or Scientology,” Enright comments, “but the real culprit is much, much more sinister. Something else happened in 2002, the year your movies went south so drastically: Little Ella Olivia, your first child, was born. Coincidence? I think not. And you didn’t stop there; No. 2, Quinlan Dempsey, came along in ’05.
“Yes, I blame the children — it’s a well-substantiated, scientifically tested theory that having kids drains the talents of great comedians, leaving them hollow and laugh-deficient, capable of and interested in only fart jokes and the occasional animated movie.
“The once-hilarious Eddie Murphy went through exactly the same decline, starring in his first major bomb, Harlem Nights, the year his first kid appeared on the scene. Whether it’s caused by a hormonal shift that kills any sense of The Funny or springs from a desire to create movies that please the young spawn, the trend is career-fatal.”
I would go farther and say that for many artists, feeling happy and settled and soothed isn’t precisely “bad” for their creative output, but it doesn’t seem to exactly help either. This may sound deranged or masochistic to some (and I’m not saying it applies to each and every actor, comedian, writer and gallery artist) but some artists feel they need to be on the edge in order to keep themselves sharp and focused — to pick up on those shortwave transmissions that tell them what’s next and where to go.
Sidenote: Enright’s piece wrongly states that Stephen Sommers is the director of Night at the Museum (i.e., the passage in question calls the film “Steven Sommers’ attempt to bring his crazy Mummy antics to a setting that wouldn’t require travel to far-off locations.” Enright also obviously misspells Sommers’ first name, which is “Stephen.” It’s easy to fix this, guys…shake a leg.

“Night At The Museum is a disappointing foray into the family-entertainment genre for its star Ben Stiller,” writes Screen Daily‘s Ed Lawrenson — a bad omen given this trade rag’s well-known tendency to run softball and/or turn-the-other-cheek reviews if at all possible. The rule of thumb is that if your film gets panned by Screen Daily, you’re probably going to get totally creamed by the tougher critics.
“Unlike the magical artifacts it revolves around, Museum is a holiday feature — based on a children’s picture book about a security guard in a museum where the inanimate exhibits come to life after-hours — that shows only occasional signs of vitality, despite a cast of well-known comic talent and some inventive CG work.
“An underwhelming if competently crafted family film, Night feels more suited for the DVD market, particularly among parents who read their children Milan Trenc‘s source book. [It] has some messy fun with its premise, but Shawn Levy‘s workman-like direction lacks flair. Overall the film lacks the visual imagination of, say, Joe Dante‘s Small Soldiers or the novelty value of Jumanji — two other family films where CG brings to life inanimate objects — ensuring that the effects quickly grow repetitive.
“Stiller is uncharacteristically awkward as Daley. With the exception of his vocal performance in Madagascar, Night At The Museum is his first kids’ film. His comic style, which tends to be deadpan and low-key, isn’t well suited to the genre, and he struggles to convince in the many slapstick scenes. Robin Williams brings some much needed exuberance as Teddy Roosevelt, and makes one wish that a more physically expressive actor had been cast in the lead.
“The supporting cast has an impressive roster of comic performers, including Brits Steve Coogan and Ricky Gervais (who brings smarmy David Brent-like incompetence to his role as the museum director), but the thin, largely unfunny script wastes their talents. Veteran actors Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney play the scheming guards, the former exhibiting a commanding lightness of touch, the latter embarrassingly hamming things up.”

“If you haven’t seen Paul Verhoeven‘s Black Book (Sony Classics, 3.9.07), get your butt into a screening. If you can imagine Verhoeven’s over-the-top style and his obsession with female nudity, blood and other bodily fluids grafted onto a somewhat traditional World War II film about the Dutch underground fighting the Nazis….well, you may not believe what you’re seeing.

“It is both utterly ridiculous and fabulously entertaining, but at 145 minutes it moves like lightning, It looks in some ways like a 1940s MGM flick (think The Cross of Lorraine) but with a 2006 sensibility. I was chuckling all the way through at how florid it was, but have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it.” — Manhattan-based hit-shot journalist Lewis Beale in an e-mail sent this morning.
http://www.blackbook-lefilm.com/home.htm

“A lot of reviewers nowadays, they fall into that vice: they want stories, they want explanations, they want exposition and they want political postures. Why does cinema have to be a medium for making political statements as opposed to presenting facts, presenting elements and then you making your own conclusions — even if they are elusive? There’s nothing more beautiful than elusiveness in cinema.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù — Children of Men helmer Alfonso Cuaron to Movie City Indie‘s Ray Pride in a 12.19 piece appearing on Stu VanAirsdale‘s The Reeler.

Complete agreement with David Carr/”the Bagger” on Nathaniel R.‘s tiny but hilarious little riff on the Best Actress race.
Knowing that Helen Mirren has the Oscar so totally in the bag is a little dispiriting; ditto Forest Whitaker taking the Best Actor trophy for The Last King of Scotland. It would be at least somewhat enjoyable (i,.e., interesting to write about) if there was even a slight sense of a horse race. But c’mon…no one’s going to take it from Mirren. (Right?) It’s a done deal.
And yet a Fox Searchlight rep confided last night that Whitaker’s absolute dominance with the critics groups so far is giving her colleagues a twitch of concern because it sets the stage for a possible Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith or Peter O’Toole surge. Maybe one of these three will take it regardless — the Academy has often ignored critics’ champions.

A reader pointed out yesterday that Peter Yates‘ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, one of the great ’70s crime films (and probably the best Boston crime movie ever made, no disrespect to The Departed), will play Friday, January 5, at the American Cinematheque’s Overlook/Underrated series at the Egyptian.

This feels like fourteenth or fifteenth goad for Paramount Home Video (or whomever owns the rights) to please stand up and fund a decent high-def remastering and release this little masterpiece on DVD, complete with audio commentary (Yates is still around — too many others have passed including star Robert Mitchum and costar Peter Boyle) and some kind of looking-back, respect-must-be-paid documentary.
Turner Classic Movies is allowing viewers to vote for the films they’d most like to see released on DVD. Eddie Coyle is ranked #36, but it needs more supporters. Turner says that they notify distributors of movies with high demand, so fans need to vote to improve its standing. Here’s the link.

“Movie directors love to show off, and one of the ways they strut their stuff is with long, single-take shots — they’re a hallmark of Brian De Palma. Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron and longtime cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki also were drawn to such lengthy shots but for a different reason: They felt they would immerse the audience in the story.
“I think they are pretty staggering, but they are not showy,” says Men star Clive Owen, who was called on to perform scenes 10 minutes and longer, many of them filled with gunfire, explosions and crashes. “They are trying to put you viscerally in the middle of things — to make you feel you are in the situation.” — from L.A. Times entertainment writer John Horn‘s piece (12.19) on Cuaron’s film (Universal, 12.25), its making and its atmospheric themes.

“The real and great questions of conscience and accountability would not loom so ominously — unanswered or evaded at such tremendous cost — without our day-to-day failure to insist on genuine accountability. Of course we’d prefer some easy ways to get there. But no easy ways exist. Not a new Congress. Not Barack Obama. And not John McCain. His courage in North Vietnamese prison makes him a heroic man. His voting record in Congress makes him a damaging public servant. We have gotta stand the fuck up and show the world how powerful are the people in a democracy. That’s how we regain our position of example, rather than pariah, to the world at large. And that is how we can begin to put up our chins and allow pride and unification to raise our own quality of life and security.” — Sean Penn on the state of things, from remarks delivered last night (12.18.06) upon his receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition.