A reported (and undeniably brilliant, if true) career move for Tom Cruise: personally bankrolling The Thetan, a Scientology-inspired drama about a so-named alien leader and immortal spiritual being, blah, blah. Anyone would have trouble believing this Daily Telegraph story about Cruise having cast Victoria Beckham in the said-to-be-forthcoming film, but if it’s real…Battlefield Earth 2! The bizarre element is Cruise allegedly describing Beckham, wife of soccer superstar David Beckham, as a “comic genius.” This implies that The Thetan (which the Telegraph piece says was “rejected by all the major film studios”) will presumably make use of said comic gifts, which in turn suggests the film will be in some way comedic? Good God.

I’ve already pointed to Bill Nighy‘s Davy Jones performance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest as unjustly overlooked, and we may as well acknowledge that his acting as Cate Blanchett‘s perplexed husband in Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.2.7) probably won’t be received with much more than fitting respect. There’s only one way to really appreciate how good Nighy is these days, and that’s coming to Manhattan, plunking down close to $200 bucks (i.e., yourself and a friend) and catching him in David Hare‘s The Vertical Hour at the Music Box. (A tall order but worth it.)
This play “confirms [Nighy’s] exclusive brand of greatness,” John Heilpern wrote not long ago in the N.Y. Observer. “Nighy looks like one of Whistler√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s rakish, languid aristocrats lolling about the place. He√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s awesomely relaxed, an urbane presence, cultivated, ironic in the light English style, and razor-sharp. His innate, mercurial spontaneity makes it hard to imagine him giving the same performance twice. He possesses the stagecraft and dangerous edge of a Michael Gambon with tics. To watch him in The Vertical Hour nonchalantly responding to [Julianne Moore’s] misguided American earnestness is to appreciate the nature of lethally understated disdain.”

“If someone looks like he hasn’t either bathed or been outdoors in weeks, he’s probably a blogger. Yes, even humble bloggers are invited to leave their attics and basements during Shmooze Season.” — Peter Bart in his 12.17 Variety column, titled “You Schmooze or You Lose.”

Between The Dead Girl and next year’s production of The White Hotel, Brittany Murphy is clearly casting her lot these days with dark, despondent material. Ron Rothholz is producing and Simon Monjack is directing from his own adaptation of the D.M. Thomas novel, which I haven’t read in eons. I remember, however, that the heroine, a haunted opera singer who goes to Sigmund Freud to examine visions she’s been having about a white hotel, the Nazi holocaust and her (unless my memory is going) her own death.
I’ve said it before — anything that people have tried but failed to turn into a movie for a really long time (The White Hotel has been kicking around since the early ’80s) has developed a hard-luck karma that’s akin to a kind of curse. From the first idea to the first weekend in theatres a movie shouldn’t take any more than five or six years — two or three or four is better. It may sound illogical and even warped to say this, but any film that’s failed to launch for ten or twenty years is probably going to feel too precious and removed from the hurly-burly when it hits the screen.

No overt disagreement with retrocrush’s Robert Berry — Paul McCartney‘s “Wonderful Christmas Time” (released in ’79) may well be “the worst Christmas song of all time [as well as] one of the most awful songs ever recorded” period. It’s relentlessly lame, icky…pink cotton candy set to music.

That said, I have a shameful confession. I was roaming the aisles of Stew Leonard’s supermarket in Norwalk, Connecticut, around this time last year, and the p.a. system was playing the McCartney tune, and God help me but when I heard the main chorus I felt soothed in a hokey, mortified way. Give McCartney his due: he knows how to write those insipid-but-catchy little hooks. (Just the chorus, mind…the rest of the song makes you want to spit.)
I guess you have to be a white middle-class guy who grew up in sedate, vaguely druggy surroundings to sympathize with this. I feel as if I’ve just totally surrendered any claim to being a marginally hip person.

If you ask me, the Las Vegas Film Critics called it straight and true by awarding their Best Cinematography award to Children of Men dp Emmanuel Lubezki (a.k.a. “Chivo”). They also decided somewhat originally by naming Djimon Honsou as Best Supporting Actor for his work in Blood Diamond, and by toasting Thank You For Smoking‘s Jason Reitman for having written the Best Screenplay (original or adapted) award. Otherwise, it was the same old litany — The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren for Best Actress, Dreamgirls‘ Jennifer Hudson for Best Supporting Actress, The Departed‘s Martin Scorsese for Best Director. The Best Film Editing prize went to The Departed‘s Thelma Schoonmaker, and good for that.

Another Best Picture prize has been snared by United 93, not that this will change the minds of Academy members who’ve refused to see it all along. (Hang tough, guys — don’t let the critics guilt-trip you!) The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics have declared Paul Greengrass‘s 9/11 drama the best of ’06 while also honoring The Departed‘s Martin Scorsese as Best Director. The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker and The Queen‘s Helen Mirren won again for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. And Jackie Earl Haley took the Best Supporting Actor prize for his work in Little Children. (Again, following his win earlier today among the Southeastern Film Critics.) There was a surprise, at least, with Cate Blanchett winning the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as an obsessively-inclined art teacher in Notes on a Scandal. The org also named Clint Eastwood‘s Letters For Iwo Jima as the Best Foreign-Language Film, with Pan’s Labyrinth named as first runner-up in that category.

“Not long ago, the Bagger was at an event with a major film writer and director and ended up in a booth with him for several hours. He admired the man tremendously, [but] did not like his last project. Finally, the subject came up and the Bagger told the truth, after which there was suddenly very little to say. Later, he asked a colleague with more experience if he had been wise to speak his mind. ‘No, that was profoundly stupid,’ he was told. ‘They really don’t want to know the truth.'” — from David Carr‘s latest Oscar-related posting, “Ten Things I Don’t Hate About You, or At Least Your Movie.”
Carr’s friend was right, but I’ll never forget the shame I felt eight years ago when I lied by saying something encouraging and enthusiastic about Armageddon to its producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, at an early-bird industry screening. That Michael Bay film felt way too forced and agitated. As Variety‘s Todd McCarthy famously said at the time, the pace felt to me like that of “a machine gun locked in the firing position.” A guy in the know told me a week or so later that Armageddon was “frame-fucked…the length of every last shot was cut down to the absolute bare minimum to keep it moving as fast as possible.”
Anyway, I saw Bruckheimer in the lobby right after the show and told him, coward that I was, that Armageddon “seriously rocks.” Jerry knew right away I was full of it; he gave me a look that said, “Huh, that”s funny…you’re lying to me and you’re doing a bad job of it.” He didn’t look at me for the rest of the evening. Nice feeling, that.

The Southeastern Film Critics Association has given its Best Original Screenplay award to Michael Arndt‘s Little Miss Sunshine, on top of Sunshine being named among the org’s top ten 2006 films. And three big awards went to The Departed — Best Film, Martin Scorsesefor Best Director , and Best Adapted Screenplay (i.e., William Monahan). And Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth won for Best Foreign Film. The rest followed what’s become the standard form: The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker for Best Actor, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren for Best Actress, Little Children‘s Jackie Earle Haley for Best Supporting Actor, Dreamgirls‘ Jennifer Hudson for Best Supporting Actress, and An Inconvenient Truth for Best Documentary.

“When the studios are in for a penny, they’re in for a pound. When you’re giving them product, then their nose is in the wind a lot more. If it smells good, they’ll run with it. But if it doesn’t, they’re not invested in it.” — The Painted Veil star Edward Norton to Hollywood Reporter/”Risky Business” columnist Anne Thompson in her 12.18 column.

This is the money quote that pretty much explains why Veil producer Bob Yari is flustered about what he sees as faint Warner Bros. support in terms of “For Your Consideration” Oscar ads for The Painted Veil. The bottom line is that Warner Bros. honchos have put a damp finger to the wind and decided that the film doesn’t smell all that good — that it’s a respectable stiff.
This despite its high-pedigree credentials (an adaptation of a Somerset Maugham novel, shot in rural Chinese locations, well-rendered 1920s period sets and costumes), mildly interesting performances and Stuart Dryburgh‘s eye-filling cinematography. As Slant‘s Jason Clark has written, Veil “is more or less from the school of motion picture that Pauline Kael used to say ‘reeks of quality.'” And the import of the story….good heavens.
It’s basically about how a pretty young British woman (Noami Watts), under pressure from her parents to find a suitable mate, marries a dweeby stuffed-shirt bacteriologist (Norton)…and gradually comes to love and respect him for his character and steadiness and compassion for Chinese peasants afflicted with cholera. The message, in short, is that humorless prigs with commendable inner qualities make good husbands as long as the woman in question gives up all those immature ideas about heady romantic attraction, great sex and other spirit-lifting chemistries.
Watching this film a few weeks ago made me feel frustrated, impatient, bored — bees were buzzing in my head. 70 minutes into it I got up and asked the projec- tionist how much time was left, and when he told me there was another 55 minutes to go my heart just sank. I went back to my seat and told The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil, who was sitting next to me, “I can’t do this”…and I left. As I was driving out of the parking garage I saw a woman who’d been sitting behind O’Neil and myself walking up the ramp. “You left too?” I asked. “Oh, God…please!”, she replied.
Yari, naturally, believes in the film and is fighting for it tooth and nail — the mark of a good producer. But The Painted Veil is one respectably doomed film if I ever saw one. That said, 67% of the Rotten Tomatoes critics who’ve posted so far have raved, liked it or gave it a qualified pass.
L.A. Times film reporter John Horn has written a similar piece about the same kettle of fish.

This is hardly a new or even a profound thought, but everyone seems to overlook the fundamental current driving the end-of- the-year superlatives, and particularly the Oscar-contender positioning. Arguing or lobbying for this or that movie as the best is not, in the final analysis, about this or that movie or even the awards that may result, but about certain visions, themes, philosophies and capturings contained in these films.
It’s not an insipid thing to recognize, salute and/or champion certain values or spiritual poems that matter to some of us in this day and age — films that express and reflect who and what we feel we are deep down. This, for me and (I suspect) many others, is what all the end-of-the-year horseshit is really about.
Just as cigarettes are “a delivery device for nicotine” (a term coined by The Insider‘s Jeffrey Wigand), good movies — the ones that are about more than craven emotional button-pushing or EED (extraordinary eyeball diversion) — are delivery devices for visions, dreams, philosophies…ways of thinking, feeling, being.
The Departed is not just a package of high-octane Scorsese flash but an idea, an immersion, a Boston street-crime theology of sorts — something that most of us were moved to let inside and reflect upon after seeing it, apart from its obvious cinematic razzle-dazzle. Ditto The Good Shepherd, The Lives of Others, Little Miss Sunshine, Children of Men…reflections and summations of what life is, might be, used to be, ought to be, inevitably is.
When The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil enthuses over Dreamgirls, he’s really saying “it’s the movie, of course, but more to the point, this is a world and a spirit that moves me…that I want to live in and share and spread around.” Substitute any Oscar prognosticator and film and the same equation applies.