Patrick Goldstein‘s annual “early betting line” column about Best Picture contenders gives the best odds (4-1) to Dreamgirls. His only qualifier is that “its chances of a best picture victory depend on whether the academy, which has a soft spot for showbiz stories, will embrace a crowd-pleaser that isn’t daring or original. In other words: Does the soul outweigh the schmaltz?”

Goldstein doesn’t mention the well-known fact that there are some out there — maybe a few, maybe a lot — who are foursquare against Dreamgirls. A Manhattan publicist told me last night there are a lot of people “in the closet” about it — they don’t like it but don’t feel secure enough to go up against the gay media-industry mafia by saying so with any conviction.
I’m mixed on Dreamgirls — I like the pizazzy song-and-dance stuff but feel it zips along too fast and that there ‘s not enough emotional particularity or undertow, and that it lacks connective story-telling tissue. But for me, it’s not Chicago or Munich — if it wins I’m okay because the parts of it that I genuinely admire are fairly kick- ass, and because director Bill Condon has delivered genuinely admirable work in the past (Kinsey, Gods and Monsters) and will again.
The other thing that Goldstein omits is another awesome foreign-language Best Picture contender besides Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver. I’m referring, of course, Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others. I’m sorry, but Goldstein not even mentioning this film as at least a very long shot seems like dereliction of duty.
There is no avoiding the fact that this Sony Pictures Classics release has the the stuff that penetrates and lifts up and lasts — a riveting paranoid thriller, two kinds of love stories, superb acting (Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck), tangy adult sexuality and a truly stirring finale. I’m pretty cynical about the Oscar race, but is any aspect of the Best Picture race about nominating those films from whatever nation and spoken in whatever language that really and truly knock your socks off? If so, there is simply no way to keep Others out of contention.
Goldstein gives lousy 18-1 odds to Volver. “If there were ever an endangered species in the best picture race, it’s the foreign film, which, like animation, has been ghettoized in a separate but not equal category,” he says. “Sony Pictures Classics has made a big push for this…film, but it doesn’t look to have the depth of support needed.” No depth of support for one of the all-time great Pedros? Is everyone on Ritalin?

“We realize it never goes away. Life is always going to be a battle. You expect it to get easy as you get older, and It doesn’t. [And so the movie is about] how does he cope, how has he tried to put together new friends? He’s starting out without his wife. He’s full of grief. But [what he goes through and comes to] is like a rebirth. Certainly not the way he was in Rocky but an older, wiser guy.” — Sylvester Stallone talking to AP sports writer Dan Gelston about Rocky Balboa (MGM, 12.2).

Weinstein Co, publicist Liz Biber told me this morning that George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl(Weinstein Co., 12.29) will definitely screen “several” times this week for the benefit of New York and Los Angeles critics, as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press. (The National Board of Review saw it yesterday afternoon.) She said she’ll be contacting everyone on both coasts today and giving them screening dates and times between now and Saturday.

This despite the last-minute, down-to-the-wire additional shooting last month and the re-editing and re-mixing that Hickenlooper finished only yesterday morning (with more tweaks to come over the next week or two), and despite some critics (including a couple of influential ones from the LAFCA and NYFCC orgs, which will decide their annual awards this coming Sunday and Monday, respectively) complaining that the Weinstein Co. doesn’t have its act together and that showing a would-be contender this late in the game makes it difficult all around.
The odds that anyone will jump up and down about Factory Girl or even the performances are not high at this stage of the game — let’s face it. But you have to admire the spirit of HIckenlooper and the Weinstein Co. to somehow make it work despite the pressure and general insanity.
Biber wants it understood that there are still a few polishings and smoothing yet to be done on the version that will show this week. Those are curious terms when it comes to this film because Factory Girl has a deliberately raw, unpolished, Warhol-of- the-late-’60s visual scheme, which naturally synchs with the story and the era in which it happens.
Since running an early review last August, I’ve been waiting for the big end-of-the- year moment when it would finally start screening for the big-gun critics. Having pretty much done cartwheels over Sienna Miller ‘s performance as Edie Sedg- wick (and Guy Pearce‘s as Andy Warhol), I wanted to know if I’d be joined by several others or be all alone on an island.

I spoke to Us critic and NYFCC Thelma Adams this morning about this whole magillah, and she said that “several screenings at this stage of the game are not good enough for me right now.” But NYFCC members vote next Monday and the screenings start tomorrow, I countered — you have four or five days to see it. “This is very last minute,” Adams said. “I’m a mom, I have to commute into town…if they sent me a DVD I could maybe watch it.
“I’d like to see it, I’m curious to see it…but it’s the deluge factor right now. They’re screening Letters From Iwo Jima and The Good Shepherd this week, to name but two. This has been a good year and I could easily fill a top ten list right now, and you have so many Best Actress contenders already in place. .Sienna Miller doesn’t stand a chance unless she’s drop-dead brilliant. Bless their hearts” — she meant the Weinstein Co. — “but they’re pushing too much, too late. It almost seems to do a disservice to the film to put it out this way.”

I’ve been expecting to hear about bicoastal memorial tributes to Robert Altman, who passed just before Thanksgiving. Having attended DGA-sponsored tributes for Hal Ashby and Stanley Kubrick some two or three weeks after their deaths, I was presuming it would happen sometime this month.
But Altman’s widow Kathryn Reed is calling the shots, and her husband’s sudden departure (Picturehouse chief Bob Berney, the distributor of Altman’s final film A Prairie Home Companion, told me last night that he and wife Jeanne Berney were partying with Altman into the wee hours only a few days before his final visit to the hospital) has left her in a shattered state and unable(or simply disinclined) to immediately jump right into the organizing of two big farewell events.
There’s a notion afloat that staging the Altman memorials in early January, say, might conceivably nudge DGA or Academy voters into offering the Prairie Home Companion helmer a tribute nomination for Best Director, as a kind of official acknowledgment of his historical greatness and profound influence. But the word is that the N.Y. and L.A. tributes won’t be happening until late February.

Q: “The other thing that seems to be a constant in both [The Good Shepherd and A Bronx Tale] is the relationship between fathers and sons. And I wonder if it’s something you think about a lot.” A: “Yes.” Q: “You have four sons.” A: “I do.” Q: “And your father [artist Robert De Niro Sr.] was a big influence on your life?” A: “Yes.” Q: Do you consider this a political film? A: I don’t know. I wouldn’t say.” Q: “You don’t know or you wouldn’t say?” A: “I don’t know. I think people should see it the way they want.” — The Good Shepherd director Robert De Niro speaking to Time editor Belinda Luscombe.

“Why should I feel like the minority when the majority of America is a size 12? Plus, a lot of singers don’t sound the same when they lose weight. I have a little singer’s pouch, and that’s where the voice comes from, so you’re all just going to have to get used to my jelly. Hey, somebody has to represent the big girls. Why not me?” — Dreamgirls costar (and — this is not a reach — probable Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner) Jennifer Hudson, speaking to Sean Smith in Newsweek‘s 12.11 issue.

I’m also under embargo, but I just thought I’d say something about a movie I saw today. (Gee, what could that be?) I want to keep things oblique so I’ll put it this way: it’s a lot better than its first cousin. I mean, a lot better. I’m not sure if it’ll rocket right up into Best-Picture-contender status, and “in the process kill off Babel, Little Children and World Trade Center once and for all and create a major dogfight between Little Miss Sunshine and The Pursuit of Happyness for the #5 slot,” as a certain spitballer yesterday suggested it might (unless he was talking about The Good Shepherd…doubtful!). But anytime some unusual and affecting and well- above-average comes along at this stage of the game, it’s always a welcome turn-on. Let’s let it go at that.

Todd Haynes‘ I’m Not There, about the life and legend of Bob Dylan, “explores different pockets of a man who refused to be categorized. I have always loved his music, but I’m terrified about this because I am besotted. I watch the press conference he gave in San Francisco in 1965, or whenever it was, and just think, ‘I love you.’

“The worst thing an actor can do is fall in love with someone they’re about to portray, but then I’m not playing him — my character is called Jude. [The film is] a riff on who Dylan could possibly be. When I saw the script I thought, ‘This is so out there I can’t run away from this.” — from a Cate Blanchett interview by Guardian‘s Mark Salisbury.

With the O’Toole bandwagon slowing to a stall (especially if he winds up staying in London), the Best Actor Oscar face-down is pretty much down to Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed, Blood Diamond) vs. Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) — and it seems more and more likely to me that DiCaprio will take it.

The DiCaprio undersaga-metaphor is about a gifted kid-like actor finally surging into the realm of manhood and mature conviction, so a vote for Leo is a vote for a potential finally fulfulled. A vote for Smith is a vote for the idea that a practiced smoothie can get down and find something deeper and fuller in his craft as well as himself. On this they’re more or less evenly matched.
But DiCaprio has the edge because he nailed it twice this year, and because The Departed is at the top of nearly everyone’s list. In the long run The Pursuit of Happyness is going to outpoint Blood Diamond (which is going to get dinged when it opens next Friday), but the feeling is that the former lacks the dramatic chops and gravitas to springboard Smith into a higher standing and keep the ball rolling into February. The reason the O’Toole/Venus thing is sagging is because it’s all about the past, and because O’Toole is being kept from projecting a present-tense, here-I-am, onward-and-upward profile. It’s a tough game.

“Mel Gibson‘s self-financed passion project was originally budgeted through his Icon Productions at $64 million. Despite the twofold increase in shooting days, that initial figure has been whittled down to $50 million for public record. However, production execs who worked on and or regularly visited the set estimate Apocalypto‘s actual budget is closer to $75 million to $80 million.” — from Sheigh Crabtree‘s L.A. Times piece on the making of it.

This site has bonged the gong on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others several times, but yesterday’s announcement that it won three top European Film Awards awards — Best Picture, Best Actor (Ulrich Muhe) and Best Screenwriter (von Donnersmarck) — brings it to the fore again.

This Sony Pictures Classics release has the current of greatness in it — a subdued but passionate story, arresting specificity of observation and recreation in every last department, superb acting (Sebastian Koch and Martina Gedeck especially), ripe adult sexuality and a truly heartening finale.
Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver also cleaned up at the European Film Awards — Pedro for Best Drector, Penelope Cruz for Best Actress, Jos√É∆í√Ǭ© Luis Alcaine for Best Cinematography, Alberto Iglesias for Best Musical Score as well as the recipient of the People’s Choice Award for Best European Film.