I realize that yesterday’s National Board of Review awards were damaged goods from the get-go, given the org’s idiosyncratic oddball rep and all. But the Letters From Iwo Jima Best Picture win was nonetheless a good thing, if for no other reason that the startle factor. That aside, I had four significant beefs with the hand-outs.
(a) The Best Supporting Actor trophy going to Blood Diamond‘s Djimon Hounsou felt like an especially deranged call. Honsou’s acting in that film is emotionally excessive — he has two emotional-outburst moments are flat-out idiotic. The worst is a scene in which he and Leo are hiding in the dark from a platoon of bad-ass hip-hop rebels — very dangerous, hair-trigger cats armed with automatic weapons — when the crouching Honsou suddenly sees his kidnapped, long-lost son among them. Naturally, this being an Ed Zwick film, he immediately jumps up and shouts out, “Son!” He should have died right there and then. All stupid people (i.e., those without the sense to hold themselves in check when their lives are in danger) deserve a bullet in the head.
(b) The Best Supporting Actress award going to For Your Consideration‘s Catherine O’Hara means that NBR voters thought she was more deserving than Cate Blanchett (Notes on a Scandal, Babel); Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls); Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth); Adriana Barraza (Babel); Carmen Maura (Volver), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) or Babel‘s Rinko Kinkuchi. That’s just absurd.
(c) The NBR’s Best Original Screenplay went to Stranger Than Fiction‘s Zach Helm because they wanted to honor Helm’s inability (refusal?) to define the metaphysical system in that film? At no time do you clearly understand whether Will Ferrell’s tax man is some kind of organic but basically “fictional” guy living inside novelist Emma Thompson’s head, or, if he’s as “real” as you or me or Dustin Hoffman‘s character, how it is that Thompson’s decision to kill him off in her book is going to affect him. Helm’s screenplay is infuriating.
(d) The NBR omitting Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others from its top five foreign-film list is just nutso…a joke. The ones they went with are Volver, (the favorite), Curse Of The Golden Flower, Days Of Glory, Pan’s Labyrinth and Water.

“It’s tough getting a fix on the Best Picture race,” writes N.Y. Post film critic Lou Lumenick. “Everyone agrees that the much-hyped musical Dreamgirls (Dreamamount, 12.15) has the pole position. It’s a huge crowd-pleaser, but already the chattering classes are starting to pick at it with the sort of griping that eventually left recent Oscar front-runners Brokeback Mountain and The Aviator gasping at the finish line.
“On the other hand, the Academy loves even flawed musicals like Chicago — unless they’re complete botches like The Phantom of the Opera, Rent and The Producers.”
Rent was a complete botch? News to me. I don’t know why exactly, but from time to time I’ve had radically different reactions to this and that musical, and this was definitely a prime example. Last year at this time I wrote the following: “Call me emotionally impressionable, call me unsophisticated, call me a sap…but I saw Rent last night in Santa Monica, and in its vibrant, open-hearted, selling-the- hell-out-of-each-and-every-song-and-dance-number way, it’s a knockout and an ass-whooper and damn near glorious at times.
“I didn’t just like it…I felt dazzled, amped, alpha-vibed. I got into each and every song, every character and conflict…I settled back and went with it. People were applauding after almost every song, and the film really does give you a ‘whoa… this is special’ feeling.”

Okay, so the Weinstein Co. is still screening Factory Girl this week after all — today (Thursday, 12.7.06, 2:00 pm at Dolby 88 Screening Room) and Friday (1:00 pm at same location)…even though it doesn’t matter as far as next Monday’s New York Film Critics Circle voting is concerned because the film isn’t opening in NYC on 12.29.
A Manhattan journalist is saying my chronology in yesterday’s item was off: “What happened is that when the Factory Girl screening notice went out it stated that the film was only opening in Los Angeles, [and then] several NYFCC members pointed out that it was thus ineligble for our awards. That’s when they pulled the plug on the NYC screenings.”
So Weinstein Co. staffers didn’t realize their decision to not book Factory Girl into Manhattan theatres on 12.29 (they’re apparently looking to open it here in early February instead) disqualified it from NYFCC consideration? They were clueless about this until certain NYC critic-journos pointed this out?

Others may be interested in how “the great diva” Diana Ross is reacting — or plans to react — to Dreamgirls and/or questions about same from the media in the next few weeks, but I personally don’t give a damn, no offense. What does Diana Ross do all day exactly? Question withdrawn — I don’t want to know.

“Hilarious and sad — that’s what the National Board of Review has become in the last several years,” Fox 411’s Roger Friedman has written in response to yesterday’s announcement of the NBR Awards. “The hilarious part is because the movie studios hate it but keep it going so they have an award to tout in newspaper ads. The sad part is that the members don’t know what they’re doing, and no one respects them.
“When the NBRMP snubbed Dreamgirls, The Queen and several other excellent 2006 films Wednesday, they were finally revealed for what they are: bickering fans and not professional film critics. Their choices instead for the 10 Best Pictures of 2006 included two Clint Eastwood films, The Devil Wears Prada, Blood Diamond and Little Miss Sunshine.
“But who makes the final selections for those 10 films? It’s not the whole membership of the NBRMP, people who pay $600 (more than I had previously understood) to be part of this gang. It’s just a group of 12 called the Exceptional Photoplay Committee. That’s it.
“The committee is led by Annie Schulhof, sister-in-law of former Sony CEO Mickey Schulhof. Her qualifications? She’s wealthy and has the time to run the organization. After Schulhof, the committee list is harder to place. It’s a secret organization, kept that way because the members — with the exception of one, possibly two — are not film professionals. They are just rich fans.
“This column reported last year that Annie Schulhof had close ties to Warner Bros. But we could never have imagined those ties culminating in these results.”

Giving credit where credit is due in light of the National Board of Review having today handed its Best Picture prize to Clint Eastwood‘s Letters From Iwo Jima: In Contention‘s Kris Tapley went way out on that limb a full week before David Poland did. And then Kris backed it up when Poland posted his little cock-tease blog entry last Saturday. And then Kris went crazy last night and predicted the damn thing for a win.

Clint Eastwood‘s Letters From Iwo Jima has won the National Board of Review’s Best Picture of 2006 trophy, which comes as a surprise. Not a whopping one — this is a very good and moving film — but it nonetheless knocked me for a loop when I read it a few minutes ago. The NBR’s Top Ten pics are Letters, Babel, Blood Diamond, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada, Flags Of Our Fathers, The History Boys, Little Miss Sunshine, Notes on a Scandal and The Painted Veil.

Letters From Iwo Jima

The NRG’s Best Director prize went to Martin Scorsese for The Departed. Forest Whitaker won the Best Actor prize for his General Idi Amin perf in The Last King of Scotland. Helen Mirren won Best Actress for her acting in The Queen. Djimon Honsou won Best Supporting Actor for his acting in Blood Diamond…a joke! For Your Consideration‘s Catherine O’Hara won for Best Supporting Actress.

The last-minute, going-totally-crazy efforts of the Weinstein Co. team to get additional shooting done on George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl (Weinstein Co., 12.29) only a few weeks ago and then hurriedly screen the film for all the year-end critics groups for possible awards consideration…the entire breathless bandwagon (Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick! Don’t count us out! We’re in the game!) has suddenly devolved into an east-coast farce.

“What?”

I’m speaking of an hours-old decision to suddenly cancel the just-scheduled New York press screenings in lieu of a decision by Weinstein Co. distribution honchos to bypass the 12.29 release and not even open Factory Girl in New York theatres until sometime early next year, possibly as late as February.
The reason, I’m told, is that the film is not quite finished — i.e., some rough spots still exist — and the Weinstein Co. would rather that the extra-tough New York-area critics see a film that’s 100% finished rather than one that’s 97% or 98% there. Bullshit, bullshit….a line like this is always a cover for something else.
No one was expecting New York Film Critics Circle members to drop everything and see Factory Girl this week (although three screenings had been set up between now and Friday) and then step right up and vote for Miller in the Best Actress category or for Guy Pearce‘s Andy Warhol performance in the Best Supporting Actor category…nobody was expecting anything. And yet something favorable could have happened along these lines. But not now with the NYFCC totally cut loose. And yet the Weinstein Co. showed the 97% -completed version to the National Board of Review on Monday, and will screen it for the Holly- wood Foreign Press today, and is still showing the film to Los Angeles critics (five screenings between today and Saturday) in time for the LAFCA voting on Sunday.
I’ve been a supporter of Factory Girl for several months, having seen a rough cut back in August, but now the campaign for it is starting to feel like a joke — and the film is not that. It’s spritzy and steeped in a mid 1960s aroma-atmosphere with a excitingly alive-feeling performance by Miller and a wryly amusing one by Pearce, and yet the Weinstein Co.’s suddenly pulling the film out of the New York arena obviously means someone — Harvey Weinstein would be a good guess– got scared at the last second about what the tough-ass NY-area critics might say or do, and decidely to pull the plug on this specific area. Weird.
24 hours ago Weinstein Co, publicist Liz Biber told me that despite confusion to the contrary, Factory Girl would definitely screen “several” times this week for the benefit of New York and Los Angeles critics, as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press. She said she’d be contacting everyone on both coasts yesterday and give them screening dates and times between now and Saturday. And three or four hours later, she did just that. And then came today’s announcement about the New York bailout.
I feel somewhere between angered and dis-invested. I’ve been feeling something genuine for this film for the last four months, but the handling of it over the last 24 to 36 hours has been erratic and close-to-embarassing.

Chris Rule‘s “Scary Mary” — a horror twist trailer mash given to 1964’s Mary Poppins with Julie Andrews. Posted five or six weeks ago, I’ve only just seen it and so what? My one complaint is that Rule didn’t find some way to make Dick Van Dyke‘s chimney sweep into some kind of fiendish monster also.

“One could make a fairly substantial list of things in Inland Empire, as in all David Lynch‘s work, that are inanely repellent or outright dumb. Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol and Andrei Tarkovsky are other filmmakers who veer wildly between genius and utter puerile shit, sometimes from minute to minute within a given work. Of course this gets into the whole issue of how certain forms of stupidity, sloppiness and impatience sometimes act as protective covering for genius… but that, as they say, is another subject.
“If Inland Empire is good-or-great, it may not be so much good-or-great-in-itself, but as a continuing harbinger of the possibility of another cinema to come.” — Screenwriter Larry Gross writing for MCN Voices and delivering an obviously vigorous tapdance/pretzel-like contortion in order to give Lynch’s long video-shot surrealist mind-bender a quasi-pass.
Gross was inspired by Manohla Dargis‘ N.Y. Times review of same, in which she calls Inland Empire “extraordinary, savagely uncompromised…and one of the few films I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ve seen this year that deserves to be called art. Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate, by turns beautiful and ugly, funny and horrifying, the film is also as cracked as Mad magazine, though generally more difficult to parse.”

Liam Neeson “is prepping for his role as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s film about the Great Emancipator,” it says in Rush & Molloy’s 12.6 column. “[In so doing] Neeson toured the New York Historical Society’s exhibit ‘New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War’ and attended a lecture by ‘The Gettysburg Gospel’ author Gabor Boritt.”

Good heavens, hold on…Neeson was preparing for the same role when I spoke to him twice about it in August 2005 — 16 friggin’ months ago — and there hasn’t been any announcement since that Spielberg is going to finally commit to making the historical biopic, which will cover Lincoln’s Presidency from his inauguration to assassination. Maybe Neeson knows something we don’t? It would be nice if Spielberg were to finally pull the trigger or at least let someone else step in. Lincoln obviously has the earmarks of a great Neeson role.