“We did the best film we could, and it’s just snakes on a plane. It’s not ‘Snakes on Brokeback Mountain.'” — the compulsively honest Samuel L Jackson speaking to The Independent‘s Leslie O’Toole.

“Riddle me this,” David Poland wrote this morning. “Is a 20 minute clip, some free hors d’oeuvres, a handshake and a smile from a singing diva, and a Japanese trailer really enough to lock up the Oscar season for people now?” The implication seems to be that it’s too early to make a call about Flags of Our Fathers and Dreamgirls looking like the hottest Best Picture choices. That or he thinks I’m full of gas for joining Tom O’Neill in saying so. Or something like that. I’m not quite sure.
Let’s just repeat the Flags basics without comment: (a) I’ve read the script of Flags of my Fathers and have a pretty good idea of how it unfolds. (b) Plus the Japanese trailer — the desaturated color, the texture of it, the versimilitude, the moody whatever — drove it in deeper. I also said in yesterday’s piece that (c) Flags might not stand up on its own (one never knows anything, it hasn’t been seen) but it’s safe to say that this latest Eastwood/Haggis collaboration will most likely have some measure of poetic refinement…a certain spareness and sureness of touch, etc.
And then you need to add three things to this: (d) the personal-anguish-of- soldiers factor, which will likely resonate in the hinterlands among the support-our-troops-in-Iraq contingent, (e) the big-scale tribute to the World War II generation is going to sink in big with boomer-aged Academy members, and (f) the Flags-plus-Letters from Iwo Jima factor is going to impress the hell out of Academy members for the same reason that actors who gain weight or put on fake noses or speak in exotic accents always tend to get Oscar-nominated — because the effort that went into it is so obvious, and because no director has ever done something like this before.
I said in the piece also that something else might pop through between now and December 31st (“something always does”) and so on.
And if Poland has yet to be convinced that Dreamgirls is probably the other leading Best Picture contender at this stage, then he really does need a doctor-supervised schedule of daily enemas.
Oh, I’m sorry…that’s getting personal. But of course, Poland started it by posting this cleverly done HE banner with Quentin Crisp in place of myself. Poland is making a point about personal proclivities ouside the bounds of journalistic endeavor. Are you noticing the sophistication levels here? This is really mature, stirring, erudite stuff. Welcome to the fucking sandbox.

Just to continue the foolery, here’s a Wells-vs.-Poland q & a thing on DVD Newsroom.

L.A. Times writer Deborah Netburn has asked editors of some of the top geek sites if Snakes on a Plane (New Line, 8.18) is coming out past its hip prime. I thought this was a settled issue. Of course it’s coming out too late as far as the hip online community is concerned. Thing is, the 100% support of this crowd isn’t enough to make Snakes a serious hit.
To broaden general interest levels New Line Cinema began in June tand July to reach out to the less-hip, the squares, the newspaper readers, the slow-on-the-pickups — in effect dumbing down the ad campaign.
I’ve been hearing for weeks now that the definitely-not-interested percentage on tracking reports was fairly high — over 20% — but these are primarily the two older quadrants talking. Snakes is obviously a younger-person’s movie. On top of which there are probably a lot of people out there who are squeamish about snakes and just don’t want to see a movie about them, period.
I don’t know what to expect this weekend…yet. I just know that Snakes was cool six months ago, but it ain’t so cool now.
Two quotes from Netburn’s piece: (a) “Fact is, those mother-f***ing snakes are getting on my mother-f***ing nerves. And I know I can’t be the only one who feels this way” — Cinematical’s Eric Davis; (b) “They’ve done a pretty good job with the buzz, but because it has taken so long for the film to come out they felt the need to show more of the film to keep people interested. When people knew nothing about it short of the concept they were excited — now they are saying it is a cheesy Samuel Jackson film.” — Dark Horizons’ Garth Hudson.

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neill got Dreamgirls costar Jennifer Hudson to tell him about the filming of the scene in which she sings “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” — the classic tune that Jennifer Holliday sang in the original B’way stage version that ran in the early ’80s, and which won more or less won her a Best Actress Tony Award.
For Hudson’s performing of “the most anticipated scene in one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, director Bill Condon fretted so much over shooting it that he saved it up for last and shut down the set so no one could spy on the scene,” O’Neill writes. “All early buzz indicates that Dreamgirls is about to transform Hudson into a superstar,” he adds. “[And] she’s already the frontrunner for the Supporting Actress Oscar.”
O’Neill is correct about this — Hudson is the one to beat right now. I saw the Dreamgirls scenes Monday night at the Pacific Design Center and listened to Hudson belt out three tunes like a champ. She’s got the hot role in Dreamgirls — the one with the most soul and punch and heartache.
I didn’t think I’d be saying this, but the great Meryl Streep needs to put herself into the Best Actress category after all for her Devil Wears Prada performance. If she goes for Best Supporting Actress she’ll almost certainly lose to Hudson.

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (a.k.a. “Mr. Steely Dan”) have struck again, this time writing to sometime Owen Wilson colleague Wes Anderson. The idea is to get Wes to convince Fox Searchlight to fork over $400 grand for the rights to two songs Becker and Fagin have composed for Wes’s forthcoming The Darjeeling Limited, which was offically announced yesterday in Variety. Here’s the lyrics to the chrous from the first song: “Darjeeling Limited / That’s the train I wanna get kissed on / Darjeeling Limited / But I’ll be lucky if I don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t get pissed on.”

Hollywood Interrupted is reporting that Bruno Kirby has died from “recently diagnosed leukemia.” Kirby is best known for having played “young Clemenza” in The Godfather, Part II, for doing a good job with a fairly sizable role in City Slickersand for having played Albert Brooks‘ co-editor in Modern Romance who says to Brooks at one point, “The ‘ludes kicked in, right?” Kirby was only 57. A sad thing…sorry.

The Thursday night 10 pm showing of Snakes on a Plane is going to be one of the coolest events in the ticket-buying L.A. moviegoer realm in a long while. Every critic in town, I imagine, will be at one of the theatres where it’s playing, and will thereafter run straight home (or back to the office) to write the review at 12:30 am. I’m assuming that the Arclight will be Ground Zero that night. I want to be among a crowd of loud talk-backers, booers, cheerers, Samuel L. Jackson fans and hipper-than-thou’s who were into Snakes in March-April but have since gotten off the boat, etc. Hollywood Elsewhere is planning on being there barring some catclysmic event. I asked a New Line rep if they’re going to have a 10 pm freebie screening for critics, and I was told no. Watch them do this anyway and invite their friendlies.

Anne Thompson agrees with L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein that print critics should also write blogs to keep their connectivity levels up and running with cyber film fans. “Major news outlets should give their critics blogs and encourage them to weigh in before the official studio review dates,” she writes. “I love this idea! And it will probably drive the studios nuts.”

Sad news about that Nick Papac, a 25 year-old propmaster, getting killed in that crash with an SUV carrying director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) during shooting of The Kingdom, starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. One thing these stories never to seem to reveal is what really happened (or what appears to have happened). The details always seem to emerge weeks or months later.

Jennifer Aniston‘s publicist Stephen Huvane vs. Us magazine’s Janice Min and and the Today show…old news (over 24 hours! forget it!) but hilarious. Who’s the more-full-of-shit offender in this thing?

N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr, whose dismissive snortings have prompted an occasional retort from this corner, has gotten it wrong again. In his current column he refers to Billy Wilder‘s The Spirit of St. Louis, a not-half-bad 1957 James Stewart flick about Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight from New York to Paris, as “stunningly impersonal.”

In terms of auteurist brushstrokes, he means. And Kehr is right — the film has none of the wit or subversion in Wilder’s best films, and it does seem as if Wilder made it for the paycheck. But in its mid-1950s, earnestly stodgy way, The Spirit of St. Louis is moderately watchable — it moves along in a steady, workmanlike fashion — but also pays off emotionally at the very end. In a blatantly dishonest way, yes, but effectively. And I’ve always found this fascinating.
It’s mainly because of Wilder’s storytelling discipline — he was always one to plant seeds and make them pay off much later in a film — and also, partly, due to Franz Waxman‘s music. But Kehr can’t be bothered to mention this, perhaps because he never realized it or is too smug to pay attention. I only know that I hate it when smart critics diss a film that’s at least partly successful.
Just before the exhausted Stewart is about to land his plane at Le Bourget field in Paris, he starts to lose it — he starts freaking and whimpering over a sudden inability to focus on the basics of landing a plane.
The movie has briefly acknowledged about an hour earlier that Lindbergh was an atheist who believed only in his own aeronautical skills and in the engineering of planes. But just as Stewart is melting down above Le Bourget he thinks back to a “flying prayer” that a priest passed once passed on, and he says aloud, “Oh, God, help me.” And of course he lands safely.

And I swear to God it seems like the right thing to say at that moment — for Stewart/Lindbergh, for the audience, for the film. And I’m saying this as a half- atheist myself. (I found satori when I was 20 — I held universes in the palm of my hand — but mystical flotation fades over time.) It was shameless of Wilder and coscreenwriters Charles Lederer and Wendell Mayes to have pulled such a cheap trick (pandering to conventional religious sentiment, etc.), but it’s amazing when bullshit works despite it obviously being bullshit.
Jean Luc Godard had a somewhat similar reaction when he said he was seized with affection for John Wayne‘s Ethan Edwards at the end of The Searchers when he picks up Natalie Wood and says, “Let’s go home, Debbie.” That’s a dishonest moment also — Ethan is a racist sonuvabitch, and there’s no way he’s doing to do a last-minute 180. But the moment works anyway.
I’ve always felt that any movie that puts at least one lump in your throat is not impersonal. If the filmmakers are talented and clever enough to “get” you, they’re always coming some emotional place themselves. You can’t be totally cynical and touch people. You have to mean it on some level. And that means getting down to the “personal”.

A frank, astute, well-written piece by L.A. Times industry columnist Patrick Goldstein about why film critics seem to more and more irrelevant (or at least being seen as such), and what moves could be made to plug them into the cyber world — i.e., basically bring the learned brahmin types into more of a democratic give-and-take dialogue with the rude and unwashed masses.