One of the issues with All The King’s Men (Columbia, 9.22), I’m being told, is “length.” Director Steven Zallian “can’t really part with any bit of it.”

For those who don’t feel like reading to the end of the “Balloon Dismissals” piece I just put up, my revised Best Picture of 2006 list in order of probable (i.e., perceived) Oscar strength is as follows: (1) Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks); (2) Babel (Paramount Vantage); (3) Dreamgirls (DreamWorks/Paramount); (4) The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia Pictures); (5) World Trade Center (Paramount); (6) Stranger Than Fiction (Columbia); (7) The Good Shepherd (Universal Pictures) and (8) Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.).
Plus (9) The Fountain (Warner Bros.); (10) Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight); (11) United 93 (Universal); (12) Infamous (Warner Independent); (13) Reign O’er Me (Columbia); (14) Red Sun, Black Sand (DreamWorks); (15) Fur (Picturehouse); (16) The Holiday (Columbia); (15) Little Children (New Line); (17) The Good German (Steven Soderbergh); (18) Notes On a Scandal (Fox Searchlight ) and (19) maybe Stephen Frears’ The Queen (Miramax).

Balloon Dismissals

Four weeks from the Toronto Film Festival and the start of early Oscar season, and it’s becoming clear that certain films I put into the presumptive Oscar Balloon way back when have to be eliminated. I’m sorry but life is necessarily Darwinian at times, and handicappers like myself are merely agents of that process.
On top of which David Poland began running his Gurus of Gold chart today, and this goaded me into action. Poland is saying he didn’t invite me to participate this year because I resigned from last year’s Guru gang at the end of the Oscar road, sometime in late January or early February. And he’s right. I did quit. It became boring and tedious filling out those damn charts every week, and I finally couldn’t stand it. Of course, Poland is also playing his little chickenshit game by excluding me.

Jude Law in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering

This is solely about Best Picture dismissals. Everything flows from this category, as a film not in contention for Best Picture (i.e., or one considered to be at least potentially in that game) rarely supplies serious contenders sparring in other categories, although exceptions do crop up from time to time. Of course, I could turn out to be dead wrong about one of these kills down the road, which means I may do a 180 and put a title back in.
Perhaps some of these films shouldn’t have been in the Balloon in the first place, granted, but I have to work with a starting template of some kind and felt it was bettter to be generous to a fault than not. The idea here isn’t to piss on these movies. I’m just saying that as good as they may be, they’re starting to like they Might Not Be Giants in an Oscar Derby sense.
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Best Picture Kills:
(1) The Departed (Warner Brothers / dir: Martin Scorsese). Reason: Any film that isn’t going to the Toronto Film Festival by the call of the distributor almost certainly has issues of some kind, so barring a miracle hard-luck Marty is once again out of the derby. (Poor guy can’t seem to catch a break in this regard.) This isn’t to say it won’t be a commendable, enjoyable or successful film otherwise. Cast: Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Vera Farmiga.
(2) Breaking and Entering (The Weinstein Co./dir: Anthony Minghella). Reason: A contemporary London drama that automatically deserves a serious looksee because of the Minghella factor. But I started feeling uncertain two or three months ago when I began hearing…well, better not to pass it along. B & E may well be intriguing and recommendable for any number of reasons, but at this juncture it doesn’t sound, look, or feel like Best Picture material. I may be wrong but that’s how it smells right now. Cast: Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright-Penn, Ray Winstone, Martin Freeman, Vera Farmiga.

Joseph Cross, Annette Bening in Ryan Murphy’s Running With Scissors

All The King’s Men (Columbia Pictures/dir: Steven Zallian): Reason : Something’s wrong with this film. I can feel it. Sean Penn’s hoarse screaming of those campaign speeches with that actorish down-home cracker accent he’s using is deeply unappealing in the trailer. He’s a great actor but I’m not looking forward to sitting through this performance…I’m really not. If this period drama had any kind of Best Picture fortitude, somebody would have seen it by now and begun talking it up. It opens on 9.22 and I haven’t heard any distant jungle drums heralding its arrival. Cast: Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo.
(4) A Good Year (20th Century Fox/dir: Ridley Scott): Reason: The more I read about it and look at the trailer, the more appealing it seems. I would love it if a quality-of-life film such as this turned out to be derby material, but the more I meditate upon the mood of the trailer and the somewhat predictable story arc (i.e., financial kingpin grows a soul, learns to savor life’s organic/pastoral pleasures), the more my gut tells me it’s probably a case of Ridley Lite. Nothing wrong with that — I’m looking forward, I can’t wait, and I’ll always love Crowe — but it’s not looking like a heavyweight deal. And so what? This could a laid-back winner of another stripe. Cast: Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Abbie Cornish, Marion Cotillard, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Didier Bourdon.
(5) Running With Scissors (Columbia/dir: Ryan Murphy) Reason: The word is actually pretty good on this one. Sassy, funny, oddball coming-of-age, life-lesson stuff. I’m just picking up signals that it lacks the water-table gravitas and emotional current to be in the Best Picture race. Said to be fine and worth seeing on its own terms, though. I was pitched about inteviewing Ryan Murphy (and I’d like very much to salute any ex-Entertainment Weekly writer who’s gone on to greater things) but after saying I wanted to see Scissors as a pre-condition…well, I’d still like to see it. Cast: Annette Bening, Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Joseph Fiennes, Evan Rachel Wood, Alec Baldwin, Jill Clayburgh.
(6) The Prestige (Touchstone/dir: Chris Nolan) Reason: A turn-of-the-century dramatic thriller about competing magicians shouldn’t have been listed among my Best Picture hopefuls in the first place. It’s just that Nolan is such a first-rate director — one of the very best working today — and I keep thinking one day he’s going to hit it out of the park. Not this time, though. The buzz is excellent but the trailer tells me it’s primarily a genre film meant to satisfy the plebes (and I include myself in that category). Cast: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, Piper Perabo, David Bowie.

Drew Barrymore, Eric Bana in Curtis Hanson’s Lucky You

Children of Men (Universal/dir: Alfonso Cuaron) Reason: An obviously thoughtful doomsday drama that looks superb and whip-smart and technically top-of-the-line. (A director friend who’s seen it says the compositions and long shots are Kubrick-like.) But any movie previewed at Comic-Con featuring Michael Caine in hippie hair and being called a “thriller” on www.comingsoon.net is most likely not Best Picture material. That sounds like a big lunge but you know what I mean. Educated filmgoers, cineastes, cultists and geeks will probably be delighted, but the futuristic plot places it in the basket of political-polemical films that never seem to end up in the Best Picture derby. Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Charlie Hunnam, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor.
(8) Zodiac (Paramount/dir: David Fincher). Reason: A dark, gritty procedural about an actual hunt for a real-life San Francisco-area serial killer that began 37 years ago is, again, a film that may well have grand distinctions and fantastic chops, but it’s almost certainly not Best Picture material because of the lack of an emotional current of any recognizable kind, much less a cathartic emotional crescendo, in the script that I read a few months ago. Plus it’s hard to figure if Paramount is going to release it platform-style in late December to qualify it, or whether they’re just going to open it on 1.17.07 with no platform. Cast : Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Ezra Buzzington.
(9) For Your Consideration (Warner Independent/dir: Christopher Guest). Reason: May well be clever, funny, sharply satirical, etc., but not remotely made of the stuff that gets you into the derby. Chris Guest operates on his own sub-atomic plane. Cast: Carrie Aizley, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, Paul Dooley, Ricky Gervais, Christopher Guest, Rachael Harris, John Michael Higgins, Michael Hitchcock, Don Lake, Eugene Levy, Jane Lynch, Michael McKean, Larry Miller, Christopher Moynihan, Catherine O’Hara, Jim Piddock, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard.
(10) Hollywoodland (Focus Features/dir: Alan Coulter). Reason: An atmospheric, above-average Hollywood noir with a steady hand and fine performances. But it’s more of an early-fall than a late-fall film, if you catch my drift. And it’s certainly not a year-end one. Which isn’t to put it down. I’m just trying to weigh its merits in the proper context. Cast: Adrien Brody, Ben Affleck, Bob Hoskins, Diane Lane.

Gael Garcia Bernal (r.) in Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep

Lucky You (Warner Bros./dir: Curtis Hanson). Reason: Gambling movie, not going to Toronto Film Festival, the curse of Eric Bana, etc. I finally saw the trailer on the big screen last night, and it doesn’t look half bad. Hanson is a first-rate filmmaker, as everyone should know by now, and his having worked with Eric Roth on the script is some kind of quality guarantee. But unlike Hanson’s excellent, under-appreciated In Her Shoes , this one doesn’t feel Best Picture-ish. (Note: Lucky You has changed its release date from 9.8 to 10.27.) Cast: Bansa, Drew Barrymore, Robert Duvall.
(12) The Painted Veil (Warner Independent/dir: John Curran) Reason: Looks to be an exotic, high-toned period drama, set in the 1920s, about a married London woman’s journey of self discovery by way of an adulterous affair and dealing with cholera-afflicted Chinese natives. Whatever aesthetic pleasures it may ultimately yield, one can sense immediately by way of its 9.15 release date that it’s probably not derby material. Cast: Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber.
(13) The Science of Sleep (Warner Independent/dir: Michel Gondry). Reason: I still haven’t seen it, but it’s been at festivals and hasn’t generated anything that sounds like derby-entry buzz to me. Trippy and imaginative, I hear, and a likely smart-audience favorite. Cast : Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Jean-Michel Bernard, Emma de Caunes, Inigo Lezzi, Stephane Metzger, Miou-Miou.
Best Picture Add-On:
Blood Diamond (Warner Bros./dir: Edward Zwick). Reason: It’s a Zwick film about moral growth in a wartime atmosphere, and it’s opening on 12.15 with Warner Bros. behind it — that in itself tells you it’s in the game. Set in 1990s Sierra Leone, it’s about a South African mercenary (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) whose fates become interwined “in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives.” That last part sounds like horseshit but Zwick always tries hard and Diamond is looking pretty assertive at this stage. Cast: DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Hounsou, Michael Sheen, Stephen Collins.

Naomi Watts in John Curran’s The Painted Veil

Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight/dirs: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris). Reason: It sometimes takes a while for people to realize just how exquisite and emotionally on-target a film is, even if it opened at Sundance and feels indie-ish. Cast: Gregg Kinear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin.
Best Picture Keepers in order of probable (i.e., perceived) Oscar strength:
Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks); Babel (Paramount); Dreamgirls (DreamWorks/Paramount); The Pursuit of Happyness (Columbia Pictures); World Trade Center (Paramount); Stranger Than Fiction (Columbia); The Good Shepherd (Universal Pictures) and Blood Diamond (Warner Bros.)
Plus The Fountain (Warner Bros.); Litttle Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight); United 93 (Universal); Infamous (Warner Independent); Reign O’er Me (Columbia); Red Sun, Black Sand (DreamWorks); Fur (Picturehouse); The Holiday (Columbia); Little Children (New Line); The Good German (Steven Soderbergh); Notes On a Scandal (Fox Searchlight ) and maybe Stephen Frears’ The Queen (Miramax).
The Oscar Balloon adjutments are done.

Isn’t it about time to start showing Steve Zallian‘s All The King’s Men (Columbia. 9.22) to the press? It was presumed to be some kind of Oscar hopeful last fall before it was pulled, it was subsequently re-edited and refined (or so I was told), it’s been done for while now, it’ll be showing at the Toronto Film Festival before you know it, and playing in theatres in about seven weeks. I made three calls about this yesterday and today…zip. But I heard too many interesting things about this film last year. Has to be something estimable. Give it up, guys.

The Departed trailer minus the dreaded Mozilla X Plug-in factor, in Quicktime and Windows Media Player.

Mission: Impossible: III “is likely to gross close to $400 million worldwide at the box office and is projected to earn an additional $200 million in DVD revenue…[and yet] Paramount expects only to break even after star-producer Tom Cruise gets his share of the profit, which two informed sources estimate could be as high as $80 million.” This according to Claudia Eller‘s 7.31 L.A.Times piece about the diminishing interest that Paramount has in cutting any more fat deals with Cruise and his ilk. Paramount recently offered Cruise/Wagner Prods. an annual $2 million budget, Eller reported, instead of the annual $10 million C/W had been authorized to spend before. The bottom line is that the days of big-dollar gross players are over.

“In the New Hollywood, the power has shifted from production to marketing. And why not? When your aim is to make a franchise picture aimed at the whole family, the person you want at the helm is a brand-management expert, not a filmmaker-friendly production chief. Next summer is already jammed with another slew of sequels, including new installments in the Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, Fantastic Four, Rush Hour, Bourne and Ocean’s Eleven series. These are consumer products, not cinema.” — from Patrick Goldstein‘s 8.1 “Big Picture” column.

“It’s folly for studios to say we’re only going to make a movie we know how to market,” says World Trade Center producer Michael Shamberg. “The problem with marketing is that it’s based on what’s worked in the past. But audiences want freshness and new ideas, which is all about the future. If a studio is unwilling to be a home for fresh ideas or daring films, they’re ultimately not going to be competitive, because the top talent is going to go somewhere else.” — also in Patrick Goldstein‘s 8.1 “Big Picture” column. To which I would add, audiences don’t seem to really want freshness and new ideas — they want fresh spins on safe ideas. Lame as this sounds, the word “new” tends to put most people a little on edge, except for toddlers, tweeners, teens and 20-somethings.

Suddenly my old Fairfield County stomping grounds (Wilton and Norwalk) are part of the Hollywood-now cycle. The Dave Karnes character in World Trade Center (Paramount, 8.9) is shown watching the 9/11 tragedy on a TV set along with two or three coworkers at his job in Wilton, and now House of Sand and Fog director Vadim Perlman is in a legal skirmish over something that happened in a South Norwalk restaurant-bar. It sounds lame to bring this up, but if you lived in this neck of the woods and someone mentioned this to you at a party at someone’s home on Cheesespring Road, you’d smile and nod and go, “Yeah, interesting.”

I’ve seen thousands of films with rote, static, or unimaginative camera work, particularly those made between the nascent sound era of the early 30s up until the beginnings of the influence of Italian neorealism in the early ’50s and the hand-held, free-form era of the French nouvelle vague in the early ’60s. Laurence Olivier was, I suppose, not an especially exciting or inspired director, but his three best-known Shakespeare films — Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III — never struck me as being particularly labored or tedious or difficult to sit through.

These three films were mainly about text, acting and visual clarity, and Olivier’s shooting of them never got in the way of these things.
And yet here, out of the blue, is N.Y. Times DVD columnist Dave Kehr all but spitting on Olivier’s grave by saying his work may be slightly worse than that of Ed Wood’s — seriously — in a brief review of the Criterion Collection’s just-issued Olivier Shakespeare box set.
“Olivier might have been a great actor, but he was one of the klutziest directors who ever lived, and seeing these films, with their static arrangements of actors, pointlessly peripatetic camera movements and bizarre framing, makes one appreciate again the deep commitment to cinema represented by the work of Edward D. Wood.
“Hamlet is the best of the bunch, a Freudian interpretation focused on the prince’s sexual disgust with his adulterous mother (all ambiguity has been eliminated) and dressed up with billowing clouds of dry-ice and angular, expressionistic sets that strongly resemble Orson Welles‘s back-lot Macbeth of the same year. Richard III, now with its Technicolor buffed up and its VistaVision aspect ratio restored, still remains a mighty soporific. All three are better heard than seen.”
And Olivier’s Henry V concept of starting the film at London’s Globe theatre and gradually opening it up into big studio sets and outdoor locations….that was chopped liver? It was fairly out there idea for its day, and it’s still moderately engaging by today’s standards. Kehr must have a serious bug up his ass about something when he wrote this.

And while speaking of Shakespeare on film, what’s with Warner Home Video’s continuing delay in releasing a remastered DVD of Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar (’53)? By my standards this superbly acted, exquisitely mounted black-and-white version is one of the best Shakespeare rides around, Hollywood-produced or otherwise. (Dave Kehr might piss on it and wish for more of a Plan 9 From Outer Space approach, but that’s his right as a critic.)

Marlon Brando‘s performance as Marc Antony may not exemplify the grunty, earthy Marlon of legend, but it’s one of his most striking performances. No one has ever delivered the “cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” speech with more punch or pizzazz. It’s right up there in terms of rage and fire with his Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar…seriously. That moment at the end of Act Two when his newly empowered Antony walks up to a marble bust of the late Ceasar, puts his hand on the base and turns it toward him is one of Brando’s finest non-verbal bits ever… and people are barely aware of it.
James Mason‘s Brutus, Louis Calhern‘s Caesar, Edmond O’Brien ‘s Casca, John Gielgud‘s Cassisus, John Doucette‘s “carpenter, citizen of Rome”, John Hoyt‘s Decius Brutus, Greer Garson‘s Calpurnia….an awesome cast delivering one knockout moment after another. Not to mention Miklos Rosza‘s haunting score and Joseph Ruttenberg‘s luscious cinematography.
I thought WHV would issue this film for sure after Brando’s death in ’04, but nope. There’s no question this film is an essential, so whassup, Ned Price?

Another trailer mashup, this time selling the idea of a warm and uplifting Taxi Driver. Very well edited by Steven Santos…but I think we all got the idea with that Shining trailer that went around a couple of years ago.