Had I not been all Bend-ed and distracted yesterday, I would have posted a sampling of reviews of Nicolas Hytner‘s The History Boys (Fox Searchlight,11.21) which opened yesterday in England. The consensus is not one of immense enthusiasm for the film, but derby-wise Richard Griffiths‘ performance as a rotund, intellectually spirited grammar school prof named Hector may — favoring winds allowing — have a shot at a Best Actor nomination.
The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil yesterday reported that Fox Searchlight, encouraged by the rave reviews Griffiths has gotten from London film critics, has decided to push him in the Best Actor category instead of Supporting, which had been the previous thinking due to Boys‘ ensemble-y nature.
Leslie Felperin‘s Variety review last Wednesday was the first to lower the boom on the film itself — now there’s a chorus of critics saying more or less the same things. The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw called it “an odd, faintly directionless experience…a stagey and oddly contrived movie directed by Nick Hytner, with the kind of elaborate, highly worked dialogue that is exhilarating in the theatre, but rather unreal-sounding on the big screen.
“It is set, notionally, in the early 1980s, though Bennett’s mental picture of the scene is surely from decades further back than that. There are some ’80s pop songs on the soundtrack and modernized touches that appear to overshoot the period runway; we get talk of ‘media studies’ (for the Oxbridge term? in the early 80s?) and the boys invoke their ‘rights’ when a master casually whacks them over the head with some exercise books.”
Bradshaw is especially good with his riffs on Mr. Creosote:
“Really, though, we are in Mr. Chips country. And the Mr. Chips who has wisely and wittily guided a number of clever-clogs youngsters to academic success is a master called Hector, rumbustiously played by Richard Griffiths. Heaven knows, Mr. Griffiths was no starveling playing Uncle Monty in Withnail and I 20 years ago — but now he is a mighty presence indeed.
“[Griffiths] actually has a stunt double listed on the final credits, presumably for long-shots showing Hector in his crash helmet sedately riding a motor-scooter into the school grounds, and that is not exactly Mission: Impossible stuff. As far as he is permitted, Griffiths dominates the screen with talent and charm — and sheer equatorial girth.”

It’s been a strong year for British films and British performers. The proof, says Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye, is that the 2007 BAFTA Awards, set for Sunday, 2.11, will have a larger-than-usual amount of actual competing Brits. To make his point he starts by safely predicting “the Battle of the Dames” — Notes on a Scandal‘s Judi Dench vs. The Queen‘s Helen Mirren going head-to-head for the best actress crown. (Baz has seen Notes and says Dench “nails it.”) Dench’s costars in this film, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy (as Blanchett’s husband) will also be up for best supporting BAFTAs, he says. Little Children ‘s Kate Winslet will also be in the running, he claims, for her role in Todd Fields‘ Little Children. So will Toby Jones for his “cracking portrayal” of Truman Capote in Infamous…wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There’s no heat for Jones on this side of the pond — Bamigboye is saying he’s a likely BAFTA nominee because he’s British? he’s also predicting that the Venus team — costars Peter O’Toole (of course), Leslie Phillips (really?), Jodie Whittaker (doubtful) and a “peerless” Vanessa Redgrave (maybe) — may be nominated for their work in Roger Michell ‘s smalllish low-budgeter. Bamigboye is further predicting that Jude Law and Martin Freeman will get BAFTA noms for their work in Breaking And Entering.

The column wasn’t very active today either, largely because the Bend Film Festival jury — myself and five other guys — sat down and mulled over which films will win the cash (including a $10,000 Best of Show” award) and non-cash prizes for a little more than four hours. We started around 11:15 this morning and finished at 3:20 pm. There were some differences of opinion but very little debating; everyone was more or less on the same page. The winners will be announced on Saturday night.

Bend Film Festival jurors during deliberative recess — (l. to r.) entertainment attorney Richard Roll, director Taggart Siegel (The Real Dirt on Farmer John), myself, critic/journalist/Movie City Indie editor Ray Pride, director-writer-actor Hank Rogerson (Shakespeare Behind Bars), filmmaker Rory Kelly (Sleep With Me, Some Girl); in a Wall Street storefront window, a board game for sale; the festival’s flagship venue is the Tower theatre, located on Wall Street in the center of downtown; ditto; haven

Three strongly worded reactions — an ecstatic rave, a thumbs-up and a pan — to David Fincher‘s Zodiac (Paramount, 1.17) went up on AICN today following Thursday night’s screening of a nearly-finished cut at Hollywood’s Arclight.

San Francisco’s Transamerica tower was built between ’69 and ’72; the Zodiac action mainly happens between ’69 and ’71.

You can discount the wows or choose to regard them as plants, but it sounds at the very least like an impressively detailed and workmanlike policier coming from an early ’70s Pakula-type place. Given the building consensus that fall-winter season is looking weaker and weaker as we go along, it seems as if a limited December release of Zodiac would fill at least a portion of the void.
The ecstasy guy said he was “blown away,” called it “easily the best film I’ve seen this year,” “an instant classic”, “a great piece of filmmaking [and] easily one of the best films about an investigation I’ve ever seen.” The moderate admirer “didn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t think it was quite as good as either Se7en or Fight Club” [but] says it operates in a kind of Pakula-type realm (All The President’s Men, Klute) and called it “a terrific film, one that I was long looking forward to…almost consistently compelling, suspenseful, and dramatically effective.”

The shadows are getting longer and I have to make the rounds around Bend (at festival headquarters and at various opening night soirees), so I guess this is one of those days in which five items will have to do. Unless I get industrious later this evening.

Rapidly speaking: (a) Dreamgirls won’t be seen in its entirety until later this month, but it’s feeling more and more like a locomotive; (b) The Departed is Marty’s Rousing Return and a bit of a torch-bearer for the tradition of The French Connection; (c) Based on almost nothing (or virtually nothing), The Good German feels a bit pallid; (d) Little Children is all about Kate Winslet right now…if that; (e) Little Miss Sunshine is on the move again…yes!; (f) We all know about Helen Mirren‘s inevitability, but now The Queen, which seemed good but overly tidy at first, is starting to look like Best Picture material; (g) Babel is an aching, close-to-great film, and also superbly made; (h) hasn’t World Trade Center been out of the picture since August?; (i) Flags of Our Fathers is well respected, has its admirers, etc., but it’s been dissed also — no duckwalk; (j) The Good Shepherd has been sounding like a not-quite-there thing since last summer; (k) The History Boys is apparently over; (l) Bobby never got rolling; (m) Catch A Fire is as well-jiggered as a film of this sort can be; (n) The Pursuit of Happyness is automatically suspect because of Will Smith in the lead role; (o) Stranger Than Fiction died in Toronto; (p) The Last King of Scotland is entirely about Forrest Whitaker.

I’m just adding my voice to those who’ve already cheered Roger Ebert‘s re-appearance from his sick bed yesterday. “I won’t be back to full production until sometime early next year,” he said. “The good news is that my rehabilitation is a profound education in the realities of the daily lives we lead, and my mind is still capable of being delighted by cinematic greatness.”
The recovering critic assures us he “will eventually walk, talk, taste, eat, drink and live, more or less, normally. But it will be a struggle, involving another surgery to complete what began in June.
My favorite passage: “I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? ‘Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’? One thing I’ve discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more!”

I landed in dry and sunny Bend, Oregon, a couple of hours ago — blue skies, clean air, juniper trees. About an hour later I checked into the Marriott Fairfield — bland, sterile, colorless, corporate…and located right next to a freeway. I’m a juror at the Bend Film Festival, which kicks off at 5:30 pm today and winds up on Saturday night. All the corporate brand stores are here in force, naturally. Remember when rural smallish towns had their own particularity, a hamlet-y feeling… far from the madding crowd?

Suddenly there’s a consensus that year-end contenders are weak, weak, weak all over. It does kinda seem that way. I’m not just saying that because the more I hear about the supposed heavyweights coming out in December, the less current they seem to have. Warner Bros. managed to keep people from seeing The Departed so there was no advance word, but when a film is really exceptional and a couple of months away the word will usually seep out. A hint or two, minor leakage…something.
I realize studio p.r. people don’t want anyone saying anything about their Decem- ber films — too damn early — but people are talking anyway. Talking by not talking, I mean. Or by giving you a look at a party, or saying something incon- clusive or abruptly changing the subject. Dreamgirls doesn’t have to worry about anything, and I’m not saying German/Shepherd, Blood Diamond and The Pursuit of Happyness necessarily need to either. I’m just saying there’s beaucoup silence out there.
The perception of weakness makes it all the more likely that The Departed will end up as a Best Picture contender. (In a stronger year it could wind up being dismis- sed as merely a well-made crime film — the fact of it being an exceptionally well-made crime film is why I’m feeling more and more that it has Oscar strength.)
It’s also a welcome thing that Little Miss Sunshine, easily one of the year’s finest no matter what the mainstream winds up deciding, will start picking up renewed heat. This is Pete Hammond ‘s view, at least, in his latest Hollywood Wiretap column.
And I’m amused by the take-it-or-leave-it bluntness of this statement from David Poland ‘s latest Oscar prediction column, to wit: Bill Condon‘s Dreamgirls “is clearly the Best Picture frontunner now that Flags of our Fathers [has] stumbled on exposure to the media (even if the trades and others are still barking up that flagpole).”

Who and what the hell is Ezekiel 22, and why are the principals of this Atlanta-based company allegedly paying $3.8 million for rights in all media to the story of three not-terribly-brilliant Mexican guys who drifted 5,000 miles across the Pacific, from San Blas to the Marshall Islands, and had to resort to “occasionally” drinking their own urine to stay alive?
Is this some kind of put-on? Has Yahoo Entertainment News been taken over by a team of Onion-styled satirists?
Late this afternoon a story was posted on Yahoo Entertainment News with a headline that read “Movie to make millionaires of lost Mexico fishermen.” The story begins, “Three Mexicans who spent nine months drifting across the Pacific Ocean in a flimsy fishing boat eating raw fish and sea birds are to be paid at least $3.8 million to turn their story into a movie.
“The three — all fishermen who said they were too poor to afford a better boat or modern fishing tackle — have signed a contract to sell their story to an Atlanta- based company [which] negotiated 8-year exclusive rights to market the story to film companies, book publishers and merchandisers, said government official Silverio Aspericueta, adding that the final payment could be even higher. He said the company’s name was Ezekiel 22.”
A company calling itself Ezekiel 22 — a chapter in the Old Testament that has to do with the sins of old Jerusalem — seems to indicate an interest in business ventures with a certain historical-religious slant. Do the principals of Ezekiel 22, if there is such a company, see three guys surviving a long trip across the Pacific as some kind of Biblical tale about God’s benevolence, like God letting Jonah live by having the “big fish” spit him up?
Wikipedia says that the book of Ezekiel contains three distinct sections — judgment on Israel, prophecies against various neighboring nations, and prophecies delivered after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II. Bible Gateway, a relligious right website, offers the entirety of Ezekiel 22 and at the beginning of the chapter are the words “Jerusalem’s Sins.”
Leaving aside the anti-Israel/Christian-right angle, why would any company prom- ise to pay $3.8 million to three intellectually-challenged Mexican guys for the rights to their story? They could have bought them for a less than that, surely. And who wants to see a movie about Mexican guys who were too dumb to hoist a sail or bring oars on a seafaring journey, and watch them eating fish and seagulls and drinking their own piss?
This is one of the weirdest news stories I’ve ever read.
And by the way, if you want to read some really hot-sounding descriptons of wild sexual abandon by pair of sluts, read Ezekiel 23, which is called “Two Adulterous Sisters.” Some of the language is so graphic and steamy it reads like something out of a 1975 issue of the National Lampoon.
Consider this passage: “Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.”

A byline-free Yahoo Movies article about likely Oscar nomines was posted late this afternoon, and the basic claims are that Helen Mirren may win the Best Actress Oscar for The Queen (duhhh), and Peter O’Toole may finally win for Venus (things have been strangely silent from the O’Toole corner since he bailed on Toronto Film Festival due to ill health).

And also that Jack Nicholson‘s mobster performance in The Departed could result in his tying Katharine Hepburn for a record fourth Oscar (no way…too many people are saying his Costello character is way too over-the top), and that Clint Eastwood‘s direction of Flags of Our Fathers may fortify his rep as “one of the winningest directors in Oscar history” (maybe, but Flags noms are looking somewhat uncertain at this stage).