Helen Mirren‘s performance as Queen Elizabeth II “has turned The Queen into something you never imagined it could be: a crackling dramatic story that’s intelligent, thoughtful and moving.” — from Kenneth Turan‘s review in the L.A. Times. Stephen Frears‘ just-opened film is intelligent, thoughtful and…well, somewhat moving. But “crackling” it absolutely is not. We all know what crackling is — something like fire, a plot with close-to-breathtaking dips and turns, next door to crackerjack. Due respect to Turan –he’s a gifted and careful writer — but he should have chosen more carefully.

David Lynch‘s Inland Empire, which has been shown at the New York Film Festival, is the filmmaker’s “most experimental feature since Eraserhead, according to N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. The story spins a familiar Lynchian fairy tale: a blond actress (Laura Dern, in a career-defining performance) lands a coveted film role and spirals down into a hallucination in which dreams become nightmares. There are whores, of course, with laughing and lurid mouths, and shadowy corridors that, in suggestively female anatomical fashion, lead to dark rooms. Mostly, though, there is Mr. Lynch, whose shards of dream logic sometimes achieve the convulsive beauty that Andre Breton wanted for surrealism and, at other times, feel like the disgorged bile of an artist who has taken the brakes off his sadism.”

“This is either great acting, or atrocious scene-chewing. Maybe it’s both. But it’s sure entertaining to watch.” – – CNN’s Tom Charity in his review of The Departed, and particularly of Jack Nicholson ‘s peformance.

The two biggest exhibition chains who are saying they won’t play Gabriel Range‘s controversial Death of a President — Phillip Anschutz‘s Regal Entertainment Group and the Texas-based Cinemark USA — are run by people who’ve expressed support for Republican causes and/or the Bush administration. For whatever reason, Nicole Sperling and Anne Thompson‘s story about Newmarket’s difficulties in booking the film fails to mention this.

Death of a President; Regal Entertainment chief Phillip Anschutz

Death of a President, which I saw in Toronto, begins with an imagined, recreated asassination of President Bush in Chicago. It’s mostly about the response to the shooting. It’s obviously anti-Bush to some extent but it’s mainly against people rushing to judgment. Righties, naturally, have accused the film of trying to incite notions of violence against the president. And once the righties decide on a position, the rank-and-file marches precisely to the same beat .
It’s no secret that Anschutz is a big Republican contributor, and in at least one instance Cinemark contributed to the campaign of a Republican candidate for Congress — the late actor Noble Willingham. Cinemark’s corporate headquarters being based in Plano, Texas, suggests some kind of affiliation/accomodation with the Bushies has probably manifested in some form.
Sperling and Thompson’s story says that “several major theater chains are refusing to play the film” but it only mentions Regal and Cinemark as having declared this absolutely. A spokesperson for Sumner Redstone‘s National Amusements is quoted as saying “we’re currently in discussions with the distributor of the film…our film department does consider all films, and we’ve run controversial films in the past.”

On page 244 of the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Marie Antoinette director Sofia Coppola is quoted by Lady Antonia Fraser, author of Marie-Antoinette: The Journey, as having asked early on, “So would it matter if I leave out the politics?” And Fraser, whose biography Coppola based her film upon, replies, “Marie Antoinette would have adored that.” Exactly. Precisely.

As most everyone knows, Jackie Earl Haley — a balding, pale-skinned, rodent-like actor of some 45 years — has suddenly popped through in supporting roles in a pair of high-profile films — as Sean Penn‘s all-but-silent driver in All the King’s Men, and as Ronnie, a prison parolee who’s been in jail for exposing himself to minors, in Todd Field‘s very well-crafted Little Children, which opens limited today.
And USA Today‘s “Suzie Woz” (a.k.a., Susan Wloszczyna), in a profile of Haley, says that “Oscar handicappers” — a reference to pally David Poland, for the most part, and perhaps also herself — “suggest a supporting nomination is not out of the question for Haley’s hauntingly understated performance” in Little Children.
“This is the great comeback story of the year because it is so unexpected,” says Poland. “[Haley] is not movie-star pretty. And he was all but forgotten. But here he is, in two big films.” Two attention-getting films within the critic-journo community, he means. “Big” tends to mean important and popular among the hoi polloi. Men is dead, and Children has yet to register.
Haley invests genuine feeling in his Children role . He’s playing a sexual cockroach and a bit of a retard who loves his mom (and therefore has decency in him) but is unable to control himself. Ronnie tries to make things right at the end of the film (in a gross and pathetic way), but he’s an odious character throughout. He’s got one scene that makes you scrunch your face and turn away. Trust me — nobody outside the Poland realm is going to push Haley as Best Supporting Actor.

The thinking is that Tom Tykwer‘s Perfume (Paramount, 12.27) isn’t going to do as well in the U.S. as it has so far in Europe. But it could turn into a goofy-kicky theatrical event if ..if…the Paramount distribution people were crazy enough (and trust me, they’re not) to invest in a special revival of an upgraded Smellovision system to accompany the showing of Tykwer’s film in select big-city theatres.

From a newspaper ad for Michael Todd‘s Scent of Mystery, directed by Jack Cardiff.

Perfume is a movie about the loveliness of scent — specifically about an oddball character who lives for the spiritual transportation he receives from very special scents, aromas and perfumes. What triggered my idea was Variety critic Derek Elley writing in his 10.4 review that “the problem with Perfume is not so much how to make the audience identify with a largely silent, olfactory-obsessed nerd who turns serial killer, but how to transmit his compulsion in the strictly audiovisual medium of film.

“More than just a killer-thriller or the tale of a man with an exceptional gift,” Elley continues, “Perfume is a skewed love story…[about] a man who suddenly discovers the ‘scent of woman’ but can’t make the jump into real relationships.

Bringing back Smellovision would be such a no-brainer goof of a gimmick I can’t believe it wasn’t at least considered for the release of this film. People are still into 3D and every so often there are revivals of 3D versions of House of Wax , Dial M for Murder and whatnot — why not bring back aroma-fortified cinema?

Smellovision and Aromarama were attempts to enhance the moviegoing experience in the late 50s. I’m guessing that if any desire existed within Paramount to bring this theatrical device back for special Perfume showings, a more effective, less cumbersome version than was used in big-city theatres in 1959 and ’60 would be within the grasp of ’06 technology.

In this Variety review of Scent of Mystery (’60), Smellovision was described as a somewhat more advanced process.

“In Smell-O-Vision, developed by the Swiss-born Hans Laube, the odors are piped via plastic tubing — a mile of tubing at Chicago’s Cinestage Theatre — to individual seats, the scents being triggered automatically by signals on the film’s soundtrack,” the review wrote. “The Aromarama smells are conveyed through the theatre’s regular air ventilating system. The Smell-O-Vision odors are more distinct and recognizable and do not appear to linger as long as those in Aromarama.”

The reason Fox will be pushing Devil Wears Prada star Meryl Streep in the Best Actress category, I suspect, is that they don’t want her up against likely Best Supporting Actress contender Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (Paramount/DreamWorks, 12.15). Because she would stand a pretty good chance of losing if they did. I don’t know anything but I sense awesomeness from Hudson’s performance, based on what little I’ve seen.
Streep will probably lose in the Best Actress race anyway…no offense. She’s up against The Queen‘s Helen Mirren, who has a much richer part than Streep’s Miranda Priestley (another sort of aloof queen) and seems all but unstoppable at this stage, and Penelope Cruz’s struggling-mother performance in Volver — her absolute career best — is, I feel, deeper, stronger and more full of life than Mirren and Streep’s performances put together.

Unofficial but you can take it to the bank: Clint Eastwood‘s Letters From Iwo Jima, the Japanese soldier, Japanese-language battle- of-Iwo-Jima film, will open in early February. This is the decision from Warner Bros., which is handling the film’s U.S. distribution, and its partner DreamWorks. It’s being regarded very much as an “art film” by the powers-that-be, and may even turn up at the ’07 Sundance Film Festival. Or so I’ve been told. Oh, and Clint isn’t quite finished editing it yet, even though Warner Bros. marketing staffers saw a print a couple of weeks ago.

“Indiana Jones 4 is still in development,” George Lucas has told Variety reporter David S. Cohen. He explained that “Steve (Spielberg) and I are still working away, trying to come up with something we’re happy with. Hopefully, in a short time, we will come to an agreement . Or something.”
Indy IV — the anti-matter black-hole movie that refuses to die, that can never be satisfactorily written, that will never be made.
Lucas made this comment earlier this week following groundbreaking ceremonies for the renamed School of Cinematic Arts at USC.
He also said that — pop open the champagne! — Lucasfilm is getting out of the movie business. “We don’t want to make movies,” he told Cohen. “We’re about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we’ve moved away from the feature film thing because it’s too expensive and it’s too risky. I think the secret to the future is quantity.”
Didn’t Lucas say last year that he wanted to be a indie director and make smaller, lower-budgeted features and basically be Gregg Araki, and that he was looking forward to this and felt the freedom to do this now that he’d made his billions?

New York Observer reporter Sara Vilkomerson reports that “more than a few guests dismissed Sofia Coppola‘s Marie Antoinette” at last week’s opening-night party for the N.Y. Film Festival. “It’s like sticking your hand in a giant meringue. Mark my words, no one will see it but gays and girls.”