She tried and failed to be Lois Lane and needs to do something else fast…something fairly strong…if not piercing then at least provocative..to restore her industry cred. And so Kate Bosworth has bought the movie rights to Catherine Hanahan‘s Lost Girls and Love Hotels (Pengnuin) — a nocturnal Lost in Translation without a Bill Murray figure and/or an absentee husband, plus a lot sexier and more dangerous and not that many laughs (if any)…ache-y-breaky Tokyo nihilism and (I’m told) a fair amount of bleak-steamy hotel-room sex.

On her My Space page, Hanrahan has written that she’s “really pleased to finally be able to let people know that Kate Bosworth has bought the film rights to Lost Girls and Love Hotels. She’s a talented actress and she obviously has good taste in books.”

Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker- Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren, Whitaker-Mirren…okay, all right, I get it.

I’m just wondering if all those brave adults who refused to see United 93 when it opened last April — the “too soon!” crowd — might be inclined to give it a whirl on DVD now that it’s won the Best Picture prize from the New York Film Critics Circle. You know what? Naaaah.

Director Paul Greengrass during the shooting of United 93

Does this award put United 93 into the running for one of the five slots in the Best Picture Oscar noms? As much as I’d like to see this happen, my sense is that it probably won’t. Those Academy members who were too squeamish about seeing United 93 last April are probably in the same place now no matter how well it does with the critics groups. Universal’s Oscar strategist Tony Angelotti has his work cut out for him, but if anyone can do it…
Rest assured, there is at least some confusion and probably very little joy in Mudville (i.e., Movie City News) over this decision. David Poland pretty much dismissed this film right out of the gate.
I was delighted when I heard the news early this afternoon. I’d just finished a round-table chat with Letters From Iwo Jima star Ken Watanabe and was standing in the banquet room loading up on baked salmon with all the other junket freeloaders when I heard the news from publicist Jeff Hill. I’d pretty much given up any hope for distinguished black sheep of a movie and then…kapow!
Six months ago I wrote that “my choice for the best film of the year so far, no question, is Paul Greengrass‘s United 93 — a film that many, many people still don’t want to see, but is truly a pulse-pounder for the ages, in part because it’s so stunningly well-made, but mainly because the extraordinary craft manifests in all kinds of haunting ways.
“Composed of a thousand details and a thousand echoes, United 93 is a film about revisiting, recapturing, reanimating…about death, loss and a portrait of heroism that, for me, was too much to absorb in a single viewing. I’ve seen it five times, and I can’t wait to watch and re-watch the DVD.:
For the record, the top New York Film Critics Circle winners are United 93 for Best Film, The Departed‘s Martin Scorsese for Best Director, the Best Actress award to The Queen‘s Helen Mirren and the Best Actor prize to Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland. Have there ever been a Best Actress and Best Actor pair that have won as many critics awards in tandem as Mirren and Whiaker have?
The awards presentation will take place on Sunday, 1.7.07 at the Supper Club, “a new venue for the organization this year.”

Voting for the 2006 New York Film Critics Circle winners is taking place right now. Keep tabs on the NYFCC website for updates, which will be posted one by one as they’re decided upon. So far, as of 11:14 am, the Best Supporting Actor award has gone to Jackie Earl Haley for Little Children and the Best Supporting Actress award has been nabbed by Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls. Previously: Best Screenplay award has gone to Peter Morgan for The Queen, the Best Cinematographer award has been given to Guillermo Navarro for his work on Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Best Animated Feature award has gone to Happy Feet.
There’s a lone wolf with a Blackerry who’s also posting the awards as they’re decided upon here.

In Richard Eyre and Patrick Marber‘s Notes on a Scandal (Fox Searchlight, 12.27), “the riveting interplay between Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre’s equally incisive direction,” writes Variety’s Justin Chang.
“Zoe Heller‘s compelling 2003 novel unraveled the sordid tale of a schoolteacher’s affair with one of her young pupils, taking the form of a coolly perceptive and bitingly funny diary written by a close friend. The book’s subversive achievement was to project the diarist’s own gaze back upon herself, turning a salacious tabloid tale into a subtle and revelatory act of confession.
“What Heller achieved through tricky literary technique, Eyre and scribe Marber (Closer) have inevitably rendered more explicitly, playing up the obsessive lesbian-stalker angle with a discreet nod in the direction of Fatal Attraction. What makes Notes on a Scandal more than just a Lifetime-ready psychothriller — as well as a satisfyingly nasty awards-season tonic — is the ruthless economy of its execution from start to finish.”

“We’ve come to be consumed by a 24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative ad, bickering, small-minded politics that doesn’t move us forward. Sometimes one side is up and the other side is down. But there’s no sense that they are coming together in a common-sense, practical, nonideological way to solve the problems that we face.” — Sen. Barack Obama speaking today in Manchester, New Hampshire, as reported by the N.Y. Times‘ Adam Nagourney.

“To me, The Departed and The Good Shepherd are masterpieces. The Departed is such a fast-paced demon of a movie, with its hilariously nasty dialogue and tough, smart performances, that I kept checking my watch because I didn’t want it to ever end. And the Robert De Niro-directed The Good Shepherd is The Godfather of CIA movies, a tense epic of business and family. It sets a new standard for cloak and dagger. But the film of the year, if not the decade, is United 93. Every American should see it. It was one of the most moving experiences I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ve ever had in a theater, and it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s a lasting monument to American courage.” — N.Y. Post critic Kyle Smith in a discussion with colleague Lou Lumenick.

I’ve admired screenwriter Eric Roth for a good ten or so years (and doubly so since The Insider), and I think he knows that. So when we sat down today at Manhattan’s Regency Hotel (Park and 61st) to talk about The Good Shepherd, which he’d heard I’m not a big fan of, things were a wee bit tense (for Roth, certainly) but soon after relaxed because he’s brilliant and amiable and a great guy to shoot the shit with, so we both just…settled in.

The Good Shepherd screenwriter Eric Roth — Sunday, 12.10.06, 2:15 pm

Here’s about 65% of our chat. It might help to read the Todd McCarthy review plus my own Shepherd review for background before listening.

“The birth of the CIA and the life journey of one of its founding operatives is a fascinating subject, [but] one that is done only lukewarm justice in The Good Shepherd,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy.

I can guess what the HE readership is thinking as they read this — give us rude, disturbing, irreverent, provocative or even gross….but please, please not lukewarm.

“Robert De Niro‘s second film as a director adopts a methodical approach and deliberate pace,” McCarthy continues, “in attempting to grasp an almost forbiddingly intricate subject, with a result that is not boring, exactly, but undeniably tedious.

“The long and short of the problem is that [De Niro] never finds a proper rhythm to allow the viewer to settle comfortably into what turns out to be a very long voyage. Like many films of the moment, this one keeps jumping around in time, not confusingly in the least, but in a way that has no natural flow to it. Tie that to a central character who defiantly offers no glimpse into his inner life and you have a picture that offers scant returns for the investment of time it requests of the viewer.

“Crucially missing is slowly building momentum, a firm hand on pace, a way to convey gradual moral decay and a talent for magisterial storytelling — gifts that are impossible to fake in the long run.

“Seemingly based in great measure on the ever-intriguing James Angleton, Matt Damon‘s Edward Wilson remains an opaque, impenetrable figure throughout, and neither actor nor script provides the subtext to reveal any layers of personality.

“Many of the supporting players provide welcome personal flavors, but thesping overall is restrained rather than flashy or deeply felt.”

I respect the years of work, immense care and herculean effort that went into the making of Robert De Niro and Eric Roth‘s The Good Shepherd, and I admire the unity of tone and mood that the film provides. In no way is it muddled or slapdash. But it’s not very stimulating. I think it’s fair to use the world “lulling.” I don’t want to use the word “dull” because it’s always somewhat interesting, and sometimes mildly absorbing. But “somewhat interesting” and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket.
It’s a film with a vision, all right, and made by an above-average director who’s up to something serious and solemn. (You can tell DeNiro isn’t kidding around because of the length, which Universal should have kept at three hours…why not? It’s going to lower people’s eyelids anyway.) But I didn’t believe any of it. I couldn’t believe that being a spook in the late ’40s, ’50s and early ’60s was this confining, this spirit-deflating. Like any work-related obsession, it had to be exciting on this and that level, no? The excitement, the perversity, the intrigue, the killings? But there’s no particular current in what we’re shown. The story just “happens”, and about a half-hour in I started saying to myself, “Uh-oh…”
The Good Shepherd isn’t just a lament/indictment of the hermetic, ingrown culture of the CIA — it’s also a lament/indictment of WASP culture, which everyone knows is about exclusion, efficiency, ownership, clubbiness, Rice Krispies and half- hearted sex. It’s basically about WASP zombies in Burberry trenchcoats and dull haircuts and horn-rimmed glasses, and how if you’re a woman you’ll never want to marry one. (Unless you’re a WASP woman and you’re used to the tedium.)
The parallels between The Good Shepherd and The Godfather, Part II are obvious…but it only makes Francis Coppola‘s film look better. When Joe Pesci shows up…eureka! An Italian mafia guy with a little soul, a little attitude…a break from the WASPs! Viewers are subjected to way too many Skull & Bones ceremonies and get-togethers in this thing, I know that. And what’s with Damon singing in drag in the Yale production of H.M.S. Pinafore and then, later on, Bill Hurt and those other Skull & Bones guys doing a rendition fo “There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame” in grass skirts?
Why is it that the spooks in the John Le Carre novels — based on reality, as Le Carre was in British intelligence — are so much quirkier and more flavorful and wittier than their American cousins? I loved John Irvin‘s six-hour Tinker, Tailor, Solder Spy and the other one, Smiley’s People, for their absorbing and very detailed stories and the fact that they were truly never dull.
I’m sorry, but as thorough and meticulous as it is in just about every department, The Good Shepherd is not very absorbing to sit through. Strange that a shortfall of this proportion has been written by the great Eric Roth (The Insider, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Forrest Gump, Ali). I think it’s the director’s fault. I mean, it always is.

More significant wins have been handed to United 93, The Last King of Scotland‘s Forrest Whitaker, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren, Departed directors Martin Scorsese and Guillermo del Toro, and for Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt.
The Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) has announced winners of its 2006 awards, and the harrowing Universal-released, Paul Greengrass-directed drama was named Best Film, Whitaker was named Best Actor, Mirren was named Best Actress, Scorsese for Best Director and Arndt for Best Original Screenplay.
Blood Diamond‘s Djimon Hounsou was named Best Supporting Actor and Dreamgirls‘ Jennifer Hudson won for Best Supporting Actress. Jason Reitman won the Best Adapted Screenplay award for Thank You For Smoking, Happy Feet won for Best Animated Feature, An Inconvenient Truth won for Best Documentary and Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth won for Best Foreign-Language Film — the second win of the day following the Boston Film Critics honoring del Toro’s masterwork a few hours ago.
The Little Miss Sunshine posse won for Best Acting Ensemble, Jennifer Hudson won for Best Breakthrough Performance and Marie-Antoinette won for Best Art Direction.