If you’re looking for insight into adolescent male sexuality and the influence of movies upon same, the Christian film-critic view is never less than four-square. Consider the suspicions of Bob Waliszewski, a film critic with Focus on the Family and www.pluggedinonline.com, as quoted by the New York Times‘ Sharon Waxman in her 11.20 story about Oliver Stone’s portrayal of a bisexual world conqueror in Alexander, to wit: “There will be people who see Alexander the Great’s bisexuality as applauding that lifestyle, and unfortunately it will lead some young boys, young men down a path that I think they’ll regret someday.”
Apologies for screwing up sound clips # 3 and #4 in today’s Prick Up Your Ears. I fixed it and it’s now working….
Remember that scene in Jerry Maguire after Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr) fires Jerry (Tom Cruise) at lunch, and then they both run back to the office to beef up their client list — Sugar calling to dissuade his clients from signing with Maguire, and Maguire trying to persuade his clients to come with him, etc.? This is pretty much what’s been happening since PMK/HBH’s Pat Kingsley fired 23 year veteran Leslee Dart on Wednesday. The reason Kingsley acted so decisively and at such an inopportune time (i.e., right in the middle of Oscar season), I’m told, was because Dart had been talking to several clients about coming with her to a new p.r. company she intends to start up, possibly in partneship with former Miramax publicist Marci Granata but not, despite the rumors, with currently-employed Miramax publicist Amanda Lundberg, who says she’s flattered by the rumor but is pregnant (due next April) and under contract with Miramax until August ’05.
Thighs and Whispers
Forget the implications in Lou Lumenick’s 11.18 New York Post story about the allegedly pronounced gay content in Oliver Stone’s Alexander (Warner Bros., 11.24).
The opening line reads, “Is Oliver Stone’s $150 million epic Alexander too gay for mainstream audiences?”
In other words, will hetero stalwarts stay away out of some kind of vaguely anticipated discomfort factor? Alarmed, perhaps, by a line of Alexander narration spoken by Anthony Hopkins’ Ptolemy character: “It was said that Alexander was never defeated except by Hephastion’s thighs”?
First, the movie’s scenes of same-sex intimacy and affection aren’t that pronounced. If anything, they’re timid. They’re presented in any case within the context of ancient Greek warrior culture, which allowed for degrees of sexual intimacy but wasn’t “gay” as we know the term.
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One post-screening comment I heard from a critic friend after seeing the film last week was that Stone “didn’t have the guts to really show it.” Stone reportedly told a Playboy interviewer that “we may have had a few takes of them [Alexander and Hephaistion] kissing, but it wasn’t my intention” to show anything physically explicit.
Stone’s handling of suggested sexual intimacy between men in Alexander is no stronger than the way director Peter Glenville handled it 40 years ago in Becket .
I’m speaking of a first-act scene in which Peter O’Toole’s Henry II flops down on a bed inside a castle chamber room and then says to Richard Burton’s Becket, “I don’t want to be alone tonight, Thomas.” Burton nods and then picks up a candelabra and blows out the candles, one by one, as he quietly speechifies about his moral-ethical nature.
Alexander is said to be tracking very well, so it doesn’t appear as if anyone out there is particularly hesitant about seeing it.
But there is an element of spin, apparently, in what Alexander lead Colin Farrell said at the Alexander premiere last Tuesday in response to a question about gay content having been edited out. “”There was nothing really re-edited, man,” Lumenick quoted him as saying. “The film that you see is the film that was originally intended.”
A journalist friend told me a couple of days ago that an L.A.-based critic was shown a three hour and 40 minute cut of Alexander not long ago, and that the male-to-male intimacy in this version was more assertive that in the final version, which runs about 2 hours and 55 minutes.
Alexander was originally scheduled to open on 11.5. Lumenick writes that “there were widespread reports — since denied — that Warner Bros. postponed the release because of flak about the gay content at early screenings.”
“I don’t know how people are going to respond” to the film, WB production chief Jeff Robinov told an Entertainment Weekly reporter, “but I know Oliver didn’t run from who [Alexander] was.”
The Hand
This is going to seem like a slightly weird piece to some, but I noticed something fascinating this morning as I was reading Stuart Elliot’s piece in the New York Times about Pat Kingsley’s firing of Leslee Dart from the big-time p.r. agency PMK/HBH.
What got me is a telling detail in a photo of Dart posing with PMK/HBH client Nicole Kidman (taken by Michael Caulfield of Wire Image) than ran alongside the story.
People can say what they want to say and believe what they want to believe, but body language never lies.
I’m not saying Kidman doesn’t support and admire Dart as far as it goes, and I’m sure she’ll be offering encouragement as Dart starts up her own agency in the coming weeks and months, but on some deep-down level Kidman was feeling ambivalent about an aspect of their relationship, or perhaps about publicists in general, when this photo was snapped.
The proof is in the positioning of Kidman’s left hand, which is draped around Ms. Dart’s left shoulder. What the tips of her fingers are touching (or not touching, I mean to say) says it all.
Only Kidman’s left index finger is touching — pressed upon — Dart’s sweatered shoulder. The other three fingers are curled under and resting upon it. Kidman’s left thumb is not touching Dart’s shoulder either — it is stiffly positioned in a kind of noncomitted limbo state and surrounded by air.
You can call me an obsessive, but I don’t fool around when I hug my friends or put my arm around their shoulder. My thumb might be in the air — thumbs are often ambivalent in a social context — but all four finger tips are always touching or pressed into their flesh. That’s a standard homo sapien way of saying, “I mean it.”
Straight Story
A gifted young director with a style and sensibility all his own doesn’t exactly hit the jackpot with his first film (which he co-wrote), but anybody who knows or cares about movies loves it.
The next film is damn near perfect…a jewel. It still has the reputation of being his best ever.
But the one after that disappoints in some quarters, the primary complaint being that attention paid to the director’s exacting and very particular brushstrokes (as well as a certain deadpan quality to the performances) has gotten in the way, to some degree, of what the film is trying to say or be about.
Then the fourth film starts making the rounds, and it’s clear to many viewers this gifted, very precise guy has painted himself into a corner with an even greater focus on detail and brushstrokes and deadpan acting, and in so doing has pretty much outsmarted himself.
The particulars are fine but the essentials are missing. The film feels dry and perfunctory and won’t lift off the ground. It’s a mathematical equation without the magic.
Then you hear from a guy who’s known him for years and also knows many of the behind-the-scenes players who’ve known or worked with this filmmaker, and he says the problems in the film are reflections of a basic problem having to do with how the filmmaker has come to operate as well as see himself over the last two or three years.
The basic situation, he says, is that Mr. Gifted and Particular has gotten caught up in his own mythology, that he lives in a special self-created membrane, and has positioned himself so that no one with any kind of challenging input can get through on a creative/collaborative level.
“And now he’s basically come to the end of this thing that he’s been doing these last few years,” the inside guy says, “and now he needs to find something else.”
Big vs. Small
As long as we’re running blind descriptions of filmmakers, there’s the case of a greatly respected director who’s been working in the big-budget realm over the last few years and, one presumes, pocketing big paychecks for his trouble.
But directing expensive widescreen movies with historical backdrops and lavish production values is not what this guy is best at. His calling is more in the contemporary urban realm, which he’ll apparently be getting back into for his next film. Good.
His latest big movie, which cost well over $100 million to make, is a difficult sit and will most likely tank after the first weekend. In fact, it may tank so decisively (partly due to the uncompromising way in which the darker subject matter is handled) that he may never be handed the reins of a $100 million-plus movie again.
This, I submit, will be an excellent thing all around. History has shown that he’s a much better filmmaker when he’s working with medium or lower-scaled budgets. He’s better at imagining or creating his way around a problem instead of resorting to the usual big-budget solution, which is to throw money at it.
A metaphor of what this director may be facing (may be about to face) can be found in Ulu Grosbard’s True Confessions (’81).
Robert De Niro plays a wheeler-dealer Catholic priest caught up in all kinds of real estate deals and political chess-playing in late 1940s Los Angeles. But he loses his job due to his involvement in a sex scandal, and the church sends him to a small Palm Springs church… for the rest of his life, it turns out.
The scandal was triggered by an investigation by his brother (Robert Duvall), a homicide detective. But the gray-haired De Niro is not angry at the film’s conclusion. He thanks his brother for saving his life and helping him find God again. He was lost playing power games and dealing with big-money contributors in Los Angeles, he says. Being sent to the desert purified him and got him back on track.
The filmmaker I’m speaking of needs to do the same thing.
Prick Up Your Ears
The same guy who was first to identify last Friday’s dialogue clips — Eddie Smith of Bainbridge Island, Washington — did it again just minutes after I posted Wednesday’s clips two days ago. I don’t like repetition. Stop Eddie Smith!
The philosophical riff in Clip #1 is spoken by Gregory Peck’s Captain Ahab in John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956). Clip #2 and Clip #3 are from Ridley Scott’s Matchstick Men (2003) and a conversation between Nicolas Cage and Bruce Altman; and Clip #4 is Charles McGraw, William Conrad and Harrry Hayden in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946).
Among today’s clips, Clip #1 is from a very familiar classic from the early ’50s; Clip #2 features the voice of an actor with one of the most irritating regional accents in the history of motion pictures; and Clip #3 and Clip #4 are from the same film and feature the same actors.
Send in your answers quickly and I’ll post the winner next Wednesday, as long as he’s not Eddie Smith.
New Design
Hollywood Elsewhere is being re-designed to some degree. I had hoped that it would be up today (i.e., Friday, 11.19), but you know how these things go. I’m told the newbie will be up and viewable by sometime tomorrow.
The new Elsewhere is not going to look radically different. Mainly a slight upgrading in terms of this and that design element. The home page is being harmonized with the look of the other column pages. When you click from one page to the other it will all seem fluid and smoother. Gray gutters are being added, some new lettering on the navigation bar…stuff like that.
The guy who’s been doing all the work is Christopher Risdon. He’s from Georgia and has a Masters in Graphic Design, and I think he’s done a really excellent job so far. Any comments or criticisms anyone may have will be welcome. Sometimes it helps to hear from people who haven’t been involved in the step by step.
As I Was Walking…
…up Sunset Blvd. the other night in front of Tower Records, across from Book Soup, I happened to look up and there was this brand-new billboard. Million Dollar Baby is finally starting to be screened, and with any luck I’ll catch up with it early next week.
After that happens there will be just one more possible award-level contender to go — Jim Brooks’ Spanglish — but I’m told no one will see it until sometime in early December. I was also told I was wrong about the final music being on the version that was shown early last week in Orange. The final scoring session hasn’t happened yet.
Those who haven’t seen Kevin McDonald’s Touching the Void, hands-down one of the year’s finest films, should know it’s showing on PBS stations on Sunday evening, 11.21, at 9 pm. (L.A.’s KCET is showing it at this time, anyway — go to http://www.pbs.org/previews/touchingthevoid to see what your local airing time is.) Watch it closely, consider the dramatic devices it uses, and tell me if you think it meets the criteria for a documentary. I think it should be Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and not Best Feature Documentary.
There’s quite a contrast between Claudia Eller’s reporting in today’s L.A. Times about the firing of PMK/HBH honcho Leslee Dart by Pat Kingsley, and Stuart Elliot’s version of the story in the New York Times. The apparent fact is that Eller got the story and Elliot didn’t. Eller simply states that the 50 year-old Dart “lost an internal power struggle to take control of the agency from the 72 year-old Kingsley.” Elliot pussyfoots around and interprets what happened mainly through quotes from Kingsley and Dart. Kingsley tells Elliot there was “a difference of opinion about the direction of the company and what we wanted to accomplish” and Dart tlles him she and Kingsley “had different ideas about the future of the company.”
Letter from a smart movie-marketing guy in New York City: “You really should add The Incredibles to the Oscar Balloon for Best Picture, Best Director (Brad Bird) and Best Original Screenplay (ditto). It’s a lock for Best Animated Feature, of course, but I think something else is starting to happen. It reminds me of last year when Keisha Castle-Hughes got nominated for Best Actress against all predictions…because everyone who saw Whale Ridervoted for her, even if they thought nobody else would. This year, when I ask Academy members what they like most, only Sideways comes up as often as The Incredibles. Sure, a lot of people still need to see a lot of movies, but I think this one has hit a deep chord…and rightly so.”
Michael Moore’s coming to Los Angeles at the end of the month (i.e., just after Thanksgiving) to make the rounds, beat the bushes and work the town. With one presumed big-studio Oscar contender after another getting shot up or going down in flames, those who are paying attention are facing the likelihood that the five Best Picture finalists are going to be (Phantom of the Opera aside) four un-grandiose movies from the middle-ranks, which means Fahrenheit 9/11 has a shot, especially if Academy members are just into the idea of giving G.W. Bush a symbolic f— you by nominating it, but paying tribute to its place in history for being the first doc to earn north of $100 million.
Speaking of places in history, what about the Academy giving a Best Picture nomination to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ for the $300 million it earned? I don’t see it happening. People are too angry about Bush’s re-election to nominate a film that became a mega-hit largely by appealing to red-state moviegoers. Plus a good percentage of the New York-L.A. crowd thinks it’s a fairly deranged film anyway with all the blood and beatings and whippings..
Bad Calls
I’m appalled (and I’m not alone) that two of the absolute finest, no-argument-tolerated docs of the year — Xan Cassevettes’ Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession and Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation — have been excluded from the list of 12 semi-finalists for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.
One of the docs that made the cut is Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants , an honest, open-hearted film about surfing that is nonetheless a bit too fan-maggish in toasting the champions of the sport. Sorry to sound harsh, but there’s no way this is a stronger, more accomplished work than Z Channel or Tarnation. Giants doesn’t begin to approach their realm in terms of passion, intelligence, soul.
And what about Kevin McDonald’s Touching the Void, a movie that has its roots on both sides of the aisle, making the cut? There is no bigger fan of Void than myself, but in an ideal world it should be a Best Picture nominee. I’ve had it on my Best Picture list in the Oscar Balloon section for months.
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I sympathize with the motives of those who put Void on the semi-final list, but it’s not a documentary. It’s mainly a docu-drama…a recreation. It uses actors who speak lines. It’s about a mountain-climbing adventure that happened in South America, and yet the bulk of it was largely shot in the Swiss Alps. The only thing that makes it feel like a doc is the talking-head footage of the real mountain-climbers.
Among the docs that made the short list are Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (fully deserved), Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are (a tribute to Mark’s cinematographer dad Haskell, in the vein of last year’s My Architect), Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels and Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal.
Other deserving hopefuls that got the shaft were Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Robert Stone’s Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst and Sara Price and Chris Smith’s The Yes Men.
Guerilla friend Fredel Pogodin said this morning that “given the monumental task that Stone went through to find the footage for this film, and to track down Russell Little and all the others, it is indeed a surprise that doc filmmakers who understand the difficulty in doing this did not put it on the short list.”
And yet, on the whole, “It’s a great time for documentaries. There’s an amazing amount of them that qualified this year. And the selection process has changed — the rules are now that only filmmakers in the documentary branch can name the semi-finalists. That’s an improvement from years before.”
Backstroke
I’ve been saying snide and dismissive things about the idea of The Phantom of the Opera being the strongest Best Picture candidate around right now, and because of this I feel I ought to say what I now believe, having seen it a couple of nights ago:
It ain’t my particular cup of tea, but Phantom delivers a big wham, regular folks are going for it, and it will almost certainly make the cut as a Best Picture nominee. Hell, it might even go all the way.
I’d rather not see that happen, being a Sideways man all the way, and (who knows?) maybe a Spanglish convert waiting to happen, as well as a Motorcycle Diaries) admirer, a worshipper of Maria Full of Grace, a Fahrenheit 9/11 protest-the-election-of-Bush guy and a devout believer in Collateral, not to mention Touching the Void.
If Phantom wins I will not be in pain, like I was when Chicago won two years ago. I will not agree, but I will understand.
I was down on the prospect of its Oscar ascension due to three factors. One, my general discomfort with emotionally bombastic films that send you over the waterfall (although I really liked Evita). Two, a reluctance to trust the notion that director Joel Schumacher has it in him to deliver a truly worthy Best Picture contender, given several disappointments with his past films. And three, stuff that I’ve been hearing over the past couple of weeks from colleagues.
I’m not saying the people who aren’t fans of this film are wrong, and I’m not going to get into a point-for-point review of any kind, but at least give Phantom this: it is not half-hearted.
You can bring up subtlety issues, and I’m sure some will address this down the road, but by any measure of committed filmmaking it takes Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical and really rocks the house. Call it cornball, but it heats up the emotional essence of the piece and wears its heart on its sleeve. The actors hold their own, the musical sequences all swing for the fences, and John Mathieson’s cinematography is rich and painterly. The film plays like a Baz Luhrman musical on a mild sedative, and by that I mean it doesn’t make your head explode.
I suppose I sound like a square to some of you right now, but with that big 60-piece orchestra sawing away and the knockout production design and the sound cranked up and the film playing on a big screen with an appreciative crowd, the “whoa” factor is definitely there. In terms of the overall effort, I mean.
And so in the final analysis and various reservations aside, I’ve resigned myself to the likelihood of a Best Picture nomination because it satisfies the middle-class emotional criteria that Academy members tend to look for and respond to.
Picking over the particulars is for sometime next month. I just had to say this and set things straight. You can go with Phantom or not, but movies like this have their place. It’s not a crime to accept what they’re selling and go, “Yeah, I get it.”
Musical vs. Musical?
A friend thinks there’s some Academy mentality no-no about putting two musicals up for Best Picture in the same year. He says if this attitude holds it’s going to be an either-or between Ray and The Phantom of the Opera.
I don’t buy this. Ray is not a musical — it’s a biopic with a lot of musical numbers. And I reminded him that My Fair Lady was nominated for Best Picture against Mary Poppins in ’65, and Oliver against Funny Girl in ’69. (They were released in ’64 and ’68, respectively, but the nominations happen in January.)
And how strong a contender is Ray anyway? The talk I’ve heard all along is that Jamie Foxx is a lock for Best Actor, but that the film is an enjoyable and respectable thing but nothing to go out into the street naked and shout about.
Big Tinted Glasses
Last weekend I went up to Universal City Walk, a sickening corporate environment that mixes The Fall of the Roman Empire with Animal House, and shelled out $15 bucks to see The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D. It was worth it. However the movie plays in regular presentations (I hadn’t seen it before), this has to be better. This is a movie about digital technology first and all the other stuff second, but I didn’t mind because it looked so big and cool.
Okay, I had some quibbles. How many roller-coaster thrill ride sequences does this film have? Three? Four? It feels like one too many. The young African-American girl (the one with the leadership qualities) does look like she’s from Village of the Damned . And Manohla Dargis is right — that big red bag of gifts does look like a giant scrotum. But I have to say I thought Tom Hanks’ performance as the train conductor was note perfect. It’s not a big reach thing, but he handles it with just the right emphasis.
Prick Up Your Ears
Eddie Smith of Bainbridge Island, Washington, was the first to correctly identify all three of Friday’s (11.12) sound clips.
Clip #1 is Steve McQueen and Simon Oakland discussing the aftermath of a mob hit in Peter Yates’ Bullitt (’68) (b) Clip #2 is James Dean and Corey Allen standing on the bluff just before their chicken run in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (’55); and (c) Clip #3 is Thomas Gomez talking to Humphrey Bogart in an early scene from John Huston’s Key Largo (’48).
Today’s Clip #1 is a philosophical riff that most over-40s will probably recognize in a heartbeat; (b) Clip #2 and Clip #3 are taken from the same scene in a relatively recent film; and Clip #4 is not from a Gene Kelly musical or an Adam Sandler comedy.
I’ll post the winner in the column in next Wednesday’s column.
Authorship
Too many people who write in fail to sign their names at the bottom of the e-mail. I copy and paste the letter into A Word file for a new column (which always includes letters), and the name of the writer isn’t there. I could afford a down payment on a new car if I had a dollar for every time I had to go back to an e-mail to search for the f***ing writer’s name. Spare me this exercise the next time you write a comment or whatever.
Hot Legs
“Why are you on your cell at Pavilions pontificating about the Oscars? This act is one of the reasons L.A. is the most shallow place on earth. As if you can’t go food shopping without cluttering people’s head with your thoughts, let alone a topic so useless as `what’s going to be nominated’?
“Have you no ability to see yourself from an objective angle? It’s so disspiriting that you can’t go about a normal errand without ranting about the friggin Oscars. Don’t you realize there are homosexuals trying to pick each other up there? They don’t want to be bothered with your Oscar jibberish — well, unless you were wearing short shorts.” — Larry Fisch
Wells to Fisch: Any hip gay guy at Pavilions with functional “gaydar” should be able to read me as one of those anguished hetero types from 100 yards off. I go to Pavillions partly for the hot 30ish women, if you really want to know.
Passion Fruit
“Like too many Oscar handicappers, you’re overlooking a big, ugly elephant in the room. There is one film that is a definite lock for a Best Picture nomination no matter what, and that is The Passion of the Christ.
“Not that it’s a good film, of course. In fact, it’s a lousy film. And not that the Academy is likely to have much affection for a nearly-plotless s&m-tinged propaganda film for pre-Vatican II Catholic regressionism/evangelical fundamentalism. But the Academy makes political nominations often enough, and I’m convinced that they’ll nominate Mel Gibson’s opus for just such a reason.
“A huge part of the volunteer marketing effort for The Passion was the spewing by religious-right media personalities of a baseless conspiracy theory that the film and Gibson were under attack by the liberal/gay/Jewish/secular media “cabal” that supposedly controls Hollywood and the media, and that it was believer’s Christian duty to get out and support the film to stick it to them.
“The Academy doubtlessly is aware of this, and even though they’ve surely got no intention of handing the Big Prize to this film, they are aware that if they don’t nominate Gibson’s vision the likes of James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will whip up an anti-Oscar media firestorm, claiming that the film is being denied a nod because the liberal Academy hates Christians!”
“It’l be too bad if of all the worthy films this year, at least one will be denied a place because of the Academy won’t risk the wrath of Evangelical extremists, and if I’m right it’s a depression situation indeed.” — Rufus T. Firefly
“I originally wasn’t very high on seeing The Incredibles because I wasn’t that nuts about Brad Bird’s Iron Giant and I thought The Incredibles would be more of the same. Instead, it’s a very witty take on superhero lore as well as the joys and foibles of family life. It’s one of the nuttiest movies I’ve seen about being normal in a long time but it works.
“The Polar Express, on the other hand, is an amazing bomb not only because it is really creepy. Who on earth dreamed up the North Pole stuff with Nazi elves? They reminded me of the African-American midget from Bad Santa. It’s also a crashingly boring and predictable movie.
“The Incredibles has people going back a second time to catch all the stuff they missed or enjoy it again. You see Polar Exprss once and that’s all you need, unless you do want to go catch it in 3-D, where it ought to be…well, incredible.” — M.
Predictions
“Some random thoughts on the Oscars…
“(1) Ray shouldn’t be seen as a serious contender for Best Picture. It offers a moderately good impersonation of Ray Charles by a moderately good actor but it’s a essentially a mediocre TV biopic. Why won’t anyone acknowledge this?
“(2) I know it will never get a nomination but
“(3) I Heart Huckabees won’t win or get nominated for anything. Too many people hate it.
“(4) As someone who has seen The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Sean Penn better get another nomination for this. It’s an infinitely better film and he gives a better performance in it than Mystic River but I assume nobody will see it.
“(5) Why does everyone assume that every Scorsese film is an automatic Oscar contender? This becomes the criteria by which they’re judged and some excellent movies (i.e. Casino) get dismissed because they don’t fit into the very limited Oscar package. I hope The Aviator is great and I hope it gets awards but I’d much rather see a solid, intelligent character study than a half-baked piece of Oscar bait like Ray.
“(6) I know there’s resistance to Sideways but don’t rule it out. It may not win best picture but it will definitely be nominated. Mark my words.
“(7) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou should not be forgotten. Movies that win Oscars are always very showy in their use of the tools of filmmaking (photography, costumes, sets, locations, actors, music, etc.) because then they appeal to a broad range of voters. The main thing against Sideways is that it doesn’t show off in these areas as much as the Academy likes. The Life Aquatic does. Admittedly, it may be a little too weird for Academy voters but it’s making people cry and that’s important. I know a few people who cried like babies when they saw it. Plus, don’t forget that Anderson is obsessed with American movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, the same era of films that the influential older Academy members made and/or grew up with.
“And by the way, why haven’t you seen/written about Undertow yet? It’s a real 70s throwback and may be up your alley, although I fear it may be too poetic for your taste (i.e. Lost in Translation). Still, you should check it out. ” — Jonathan Doyle
Bad Calls
I’m appalled (and I’m not alone) that two of the absolute finest, no-argument-tolerated docs of the year — Xan Cassevettes’ Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession and Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation — have been excluded from the list of 12 semi-finalists for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.
One of the docs that made the cut is Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants, an honest, open-hearted film about surfing that is nonetheless a bit too fan-maggish in toasting the champions of the sport. Sorry to sound harsh, but there’s no way this is a stronger, more accomplished work than Z Channel or Tarnation. Giants doesn’t begin to approach their realm in terms of passion and intelligence.
And what about Kevin McDonald’s Touching the Void, a movie that has its roots on both sides of the aisle, making the cut? There is no bigger fan of Void than myself, but in an ideal world it should be a Best Picture nominee. I’ve had it on my Best Picture list in the Oscar Balloon section for months.
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I sympathize with the motives of those who put Void on the semi-final list, but it’s not a documentary. It’s mainly a docu-drama…a recreation. It uses actors who speak lines. It’s about a mountain-climbing adventure that happened in South America, and yet the bulk of it was largely shot in the Swiss Alps. The only thing that makes it feel like a doc is the talking-head footage of the real mountain-climbers.
Among the docs that made the short list are Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (fully deserved), Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are (a tribute to Mark’s cinematographer dad Haskell, in the vein of last year’s My Architect), Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels and Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal.
Other deserving hopefuls that got the shaft were Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Robert Stone’s Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst and Sara Price and Chris Smith’s The Yes Men.
Guerilla friend Fredel Pogodin said this morning that “given the monumental task that Stone went through to find the footage for this film, and to track down Russell Little and all the others, it is indeed a surprise that doc filmmakers who understand the difficulty in doing this did not put it on the short list.”
And yet, on the whole, “It’s a great time for documentaries. There’s an amazing amount of them that qualified this year. And the selection process has changed — the rules are now that only filmmakers in the documentary branch can name the semi-finalists. That’s an improvement from years before.”
Backstroke
I’ve been saying snide and dismissive things about the idea of The Phantom of the Opera being the strongest Best Picture candidate around right now, and because of this I feel I ought to say what I now believe, having seen it a couple of nights ago:
It ain’t my particular cup of tea, but Phantom delivers a big wham, regular folks are going for it, and it will almost certainly make the cut as a Best Picture nominee. Hell, it might even go all the way.
I’d rather not see that happen, being a Sideways man all the way, and (who knows?) maybe a Spanglish convert waiting to happen, as well as a Motorcycle Diaries) admirer, a worshipper of Maria Full of Grace, a Fahrenheit 9/11 protest-the-election-of-Bush guy and a devout believer in Collateral, not to mention Touching the Void.
If Phantom wins I will not be in pain, like I was when Chicago won two years ago. I will not agree, but I will understand.
I was down on the prospect of its Oscar ascension due to three factors. One, my general discomfort with emotionally bombastic films that send you over the waterfall (although I really liked Evita). Two, a reluctance to trust the notion that director Joel Schumacher has it in him to deliver a truly worthy Best Picture contender, given several disappointments with his past films. And three, stuff that I’ve been hearing over the past couple of weeks from colleagues.
I’m not saying the people who aren’t fans of this film are wrong, and I’m not going to get into a point-for-point review of any kind, but at least give Phantom this: it is not half-hearted.
You can bring up subtlety issues, and I’m sure some will address this down the road, but by any measure of committed filmmaking it takes Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical and really rocks the house. Call it cornball, but it heats up the emotional essence of the piece and wears its heart on its sleeve. The actors hold their own, the musical sequences all swing for the fences, and John Mathieson’s cinematography is rich and painterly. The film plays like a Baz Luhrman musical on a mild sedative, and by that I mean it doesn’t make your head explode.
I suppose I sound like a square to some of you right now, but with that big 60-piece orchestra sawing away and the knockout production design and the sound cranked up and the film playing on a big screen with an appreciative crowd, the “whoa” factor is definitely there. In terms of the overall effort, I mean.
And so in the final analysis and various reservations aside, I’ve resigned myself to the likelihood of a Best Picture nomination because it satisfies the middle-class emotional criteria that Academy members tend to look for and respond to.
Picking over the particulars is for sometime next month. I just had to say this and set things straight. You can go with Phantom or not, but movies like this have their place. It’s not a crime to accept what they’re selling and go, “Yeah, I get it.”
Musical vs. Musical?
A friend thinks there’s some Academy mentality no-no about putting two musicals up for Best Picture in the same year. He says if this attitude holds it’s going to be an either-or between Ray and The Phantom of the Opera.
I don’t buy this. Ray is not a musical — it’s a biopic with a lot of musical numbers. And I reminded him that My Fair Lady was nominated for Best Picture against Mary Poppins in ’65, and Oliver against Funny Girl in ’69. (They were released in ’64 and ’68, respectively, but the nominations happen in January.)
And how strong a contender is Ray anyway? The talk I’ve heard all along is that Jamie Foxx is a lock for Best Actor, but that the film is an enjoyable and respectable thing but nothing to go out into the street naked and shout about.
Big Tinted Glasses
Last weekend I went up to Universal City Walk, a sickening corporate environment that mixes The Fall of the Roman Empire with Animal House, and shelled out $15 bucks to see The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D. It was worth it. However the movie plays in regular presentations (I hadn’t seen it before), this has to be better. This is a movie about digital technology first and all the other stuff second, but I didn’t mind because it looked so big and cool.
Okay, I had some quibbles. How many roller-coaster thrill ride sequences does this film have? Three? Four? It feels like one too many. The young African-American girl (the one with the leadership qualities) does look like she’s from Village of the Damned . And Manohla Dargis is right — that big red bag of gifts does look like a giant scrotum. But I have to say I thought Tom Hanks’ performance as the train conductor was note perfect. It’s not a big reach thing, but he handles it with just the right emphasis.
Prick Up Your Ears
Eddie Smith of Bainbridge Island, Washington, was the first to correctly identify all three of Friday’s (11.12) sound clips.
Clip #1 is Steve McQueen and Simon Oakland discussing the aftermath of a mob hit in Peter Yates’ Bullitt (’68) (b) Clip #2 is James Dean and Corey Allen standing on the bluff just before their chicken run in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (’55); and (c) Clip #3 is Thomas Gomez talking to Humphrey Bogart in an early scene from John Huston’s Key Largo (’48).
Today’s Clip #1 is a philosophical riff that most over-40s will probably recognize in a heartbeat; (b) Clip #2 and Clip #3 are taken from the same scene in a relatively recent film; and Clip #4 is not from a Gene Kelly musical or an Adam Sandler comedy.
I’ll post the winner in the column in next Wednesday’s column.
Authorship
Too many people who write in fail to sign their names at the bottom of the e-mail. I copy and paste the letter into A Word file for a new column (which always includes letters), and the name of the writer isn’t there. I could afford a down payment on a new car if I had a dollar for every time I had to go back to an e-mail to search for the f***ing writer’s name. Spare me this exercise the next time you write a comment or whatever.
Hot Legs
“Why are you on your cell at Pavilions pontificating about the Oscars? This act is one of the reasons L.A. is the most shallow place on earth. As if you can’t go food shopping without cluttering people’s head with your thoughts, let alone a topic so useless as `what’s going to be nominated’?
“Have you no ability to see yourself from an objective angle? It’s so disspiriting that you can’t go about a normal errand without ranting about the friggin Oscars. Don’t you realize there are homosexuals trying to pick each other up there? They don’t want to be bothered with your Oscar jibberish — well, unless you were wearing short shorts.” — Larry Fisch
Wells to Fisch: Any hip gay guy at Pavillions with functional “gaydar” should be able to read me as one of those anguished hetero types from 100 yards off. I go to Pavillions partly for the hot 30ish women, if you really want to know.
Passion Fruit
“Like too many Oscar handicappers, you’re overlooking a big, ugly elephant in the room. There is one film that is a definite lock for a Best Picture nomination no matter what, and that is The Passion of the Christ.
“Not that it’s a good film, of course. In fact, it’s a lousy film. And not that the Academy is likely to have much affection for a nearly-plotless s&m-tinged propaganda film for pre-Vatican II Catholic regressionism/evangelical fundamentalism. But the Academy makes political nominations often enough, and I’m convinced that they’ll nominate Mel Gibson’s opus for just such a reason.
“A huge part of the volunteer marketing effort for The Passion was the spewing by religious-right media personalities of a baseless conspiracy theory that the film and Gibson were under attack by the liberal/gay/Jewish/secular media “cabal” that supposedly controls Hollywood and the media, and that it was believer’s Christian duty to get out and support the film to stick it to them.
“The Academy doubtlessly is aware of this, and even though they’ve surely got no intention of handing the Big Prize to this film, they are aware that if they don’t nominate Gibson’s vision the likes of James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will whip up an anti-Oscar media firestorm, claiming that the film is being denied a nod because the liberal Academy hates Christians!”
“It’l be too bad if of all the worthy films this year, at least one will be denied a place because of the Academy won’t risk the wrath of Evangelical extremists, and if I’m right it’s a depression situation indeed.” — Rufus T. Firefly
“I originally wasn’t very high on seeing The Incredibles because I wasn’t that nuts about Brad Bird’s Iron Giant and I thought The Incredibles would be more of the same. Instead, it’s a very witty take on superhero lore as well as the joys and foibles of family life. It’s one of the nuttiest movies I’ve seen about being normal in a long time but it works.
“The Polar Express, on the other hand, is an amazing bomb not only because it is really creepy. Who on earth dreamed up the North Pole stuff with Nazi elves? They reminded me of the African-American midget from Bad Santa. It’s also a crashingly boring and predictable movie.
“The Incredibles has people going back a second time to catch all the stuff they missed or enjoy it again. You see Polar Exprss once and that’s all you need, unless you do want to go catch it in 3-D, where it ought to be…well, incredible.” — M.
Predictions
“Some random thoughts on the Oscars…
“(1) Ray shouldn’t be seen as a serious contender for Best Picture. It offers a moderately good impersonation of Ray Charles by a moderately good actor but it’s a essentially a mediocre TV biopic. Why won’t anyone acknowledge this?
“(2) I know it will never get a nomination but
“(3) I Heart Huckabees won’t win or get nominated for anything. Too many people hate it.
“(4) As someone who has seen The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Sean Penn better get another nomination for this. It’s an infinitely better film and he gives a better performance in it than Mystic River but I assume nobody will see it.
“(5) Why does everyone assume that every Scorsese film is an automatic Oscar contender? This becomes the criteria by which they’re judged and some excellent movies (i.e. Casino) get dismissed because they don’t fit into the very limited Oscar package. I hope The Aviator is great and I hope it gets awards but I’d much rather see a solid, intelligent character study than a half-baked piece of Oscar bait like Ray.
“(6) I know there’s resistance to Sideways but don’t rule it out. It may not win best picture but it will definitely be nominated. Mark my words.
“(7) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou should not be forgotten. Movies that win Oscars are always very showy in their use of the tools of filmmaking (photography, costumes, sets, locations, actors, music, etc.) because then they appeal to a broad range of voters. The main thing against Sideways is that it doesn’t show off in these areas as much as the Academy likes. The Life Aquatic does. Admittedly, it may be a little too weird for Academy voters but it’s making people cry and that’s important. I know a few people who cried like babies when they saw it. Plus, don’t forget that Anderson is obsessed with American movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, the same era of films that the influential older Academy members made and/or grew up with.
“And by the way, why haven’t you seen/written about Undertow yet? It’s a real 70s throwback and may be up your alley, although I fear it may be too poetic for your taste (i.e. Lost in Translation). Still, you should check it out. ” — Jonathan Doyle
Bad Calls
I’m appalled (and I’m not alone) that two of the absolute finest, no-argument-tolerated docs of the year — Xan Cassevettes’ Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession and Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation — have been excluded from the list of 12 semi-finalists for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar.
One of the docs that made the cut is Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants , san honest, open-hearted film about surfing that is nonetheless a bit too fan-maggish in toasting the champions of the sport. Sorry to sound harsh, but there’s no way this is a stronger, more accomplished work than Z Channel or Tarnation. Giants doesn’t begin to approach their realm in terms of passion, intelligence, soul.
And what about Kevin McDonald’s Touching the Void, a movie that has its roots on both sides of the aisle, making the cut? There is no bigger fan of Void than myself, but in an ideal world it should be a Best Picture nominee. I’ve had it on my Best Picture list in the Oscar Balloon section for months.
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I sympathize with the motives of those who put Void on the semi-final list, but it’s not a documentary. It’s mainly a docu-drama…a recreation. It uses actors who speak lines. It’s about a mountain-climbing adventure that happened in South America, and yet the bulk of it was largely shot in the Swiss Alps. The only thing that makes it feel like a doc is the talking-head footage of the real mountain-climbers.
Among the docs that made the short list are Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (fully deserved), Mark Wexler’s Tell Them Who You Are (a tribute to Mark’s cinematographer dad Haskell, in the vein of last year’s My Architect), Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels and Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal.
Other deserving hopefuls that got the shaft were Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, Robert Stone’s Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst and Sara Price and Chris Smith’s The Yes Men.
Guerilla friend Fredel Pogodin said this morning that “given the monumental task that Stone went through to find the footage for this film, and to track down Russell Little and all the others, it is indeed a surprise that doc filmmakers who understand the difficulty in doing this did not put it on the short list.”
And yet, on the whole, “It’s a great time for documentaries. There’s an amazing amount of them that qualified this year. And the selection process has changed — the rules are now that only filmmakers in the documentary branch can name the semi-finalists. That’s an improvement from years before.”
Backstroke
I’ve been saying snide and dismissive things about the idea of The Phantom of the Opera being the strongest Best Picture candidate around right now, and because of this I feel I ought to say what I now believe, having seen it a couple of nights ago:
It ain’t my particular cup of tea, but Phantom delivers a big wham, regular folks are going for it, and it will almost certainly make the cut as a Best Picture nominee. Hell, it might even go all the way.
I’d rather not see that happen, being a Sideways man all the way, and (who knows?) maybe a Spanglish convert waiting to happen, as well as a Motorcycle Diaries) admirer, a worshipper of Maria Full of Grace, a Fahrenheit 9/11 protest-the-election-of-Bush guy and a devout believer in Collateral, not to mention Touching the Void.
If Phantom wins I will not be in pain, like I was when Chicago won two years ago. I will not agree, but I will understand.
I was down on the prospect of its Oscar ascension due to three factors. One, my general discomfort with emotionally bombastic films that send you over the waterfall (although I really liked Evita). Two, a reluctance to trust the notion that director Joel Schumacher has it in him to deliver a truly worthy Best Picture contender, given several disappointments with his past films. And three, stuff that I’ve been hearing over the past couple of weeks from colleagues.
I’m not saying the people who aren’t fans of this film are wrong, and I’m not going to get into a point-for-point review of any kind, but at least give Phantom this: it is not half-hearted.
You can bring up subtlety issues, and I’m sure some will address this down the road, but by any measure of committed filmmaking it takes Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical and really rocks the house. Call it cornball, but it heats up the emotional essence of the piece and wears its heart on its sleeve. The actors hold their own, the musical sequences all swing for the fences, and John Mathieson’s cinematography is rich and painterly. The film plays like a Baz Luhrman musical on a mild sedative, and by that I mean it doesn’t make your head explode.
I suppose I sound like a square to some of you right now, but with that big 60-piece orchestra sawing away and the knockout production design and the sound cranked up and the film playing on a big screen with an appreciative crowd, the “whoa” factor is definitely there. In terms of the overall effort, I mean.
And so in the final analysis and various reservations aside, I’ve resigned myself to the likelihood of a Best Picture nomination because it satisfies the middle-class emotional criteria that Academy members tend to look for and respond to.
Picking over the particulars is for sometime next month. I just had to say this and set things straight. You can go with Phantom or not, but movies like this have their place. It’s not a crime to accept what they’re selling and go, “Yeah, I get it.”
Musical vs. Musical?
A friend thinks there’s some Academy mentality no-no about putting two musicals up for Best Picture in the same year. He says if this attitude holds it’s going to be an either-or between Ray and The Phantom of the Opera.
I don’t buy this. Ray is not a musical — it’s a biopic with a lot of musical numbers. And I reminded him that My Fair Lady was nominated for Best Picture against Mary Poppins in ’65, and Oliver against Funny Girl in ’69. (They were released in ’64 and ’68, respectively, but the nominations happen in January.)
And how strong a contender is Ray anyway? The talk I’ve heard all along is that Jamie Foxx is a lock for Best Actor, but that the film is an enjoyable and respectable thing but nothing to go out into the street naked and shout about.
Big Tinted Glasses
Last weekend I went up to Universal City Walk, a sickening corporate environment that mixes The Fall of the Roman Empire with Animal House, and shelled out $15 bucks to see The Polar Express in IMAX 3-D. It was worth it. However the movie plays in regular presentations (I hadn’t seen it before), this has to be better. This is a movie about digital technology first and all the other stuff second, but I didn’t mind because it looked so big and cool.
Okay, I had some quibbles. How many roller-coaster thrill ride sequences does this film have? Three? Four? It feels like one too many. The young African-American girl (the one with the leadership qualities) does look like she’s from Village of the Damned . And Manohla Dargis is right — that big red bag of gifts does look like a giant scrotum. But I have to say I thought Tom Hanks’ performance as the train conductor was note perfect. It’s not a big reach thing, but he handles it with just the right emphasis.
Prick Up Your Ears
Eddie Smith of Bainbridge Island, Washington, was the first to correctly identify all three of Friday’s (11.12) sound clips.
Clip #1 is Steve McQueen and Simon Oakland discussing the aftermath of a mob hit in Peter Yates’ Bullitt (’68) (b) Clip #2 is James Dean and Corey Allen standing on the bluff just before their chicken run in Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (’55); and (c) Clip #3 is Thomas Gomez talking to Humphrey Bogart in an early scene from John Huston’s Key Largo (’48).
Today’s Clip #1 is a philosophical riff that most over-40s will probably recognize in a heartbeat; (b) Clip #2 and Clip #3 are taken from the same scene in a relatively recent film; and Clip #4 is not from a Gene Kelly musical or an Adam Sandler comedy.
I’ll post the winner in the column in next Wednesday’s column.
Authorship
Too many people who write in fail to sign their names at the bottom of the e-mail. I copy and paste the letter into A Word file for a new column (which always includes letters), and the name of the writer isn’t there. I could afford a down payment on a new car if I had a dollar for every time I had to go back to an e-mail to search for the f***ing writer’s name. Spare me this exercise the next time you write a comment or whatever.
Hot Legs
“Why are you on your cell at Pavilions pontificating about the Oscars? This act is one of the reasons L.A. is the most shallow place on earth. As if you can’t go food shopping without cluttering people’s head with your thoughts, let alone a topic so useless as `what’s going to be nominated’?
“Have you no ability to see yourself from an objective angle? It’s so disspiriting that you can’t go about a normal errand without ranting about the friggin Oscars. Don’t you realize there are homosexuals trying to pick each other up there? They don’t want to be bothered with your Oscar jibberish — well, unless you were wearing short shorts.” — Larry Fisch
Wells to Fisch: Any hip gay guy at Pavillions with functional “gaydar” should be able to read me as one of those anguished hetero types from 100 yards off. I go to Pavillions partly for the hot 30ish women, if you really want to know.
Passion Fruit
“Like too many Oscar handicappers, you’re overlooking a big, ugly elephant in the room. There is one film that is a definite lock for a Best Picture nomination no matter what, and that is The Passion of the Christ.
“Not that it’s a good film, of course. In fact, it’s a lousy film. And not that the Academy is likely to have much affection for a nearly-plotless s&m-tinged propaganda film for pre-Vatican II Catholic regressionism/evangelical fundamentalism. But the Academy makes political nominations often enough, and I’m convinced that they’ll nominate Mel Gibson’s opus for just such a reason.
“A huge part of the volunteer marketing effort for The Passion was the spewing by religious-right media personalities of a baseless conspiracy theory that the film and Gibson were under attack by the liberal/gay/Jewish/secular media “cabal” that supposedly controls Hollywood and the media, and that it was believer’s Christian duty to get out and support the film to stick it to them.
“The Academy doubtlessly is aware of this, and even though they’ve surely got no intention of handing the Big Prize to this film, they are aware that if they don’t nominate Gibson’s vision the likes of James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will whip up an anti-Oscar media firestorm, claiming that the film is being denied a nod because the liberal Academy hates Christians!”
“It’l be too bad if of all the worthy films this year, at least one will be denied a place because of the Academy won’t risk the wrath of Evangelical extremists, and if I’m right it’s a depression situation indeed.” — Rufus T. Firefly
“I originally wasn’t very high on seeing The Incredibles because I wasn’t that nuts about Brad Bird’s Iron Giant and I thought The Incredibles would be more of the same. Instead, it’s a very witty take on superhero lore as well as the joys and foibles of family life. It’s one of the nuttiest movies I’ve seen about being normal in a long time but it works.
“The Polar Express, on the other hand, is an amazing bomb not only because it is really creepy. Who on earth dreamed up the North Pole stuff with Nazi elves? They reminded me of the African-American midget from Bad Santa. It’s also a crashingly boring and predictable movie.
“The Incredibles has people going back a second time to catch all the stuff they missed or enjoy it again. You see Polar Exprss once and that’s all you need, unless you do want to go catch it in 3-D, where it ought to be…well, incredible.” — M.
Predictions
“Some random thoughts on the Oscars…
“(1) Ray shouldn’t be seen as a serious contender for Best Picture. It offers a moderately good impersonation of Ray Charles by a moderately good actor but it’s a essentially a mediocre TV biopic. Why won’t anyone acknowledge this?
“(2) I know it will never get a nomination but
“(3) I Heart Huckabees won’t win or get nominated for anything. Too many people hate it.
“(4) As someone who has seen The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Sean Penn better get another nomination for this. It’s an infinitely better film and he gives a better performance in it than Mystic River but I assume nobody will see it.
“(5) Why does everyone assume that every Scorsese film is an automatic Oscar contender? This becomes the criteria by which they’re judged and some excellent movies (i.e. Casino) get dismissed because they don’t fit into the very limited Oscar package. I hope The Aviator is great and I hope it gets awards but I’d much rather see a solid, intelligent character study than a half-baked piece of Oscar bait like Ray.
“(6) I know there’s resistance to Sideways but don’t rule it out. It may not win best picture but it will definitely be nominated. Mark my words.
“(7) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou should not be forgotten. Movies that win Oscars are always very showy in their use of the tools of filmmaking (photography, costumes, sets, locations, actors, music, etc.) because then they appeal to a broad range of voters. The main thing against Sideways is that it doesn’t show off in these areas as much as the Academy likes. The Life Aquatic does. Admittedly, it may be a little too weird for Academy voters but it’s making people cry and that’s important. I know a few people who cried like babies when they saw it. Plus, don’t forget that Anderson is obsessed with American movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, the same era of films that the influential older Academy members made and/or grew up with.
“And by the way, why haven’t you seen/written about Undertow yet? It’s a real 70s throwback and may be up your alley, although I fear it may be too poetic for your taste (i.e. Lost in Translation). Still, you should check it out. ” — Jonathan Doyle
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