“A favorite quote of the week came from a producer of a major awards contender : ‘I guess since no one has seen it yet, Dreamgirls must be the front runner for Best Picture.'” — from Pete Hammond‘s latest Hollywood Wiretap column.
The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil has this notion — along with some reporting to back it up — that Diana Ross could wind up dissing Dreamgirls, a show she allegedly “hates”, which could result in adverse vibes of some kind.
“If Dreamgirls is truly the best-picture frontrunner, as many pundits claim, this year’s biggest awards cliffhanger may be the answer to this question: Will Diana Ross, the original Dreamgirl, finally embrace the fictionalized story of her career 25 years after it debuted on Broadway or, now that it’s immortalized on film, publicly disapprove and turn on it like a true diva?
“If the latter, Dreamgirls could face an Oscar nightmare. Some sources insist that Miss Ross — as she likes to be called — has finally accepted the show that may define her career, so much so that she secretly inquired about securing a role in the Dreamgirls film, but scoffed when all she was offered was a cameo as her own mom.”
IndieWIRE’s Anthony Kaufman is spotlighting the big contenders in the Best Foreign Language Oscar category: Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver (from Spain), Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others (Germany), Deepa Mehta’s Water (Canada) and Daniele Thompson‘s Avenue Montaigne (France).
HE can’t decide which of the three biggies — Volver, Pan’s Labyrinth, The LIves of Others — to stand up for. I love all three equally, but in different ways. The Pedro is one of the finest films ever made about what it takes to keep a family together…a film about women working hard and needing/loving/caring for each other…grounded, emotional, impassioned and yet disciplined at every turn. The von Donnersmarck is well crafted, political, sensuous, uplifting, a thriller…a great German stew. And Pan’s Labyrinth is del Toro’s most soulful, disciplined and deeply felt film to date — a masterwork by any standard.
The runners-up, say Kaufman, are Zhang Yimou‘s lThe Curse of the Golden Flower (sign unseen, HE is dimssing any Zhang Yimou film with the word “Curse” in the title), Emanuele Crialese‘s Golden Door, Paul Verhoeven‘s Black Book (a.k.a. Showgirl’s List), Susanne Bier‘s Danish drama After the Wedding (not up to par with her previous films) and Lee Sang-il‘s Hula Girls.
“At the Los Angeles premiere of director Stephen Frears‘ The Queen Tuesday night, partygoers anointed Helen Mirren as the inevitable best actress Oscar winner for her bravura turn as the dowdily out-of-touch Queen Elizabeth II, but several Miramax Films marketing staffers were looking like deer frozen in headlights. That’s because the last thing anyone wants to have happen this early in the developing awards season is to be named the Oscar frontrunner.” — from Anne Thompson‘s latest Hollywood Reporter/Risky Business column.
Obviously there are two competing Oscar handicapper gangs taking shape — one at Tom O’Neil‘s “The Envelope” (expect at least 12 journos when it’s all finalized) and the return of Gurus of Gold (roughly 80% in place) at David Poland‘s Movie City News.
The Times rule is that you can’t be an “Envelope” team member plus a Poland Guru. I know there’s been some soul-searching among journos about whether to side with the Hatfields or the McCoys, and I for one have heard the crack of rifle fire over issues of alleged guru-poaching.
I know this: it’s not “early” in the Oscar handicapping racket. It’s all happening right now, fast and furious.
Just yesterday I heard uh-ohs about three big December releases, and once these stories begin to travel the films in question — I’m not going to name them — will see their stock prices begin to drop. All of this could easily fall by the wayside once they start to screen, but right now it’s starting to look as if these three now have something to prove.
The game will basically be over as of early to mid November, and from then on everyone will be just dancing. The chances of a late November or early December surprise seem slim at this stage.
O’Neill is currently working on a comprehensive choices-at-a-glance chart, and it’ll be in place fairly soon. Poland posted a Gurus chart today but I’m told that at last one respondent’s choices are about three weeks old, so it’s not exactly expressing the immediate current.
That said, the Best Picture tally has Dreamgirls slightly ahead of Flags of Our Fathers with Babel a somewhat distant (20 points behind) third.
The Best Actor race — this is a fairly early call — has The Last King of Scotland‘s Forrest Whitaker almost 20 points ahead of Venus star Peter O’Toole, and Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed…nobody’s seen Blood Diamond yet) trailing in third place.
And the Best Actress race has The Queen‘s Helen Mirren well in front of three runner-ups — Volver‘s Penelope Cruz, Little Children‘s Kate Winslet and The Devil Wears Prada‘s Meryl Streep — with very nearly the same scores.
The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neill got Dreamgirls costar Jennifer Hudson to tell him about the filming of the scene in which she sings “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” — the classic tune that Jennifer Holliday sang in the original B’way stage version that ran in the early ’80s, and which won more or less won her a Best Actress Tony Award.
For Hudson’s performing of “the most anticipated scene in one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, director Bill Condon fretted so much over shooting it that he saved it up for last and shut down the set so no one could spy on the scene,” O’Neill writes. “All early buzz indicates that Dreamgirls is about to transform Hudson into a superstar,” he adds. “[And] she’s already the frontrunner for the Supporting Actress Oscar.”
O’Neill is correct about this — Hudson is the one to beat right now. I saw the Dreamgirls scenes Monday night at the Pacific Design Center and listened to Hudson belt out three tunes like a champ. She’s got the hot role in Dreamgirls — the one with the most soul and punch and heartache.
I didn’t think I’d be saying this, but the great Meryl Streep needs to put herself into the Best Actress category after all for her Devil Wears Prada performance. If she goes for Best Supporting Actress she’ll almost certainly lose to Hudson.
Oscar Mashing at Paramount
Here it is not even Labor Day, and it’s looking more and more likely that the two strongest Best Picture contenders are going to be Flags of Our Fathers and Dreamgirls, which in itself is going to make this a phenomenal Oscar campaign year for Paramount /DreamWorks (a.k.a. “Dreamamount”), which is distributing both.
Shot during the filming of Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers (DreamWorks/Paramount, 10.20)
Keep in mind also that one other Paramount release — Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu‘s Babel (Paramount Vantage) — is also regarded as a probable awards- level thing. Not to mention the possibility of Paramount’s World Trade Center eeking into one of the five slots as a kind of sentimental favorite. Four Best Picture finalists from the same studio — it could happen.
But I’m all but convinced it’s going to come down to a Flags vs. Dreamgirls thing — a mano e mano on Melrose Ave. I’m saying this because of fresh perceptions of extremely strong emotional currents in both. And because, as one strategist notes, “there’s such a shallow pool of obvious [Best Picture] contenders from our current vantage point of mid-August.”
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Some surprise movie may come along in a month or two and rewrite the picture — “”it happens every year,” the strategist says — but right now no one can see what film that might be. And I spend every damn day trying to figure this stuff out.
How do I know it’ll be Dreamgirls vs. Flags of Our Fathers? I don’t as far as Flags is concerned, having only read the script and seen this morning’s Japanese combo trailer (i.e., Flags plus Letters from Iwo Jima).
But count on this : (a) the personal-anguish-of-soldiers factor, which Flags is full of top to bottom, is going to resonate to some extent (maybe a large extent) in the hinterlands among the support-our-troops-in-Iraq contingent, and (b) this big-scale tribute to the World War II generation is going to sink in big with boomer-aged Academy members.
I wouldn’t be saying this if Flags was just standing on its own — it could fade or come up short, you never know — but the Flags-plus-Letters from Iwo Jima factor (joined-at-the-hip movies using the same history and locale) is going to impress the hell out of Academy members for the same reason that actors who gain weight or put on fake noses or speak in exotic accents always tend to get Oscar-nomina- ted — because the effort that went into it is so obvious, and because no director has ever done something like this before.
And having seen portions of Bill Condon‘s knockout Dreamgirls again last night I’m dead certain it’s a Best Picture lock. Four scenes were shown, and each was emotional, exuberant, tight as a drum, perfectly staged and performed, and edited with the skill of a diamond-cutter.
And yet when you think about the Flags vs. Dreamgirls competish, it feels like a bit of a muddle because their Oscar campaigns are going to be run by two execs collecting Paramount paychecks — DreamWorks marketing executive Terry Press and Paramount marketing chief Gerry Rich — and who will have to split their loyalties and energies in two directions.
Flags and Dreamgirls originated as DreamWorks projects, of course, and Press is going to be handling the marketing for both, but she and Rich will be making the Oscar campaign moves — and this may look to some like an operation at cross purposes.
Press listened to my questions and declined official comment, but let’s look at this situation as best we can.
One, there’s a huge influx of Miramax and DreamWorks marketing veterans on the Paramount lot these days, and these people know their way around the Academy rodeo. Paramount is a studio, remember, that hasn’t been in a major Oscar campaign since Titanic, which was nine years ago.
Two, there’s no Paramount logo on the Flags of our Fathers one-sheet. Think about that.
And three, Warner Bros. is is the international distibutor and co-financier of Flags of our Fathers, and Warner Bros. will be the the domestic distributor of Letters From Iwo Jima…so there’s that element to consider.
Simultaneous Oscar campaigns for films released by the same studio have happened before, of course. Miramax had its own Life is Beautiful vs. Shakes- peare in Love competing for the Best Picture Oscar in ’98. Disney had The Insider running against The Sixth Sense in ’99. Miramax had The Aviator vs. Finding Neverland in ’04. Universal had Field of Dreams vs. Born on the 4th of July in ’89.
But Life is Beautiful was never considered a Best Picture front-runner, and neither was The Sixth Sense or Finding Neverland. The only analogy that really fits is the Field of Dreams vs. Born on the Fourth of July one.
If it comes down to a Flags vs. Dreamgirls standoff, the ideal situation, of course, would be for Press and Rich to push both with equal vigor. Press is a pro and will naturally strive to do that. She seems to be making the right moves by hiring outside Oscar campaign consultants for both films — Amanda Lundberg for Dreamgirls and a not-yet-finalized hire for for Flags.
But one studio insider who also knows his way around the racetrack sees other forces at work.
“It’s really not Terry Press making the call here,” he said. “This is about Spielberg and Katzenberg and Geffen…this is Geffen’s movie, Dreamgirls…and it’s about how these guys are joined in the planning the future of this studio. Dreamgirls is going to get the big push — it’s a non-contest.
“And I think Eastwood knows that, and I’m not so sure he even cares about playing this game at this stage in his life. But look at the power DreamWorks has at Para- mount these days, and you have to consider the hard reality, which is that from the DreamWorks/Paramount perspective, Clint is a 76 year-old director who’s basically a Warner Bros. guy on hiatus.”
The other strategist says “the reality is not Clint’s age but the fact that he’s won twice” — i.e., Best Picture Oscars for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby — “and that he won last year.”
Writers — serious writers of books and plays as opposed to, say, journalists — are not very interesting people to make films about. They’re almost as bad as painters. Morose, self-destructive depressives…terrific. Unless the film follows the writer on an intense real-life adventure of some kind, as Fred Zinneman‘s Julia did with an episode in the life of the young Lillian Hellman. Or better yet, if the movie somehow injects its writer character into a surreal realm of his/her own devising, like Joel and Ethan Coen did with John Turturro‘s gloom-head screenwriter in Barton Fink, or like David Cronenberg did with a William S. Burroughs-like character in his adaptation of Naked Lunch.
The latter approach, apparently, is the idea behind Paul Giamatti‘s untitled, just-announced film about Blade Runner author Phillip K. Dick movie, which Giamatti’s Touchy Feely Films will produce with Anonymous Content. The screenplay, to be written by Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), will use elements from Dick’s unfinished novel “The Owl in Daylight.” The visually surreal aspects of Tery Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing mixed with an “Owl” synopsis (found on Wikipedia) offer clues about what Giamatti’s film will be up to. In fact, it sounds like it may contain similarities to Lady in the Water as well as an echo or two from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse Five and Spike Jonze‘s Being John Malkovich.
Giamatti will play Ed Firmley, a composer of music scores for second-tier horror and sci-fi films who gets mugged by a squad of deaf alien humanoids — emissaries of a species that can’t hear but enjoys amazing visual abilities — who implant a micro-chip in Firmley’s head so their brethren back home can monitor and experience his life. The aliens soon become disinterested in the idea when they realize what a cheeseball-level composer Firmley is, and from this point is where the story truly takes flight. The meaning of the “The Owl in Daylight” title is presumably self-explanatory.
It’s been 22 years since the first Miami Vice season on the tube in ’84-’85, and I never rented the February ’05 Vice DVD that had that entire season on it. But reader Dewey Yeatts of Whitehall, PA, is saying that Michael Mann‘s just released Miami Vice features is based on a February ’85 Vice episode called “Smuggler’s Blues,” in much the same way that Mann’s Heat (’95) was a big-star feature version of the 1989 TV movie he wrote and directed called “L.A. Takedown.”
Is there anyone who’s seen the big-screen Vice who also remembers “Smuggler’s Blues” in detail? And if so, does Yeatts have it right?
Here are Dewey’s similarites: (1) The movie and the episode “both open with the death of a drug runner/informant and his family”; (2) “What follows is a federal officer pulling Crockett and Tubbs into a secret meeting also attended by Lt. Castillo. In both versions, the Fed knows about a leak in the system, and pleads with Crockett and Tubbs to go undercover and make contact with a drug lord”; (3) “In both versions, they hit the underworld to obtain transportation (in the TV show, they wind up in a plane piloted by Glenn Frey — in the movie, they go to work on the competition’s ‘go fast boats’ and then fly their own plane to Latin America)”; (4) “They then make contact with a drug lord, and the meetings in both versions are weird (though for different reasons”; (5) “After the meeting they go back to their seedy hotel room and check the doors and windows. (To my eye, the room in the movie seemed to be the exact same one from the episode — the movements of the detectives seem very similar during the sequence.)”
“The movie at this point sets up more twists and plot points, which is normal, since the film has nearly three times the running time of the episode,” Yeatts writes. “But Crockett’s seduction of Gong Li’s Isabella is right out of the TV show’s playbook. How many episodes involved around romantic entanglements that dovetailed with the “case”? And how many episodes revolved around one of the girl detectives being put in danger? (See next item…)
“In the TV episode, on the partners’ return to America, Trudy is taken hostage by the bad guys and wired for explosives. In the movie, upon the partners’ return to America, Trudy is taken hostage by the bad guys and wired for explosives. (It should be noted the radical difference in the way these scenes are handled in each version.)
“To my mind, the film may have lacked the show’s pastel fashions, had hipper music (in 20 years will the movie soundtrack seem dated? Of course it will) and almost zero humor (though I felt there were a few dry lines that crackled.) But overall, the movie to me played like a larger-scale episode. The story beats from “Smuggler’s Blues.” The romantic issues. The lady-detective-in-peril. Scenes of cars and boats going very very fast. (Mann did resist the urge to go Phil Collins on us however.) The end, where they are to meet at a point along the river, reminded me of a similar sequence in the pilot episode.
“In the end, Mann did not make an homage — he just made a better version of what was already pretty cool and cutting edge. The fact that all the major cop characters had exactly the same names (Switek, Zito, etc.) says that Mann was not turning his back on his creation — just enhancing it.”
“One last thing: although the Cro-Magnon audience I saw the film with was restless at times (you don’t want to know about Friday night screenings in my neck of the woods`– mouth breathers, the lot of them), the crackerjack third act (the siege in the trailer, the firework-laden finale) sent them out of the theater crackling. So the word of mouth may be better than you think. Let’s hope so. This is the movie that should get a sequel.”
San Diego Hoo-Hah
I was so backlogged by Friday midnight that I decided not to return to Comic-Con today (i.e., Saturday, 7.22). No offense but I was fairly okay with that. I heard a little voice late last night that said “fug it.” It’s a cool thing to be a Comic-Conner but after wandering around the San Diego Convention Center and sitting for several hours inside the cavernous Hall H, you start to feel like a stooge sitting there with 5000 others, watching show after show on the big screens and absorbing the big-studio sell-jobs.
In any case Friday’s action — a special screening of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, the raucous Snakes on a Plane presentation, the colleague buzz that followed the promo for Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men — was enough to fill the tank.
Fountain director Darren Aronofsky (l.), composer Clint Mansell (r.) at small party following Friday night’s Fountain screening
The Snakes presentation was a lot of fun for everyone, but for me it was also a bit of a downer — a final official confirmation that Snakes on a Plane isn’t going to be anything like Tremors (i.e., a smart, crafty comic thriller), and possibly more like a cheeseball B-movie with special effects out of the mid ’90s, and enhanced by the reverse Midas touch of a go-along, second-tier director.
Aronofsky’s The Fountain (Warner Bros., 10.13), which I saw with about 20 other journalists last night in a plex on 5th Street, is the most beautiful and best-cafted cosmic head-trip movie since I don’t know what. 2001: A Space Odyssey? Fight Club? The first half of Altered States ? (I was never a big fan of Bertolucci’s Little Buddha. Was anyone?)
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And for a movie with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz playing three characters each in three different eras (the 1500s, the present and the 24th Century), it’s remarkably easy to sort through and make sense of. You have to let it seep into you like any great book or perfectly brewed cup of tea, and you have to seep yourself into it also, but it’s an extraordinary place to go to and then return from….like a planet unto itself.
It’s one of those films that takes a little seasoning to appreciate. Mature educated types will like it more than typical 20-something hormonals, women probably more than guys who watch football and smoke cigars and drive SUVs, etc.
I’m presuming that anyone who’s ever tripped on anything will definitely respond to The Fountain. (Most columnist-critics are afraid to admit they’re “experienced”, but a lot of people of character and conviction dropped in the old days). This means, I guess, that at least part of the marketing effort will have to be directed at boomers who’ve been around that particular block.
Samuel L. Jackson during yesterday’s Snakes on a Plane presentation at Hall H
But a good nutritious film is a good nutritious film, and The Fountain is tight and rich and well-crafted enough that it will play just as well ten or fifty years from now.
I guess you could call it an odyssey. It’s about parallels, echoes and refrains between Jackman and Weisz’s three characters over a thousand-year time-span. The three settings are 16th century Spain, here-and-now America and somewhere in the nether cosmic regions some 500 years from now. It’s a movie about healing, loving…trying to break through.
The Fountain will play at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in early September. I’ll get into it more sometime around then.
I don’t know where I was when the presentation for Children of Men (Universal, 9.26) happened, but one look at the trailer tells you it’s a gripping futuristic thriller and a class act that steers clear of generic Comic-Con elements — i.e., mythical terrain, geek wonder, visually driven, monsters and mutants, etc.
On top of which it’s got Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) co-writing a script with Timothy Sexton (Live from Baghdad) and with Clive Owen, Julianna Moore and a hippie-haired, pot-smoking Michael Caine costarring. You can feel the focus and and smell the pedigree.
Clive Owen, Julianne Moore in Children of Men
Set in Britain a few decades hence, it’s about mankind facing extinction and anarchy because of an infertility defect that has spread across the globe. Cuaron was quoted as calling it “the anti-Blade Runner.” I’m guessing that Children will be shown at the Toronto Film Festival and that screenings starting next month in Los Angeles are also likely. The great Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) Interviewed Cuaron during the presentation.
I don’t know how I managed to avoid thinking about Child of Men until yesterday, but I’m all over it now.
The Warner Bros. presentation include a briefing onThe Reaping, which looks like The Birds by way of The Swarm except it’s about locusts and (I presume) frogs and other Biblical plagues visited upon a small southern town. The director is Stephen Hopkins, a moderately talented, very friendly Britisher (The Life and Death of Peter Sellers) whose involvement in a film of this sort means….competency.
Problem is, I’m having trouble remembering the title. The Reaping, The Gleaming, The Shining, The Reaming, The House-Cleaning…hard to hang onto.
Next on the bill was Superman Returns director Bryan Singer, who told the crowd he intends to shoot a Supie sequel for 2009, and that he hopes to “go all Wrath of Khan on it.” After a while Singer brought on Richard Donner, director of the original ’78 Superman with Chris Reeve. Donner was there to plug a new Superman II DVD. He showed a cool Superman-deceives-Lois scene from that film that was never used in the film. The disc will also include footage of Reeve doing screen tests.
Hilary Swank, AnnaSophia Robb in The Reaping
The best thing shown the whole day was Singer’s Superman Returns blooper reel. It’s hilarious. He only cut it together a day earlier, I was told. Singer should definitely put this on the DVD.
The second funniest thing happened when Singer was asked about the selling if Superman Returns. “I can’t talk about the marketing,” he almost whispered…but it was clear he wasn’t delighted with what happened. His hints, implications and half-utterances on this subject were priceless.
I can’t talk about 20th Century Fox’s Eragon because it struck me as another mythical CG battle flick in the crusty mold of Joseph Campbell, Lord of the Rings, Dragonslayer and Star Wars. Same deal with Pathfinder. Reno 911….low-rent but a lot of people will have fun with it. Borat ….same.
A unseen sequence from Peter Jackson’s King Kong Deluxe Extended DVD was shown on the big screens. It’s a re-do of the scene from the ’33 original with crew making their way across a swamp on a raft. It was “fun” to watch and yet it was typical Jackson crap — vigorous and inventive, overwrought, show-offy. The guys are attacked by a huge eel-like monster with big yellow teeth, and Jackson has his creature swim all kinds of wow stunts like he’s a dolphin at Sea World.
Richard Donner, Bryan Singer
Neil Labute talked about The Wicker Man (Warner Bros., 9.1) a bit, and then showed a scene from the opening of the film. Nic Cage is a motorcycle cop pulling over a young mother because her daughter has thrown a doll out in the road. The scene starts to get creepy, and then creeper still…and then shocking, and then demonic. It left me with a feeling that The Wicker Man is going to be a very scary film. Labute is one of the brightest directors around, but I wouldn’t call him warm and fuzzy. And you need a little touch of steel in your soul, I think, to push the right buttons and do the job on people.
Comic-Con is the ultimate cinegeek get-together. I love being surrounded by thousands and thousands of mellow eccentrics. Spiritually-speaking, the vibe is very cool…serene, even. But nobody looks like they work out much or eat a lot of healthy food. There were always a good amount of smokers outside. Four or five people suggested to me that Comic-Con was about movies and mythology but also drinking. Lots of that.
San Diego’s Gaslamp district has the usual-usual tourist stuff (cool restaurants, lotsa bars, pretty women), but I wish have liked to visit here during Wyatt Earp’s day. Which was one reason it feels better to just chill and work on the column today in air-conditioned comfort. I’m sitting in a guest cabin this afternoon in Escondido (about 30 miles north of San Diego), and it’s the Nefud desert out there.
I’m being told by someone who doesn’t necessarily know anything solid that Paramount/DreamWorks’ plan on the second Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima film — Red Sun, Black Sand — is to bring it out in early ’07 and not release it, platform-style or otherwise, in late ’06. If this is the determination (and I say “if”) I don’t know if this is the right way to go, as I tried to explain the other day.
The reason I think they may be wrong is that I’m a little uncertain about the Oscar worthiness of Flags of Our Fathers, based on a reading of a draft of Paul Haggis‘s script. Eastwood’s film might have much more going for it than is indicated by Haggis’s script (which I didn’t read a recent draft of), but last March I ran a piece about how it reads, and wrote the following:
“I’m not saying Flags [doesn’t look like] a possible Oscar favorite, or that it doesn’t have the earmarks, in fact, of a presumptive front-runner. But all I can really say for sure, having slept on Haggis’s 119-page script, is that I’m genuinely impressed, but at the same time I’m wondering how much broad-based appeal the film will turn out to have.
“Put bluntly, the script reads like Saving Private Ryan‘s artier, more glum- faced brother. It has a lot of the same battle carnage and then some, a bit of the old-WWII-veteran-looking-back vibe and minus the manipulative Spielberg tearjerk factor but also with less of a narrative through-line.
“Fathers is a sad, compassionate, sometimes horrifically violent piece that’s essentially plotless and impressionistic and assembled like a kind of time- tripping poem — a script made from slices of memory and pieces of bodies and heartfelt hugs and salutes from family members and politicians back home, and delivered with a lot of back-and-forth cutting.
“So it’s basically a montage thing that’s obviously more of an art film than a campfire tale, and that means that the sector that says ‘give us a good story and enough with the arty pretensions’ is going to be thinking ‘hmmm’ as they leave the screening room.”
Six Months In
We’re just about at the ’06 halfway mark, and it’s time for a basic sum-up.
By this site’s yardstick there have been 10 A-listers, 15 honorable B-listers, and 9 half-decents. A total of 34 films — a bit more than one per week since the year began — that were either excellent or very good or respectable, or at the very least mildly pleasing.
An Inconvenient Truth
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.
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The first runner-up is Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight. It’s not the first doc to ask and explore why so many people around the world despise the U.S. of A., but it’s surely one of the most precise and persuasive. By delivering a cleanly composed, ultra-perceptive explanation of how the American military-industrial complex runs the whole foreign policy show, from the leanings of the U.S. President to the Congress and right on down the food chain, it burns right through to the nub.
The third best so far is Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, a revisiting that feels freshly felt as well as a heart movie with a personal stamp that just happened to cost $260 million (or whatever the actual figure is) to compose. It’s a deeply satisfying upgrade, a reverent nostalgia piece, an above-average chick flick, a sumptous and harmonious piece of work and, frequently enough, a solid action thriller.
Fourth on the list is Sydney Pollack’s Sketches of Frank Gehry — a stirring, hugely likable portrait of the most daring and exciting architect of our time. I wrote this during the Toronto Film Festival, and nine months later I feel the same way: “Corny as this sounds, Sketches left me with a more vivid feeling of celebration and with more reasons to feel enthused and excited about life than anything I’ve seen [in a long while].”
Fifth in line is Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and yes, I’m applying special criteria here. It’s among the five best not just because it’s a movie that stirs and sinks into your soul (if you don’t feel this movie there’s some- thing seriously detached inside), but because it’s flat-out the most important flick of the year.
I’m listing it among the top five, in short, because more people need to see it because the sell is far from complete, especially with so many skeptics and corporate doubt-spreaders spinning against it as we speak.
I’m just going to list the ’06 films that have popped through over the last two or three hours. I’ve only listed 28 films on top of the 34 in the first three categories. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a gem or two, and I’ve probably overlooked some half-worthies.
Frank Gehry
Scoldings and admonishings are, of course, necessary and welcome.
TEN BEST SO FAR: United 93, Why We Fight, Superman Returns, Sketches of Frank Gehry, An Inconvenient Truth, Tsotsi, Find Me Guilty (a triumphant return to form for director Sidney Lumet), V for Vendetta, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home (the best Martin Scorsese film since Goodfellas).
GOOD, STURDY, HONORABLE (15, in no particular order): Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Inside Man, Running Scared, The Devil Wears Prada, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, The Break-Up, Favela Rising, Mission Impossible 3, Ask the Dust, Akeelah and the Bee, Bubble, Thank You for Smoking, Our Brand is Crisis, Sophie Scholl — The Final Days, Mozart and the Whale.
OKAY, PASSABLE, TOLERABLE (9, in no particular order): Down in the Valley, Nacho Libre, The Omen, Poseidon, Glory Road, Firewall, Imagine Me & You, Kinky Boots, Free Zone.
UNDERWHELMING (8): X-Men: The Last Stand, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 16 Blocks, The Notorious Bettie Page, Lonesome Jim, Cars, Friends with Money, Lucky Number Slevin.
DIMINISHES A BIT MORE EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT IT (1): The Road to Guantanamo.
OVERRATED IN SOME QUARTERS (5): The Proposition, Lady Vengeance, Battle in Heaven, Brick, The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
DISAPPOINTING (especially coming from a brilliant writer-director who’s done much better work): Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World.
NOT VERY GOOD…KINDA BAD, ACTUALLY (1): The Da Vinci Code.
WORST (3): RV, Basic Instinct 2, American Dreamz.
BEYOND DISSECTION (1): Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion.
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