Just days after the passing of Brad Renfro in what is widely presumed as a drug overdose, the day of Academy Award nominations has been overshadowed by the shocking news that fellow actor Heath Ledger, Oscar-nominated for his role inBrokeback Mountain, has been found dead today in a Lower Manhattan apartment at the age of 28. CNN is reporting that Ledger was found unresponsive by a housekeeper at an apartment owned by billionaire actress Mary-Kate Olsen*, who was not at the scene; pills, possibly an over-the-counter sleeping medication, were found “in the vicinity of the bed.”
UPDATE 1/23: * Apparently it wasn’t Mary-Kate Olsen’s apartment. Nor her building. Nor was she even in the city. The masseuse who discovered Ledger’s body at the apartment in SoHo called Olsen (twice) before calling 911, because she knew she was a friend of
Ledger’s. Ummm… okay.
Frank Langella’s Oscar evening plans were finalized this morning — or at least defined by the absence of more specific plans — when his richly drawn, artfully understated lead turn in director and co-writer Andrew Wagner’s Starting Out in the Evening failed to score a Best Actor nod.
While Tommy Lee Jones’ somewhat surprising nomination for In the Valley of Elah, a miniscule arthouse release ($6.7 million take, domestically) whose time had come and gone earlier in the fall, probably took the last up-for-grabs spot, Starting Out in the Evening, from indie distributor Roadside Attractions, never really could punch through, either at the box office — where it’s grossed only $600,000 to date — or with a string of critics prizes that might have caught the attention of enough Academy members. Langella was awarded the Best Actor prize from the Boston Film Critics Society, and crowned the runner-up to There Will Be Blood‘s Daniel Day-Lewis by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, but otherwise found himself on the outside looking in, done in by fickle big city arthouse audiences whose indifference played a part in making sure that the film never saw an expanded release much beyond several dozen theaters.
Still, much like Naomi Watts’ critically lauded but Academy-unrecognized turn in Mulholland Drive, Starting Out in the Evening could be the profile-raising film that lays the groundwork for an Oscar nomination in the near future. In the case of Watts, an exhilarating fresh face, it was 21 Grams, from 2003; with savvy, respected veteran Langella, the possibility looms at around this same time next year, courtesy of his wrapped performance as Richard Nixon in Ron Howard’s adaptation of Frost/Nixon, a role for which the actor has already won a Tony Award on Broadway. Either way, Langella — who also appeared recently as CBS President William Paley in George Clooney’s Oscar-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck. — is clearly enjoying a mini-renaissance.
Langella, who just turned 70 years old earlier this month, comes across as intelligent and exceedingly well spoken in person, and radiates a calm rootedness that comes from total self-assurance — a surprisingly rare quality in a lot of young actors. Langella explains he’s by nature fairly private, since work on films is so collaborative, involving on-set interaction with many departments and people. In Starting Out in the Evening, though, he had to muzzle what he calls his natural Italian gregariousness to portray a private, very internalized man with no such outlets for freewheeling openness. “I don’t like the word challenging because I think it’s always overused,” Langella says, “but it does require of you a sort of consistency of intent from beginning to end when you decide that someone is as imploded as this man, as old world-mannered as he is — the way he dresses, the way he thinks, the way he speaks. It requires you to be vigilant about every single moment.” For the full feature interview piece, from FilmStew, click here.
Starring Jessica Simpson and Luke Wilson (and costarring Andy Dick), virtual straight-to-video romantic comedy Blonde Ambition has all the ingredients of a classic, slack-jawed trainwreck, and at the 50-minute mark of the movie, when a group of visiting Norwegian priests burst into a karaoke version of “Baby Got Back,” it sure seems every bit as bad as feared when first firing up the DVD player. Yet the modest, to-scale surprise of Blonde Ambition is that, all things considered, it doesn’t suck nearly as much as it should. In fact, it goes down mostly with just a shrug.
Simpson stars as Katie Gregorstitch, a naive, gum-smacking, small-town Oklahoma beauty who goes to New York City to visit her long-time boyfriend. When (big shock) he turns out to be a philanderer, Katie finds (or lucks her way into, really) a job at a top-notch construction firm, where scheming vice president Debra (Penelope Ann Miller) and her underling Freddy (Dick) have their eyes set on unseating Ronald Connelly (Larry Miller), the firm’s head honcho. Rachael Leigh Cook and Willie Nelson also pop up in small roles as Katie’s family, seemingly paying off favors.
Blonde Ambition is rather wanly plotted, and its allusions to The Seven Year Itch are obvious, even without the visual signpost “homage” of the latter movie’s title on a nearby marquee. Directed by Scott Marshall (son of Garry, nephew of Penny), the movie clearly aims to be a Mary Tyler Moore-type, little-girl-in-the-big-city revamping of Simpson’s image. I previously touched on the theatrical misfortunes of Blonde Ambition, as well as its risible surplus of producers, and the truth is that Simpson just isn’t at all a very good actress, even when the stakes are drastically lowered. In short, she’s a Betty Grable pin-up queen, tantalizing only as an unknowable commodity. The second she opens her mouth, the illusion is shattered. Both on screen — with her forcedly, faux-sexy twang — and off, Simpson is play-acting what she’s been told is sexy, and the dimness and swallowed panic come through in equal measure. Here, though, it certainly doesn’t help that she’s appearing opposite Wilson, who may be the most drab studio-vetted leading man of the last quarter-century.* Watching these two feign a burgeoning attraction is like staring at the sun — it leaves a painful, lingering memory, no matter what you move on to do next.
And yet Blonde Ambition is a lot less awful than it could (maybe even should) be. Miller in particular gives the movie some unexpected lift, not the least of which because his performance — at once bemused and distracted — seems to serve as a subtle mimicking and commentary on Simpson’s outsized, real-world fame. “That horsey grin insults us both,” he says at one point. “And what’s with those teeth? They’re too white, like an artist’s rendering of teeth.” Marshall, too, stages scenes in a smart, forgiving manner (for the most part avoiding long takes), and his aunt Penny drops in for a nice, unforced, yet still amusing cameo. If there’s certainly little to actively recommend the movie, it goes down smoother than anticipated.
Housed in a regular Amray case, Blonde Ambition comes with a nine-plus-minute making-of featurette, during which Simpson and her producer dad (whose shingle, yes, is “Papa Joe Film Productions”) own up in rather candid fashion to the movie being an attempt to break free from the typical tabloid coverage of Jessica. While I’d argue that there isn’t much there absent the media constuction, it’s at least refreshing to hear an acknowledgement that such considerations were at least a factor in tackling and shaping this flick. The only other bonus feature consists of three deleted scenes that run a total of four minutes, with one — a rooftop-set piece involving green-screen work — explaining the origin of Katie’s bizarre toothbrush fixation. I checked scrupulously for an Easter egg, and thankfully there isn’t one. C- (Movie) C (Disc)
* – the irony of course being that if there were one greater, you certainly couldn’t remember their name to cite
So the Oscar nominations are in, and Juno is undeniably one of the big winners, its hearty commercial embrace having pushed the movie over the hill. I pointed out yesterday that Fox Searchlight is operating on a different plane when it comes to turning out the vote for its movies, and alongside the aforementioned surprise little hit of the final quarter of 2007 ($85 million and counting), further evidence arrives in the form of Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages, which, despite not (yet) having connected at the box office (it’s made only $3.6 million in a month and a half of release), garnered an expected Best Original Screenplay nomination, but also a Best Actress nod for Laura Linney, probably coming at the expense of Angelina Jolie and A Mighty Heart.
Writer-director Tony Gilroy’s end-around on studio financing worked out well, with Michael Clayton racking up nods for George Clooney’s lead performance, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson’s supporting turns, Best Original Screenplay and, somewhat surprisingly, Best Director, in Gilroy’s debut. Joe Wright’s Atonement, meanwhile, used its “BAFTA bounce” to secure Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan) and Best Film nominations, despite neither of its leads (James McAvoy or Keira Knightley) being selected for the final winnowing.
Finally, with eight nominations — tied for the most, with Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men — critics can for the moment stop bellyaching about Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood being a snubbed masterpiece. They’ll get a chance to continue if the film is shut out in top categories, but for now, it’s a “made film,” a legit contender with the other big boys and probably an early front-runner, alongside the aforementioned Coen brothers flick and Michael Clayton. Oh, one other thing… what happened to the brilliant prognostications of The Envelope’s human noisemaker, Tom O’Neil, who I thought called for a Sweeney Todd sweep long ago?
