So what exactly was the deal, in announcing the Golden Globe nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, with sticking the somewhat rather thickly accented Djimon Hounsou with the directors of Volver, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Lives of Others — meaning he had to pronounce, in quick succession, the names of Pedro Almodovar, Guillermo del Toro and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck — while co-presenter Sharon Stone got to namecheck… Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson. Was that a desire to get everyone to lean forward in their seats, or a reflection of someone’s consideration that perhaps Hounsou would be more sober than Stone?

Props to Clint Eastwood’s “This does wonders for my confidence” crack
— echoing Best Supporting Actress winner Jennifer Hudson’s remarks
from earlier in the evening — upon receiving the Best Foreign Language
Golden Globe for Letters from Iwo Jima. When he said that, Martin Scorsese no doubt laughed weakly and crapped his pants.

I still think Scorsese has the directorial prize sewn up tonight, and is far better shape to  trump Eastwood and (finally) score his long-coveted Best Director Academy Award. In The Departed, he’s got the stronger film. Look for a bulge in the back of his pants, though, when he waddles up on stage…

an interesting piece in today’s Los Angeles Times focusing on Harvey Weinstein’s go-for-broke strategy with regards to garnering Academy Awards attention for  Emilio Estevez’s Bobby. The gist of the piece is about how Weinstein is flogging a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Ensemble Cast — the new Crash model for darkhorse success — and hoping that, along with TV and print ads touting positive rank-and-file audience reaction, yields some Oscar noms.

Though we’ll doubtlessly be subjected to the trotting out of both Charlie and Martin Sheen, in an effort to score some sort of familial goodwill, there won’t be any Bobby surprise upset at the Golden Globes — the competition in the dramatic film category is too strong. Still, don’t discount Weinstein’s shrewd (and devoted) strategy, or place the film on ice just yet. I’ve said before that Bobby is basically a movie that’s as good as one allows it to be, meaning that as things get worse in Iraq and abroad, people are more receptive to the plaintive chords of hope that Bobby strikes. Any Oscar nominations would be reflective of this.

Still, I have a friend who can’t fathom any continued awards talk, and rants that Bobby is, and I quote, “TV-level filmmaking… like Cold Case: The Movie. It’s all two-person set-ups, lacking cinematic scope and nuance.” And for the record, he voted for Bush once, but not a second time…

Dana Stevens has an interesting piece up today on Slate about Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, just out recently on DVD, in comparison to Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men. The gist of the piece is that it’s slightly unnerving that two of the year’s more underappreciated and snuffed films — certainly from a marketing perspective — also happen to be the two that probably ask
us to peer most deeply into the mirror and contemplate our shared future and its correlation to the way we interact with one another and comport ourselves culturally and socially.

It’s an interesting thesis, and there’s probably something there. While I think Universal’s marketing of Children of Men falls more into the category of simply not knowing what they had, I previously speculated about the reasoning of Fox’s bizarre dumping of Idiocracy here. The maintenance of the well-groomed hedges of other financially beneficial relationships, I believe, won out.

Borat and Jackass Number Two have been (rightly, if amusingly) getting from critics’ groups in their year-end handouts — the latter at least in the voting if not the actual final awards — made me glancingly reflect back on the charms of 2004’s Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle.

From Kal Penn (above, left) and John Cho’s perfectly pitched performances and Neil Patrick Harris’ brilliant cameo as himself to some of the wickedly zonked dialogue (“Shotgun anus!”) and that inspired fantasy sequence involving a giant bag of weed, Harold & Kumar ranks as one of the best willfully “dumb,” smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em comedies of the past decade. Sure it hits all the requisite beats, but it also puts a fresh, frequently anarchic twist on things, which more movies could stand to learn from. Here’s hoping that long-gestating sequel eventually gets off the ground.

Adam Goldberg called it. I bumped into the character actor recently, and in the context of chatting a bit about his experience on Deja Vu, asked about the ball of contradictions that is Val Kilmer. Goldberg insisted Kilmer was a pleasure on set, and related that the notoriously short-tempered star — whose antics have over the years cost him both some jobs and some friends — had said, “I’ve been on good behavior for my last five movies.” (I don’t know where, exactly, that places the last freakout, but somewhere before Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)

Goldberg said Kilmer was in good spirits and quite funny, and now comes bubbling rumor that Kilmer may in fact be looking to reprise his role from 1985’s Real Genius as wonked-out science prodigy Chris Knight. That’d be something, huh? The overriding personal memory of that movie for me is of a buddy who rented it from Blockbuster and ran up like an $80 late fee tab, leading to much clucking disapproval from said store’s manager. Nothing official has yet been announced, but Kilmer allegedly wants, a la Robert De Niro, to trade in (and off of) his hardassed persona for a few overtly commercial, wide release comedies. If true, can a Top Secret! sequel be far behind? After all, The Good German gives the Zuckers plenty of new (old) material with which to work.

Turistas, let’s take a moment to appreciate the particular charms of Olivia Wilde (above). I’m usually not too big a fan of the overly manufactured/tweezed eyebrow, but here it works. I know the devilish temptress stuff only worked so long for Rose McGowan, but this is totally the niche Wilde should be exploiting, no? She’s younger, and once her teen marriage to flamenco player/documentary filmmaker Tao Ruspoli invariably unravels, she’ll be even hotter. Save Angelina Jolie, is there a better feminine arched brow working in movies today?