In quarter-hearted fashion (the entire piece reads like a sigh, frankly, a fact that I dig), Variety‘s Cynthia Littleton takes a stab at the recent flare-up in film blog pissing matches, and concludes it’s cyclical, and wearying. Without waging into the breach myself — because, truly, I care not — I will say that the incidents cited in this piece, and others like them, are exactly why I find so many film blogs kind of tiresome, and it reminds me of two other things:
1) The old saw about the politics of academia — that the squabbles are so nasty because the stakes are so low.
2) My firm belief that “Toldja!” is the scrappy, upwardly-mobile middle class intelligentsia’s equivalent of the rotted celebrity bitch line “Do you know who I am?,” and its unironic deployment, especially in print, is a sign of mental inferiority, tackiness and/or low self-esteem.
An email from the French Embassy’s Los Angeles Film and TV Office landed in my inbox this morning, with an invitation to a screening of Jacques Doillon’s Ponette… held on March 6. Further ignoring the fact that it was in Valencia, I really wish this invite had arrived, you know, in advance of the actual screening, since Doillon was there in person.
An arresting bereavement drama refracted through the eyes of a little girl, this film is an absolute heartbreaker, and features one of if not the most affecting child performance I’ve ever seen. Victoire Thivisol (look at that face!) plays 4-year-old Ponette, who must come to terms with grief following the death of her mother in a car accident. She gets little sympathy and support from her atheistic father, who just dumps her with her aunt while, wrapped up in his own denial and anger, he goes back to work. Ponette’s aunt and her young friends confuse her with a mixture of religion and fantasy, to the point she ends up believing that her mother will soon be coming back to visit her.
It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie, and though I don’t at all doubt its staying power, I do ponder whether this is a case of actual performance, or just deeply superb, marionette strings manipulation-as-direction. Thivisol won the Best Actress Award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival, but four years old is awfully young, and the movie, largely in the contrast drawn between Ponette and her father, has a lot of substance to say about so-called truths that crumble into uncertainties when adults are called upon to try to explain them to children. It’s for this reason that I would have loved to talk to Doillon.
First thought I had about The Last House on the Left, upon seeing the cast, and then the trailer: wait a second, Monica Potter is old enough to play the mother of Sara Paxton? The math says yes… if you’re stretching it. Potter is 37, and has 17 years on Paxton. Tony Goldwyn, her screen husband, is 11 years older. But the movie doesn’t establish the couple as high school sweethearts, and in fact they have an even older, deceased son, the brother of Paxton’s character. So… I call bullshit. Good-looking bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless.
So nouveau rapper Joaquin Phoenix jumped off the stage and attacked a heckler at a hip-hop club gig last night in Miami, according to reports, the type of behavior that’s making it increasingly hard for me to defend his bird’s-nest-haired career switcheroo as just a creative-minded Nestea plunge, and a case of aggressively feeling the moment in the manner that a nice financial security blanket will allow. This is the type of shit people do to manufacture attention, and/or when they don’t have any smart people who care about them around them. I’d like to think the latter isn’t the case with Phoenix, so…
Don’t know what it is, but title renderings which invoke waxing/waning/eclipsed heavenly bodies as a substitute for the letter “O” just turn me off, in gut level fashion. It’s not awe-invoking or intriguing anymore, if it ever was. It feels cheap or desperate, especially for a movie not actually set in outer space. There was some TV series/project not too long ago which played the same card as the poster for Knowing, and I immediately lost all interest. Also, it may just be the taint of Andrew Niccol’s Simone, which dropped a bunch of 1s and 0s in its title and advertising campaign, but I can do without the numeral as well. Mainly, though, it’s that eclipse that has me inwardly sighing.
Hopelessly busy today, so not really any time for any sort of in-depth Oscar analysis. I think it’s obvious, though, that Hugh Jackman ruled; he emceed with grace and charm, and presided over some nice song-and-dance bits. And the five-for-the-price-of-one introductions for the acting nominees was inspired — a cool touch. It’d be interesting to see that extended to the screenwriting and directing categories at some point down the line. Also, Kate Winslet’s terribly myopic Best Actress victory for The Reader was totally preordained, of course, but AMPAS voters’ selection of the beautifully shot but ploddingly obvious Toyland as the best live action short film only underscored the hard-boiled truth of the joke about how they’re such unremitting suckers for anything Holocaust-themed; Toyland was without a doubt the least interesting of the five finalists.
Meant to post this last week, but what does the future of film coverage in Los Angeles look like? Kind of depressing, but also laughably terrible, truth be told. Since they let film editor and chief critic Andy Klein go last month, CityBeat has, as I understand it, been picking up what little film stuff they’ve run from out-of-town sources (i.e., writers on other papers they own, in Seattle and elsewhere). This has led to some strange circumstances — including the reviewing of things that
have shuttered in L.A., and/or already been reviewed, as well as a complete lack of any updated film material online for several weeks. The new nadir? For the week of
February 6, CityBeat ran a single capsule review of the Weinstein Company’s Fanboys in its print edition. Then, for the week of February 13, they ran… the very same
review of Fanboys. Yikes. I don’t know if this is a case of printer error (very tough to believe, given updated layout), or some cheap, shrugging stop-gap trick that the powers-that-be thought they could slip by, but I can tell you from experience that that sort of thing is not only a white flag of surrender to any reader with half a brain, but will be noticed by movie studios and ad buyers as well.
Hot news today: Christian Bale does not much like Shane Hurlbut, the cinematographer on Terminator Salvation, it seems. An epic, rafters-shaking scream-down, truly. I’ll give Bale a pass on about three-fifths of this captured rant, maybe more, because filmmaking is a tough, high-tension business, and when a quality take or moment is ruined by either some technical glitch or an entirely preventable screw-up, as I’ve witnessed a couple times, it’s hair-pullingly maddening.
But then Bale crosses the line, somewhere around the time he re-tees things up, starts asking questions he apparently doesn’t want answered, and seemingly makes a charge at Hurlbut. “I’m tellin’ you — I’m not asking, I’m telling you,” Bale bellows, and then, “I’m gonna fucking kick your ass if you don’t shut up for a second.” (Err… you’re the one talking the most, dude.) Hurlbut maybe should have just turtled, taken his public dressing-down, avoided eye contact and said nothing, walked away, etcetera. Instead he makes the mistake of trying to meekly re-explain his screw-up. Whoops… kerosene. This fire burns too long, though; clearly, Bale is a guy who just hasn’t been told to shut the fuck up in a long, long time. Meanwhile, director McG kind of comes off as a pussy here, no? Why isn’t he in the midst of this?
The industry/publishing world blood-letting continues — deputy editor Anne Thompson was among the estimated 30 lay-offs at Varietyyesterday. She says her blog, Thompson on Hollywood, will continue uninterrupted, for now, and that there are other irons in the fire, of course. Sucks. Big-time, as Dick Cheney would say. But who doesn’t have multiple irons in the fire these days? It’s the only wise, proactive move, sadly.
I may have a horse in this race, it’s true, but I’ll just say that over on his blog Luke Y. Thompson really nails the unfolding, ongoing CityBeat situation, in all its mouth-agape curiosity. To briefly set all this on a tee, in the wake of Ella Taylor being let go by L.A. Weekly just a couple weeks ago, CityBeat decided two weeks ago that film editor/critic Andy Klein was a luxury they could no longer afford. I’ll spare some bleak-sounding insider-ish details, because I realize the hard-knock economic reality of things in general, and the publishing world specifically (in Klein and Taylor, probably the two most veteran local critics still
working in the aftermath of Kevin Thomas’ retirement have just been let
go), and I also don’t really know new publisher Will Swaim. But, this bizarre but to my knowledge true bon mot: in the wake of clearing their chief film critic from their books, CityBeat made no effort to even contact any of its film writers.
After cleaning up with various critics groups and other film-honoring bodies, and going 1-2 at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards, commercial juggernauts Wall▪E and The Dark Knight both got relegated to somewhat unfortunately expected, consolation-type booby prizes: a Best Animated Feature nod for the former, and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Heath Ledger for the latter, among a mess of other, lesser nods. And that sucks, for different reasons. The rejection of Wall▪E shows the stranglehold that the actors’ branch has on voting (the thinking: “no actors = we’re not voting for it for Best Picture, since it didn’t employ as many of us”), while the stiff-arming of The Dark Knight, especially in light of the embrace of past commercial hits, underscores ingrained genre snobbery, pure and simple. Below are the top-shelf domestic narrative nominations:
More thoughts later, and in the coming weeks, certainly, but the Best Supporting Actress nominations clearly offer mostly confirmatory love on the part of AMPAS voters — Cruz and Adams are recent nominees, and Tomei a past Oscar winner. Taraji P Henson’s nomination for a solid but unexceptional performance in a very Mammy-ish role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is depressing, but indicative of the weird love that film is getting.
I have an inkling… and that inkling is that Khloe Kardashian, who previously got out of not paying months of rent at my apartment complex by having her late father threaten baseless legal action, is in fact a man.
One must never forget, even as his bank account and collection of vintage distressed T-shirts and other designer duds swells, that Ryan Seacrest is a douchebag. Why, apparently last night he even tried to high-five a blind guy. Smooth, that one. I’m surprised he didn’t ask the guy how long he’d been watching the show.
When I said that tabloids would unfortunately have a field day with the death of Jett Travolta, I should have specifically included/made mention of sites like Gawker, which now has a piece up alleging that the old family photos sent out after his death have been PhotoShopped… to shave away some of the pudginess in his face? Egads, what a conspiracy. Surely that relates to the other questions surrounding his death, right?
Hey, you know what’s great? Getting up early and building your entire day’s schedule around an interview commitment with an actor or director, and then getting hosed, or stood up. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if it’s individually, provably their fault or that of some flak. It all boils down to the same point: the time of famous people is infinitely more valuable than yours, and in these exchanges, you will suffer the whims and fuck-ups of others.
Reports of the economic collapse of the world as we know it are surely overstated if, as Popeater and others have reported, the remnants of a tissue used by a cold-stricken Scarlett Johansson when she appeared on The Tonight Show a week ago were auctioned off for over $5,000.
OK, Jennifer Aniston: you win. You got me to post a picture of you — a nude picture of you, from a recent GQ photo shoot — in promotion of your new PG-rated movie, the Christmas release Marley & Me. Your Ph.D. in media manipulation surpasses my Baccalaureate of willpower. Check and mate. Again, you win. I acknowledge this. Just please stop talking, and leave Angelina Jolie out of this.
Over on Huffington Post, Bonnie Fuller takes a rare dissenting feminine view in the ongoing Jennifer Aniston–Angelina Jolie shadow tabloid war, and nails why Aniston should just take a big gulp from a warm glass of shut the hell up. Fuller accuses Aniston of “perpetrating the most fantastic press dissathon” of recent memory (giving an interview for a Vogue cover story in which she says, “What Angelina did was uncool,” then whining to Entertainment Weekly for a separate, later cover story, “I was just surprised that Vogue would go so tabloid. I was bummed, but you almost expect it”), and basically makes the point that Aniston can’t stop running her yapper and wearing the victim’s hoodie, which wears on guys a lot quicker than females. Who knows whether this brand damage is long-lasting or irreperable, but I can tell you that male audiences will not stick with a female movie star that they perceive as a nag and endless re-hasher of the past, no matter how finely toned the legs. Personality does still matter, shockingly.
You know what I hate? Films… or, more specifically, scenes in films which use crossword puzzle entreaties to showcase one character’s intelligence, worldliness, etcetera. Hate ’em, hate ’em, hate ’em. They’re frequently meant to be cute, these scenes, but without fail I find them irritating, chiefly because they’re usually prime examples of lazy screenwriting. And what triggered this recollection of my carefully packed away rage, you might ask? Last Chance Harvey, don’tcha know…
I caught Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road today, aka the non-waterlogged reunion of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and while I’ll have more thoughts soon, it bears pointing out that one thing the film definitively proves is that DiCaprio cannot convincingly swear; he’s the anti-Sam Jackson in this regard. It’s not that DiCaprio is patrician, per se, it’s just that whenever he spits out an epithet or obscenity, all the effort is revealed, the intellectual processing of the fact that a not-particularly-fit-for-polite-conversation word is about to be deployed, and always the weight of its intended effect. Sometimes this doesn’t matter, in the case of a character who is manipulative in just such a fashion. When it’s a lover’s quarrel, however, this marble-mouthed properness is a problem, since it runs counter to a lot of profanity. I don’t know if it means that he smokes weed (I tend to think not), but there’s just no verbal instinctuality or knee-jerk, hair-trigger impulsivity to DiCaprio.
I touched on the ratings controversy surrounding Slumdog Millionaire at the end of my one-on-one interview with Danny Boyle, but I also recently exchanged a couple emails with friend and colleague Wade Major, who gave good voice to the ire and irritation surrounding the R rating with which the film is saddled. The capper of his response is excerpted below:
“I’ve been screaming about the racism factor in the decisions of CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) for years. It’s been unbelievably evident, time and time again. And in fairness, it has far less to do with racism than with cultural parochialism, as you could also make the case for Billy Elliott, as family-friendly a film as has ever been made. I’m sorry, but “Fuck” is about as offensive to people in Yorkshire as “Dang.” CARA doesn’t get that. Their primary motivation is not, as Jack Valenti always claimed, providing information for parents. Their goal is to keep government censors at bay, so they zero in on anything that a morality mandarin might flip out over… regardless of context or common sense. And more often than not, that ends up putting a lot of foreign films on unequal footing, particularly Asian films. They’ve never been able to wrap their heads around some of the stuff in Hong Kong movies, and the fact that someone running around with a hatchet in his back can, in context, be fun and/or funny. To them, it’s straight out of Friday the 13th. Fuckers.”
From the intersection of religion, politics and douchiness comes this guy, a South Carolina priest who says his congregants who voted for Barack Obamashouldn’t take communion until they’ve done penance for supporting the man he called “the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or run for president.”
Well, “Inglorious Bastards” is no more, but that shouldn’t bring a smug exhalation from Michael Madsen just yet. In a press release today touting the start of principal photography on the film in Germany last week, it was confirmed that Quentin Tarantino is going the same English-mangling route as The Pursuit of Happyness, and that the film will be released as Inglourious Basterds.
The ensemble cast includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Paul Rust, Michael Bacall, Omar Doom, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Jacky Ido, August Diehl, Martin Wuttke, Richard Sammel, Christian Berkel, Sönke Möhring, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Denis Menochet and, yes, Cloris Leachman.
The film — which will shoot at Studio Babelsberg as well as in Berlin, Saxony and Paris — begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish-American soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own.
Inglourious Basterds reunites Tarantino with Academy Award-nominated
editor Sally Menke, Oscar-winning director of photography Bob
Richardson and production designer David Wasco; joining Tarantino for
the first time is costume designer Anna
Sheppard. The film will be released worldwide in 2009, with The Weinstein Company handling domestic duty and Universal releasing the film internationally.
Wow. This is most assuredly not the video to attach to international tourism entreaties. It does chillingly explain the political persistence of xenophobic character assaults, though — because there are still (always?) easily impressionable bumpkin loons like this. We get it, m’am… you don’t at all like Barack Obama‘s middle name. (As a side note, I like the background plea of “Don’t spill that beer!”) On the plus side, though, she also says, “Black ain’t got nothing to do with how these Arabs are trying to sneak this guy into our country.” So… one small step, I guess?
Amazing. Fascinating. Jaw-dropping. I can’t believe these actually exist. It’s almost worth buying some stickers in bulk and taking a silver Sharpie to the word “thank.”
