Radius-TWC and Tom Freston hosted a Monday night gathering for Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom, a likely nominee for Best Documentary Feature. I’ve loved it all year — here’s my initial rave out of last January’s Sundance Film Festival. The party happened at the Polo Private Dining Room at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Neville was there along with costars Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer, among others. Everyone performed. A smattering of critics and Oscar bloggers were there — Hammond, Karger, Thompson, myself. Here’s a video of Clayton’s big number. I laid down on the floor and held the camera as steadily as I could.
I’ve been posting occasional hosannas about Morgan Neville‘s 20 Feet From Stardom for over a year now (i.e., since I first saw it at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival) so why quite now, right? This featurette was just circulated to people like myself so I’mjust passing it along like a good little kiss-ass. Except you’re not a kiss-ass when you really love and respect a film as I do here. Call me a devotee, an acolyte, a team member, etc.
Yesterday I spoke to Morgan Neville, the veteran documentarian who’s been riding the high of a lifetime since 20 Feet From Stardom ignited 11 months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. A bliss-out by any yardstick, 20 Feet is now one of the 15 shortlisted docs that may become a finalist at the 2014 Oscars. Partly or largely because it reflects Morgan’s music-industry fervor and his amiable alpha-guy vibe. Conversationally he’s cool and down-to-it. We covered the usual bases, had a nice easy chat.
Dana Williams (I think), Judith Hill, Tata Vega, Merry Clayton, Morgan Neville at last January’s Sundance Film Festival.
The most important thing to get about 20 Feet From Stardom is that it’s not just a film about backup singers Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, Claudia Lennear and Tata Vega. It’s a story about dealing with the frustration of not being fully heard, of not quite reaching your goals, of having to grim up and persevere for decades until it finally happens. The “it”, semi-ironically, is Neville’s film. The acclaim for 20 Feet plus the Oscar attention has put these ladies — all back-up singers in a sense — over in a big way.
Proof will come on New Year’s Day when the best-known of the four — Love, Clayton, Hill and Fischer — sing “The Star Spangled Banner” before the big game between….hold on…need a second…between the Stanford Cardinals and Michigan State Spartans. If this doesn’t rouse slumbering Academy members who still haven’t popped in the 20 Feet screener then I don’t know what.
I’ve contemplated the suggestions for HE’s Best of 2013 At The Six-Month Mark, and I just can’t blow off the top-notch films I saw at the Cannes Film Festival (Inside Llewyn Davis, All Is Lost, The Past, Blue Is The Warmest Color, et. al.). If I were to ignore them because they haven’t been released I’d give HE’s Halftime Award for Best Picture to Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight, but I can’t ignore Cannes — it happened, hundreds saw and wrote about these films, they’re part of the conversation, they’re too accomplished and important, etc.
So here’s the breakdown so far on 2013’s Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress…right? Little thought is given to likely Oscar/Academy recognition given my lack of respect for mainstream Academy attitudes, although any/most of these faves will probably be Oscar-nominated. This is just me talking right now. The Academy bullshit can wait.
Best Halftime Picture Award of 2013: Tie between Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost. I’m sorry but Davis is one of those less-is-profoundly-more films that not only works and coheres perfectly when you first see it, but also gets better and better the more you think about it weeks down the road. And All Is Lost is just fucking brilliant — easily the most novel and gripping survivalist suspense drama ever made, and particularly striking for the zero-dialogue element. Leagues and light years beyond Life Is Pi.
Other Best Halftime Picture Nominees: 3. The Past, d: Asghar Farhadi (Cannes 2013); 4. Blue Is The Warmest Color, d: Abdellatif Kechiche (Cannes 2013); 5. Before Midnight, d: Richard Linklater; 6. Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station (Sundance, Cannes); 7. 20 Feet From Stardom, d: Morgan Neville; 8. Frances Ha, d: Noah Baumbach; 9. Behind The Candelabra, d: Steven Soderbergh; 10. Mud, d: Jeff Nichols, 11. Upstream Color, d: Shane Carruth; 12. Shadow Dancer, d: James Marsh; 13. The Attack, d: Ziad Doueiri.
Best Halftime Director Award of 2013: Joel and Ethan Coen, Inside Llewyn Davis. Other Best Halftime Director Nominees: J.C. Chandor, All Is Lost, Asghar Farhadi, The Past, Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station; Richard Linklater, Before Midnight.
Best Halftime Actor Award of 2013: Robert Redford, All Is Lost. No other performance so far has come close to conveying as much gravitas, alone-ness, sadness, decency, humanity. And no other performance so far has elicited such flat-out admiration and exhilaration on my part. There’s nothing to do but celebrate Redford’s luck in scoring perhaps the best role of his career and delivering bis best performance since he played…you tell me. Jeremiah Johnson in Jeremiah Johnson, Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men, David Chappelet in Downhill Racer, the goodbye scene in front of the Plaza in The Way We Were, etc.
Best Halftime Actor Nominees besides Redford: Oscar Isaac, Inside Llewyn Davis (there’s often a new guy/outlier nominee among Academy’s Best Actor contenders), Michael Douglas, Behind The Candelabra (I don’t care if Candelabara debuted on HBO — it opened theatrically in Europe); Michael B. Jordan, Fruitvale Station; Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight. Wells Exception: If Michael Shannon hadn’t played General Zod in Man of Steel his Iceman performance might have some Best Actor traction at this stage, but he has to pay the penalty for being in Steel, which was and is an act of mercenary paycheck-ism.
Best Halftime Actress Award of 2013: Tie between Berenice Bejo in The Past and Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue Is The Warmest Color (although the latter’s unpronounceable, unspellable last name probably puts her behind Bejo at this point). Best 2013 Halftime Actress Nominees besides Bejo & Exarchopoulos: Julie Delpy, Before Midnight; Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha; Andrea Riseborough, Shadow Dancer; Rooney Mara, Ain’t them Bodies Saints.
Best 2013 Halftime Best Supporting Actor Award of 2013: Bruce Dern, Nebraska. (Wells to Paramount: Dern having won the Best Actor award at Cannes is great advertising, but there’s no way his Nebraska performance will get any traction as a Best Actor contender with the Academy — it’s a supporting performance through and through. Runner-up: Ali Mosaffa, The Past.
Best 2013 Halftime Best Supporting Actress Award of 2013: Pauline Burlet, The Past. Runner-Up: June Squibb, Nebraska. HE Exception: Kristin Scott Thomas is striking and, yes, memorable in Only God Forgives, but the movie is so Godless and Godawful that nobody having anything to do with it can be nominated. There may even be a penalty carrying over into 2014 and 2015. I haven’t finally decided — let me think it over.
Focus Features will open Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a doc about the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, in theatres on 6.8.18.
My gut tells me this is a total lock for a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for two…no, three reasons: (1) Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister before becoming a children’s TV star, was the personification of everything Donald Trump never was, isn’t today and never will be, so everyone who will want to salute that; (2) The doc was highly praised (RT 95%) during last January’s Sundance Film Festival; and (3) Everyone who loved Neville’s Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom will be favorably disposed.
I’m not exactly the kind of guy who strolls around with a gentle, open-hearted, sunny-faced attitude, but I admire guys who can pull that off. Rogers was also something of a progressive, forward-thinking lefty, which makes me admire his memory all the more. And I’m a longtime admirer of Neville (Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Keith Richards: Under the Influence). Missed the Rogers flick during Sundance, but would love to see it soon (i.e., before leaving for Cannes on 4.29). What say, Focus?
Morgan Neville‘s Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, a doc about the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, will premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. An ordained Presbyterian minister before becoming a children’s TV star, Rogers was everyone’s idea of a gentle, kindly, compassionate fellow. Rogers passed in ’03, but he was the personification of everything Donald Trump never was, isn’t today and never will be. I love guys like Fred Rogers, and he was also something of a progressive, forward-thinking lefty, which makes me admire his memory all the more. And I’m a longtime admirer of Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Best of Enemies: Buckley vs. Vidal, Keith Richards: Under the Influence). But I can’t honestly say that Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is at the top of my Sundance gotta-see list. I’m just being honest.
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon‘s Best of Enemies (Magnolia), one of the year’s finest docs and one of my hands-down faves during last January’s Sundance Film Festival, will open on 7.15. On one level a spry, highly intelligent history of the ABC TV debates between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal during the Democratic and Republic national conventions of ’68. On another level a capturing of a time and a pre-Fox News political climate that no longer exists — even with the police riot on the Chicago streets and the acrimony that eventually engulfed Buckley when he lost his temper and called Vidal a “queer”, the summer of ’68 was nonetheless a time of relative civility when it came to right-left disputes. And yet the debates were also a harbinger of the culture wars that began…when, during the Nixon administration? I’m hoping to see this again and sit down with Neville (director of the Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom) before it opens.
It’s generally accepted that Pauline Kael‘s biggest triumph as a critic came when The New Yorker published her 7000-word defense-and-praise piece on Warren Beatty and Robert Benton‘s Bonnie and Clyde (10.21.67), which had opened and fizzled in August 1967. Kael’s piece helped to turn the tide (Newsweek‘s Joe Morgenstern initially panned it but went back a second time and recanted), which led to a profitable re-release and Oscar nominations in early 1968. It might be the only time in movie history in which a single critic was fairly credited with actually saving a film.
8:56 pm: Will Smith presenting the Best Picture Oscar. This is it. 12 Years A Slave wins! Good God! All the people who wouldn’t watch it, all the people who frowned…there weren’t enough of them in the end. Amazing! I can’t believe it. A lot of people who didn’t see it must have voted for it anyway. I’m really astonished and very, very pleased. Wow! Good, excellent, wondrous thing. The sour-faced people were heard from, but they weren’t numerous enough. Steve McQueen hops up and down…yes! I owe Glenn Kenny $50 bucks. Did American Hustle win anything? Nope.
8:51 pm: Jennifer Lawrence presenting the Oscar for Best Actor, which will go to Matthew McConaughey. Pre-ordained. Kisses and hugs. McConaughey: “Thank, thank you, thank you to the Academy for this. First off, I wanna thank God.” What? God does not have a rooting interest in anything. “To my family, which is what I look forward to. My mother taught…demanded that we respect ourselves. And to my hero…that’s who I chase. I’m never going to be my hero. [What matters is] somebody I keep on chasing.” And then he says “aww right aww right, aww right.”
8:43 pm: Daniel Day Lewis presenting the Best Actress Oscar to Cate Blanchett. We only have to wait for him to say the name. (Worst clip: Judi Dench delivering that horrid, detestable line about forgiving the old-crone nun and not wanting to be like Steve Coogan.) Blanchett! The name is spoken! “It means a great deal.” “Thank you so much Woody for casting me.” Compliments to Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock, Judi Dench, Meryl Streep. And a plug for films about women which make money. “The world is round, people!” An elegant speech, very well delivered.
8:40 pm: Same Samsung commercial we saw earlier. Same McDonald’s commercial. Same car commercial.
8:36 pm: Angelina Jolie and Sidney Poitier presenting the best Director Oscar to Alfonso Cuaron. And after some uncertainty as to who will read the name, Ms. Jolie says “and the Oscar goes to Alfonso Cuaron.” Best line: Cuaron thanking “the wise guys of Warner Brothers” and then corrects himself by saying “the wise people of Warner Brothers!” Wise guys was better, Alfonso.
8:22 pm: Robert DeNiro and Penelope Cruz presenting the Best Adapted Screenplay. John Ridley‘s 12 years A Slave screenplay wins! Good thing! (Could this indicate…could this possibly mean…?) John is grappling with surging currents of emotion, and is holding it together. Hats off. And the Best Original Screenplay Oscar (I’m rooting for Her) goes to…Spike Jonze for Her! Very wise choice. Very happy for Spike. Highly deserving.
8:15 pm: Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx presenting the nominees for Best Original Score. Wait, let me guess…Gravity‘s going to win, right? Jesus God. Gravity‘s Steven Price wins! What is this, six Oscars now? Does everybody realize what a Gravity pigfuck this show has been over the last two hours and 45 minutes? Gravity is going to win the Best Picture Oscar. How can it not? Oh, yeah…Frozen (i.e., “Let It Go”) wins the Best Song Oscar.
8:05 pm: I’m sorry but something is off about Goldie Hawn‘s face. Too many injections or the wrong implants…something. None of us mind “work” if it’s done well, but you’re supposed to resemble your younger self on some level. Hawn looks waxy.
7:53 pm: Glenn Close presenting the Death Reel. Will Alain Resnais be included? Who are all these people? Jim Kelly, Mickey Moore, Charles Campbell? Roger Ebert and Dutch Leonard are included. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the last face in the montage. No Resnais. Are you telling me they couldn’t fit him in at the last minute? They had hours to do this. Lazy! Bette Midler comes out to sing “Wind Beneath My Wings.”
7:46 pm: Terrific– the Oscar are presenting a tribute to brawny, dynamic, athletic heroes. Mostly CG super-heroes. Superhero movies are megaplex diversions, for the most part, and have absolutely no place in a show ostensibly devoted to celebrating the most profound or highest-aspiring films. This is just pandering. Pandering to the popcorn-munching apes.
7:44 pm: Jennifer Garner and Benedict Cumberbatch handing out the Best Production Design Oscar. is Gravity nominated? Good God, it is. Please don’t give this to Gravity…please, I’m begging you. Thank you! The Great Gatsby takes the Oscar, the second Gatsby win of the night.
7:38 pm: Pink’s performance of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” was nicely done, but why? I don’t get the reason for the Wizard of Oz tribute number other than…uhm, Craig and Neil wanted to do a Wizard of Oz tribute number.
7:30 pm: If Gravity wins the Best Editing Oscar, I fear the worst as far as the Best Picture Oscar is concerned. Good God, Gravity has won. Five Oscars so far. The Academy really loves this technically impressive thrill ride. Gravity, dammit, is going to win the Best Picture Oscar…eff me and double-eff the Academy. All those people who predicted 12 Years A Slave to win….well, I shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet, right? Hang in there.
7:28 pm: Emmanuel Lubezki‘s Oscar for Best Cinematography is about to be presented. And it is presented! What is that, four for Gravity now? Hooray for Bill Murray‘s shout-out to his Groundhog Day director, Harold Ramis.
7:22 pm: The three large pizzas have arrived! Pass ’em around…anybody got red pepper packets? Big Mamas and Papas Pizza gets the plug. The show is almost two hours old, and the four best moments so far have been (a) Lupita Nyong’o‘s big win, (b) the group selfie, (c) the pizza and (d) Jared Leto‘s win.
7:14 pm: Best news of the night so far — 12 Years A Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar! Lupita is so eloquent, so well-spoken, so poised, such a class act. She thanks everyone who deserves thanks. “No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid…thank you.”
7:07 pm: Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron presenting the Best Sound Mixing oscar, and Gravity wins it. Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro. And the Oscar for Best Sound Editing goes to Gravity also. Actually to Glenn Freemantle. That’s three for Gravity now, and I’m sorry but this feels like a kind of omen.
7:01 pm: The group tweet photo routine was the coolest thing so far. Here it is:
In the wake of 12 Years A Slave winning five Spirit Awards yesterday afternoon (Best Feature, Director, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, Cinematography) and feeling all the audience love and the relief and joy from the filmmakers about having scored big-time, I began to think about what may happen this evening at the Oscars. About what I fear will happen. For in the minds of many millions the Academy will be revealing a self-portrait if they give the Best Picture Oscar to Gravity in this, the year of the greatest surge of top-quality African-American filmmaking in Hollywood history and especially this one masterful film — the first indisputably artful drama about 19th Century slavery in America, not so ironically directed by a Brit.
12 Years A Slave producer and costar Brad Pitt, costar and Best Supporting Actress winner Lupita Nyong’o in Spirit Awards press tent after their big win.
Because if the worst comes to pass the main impression won’t be that Gravity has won. The main impression, trust me, will be that the old-white-fart Academy has frowned upon one of the greatest, saddest and most compassionate films about human dignity and one man’s unquenchable desire to live and not just exist. In so doing the Academy’s epitaph will read as follows: “Okay, look, we know 12 Years A Slave is a very well made film but we’re the smug Academy and we just didn’t like it…okay? Too downish, too brutal and our wives wouldn’t even watch the screener. We don’t like thinking that the culture of Scarlett O’Hara was this cruel, this heartless. It brings us down. So we’d rather give the Best Picture Oscar to a beautifully composed space thriller with Sandra Bullock tumbling weightless and going ‘aahh! aahh!'”
I’ll be driving over to the Patton Oswalt-hosted Spirit Awards in Santa Monica around 10:15 am. Chilly temps and rainy weather obviously mean suppression as far as the outdoor schmoozy stuff is concerned. (Phase One is a 150-minute party starting at 11 am; Phase Two is the show’s taping from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm.) Alexander Payne, Cate Blanchett Jeff Nichols, Bruce Dern, Matthew McConaughey, J.C. Chandor, Steve McQueen, Lupita Nyong’o, Richard Linklater, Robert Redford and dozens of other distinguished coolios will be milling around. The show will air on IFC tonight.
My know-nothing predictions:
Best Feature: 12 Years A Slave, All Is Lost, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska. Predicted Winner: 12 Years A Slave. This seems certain as the Spirits will want to set themselves apart from the old-fart Academy members who either don’t “like” Slave (largely due to resentment of the film’s mostly negative portrayal of whites) or haven’t even watched the screener.
Best Director: Shane Carruth (Upstream Color); J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost); Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave); Jeff Nichols (Mud), Alexander Payne (Nebraska). Predicted Winner: Most likely McQueen but possibly Payne.
Best Female Lead: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Julie Delpy (Before Midnight), Gaby Hoffmann (Crystal Fairy), Brie Larson (Short Term 12), Shailene Woodley (The Spectacular Now). Predicted Winner: Will the Spirits copycat the Oscars by awarding Blanchett, or will they do the better identity thing and give the award to Brie Larson? Fearing the former, hoping for the latter.
Best Picture: It pains me to predict this but Gravity will probably win, despite the lame-ness and the wrongness of such a choice. Should win: Wolf of Wall Street or 12 Years a Slave. I know I’ve predicted 12 Years to win but…I don’t know what’s going to happen. But a gut feeling is telling me to prepare for the worst.
Best Director: Like everyone else, I’m expecting Alfonso Cuaron to come out on top. Not for directing one of the boldest and finest films of the 21st Century, Children of Men, but for directing a technically dazzling “Sandra Bullock in a haunted house but the haunted house is space” movie. Should win: Martin Scorsese for Wolf or Steve McQueen for Slave.
Best Actor: Dallas Buyers Club‘s Matthew McConaughey, of course, but Leonardo DiCaprio‘s balls-out performance in The Wolf of Wall Street is more deserving.
Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, of course, for her work in Blue Jasmine. Should win save for the fact that she wasn’t nominated: Blue is The Warmest Color‘s Adele Exarchopoulos.
Best Supporting Actor: Dallas Buyers Club‘s Jared Leto, although there’s no question in my mind that WoWS‘s Jonah Hill gave the richer and more vivid performance.
Best Supporting Actress: The most deserving nominee is 12 Years A Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o but I fear that American Hustle‘s Jennifer Lawrence will take it nonetheless. The Academy that gave Christoph Waltz two Oscars for playing more or less the same kind of character twice in two Quentin Tarantino movies is more than capable of blowing off Nyong’o.
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