Two days after the Toronto Film Festival debut of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, it seems obvious if not inescapable that Tom Hanks‘ performance as Fred Rogers will be campaigned as a Best Actor thang. If this happens David Poland would be “surprised”, but he’s nonetheless convinced that Hanks can’t win against Joker‘s Joaquin Pheonix and Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver. Perhaps not but by the calculus of the Poland curse, this is almost a dead-to-rights guarantee that Hanks will collect his third Best Actor Oscar.

Past Poland Curse victims: Rachel Getting Married (which Poland called “the best American film of the last 15 years“), Munich, Dreamgirls, Phantom of the Opera, Quills, Finding Forrester and the Reverse Poland Curse trio of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood (all of which Poland panned as “the trilogy of Critical Onanism,” and therefore provided an awards-season headwind).

Now it’s The Curse of Kris Tapley’s Premature Seal of Oscar Inevitability. Or something like that.

If the legend of the Poland Curse still means anything, MCN’s David Poland may have stuck a shiv into Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go (Fox Searchlight, 9.15) by calling it “a masterpiece…a film we’ll be discussing, frame by frame, in schools, 20 years from now.” He also praises it as “smart and demanding and emotional and rigorous and profoundly artful. It is more than ‘a good story well told’ [but] humanity on a screen. And it trusts us, as thinking, feeling adults, to do the work.”

I say this as someone who (a) is looking forward to seeing and possibly loving (really) Never Let Me Go — I really have no argument or bone to pick, and yet (b) someone who has noticed time and again that early unbridled Poland enthusiasm = “uh-oh, your movie is fucked.”

I say this as someone who has also seemed to curse films — commercially, that is — with love and enthusiasm. I was afraid all along that all my ecstatic Greenberg postings earlier this year might somehow seal its fate as a box-office dud. I once wrote that my love for Alexander Payne‘s Election was probably a guarantee that it would do poorly with general audiences. But the Poland Curse is different. I know it sounds cynical, but I consider it an absolute red flag whenever he calls any film a “masterpiece.”

Past Poland Curse victims: Rachel Getting Married (which Poland called “the best American film of the last 15 years“), Munich, Dreamgirls, Phantom of the Opera, Quills, Finding Forrester and the Reverse Poland Curse trio of The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood (all of which Poland panned as “the trilogy of Critical Onanism,” and therefore provided an awards-season headwind).

Plot-thickener: Time‘s Richard Corliss has called Never Let Me Go “a superb, poignant film about love unto death.”

MCN’s David Poland voted for a grand total of 7 correct Oscar calls in the final Gurus of Gold chart. Out of 21 categories, that is. (MCN doesn’t include doc short, live action short or animated short.) Poland also missed 4 of the top 8 categories including such no-brainers as Best Picture and Original Screenplay. He went with Tony Gilroy and Michael Clayton instead of Diablo Cody and No Country for Old Men.

This doesn’t precisely fortify the legend of the Poland Curse (i.e., any Best Picture he gets behind big-time will lose) because Poland didn’t push all that rigorously for Michael Clayton, or not as hard as he campaigned for Dreamgirls and Munich. But it does tend to support the idea that Poland, a major Hollywood know-it-all, has a less than sterling track record in this realm.
Pete Hammond, who got the most correct choices among the Envelope Buzzmeter crew, was first among MCN’s Gurus with 16 correct calls, followed by Jack Matthews (15), Dave Karger (14), Glenn Whipp, Anne Thompson, Sean Smith, Mark Olsen (13), Susan Wloszczyna, Eugene Hernandez (12), Lou Lumenick, Sasha Stone (11), Peter Howell (10), Glenn Kenny and Scott Bowles (8).

“The big story of 2007 really, in critical discussion, is the Trilogy Of Critical Onanism (in order of jerk-off) — The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood.” — from David Poland‘s 1.2.08 Hot Button column (even though the page identifies itself as “The Hot Button — January 2, 2007”).
I could be snide and call this the flip-side of the Poland Curse. If you believe in the legend that any film strongly pushed by Poland for Best Picture contention is all but doomed, you might also conclude that any film he calls masturbatory probably has considerable merit.
Of course, presumption isn’t needed in this instance. Minus these three films 2007 would have been a much leaner feast. Zodiac is my choice for the Best Film of the Year, and currently sits on so many Top Ten lists that it seems silly to debate Poland’s jab.
That one lantern-lit night shot in Jesse James — i.e., the train coming ’round the bend with the James gang is waiting to stick it up — is so drop-dead breathtaking that it justifies the entire film’s place in the ’07 pantheon. (As well as cinches Roger Deakins‘ Best Cinematographjy Oscar.)
It took me a second viewing to realize that the sickness running through There Will Be Blood — a malevolence that climaxes with the bowling-pin finale — has a stick-to-the-ribs quality that grows more scalding and pernicious the more you re-view and re-think it.

Munich supporters will probably curse me for saying this, but I think it’s entirely fair to observe that after today’s “Big Picture” Patrick Goldstein column in the L.A. Times about the media’s pre-release bashing of Munich that the game is all but over. Munich was hurting already but this is the crashing left hook to the jaw. Munich has not fallen to the canvas, but — quickly pop in a DVD of Raging Bull and chapter-search to the final fight between Jake La Motta and Sugar Ray Robinson — this pretty good movie that has won the admiration of several critics and some Academy members…this decently-made film with a tedious third act is against the ropes and bent over and bloodied with a swollen left eye. And its manager-director, Steven Spielberg, isn’t even at ringside, and seems to be a little bent-over himself. He was described a few days ago by L.A. Times writer Rachel Abramowitz (in the one non-Time magazine interview Spielberg has given to help support the film) as “slumped — almost curled up against a pillow — on a banquette by a window overlooking the Pacific…his hair is gray, his face pale, his manner muted. He seems tired — soul-tired — almost emptied out, as he talks.” And the publicists are still in a hunker-down mode. There have evidently been no interview pieces about Munich star Eric Bana in newspapers. There are no interviews with screenwriter Tony Kushner I’ve run across. Munich costar Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, isn’t doing any press as far as I know. (I’m told there will be forthcoming features about one or two of these guys, but appearing more in concert with the nationwide 1.6.06 opening rather than the 12.23 limited break.) And Spielberg, Kushner and Bana won’t be doing the standard q & a thing after Munich plays this evening at the Variety Screening Series…even though this series is considered an essential by Oscar-consulting publicists all over town. (This is due to a conflict with an industry screening this evening with Spielberg, Kushner and Bana attending, but such conflicts can always be finessed if there’s a will to do so.) I want to be fair and even-handed, but add all this mishegoss to what my Manhat- tan-based Academy friend told me about Munich this morning [see the 12.20.05, 9:17 am item below], and it seems that even the doggedly-Munich-supporting David Poland would have to admit that the crowd, sensing defeat, is on its feet in anticipation of what appears to be a fait accompli.

There is no joy in Mudville over the sluggish response to Adele Lim‘s raunchy Joy Ride, which was produced by Point Grey Pictures’ Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro projected between $7 and $9M at 2,820 locations; now the weekend tally is looking closer to $6.5M. A $1,100,000 haul on Thursday, and $2,600,000 yesterday — $3,700,000 so far. Friday’s per-screen average was $922.

Although the film sent me into a black pit of depression and I only laughed once, I’m not personally delighted by this shortfall. Lim directs with urgency and vigor, and Cherry Cheva and Teresa Hsiao‘s well-structured script delivers heart as well as vulgarity. I’d decided by the finale that I didn’t completely hate it, and that ain’t hay.

But I knew the formerly titled Joy Fuck Club was a dead fish when I saw the B-minus CinemaScore rating plus that statement by David Poland that he’d returned for a second viewing with his wife and 13-year-old son. Yes — I’m referring to an adjunct of the Poland curse.

13 and 2/3 years ago a desecrated version of The French Connection — grubby, splotchy, desaturated — was released on Bluray, and fans hit the roof. It was a bizarre experimental remastering from director William Friedkin that everyone (including director of photpgraphy Owen Roizman) hated. A much more palatable version was released on 2012, and the complaints stopped.

I may be mistaken but I seem to recall that the only person in the world of critics and columnists who gave a thumbs-up to the 2009 version was David Poland. From that point on the term “Poland Curse” applied to every which way.

Now another Bluray debacle is upon us, and it took me six damn weeks to pay attention. The new 4K Heat Bluray, approved by Michael Mann and released by Disney’s 20th Century video division, is covered or more precisely smothered in needless shadow and murk, like a black scrim thrown over everything.

I watched the 4K version last night, and right away I knew something was wrong. “Why is everything darker?’, I asked myself. We naturally expect 4K to deliver some degree of enhancement — a noticable “bump” or upgrade of the film’s well-known visual quality. Well, the 4K does not deliver a noticable uptick. In fact it’s another desecration. It’s Heat with the lights turned down and a heavier emphasis on blue-gray. It’s Heat covered with a black stocking. It’s basically a vandalizing.

I was so pissed off by the 4K disc tHat I took it out and popped in the 1080p Bluray version. The Bluray is much, much more pleasing to the eye./