http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/ Movies Copyright 2012 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:20:44 -0800 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=4.23-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss "The contemporary Oscar economy runs entirely on charm," Movieline's Stu Van Airsdale wrote late today. "Your movie can make $1 million or $1 billion, be a polarizing scourge or smothered in plaudits and acclaim. You can place ads everywhere, send thousands of DVD screeners and engineer a fortune's worth of publicity. But by the time nomination ballots are mailed in late December, if you haven't found a way to charm a vote out of an Academy member, then you and your film are about as long for the awards race as Angelina Jolie is for a burger-eating contest."... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/take_that_charm.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/take_that_charm.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:20:44 -0800 I'm sorry but I'm not getting the same sense of ironic hooligan satire from Goon (2.24) that I did from the Hanson Brothers drawing blood in George Roy Hill's Slap Shot. But I'll bet that the Goon guys (director Michael Dowse, screenwriters Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg) took their inspiration from the Hanson Brothers.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/im_sorry_but_im.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/im_sorry_but_im.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:55:37 -0800 Dan Lindsay and TJ Martin's Undefeated (Weinstein Co., 2.17) is a deeply touching 90-minute doc about Memphis's Manassas Tigers, an African-American high-school football team trying to up their wins. But it's mainly about various team members toughing it out with personal struggles. And it really sinks in. The first half is somewhere between good enough and not bad -- very nicely shot and smoothly cut but still a familiar portrait of a rural underdog football team. Kinda seen it before. But the second half...whoa. That's when all the threads pay off and the seeds sprout, and it really gets you. I started to... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/remember_undefe.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/remember_undefe.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:37:32 -0800 Honestly? In a perfect world? I'd like to do is retain everything I've learned and acquired over the last 30 years, spiritually and wisdom- and experience-wise, while physically reverting back to this guy. I could get more girls this way, for one thing. I've had this for about 15 or 16 years now. It's crucial to be able to see the red serpent eyes.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/flicking_serpen.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/flicking_serpen.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:18:38 -0800 The L.A. all-media screening for Daniel Espinosa's Safe House happens tonight at 7 pm. Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds bagging a paycheck for a standard action thriller -- i.e, a variation of the Training Day formula set in South Africa, CIA operatives instead of L.A. cops, same old same old, blah, blah explosions, etc. Many critics have already seen Safe House and reviewed it and, according to Rotten Tomatoes summary, given it a failing grade. Universal's request that reviews be held until Friday seems....well, odd in light of this. Is Reynolds ever going to star in a really good commercial film? Buried was... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/ryan_reynolds_f.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/ryan_reynolds_f.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:21:20 -0800 Here's a reminder that Robert Weide's Woody Allen: A Documentary will begin streaming gratis starting tomorrow (i.e., Thursday, 2.9) "for a limited time," whatever that means. There will also be an encore broadcast on PBS CoCal on Saturday, 2.18 at 9 p.m. Here's my review from mid November 2011.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/woody_doc_whene.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/woody_doc_whene.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:18:33 -0800 Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy (8.3.12) got a boost from Jeremy Renner's standout performance in Mission Impossible 4. That movie explained to the primitives (i.e., those who couldn't be bothered to see The Hurt Locker) that Renner is solid and cool. The second best thing is this trailer, which makes it clear that Legacy is a Renner-for-Matt Damon substitution thriller with many of the same players (Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Scott Glenn ) as before. The only thing that gives me a moment of pause, frankly, is the August 3rd release date -- obviously a hedging-our-bets-but-hoping-for-the-best strategy. To me it amounts to Universal... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/bourne_substitu.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/bourne_substitu.php Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:14:09 -0800 A Better Life's Demian Bichir was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar due to quality of performance, word-of-mouth and pressing the flesh at industry events. When I returned from Santa Barbara last weekend I asked about running some FYC ads to help things along, but was told it was too late in the Phase Two cycle to construct ads because it would take too long. This didn't seem to make sense as a full two weeks remain before the balloting dealdine. So yesterday afternoon I turned to freelance art director Dylan Wells and asked if he could throw together some Bichir ads overnight.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/hats_off_1.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/hats_off_1.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:27:53 -0800 "The title role in Albert Nobbs goes to Glenn Close, who played it Off Broadway thirty years ago and has striven ever since to bring it to the screen. She co-wrote and co-produced the film, and is seldom out of our sight. But what do we see? Albert is a woman dressed as a man, in the Ireland of the late eighteen-hundreds, yet what Close serves up is neither man nor woman, flesh nor fowl, but a strange hieratic hybrid of no discernible identity. "She walks as though freshly risen from the dead, patrolling the streets and corridors in a stiffened glide, with... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/good_writing.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/good_writing.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:57:46 -0800 Grantland's Mark Harris admires Meryl Streep's "old Maggie" acting in The Iron Lady, but he has difficulty with the other two-thirds of the film because it "lets its subject down by insisting that the most -- no, the only -- interesting thing about Prime Minister Thatcher is that she was a woman in a world of male power. "There's a campy scene in Mommie Dearest when the widowed Joan Crawford tells off an all-male Mad Men-era boardroom by bellowing, 'Don't fuck with me, fellas! This ain't my first time at the rodeo!' That's a fun idea for a moment, but not for a... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/fear_of_god.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/fear_of_god.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:57:26 -0800 Last night I didn't attend Film Independent at LACMA's screening of Moneyball at the Bing Theatre at LACMA. (I've seen Bennett Miller's film five or six times.) But I did attend a pre-screening q & a with star-producer Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane. Thanks to FIND's Elise Freimuth and LACMA host, curator and gadfly Elvis Mitchell, I mean. Without their help I would have been out on the pavement. Moneyball's Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill during last night's q & a at LACMA's Bing Theatre. It must be said that Freimuth's assistance aside, LACMA/FIND rules regarding press coverage... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/they_came_to_la.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/they_came_to_la.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:49:58 -0800 The first in a series of This Is War billboard capturings in West Hollywood. The images are artful, I feel, when you consider the elements (billboard + neighborhood + natural light + cars) as a single integrated statement. Something very subtle but in some way measurable has happened due to the presence of these posters over the last few days. I can say no more.... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/war_vibe.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/war_vibe.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:25:47 -0800 Last weekend I finally bought Lorber Films' Bluray of Bertrand Blier's Going Places. What a pleasure in every department. This is one of the great anarchic comedies of any culture or era, and the film-like Bluray made me feel like I was watching it fresh and new. With the exception of a 40-second passage of dupey, sepia-colored footage, the transfer is clean and robust from top to bottom. From my September 2011 riff called "Going Places Forever": "Going Places ('74) is one of the most curiously seductive films ever made about loutish, anarchic, groin-driven swagger. Gerard Depardieu and the late Patrick Dewaere are... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/still_going.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/still_going.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:47:43 -0800 In posting this new English-subtitled trailer for The Kid With The Bike (IFC Films, now available), it's only fair that I include an excerpt from my 5.14.11 Cannes Film Festival review. "Directors Jean Pierre and Luc Dardennes are first-rate scenarists and straight shooters. Their work is assured -- they know exactly what they're doing every time. And their film ends well. But Cannes critics are, I feel, kneeling forward and kissing the proverbial ring. There's nothing wrong with that in a general sense as long as there's perspective. "Yes, I took an instant dislike to Thomas Doret, the red-haired lead character called Cyrill,... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/wounded_woodpec_1.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/wounded_woodpec_1.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:10:55 -0800 "Let's have a moment of silence for the suffering Oscar bloggers as they enter the most trying and mortifying weeks of their labors," Glenn Kenny tweeted a little while ago. "Pray for @DavidPoland @kristapley @GuyLodge and @AwardsDaily, that they may not be crushed by the inevitable world-weariness. God grant them the serenity to accept the awards results they cannot change, and the temerity to tell the rest of us to shut up about it. And a special prayer for @wellshwood, that he may not be afflicted by spontaneous combustion."... http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/this_year_espec.php http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2012/02/this_year_espec.php Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:02:12 -0800