It’s that time of the year again — Oscar time!  (Cue “Hooray It’s Hollywood!” music.)  I know it’s supposed to be uncool to care, but I grew up watching the Oscars with my mom every year, and just can’t kick the habit.

Like some grim tribal ritual whose original meaning is lost in the mists of time, I will most probably sit down in front of the tube at the appointed hour, and brace myself for the onslaught of awkward acceptance speeches, corny jokes, and interminable dance numbers (please, God, no dance numbers!).

The experts agree there are two main contenders for Best Picture.  (What would we do without experts?)  One is a movie about a peaceful, idyllic land invaded by an evil military force trying to steal their resources.  The other one is called Avatar.

The struggle between Avatar and The Hurt Locker has gone back and forth.  Avatar was an early favorite, but Hurt Locker seems to have enjoyed a late General Petraeus-like surge.

Then in the final days, an ugly controversy struck Hurt Locker as one of its producers had the gall to ask people to vote for his movie.  Imagine that!  Doesn’t he know that Hollywood is a respectable place where aggressive self-promotion and crass commercialism are strictly off-limits? (more…)

The real fun of the Oscars isn’t the cut-throat competition for the little gold naked man but guessing who will make the biggest idiot of himself. 

The Academy Awards show has a fine tradition of pampered celebrities popping off with something stupid when they hit the stage.  It must be something about TV cameras and the opportunity to make damn fools of themselves before tens of millions of people around the world that the Hollywoodoids find irresistible.  Notice how you never hear any fallout from the “technical awards” ceremony?  You know, the non televised ceremony recognizing the boring technological stuff that actually makes movies possible that is usually held at the Beverly Hills Elks Lodge with hosts Steve Guttenberg, Charo and/or one of the lesser Sweathogs.

Some of the past magic moments are legendary.  Remember back in 1993, when Tim Robbins and his then-gal pal, tranny vomit insanity enthusiast Susan Sarandon, harangued the crowd about the detention of Haitian refugees?  Of course, right after that these stars led the way by opening up the grounds of their mansion to these huddled Haitian masses.

Roberto Benigni engaged in memorably tiresome antics after winning “Best Foreign Language Film of 1997” for the Worst Film of All Time, the insanely appalling Life Is Beautiful.  Life has certainly aged well, and Benigni’s shtick has only gotten fresher, contributing to the runaway freight train of success that his career has become since then. (more…)

How did the film industry get so screwed up and turned upside down that the only feeling the annual watching of the Academy Awards elicits from me is dread? Every year, three things hover on my calendar like a big black rain cloud: prostate exam, tax season, Academy Awards — and the  metaphorical similarity between all three is somewhat striking.

Obviously my career choice makes viewing the ultimate Hollywood award orgy necessary, otherwise I would return to what is my default emotion for most things: utter indifference. But how sad that it’s come to this. Going back to Johnny Carson’s hosting straight through to Billy Crystal’s, the Oscars were once one of the top three high points of the television viewing season, right after “Battle of the Network Stars” and “Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes.”

Maybe I’m the one who’s changed. Maybe the ceremony was always filled with a striking lack of class – with sanctimonious preening and political abuse hurled at me and mine. Regardless, over time those nine hours have simply gotten more and more torturous to sit through. You’re either on edge waiting to be insulted or on edge hoping one of the few movie stars you still hold some affection for doesn’t disappoint in some way. (more…)

 The Associated Press:

The science-fiction sensation “Avatar” and the war-on-terror thriller “The Hurt Locker” lead the Academy Awards with nine nominations each, including best picture and director for former spouses James Cameron and
Kathryn Bigelow.

For the first time since 1943 the Oscars feature 10 best-picture contenders instead of the usual five.

Best Picture
“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9”
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”

Best Director
James Cameron — “Avatar”
Kathryn Bigelow — “The Hurt Locker”
Quentin Tarantino — “Inglourious Basterds”
Lee Daniels — “Precious”
Jason Reitman — “Up in the Air” 

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Toward the end of the filming of The Wizard of Oz (1939), the picture’s director, Victor Fleming, was suddenly called away to salvage another production that was careening off-track at the studio, Gone with the Wind. The “Oz” portions of the movie, filmed in spectacular Technicolor, were already finished. But the “Kansas” sequences bookending the picture — including the all-important scene showing Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow” on her Depression-era farm — had yet to be shot.

The studio heads called in a oft-used master craftsman named King Vidor to handle the job, and he proceeded in a few weeks to capture on celluloid some of our culture’s most beloved images.

Who was this “King Vidor”?  If you’re a modern conservative movie lover with some smattering of knowledge about classic Hollywood, you may have heard that strange name without really knowing or caring about its import. It sounds vaguely European — perhaps even fake? — and hardly evokes the same smile of recognition as Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Wilder. It seems to belong more with names like Curtiz, Lubitsch, Cocteau, Kurosawa — foreign-sounding, arty-farty names, ones only a geeky film aficionado could love.

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If you’ve seen Superman: The Movie (1978), you surely remember the character of Perry White, the tough-as-nails editor of The Daily Planet. Played pitch-perfect by actor Jackie Cooper, he’s one of the comedic highlights of the picture. “I want the name of this flying whatchamacallit to go with the Daily Planet like bacon and eggs! Franks and beans! Death and taxes! Politics and corruption!”

Cooper delivers his one-liners in a Preston Sturges staccato that helps give the 1970s film a pleasant 1930s gloss, bridging the gap between comic book and movie. But if, like me, you were just a kid when you saw Superman, you may not have known that here was an actor who, fifty years earlier, was one of the most popular and recognizable in the world, courtesy of a little picture called The Champ. (more…)

The Champ marks the third time in a row — after John Wayne and Burt Reynolds — that I’ve chosen a movie starring an actor many deride as a “natural,” a “ham,” someone who gained stardom not by skill but mere charisma. The sort of rough-hewn appeal epitomized by Wallace Beery (1885–1949) isn’t something that can be taught by Stanislavski or faked with The Method. It comes from within, and evokes American qualities and ideals that have never gone out of style.

Beery was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest son of three. He dropped out of school in fourth grade (“I was too dumb to get any farther”) and ran away for a few months, bumming around the Midwest, spurred onward not by a hatred of family but by a sense of pure adventure. At sixteen he lied his way into a job as an elephant handler with a circus, spending the next three years traveling across the country, and even crediting himself with being the first to train elephants to use their trunks to grab the tails of the elephants in front of them in order to keep them all in line. But eventually he realized that, where bull handling was concerned, “my ambition had been no ambition at all, that I was just drifting.” When Beery heard that his older brother Noah was working on Broadway in New York, he hurried there to try his hand at the acting game. (more…)

I’ve been a member of The Screen Actors Guild for almost thirty years. They spend my dues on politically correct crap I don’t agree with and to my knowledge have never supported a political candidate for whom I would vote. A lot of the better known members scream for a government takeover of health care but do not pressure the union to adopt a policy which would allow actors who work less to still have access to the union plan. At the same time, thousands of paid-up members continue to chip in with their dues to support richer members’ benefits. Exactly the opposite of what they would like the government to do.

A lot of my slack jawed knuckle-dragging conservative friends ask me why I remain a member. If I ever want to work in film or television again I have to be a member. The “art” of  television and film-making is a closed shop. I do get a really cool card to carry around in my wallet and I get to vote on the SAG Awards every year. Getting to vote on the SAG Awards has a great perk; I get screener copies of a number of the nominated movies. I got “Up in the Air” and “Precious” today. Most of them are films I would never pay $12 to see in a theater. I usually see a lot of  the nominated films during downtime on ships or airplanes.  For example, I recently saw “Inglourious Basterds” on a plane. I thought the first scene was compelling and then the movie disintegrated into mess which couldn’t decide if it was a farce or a Sam Peckinpah homage. (more…)

A onetime global but now aging action hero once told me in private how he took pity on an ugly woman pining for an autograph by taking her to bed, only to find that he couldn’t reach climax until he stood up, gazed upon his own image in a full length mirror and finished himself off. Hollywood’s award season is upon us and we are that ugly woman.

The first few months of every New Year, Hollywood accessorizes itself by folding back the sidewalks of Los Angeles and New York and laying down a bed of red carpet. They dress the night up with flashing bulbs, free booze and silicone injected starlets wrapped in ten-thousand dollar Vera Wang sequined napkins. They walk the carpet, upright men in monkey suits, holding fifty thousand dollar gift bags and smiling for the cameras. The cameras suck them in as they sashay and pose, they tell funny little antidotes about how life should be for everyone, while adding how normal they are because they’ve started taking the latest mystical potion. (more…)

In an industry notorious for wasteful pretentiousness — directors shooting a hundred takes, crews taking all day to light a single shot, gazillions spent on the latest effects — Hal Needham was a rebel. Directing? “There is no magic to it, you know. All you have to do is look through the camera and see if it’s got the lens on it that you want. . . I don’t really think it’s that tough.” Cinematography? “We’re not doing Gone with the Wind or Fiddler on the Roof. It’s action/comedy. . .don’t give me none of this artsy-fartsy stuff, just shoot the film.” Expensive locations? “I like to get outside whenever I can. I think it gives a film energy to be outside. . . and beauty.”

And so Smokey and the Bandit was made fast and loose, outside, on a low budget. In Reynolds’ words, they worked “lightning quick,” with first-time director Needham “reigning over crew and camera with instincts that made him, in my humble opinion, the best action director in the business.” The entire film was shot on location in the South. “We moved all over Georgia. . . It was a screwy chase picture, but Hal’s fun, outlaw, hell-bent-sensibility made it sparkle.” (more…)

Christmas Day is upon us, a day of celebration for Christians AND Hollywood: Christmas Day is the day when many blockbuster and Academy Award wannabes are released. If you’re a screenwriter jonesing for an Oscar, how do you prove you’re part of the “cool clique” in Hollywood deserving of recognition by your Hollywoodite peers? Why, by trashing the very schlubs who may be thinking of shelling out 10 bucks plus to see your new movie as a bunch of zombies, vampires and werewolves.

Were you thinking of seeing “Nine”? Well, sucks to be you, doesn’t it?

“Nine” Screenwriter Michael Tolkin

Ah yes, the Academy Awards – specifically, Best Picture. And maybe in this case, Best Screenplay. (Only the actual winners get excited about categories like Best Makeup and Best Editing.) Best Picture winners don’t necessarily reflect a movie’s popularity with the public, but often the political statement the movie makes – or, perhaps, statements made by those closest to it – like the screenwriter.

Yep, Michael Tolkin may have written a movie about an “arrogant, self-absorbed movie director” looking for meaning in his art (is this based on a true story???), but he’s positive that the bitter clingers who populate Middle America don’t have a clue either, and he’s prepared to educate the masses. (more…)

The Oscar-nominated movies in recent years have been enough to make a grown man cry… Or worse. Consider “There Will Be Blood,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Reader” as a sampling of the morbid films jockeying for Oscar glory. This year, add Oscar wannabes “The Road” and “Precious” to the list.

Newsweek scribe Ramin Setoodeh writes about the trend in the liberal magazine’s latest edition. Setoodeh bemoans the fact that some of the best films lately take a too sober view of society. On that we can agree.

Then, Setoodeh whips out his trusty Bush bashing cudgel and starts a whacking:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies. (more…)

In 2006, while accepting the Academy Award for playing a husky, grizzled version of himself, George Clooney famously gushed, “…this Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy. I’m proud to be part of this community. I’m proud to be out of touch.”

My apologies for bringing up old crap, but Clooney’s statement, especially the part about how he’s so proud to be out of touch, is one of the most bafflingly odd things I’ve ever heard coming from Clooney, who’s also famous for telling anyone who’ll listen that everybody tells him all the time how brave he was for making a black and white movie about the red scare. It’s very revealing that Clooney would say this, to cheers, a mere three years after a child-rapist was handed an award by that same Academy. (more…)

There has been much indignation - and rightfully so - from various parties over the fact that Hollywood is ”circling the wagons” around Roman Polanski, who was finally arrested in Switzerland after being a fugitive from justice for over 30 years for the drugging and subsequent rape and sodomy of a 13-year-old girl despite her pleas to stop – to which he pled guilty, by the way.

An excellent article, which really says it all, is by Kate Harding over at Salon.com – if you haven’t read it yet, you should. She reminds us that Roman Polanski – wait for it – raped a child. I don’t care if the victim, now 45, wants it all dropped because she’s tired of being the focal point of publicity. I don’t care it it’ll be a drain on California’s over-extended budget (how about not footing the bill for the education and medical care for illegal aliens? That’d fix things in a big hurry). I don’t care if she “looked” older than 13, or if her mother was the proverbial stage mother from hell, or if the sky was green instead of blue that day. And I certainly don’t care that Polanski is such a talented director – what WOULD we do without Hollywood to entertain us? – with a troubled past of his own. Many of us have troubled pasts. We don’t all use it as an excuse to do whatever the hell we want just because it “feels good” at the time. (more…)

One day … ONE day after gushing over how exciting the recession is now that those forced to work jobs they hate or who have lost them entirely can focus on their passions, Natalie Portman bought herself a $3 million castle-like estate.

Natalie, whoever’s advising you … fire them. If no one’s advising you, find someone who doesn’t carry a small dog in their purse or dates someone who does. Look to the real world for help. Look to someone who’s spent a few years in a land where the zip codes don’t start with “9-0.” Someone who cares enough about you and your career to say (without any “Honey, babys”):

“Nat, past the gates of your community and away from the hills of Hollywood losing your job doesn’t fuel passion, it fuels despair, and working a job you hate is almost as bad because of the big black  permanent ball of dread it plants in your gut. I know you dig Barack, I did too before he targeted my children and health care, but you can’t flak for his recession. That’s what the mainstream media is for. You have to empathize with your audience, build goodwill. Besides, you’re closing on that castle tomorrow, so today wouldn’t be a good time to get all gushy over how exciting Barack’s recession is. And if you do, I quit.” (more…)

It’s rare enough these days to see a movie in which one story is well-told, much less two stories. It’s even more rare when a filmmaker is able to balance two completely different plotlines and make both equally enjoyable and compelling. Yet with her new film “Julie & Julia,” writer-director Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail”) pulls off such feats so impressively that the movie could possibly wind up with an Oscar nomination at the end of the year now that the Academy has expanded the awards to ten nominations and will likely finally include a couple of comedies each year.

“Julie & Julia” follows the amusingly parallel lives of chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), who achieved worldwide fame while revolutionizing the art of cooking starting in the ‘50s, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young New York City woman searching for identity in 2002. Powell longs to be a successful writer like her friends and yet is trapped processing insurance claims from victims of the World Trade Center attacks. (more…)

The sun is sinking in the west
The cattle go down to the stream
The redwing settles in her nest
It’s time for a cowboy to dream….

Exquisitely crafted, but never ostentatious. Pleasantly mellow, but never lazy. Thematically rich, but never preachy. Respectful of tradition, but never stolid. Deeply compassionate, but never descending into schmaltz. Five decades ago, a group of men now long-dead (and, it must be said, one smokin’-hot woman, still-living) followed an aged veteran director into the Arizona desert to make a humble, heartfelt western based firmly on quintessentially American notions of courage, decency, and good humor. The result of their collaboration, Rio Bravo (1959), remains one of the great visceral pleasures of cinema.

Howard Hawks’ masterpiece stemmed from his disgust with the joyless anti-heroics of uptight, melodramatic westerns like Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952) and Delmer Daves’ 3:10 to Yuma (1957) — dark “message movies” that seemed to revel in smugly depicting small-town Americans as cynics and cowards. The man behind such classics as Scarface (1932), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), To Have and Have Not (1944), Red River (1948), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) was in his early sixties in 1958, his career winding down after decades of constant production. He had interned for Famous Players-Lasky way back in 1916, and directed his first features in the mid-1920s. Thirty years later he was old and tired, and his last film, Land of the Pharaohs (1955), had been a disheartening flop. Since then, the previously prolific director hadn’t helmed a picture in three years, an unheard-of period of self-exile for a man who had cranked out movies regularly for decades. But the brazen slap across the face that High Noon had given America’s western mythology had bothered him. “I made Rio Bravo,” he later told an interviewer, “because I didn’t like High Noon. Neither did Duke. I didn’t think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn’t my idea of a good western.” (more…)

It was another good weekend for Summit Entertainment. The distributor behind last year’s meteoric hit Twilight has scored a solid hit with the Alex Proyas-directed Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. Despite shaky word-of-mouth and negative reviews, the sci-fi thriller got a solid 9% bump on Saturday for a $9.7M second day, and it will likely finish its opening weekend with a possible $24.8M.

As a production company, Summit is responsible for some monster hits, including commercially and/or artistically successful films like Once (Oscar nominee for Best Picture), American Pie ($102..5M domestic), Memento (Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay: Chris Nolan), Mr. & Mrs. Smith ($186.3M domestic) and In the Valley of Ellah (Tommy Lee Jones nominated for Best Actor). But as a distributor, they got off to a slow start. (more…)

Early box office returns are pointing to a weekend win for Knowing from Summit, but I will put my money on I Love You, Man (Dreamworks/Paramount) to generate more in US ticket sales over the long haul. The Nicolas Cage sci-fi thriller has grabbed an estimated $8.95M to start the weekend, and it will likely finish at $24M or so. That is, unless word-of-mouth catches up to it first.

Will reviews and word-of-mouth catch up to KNOWING?

Reviews for Knowing, written and directed by Alex Proyas, the inventive filmmaker behind the visually striking 1998 film Dark City and the 2004 Will Smith mega-hit I, Robot, has received overwhelmingly negative reviews (25% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), but thanks to Twitter, real-time movie-goer reactions spread like wildfire. Here are some Tweets I just grabbed off the social networking platform.

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For the last few weeks, Summit’s Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage, has appeared to be the likely winner of the upcoming box office weekend. But, my sources tell me that I Love You, Man, the new comedy starring Paul Rudd (Role Models) and Jason Segal (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) has surged in the latest pre-release industry tracking.

In the spirit of March Madness, I’m calling for the upset. I Love You, Man may not actually be a Judd Apatow movie, but it sure does look like one in trailers and commercials. The movie reportedly “rocked the house” at the South By South West Festival last week, and the buzz is very positive. I am calling for $21.5M, which would be above industry expectations.

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