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if Hollywood & the WGA work it out 
We haven't played a movie mash-up game in a long time (remember that from last year?) so allow me to throw Eastern Promises 2 at'cha. Over at the big site you can vote on your favorite scenario/co-star. [Strictly for entertainment purposes you understand. I don't actually want endless sequels -ed] If you don't see one you like or you'd care to detail the plot that won your imagination, you can always let loose in the comments. And I promise that I will soon be done posting about 2007 movies. I mean, how many more times can I say Viggo's name before Oscar season is up... 2? 7? 23?
Brokeback Mountain just keeps getting better. The more I look at it the more classically and perfectly structured, shot, acted, and edited it is. Since I'm still reeling from the tragic loss of Heath Ledger, I was looking at the movie this morning. Ang Lee's deliberately quiet and langorously paced drama introduces Ennis Del Mar in longshot as he walks to his destination and waits. And waits some more. He rarely lifts his head up, but stays all stiff and internal. We get our first closeup at the sixth cut to him as Jack Twist's (Jake Gyllenhaal) sputtering vehicle disturbs his peace and quiet. But when Jack gets out of the truck and looks at him, Ennis immediately shrinks back into himself, head bowed, staring at the boots (the bottom right highlighted image, which is the eighth).
I'm saving for a place myself. Uh, Alma and me, we --we'll be getting married when I come down off this mountain.It's only the second personal thing that Ennis has told Jack. Jack, sympathetic to the first story about Ennis's parents, ignores this one completely and jumps immediately back to his previous griping about their work.
Daniel Day-Lewis's remarks on Oprah (the day after Heath's death) felt extremely genuine and sad to me --the less said about Oprah trying to deal with the sudden disruption of Oscar conversation the better --but his dedication of his own SAG trophy to Ledger @ last weekend's ceremony made me uncomfortable. Even though I feel the same way in regards to Monster's Ball (FB win) and Brokeback (FB win). I understand that this same exact speech really affected others deeply. Which I'm glad for. But the only thing I could think was: again? And 'oh god, no'.
I keep reading about how great he was in I'm Not There but before his death he was barely mentioned in the Blanchett-obsessed reviews and media coverage. I'm distrustful of the sudden great love. I was also reading some annoying bits about John Travolta slobbering over Heath at Out in Hollywood and it felt so distasteful. Why is Heath Ledger suddenly everyone's favorite actor? Was he their favorite actor before his untimely death? I'm skeptical. Where were Hollywood's votes when he lost the Best Actor Oscar two years ago? He lost despite giving a performance that was so obviously going to become legendary. No offense to Phillip Seymour Hoffman (honestly, no offense. He's quite good in Capote) but Ennis Del Mar was a legend-making performance that was pitted against a traditional type of very good performance. Excuse the generic analogy but it's like comparing a Mona Lisa to a fine painting and choosing the latter. Maybe the Mona Lisa is just too hard to really stare at. Too much to see?
To be fair I can tell you that I relate to the urge to make everything about oneself. I cringe at Mickey Rooney's SAG antics and Travolta's "everyone in Hollywood is my best friend" neediness because I probably see too much of myself in it. But then I also know it's not just me. I think we all have moments of self-absorption but we civilians don't think of it as a character strength and our weaknesses don't get broadcast for the masses. Famous people are playing in a different universe. They are essentially asked to succumb to this urge fully. Everyone wants a piece of them. Everyone wants their picture. Everyone wants to hear their thoughts about everything they feel about themselves and everyone and everything else --even shit they know absolutely nothing about. Who can blame them for disappearing up their own asses?
Kathleen Turner is on my brain...
I always hope to see the 13-15 ish films that are nominated each year in the short film divisions at the Oscars (live action / animated / documentary) but this year I've seen but one from the Live Action division: the humorous Italian entry The Substitute which is about a very wild teacher who causes chaos in a high school classroom one day (screened at the IIFF). So I'm turning this report over to Brian Darr who writes the informative Hell on Frisco Bay blog (which focuses on the cinephile scene in San Francisco) and who recently completed a stint covering Sundance for GreenCine Daily.
Salim Baba (d. Sternberg)
La Corona is just as good, with a riveting subject matter: a beauty pageant in a women's prison in Columbia. Terrific characters, very well-directed, amazing access to the prison facility thanks to director Isabel Vega (her co-director Amanda Micheli made the terrific stuntwoman documentary Double Dare, which proved the awesomeness of Zöe Bell well before Death Proof). My only personal reservation with the film is that it seems like it could have been even more effective if expanded to feature-length, and that its 40-minutes-on-the-nose running time (the maximum for this category, and according to imdb Freeheld hits it too) is a naked grab at this Oscar. I guess that's business though. It feels a lot like a winner; a nice mixture of socially-conscious and entertaining. La Corona was an honorable mention for a prize awarded bythe Sundance Shorts Jury, made up of Juno directorJason Reitman, Melonie Diaz (this year's "queen ofSundance" she acted four feature films in the festival), and Jon Bloom, head of the Academy's Short Film section.
Sari's Mother, which I saw not at Sundance but at the San Francisco International Film Festival back in May, is the fourth segment planned for last year's documentary feature nominee Iraq in Fragments. Director James Longley felt it didn't fit with the other three fragments after all, and decided to leave it out of his feature and develop it into a stand-alone short subject. It's probably the most downbeat of the four of Longley's fragments, as it shows a mother trying to get medical care for her young son, who contracted AIDS through a bloodtransfusion. It's pretty bleak, but voters could go for it if they decide they want to acknowledge the war in Iraq."
I know I'm supposed to be thinking about 2008 by now, but I've been extremely busy with corporate work and freelance work. The annual film experience awards jamboree is suffering from the slow crawl. My apologies but I'm only one man. So let's throw out one more category ... or two.
<--- Julie Christie is a goddess
Empire Julianne, no! Back away from the mainstream genre movies. No Moore
I love Jolie's delivery as she says goodbye to this large multinational group of round the clock reporters, officials, and counter-terrorists. She earns the title of the film.I just want to -- to say something to everybody.Really, though, the Oscar snubbing is no great issue. The film has far more important things on its mind than winning awards. Director Michael Winterbottom's generous eclectic style of storytelling, which makes room for a large mosaic of astute character sketches (Irfan Khan and Archie Panjabi are my favorites), is a perfect fit for the subject matter. What makes the scene great, beyond Angelina Jolie's intelligence and tightly controlled emotion, is those tiny little cuts to the major supporting players when her speech ends. They're a true community, albeit a now disbanding one, and each of their faces tells its own individual story, too.
I want to... I want to thank you for all of your work and all of your -- your effort and your--your kindness. I know how much you wanted to find and bring Danny home. You did not fail, you know? Danny is dead but you know the-- the --the kidnappers, their point is to terrorize people. Right. I am not terrorized. And you can't be terrorized. I am grateful to all of you. Very very grateful. So thank you.
So please, let's eat.
Post 7 Meirelles says that César Charlone (the Oscar nominated cinematographer from City of God) had the idea of filming in Uruguay. The crew created an irrigation system to simulate rain for a scene in the movie. Meirelles could barely sleep the night before filming this scene he was so busy visualizing it. The morning came with cold and wet weather. He didn't want to torture cast and crew so they waited for the day to warm up a little. He shot the scene three times in a row and stopped because the actors were turning blue, but the scene turned out fine.
Post 9 The first official photo released (right) was of the "First Blind Man" played by Yusuke Iseya. Meirelles starts by describing a a shift that's happened from the book. In the movie the relationship between the "First Blind Man" and "The First Blind Man's Wife" (Yoshino Kimura) is very tense and they are introduced to the audience in the middle of argument. The selfish wife can't stay with her husband when he loses his sight. He said that their relationship is not like this in the book, but he saw an opportunity to create a good dramatic arc for those characters and the screenwriters know that a conflict is the best fuel to any story. The actors chosen to play these spouses became a couple during filming. Ahhh, nothing like working on an epic bummer to foster on-set romance. 
a photo of Mark Ruffalo taken by the actress playing "The First Blind Man's Wife"
Post 10 The director lost the movie's script that he had written all of his notes on! This is not the first time. It also happened to Mr. Meirelles while shooting The Constant Gardener and City of God. Is the director playing Nathaniel in an unauthorized biopic? Cuz I lose everything daily...
Meirelles is sad that people don't understand the complexity of screenwriting. For example: Who tells the story? In the beginning of Blindness he is the one telling the story, presenting the character and the situations with his camera. In the second act ("quarantine") the story is told by the doctor's wife (Julianne Moore), it's through her eyes that the audience sees what's happening in the isolation period. Meirelles praises Moore here for her power to connect emotionally with audiences. Later in the film a new narrator is introduced: "Old man with eye patch" (Danny Glover). This character starts telling what's going on with the character, but unlike the doctor's wife, he tells what's happening in the character minds. In the third act doctor's wife and old man tell the story along with the director. This accumulation of voices is how the story will gain rhythm (momentum?)
There's a note of support for the writer's strike and the director wraps up the post sharing that Goodfellas (1990) is his "script bible". That classic also uses a shifting narrator.
more later...
I am late to the party. Not fashionably late. Just damn late... "well, I guess I'll help clean up" late. Oops. But I do want to ask you to spend a moment wishing Nick, a grade A film critic (but more importantly one of my very best friends in the world), a happy 10th anniversary on the web.
How's this for ironic... the second episode of the film experience podcast features a sound guy (12 time Oscar nominee Greg P Russell) and the sound quality of the interview leaves much to be desired. To explain: Half of the interview you're about to hear was conducted over the summer before Transformers rampaged through theaters and before I knew what the hell I was doing with podcasting. Ahhh, the joys of learning on the job. So sequentially this came before I spoke with the delicious Marisa Tomei. Before --that's the long and short of it, my excuse. I'm most improved.
In the new interview Greg talks about his whole career and this year's Oscar competition --he's glad he's not competing against a musical again but No Country For Old Men is a chilling rival. After the interview there's a three-way chat about the Oscar nominations with Joe Reid of Television Without Pity and Susan Posnock of Awards Daily. Enjoy. Now, I'm off to see the new Broadway production of Sunday in the Park with George !
The Académie des César (aka the French version of our Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences -affectionality known as AMPAS i.e. the Oscars) announced their nominations yesterday for 2007 films. And the winner is... (likely to be) La Vie En Rose which led all the films with a rather impressive 11 nominations. That's more than any of the American pictures got in their parallel "best of year" race. Other Oscar nominees in the French César race include The Diving Bell and Butterfly (7 nominations but still no recognition for Max Von Sydow --my interview -- damn!) and Persepolis (6 nominations)
Mathieu Amalric, who couldn't generate any Best Actor Oscar traction for his warm but limited work (hey, he can only blink his eye! it's not a judgment) in The Diving Bell and Butterfly is up for Best Actor across the pond. His competition includes Michel Blanch (Les Témains), Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Dialogue avec mon Jardinier), Vincent Lindon (Ceux qui Restent) and Jean-Pierre Marielle (Faut que ça Danse!)
From left to right: Nicolas Cazalé, Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet, Johan Libéreau,
Portugese fluent readers may already know what's coming up in these Blindness posts but those of you who are, like me, limited to one or two other tongues, will want to read on. I've had loyal TFE reader Felippe send me a rundown of what's going on over at Fernando Meirelles Blindness blog. What follows is a mix of his paraphrasing with my editing and commentary --if I'm obviously taking over the text is in red.
Post 4 In this post Meirelles discusses charisma. "Where does it come from?" The director cites Sandra Oh as an actor full of it. He did not know that she was an actor when they first met but he was with her presence. She asked for a small role in Blindness, so they wrote a few lines for the character Minister of Justice. He said that the minimal role became a great role, that is the power of a great actor like Oh. Meirelles also mentions that he expands the role of the pharmacists assistant (played by Mpho Koaho) due to the actor's charisma. Now, if only Meirelles could time travel back to 2004 and beef up Oh's role in Sideways. It's still sad that she was so ignored while the rest of the cast kept winning honors.
and the one supporting nominee that was predicted in lead...
So what are you most looking forward to this year?
I mean, besides Australia with the one and only Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!) directing La Kidman again. Duh. We're all breathless for that. Baz isn't the fastest filmmaker in the world but since they've wrapped, he has more than enough time in post to deliver that cattle ranch epic (co-starring Hugh Jackman) for the next Oscar season.
My New Plaid Pants has the best episode yet of "Thursday's Ways Not To Die"
And way the hell over in Park City, Utah the Sundance Film Festival has recently wrapped its first week (couple more days to go). One of the hits of the festival is Trouble the Water (pictured, above) a raw firsthand account of Hurricane Katrina and Hurrican FEMA survivors. You can read my review @ Zoom-In.
[cue exit music: God's gonna trouble the waa--aahh---ter]
*
oh, hell's bells they even shot the dogThe first two murders (a cop and an unfortunate driver on the highway) come courtesy of Chigurh and aren't given much if any context in the larger narrative. I'm not counting the deal gone wrong that sees several dead people at once --one only mostly dead "agua"-- since these killings took place offscreen and I can't tell how many victims there are.
More loss of life follows: a dog (the only onscreen kill not committed by Chigurh) and two 'managerial types' that the big boss must be displeased with. He's not one to articulate his reasons --but god, that's a harsh on the job performance review.
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