MCN Columnists
Other Voices

By Other Voices voices@moviecitynews.com

Posted Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 - Comments Off on Acquiescence
Be Sociable, Share!

Acquiescence

It is truly a weird circumstance when the most interesting part of the Golden Globes ceremony is having a conversation with Carson Daly at an after party.

Last night, Hollywood’s elite congregated and got good and inebriated as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out their Golden Globe awards. As you have read, Ang Lee andBrokeback Mountain made the important screenplay/director/picture sweep, lining the film up perfectly as the undeniable frontrunner (if there were doubts before hand).

Walk the Line’s three wins put it in a very good place to slip into the Academy’s final five, while likely Best Actress contender Reese Witherspoon sewed up her Oscar by winning the Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical award.

George Clooney became the frontrunner in the supporting actor category for his performance in Syriana; Philip Seymour Hoffman set his sights on Oscar in earnest by triumphing over a strong contender in Heath Ledger; and the supporting actress race was blown wide open, becoming anyone’s game as Rachel Weisz took the award in a category lacking three of the ladies nominated by the Screen Actors Guild.

But…did we really learn anything? Most of these conclusions were already drawn prior to last night’s ceremony. The fear that suddenly strikes me is that there will be no trace of surprise at the Academy Awards in March (a LONG way away still), and that the legions of Oscarwatchers and awards prognosticators will bear witness to a telegraphed display.

Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck. andSyriana (to a lesser extent) continue to pop up as major awards contenders, forcing the season into a state of predictability at this point. But I think it’s important to grasp – at the very least – that the state of art in the cinema has come to a point of concentrated statements much like the invigorating work that came out of the 1970s.

I’ve been very hard on 2005. As my tastes are concerned, it was difficult to really champion much of the cinematic product from the last year. But even so, I am extremely excited that filmmakers like George Clooney, Stephen Gaghan, Ang Lee, Fernando Meirelles, Sam Mendes and even Steven Spielberg are flexing their muscles and taking the task of filmmaking to other levels, even if they might miss the heights they aim for.

Anthony Lane recently wrote about the thought-driven year in film that was, expressing distaste for the apparent loss of creation-above-agenda we saw. While I side with him in his disappointment with what a number of these filmmakers’ intentions yielded, I can’t concur that any such intentions should ever be abandoned.

As such, it’s been something of a struggle this year to fully comprehend the season. From the beginning, it looked like a slow, uneventful year and, in many cases, the chips fell as such. We’re still talking about most of the same films that were forecasted eleven months ago. So the task of Oscarwatching has become a labored one, especially with so many opinions being tossed into the ring, more so this year than any other.

The Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, soonUSA Today, various internet tributaries, sanctioned and unsanctioned, there is no shortage of perspectives, all struggling to predict the future, classify the season, and report on the goings on. But in the midst of this spike in film awards interest, it seems ironic that 2005 has panned out to be the season to watch more so than the season to analyze.

And, luckily, the Academy looks set to reflect the labor of these topically inclined filmmakers. Rather than going the route of recognizing broader, “softer” films like King Kong or Mrs. Henderson Presents, or even personal favorites like Cinderella Man or Memoirs of a Geisha – films that are at first glance directly up AMPAS’ alley – focused and hard-hitting pieces are looking to rule the day.

I, for one, think it is shocking that we could have a Best Picture lineup that includes a film centering on a homosexual relationship, a claustrophobic piece about the disintegration of civil liberties (all the more poignant in recent weeks), an attack on the social order of America through the looking glass of race relations and an acute communiqué on the effects of retaliation and vengeance in the face of terrorism. It seems almost unheard of. The critical voice has really leaked into the voice of the industry and a collective, organic statement seems to be at hand.

There are nearly seven weeks left before the awards season is truly over. And anything can (and usually will) happen in that length of time. But from my perspective, everyone on the inside is coloring inside the lines and going about things as if it was inevitable, while many of us on the outside continue an attempt to assess and comprehend…like we do. But it may just be time to sit back and let things happen.

This isn’t really a year of competition. It isn’t a year of dramatic excitement. More, it looks to be a year of yielding to things that are rarely met with such overwhelming concession.

January 17, 2006

E-mail Kris Tapley
Visit Kris’ blog. In Contention

Be Sociable, Share!

Comments Off on Acquiescence

Comments are closed.

Voices

Most Recent Comments Archives

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon