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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Oscar Movie du Jour 2 – Frost/Nixon

Another quickie…
The conversion from stage to film is pretty much perfect. It is very, very much the stage show well turned into a film, though it never feels stilted or limited by its origin. If you didn’t know it was a stage show first, you might not guess… anymore than you might about something like Good Night, And Good Luck. Ron Howard does an excellent job, though the only real new image idea he found was the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop for Nixon’s banishment… lovely.
Frank Langella just gets better and better as the movie moves along, as he did on stage. A remarkable piece of work and a sure nomination to go with it. Michael Sheen is excellent, as he was on stage, but just doesn’t get the showy role… go for Supporting Actor and take your nom, sir.
Great supporting cast of Platt, McFayden, Rockwell, Rebecca Hall, and one significant improvement from the stage, a subtle, strong performance by Kevin Bacon. The improvement was not just the actor, but more about the role being open to a more subtle interpretation in the film, where it didn’t need to reach the back row.
It’s The Queen with one of our kings and a little less flourish to it. It should be a very popular film for adults and curious 20somethings.

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12 Responses to “Oscar Movie du Jour 2 – Frost/Nixon”

  1. LexG says:

    This is less about the movie(s) but more about the circumstances. I totally envy having a gig where you can see “Milk” and “Frost/Nixon” in the same day, weeks before anyone else, and probably with an appreciative and respectful audience of industry pros and crix.
    But I’ve always wondered if, for professional critics like DP, Leydon, LYT, movieman, scooterzz, etc., does it sometimes kind of harm your critical faculties to see movies so quickly, one on top of the other? Especially important, serious movies?
    I certainly don’t get paid for it, but I try to see as much as I can all year long; I like to think I can compartmentalize, and I’m sure real critics do, but with something as dense as “Milk,” don’t you kinda wanna mull it over afterwards instead of being forced to rush off the next screening?
    Obviously you guys don’t have a choice, just wondering how that affects your perception. In one of his slight but amusing humor books that serve as a collection of random film critic thoughts, Richard Roeper posted his screening schedule from 2003; I forget the specific example, but seemed like he’d have a morning screening of some epic, intense, exhausting character piece, and like 15 minutes later he was in the next auditorium for a screening of Jessica Alba in “Honey.” Doesn’t that to some degree affect the need to process what you just saw?
    I’m trying to imagine taking in “There Will Be Blood” and then four minutes after the Plainview Bowling Pin Massacre, settling right back into my seat for the “Water Horse” movie.
    Like I said, I think this would own, I just wonder on a double-bill like this, if my thoughts on the former wouldn’t be clouded too soon, or so pervasive that they’d make me too exhausted to appreciate the latter film.
    On topic, I never saw what the big deal about Watergate was. Yes, I know at 35 I’m too young to have lived through it with any real cognizance, but wasn’t it just some low-rent hotel break-in? And weren’t the election results a foregone conclusion? I know in the trailer, and I assume the play and movie, we’re supposed to be STUNNED by the AUDACITY of that line about the president having leeway with the rules and laws, but, I mean, he IS the president.
    I don’t know, just Nixon always seemed AWESOME to me… if nothing else, I know he’s the FORMATIVE ISSUE OF THEIR TIME for Boomer filmmakers, but I kinda wish they’d let up on the guy already.

  2. jeffmcm says:

    Lex, can you give us a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 of how ironic that Nixon question is meant to be? Someone with three degrees surely must know more about Watergate beyond it being a ‘low-rent hotel break-in’. For example, it’s a quite expensive hotel.

  3. LYT says:

    I have to say that I very rarely see multiple “Big Important” movies in one day. The scheduling isn’t often so kind. Though it can be rough at AFI Fest.
    I do remember one year that I saw three movies in one day, the last being Amelie, and I fell asleep in it. Then I asked for a screener, was given one, and ultimately thought it tied for best movie of the year (with Ghost World).
    So it is subjective. Fortunately, in LAFCA, we get screeners of all the major stuff and can revisit if we feel we’ve been unfair.
    Though speaking of double features that OWN, I saw Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight on the same day earlier this summer. Didn’t stop me from loving both.

  4. LexG says:

    Jeff, I genuinely fascinated by the era and by Watergate, but I’ve never been particularly “shocked” by the “scandal.”
    I realize and appreciate it’s one of those collective “loss of innocence” moments for a great many people. Personally, I kinda wonder how everyone could’ve been so seemingly naive.
    “Like, you mean, after how many THOUSANDS OF YEARS of civilization, a leader might let power go to his head and take some shortcuts???”
    QUEL SUPRISE.
    And, yes, I realize the cover-up was the rub, and maybe I’m just seeing things in hindsight and through the prism of recent scandals which almost make a hotel break-in look “quaint.”
    But if I had been 20, 30-something back then, I probably would’ve shrugged it off just the same. Pretty sure Nixon was someone I would’ve thought OWNED.

  5. christian says:

    “But if I had been 20, 30-something back then, I probably would’ve shrugged it off just the same. Pretty sure Nixon was someone I would’ve thought OWNED.”
    If you were 20-something would you think that after you were drafted and sitting in a rice paddy waiting to kill some Cong for Nixon?
    Christ Lex. You can’t even OWN yourself.

  6. anghus says:

    when did lex get lucid? did someone steal his caps key?

  7. The Pope says:

    LexG. (and I don’t address this exclusively to you, it’s just that you brough it up).
    Your observation about Nixon is brilliant. Not necessarily because of its insight but more because of what it reveals about human nature.
    You say “QUEL SURPRISE.” And well might anyone not of that generation. Which then begs the question, what moment of your generation have you been stunned/betrayed by? My answer to that is that each generation has its own trauma. It is, I think, part of the cycle of life. Each generation has to make and hopefully learn from its own mistakes… only for the next generation NOT to heed the warnings.
    I look at this generation and ask what have we learned and what can we impart that will have lasting impact on the next? Sadly, I think very little. Look at the economic crisis we are in and ask yourselves, did we not learn anything from the Master of the 1980s’ Universe?
    But the deeper question is the one you asked about “loss of innocence.” And that is far more troubling. If anyone shrugs their shoulders and says we should not be surprised, I think the danger there is that we have automatically lowered the bar of high office. Our public representatives are elected because they are supposed to represent the better natures of ourselves. I know a lot of the times they don’t, but they are SUPPOSED to. If we don’t think they should, we have lost sight of decency and altruism.
    So, I think that each generation loses its innocence. 1919 World Series, the Holocaust, Kennedy, Nixon, Abu Graib..
    WE need to be appalled because it shows WE care. That President Nixon knew of the break-in, lied about it and tried to cover it up… and til his death denied, denied, denied is an appalling thing.

  8. Chucky in Jersey says:

    Another movie that needs to be promoted with “Academy Award Winner” and “Academy Award Nominee”. The kiss of death!

  9. jeffmcm says:

    Lex, here’s a legitimate question for you: do you worship power for its own sake, or for some other reason?

  10. christian says:

    Based on Lex’s love of Leykis, he loves power for its own sake. Of course, it’s usually folk like him who get crushed under such power from others. OWNAGE.

  11. storymark says:

    Here’s a scary thought – What if the all-caps OWNAGE Lex is the real Lex; and the lucid, interesting Lex who posts only occationally, is the front?

  12. Kim Voynar says:

    Lex,
    I can only speak for myself but yes, it does get mentally (and physically) exhausting at a big fest sitting through 3-4 movies a day for 10 days. And, depending on the film, when it shows during the fest can have an impact. At Cannes this year, for instance, quite a few of us were bemoaning the placement of Synecdoche, NY later in the fest when we were all freaking wiped. I would have much preferred to see that film when I was relatively fresh and not sleep-deprived, and saved Changeling or Indiana Jones for the end of the fest, when a bit of lighter fare would have been welcome.
    More than once, I’ve had a very negative response to a film at a fest, sat on writing a review because I couldn’t be sure if it was the film itself or a reaction to seeing it with too many other films, or fest burnout or whatever, and then revisited it later on a screener to find I actually liked it. The one thing that helps is that I have a fairly freakish ability to retain films as I see them and then replay them mentally later, which is useful for when you have to sit down and write up reviews that night of three films you just saw back-to-back or processing more challenging films like Adam Resurrected. That one, I sat on for four days or so after seeing it before writing the review, and it was only in the process of writing it up and replaying specifics of scenes that I was able to crystalize how I felt about it. The end-of-year screeners are a huge help, too, especially for going back to a film you saw at Sundance for a second look, although when I can I prefer to catch most films first on a big screen, and then use the screener to go back and revisit specific scenes if I need to.

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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