BYOB Globes Morning

Dp/30 Bi-Coastal: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s director Tomas Alfredson & Peter Straughan, NY & LA

Dang SAG It!

I feel like I’ve been saying the same thing every day this week and for the last few… this season is a puzzle that will not be solved until The Academy membership votes and makes their 5 and or 6 – 10 choices in each category. Didn’t get BFCA… you can get SAG. Got SAG… might not get Globes. Got Globes and SAG… still unsure about Oscar.

The most obviously treacherous place is Best Actress, with 8 clear serious candidates. But both supporting categories offer a similar number of candidates floating out there, though the argument for one over another may not be as compelling or passionate in every case. This morning, Jonah Hill supporters got what they’ve wanted… and Albert Brooks supporters are wondering what SAG’s problem with Drive is. Well… neither feeling is necessarily supported by reality. Brooks may well have paid a price for Mr. Gosling’s unavailability. Or maybe that group just didn’t like Drive as much as something else. Or maybe they saw it as a movie with a Canadian star, a British female lead, and a great writer who acts. Perhaps if Albert wore make-up that made him look like a burn victim he could have been nominated. (I really like Armie Hammer… but really?)

Bridesmaids is the clarifying SAG nomination – in Ensemble – for me. I certainly can’t begrudge the ensemble nomination for the film. It’s a wide ranging crew of very funny women (and even a few men) and though Ms Wiig gets a lot of screen time, it’s really an ensemble piece. Moreover, it is loaded with TV talent that fits right in with the actors. Now… how do you compare Bridesmaids with the work with the ensemble of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a movie that suffers in award season heavily from being such and ensemble piece? Comedy has an unfair bias against it in award season. So, yay for the comedy. But really?

Wait… can’t forget about SAG’s clear annual bias against foreign actors! They break their own unspoken rule at times. But when things are all relatively even, forget about them foreigners. War Horse is another big ensemble film that was late in being sprung… but is truly an ensemble… and a remarkable one. But also loaded with foreigners and foreigners who didn’t come to LA and do a lot of Q&A time. SAG isn’t star-f***ing like HFPA… but a nominating committee likes to get courted, at least a little.

God bless Bridesmaids… but it fit better in many ways. And as a result, has a SAG ensemble nomination. Unlike HFPA, this is not about SAG members wanting a good show. The votes are, I feel, in earnest. But if you think Bridesmaids is getting an Oscar Best Picture nomination because of this… you would be nuts. (Melissa McCarthy’s candidacy for a Supporting Actress nod, is now looking very strong.)

Anyway…

Today, it’s SAG. Tomorrow, it’s HFPA. Expect a whole different kind of shading there, though some will be tempted to just on the Bridesmaids BP bandwagon after it gets a Comedy/Musical nod from The Globes. Silly.

And what of Hugo, which seemed to be surging as of late? It’s fine.

And what of Michael Fassbender? Fine.

Etc, etc, etc…

You know what you NEED to get an Oscar nomination? Votes by Academy members. And this year, though I think we can narrow our notion of what the field is… but I don’t think there is a single category amongst the actors and Picture where you can really be sure we know who is in more than 60% of the slots at this point.

Or as 1957 Oscar winner Yul Brynner might say, “It’s a puzzlement.”

DP/30: Rio, director Carlos Saldanha, producers Bruce Anderson, John C. Donkin

DP/30 Double Dip Animation Tuesday: Kung Fu Panda 2, director Jennifer Yuh Nelson

The other dip due later today…

BFCA Votes

So the BFCA, as expected, spread it out generously.

The big positive surprise is Drive scoring 8 nominations, more than War Horse or The Descendants. These include Ryan Gosling, director Nic Refn, cinematography, score, editing, and “Best Action Movie.” Albert Brooks was expected, though no screenplay and no ensemble as a bit of a surprise, considering the interest shown.

In a classic show of numbers gamesmanship (see: whoring for status), all four of the traditional acting categories have six nominees each, as do Best Director and Best Doc.

Still, in spite of a surprisingly strong showing from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with Picture, Director, and Screenplay, no nomination for Max von Sydow, who was expected to be the one Oscar nod lock for the film. Also a bit surprising was the absence of Jonah Hill for Moneyball, which got Picture, Actor, and Screenplay and nothing else. Odd.

The toughest category of this awards season continues to be Best Actress, where even with six slots, BFCA left out Glenn Close, Rooney Mara, and Kirsten Dunst. Melancholia got no nominations, Dragon Tattoo got score and editing nods, and Albert Nobbs got a Make-Up bone.

Shame got two nods… for Fassbender and Mulligan.

BFCA took the opportunity to nominate Andy Serkis for his mo-cap role in Rise of the Planet Of The Apes. But keep in mind that in 2003, BFCA also gave a Best Digital Acting Performance award, which Serkis won for Gollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The trend didn’t take. And the likelihood is that Serkis, once again hard at work on a new film, will appear at this year’s show via videotape again.

The thing about BFCA is that they do follow the trends closer than any other group. Primarily made up of junketeers and web-based Oscar geeks, the group does tend to exhibit the middlebrow tastes of the Academy. But there is nothing remotely definitive about these nominations. The whole season has long been here. It’s just a jump to the left… or the right… from here to The Oscars. They could have hit it dead on… or be off by 30% or more. One or two films will tell that tale.

It’s Raining In L.A.

It’s amazing how a little drizzle shuts down a city.

I am looking forward to c a couple of weeks in the snow next month… but even I find the rain that I would shrug off without a thought in New York to be problematic here. Weird.

I’ve been a bit blog-absent as the DP/30 universe has become relentless, awards season is upon us, my son is transitioning into a big boy bed, and something got in my eye and gave me a minor infection that has left me and my 3-prescriptions-ago glasses trying to focus effectively while staring into light, which is what irritates my eye. The good news is that my eye is almost back to 100% and the contacts will go in tomorrow. The more good news is that Wednesday looks to be one of the truly epic days in the history of DP/30, featuring no fewer than 2 living legends, a production pioneer at the top of his game, and an award winning screenwriter to boot. And there may be a fifth shoot.

But that’s not helping the blog be more interesting.

Saw Margaret last week, as a double feature with The Sitter. The DDG comedy was funny as hell now and again, but basically felt like 20 good gags in search of a plot that might hold together by the thinnest of threads. Jonah Hill is funny. Children behaving like adults is sometimes funny. Black people liking white idiots from the suburbs can be funny. But you know what really struck me? As R-rated as this film was… it didn’t have the courage of Porky’s and that era of bad, but likable broad comedy, teen crap. Opening the film with…

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

…Jonah Hill going down on a blonde….

SPOILER END!!!

…. is about the tone the film needed. But somehow, the idea of Jonah getting off was actually not attractive to the filmmakers. Ari Graynor is funny, but she became more and more bland as it became clear that had she reciprocated, it probably wouldn’t have been that good. The film was missing the sexual threat of Kat Dennings. (So is her TV show, where they use her breasts like she was a girl with long hair that needed to figure out a new way to keep her hair out of her eyes each day. Note to CBS: The anorexic one isn’t the sexy one.)

Anyway.. Margaret.

The power of Lonergan compelled me through the first act. And then into the second. And then, like a pill taking someone from completely sober to a fall down drunk in a second, things changed. it was as though someone who had no idea what movie he wanted to make had suddenly taken over. Ideas were repeated ad naseum. Others were established and then abandoned. And it all conflicted. Some may thing that this sloppiness is a sign of genius. But for me, the not very sloppy first two acts and the other movie’s 3 acts… signs of genius. Throwing the kitchen sink at it, waiting to see what sticks and becomes the end of the film… not so much.

Really, this was a 3.5 act movie… maybe 4. And perhaps there is a longer cut that is substantially better. I know that a sheepdog with a Moviola could have improved this version by excising 20 minutes without blinking an eye. Of course, one of the victims of that cut would be, for instance, part of the Matt Damon big set-up and pay off… which doesn’t really pay off. Cutting Matt Damon must have seemed like a bad idea. But as this movie plays, the way Damon is used is so poorly structured that it sticks out badly.

Usually movies get away from strong filmmakers in the second act and they recover in the third. This is the rare movie where the close is weaker than the middle.

And still, I would recommend it to anyone who loves film as a form. Lonergan’s ambitions are miles beyond so much of what’s out there. The performances are, generally, excellent. And without really being “a 911 movie,” this will make you think… a lot. It will make you think about well-meaning Upper West Side liberals who forget to look in the mirror to seek their truth because they are too busy putting on a show. It makes you think about the family member in the mid-west who you feel guilty about not calling and now realize that you’re better off without her holiday card. It will make you think about all the confusion that we live in.

But as is, it is a broken movie. And I can only pray that, like Kingdom of Heaven, the other cut makes it all make sense and allows what does work so well to really soar even higher.

Drip, drip, drip…

DP/30: The Iron Lady, director Phyllida Lloyd

Note: I am not thrilled about how this video looks. I had a last minute replacement on camera and the results are unfortunate.

That said, the content of the interview and the subject herself were a great and happy surprise to me. I found her very honest, her story compelling, and her perspective on her work completely refreshing. I am particularly intrigued by her sense of a shared perspective with Meryl Streep, more naturally similar than the glamor machine around actresses might have you think.

So my apologies for the rather harsh light and bad camera angle. But i hope you’ll take a listen nonetheless.

Trailer: Wait For It…. MIB3

Spoiler comment after the jumo
Read the full article »

Awards du Jour

Gotta give it LAFCA… they are willing to go as obvious and obscure at the same time as any group on the planet.

They get behind The Year of Michael Fassbender and The Year of Jessica Chastain and give them each acting awards for a parade of titles. Meanwhile, Christopher Plummer wins for being Christopher Plummer (a remarkable thing indeed), The Descendants has been the critics’ choice since TIFF, and then they throw in Yun Jung-hee as Best Actress for Poetry, a movie that I would venture to guess has been seen by fewer than 200 people reading this, aside from LAFCA members.

If I had to host a gathering of my favorite actors out there right now, the trio that I have spent some time with would be high on that list. So how can I mock? At least it’s the kind of weird outcome that critics should be having. And I hope Malick shows up.

Boston and NY Online Film Critics also handed out awards today, keeping Melissa McCarthy a busy girl… and in the rare show of critical might, making her a much more likely candidate to get an Oscar nomination in a very muddled Supporting Actress race. In that category, as in Supporting Actor, these kinds of awards will be influential in building consensus this year. (Congrats to Albert Brooks on the same line… though LAFCA members should probably stay away from him in steak houses… where they have sharp knives… get it?)

ADD, 5:30p: San Francisco

DP/30: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Pt 2, director David Yates, producer David Heyman

Weekend Estimate by Klady: The Dregs Of December

There’s not much more to say about this weekend, is there?

Young Adult slightly won the $ battle with Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, but Tinker won the per screen war handily, which suggests to me that the base for Tinker – adults in big cities – is more focused and interested than the base for YA at this point. The result is pleasant for both films and where it leads is not realistically predictable at this point.

I have no idea what The Adventures of Tintin is doing in limited release. Odd to me. But I guess they feel compelled to spread the news that Tinitin exists. Next week, yet another Paramount movie will debut in a truncated release, as M:I Ghost Protocol does a week of IMAX only before going wide. With Hugo, that makes four in a row. Someone called Steven Zeitchik!

The awards season is looking a little less lustrous as many of the leading titles are doing mediocre business at the box office. Will this be a game changer for the field as The Academy starts voting after the new year (like sane people)? Hard to say. There is an “inside the bubble” world and and an “outside the bubble” world. And there is the anticipatory notion that nominations will drive business. But if I were Focus, for instance, I would be very excited about promoting the success of Tinker in limited, whereas if I were Searchlight or The Weinsteins, I’d be a little anxious about how The Descendants and The Artist are playing. War Horse could be the nuke of the season, as it seems likely to be the biggest commercial hit in the field this season. And Paramount, which is still revved for Hugo, should keep pushing hard. Getting the film up to $70m or more by the end of the holidays is now looking like it could count for a lot.

DP/30: Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn

Friday Estimates by Love, Klady Style

December is different.

There were four $20m openers last year in December and five each in the two years before. And no film has ever opened to as much as $78 million in December. Yet, the two biggest grossers of all time opened in December. And year after year, the biggest grossers in the month are from the second half of the month… which is why studios tend to stay away from these first two weekends of Decembers with their bigger guns. Of 62 $100m domestic grossers launched in December, just 27 launched in the first half of the month.

So does New Line going back to the well with Garry Marshall’s feature film recreation of Love, American Style, this time without Julia Roberts, Queen Latifah, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx or anyone else – aside from Katherine Heigl – who might be confused with a box office opener, suggest that a much smaller opening should be a surprise to anyone but the people who greenlit it, thinking it was a new genre that could be relied on and not driven by the things that drive most openings? No. Add to the equation that the total domestic gross of Valentine’s Day was less than 2x the opening weekend and you can easily see that “fool me once” is in full effect.

As for The Sitter, it’s Jonah Hill’s first solo lead. The guy selling the movie isn’t the guy in the movie. Also, Get Him To The Greek only opened to $17m. Cyrus didn’t gross in total as much as this film will gross this weekend. In other words, this opening, based almost exclusively on Jonah’s face and the promise of profane talk from kids, is about right. This is the kind of movie that is built to be leggy, not to open huge. Whether it will hold is a question to be determined by word of mouth. Are 20 pretty-good jokes packaged around unreliable storytelling that doesn’t really push the envelope – think Porky’s or The Hangover without body parts – enough to keep them coming back? We’ll see.

There are two wide release movies opening in exclusive/limited this weekend: Young Adult on 8 and Tinker Tailor Solider Spy on 4. Their Friday numbers are neck-and-neck. For reference, The Tree of Life opened to $372,920 this spring on 4 screens, which was the biggest 4-screen open in modern history. Just behind it was The King’s Speech, which grossed 10x as much, just over $135m domestic.

An 8-screen launch is a much rarer occurrence, only listed 5 times on Mojo’s charts of 3-day per-screens over $33k. All five are high profile movies (Memoirs of a Geisha, Match Point, Dead Poets Society, 21 Grams, and The Commitments) and notably, 4 of the 5 were releases by majors (the exception being Dependent Focus’ 21 Grams). Starts range from $271k per to $683k per. YA looks to be on the low end of that. Only 2 of these films got past $25m and the high is Dead Poet’s $96m.

What does this mean? Well, not necessarily anything. Everything is possible. But so far, a very creative campaign from Paramount for an excellent, challenging, memorable movie clearly hasn’t become a huge “must see.” For what it’s worth, Juno did $413,869 on 7 on Dec 7, 2007 after opening on Wednesday, including a $121k Friday. YA is off of that by about 25%. If that held, YA would still do over $100m domestic. But probably not. Juno was a unique event. But Up In The Air‘s $84m domestic is not out of reach. Thing is, even if the movie grossed half of that, it will be a financial success for Paramount and Reitman. And in the world of “adult” movies, $40m domestic grosses are currently undervalued… and that’s bad. A quality “middle class” is what leads to all the grousing about an underserved adult movie market.

And did I mention… I really, really like this movie. I want it to succeed and to be perceived as being a big success so that others will follow.

BYOB Weekend