Shrinking Film Critic Archive for February, 2007

Eddie Murphy wuz robbed

I mean, I’ve always loved Alan Arkin, but his performance in Little Miss Sunshine was pretty much what we’ve come to expect of him, his patented, deadpan codger. Whereas Murphy tried something wholly new in his career, and it was quite sensational, not only for being unexpected.
Meanwhile, Peter O’Toole’s badly lifted face seemed to fall, as if realizing this was his last chance at an Oscar. But for Forest Whitaker, this truly was a role of a lifetime, probably the greatest showcase of his talents any movie will offer him. I’m glad (and rather surprised) the Academy didn’t just go for the sentimental vote (as I think they did in Arkin’s case).

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Monday-morning quarterbacking on Oscars

I especially enjoyed when Pilobolus formed itself into Ellen DeGeneres’ crimson velour tracksuit.
Other trenchant observations:
Helen Mirren is sexier at any age than any woman with a facelift.mirren.jpeg
Jack Nicholson is starting to look like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.baldnicholson.jpg
The actresses all seemed to have strangely symmetrical, erect nipples.
Big attempt to make the Oscars “relevant” to “today” by name-dropping YouTube, MySpace, other Internet buzzwords.
Stop giving child actors “cute” things to say.
Loved seeing Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow in a Japanese-hair-straightening-technique smackdown.
Jennifer Hudson, for all the time she had to prepare for this night (if not her whole life), gave a less than stirring speech.
Jerry Seinfeld used his time onstage to audition for next year’s host.
Celine Dion’s lips pursed up at the end of her song into something out of a horror movie, like an upward-migrated vagina dentata.

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What Ennio Morricone was really saying ….

“That Celine Dion, she scares me, my balls just retracted into my body”

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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