The latest in a series : “The Oscars have become the golden fig leaves that the industry wears to pretend it’s as committed to being in the quality business as it was in the past.” [ NYT ]
Everybody knows that George Clooney broke out on The Facts of Life in the mid-’80s. But in the quarter-century before the once and possibly future Oscar-winner and all-around Hollywood royal’s media profile encompassed morning-show house tours and magazine covers from Esquire to Vanity Fair , where was the 25-year-old Clooney developing his public persona? Where else? Tiger Beat ! Just in time for this week’s Oscar build-up, the indispensable film-culture resource Looker points us to the heartthrob repository and its revelatory Clooney feature from February 1986. Parts of it sound uncannily familiar — the Descendants star’s self-effacing charm (“I ran outside in my rabbit suit shouting, ‘What’s happening?’ and I was known as Chicken Little for a long time!”), bachelor swagger (“I’m really bad at a lasting relationship — you can tell because I’ve never had one!”) and bracing humility (“I don’t think I dislike anything about this business except for the fact tat there are so many actors out of work!”) all come through loud and clear. But other parts of it of it are like, “Say whaaaa?” To wit: George Clooney has (or had, anyway) a temper! And a very large car: “The problem is that, especially in this business, you’re always on the edge, everything is so temporary. Sometimes, if I’m driving my car and the guy in front of me wants to turn left when he wasn’t signaling for a turn, I just want to ram into him! I go nuts, crazy! I have this big Oldsmobile that could drive over everything and that’s what I feel like doing. I have this bumper sticker on my car because I broke the dashboard with my fist: ‘Don’t worry about things you don’t have control over.'” Priceless . And this bit about “time for myself”: “I love my new apartment and being there just listening to music or studying my script.” Your move, Brad Pitt . [ Looker ]
Minutes ago came this terrible reminder from Moviefone: “Good news and bad news: awards season only lasts another five days — which means you’ve only got five more days to bask in the glow of Uggie the dog. He’s the dog you love to love; after all, despite Martin Scorsese’s campaigning, you don’t see Blackie from Hugo with a Facebook fan page numbering nearly 12,000 members .” Or with his own cookies! Anyway, this calls for a slideshow. Bring Kleenex. [ Moviefone ]
The Academy Awards are not a contest, the humble nominees might demur, taking the high road through the gory scrum that is awards season. But do you really think, say, Glenn Close wouldn’t cut a bitch for an Oscar? Alas, the odds are against her, literally; online books have her at as much as 100:1 odds to win her first statuette for Albert Nobbs . Take a peek at how the internet’s enterprising bookies have handicapped the 84th Academy Award nominees and adjust your bets accordingly. Oscar wagering is, of course, a natural byproduct of Hollywood’s biggest night. After all, for some folks the Academy Awards are the sporting event of the season, and this Sunday is moviedom’s Super Bowl – the night our nation gathers around the tube to watch favored players, decked out in uniforms of black tie and couture, nodding gamely at the competition along the red carpet while hoping to be the one holding the hardware aloft in triumph at the end of the night. So whether or not you play along at home with your own Oscar pool or go in for the big bets, these odds should give you an extra leg up on predicting this weekend’s winners. This year the odds made by the experts line up for the most part with the prognostications of the awards watchers who contribute to the Gold Derby Oscar handicap (including Movieline’s S.T. VanAirsdale, whose latest Oscar Index can be found here ). That said, who among us isn’t rooting for at least one or two upsets on the big night? The Artist has had a lock on Best Picture for months, and odds reflect the near-certainty that it’ll take home top honors. Running a distant second, according to the bookmakers and the pundits, is The Descendants , while Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is the near-unanimous choice among betmakers and pundits for last place. Best Picture (Best odds selected from multiple sites via Oddschecker.com.) 1/9 The Artist 28-1 The Descendants 25-1 The Help 25-1 Hugo 50-1 War Horse 100-1 Midnight in Paris 100-1 Moneyball 100-1 Tree of Life 100-1 Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Likewise, put money on The Artist ’s Michel Hazanavicius to win Best Director (1/6 at Bodog.com) and you won’t get much on a win, but bet on Terrence Malick (66-1 at Ladbrokes) and the dark horse could pay-off handsomely. A little more excitement is to be had in the Best Actor category, where favorite Jean Dujardin is fending off George Clooney in a close-ish race. And over in Best Actress, the ladies are duking it out in the more exciting category of the season, where Viola Davis reigns over Meryl Streep but a winning wager on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ’s super, super dark horse Rooney Mara could be huge (303-1 at Betfair). Meanwhile, the pundits and the betting experts differ the most in Best Animated Feature, where the clear favorite is Rango ; Oscar watchers betting with their hearts and minds (and knowledge of Academy voting habits) peg Puss in Boots and A Cat in Paris as the likeliest winners behind Rango , but betmakers put the odds on Chico & Rita in the case of an upset. Want less predictability in your Oscar betting game? You can also bet on which designer will be worn by the Best Actress winner (odds in favor of Stella McCartney, Valentino, and Yves Saint Laurent). For a full look at the odds on the Oscars in multiple categories, head to Oddschecker . [ Oddschecker , Gold Derby ]
At one point following the critical and commercial success of his 2007 post-apocalyptic blockbuster I Am Legend , director Francis Lawrence entertained the notion of coming back with star Will Smith for prequel, but eventually that possibility trailed off and Lawrence casted doubt onto his involvement with the potential project. But today Warner Bros. announced a deal with Akiva Goldsman and Overbrook Entertainment , who have tapped screenwriter Arash Amel to write a follow-up to the $584M hit. Whether or not it’ll be a prequel or some sort of direct sequel is unknown, though it’s reportedly being created for Smith. Let’s speculate away: Just how WB can possibly pull off another installment? What makes the project a curious — and, frankly, conspicuous — one is the way in which Lawrence wrapped up I Am Legend , based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 sci-fi novel. [Spoiler alert] Following a global pandemic that wiped out 90% of the world’s population, scientist Robert Neville (Smith) had only just discovered a cure when, at the film’s conclusion, he faced an onslaught of mutated vampire-people solo and seemingly met his own demise. Of course WB wants their star and his famously potent box office draw to headline another I Am Legend movie. A prequel would explain Smith’s presence most easily, but Deadline suggests that won’t be the case. So how might they bring Smith back otherwise? Retcon the last scene in the first film, using the alternate ending in which Neville makes grudging peace with the vampire thingies? Maybe the survivors colony has cloning capabilities? Hell, why not bring in a long-lost twin brother for Neville who became a brilliant virologist as well – I Am Also Legend ? Whatever it turns out to be, at least it has a shot at being ” one of the greatest movies ever made ,” amirite? Warner Bros Plans More ‘I Am Legend’ With Will Smith [Deadline]
When you’re not going to win on points, you may as well try to shoot the moon — that seems to be the thought process behind Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance , the sequel to Marvel’s 2007 Ghost Rider . Realizing that their stunt rider who turns into a flaming skeleton-monster character and their star who turns in what are less performances than performance art were unlikely to result in a film that could be thought of as good in any traditional sense, the studios have aimed instead to make something that embraces its own lunacy. To oversee this endeavor, they brought in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the directing duo behind the Red Bulled-out, always in motion Crank films, who ignore a good portion of what happened in the first Ghost Rider , plant their tongues firmly in cheek and loose Nicolas Cage to do his strangest. It’s not as wild or as fun as it may sound (or that it needs to be to hit the midnight-movie sweet spot for which it aims), but it’s a minor improvement on the unintentional silliness of the initial installment. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance moves the action to Eastern Europe, where sinister forces are trying to capture 13-year-old Danny (Fergus Riordan) for use in the fulfillment of a doomy prophecy. The kid and his mother Nadya ( The American ‘s Violante Placido) have been in hiding with the first of two sects of tough monks (the first is overseen by Anthony Head, the second by Christopher Lambert), until they’re chased down by a group of mercenaries led by her ex, Carrigan (Johnny Whitworth) who’ve been hired to bring the boy to become the new vessel for Roarke (Ciarán Hinds), the living embodiment of Satan (look, I don’t make this stuff up). An alcoholic French priest (Idris Elba) recruits Johnny Blaze (Cage) to help save the pair using his Ghost Riderly powers with the promise of curing him of the curse, though Blaze fears he won’t be able to control the demon that possesses him enough to not also devour the people he’s trying to save. Cage plays Blaze as a tweaker, a twitchy, shaky mess who pops skull eye whenever he struggles to control his inner monster. It’s a performance that starts off as awkward but gradually builds to new arias of weird; threatening a flunky from whom he’s trying to get information, he notes that the Rider is “scraping at the door! He’s SCRAPING AT THE DOOR! If you don’t TELL me what he needs to KNOW, I’m going to let him oooooooooout!” Cage jerks and flinches and laughs maniacally — in one of the more memorable shots, a camera affixed to the front of his motorcycle holds on him as he accelerates, cackling, through town, gaping black eye sockets warping his face and then getting tamped down. Neveldine/Taylor have apparently gotten Cage to also play the transformed Rider this time around, an addition that comes through in the demon’s odd head tilts and dancey fits. Cage is given a run for his money by Elba (who uses his character’s accent as one might use a swirling cape) and Hinds, who have a ham-off in their respective roles, though Cage emerges triumphant just from the sheer effort he puts into the role. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance scores some deliberate laughs — the Rider spins inexplicably in mid-air after getting shot by a bunker buster, a character who can make things decay with his touch finds the only thing that doesn’t crumble in his hands before he eats it is a Twinkie, and at long last the question of what happens when the Ghost Rider needs to pee is answers (it’s “like a flamethrower”) — but the smugness of the film grows wearying long before the end. Just because the people on and behind the camera are willing to acknowledge what we’re watching is ridiculous crap doesn’t really change the fact that, well, it is. For filmmakers as talented as Neveldine/Taylor are (and they are, as the exhilarating freedom of their camerawork attests), it’s a letdown, evidence that all the air quotes in the world won’t make your end project any better if there’s nothing sincerely good thrown in there as well. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Poor Robert Pattinson: The weight of proving himself, in a movie that doesn’t have the words “Twilight” and “Saga” in the title, is shaping up to be heavier than a vampire’s curse. In last year’s Water for Elephants, he had a charming naivete, a seemingly natural shyness that was wholly inoffensive, if not exactly memorable. And as social schemer Georges Duroy in Bel Ami, playing here at the Berlinale out of competition on the festival’s next-to-last day, he works harder to redeem himself than any actor should have to: He applies a scowl from Column A with an eyebrow furrow from Column B to express displeasure; Smirk No. 4 denotes a moment of extreme hubris. The effect is like watching an athlete trying not to break a sweat – you might want to root for him, but there’s a part of you that just wants him to let it all out already. What is it about the guy? Under the direction of first-time filmmakers Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, who have directed mostly for the London stage, Pattinson isn’t half-bad. He doesn’t overreach, which perhaps saves him from embarrassment. But he expends so much energy in his desire to be subtle that he’s the exact opposite of subtle — yet he doesn’t just go all the way and take the performance over the top. Duroy is a fellow of modest means, rattling around Paris bedding the women of influential men to increase his own wealth and power. (The movie was adapted, by Rachel Bennette, from Guy de Maupaussant’s second novel, and it’s a foamy — if somewhat snoozy — bit of picturesque entertainment.) The problem may be that the women around Pattinson run circles around him. They’re the ones you remember, from Uma Thurman’s politically astute Madeleine Forestier, to Kristin Scott Thomas’s mouselike, aging skinny-minny Virginie Walters, to Christina Ricci’s Belle Époch sexpot Clotilde de Marelle. Pattinson, despite the fact that his character is trying to dominate these women, looks a little afraid of them: Perhaps paradoxically, he has more erotic wattage when he’s playing wan Victorian valentine Edward Cullen, his character in the Twilight movies. Here, in his stiff collars and glossy top-hats, he looks like a very lean bird dressed up for dinner, only he’s the one on the plate. I’m wondering how an actor like Pattinson, a guy who’s had so much teenage longing projected onto him he’s practically a walking piece of fan fiction, can ever unravel the tight knots of his own self-consciousness. Or if he can. Watching him in Bel Ami, I found myself hoping he’d rally, looking for subtle glimmers of awareness that might suggest he knows he’s supposed to make us believe he’s a cad, not just act like one. He’s trying so hard — why can’t he use those lizardlike eyes, that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile, in the service of making us forget who he is? Maybe it’s because he can’t forget who he is. And that’s the stiffest, tightest collar any young actor can wear. * * * This is my last post from Berlinale 2012, and here at the tail end of my 10 days here, I’m looking back on all the pictures I wanted to see and didn’t: Bunches of critics were shut out of the crowd-funded Nazis-in-space spoof Iron Sky when it screened late last week; I also missed the much-lauded Marley, directed by Kevin MacDonald, which I hear is an elaborate and involving portrait of the late singer and musician’s life. But there’s no use lamenting the ones that got away. If I can rally for a 10:30 p.m. screening tonight, I might be able to catch Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Saying good-bye to Berlin with a bit of 3-D craziness doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. Read all of Movieline’s coverage of Berlinale 2012 here . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘Never has a 33-second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock postboard rage,’ Grohl writes on the Foo Fighters’ Facebook page. By James Montgomery Foo Fighters onstage at the 2012 Grammy Awards Photo: Getty Images Midway through his MVP-like performance at Sunday’s 54th Grammy Awards — a tour de force that included wearing a Slayer T-shirt, engaging in a lengthy guitar duel with Bruce Springsteen and inadvertently standing in Paul McCartney’s spotlight for, like, 45 seconds — Foo Fighters’ frontman Dave Grohl strode to the stage to deliver a delightfully long-running acceptance speech, one that some thought took a few none-too-subtle jabs at the burgeoning EDM movement. Surrounded by his bandmates and Wasting Light producer Butch Vig , Grohl held the band’s Best Rock Performance award and spoke about the back-to-basics approach the Foos employed while making the album, which included eschewing computers and recording directly to 2-inch tape, saying in part: “To me, this award means a lot, because it shows that the human element of music is what’s important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do. … It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].” Of course, most in the crowd cheered wildly at the statement, though there were those who thought Grohl’s comments also slighted electronic artists like Skrillex (who won three Grammys that night) and deadmau5, whom the Foos were set to perform with later in the telecast. So on Friday (February 17), Grohl took to the Foo Fighters’ Facebook page to clarify his comments. “Never has a 33-second acceptance rant evoked such caps-lock postboard rage as my lil’ ode to analog recording has,” Grohl wrote. “I love music. I love all kinds of music. From Kyuss to Kraftwerk, Pinetop Perkins to Prodigy, Dead Kennedys to deadmau5. … Electronic or acoustic, it doesn’t matter to me. The simple act of creating music is a beautiful gift that all human beings are blessed with. And the diversity of one musician’s personality to the next is what makes music so exciting and human. “That’s exactly what I was referring to. The ‘human element.’ That thing that happens when a song speeds up slightly, or a vocal goes a little sharp. That thing that makes people sound like people,” he continued. “Somewhere along the line those things became ‘bad’ things, and with the great advances in digital recording technology over the years they became easily ‘fixed.’ The end result? In my humble opinion, a lot of music that sounds perfect, but lacks personality. The one thing that makes music so exciting in the first place.” Grohl added that, while he felt those technological advances in recording have also taken the focus off “the actual craft of performance,” he in no way meant to suggest that artists like Skrillex or deadmau5 aren’t actual musicians. In fact, it’s the way they use that technology that makes them unique. “Look, I am not Yngwie Malmsteen. I am not John Bonham. Hell, I’m not even Josh Groban, for that matter. But … I do the best that I possibly can within my limitations, and accept that it sounds like me. Because that’s what I think is most important. It should be real, right? Everybody wants something real,” he wrote. “I don’t know how to do what Skrillex does (though I f—ing love it) but I do know that the reason he is so loved is because he sounds like Skrillex, and that’s badass. We have a different process and a different set of tools, but the ‘craft’ is equally as important, I’m sure. I mean…..if it were that easy, anyone could do it, right?” Grohl concluded by poking fun at the supposed controversy, joking, “Now, I think have to go scream at some kids to get off my lawn” and signing his post “Davemau5.” And then he probably went back to being awesome — since, you know, aside from acceptance speeches, it’s what he tends to do best. Did you think Grohl’s acceptance speech was targeted at EDM? Let us know in the comments! Related Photos 2012 Grammy Awards: Backstage And Audience Related Artists Foo Fighters
Today is the next-to-last day of competition screenings here at the Berlinale , which means people are speculating about a possible winner – to the extent that speculation is ever possible. This year’s jury is headed by Mike Leigh, and at dinner the other night some friends and I were playing the “WWMLL” – What Will Mike Leigh Like? – game. Voting for prizes is a democratic process, but the jury president can set the tone. Even so, it’s hard to say, rummaging around in the Berlinale 2012 bag, what Leigh and co. might possibly go for. The critics’ favorites so far seem to be Christian Petzold’s Barbara , an unusual, slow-building drama set in 1970s East Germany, and Miguel Gomes’ Tabu , an inventive melodrama that uses old-school movie conventions – and sensuous black-and-white cinematography – to weave a story of love and loss. But critics’ favorites and a jury’s choices don’t necessarily align. At this point, the field is fairly open. I’m wondering what a Mike Leigh-led jury will think about Postcards from the Zoo , by the young Indonesian filmmaker who goes by the name Edwin. Postcards is a gentle story, with a loose-jointed, somewhat impressionistic narrative structure, about a young woman, Lana (Ladya Cheryl), who spends her life in a Jakarta zoo, though she doesn’t officially work there. She helps bathe the zoo’s baby tiger; she knows many facts about the zoo’s giraffes, which she shares authoritatively with the zoo’s visitors; and, one day, she takes up with another zoo denizen, a magician-cowboy who turns her into his assistant and accomplice. (She dons an Indian-girl outfit and takes her place in his knife-throwing routine.) During this meandering journey of self-discovery, Lana also becomes a massage girl at a spa, serving men who nonchalantly stop in for full-service satisfaction, complete with a happy ending (if they’re willing to pay for it). The picture is gorgeously filmed – the early section really is a series of postcards, a gentle meditation on the zoo’s peaceful, inspirational nature, including shots of a mother and baby hippo idling in a pool, and a droll little sequence in which Lana muses aloud about why one of the tigers won’t eat. (She surmises that he feels sorry for the hens that become his dinner.) Postcards , Edwin’s second feature, is so low-key that its emotional effects don’t really linger – the picture is inconsequential, but it’s also reasonably enjoyable, particularly for its pensive, low-key aura. Wang Quan’an’s White Deer Plain, on the other hand, is anything but low-key. This nearly-three-hour Chinese epic includes no real battle scenes and very little pageantry, but it does something that’s perhaps harder to pull off: It wrestles with the changes and hardships that the country endured between 1910, the end of Imperial China, and 1938, the time of the Japanese invasion. The story, an adaptation of a controversial historical novel by Chen Zhongshi, uses the power struggle between two village families – a struggle that’s intensified by the woman, played by an expressive actress named Kitty Zhang Yugi, who enters their midst – as a means of talking about sweeping and painful change in China during the first half of the last century. The picture is gorgeous to look at — well, not the famine sections, but pretty much everywhere else. Wang has a weakness for showing, over and over again, the shimmering golden wheat fields that play a key part in the story, and they are beautiful. The human characters, unfortunately, often take a backseat to the scenery. They’re cogs in the machinery of the country and in that of the movie, too – perhaps that’s intentional, but it does keep White Deer Plain from being as involving as it might be. So who knows, from what we’ve seen so far, what the Berlinale 2012 jury will go for? (The group also includes François Ozon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anton Corbijn and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as well as Asghar Farhadi, the director of last year’s Golden Bear winner A Separation .) A Hungarian picture that screened this morning, Bene Fliegauf’s Just the Wind, draws its subject matter from recent real-life horrors, in which several Romany families were murdered in their homes, the targets of racial hatred. The picture is harrowing, yet it’s also somewhat detached – Fliegauf often works harder than he has to, maybe, to underscore the fear and anxiety visited upon the community in the wake of these murders. But the picture is topical, and that’s sometimes a quality that makes a jury sit up and take notice. We’ll see what happens on Saturday, by which time I’ll have bid the Berlinale adieu for another year – though before that, I’ll be checking back in with a look at Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s Bel Ami , featuring the Pale One himself, Robert Pattinson. Read more of Movieline’s coverage from the 2012 Berlinale here . Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Last summer’s Cars 2 marked a notable footnote in the history of Pixar Animation , just not a good one; despite opening to the studio’s sixth-highest worldwide take to date, the sequel to 2006’s Cars earned middling reviews, prompted critics to deem it a commercial cash-grab, and eventually – maybe most shockingly, given the studio’s track record – became the first Pixar film not to nab an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature since the category was inaugurated. Could it be, as Pixar producer Lindsey Collins suggests, that Cars 2 was Oscar-snubbed because of anti-Pixar backlash? Speaking with press today in Phoenix, Arizona for John Carter , which she produced for longtime Pixar collaborator Andrew Stanton, Collins assessed why Cars 2 was overlooked in favor of five other animated films ( A Cat in Paris , Chico and Rita , Kung Fu Panda 2 , Puss in Boots , and Rango ). “The fact that [ Cars 2 ] was a sequel — in a way it’s funny, because obviously from a franchise standpoint people love sequels,” Collins explained. “And certainly from a franchise standpoint Cars 2 did insanely well, such that we can’t even count it as a good metric to tell us whether or not to do sequels.” Sequel status aside, Collins surmised a larger reason was working against the John Lasseter-directed pic, which was the first Pixar film to earn an overall “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes. “I think it had the fact that Pixar has dominated going against it,” she added. “At a certain point there was going to be somebody who was going to take the fall a little bit. It was going to be like, ‘Eh, we don’t like that one.’” Then again, Cars 2 ’s nomination miss could also be chalked up to the relatively deep field of animated films in the running for Oscar this year – many of which surprised Collins and defied her own expectations of the competition. “I see every single one of these things because my kids drag me to them all, and to me it felt like God, there are some great animated films this year. I actually had one of those, ‘There’s two hours of my life that I’m never going to get back’ [thoughts], and then you walk out like, ‘Actually, that was quite good!’” Among the “great pictures” not spawned from Pixar that Collins had praise for? “I loved Rango ,” she admitted. “There were actually some great pictures this year.” As for the cold critical reception and accusations of crass commercialism Cars 2 received, Collins maintains that Lasseter “truly, truly loves” the sequel — and Pixar, she says, supports the films its stable of directors want to make. “John loves that world, he loves those characters. We got accused of being very commercial with it and it’s kind of funny, it’s so ironic because if you’ve met John Lasseter there’s not a disingenuous bone in that man’s body.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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