March 12, 2003

The Oscar battle is a week for being over… and the heat in the over seems to be going up, not down… but I’m going to save most of that for tomorrow’s Oscar column at Movie City News.  All I’ll say right now is that it’s great that the L.A. Times quotes Rick Sands as saying, “The [original Broadway] show was written very much in response to the Watergate years, and it's very relevant today.”  Why?  Because its not enough that screenwriter Bill Condon said almost exactly that in ads that seem to run five times every hour that have now been replaced by ads with director Rob Marshall saying the exact same words as Condon.  So it must be true, right?  Because when the company line is repeated enough, it becomes truth.  Even if one prompter rules them all.

Speaking of MCN, a piece went up yesterday regarding the sudden appearance of Samantha Geimer’s grand jury hearing transcript after 25 years of being under seal.  You can read the whole story and the transcript here.  There will a Reader of the Day comment on the subject down at the bottom of the column.  (I would happily print different opinions, but none have turned up yet, probably because MCN isn’t structured to encourage reader mail.)

ON A LIGHTER NOTE:  I caught the Fox Searchlight ShoWest reel a few days ago… as they say in the reel, last year was their best year ever and 2003 looks even better.  It does.  Bend It Like Beckham opens today and every single person I have spoken to who has seen it, loved it.  Somehow, I have managed to miss it over and over and over again.  It could become a crossover hit. 

But the heavy hitters start in three weeks with the release of Neil Jordan’s The Good Thief.  This remake of Bob LeFlambeur was one of my favorite films at the Toronto Film Festival.  Jordan is one of the industry’s most underrated filmmakers, though he has made many landmark films, and Nick Nolte is simply magnificent… as defined by this role as he once was by North Dallas Forty.

Searchlight pushes the international envelope with the French hit, L'Auberge Espagnole, a comedy about an apartment in Spain where young people from a bunch of different countries live together.  One has to figure that Searchlight sees the film as a kind of experiment, finding out whether American audiences will bite on a primarily foreign language film that at least has a couple of central characters who speak English.  It’s a gateway movie… I hope.

Alex Proya’s long-awaited first feature after Dark City is Garage Days, which played at Sundance and has been in release in a few countries already.  Searchlight’s reel gives us a slice from one scene in the movie and, from what I hear, it was a good choice.  The film has had a hard time generating intense enthusiasm, though it does seem to be liked.  We’ll see.

On the other hand, Danny Boyle’s “comeback” film, 28 Days Later looks like it could be a major mainstream hit.  Imagine a version of Stephen King’s The Stand without the restraints of the size and status of that book.  I’ve felt like I was watching Boyle’s progress in the TV film Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise, which was absolutely wonderful with a great, great performance by Timothy Spall.  But the freedom of the form seems to be, forgive the pun, infectious.  And it stars an actor who I am coincidentally familiar with, having embraced the other film he starred in, Disco Pigs - which in another Searchlight coincidence, was written and directed by Kirsten Sheridan, who co-wrote the Searchlight film, In America.

Le Divorce is a kind of mystery to me.  I’ve seen the trailer before and it looks like lovely froth.  Simplistically put, the trailer puts one in mind of Kate Hudson in really expensive, complicated underwear… not the worst place to be.  Merchant/Ivory is not traditionally a great company for comedy, so there is a bit of anticipatory eggshell walking.  If the pieces come together, it could be really special.  If not, not.

There were two films that had previews kind of thrown together, but are very intriguing.  The Clearing starts Willem Dafoe, Robert Redford, Helen Mirren, Alessandro Nivola and seems like a film with a potential to be taught and intelligent thriller.  The Cannibal’s Daughter stars Almodovar veteran Cecilia Roth.  It’s another déjà vu situation for me, since it reminded me of a great (and unseen in this country) Cecelia Roth film from Argentina, called Vidas Privadas (Private Lives).  The films seem to have some of the same undercurrents, though Vidas Privadas also has Gael Garcia Bernal, would you think would be enough to get some kind of domestic pick-up.  Maybe later…

Two more future films really pop off this reel.  The first is Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which seems like a combination of Truffaut’s Jules & Jim, a hybrid of Phil Kaufman’s Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry & June, and Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris.  The taste was very small, though one can see that Bertolucci has the good taste to include the great Anna Chancellor (who also cameos pathetically in cameo-pathetic What A Girl Wants).  But the most breathtaking is newcomer Eva Green, who is clearly the new body-most-likely in the movie game.  If she can act, this creature has the unusual size and angelic face of Liv Tyler, the athletic lank of Julia Stiles and the breasts of a young Michelle Johnson or Kelly Preston…  oy.  And she is French, which is really sexy when she doesn’t wave. 

Of course, the movie of them all, for me, is Jim Sheridan’s intimate masterpiece, In America.  I hope and expect that this will be one of the major Oscar contenders in next year’s race.  Samantha Morton, who should have been nominated this year for Morvern Callar, will be.  Djimon Hounsou, who has had his quality roles sliced into near oblivion in films like Gladiator and The Four Feathers, should win an Oscar for his supporting turn here.  The sisters who play the young daughters in the film are absolutely amazing.  And Paddy Considine is terrific in a terribly difficult role as a father whose weakness comes closer and closer to the surface.  The thing I love about this film – and you will be sick of reading about it in this column by this time next year – is that it is about one family and about all of us at the same time.  It is about the immigrant experience, but it’s also about the magic of New York City, a place that stands as a true symbol of what we love about America, for better and for worse.  It is a movie about death, but it is more a movie about life and the choice we all have, to live.  Tears of joy and tears of pain… an amazing film. 

OFF TOPIC:   It was odd reading Michael Fleming’s Variety column on non-Hollywood types investing in Hollywood following so closely on the heels of Nikki Finke’s similar, albeit Sundance themed, LA Weekly piece on the same subject.

READER OF THE DAY:  NOT GARY U.S. BROWN writes:  “As someone who is in the process of putting a film together that features a primarily black cast, I have learned one major disheartening issue. Films that are "urban" or with predominantly black casts don't do well foreign. So, when tricolor and others point the finger at racism, or segmentation towards actors; I really don't think it's that at all. It's about money.

Unfortunately, those films and actors don't pull in enough money in foreign territories. And tricolor or any other person that works in or around this business should know the only color Hollywood really cares about is green.”

PD2003 writes:  “I couldn't possibly agree more with Tricolor's statements. I reviewed films for seven years prior to moving out of the country two months ago, and I saw about 175 movies in the theater every year. The mainstream white audience does ignore many quality films made by and/or starring African-Americans.  Barbershop did some crossover business, obviously, but I saw Antoine Fisher and The 25th Hour, movies that should have made tons more money than they did, with an almost all-black audience. Why is that? My parents (white and mainstream) loved Fisher, as did I, and 25th Hour is in my top 5 for 2002 (I know you hated it). Why didn't they find a larger audience? Can you blame it all on the marketing? And those are just two examples of a much larger trend. I, like tricolor, miss seeing actors like Larenz Tate (so good in love jones and Dead Presidents) and Terrence Howard more. The list goes on and on. Morris Chesnut, Taye Diggs, Harold Perrineau, Jr. (spelling?), Mekhi Pfifer, Omar Epps, Don Cheadle, Isiah Washington, Delroy Lindo. You could go on and on.

Same for actresses. Basset, Nia Long, Regina King, Sanaa Lathan. It's frustrating to witness the lack of crossover appeal exhibited some enjoyable romantic comedies starring African-Americans while pieces of crap like How to Lose a Guy in Ten

Days and Just Married make money hand over fist. It's frustrating to see so many talented actors and actresses forced into thankless roles in awful movies (Chesnut in Half-Past Dead; Tate in Biker Boyz) just so they can work. But what's the solution?”

NOT REBECCA’S HUBBY:  “My question to you and your readers is do they care about issues concerning black people in entertainment?  All the actors he mentioned are fine actors, but if the majority of the income is coming from an audience that can not relate to any of the people you discuss, why should they pay their money.  I do not know if its an innate reaction to avoid black or brown films, but I know that I try to support these black films and always end up disappointed.  If i see another gary hardwick production I will probably stab myself in the eye.  There is definitely a debate of quality versus quantity as well as there is an issue with race in hollywood or any arena.  Even the issue with Mel Gibson and his father may come down to bigotry and/or prejudice, but why must people always travel this road.  We should respect people’s opinions, acknowledge what is being presented to us, but realize we don’t have to support it.  Overall i don’t think its is racism, but an inclination on part of the mainstream audience to see characters that remind them of them on a physical level. Once in a while we have a color purple or a crouching tiger hidden dragon, but those are masterpieces.  Lately all we are offered, no matter what color is on the screen, is trash.”

Finally, on the Geimer/Polanski thing, DEEP DEEP DEEP SOUTH writes:  “This whole subject makes me sick. Not the "rape" thing (I don't think it was rape at all, although I don't think having sex with a 13-year-old is right), which I'll explain later, but the fact that the Oscar campaign is getting nastier and nastier. My God; last year they used Nash's supposed homosexuality; this year they're using this case. Oh, boy, that's not fair to Samantha or Roman Polanski, whose life is full of grief already. He lost his mother at a concentration camp; his pregnant wife was murdered... c'mon, let's give this guy a break! Whatever was the crime he committed, he's paid for it!

Harvey Weinstein should be ashamed of himself (oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure Miramax is behind this once again...)!

About the rape thing: I'm sure you read her testimony already:

1) At the first photo session, Samantha had to take off her blouse. She sad she was uncomfortable with that. Next time Polanski stops by her house, she goes out with him again - and takes her blouse off again. It doesn't seem like she was THAT upset by the whole matter. (And, please, a 13 year old knows what sex is: the 70s - almost 80s - were not the 40s).

2) During her second photo session, at Jack Nicholson's house, she said she was thirsty and Polanski took her to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator - where she saw bottles of juice - and asked her if she wanted champagne. She said yes.

3) Later that day, Roman called her mother and she talked to her. Her mother asked if she wanted to go home - and she answered "No" - although she once again had been photographed without her blouse.

4) By the way: I won't even comment on her mother behavior. She was clearly loving the fact her daughter was being photographed by a movie director - and she didn't seem worried at all about her daughter being alone with him.

5) About the Quaalude thing: he took the pill and ASKED HER if it was a Quaalude. SHE SAID YES (she knew what it was). Then he asked her if she wanted a pill and she SAID YES. (She had took one a year before).

6) Before she entered in the jacuzzi, she took her dress off without being asked to do it.

7) She confessed she had been drunk before, i.e., that was not the first time she drank alcohol.

8) She was not a virgin anymore (at 13, mind you).

9) The "rape" was interrupted by a maid who knocked on the door. Polanski opened the door and talked to the woman. She could have asked for help then --- but she didn't.

Now... having said that, I must say her depiction of what happened made me view Polanski with much more "critical" eyes. Asking her about "pills", "period", "back door"? Ew! He is (was) a sick man, indeed. I do believe the girl wasn't so innocent: maybe she thought that way she could be in one of his films, I don't know. Maybe she didn't want that to happen, but she surely didn't fight too hard.

Anyway, her testimony is very damaging to Polanski. I mean: I think she wasn't an innocent victim BUT, even so, her words made me want to punch him in the face.

And I'm the one defending him...

Mr. Weinstein really did it this time. "The Pianist" is out of competition. And so is Polanski. And I'm sorry about that, because it is the best film and the best directing work."

E ME:  You know the drill…