Cinemascope

Anton Ego, “Ratattouille”

Anton Corbijn, “Control”

Anton Chigurh, “No Country for Old Men”

Christmas makes me a sucker for good will ventures by rich pop stars wanting to help underprivileged kids, who probably don’t celebrate Christmas but Id-el-Fieter. On any other day I’d be a cynic, but today these two charity songs, one from the Seventies, the other from the Eighties, choke me up.

For New Yorkers who are early risers this Yule Log, shown every Christmas morning on local stations, surprisingly garnering pretty decent ratings, is as much a Christmas tradition as the eggnog. But for me this looks and sounds like a shot right out of Andrey Tarkovsky’s “Mirror”.

It’s Christmas eve. The networks have Bob Clark’s “A Christmas Story” on (in a 24 hour marathon on TBS), Frank Capra’s 1946 wonderfully classic “It’s a wonderful Life” (on NBC), and Dr Seuss’ animated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (on ABC). So, if you’re away from your TV, here’s your chance to take part in that great Christmas tradition: watching movies (I’ll have the yule log up by morning).

But this year there’s added value, a tragic one, in watching those films. Bob Clark, director of “A Christmas Story” and “Porky’s”, was killed earlier this year at age 67, when a drunk driver smashed into his car, killing him and his 27 year old son. So perhaps it would’ve been more fitting to play Clark’s other classic today, the horror film “Black Christmas”.

And Frank Capra Jr., son of director Frank Capra, died three days ago at age 73. He used to screen his own private print of “It’s a Wonderful Life” every Christmas at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.

So, in their memory:

1.
Watch Bob Clark’s “A Christmas Story” in it’s entirety here.

2.
Watch Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life“:

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3.
Watch Dr. Seuss’ animated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas“, directed by Chuck Jones:

Scott Feinberg names these five films as Best Picture Nominees:

(1) Juno (Fox Searchlight)
(2) No Country for Old Men (Miramax)
(3) Atonement (Focus Features)
(4) Into the Wild (Paramount Vantage)
(5) The Diving Bell and Butterfly (Miramax)

This sounds almost perfect. But still, something is off… Juno.

Sasha Stone is still mulling around with an incomplete list:

No Country for Old Men
Michael Clayton
Atonement
American Gangster
…
And then one of three: Into the Wild (most likely), There Will Be Blood or Sweeney Todd.

American Gangster!? Does this one still have a chance? How can anyone still like American Gangster after seeing There Will Be Blood? Michael Clayton!? I don’t know. I can’t see it.

David Poland has four films locked: No Country For Old Men, Michael Clayton, Sweeney Todd, Atonement. And then five others for the last slot.

Anne Thompson, an ace Oscar predictor in my eyes, is considering (on the Guru’s o’ Gold chart) these five: No Country for Old Men, Atonement, American Gangster, Sweeney Todd, Juno.

Jeffrey Wells, in his Oscar Balloon feature has listed: No Country for Old Men, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, There Will Be Blood, Juno.

Most Oscar Prognosticators said this before: this is an exceptional year because there really are many great movie to confuse us. And these prophecies, I believe, will be similar to the actual ballots. But what will be the final tally?

The good thing that happened so far is that The Kite Runner and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead have dropped up from consideration. I never did see them as true contenders.

Here is my problem: American Gangster? Michael Clayton? Juno? I just can’t imagine any of those as Best Picture nominees. Maybe it’s because I didn’t flip over any of these. And maybe it’s moronic to hope that ALL five nominees will all be my favorites (although I adore There Will Be Blood but I can’t imagine it nabbing a Best Picture nomination).

So, these are my five Best Picture nominees:

- No Country For Old Men
- Atonement
- Into the Wild
- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
- Sweeney Todd

This list sounds perfect to me. The only problem is that it’s probably too perfect. But I’m sticking with this one for now.

“I’m finished here”.

For several days I’ve been switching back and forth between There Will be Blood and Control in the number 1 spot on my Best-Of-2007 list. I can’t make up my mind which I love more. They were both astounding. I finally settled on Control for Best Movie of 2007, but I can’t help thinking how Ian Curtis’ life would look if directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. As far as I care, the two films are tied for Best of the Year.

1. Control (Anton Corbijn)

2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Zodiac (David Fincher)
4. Into the Wild (Sean Penn)
5. Ratatouille (Brad Bird)
6. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel)
7. The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
8. No Country For Old Men (The Coen Brothers)
9. The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)
10. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow)
10.1. Eastern Promises (David Cronnenberg)
10.2. Away From Her (Sarah Poley)

Best of their kind genre-movie-runner-ups:
11. 300 & Beowulf
(two mythical CGI epics, both wonderfully over-the-top. The first is campy and ironic; the second took itself way too seriously but provided the best film-going experience of the year when viewed on Imax 3D)

12. Hot Fuzz
(Hilarious and superbly made, and made you want to see Point Break all over again. The final act is a riot).

13. Superbad
(If David Mamet or Tom Stoppard were to write a teen comedy this is what it would sound like. This film has the best dialog lines heard this year).

14. Hairspray & Across the Universe
(Two musicals set in the Sixties. both naive and old-fashioned but sneakily engaging and lovable).

15. 28 Weeks Later
(This year’s best horror movie. The scenes in an infested and deserted London make I am Legend look like a rip-off).

Almost there:
Wristcutters: A Love Story
(The second movie this year to feature music from Joy Division. An adorable film).

Honorable mentions for documentaries:
Sicko, Crazy Love, The War and In The Shadow of the Moon.

Most moving movies I didn’t think I’ll care for:
The Diving Bell & the Butterfly and Away From Her. I hate hospital movies. But these two movies moved me tremendously. I think of them often.

Best DVD:
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
(As always with this movie - a rare example of a film misunderstood by its own director - Ridley Scott’s additions to the 2007 cut are completely useless, but the image and sound quality are breathtaking and make you fall in love with this movie all over again. The bonus documentary, Dangerous Days, is the best summary of the Big Blade Runner Battle and a riveting story in itself. But mainly: having the much-superior 1982 theatrical cut, for the first time on DVD, is worth buying the entire case. This is the true masterpiece, even if the brains behind it is more Budd Yorkin than Ridley Scott).

Highly over-rated:

Michael Clayton
(Except for one scene, where one character gets whacked out in one continuous take, this film is not as good as many think it is).

Juno
Great dialog pieces, but Jason Reitman was way better in the brilliant “Thank You For Smoking”, and the script is no-where near Apatownian great.

Sweeney Todd
(OK, I guess)

American Gangster
(In many ways Denzel Washington’s character in American Gangster and Daniel Day Lewis’s character in There Will Be Blood are quite similar. But American Gangster is like a stone skipping on lukewarm water, a chronology of events with no real gravitas. TWBB, however, displays how grandiose and magnificent a story like this can be, a mythology in the making, a metaphor played out to the extreme, and a real wild ride).

Rescue Dawn
(I prefer the documentary Herzog).

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 Days
(That horrendous fetus on the floor shot aborted this movie mid-term).

La Vie En Rose
(An Oscar for Best Make-up for sure. Not much more than that).

The Namesake
(How do you say “Soap Opera” in Sanskrit?)

Best Screenplay:
(tie) Ratatouille and Zodiac. Two different disciplines of screenwriting, each one fashionable in different eras in Hollywood, get a superb make-over this year. Brad Bird’s script for Ratatouille is astonishing, well structured, perfectly balanced, this is mainstream Hollywood at its most excellent. This is a screenplay Billy Wilder and Izzy Diamond would have loved to have written.
James Vanderbilt’s screenplay for Zodiac is the complete opposite: episodic, open ended, it takes you on a roller coaster ride with your identification. Who’s the real wacko in this movie? This could have been the best movie of 1971.

Way-way-way underrated:

Steven Soderbegh’s The Good German had its’ international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2007 so I have it on my list this year. This film got overlooked, but it’s a brilliant piece of filmmaking with a very witty and acidic screenplay. Between The Good German and Ratatouille, this has been the year of the Billy Wilder wannabes.

Masterful art-house movies:
Tsai Ming Liang’s Wayward Cloud and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
Ploy (Pen-ek Ratanaruang)
Beaufort (Joseph Cedar)
Jellyfish (Etgar Keret and Shira Gefen)
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi)

Saturday AM update: Jeffrey Wells is reporting that based on Friday estimates National Treasure 2 is on track for a $50+million weekend, with Sweeney Todd making 14 million. The prophets were right. I was ridiculously wrong. That’ll teach me.

Original posting, Friday AM:

I don’t do weekend box-office predictions. I just don’t have the data, and I can’t really tap into the collective consciousness. But I do like the odd “what-if” speculation game.

Three weeks ago I posted a poll over at my good friends of Poll’s Boutique and asked readers which of these high profile releases they are planning to see December 21st. Though this can cannot be seen as anything remotely valid it did spark my curiosity: 49% said they’d go see Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Only 22% picked National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Today I see that MCN’s box office gurus are predicting Book of Secrets will finish the weekend on top with 44-55 million dollars in the bank. Sweeney Todd, rolling out on only 1200 screens, is expected to come in sixth with 10-13 million dollars.

But what if…?

What if most young teens, both male and female, who are supposed to flock to National Treasure get a sudden whiff of the pile of shit this movie probably is and while standing in line seeing the Sweeney Todd trailer playing on the LCD screen they say to themselves - “Hmmm… this looks like a slasher movie” (boys) and “Hmmmm… Johnny Depp” (girls) and they dump Nic Cave and go for Sweeney Todd. Which could make Book of Secrets the Lara Croft: Cradle of Life of 2007.

So what if… Sweeney Todd makes something between 26 and 30 million dollars this weekend, on only 1200 screens, averaging 21,000 to 28,000 dollars per screen, and Book of Secrets belly-flops with 20-22 million dollars? Meaning that I am Legend could remain at #1 and Sweeney Todd wows and takes the #2 spot. Or: if I am Legend takes a bigger drop, Sweeney Todd could actually become the #1 movie in America, with Book of Secrets debuting at number 4.

Could this happen? Am I only fantasizing of a reality in which ticket buyers don’t just heap the movie most advertised but the movie with the better chances of turning out spectacular?
Come Sunday morning I’ll find out whether I’ll be too humiliated to ever consider making this kind of speculation again. Check back.

I loved Return of the King. Loved it. And I was even highly entertained by King Kong. But last night’s news, that Peter Jackson, with partner-writer-wife Fran Walsh, will produce “The Hobbit” left me bewildered. Although I prefer The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, as literature, I must admit that my hobbit cup runneth over. Adding to this is the fact that the deal maintains that Jackson will only executive produce (he’ll be preoccupied with The Lovely Bones and Tintin as director, which both sound much more interesting ) and the timing of the announcement, right after New Line tanking with The Golden Compass and right before New Line chief Bob Shaye’s contract is to be renewed, and you may sense my notion that this is an empty deal. It’s New Line bowing to the almighty Peter Jackson. I don’t know, this doesn’t sound sincere, It’s more like a merger between two multinational corporations than the deal to make a movie of substance.

Added: Cinematical’s Erik Davies reminds us that Sam Raimi once expressed interest in directing The Hobbit. OK, this sounds much better. Raimi directing and Jackson producing? You have my attention. But somehow it’s hard for me to believe that after directing this year’s number 1 movie at the North American box-office Raimi will still be excited to be working with the Jacksons, instead of taking on an independent project he can call his own. We’ll see.

It was 14 months ago that I ran into this story in The New York Times, about the tiny west Texas town, Marfa, population 2,400, that hosted back-to-back shoots of a Scott Rudin production: first the Coen Brother’s No Country For Old Men, and then Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. Marfa, TX, is still better known as the location where George Stevens shot Giant, with James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. The Coen and the Anderson shoots took place 50 years after the premiere of Giant. Grandchildren of local residents that were extras on Giant were now incorporated as extras in the new films.

14 months later and Marfa turned out to be quite the mascot: both films are getting high marks by critics, headlining the year’s top ten lists. Both are also bloody neo-westerns.

Said The Times:

While the landscape was the main draw for both productions, the town of Marfa was a factor too. An eccentric, fiercely independent place that’s become a haven for artists and art tourists, Marfa has seen an upsurge in galleries, boutique hotels and print coverage in the last 10 years. The Coens became enamored with Marfa.

That’s probably because Marfans (rhymes with Martians), some of which are artists that have recently located to the town that has become a sort of artist recluse, couldn’t care less about Hollywood (or at least that what they tried to convey):

Though Hollywood returned to Marfa in full force this summer, these aren’t the days of “Giant.” Neither the locals who have lived here for generations, nor the neo-Marfans drawn by the relatively recent art presence — most of whom have moved from urban areas in which they’re used to at least acting as if they don’t recognize a celebrity — seemed particularly swayed by, say, eating lunch next to Joel Coen’s wife, the actress Frances McDormand, or spotting Mr. Anderson’s partner, Maya Rudolph, the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member.

“A lot of people live out here in West Texas because they’re pretty independent in the first place,” said Maiya Keck, a Marfan restaurateur. “Either they’re from here and raised that way, or they’ve moved out here because they liked the space and solitude. They’re not the kind of people who generally want to rubberneck — or even recognize — a celebrity.”

Which, naturally, pissed off the celebrities:

Jason Willaford, an artist who co-owns a gallery with his wife, was instrumental in shepherding the Coens into Marfa. A hunting enthusiast who’s friendly with many of the local ranchers, Mr. Willaford was able to connect the Coens with the land they might want to use.

The ranchers “didn’t get all gaga just because they’re movie people,” Mr. Willaford said. “It was like, ‘Well, I’m going to have to have a meeting with my family.’ It’s not like, ‘Whoa, the movie people are coming here and we’re going to drop everything for them.’ ”
But in some ways Marfa’s shrugging attitude baffled the film crews. There are only a handful of restaurants in town, and if you’re hungry past 9 p.m., you have to settle for the local gas stations’ dizzying array of fried food. Both crews asked local restaurants to either open earlier or stay open later, and most declined. “That’s frustrating,” Ms. Sellar acknowledged. “We’ve been working six-day weeks, and on our one day off — Sunday — nothing’s open. Everybody’s been very welcoming, but they’re like, ‘We’re not going to change our ways.’ ”

Which makes one think: take the luxury and comfort from a movie shoot and you get… two masterpieces. So that’s the trouble with Hollywood: they are just too spoiled and pampered.

(Bonus: vote for your favorite Marfa movie)

Added: take this exclusive Zohan poll.

The first trailer for You Don’t Mess With the Zohan makes it quite clear: some Israelis will take offense with this movie. What’s with that accent, they will ask. A mish-mash of Arabic and Kazakh, Sandler sounds like Borat’s gay cousin. Not like anything resembling Hebrew. And what’s a Zohan? It’s not even a real word.
But frankly, I don’t care. That “You’re like Rembrandt with a grenade” line made me laugh out loud. And seeing Cabo beaches double for Tel Aviv beaches, complete with the Hebrew ice cream product placement, is a riot.

Making a hero out of an Israeli Mossad agent in an action-comedy? It’s like 1976 all over again. Very weird. But the best part of the trailer is its choice of music. This is where one senses that the makers of “Zohan” have some sincerity. The song bookending the trailer is “Here I come” by Jerusalem Groove-Funk-Hip Hop Band Hadag Nachash (The Snake Fish). The song itself is quite humorous. It’s about a guy who packs up to leave Jerusalem, a boring and nerdy city, and sings “Here I Come” to Tel Aviv, the wild beachy party-town. But the big city - a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah - eats his soul up, so he packs up again and sings “here I come” back to Jerusalem, the holy city, a city of spirituality, a city with superb hummus. And so on and so forth as he can’t make up his mind whether to stay in one city or the other.
Here is this fantastic song (a huge hit in Israel) in its entirety:

Hadag Nachash, “Here I Come”. Directed by Yarden Gatt