Five stories we didn't share in all the hulaballoo of our trip to Los Angeles, the recovery week's madness and now our Thanksgiving prep. Can't let these stories go unremarked upon since many of them are related to this year's Oscar race as well as 2015 and possibly 2016. Let's get ahead of ourselves!
Barnum by way of Jackson / Amy to play Janis
1. Hugh Jackman as P.T. Barnum
When I was coming out of Into the Woods the other day and coming out of The Last Five Years back in Toronto, I was wracked with indecision about how I felt. My cinephile self was mounting a civil war with my inner musical theater geek who is deeply devoted to both shows. The former musical is among my top 3 favorite Sondheim shows (the others being Company & Follies) and the latter is literally my favorite original musical of the 21st century to date. The solution to this inner turmoil is surely ORIGINAL SCREEN MUSICALS. We haven't had one since Dancer in the Dark, right? So I'm absolutely excited to see Hugh Jackman belt out whatever tunes they're writing for him as P.T. Barnum in a new musical biopic about the circus pioneer called The Greatest Showman on Earth. Having seen Jackman absolutely slay audiences on Broadway as another flamboyant showman (Peter Allen in "The Boy from Oz"), this could be his Oscar ticket if the movie is good. The songs are by a composing duo you know from "Smash" but before you get too excited it's not from the composers behind the fictional musical "Bombshell," damnit!, but the composers behind the fictional musical "Hit List" which wasn't half as good. (Sigh)
Bette Midler as Janis Joplin (sort of) in The Rose (1979)2. Amy Adams as Janis Joplin
Should Adams be nominated (maybe) and lose (definitely) the Best Actress Oscar for Big Eyes this season she will join the "Biggest Actress Loser Club" that is currently a three-person tea party with Thelma Ritter, Glenn Close, Deborah Kerr. Fine company, don't you think? The solution is UNDOUBTEDLY a Janis Joplin biopic since Amy Adams has a great singing voice, considerable awards momentum, and is still young enough to be interesting to Oscar... for at least another few years. We're far enough away from Bette Midler's wildly acclaimed take on that iconic musician (by another name) in The Rose (1979) that the earlier Oscar run won't be an issue either. [More after the jump...]
Apparently Lee Daniels vacated this project at some recently when I wasn't looking and now Jean-Marc Vallee, who is definitely in demand at the moment after proving so adept at pulling great work from major movie stars in Dallas Buyers Club and Wild will helm. I personally hope they skip Amy this year at the Dolby. She is moving in Big Eyes but it's not a major performance and Oscar triumphs are far more satisfying when the winner has had to struggle at least a tiny bit for recognition and isn't nominated for every one of their would be prestige projects.
In fact if Amy Adams had that Joplin ready this year I'd be willing to bet the house right now that she'd totally trounce Julianne Moore whose profile is too low for such an expected steamroller. Sony Pictures Classics is either keeping things quiet to prep for a major blitz in January or they're being far too overconfident. When people are confused about the name of your movie, it's past time to do some campaigning!
3. Lee Daniels Moves Into a "Demon House"
Lee Daniels keeps surprising us. Who could have predicted ANY of his career moves? He's gone from a thriller about a bi-racial/intergernational assassin romance to an Oscar favorite about a pregnant obese teenager to a misunderstood trashy swamp-noir about violent sex fetishes to a historical epic via the servants in the White House to... a horror movie about demonic possession? I'm not eager for Lee Daniels, who sometimes struggles with overstatement and tonal ADD but really gets stylization and actressexual pleasure, to head directly into Ryan Murphy's wheelhouse (who shares many of the same strengths and weaknesses come to think of it) and especially by way of such a well worn genre (how many demon possession movies does every film year need?). On the other hand -- and I could care less about the many critics who ridicule him -- I love him. Given how transcendent his best movie moments are, how grand the actressing in his movies tends to be, and how unique his voice is, I'll see anything Lee Daniels makes.
4. Wonder Woman's Female Director
I am a feminist and have long rooted for women to succeed in every aspect of showbiz -- the history of this site more than proves it. And yet I do find this contemporary notion, surely born of justifiable anger over inequal opportunities, that women will automatically be better suited to directing female projects suspect. Why do we have to limit artists like this? This also extends to movies about people of color. Do we really want Kathryn Bigelow to stop directing movies about men? I don't. She does it so well!!! Would I want to live in a world where anyone BUT Ridley Scott directed Thelma & Louise (nope. That movie is awesome as is). Would I want anyone besides Spike Lee to have directed The 25th Hour which is an excellent movie about white guys? No.
Anyway, DC wants a female director for Wonder Woman (update: It's officially done) and Marvel apparently doesn't want a female or a black director for Captain Marvel or The Black Panther. Okay, okay. That's not fair. That's an assumption but I make it on the grounds that cagey statements mean "no - we'll stick to what we're comfortable with!" if any cagey statements throughout the history of press conference recorded time mean anything! But you know I'd just as soon have a female director or person of color for Dr Stranger or Thor 3 than I would have them behind Captain Marvel or The Black Panther. Great artists are capable of transcending their physicality and ethnicity and gender to just make great art, or great entertainment or whatever, no matter what it's about. Disclaimer: artists who make art primarily about their hermetically sealed lives (Sofia Coppola & Woody Allen for example) are exempt from this conversation but a lot of fine artists aren't that internally focused. Ang Lee, a director of color, has proven again and again that he can basically direct the crap out of a movie about basically anything starring basically anyone taking place basically anywhere and get to the heart of it.
And, yet, if we have to go through this phase where we believe that only women are good at female stories and only men are good at "masculine" things and only people of color are good at ethnic stories and so on to get to a more level playing field than fine. It'll be worth the reductiveness! Still I'm with female director Lexi Alexander who infamously said she'd never direct Wonder Woman (even though she wasn't asked) because her reasoning about not wanting the blame (ha ha) is sound.
5. Eddie Redmayne's Trans Project
Fact: Eddie Redmayne is an adorable person: super friendly, unfailingly humble, accessible, and interesting. Or great at pretending to be all those things which is a distinct possibility but amounts to the exact same thing. Focus is smartly putting him out there everywhere to fish for Theory of Everything votes and trophies this season. Even if he doesn't win for Best Actor this coming Oscar night, he has The Danish Girl coming up in which he'll play a trans woman, the first to undergo gender reassignment surgery, and it doesn't get baitier than that. Just ask Jared Leto, Felicity Huffman, John Lithgow and so on back through Oscar time. The movie which was once an Oscar vehicle for various actresses including Nicole Kidman is finally out of development hell and will be directed by Eddie's Les Miz friend/guide, Tom Hooper. But question: Given the rise of actual transgender thespians on TV which (I think) kicked off with Candis Cayne back in the day on Dirty Sexy Money (2007) and has lately exploded in TV with Laverne Cox as "Sophia" on Orange is the New Black, Erica Ervin as"Amazon Eve" in Freakshow and Alexandra Billings as "Davina" on Transparent, how long before there starts to be backlash every time that well known actors take these roles? Leto got a little of it but Leto isn't as cuddly a celebrity as Redmayne and he was definitely more tone deaf to the LGBT community. Do you think this project a) avoids backlash b) actually sees movie screens and c) wins Oscars?
FIVE TOPICS!
Too much for one comment thread but have at it!