Notes on the NYFF Main Slate

The full lineup of the New York Film Festival's Main Slate was released today. Though the film festival is famously curated and thus exclusionary (I still haven't forgiven them for thinking Rachel Getting Married, the best movie of 2008, was beneath us) this year's lineup is quite a bit larger than usual. Are their standards loosening or was there just too much quality to deny? In honor of the bigger than usual lineup, I thought I'd attempt 35 thoughts on the lineup but I ran out of time. Herewith 29 bullet points...

• Can The Wind Rises save this year's sure-to-be-dismal Best Animated Feature race that Oscars? It's been over ten years since the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki won the Oscar for Spirited Away (2001). His newest film is a biopic, excuse me a "visionary poem", about Jiro Hirokoshi, the man who designed the Zero fighter. 

• Some titles just roll off the tongue. Consider... When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, a film from the director of Police, Adjective, which is about the life of a film director when the cameras aren't rolling. Except, we hope, the camera filming this movie because staring a blank screen wouldn't do.

• They describe that one as "fascinatingly oblique" which could well be film festival speak for "__________" (that's for you to fill in in the comments)

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Five Easy Linkses

Viola Davis is sad because her daughter when missing. I'm sad because Hollywood keeps underusing her!Cinema Blend on the giving-too-much-away promotion of crime thriller Prisoners. I must add that one thing they're not giving away is Viola Davis. She's barely in the trailers, despite the fact that her daughter -- not just Hugh Jackman's -- also goes missing!
The Dissolve on racial profiling at screenings of Lee Daniels' The Butler
eOnline Jennifer Lawrence & Hugh Jackman & other assorted X-Men go to see The Butler together with Hugh leading the way (also: since when is JLaw back with Nicholas Hoult? I somehow missed that)

blog buddies
Joe &  Nick talking about Supporting Actor (thus far this year) with notes on the men of The Place Beyond the Pines (have you heard they're all going supporting in Oscar campaigns?) and James Franco in Spring Breaker
Joe & Nick talking about Supporting Actress (thus far this year) with lots of mutual enthusiasm for Emma Watson in Bling Ring and a nifty little cameo that I'm also jazzed about in Side Effects. Also discussed: Melonie Diaz and Alison Janney. I should note since people have asked in various comments sections that I am less enthused about Emma Watson in Bling Ring than Joe & Nick seem to be.

It's not that I don't think she's funny in it. I very much do. I think she's really good in it. It's just that, for me, she's cribbing too much from Nicole Kidman's Suzanne Stone (To Die For) for me to fully feel like it's a creation of Emma's. That and it seems a touch ACTED when seen next to the beautifully unaffected real-person quality of Israel Broussard and Katie Chang and Taissa Farmiga who are all quite good as well. But still... I'm super glad that Emma is improving so much and so quickly (see also: The Perks of Being a Wallflower) since her beloved yet ghastly acting in those Harry Potter flicks. She was going to get a ton or roles whether or not she did so more power to her for committing to her craft.

Review: White House. Golden Oprah. Lee Daniels' The Butler

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

Somewhere in the vast middle of LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER, a movie about a White House butler who served US Presidents from the Eisenhowers through the Reagans, there's a terrific agitated scene in which we leave the butler behind to check in on his wife Gloria. Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and Howard (Terrence Howard), the neighbor she's turned to from loneliness, argue on a couch. Howard is trying to sweet-talk his way back into her bed. Gloria, guilt-ridden, distracts herself with chain smoking, occasionally side-eyeing him as if he were a buzzing nuisance and, damn, where is her fly swatter? Slick Howard begins spinning two of her clothes hangers in the air to visualize their parallel worlds. Gloria reacts with extreme annoyance to the comic pleasure of the audience -- Oprah gets one laugh after another, all of them blessedly intentional, in her rousing return to the big screen. 

It's a weird but lively domestic hothouse scene that feels, at first, largely divorced from the movie containing it, a somewhat duller "greatest hits" tour of America's civil rights journey. But in its own peculiar way it's also the movie's key scene. [more...]

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Podcast: "Butler" History & "Elysium" Nonsense

On this week's podcast Joe, Nick, Nathaniel and Katey discuss Foxcatcher's release date, and Elysium's fast fade nonsense from unsanitary exoskeletons to Jodie Foster's unplaceable accent.

But the bulk of the conversation is devoted to Lee Daniels' The Butler which has us all confused. Is it a terrible movie with good moments or vice versa? Whatever it is it might well be an unmissable oddity given all the celebrities crammed into it from Mariah Carey to Vanessa Redgrave and the ability to see Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey in matching track suits. 

We'll also tell you which celebrities weren't in the movie that should have been. You can listen to the podcast right here or download it on iTunes. 

The Butler & Elysium

Oscar Chatter: If It's Yours To Lose, You Can Still Lose

Each year as the first "wow" factor players emerge in the Oscar race, pundits (professional and amateur alike), jump all over themselves to declare "winners!" in each of the acting races several months in advance. I always want to pass on analgesic creams when this begins to happen but then I'm more patient than some Oscar fans and prefer the slow sexy fight for nominations to the wham bam foregone conclusions of Oscar night.  If you believe the internet Cate Blanchett has it locked up in Best Actress (on the strength of her work in Blue Jasmine) and Oprah Winfrey has it locked up in Supporting Actress (on the rush of excitement that's greeted Lee Daniels' The Butler and her against type work... if you can have a type when you rarely act.) The only trouble is that no one has seen their competition. And your competition is half the equation at least as to whether or not you'll win. (One example: Does Reese Witherspoon's Walk the Line win in a highly competitive year? I think not.)

Oscar loves a drunk. Can Cate & Oprah both win while boozing it up?

The male categories are less clear though we've already heard quite a few "Leonardo DiCaprio finally has it for The Wolf of Wall Street!" (on the strength of his meme-worthy dancing and lively charisma in the trailer) and some have floated Bruce Dern as your future Supporting Actor winner for Nebraska... though his campaign remains a question mark. Nebraska, we know, is one of those Two Lead/Same Gender films that Oscar's acting branch has forgotten how to parse. Nobody ever tried to suggest that Salieri or Amadeus were supporting each other or that the true lead of Thelma & Louise was Thelma OR Louise but they would if those films opened today because times have changed and fans and campaign managers got increasingly shameless. 

So will any of these four win? Quite possibly, sure. But they could also all lose. One or more of them might not even be nominated! We haven't seen most of the competitive sets and until the great winnowing of December begins when the precursor awards race in to borify the entire race... let's keep an open mind and enjoy the wide world of possibilities!

OSCAR CHART UPDATES
Best Actress - Will Amy give Cate B a run for her money with Meryl maybe dropping out?
Best Supporting Actress - Can Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer stay in the conversation as Oprah sucks up all the late summer oxygen?
Best Actor -It might come down to Leo vs. Matthew unless Old Hollywood rallies for career honors for Dern or Redford or someone else surprises. Oh god, please let there be surprises this year!
Best Supporting Actor - only the editors know... seriously... nothing has happened yet. (sigh)

more updates to follow on the remaining charts