De Niro to Cannes: You Screenin' For Me?

"Huh? Huh? Faster than you. Saw you coming. I'm standing here. You make the movie. You make the movie. It's your movie. You screenin' for me? You screenin' for me? Then who the else are you screening to. I'm the only one here."

The Taxi Driver himself, Robert De Niro will head the jury for this summer's Cannes Film Festival. That honor recalls Taxi Driver's own Cannes win in 1976 and neatly coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Tribeca Film Festival this year. Jury members are TBA but the pool generally includes a couple gobsmackingly beautiful foreign actresses, a few directors and/or writers, and a couple key below the line giants. Last year, as you'll recall, Tim Burton and his Cannes jury gave their top prize to Apichatpong Weerathesakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (my review).

Here's to De Niro being a better judge of international art cinema than he is of his own current projects!

Blogger Man: Turn Off the Link

Serious Film Michael (a TFE columnist) is counting down his favs of the year.
Final Girl Stacy's cartoons of the Friday the 13th series almost make it seems as cute as a Pixar movie... okay no. I amend. It's still sick so it's almost as cute as a Don Hertzfeldt animation.
Parabasis a fascinating thoughtful and scathing review of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
In Contention Guy's 25 favorites of 2010. It was a very good year.

Alternative Film Guide RIP Miriam Seegar, one of the last surviving silent film actors.
Vulture Quentin Tarantino responds to the collective internet freakout also known as "OMG, why isn't Sofia Coppola's Somewhere which he awarded in Venice on his top ten list?!?"
Pop Matters chooses their (collective) favorite 20 female performances of 2010. Interesting li... okay, it's a bizarre list. We do appreciate Matt's writeup of Barbara Hershey in Black Swan. We do not appreciate the Annette Bening snub.

Fuming Actresses
US Weekly Michelle Williams is not pleased with the way Nightline edited her statements about Heath Ledger's death and their breakup.
EW's Inside Movies Julia Roberts has had it with everyone ignoring Javier Bardem in Biutiful. OBEY!
The Advocate Glenn Close is horrified that she has an unauthorized cameo in that anti-gay USS Enterprise Navy video that recently caused such a ruckus.

Academy's F/X Branch Votes Movies Off Their Magical Island

The idea of "bakeoffs" that some of the technical Oscar branches use, wherein voting members check out showreels of various films and narrow down the field, is interesting. I'm glad they don't do it with most categories but it's interesting. But when it comes to finals within those semi-finals it just seems... rude. It seems humiliating like Reality TV humiliating. For the first time, we'll have five nominees this year in the Visual Effects category and most people agree that's a smart move given how many movies employ visual f/x these day.

For reasons we don't understand, they've narrowed down their 15 wide finalist list to 7 films, eliminating the new Narnia, wannabe franchises like Prince of Persia and Percy Jackson, jeered 3D efforts Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender, the Nic Cage sorceror movie and the hit action film Unstoppable. So now we're down to... 

• Eyesore in Wonderland
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Tent Moping Part ∞
• Hereafter
• Inception
• Iron Man 2: The Avengers Cometh. You Saw The Shield and the Hammer, Right?
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
• Tron: Legacy

Which means that two of those movies will be snubbed on January 25th and that just seems so mean-spirited. Like "PSYCHE! You thought you were going to be an Oscar nominee. And now you're not. HAHA. You lose!" Note to these AMPAS branches: Only narrow it down once. Don't be a jerk! This isn't reality TV. 

Or maybe we're just in a bad mood because we figure be nice. Put the totally deserving Scott Pilgrim out of his misery early. Don't make him think you're going to honor his creative, funny, stylized effects only to cast him aside for something infinitely more derivative.

Current Predictions

USC Scripter Nominations

If you're new to the awards game -- and there are some newbies every year welcome! -- the USC is a screenplay honor with a very specific focus. The idea is to honor "the year's most accomplished cinematic adaptations as well as the author of the written work upon which the screenplay is based." Got that? That means if you wrote a book 10 years ago that was awesome and someone makes it into a movie that people respond to you get the honor along with the screenwriter. It's a different way of doing things but it's not such a terrible idea since the original writer did do much of the heavy lifting in terms of plotting and character construction and what not.

The nominees:

• 127 HOURS by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy based on "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" by Aron Ralston.
• THE GHOST WRITER by Roman Polanski based on "The Ghost" by Robert Harris.
• THE SOCIAL NETWORK by Aaron Sorkin based on "The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money and Betrayal" by Ben Mezrich.
• TRUE GRIT by the Coen Bros based on "True Grit" by Charles Portis
• WINTER'S BONE by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini based on "Winter's Bone" by Daniel Woodrell

This year's 58 member selection committee composed of screenwriters, film critics and authors among others was headed by Oscar nominated screenwriter Naomi Foner who we have always loved for two reasons. First for writing Running on Empty (1988) which makes us cry every time we see it, and then for those eighteen months of hard work bringing Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal into the world. Eighteen months well spent!

This list could be your Oscar list but for the likelihood of the Toy Story 3 Oscar nomination. Common wisdom is that The Ghost Writer will slip out but isn't 127 Hours a bit vulnerable? Does anyone else think it's a bit odd that all sequels campaign as adapted?

Mama's Getting Hot: Babs for Gypsy?

Fockin' BarbraBy now, should you have a known predilection for movie musicals or Barbra Streisand as musical comedienne (we endorse both predilections, though we can do without Babs otherwise), someone has undoubtedly forwarded you something saying along the lines of "OMFG. BABS. GYPSY. SQUEEE (and/or) EWWW."

According to Playbill, she is in talks to star in a new film version about the ur stage mother "Mama Rose". Other reports have the diva, currently atop the box office charts in her Meet the Fockers role, directing and producing as well. That Babs, always multi-tasking. We heartily approve of Babs returning to musical comedy, her true yet abandoned once-in-a-century gift, and we get that she'd want to scale the musical Mt Everest of "Mama Rose". Many divas have tried their hand at the enormous role. Streisand, at 68 years of age, would definitely be the oldest filmed Mama Rose. Which isn't a big deal since you do need a BIG performer except that the musical is about a mother's tempestuous relationships with her young children who she carts around on the vaudeville circuit as child and then teen performers until the elder kicks free of Mama (and clothing) to become the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

Well, maybe she'll pull it off. She did famously sell herself as "Second Hand Rose" already.

The major Mama Roses to date (Gypsy never stays away for long):

• Patti Lupone (2008 Broadway revival, Tony Award)
• Bernadette Peters (2003 Broadway revival, Tony nomination)
• Bette Midler (1993 TV movie, Emmy nomination, Globe winner)
• Tyne Daly (1989 Broadway revival, Tony Award)
• Angela Lansbury (1975 Broadway revival, Tony Award)
• Rosalind Russell (1962 Film, Globe winner -- snubbed by Oscar)
• Ethel Merman (1959 Original Broadway musical, Tony nomination)

Which was your favorite? (I've only see Russell, Midler and Peters and, despite her divisive reviews, Bernadette Peters was my favorite. How about them eggrolls?)

(Remember when Hugh Jackman had super long hair? Hee.)

Hey you know what?

Forget Babs. Wasn't Sigourney Weaver supposed to star in a non-musical version sequel of sorts called G String Mother? That one was about Mama Rose's daughter "Gypsy Rose Lee" in her later years after retiring from stripping. Maybe that project got cancelled? It no longer has an IMDb page. Sadness. That sounded interesting.