Will Oscar Hire "The Help"?

Here's a quickie conversation with Katey Rich and I about Tate Taylor's The Help and its Oscarable cast. We accidentally ran into each other outside the theater (hitting different screenings on the same day) so we decided we should have a brief chat.

How might the ladies campaign? Who really owns the film? Is this an Oscar vehicle for Viola and Emma or something more like momentum for a future Oscar?

Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are the title characters but we also discuss the work of Emma Stone, Sissy Spacek, Bryce Dallas Howard, and an unrecognizable Jessica Chastain if The Tree of Life is all you have to go on. And that was all I had to go on going in.

The movie opens tomorrow in theaters. Have a listen.

Katey and Nathaniel on "The Help"

Thoughts I Had... While Watching "Kaboom"

This past week I finally caught up with Gregg Araki's Kaboom which is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray. I still vividly remember seeing The Living End when it came out and the memory is vivid because it was so raw, like a gay garage band demo. The latest is a typical Araki as its obsessed with beautiful young men, polysexual love triangles and the apocalypse. 

Here are a few thoughts on the movie ... let's say five of them to be precise.

01 While Araki has been known to reuse the same actors, his obsession with youth means that he has to keep moving on from muses past. It must suck for 38 year old James Duval, for example, to be demoted to third tier stoner "The Messiah" after headlining in the past. For Kaboom Thomas Dekker gets the beloved son position front and center and I do mean front and I do mean center. That seems to be the only compositional choice Araki makes in the movie. Nearly every scene ignores the sides of frames entirely -- the art direction often consists of a black screen - and places one actor cropped close up dead center, usually Dekker with his blue peepers and vaguely frosted lips. Dekker is nice to look at, and I'll admit straightaway that betwen this and Cinema Verite, he's a more interesting and game actor than I initially thought when he whined through The Sarah Connor Chronicles. But I'm not sure he's ready for his close-up. Or at least not this many of them in one movie. You'd have to be a full fledged movie star to nail that many of them in short succession.

02 See what I mean about the composition...

Do you wanna f*** me?"

...asks Juno Temple's "London" while Smith begins to hallucinate from the party drugs in an early scene. This is about as forward as the movie gets about sex despite a narrative which includes the following [NSFW]:

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Q&A: British Ladies, Weary Superheroes, & "The Hours" for Men

I thought we'd experiment with a Q&A column so over the weekend I asked you to ask questions. Despite this summer's attempt to rebrand myself as a mutant telepath to rival Professor X, I can't actually read minds (unless I'm sitting across from you or holding something that belongs to you), so you had to type them.

So here we go. I'm answering half of them chosen somewhat randomly.

Robert: Do you think mainstream audiences will ever tire of superhero flicks? If so, which film will be the straw that breaks the camel's back?
Professor R: Yes, all things being cyclical. I predict it will happen with the Spider-Man reboot after the Spider-Man reboot... in 2019. (The window keeps shrinking, see.) Either that or the Wonder Twins: The Movie in 2016.

eurocheese: We've heard who'll be producing the Oscars (Brett Ratner and Don Mischer). Any guesses on a host?
Professor R:  It would be unfair for me to guess since I can see into the future. But I will tell you it's a solo act this year after last year's debacle and it's unfortunately not Andy Serkis covered in motion capture gear backstage and then projected onto the stage by WETA in a variety of famous beastly character guises from cinematic history: King Kong, Mickey Mouse, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Charlotte on a web, Jabba the Hut. (Damnit. That would have been so great. Why don't they let ME produce the Oscars? Fuck Brett Ratner!)

Mark: Is Michelle Williams becoming the next Renée Zellweger? She is showing up in 4 or 5 movies a year and seems desperate to win the Oscar.
Professor R: I don't understand the question. That's like comparing apples to oranges lemons. I don't think Williams is desperate to win an Oscar. She wouldn't be making Meek's Cutoff if she was. If she's desperate to win an Oscar she's doing a terrible job of showing it; quiet and serene on the campaign trail is generally not a winning strategy. 

/3rtfull: You're having tea with three famous women. Who are they?

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Goddess Behaving Badly

She's ba-aaaack!!! Look, it's Sharon Stone on the set of Gods Behaving Badly (via Zimbio). 

Goddess on the mountain top 
Burning like a silver flame 
The summit of beauty and love 
And Venus was her name 

-Bananarama "Venus"

She also goes by Aphrodite.

Gods Behaving Badly is producer turned director Marc Turteltaub's first feature so we have no idea whether to salivate or run for cover but the high-concept plot "Greek Gods living in NYC intervene in the lives of a young couple" sounds like the kind of thing that could go either way. It might be immense popcorn fun with lively star turns or the more common typical modern comedy which tends to rely on concept and stars (they've got both here) and forgets that you actually need ideas beyond them if you want more than a three or four laughs over two hours.

Beyond Sharon -- hugely watchable whether great or terrible -- John Turturro and Rosie Perez as Hades and his trapped wife Persephone sound like potential comedy gold, right? Other cast members include: Phyllica Rashad as Demeter, Edie Falco as Artemis, Christopher Walken as Zeus (top billed), and Nelson Ellis as Dionysus. The weirdest casting has to be Oliver Platt as Apollo.... uh, okay. I hope there's a more clever joke there than merely the casting of a rolypoly comic actor as the blindingly beautiful sun god.

True Blood 4.7 "Cold Grey Light of Dawn"

She hurts him to save him. Unless they're silvered all the vampires will walk into the sun.With Sunday night's episode, fang-bangers are now past the hump. This season's witchy storyline is now on its way to resolving itself. The halfway mark also suggests that from here on out we might have droppings that set things up for Season Five. 

Cold Grey Light of Dawn
We begin where we left off with Marnie (Fiona Shaw) wreaking havoc. Controlling vamps, as it turns out, seems to be getting easier and easier for her. With a whisper of "Resurrection" her former rapist Luis (Peter Macdissi) stakes himself with Bill's silver weapon after a scuffle. One vampire down, all the rest of them to go. Marnie wants them all to meet the true death. After the burst of action that opens the show (Tara also narrowly avoids death at Pam's rotting hands), things slow down considerably. We stop in on unhappy couples (Alcides and Debbie) still shaky couples (Sam &) and new ones (Sookie & Eric). Meanwhile, Tara dumps her lover and signs up with Marnie's vampire slaughter plans, Jason tries to avoid Hoyt "I'd rather be cooking then talking anyhow" and realizes (again) that he's hot for Jessica. Most oddly, Bill tells Jessica the Antonia story which seems like a really strange storytelling move. We've heard and seen this storyline via Marnie and Luis so many times now it felt like a "previously on..." in the middle of the show.

But any scene with Deborah Ann Woll's Jessica gives us great visuals. Such a screen face [spoiler image after the jump]

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