NYFF: A Few Thoughts on "Her"

Jose here. The New York Film Festival is coming to its end this weekend and earlier today we were treated to Spike Jonze's Her, which has its official world premiere at the festival tonight.

The film takes place in a not so distant future where human communications have evolved into something quite fascinating: people get paid to write handwritten letters, video games push your buttons and force you to try harder and computer operating systems have personalities that you can even fall for. This happens to the film's protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls madly in love with his OS named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

The film is a small masterpiece that will undoubtedly appear on endless Top Ten lists at the end of the year and here are a few random thoughts I had about the film and at the press conference that followed which included appearances from Jonze, Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara and Olivia Wilde.

More Jonze, Phoenix and ScarJo after the jump!

Click to read more ...

Uh Huh Link Her

Erik Lundegaard on lipsyching w/ talent via Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Jimmy Fallon
Guardian Kevin Smith talks about Ben Affleck's Bat Cave. errrrrr....
Empire The Help reunion! Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer will co-star in a James Brown biopic for Tate Taylor. Unfortunately neither won of them is playing James Brown (This aint no I'm Not There)
THR Hugh Jackman will play a supporting role in Chappie, the next sci-fi epic from Neil Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium)

Towleroad James Franco's Sal Mineo biopic Sal which seems like it was completed many years ago finally gets a trailer
Deadline good grief. They put up and then removed a Diana poster from the Princess's crash site in Paris?
NY Times Magazine talks to director Kimberly Peirce about her stop and start career, from Boys Don't Cry to Carrie 

Today's Must Read
Interview Magazine is featuring a conversation between Darren Aronofsky and Scarlett Johansson about Her (which Aronofsky loves and which she vocally stars in) and the funny but serious banter reminds us of why we love both of them.

"I've got Patrick"... Scarlett photographed by Patrick Demarchelier for Interview

Scarlett even indirectly adresses what we were talking about on the last podcast, how she's totally become a more nuanced dimensional actress in the past couple of years:

JOHANSSON: I like doing voice work, and I've also become increasingly interested in pushing different parts of performance, whether it's a physical thing or a kind of vocal nuance, so this seemed like it would be an interesting thing to at least talk about...

ARONOFSKY: Did you think about what you were going to do with your voice in terms of what artificial intelligence might sound like? Or was the goal always just to be as present and natural with the performance as possible?

JOHANSSON: Well, one thing that Spike really emphasized was the fact that the character, Samantha, is really experiencing everything in the moment because she's developing, so she doesn't have any preconceived ideas of anything. Even her programming is not really preconceived—she has no opinion on anything until she forms it right then, in the moment. So Spike just wanted it to have a real levity and, I think, a curiosity. He also wanted that level of depth. So more than just the tone of the voice, which was ultimately sort of unimportant. With her, it was about finding the shape of things and building this character that's almost a babe—but just fresh out of the package in every way.

Fresh out of the package in every way, eh? That's how she feels as an actress of late. The change is 100 proof intoxicating.

Podcast: Fall Film Preview... "Lady Stuff Coming Up!"

Labor Day Weekend is notoriously unfriendly to movie openings unless you can find a gem at your arthouse... so Katey, Joe, Nick and Nathaniel are looking ahead to the Fall Film Season on this week's podcast.

Films speculated upon include Ridley Scott's The Counselor, Alfonso Cuarón directing Sandra Bullock in Gravity, Steve McQueen & Michael Fassbender reunited for 12 Years a Slave, George Clooney's Monuments Men, Spike Jonze's Her, August: Osage County and many more. We answer these fives questions and you should, too, in the comments...

• Which two movies are you most excited about?
• Which performance are you most curious to see?
• Which film are you most suspicious of?
• Whose life is going to change this fall when their movie hits? 
• Which premiere party would you most like to attend? 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Please note: There won't be a new podcast next weekend since ½ of us will be festing in Toronto and dashing madly from screening to screening. 

Fall Film Preview 2013

Attack of The December Glut

I shall honestly try not to complain about the studios weird habit of shoving everything into one month of the year this year. I shall honestly try! I know the complaint is as tired as their inability to think outside of the Christmas Box. This post is brought to you by tonight's news that Sony Pictures Classic will open Foxcatcher, the true crime story of Olympic wrestler brothers and the schizophrenic who murdered one of them, the same day as their other Oscar hopeful The Past (December 20th) from Oscar winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. This post was also brought to you by the sorry news that Spike Jonze's fascinating looking Her was recently pushed back to December, too, despite looking like a perfect fall title... like a Lost in Translation kind of moodpiece that could really use some air on both sides of it to breathe a little in the imagination.

Herewith the current schedule for the last month of the year so save up your pennies and let your friends and family know you won't be available for their parties and reunions because Hollywood is greedy-greedy-greedy and Scrooge-like. They want ALL your money and your time at the tail end of the year. Unless you wanna just wait until February and try to catch up after the Oscar nominations. That's so much less fun, damnit! See, I'm not a velvet rope kind of person. I don't believe in exclusivity when it comes to the movies. I want everyone invited to the Oscar discussion party. Not just people who do showbiz as their work or have lots of free time in December and happen to live in New York or Los Angeles. (sigh)

two musicals kick off holiday movie season: Black Nativity and Frozen

Thanksgiving Weekend
BLACK NATIVITY
FROZEN
GRACE OF MONACO - expanding in December
MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM - expanding in December

December 6th
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS -- expanding for Christmas
OUT OF THE FURNACE 

Dave and Mark Schultz... to be played by Mark Ruffalo & Channing Tatum in "Foxcatcher"December 13th
AMERICAN HUSTLE --expanding for Christmas
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SEMI-COLON FILM TITLES
SAVING MR BANKS -- expanding for Christmas

December 18th-20th
HER -- going wide in January  
THE MONUMENTS MEN  
THE PAST  -- expanding in January
FOXCATCHER  -- expanding in January 

December 25th
AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY
LABOR DAY -- expanding in January 
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Ralph Fiennes directing) -- expanding in January 
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

That's it. That was my last ever rant this year about December glutting!

The point is to really embrace and enjoy the serious movies that open before the holidays. They are rare beasts that deserve your love. In fact, go pledge yourself to Blue Jasmine again!

Linksium

Photogenesis has brief promotional clip of Guardians of the Galaxy
IndieWire a catalogue of old movie magazines now available online
Empire the Fading Gigolo trailer - Woody Allen & John Turturro do their own version of Hung
Glenn Dunks on The Conjuring as all haunting movies. All of 'em!
i09 What is wrong and right about Elysium's mixed bag

CHUD First look at Channing Tatum (with poiny ears!) in Jupiter Rising
Cinema Blend Wagner Moura (Elysium) and John Leguizamo competing for a Pablo Escobar biopic
Gawker Christina Bianco does it again - 19 divas singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" 
Advocate with two new Hercules films coming, The Advocate outs the demi-gods gay side 
Variety annoyingness: Her gets moved into the December glut... as if November isn't good enough to make an Oscar run. Wrong! 

the 80s are inescapable
Variety 'we'll never escape the 80s' alert: Pope of Greenwich Village co-stars Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke and Daryl Hannah are all reuniting for a hitman movie called Skin Traffix. (*sniffle* no Geraldine Page this time.)
Towleroad Lady Gaga's new song "Applause"... which sounds suspiciously like Missing Persons to me. Or maybe that's just Gaga's voice.
Best Shot The Color Purple is coming (tonight! watch it in the next 24 hours and post somethin!). Next Wednesday The Bad and the Beautiful!

tv lolz
i09 wonders what the hell is going on with True Blood -- who knows anymore. Who cares? Such a hot mess.
Gayest of All Time This "dramatic retelling" of a recent Project Runway in pictures made me LMAO 
Vulture quotable Christina Hendricks wants to be on Game of Thrones post Mad Men