I Dreamed a Dream That The Film Version of Les Miz Would Be Awesome.

It came true.

Tom Hooper, looking very confident, took the stage at Alice Tully this afternoon to welcome everyone to the screening with a Happy Thanksgiving and a confession that he had finished the film at 2:00 AM in time for today's all guild screenings, the very first! If we were sitting there "It must mean I've finished it," he quipped.

Though reviews are embargoed until December 11th, let it suffice to say (for now) that my fears about the film adaptation of the classic musical were alleviated quickly. MORE...

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THR Actress Roundtable Final Thoughts

But what she really wants to do is laughSee Part One for the full video and commentary on first half hour

The Hollywood Reporter's Actress Roundtable has become an event I impatiently await more than any other non-awards part of the season. It's how I used to feel about Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue before too many dud covers and too many other types of issues using that template. But I digress. Though I am deeply thankful for actresses on every day of the year it IS Thanksgiving so I'm eager to get to the festivities with my family of friends. So just a few quick final notes on each actress before turkey and pie!

Naomi Watts
Her palpable terror about auditions is fascinating when you pause to connect it with the exact moment that essentially made her a star: her persona-switching audition scene in Mulholland Dr. Unlike Anne Hathaway my tendency is not to go pollyanna and I completely don't believe that 'everything happens for a reason' as most people are so fond of saying in a soothing way when bad things happen but maybe those years of career trauma were worth it because Mulholland Dr just wouldn't have been so special without her absolute genius in that dual role. (I do not find her amnesia about I ♥ Huckabees amusing. That movie is so great and she is quite funny in it. "Fuckabeeeees!")

Helen Hunt
The Sessions star flips the questioning on to the reporters who completely lie through their teeth 'Yes, we'd ask the men the same questions'  LOL. (I've never heard that 'when were you last victimized?' school of questioning toward male actors that the "when did you feel forced into doing something you didn't want to do?" question belongs to.)

Helen Hunt is a smart one. "would you ask the same question of the men?"

Sally Field

It's cute the way she's so embarrassed about how much she hogs the conversation but if you're a good raconteur, as she is, hog away. I'm desperate to see this spy movie that Anne Hathaway wanted to write for her and how random is that?!

Anne Hathaway & Marion Cotillard
I will think of little else for the next hour than which movies they were talking about when they expressed that they were in over their head and can't even watch it (Anne) and so miserable and in hate with the director that they couldn't perform (Marion)... though I suppose Marion's will be easy enough to figure out given the clues.

Amy Adams
Still looking like she doesn't want to be there in this Part 2. What gives?

Rachel Weisz
The most surprising contender in the roundtable and, quite possibly, the most fun to have a drink with afterwards. I'm really pissed to hear that the studios responded with "no one makes movies like that" about her proposed very solitary Julia Butterfly-Hill movie. Um... Cast Away? 127 Hours?

Let's end with a poll.

Each actress was asked to share a role she really wanted to play or write or make happen somehow. Which of their imagined movies do you most want to see?

"I would like to play a monster. Like the Gollum."

poll by twiigs.com

THR Actress Roundtable - Part 1

Live Blogged via Tape Delay! Woot 

I've embedded the whole hour at the bottom of this post. Please to enjoy.

00:01 Photoshoots. We begin with a lot of hand to throat or chest or hair gesturing. And... pose! This year's models in order of first solo shot in the montage: Marion Cotillard, Sally Field, Naomi Watts, and Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway and Helen Hunt . Weirdly Rachel Weisz does not get a solo shot. Don't they negotiate every second of these things: "AGENT!!!"

00:38 One thing that's immediately clear about this latest edition of the Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable -- now one of the best Oscar traditions -- is that they're upping their game. The camera work is more expressive, and the spacious well designed interior with white couches is less corporate bland than I remember and more conducive to the group therapy session that follows. Psssh, it is so group therapy!. I mean they start with a question about fear and move straight into rock bottom trauma of careers the "should I give up?" moment before the big break. 

00:43 Helen Hunt's "I'm thinking about the question" face is hilarious. PONDERING in all caps. [Lots more after the jump.]

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You Only Link Twice

Broadway World the SNL cast does "One Day More" from Les Miz to celebrate their lame one-day weekend. With Anne Hathaway as host. For the third time, bitches.
Vulture Joaquin Phoenix's apology (of sorts... if you stretch the definition of the word) for his comments about the Oscars
Cinema Blend Joe Wright talks about restored confidence and directing Anna Karenina. Calls the release of The Soloist "heartbreaking" 
Film Drunk on Channing Tatum the "Sexiest Man Alive" ... and other prizes
Awards Daily Ben Affleck to receive the "Modern Master" award at Santa Barbara Fest after only three films. (I think it's time you all bowed down to my stunning predictive powers about Monsieur Affleck. I predicted his ascendance to Eastwood Jr. status years and years ago!)

In Contention Skyfall's amazing un-Oscared tech team 
The Envelope overhears a "Who is that?" question in relation to... Jennifer Lawrence?!? Also: The Best Actress race.

Retro
Criterion Collection Ira Levin on the origins of Rosemary's Baby and what he worries about in terms of the film's legacy 
MNPP on the infamous and still-censtored 'Rape of Christ' sequence from Ken Russell's The Devils.  

Off Cinema For Fun
Fantagraphics Illustrator Wilfred Santiago illustrates Victoria Jackson's Election Night tea-party addled tweet meltdown
i09 studies suggest that mankind is getting dumber and dumber
The Advocate the internet's fascination with gay geek / political prophet Nate Silver of "Five Thirty Eight" fame
Boy Culture a new wax replica of Madonna for Madame Tussauds  

Feline Oscar Twins: Anne & Michelle?

In the hall of fame of superhero/villain catchphrases “oops” (Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises) never stood much of a prayer against “me-ow” (Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns), nor could the dark side self importance of 2012’s “there’s a storm coming Mr Wayne” ever best the sexier playful 1992 ‘dark side?’ retort “no darker than yours Bruce”  But catch phrases aren’t everything...even when you've got zingy ones like "life's a bitch now so am I" In the great Catwoman wars of popular culture, it’s always in some ways a draw. Every generation and every aesthetic gets their own James Bond and so it goes with all enduring characters which win several iterations. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle may never claim the easy universally agreed upon “Best Catwoman Evah!” victory you’d expect given Pfeiffer’s mammoth performance (give or take Heath Ledger, the most psychologically precise, overachieving & seismically inspired in superhero cinema) but what can you do? Before The Dark Knight Rises premiered I braced myself for the onslaught of “best catwoman ever” pieces which I knew would proliferate. In truth they would have even for a  performer less dazzling than Anne Hathaway’s.  Out with the old and in with the new is, generally speaking, the law that governs pop culture. It’s just How Things Work.

Catwoman watching Catwoman. Feline staring contest in 1...2...

With the recent news that Anne Hathaway would be campaigned as Best (Leading) Actress for the role, a strategic move which has been taken more seriously than I was expecting given that she has no prayer in hell of a nomination for everyone’s favorite good/bad girl in spandex, this Hathaway/Pfeiffer story wouldn’t leave me.

Twenty years back when Michelle Pfeiffer lept into the feline role vacated by Annette Bening she nailed the role winning “best in show” reviews, winning a massive new army of fans, achieving her biggest box office hit, and sailing on to an Oscar nomination for the year (albeit not as Catwoman). Leap forward a couple of decades and history repeats itself four times over…. Well three times over for now but we all know Anne Hathaway will make it four-for-four once Les Miz hits.

It's worth thinking about Hathaway and Oscar through the prism of Pfeiffer. It's not a perfect identical twin situation but the similarities don't end with "what happened with Catwoman." At the time of Batman Returns/Love Field Michelle was a 34 year old previous Oscar nominee who had been famous for 10 years and had already co-starred in one very major also-ran Best Picture nominee (Dangerous Liaisons). At the time of The Dark Knight Rises/Les Miserables Anne is a 30 year old previous Oscar nominee who has been famous for 11 years and has already co-starred in one extremely major also-ran Best Picture nominee (Brokeback Mountain). Both actresses played Catwoman in the summer and followed it up at Christmas time by starring in something more typically Oscar-friendly, Pfeiffer in a civil rights drama and Hathaway in an epic musical. 

On top of all of Fantine's problems... she never return her DVDs to the video store

But here's where the similarities end and Hathaway's Oscar story may have a much happier ending. For one, Anne Hathaway's Catwoman arrived in a culture that has moved past viewing superhero films as "fluff" and is therefore less shy about recognizing acting achievements inside of them. For another, the eventually nominated performance by Hathaway is likely to be "the right one of the two" whereas Michelle was chosen for the wrong performance -- not that she isn't very good in Love Field, but it's not the inspired no one else could do this work that her Selina Kyle was. Finally and most obviously Les Miserables will be no Love Field, a film that was barely released and was largely only acknowledged -- if it was acknowledged as all -- as a vehicle for a Michelle Pfeiffer nomination. If you want to stick to the Pfeiffer narrative Les Miserables is far more likely to be Hathaway's own Fabulous Baker Boys... only this time there's no Jessica Tandy in sight to steal the statue away from a glorious actress in the full bloom of her star power.