Yes, No, Maybe So: "The Trouble With the Curve"

Longtime Clint Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz (producer or first assistant director on many Clint features) rousted Clint out of the director's chair and in front of the cameras for a father/daughter baseball scouting drama The Trouble With the Curve. Or is it a comedy? Let's break down the trailer with our usual system.

YES

• Always up for a father/daughter drama... and Eastwood gave that relationship all sorts of interesting edges and nuances and softspots in Million Dollar Baby. Plus in the interest of selling Gran Torino 2 with all those shots of Clint "Get Off My Lawn!" Eastwood maybe we're not seeing some of the meat of the central relationship in the trailer.
• Amy! Just saw her in Into the Woods in Central Park. She got majorly swallowed up in her wig (so big that from my bad seat I could barely notice her face) but I like that even if she might not have limitless range she is able to adapt her screen persona for drama, comedy, and musicals. That's a type of range -- the movie star type of range which is nothing to scoff at.
• Hei John Goodman!

NO and maybe so after the jump...

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Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

The Oscar winning character actor, star of 1955's Best Picture Marty, died today at 95. His career was so healthy that his IMDb page requires much scrolling through 200+ titles. The prolific filmography obscures the fact that he didn't even get started until this thirties.  Starting late isn't always a drawback when you've got the goods... particular for character actors; you can't have matinee idol looks and sell an everyman schlub like "Marty". Borgnine's career was so enduring that his latest completed role was a starring one: The Man Who Shook The Hand of Vicente Fernandez (2012) just recently debuted on the festival circuit. 

A career that long is bound to have its rough patches, its controversies and divisiveness. Borgnine generated some deserved internet ire seven years back for publicly refusing to see Brokeback Mountain (2005) despite voting on the Oscars. [The Film Experience's position on this has always been that AMPAS members should be required to see all nominees in order to vote on a win in any particular category. Currently you have to for foreign film but most categories do not require that you actually watch the movies.]

Ernest Borgnine bullying Monty Clift in "From Here To Eternity"Borgnine had been very active for a 90something actor. In addition to Vicente Fernandez, he'd done a lot of television, voicework on Spongebob Squarepants and popped up in a memorable cameo in the action comedy Red (2010). But it's his work in the 1950s and 1960s that will be his legacy: McHale's Navy, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch and two best picture winners From Here to Eternity (1953) and Marty (1955) among them.

Have you ever seen Marty? What role first pops to mind when you think of Borgnine?

Halfway House 2012. Lead Actor (Thus Far)

It's part three of our Halfway Mark rundown as we survey the film year thus far from January through June releases. It's been crickets thus far in terms of possible Oscar players (with the exception of one of these men -- but we'll get to him in a minute.) but that doesn't mean there isn't work to appreciate.

If I was forced to draw up a ballot right now...

explanations and Team Experience commentary after the jump

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April Foolish Predictions: Best Actor

Every year on the 1st of April we begin consulting our well used crystal ball. It's like "the Oscars, again? Don't you wanna know winning lottery numbers or something?" It's foolish to predict the Oscars before practically any of the contenders have screened but foolish can be fun.

This year the contest might be between two men playing beloved US presidents, Bill Murray as FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson and Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln, and even if it isn't that angle will get media play. Streep's win a month ago reminded us that Oscar has always loved political performances (if not overtly political films) and they literally can't go one year without having one of the four acting winners playing a real life character. (Benjamin Walker is also playing Abraham Lincoln this year but he's playing him as a vampire hunter so he doesn't figure into the chart.) 

Ryan Gosling has a few leading roles again this year but after the past few years it's clear that Oscar just isn't that into him. So we look to people they love nearly without fail like Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master. It's possible that he'll overplay the role of a charismatic cult leader but that might actually help with Oscar. They love Clint Eastwood more as a director than an actor but one last chance to honor him for The Trouble With the Curve, a father/daughter road trip drama might be too much to pass up.

At this point I'm most curious about Hugh Jackman's chances for Les Misérables -- I'm guessing they're very good but I'm also guessing that that opinion won't be shared by all -- and whether John Hawkes can fend off dozens of upcoming contenders and keep the heat from his Sundance success in The Surrogate as a man in an iron lung. 

Numerous leading men are coming but only five of them can win Oscar love. Other possibly interesting lead performances are on the way from Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Oscar Isaac, and of course Jamie Foxx as Django Unchained.

Who will it be? Here's my new guesswork.

How would you shift it?
Whose work are you most curious to see? 

3 Days Until Handsome Bludgeoning...

Oscar is an octogenarian so you know he's heard everything. He's been reviled, exalted, and called all sorts of things other than "Oscar" over the years. My favorite name-calling recently was from Daniel Day-Lewis. At the 80th Oscars in February 2008, he called our shiny man the "the handsomest bludgeon in town".

Remember that?

That's the closest I'll ever come to getting a knighthood so thank you. My deepest thanks to the members of the Academy for whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town. I'm looking at this gorgeous thing you've given me and I'm  thinking back to the first devilish whisper of an idea that came to him and everything since.

Mad Beautiful-Headed P.T.It seems to me that this sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad beautiful head of Paul Thomas Anderson.

I wish my son and my partner H W Plainveiw were up here with me, the mighty Dylan Frazier. So many people to thank. One amongst them would be Mrs Plainview down there, the enchantingly optimistic, openminded and beautiful rebecca miller.

I hope that all of those to whom I owe and to whom feel the deepest gratitude will forgive me if I say just simply 'Thank you, Paul.'

I've been thinking a lot about fathers and sons in the course of this. I'd like to accept this in the memory of my grandfather Michael Balkan, my father Cecil Day Lewis and my three find boys Gabriel Ronan and Kashel. Thank you very much indeed, thank you.

This is not Dylan Frazier. HW Plainview had to put on a few years first.

Only an actor as great as Daniel Day-Lewis could make you forget that they're actually elegant and erudite and endearing in person. When he's onscreen in There Will Be Blood, glowering and strategizing his heart pumping out only oily greed it's impossible to imagine that they're the same person.

When do you think we'll see a performance that massive winning Best Actor again? Don't say "the next Paul Thomas Anderson picture!" because then I'll have to remember that it's Phillip Seymour Hoffman who's starring in it. When do you think we'll start seeing production stills from The Master? Even with PSH leading I want. Gimme.