"L. DiCaprio" Will Do Anything...

"It's time the Academy learned the difference between giving me a nom and giving me a nod!"

L. DiCaprio (J. Edgar Parody) - watch more funny videos

So so funny. Wish I'd made it.

All Male Revue: Brad, Andy and Ryan (who is just too Ryan).

The Film Experience is known the world over for its actressy devotions but for this quickie link-list, we've gone Men Only for some reason. Must be all that Best Actor talk in the air... or rather in the internetz. On that front I would like to note that my Best Actor chart is HAUNTING ME. It went the way of the dinosaur once Moneyball hit... rendering past speculations moot and the html coding is suddenly acting up, too. Yes, Brad Pitt vaults up when the charts are all redone on Friday. Weekly updates, however minor, follow from then on. Aren't you excited?

Okay okay. Enough screams and tears of joy for weekly charts. Settle.

Hello Giggles a must-read letter to Ryan Gosling. "You have to stop. Just stop. It’s getting to be too much."
Oscar Metrics Mark Harris in the lonely outfield, doubting Brad Pitt's nominatability for Moneyball.  
In Contention surveys the crowded Best Actor field and talks Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon.
Cinema Blend  Justin Timberlake has already played one man who rocked the rock world (Napster founder in The Social Network.)  Next he'll play Neil Bogart who introduced 70s acts like KISS and The Village People to the world in Spinning Gold.

Towleroad Actor Sean Maher (of Firefly and The Playboy Club) comes out of the closet.
Movie|Line talks to Corey Stoll of Midnight in Paris career-boosting.

Oh and only because I know I'll forget. A very happy 50th birthday to Andy Lau tomorrow. He's been super busy lately what with festival appearances, multiple new films and headlining the Hong Kong Oscar submission A Simple Life which stars Deannie Yip (Best Actress Venice) as his life long nanny who suddenly needs him to caretake. Please to remember that Lau was Matt Damon before Matt Damon was Matt Damon in The Departed by way of the original film Infernal Affairs. Have you ever seen that one?  

Here's the subtitled trailer to his Oscar entry A Simple Life.

Box Office: Brad vs. Simba. And Other Stories...

Brad on the greenThe lion is still the king of the jungle. Moneyball's opening was very respectable but a bit softer than Brad Pitt's usual opening weekend numbers. My guess is that too many people who are pushed toward ticket-purchases by perceptions of quality rather than celebrity or subject matter didn't expect it to be as good as it actually is. I'm guessing word of mouth is strong and Brad's very-real bid for Oscar (who'da thunk it?) finds its legs quickly. In baseball you have to do a lot of standing around and waiting for the excitement to accumulate. Or so I gather. 

Thus Disney's most popular picture roars again from its jutting cliff peak. 

Box Office (U.S.) Baker's Dozen -estimates
01 THE LION KING 3D [review] re-release $22.1 (cum $390.2)
02 MONEYBALL [review] new $20.6 
03 DOLPHIN TALE new $20.2 
04 ABDUCTION new $11.2 
05 KILLER ELITE  new $9.5 
06 CONTAGION [venice] $8.5 (cum $57.1)
07 DRIVE [review] $5.7 (cum $21.4)
08 THE HELP [review] $4.4 (cum $154.4)
09 STRAW DOGS  $2.1 (cum $8.8)
10 I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT  $2 (cum $8)

Talking Points: Weekend, the terrific gay romantic drama we've been raving about (read my interview with the director) had the nation's highest per sceen average which is promising for its expansion plans.

Chris New (foreground) offers an invitation to Tom Cullen in "Weekend"

We have always hoped it would expand quickly. You deserve to see it! According to Indiewire our hopes will become reality.

Sundance Selects said they’re “thrilled” with the opening numbers and will expand through the major markets in the next two weeks."

Dolphin Tale once again proves that family films don't need anything in the way of pre-release buzz to do well. I'm so weirded out that it almost equalled the gross of a really entertaining Brad Pitt movie! (I expect that Moneyball will have sturdy legs over the next month or two though.)

Uh... I did not throw that tomato!Will Abduction's super blah but not altogether embarassing opening and the terrible reviews be enough to put a stake through Taylor Lautner's career? My guess is no. Besides, stakes can't harm you if you're already made of wood. (Hardy-har-har). Nevertheless, unless his acting magically improves, he'll be given a headlining opportunity on a procedural on TV in ten years time on his name recognition alone. He'll be working his whole life on name recognition, actually. Such is the power of kicking things off in a blockbuster franchise. (See also: the inexplicably long career death rattle and similarly suspect acting of one Hayden Christensen.

What did you see this weekend?
If you saw Moneyball make sure to sound off over in the review. I'm a bit surprised that Brad Pitt didn't win the weekend since my theater was packed even early in the morning (which is not common in September in NYC).

Review: "Moneyball"

Moneyball is an instant contradiction, a fine humanistic film championing an innovative but dehumanizing method of team-building, reducing all star athletes to statistical equations. The film has two stories to tell, that of a middle-aged man finally making his mark on the game he was supposed to rule in his youth, and the reinvention of baseball management to achieve a more equitable playing field with or without mega-funds.

The story begins after a disheartening loss for the Oakland Athletics. The humiliation is compounded by the loss of three star players who the A's don't have sufficient money to replace. General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) butts heads with owners trying to get more money and with his own management staff who are entirely resistant to innovative thinking. Enter young economics / statistics master Peter Brand (Jonah Hill moving up to the majors?) who frees up Billy's mind with his theories on why so many players are over and undervalued. They begin to make controversial and provocative changes which mystify or anger the baseball powers that be  including their own team's manager Art (well played by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

There's a smart visual well into Moneyball's first act in which huge banners of the A's three lost stars are dropped from their places of honor crumpling as they hit the ground like the deflating egos of management. Billy takes the leap of faith with Peter and they rebuild with new players, a team of misfit toys, who are all undervalued (or not valued at all). Shortly afterwards, when we see the stadium again, there is only one banner trumpeting one of the League's oldest fan-beloved players David Justice (Stephen Bishop) whose glory days are far behind him. 

Moneyball's solid screenplay (by Oscar winners Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian) has a good joke at the expense of metaphors but I can't resist this one. For all of Moneyball's strengths, from a solid cast with vivid cameos (Reed Diamond from Dollhouse is superb in a one-scene face/off with Brad Pitt) to able and sharp direction (Bennett Miller of Capote fame) and editing (which skims veritable mountains of statistical information, old footage, and emotional backstory) it really all comes down to one star banner: Brad Pitt unfurled. 

I've been in this game a long time."

Yes, you have Brad Pitt, yes you have.

In his two decades of stardom, Pitt's best work has generally happened within three types: weirdos he attacked with gleeful creative gusto (Tyler Durden, Jeffrey Goines, Chad Feldheimer), strutting men that basked in their own golden light (J.D., Rusty and Paul McLean), and family men with wounded machismo (Mr O' Brien and Detective Mills);  In Billy Beane, all of Pitt's strengths coalesce as if he'd been in training for this one. He's loosely idiosyncratic and funny (that goofy business after a "good talk" with the humorless Art is just wonderfully endearing detail), he harnesses his potent movie star charisma with weary grace playing a man who, unlike himself, didn't live up to his golden boy promise, and in scene after scene but particularly when visiting with his teenage daughter, he lets his worried humanity show; he feels like a failure and this daring move is his last shot at glory.

Brad Pitt's shiny star turn is so good, in fact, that it neatly blinds you to the film's minor flaws. No one, including the man himself, is reinventing the wheel here and for all the star light that Pitt gives off, the film doesn't use any of it to fill in poorly lit corners. It raises but never addresses troubling side issues like what to do with the understandable revulsion that greets the dehumanization of players (exarcebated by so few of the players having distinct personalities) and it has a strange inability to flesh out the important side story of Art's insistence on managing the team in opposition to Billy's plans. The scene wherein Art finally capitulates to a different way of thinking would be a superb bit of economic storytelling in most films but here, given the underlit subplot, it feels like not enough as a wrap-up.

Billy continually worries that all of his accomplishments will be dismissed if he loses the final game of the season. The film needn't worry about the same thing. The final game here is a beautifully elongated nearly sports-free quietitude while Billy merely contemplates his options and a coda that works as a reprise of one of the sweetest earlier scenes with tenderness and even gently needling humor as the credits begin to roll. Late in the film we're told "you can't help but romanticize baseball" and it rang so true, even to me! I don't know the first thing about baseball, nor do I care to, but I was nodding my head like some dreamer in the bleachers waiting to catch that fly ball.  B+ 

Oscar Notes: It's rare when late August / early September hype survives intact the following February but (for now) it's looking like this may well be the golden year for Hollywood's golden god. In the past I've stated that Brad would never win until he was in his 60s (they make the adonises wait) but I'll quite happily be proven wrong since I've been on Brad's team for twenty years. Beyond Pitt's likely nomination (a third... and easily his most deserving since Oscar's idea of his "best" work is suspect.) I think you can safely bet on Moneyball's statistical scrappiness factoring into several categories barring those generally reserved for eye candy films. In short: we need to update our prediction charts. 

Cinema de Gym: 'Megamind'

Editor's Note: In Cinema de Gym, Kurt writes about whichever piece of whichever movie was playing while he cardio'ed. I wish my gym would play movies.

Kurt here with the first Cinema de Gym column to tackle an animated film. Megamind seems to be the lesser of at least two 2010 CG toons to pin the spotlight on the villain instead of the hero (the greater, of course, was Despicable Me, that darkly random Steve Carrell curio). As the titular swollen-headed baddie, Will Ferrell even has a henchman he refers to as "Minion," a la those adorable Tic-Tac Oompa-Loompas that Carrell bossed around. Of what I saw, Megamind offers some cozy glee, with handsome, colorful action setpieces, but it doesn't take long to tell that it's low on the animation totem pole, and unlike Despicable Me, no worries if it's not on your catch-up list.

It also stars the voice of Brad Pitt, and by the time I walked in, Pitt's character, Metro Man, had already been vanquished/defeated/pushed-aside-until-the-winding-down-of-the-second-act by Megamind, his vainglorious nemesis. The centerpiece of what I caught was a scene in which Megamind and the movie's Lois Lane, a reporter voiced by Tina Fey, stand on opposite sides of a catwalk encircling a syscraper-sized Metro Man monument, admiring the curvature of his literally cut-from-stone features. At one point, the two – well, she and a shape-shifted version of our villain – head downstairs in a glass elevator, scanning the whole height of that muscular marble man.

It was a fitting bit of star-gazing during this special week of Pitt adoration. On Tuesday I caught the impressively, refreshingly sophisticated Moneyball, and I'm happy to say I've never been more pleased with a Pitt performance (if ever he deserved an Oscar nom...). I didn't get to hear the superstar's voice in Megamind, but I did get a little Moneyball parallel, as Jonah Hill voices Fey's reporter's flatly-rendered fat sidekick.

It's no news to anybody that animated features have become a go-to arena for comedians, whose nimble vocals are ever-amenable to over-the-top, rubbery-bright concoctions. Hill, like Seth Rogen, has become a very obvious casting choice, while David Cross (who voices that fish-headed "Minion") is a wee bit sad in just how often he's schlepping it to the recording booth. But, I guess we've all gotta make bank, and on that note, I'd much rather see Ferrell continue to pad his well-padded sellout pockets while...not having to actually see him. In that way, animation is good for comedians, assuming those comedians are ones who rose to fame, got greedy, and proceeded to say yes to every lousy project that came down the pike. The filters of fantastical illustration and family-friendly restraint work small wonders, and Megamind is to Will Ferrell what Kung Fu Panda is to Jack Black: a colorful gift of funnyman palatability.

Conclusions?

1. In this age of the especially tireless questioning of authority, Villain is the new Hero, even in kids' flicks.
2. Brad Pitt insists on being in my life this week. Redirected from my old address, the new EW with Pitt on the cover just arrived mere moments ago. Hey, I'm not complaining.
3. In truth, it's probably best that David Cross stay in the recording booth.
4. With their animation ventures ripe for corruption, and with their tendencies to freely sign on dotted lines, it's only a matter of time before we see Ferrell and Black team up for Megamind vs. Kung Fu Panda.

What's your favorite animated performance from a comedian?