Two Graces at War

It's Julien your French correspondent to pass a bit of a contentious interview your way. After tampering with the ending of August: Osage Country and cutting 20 minutes off Snowpiercer, it seems Harvey Scissorhands is at it again. Grace of Monaco director Olivier Diahan spoke to French newspaper Libération (in an article published today) about his ongoing feud with Weinstein.

The disagreement is apparently the cause of the film's delay:

What’s complicated right now is to make sure that the critics will be able to judge my own version of the film, and not another one. But it’s not over yet, I haven’t given up. (…) There are two versions of the film: mine and his… which I found catastrophic.”

Quite a strong assessment from the guy who directed My Own Love Song, wouldn’t you say?

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"In years to come, they will continue to whisper your name NICOL... I mean GRACE"

The teaser for Grace of Monaco has finally arrived and it is one money shot of Goddess and/or Opulence and/or FYC Advertisement after another, all to further iconize Grace Kelly through another film icon Nicole Kidman.

It's an actressexual oroborus and I be gobbling it up.

Gobbling it up whilst fretting about the reviews and response to come. I'm not so secretly dreading the onslaught of negativity about 'how dare Kidman play Princess Grace' when discerning cinephiles or anyone who has actually watched their respective filmographies will surely understand that Kidman > Kelly. And anyone who can look past glamour iconography will surely understand that Grace Kelly was only 25 years old for 12 months of her life... that just happened to be the year of her life when the bulk of movies she's remembered for appeared (Rear Window, The Country Girl, Dial M For Murder) and looked different later on after leaving Hollywood. (Different being older).

Long after The House of Grimaldi has fallen, the world is going to remember your name, your highness. You are the fairy tale, the serenity to which we all aspire. And peace will come when you embrace the roles you have been destined to play.  For no matter where you are in the years to come they  will continue to whisper your name, the Princess Grace.  

The teaser's monologue is set to a lovely piece o' opera familiar to all little boys who obsessed over A Room With a View's original motion picture soundtrack in their bedroom in their parent's basement in Michigan. Hypothetical little boys from Michigan who now write film blogs in NYC which obsess over Nicole Kidman!

(Is that supposed to be Alfred Hitchcock in the first shot? Is a Costume Design nomination locked up for Gigi Lepage? Are you gagging over the beauty or just gagging? Tell us in the comments)

Dlink. The D is Silent

Mandatory the 100 funniest tweets of the year. Some of the movie folk who get punchlined: Liam Neeson, Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp.
Nicole's Magic Scans from Paris Match -- Nicole Kidman looks great as Grace of Monaco
E! Anjelica Huston is PETA's person of the year
i09 Futuristic predictions that came true this year
The Lost Boys farewell to Peter Knegt's long running blog.
Slate I've been talking a lot recently about people being hideous jerks when it comes to the topic of Les Misérables so here is a negative review from Dana Stevens which I think is completely fairly written and actually pretty clever in some of its digs. I've only ever asked that people be fair about it and state their biases if they have them (Stevens doesn't like the source material).

Unreality looks for gender flipping of Star Wars in the cosplay community. Sadly the gallery has no Prince Leia Lee. WTF?
Cinema Blend Quentin Tarantino wants to make a third revisionist history revenge flick called Killer Crow. This saddens me as Tarantino hasn't made a non-revenge themed film since Jackie Brown. That's a long time to be working one kind of narrative template, even if you do it extremely well.
Shadow & Act the actress who plays "Coco" in Django Unchained, a slave in a French maid's uniform, speaks about her experience on the film. And while we're on the topic ...

Spike & Quentin
I feel bad for Spike Lee. I really do. Even when people are trying to be fair to him, they end up dissing him. Press Play's Steven Boone wrote an excellent provocative piece on Django Unchained that has measured compliments for Spike Lee's work but it's still basically a slap.

Not to say that Django is an exceptionally subtle piece of work. Both Spike and Quentin have a Sam Fuller tendency to go all-caps, tabloid large when staging bits of provocation that would be juicy all on their own. But let's just lay it on the table: Tarantino is the better filmmaker, by many miles.

Meanwhile We Are Respectable Negroes reviews the movie (Quentin's) that does exist but still ends up critiquing an imaginary movie that doesn't (Spike's). And though the article is really interesting and makes strong points about the imaginary movie that's maybe still wildly unfair once you stop to think about it.

Meanwhile Quentin and others like Sarah Silverman are defending the controversial rampant use of the "N" word in the movie on the grounds that it's a period piece set during the time of Slavery. Which is a basically a solid defense. But I think the reason Quentin sounds like such an asshole spelling that out is because he's always used the word rampantly in his movies, even when that excuse was nowhere to be found.

ANYWAY... Spike really was in a lose-lose situation with Django Unchained. If he spoke against it without seeing it he'd be dissed. If he made anything like it he'd be crucified whereas Tarantino is celebrated (hi, double standards). If he hadn't said anything people would have surely kept asking him to. So he said that Slavery wasnt a Spaghetti Western but a Holocaust (which is true, duh) and now everyone is pissed at him. Would they still be pissed at him if he saw the movie and still said that? I think so. 

Today's Must Read
The Vote discusses the biggest problem with Oscar this year: the early voting deadline. Jon concludes with the message I'm always trying to send to the Academy which is basically this: Stop worrying and just be you. I'm glad others are starting to carry this message because my voice was lonely and choruses are louder. The Academy is Goliath. There is no David. And yet they're constantly changing to dodge the phantom slingshots. 

Nicole as Grace on Paris Match

I haven't mentioned Nicole Kidman in forever! (heh) The goddess has been busy. In addition to awards press for The Paperboy, she's been been filming Grace of Monaco and now she's covering Paris Match.

I tend to like Nicole's riskier messy projects more than her prestige polished ones. Give me a Dogville or a The Paperboy any day over a Cold Mountain or a Human Stain (anyone remember that one?). So I'm not looking forward to Grace of Monaco or The Railway Man, her 2013 films, in quite the way I usually look forward to her projects but I'll definitely see them for her. Stoker on the other hand...

I'm not sure that cover does Nicole any favors but I've been steeling myself for the inevitable "she's too old to play Grace Kelly" criticisms to come, which will conveniently forget that Grace Kelly lived to be 52 and that we only think of her as a startling young beauty because she was frozen in the public imagination for work she did in her early 20s (High Noon, Dial M For Murder, The Country Girl and Rear Window). 

Grace Kelly in 1961 when she was 32

The film takes place in the early 60s when Grace was in her 30s. I'm not sure where I was going with this so I'll quit now.

Nicole Kidman Wore a Tiara To Our Interview

Nathaniel, it's Nicole!" 

[!!!] 

After the briefest of pauses in which we both waited for my bewilderment to pass -- Nicole Kidman is calling me (?) -- she let out a hearty familiar laugh, instantly delighting and relaxed. She was, as it happened, a full hour early to our scheduled interview, having just finished a day's filming on Grace of Monaco. 

Academy voters will be filling out their nomination ballots online for the first time this year -- they started voting this week and will continue through Thursday, January 3rd. One prays that this shake-up to their old school paper & pen system might also shake up their aesthetic palette. If it does, you'll hear Nicole Kidman's name read out for her genius star turn in The Paperboy. In this polarizing sweaty film, Nicole plays a tawdry beautician with a thing for violent inmates. This is not, as you have undoubtedly ascertained whilst reading about the film, the type of role which is usually nominated. This is, as you will undoubtedly discover while watching the film, the type of performance that deserves to be.

Early in our phone conversation, I shared with her my awe at her latest quick-change. "You've gone from Charlotte Bless to Grace of Monaco? Talk about an about-face!". She didn't skip a beat in her quippy response:

Kidman on the set of "Grace of Monaco"

 I'm standing here in a tiara and a white beaded dress and Cartier jewels."

As well she should.

Herewith our conversation...

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