• David Poland talks “In a Better World” with the film’s director, Susanne Bier. [The Hot Blog]
• The HFPA counter-sues it’s former publicist. [The Wrap]
• Michael Moore is suing Harvey Weinstein for “Fahrenheit 9/11” profits. [TMZ]
Tag: Michael Moore
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2/8 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: HFPA counter-sues, Moore wants more ‘9/11’ money, how Harvey got his groove back
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Kathryn Bigelow elected to AMPAS Board of Governors
Well, this is a pretty nifty ascent for a director whose seven previous features received not a sniff of an Oscar nod between them. Four months after becoming the first female Best Director winner in Oscar history, Kathryn Bigelow has been named one of three first-time electees to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors.Joining Bigelow are two other previous Oscar champs: documentarian Michael Moore (I guess AMPAS brass don’t hold a grudge over that acceptance speech) and one of the greatest editors in the history of the medium, Anne V. Coates (“Lawrence of Arabia,” “Out of Sight”). Congratulations all round.
To give you an idea of the exclusivity of the honor, AMPAS has only 43 Governors in total — three for each of their 15 branches (which the exception of Makeup, which has a single representative). Bigelow therefore joins Martha Coolidge and Edward Zwick in leading the Directors branch. Interesting that this long male-skewing branch should now have two female Governors.
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Michael Moore on ‘Hurt Locker’ politics
One of the most common lines (usually used in praise) on our newly-crowned Best Picture winner is that it’s deliberately apolitical, taking no sides in the Iraq conflict as it aims simply to present the soldier’s experience on the ground. Kathryn Bigelow herself dismissed that as something of a misconception in a recent interview with Steve Pond:I guess my feeling is that graphic portrayals of innocent children killed by bombs, and soldiers incapable of surviving catastrophic explosions … I think that’s pretty clear. And then also, to add to that, the movie opens with a quote, “The rush to battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” So it’s definitely taking a very specific position.
Blogging last night on the Oscar race, Michael Moore says much the same thing — less tacitly, of course, than Bigelow:
The truth is “The Hurt Locker” is very political. It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this. That’s why the right wing has attacked the movie. They’re not stupid — they know what Kathryn Bigelow is up to. No one leaves this movie thinking, “Whoopee! Let’s keep these wars going another 7 years!”
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11/20 Oscarweb Round-up
• With his directorial debut “The Merry Gentleman” on the way, Michael Keaton gets a profile across the pond. [The Guardian]• Laura Almo sits down with “Up in the Air” editor Dana Glauberman. [Editors Guild Magazine]
• “Avatar”‘s Sigourney Weaver remembers the days when James Cameron’s crews didn’t live in fear. [Vulture]
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The Telegraph picks the decade’s Top 100
I’ve lately been immersed in a marathon of DVD viewing and re-viewings, catching up on films that slipped through the cracks and reassessing former favorites — all in preparation for my own year-end “Best of the 2000s” list.It’s a process that has resulted in some unexpected fringe challengers (“Longing,” an underexposed work of New German Cinema, won’t leave me alone), as well as some shifted perspectives (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Distant,” which I adored on first viewing six years ago, burned a little less brightly second time around). Nat Rogers is currently doing similar homework at the Film Experience, on a year-by-year basis.
At this stage, I have only a faint idea of what my list will eventually look like, but I’m already fairly sure that it will have little in common with the Top 100 of the decade that has just been unveiled at The Telegraph. Compiled by the British paper’s three critics, including IC friend Tim Robey, it’s an interesting and occasionally perplexing list.
They state upfront that their aim is to represent the decade’s “pick ‘n mix” culture, though the headline promises the decade’s “Top 100 movie masterpieces.” “Mamma Mia!” and “Saw,” both in the top 20, may fit the former description, but “masterpieces” they ain’t. Then again, popularity or influence aren’t the principal criteria either, as the list includes such obscurities as “Los Angeles Plays Itself.”
Whatever the system of selection, the result, you may or may not be thrilled to hear, is that Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is the film of the 2000s.
(More, including the Telegraph’s Top 20 films, after the cut.)
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10/8 Oscarweb Round-up
• Jamie Foxx wants “Ray” director Taylor Hackford to tackle the actor’s planned Mike Tyson biopic. [MTV Movies Blog]• Jeffrey M. Anderson talks to “A Serious Man” star Michael Stuhlbarg. [Green Cine Daily]
• Patrick Goldstein wants to know why Michael Moore got dolled up for Sean Hannity. [The Big Picture]
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10/6 Oscarweb Round-up
• Steve Pond asks five important questions about the expanded Best Picture category. #1, #3 and #5 have been covered at length in this space. #2 is philosophical and worth considering. #4 is a practical issue at hand, I imagine. [The Odds]• On set with the Coens directing “A Serious Man.” [MakingOf]
• Nicolas Winding Refn talks “Bronson”‘s Pet Shop Boys alterna-score, among other things. [The Playlist]
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10/2 Oscarweb Round-up
• Maurice Sendak’s one nit-pick with the adaptation of his “Where the Wild Things Are.” I agree with him. [io9]• Capturing the miniature worlds of the film. [Los Angeles Times]
• Adding a new dimension to Woody and Buzz Lightyear. [New York Times]
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9/30 Oscarweb Round-up
• Roger Ebert talks “Capitalism: A Love Story” with Michael Moore. [Chicago Sun-Times]• Noah Forrest stands up for Megan Fox against a weird culture of hatred toward the actress. [Movie City News]
• George Clooney vs. George Clooney at the November box office. [Vulture]
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“Solipsism” and Moore on Maher
Last night, on Maher, [Michael Moore] talked about wanting to make a movie that was so outrageously honest that no studio would ever fund another one of his movies. Epic Fail, Mike. There is not a single thing exposed in the body of Capitalism: A Love Story that Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, David Letterman, and even Jay Leno haven’t already mocked… and mocked in a more funny way. No one needed a film to tell us that bailing out banks sucks and that people being thrown out of their houses – that they took insane loans on, of their own greedy accord, btw – at the same time feels like a shot in the gut. America gets it.
You used to convert. Now all you seem to want to do is to preach to the converted.
I truly love your work and believe in your gift, Michael Moore. But you need to get further out ahead of the news cycle or you become just another f-ing talking head for the liberals instead of the idiots of Fox News who do the same crap on the other side.
From David Poland’s dismissal of Michael Moore’s latest in a post titled “Solipsism: A Love Story” at The Hot Blog. And from last night, Moore on Real Time, after the jump…
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9/15 Web Round-up
• James Rocchi sits down with Jason Reitman to talk “Up in the Air.” [AMC TV]• Jeffrey Wells bangs the Best Picture drum for Rodrigo Garcia’s as-of-yet un-acquired “Mother and Child.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]
• Michael Douglas talks “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” [Empire]
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Michael Moore sticks foot in mouth
I recently had a conversation with someone about Michael Moore and why he has a dicey professional reputation, and the answer — not to put the filmmaker on the couch — was interesting. Here’s Moore, making money hand over fist yet crying out against the evils of capitalism and the greed of corporatism. Perhaps it triggers some sort of guilt/self-loathing.At Venice over the weekend, it seems Moore tried to address that in some way, but he might have effectively discontinued his Hollywood career in the process (though that seems to be fine by him):
In an outburst…that could spell the end of his Hollywood career, Moore turned on a roomful of executives from the film company that bankrolled his latest movie and ridiculed them as the perfect example of a capitalist corporation he criticises in his new film, before pointing out that he is now wealthy enough to make his own.
Moore, whose film Capitalism: A Love Story is in the festival’s official competition, stood in front of executives from the big-budget studio Paramount and openly mocked them. “Why would these companies give money to me, a guy who is diametrically opposed to everything they stand for?” he said.
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9/9 Web Round-up
• Roger Deakins, Alexandre Desplat and Colleen Atwood added to Hollywood film fest honorees. [Variety]• Matt Damon talks “Bourne 4.” [Empire]
• Viggo Mortensen planning an early retirement after the release of “The Road?” [Cinema Blend]
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REVIEW: “Capitalism: A Love Story” (***)
Venice Film FestivalIt was well before Michael Moore dropped an extensive archive-footage chunk of a Franklin D. Roosevelt speech into the last reel of “Capitalism: A Love Story” that the following thought entered my head, but the appearance of FDR and his homespun common sense crystallized it: Michael Moore is this generation’s Frank Capra.
By that token, “Capitalism: A Love Story” – an artlessly effective slice of rah-rah rhetoric more sincerely idealistic than anything the director has yet put his name to – represents Moore’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
A film made in the infant stages of vast social healing (substitute the end of WWII for the beginning of the Obama presidency), it uses its transitional timing to examine alternately the America that was, could have been and hopefully will be.
As with the prototypical Capra film, “Capitalism” places its faith in the American everyman, while blanketing evil as a vaguer collective, defending the rights and ability of the former with unashamed sentimentality and sledgehammer subtlety.
The bait for the filmmaker’s multiple critics to seize upon is left prominently and deliberately exposed – the film is a veritable compendium of all Moore’s most manipulative muckraking tactics, whether it’s the wilfully decontextualized use of vintage news clips or the breathtaking exploitation of having an ordinary Joe tearfully read a love letter to his deceased wife on camera. No button is left unpushed in the service of an argument that already doesn’t have to work very hard to win over the liberal public, but Moore isn’t one to leave much to chance.
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8/5 Web Round-up
• Tom O’Neil wonders whether “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” is Razzie-bound. [Gold Derby]• Devin Faraci, meanwhile (one of the “easy marks” Paramount screened the film to over the rest of the nation’s critics), comments on the “No ‘Joe’” brouhaha. [CHUD]
• And Steve Weintraub talks to the film’s screenwriter, Stuart Beattie. [Collider]
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Venice lineup includes ‘The Road,’ ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’
(UPDATE: For whatever reason, my initial source failed to mention that George A. Romero’s latest zombie opus, “Survival of the Dead,” is also in competition.)In years past, the Venice Film Festival has unveiled several titles that went on to figure significantly in the awards season ahead — “Brokeback Mountain,”The Queen,” “Far From Heaven” and “Vera Drake” all began their journeys with major wins on the Venetian Lido. Last year alone gifted us with “The Wrestler,” “Rachel Getting Married” and this summer’s hot property, “The Hurt Locker.”
However, looking down the list of list of titles in competition at this year’s fest, it’s hard to tell if there are any selections that could go a similar distance.
As usual for the festival, it’s a Euro-loaded menu — and a tasty one at that, featuring new offerings from the likes of Claire Denis, Fatih Akin and Jacques Rivette — while, as with Cannes this year, the U.S. contingent is on the small side. (There is, incidentally, one “surprise film” film in competition, so the speculation is not yet over.)
Now is as good a time as any to reveal that I have an invested interest in the lineup, as I’m attending the festival for the first time, so we’ll be bringing you all the Venice news and reviews first-hand for a change.
(More details, and a full list of films in competition, after the cut.)
