Oscars 2017: Whew, That Was Awkward

So last year I got my worst score ever in my Oscar predictions (16 out of 24). Well, this year I got the same damn score. 

The one that I most wanted to be off on, LA LA LAND for Best Picture, I was wrong about, but not in the way I wanted, for, if you haven't heard, it was mistakenly announced as such.

It was really painful to watch the conclusion of the 89th Academy® Awards, which I saw broadcast on the big screen at the Rialto Theater last night, when the team behind LA LA LAND found out that MOONLIGHT was the real winner.

The presenters, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, had been given the wrong card - they had one for Best Actress, which had been given to Emma Stone (one I got right!) earlier in the evening. 

The moment when director Damien Chazzelle had to admit “We lost, by the way” has already been noted by many as one of the most embarrassing things to happen at the Oscars ever.

The Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan even wrote: “Not since a Chicago newspaper headlined ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ has there been a massive public screw-up on the order of what happened at the Oscars on Sunday night.”

So, yeah, that was a crappy instance in which MOONLIGHT’s thunder was stolen and the LA LA LAND folks looked way foolish. 

Maybe somehow it fits into our current world dominated by alternative facts and fake news. I dunno.

I will note that I thought Jimmy Kimmel did a good job hosting. My favorite line of his: “I want to say thank you to President Trump... remember last year when it seemed the Oscars were racist?”

Anyway, here’s the other Oscar predictions I got wrong:

COSTUME DESIGN: FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: THE WHITE HELMETS

FILM EDITING: HACKSAW RIDGE

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: SUICIDE SQUAD - That's right, SUICIDE SQUAD is now an Academy® Award-winning film. What was I thinking predicting STAR TREK BEYOND?!!?

LIVE ACTION SHORT: SING

SOUND EDITING: ARRIVAL

SOUND MIXING: HACKSAW RIDGE - I had this film down for SOUND EDITING. Live and learn.

Okay! So that’s that. Now let’s all collectively move on to a new year of movies that I’ll be wrong about winning Oscars next year.

This Oscar wrap-up post is sponsored by USB Memory Direct, my recommended promotional flash drive supplier.

More later...

RULES DON’T APPLY: A Warren Beatty Bomb Decades In The Making

Now playing at mostly empty theaters across the country:

RULES DON’T APPLY (Dir. Warren Beatty, 2016)

By this point it’s pretty apparent that Warren Beatty’s return to the big screen has failed to make a big splash. Beatty’s long gestating Howard Hughes project was released last Friday to mixed reviews and terrible box office returns, which is sad because it’s his first acting role in 15 years (his last was in Peter Chelsom’s dreadful TOWN & COUNTRY), and his first directing job in 18 years, his last being 1998’s far from brilliant BULWORTH.

Beatty first had the idea for the film in the early ‘70s when he found himself staying in the same hotel as the famously reclusive billionaire, but it didn’t have a screenplay until the ‘90s when he drafted Academy Award-winning screenwriter Bo Goldman to co-write what was then titled “Hughes.” It was intended to be Beatty’s follow-up to his last big hit, DICK TRACY, but things didn’t work out and the project was shelved.

Since then, it’s been in development hell, and many have thought it would never be made. Yet, here it is – just in time for awards season, now called RULES DON’T APPLY, starring Beatty as Hughes, and featuring a fabulous supporting cast including Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Matthew Broderick, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Beatty’s wife of 24 years, Annette Bening.

Actually, Ehrenreich and Collins are the real stars, as Beatty’s Hughes is largely in the background here, sometimes even in the darkness of sparsely lit hotel rooms or holed up in a curtained bed.

It’s 20 minutes before Hughes even enters the picture as we learn about Collins’ fictitious character, Marla Mabrey, who has come to Hollywood in 1958 to make it in show business. Marla signs a contract with RKO, in which she is provided with a posh house, and a chauffeur named Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich). Both Marla and Frank are waiting for a chance to meet their employer – she wondering when she will get to do a screentest, while he wants to get Hughes to invest in a real estate deal involving housing in Mulholland Canyon.

When Hughes finally makes his entrance, it’s in the aforementioned darkness of a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, in which the nervous Marla has a prepared spiel, but Hughes ignores her questions.

Frank also gets his meeting with Hughes over burgers at the end of the Long Beach dock where Hughes’ ginormous flying boat, the Spruce Goose, is stationed, in the middle of the night.

Despite having a fiancée (Taissa Farmiga) back home in Fresno, Frank has the hots for Marla and things get heated between them when she sings him a song she wrote called “Rules Don’t Apply.” The couple engages in a make-out session, smashing a glass table in the process. However, Frank’s coworker Levar Mathis (Broderick) interrupts and ends their lustful moment by showing up at Marla’s house to drive her to an engagement.

Meanwhile, the paranoid Hughes fears that he’ll be committed to a mental hospital so he figures that if he gets married the powers that be can’t put him away without his wife’s approval. When Marla sings her “Rules Don’t Apply” song to Hughes, it triggers the same smitten reaction, but this time her tryst gets consummated.

I bet Beatty thinks that the song, an original composition by Lorraine Feather and Eddie Arkin, is sure to get an Oscar Nomination, but, despite it not being bad, I'll be really surprised if it does.

It’s weird to say that a movie that has been in the works in one form or another for decades is underwritten, but it certainly is the case. Beatty nails the collection of ticks that Hughes was famous for including the habit of repeating the same phrase over, (though Leonardo DiCaprio did that better in Martin Scorsese’s far superior Hughes biopic THE AVIATOR), and his performance is one of the best things about the movie, but it’s in service of a extremely lightweight storyline.

It’s easy to see why Beatty was attracted to Hughes’ persona, as Beatty himself is an eccentric, reclusive, control freak. In Peter Biskind’s 2012 biography Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, journalist/politico Bill Bradley speaks of Beatty’s original concept being one that “could be a movie that really explains power and money in America.” That’s not what we have here at all. What this is a drawn out, largely dull tale of a love triangle that oddly resembles what Woody Allen did better in his period piece CAFÉ SOCIETY last summer.

Beatty’s co-writer Bo Goldman who once called himself “the world’s greatest living expert on Howard Hughes,” and who penned the also Hughes-related 1980 comedy drama MELVIN AND HOWARD, wrote a version of the screenplay 20 years ago that Beatty appears to have rewritten and rewritten until whatever spark that may have been there is gone.

RULES DON’T APPLY strains and fails to be an amusing and charming romp as there’s a severe lack of chemistry between its leads, and an indefinable purpose to the proceedings. It's a passion project without any passion.

There are a number of stylish touches that I enjoyed, such as the use of archival footage in establishing shots and in rear projection driving scenes, and the film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, but that is just the pretty packaging for a shallow, insightful-less premise.

At the very least, if this is indeed the swan song that Beatty has claimed, even though it bombed, it’s still a better movie to go out on than TOWN & COUNTRY. In many ways, that’s all it really needed to be.

More later...

Review To A Kill & 5 R-Rated Moments In PG AND G Rated Movies That Slipped Past The MCAA

“It's not really happening. It's a movie, and it's called acting.” - Dakota Fanning talking about her new film HOUNDDOG Okay, I got some DVD reviews and some babble 'bout R rated moments in G and PG rated movies so let's get started.

DVDS IN CURRENT RELEASE:

FACTOTUM (Dir. Bent Hammer, 2005) 

One of my favorite movies is BARFLY (incidently it's out of print on DVD - used copies sell for $89.95 - $200 on Amazon) in which Mickey Rourke portrayed Charles Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chimalski - a definitive movie drunk, a pouty poet, and an all around unemployable schlub. Well Chimalski is back, this time a splotchy-faced and cranky Matt Dillon fills his shoes. Dillon's take on the character is edgier with less of the humour than Rourke's but he's still the same schlub. 

Dealing mostly with the series of jobs Chimalski can't keep and interspersed with the destructive relationships (Lili Taylor, Marissa Tomai) he can't get a handle on, FACTOTUM doesn't have much of a plot but it does actually have a point. It's no BARFLY but after what some critics have mistaken for a inebriated exercise, Dillon's final monologue brings it all into sweet focus. 

IDIOCRACY (Dir. Mike Judge, 2006) 

Mike Judge's (OFFICE SPACE, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill) return to the big screen has an infamously troubled back-story (extensive re-tinkering, little distribution and almost no promotion), so it's recent DVD release will be the first time many are allowed to see it. 

Telling the story of 21st century every-man Luke Wilson who along with Maya Rudolph (SNL) is frozen in an army experiment for 500 years only to awaken to a collosally dumbed down culture where the President is a wrestler/former porn star, StarBucks offers sexual as well as coffee service, and Costcos are the size of Tennessee. 

The premise peters out less than half-way through and awful unneccesary narration annoyingly talks over full scenes of dialogue strongly implies further dumbing down of the movie in post production. Still there are some interesting attempts at socio-political satire and enough decent laughs involved to gain it a following particularly among fans of base level comedy. I've had those who lecture me on the worth of JACKASS, the SCARY MOVIE series and even CLERKS 2 so I know they are plenty out there who will dig it. 

BUGSY: THE EXTENDED CUT (Dir. Barry Levinson, 1991) 

"Dialogue's cheap in Hollywood Ben, why don't you run outside and jerk yourself a soda?" - Virginia Hill (Annette Benning)

Haven't seen this since it's original video release in '92 (didn't catch it in theaters in '91) so I don't remember it very closely and couldn't tell what was different about this new version but I enjoyed this new special edition much more than I expected. 

Based on the legendary mobster who ostensibly built Las Vegas and who Godfather fans well know was the inspiration for Moe Green (Alex Rocco) BUGSY doesn't quite acheive the levels of stylistic period piece lyricism it aims for yet it still works. Warren Beatty plays the right note as the slick vain enterprising yet not unromantic Ben Siegel (I know that doesn't sound like much of a stretch), Annette Benning puts in her usual silky never sleazy accompaniment and the rest of the cast is top notch (Ben Kingsley, Harvey Keitel, Elliot Gould, and Joe Montegna) James Toback's sharp script is worth singling out too. 

Levinson's directorial career has been spotty since (WAG THE DOG, ENVY, MAN OF THE YEAR, ugh) so it is nice to go back and re-appraise one of his most competant and under-rated films. 

THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (Dir. Kirby Dick, 2006) - Having been confused and weirded out by what the exact standards and/or rules of the MPAA's movie rating system I was excited about this film. I have to say though that this good-intentioned but ultimately misguided feature is fascinating but flawed as fuck. The idea of hiring private detectives to find out exactly who the people are who rate movies is a good one but the execution of said premise involving following SUVs around and getting un-insightful film of possible suspects is frankly a waste of time. Better is the interview material, the comparisons of what is permited between hetero and homosexual content and the background history of the MPAA and their former President Jack Valenti. I just wish it went deeper and was better structured - Kirby Dick appears to be passionate and dedicated and I wasn't as annoyed by his Gonzo-insertions as some were but this could use a bit more work. This Film Is Not Yet Finished, more like. Inspired by this documentary I thought it would be fun to look at: 

5 R-RATED MOMENTS IN PG AND G RATED MOVIES THAT SLIPPED PAST THE MCAA

1. HEAD (Dir. Bob Rafelson, 1968) – The famous 1968 photograph and NBC-shot film of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon is one of the most shocking and violent images ever presented to the world at large. It is effectively used alongside other frightening war footage in the LSD fueled mind-bending montages of this freaky envelope pushing movie in which the Monkees deconstruct their pre-fab bubblegum image. Thing is, this is a G-rated movie! Really Seems like someone at the MPAA saw that this was the Monkees and stamped a G on it without even watching it. 

2. BRAINSTORM (Dir. Douglas Trumball, 1983) - A good example of what often sailed by the review board in the days before PG-13, this virtual-reality sci-fi thriller that is most famous because of the drowning death of Natalie Wood that occured while shooting contains a shocking scene involving one of the bulky combersome devices that Christopher Walken is wearing in the picture on the right. A man has a heart attack while engaging in a simulated sex program with full frontal female nudity shown. I learned this the hard way when I innocently put the movie on when I used to work at a local video chain. Definitely not 'in-store playable.'

3. JAWS (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975) – Many bloody moments in this movie qualify it for an R rating but the skinny dipping girl who gets eaten within the first five minutes should of set up some sort of ratings red flag. On the other hand I saw the movie when I was a kid and don’t remember losing any sleep over it. 

4. BANANAS (Dir. Woody Allen, 1971) - Squirmy neurotic low-level products tester Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen) has very little luck in his meager life - even the simple task of picking up a porn mag along side copies of news publications like National Review invites public scorn. As he makes his choice of purchase we are guided through an explicit wall of porn magazine covers that did oddly only earned a PG-13 rating in a later video incarnation re-appraising.

5. AIRPLANE! (Dir. Jim Abrahms, Jerry Zucker, 1980) – There are a lot of scenes and elements in this famous disaster movie spoof that would be questionable PG material these days but the extreme shot of female full frontal nudity that occurs during a riotous panic when the passengers are told the plane is in jeopardy takes the cake! Of course it goes by so quick one could blink or sneeze and miss it. Looks like someone at the MPAA sure did.

More later...