Reeling

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

Just as I was finishing entering the Oscar post below, the news broke that Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan apartment.

I interviewed Ledger at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005, when Brokeback Mountain was shown there. He was a little nervous about the movie and how audiences would receive it - it was the first time it was being shown to an audience in North America - but he was also immensely proud of it and happy with his work.

Ledger struck me as an easy-going, low-maintenance, in-it-for-the-work type of actor. He was also extremely gifted and seemed to still be in the process of discovering the depth of his own talents. I had been really looking forward to his turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight this summer. Now, watching the movie is going to be a melancholy experience.

Oscars got it right (at least the nominations)

If you believe, as you should, that 2007 was a good year for movies, then you have to feel fairly pleased with the list of nominees for the 80^th Academy Awards that were announced this morning.

Yes. there are always going to be unforgivable snubs and omissions, no matter how generously Academy Award voters share the wealth (not a single nomination for David Fincher’s Zodiac? Really?)

And if you’re Angelina Jolie, who was expected to earn a Best Actress nomination for her impressive performance as Danny Pearl’s widow in A Mighty Heart, you’re probably wondering how Cate Blanchett managed to squeeze her out in the category with a nod for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which everyone agrees was pretty terrible.

What’s worse (at least for Jolie), Blanchett is also nominated in the Best Supporting Actress race, for her astonishing Bob Dylan impersonation in I’m Not There. Yes, the Oscars can be unfair, even cruel. But they can also be completely bone-headed, which is something this year’s batch of nominees is definitely not.

The two best movies of the year, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, tied for most nominations with eight apiece, including Best Picture and Best Director. I don’t envy Oscar voters having to choose between the two: Both are remarkable feats of filmmaking, made with little attention to matters of marketability, and both have something to say about life in America.It’s a shame that only one can win, but it’s good that the Academy recognized their greatness,

Blood's Daniel Day-Lewis is up for Best Actor, and rarely has one of these races seemed like such a sure thing. It’s too bad, because the other four nominees – including Sweeney Todd’s Johnny Depp and Eastern Promises’ Viggo Mortensen - are all, if not equally deserving, at least just as deserving of the recognition.

Fellow Best Actor nominee George Clooney, whose Michael Clayton underperformed at the boxoffice in October (it’s being re-released to theaters this Friday: go see it), has to be feeling formidably pleased, since the movie scored a well-deserved seven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (for former screenwriter Tony Gilroy) and two supporting nominations for Clooney's two co-stars, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson.

In most any other year, a movie like Michael Clayton – a talky legal thriller - would have probably slipped by Academy voters largely unnoticed, snagging a nomination or two at best. This year, Michael Clayton got noticed, tying for second most nominations with Atonement, with seven a piece. Atonement, which is up for Best Picture (but not Best Director, which means it won’t win) and Best Adapted Screenplay, is a period piece based on an acclaimed novel. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of movie the Oscars love to honor.

But Juno, a scrappy independent about teenage pregnancy with a sharp, contemporary wit, might have been too cool and of-the-moment for the traditionally stodgy Academy members.  The fact that Juno scored four nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Jason Reitman), Best Actress (Ellen Page) and Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody) continues the trend seen over the past few years that implies Academy members may be loosening up.

Julian Schnabel’s remarkable The Diving Bell and the Butterfly didn’t score the Best Picture nomination it deserved, but Schnabel was not crying into his coffee this morning, since the movie did land four nominations, including Best Director. And Ratatouille scored five nominations, including Best Original Screenplay – a testament that the Academy is willing to recognize great work, even when it comes in the form of an animated film about a rat who wants to cook.

Casey Affleck is in the Best Supporting Actor race for his fascinating performance in The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, while his big brother Ben should feel pride at having directed Amy Ryan to a Best Supporting Actress nomination in Gone Baby Gone. Another actor turned director, Sarah Polley, scored a Best Adapted Screenplay for the drama Away From Her, while her leading lady, Julie Christie, earned a Best Actress nod (and will undoubtedly win).

Charles Ferguson superb documentary about the Iraq War, No End in Sight, got a Best Documentary nomination, which couldn’t be taken for granted, considering the long history of baffling snubs in that category. Fellow documentarian Michael Moore is also in the race with Sicko, but it’s probable Moore won’t need to prepare an acceptance speech this year.

American Gangster, once expected to be a major Oscar contender, only ended up with two nominations, but one of them – Best Supporting Actress nominee Ruby Dee – feels right. Another former hopeful, Into the Wild, also came away with just two nods, with another longtime veteran – Best Supporting Actor Hal Holbrook – scoring a Best Supporting Actor nomination.

Both Dee and Holbrook will be 84 by the time Oscar night rolls around Feb. 24. But even if Academy members couldn’t resist sneaking in a sentimental nomination or two, at least they made sure both were worthy. And that extends to practically every nominee on the list. How many years can you say that about the Oscars?

Will there be EIGHT Harry Potter movies?

Just because J.K. Rowling managed to finish the Harry Potter saga in seven volumes doesn't mean filmmakers have to follow her cue.

Although nothing is official yet, the early word is that the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be broken out into two movies, in part to accomodate the whopping 776 pages of plot Rowling crammed into the book - and in part, no doubt, to maximize the profits from the franchise by a few hundred million dollars more.

It would be great, though, if the rumor about enlisting Steven Spielberg to direct the last film turns out to be true.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" is coming

UPDATE: Sadly, The Road has been bumped to 2009, so we'll have to wait a little longer to see it.

Viggo Mortensen has been cast as the father walking across a post-apocalyptic America with his young son in The Road, a film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's follow-up novel to No Country For Old Men.

Australian director John Hilcoat (The Proposition) and screenwriter Joe Penhall (Enduring Love) will have a much harder time adapting McCarthy than the Coen brothers did with No Country: The Road is an amazing, superlative book, but it is also largely plotless and relentlessly grim. As recently as November, it looked like the movie was never going to get made, mostly due to the downbeat nature of the story.

If done right, though, I think the film could turn out to be something great. Charlize Theron has been cast as Mortensen's wife, and anyone who read the book knows although the role is tiny, it also leaves a deep impression. No word yet on who will play the kid.

Tom Cruise loves Scientology. Really, really loves it.

Wanna see something kinda scary? Gawker has posted a fascinating video of actor Tom Cruise going on and on - and on - about the wonders of Scientology.

I'm guessing the video is something new recruits would be shown during their orientation, since it has the slick production values and jazzy, nondescript musical score of a sales reel - like the kind of thing you'd be forced to watch during one of those timeshare condo hardsell weekend "vacations".

I doubt the Church will allow the video to stay up for very long, so watch it while you can.

Producers Guild of America nominations are in

Forget the Golden Globes. For a real hint of what the final list of this year's Best Picture Oscar contenders may look like, check out the nominees for the 2008 Producers Guild of America Awards, which were announced today.

The five contenders for the group's Best Picture prize are: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. I'm a little surprised (but not unhappy) that Atonement did not make the cut and that Diving Bell did.

Also, Juno has picked up tremendous steam in the past few weeks (it has grossed $71 million as of this weekend and is guaranteed to hit the $100 million mark). Considering the Oscar nomination ballots were due this past Saturday, there's an excellent chance it will end up as a Best Picture nominee, the way Little Miss Sunshine did last year. We'll find out the morning of Jan. 22, when the nominations are announced.

HD DVD strikes back

After the stunning defection of Warner Bros. to the Blu-ray camp, Toshiba has responded with a fire sale by permanently slashing the prices of its three current models of HD-DVD players. The cheapest model (HD-A3) now costs $150, the mid-range player (HD-A30) is $200 and the top of the line machine (HD-A35) is $300.

Combine those new prices with the stack of free HD-DVDs you get when you buy a player, along with the discounts available from online retailers, and it is now cheaper than ever to buy into HD-DVD, proving competition is not necessarily a bad thing.

None of this means, of course, that you'll be able to buy any new HD-DVDs to feed those machines a year from now. But they do make regular DVDs look almost as good as high-def. 

R.I.P. Dusty Cohl

I had the pleasure of having lunch with Dusty Cohl only twice - both times at Joe's Stone Crab, where everyone treated him like royalty and family - but I will always remember the two occasions fondly.

Cohl, who passed away yesterday at the age of 78 after a long battle with liver cancer, had sought me out to talk about the Floating Film Festival, his very popular brainchild of a film festival on the open sea that sails out of Miami every two years.

I ended up writing a story about the festival, but more importantly, I also ended up making a friend out of Dusty, who was an engaging, witty, vivacious raconteur - as well as one of the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic movie buffs I have ever met.

Here is a moving tribute to Dusty by Roger Ebert, who knew him a lot better than I did.

The number 82 in "Magnolia"

In honor of the opening of There Will Be Blood today, I went back through an earlier Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Magnolia, and grabbed a frame of every appearance I could find of the number 82. Click on the pictures to make them bigger:

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If you're unfamiliar with the reason why there are so many 82s in the movie: The answer is found at the start of the quiz game show sequence, in which an audience member is holding up a sign that is taken away by an usher (played by Anderson himself). You can see the sign on the left hand side of this frame:

Later, during the peculiar rainstorm that happens at the climax of the movie, the same Exodus 8:2 reference appears on billboards, store signs and bus stops everywhere:

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Go here for more Magnolia-related coolness.

Bowling for "Blood"

Much ado has been made about the wild last scene of There Will Be Blood, which takes place in a bowling alley and, among other things, includes the highly quotable line "I drink your milkshake!"

Some critics have even taken director Paul Thomas Anderson to task, saying that scene nearly ruins everything that has come before it. Here's a quote from Anderson talking about the sequence, taken from the story that ran in today's paper:

''Listen, I can completely understand whatever people's feelings about that scene might be,'' he says. ``But from the very beginning, when we started cutting the film, we always knew what we were doing was we were going to the bowling alley.

'It wasn't like `Yeah, we originally had this other ending, but Paramount asked us if we could do something kind of crazy and outlandish instead.' This movie was built to get to the bowling alley.''

Anderson was a little talked out by the time we got around to discussing the movie's title, which is apparently derived from the Book of Exodus, Chapter 7, Verse 19. ("There will be blood everywhere in Egypt, even in the wooden and stone containers.")

"We didn't want to call it There Will Be a Morally Ambiguous Ending," is all Anderson would say about that.

Tilting at windmills

A Save HD-DVD! Petition has gone up in hopes of getting Warner Bros. to rescind their decision to go Blu-ray exclusive. The number of signatures is growing by the minute, but now that New Line Cinema and HBO have followed their parent company's lead and gone Blu-only as well, it is highly unlikely - OK, impossible - that the petition will have any effect.

The two remaining studios supporting HD-DVD, Paramount and Universal, are rumored to be in negotiations to announce Blu-ray support practically any moment now. In other words, visit the cool HD-DVD website while you still can, since it's probably not going to exist much longer.

Why does Rambo look so sad?

Maybe because he heard Lionsgate is not going to be screening Rambo in advance for critics.

A quicker than expected death for HD-DVD?

According to the Financial Times, Paramount Pictures is poised to follow Warner Bros.' lead and abandon HD-DVD for its rival Blu-ray. Although Paramount stopped releasing titles earlier this year on Blu-ray in exchange for 150 million in a deal with the HD-DVD camp, there was apparently an escape clause in the contract that gave the studio an out if Warner went blue.

Paramount's defection would only speed up what already seems inevitable, since with only two studios on its current roster (Paramount and Universal), HD-DVD can't possibly hope to stay in the game.

Blu-ray wins the format war

Now that Warner Bros. will be dumping HD-DVD and releasing their titles exclusively on Blu-ray, the end is near for the high-def war that has been raging between the two formats since 2006.

With only two major studios left in its corner (Universal and Paramount) versus Blu-ray's four (Warner, Disney, Sony and Fox), it would seem HD-DVD's days are numbered. Rumors are swirling that the Blu-ray Association paid Warner a whopping $500 million to join their side.

More details are bound to emerge from the Consumer Electronics Showcase conference beginning tomorrow in Las Vegas. Ironically, the HD-DVD camp has canceled a pre-show press conference scheduled for tonight where some insiders say they planned to announce Warner was giving their format exclusivity.

Regardless of whether or not the studio was bought off at the last minute, the killing blow has been delivered.