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The bloggers over at Vulture must have drunk the Kool-Aid. Or maybe they just LOVE Andrew Stanton. But their not-so-hidden agenda to stump for Wall-E's Oscar nom is getting the best of their senses. Lane Brown has been closely following Wall-E's Oscar future for some time. Then it started getting heated when Jessica Coen became annoyed that EW's Dave Karger for not predicting a nomination. Then it somehow morphed into the hottest film story of the month. Jan. 2 Brown writes a headline: "Jeffrey Wells Finally Relents, Predicts a Best-Picture Nomination for Wall-E." Then yesterday two posts: one claiming Wall-E's EVE had a single vote to be considered for a nomination and then later that Wall-E's director, Andrew Stanton, was snubbed by the Directors Guild. Then more on the subject today.
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Yesterday we received a DVD screener of the first few episodes of United States of Tara, the new Showtime drama that stars Toni Collete as a woman living, unmedicated, with multiple personalities. It's a bizarre premise on the surface, and the biggest question seems to be: Is this gonna be depressing or funny? I mean, if you've seen Sally Field's portrayal of a woman suffering from the disorder in the 1976 TV movie Sybil, you know this reality can be freakin horrific. Instead, Diablo Cody (yes, the over-hyped Juno scribe) has managed to take the modern dysfunctional family with unusual sidelines that have been the latest bread-and-butter of HBO and Showtime and make Dissociative Identity Disorder (the new classification of multiple personality disorder) seem like crazy hi-jinks for the whole family.
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The Alliance of Women Film Journalists like to get a little opinionated when it comes to their annual EDA Awards. This year, they gave their top honor of Best Film to Slumdog Millionaire and Best Director to Danny Boyle. And Kate Winslet (The Reader and Revolutionary Road) and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) tie for Best Actress. OK, got it.
But then we get Actress Most in Need Of A New Agent: Kate Hudson. And we can understand the ambivalence for Mamma Mia! and The Women tying for Movie You Wanted To Love But Just Couldn't. But we have to wonder about this one: Best Leap from Actress to Director Award going to Helen Hunt for Then She Found Me. OK, ladies. Time to explain.
I'm still surprised at how few people are familiar with Derek Jarman's films. While other eccentric, avant-garde filmmakers, such as Pasolini, seem to gain more attention and accolades as time passes, Jarman's reputation has withered in some fashion. His longtime collaborator, the actress Tilda Swinton, has recently risen to Hollywood success in some respects. And she seems to be using her newfound power for good: By appearing in the Isaac Julien-directed documentary Derek. The doc, which played at MoMA earlier this year, is now available from Kino, and has also been included in an eclectic four-disc box set that includes Jarman's earliest film, Sebastiane, as well as The Tempest and War Requiem.
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Is Disney planning a new effort to indoctrinate the youth of America? Or is TCM (previously known as Turner Classic Movies, Ted Turner's way of airing his uber collection of archived films) soon going to be bought up by Disney? It's the question that arises when watching the made-for-TV doc The Age of Believing: The Disney Live-Action Classics, which will premiere tonight on TCM and starts a month-long orgy of Disney films—Swiss Family Robinson, The Parent Trap, The Black Hole, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, etc.—on the cable network.
Like many youngsters, I soaked up the weird flicks on ABC and later The Disney Channel, when it had less original programming and they dredged up everything from their backlist to play 24-7. That's the only excuse for why I watchd Darby O'Gill and the Little People 20 times. So I was intrigued to see what the backstory was for Disney's slew of live-action films that spanned from the 1950s to early '80s. But The Age of Believing, partly narrated by Angela Lansbury (who starred in Bedknobs and Broomsticks) is pure hagiography, with talking heads like film "critic" Leonard Maltin and Disney Board Director Emeritus Roy E. Disney spreading the gospel without nary a critical word. No talk of the way Walt was a mastermind of so many insidious ideas, how he strong-armed government into giving him sweet tax breaks and assisted in his landgrab schemes. There's a hint at the controversy with P.L. Travers in the making of Mary Poppins, but it's cut short. And Kurt Russell (whose career started with the studio) can't be muzzled and seems to be about to spill some beans, as does Haley Mills, on ol' Walt, but it never happens. The duds like The Black Hole never get discussed and everything is wrapped with a tidy little bow with Tron (which will not be aired on TCM, unfortunately).
The whole thing feels like a 2 hour advertisement for the Disney machine. There's no discussion about the horrible remakes of such classics as The Absent-Minded Professor or Pollyanna, but this arrangement between media behemoths is peculiar enough to make us ponder some potential collaboration between the two. Is it time for an Apple Dumpling Gang remake or a Herbie Rides Again with some new souped up car (this one an American car, natch) as an advertising vehicle? We'll all just have to wait and see.
