Christian Bale, Honorary Powerpuff Girl

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone fame is being roasted again as the all time champ of shameless Blurb Whores but that's not the point of this post.

While interviewing Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter, who seem to be in great moods (why wouldn't they be after the Globe & BFCA announcements?) Travers tries to entice Bale to serenade us with a little Newsies number. And why shouldn't he? Is there anything so wonderful as Bale crooning "Santa Fe" on horseback with that little red kerchief round his neck?

Travers doesn't get what he expects.



Unexpected delight: Wahlberg throwin' a little Boogie Nights encore in there.

Okay, I can't resist posting it... the best moment from Newsies bar none.



He has a lovely voice. Sad that he doesn't want to do another musical.

You Were Saying...? (Extended Thoughts on Previous Topics)

I pray my occasional 'look at these comments!' posts don't come off as desperate. I'm just a very chatty person, what can I say? Since we are all becoming cyborgs, comments feel closer to conversation all the time. One day we will all forget how to speak. We will grow extra sets of fingers for more typing speed. Evolution will shrink our hands so that we can text with greater ease on our tiny devices.

First, I wanted to thank everyone who offered up music suggestions ♪ ♫  in the Grammy Awards post. I've already started investigating your recommendations since I usually have at least one "music of the year" or "music video of the year" posts in late December.  Keep 'em coming.

Last year about this time the public was going wild for The Blind Side and I included an "Overheard" conversation about it. Broooooke recently discovered the year old post and feels bad that Sandra got such flack for winning because the performance (if not the film) holds up. I would love to include more of those overheard posts but I'm telling you it is SO hard to eavesdrop in NYC. You're oft thwarted by noisy subway trains and traffic and whispering (damn you quite people in noisy cities!). Just last week two older men in suits right next to me on the subway were discussing the Oscar race. I was dying to eavesdrop but alas... major subway noise and then my stop.

A related note on Sandra B: Rebecca finds it odd that people lament the Academy's refusal to give older women the Oscar in the Annette Bening post but also bitch about Sandra's win. Sandra was 45 when she won. But more on this age & oscar topic this week ~ Article in Progress. 

Viggo & Fassy on the set of A Dangerous Method

Patrick F recently declared it a life goal to see all of Viggo Mortenson's movies. I was just thinking about Viggo yesterday and how long it took him to get really famous. It was a by-association thought. I was watching Fish Tank (so good, right?) and dreaming about seeing Viggo and Michael Fassbender as Freud & Jung in A Dangerous Method or The Talking Cure or whatever David Cronenberg is calling that psychiatric bio these days. They seem like such ideally paired co-stars to me.

Cal read the whole Undertow interview -- that's the Peruvian Oscar submission -- and loves that more Latin American movies are getting international attention "Before it was only Argentina and Brazil." Troia recently saw the movie, too, and thinks it one of the most moving of 2010. I bring this up now after the fact because I'm assuming we're going to hear about the foreign film finalists from AMPAS any day now. I love following the foreign film race but I'm not sure about this whittling down process where suddenly 50+ movies are evicted in the last month before the actual nominations. Imagine being on the campaign trail and then >boom< 'Sorry, you're out before nominations are even announced.' My current 9 predicted finalists are here but this category often holds surprises so no one knows anything.

That Helen Mirren "women in hollywood" speech sure has been making the web rounds (though there weren't many comments here on it.) Still, Manuel recalls the first time he saw the delightful Helen Mirren (Prime Suspects) and was hooked ever after. Mirren only gradually entered my consciousness. The first thing I remember seeing her in is White Nights (1985) where she met her future husband, the director Taylor Hackford. I was kind of in love with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the time (she played his wife) and I only remember two things about the movie today.

1. A shot of Misha stretching to warm up where he lays his head against his entirely vertical leg. As if this is something the human body is supposed to be able to do! 
2. This scene where Misha dances for her and she cries from the beauty of his movement. Or at least that's how I remembered the reason for her tears.

Why the Misha love? Blame childhood in the 1970s. It's probably impossible to imagine for anyone born in the 90s when the only people constantly discussed seem to be reality TV show stars but yes... a ballet dancer was once mega-famous to the point where teenager had posters of him on their walls. I wonder if Black Swan will inspire a mini-fad of renewed interest in ballet? If so that'll sure help Benjamin Millipied from Black Swan.

Odes to Emaciation: Christian Bale's Insane Actorly Commitment

I was just about to go into several interesting comments from the latest link roundup but I could do this all day and I have to move on. See.... in about 4 or 5 hours things start getting really crazy with the awards calendar... but maybe Sheila isn't the only one who is less than excited to see the madness begin. She writes

Ahh, these bullshit awards leave me cold. Why do people fawn over them so? Think of all the past great performances that were left out and you get the message. It's all about timing, timing, timing, especially now...

Timing is indeed the magic element. She's not far off with one key example: Christian Bale's "posterboy routine for committed actors" is finally catching up with him in terms of awards heat. 
Are you as chatty this morning? If not, have another cup o' joe.

My Favorite Thing About "The Fighter" Is...

I saw The Fighter last week and didn't even deliver a "this is all the time I have" 7 word review. I have more than 7 words on this one though what follows is not a traditional review. The first thing I tweeted was...

It still applies. Yep, Christian Bale is doing his best work ever in the co-lead role of Dicky Eklund (Let's call it The Fighters) or at least his best since American Psycho (2000). Barring Geoffrey Rush's mutant power (awards magnetism) the "supporting" Oscar is most definitely Bale's to lose. And this is an important distinction: It'd be his to lose even without his baity penchant for putting his health at risk to dwindle down to anorexic nothingness for a role. This is his third time doing so. We hope it's the last.

A Tale of Two (Half) Brothers

But what's my favorite thing about The Fighters other than him?

I guess it'd be the way Melissa Leo (playing the mother to both fighters) and Christian Bale are always believably in sync as mother/son. They're practically twins with their darting hollow eyes, perpetually nervous body language and emotionally vampiric yet super vibrant energy. Would that more actors would co-author such compelling familial bonds while playing at "family". What's more, Bale and Leo have mastered the weird arms-length charisma of charming people who are simultaneously completely off-putting. Alice Ward and Dicky Eklund are the type of people you can't help but want to hang out with... but from a very safe distance, with plentiful escape routes.

Melissa Leo's on fire.

No, no. it's not that. That sympatico style is great but it's not my favorite thing about the movie.

Also worth loving is the everyman mundanity of Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg, a somewhat perverse use of their combined star power. (Though they both have it, they're more recognizably "human" and thus smaller than giant film stars, here and elsewhere). Charlene (and Adams who plays her) and Micky (and Wahlberg who plays him) are constantly drowned out by the cacophony of Much Bigger Personalities surrounding them. It's hilarious how often they both just shut right down in the center of a scene with an 'I give up' pout. And they're the "Stars" for lack of a better word!

No, no.

The best element has to be the idiosyncratic humanity that director David O. Russell keeps breathing into the proceedings. By all rights, The Fighter ought to feel far more generic than it does; make no mistake, this is a "true story" inspirational sports biopic. Russell keeps finding ways to vary the tone, play with the moodswings (even perpetually "on" people like Alice & Dicky have quiet days) and have fun with the framing, which generously allows the orbiting cast members to contribute to the movie as well (the standout being Jack McGee as Alice's impressively sturdy husband George). Sports movie fans won't like the film quite as much, one suspects, since the boxing scenes are arguably the most generically executed part.

And then there's the subplot involving the making of the unflattering HBO documentary on Dicky "High on Crack Street" (1995). Dicky willfully deceives himself about it but the doc scenes gives the film tremendous tragicomic boost.

There's also a choice scene in which Micky & Charlene go to the movies and... well, I don't want to spoil it.

David O. Russell loves a rangey ensemble.

 Oh wait, I know.

My favorite thing is the clown car chorus of Dicky & Micky's trashy big haired sisters (John Waters will be green with envy). There are so many of them. They're the most abrasively comic gaggle of sisters since the perpetual assault of Adam Sandler's siblings in Punchdrunk Love.

Or. Well...

The best thing might be the way The Fighters manages to slide so easily into David O. Russell's undervalued filmography even though it's much less original than his other films. When some auteurs make stabs at mainstream genres or popular appeal they lose themselves. Such is not the case here. Russell is still in love with the juggling act of impossibly noisy mixes of disparate acting styles (Flirting With Disaster, I Heart Huckabees), he's still fond of Oedipal undercurrents (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting...), he can still turn a film on a dime from comedy to 'wait, that's not funny' disturbing (Three Kings, Huckabees)  and he's still just about the only director who Mark Wahlberg should ever work with (though, that said, "Micky Ward" has nothing on Wahlberg's Kings or Huckabees performances... the character's too much of a cypher this time.)

But no, it's not that. It's... NO. 

No. No. No. You have to stop somewhere.

Needless to say, The Fighter is incredibly watchable. It's a solid good time at the movies. More importantly, it's a total K.O. for fans of Bale, Leo and O. Russell. A-/B+

Who Cares About Link?

God bless V Magazine for their latest issue, "Who Cares About Age". Usually when the media decides to celebrate older women, we're only allowed one. Like the recent Streep Mania... or 2006 when Helen Mirren was all the rage. I've always had a thing for actresses of a certain age so I applaud them for multiplying the enthusiasm. I mean check out these legendary cover girls: Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, and Sigourney Weaver. yesplease³.

And as if that weren't enough, you've got Charlotte Rampling on the inside! A whole huge photogallery of her... "Charlotte in Couture".

The average age of these women is 66. The average fabulousity of these women is ∞. Just saying.

More links...
Scott Feinberg interviews Halle Berry
The Evening Class Liza Minnelli interviews and TCM schedule
Deadline Hollywood Toy Story Best Picture spoofing FYC ads. The first is to your left. There's more to come as they campaign for the big prize. I'm really hoping they do Amadeus, The Hurt Locker and West Side Story. Which Best Pictures would you like to see spoofed by the toys?
Man About Town interviews Ryan Kwanten... naked. Ha.
Shadowplay proposes a mid December blog-a-thons about the last films from directors. What a fine idea. Any suggestions you'd like me write about?
Just Jared Anne Hathaway is awesome. She's already dreamt up her own role on Glee and picking songs before they've even invited her.
Moviefone If Lindsay Lohan needs to hit rock bottom to recover maybe this will do it? Malin Akerman of all people is now considered a suitable replacement.

offscreen
Gabby's Playhouse brilliant cartoon about the progression of all "sexism" discussions on the internet
The Post-Game Show on "beefcake" comic art and how it differs from cheesecake...

And finally... 
What's your take on Christian Bale's Oscar chances for The Fighter?

I was discussing this with some peers earlier today. Some people feel he's too disliked to win an Oscar (after all, many below the line players vote on Oscars and we all know that Bale has a temper on set) others that "likeability" doesn't matter so much in the face of a certain level of performance. Esquire just published a thorny profile piece. Some journalists think he's an ingrate. Others, like Kris Tapley appreciate his rough edges. My take is somewhere in the middle. Likeability does matter in awards season (a lot) and though I appreciate honesty and strong opinions, I do find that it's incredibly narcissistic when stars of a certain level bitch about their duties as stars... like doing press. Basically they wouldn't have those duties if they weren't hugely successful. If people want to talk to you that means you're more successful. All jobs come with elements that are less joyous for the worker ... but very few jobs have the rewards that star actors receive. Bitching about a tiny amount of drudgery within a life filled with extravagant reward (the only reason that tiny amount of drudgery even exists is because you're successful enough to have been extravagantly rewarded) seems very very petty. So I'm torn. I find it distasteful but on the other hand I believe art should be judged without interference from the personality of the artist.

Yes No Maybe So: The Fighter

Our first glimpse of the highly buzzed David O. Russell boxing picture The Fighter. If it becomes a major player at this year's Oscars I want y'all to remember that I believed it would happen first. Toot Toot. (That was my own horn).



And now the patented foolproof system for judging our own reaction to the trailer: Yes, No, Maybe So™. Join us with your own in the comments.

First things first: It seems obvious that this film will live or die on the chemistry between its central brothers, boxer Mickey (Mark Wahlberg) and his trainer (Christian Bale). It seems obvious from the trailer that their relationship could well float like a butterfly and sting like a bee or whatever the hell boxers are supposed to do. Maybe Wahlberg is the type of performer who has to have a strong director to be properly called an actor -- but that question of his ability is already solved by reteaming him with David O'Russell who is already responsible for his best performance (I Heart Huckabees). Plus we'd like Christian Bale to stop doing these crazy things to his body so maybe mass acknowledgement that he's a good actor will dampen down that particular self-destructive urge for awhile?


On the other hand, haven't we seen enough boxing pictures? Isn't it the #1 most populated sport within the movies -- you'd think there'd be boxing gyms on every corner of every street to meet the need. Boxers are like hitmen: way more prevalent in the movies than they are in real life. But there will be blood... in the movies. Since we've seen so many rise and fall and rise again biopics and so many boxing pictures, what could this possibly add to the bloated over populated genre? I fear it looks a smidge generic... at least visually. Not that you can always tell from a trailer.

The cast sounds good on paper but how do they all come together onscreen? It's possibly delicious that there will be a catfight of sorts between Mickey's mom (Melissa Leo) and his girl (Amy Adams) but it also just might be typical Hollywood poverty porn. You know how they love the 'We're going to Disneyland!' white trash families the movies... or maybe I'm just thinking of the last Oscar baiting boxing pic. So, to make a long story short: I knew that both Leo and Adams were in the movie but who expected that the movie would contain girlfights? Haven't we all wanted to see Amy Adams test her range a little ever since her triumph in Enchanted? So why am I a little worried about her in this context.

How about you?

The Fighter opens in December.
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