Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

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Reality Bite for Steven Spielberg: Netflix Isn’t the Enemy, It’s Elitism

March 17, 2019 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Steven Spielberg’s post-Oscars aggressive mobilization demanding a four-week theatrical qualifying run for a movie to be eligible for Best Picture – with his sights on Netflix – really aggravates me. And not only because I think that the streamer’s Roma is a more authentic film than Spielberg has made in the past decade.

This has been a flashpoint and continuing source of heated discussion — and tweeting — ever since Spielberg, a governor of the Academy’s directors branch, expressed his controversial intention to lobby to revise Oscars eligibility rules at the upcoming Board of Governors meeting.

After winning three Oscars for Roma, Netflix tweeted: “We love cinema. Here are some things we also love: -Access for people who can’t always afford, or live in towns without, theaters -Letting everyone, everywhere enjoy releases at the same time -Giving filmmakers more ways to share art These things are not mutually exclusive.”

Netflix doesn’t need me to defend them. They have the righteous Director Ava DuVernay, who’s also used social media to voice her view @ava: “One of the things I value about Netflix is that it distributes black work far/wide. 190 countries will get WHEN THEY SEE US. Here’s a promo for South Africa. I’ve had just one film distributed wide internationally. Not SELMA. Not WRINKLE. It was 13TH. By Netflix. That matters. https://t.co/lpn1FFSfgG”

That does matter, Ava. Moreover, it’s significant that the industry’s embedded leaders may not be getting the message. I’m mad because when Spielberg and his cronies get their boxers in a twist and mobilize within their cloistered industry they choose self-interest and self-preservation.

Why should I be surprised?

News to the three-time Oscar winner Spielberg: there is nothing sacred about a theatrical release. It’s the stories and their connection to contemporary audiences that must be nurtured. That’s where the juice is. And that’s where the potential is to make positive change.

I would really love it if these powerful Hollywood kingmakers took all their clout, Academy cred, mentorship capability and ridiculous bags of money – and channeled that energy into the most crucial issue facing their industry today: inclusion.

I’m not asking these film folks to write checks to the Democratic Party. They already do that.

Just, please, don’t squander your outrage by planting your flag on this issue of theatrical releases.

Or, as The Black List founder Franklin Leonard tweeted: “It isn’t even about Netflix, though they’re the most visible and least sympathetic target. It’s about every other film and filmmaker who will struggle to get access to the resources necessary to make a film but not get those allowing for a four week exclusive theatrical release.”

Thank you, Mr. Leonard. This is the key point. Access to the means of movie production is the central struggle of this moment.

These viewpoints in support of a new economic model lead to my central question: has Spielberg taken as aggressive a stand defending gender parity or diversity as his outspoken rebuke to Netflix? Has he worked with other honchos to, for example, amass a $100M development pool to support full budgets of new films directed by those filmmakers previously disenfranchised?

This isn’t charity. This is industry survival in a global economy. And, as the pump of cultural product that Hollywood is, this is about preserving and enhancing our position as a world power in the field of ideas at a moment when we are losing face on the international stage.

And I’m not asking Spielberg or his posse to do it as a reflection of personal magnanimity. Slough off the ego, roll up the sleeves and make change because it will cost you nothing other than money. Certainly you haven’t spent those massive movie profits simply on In –N-Out burgers.

Mr. Spielberg, if you want to save movies, I suggest you step out of your creative comfort zone and relinquish control.

This won’t be easy. He’s no longer a Young Turk but an elder statesman. And his inclination, as reflected in his prestige Oscar-bait period films, is to lionize the white savior over the oppressed minority. For example, in Schindler’s List, now celebrating its 25th Anniversary, Liam Neeson saves the Jews as the fact-based title character who rescues his factory workers from the maw of the Nazis. Ditto Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and Lincoln.

What none of these dramatic serious stories does, with the exception of The Color Purple, is relinquish the central narrative arc to the so-called victims: Jews, blacks or women.

I don’t expect Spielberg the artist, whose 1975 film Jaws signaled the rise of the blockbuster and the decline of the 1970s groovy grainy films of his fellows like Sidney Lumet’s contemporaneous Dog Day Afternoon, to easily shift his focus. He has been in the industry sweet spot, often numero uno, for nearly half a century. But this is my plea.

We don’t need a savior tilting at the windmills of the past, like a silent-movie star raging in a squeaky voice at the rise of talkies. We need financing. We need mentorship and budgets.

We don’t even need big budgets.

Last year’s Oscar-winner Moonlight by Barry Jenkins had a $4M production budget. Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird was $10M. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone the movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career, was $2M.

What would the Athena Film Festival or the Memphis Film Prize or the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival be able to accomplish with $100M to award to women of all kinds and artists of color?

That would be a game-changer, Mr. Spielberg. And maybe it’s time for us, your audience, to save you from yourself.

(This column first appeared in RealClearLife.com}

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Ava DuVernay, Diversity, Film, Inclusion, Netflix, Opinion, Oscars, Steven Spielberg

Meryl Streep Berlinale Masterclass: What the Oscar winner finds useless and stupid and un-artistic

February 19, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

meryl in berlin 2On Sunday, Meryl Streep addressed a select group of actors and filmmakers at the Berlinale and I was fortunate enough to attend as tickets were scarce. While I wrote about her for VF.com, here’s more from the event, and the actress discussing directors Mike Nichols and Clint Eastwood:

When asked by the British critic Peter Cowie if acting with a lot of makeup in The Iron Lady inhibited her acting, MERYL responded: “I feel I must disabuse. I was not wearing any make up. There are great things that they can do with lighting or not do. It’s fantastic. You can’t have a long career and really play a lot of different kinds of characters of all different ages and maintain your magazine-cover vanity. You just can’t. It’s useless and stupid and it’s un-artistic and who cares.”

[Related: Unwitting Feminist: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher]

About her preparation to play Thatcher, Streep said: “I prepared wildly. I read five biographies. I read some man who was the Samuel Pepys of his time in 70s London and noted every time she came to dinner — Woodrow Wyatt I listened to her obsessively. I watched film of her. And then I threw it away. We were concerned with her private life. It was on power in decline. After she’s out of power, the confrontation with mortality….when we feel least certain that is when we lash out most vehemently. When we feel attacked and not able to withstand it.”
“

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV Tagged With: Berlinale, best actress, Margaret Thatcher, mentorship, Meryl Streep, Oscars, The Iron Lady, Vanity, Woodrow Wyatt

Julianne Moore’s Long Red Carpet to the Oscars

May 21, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Julianne Moore sighs over a mondo coffee cup in 'Maps to the Stars' and wins Best Actress at Cannes 2014

Julianne Moore sighs over a mondo coffee cup in ‘Maps to the Stars’ and wins Best Actress at Cannes 2014

Can it be only a year since Julianne Moore owned the red carpet at Cannes — and won the festival’s Best Actress — for playing a diva on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Maps to the Stars? And then David Cronenberg’s bitter little Hollywood pill lost its way to the theaters and what had once seemed like Julianne’s yearstumbled. And then came Alice, Still Alice and Moore was back in play. Here’s my interview of Moore for the New York Observer that appeared on January 21st on finding Oscar without a map:

It was a lunch at Le Cirque, it was star-studded, and actress Julianne Moore was at Table One. The star of Still Alice—a tough, raw portrait of an academic, wife and mother coping with the disintegration of her identity due to early-onset Alzheimer’s—looked, at 54, terrific. Friends surrounded her: Kate Capshaw, wife of Steven Spielberg, on her right; Ellen Barkin to her left. The mood was hopeful, even giddy, with a side of wood-knocking: Ms. Moore was and is the frontrunner for the Best Actress Academy Award. Last week, she received her fifth nomination and, if it happens February 22, this would be her first win.

It’s no coincidence that Cate Blanchett held down that same circular table last year on her juggernaut to the Oscar for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, also, not coincidentally, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. But while Ms. Blanchett held the Best Actress lead from a midsummer release to the Oscars, it’s not an easy position to maintain. Ms. Blanchett’s frontrunner status could easily have been torpedoed by the abuse scandal surrounding director Woody Allen [Read more…]

Filed Under: Celebrity, Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: best actress, Cannes, Cannes Film Festival, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Maps to the Stars, Oscars, Still Alice, The Hunger Games

Contenders 2016: From the Palmes d’Or to the Oscars

May 18, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Cate Blanchett in the title role

Cate Blanchett in the title role

We hate to be looking over someone’s shoulder like Carol/Cate but we know that somewhere, beyond next winter, the movies of sunny spring will be competing for Oscar. And right at the front of that long red-carpet march is Blanchett, only two years out from her Best Actress win for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. (Like Blanche DuBois, we’re constantly looking at the past and struggling with the disappointments of the present.) Blanchett was the queen of Cannes 2013 — and no one could catch her. So, I’m tossing out some ideas generated by Cannes for Contenders:

BEST PICTURE

Carol

Youth

BEST DIRECTOR

Todd Haynes (Carol)

Paolo Sorrentino (Youth)

BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett (Carol)

Emily Blunt (Sicario)

Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)

Emma Stone (Irrational Man)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Rooney Mara (Carol)

BEST ACTOR

Michael Caine (Youth)

Michael Fassbender (Macbeth)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Woody Allen (Irrational Man)

Yorgos Lanthimos, Elthymis Fillipou (The Lobster)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Phyllis Nagy (Carol)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Son of Saul
The Assassin

Dheepan
The Other Sister

[Related: From THR Study: In Cannes vs. Oscars, the Winner is….]

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Inside Out

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Amy

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Richard Deakins (Sicario)

Edward Lachman (Carol)

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Oscar Race Tagged With: Cannes 2015, Carol, Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Marillong Cotillard, Michael Caine, Michael Fassbender, Oscars, Todd Haynes

Office Politics Gone Wild: Why you must see ‘Two Days, One Night’

December 30, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Two Days One Night
Naturalistic and probing, in Two Days, One Night, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (The Kid with a Bike) tell an apparently simple, linear story with astonishing depth. Recovering from depression, wife and mother Sandra (Marion Cotillard) returns to work at a solar panel factory after sick leave. Once there, she discovers that her bosses have made her co-workers a Sophie’s Choice: take a thousand Euro bonus and lay-off Sandra, or save Sandra and sacrifice the cash.

It’s not surprising that Sandra’s colleagues choose the bonus over their colleague’s needs. But, when management allows a last-minute recount, Sandra’s husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) urges her to visit each and every individual to plead her case. This reluctant quest — a married mother on the verge of a second nervous breakdown travelling door-to-door over two days and one night — opens up a working class world to the audience. We see into the lives of the others from the factory and their impact on the sobbing Sandra.

Oscar-winner Cotillard (Ma Vie en Rose) portrays Sandra in jeans and a tank top, bra straps showing, hair clutched uncombed in a pony-tail; far more unkempt than the actress who plays her, who is the face of Lady Dior handbags. As Sandra, Cotillard’s walk rides low in her hips, she pops Xanax and, defeated, she retreats to her bed where she lies in a fetal position under the duvet. But none of this is overwrought. She melds perfectly in the Dardennes’ matter-of-fact style; the first true star these Belgian brothers have cast as a lead.

[Related: TIFF Critic’s Pick: ‘Two Days, One Night]

Cotillard has become one of my favorite actresses. Whether in high-gloss blockbuster mode in The Dark Knight Rises or period perfect in The Immigrant, she works from a very quiet core. Her characters always have a life beyond the screen, a before and after. These women don’t ask you for permission, they compel you to watch. The biggest emotions register in tiny gestures.

While Sandra’s struggle and transformation is central to Two Days, One Night, the drama is less a star vehicle than an ethical exploration. Do you leave your morals at the door when you clock in? You may treat your family humanely at home, but the actions taken in pursuit of a paycheck also define your character. In reality, what you do at work is as much who you are as your private identity. In this competitive economy of layoffs and job insecurity, that certainly is cause for reflection, whether you’re American or Belgian

Filed Under: Criticism, Oscar Race Tagged With: Belgian Films, best actress, French Language, Marion Cotillard, Office Politics, Oscars, Two Days One Night

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