
Though I first buzzed about an Academy Award nomination for Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight more than a month before his death, I now want to take it all back. I feel all the talk of Ledger’s posthumous Oscar chances will cloud my mind when I finally do see it, and it will probably also cloud the Academy’s judgment, too. Six months from now, when the nominations are announced on January 22 (coincidentally the one-year anniversary of Ledger’s death), if Ledger is not recognized for his role as The Joker, there will surely be an uproar — actually, Hollywood might just up and self-implode.
I’m not the only one annoyed by all the Oscar buzz. Terry Gilliam, who directed Ledger in The Brothers Grimm and the upcoming The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is calling “bullshit” on the whole thing, particularly against Warner Bros., which Gilliam accuses of exploiting Ledger’s death and chance of a posthumous Oscar for publicity purposes. Considering most Oscar campaigns for live actors are really just part of movie marketing, he has a good point.
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Artist on Artist: John Cusack and Diablo Cody
There’s a really strange moment in the above Artist on Artist video with Diablo Cody and John Cusack, where Cusack is all, “The mainstream media don’t understand my my shitty war satire movie, so I gave Liz Phair a copy and she gave me a blurb for my website,” and Diablo’s all, “Uh, yeah, I’ll give you my quote soon,” and she has this look on her face like, “Shit, people are actually doing that? Liz Phair’s actually doing that? I have as big a crush on Lloyd Dobbler as anyone but … seriously?” Maybe we like Diablo Cody better than we thought. Although this does come right after she says something about how blogging=good because “you don’t have to contend with The Man,” which is about as fresh a sentiment as any in War, Inc, so maybe her pullquote really *is* on the way…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two days––and or, don’t read many film blogs, which is the likelier of the two scenarios––you’ll know that Nathan Lee was laid off from his position as second film critic at the Village Voice this week, due to unspecified “economic reasons.” That makes Lee the fourth full-time New York based critic to get pink slipped in the past month, and it’s not hard to see his firing as a sign that, as Lee himself put it in an email to colleagues widely circulated on blogs, “staff film critic…jobs no longer appear to exist.”
For those of us old enough to have put a few years effort towards such a career but too young to have achieved any kind of institutional seniority, this is a pretty troubling state of affairs. Strippers are winning Oscars, but *I* have no future? There’s a great joke here, but because it’s on me it’s up to someone else to unpack.
In any case, I’ll point you to the comment sections on both The Reeler and The House Next Door, where bloggers/internet critics like Vadim Rizov and Andrew “Filmbrain” Grant are chewing over the issues with “old media” critics like Glenn Kenny and David Edelstein. Interestingly, a number of members of the extended Village Voice family weigh in, most notably Luke Y. Thompson, whose comment on Lee at The Reeler (which he now admits was “ill-considered”) touched off a firestorm of bashing.
I don’t know if it’s really appropriate to call Chasing Windmills a “mumblecore webseries,” as Molly at This Recording does, but that’s definitely Oscar winning screenwriter Diablo Cody playing a hippie stripper who teaches pole dancing in her living room, and implores the stars of the show to “throw off the shackles that society has placed on your pelvis.” Watch for the cameo from what appears to be Cody’s now-ex-husband Johnny, who provokes the line, “Do you really want to have a starring role in some ex-stripper’s sex games with her skeezy husband?”

Here’s proof that Kevin Smith is the old and busted comedy filmmaker and Judd Apatow is the new hotness. Smith is totally biting Apatow’s meta, viral-marketing shtick with this video starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, which is meant to promote Smith’s upcoming movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It is also meant to parody the continuing string of “I’m Fucking So and So” videos (Sarah Silverman fucking Matt Damon, Jimmy Kimmel fucking Ben Affleck, Karina Longworth fucking Diablo Cody — oh wait, that last one hasn’t happened yet).
First of all, just casting Rogen and Banks makes Zack and Miri appear like an Apatow-movie wannabe. Then referencing Apatow’s films — the very premise of the video mocks the premise of Knocked Up and obviously it literally references The 40 Year Old Virgin and Apatow himself — builds up that appearance more. Mind you, I’ve never been a big fan of Smith’s work, but he has been around longer and should be more original than this. Right?
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Unlike other major papers, which mostly went with a cover shot of a resplendently emotional Marion Cotillard, the ever-classy New York Post puts “former stripper” Diablo Cody on the cover of their Oscar morning-after edition, letting her outdated job description stand in for her name. And with THAT, the rags-to-riches transformation from strip club Cinderella to Oscar winner, as well as the little indie-choo-choo-that-could fiction that made it happen, (the Post story actually uses the phrase “the little indie that could”, and refers to the win itself, which was the second-biggest lock of the night behind Javier Bardem, as a “shocker”) is complete.
Oh, and did we mention that the Post, like Fox Searchlight, the teeny-tiny independent company that made and released Juno, is owned by Rupert Murdoch? Vertically integrated corporate strategy is a beautiful thing.
Via Tim Shey.
UPDATE: I apologize for suggesting that Cody only wore one earring to the Oscars. I was clearly wrong.