Gossip Central

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother: At the Athena Awards

In this its second year featuring a lively weekend of films focused on women and leadership, the Athena Awards, founded by Kathryn Kolbert and Melissa Silverstein and held at Barnard College, honored The Tempest director Julie Taymor, Moneyball’s producer Rachael Horovitz, Pariah’s director Dee Rees and producer Nekisa Cooper, and the Fempire: Young Adult writer Diablo Cody, , Liz Meriwether, and Lorene Scafaria. A Laura Ziskind Lifetime Achievement Award was inaugurated in memory of this noted film producer and activist in cancer research. Recipients are asked to adhere to only one caveat: they must speak about a woman who has influenced or inspired them, not their mother. An act of rebellion, this rule was immediately violated.

Agnieszka Holland Revisits The Holocaust: In Darkness

“It’s harsh,” said Polish director Agnieszka Holland introducing her new movie, In Darkness at a special screening at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens last month. Literally dark, In Darkness, to open this week in New York, takes place under ground in the sewers of Lvov, Poland in Holocaust era Europe. Based on Robert Marshall’s book, In the Sewers of Lvov, about the story of Jews hiding in the wet, stinky sludge and the Polish thief and sewer worker, Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), who helps them survive, at times, the rats—seen and unseen, the soundtrack of their scurrying and little squeals is terrifically powerful--seem more menacing than the Nazis hunting for Jews above ground.

Lilyhammer: A Gangster's Rap

On a balmy New York evening with snow a distant memory, the corners of the Crosby Hotel were fitted with white stuff, the waiters sported big ski lodge sweaters and snow boots, and the décor, usually warm, was even cozier. The occasion was a screening of an episode of Lilyhammer, the first of five original series planned for Netflix. Harvey Weinstein and Netflix's chief content officer Ted Sarandos hosted the evening, with help from uber party planner Peggy Siegal. Starring E Street Band guitarist and The Sopranos veteran Steven Van Zandt, Lillyhammer begs the question, where can mob fugitives go to hide? Even ex-Sopranos? Well, how about Lillehammer, the remote town in Norway that famously hosted the Olympics in 1984? It looked pristine, beautiful, Frankie ("The Fixer") Tagliano explains even as he brings his ways of getting things done (i.e. bribes, blackmail) to cut through the country’s bureaucracy. Talk about a clash of cultures! 

Oscar Nominations: The Artist for Ten

“Fame is fleeting,” said Harvey Weinstein introducing Coriolanus last week at the film’s Paris Theater premiere. Juxtaposing the all night Golden Globe parties with his turn on television with Uggie, the canine star of his movie The Artist, Weinstein noted, one minute I’m accepting awards (The Artist, My Week with Marilyn, The Iron Lady, were among Weinstein films honored with top prizes), the next I’m on the Today show with a dog. But what a dog!

Anticipating the Best Picture Oscar nod, Uggie’s P.R. people called for a photo op at the Empire State Building, on the 86^th floor deck. With his trainer and owner Omar von Muller, the Jack Russell terrier played dead and eh, manned a skateboard. Ever since Cannes, this “rescued” dog has been a secret darling of the film: at the New York Film Festival opening, The Artist director Michel Hazanavicius was asked how he worked with the dog. Sausages. The reply seems to have gone viral.

Globe Watching

Running up to the Golden Globes weekend, a plateau in the awards season, one category I had my eye on was Best Actress in a Drama. The nominations left two formidable actresses vying for the honor, that is, Viola Davis in The Help and the winner Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady. Even as Streep left the stage she said, Viola, you’re my girl.

Awards Foreplay at the National Board of Review Gala

At the elegant National Board of Review’s Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street this week, fine films were respectfully feted, with Hugo winning Best Picture, its director Martin Scorsese honored. Christopher Plummer, Best Supporting Actor for Beginners, and Will Reiser for his 50/50 original screenplay were among those honored. But, those speeches! On this occasion coming up on the Golden Globes weekend, a subtext emerged. Were they thinking about Oscars?

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory on HBO, and Awarded by the National Board of Review and Cinema Eye Honors for Non-Fiction Filmmaking

Last October when the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory premiered at the New York Film Festival, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky celebrated an unanticipated event: the release from prison of the West Memphis 3. For documentary filmmakers, it doesn’t get better than this: having your work bring about change.

In 1993, a newspaper item about the murder of three 8-year olds in West Memphis and the three teenaged boys arrested for the crime piqued the interest of HBO’s Sheila Nevins. She called the filmmaking team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, sending them south to document the case. The filmmakers thought they were going to tell a tale about guilty teens and Satanic rituals in the heartland. Finding the evidence overwhelming that the men were innocent, instead they made a movie that pointed toward a miscarriage of justice. Two earlier versions of the documentary, shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directions/ New Films festival and HBO galvanized support for the convicted young men. After 18 years in prison, the men were released this past August.

The Awards Will Not Be Televised: Brad Pitt at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards

The crowds outside Crimson, the club where the New York Film Critics Circle held their awards, were six deep, calm in the cold behind velvet ropes, hoping to get a glimpse. Brad Pitt would receive a Best Actor award for his work in Moneyball and The Tree of Life, and, Angelina was by his side. He had been at hers a few weeks ago, a quiet presence at the In the Land of Blood and Honey premiere. Inside Crimson, critics and colleagues heard his story about first coming to New York at age 25, staying with a friend on Christopher Street, noting there were an awful lot of men, and they were all so nice. As to the New York critics, he was happy to meet this group led this year by John Anderson, surprised they weren’t taller, and even happier that the event would not be televised.

Albert Brooks Tribute at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

As the guy who doesn’t get the pretty girl, Albert Brooks does get the laughs. Which, as he indicated at a special tribute focused on his acting on Sunday night at the Walter Reade Theater, has made some directors hesitate to cast him in dramatic roles. In such American classics as Taxi Driver and Broadcast News, romance with Cybill Shepherd and Holly Hunter eludes him, while in Private Benjamin, sex with Goldie Hawn on their wedding night does him in. Filmmakers may be wary of his “funny,” but not Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director of Drive, a Ryan Gosling vehicle (ha!) in which Albert Brooks plays an articulate thug, a performance touted for major awards, such as Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Before the Film Society’s tribute and a special screening of Drive, I had the opportunity to ask Albert Brooks about this role.

Untoward History: Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey

With a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and a ban called by a Serbian leader, it is hard to tell which is better publicity for Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Set in Sarajevo in the early ‘90’s, the drama illustrates neighbors murdering neighbors, barbaric behavior of all sorts, rape, and an official policy of ethnic cleansing. This bloodbath makes the Serbians look bad, the Muslims look like victims. The Croatians are mostly missing in the movie’s action. But last week, at the premiere and press conference, surrounded by regional actors on all sides of that conflict, Jolie made her equal-opportunity indictment clear: war damages the human psyche.