Toronto & San Francisco Let the Right Ones In

Film critics from my current home city and my former home city have both recently announced their year-end awards for motion picture excellence.

Now let's see who has the better taste... is it the poutine and veal sandwich types or the garlic fries and clam chowder in a breadbowl crowd (Toronto in blue / SF in orange):



BEST PICTURE
“Wendy and Lucy" / "Milk"

BEST DIRECTOR
Jonathan Demme, “Rachel Getting Married” / Gus Van Sant, "Milk"

BEST PERFORMANCE, MALE
Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler” / Sean Penn, "Milk" & Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler” (Tie)

BEST PERFORMANCE, FEMALE
Michelle Williams, “Wendy and Lucy” / Sally Hawkins, "Happy Go Lucky"

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, MALE
Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight” / Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”

BEST SUPPORTING PERFORMANCE, FEMALE
Rosemarie DeWitt, “Rachel Getting Married” / Marisa Tomei, "The Wrestler"

BEST SCREENPLAY
Jenny Lumet, “Rachel Getting Married” / Dustin Lance Black, "Milk"

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM
“Let the Right One In” / “Let the Right One In”

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“Man on Wire” / "My Winnipeg"

I'm not sure, but I think it's a tie. The SFFCC loses points for making the obvious homer choices with "Milk", but the TFCA loses the same amount for loving the shit out of "Rachel Getting Married" (and boy, that movie is sure full of shit).

Toronto might get the edge in the Documentary category, since "My Winnipeg" can barely, barely be categorized as such. (Toronto also gets props for naming Jean Claude a runner-up for Best Actor in "JCVD").

All in all, they both got Heath right, and that's all that really matters this year. Check out the full Toronto list here and the full SF list here.

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg

Looks like there's an Allen Ginsberg biopic in the works and Pineapple Express star James Franco is set to play the famous poet. The movie is titled Howl and it will revolve around the obscenity trial that his famous poem sparked in 1957.



This is a huge coup for Franco, and it seems like he'll be working with a pretty decent team. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Gus Van Sant will serve as executive producer, and Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedberg the filmmakers behind the superb documentary The Celluloid Closet [link to trailer] will be directing.

An excerpt from "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...

And speaking of period biopics of homosexuals that involve James Franco and Gus Van Sant, the trailer for Milk is online. Watch it here, and look out for the scene I saw them shoot in San Francisco.

got Milk?

Monday night, coming home from watching a movie, I walked into a movie being made in the Castro. They're filming Milk, the story of San Francisco City Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated in 1978.

Gus Van Sant is directing. Sean Penn plays Harvey. Emile Hirsch, James Franco and Josh Brolin also star.

It was a pretty funny scene with the Castro completely decked out in '70s nostalgia (as it has been for a couple weeks), hundreds of bell-bottomed extras, and the usual assortment of SF bums and bystanders. Right after I emerged from the subway, there was an AD or something on the mic thanking all the extras for braving the cold and then introduced none other than Princess Leia Organa (or Carrie Fisher). The crowd went crazy, and she gave this rousing, yet familiar speech - pretty much word for word:


Monday night, coming home from watching a movie, I walked into a movie being made in the Castro. They're filming Milk, the story of San Francisco City Supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk who was assassinated in 1978.

Gus Van Sant is directing. Sean Penn plays Harvey. Emile Hirsch, James Franco and Josh Brolin also star.

It was a pretty funny scene with the Castro completely decked out in '70s nostalgia (as it has been for a couple weeks), hundreds of bell-bottomed extras, and the usual assortment of SF bums and bystanders. Right after I emerged from the subway, there was an AD or something on the mic thanking all the extras for braving the cold and then introduced none other than Princess Leia Organa (or Carrie Fisher). The crowd went crazy, and she gave this rousing, yet familiar speech - pretty much word for word:

"Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. [...] This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope."

And as she ad libbed something about homos at the end of the speech, I started bonding with some Hawaiian teenagers over the spectacle. Just then an old preppy guy asked them for a light. The guy turned out to be Cleve Jones, and he spoke with pride how Emile Hirsch was playing him in the film. Very cool dude (he told us how 30 years ago he would be "on the megaphone, leading a mob of angry homos down the street, burning cars...").

I stood around with my friend for about an hour more watching them film the sequence Cleve described to us, with now a bespectacled Emile leading the mob. We even caught a peek at Gus himself and I was tempted to yell some adulation at him, but even amidst the excitement I realized I'm not much of a fan and didn't think, "I admire Elephant's ambition, but it was severely flawed" would go over that well.

Check out some photos of the time-machined Castro courtesy of Observd and Tristan Savatier (click to enlarge)...

[There's some footage on the tube as well... Here. And here.]