Hey. You're still here?
Wow. Okay. I guess that means I'm going to keep writing this; at least, until pre-production on myself and
Gary Kurtz' movie, "
Panzer 88," makes the paragraphs dwindle.
(Just as a little insider gossip, we gave up this week in exasperation on an actor that we'd written a role for. While we love the actor in question, they'd just taken too long in reading the script, and we're under a deadline to try and get shooting by summer. So sad, too bad: everybody cries.
Film
Well, let's throw ourselves in at the deep-end. I saw the last of the Academy Award nominated films I needed in my big Pre-Oscar catch-up today. It made me shake my head in wonder a little bit, as I felt the film in question was somewhat poor. In honesty, there are a good few highly-praised movies this year I didn't think were particularly great. Academy politics can be perplexing.
Also up for Awards: I mentioned "
Lincoln" last week, but forgot to expound on it. I'd already seen a screener, but the movie finally opens here in Europe (I'm in the Sweden portion of my globetrotting "Panzer 88" tour right now), and director Spielberg has been traveling about doing a fair bit of publicity for it. On
Kermode and Mayo's BBC radio show last week,
Spielberg told a very sobering story about
Daniel Day-Lewis turning him repeatedly down for the titular role over several years; and how
Leonardo DiCaprio broached the gap between the director and Day Lewis, phoning Spielberg up one day out of the blue to give him Day Lewis' cellphone number. Going through casting trials on my own movie, "Panzer 88" (with "
Star Wars" producer Gary Kurtz) right now, it's somewhat cheering to know that even the biggest director in the world can't always get what he wants.
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