Piss Off Barbra: Buy Lost in Translation on DVD

mecha-streisand, from southparkstudios.comMichael Musto points out an unexpected upside to Sofia Coppola’s winning the First American Woman To Be Nominated For Best Director: it rescues that historical recognition forever from Barbra Streisand’s French-manicured clutches.
You can celebrate this karmic retribution by buying Lost in Translation, out today on DVD (complete with a half-baked making-of documentary and no director’s commentary track. Where’s Carrot Top when you need him?). Or you could rent it. Mecha-Streisand was defeated by The Cure’s Robert Smith in the first season of South Park, which is also on DVD.
[While I’m on the subject of Oscar-nominated DVD’s, the Capturing the Friedmans DVD sounds like a real standard-setter: two discs of supplementary footage and commentary that are showing up in court as Jesse Friedman tries to get his conviction reversed.]

Calling Scott Sforza

Some schlub Dem senator falls in the forest against the Bush budget, next to an embarassing picture of a red elephant, image:AP/Yahoo.com

To protest Bush’s 2005 budget, the party of Liberal Hollywood ignores the dark art of image manipulation (cf. White House Productions’ favorites, PowerPoint wallpaper and carefully positioned crowds of (skin)color-coordinated soldiers) in favor of some intern’s clip art.
Let’s get one thing straight: this is not Democratic indie authenticity going up against Republican soulless studio spectacle. Just ‘cuz Karl Rove is playing Jerry Bruckheimer doesn’t mean the Dems are suddenly Steven Soderbergh; they’re the dweebs sending their darndest “accidents” to America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Related: Scott Sforza, White House Productions. And they do indie, too.

Phrancis Phord Coppola’s Ophspring

Sofia Coppola being praised for her wok by people who can't bother to spell her name correctly, image: yahoo.com

From Yahoo News coverage of the Golden Globes[note: annoyingly slippery link]:

Director Sophia Coppola holds her award after winning Best Screenplay for a motion picture for her wok on the film ‘Lost In Translation’ during the 61st annual Golden Globe Awards (news – web sites) in Beverly Hills January 25, 2004. (Chris Haston/NBC via Reuters)

Dude, she spells it “Sofia.” This is the Baysinger/Bassinger of her generation.
[And while she’s usually very quiet, the one thing Sofia won’t shut up about is her wok.]
Drew Nieporent’s SF Rubicon is just down the street from The Wok Shop. Sofia’s father is an investor. Coincidence?

Boosters’ Millions

How many times have you replayed the Richard Pryor movie, Brewster’s Millions, in your head and said, “I could spend $30 million in 30 days and have nothing to show for it, what’s the big deal?” Not counting P Diddy’s entire, hapless, yacht-renting existence, Howard Dean is the only person I can think of who’s actually done it. He’s a veritable Doctor of Spendology.

Yohji Madness

Madness in the Yohji Yamamoto FW04 show, image: nytimes.com

The 2-Tone ska band Madness skanked down Yohji Yamamoto’s runway during the Fall ’04 shows. British GQ has pictures of the entire collection, but no acknowledgement of the band at all; he just shoots the clothes. Clearly, a magazine for New Ro poseurs.
On the other hand, the Times has the full band, including frontman Suggs, but Cathy Horyn doesn’t even mention Yohji or Madness in her report. Poseur.
Buy Madness’s One Step Beyond or Ultravox’s The Collection (Poseur). [Obviously, I have them both.]

Knee-Jerk Oscar Comments

In addition to what I wrote on Gothamist,

1. Do these nominees follow the Zapf Zipf distribution? It seems like they’re either mega-blockbusters or tiny independent films. Granted, many so-called “indie” films are made by the studio-owned mini-majors, aka Dependents, but still.
2. I’m burning through like $10/day on Google ads for people who misspell Sofia Coppola. She’s now famous enough to have her name spelled correctly. I’m sure the kids from Spellbound would agree, if they weren’t all in some rehab program for washed up child stars.
3. Is Cold Mountain the first movie edited with Final Cut Pro to be nominated for Best Editing?

I would add a big 4. There is no Elephant is this room. That’s more than a Punch-Drunk Love-level snub. I think Gus Van Sant has completely replenished his indie cred. [1/31 update: The Observer‘s Philip French clearly doesn’t vote in the Academy; he calls Elephant “a chilling tour de force.”]

2004-02-02, This Week in The New Yorker

In the magazine header, image: newyorker.com
Issue of 2004-02-02
Posted 2004-01-26
The Talk of The Town
COMMENT/ UNSTEADY STATE/ Hendrik Hertzberg parses the President?s State of the Union address.
RELOCATION DEPT./ NET LOSS/ Ben McGrath on the Brooklyn Nets? new arena, possibly.
LONDON POSTCARD/ DARK MATERIAL/ Louis Menand on Britain?s latest pop-mythology production.
THE PICTURES/ AGAINST TYPE/ Hilton Als catches up with Charlize Theron.
ELECTION YEAR/ SEVENTEEN OTHER IMPORTANT SWING VOTING GROUPS/ Zev Borow on whom not to forget.
CAMPAIGN JOURNAL/ OUT OF IOWA/ Philip Gourevitch on Teresa Heinz Kerry, the Iowa caucuses, and democracy.

SHOUTS & MURMURS
/ Patricia Marx/ Boswell?s Life of Jackson
ONWARD & UPWARD WITH THE ARTS/ Peter Schjeldahl/ Dealership/ What Marian Goodman sees in the new. [This is not online. Go read it at B&N, or just shell out the dough for a subscription already.]
A REPORTER AT LARGE/ Michael Specter/ Miracle in a Bottle/ Our national appetite for untested remedies.
FICTION/ John Updike/ “Delicate Wives”
THE CRITICS
ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin/ L.A. LOVE/ “The L Word” brings lesbian life to the small screen.
A CRITIC AT LARGE/ Joshua Micah Marshall/ Power Rangers/ Did the Bush Administration create a new American empire?or weaken the old one? [The magazine’s first blogger turns in a veritable The New Yorker Review of Books piece. Nice.]
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ Innocence Abroad/ Adam Guettel’s Italian romance.
MUSICAL EVENTS/ Alex Ross/ Murder Will Out/ Colin Davis revisits the mystery of “Peter Grimes.”
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Anthony Lane/ Three?s a Crowd/ “On the Run,” “An Amazing Couple,” and “After Life”

FLASH: Pretend-journalists love Sofia Coppola

As you can see by my interview with her last year.
On the subject of pretend-journalists, Lost in Translation beat out indie underdog Finding Nemo for best comedy/musical at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes last night. The 80-page or so outline/story/is it really a script? that funders initially thought was too slight to make a whole film from won best screenplay, and Bill Murray won best actor (for finishing it, I guess).
Gothamist has minute-by-minute coverage of the boozefest which is more entertaining than the show itself. Sort of a Joan Rivers-meets-Andrew Sarris kind of thing.
Scarlett Johanssen goes 1 for 3 on getting thanked. Hmm. On the subject of misbehaving ingenues, it sounds like Britney Murphy didn’t have a presenting meltdown like she did last year at the IFP Awards. Whew.

Best Week Ever

Jeff Jarvis apparently doesn’t spend all his time watching Outkast over at The MTV.
He surfs over to the more demographically appropriate VH1 just long enough to post about the show weblog for Best Week Ever, The Mariah Network’s answer to The Daily Show.
From what I hear, the weblog’s the best part of the show. I have to go by secondhand information since I stopped watching any music channels since the quaintly homemade MuchMusic sold their Canadian souls.

Sundance Winners at IndieWIRE and beyond

Awards were handed out last night at Sundance. Check out the list of winners at IndieWIRE.
Or, check out IndieWIRE’s profiles of the first-timers in the competition, including New Yorkers Morgan Spurlock, who won the directing award for his masochistic documentary, Super Size Me! and Josh Marston, whose Maria Full of Grace won the audience award for dramatic feature.
Gowanus, Brooklyn, co-winner of the short film competition, is also by a New Yorker and Sundance vet, Ryan Fleck, who lives in Williamsburg. It’s the start of something big (ie., it was produced to raise money for the feature version, a direct contradiction of Filmmaker‘s rules of great short-making. The moral: If there is a rule, think about breaking it.
Bonus: a Film Threat interview with Spurlock, who conceived and made Super Size Me in less time than it takes at the drive-through window. My version of a doc about McDonald’s would be a road trip, a global search for unconventional pies.

Roger Avary: “I reveal too much of myself”

If screenwriter/director Avary doesn’t reveal enough for you in his Q&A session with the Guardian, go to his weblog–which he must deplore. And when you view his webcam, he may flip you off personally.
He was working on the script for David Fincher’s remake of Dogtown and Z Boys but the Guardian has him adapting Bret Ellis’s Glamorama now. But since I missed his garage sale (an army of professional rummage sale zombies rummaged it clean as soon as the garage door opened), I’m not the most up-to-date source of Avary goings on.