jeffrey wells Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When it comes to sifting through all actors responsible for portraying the most powerful man on the planet, there's no shortage of options. John Travolta did a great Bill Clinton impersonation in Primary Colors and Timothy Bottoms delivered a near-perfect imitation of George W. Bush in both D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis and That's My Bush! Neither one comes across as particularly flattering, so presidential nominee Barack Obama has chosen a safer bet: At a recent party in Los Angeles, Obama revealed that he prefers Jeff Bridges' conflicted commander-in-chief in The Contender. Granted, he may have said this simply to keep his audience happy -- in this case, Contender director Rod Lurie, one of the attendees who was willing to plop down $28,000 for the event. "'I just plugged your movie," Obama told Lurie, according to a report the director sent to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells.

Still, when you're under the kind of intense scrutiny that Obama currently endures, Bridges actually seems like a pretty safe choice. Choose Anthony Hopkins in Nixon and it sounds like you're endorsing the bad guy. Choose Kevin Kline in Dave and you come across as disingenuous. Choose Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and somebody will call you incompetent. Bridges, on the other hand, plays a fierce leader bound to his moral convictions. Of course, Obama also expressed sympathy over Lurie's short-lived television show Commander-in-Chief, which featured Geena Davis as the first woman president. Perhaps it's no coincidence that he and Hillary have publicly made amends.

If you thought leading a revolution was easy, try filming one. In The Huffington Post, Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere discusses Steven Soderbergh's two-part Che Guevara biopic, comprised of The Argentine and Guerilla. Despite earlier rumors to the contrary, it appears that both movies will definitely screen next month at the Cannes Film Festival, where Soderbergh was warmly welcomed last year for the premiere of Ocean's Thirteen. The reception of his latest project could be even more positive, but its distribution prospects are another story: As Wells explains, Soderbergh's project guarantees to offend some people for its apparent exclusion of Che's stint as the overlord at La Cabana fortress, where he ordered the execution of over 600 political prisoners. Add to that the heavy amount of Spanish dialog and the director's insistence that the two movies should be enjoyed as a four hour-plus package, and you've got enough red flags to send even the bravest U.S. distributors packing.

Wells, who read both scripts, analogizes the project to Lawrence of Arabia. "Hey, how about presenting the two films as a single, gargantuan Lawrence of Arabia-styled deal with an intermission, running between four or four and a half hours?" he suggests, perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Jon Stewart had it right during the Oscars this year when he ironically geeked out over Lawrence of Arabia on an iPod. If most audiences can't appreciate that movie on the big screen now, why would they turn up for something like this?

If you read online film writing regularly, you've probably heard about (if not bookmarked) the sites of David Poland and Jeffrey Wells. Poland runs Movie City News, but shares his personal views on film-related happenings over at The Hot Blog. Wells's one-man site Hollywood Elsewhere includes a range of movie topics, from reviews to thoughts about Nikki Finke to discussions of studio politics.

The two writers are notorious for feuding with one another on anything and everything, which helps boost interest in their sites (and likewise, traffic). It's always a bit of a shock when they actually agree on something, and when one goes so far as to promote the other's writing, it certainly draws your attention to the issue under scrutiny.

The issue in question concerns press/preview screenings, embargoes on film reviews and, specifically, problems in these areas that Chicago critics encountered with Twentieth Century Fox movies. If you're not a film critic, you might wonder why this matters, but it does affect the timeliness of movie reviews. If I don't see a movie until the night before it is released, either my review will appear late or it will be hastily written, and that's not helpful if you like to read reviews before deciding whether you want to see a film. On the other hand, studios are worried that if I review the movie too early, any negativity could impact box-office, and it might spoil some of their marketing strategies.

Over on Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells has really stirred things up by questioning the motives of Robin Williams gay character in The Night Listener. In the film, Williams' character, Gabriel, a late-night radio host, strikes up a long-distance phone friendship with a 14-year-old child abuse victim dying of AIDS, after the boy's memoir is passed his way by his editor. Wells sprayed the hose on the proverbial hornet's nest with this bit: "I haven't read any reviews that have brought this up, so I guess I'll have to: a 50ish gay man developing a fondness for a 14 year-old boy over the phone -- hello? -- feels icky."

The debate in the comments on this has ranged from people stalwartly defending Wells' POV on the relationship, to outright accusations of homophobia, to irate gay schoolteachers taking umbrage at Wells' implication that if an older gay man has a relationship with an adolescent boy, there must be something "icky" involved. I'd love to hear what Armistead Maupin, the author of the book on which the film was based (and co-writer of the screenplay as well) would say on this subject. The book was based on real-life incidents in Maupin's own life; ergo, an implication of unsavory motives on the part of the Gabriel character is, by extension, a questioning of Maupin's own motives.

My own take on the film, in case you're wondering, is that there was nothing untoward in the relationship between Gabriel and the boy; on the contrary, I saw Gabriel as desperately lonely and in need of someone to nurture (his character is coming off the breakup of a long relationship in which he cared for his lover, who has HIV), and that his interactions toward the boy are strictly paternal. What say you, readers -- especially those who have actually seen The Night Listener? Is the relationship between Gabriel and the boy somehow "icky"? Or is Wells reading something into this that just isn't there?