- Hollywood-Elsewhere: Jeff Wells notes that, in the wake of the coalescence of virtually all of the major critics groups behind “The Social Network” over the last few weeks, a number of people who have long argued that “The King’s Speech” is the frontrunner for the best picture Oscar are now jumping ship. The most noteworthy example of this is Pete Hammond, who for weeks had “The King’s Speech” at #1 but has now dropped it all the way down to #3 on his projections, behind both “The Social Network” and “The Fighter.” Steve Pond and Kris Tapley have also dropped “The King’s Speech” behind “The Social Network” on their respective charts. Both major polls of awards pundits — GoldDerby’s “Inside Track” and MovieCityNews’s “Gurus ‘o Gold” — now show that “The Social Network” is firmly in the lead.
- Los Angeles Times: Amy Kaufman interviews best supporting actress hopeful Hailee Steinfeld, the 14-year-old who beat out 15,000 other girls to win the part of Mattie Ross in Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s “True Grit” and all but stole the show from her three A-list male co-stars — all despite having never previously appeared in a film before! Steinfeld, who is being homeschooled by her parents (neither of whom have anything to do with the entertainment business), only turned 14 earlier this month, and was treated by Paramount, the film’s distributor, to a “special birthday screening of the movie” last weekend for her and 200 friends and family members.
- All These Wonderful Things: AJ Schnack scores a rare interview (via email) with Banksy, “the anonymous British artist who gained notoriety and fame for his often-politically charged work that would turn up in some very unusual places,” and who directed the controversial documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” which recently made the Academy’s short-list of 15 films from which five Oscar nominees will ultimately be chosen. One of Banksy’s most fascinating answers was his description of the small creative team with whom he makes his art: “They all hate this fucking film. They don’t care if its effective, they feel very strongly that Mr. Brainwash is undeserving of all the attention. Most street artists feel the same. This film has made me extremely unpopular in my community.” Of the debate over the film’s legitimacy as a doc, he says, “I’m still shocked by the level of skepticism. I guess I have to accept that people think I’m full of shit. But I’m not clever enough to have invented Mr. Brainwash, even the most casual on-line research confirms that.”
- New York Daily News: Nina Mandell reports that Damon Feldman, the head of the Hollywood Boxing Federation, has offered $1 million each to Hollywood A-listers Mark Wahlberg, who plays boxer Micky Ward in “The Fighter,” and Will Smith, who played boxer Muhammad Ali in “Ali” (2001), to “fight three one-minute rounds” against each other. Feldman says, “We don’t think that these two are going to rip each others heads off. We’re just hoping to get into the ring and have a little fun duking it out.” Mandell notes, “It would certainly be a coup for Hollywood Boxing Federation, which normally snags C-listers. Previous competitors include Jose Canseco, Tonya Harding, and Rodney King.”
- New York Times: A.O. Scott points out a number of cinematic “themes and trends” that stood out to him this year. Among them, the high prevalence of films about “dreams, hoaxes, and puzzles, many of them playing with fundamental questions of identity” (“Black Swan,” “Inception,” “Shutter Island,” “The Social Network,” etc.); “it’s all mom’s fault” (“Animal Kingdom,” “Black Swan,” “The Fighter,” “Tangled,” etc.), tough young women (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “Let Me In,” “The Runaways,” “Somewhere,” “True Grit,” “Winter’s Bone,” etc.), residual interest in/anger about “the Bush era” (“Casino Jack,” “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” “Fair Game,” “The Ghost Writer,” “Green Zone,” “Inside Job,” etc.), and how “a good actor can make a bad or mediocre or not-quite-great-movie much better” (“Barney’s Version,” “Casino Jack,” “Love and Other Drugs,” “Red,” “The Tempest,” etc.).
- 24 Frames: Steven Zeitchik gets the lowdown on the actresses who portray the “big-haired, loud-talking, punch-throwing Irish-American siblings to Mark Wahlberg’s Micky Ward and Christian Bale’s Dicky Eklund” in “The Fighter,” who “have nicknames as colorful as their hairstyles. It turns out that while a few of them “live in Los Angeles and have some acting experience, the majority are small-town Massachusetts locals who came through the front door — literally, by answering a casting call” to which 3,000 others responded, too. They scored their parts after “a four-hour audition in which famously exacting director David O. Russell had the finalists improvise their parts,” and were soon on set with some of Hollywood’s biggest names. One tells Zeitchik, “Amy [Adams] and Mark were cool. They would just talk to us and shoot the —-. But Melissa [Leo] and Christian stayed in character. And I do mean stay in character. Melissa was our mother 24-7. She called us by our names. She never dropped that overbearing Lowell mother. It was a little weird.” Zeitchik reports that by the end of the shoot, four of the actresses — including Kate O’Brien, Conan O’Brien’s sister — “had become close friends, now talking several times a week and even vacationing together.”
- eFilmCritic: Erik Childress reveals his ninth annual “[Quote] Whores of the Year” list, wherein he identifies the 10 critics who most frequently and shamelessly provide good quotes for bad movies. He has historically targeted our pals Pete Hammond and Ben Lyons, as much as anyone, but this year neither of them makes the cut, and he instead set his sights on Shawn Edwards (who was quoted 26 times this year, 9 times for films that generated less than 40% approval on RottenTomatoes.com) and Jake Hamilton (citing his “blind enthusiasm” and “hyperbole-laden quotes”), among others.
Photo: Colin Firth in “The King’s Speech.” Credit: The Weinstein Company.