Jimmy M and The Descendants.

George Clooney.

I'm going to have a little go at my friend Jim today. He writes a terrific blog about the movie business which is linked on this page to the right there and it's one of the top 50 movie blogs – can you see it there to the right of George Clooney's picture Jim Makichuk's Film Project? – give it a try.
I'm sure that he will post an answer to this; he said in one of his posts on the blog '. . . The Descendants is a Hallmark TV movie, a nice movie, even admirable, but not a feature movie, more like a TV movie. Only difference is a few curse words.'
For the sake of people who don't live in America, the phrase Hallmark TV movie refers to the Hallmark Movie Channel, sister to the Hallmark Channel, which shows family friendly movies. It is owned by the same people who own Hallmark Cards who are headquartered in Kansas City Missouri.
Not the kind of channel that would show The Sopranos, The Wire or The Singing Detective or the kind of channel that would interest me.
Family friendly movies? That's not The Descendants – if The Descendants could be compared to anything it might be to an Anton Chekhov play.
The Descendants has a multilayered script admirably performed by an excellent cast and both the script and George Clooney, who plays the leading role, deserve Oscars. They probably won't get them as Clooney already has an Oscar and – well you never know – Alexander Payne and his co-writers might get it for adapted screenplay.
But I know what Jim means; I remember seeing a movie called City Hall which was directed by Harold Becker and starred Al Pacino. Pacino played the Mayor of New York City and it was about the accidental shooting of a boy and the investigation into it thereafter. I remember sitting and watching it, thinking that I could have sat at home and watched episodes of Law and Order as it was a run of the mill cop script.
The thing about The Descendants is that it is too complicated for television; it's something you have to sit down in the dark with strangers to watch; not have it pumped out of the TV with all the distractions of your living room.
Clooney gives a terrific nuanced performance; he has been criticised by “Mister Anonymous” in the blogesphere and by people who don't understand what acting is all about. One of them said that when he was given a particular piece of bad news in the movie he did nothing. Nothing?? What did they expect him to do; if you looked at his face you could see what was going on internally.
You see he can never get passed the fact that he is a movie star and good looking and people who don't know seem to think that those things don't go together.
Years ago when he was in ER I thought he was awful; he would play every scene with his head down and look up at people but something happened when he went into movies. He met directors who told him things, gave him direction and not only did he learn from that as an actor he learned to direct too.
He directed some really good movies: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Leatherheads and The Ides of March – okay we'll sweep over Leatherheads but the others are good. He has also produced some 27 titles so he is an asset to the film business.
The Descendants will not appeal to people who prefer blockbusters or movies with special effects and computer-generated images but there is certainly room for it in the scheme of things; we can't give in totally to the 15 year olds.
As a footnote: I mentioned Harold Becker earlier as the director of City Hall. Well I was in his first full length feature film The Ragman's Daughter.
A couple of years ago, in Los Angeles, my wife went to a yard sale at a large house in the Hollywood Hills – where we lived. The house was, maybe, half a mile from us, and when she got there she saw a poster for The Ragman's Daughter and said “My husband was in that” and woman of the house said “My husband directed it.”
They were moving and all their stuff was in the front yard for sale.
The woman told my wife to tell me to come up to the house which I did.
When I got there, the poster was still in the yard and Harold Becker came out to see me.
The last time I had seen him was in 1971 but he looked kind of familiar and when we shook hands he said 'a familiar face.'
We'd been living close by for all those years. He knew what people who were in The Ragman's Daughter were doing which I thought was impressive and I see that at the age of 83 he is to direct another movie – certainly built of the right stuff.
By the way I didn't buy the poster.

Harold Becker.