Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese in 'Side by Side'

Have you ever wondered what your favorite director thought about shooting on digital film? How about actress Greta Gerwig? Have you even considered what the indie actress thought the first time she heard the whirring sound of an actual celluloid camera? What of cinematographers and colorists—how interested are you in exploring their relationships? (Are they adversaries? Do they work as a team? Did they start out adversaries, but thanks to advances in technology, now work as a team?) Have you ever wondered how Keanu Reeves would sound saying such profound phrases as “film has helped us share our experiences and dreams,” or “by the 1980s, Avid had developed digital editing into a cost-effective, computer-based system”?

If the answer to any of the above is “yes—but only if fed to me through a 90-minute documentary”—then you are exactly the niche audience longtime production manager and part-time documentarian Chris Kenneally had in mind for his second feature-length film, Side by Side.

Perhaps that sounds unduly negative. After all, there are many out there for whom portions, at least, of this documentary about the rise of digital film in cinema may be of interest. Side by Side manages the tough task of being an instructive look into the way technology has developed over the years while also being occasionally entertaining. There is a intriguing question prevalent in the movie—which taps the likes of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Richard Linklater, James Cameron, George Lucas and David Fincher, as well as the special effects guy for Jurassic Park, for answers (and yet, for some ungodly reason, chose Keanu Reeves as its narrator)—one that can be summarized somewhat neatly: Are we at the end of film?

Unfortunately for the producers, that doesn’t take too long to answer. The only people who even try to argue against the relentless march of technology do so purely on an aesthetic basis. Digital film lets you shoot longer, and for less money. It is easier and cheaper to edit. It is better for the planet. The end. As Ms. Gerwig puts it, “They process digital now to make it look like film, as if film is inherently better. Just, we like the way it looks better. Which seems kind of arbitrary, because it’s just what we’re used to.”

Surprisingly, the film chooses independent cinematographers (Reed Morano and Bradford Young) to defend the more expensive, older technology, as if the idea of film reels is now so antiquated that the only people who use them do so specifically so they can talk about how it “feels different.” Hipsters, basically. The film barely acknowledges that most films are still mainly shot on celluloid, with digital cameras filling in occasionally.

With 80 minutes left to fill, Mr. Reeves is left to ask more questions about, you know, movie stuff. Judging from the answers given, the questions range from “Do you remember back when you had ‘dailies’ and had to edit movies by hand?” to “Did Robert Downey Jr. ever pee in jars and leave them around your set as a form of protest?”

It’s not that the answers aren’t interesting: Mr. Lynch, whose last film, Inland Empire, was shot entirely digitally, claims that he will never return to celluloid. Some like Mr. Fincher, on the other hand, recognize that digital film can lead to terrible-looking movies—though he rightly puts the blame on the people who make them, not what equipment they are shot on. And Danny Boyle is perhaps the best example of how an early adopter can turn a public’s interest and make something like digital film mainstream. After watching a Dogme 95 film called The Celebration, which was shot entirely on a Sony Handycam, the director tracked down the film’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle. The result was 28 Days Later, portions of which were shot with digital cameras. In 2009, their film Slumdog Millionaire became the first movie shot predominantly in a digital format to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Lucas, meanwhile, are super-jazzed to talk—at length and ad nauseam—about every minutiae of digital editing and special effects. This would be less irritating if they weren’t busy taking credit for everything short of inventing the digital camera itself. Actually, Mr. Lucas comes close, boasting about how his company created the analog computer editing system EditDroid, and the next thing you know, he’s referring to the game-changing digital editor Avid as a “we” endeavor. It would have been good to take note here that EditDroid was a commercial failure and was sold to Avid in 1993 after the Star Wars remakes. Only 24 ED systems were ever made.

Frankly, the movie has too much time on its hands: it spends an exorbitant amount of it talking to colorists, special effects animators, editors and various other people with jobs that you’d only care to hear about if you were really really interested in how films are made. And when someone appears whose only movie credit is the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt feature Premium Rush, you have to wonder what he is doing sharing screen time with Mr. Scorcese.

Finally, in a movie that gets into the nitty-gritty of editing and special effects, you would think the glaring continuity error of Mr. Reeves’s hair length would have been noticed and fixed in post. (It goes from very short, with stubbly beard to very long, with neckbeard, before going short again, then long again, etc. It’s quite distracting.)

But let us not nitpick. It’s doubtful that anyone will leave this movie siding with the celluloid purists, believing that the digital process will be the end film as we know it. Auteurs will continue to shoot in whichever medium they prefer, and there will always be hundreds of forgettable flicks for every great one, no matter what technology is employed—a lesson Side by Side proves simply by existing.

SIDE BY SIDE

Two stars out of four
Running Time 99 Minutes
Directed by Chris Kenneally
Starring: Keanu Reeves, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron,
Robert Rodriguez, Walter Murch and David Fincher

There's a working fireplace and a grand piano. Everything you need... except for furniture.

You know those movies that you can watch over and over again? The ones that you can never get enough of until suddenly, one day, you're done? You just want to see something, anything, different? We assume a similar thing happened to Rodney Schiffer, who's selling his townhouse at 217 East 62nd Street after five years.

Mr. Schiffer, the former managing director of Column Financial, bought the 3,750-square foot house from Martin Scorsese back in 2007. Mr. Scorsese departed from his home of 20 years for a $12 million townhouse on E. 64th Street, apparently figuring that he and his long-overdue Oscar deserved some fancier digs.

The property is listed for $6.49 million with Leslie J. Garfield & Co., only a little more than the $6.15 million that Mr. Schiffer paid for it back in 2007. Not that he didn't try for more, listing it for $7.9 million with Prudential Douglas Elliman back in January. Hey, the streets, and the market, can be mean.

Still, the place sounds pretty awesome, especially because it appears to be almost the same as Mr. Scorsese left it, with the top of the home dedicated to a "director's screening room with en suite bath, drop down projector screen, Crestron system, Pullman kitchen and synchronized black out shades," according to the old Elliman listing.

Other nifty features of the six-bedroom house include a working fireplace, a balcony overlooking the garden and a dumbwaiter. Fun and creepy!

Apparently not Mr. Schiffer's cup of tea anymore, though. In fact, it's unclear if the house was ever his cup of tea. At the time of the purchase, when asked to describe the townhouse for an Observer reporter, he begged off with: “It’s really not that great.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Martin Scorsese in the new iPhone ad (YouTube)

Zooey Deschanel orders tomato soup. John Malkovich demands a joke. Samuel L. Jackson makes his own tomato soup (Hot-spacho!)

The iPhone 4S ads have drawn some A-list names to promote its new feature: indentured robotic servant Siri. Because Apple won't rest until the singularity is here and everything Isaac Asimov predicted comes true.

The latest spot, released yesterday, stars director Martin Scorsese in the back of a taxi cab. In 1976's Taxi Driver, it was Mr. Scorsese himself who made the cameo as a creepy backseat passenger. Now, he's returning the favor.

See if you can spot the Taxi Driver shout-out in the iconic director's commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z714Fnylf5s&feature=player_embedded#!

Did you see it? As Redditors pointed out, Mr. Scorsese is apparently still riding in Travis Bickle's cab: the car has the same license plate as the one in the DeNiro film.

Even though the Tribeca area has been gentrified since Taxi Driver was first released (thanks in large part to Mr. DeNiro himself), it's still nice to know that the city is still be kept safe by vigilante cab drivers...at least those willing to sell out for a phone commercial.

Henry Hill's FBI mugshot in 1980 (Wikipedia)

According to the New York Post, Mr. Hill-- who was part of the Luchese crime family before turning around and ratting them out in court in exchange for a life in the Witness Protection Program--passed away at the West Hills Hospital in LA after entering the hospital at the end of May when he suffered a heart attack.

His manager and girlfriend, Lisa Caserta, said that Mr. Hill faced bad circulation due to his smoking and suffered from a drinking problem.

“I don’t think he ever got over his demons," Ms. Caserta lamented about the iconic crime figure. As for Mr. Scorsese's portrayal of Mr. Hill's life?

"“He always said it was 99.9 percent accurate,” Ms. Caserta told the press. So pour one out for Henry Hill, the original Goodfella, and tonight go home and watch the film. It is a classic, after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sr-vxVaY_M

Inside the atrium, however, a reverent group was congregating, awaiting the entrance of the filmic doyenne. In true French fashion, she kept them waiting.

In the meantime, a steady flow of Hollywood elite appeared, in black-tie best, to pay tribute to Ms. Deneuve and her distinguished, six-decade career.

Some were old friends. Slightly bleary eyed, Susan Sarandon arrived to show support for her colleague and erstwhile on-screen amante. When a young reporter asked Ms. Sarandon if she had ever worked with Ms. Deneuve, we could practically see the hair raise on the nape of the actress’s neck, a Rottweiler urge boiling barely beneath the surface. “Actually, we filmed a very famous love scene in the ’80s,” she barked with righteous indignation, referring of course to her canonical tryst with l’actrice in The Hunger.

The Observer asked Ms. Sarandon about her experience working with Ms. Deneuve. “Everybody remembers she’s gorgeous, and she has this reputation for being kind of very cool, but she’s actually really funny and a really game gal,” Ms. Sarandon said. A faraway look crossed her face. “That was before I had children, so it was a lot of fun. A lot of partying.” In her speech at the tribute, Ms. Sarandon would recall that after one particularly raucous evening, Ms. Deneuve was the only guest who returned the next day to help clean up le grand désordre.

Others, however, had never met Ms. Deneuve personally. “I think my impression of Catherine Deneuve is that she really is ageless. She’s timeless. I think she’s one of the great cinematic actresses, because her face, and her art has changed,” Glenn Close told The Observer. Somehow, their paths had never crossed, and Ms. Close was eagerly looking forward to meeting the woman who had been an inspiration for her own career, albeit from a distance. “I wouldn’t be here without the likes of Catherine Deneuve.”

Despite the praise, Ms. Close could not recall a single scene from Ms. Deneuve’s prolific film career. “I should have studied up on it before I came,” she said, quickly moving toward the cocktail reception.

Still others were admirers from afar. Ali Wentworth recalled attending a Catherine Deneuve film festival in Paris several years ago. “I felt so inadequate, and I felt so un-chic and so un-elegant that I swore I wasn’t going to watch another Catherine Deneuve film until I got my act together. You know, she epitomizes that kind of beautiful, ethereal, Parisian thing. You know Americans, we’ll never get it right.”

Director François Ozon, who worked with Ms. Deneuve on his film 8 Women, explained that Ms. Deneuve has come to encompass not only French cinema, but French identity. “She is the French woman! She was used for the Marianne, the symbol of France in the ’70s,” he said, Parisian pluck ringing clear through his heavily accented voice. “Do you know what is the Marianne?” he said. Visions of Delacroix, laurel wreaths—and of course liberté, fraternité et egalité flashed before our eyes. Yes, we know what is the Marianne, that allegorical fetish of French femininity and philosophy.

Indeed, while many jeunes belles have seen their stars rise in the Champagne landscape of cinematic iconography, Ms. Deneuve towers above the rest. Is she not still La Marianne? The Observer asked Mr. Ozon. He chuckled. “She’s still a Marianne, I think so. We can still say that.”

And suddenly, there she was. Amid the electric storm of flashbulbs, she appeared in a bright blue gown, her upper lip flexed with that peculiar Parisian mien. Catherine Deneuve, la grande dame Marianne, looked neither flustered nor surprised by her adoring fans. Immediately, many guests dropped their cocktails and scrambled toward the red carpet hoping for a glimpse of the actress. A Champagne flute shattered somewhere, with that grimace-inducing chime. “Ooh la la,” someone gasped, at the flute or the actress, or both.

Ever the glutton for punishment, we asked Ms. Deneuve if she thought Americans could truly appreciate French film. She was, much to our delight, graciously diplomatic. “Depends,” she began, “If it talks too much, maybe it’s a little boring, you know, for an American audience … There is less action in French films.”
Still, she has great faith in American cinephiles. “There are a lot of American people who love European cinema I think now,” she said with a pursed but warm smile and a slight nod.

Soon after Ms. Deneuve’s dramatic entrance, guests reached for one final mango chicken appetizer, set down their glasses and moved downstairs to the movie theater. Flanked by two massive bouquets of red roses, a screen reeled highlights from Ms. Deneuve’s career. Starting with her sing-songy eloquence in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, through the perverse world of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, toward ice maidenhood in Tristana and the sexual exploration of Belle du Jour, the audience was steeped in both the history of French cinema and Ms. Deneuve’s unparalleled repertoire.

Presenting Ms. Deneuve with the Film Society’s Chaplin award, Martin Scorsese proposed that the actress embodies the emotional experience of French film. “The adventurousness, the daring sense of life flowing from tragedy to happiness and joy and to acceptance from moment to moment, the timeless beauty, beauty so delicate that it seems impossible, but then it’s there, it exists. As I said, French cinema, Catherine Deneuve one in the same.”

Ms. Deneuve accepted the award with typical humility, after a standing ovation from the audience. “So much has been said, I don’t have much more to add, but to thank you again for honoring me tonight.”

editorial@observer.com

Viola Davis (Getty Images)

Best Actress

In the past few weeks, this race--long led by Viola Davis--got a lot more interesting with Golden Globe wins for Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams. Ms. Williams's film may feel too slight, but she's gone on the PR offensive with an in-character GQ cover; Ms. Streep's film has its detractors, and she hasn't won an Oscar in many moviegoers' lifetimes (the Academy likes to nominate her and award a "buzzier" actress, generally speaking).

Best Cinematography

The Artist's black-and-white work is the category's greatest curio, but Hugo's camerawork was widely praised for bringing richness to too-often misused 3-D technology. This is also the only place, realistically speaking, where the Academy could award The Tree of Life for its vision of the beginning and end of life--one accomplished largely through Emmanuel Lubezki's work behind the camera.

Best Director

Whether or not The Artist has Best Picture sewn up, Martin Scorsese--honored in 2007 for his work on The Departed--has shown surprising strength this season for his so-called "love letter" to the cinema of his youth. It's the exact same narrative that accounts for the success of The Artist, with the crucial different of Mr. Scorsese's fame and reputation.

Best Makeup

No widely-nominated films are in this ever-scattershot category--will The Iron Lady team win for making Meryl Streep into Margaret Thatcher? (And does that discount the actress's own skill?) Will the Harry Potter series take a phrryic victory lap here? Will Albert Nobbs win for what we assume is good... make...up? (Still isn't playing in New York.)

Best Original Screenplay

In this category, Oscar has historically rewarded novelty and/or innovation (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno, Matt Damon). While Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris would seem to be in pole position, A Separation and Bridesmaids have their supporters (for radically different reasons). One winner elsewhere that may have trouble here? The Artist, which lacks for obvious reasons sparkling repartee.

Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara

This morning, thousands upon tens of New Yorkers are realizing they have to go see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, as that film was announced as one of nine Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Big surprises of the morning included that film's nomination for Best Picture, the inclusion of Best Actor nominees Demian Bichir and Gary Oldman, and the breadth of the Best Picture category, which found room for movies as different as War Horse and The Tree of Life after speculation tended towards the notion that there would be fewer nominees about which voters felt more strongly.

The predictions we got right? That Rooney Mara would take the place of Tilda Swinton in the Best Actress race, and that Albert Brooks would fall out of Best Supporting Actor--as well as the first five of those nine nominees. We didn't speculate on Best Animated Feature, speculating to ourselves that the field was a bit fallow, and with nominees including Chico and Rita and A Cat in Paris, we may have been right.

Hugo leads the race with 11 overall nominations, followed by heretofore perceived frontrunner The Artist with 10.

The nominations in top categories are below, and the full list of nominations is here.

Best Picture

The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist; Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Alexander Payne, The Descendants; Martin Scorsese, Hugo;

Best Actor:

Demian Bichir, A Better Life; George Clooney, The Descendants, Jean DuJardin, The Artist; Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress:

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs; Viola Davis, The Help; Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady; Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn; Jonah Hill, Moneyball; Nick Nolte, Warrior; Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Best Supporting Actress:

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist; Jessica Chastain, The Help; Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids; Octavia Spencer, The Help; Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Best Original Screenplay

The Artist; Bridesmaids; Margin Call; Midnight in Paris; A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants; Hugo; The Ides of March; Moneyball; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Animated Feature

A Cat In Paris; Chico and Rita; Kung Fu Panda 2; Puss in Boots; Rango

Michelle Williams--who will be nominated. Who else will join her? (Getty Images)

Tomorrow morning will bring that early-morning announcement of this year's Oscar nominees--with the attention-desperate wrinkle that no one knows how many nominees there will be. Herewith, our predictions, for last-minute entries into your office pool (if yours is the sort of office at which Oscar nominations are the subject of a pool. Ours is not, which is why we're writing a blog post).

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

We know any number of films between five and ten can be nominated for Best Picture, but with The Artist and The Descendants sucking up so much oxygen and so many first-place votes, it's easy to imagine no sixth choice gathering enough steam. The likely sixth entry, if there is one, would be Moneyball--but aren't many of those voters who love "adult dramas" more likely to vote in the buzzier Descendants first?

Best Director

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Mr. Allen, Mr. Scorsese, and Mr. Hazanavicius are clear locks, and Mr. Payne will get in on the strength of his film's reputation. For the fifth spot, Mr. Fincher and Steven Spielberg seem the likeliest (The Help's debut director, Tate Taylor, did not particularly distinguish himself), but the total fade of War Horse's repute gives the advantage to Mr. Fincher for what would be his third nomination in four years.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean DuJardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo DiCaprio has been nominated for all manner of precursor awards for his role in J. Edgar, but that movie's disappeared from theaters and from the minds of viewers who've seen many, many better movies by now (J. Edgar really is uniquely terrible). Anyone who loves biographical films about controversial figures gets to vote one in with Meryl Streep in Best Actress--and the surprise nominee might be Ryan Gosling, who does nothing too special in The Ides of March but who'd be a big enough star to stand alongside Mr. Clooney and Mr. Pitt.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Ms. Streep, Ms. Davis, and Ms. Williams have all won early awards, and Ms. Close helped produce her own movie, in which she plays a traditionally bait-y role as a female impersonating a male. The notion that four people in Oscar-bait roles would be joined by Tilda Swinton in the avant-garde We Need to Talk About Kevin stretches credulity--silent for long stretches and chronologically disjointed, this doesn't seem like the sort of role that gets an actress to the Kodak. The narrative around Rooney Mara--plucked out of nowhere in the most extensive casting search since Scarlett O'Hara--seems to coalesce towards a surprise nomination.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Armie Hammer, J. Edgar

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Mr. Plummer is so far ahead here that the rest of the nominees seem plucked from thin air--an impersonation of Lawrence Olivier? Sure! A fairly quiet turn by a popular comic? Definitely! An attempt at a comeback in a movie no one saw? Okay! Armie Hammer's nomination seems the least likely, but the energy he brought to J. Edgar could make him the one element of the film they nominate.

Best Supporting Actress

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Three movies with huge amounts of apparent support carry their supporting stars towards a nomination, with the addition of Melissa McCarthy, taking the spot that some believe might have gone to Janet McTeer in the little-seen Albert Nobbs.

Best Original Screenplay

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

Young Adult

This category seems fairly open--besides the two Best Picture nominees, the three other top entries are not traditionally Oscar-y comedies. The Writers' Guild of America nominated Win Win, a sort-of comedy also, here, but that movie seems even less up Oscar's alley than Young Adult, a movie in which past winner Diablo Cody deals with her relationship with fame.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Moneyball

This category, on the other hand, has the real heat--it's hard to imagine anything sneaking into a set of screenplays this popular. It's also one of the few categories with true suspense as to the winner--because the real speculation only begins on Tuesday.

Golden Globe-winner Madonna, singer of "American Life." (Getty Images)

The most likely, of last night's awards, to an awards-show junkie in 2002 imagining the hazy future:

1. Meryl Streep. Sure! Bet the speech was great.

2. Christopher Plummer. Glad he's still around!

3. Martin Scorsese. He deserves some recognition!

4. George Clooney. Did he win for playing Cary Grant?

Middling likelihood--not impossible to imagine, but sort of weird:

5. Michelle Williams. It's nice that the girl from Dawson's Creek figured it out. But if Michelle Williams has a Golden Globe, Katie Holmes must have two Oscars, right?

6. Claire Danes. It's nice, and unexpected, that the girl from My So-Called Life figured it out. So, is Jordan Catalano a movie star?

7. Jessica Lange. She's not a recluse in 2012? She says lines, on camera, and not just to the mirror in her creepy haunted mansion? Oh, she played an old witchy lady living in a mansion full of ghosts--that makes much more sense. Moving her up to spot #3.

Very weird:

7. Kelsey Grammer. Frasier is still on? They convinced the cast to keep coming back? Wow, NBC must be the number-one network!

8. Matt LeBlanc. Friends is still on? See above.

9. No one accepted their award riding a hoverboard. Truly tests credulity of what 2012 will be like.

10. Madonna. Did "original song from a movie" stop being a thing that really exists, with integrity, at all? What a terrifying future!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

A Film Forum rep explained to the Observer: "When Rialto [Pictures] picked it up, they thought it had a wider audience beyond HBO--it's such a New York movie, and so perfect for the Film Forum audience and the New York audience." The film is to run for a limited engagement; Scorsese's Taxi Driver is to screen there March 18 through 31.

This may be the first time Scorsese's spoken at Film Forum, the rep told us, in about fifteen years--he presented Mean Streets there, ages before winning an Oscar--though he's active in film preservation. Margaret Bodde, executive director of Scorsese's Film Foundation, helped broker Scorsese's appearance, for which demand was clearly pent-up. "It was an instant sell-out," after an email blast to those well-heeled cineastes who opt in on the mailing lists. So, any room for the Observer to hear our favorite director talk about filming our favorite curmudgeon? "No."

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_