The Robert De Niro poll.

Recently on Twitter, I ran a poll with regards to Robert De Niro's determination to keep working regardless of the project's quality (except when he works for David O. Russell).

The responses were minimal, but here's a link to the poll:
https://twitter.com/TVMCCA/status/748601184265469952

Poet Nick Flynn deserved better than BEING FLYNN.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/02/being-flynn-and-nothingness.html

Glenn Kenny's review is perceptive in pointing out that poet/author Nick Flynn's BEING FLYNN (adapted from the memoir ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY) has obviously been run through the nibbled-to-death-by-development-notes Hollywood homogenization process.

As coincidence would have it, BEING FLYNN director Paul Weitz' brother Chris' recent A BETTER LIFE (with Damian Bechir's excellent lead performance) seems a model of how to hit a balance between realistic character observation and the demands of commercial narrative filmmaking.

I haven't read ANOTHER.... but I want to now in order to have an idea of what was sacrificed between page and filming.

However, I did read Flynn's poetry volume SOME ETHER, which is a stark, moving tribute to his mother (another great Julianne Moore performance in the film) and the loss young Nick felt after her suicide.

And I sincerely hope at least a few of the theatrical viewers of BEING FLYNN will take the time to seek out/buy SOME ETHER.

Barry Levinson's WHAT JUST HAPPENED?--surprisingly not bad.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?, the Barry Levinson/Art Linson showbiz docucomedydrama (based on Linson's autobiography) is getting a limited theatrical release (don't know if it's also on pay-per-view) and, surprise, it's not at all bad (**1/2 on a **** scale). It's a welcome improvement over Levinson's 2006 MAN OF THE YEAR (an attempt to recapture the good old days of GOOD MORNING VIETNAM), with a decent straight-man performance from Robert De Niro and two primo comic turns from Michael Wincott as a "difficult" British director and John Turturro as a spineless agent of Bruce Willis (the latter doing a takeoff of Alec Baldwin's alleged prima-donna behavior pre-filming of THE EDGE, which Linson produced). Only major debit: the scenes between De Niro and Robin Wright Penn as a soon-to-be-ex-wife, which periodically kill the film's comic and serious momentum.