Gold Animal Charm

REVIEW: Reitman's 'Up in the Air' Built With Award Season In Mind, Not Audiences

16.12.09

Biases up front:

For many of the same reasons most of us don’t care for leftist movie stars, I don’t like George Clooney, but after he  publicly made fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s , that was something altogether different. Unforgivable. An uncommonly cruel thing to do – even for a Hollywoodist — and it offered a disturbing glimpse into the mercenary assholery of a man willing to say anything for a place at the Hollywood Cool Kids’ Table. Clooney’s other problem is that unlike Jane Fonda and Sean Penn, he simply doesn’t possess the acting chops to transcend what a classless act he really is behind that Cary Grant-lite façade. Sure, Hollywood and the entertainment media adore him, but that’s because he’s the kind of guy who would make fun of Charlton Heston’s Alzheimer’s.

I do, however, like director Jason Reitman — quite a bit, in fact. “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno” proved him to be a genuine talent, superb with actors and able to bring genuine warmth to the kind of stories lesser directors would distance us from with “quirk.” And as we saw with the subtle anti- abortion message in “Juno,” Reitman’s the rare filmmaker today who puts the quality of his story above the clichéd politically correct demands that bring down so many others … like, say, the wretched “Avatar.”

Source: Big Hollywood (blog)