FILM: Up In The Air – is up, until the end

The story of firing people for a living – and ways of living life, alone or with others – Up In The Air is driven by excellent, smart dialogue, spoken by excellent, smart actors. As the ‘career transition counsellor’ George Clooney is just as you’d expect him to be, so the news is that Vera Farmiga (his detached, female equivalent) and Anna Kendrick (his modernising young colleague) are more than a match for his sparky repartee – and so it’s in the dialogue between these three, especially with all three at once, that the film really takes off.
You completely forget about everything else. There is nothing else, just these people being witty and intelligent, but not witty and intelligent in a way that’s informed by anything other than their life experience. The lines are sharp and appropriate, and it’s a pleasure to watch.

So important are the actors to the movie that Zach Galifianakis, the John Goodman-style figure from The Hangover, gets a full credit in the intro despite only being in the first five minutes. Galifianakis appears in a mildly incongruous comedy turn that eases you into the film, letting the viewer know that what’s to come won’t be solely about wallowing in jobless-induced misery.

The ending, though, feels like a cop out, like when Oliver Stone drifts off at the end of Wall Street. It could leave you feeling empty. The seed of this emptiness is sown in attempting to reform Clooney’s isolated frequent flier in the first place, but you could, of course, argue that emptiness is rather the point of the film. But that feels way too easy, considering the intelligence of what comes earlier on. It should have been better.

Either way, you’ll end up enjoying the dialogue and the performances more than the plot, which is why all three stars (and the screenplay) have Oscar nominations.

Media trickies: Brown, Shepherd face twisting in the wind of appearances

Rarely do politicians look natural on television, but Gordon Brown’s appearance on American Idol was a sight to behold. His head catapulted from side to side, his mouth beamingly claiming how wonderful everyone was, before someone flipped the serious switch on the magic word: ‘Africa’. Before long, Brown was pledging £100 million in mosquito nets (the smile surfaced again occasionally) before signing off to an ecstatic Ryan Seacrest in the studio. This came barely a day after the British premier was seen chatting with George Clooney, a meeting about helicopters in Darfur with which the actor seemed most pleased. Unlike many stars, Clooney has credibility when it comes to Darfur, having made a documentary on it with his father – and few people dislike watching Hollywood’s last true star doing anything.

On Idol, the spectre of Brown rolling his head and smiling was inflicted on 17.6 million Americans – one has to wonder, is this not a greater cruelty? Could not the premier have maintained a dignified silence, simply donating £100 million in the name of Mr G Brown, Westminster? But surely the eagle-eyed Seacrest would have twigged – and we would have been subjected to a reluctant admission of amazing generosity from the Prime Minister, a scene worthy of the loathsome Richard Curtis’s Love, Actually. What use is generosity if no-one knows about it, runs the publicist’s adage? (But there are subtler means, as recalled in this episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.) It faintly recalls the heady early days of New Labour and Cool Britannia, when deluded pop musicians quaffed bitter and champagne at No 10, cracking open a new future with merry abandon to the fate of either parties’ credibility.

It is the manner, not the results, which is the problem. Media relations are fraught with difficulty, of course; the star sees a mirror clapping back and slips into a parallel world, where they are right and never wrong, as long as the money keeps coming. Soap star Jack P Shepherd, occasionally seen without the P*, is doing the media rounds as his character on Coronation Street reaches a head. Having previously compared himself to Robert De Niro, and sung with Ocean Colour Scene after clambering onstage, the actor recently remarked that David’s entire trajectory was down to a single calculated look he gave on set, turning the writers on their heels and forcing them to look at the character anew. (It may be true but don’t say it, one imagines soap veterans thinking.) He was on loquacious form on This Morning, impishly implying that his character had a homosexual future and ‘plenty of shower scenes’ while sharing a jail cell with a man named Bubba, forcing soap bosses to issue a retraction. Should this fever escalate, one can only fear for a moody departure, a la David Caruso or Jack Ryder – apparently for great success but actually for points unknown, bridges burning in the breeze behind them. Fingers crossed that, if he says Hollywood beckons, it actually is.

*One should note that this is probably down to mischievous sub-editing – he is Jack P Shepherd to differentiate him from Jack Shepherd, familiar to millions as Cornish detective Wycliffe.

Prominent actors in shock campaign against themselves

Perhaps buoyed by the success of the writers’ strike, the entertainment industry is putting its foot down when it comes to international violations of best human practice. Steven Spielberg pulled out of the Olympics when it became apparent that the Chinese were not about to do anything about the atrocities in Darfur, prompting one person to congratulate the millionaire (billionaire?) director on putting his principles before money and fame. It would be a cheap shot to remark that such a move is unlikely to put Mr Spielberg in the poorhouse.

Sylvester Stallone has got himself blacklisted in Burma by not toeing the government line while making the latest Rambo movie there.

“The Burmese military said ‘there’s no way you’re coming back into this country unless we can take you to certain parts like Rangoon.’ I said ‘no way, let me walk around without somebody watching.'”

Action’s elder statesman has reportedly received death threats, not to mention the adulation of a group of Cambodians in London’s Leicester Square – so we guess he must be doing something right, the gratuitous kill rate of the movie aside (one every 23 seconds, if you remember. Imagine the amount of fake blood that must have been involved – or perhaps Stallone demanded realism, and decided to go cinema verite with the bodily fluids.).

So keen are actors to campaign, they have even begun taking adverts out against their own kind. Fearing a repeat of the three-month hiatus of the recently concluded writers’ strike, which the actors supported, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro have placed an ad urging the Screen Actors Guild to settle rather than stall over their upcoming contract renewal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP – an mysteriously unwieldy acronym).

One can hardly blame the quartet – all four have movies in the pipeline, with De Niro, Clooney and Hanks all working as producers. The last thing they want are striking actors throwing sticks into the spokes of Hollywood. One can only imagine the horrors of impromptu mime shows, unthinking political musings and ‘creative’ improvisation that actors would bring to the picket lines. Not that we’re into stereotypes at News Hour, you understand.