Author: Jack Ford

Clint Eastwood continues his run of real-life stories of unsung American heroes – which he began with sleeper 2014 hit American Sniper and followed with Sully and The 15:17 to Paris – with the self-titled story of Richard Jewell.

His film follows events of the eponymous Richard Jewell who, working as a security guard at a concert in Atlanta’s Centennial Park on July 27 1996, discovered a planted pipe bomb early enough for the authorities to get enough people to a safe distance before it exploded, reducing the number of potential fatalities to just one.

At first, Jewell was praised as a hero, but after some scandalous details about his past came to light, he became the prime suspect. The story then became he had planted the bomb himself in order to discover it and be seen as a hero. The film depicts the media scrutiny Jewell came under and how he and his lawyer, Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), tried to clear his name.

As the title character, Paul Walter Hauser is the most unknown of the film’s leads, a casting decision which gives the character a more authentic, less-stagey feel. The film shows Jewell in his prior security jobs to the fateful one at Centennial Park, where he had always shown an enthusiasm in law enforcement – so much so that he has over-exercised his authority. It would be that obsession with law and order, for better and worse, that would put him in the public eye.

On his case following the blast are one composite character, FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), and one based on real-life Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde).

Like Jewell, they are both overly-enthusiastic about what they do, but their single-mindedness ends up putting Jewell into hot water rather than themselves. Scruggs is after a scoop, Shaw is looking either for the perpetrator, or someone to blame. Neither show any concern about throwing Jewell under the bus to get what they want.

Jewell’s innocence can be easily proved, but the circumstances are against him. Fitting the profile of an embittered terrorist – fat, single, unable to hold down a job, living with his mother – as well as blotches on his record and his knowledge of weaponry and explosives, in many peoples’ eyes, make him guilty.

That we see Jewell is not responsible does rob the film of some tension – even at the most desperate moment, it never feels like he will be convicted, whether or not you know the outcome of the real-life story beforehand. Eastwood and screenwriter Billy Ray, though, are not out to manipulate audiences with Richard Jewell.

There are moments of sentimentality, but they are not overdone and when they come, the story has earned a right for such a moment. The use of a docudrama style and lack of score make for a far less exploitative and more compelling way of letting the story unfold.

There have been some doubt cast over the film’s historical accuracy, particularly in its depiction of Scruggs, which does feel unfortunately old-fashioned.

Such claims can be particularly damning for a film about the importance of the truth, but it ultimately does not discredit Richard Jewell  The film can work on two levels: first the story of the man himself, second it can be seen as an allegory of the integrity of the press and how we should not be so quick to cast assertions on others. The fake news angle may be one that Trump’s lot will jump on, but it is nonetheless a prescient point to make.

Richard Jewell does well to tell a little-known story and is probably the best dramatisation of these events that there can be. It succeeds largely by not trying to be anything more than what it is and everyone involved giving it their all. In particular, it’s testament to the evident fact that Eastwood, still directing at the age of 89, has not lost any of his abilities as a storyteller.

Once again, it’s that time of year when the collective thoughts of the film world turn to just one thing, the studios beg for the recognition of self-appointed peerages and every day gossip outlets speculate which men will be winners and what women will wear at the ceremony – yes, it’s awards season.

If you couldn’t already tell, I’m not a fan of awards, from the Oscars down. With a growing emphasis on red carpet appearances and, more often than not, those who receive the most hype seem to win, it feels more and more like another piece of celebrity news and a lot of time spent speculating on what is an inevitable conclusion.

Is this just cynicism, though, or, if you looked back at every Oscar result from the start, could you find patterns that could save us all the time and predict the outcomes as soon as the nominees are announced? Could it even be expressed as a mathematical model? 

Author Ben Zauzmer, who holds a degree in applied maths from Havard university, believes he has created just a model that can forecast the outcomes on the night – one that correctly predicted 20 out of 21 winners ahead of time in 2018. He shares the makings and practical workings of that model in his new book Oscarmetrics.

In the book, Zauzmer has collected every piece of Oscars data, the nominees and winners of every category throughout the awards’ history, and analysed it all to find tendencies in how the Academy has voted over time.

It’s not just the Oscars, either, he has done the same for the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, DGA, WGA, Grammys and various other guilds to see if there are any correlations between how they all hand out their prizes and the subsequent Oscar wins.

In doing so, he brings up some interesting trends – such as the director of the eventual best film winner wins their respective award 96% of the time – and litters his books with interesting piece of information, such as the most nominations for an individual without a win and the average age discrepancies in the acting categories.

An in-depth knowledge of maths is not needed to understand Oscarmetrics, though it can get over-technical to the point of confusion at times. Some may find themselves re-reading passages a second, third and fourth time before finally understanding what is being said. 

Even so, Zauzmer proves himself both a very credible writer on both maths and cinema and is able to articulate his understanding of both very well – even doing well to explain how the two can be linked when it comes to awards.

That said, the book can also be unfocused and meandering at times – sometimes Zauzmer doesn’t even discuss the category mentioned at the top of the chapter. Probably more harmful to a book about statistics is that sometimes he uses incomplete or unreliable data, such as IMDb user scores and Rotten Tomatoes ratings, as part of proving his hypothesis. 

This is forms part most grating in an over-long section of the book, towards the end where Zauzmer uses the IMDb scores as the basis to work out which film, year on year, should have won the Best Picture gong. His doing so will make you wish more and more that the proposed “Best Popular Film” category never comes to light.

Possibly the biggest missed opportunity of Oscarmetrics is that Zauzmer does not put his findings into action and predict the winners of an upcoming Oscar ceremony. There may have been some legal issue preventing that, but it does give the book something of an anticlimactic feel.

Despite containing elements that don’t sit comfortably, Oscarmetrics is full of fascinating information and is a book that can be read, understood and appreciated by anyone, regardless of their mathematical ability or level of understanding of film. 

It’s a book that feels to the Oscars what Moneyball was to baseball and will add to the excitement of those who love awards season, while giving greater validation to those who hate it. They can now point to the hard data in Oscarmetrics to show it’s all a predictable, elitist, corporate fuss that will all be long forgotten by the time next year’s ceremony comes around.

When American boy band NSYNC signed their first record deal, they were told by their manager, Lou Pearlman, that they would all get their fair share of the profits once the contract was up. Three years later, after touring the world and selling millions of records, the five members all received what they were told was their cut – $10,000 each.

They knew right then and there that Pearlman, the man credited with starting the nineties boy band trend and who the band thought of as a second father, had been ripping them off all along.

They would also soon find out they weren’t the only ones. Other bands under his management had also signed his contract, described by one lawyer as being “the worst (he had) ever seen,” and lost out on big money as a result. These events are all recounted in the documentary The Boy Band Con: The Lou Pearlman Story.

The documentary has plenty of first-hand accounts from those who directly affected, which isn’t so surprising as some helped to produce the film. Ex-NSYNC member Lance Bass serves as producer as well as appearing as a subject, along with his mother Diane and former band mates Chris Kirkpatrick and JC Chasez.

As such, the film does tend to focus on their own dealings with Pearlman, though there are testimonies from others who were once in the same boat – trusting young hopefuls who misguidedly signed his contract, which as one puts it, would have seen them making more money working in Starbucks.

It’s clear there are still mixed feelings about Pearlman – he has done many people wrong, yes, but he also gave them their start in the industry. AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys does not hold back his continued disdain, while former teen star Aaron Carter almost won’t hear a word against Pearlman.

These sentiments are echoed by Lynn Harkless, the mother of Justin Timberlake (himself absent), who expresses sympathy for Pearlman who, she feels, “wanted to be the sixth member of the band.” The problem is, the less interviewees who are prepared to really vilify him, the more the film ends up justifying his actions.

As well as hearing how they had been duped, the film also devotes time to Pearlman’s life story, from his childhood to his early business days in aviation and real estate – with his dissatisfied customers here also telling all – to making the unlikely career move to the music industry.

The documentary then goes into detail about Pearlman’s shady dealings and the truly bizzare manner where he was caught and brought to justice. The tone, though, is so light and splashy that it’s easy to get lost in the finer, more technical details of the legal proceedings. At the same time, some other serious allegations made against him are hardly probed.

Ultimately, The Boy Band Con struggles to find the balance between a real-life showbiz story and a more serious story about a serial embezzler. However, the story at its core is interesting enough to shine through the imperfections and make a viewing for those interested in crime stories and the late nineties music scene worthwhile.

This is huge; so, so huge. Director Drew Bierut’s Things They Say is a sideways look at a modern day phenomenon that has been part of the public consciousness ever since the election of Donald Trump – FAKE NEWS.

You’ve never seen anything like this before, folks. Nothing like it. A film about a gossip website under threat from the lying fake news media, THE REAL FAKE NEWS MEDIA, as well as an alt-right conspiracy group and a restaurant who changes its menu because of a rumour about olive oil causing impotency.

The script of this short film – and we love films that are short – written by Brando Topp, works efficiently and confidently to introduce all its different plot elements and resolve them all in way that ties them all together well.

In it’s FIFTEEN MINUTES running time (fifteen minutes, that’s not so short) it’s able to cover a lot. It has a broad reach with some of its material, but it’s focused and  in its storytelling. The script is well-constructed, every element gets the right amount of screen time, nothing feels like dead weight.

Where other films of its type – social satires – can feel stagy and lack an integrity and attention to detail to make the film feel real, Things They Say had a tone and sensibility where it comes off as authentic as it’s possible to be. On these counts, Things They Say wins and wins bigly.

Things THEY Say from Tyler Weinberger on Vimeo.

It’s not so funny, though, not as funny in the quirky Greta Gerwig-style it is clearly aiming for. It also doesn’t go as far with its targets as much as it could do, or do anything that you wouldn’t have seen coming. All that does take away from the film, that there’s nothing that really sticks in the memory about it.

What’s more, given the opportunities it has to pick its subject matter apart, it doesn’t really do anything with it. SAD.

Things They Say is a mixed bag: there are some good things in there and it’s technically very sound, but in not tackling its subject matter too deeply it ends up feeling throwaway and forgettable.