PosMeter: Can this actor be saved, “Bestest," and Nothingness…

By Susan Thea Posnock

1. Oscar Drop: When it comes to the post-Oscar decline, it’s hard to come up with a past winner who has had a more dramatic plunge than the likable Cuba Gooding Jr. It’s one thing to be in sub-par films, but Daddy Day Camp looks “direct-to-video” bad. To be fair, I haven’t seen the film, but a Rotten Tomatoes score of 2 percent doesn’t make me want to run out to the theater. It’s depressing when one considers the potential Gooding once had in films like Boyz N the Hood. The bright spot on the horizon is American Gangster, in which he plays heroin pimp Nicky Barnes (who has his own doc coming out, as per Rollerboy’s earlier post) opposite leads Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.

It sounds like a huge improvement over the roles Gooding has been getting since he peaked in 1996 with Jerry Maguire. Despite the dismal depths he’s sunk to, I think he’s always had talent and presence. Here’s hoping this is a real return to form and not just a caricature.

2. “Bestest Friends”: Rather than bitchy enemies, High School Musical stars Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Anne Hudgens are “bestest friends,” according to Tisdale, who plays semi-evil Sharpay in the hit Disney movie and its sequel. What a relief.

I haven’t seen High School Musical 2 yet, but I will grudgingly admit I enjoyed the first one. On a scale of 1 to 10 it scored a 50 on the Pos-perky-meter. And it’s hard to be dismissive about Tiger Beat’s new generation of poster boys and girls. When I gave my niece a copy of that tween mag with Zac Efron on the cover, she shrieked with excitement and then gave the “pull-out-poster” of the young HSM and Hairspray heartthrob an honored spot on her bedroom wall. While his acting skills are negligible, Efron has broken out of the Disney channel mold. Will the others follow? One thing’s for sure, they’re much shinier than my gritty, dirty boys from The Outsiders.

3. And then…nothing happened: I watched Old Joy recently and while I enjoyed the music, images, tone and performances, I wondered afterwards about the nothingness of it all—the film is so low-key it barely has a pulse, yet it’s also oddly moving. It got me thinking about an indie called Jones I saw last week with Nathaniel at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. The film is too indulgent in its desire to slowly (very slowly) set the mood as the Jones of the title spends a couple of not-very-eventful days and nights, interspersed with bars, slept-through-subway stops and Asian hookers, in New York City. Director/writer Preston Miller does manage to create some funny moments, in particular a scene involving what has to be the dullest profession on the planet: filming an insurance company deposition. But what’s the point to all this nothingness on film? Do these empty spaces have meaning?

*Originally posted at Awards Daily