Esquire (March 2009) now on stands: includes Sean Penn exclusive by Richard T Kelly

This month's Esquire is, in the journalistic sense, my first-ever cover-story, which feels like rather a special moment, to be frank. No-one who knows me has expressed the slightest surprise that the subject of said cover-story happens to be Sean Justin Penn, but then they know me too well. For the many readers who have never heard of me but are intrigued by SJP, I hope the piece proves useful, and - who knows? - might even lead them toward a spot of further reading, specifically Sean Penn: His Life and Times.

One snippet of Sean on Harvey: ‘It did strike me that there could never be a better actor to play Harvey Milk than Harvey Milk. That’s rarely the case: usually you figure you can create a more charismatic character, or else they’ll just cast someone better-looking than the real guy… But Harvey’s particular dear quality was very unusual.’

Need I add that there's plenty more great stuff within these covers this month, including a very useful piece on the '50 Funniest Books Ever Written'? It's a grand selection even though it doesn't have room for Flashman or The Rules of Attraction, and favours Summer Lightning over The Code of the Woosters for some odd reason best known to the literary agent Peter Straus.

The movie reviewed in my regular column is the wonderful Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which my feelings grow yet more dear even as day by day the picture, most unhappily, is marked yet more woundingly with the stigma of Expected Loser at every Awards Ceremony still to be held in this long-drawn-out Awards Season...

Oscar Nominees: Good Work, Fellas

Not Oscar's nominees, no, per the photo - but then I know that AMPAS are protective of any and all reproductions of their famous statuette, whereas I do hope Sesame Street are happy to see Oscar the Grouch show up anywhere, as I certainly am and as I imagine those two tourists were too...
No, ordinarily this blog finds it best to yank down the earmuffs and the eyeshades round Oscar Nominations time - an announcement that only marks the end of one round of Drivel being talked across All Media, prior to the commencement of a fresh Drivel festival. But, having glanced at this year's noms list, with a special interest in one or two parties, I have to say I can't remember a year when so many of the Good Guys seem to have won (if you consider the taking-part as winning, which sadly most people don't...)
One can't but be pleased, for example, to see Werner Herzog and Peter Gabriel both getting recognised. Will they both go to the ceremony? They should ride in the limo together, talk about some stuff on the way... Elsewhere, good to see two pictures highly praised at Cannes - the gentlemanly Laurent Cantet's The Class, and Waltz With Bashir - go into the Best Foreign Film pot. I would imagine Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Anthony Dod Mantle will be a gang for the night as part of the Slumdog Millionaire set, and it seems to me they deserve all the praise in the world for their respective inspired inputs to that picture. This blog need say little more on the subject of Sean Penn and Milk save an extra hearty congrats to Gus Van Sant, who served a long stint on this project, and to Focus Features. And I imagine the 13 nominations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button must be close to some kind of record? I'll be writing about that picture at length elsewhere, but as with the others above, I think in this case the recognition and applause for the quality of the filmmaking is deeply, deeply deserved. As it so often isn't...