The Morning After...
If you’ve watched Tootsie, the very long acceptance speech from Renée Zellweger ultimately started to remind me of Michael Dorsey’s when he wants to reveal the truth about his identity and knows where he’s going but is very lost in getting there. As Renée is the co-star of Jerry Maguire, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, and gave a performance in Judy that shows her in utter command at very moment of a character who is clearly Judy in every moment and maybe Judy Garland in very few of them, and as she has had a career with quite a few bounces to it, some of them off the table and rolling around on the floor for a few years, I am deeply happy for her win. And as someone who was raving up every acting award, I sure do wish her speech had been less improvisational than Michael Dorsey’s.
Joaquin Phoenix’s speech also rambled. I’m not entirely sure what he was saying though I heard every word of it, and am intrigued the morning after to discover that it is a paean to veganism. I might have interpreted it differently. I was most interested to see if or how he would deal with the tragedy of his brother, another deeply gifted actor, and the quote from River Phoenix’s poem was a moment of few words and few details that said quite a bit.
Whether or not they wish to admit it, many of the people who write about Hollywood and the Oscars were strangely blind to the inevitability of the Parasite win for Best Picture. Many other times, we’re told how important the actor’s branch is, how it’s the largest in the Academy, how hard it is to win for Best Picture without having nominations for the actors, or for movies that are all about CGI and robots and spaceships to win. And yet, I saw very few columns looking at the tea leaves of the standing ovation that the cast of Parasite received at the SAG Awards. To be sure, that standing “O” had to battle the fact that there were no acting nominations for Parasite, but let’s give a think to something. How easy is is to judge acting by people speaking in another language? In a movie with a fairly large cast with good-size roles for half a dozen people and substantial above-the-title roles for none of them? And none of them people you’ve heard of. And no lack of really good roles for people we have heard of them. I do think it’s legitimate to ask which of the people who were nominated should have been kicked off the ballot in favor of the other thing you wish were nominated instead. All of this in mind, that standing ovation at SAG said a clear something about an enthusiasm for the movie which might not have easily manifested in individual nods.
And let’s call that a wrap,.
11:56 PM I am going to do a final wrap in the morning; have to start back to NYC bright and early and need my beauty sleep. But lots to talk about and more TK.
11:22 PM The Best Actor/Actress wins as expected, but those speeches. Well, more to come. Best Picture is at hand.
11:22 PM Wow, a half hour since my last post. Caught up in the magic as it all heads into the home stretch.
10:50 PM Contrast — from a new voice in scoring for Hollywood and only third female to win in a category to Elton John and Bernie Taupin winning after what Elton tells me in his acceptance speech is 53 years of banging the keys around together. Based on the performances tonight I’d give this one to the song from Harriet, but based on the work of a lifetime this one’s up there with Brad Pitt getting his first Oscar for acting a few decades into an acting career.
10:47 PM I’d also like to get on my soapbox about Marvel movies. On the whole, DC movies have better scores from better composers, and I simply don’t believe Marvel cares on the whole very much about the quality of the music in their movies. The score for Joker was good, very good. How many Marvel movies other than Black Panther, where Ryan Coogler was able to push thru a lot of stuff that Marvel movies aren’t known for, have anything better than ninety minutes of bombast. So, another happy-making moment for me as Hildur Gudnadottir takes home a prize.
10:45 PM & Joker joins the list of movies to have won at least one Oscar this evening.
10:43 PM Hildur Guðnadóttir is only the third woman to win in the Best Score category
10:42 PM And it was a great intro with Brie Larson, Gal Gadot and Sigourney Weaver on stage. And Joker soundtrack from a female composer, as they are slowly starting to make inroads into what has been a guy’s world of movie music composition.
10:41 PM More musical moments. I’d very much like for John Williams to win one more Academy Award. There might not be many more chances. But I also very much like the music for Marriage Story.
10:36 PM The music of the moment. A good performance by Elton John. A good night for Tiny Dancer, which appears in the musical moments montage and then in the very effective ABC promo for American Idol.
10:20 PM So much harder than twenty years ago to have a grand sweep of the Oscars. The award for Bombshell to go along with wins for Once Upon a Time..., Ford vs Ferrari — the people who vote take it seriously. There are the consultation prize wins for Screenplay or a supporting role sometimes, but it’s a good job of looking film-by-film at where the best in the business are dong their best.
10:15 PM I would not complain if every Oscar song performance were as good as the number from Harriet.
10:00 PM “I am Spartacus.” Tom Hanks did a great job with the promo for the Academy museum, and I loved the roast at Colin Jost getting snuck into it. The pictures I’ve seen of the 1000 seat movie theatre in the past week as they did a press tour — another of the occasional reasons to which I lived in LA. As a movie lover, being there with that theatre, being able to see movies at The Dome, at The Village, the one thing LA still has which we don’t have in New York is great single screen theatres, and the Academy museum is going to have a theatre that vastly out-punches the Moving Image or the Walter Reade or the Metrograph.
9:57 PM Amaaaaaazing. Ford vs Ferrari wins for Film Editing. It is so difficult to get me to sit in a movie theatre for two-and-a-half hours without once looking at my watch. The importance of film editing to that accomplishment cannot be understated. I am so happy to see that recognized with a gold statuette. I may have to look for a theatre that’s still screening this one, and give it a second viewing.
9:53 PM I’d have preferred the Cinematography award go to Once Upon a Time, but while I don’t much like 1917 I can’t complain to have Roger Deakins taking the award. I did like the presenter patter before this award. This is one of the categories where I didn’t see all the nominees, because, The Lighthouse. The Lighthouse won some awards yesterday at the Spirit Awards.
9:42 PM Was the segue planned? From the explosion of music and sound with Eminem to the sound awards? I’d love if both 1917 and Ford vs Ferrari are getting token awards here - 1917 because it winning just a token award would be just great, and Ford vs. Ferrari because it’s a great piece of audience pleasing filmmaking, and as Donald Sylvester said, James Mangold is worthy of being nominated for Best Director. Ford vs. Ferrari is a master class in directing. The editing - two-and-a-half hours and I never looked at my watch. The sound, The photography. The acting, none of which was recognized. So darn tootin’ happy that the movie can forever announce itself as an Oscar winner.
9:37 PM The montage of great musical moments was just great. Those are classic moments all, and also frightening ones to see Kevin Costner looking so much younger, Kevin Bacon looking so much younger, Leonardo DiCaprio looking so much younger. I know Titanic is twenty years ago, but I guess, yeah, once upon a time he looked that young, even younger in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. And then Eminem just knocked it out of the park. After a batch of cringeworthy musical moments in this evening’s Oscars, the show hit it out of the park here. Just amazing.
9:36 PM Applause Worthy! Standing O from my hotel room.
9:24 PM But just to say you could have filled the entire list of acting winners with people from Marriage Story, with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson to go along with Laura. So many good supporting men that I’m not sure Ray Liotta or Alan Alda quite fit into the conversation but they’re darn good in Marriage Story. Wallace Shawn is better with a few minutes on screen in Marriage Story than a lot of other acting highlight reels. It’s an amazing cast top to bottom, given great lines to speak, sensitively directed, backed up with a wonderful under score from Randy Newman. It’s a great movie. So glad to see Laura Dern. And Noah Baumbach has done this twice. Fifteen years ago with The Squid and the Whale, which is also a bitterly brilliantly scripted movie with a cast that excels in every role.
9:22 PM My choice for Best Picture is Marriage Story, so I’m happy that Laura Dern got the Oscar she was expected to win for Best Supporting Actress, and she gave a helluva acceptance speech. For me the nicest moment of the evening so far, and she seemed to touch a lot of people in the room.
9:16 PM reviews of the documentary shorts from Peter Debruge ‘2020 Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Documentary’ Review – Variety
https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/2020-oscar-nominated-short-films-documentary-review-1203497465/maz/
9:13 PM Netflix may not have a Best Picture this year, but has now proven it can get a win in the Best Feature Documentary category.
9:01 PM I’d have loved seeing the Costume Design award go to Once Upon a Time, too, but I think it was inevitable that Little Women wears going to win something, and this might be the best award it’s nominated for to accomplish that necessary.
9:00 PM But an hour in and already two bathroom break moments. I’m enjoying these presenter comments a lot more than the people blogging at The NY Times are.
8:57 PM Once they finally got round to presenting the Production Design award... there were a lot of good choices here, but Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood is the best. At least on the first time through the movie I lapped up every moment of the loving recreation of the past, from Hollywood Blvd. to the Bruin and Village in Westwood to the menace of the Spahn Ranch. That by itself not enough to make the movie hold up as well as I’d have liked on a second viewing, but it’s a brilliant job of finding the past in our present. Congratulations!
8:55PM Is there an award for Worst Patter by Presenters in an Oscar Ceremony?
8:46 PM Jo Jo Rabbit: The rare movie that I can’t say if I liked it or not. It was weird and different and tonally all over the place, and I loved all of that and I’m not sure it added up to anything more than confusion, and I’m not sure that it doesn’t.
8:42 PM I’d like to thank Bakeshop for supplying my Oscar desserts this year. But if the red velvet cupcake isn’t as good as R R Virdi told me his was...
8:41 PM The original screenplay category was not certain in a lot of the preview pieces. The question is whether Parasite’s victory is a consolation prize or an augur of things to come.
8:39 PM Keanu looks amazing.
8:33 PM Any chance next year that @johnpicacio could produce the Oscars?
8:31 PM I wish I needed to go the bathroom, because the Oscars have put in a bathroom break just thirty minutes into the festivities.
8:30 PM Now we are having a musical performance with no discernible reason for existing.
8:27 PM In a victory for writers everywhere who are deep into a series, Toy Story 4 just won an Academy Award. This movie was the little side story that becomes the novella that’s published as Book 7B of your long-running series. But in sf/fantasy we don’t generally give those things awards.
8:20 PM: The M&Ms commercial was to M&M commercials what the Holiday Mint M&Ms is to M&Ms. Sublime. The opening number and the “monologue” are like bringing rice cakes to your seat from the concession stand.
8:16 PM: Yay, Brad Pitt! Watch the Spahn Ranch sequence in Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood. It’s a master class in 5,329 things in making movies, and Brad Pitt is top among them.
8:14 PM A better idea is having a medley of clips for the acting nominees, rather than a clip accompanying the reading of each nominee’s name.
8:13 PM. In theory the pairing of Chris Rock and Steve Martin is a great idea. In practice I’m with Dave Itzkoff on The NY Times blog: That was an excellent argument to never have hosts again.
8:05 PM This mighty have been one of those numbers that plays better in the room than on the TV, but it’s done nothing for me on my TV.
8:03 PM Is it too early to say I’d rather be watching the cast of Cats performing a number?
7:53 PM American Factory was produced by the Obamas. If a Democrat wins in November, both President and Senate, I hope the new administration will pass legislation that was talked about twelve years ago which Obama decided against pushing. It’s called card check. You get 50% of the employees to sign a card asking for a union, you get a union without an election. Imagine if employers have to live in deathly fear at all times that a majority of employees will sign a card. Imagine it! Instead, we have a system where the cards have to be followed by an election, giving the employers more time to fire the union organizers, to hold mandatory meetings, to spend two months being nice and giving raises while making threat after threat after threat. A lot of what goes on in those two months is technically illegal, but it’s a lot cheaper to rehire an illegally fired employee with back pay two years later than to lose a union vote. With card check, you have to do better by your employees all day every day. I consider the failure of the Obama administration to push card check to be one of its biggest failings. You want to know the legislation to push for when you’re new —- the legislation that the opposition is spending the most time telling you is too divisive or too something something something.
7:42 PM I thought the year in movies was just fine. But whereas many years recently have had an abundance of good documentaries, this year was lacking. I didn’t see three of the nominated movies, and I didn’t like the two that I did see. Honeyland has beautiful photography, but held me at a distance for reasons I can’t 100% understand. Part of it, I believe, is that the documentarians were so lucky to hit on just the right year to make this movie for interesting happenings, and I might have liked more the version of the movie that was just about the main character of it without the miraculous conflict that animates the actual version. American Factory is a sad and depressing story about the state of unionization in America with fired employees and lying employers, and it doesn’t require or much benefit from or would be much different without the extra bonus that the employer in this instance is a Chinese-owned company. Why not have the same movie about a unionization drive with a US owned company, so many of which do all of the same things pulled from the tool kit of the same law firms that specializing in helping employers to squelch unionization drives.
7:39 PM As is often the case, I am not in thrall of the movies that are most buzzed about for Best Picture. Parasite was, like, fine. But it’s so far short of what the critical establishment says it is, and I’m so not into it. But I’d rather Parasite win than 1917, which takes a gimmick that isn’t terribly new to make a been-there-done-that movie. My own Top Ten list can be found here, and includes only four of the movies on the slate of nine Oscar nominees.
7:27 PM Settling in for a half hour of pre-Oscar chit-chat!
Showing posts with label Oscars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oscars. Show all posts
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Oscars 2019
12:05 AM - And we'll call this a wrap for the Live Blog. I may have more to say about some of my favorite movies of 2018, but for the Oscars, it's a night. I know I've done better jobs on the live blog than this year, but since they eliminated around a half hour of Stuff, they eliminated a lot of the down time when I could pay less attention to what was on the screen, and more to my typing. I'll take that trade-off any day.
12:03 AM -- Best Actress. Prior to going for a repeat viewing of The Wife a couple of weeks ago, I don't believe I've ever gone back twice to a movie just to see a brilliant performance by an actress. I am deeply disappointed for Glenn Close. I might have a hard time separating out Olivia Colman's performance from my overall dislike for the movie she was in. But even allowing for that, I can't see Colman's performance as better than the third or fourth best in the category, because Melissa McCarthy is a knockout in Can You Ever Forgive Me, and as up and down as A Star Is Born is, it would almost certainly be down-er with anyone else in the lead role.
11:58 PM - Talking more about the Adapted Screenplay category. I didn't see Beale Street, but there are arguments to be made for all four of the nominees that I did see, while the Original category is full of weak links in stronger movies. Can You Ever Forgive Me takes an assortment of unlikeable characters -- even Jane Curtin as the literary agent isn't the most likable literary agent, which is scandalous, and makes us love their faults and imperfections. A Star is Born gets progressively weaker as it goes along, but at its best it takes a story that's decades old and makes it feel utterly contemporary, and it tackles issues of class differences that aren't required from the original movies. But the Screenplay category, both for awards and nominations, is often where the consolation prize is given, and it's a great place to give Spike Lee his first competitive Oscar. I'd put Spike Lee's career against that of Martin Scorsese. Neither has many Oscar statuettes. Both have done films that are highly variable in quality. I'm glad to see him with an Oscar to put on his shelf.
11:45 PM - I'm more upset with Green Book winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay than I am about its winning Best Picture. The Oscars will be the Oscars, and if anything they've gotten better and less Oscar-y over the course of my lifetime. Last night I saw Goodfellas at the Loews Jersey, with around 300 people in attendance to see a film that's some thirty years old. It lost Best Picture to Dances With Wolves. I doubt the Loews Jersey would program Dances With Wolves. If it did, I doubt 300 people would show up to see it. But the most notable thing about that year's Oscars isn't that Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas for Best Picture. The more enduring film loses often, and if you take a look at the Amazon rankings, it ain't like there aren't people still interested to buy a copy of the movie. What's noticeable is how Dances With Wolves swept so many of the smaller award, and once upon a time the Best Picture always racked up Oscar after Oscar. Now, it's much more common to see the spreading around of the statuettes as we saw this year with Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and Black Panther all taking home multiples. But for Screenplay? The remake of Driving Miss Daisy wins for Screenplay? And yet, even there, my disappointment is tempered. This year's Adopted Screenplay category was full of contenders. The Original Screenplay category? Well, The Favourite wasn't winning. Vice? First Reformed and Roma are both better movies than they are screenplays. Roma's strengths weren't in its underwritten screenplay; I don't know that even the movie's fans would say the screenplay was its strength. And First Reformed is similarly flawed to Roma. There's just too much in both screenplays that we don't see on the screen. Without Ethan Hawke and the passion that the screenwriter also brought to his direction, First Reformed is a clumsy mess that flips its lid as it goes over the top in the ending, and Roma is full of contrivances and the under-explained in its screenplay. But. Still. Green Book, for Screenplay?
11:32 PM - Returning to earlier items... So I joked about Ludwig Goransson's ago, but quite well-meaningly. He's 34 years old. And winning an Oscar for Best Score at the age of 34 -- well, that takes some work. You don't get to score very many motion pictures fresh out of college. You've got to become known, apprentice, gain trust, have reputation enough that the music branch of the Academy will think of you as a possible Oscar winner. If we looked back over 90 years of Academy Awards, how many winners will we find who were younger? It's also a tribute to Ryan Coogler, to spot the talent in someone he meets at college, and have the confidence to give that person work. It's easy enough in to do in his debut movie Fruitvale Station, but then you have to be willing to stick with your man when the studio starts to say "Superhero movie, we need to have the score by the guy who does the loud obnoxious Superhero Movie music." Also worth noticing is the delicacy with which Goransson's scored the quite different Creed and Creed II, where the score requires a different touch, including playing the obligatory homage to Bill Conti's original and enduring themes from the first Rocky movie, which Goransson always does with skill and grace. Now, if Goransson would be willing to study just a little bit more at the knee of a John Williams and get even better, because Williams is getting on, Michael Giacchino isn't doing as much as he could be doing to assume the mantle, and we need people for that role.
11:15 PM - Green Book. Well!
11:03: We don’t always get what we want in life. Green Book won an Oscar for its screenplay, and Glenn Close did not win for The Wife. I shall have more to say on these things.
10:50 PM - Rami! I believe Bohemian Rhapsody is currently in the lead with four Oscars. Very good Nike ad. Roma is the only movie with a shot at overtaking Rhapsody.
10:45 PM - Already at Best Actor?!?!?
10:36 PM - after a few minutes of music from E.T., the bulk came from Superman: The Movie, the music over the funeral of Jonathan Kent, which brings tears to my eyes as an adult when I am lucky enough to see the film on the big screen. Fitting selection in a year when Margot Kidder is amongst thise whose lives were commemorated.
10:25 PM - Ludwig Goransson said “twelve years ago” in his acceptance speech. He doesn’t look old enough! Since I didn’t like any of the score nominees, I opted to root for Black Panther in this category, and am glad to have another win for the movie.
10:20: The Good. The Bad. And The Ugly. And having Green Book win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay is definitely in the Bad column.
10:09 PM - I quite liked how they non-introduced Shallow, just had Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper come on up and sing. Would have been better if theybalso used the occasion to reenact that famous piano number from The Fabulous Baker Boys, but, OK. And how have so many people been doing the “Star Was Robbed” thing. It’s a great first third of a movie that gets worse with each trimester. Really! It isn’t a great whole movie.
10:05 PM - quoting @kylebuchanan “Only 3 black women have won Oscars for anything other than acting. 2 of them just happened tonight.”
9:57 PM - First Man. Won an Oscar.
9:53 PM - American Idol ad is the first standout in a while. The cell service providers are dragging the whole thing down.
9:50 PM - Whatever happens with Roma as Best Picture, Netflix has three Oscars in hand tonight.
9:48 PM - “I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar.”
9:47PM -first time presenters have done two awards?
9:38 PM - Not so happy about Supporting Actor category. The winning performance could have been in the Best Actor category, and I just have a lot harder a time seeing Richard Grant or Adam Driver being swapped out for actors as good or better, while with Mahershala Ali, I can easily plug in three or five. Richard E. Grant first came to attention in the late 1980s with Withnail and I, which I didn’t see, and How To Get Ahead in Advertising, which sadly I did, an overpraised art film but Grant made an impression. He resonated more positively in Steve Martin’s LA Story, and over the past thirty years he’s been in everything and anything, genre-wise, that you could be in, a lesser known actor from the Mchael Caine school choice philosophy. But there’s nothing in that thirty years to hint at the offbeat power and brilliance of his performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me,, which is a tone perfect tone poem about a deeply imperfect man playing off an ewually imperfect character played by Melissa McCarthy. I reckon being nominated and getting to play the award circuit is for a Richard E. Grant somewhat its own reward, but an Oscar would be a bigger one. And Adam Driver is an actor of deep subtlety as seen also in movies like Paterson. So, here, two performances I much preferred to the one that won.
9:26 PM - from David Itzkoff in the New York Times — Trevor Noah reflects on his own life as “a young boy growing up in Wakanda,” and recounts the many people in his life who approach him by saying “Wakanda Forever.” “Even backstage, Mel Gibson came up to me like, ‘Wakanda forever.’ He said another word after that but the Wakanda part was nice.”
9:16 PM - I could’ve filled out half of a Ten Best list just with documentaries. Bathtubs Over Broadway, Three Identical Strangers. Science Fair. Filmworker. In addition to the the two I placed on.
12:03 AM -- Best Actress. Prior to going for a repeat viewing of The Wife a couple of weeks ago, I don't believe I've ever gone back twice to a movie just to see a brilliant performance by an actress. I am deeply disappointed for Glenn Close. I might have a hard time separating out Olivia Colman's performance from my overall dislike for the movie she was in. But even allowing for that, I can't see Colman's performance as better than the third or fourth best in the category, because Melissa McCarthy is a knockout in Can You Ever Forgive Me, and as up and down as A Star Is Born is, it would almost certainly be down-er with anyone else in the lead role.
11:58 PM - Talking more about the Adapted Screenplay category. I didn't see Beale Street, but there are arguments to be made for all four of the nominees that I did see, while the Original category is full of weak links in stronger movies. Can You Ever Forgive Me takes an assortment of unlikeable characters -- even Jane Curtin as the literary agent isn't the most likable literary agent, which is scandalous, and makes us love their faults and imperfections. A Star is Born gets progressively weaker as it goes along, but at its best it takes a story that's decades old and makes it feel utterly contemporary, and it tackles issues of class differences that aren't required from the original movies. But the Screenplay category, both for awards and nominations, is often where the consolation prize is given, and it's a great place to give Spike Lee his first competitive Oscar. I'd put Spike Lee's career against that of Martin Scorsese. Neither has many Oscar statuettes. Both have done films that are highly variable in quality. I'm glad to see him with an Oscar to put on his shelf.
11:45 PM - I'm more upset with Green Book winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay than I am about its winning Best Picture. The Oscars will be the Oscars, and if anything they've gotten better and less Oscar-y over the course of my lifetime. Last night I saw Goodfellas at the Loews Jersey, with around 300 people in attendance to see a film that's some thirty years old. It lost Best Picture to Dances With Wolves. I doubt the Loews Jersey would program Dances With Wolves. If it did, I doubt 300 people would show up to see it. But the most notable thing about that year's Oscars isn't that Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas for Best Picture. The more enduring film loses often, and if you take a look at the Amazon rankings, it ain't like there aren't people still interested to buy a copy of the movie. What's noticeable is how Dances With Wolves swept so many of the smaller award, and once upon a time the Best Picture always racked up Oscar after Oscar. Now, it's much more common to see the spreading around of the statuettes as we saw this year with Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody, Green Book and Black Panther all taking home multiples. But for Screenplay? The remake of Driving Miss Daisy wins for Screenplay? And yet, even there, my disappointment is tempered. This year's Adopted Screenplay category was full of contenders. The Original Screenplay category? Well, The Favourite wasn't winning. Vice? First Reformed and Roma are both better movies than they are screenplays. Roma's strengths weren't in its underwritten screenplay; I don't know that even the movie's fans would say the screenplay was its strength. And First Reformed is similarly flawed to Roma. There's just too much in both screenplays that we don't see on the screen. Without Ethan Hawke and the passion that the screenwriter also brought to his direction, First Reformed is a clumsy mess that flips its lid as it goes over the top in the ending, and Roma is full of contrivances and the under-explained in its screenplay. But. Still. Green Book, for Screenplay?
11:32 PM - Returning to earlier items... So I joked about Ludwig Goransson's ago, but quite well-meaningly. He's 34 years old. And winning an Oscar for Best Score at the age of 34 -- well, that takes some work. You don't get to score very many motion pictures fresh out of college. You've got to become known, apprentice, gain trust, have reputation enough that the music branch of the Academy will think of you as a possible Oscar winner. If we looked back over 90 years of Academy Awards, how many winners will we find who were younger? It's also a tribute to Ryan Coogler, to spot the talent in someone he meets at college, and have the confidence to give that person work. It's easy enough in to do in his debut movie Fruitvale Station, but then you have to be willing to stick with your man when the studio starts to say "Superhero movie, we need to have the score by the guy who does the loud obnoxious Superhero Movie music." Also worth noticing is the delicacy with which Goransson's scored the quite different Creed and Creed II, where the score requires a different touch, including playing the obligatory homage to Bill Conti's original and enduring themes from the first Rocky movie, which Goransson always does with skill and grace. Now, if Goransson would be willing to study just a little bit more at the knee of a John Williams and get even better, because Williams is getting on, Michael Giacchino isn't doing as much as he could be doing to assume the mantle, and we need people for that role.
11:15 PM - Green Book. Well!
11:03: We don’t always get what we want in life. Green Book won an Oscar for its screenplay, and Glenn Close did not win for The Wife. I shall have more to say on these things.
10:50 PM - Rami! I believe Bohemian Rhapsody is currently in the lead with four Oscars. Very good Nike ad. Roma is the only movie with a shot at overtaking Rhapsody.
10:45 PM - Already at Best Actor?!?!?
10:36 PM - after a few minutes of music from E.T., the bulk came from Superman: The Movie, the music over the funeral of Jonathan Kent, which brings tears to my eyes as an adult when I am lucky enough to see the film on the big screen. Fitting selection in a year when Margot Kidder is amongst thise whose lives were commemorated.
10:25 PM - Ludwig Goransson said “twelve years ago” in his acceptance speech. He doesn’t look old enough! Since I didn’t like any of the score nominees, I opted to root for Black Panther in this category, and am glad to have another win for the movie.
10:20: The Good. The Bad. And The Ugly. And having Green Book win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay is definitely in the Bad column.
10:09 PM - I quite liked how they non-introduced Shallow, just had Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper come on up and sing. Would have been better if theybalso used the occasion to reenact that famous piano number from The Fabulous Baker Boys, but, OK. And how have so many people been doing the “Star Was Robbed” thing. It’s a great first third of a movie that gets worse with each trimester. Really! It isn’t a great whole movie.
10:05 PM - quoting @kylebuchanan “Only 3 black women have won Oscars for anything other than acting. 2 of them just happened tonight.”
9:57 PM - First Man. Won an Oscar.
9:53 PM - American Idol ad is the first standout in a while. The cell service providers are dragging the whole thing down.
9:50 PM - Whatever happens with Roma as Best Picture, Netflix has three Oscars in hand tonight.
9:48 PM - “I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar.”
9:47PM -first time presenters have done two awards?
9:38 PM - Not so happy about Supporting Actor category. The winning performance could have been in the Best Actor category, and I just have a lot harder a time seeing Richard Grant or Adam Driver being swapped out for actors as good or better, while with Mahershala Ali, I can easily plug in three or five. Richard E. Grant first came to attention in the late 1980s with Withnail and I, which I didn’t see, and How To Get Ahead in Advertising, which sadly I did, an overpraised art film but Grant made an impression. He resonated more positively in Steve Martin’s LA Story, and over the past thirty years he’s been in everything and anything, genre-wise, that you could be in, a lesser known actor from the Mchael Caine school choice philosophy. But there’s nothing in that thirty years to hint at the offbeat power and brilliance of his performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me,, which is a tone perfect tone poem about a deeply imperfect man playing off an ewually imperfect character played by Melissa McCarthy. I reckon being nominated and getting to play the award circuit is for a Richard E. Grant somewhat its own reward, but an Oscar would be a bigger one. And Adam Driver is an actor of deep subtlety as seen also in movies like Paterson. So, here, two performances I much preferred to the one that won.
9:26 PM - from David Itzkoff in the New York Times — Trevor Noah reflects on his own life as “a young boy growing up in Wakanda,” and recounts the many people in his life who approach him by saying “Wakanda Forever.” “Even backstage, Mel Gibson came up to me like, ‘Wakanda forever.’ He said another word after that but the Wakanda part was nice.”
9:16 PM - I could’ve filled out half of a Ten Best list just with documentaries. Bathtubs Over Broadway, Three Identical Strangers. Science Fair. Filmworker. In addition to the the two I placed on.
9:12 PM - When Justin Chang says it for you, quote Justin: Foreign-language film winner Alfonso Cuarón, making the second of likely three appearances on stage tonight, has a lot of cinephilia to go around: This time he tips his hat to CITIZEN KANE, JAWS, THE GODFATHER and BREATHLESS and quotes Claude Chabrol.
9:09 PM - Black Panther didn’t make my Ten Best, but I find myself pulling for it because the films I liked more are often not contending. And it is the work of an actual filmmaker in Ryan Coogler who tried jard to bend the superhero movie to his vision, and crafted a film that wears the influence of other great films on jts sleeve, rather than other superhero movies. I am pretty much dead to the world of superhero movies at this point in time, but this has more staying power with me.
9:05 PM - Geek note, Ruth Carter was the Costume Designer for Joss Whedon’s Serenity.
8:53. Serena!
8:44 PM - Moving along so briskly, not a lot of dead time for blogging!
8:37 PM - Walmart ain’t my favorite place. McDonalds neither. But they step up to the plate with their Oscar ads.
8:27 PM - the guys are killing it with the tuxes this year😀👍😊😁👍😊
8:26 PM - Vice is not a good movie.
8:25 PM - and a great Rolex ad. Google did someg soecialir the Oscars, but seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey abused that way. Yikes! Ugggh!!
8:21 PM. That was a great Cadillac ad, and then gets followed by a very prosaic Verizon ad.
8:18 PM - But Free Solo also made my Top Ten, and I wish I had gotten back to see it in IMAX. Missing from the category is Three Identical Strangers.
8:16PM - What a great category. Minding The Gap, Free Solo, RBG all good. Me go for Minding the Gap.
8:10 PM - Regina King is favored to win, and Beale Street is the one film all over the awards season that I took a pass on. No dog in this hunt. I couldn’t have done worse seeing Beale Street over The Favourite, which I loathed.
8:08 PM Sparkly! Love the tux Chadwick Boseman is wearing.
8:04 PM An Oscar buffet fit fir a Queen
9:09 PM - Black Panther didn’t make my Ten Best, but I find myself pulling for it because the films I liked more are often not contending. And it is the work of an actual filmmaker in Ryan Coogler who tried jard to bend the superhero movie to his vision, and crafted a film that wears the influence of other great films on jts sleeve, rather than other superhero movies. I am pretty much dead to the world of superhero movies at this point in time, but this has more staying power with me.
9:05 PM - Geek note, Ruth Carter was the Costume Designer for Joss Whedon’s Serenity.
8:53. Serena!
8:44 PM - Moving along so briskly, not a lot of dead time for blogging!
8:37 PM - Walmart ain’t my favorite place. McDonalds neither. But they step up to the plate with their Oscar ads.
8:27 PM - the guys are killing it with the tuxes this year😀👍😊😁👍😊
8:26 PM - Vice is not a good movie.
8:25 PM - and a great Rolex ad. Google did someg soecialir the Oscars, but seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey abused that way. Yikes! Ugggh!!
8:21 PM. That was a great Cadillac ad, and then gets followed by a very prosaic Verizon ad.
8:18 PM - But Free Solo also made my Top Ten, and I wish I had gotten back to see it in IMAX. Missing from the category is Three Identical Strangers.
8:16PM - What a great category. Minding The Gap, Free Solo, RBG all good. Me go for Minding the Gap.
8:10 PM - Regina King is favored to win, and Beale Street is the one film all over the awards season that I took a pass on. No dog in this hunt. I couldn’t have done worse seeing Beale Street over The Favourite, which I loathed.
8:08 PM Sparkly! Love the tux Chadwick Boseman is wearing.
8:04 PM An Oscar buffet fit fir a Queen
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Oscar Nominations!
Most of the films I liked most didn't get anywhere near a nomination for Best Picture. There is 0% overlap between the Academy and my Ten Best list, and if I get around to posting a "worth mentioning" there might be three from that list. But there are lots of things to be praised in the selections.
And just to note, I signed up around Thanksgiving for this social media site called Letterboxd where I am listing every movie I see, and expect to review a good chunk of them.
Black Panther was one of the best superhero movies in years, but that's a deeply degraded standard since most of them aren't very good at all. But Black Panther is the work of a major filmmaker, who made a superhero movie steeped in influences from major works in the cinematic cannon rather than other superhero movies. Sure!
BlacKkKlansman is one of Spike Lee's best movies, it boasts great performances, it's timely. Sure!
Bohemian Rhapsody isn't a good movie, but the last twenty minutes are about as transcendent an experience as I've ever had in a movie theatre, helped by seeing it on a big RPX screen with great sound. And since you can't get directly to the transcendent experience, I've got no problem with the Academy bestowing a Best Picture nomination on the film. Sure!
The Favourite. WTF. There's a thirty point gap on Rotten Tomatoes between the critic and audience rating. I'm with the audience rating. WTF. WTF. WTF. And with Roma, I can understand and appreciate why the critics are fawning over the film even though I didn't like it all that much. My dislike of Roma veers into the kind of passionate dislike which at least suggests it's gotten under my skin. The Favourite? WTF WTF WTF.
Green Book: This would be kind of like having a really great slightly modernized version of a 1980s military sf novel come out in 2019, and be nominated for a Hugo Award. It's not a bad movie. I laughed out loud in parts, as did the audience I was with. Again, lots of good performances to go around. The movie's safe and comfortable, but I think not entirely so because there's some squirminess and discomfort in the mens store scene or the country club scene that bring it a little more into today than the same movie might have been thirty years ago. But at the same time, you can't shake from the movie that there are parts of it that seem so thirty years ago. Meh.
Roma: So I didn't like this movie very much. It's so full of all the things those deep within the critical establishment like. Deep meaning. Rich and wonderful black-and-white cinematography. Very auteur. It was pretty much foreordained from its earliest screenings to be an Oscar nominee, but I would have liked a character to care about, a tiny bit of a sense of humor, something that wasn't so fully and self-consciously auteur. Meh.
A Star is Born: I'll apply the same guidance as I did for Bohemian Rhapsody, only in reverse. The first third of the movie is danged good. It goes steadily downhill, the middle third somewhat worse and the final third I'm thinking really really hard about the Bumblebee puzzle in that weekend's NY Times Magazine. But the good parts are dang good. Sure!
Vice: No. Not Best Picture material. Nominate it for make-up, nominate it for Christian Bale, but this is not Best Picture material.
& Moving down the list...
Actor: Willem Dafoe got a nomination for a movie nobody has seen. I don't need to look at the "Snubs and Surprises" list to know what one of the leading Surprises will be. I would give this to Rami Malek, because how you give a great performance in a bad movie with those teeth leading into one of the most transcendent sequences on film...
Actress: Glenn Close is impeccably good in The Wife, and it's a movie about an author winning a Nobel Prize for Literature. How can I not root for that? But all the competition is strong.
Supporting Actor: Hard to choose, We'll toss Mahershala Ali for being in the wrong category. We'll toss Sam Elliott for doing a great job with cliches in a cliche ridden movie. Sam Rockwell is good, but I'm sure there are five other performances as or more deserving. And I still wouldn't be able to choose easily between Adam Driver and Richard E. Grant. But I'll go with Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me, because it's closer to my profession.
Supporting Actress: Amy Adams. Because The Favourite isn't very good, I didn't like Roma, I won't go see If Beale Street Could Talk. And Amy Adams was great. But whether or not I go and see Beale Street I think Regina King has this. (Why am I not going to see Beale Street: Me no like the overly arty Moonlight full of weird shots of people coming onto the frame out of focus. Unless there's a chance to do this as part of a double feature...)
Director: Spike Lee.
Animated: Spider-Verse. More because of how much love it's inspired from people I love, more than because I loved it myself.
Screenplay: First Reformed in Original. BlacKkKlansman or Can You Ever Forgive Me for Adapted.
And let's talk about First Reformed. Ethan Hawke is great in it, and the movie has some indelible aspects and images that I won't soon forget. The ending! The ending! But really, the movie is just too damned weird, and the unique and special qualities of the weirdness don't entirely compensate for the fact that the movie is trying to do way too many things at once, with too many important moments happening way too quietly to the point that you wonder if they're motivated at all. The weirdness of the movie, its offputting-ness, is nicely demonstrated by the fact that Willem Dafoe has an Oscar nomination for a movie nobody say, and Ethan Hawke does not. Since a lot of my problems with the movie have to do with its screenplay I hesitate to award it an Oscar in that category, but I feel like the movie deserves an award someplace.
Cinematography: Cold War and Roma are both fabulous.
Documentary: We are living in such a great era for documentaries, and Free Solo and Minding the Gap are both wonderful. And even though I liked RBG, I think it would be a disappointment, awarding a perfectly fine documentary for being in the moment when there are other movies which are just plain better.
Editing: Bohemian Rhapsody. You don't get twenty minutes of transcendent filmmaking at the end without editing the heck out of it.
Tech categories: A brief moment of silence for First Man, which has a couple nominations down ballot. I wanted to love this movie, with a director and actor I both love both doing some solid work, but at the end of the day the movie never makes a persuasive case for existing when we already have The Right Stuff, already have Apollo 13, etc.
Good News: No need to see Mary Poppins Returns on account of its Oscar nominations count, which is slim.
And just to note, I signed up around Thanksgiving for this social media site called Letterboxd where I am listing every movie I see, and expect to review a good chunk of them.
Black Panther was one of the best superhero movies in years, but that's a deeply degraded standard since most of them aren't very good at all. But Black Panther is the work of a major filmmaker, who made a superhero movie steeped in influences from major works in the cinematic cannon rather than other superhero movies. Sure!
BlacKkKlansman is one of Spike Lee's best movies, it boasts great performances, it's timely. Sure!
Bohemian Rhapsody isn't a good movie, but the last twenty minutes are about as transcendent an experience as I've ever had in a movie theatre, helped by seeing it on a big RPX screen with great sound. And since you can't get directly to the transcendent experience, I've got no problem with the Academy bestowing a Best Picture nomination on the film. Sure!
The Favourite. WTF. There's a thirty point gap on Rotten Tomatoes between the critic and audience rating. I'm with the audience rating. WTF. WTF. WTF. And with Roma, I can understand and appreciate why the critics are fawning over the film even though I didn't like it all that much. My dislike of Roma veers into the kind of passionate dislike which at least suggests it's gotten under my skin. The Favourite? WTF WTF WTF.
Green Book: This would be kind of like having a really great slightly modernized version of a 1980s military sf novel come out in 2019, and be nominated for a Hugo Award. It's not a bad movie. I laughed out loud in parts, as did the audience I was with. Again, lots of good performances to go around. The movie's safe and comfortable, but I think not entirely so because there's some squirminess and discomfort in the mens store scene or the country club scene that bring it a little more into today than the same movie might have been thirty years ago. But at the same time, you can't shake from the movie that there are parts of it that seem so thirty years ago. Meh.
Roma: So I didn't like this movie very much. It's so full of all the things those deep within the critical establishment like. Deep meaning. Rich and wonderful black-and-white cinematography. Very auteur. It was pretty much foreordained from its earliest screenings to be an Oscar nominee, but I would have liked a character to care about, a tiny bit of a sense of humor, something that wasn't so fully and self-consciously auteur. Meh.
A Star is Born: I'll apply the same guidance as I did for Bohemian Rhapsody, only in reverse. The first third of the movie is danged good. It goes steadily downhill, the middle third somewhat worse and the final third I'm thinking really really hard about the Bumblebee puzzle in that weekend's NY Times Magazine. But the good parts are dang good. Sure!
Vice: No. Not Best Picture material. Nominate it for make-up, nominate it for Christian Bale, but this is not Best Picture material.
& Moving down the list...
Actor: Willem Dafoe got a nomination for a movie nobody has seen. I don't need to look at the "Snubs and Surprises" list to know what one of the leading Surprises will be. I would give this to Rami Malek, because how you give a great performance in a bad movie with those teeth leading into one of the most transcendent sequences on film...
Actress: Glenn Close is impeccably good in The Wife, and it's a movie about an author winning a Nobel Prize for Literature. How can I not root for that? But all the competition is strong.
Supporting Actor: Hard to choose, We'll toss Mahershala Ali for being in the wrong category. We'll toss Sam Elliott for doing a great job with cliches in a cliche ridden movie. Sam Rockwell is good, but I'm sure there are five other performances as or more deserving. And I still wouldn't be able to choose easily between Adam Driver and Richard E. Grant. But I'll go with Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me, because it's closer to my profession.
Supporting Actress: Amy Adams. Because The Favourite isn't very good, I didn't like Roma, I won't go see If Beale Street Could Talk. And Amy Adams was great. But whether or not I go and see Beale Street I think Regina King has this. (Why am I not going to see Beale Street: Me no like the overly arty Moonlight full of weird shots of people coming onto the frame out of focus. Unless there's a chance to do this as part of a double feature...)
Director: Spike Lee.
Animated: Spider-Verse. More because of how much love it's inspired from people I love, more than because I loved it myself.
Screenplay: First Reformed in Original. BlacKkKlansman or Can You Ever Forgive Me for Adapted.
And let's talk about First Reformed. Ethan Hawke is great in it, and the movie has some indelible aspects and images that I won't soon forget. The ending! The ending! But really, the movie is just too damned weird, and the unique and special qualities of the weirdness don't entirely compensate for the fact that the movie is trying to do way too many things at once, with too many important moments happening way too quietly to the point that you wonder if they're motivated at all. The weirdness of the movie, its offputting-ness, is nicely demonstrated by the fact that Willem Dafoe has an Oscar nomination for a movie nobody say, and Ethan Hawke does not. Since a lot of my problems with the movie have to do with its screenplay I hesitate to award it an Oscar in that category, but I feel like the movie deserves an award someplace.
Cinematography: Cold War and Roma are both fabulous.
Documentary: We are living in such a great era for documentaries, and Free Solo and Minding the Gap are both wonderful. And even though I liked RBG, I think it would be a disappointment, awarding a perfectly fine documentary for being in the moment when there are other movies which are just plain better.
Editing: Bohemian Rhapsody. You don't get twenty minutes of transcendent filmmaking at the end without editing the heck out of it.
Tech categories: A brief moment of silence for First Man, which has a couple nominations down ballot. I wanted to love this movie, with a director and actor I both love both doing some solid work, but at the end of the day the movie never makes a persuasive case for existing when we already have The Right Stuff, already have Apollo 13, etc.
Good News: No need to see Mary Poppins Returns on account of its Oscar nominations count, which is slim.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Oscars 2016
Midnight: Spotlight.
11:57 I like Leonardo DiCaprio a lot, liked him from when I first saw him in Gilbert Grape a very very long time ago. In Wolf of Wall St., in Titanic, in lots of movies. I just wish he wasn't getting an Oscar for The Revenant.
11:53 PM I would happily see Michael Fassbender or Malcom's dad or Matt winning for Best Actor. But this is not likely to end happily. Steve Jobs was a great movie, and Fassbender's performance is a huge part of that. Matt Damon was too good, made it seem too easy! Trumbo better for me than for most critics.
11:45 PM Best Actress is a depressing category for me. Saw 45 Years, and not a fan. And not a fan of Brooklyn, or of Carol. Didn't see Joy. So I guess I'll hope for Brie Larson to win, as she is touted to do.
11:38 PM Not a surprise, but I so wish something or someone else would have won for Best Director. What can he do next year in his quest for Best Award Bait? Maybe we'll find out he's secretly been filming a movie for a few days every year that takes some character from his bar mitzvah through his 30th birthday. Yes, he is "very lucky."
11:35 PM For all the people complaining how long the Oscars are... well, it's actually not much longer than seeing a bloated 2:20+ superhero movie with the accompanying previews of coming attractions. And here, you got to tweet and eat and do the whole social media thing and complain at the TV set, and just now you got to learn about an exciting drug to ask your doctor about. Which beats needing ear plugs during the overblown SFX CGI spectacular half hour battle at the end of the bloated superhero movie.
11:34 PM If they could do a revote after seeing the performances tonight, would the same song have won?
11:33 PM Curious to see what movies won Best Score when Ennio Morricone could have won for The Mission, The Untouchables, or Casualties of War. His collaboration with Brian de Palma was, for me, a particularly rewarding period for Morricone's work.
11:26 PM Look at Ennio Morricone's filmography, it's stunning he's never won an Oscar before, and wonderful for him to get one for something that's good on its own terms, rather than Leonardo DiCaprio potentially winning for something like The Revenant that is far from his best role, movie, or performance. Much as I like John Williams, and hope he'll get one more Oscar for his career, thks deserved to be Morricone's year.
11:17 PM Happily Lady Gaga's great moment is followed shortly thereafter by another one of those great Kohls ads.
11:15 PM Lady Gaga is kind of special. Very powerful moment that crept up in the middle of a song.
11:08 PM No rooting interest in Foreign Language category. The more reviews I read of Son of Saul, the less interested I was in seeing it. So the only one of the five nominees I ended up seeing was the Danish film A War, which opened in NYC just this month. Which was good, though I'd say the director's earlier A Hijacking was somewhat better.
11:05 PM So they found a way to get Jacob Tremblay on to the stage in the year of his amazing performance in Room. A way that worked kind of nicely. This is a really, really sweet moment. Kudos.
11:02 PM It was not a good year for the art of cinematography, with Slocombe, Zsigmond and Miroslav Ondricek all passing away.
11:01 PM Douglas Slocombe passed away just recently. He did additional filming on Close Encounters, leading to work as Director of Photography on the Indiana Jones movies. Only in the Oscar memorial crawl am I noticing that he passed in the same "Oscar year" as the primary cinematographer for Close Encounters, Vilmos Zsigmond.
10:51 PM So I guess I am celebrating an anniversary of seeing Whoopi Goldberg's Oscar-winning performance in Ghost. I saw Ghost at the Loews Elmwood. Where did you see Ghost?
10:48 PM The award for Best Tweet from @isaacbilmes: Patricia Arquette seems bored and confused
I wish I'd come up with that one.
10:46 PM I don't even get the joke about the kids and Price Waterhouse. But I feel like Chris Rock is very very in command of the festivities this evening.
10:43 PM Per my comment a little while ago, Amy was great. The Best Documentary award might have gone to the actual best documentary of last year.
10:39 PM If you want to understand the regard for the caliber of Mark Rylance's performance in Bridge of Spies, just look at his filmography. It's full of, frankly, not very much. The award isn't being given for career achievement. But he's done enough that it isn't being given for being someone we've never heard from and won't hear much from again, which is another tradition in the supporting categories. I first heard Rylance's name associated with Angels and Insects, an overrated UK artsy film that came out some twenty years ago. And it isn't like I've heard it in association with much else since. Lots of Shakespearean and UK theatre credits. But this is an award that's given for a great performance that commanded recognition.
10:37 PM And the clip for Sylvester Stallone showed why the Oscar didn't go to him, shouldn't have. It's said that acting is about listening, and the quickest glimpse of Michael B. Jordan listening to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky shows so much in just a few seconds of quiet listening. So much feeling, so much thought, so much thinking about what's being said. I mention in my #OscarsSoWhite post that it's tough to judge negatively on categories Creed could have been nominated in and wasn't; which Best Actor nominee do you boot in favor of Michael B. Jordan. But Jordan delivered a better performance in Creed than Sylvester Stallone did, and let's hope Michael B. Jordan's time will come...
10:32 PM Glad to hear Mark Rylance singling out Tom Hanks for praise. Tom Hanks should be the Men-yl Streep, picking up nomination after nomination in the Best Actor category, and he isn't. He's so effortless and so likable that it's hard to appreciate just how good he is, continues to be, in many different roles.
10:31 PM The win for Mark Rylance is something of an upset, but he gives a great performance in Bridge of Spies. Which I really liked. And which now has an Oscar win.
10:30 PM Everyone thinks Stallone wins for Creed, but the Supporting Actor category is full of great performances from Stallone, Bale, Ruffalo and Rylance. Anyone but Tom Hardy for The Revenant.
10:20 PM These Android ads. This was better than the first, but still has so little to do with the product that I don't think it works. And did I suggest that Kohls start the search for a new ad agency?
10:15 PM Will take advantage of song to finish my cole slaw from my take-out last night from the excellent John Brown Smokehouse. Better BBQ than any place in NC or TX or KC or wherever, just a ten-minute walk from my apartment. For good BBQ, come to NYC and join me at John Brown Smokehouse. I got there too late yesterday, though, and they were out of turkey. Sigh.
10:14 PM I also like Kevin Hart's tux. If I ever have to go the National Book Awards or something, I hope I can find a tuxedo with pizzazz. Not that this is a problem I am very likely to have to worry about. But yes, "a suit with shiny stuff on it," as Kevin Hart just said. That's the way to go.
10:13 PM I didn't like Inside Out at all, but I guess as a 51-year-old I can't muster the energy to hate what happens in the Animation category. Don't go to many of the movies. I liked Peanuts Movie, which wasn't even nominated.
10:11 PM Is there any chance that people voted for Bear Story in the Animated Short category because they thought they were voting for the Bear Mauling in The Revenant, thus heightening the chances that some other, better movie will take the Best Picture award?
10:10 PM I'm going to talk a little about documentaries while the Minions are speaking. 2015 was a great year for documentary films, and most of the best to me aren't even on the Oscar ballot. From those we can choose from, Amy is my hands-down favorite. It's informative, enlightening, happy, sad, opinionated but even-handed. Takes a musical figure I'd known only from a great distance and humanizes her. Finds the tragedy without dwelling in sadness. Don't know if it will win tonight. Do know I would strongly suggest checking it out.
10:07 PM They don't have near enough boxes for 3000 people.
10:05 PM Is Wednesday's episode of The Goldbergs finally the excuse I need to give it a try? Have an hour of TV to replace The Flash with. Try that? Try Black-ish?
10:02 PM One of my professional frustrations is the ghettoization and lack of appreciation of serious science fiction. Ex Machina should have gotten even better reviews, been seen by even more people. But there are a lot of people who don't even have the tools to understand and evaluate Ex Machina, to appreciate the suppleness of its writing, the elegance with which the performances conveyed those words, and the idea that Alex Garland put into them. So it is incredibly, incredibly sweet to have it take something home on Oscar night. It takes some unexpected yet obvious turns, in the tradition of but more serious than something like Sixth Sense. I would see this again if it popped up at a New York movie house.
9:57 PM And I am kind of stunned and kind of super happy that Ex Machina has taken an actual Oscar to go with its honorary win for Alicia Vikander in the supporting arts category.
9:57 PM Quick glimpse of bear mauling sequence that would have cut The Revenant short. Too bad it didn't.
9:55 PM Very nice gesture to single out Andy Serkis for some special recognition, since his contributions to movies like the Planet of the Apes and Lord of the Rings sagas have been hard to acknowledge within traditional acting categories.
9:53 PM Quite a year for achievement in unexpected sequels, with both Mad Max Fury Road and Creed setting a standard that I can pretty much guarantee won't be exceeded by the next Avengers or Superman movie.
9:52 PM We're now at six wins for Mad Max: Fury Road; we can safely say it will be taking home the most Oscars on the evening. Maybe not the biggest Oscar, but definitely the most of them.
9:50 PM One of those Mad Max dudes is wearing a great tux. The Mad Max tech crew is setting the bar high for wardrobe tonight, which is probably not what they were covering on the red carpet. Like, I want that tux.
9:49 PM Maybe Star Wars can get a token win in one of the sound categories?
9:45 PM Two dud ads from Kohls. I vote they start the search for a new ad agency first thing Monday morning.
9:43 PM Hasn't Liev Schreiber come a long way from lighting up the screen in the Scream movies? Lots of critics have him on their "Should have" lists for Spotlight.
9:41 PM Four wins now for Mad Max Fury Road, and against tough competition. Spotlight and The Big Short also had serious cred for winning in this category.
9:40 PM Editing is a category with a snub. I think Bridge of Spies should have gotten a nod in this category.
9:38 PM Not a surprise to see The Revenant win for photography. It looked beautiful in the 30 minutes I saw of it. But this was a category with a lot of achievement from all of the nominees.
9:34 PM: McDonalds ad just used the word "montage," hopefully to better results than Sam Morgan rolling it out when we played Codenames in the office on Wednesday.
9:33 PM: Steve Jobs hasn't been in the discussion much this awards season, and I just want to interrupt to say how good a movie it was.
9:30 PM: I saw Mad Max Fury Road with noted YA author and JABberwocky client E C Myers!
9:30 PM: The bear -- nice touch!
9:27 PM Are these three straight tech wins for Mad Max Fury Road three leaves at the bottom of a tea cup?
9:25 PM Can we acknowledge that the "thank you" crawl at the bottom isn't working, and do away with it before the end of the evening?
9:23 PM And I kind of am surprised. But not going to complain. Anything but The Revenant is my motto for the night, and Mad Max Fury Road was a very well-crafted film.
9:23 PM Will be surprised if The Revenant doesn't win Production Design.
11:57 I like Leonardo DiCaprio a lot, liked him from when I first saw him in Gilbert Grape a very very long time ago. In Wolf of Wall St., in Titanic, in lots of movies. I just wish he wasn't getting an Oscar for The Revenant.
11:53 PM I would happily see Michael Fassbender or Malcom's dad or Matt winning for Best Actor. But this is not likely to end happily. Steve Jobs was a great movie, and Fassbender's performance is a huge part of that. Matt Damon was too good, made it seem too easy! Trumbo better for me than for most critics.
11:45 PM Best Actress is a depressing category for me. Saw 45 Years, and not a fan. And not a fan of Brooklyn, or of Carol. Didn't see Joy. So I guess I'll hope for Brie Larson to win, as she is touted to do.
11:38 PM Not a surprise, but I so wish something or someone else would have won for Best Director. What can he do next year in his quest for Best Award Bait? Maybe we'll find out he's secretly been filming a movie for a few days every year that takes some character from his bar mitzvah through his 30th birthday. Yes, he is "very lucky."
11:35 PM For all the people complaining how long the Oscars are... well, it's actually not much longer than seeing a bloated 2:20+ superhero movie with the accompanying previews of coming attractions. And here, you got to tweet and eat and do the whole social media thing and complain at the TV set, and just now you got to learn about an exciting drug to ask your doctor about. Which beats needing ear plugs during the overblown SFX CGI spectacular half hour battle at the end of the bloated superhero movie.
11:34 PM If they could do a revote after seeing the performances tonight, would the same song have won?
11:33 PM Curious to see what movies won Best Score when Ennio Morricone could have won for The Mission, The Untouchables, or Casualties of War. His collaboration with Brian de Palma was, for me, a particularly rewarding period for Morricone's work.
11:26 PM Look at Ennio Morricone's filmography, it's stunning he's never won an Oscar before, and wonderful for him to get one for something that's good on its own terms, rather than Leonardo DiCaprio potentially winning for something like The Revenant that is far from his best role, movie, or performance. Much as I like John Williams, and hope he'll get one more Oscar for his career, thks deserved to be Morricone's year.
11:17 PM Happily Lady Gaga's great moment is followed shortly thereafter by another one of those great Kohls ads.
11:15 PM Lady Gaga is kind of special. Very powerful moment that crept up in the middle of a song.
11:08 PM No rooting interest in Foreign Language category. The more reviews I read of Son of Saul, the less interested I was in seeing it. So the only one of the five nominees I ended up seeing was the Danish film A War, which opened in NYC just this month. Which was good, though I'd say the director's earlier A Hijacking was somewhat better.
11:05 PM So they found a way to get Jacob Tremblay on to the stage in the year of his amazing performance in Room. A way that worked kind of nicely. This is a really, really sweet moment. Kudos.
11:02 PM It was not a good year for the art of cinematography, with Slocombe, Zsigmond and Miroslav Ondricek all passing away.
11:01 PM Douglas Slocombe passed away just recently. He did additional filming on Close Encounters, leading to work as Director of Photography on the Indiana Jones movies. Only in the Oscar memorial crawl am I noticing that he passed in the same "Oscar year" as the primary cinematographer for Close Encounters, Vilmos Zsigmond.
10:51 PM So I guess I am celebrating an anniversary of seeing Whoopi Goldberg's Oscar-winning performance in Ghost. I saw Ghost at the Loews Elmwood. Where did you see Ghost?
10:48 PM The award for Best Tweet from @isaacbilmes: Patricia Arquette seems bored and confused
I wish I'd come up with that one.
10:46 PM I don't even get the joke about the kids and Price Waterhouse. But I feel like Chris Rock is very very in command of the festivities this evening.
10:43 PM Per my comment a little while ago, Amy was great. The Best Documentary award might have gone to the actual best documentary of last year.
10:39 PM If you want to understand the regard for the caliber of Mark Rylance's performance in Bridge of Spies, just look at his filmography. It's full of, frankly, not very much. The award isn't being given for career achievement. But he's done enough that it isn't being given for being someone we've never heard from and won't hear much from again, which is another tradition in the supporting categories. I first heard Rylance's name associated with Angels and Insects, an overrated UK artsy film that came out some twenty years ago. And it isn't like I've heard it in association with much else since. Lots of Shakespearean and UK theatre credits. But this is an award that's given for a great performance that commanded recognition.
10:37 PM And the clip for Sylvester Stallone showed why the Oscar didn't go to him, shouldn't have. It's said that acting is about listening, and the quickest glimpse of Michael B. Jordan listening to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky shows so much in just a few seconds of quiet listening. So much feeling, so much thought, so much thinking about what's being said. I mention in my #OscarsSoWhite post that it's tough to judge negatively on categories Creed could have been nominated in and wasn't; which Best Actor nominee do you boot in favor of Michael B. Jordan. But Jordan delivered a better performance in Creed than Sylvester Stallone did, and let's hope Michael B. Jordan's time will come...
10:32 PM Glad to hear Mark Rylance singling out Tom Hanks for praise. Tom Hanks should be the Men-yl Streep, picking up nomination after nomination in the Best Actor category, and he isn't. He's so effortless and so likable that it's hard to appreciate just how good he is, continues to be, in many different roles.
10:31 PM The win for Mark Rylance is something of an upset, but he gives a great performance in Bridge of Spies. Which I really liked. And which now has an Oscar win.
10:30 PM Everyone thinks Stallone wins for Creed, but the Supporting Actor category is full of great performances from Stallone, Bale, Ruffalo and Rylance. Anyone but Tom Hardy for The Revenant.
10:20 PM These Android ads. This was better than the first, but still has so little to do with the product that I don't think it works. And did I suggest that Kohls start the search for a new ad agency?
10:15 PM Will take advantage of song to finish my cole slaw from my take-out last night from the excellent John Brown Smokehouse. Better BBQ than any place in NC or TX or KC or wherever, just a ten-minute walk from my apartment. For good BBQ, come to NYC and join me at John Brown Smokehouse. I got there too late yesterday, though, and they were out of turkey. Sigh.
10:14 PM I also like Kevin Hart's tux. If I ever have to go the National Book Awards or something, I hope I can find a tuxedo with pizzazz. Not that this is a problem I am very likely to have to worry about. But yes, "a suit with shiny stuff on it," as Kevin Hart just said. That's the way to go.
10:13 PM I didn't like Inside Out at all, but I guess as a 51-year-old I can't muster the energy to hate what happens in the Animation category. Don't go to many of the movies. I liked Peanuts Movie, which wasn't even nominated.
10:11 PM Is there any chance that people voted for Bear Story in the Animated Short category because they thought they were voting for the Bear Mauling in The Revenant, thus heightening the chances that some other, better movie will take the Best Picture award?
10:10 PM I'm going to talk a little about documentaries while the Minions are speaking. 2015 was a great year for documentary films, and most of the best to me aren't even on the Oscar ballot. From those we can choose from, Amy is my hands-down favorite. It's informative, enlightening, happy, sad, opinionated but even-handed. Takes a musical figure I'd known only from a great distance and humanizes her. Finds the tragedy without dwelling in sadness. Don't know if it will win tonight. Do know I would strongly suggest checking it out.
10:07 PM They don't have near enough boxes for 3000 people.
10:05 PM Is Wednesday's episode of The Goldbergs finally the excuse I need to give it a try? Have an hour of TV to replace The Flash with. Try that? Try Black-ish?
10:02 PM One of my professional frustrations is the ghettoization and lack of appreciation of serious science fiction. Ex Machina should have gotten even better reviews, been seen by even more people. But there are a lot of people who don't even have the tools to understand and evaluate Ex Machina, to appreciate the suppleness of its writing, the elegance with which the performances conveyed those words, and the idea that Alex Garland put into them. So it is incredibly, incredibly sweet to have it take something home on Oscar night. It takes some unexpected yet obvious turns, in the tradition of but more serious than something like Sixth Sense. I would see this again if it popped up at a New York movie house.
9:57 PM And I am kind of stunned and kind of super happy that Ex Machina has taken an actual Oscar to go with its honorary win for Alicia Vikander in the supporting arts category.
9:57 PM Quick glimpse of bear mauling sequence that would have cut The Revenant short. Too bad it didn't.
9:55 PM Very nice gesture to single out Andy Serkis for some special recognition, since his contributions to movies like the Planet of the Apes and Lord of the Rings sagas have been hard to acknowledge within traditional acting categories.
9:53 PM Quite a year for achievement in unexpected sequels, with both Mad Max Fury Road and Creed setting a standard that I can pretty much guarantee won't be exceeded by the next Avengers or Superman movie.
9:52 PM We're now at six wins for Mad Max: Fury Road; we can safely say it will be taking home the most Oscars on the evening. Maybe not the biggest Oscar, but definitely the most of them.
9:50 PM One of those Mad Max dudes is wearing a great tux. The Mad Max tech crew is setting the bar high for wardrobe tonight, which is probably not what they were covering on the red carpet. Like, I want that tux.
9:49 PM Maybe Star Wars can get a token win in one of the sound categories?
9:45 PM Two dud ads from Kohls. I vote they start the search for a new ad agency first thing Monday morning.
9:43 PM Hasn't Liev Schreiber come a long way from lighting up the screen in the Scream movies? Lots of critics have him on their "Should have" lists for Spotlight.
9:41 PM Four wins now for Mad Max Fury Road, and against tough competition. Spotlight and The Big Short also had serious cred for winning in this category.
9:40 PM Editing is a category with a snub. I think Bridge of Spies should have gotten a nod in this category.
9:38 PM Not a surprise to see The Revenant win for photography. It looked beautiful in the 30 minutes I saw of it. But this was a category with a lot of achievement from all of the nominees.
9:34 PM: McDonalds ad just used the word "montage," hopefully to better results than Sam Morgan rolling it out when we played Codenames in the office on Wednesday.
9:33 PM: Steve Jobs hasn't been in the discussion much this awards season, and I just want to interrupt to say how good a movie it was.
9:30 PM: I saw Mad Max Fury Road with noted YA author and JABberwocky client E C Myers!
9:30 PM: The bear -- nice touch!
9:27 PM Are these three straight tech wins for Mad Max Fury Road three leaves at the bottom of a tea cup?
9:25 PM Can we acknowledge that the "thank you" crawl at the bottom isn't working, and do away with it before the end of the evening?
9:23 PM And I kind of am surprised. But not going to complain. Anything but The Revenant is my motto for the night, and Mad Max Fury Road was a very well-crafted film.
9:23 PM Will be surprised if The Revenant doesn't win Production Design.
9:21 PM Costume Design for Mad Max! I didn't have an opinion until they started announcing the awards, and they got to Mad Max, and I said "you know, these costumes had to be created actually from whole cloth to form a full world that couldn't be based on pictures from a book or a newspaper." I'm happier about this than I would have thought. And the winner is wearing quite a costume, herself.
9:17 PM Followed by an ad for Mr. Holland's Opus. Wait. No. An ad for Android. How couldn't I have figured that out?
9:16 PM Cadillac ad is a glorified version of the Kohl's ad. So well done, so intriguing, all the art and artistry. And it's an ad for a car nameplate.
9:13 PM: Yeah. I don't like it when someone wins for a movie I didn't see, but since she was in another movie this year that I saw, and that movie was really good, and she was really good. Congrats to Alicia Vikander.
9:12 PM: Even Alicia Vikander from the movie I didn't see. I can pretend it's for Ex Machina, instead.
9:10 PM: Anyone but Rooney Mara in this category. Please. Anyone.
9:10 PM: So each Best Picture gets about as much time as the bits during the screenplay award presentations?
9:06 PM: Over 35 minutes in. 2 awards presented.
9:04 PM One of the worst ever James Bond movies has as many Oscar nominations as Straight Outta Compton.
8:57 PM: I feel like the Kohl's ad is a fail. It doesn't have any association with the product it's advertising. Would have fit in with all the bad ads during the Super Bowl telecast.
8:56 PM: The Samsung Galaxy 7 ad was better filmmaking than some of the Best Picture nominees. So was the Diet Coke ad.
8:52 PM And the three-way Best Picture race lives on, with The Big Short staking its claim.
8:50 PM Another tough category in Adopted Screenplay. Martian, Big Short, Room -- all three, I could make a case for.
8:48 PM: It's now official. One of the year's best pictures will not win an Oscar. And one of the year's best pictures is guaranteed at least one. Keeps Best Picture race alive; if Compton had pulled an upset here, highly unlikely Spotlight would have still been in running for the top prize.
8:46 PM: Tough category. I want Straight Outta Compton to win an Oscar. And of course, I loved Ex Machina. And Spotlight.
8:40 PM "Sorority Racist" -- I detect a hash tag.
8:35 PM I worry about wearing white clothes because they'll get stained so easily. I hope no one plans on giving Chris Rock a newspaper to read during the commercial breaks, and that he ate beforehand. Newspaper ink is deadly.
8:33 PM I don't understand this montage.
8:31 PM And we're off!
8:26 PM I'd be happy to see either Spotlight or The Big Short win for Best Picture, of the three movies considered to be in a three-picture race. Last year I was totally bummed when Boyhood lost to the overrated Oscar Bait that was Birdman, and if Alejandro Inarritu, the director of that film can do it again this year with The Revenant, I will not be happy. You can reference my "#OscarsSoTrite" post for further details on my reaction to The Revenant. In fairness, a reaction that is based on only the first 30 minutes, because I couldn't tolerate longer. Also this year, #OscarsSoWhite, best exemplified by the failure of Straight Outta Compton to be nominated for Best Picture.
8:25 PM In a year full of over two dozen nominations for movies I didn't see or didn't like very much, I have lots of opinions this year.
7:58 PM Coming soon, my annual live blog!
#OscarsSoTrite
When it comes to plot-driven media like books and movies, I'm an opinionated SOB.
As such, Oscar season will never be my across-the-board favorite time of year. There will be critical darlings that aren't actually very good. Worthy movies that are just that. Frenzies, tulip bubbles, and more. Usually there will be a few things, but only a few, that I haven't seen; after all these years I can do a good job smelling out the movies that will leave an aftertaste.
I can't remember a year with as many of those movies. And after making a dutiful effort to catch up, only one of them was considerably better than I feared or suspected.
It sure isn't The Revenant. 12 nominations for a movie I never wished to pay for, and which I could stomach for just 30 minutes when I was finally able to plan it as part of a "double feature." The plot skeleton I studied thirty years ago this week when I was handed a copy of WRITING TO SELL by Scott Meredith on my first day at his literary agency starts with an identifiable lead character, and The Revenant has none. There is a lead role played by a movie star, and thus we are expected by default to root for the character. But nothing -- nothing!! -- is done atop of that. Is the novel like that? I would reject any such novel. Furthermore, the movie should have ended before I could walk out. The lead character shouldn't have survived the bear attack. In a Hollywood action movie I am willing to let pass that the lead character rarely misses and the bad guys can rarely aim, so maybe I should have more tolerance for the bear missing Leo. Yes, the photography in the movie was crisp and beautiful, but the movie is a turd.
Then we come to Carol. Director Todd Haynes has spent his entire career as a critics darling, but the critics don't seem to notice that Haynes isn't actually a very good director of actors. I wasn't a fan of Haynes' Far From Heaven, and if not for the chance to see late in the season at the Museum of the Moving Image. And to an extent, Carol was a pleasant surprise because it is better than Far From Heaven. Haynes is better at craft than at performance, and Carol is better at its craft. Far From Heaven had a certain mise en scene but never felt like Hartford. Carol does make Cincinnati into a solid enough approximation of New York City. But oh dear, what a mess to behold if you actually look at the script and acting. Rooney Mara and Kyle Chandler have both shown acting chops elsewhere, but they flail here. Chandler plays a cuckolded husband with no back story, no internal or external life, basically just a human embodiment of the male ethos of the day, and has no idea what to do, other than to do it like he's playing to the last row of the balcony. Rooney Mara received awards for this movie? In this movie, her look for all seasons is that of a mousy deer caught in the headlights. Happy, sad, lonely, fresh off sex, whatever she's doing she has this one expression. The best I can say for Carol is that it's better than The Revenant, and better than my worst fears.
Brooklyn is another movie that sent out "skip me" pheromones during the coming attractions, and also ended up screening at Museum of the Moving Image. This had more moments than either Carol or The Revenant. Efforts were made to provide an identifiable lead character, including the establishment of nemeses in Ireland. Maybe I could teach a senior seminar or get a PhD comparing and contrasting the department store scenes in Brooklyn with those of Carol. But the longer Brooklyn goes, the more it digs holes for itself. I rested my eyes for a few minutes in the middle, and when I woke up there were toe people deeply and madly (or is it almost kind of?) in love. I don't think I was resting my eyes long enough for the relationship to be suitably established. When the lead character returns to Ireland she is very quick to both forgive her enemies and forget her marriage. She doesn't make an internal decision to return to her husband. The decision is forced upon her. I am better able to see merits in Brooklyn, but I have long been picky about plot structure and can't myself forgive the shortcomings in that area.
Much as Amy Adams staked her claim as an actress of note in the little seen Junebug, Brie Larson made her mark in Short Term 12, simply brilliant as a counselor in a home/halfway house for deeply troubled kids. When Room played at the festivals last year, garnering acclaim for Larson's performance I was intrigued, and yet when the movie finally opened last fall, the more reviews I read the more my interest in actually seeing the movie diminished. I finally went a couple of weeks ago. I was both right and wrong. In terms of the Oscar race, Brie Larson has a strong claim to the award everyone is certain she will win, but yet her performance is the second best in the film, and her very young costar Jacob Tremblay could easily have been nominated. And these excellent performances aren't islands in a sea of problems; the movie around them is solid. My one big problem was with the musical score. It does nothing, and becomes actually bad at the very end of the movie, to the point that I noticed it in a negative way as the notes started to flourish at the end of the movie. And yet I also feel like my life would have gone on without Room. There's something missing in the movie. It's too good to be written off as Award Bait, but nothing about it inspires any passion in me.
Some 25 Oscar nominations given to movies that, at best, I could go either way on.
And then. we come to another handful of nominations for The Danish Girl, which I never even toyed with seeing after nominations were announced. I did Eddie Redmayne, Master Thespian, last year, with the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.
So when it gets to be 11:30 EST, anything but The Revenant.
As such, Oscar season will never be my across-the-board favorite time of year. There will be critical darlings that aren't actually very good. Worthy movies that are just that. Frenzies, tulip bubbles, and more. Usually there will be a few things, but only a few, that I haven't seen; after all these years I can do a good job smelling out the movies that will leave an aftertaste.
I can't remember a year with as many of those movies. And after making a dutiful effort to catch up, only one of them was considerably better than I feared or suspected.
It sure isn't The Revenant. 12 nominations for a movie I never wished to pay for, and which I could stomach for just 30 minutes when I was finally able to plan it as part of a "double feature." The plot skeleton I studied thirty years ago this week when I was handed a copy of WRITING TO SELL by Scott Meredith on my first day at his literary agency starts with an identifiable lead character, and The Revenant has none. There is a lead role played by a movie star, and thus we are expected by default to root for the character. But nothing -- nothing!! -- is done atop of that. Is the novel like that? I would reject any such novel. Furthermore, the movie should have ended before I could walk out. The lead character shouldn't have survived the bear attack. In a Hollywood action movie I am willing to let pass that the lead character rarely misses and the bad guys can rarely aim, so maybe I should have more tolerance for the bear missing Leo. Yes, the photography in the movie was crisp and beautiful, but the movie is a turd.
Then we come to Carol. Director Todd Haynes has spent his entire career as a critics darling, but the critics don't seem to notice that Haynes isn't actually a very good director of actors. I wasn't a fan of Haynes' Far From Heaven, and if not for the chance to see late in the season at the Museum of the Moving Image. And to an extent, Carol was a pleasant surprise because it is better than Far From Heaven. Haynes is better at craft than at performance, and Carol is better at its craft. Far From Heaven had a certain mise en scene but never felt like Hartford. Carol does make Cincinnati into a solid enough approximation of New York City. But oh dear, what a mess to behold if you actually look at the script and acting. Rooney Mara and Kyle Chandler have both shown acting chops elsewhere, but they flail here. Chandler plays a cuckolded husband with no back story, no internal or external life, basically just a human embodiment of the male ethos of the day, and has no idea what to do, other than to do it like he's playing to the last row of the balcony. Rooney Mara received awards for this movie? In this movie, her look for all seasons is that of a mousy deer caught in the headlights. Happy, sad, lonely, fresh off sex, whatever she's doing she has this one expression. The best I can say for Carol is that it's better than The Revenant, and better than my worst fears.
Brooklyn is another movie that sent out "skip me" pheromones during the coming attractions, and also ended up screening at Museum of the Moving Image. This had more moments than either Carol or The Revenant. Efforts were made to provide an identifiable lead character, including the establishment of nemeses in Ireland. Maybe I could teach a senior seminar or get a PhD comparing and contrasting the department store scenes in Brooklyn with those of Carol. But the longer Brooklyn goes, the more it digs holes for itself. I rested my eyes for a few minutes in the middle, and when I woke up there were toe people deeply and madly (or is it almost kind of?) in love. I don't think I was resting my eyes long enough for the relationship to be suitably established. When the lead character returns to Ireland she is very quick to both forgive her enemies and forget her marriage. She doesn't make an internal decision to return to her husband. The decision is forced upon her. I am better able to see merits in Brooklyn, but I have long been picky about plot structure and can't myself forgive the shortcomings in that area.
Much as Amy Adams staked her claim as an actress of note in the little seen Junebug, Brie Larson made her mark in Short Term 12, simply brilliant as a counselor in a home/halfway house for deeply troubled kids. When Room played at the festivals last year, garnering acclaim for Larson's performance I was intrigued, and yet when the movie finally opened last fall, the more reviews I read the more my interest in actually seeing the movie diminished. I finally went a couple of weeks ago. I was both right and wrong. In terms of the Oscar race, Brie Larson has a strong claim to the award everyone is certain she will win, but yet her performance is the second best in the film, and her very young costar Jacob Tremblay could easily have been nominated. And these excellent performances aren't islands in a sea of problems; the movie around them is solid. My one big problem was with the musical score. It does nothing, and becomes actually bad at the very end of the movie, to the point that I noticed it in a negative way as the notes started to flourish at the end of the movie. And yet I also feel like my life would have gone on without Room. There's something missing in the movie. It's too good to be written off as Award Bait, but nothing about it inspires any passion in me.
Some 25 Oscar nominations given to movies that, at best, I could go either way on.
And then. we come to another handful of nominations for The Danish Girl, which I never even toyed with seeing after nominations were announced. I did Eddie Redmayne, Master Thespian, last year, with the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything.
So when it gets to be 11:30 EST, anything but The Revenant.
#OscarsSoWhite
Movies are the one, or at least the longest, constant in my life.
I can easily recall movie moments from my teenage years, even early in. I was twelve when I saw Star Wars, and know that I saw it in Monticello.
So Oscar night is always special to me, the High Holidays of my secular religion.
But this year has an off taste for me, part #OscarsSoWhite, discussed below, and part #OscarsSoTrite, which will be discussed in another post and/or within my live blog of this year's Oscar ceremony.
A year ago, I thought Selma was a worthy movie, kind of like how I felt about Gandhi when I saw that 33 years ago, and how I've felt about quite a few biopics over the years. With Selma nominated in the Best Picture category, with its elastic number of potential nominees, #OscarsSoWhite felt abstract to me.
But in 2015, two movies, Love and Mercy and Straight Outta Compton raised the bar for the genre of the musical biopic. Considering how many appreciably triter biopics have garnered award nominations, I'd like for both to be more prevalent on the Oscar ballot. But Love and Mercy didn't do great box office, got mixed critical reactions, has too many problems staking its claim on the ballot. I can't feel sorry for Love and Mercy.
But
1. What's the excuse for Straight Outta Compton?
2. Why am I making the argument for Straight Outta Compton, rather than for Creed instead of or in addition to?
The second question is the easier one, so I'll tackle that first.
Yes, Creed was another highlight of the 2015 Year in Cinema. It was a creatively driven resurrection of a series that was widely thought to have crucified itself. The resurrector was a black writer/director, Ryan Coogler. He oversaw top-notch creative efforts from a female director of photographer, a Swedish composer, and a brilliant young black actor, Michael B. Jordan. And with Creed, as with Straight Outta Compton, the nominations are #OscarsSoWhite.
And yet, in the history of the Academy Awards, how many seventh movies in a series have ever been nominated for Best Picture? To ask the question is to answer it, and it's an easy way to divert self-introspection.
The other categories where Creed could have been nominated have a cap on the number of nominees. Maryse Alberti did an exceptional job photographing Creed, but there are five strong nominees in that category. Even Carol, wildly overrated as it is, shines most in the technical categories like photography. If I really really had to choose I could find a nominee to boot out of the Director and Original Screenplay categories, but it would be a hard choice. I would prefer to see Creed in the Original Score category over Carol or Bridge of Spies. But whatever my own choices would be, there are choices like this which can be made, rationalized, justified. Any Oscars voter could too easily say "if only I had room for one more on the ballot, Creed would have been it." Again, self-introspection can be avoided.
But what''s the excuse for Straight Outta Compton in the Best Picture category, with two open slots?
1. It was #19 on the box office chart for 2015. If you look at the movies above it and provide basic screening tests like "no 7th movies in series" "no comic book movies" "no animated movies" "no 50 Shades" and feel that it would be really really nice if box office successes had some correlation with the Oscars, then Straight Outta Compton has to be your second or third choice, in a category with ten nominees.
2. It's a biopic. A genre that mints Oscar nominees. See Coal Miner's Daughter in the musical biopic category.
3. Is it good enough? It has an 88% critic's rating and a 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Revenant, a contender to win Best Picture, is worse in both categories.
4. Is it part of the National Conversation? Well, duh! The scene of the N.W.A. members being harassed by the police outside of the recording studio couldn't be more timely if it came with a carillon chiming the hour.
I loved the movie. Like Boyhood in 2014, it demonstrated that it's possible to have a film flirt with three hours and justify each and every minute. That's great directing by F. Gary Gray. Not that it should matter if I liked it or not. Every year I have to resign myself to the fact that some movie I don't like will be nominated for Academy Awards because it is so totally part of the National Conversation or so clearly a Critics Darling or the kind of movie that attracts award nominations like fruit flies to apple cider vinegar. Straight Outta Compton is, for all reasons noted above, the exact kind of movie that forces acquiescence to its presence on the ballot, regardless of one's personal opinions. And white as Hollywood might be, enough of Hollywood is capable of acknowledging that. Its omission from the elastic Best Picture category is ultimately much harder to justify than its presence would have been.
In a few instances, those questioning the omission can find a scapegoat. The Oscars take cues from the studios themselves. I have a subscription to the Los Angeles Times, which is a prime venue, especially in its "The Envelope" special sections that run frequently during the Oscar and Emmy award seasons, for award campaign advertisements. In spite of the excellent reviews it received and the strong box office reception it garnered, I feel that Straight Outta Compton could have received a stronger, more persistent, from the word "go" awards campaign than it did. But if the Oscar campaign for Straight Outta Compton was underwhelming, it reflects decisions made by the studio, which are likely influenced by the lack of diversity in the studio and/or by an acknowledgment of the realpolitik of putting money behind this movie in advertising to the older, whiter, "maler" constituency of Oscar voters. The scapegoat goes off with the sins, but ends up wandering right back to those wishing absolution.
So there are no good excuses. I'm a 51-year-old white dude, and I can see this. And so can many, many other people.
The creators of and the driving forces behind Straight Outta Compton might not have a chance at Best Picture, but there's reason to think (or at least hope) that their failure there might win a bigger prize in forcing change upon the film industry.
I can easily recall movie moments from my teenage years, even early in. I was twelve when I saw Star Wars, and know that I saw it in Monticello.
So Oscar night is always special to me, the High Holidays of my secular religion.
But this year has an off taste for me, part #OscarsSoWhite, discussed below, and part #OscarsSoTrite, which will be discussed in another post and/or within my live blog of this year's Oscar ceremony.
A year ago, I thought Selma was a worthy movie, kind of like how I felt about Gandhi when I saw that 33 years ago, and how I've felt about quite a few biopics over the years. With Selma nominated in the Best Picture category, with its elastic number of potential nominees, #OscarsSoWhite felt abstract to me.
But in 2015, two movies, Love and Mercy and Straight Outta Compton raised the bar for the genre of the musical biopic. Considering how many appreciably triter biopics have garnered award nominations, I'd like for both to be more prevalent on the Oscar ballot. But Love and Mercy didn't do great box office, got mixed critical reactions, has too many problems staking its claim on the ballot. I can't feel sorry for Love and Mercy.
But
1. What's the excuse for Straight Outta Compton?
2. Why am I making the argument for Straight Outta Compton, rather than for Creed instead of or in addition to?
The second question is the easier one, so I'll tackle that first.
Yes, Creed was another highlight of the 2015 Year in Cinema. It was a creatively driven resurrection of a series that was widely thought to have crucified itself. The resurrector was a black writer/director, Ryan Coogler. He oversaw top-notch creative efforts from a female director of photographer, a Swedish composer, and a brilliant young black actor, Michael B. Jordan. And with Creed, as with Straight Outta Compton, the nominations are #OscarsSoWhite.
And yet, in the history of the Academy Awards, how many seventh movies in a series have ever been nominated for Best Picture? To ask the question is to answer it, and it's an easy way to divert self-introspection.
The other categories where Creed could have been nominated have a cap on the number of nominees. Maryse Alberti did an exceptional job photographing Creed, but there are five strong nominees in that category. Even Carol, wildly overrated as it is, shines most in the technical categories like photography. If I really really had to choose I could find a nominee to boot out of the Director and Original Screenplay categories, but it would be a hard choice. I would prefer to see Creed in the Original Score category over Carol or Bridge of Spies. But whatever my own choices would be, there are choices like this which can be made, rationalized, justified. Any Oscars voter could too easily say "if only I had room for one more on the ballot, Creed would have been it." Again, self-introspection can be avoided.
But what''s the excuse for Straight Outta Compton in the Best Picture category, with two open slots?
1. It was #19 on the box office chart for 2015. If you look at the movies above it and provide basic screening tests like "no 7th movies in series" "no comic book movies" "no animated movies" "no 50 Shades" and feel that it would be really really nice if box office successes had some correlation with the Oscars, then Straight Outta Compton has to be your second or third choice, in a category with ten nominees.
2. It's a biopic. A genre that mints Oscar nominees. See Coal Miner's Daughter in the musical biopic category.
3. Is it good enough? It has an 88% critic's rating and a 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Revenant, a contender to win Best Picture, is worse in both categories.
4. Is it part of the National Conversation? Well, duh! The scene of the N.W.A. members being harassed by the police outside of the recording studio couldn't be more timely if it came with a carillon chiming the hour.
I loved the movie. Like Boyhood in 2014, it demonstrated that it's possible to have a film flirt with three hours and justify each and every minute. That's great directing by F. Gary Gray. Not that it should matter if I liked it or not. Every year I have to resign myself to the fact that some movie I don't like will be nominated for Academy Awards because it is so totally part of the National Conversation or so clearly a Critics Darling or the kind of movie that attracts award nominations like fruit flies to apple cider vinegar. Straight Outta Compton is, for all reasons noted above, the exact kind of movie that forces acquiescence to its presence on the ballot, regardless of one's personal opinions. And white as Hollywood might be, enough of Hollywood is capable of acknowledging that. Its omission from the elastic Best Picture category is ultimately much harder to justify than its presence would have been.
In a few instances, those questioning the omission can find a scapegoat. The Oscars take cues from the studios themselves. I have a subscription to the Los Angeles Times, which is a prime venue, especially in its "The Envelope" special sections that run frequently during the Oscar and Emmy award seasons, for award campaign advertisements. In spite of the excellent reviews it received and the strong box office reception it garnered, I feel that Straight Outta Compton could have received a stronger, more persistent, from the word "go" awards campaign than it did. But if the Oscar campaign for Straight Outta Compton was underwhelming, it reflects decisions made by the studio, which are likely influenced by the lack of diversity in the studio and/or by an acknowledgment of the realpolitik of putting money behind this movie in advertising to the older, whiter, "maler" constituency of Oscar voters. The scapegoat goes off with the sins, but ends up wandering right back to those wishing absolution.
So there are no good excuses. I'm a 51-year-old white dude, and I can see this. And so can many, many other people.
The creators of and the driving forces behind Straight Outta Compton might not have a chance at Best Picture, but there's reason to think (or at least hope) that their failure there might win a bigger prize in forcing change upon the film industry.
Monday, February 23, 2015
The Best Film of 2014
The Oscars forced me to sit down with my print-out of the movies I'd seen that opened in 2014, and without further ado...
1. Boyhood
The very notion of the movie is crazy. The challenges in making a film with a 12-year shooting schedule go far beyond anything. You can't even compare it to the 7/14/21/etcUp documentary series by Michael Apted that has followed a group of kids from 7 until very close to today with films every 7 years. It's one thing to just get together every seven years and see what's happened. You don't have to worry about what happened in the intervening, you just have to report on it. And in any event, Boyhood director Richard Linklater has already replicated that with his Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight series of films with Ethan Hawke and Juliette Delpy.
Let's look at this:
You can't sign a contract for longer than 7 years for an actor/actress, so for your primary cast members, there's the chance that you could be left adrift if someone becomes rich and famous. Or they could go Full Robert Downey Jr. for a year. Or they could die. And then there's the child you start filming at age 6 who could be lots of different things by age 18, and almost certainly it's bucking the odds to expect the kid to grow up to be Miles Teller. Or something could go wrong with the director or an important crew member.
Aside from the pragmatic considerations, the script has to evolve because the world changes in twelve years. You can start the movie with an outline, but it's like the military setting about no plan surviving contact with the enemy. There are so many opportunities to fall on your face. As it is, the scenes set amidst the 2008 Presidential campaign work, but there's no guarantee of it.
And then you've got the money considerations. Empires in Hollywood rise and fall in a dozen years. IFC Films, which backed this, is a part of a big entertainment conglomerate, but these companies change management, or they get parceled out in different mergers and business arrangements.
To set out to make Boyhood is insanity.
And yet it was made, and it is a stunningly good movie, and it is always much harder to talk about the bad in something than about the good.
As a matter of effect, I've now seen Boyhood three times. It's three hours. I didn't look at my watch once. To be sure, the structure of the movie helps because the movie goes into a different year every so often so I don't need to look at my watch to know the movie is progressing, but there are versions of this movie where there would be looking. Lots and lots of looking. The "I can't believe it's been an hour and I'm only in year five and I have seven more agonizing years and two more painful hours" looking. And I would go see the movie again. Not tomorrow, but it's like a Kubrick movie, 2001 or The Shining, which I'm just thinking I need to see every two to five years, just because.
The editing is seamless, which doesn't help with the Academy Awards. Showy is nice, seamless is bad. But the movie cuts from year to year with ease, and any three hour movie that moves as fast as this is a well-edited movie. Not just between years, but in each scene, especially because some of the scenes go on for a bit. The conversation between the boy and his photography teacher that goes on at pretty much the exact length it would go on in real time. My favorite shot is a minute or two of a tracking shot of two people talking as they walk down the street in San Marcos, which uses the same toolkit for these two minutes that the "Before/Beyond" series uses for fifteen minute conversations.
But what good would it do to cut or not cut in some of these long set pieces if the words being said didn't feel right. And every word in this movie feels right. Which, when you think about it, is an amazing thing to say about a movie that was scripted and shot over twelve years with no do-overs for the early scenes. Every once in a while there's something that skates just to the line of feeling a little bit off. The scene in the restaurant with the manager who was set on his path by Patricia Arquette a few years earlier is one of those. It's just a little too perfect. But the thing of it is that this stuff happens in real life. I'll go to a convention and some writer will come up and thank me for some piece of advice in a rejection letter or something like that. Since the script always feels right when it's talking about something I can relate to, I can trust it when it's lingering on a scene I can't relate to, like the birthday party where Mason gets his first gun.
The soundtrack is well-curated.
Even on the third go-round, the film was affecting in the final scenes.
I feel like I'm underselling the movie, that it's rife with virtues I can't articulate. But there's no denying it, Boyhood is the best movie of 2014.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
The Theory of American Selma's Grand Birdhood Whiplash Hotel Game
12:23 AM: NY Times Oscar blog notes omissions of Roger Ebert and Joan Rivers from the in memoriam list.
12:09 AM: Or in the R-Rated words of @mattbilmes GOD DAMN IT BIRDMAN WON BEST PICTURE GODDAMN IT SISOALEHFIWPALCKRKWKFNDGOOWOALNFNEOW
12:05 AM: AMPAS got it wrong. Boyhood is Best!
11:49 PM: Wait, wasn't that guy a seat filler?
11:47 PM: And if you compare Graham Moore's speech to Patricia Arquette's you can understand why the editor in me gives Arquette's speech an A for content and a C- for organization.
11:45 PM: Sigh. The highlight of Graham Moore's speech followed by my disappointment over Best Director.
11:43 PM: me not happy. wrong director win Oscar.
11:35 PM: Another mild surprise with Imitation Game winning for Adapted Screenplay. It is based on a book represented by our friends at the Zeno Agency.
11:30 PM: So the Rivoli Theatre where The Sound of Music premiered. It was located at 49th and Broadway, with a ornate facade. The facade was torn down in the 1980s just ahead of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is an old story in New York. The same thing happened to the blue venetian tile facade of Cinema 1/Cinema 2. The theatre itself was torn down in the late 1980s not long after I moved to New York, and in its final years it was like most old theatres a duplex, the UA Rivoli Twin with a downstairs and a balcony theatre. I saw a few movies there before it was demolished. I am thinking maybe Hoosiers, maybe Secret of NIMH, maybe Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School.
11:26 PM: I believe Grand Budapest Hotel will, at minimum, be tied for the most Academy Awards given out tonight...
11:24 PM: That was a stunning twelve minutes of television. Lady Gaga's Sound of Music performance was moving, and hopefully some to Julie Andrews as it was to me. Having Julie Andrews come in for the hand-off, having her present the Academy Award for Best Score. It was danged well-done.
11:10 PM: Heading into the homestretch. Two screenplay awards, two acting awards, director and picture.
11:09 PM: And from the crowd shots, the performance of Glory might have been even more compelling "in the house" than it was on TV. And watching on TV, everything about the number was awesome.
11:06 PM: Maybe it would have been better not to have NPH complimenting each musical number like a waiter congratulating you on your great choice at a restaurant. The truly fantastic performance for Glory sounds so sincerely not fantastic when NPH says "fantastic" because his line-reading is just like the compliments for the other less fantastic nominees in this category.
10:58 PM: And to weigh in a bit on the Edward Snowden question -- the US has been a wee bit vindictive toward people who expose truths the government wants hidden, and Chelsea Manning hasn't just been imprisoned but has been imprisoned inhumanely, kept in solitary confinement, etc. etc. I'd be a lot more critical of Snowden for avoiding US justice if I thought the US government wouldn't go in big for extra-judicial punishment with regard to his confinement before and during his trial.
10:55 Citizen Four is quite a good film.
10:53: Wait! That was Glenn Greenwald? He wasn't, um, help us in customs to see if he was hiding documents someplace?
10:50 PM: The director of Whiplash is only 30 years old.
10:49 PM: Just to say, the editing category was a very difficult one, with Whiplash, American Sniper, and Boyhood al making very compelling arguments. The thing with Boyhood is that the editing was brilliant but also so seamless you hardly noticed it was there. Whereas with Whiplash the editing is very in-your-face important to the movie. You think of the last long sequence in Whiplash of the Carnegie Hall concert that just goes on and on for way longer than scenes are supposed to go on for in contemporary cinema. It has to give us Miles Teller drumming, it has to give us JK Simmons leading. It has to give us some perspective of what the audience is seeing, what each of the major characters is seeing of the other, it can't ignore the other members of the band that are on the stage at that point in time. I was kind of rooting for Boyhood in this category, but let's face it -- there's some brilliant cutting going on in Whiplash, and the movie wouldn't work at all without brilliant editing.
10:44 PM: Another surprise, methinks. Most people were tipping the editing Oscar to go to Sandra Adair for Boyhood, but it's Tom Cross for Whiplash who's taking the podium.
10: 43 PM: If I had to buy a gadget based on Oscar ads, I'd be buying Samsung hands down. Their Galaxy ad was much better than the iPad ad a commercial break or two back, and their SUHD TV ad was also quite stunningly good. I believe the TV ad was using music from the soundtrack for True Romance, which is very Oscar appropriate and also pays tribute to Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette.
10:22 PM: Hearing the score for Grand Budapest Hotel over the course of the evening makes me think kind thoughts about that maybe winning for Best Original Score.
10:21 PM: Production Design probably another win for Grand Budapest Hotel.
10:20 PM: That was one of the worst Academy President speeches in the history of Academy President speeches.
10:19 PM: Maybe I would like Dreamworks Animation more if they had done the Alcatraz movie based on the Brandon Sanderson novels. They even had a good script!
10:13 PM: I think most of the money was on How To Train Your Dragon 2, so the win for Big Hero 6 might be the first surprise of the evening. I didn't see Dragon. Big Hero 6 was half of a great movie and half an OK animated rendition of a boring superhero movie, but the good half was really, really good. No complaints here, and on the whole I'm not a fan of Dreamworks Animation, so having a win for Disney/Pixar is also just fine by me.
10:09 PM: Lego wasn't robbed. It wasn't good. I would have walked out if I hadn't been with a friend when I saw it.
10:07 PM: They've been big on playing romance themes as the presenters walk on. From Officer and a Gentleman and Dirty Dancing. Both of which came out before Ansel Elgort or Miles Teller were born, but which I can still remember!
10:05 PM: What else but Interstellar could have won for Visual Effects. I think this movie was under-rated, and wish I had gotten round to seeing it once in Imax after doing the 70mm film route the first time around.
10:04 PM: Ansel Elgort is tall. So very very tall. And even when I was his age, I never looked like him. Or Eddie Redmayne. Or even the director of Whiplash. Or Miles Teller. A guy can get jealous.
9:58 PM: What would her character in Boyhood think of Patricia Arquette's acceptance speech? Probably would approve. But editorially, the mix of rote thank you's to everyone with a closing message wasn't the best presentation of the message. But, hey, two Oscars for Boyhood. But Director and Picture are the ones where we must soar over Birdman.
9:49 PM: And the first American Sniper Oscar of the evening. This is a movie that is staying with me in the weeks since I've seen it, and I just may find my way to seeing it again.
12:09 AM: Or in the R-Rated words of @mattbilmes GOD DAMN IT BIRDMAN WON BEST PICTURE GODDAMN IT SISOALEHFIWPALCKRKWKFNDGOOWOALNFNEOW
12:05 AM: AMPAS got it wrong. Boyhood is Best!
11:49 PM: Wait, wasn't that guy a seat filler?
11:47 PM: And if you compare Graham Moore's speech to Patricia Arquette's you can understand why the editor in me gives Arquette's speech an A for content and a C- for organization.
11:45 PM: Sigh. The highlight of Graham Moore's speech followed by my disappointment over Best Director.
11:43 PM: me not happy. wrong director win Oscar.
11:35 PM: Another mild surprise with Imitation Game winning for Adapted Screenplay. It is based on a book represented by our friends at the Zeno Agency.
11:30 PM: So the Rivoli Theatre where The Sound of Music premiered. It was located at 49th and Broadway, with a ornate facade. The facade was torn down in the 1980s just ahead of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is an old story in New York. The same thing happened to the blue venetian tile facade of Cinema 1/Cinema 2. The theatre itself was torn down in the late 1980s not long after I moved to New York, and in its final years it was like most old theatres a duplex, the UA Rivoli Twin with a downstairs and a balcony theatre. I saw a few movies there before it was demolished. I am thinking maybe Hoosiers, maybe Secret of NIMH, maybe Rodney Dangerfield's Back to School.
11:26 PM: I believe Grand Budapest Hotel will, at minimum, be tied for the most Academy Awards given out tonight...
11:24 PM: That was a stunning twelve minutes of television. Lady Gaga's Sound of Music performance was moving, and hopefully some to Julie Andrews as it was to me. Having Julie Andrews come in for the hand-off, having her present the Academy Award for Best Score. It was danged well-done.
11:10 PM: Heading into the homestretch. Two screenplay awards, two acting awards, director and picture.
11:09 PM: And from the crowd shots, the performance of Glory might have been even more compelling "in the house" than it was on TV. And watching on TV, everything about the number was awesome.
11:06 PM: Maybe it would have been better not to have NPH complimenting each musical number like a waiter congratulating you on your great choice at a restaurant. The truly fantastic performance for Glory sounds so sincerely not fantastic when NPH says "fantastic" because his line-reading is just like the compliments for the other less fantastic nominees in this category.
10:58 PM: And to weigh in a bit on the Edward Snowden question -- the US has been a wee bit vindictive toward people who expose truths the government wants hidden, and Chelsea Manning hasn't just been imprisoned but has been imprisoned inhumanely, kept in solitary confinement, etc. etc. I'd be a lot more critical of Snowden for avoiding US justice if I thought the US government wouldn't go in big for extra-judicial punishment with regard to his confinement before and during his trial.
10:55 Citizen Four is quite a good film.
10:53: Wait! That was Glenn Greenwald? He wasn't, um, help us in customs to see if he was hiding documents someplace?
10:50 PM: The director of Whiplash is only 30 years old.
10:49 PM: Just to say, the editing category was a very difficult one, with Whiplash, American Sniper, and Boyhood al making very compelling arguments. The thing with Boyhood is that the editing was brilliant but also so seamless you hardly noticed it was there. Whereas with Whiplash the editing is very in-your-face important to the movie. You think of the last long sequence in Whiplash of the Carnegie Hall concert that just goes on and on for way longer than scenes are supposed to go on for in contemporary cinema. It has to give us Miles Teller drumming, it has to give us JK Simmons leading. It has to give us some perspective of what the audience is seeing, what each of the major characters is seeing of the other, it can't ignore the other members of the band that are on the stage at that point in time. I was kind of rooting for Boyhood in this category, but let's face it -- there's some brilliant cutting going on in Whiplash, and the movie wouldn't work at all without brilliant editing.
10:44 PM: Another surprise, methinks. Most people were tipping the editing Oscar to go to Sandra Adair for Boyhood, but it's Tom Cross for Whiplash who's taking the podium.
10: 43 PM: If I had to buy a gadget based on Oscar ads, I'd be buying Samsung hands down. Their Galaxy ad was much better than the iPad ad a commercial break or two back, and their SUHD TV ad was also quite stunningly good. I believe the TV ad was using music from the soundtrack for True Romance, which is very Oscar appropriate and also pays tribute to Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette.
10:22 PM: Hearing the score for Grand Budapest Hotel over the course of the evening makes me think kind thoughts about that maybe winning for Best Original Score.
10:21 PM: Production Design probably another win for Grand Budapest Hotel.
10:20 PM: That was one of the worst Academy President speeches in the history of Academy President speeches.
10:19 PM: Maybe I would like Dreamworks Animation more if they had done the Alcatraz movie based on the Brandon Sanderson novels. They even had a good script!
10:13 PM: I think most of the money was on How To Train Your Dragon 2, so the win for Big Hero 6 might be the first surprise of the evening. I didn't see Dragon. Big Hero 6 was half of a great movie and half an OK animated rendition of a boring superhero movie, but the good half was really, really good. No complaints here, and on the whole I'm not a fan of Dreamworks Animation, so having a win for Disney/Pixar is also just fine by me.
10:09 PM: Lego wasn't robbed. It wasn't good. I would have walked out if I hadn't been with a friend when I saw it.
10:07 PM: They've been big on playing romance themes as the presenters walk on. From Officer and a Gentleman and Dirty Dancing. Both of which came out before Ansel Elgort or Miles Teller were born, but which I can still remember!
10:05 PM: What else but Interstellar could have won for Visual Effects. I think this movie was under-rated, and wish I had gotten round to seeing it once in Imax after doing the 70mm film route the first time around.
10:04 PM: Ansel Elgort is tall. So very very tall. And even when I was his age, I never looked like him. Or Eddie Redmayne. Or even the director of Whiplash. Or Miles Teller. A guy can get jealous.
9:58 PM: What would her character in Boyhood think of Patricia Arquette's acceptance speech? Probably would approve. But editorially, the mix of rote thank you's to everyone with a closing message wasn't the best presentation of the message. But, hey, two Oscars for Boyhood. But Director and Picture are the ones where we must soar over Birdman.
9:49 PM: And the first American Sniper Oscar of the evening. This is a movie that is staying with me in the weeks since I've seen it, and I just may find my way to seeing it again.
9:47 PM: Two Oscars for Whiplash! And did I imagine that NPH was on stage in his underwear?
9:35 PM: slow stretch in ceremony -- time to start in on some dessert.
9:19 PM: Ya know, that production number was actually awesome.
9:16 PM: Even watching the montage for Boyhood gives me goosebumps, bringing back multiple great moments from a spectacularly good film.
9:12 PM: That said, Ida is the only one of the foreign film nominees I saw. Which doesn't make it the best foreign film I saw last year.
9:11 PM: Never knew you could win an Oscar for boring movies where a good chunk of the run-time is taken up with pictures of nuns eating soup.
9:10 PM: I hated Ida.
9:09 PM: I'd be happy if I was in the movie business and had to hear 45 seconds of Milena Canonero singing my praises. She has been around, doing costume design for great movies and great directors for several decades. Previous Oscar for Barry Lyndon, which might be the one perfect film where every shot fully realizes the director's intentions. And which came out almost 40 years ago.
9:07 PM: The Google Play ad is movies or content specific, but I don't think it's a very good ad.
9:06 PM: Grand Budapest Hotel wasn't my favorite movie of the year, but it is the most-appreciated by me of Wes Anderson films. Wes seemed very happy listening to the acceptance speeches for the Costume Design and Makeup/Hair Styling Awards.
9:01 PM: Both Reese Witherspoon and Patricia Arquette have a nice white-on-black going.
8:59 PM: I say that enviously because I have to match shades with my different items of clothing, and J Lo managed to do it with one piece of her closing and her actual skin tone. I cannot pull that off. I absolutely cannot.
8:57 PM: With that costume, J Lo should be giving the Costume Design Award!
8:56 PM: Both the AmEx and Samsung ads gets kudos for being movies-specific. Car ads almost always bore me beacuse i have zero interst in ever owning one.
8:55 PM: The Samsung ad was more entertaining than some of the nominated films! And the opening number.
8:47 PM: I like Liam Neeson's black-on-black look.
8:45 PM: What a weird thank you speech. It's always good to thank your parents, but a lot of people who haven't seen the other less-viewed award shows where Simmons has won maybe haven't heard him thank anyone else. As a backstage kind of guy by profession, that leaves an off note for me.
8:40 PM: Whiplash is my 2nd favorite film of the year, so the expected Supporting Actor win for JK Simmons suits me just fine.
8:38 PM: And the number is meh. Too tasteful. Too not anyone else.
8:34 PM: Neil Patrick Harris is very definitively now being Billy Crystal, but I'm no fonder of having a a lot of CGI in this production number than I am in the typical overblown SFX spectacular.
8:31 PM: Best and Whitest -- Cut to Benedict Cumberbatch in white tux.
8:30 PM: ANd we're off. Doogie Howser is on stage!
8:29 PM: And all the gumption it took to make Boyhood in the first place is outweighed by the fact that the movie which results from it is amazing.
8:26 PM: Evil is represented by the late surge for Birdman, which was an interesting movie but not that good a one. The idea of doing a movie without cuts has been done before, as far back as Hitchcock's Rope. The idea of doing a movie on essentially one set has been done before. If you want to skulk about backstage you can go and watch the wings of the NY City Ballet in Ballet 422, a decent enough documentary that's playing now. And the movie has Michael Keaton, but it doesn't really use him. The more interesting character by far is Edward Norton's. There are lots of female characters but I can't tell one from the other, during the movie or in retrospect. I would be really disappointed if this movie won Best Picture.
8:22 PM: Some years I have a mild interest in the outcome, but this year, I feel like I'm at the cusp of a great battle between Good and Evil.
8;20 PM - fun with Google, which was acting confused about my business and work accounts, but signed in and ready to go!
11:37 AM -- If tonight's Oscars are as fabulous as the title of this blog post, if Neil Patrick Harris' monologue is half as brilliant, we'll be in for a fun evening!
Monday, March 3, 2014
The Joshcars for 2013
So having completed the live blogging for the Oscars, this is my Baker's Dozen best of 2013, in no particular order:
World War Z:
This is grading on a curve. But basically, there are so many really shitty special effects spectaculars around these days that I feel an urge to give some recognition to a movie that's just a little bit different. Also, since I keep asking authors to revise their manuscripts, it's nice to see something in the popular culture where revision works. In particular, the ending of this major CGI-ridden summer spectacular release is quiet. One setting, one main character, a place where small little things count, where the tension is real. A place where the violence is earned, justified by the movie being what the movie is, and now entirely thrown in just because someone thinks it's fun to plow a starship into a building, or to destroy Manhattan for the 18th time and pretend like it isn't, like Superman didn't save Manhattan in Superman 2 over 30 years ago. This was a pleasant surprise, an over-achiever in a genre that keeps under-achieving. So I want to give it some credit.
The Spectacular Now:
Rumor has it that Miles Teller, the star of this spectacularly good adaptation of a YA novel, is going to be in a new Fantastic Four movie. What a shame. An actor as talented as Miles Teller shouldn't be wasting time in shitty SFX/CGI/superhero movies, please see my comments above on World War Z. See my comments on my live Oscar blog, and this is an example of where Roger Ebert can do something I can't, which is explain why a movie is good. This was one of the very last movies Ebert reviewed, and maybe I should just let his review speak for me. But I don't really want to. So let me try.
I always feel like one of the best achievements in the arts is to get me to like the kind of thing I don't ordinarily like. The New Yorker story that I can read must be a truly great story, or the generic slasher movie that I love can't be just a generic slasher movie, or the literary science fiction novel that grabs the Joshua Bilmes whose roots are in the Analog end of sf/f. And The Spectacular Now is a movie about a character I despise, a high school student really big into alcohol who is supposed to be lovable. And alcoholics aren't lovable. Behavior fueled by alcohol isn't lovable. There's nothing redeeming about a movie like Don's Party. Nothing pleasant about Leaving Las Vegas. Yet this movie walks the tightrope.
It has to be a team effort, here. Novel by Tim Tharp. Adapted by screenwriter Michael H. Weber, whose previous credits include the similarly successful (500) Days of Summer. Directed by James Ponsoldt, whose prior movie was Smashed, the kind of movie about alcoholism that I really don't need in my life, thank you.
But most importantly, a pitch-perfect performance by Miles Teller.
He's a likable alcoholic but never a lovable one. When he's given the chance to have more hours at work if only he would show up on time, he's self-aware enough to tell the boss that he knows it just won't work, he won't put the job before alcohol, and he won't be showing up on time. Capable of being the perfect boyfriend, except for all the times he's drunk and he isn't capable of being anyone's boyfriend.
You can understand a bit of why he likes his booze. He's from a broken home. Older sister he isn't on great terms. Struggling mother, who won't tell him where his father is. And when we finally meet the father, you know the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and you also see this glimmer of awareness that our lead character knows his father's a screw-up, that he's a screw-up, that one doesn't justify the other and he doesn't admire his father for being what he too often is, even though he can't stop himself from being it.
It's awfully damned good.
Short Term 12:
Another quiet little film that has probably gone under the radar for most of you. Brie Larson, who also has a supporting role in Spectacular Now, plays a counselor at a group home for troubled children. Jonathan Gallagher is another "veteran" at the home, which isn't saying much. It's a hard place to stay, the kind of place you burn out on real quick. But the two of them have somehow managed to keep at it for at least a little bit, and the film starts with a quiet scene of Gallagher giving some background on the place to a new employee. These characters have a lot more going on than we see at first, and the film peels back their layers slowly, carefully, way more so than any of us will ever be with an actual onion in our kitchen. While it's doing that, the film also slowly peels back some of the closely held secrets for the characters in the home, many of whom might want to be someplace else, all of whom are free to be someplace else if they can escape past the doors and the guards and get on to the street outside. It's a strange kind of thing, how the employees at the home can do just about anything to keep the kids from leaving but have no power to order them back should they leave.
So I'm not describing this like any film anyone is going to rush out to see. But the writing is really good. The acting is really good. The surprises along the way are never total surprises, yet we never quite see them coming way far ahead of time. Powerful stuff.
Rush:
Great performances. Great soundtrack. Great photography. Great racing sequences.
It's not like this film, one of Ron Howard's best, didn't get some good reviews. It's not like it didn't get some recognition on the awards scene, with some acting awards especially. But certainly, in the US, the film didn't do as well as hoped. It's a shame, that.
12 Years a Slave:
It's a hard film to love, and I want to keep pushing it away, but it doesn't deserve that.
I first caught up with director Steve McQueen with Shame, an impressive feature about an IRA prisoner who went on hunger strike. Searing visual images, excellent acting, powerful story. Often hard to sit through.
I got to see McQueen in person when the Museum of the Moving Image screened his Shame. Didn't impress me so much there. The movie had the same stunning visuals, I can still see some scenes of the main character racing down deserted Manhattan streets that shimmer and gleam. Like Shame, hard to sit through. We don't really need visually stunning movies about sex addicts. And to have to listen to the director talk about all of the wonderful artistic decisions in making a film that nobody should have bothered with. It's the risk of these Q&A things. This wasn't as bad as listening to Alan Parker spout on about his genius in making The Life of David Gale, but it was close.
Then we arrive at 12 Years a Slave. And we're starting to see some patterns here. There are stunning visuals, and the movie is hard to sit through.
But it's a worthy movie in better ways than a lot of other worthy movies. It isn't a movie that uses white people to tell the story of the black struggle. It isn't Richard Attenborough or Bernardo Bertolluci who choke on their own artifice half the time. See Gandhi for worthy and dull, or The Last Emperor. See Cry Freedom. No, this is told with passion, with emotion, with an abundance of good acting.
Captain Phillips:
Tom Hanks gives a great performance, and the film shows director Paul Greengrass at this best, with great photography and great editing in the service of some real-life drama.
Room 237:
A documentary about The Shining, kind of.
If you like The Shining -- and I like it very much -- it's hard to see it just once. You want to keep seeing it, over and over and over again. And when you see a movie over and over again, you notice things about it that you may not notice on the first viewing or the thirtieth. And it's a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, whom some consider to be technocratic and cold, so in control of every frame that he suffocates human emotion. So when you see one of his movies over and over again, and you notice things, you know that everything has to be there for a reason.
So this movie introduces us to people, whom we hear in voiceover over clips from the film but don't actually see on-screen, who have very clear ideas of what The Shining is all about. Notice how the carpet has things that look like little rockets, and this is a movie about the faking of the Apollo rocket launches. Or notice the food in the pantry and realize it's a movie about the treatment of the American Indian. Or realize that the window in the hotel GM's office couldn't really be there and go someplace else from there. All of these theories can't be right, and likely none of them are. According to Kubrick's right hand man on the film, even the control freak director sometimes has a particular thing appear on the screen because they happened to need something and that was at hand on the particular day they shot a particular scene where they needed this particular thing.
I have a confession to make. I never realized the window in the office couldn't have been a window. I have stared at the screen a gazillion times trying to figure out if the bathroom window that Danny has to climb out of can really be a window in that particular place. I've yearned to look at blueprints because I never quite believe the architecture of the hotel, and now I find out that I might be able to go on the internet and find the blueprints I'm looking for. But do I want to? I like my mysteries. I like my The Shining.
It's funny, sometimes funny-scary, it's insightful about the creative process, about our interaction with creativity, about obsession. .
Philomena:
The funny version of the not so funny story of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. Excellently acted by Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
Before Midnight:
I saw Before Sunrise when it came out 18 years ago, at the UA Lynbrook on a day when I rode out there to visit the accountants for the Scott Meredith Agency, whom I used for a couple years when I struck out on my own. If memory serves, I've not seen the movie again, though the idea of it sticks around. And then Before Sunset came around, 9 years after, and it sticks around. You can't quite believe how much tension you can get out of wondering if a guy's going to leave to catch his flight or not, and this movie left me as rapt about that small little decision as if there were a red timer counting down for the bomb that might go off and destroy the world. And now, Before Midnight. Once again, Ethan Hawke, Juliet Delpy and director Richard Linklater collaborate on a little movie with a long aftertaste. Ethan Hawke didn't make his flight. Now, he's got a son from his prior marriage, the one that broke up in part because he didn't make that flight. And he's spending some tense time in Greece with his girlfriend, Delpy. And they ride around in a car after dropping their son off at the airport, and they talk while the beautiful Greek scenery glides by. And they talk over lunch with friends, while chopping the vegetables and eating the result. And they talk some more while they walk back to their hotel, an extended take tracking them through relics. And it all comes to a head when they get to the hotel, 18 years of history and resentment and love and bitterness and shared experiences and things they should've done together but didn't. Nominated for an Oscar in the screenplay categories. The movies seem like they're being made up on the spot, but as I read in one interview, you can't go filming across the Greek countryside, closing roads, doing multiple takes, and make it all up as you go along.
Her:
One of the best sf films in a long time. Winner of an Academy Award for Original Screenplay.
The Wolf of Wall Street:
Not quite up to the level of Goodfellas, but an amazingly good film by Martin Scorcese, with an exceptional lead performance by Leonardo DiCaprio and good supporting work by Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler and others. Leisurely, finding its own rhythms, and certain to be talked about for a very long time.
The Conjuring:
I realized as I was typing that I needed to add this to my list for reasons mentioned in what I say above about The Spectacular Now. I'm nearing 50. I don't do horror movies the way I used to. I hardly do them at all. But I went to see this one, I was on the edge of my seat the whole way, I was using my arms or my knees or my anything to keep myself from seeing what was happening on the screen because I was scared. The movie's of a type, but it's among the very best of it's type that you'll find.
Gravity:
New-fangled technology and old-fashioned great acting from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Visually stunning to look at, suspenseful to sit through, one of the few films I wish I'd paid more to see.
There are several hundred films released each year, and I see only a small percentage of them, somewhere between 90-110 in a typical year. So ya know, my list isn't as valid as some critic who is paid to see movies and sees 400 of them, but it also isn't full of too many obscure films that only a critic would have or could have seen. Room 237, Short Term 12, Spectacular Now are the more "obscure" of the movies on my list, but hey, I just round a Room 237 DVD lurking in Costco, so how obscure can it be!
World War Z:
This is grading on a curve. But basically, there are so many really shitty special effects spectaculars around these days that I feel an urge to give some recognition to a movie that's just a little bit different. Also, since I keep asking authors to revise their manuscripts, it's nice to see something in the popular culture where revision works. In particular, the ending of this major CGI-ridden summer spectacular release is quiet. One setting, one main character, a place where small little things count, where the tension is real. A place where the violence is earned, justified by the movie being what the movie is, and now entirely thrown in just because someone thinks it's fun to plow a starship into a building, or to destroy Manhattan for the 18th time and pretend like it isn't, like Superman didn't save Manhattan in Superman 2 over 30 years ago. This was a pleasant surprise, an over-achiever in a genre that keeps under-achieving. So I want to give it some credit.
The Spectacular Now:
Rumor has it that Miles Teller, the star of this spectacularly good adaptation of a YA novel, is going to be in a new Fantastic Four movie. What a shame. An actor as talented as Miles Teller shouldn't be wasting time in shitty SFX/CGI/superhero movies, please see my comments above on World War Z. See my comments on my live Oscar blog, and this is an example of where Roger Ebert can do something I can't, which is explain why a movie is good. This was one of the very last movies Ebert reviewed, and maybe I should just let his review speak for me. But I don't really want to. So let me try.
I always feel like one of the best achievements in the arts is to get me to like the kind of thing I don't ordinarily like. The New Yorker story that I can read must be a truly great story, or the generic slasher movie that I love can't be just a generic slasher movie, or the literary science fiction novel that grabs the Joshua Bilmes whose roots are in the Analog end of sf/f. And The Spectacular Now is a movie about a character I despise, a high school student really big into alcohol who is supposed to be lovable. And alcoholics aren't lovable. Behavior fueled by alcohol isn't lovable. There's nothing redeeming about a movie like Don's Party. Nothing pleasant about Leaving Las Vegas. Yet this movie walks the tightrope.
It has to be a team effort, here. Novel by Tim Tharp. Adapted by screenwriter Michael H. Weber, whose previous credits include the similarly successful (500) Days of Summer. Directed by James Ponsoldt, whose prior movie was Smashed, the kind of movie about alcoholism that I really don't need in my life, thank you.
But most importantly, a pitch-perfect performance by Miles Teller.
He's a likable alcoholic but never a lovable one. When he's given the chance to have more hours at work if only he would show up on time, he's self-aware enough to tell the boss that he knows it just won't work, he won't put the job before alcohol, and he won't be showing up on time. Capable of being the perfect boyfriend, except for all the times he's drunk and he isn't capable of being anyone's boyfriend.
You can understand a bit of why he likes his booze. He's from a broken home. Older sister he isn't on great terms. Struggling mother, who won't tell him where his father is. And when we finally meet the father, you know the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and you also see this glimmer of awareness that our lead character knows his father's a screw-up, that he's a screw-up, that one doesn't justify the other and he doesn't admire his father for being what he too often is, even though he can't stop himself from being it.
It's awfully damned good.
Short Term 12:
Another quiet little film that has probably gone under the radar for most of you. Brie Larson, who also has a supporting role in Spectacular Now, plays a counselor at a group home for troubled children. Jonathan Gallagher is another "veteran" at the home, which isn't saying much. It's a hard place to stay, the kind of place you burn out on real quick. But the two of them have somehow managed to keep at it for at least a little bit, and the film starts with a quiet scene of Gallagher giving some background on the place to a new employee. These characters have a lot more going on than we see at first, and the film peels back their layers slowly, carefully, way more so than any of us will ever be with an actual onion in our kitchen. While it's doing that, the film also slowly peels back some of the closely held secrets for the characters in the home, many of whom might want to be someplace else, all of whom are free to be someplace else if they can escape past the doors and the guards and get on to the street outside. It's a strange kind of thing, how the employees at the home can do just about anything to keep the kids from leaving but have no power to order them back should they leave.
So I'm not describing this like any film anyone is going to rush out to see. But the writing is really good. The acting is really good. The surprises along the way are never total surprises, yet we never quite see them coming way far ahead of time. Powerful stuff.
Rush:
Great performances. Great soundtrack. Great photography. Great racing sequences.
It's not like this film, one of Ron Howard's best, didn't get some good reviews. It's not like it didn't get some recognition on the awards scene, with some acting awards especially. But certainly, in the US, the film didn't do as well as hoped. It's a shame, that.
12 Years a Slave:
It's a hard film to love, and I want to keep pushing it away, but it doesn't deserve that.
I first caught up with director Steve McQueen with Shame, an impressive feature about an IRA prisoner who went on hunger strike. Searing visual images, excellent acting, powerful story. Often hard to sit through.
I got to see McQueen in person when the Museum of the Moving Image screened his Shame. Didn't impress me so much there. The movie had the same stunning visuals, I can still see some scenes of the main character racing down deserted Manhattan streets that shimmer and gleam. Like Shame, hard to sit through. We don't really need visually stunning movies about sex addicts. And to have to listen to the director talk about all of the wonderful artistic decisions in making a film that nobody should have bothered with. It's the risk of these Q&A things. This wasn't as bad as listening to Alan Parker spout on about his genius in making The Life of David Gale, but it was close.
Then we arrive at 12 Years a Slave. And we're starting to see some patterns here. There are stunning visuals, and the movie is hard to sit through.
But it's a worthy movie in better ways than a lot of other worthy movies. It isn't a movie that uses white people to tell the story of the black struggle. It isn't Richard Attenborough or Bernardo Bertolluci who choke on their own artifice half the time. See Gandhi for worthy and dull, or The Last Emperor. See Cry Freedom. No, this is told with passion, with emotion, with an abundance of good acting.
Captain Phillips:
Tom Hanks gives a great performance, and the film shows director Paul Greengrass at this best, with great photography and great editing in the service of some real-life drama.
Room 237:
A documentary about The Shining, kind of.
If you like The Shining -- and I like it very much -- it's hard to see it just once. You want to keep seeing it, over and over and over again. And when you see a movie over and over again, you notice things about it that you may not notice on the first viewing or the thirtieth. And it's a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, whom some consider to be technocratic and cold, so in control of every frame that he suffocates human emotion. So when you see one of his movies over and over again, and you notice things, you know that everything has to be there for a reason.
So this movie introduces us to people, whom we hear in voiceover over clips from the film but don't actually see on-screen, who have very clear ideas of what The Shining is all about. Notice how the carpet has things that look like little rockets, and this is a movie about the faking of the Apollo rocket launches. Or notice the food in the pantry and realize it's a movie about the treatment of the American Indian. Or realize that the window in the hotel GM's office couldn't really be there and go someplace else from there. All of these theories can't be right, and likely none of them are. According to Kubrick's right hand man on the film, even the control freak director sometimes has a particular thing appear on the screen because they happened to need something and that was at hand on the particular day they shot a particular scene where they needed this particular thing.
I have a confession to make. I never realized the window in the office couldn't have been a window. I have stared at the screen a gazillion times trying to figure out if the bathroom window that Danny has to climb out of can really be a window in that particular place. I've yearned to look at blueprints because I never quite believe the architecture of the hotel, and now I find out that I might be able to go on the internet and find the blueprints I'm looking for. But do I want to? I like my mysteries. I like my The Shining.
It's funny, sometimes funny-scary, it's insightful about the creative process, about our interaction with creativity, about obsession. .
Philomena:
The funny version of the not so funny story of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. Excellently acted by Judi Dench and Steve Coogan.
Before Midnight:
I saw Before Sunrise when it came out 18 years ago, at the UA Lynbrook on a day when I rode out there to visit the accountants for the Scott Meredith Agency, whom I used for a couple years when I struck out on my own. If memory serves, I've not seen the movie again, though the idea of it sticks around. And then Before Sunset came around, 9 years after, and it sticks around. You can't quite believe how much tension you can get out of wondering if a guy's going to leave to catch his flight or not, and this movie left me as rapt about that small little decision as if there were a red timer counting down for the bomb that might go off and destroy the world. And now, Before Midnight. Once again, Ethan Hawke, Juliet Delpy and director Richard Linklater collaborate on a little movie with a long aftertaste. Ethan Hawke didn't make his flight. Now, he's got a son from his prior marriage, the one that broke up in part because he didn't make that flight. And he's spending some tense time in Greece with his girlfriend, Delpy. And they ride around in a car after dropping their son off at the airport, and they talk while the beautiful Greek scenery glides by. And they talk over lunch with friends, while chopping the vegetables and eating the result. And they talk some more while they walk back to their hotel, an extended take tracking them through relics. And it all comes to a head when they get to the hotel, 18 years of history and resentment and love and bitterness and shared experiences and things they should've done together but didn't. Nominated for an Oscar in the screenplay categories. The movies seem like they're being made up on the spot, but as I read in one interview, you can't go filming across the Greek countryside, closing roads, doing multiple takes, and make it all up as you go along.
Her:
One of the best sf films in a long time. Winner of an Academy Award for Original Screenplay.
The Wolf of Wall Street:
Not quite up to the level of Goodfellas, but an amazingly good film by Martin Scorcese, with an exceptional lead performance by Leonardo DiCaprio and good supporting work by Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler and others. Leisurely, finding its own rhythms, and certain to be talked about for a very long time.
The Conjuring:
I realized as I was typing that I needed to add this to my list for reasons mentioned in what I say above about The Spectacular Now. I'm nearing 50. I don't do horror movies the way I used to. I hardly do them at all. But I went to see this one, I was on the edge of my seat the whole way, I was using my arms or my knees or my anything to keep myself from seeing what was happening on the screen because I was scared. The movie's of a type, but it's among the very best of it's type that you'll find.
Gravity:
New-fangled technology and old-fashioned great acting from Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Visually stunning to look at, suspenseful to sit through, one of the few films I wish I'd paid more to see.
There are several hundred films released each year, and I see only a small percentage of them, somewhere between 90-110 in a typical year. So ya know, my list isn't as valid as some critic who is paid to see movies and sees 400 of them, but it also isn't full of too many obscure films that only a critic would have or could have seen. Room 237, Short Term 12, Spectacular Now are the more "obscure" of the movies on my list, but hey, I just round a Room 237 DVD lurking in Costco, so how obscure can it be!
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