Cap'n Howdy Presents His Quasi-Annual Academy Award Speculation

 As anyone inclined to read a blog about movies already knows, this weekend brings the 86th Annual Academy Awards, the final award show of "Awards Season" that runs from last December until the beginning of March. It's possible the Razzies are also this weekend, but since they gave up nominating movies that were bad and just went for the low hanging fruit (did Adam Sandler or M. Night Shyamalan make a movie this year? Nominate them in every category!) I really haven't given that much credence. I can't remember when I started watching the Academy Awards, but it's been a fixture in my life as a cinephile (to give you some idea, I can still remember Jack Palance doing push-ups on stage and Billy Crystal in the Hannibal Lecter mask like it was yesterday).

With that said, I've never been very good at predicting the winners. As I often joke, I tend to defer to friend of the Blogorium Neil, because he has a much better track record, but as he's not around to write this, it falls to the Cap'n to give it a shot. With the exception of Nebraska, Captain Phillips, and Philomena, I've seen all of the Best Picture nominees, and a vast majority of the other nominated pictures (with the exception of Best Foreign Film and Best Documentary, which I'll be going with what friends have been telling me). In the spirit of the late Roger Ebert - who I imagine will have some form of tribute on Sunday - the structure will be who the Cap'n thinks should win and who will win. I'll try to give you some idea of why I think one nominee will win over another, but remember that a) the awards are voted on by people in the Academy, so who knows what their thought process is, and b) I'm not very good at this. Nevertheless, it should be fun to look at this next year, or even just next week.


 In order of how they're usually presented:

 Best Supporting Actress:

 Sally Hawkins - Blue Jasmine
 Jennifer Lawrence - American Hustle
 Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years a Slave
 Julia Roberts - August: Osage County
 June Squibb - Nebraska

 Who Should Win: Lupita Nyong'o
 Who Will Win: Lupita Nyong'o

 Looking at the other nominees, there's no question in my mind that Lupita Nyong'o is taking home the statue for Patsey in 12 Years a Slave, and she deserves it. As much as I liked Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine, there's no comparison. I haven't seen Roberts or Squibb in their respective roles, and Jennifer Lawrence was too young for her part in American Hustle.

 Best Supporting Actor:

 Barkhad Abdi - Captain Phillips
 Bradley Cooper - American Hustle
 Michael Fassbender - 12 Years a Slave
 Jonah Hill - The Wolf of Wall Street
 Jared Leto - Dallas Buyers Club

 Who Should Win: Jared Leto
 Who Will Win: Jared Leto



 This is a little trickier to pick: although I'm convinced Leto should and will win, there's an off chance that American Hustle starts picking up steam (I'll get to the reasons why during Best Director and Best Picture) and Bradley Cooper sneaks in and takes it away as some weird penance for not winning last year. There is this strange sense of "making up for" awards that happen at the Oscars, which lead to oddball wins for movies, like Denzel Washington for Training Day or Martin Scorsese for The Departed (not that they aren't both very good movies / performances, but far from the best either has ever done). Still, Leto is fantastic in Dallas Buyers Club, although I don't know how that would impact the Leading Actor category. As another friend of mine pointed out, Jonah Hill might have been a little too broad, and Fassbender while great is too loathsome in 12 Years a Slave.

 Best Animated Film:

 The Croods
 Despicable Me 2
 Ernest & Celestine
 Frozen
 The Wind Rises

 Who Should Win: The Wind Rises
 Who Will Win: Frozen (?)

 I'm not sure here, to be honest with you; The Wind Rises is Hayao Miyazaki's final film and I can't imagine that wouldn't factor in the voters minds somehow, but all I hear about everywhere I can listen in on the public is Frozen. Since there's no Pixar entry this year, and that's the reliable vote (was Despicable Me 2 really that much better than Monsters University?), I guess Disney has an outside shot at this, but Studio Ghibli has my pick.

 Documentary (Feature):

 The Act of Killing
 Cutie and the Boxer
 Dirty Wars
 The Square
 20 Feet from Stardom

 Who Should Win: The Act of Killing
 Who Will Win: The Square (?)


 I'm not 100% sold on my "will win" pick - it could be 20 Feet from Stardom, although conventional wisdom is to go with the strangest title (Cutie and the Boxer). In truth, every single person I know who saw The Act of Killing says it's not only the best documentary they saw last year, but that it was the best movie they saw last year. Looking at the last few years, it's hard to say if a movie about unrepentant perpetrators of war atrocities is going to be the top vote getter, but it sounds like it should be. I'm looking forward to sitting down and watching The Act of Killing and seeing for myself.

 Writing (Adapted Screenplay):

 Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke - Before Midnight
 Billy Ray - Captain Phillips
 Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope - Philomena
 John Ridley - 12 Years a Slave
 Terence Winter - The Wolf of Wall Street

 Who Should Win: Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
 Who Will Win: John Ridley

 Unless 12 Years a Slave totally gets blanked in every category, John Ridley will be taking home the Oscar for adapting Solomon Northrup's true story, and I'm okay with that. It's a harrowing experience, and a very well written screenplay that avoids being maudlin or playing for cheap emotional beats. That said, Before Midnight is built around conversations, usually between Delpy and Hawke, and is a masterwork of writing and capturing the ebb and flow of conversation. It's a little silly this lands in "adapted" because Jesse and Celine are recurring characters and therefore are "based" on something else, but despite my admiration for Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke's writing, the Academy's propensity for going "rogue" in writing is usually reserved for the next category.

 Writing (Original Screenplay):
Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell - American Hustle
 Woody Allen - Blue Jasmine
 Craig Borten, Melissa Wallack - Dallas Buyers Club
 Spike Jonze - Her
 Bob Nelson - Nebraska

 Who Should Win: Spike Jonze
 Who Will Win: Craig Borten, Melissa Wallack


 Or David O. Russell and Eric Warren Singer, if American Hustle starts a-rolling. There's no chance for Woody Allen, and as much as I enjoyed Blue Jasmine we all know why that's not happening this year. I hesitate to even bring that up because I know how toxic the back and forth is and I don't want to weigh in without knowing all of the facts, and as it has nothing to do with Blue Jasmine's screenplay that's all I have to say about it. If Spike Jonze was going to win anything for Her (which he should but it's on the outside looking in for most nominations), it ought to be this but I somehow don't think it will be. That said, Borten and Wallack took what could have been an easy tear-jerker of a true story and gave us a more nuanced version, whether they took liberties with Ron Woodruff's story or not (speaking of which, how is something based on a true story an "original" screenplay?), so I'd say they have a good shot at it.

Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Amy Adams - American Hustle
Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine
Sandra Bullock - Gravity
Judi Dench - Philomena
Meryl Streep - August: Osage County

 Who Should Win: Amy Adams
 Who Will Win: Amy Adams


As much as Cate Blanchett owns every moment of Blue Jasmine, I think it's pretty clear that's a non-starter this year. Sandra Bullock was the odds-on favorite for Gravity when the film came out, but unfortunately that was too long ago (last summer is eons ago in Academy-time, which is why most of the nominees seem to be films released in November or December). Judi Dench and Meryl Streep are reliable favorites and you can never, ever count them out, but Amy Adams is THE reason to watch American Hustle. I'm dubious about all of the other acting nominations for that film, but unquestionably Adams is riveting from beginning to end and deserves to win.

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

Christian Bale - American Hustle
Bruce Dern - Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey - Dalls Buyers Club

 Who Should Win: Chiwetel Ejiofor
 Who Will Win: Matthew McConaughey

 Now, I could be wrong here, and Bruce Dern could be the spoiler because of a strange trend in Hollywood. What usually happens is that an older actor who has been under the radar for a while has a great performance and suddenly awards voters freak out and assumed that he's going to die soon and those nominations fly in (see Peter O'Toole in Venus, Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, or Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story). Now, to be fair, none of the actors I mentioned won, but everybody's talking about Bruce Dern like he's suddenly on death's door and how many more movies has he got blah blah blah. For what it's worth to you death clock counters, Peter O'Toole was nominated in 2006 and will be memorialized this year.

 For different reasons, I think there's no chance for Leonardo DiCaprio or Christian Bale. DiCaprio, who did some of the most impressive work I've ever seen him do in The Wolf of Wall Street, has no shot because the stupid controversy surrounding the film "glorifying" Jordan Belfort, the sleazeball that DiCaprio is playing. In no way would you ever want to be Belfort after watching The Wolf of Wall Street, but DiCaprio makes him an undeniable presence you want to watch for three hours. The physical work in the quaaludes scene alone should be enough to justify his nomination.

 Christian Bale was all right in American Hustle. That's it. He wasn't any better or any worse than he is in any other movie, so I genuinely don't understand why he was nominated, and unless voters just decide to go crazy for American Hustle, I can't see him taking home the Oscar for gaining weight.

 I'm really tempted to go with Matthew McConaughey taking it from the amazing Ejiofor (who conveys a sense of dignity in the most dire of circumstances and is in almost every scene of 12 Years a Slave) just because voters seem to love a physical transformation. Also, McConaughey has been on a serious upswing over the last two or three years where he finally got tired of being Surfer, Dude and has been on a real tear reminding people he's more than Wooderson from Dazed and Confused. I think I preferred him in Mud, but this might be the year that voters decide to take him seriously. But secretly I hope Chiwetel Ejiofor wins, and deep down I think he might.

 Best Director:

 David O. Russell - American Hustle
 Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity
 Alexander Payne - Nebraska
 Steve McQueen - 12 Years a Slave
 Martin Scorsese - The Wolf of Wall Street

 Who Should Win: Steve McQueen
 Who Will Win: Alfonso Cuarón

 Since 1999, when Steven Spielberg won for Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love took Best Picture, it's no longer a guarantee that Best Director and Best Picture will go hand in hand, as they always seemed to. Ben Affleck wasn't even nominated last year, which boggles my mind if you're going to award Argo Best Picture, but I digress. What Best Director now means is anybody's guess, but last year's winner, Ang Lee for The Life of Pi, indicates that spectacle and technical achievement is now a mitigating factor. In that case, it's very hard to argue that what Alfonso Cuarón achieved in Gravity doesn't automatically qualify him to win, hands down. Regardless of how I feel about Gravity's story (and it's telling the screenplay isn't nominated), I can't argue that it's an astonishingly well made film, the work of a director who spent years doing something we hadn't seen before. So he's almost certainly going to win.

 Is that unfortunate? I guess: I prefer the understated, sober direction of McQueen in 12 Years a Slave, with his long takes and willingness to let a scene unfold without overt manipulation. It's hard to believe this is only his third feature film, and all of them are uniformly excellent. In my mind there's no reason he shouldn't be standing at the podium accepting the award for Best Director (as he has been at various ceremonies this season), but the Academy Award voters are weird like that.

Speaking of which: there's a teeny, tiny, outside chance that neither happens and that David O. Russell stops being a bridesmaid and finally wins (three nominations in four years, after all), even if it's not for his best direction. I'd hate to think he would win Best Director for a film that is so clearly a copy of Martin Scorsese's films, especially at the expense of Scorsese, who made a much better film that's not going to win anything, but there's certainly been a big push for Russell since The Fighter. It's weird, because I vastly prefer Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees to Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, but it could be that kind of year, which leads us to...

 Best Picture:

 American Hustle
 Captain Phillips
 Dallas Buyers Club
 Gravity
 Her
 Nebraska
 Philomena
 12 Years a Slave
 The Wolf of Wall Street

 Who Should Win: 12 Years a Slave
 Who Will Win: American Hustle

 Yep, I'm going with it. I don't think American Hustle was the best movie of 2013, and while Her is nominated it has no chance considering the paltry nominations. The Wolf of Wall Street is this year's Zero Dark Thirty, a great film overshadowed by a ridiculous "controversy" that will scare off voters regardless of the merits of the movie itself. Gravity has excellent direction and nice special effects but a story that strains credibility to the breaking point - it's a great ride, but not necessarily a great movie. I've heard nothing bad about Philomena, Nebraska, or Captain Phillips (in fact, quite the opposite), but they seem to be movies that are there to fill out the new "5-10 nominees" logic the Academy implemented a few years ago. Dallas Buyers Club is a fine movie but not one I see taking home the big award.

 All of the buzz, and rightfully so, has been with 12 Years a Slave, and it was my hands down pick to win Best Picture until I found out just how few people had seen it. I know that it's an incredibly difficult film to watch (I watched it) and that it's not a "feel good" movie and that it's "important." That's not to diminish the fact that yes, it IS important and it IS a part of American history we don't like to look at or talk about, but it saddens me that people just won't go see it because they don't want to deal with it. And I worry that this is going to trickle over to the voters in the Academy. It's true that the actors and critics and writers and directors who all voted for 12 Years a Slave in their respective guilds are also Academy voters, but for some reason they tend to go "safe" with the Oscars.

 Look, I really liked Argo, but it was the "safe" alternative to Zero Dark Thirty, which wasn't going to win anyway but they dealt with precarious points in American history that involved a level of obsession and a coordinated effort to come out victorious. Shakespeare in Love was the "safe" choice. The Artist was the "safe" choice, and so were The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire, to name a few from the last few years. Best Picture, increasingly, has been a bizarre alternate universe where movies you wouldn't necessarily consider the best picture of the year are nevertheless selected over other films.

 Putting aside the obvious argument that it isn't fair to put such varying types of films against each other, the reality is that often voters will go with a film they enjoyed over an "important" film. In fact, the "important" with quotes around it gets some sort of asinine backlash from people who want spectacle over serious. Think about the South Park episode that tore George Clooney and Hollywood a new one for being smug and suggesting that cinema should mean anything (and, by proxy, that they "mean" anything). That's a prevailing thought, even as it's easy to lampoon Hollywood for being too self-important.

 So yeah, could voters pick American Hustle over 12 Years a Slave? I can totally see it happening. Take the consistent presence of David O. Russell for the last few years, with a cast that was almost uniformly not doing their very best work (no offense, but Amy Adams is the alpha and the omega of that ensemble) who are all nominated, and a gamut of other categories, and you have the makings of a picture that could run the table. Why? Because it's a fun movie and lots of people liked it (although, increasingly, I talk to people who really didn't) and dammit, isn't that what's fun about Hollywood? Not depressing movies about the horrible things we did to other human beings and I know it's important but dammit I just want to see Bradley Cooper with a perm, you guys!

 Will it happen? I don't know. I'd like it not to, but you can never be sure. If there's one thing I've learned from years of unsuccessfully choosing winners, it's that I don't know what's going on in the minds of voters any more than I know how March Madness is going to end. I can pay attention to the prevailing trends of Awards Season and extrapolate from that, but that's about it. But it's fun to speculate in the meantime, to have wild theories and to spend unnecessary time and energy into rationalizing them. And besides, I haven't had a non-review post in a while, mostly because I didn't want to talk about Philip Seymour Hoffman or Harold Ramis, and I'm sure as hell not comfortable talking about Woody Allen right now. But the Academy Awards? Now that's something to talk about, at least until next week...

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2013: American Hustle

 Somehow over the course of a month the Cap'n went from being in the majority to the minority with respect to American Hustle. At the time American Hustle was released, the critical consensus was high on the film, audiences were looking forward to seeing it, and things looked good for David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees, Three Kings)'s follow-up to Silver Linings Playbook. I saw it, really enjoyed it, and wanted to spread that enthusiasm, only to discover that friends of mine who I thought would also dig the movie... didn't. And then the internet backlash started.

 Now American Hustle is, from what I've been reading an watching, a mess; it's a case of actors doing whatever they want with no clear direction to corral them and a director who clearly doesn't care about the story being told and it's just meh. Totally overrated. Now, if it was just the internet, I could understand that, because if there's something you like, spend five minutes online and you'll find hundreds of people vociferously arguing why it's the "worst thing ever" in forums and comments or on blogs (like this one - I bet someone out there who loves Lockout can't understand why I thought it was the worst movie of 2012). The internet is a place where everybody gets a voice whether anyone wants to hear it or not (Blogorum - case in point), so that's fine, they hate American Hustle.

 My friends were a bit more puzzling, and it wasn't so much that they hated it, but that they were underwhelmed. Maybe it was expectations for a new David O. Russell film, which usually sets the bar pretty high, or for the cast (which is impressive), but it didn't do it for them. I understand that, because I felt like Silver Linings Playbook was a thoroughly average movie that was nice to watch and amusing but in no way deserving of all the attention it got during Awards Season. In fact, I'd mostly forgotten about Silver Linings Playbook until after I watched American Hustle.

 So American Hustle still makes the cut in the "Best Of" because while I was watching the film I enjoyed it tremendously, but it's an outlier. It's on the edges, although not because of anything in the first three paragraphs. No, American Hustle gets bumped a bit because of the director and type of movie Russell is paying homage to, and only because the director in question also made a movie this year and it's that much better. Still, I'm going to stick up for American Hustle, because I disagree with much of the criticism thrown its way, and I think the internet is willingly overlooking what a clever, amusing ride the film is.

 Unlike The Butler or Dallas Buyers Club or Saving Mr. Banks, American Hustle doesn't mess around with the "Inspired By a True Story" schtick we've been seeing a lot of in 2013. It is based on real events, although not strictly speaking, and the title card at the beginning makes it clear that some of the movie really happened. Not all of it, but mostly the catching a politician in a sting operation in New Jersey part. Although it would have been pretty cool if the person who caught him had the terrible comb-over / wig combo that Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is rocking.

 American Hustle opens with a long, dialogue-free section while Rosenfeld is putting on his wig and adjusting his hair to make it look real, which it doesn't. It never looks real, and while it's kind of pathetic, it's a visual indicator of the underlying theme of American Hustle: everybody is lying. Coming into the film, I was taking the "hustle" part seriously, and rightfully assuming it meant that the film was a "con artist" movie, so I'm watching it for the con. Everybody in this movie is lying (well, almost everybody, and I'll get to the exceptions shortly) and the fun, for me, was figuring out the angle: who was lying to who about what and when.

 Rosenfeld is preparing for a sting with Lady Edith Greensly (Amy Adams) and Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), and thanks to some undercover cameras, we know it's 1978. They're already bickering and Irving doesn't trust Richie and somebody's hairpiece gets messed up. I'll let you figure out who that might be. In Goodfellas fashion, we then jump back to Irving's life as a child, helping his father improve business as a window repairman by throwing rocks in strategic directions, if you catch my drift. Irving meets Edith, who isn't actually Lady Edith Greensly, or even British, but in fact is Sydney Prosser, a former burlesque dancer who moved to New York and got a clerical job at Cosmopolitan, but that's not really her calling either. Sydney and Irving bond over Duke Ellington at a party and he gives her free clothes from the laundromat he owns. Also, Irving suggests she joins him in scamming people out of money with fake loans, but Sydney leaves. Irving thinks he screwed up, but she comes back in with a British accent and introduces herself as Lady Edith. Con artists in love.

 So how does Richie fit into this? Well, he's an FBI agent that busts London Associates during one of their loan scams and decides to cut them both a deal: help him bust four bigger fish in the pond and he'll let them go. Richie immediately has eyes for who he thinks is Lady Edith, despite the fact that he has a fiance who lives with him at his mother's house. Also, he wears curlers at night to give him a perm, of sorts. Oh, did I mention that Irving is already married? Yep, he has a wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and has adopted her son Danny (Danny and Sonny Corbo), and Sydney knows about this but doesn't really care. Rosalyn knows, and probably cares, but is also kind of crazy and hates it when people tell her what to do. She's a liability, as we'll see later in the film, but Irving loves Danny and doesn't want to lose him, so he sticks with her.

 So, I mentioned earlier that there are three genuine characters in American Hustle, and one of them is DiMaso's first target: Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). Instead of being a corrupt politician willing to take a crooked deal from a Hispanic FBI Agent posing as an Arab Sheik (Michael Peña), Polito genuinely believes that this investment in Atlantic City casinos will help bring jobs back to the community. And the community already loves him. Moreover, in a moment that confuses Irving, Carmine becomes friends with Rosenfeld, takes him out to dinner with his wife, and gives him a microwave, not as some kickback but as a sincere gift for helping him help the community. Irving thinks it's an angle, but it's not, and the scene is rather touching, because in a world of con men, Rosenfeld never had a real friend.

 The other genuine characters are DiMaso's supervisor, Stoddard Thorsen (Louis C.K.), who is stuck between Richie asking for ridiculous things like two million dollars, the entire floor of a hotel, and a jet, and his boss Anthony Amado (Alessandro Nivola), a middle of the chain guy who wants to make a name for himself. Thorsen is just trying to do right by the agency and is repeatedly punished for it, while Richie tries to guess the moral of an ice fishing story that Stoddard never finished telling. The last character, I'll leave as a surprise, but it involves the mob and was really nice to see this actor as imposing again. It's been a long time and gives me hope that we might see more of it in the future.

 Things naturally spiral out of control because Richie overestimates his ability to con people, to Irving's annoyance, but Lady Edith is also working him over (or is she working over Rosenfeld?). Meanwhile, Rosalyn can't be bothered to follow the instructions not to put metal into the "science oven" and sets something else in the house on fire. It gets messier when Carmine insists that Irving bring Rosalyn, and not Edith, to dinner and then to a party with members of the mob in attendance, and before you know it everybody is in way over their heads.

 I think I can understand the "actors gone wild" position, even if I don't agree with it. The story isn't meant to be taken on its own terms, because movies about con artists are their own particular beast. Yes, everybody has crazy hair and Amy Adams is using a British accent and only Jeremy Renner and Louis C.K. seem the least bit reserved, but that's because they're playing roles. The three main characters in American Hustle are constantly shifting because they need to convince someone to trust them, so yes there's inconsistency in the performances. I don't think that's simply a case of David O. Russell letting the actors improvise and never reigning them in. Maybe the gaudy 70s clothes and disco music are also helping this argument persist? I'm not sure, but at any rate, I see the performances as part and parcel of the story, not existing in place of one.

 On the other side, while I enjoyed Jennifer Lawrence's train wreck that is Rosalyn Rosenfeld, she's much too young to be playing that character. It's never more evident than in scenes with Bale and Lawrence together, where he seems to be the right age and she seems even younger than she's playing. On the other hand, the microwave scene is pretty funny. Renner and Louis C.K. underplaying actually helps as a counterbalance to the outlandish Bale and Cooper, and Amy Adams is a force to be reckoned with in this movie. Even as people complain about American Hustle being overrated, the exception is always Adams' performance, with good reason. She's electric in every scene in the movie, and when Sydney comes clean to Richie that Edith doesn't exist, it's a powerful scene for both actors.

 Does the Goodfellas / Casino multiple-narration, doubling backwards and forwards on itself help American Hustle? Well, David O. Russell's take on a Martin Scorsese movie definitely isn't going to compare well to an actual Martin Scorsese movie (as we'll see in a little while), but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and taken on its own, American Hustle uses the structure well. I think it's probably right that it shouldn't get the kind of Awards Season attention that it's getting already, but considering the backlash directed at Jordan Belfort and The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle might be seen as a "safer" alternative for voters. I don't know. I enjoyed every moment of American Hustle while I was watching it, and in retrospect it's maybe slipped down the list a few tics, but that's only because I saw a few movies that I liked more. And we'll be getting to those very soon. Stay tuned.

Blogorium Review: The Descendants

 No matter how many times I see an Alexander Payne film, I find myself caught off guard by something in the story. It happened with Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, and again with The Descendants, the film Payne, co-writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash adapted from Kaui Hart Hemmings novel. I expected some variety of comedy with serious undertones, both of which originating from flawed characters that can't quite connect, so in that respect The Descendants is consistent with Payne's other films. What surprised me was the humanity behind the laughs, and the complications in the narrative that undercut the misanthropy he normally imbues his characters with.

 Matt King (George Clooney) is hardly someone you'd call a responsible father. He's far more interested in his law practice in Hawaii than in his family, and he leaves the task of raising daughters Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller) to his wife, thrill seeker Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie). When Elizabeth is thrown from her water jet(?) during a race and ends up in a coma, Matt finds himself in charge of Scottie, middle school-aged and prone to acting out, without the slightest idea what he's supposed to do. Alexandra is in private school and probably drinking and acting out, so when Matt brings her home to take care of Scottie, the elder daughter brings along Sid (Nick Krause), an amiable stoner with a penchant for saying whatever is on his mind, regardless of its tactlessness. As Elizabeth's coma drifts into a permanent vegetative state, Matt accepts the provision in her will to unplug life support, and the foursome set out to prepare family and friends for the inevitable. But in the midst of this, Alexandra explains why she's so angry at her mother, and it's going to make Matt's preparations much more difficult...

 That's the simple way to explain The Descendants. It also only covers the first twenty minutes of the film, because the revelation that Elizabeth was having an affair with realtor Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard) and planned on leaving Matt before her accident is the catalyst for much of what happens in the story. Matt becomes obsessed with meeting Speer, to confront him and let him know that Elizabeth is lying in a hospital, dying, if for nothing else than to see the look on his face. With Scottie, Alexandra, and Sid in tow, he follows Brian on a business trip from one island to another, where he discovers that Speer is also married. Brian's wife Julie (Judy Greer) is also unaware of her husbands philandering ways, and Matt has to decide whether he's willing to destroy another family as his is in the process of crumbling.

 Brian also stands to benefit from Matt in a totally different way: King and his family are descendants of the last royalty of Hawaii, and they own 25,000 acres in Kauai. Their trust is going to be dissolved in seven years, so the family has been fielding offers to sell their inheritance to developers, and Matt is responsible for making the ultimate decision on if they sell it and to what interests. If he sells to the local developer his cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) supports, then Brian is going to make a small fortune off of the deal.

 The film raises the larger question about whether the family, descended from the union of Hawaiian and European / American bloodlines, really has any right to control land they have only the slightest connection to. They treat the native land as property, something they can use to camp on but a financial asset; they'd rather profit from it than lose it altogether, and the decision to sell it upsets families around Matt's home in Honolulu. Most of the cousins want to sell it because they've burned through their financial inheritance; only the penny pinching Matt saved everything, even from his family, which is one reason Elizabeth's father Scott Thurson (Robert Forster) blames him for the accident.

 All of this is the backdrop for dealing with loss, with grief, betrayal, responsibility, and with being unsure that you can be the person expected of you by others. The Descendants is alternately very funny and deeply saddening, but avoids falling into the traps of trivializing the gravity of the King's predicament or reducing the comical nature of these seemingly unrelated, compounding coincidences in service of tear-jerking.

 At the core of this balancing act is George Clooney, who plays Matt King as kind of a spaz. He's somebody who prefers business to interpersonal relations, who is convinced he can make up for all of this later, and who is totally lost when it falls apart. He's also driven purely by impulse: when Alexandra tells him about the affair, his first reaction is to run down the street to Kai and Mark Mitchell (Mary Birdsong and Rob Huebel)'s house to ask Elizabeth's friends if it's true. In spite of everything Matt needs to do, that he tells his daughters needs to be done, he is insistent on finding Brian Speer, to settling the score even though it means nothing. It's more important to him than forgiving his wife, a blank slate he can only project onto at this point.

 Clooney is fantastic in a very un-Clooney role. The screen persona cultivated by Clooney and many of his collaborators is of a man who, delusional or otherwise, is wholly confident in his actions. As Matt King, Clooney is a man out of control, a vulnerable, petty man in way over his head with two daughters asserting themselves in very different ways. Speaking of which, Woodley and Miller are also excellent as Alexandra and Scottie, neither of whom are prepared for the situation they find themselves in. Nick Krause nearly steals the show as Sid, a character that seems at first only to be there for comic relief, but as Matt begins to (inexplicably) rely on his Zen approach to life, we learn more about why he and Alexandra are drawn to each other, and in keeping with the rest of the film, it's more complicated than it seems.

 I say almost steals the film because Judy Greer, in a small amount of screen time, gives The Descendants a heart. Lillard's Brian Speer has a moment or to that keep him from just being "the other man" in the film, but Julie Speer shows decency to Matt and to Elizabeth, even though she has every right to be as bitter as the protagonist of the film. I'm used to seeing Alexander Payne films with emotionally fragile leads who struggle to coexist with their mutual baggage, but Greer as Julie is something different. She's an innocent who chooses not to lash out, but to do right, and accordingly shapes how Matt comes to terms with his life. It's a minor epiphany, not telegraphed to the audience immediately.

 To be fair, when the one thing you expect to happen does happen, I was torn about whether Matt does it out of altruism or to be vindictive. It's not clear, and Payne wisely cuts away from the "big speech" moment and transitions back to the family drama, having wrapped up a more or less traditionally expected narrative thread. Like Sideways, The Descendants is to me a strange choice for the Academy Awards: it is by all means a fine film, but one that spends much of its time dwelling in the worst of human behavior. It's not as hopeless as, say, Melancholia, but The Descendants is concerned more with small, emotional moments than War Horse, Hugo, The Help, or The Artist. It's a decidedly low-key film with fine performances, the kind of movie I think is going to age well, and deserving of its Best Adapted Screenplay, so maybe it's okay it was overshadowed by the competition.

News and Notes: Breather Edition

 Yeesh! I feel like I've been doing nothing but putting up reviews for the last few weeks. Yes, there are the obligatory Video Daily Doubles and Trailer Sundays, but between those have been a nonstop run of reviews and not much else. I'm not even done with the list of movies I've seen but haven't done write ups for (The Descendants, Young Adult, Captain America: The First Avenger, Saw IV, V, and VI), and now I'm strongly considering diving into the first season of Game of Thrones.

 Well, I watched the first episode last night, and based on how it ends, you have plenty of incentive to watch the second one. I've also been keeping up with season three of Eastbound and Down, which manages to up the ante on the horrible things that Kenny Powers is able to endure and inflict on others. It seems like either would be a fine candidate to return to TV Talk with. I must confess that I am not up to date with The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad, and if I'm going to invest another nine hours on Game of Thrones, it could be a little while before I get there.

 Now that we're nearly two weeks removed from The 84th Annual Academy Awards, allow me to share a few things I found amusing:

 - I didn't really like the "test audience" segment as it pertained to the content, but it was nice to see the Christopher Guest Players (sans Parker Posey) together again. I hope this entices them into making another of their mockumentaries.

 - The fact that the cast of Bridesmaids had a drinking game involving Martin Scorsese's name made me smile. That no one ever explained or confirmed said drinking game makes me smile all the more.

 - The Cirque de Soleil performance that people, at best, can describe as "impressive" is still tenuously (at best) related to movies after the North By Northwest opening. It is, however, as ridiculous as the "interpretive dance to scores from movies like Saving Private Ryan" from the 2000 Academy Awards telecast, so there's that.

 - Did I miss it, or was there only one pointless montage this year? To be fair, I had some apple pie early in the program, so I didn't even catch all of that montage, but if there was another one I've forgotten it.

 - Chris Rock looked younger. Like, a LOT younger. Also, he called out celebrities that do voice-over work in animation and was funnier than Billy Crystal while he did it. It didn't hurt than most (if not all) of the stars in attendance have done animation voice-over, including Martin Scorsese* (drink now).

 - Not to be outdone by George Lucas, James Cameron made sure everybody watching the Oscars that didn't DVR it would know that Titanic will be in 3-D very soon. I look forward to not watching the film for the first time again, but this time in fake 3-D.

 This is maybe something that only I chuckled at, but Criterion made it so that Belle de Jour and Godzilla will sit side-by-side in Spine Numbers from here on out. Also, they are upgrading The Last Temptation of Christ on Blu-Ray in time for Easter. Being John Malkovich, The War Room, Harold and Maude, and Shallow Grave are soon to follow. Now we just need C.H.U.D.

 Speaking of which, why is nobody trying to remake C.H.U.D.?

Finally: A List of Fifteen Minute Movie movies I Watched on VHS but Never Got Around to Writing About:

 Midnight Run
 Kelly's Heroes
 Wayne's World
 Best in Show
 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring



 * Shark Tale. You're welcome.

Blogorium Review: Moneyball

 I'm a little perplexed by all of the attention Moneyball received during "Awards Season." It's not that the film isn't good (because it is) or entertaining (which it is as well), but the movie is inherently anticlimactic, and by necessity can't actually go anywhere at the end for any of the main characters. I get that the combination of Academy Award winners Steve Zallian (Schindler's List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) with Academy Award nominee Bennett Miller (Capote) is going to get the attention of Academy voters, and they all do fine work. The cast also does fine work, and the story - based on Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, itself based the true story of Oakland A's manager Billy Beane - is an intriguing one.

  Beane (Brad Pitt) is facing the prospect of rebuilding the Atheltics after a crushing defeat that cost them a spot in the World Series, coupled with the loss of his three star players: Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to teams that can pay them more. With no budget to work with, Beane is trying to make desperation deals with the Cleveland Indians when he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Yale economics graduate working for the organization. Brand has a different notion of how to build talent on a team, based on statistics and on base percentages, and Beane likes it. Almost immediately, they run into resistance - from the scouts, from manager Art Howe (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and from sports media insiders and pundits. Despite the pressure to do otherwise, they pick up Jeremy Giambi (Nick Porrazzo), David Justice (Stephen Bishop), and Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), all of whom have been given up on by other teams. But Howe refuses to play the lineup that Beane and Brand put together, and things don't go south quickly. Can the unlikely strategy turn around the Oakland A's and allow them to compete with teams who money to spend, or is Beane looking at his swan song as general manager of the team?

 In fact, the story behind Moneyball the film is almost as interesting as the actual story of Billy Beane's experiment on Oakland: the film was, up until 2009, a project Steven Soderbergh planned to direct, starring Brad Pitt with Demitri Martin playing Beane's actual assistant, Paul DePodesta (Peter Brand is a composite character). Soderbergh also wanted David Justice and Scott Hatteberg to play themselves, but Sony put the film on hold and let Soderbergh go, replacing him with Miller and hiring Sorkin to rewrite Zallian's draft.

 You don't necessarily need to know anything about the Oakland A's or Billy Beane to watch Moneyball, and I guess if you don't know anything about baseball at all - maybe the combination of Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and (to a smaller degree) Phillip Seymour Hoffman brought you in - then it might be surprise how it ends. That surprise, alas, doesn't seem to be one that people are really happy about. Moneyball is a somewhat atypical version of the "underdog" subgenre of sports pictures. A rag-tag group of misfits get together and try to do something different because what's in place doesn't work. They fail at first, but then against the expectations of everyone else, they begin an improbable journey to proving everybody wrong. You've seen it before, and Moneyball is basically that film, just based around the management side of baseball and less about the players.

 Except that (I guess this is a SPOILER) the Oakland A's don't win. They do break the single season record of 20 consecutive wins, but lose in the first round of the postseason to the Minnesota Twins. Like their loss to the Yankees the year before, it's a hard pill to swallow for Beane, but it does get him an interview with the Boston Red Sox, the team that hired away Johnny Damon the year before. They want him to come on board, and he decides to stay with Oakland. Two years later, the Boston Red Sox, using Beane's example, broke their 86 year long championship drought. They did it with a combination of the payroll that Beane didn't have and the sabremetric system (see link above).

 A few friends of mine have rightfully pointed out that it's just as rough for viewers as it is for the fictional Beane that not only does the precedent he put into practice not work for him, but the team that does use it successfully is the very team that took one of Oakland's star players. There's even a title card at the end of the film to tell us this, as Moneyball doesn't really know quite to to finish the story: Peter shows Billy footage that metaphorically describes what happened and then Beane drives through Oakland listening to a song his daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey) recorded for him. Moneyball's ending isn't ambiguous in a way that makes much of a difference, because the stark black and white title cards break the bad news to anybody watching the film that thought "well, maybe next year!"

 I don't actually like having to point out that Moneyball is a tease of a movie, one that is eternally heading in a direction it can't actually go, and one that the film itself has to grudgingly admit hasn't happened before the credits roll. Moneyball is a solid film with great dialogue, understated performances, and is compelling even when you know how things end. I like that Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane as kind of a dick, an aloof general manager who doesn't like traveling or associating with the players because he's going to need to trade them. He's not exactly a likeable character but you like him anyway, because he makes the best of a bad situation. He's also almost always eating something: I feel the need to point this out because I began to notice it halfway through the film and then couldn't stop paying attention to the fact that Pitt is constantly chewing on something during Moneyball.

 Jonah Hill is also very good and I guess un-Jonah Hill-esque as "Peter Brand," a guy who spends the first half of the film in awe of Beane and the second half trying to keep him engaged with the team's success. While I thought he was good, I don't exactly understand the nomination of "Best Supporting Actor" as the only real difference between Moneyball Jonah Hill and every other Jonah Hill performance is that he isn't cracking sarcastic jokes. It's a little like his character from Cyrus - a movie I really didn't like - but without the manipulative streak in that film. Hill was as good as Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Howe as a guy that doesn't get or approve of what Beane is doing but instead of being a jerk because he can, also makes the best of a bad situation. He thinks he's on the way out because Beane won't discuss renewing his contract, but instead of being vindictive, he plays the team that will help him get a job next year. Why Hill was nominated and Hoffman wasn't, I couldn't say. They're both as good as Pitt, who was also nominated for reasons I don't quite get.

 Now this sounds like I'm knocking Jonah Hill or Brad Pitt, and I'm not. I liked Moneyball, and I liked everybody in Moneyball and will probably watch it again, but I didn't see why the film was Academy Award material. There are really good movies that don't need to be nominated for Academy Awards, or aren't nominated, I guess I should say, and I'd put Moneyball in that category. It wouldn't make my "Top" list from 2011, but it would be in that bracket with Bridesmaids and Attack the Block and Conan O'Brien Can't Stop. To be fair, that's where I'd put The Artist, too, so that shows how much I understand about Academy Awards politics. What I'm saying is that you should check out Moneyball, even if you aren't into baseball, but understand that like real life, sometimes things don't work out, or necessarily end.

After all, Billy Beane is still in Oakland and this season he's decided to sign Manny Ramirez to a minor league deal with the option to play for the A's. Manny Ramirez played for the Boston Red Sox when they won the World Series in 2004 (and again in 2007). You never know - there might be a Moneyball 2 someday...

Blogorium Review: The Artist

 I want to start my review for Michael Hazanavicius's film, The Artist, but correcting two assumptions I had about the film. Coming in without knowing very much about The Artist, I had the following general impressions:

 1. It was French.
 2. It was some variety of "art" film commenting on... well, something.

 To be honest, I was only vaguely aware of The Artist until two weeks ago; I'd heard it mentioned once or twice and then it started winning awards. I thought it was French because the writer / director and lead actor were both French (the lead actress is from Argentina, but let's pretend I was ignorant and assumed they were all French for this hypothesis). That made sense. It was in black and white and I had no idea what the film was about so let's just say I thought it was maybe one of those New York, New York / A Star is Born kind of movies about relationships between famous people that ends up being flawed and tragic despite their "happy-go-lucky" on-screen appearance (by this point I knew it had something to do with movie-making, partially because an article online mentioned that "movies about movies don't win Best Picture"*).

 Neither of which is true, it turns out. Well, the director / writer (Hazanavicius) and the star (Jean Dujardin) ARE French**, but Bérénice Bejo is not, and neither are John Goodman, Missi Pyle, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, and (briefly) Malcolm McDowell. That was the first surprise: seeing their names in the credits. It's a testament to how unprepared I was coming in to The Artist, which is unlike the Cap'n but in a lot of ways a wonderful way to be caught unawares by a charming film about the early days of cinema.

 George Valentine (Dujardin) is a star of the silent era, the kind who loves to showboat for his adoring fans and who has a dog sidekick (played by a Jack Russell terrier named Uggie). His antics upstage co-star Constance (Pyle) and wear on the patience of Kinograph Studio Chief Al Zimmer (Goodman), and his wife Doris (Miller) doesn't take kindly to his public flirtation with Peppy Miller (Bejo), a fan on her way to being a star of the silver screen, but what does George care? He has his trusty chauffeur / butler Clifton (Cromwell) and legions of fans to see his feats of derring-do.

 And then along comes sound. George scoffs at it and wants nothing to do with the gimmick, but when Kinograph moves to an "all talkies" production slate, the silent heart-throb finds himself on the outside looking in. His attempt to write, direct, and star in one last epic (Tears of Love) ends his career while Peppy's star is rising. She sings, dances, and more importantly embraces talking pictures. George lets his pride get in the way of their budding romance (it's fair to point out that Doris kicks him to the curb by this point) - he was at least partially responsible for her film debut - and as she ascends, the continues to plummet into despair.

 So maybe it sounds like I wasn't so "wrong" about the second assumption, but I actually was. Despite what that reads like, The Artist remains an upbeat, charming picture chronicling two stars during a change in eras. It's amiable without being inconsequential, fun without seeming trivial. Like Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, it wears its heart on its sleeve and wants nothing more than to be a throwback to movies without rampant cynicism. Somewhere along the way we forgot that those movies can be more than mindless fluff, so The Artist stands out in that regard, even if I was totally wrong about what I thought I was about to see (and apparently several other people I know).


Speaking of which, The Artist, like Drive, is getting some guff from audiences who don't seem to be aware that it's a silent film. Like, almost totally a silent film (save for two instances used in a clever way to make you chuckle, or, if you prefer, feel whimsy) with intertitles and music for most of the film. In fact, it's a little surprising when the organ / orchestra score goes away and "Pennies from Heaven" plays because it's been a while since you heard a human voice. It's not as though I haven't seen my fair share of silent films, but I don't remember Chaplin's "Nonsense Song" in Modern Times being quite as jarring as "Pennies from Heaven" is in The Artist.

 Hazanavicius also has some tricks up his sleeve to demonstrate the passage of time in The Artist: as the film moves forward a decade or so, so too do the camera techniques, choices of angles, and editing tricks. Later in the film he starts throwing in some Orson Welles-style camera trickery, and finds a way to sneak in some film noir venetian blind action in a scene where you wouldn't expect them at all. It reminded me a little bit of the way that Martin Scorsese utilized different film stocks for The Aviator as a way to move from one era to the other in Howard Hughes life. I should point out that it isn't in a "look at what I'm doing here" way on Hazanavicius's part, but more of a "I see what you're doing there" followed with a grin.

 The Artist reminded me a lot of Sunset Boulevard by way of Singin' in the Rain, which is every bit as impossible as that sounds but it does it very well. The ups and downs of George Valentin's career are loosely reminiscent of Norma Desmond's, but without the cynicism that Billy Wilder laced Sunset Boulevardwith. It has that sunny optimism of Singin' in the Rain, and the jokes about silent-era Hollywood going "talkie," just without the talking. There is, in fact, a scene you'll recognize from Singin' in the Rain, but without the ability to hear Missi Pyle's voice while Jean Dujardin laughs out loud at her delivery. It's a conceit I guess some people don't take kindly to - we're missing half of the joke because we can't hear what they hear, or something.I'll leave it up to you to determine what (if anything) is being said about audience expectations.

 I feel like I'm doing The Artist a disservice by saying it made me smile or surprised me or that it's "pleasant." The cynic in me says that's damning the film with faint praise, but the true is that The Artist is a really, really well made film with unbridled optimism and enthusiasm. If you're one of those people that CANNOT get past a movie where you don't hear anyone talk for ninety minutes, you're going to miss out on something special, but I guess New Year's Eve is still playing somewhere. Fans of cinema are going to have a fine time watching The Artist and dissecting the camera placement throughout the film. Silent Era film buffs in particular are going to go gaga over this film, and I think if you're willing to go in open for whatever The Artist has in store for you, it's a ride well worth taking.


 * I wish I could find that... I think it was on CNN but I'm not so sure anymore. That is actually true though - I checked and despite my misgivings, I'll be damned if a film ABOUT Hollywood and show business ever own Best Picture.
 ** I guess technically it IS French, but it doesn't FEEL like any French cinema I've seen, and I have been exposed to more than just the New Wave

A Few Thoughts on the Academy Awards Nominations

 And we're off! Some of you might protest that "awards season" begins with The Golden Globes, but I don't watch the show and don't consider any stamp of approval that The Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be worth much of anything. The SAG Awards, the BAFTAs, the DGA, and something I'm sure I'm forgetting are worth looking into in passing, but the Cap'n actually only bothers watching one awards show - the Super Bowl of awards shows, The Academy Awards.

 Like the Super Bowl, it sometimes takes patience to slog through - it's an "insider"'s event, often testing the interest of casual viewers despite its continued effort to be "hip" or "edgy." The abject failure of last years Oscars telecast, one that temporarily set audiences against James Franco and politely look away from Anne Hathaway, is honestly just a continued step in the direction towards more streamlined, less bloated, but less entertaining programming. That the Academy turned back to 1990s standby Billy Crystal is an indication that they really don't understand why people hated last year's show (personally, I kinda liked it) - let's get that guy everybody liked from twenty years ago!

 That's not a slight against Billy Crystal, by the way - the best hosts are consummate showmen (and women) like Crystal, Bob Hope, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin, Ellen Degeneres, and Hugh Jackman. All were involved in very entertaining Oscar shows. Jon Stewart was less successful, as were David Letterman and Chris Rock. But it's not all on the host - the elimination of nearly all of the "Best Songs" from the show was a bad idea, as was the skipping as quickly as possible through technical awards and last year's inexplicable decision to cut down the "major" awards (acting, directing, screenplay, editing, picture) to a bare minimum. In its place, shorter and less relevant montages, more inane scripted "banter" by presenters, and longer commercial breaks.

 Yikes. I didn't mean for this to get into Academy Awards bashing because, like the Super Bowl, I've been tuning in regularly for years now. I'm always hoping for something lively (the Hugh Jackman one, in particular, was a lot of fun to watch) but one can never tell. Sometimes the nominees can give us a clue of where it might be headed, so let's take a look at some of the categories, shall we?

 Disclaimer: Speculating on who will win or why is not my specialty any more. When I was younger, I pontificated endlessly about the logistics and politics of award shows, but at this point, I concede that I can't predict with any more accuracy than the average March Madness bracket pool in your office. That's where Neil comes in handy, so I might ask him to throw in his thoughts this weekend.


 Best Picture

 The Artist
 The Descendants
 The Help
  Hugo
  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
  Midnight in Paris
  War Horse
  Moneyball
  The Tree of Life

 Okay, so I haven't seen more than half of the nine nominees. I want to see Hugo, The Descendants, and Moneyball. I plan on seeing The Artist this weekend. I honestly have no interest in The Help and War Horse, and haven't heard a kind word about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close until this announcement. And I read the book, so it was a shame to see it savaged by critics.

 Neil might be able to confirm this, but The Artist has the "hot hand" after the Golden Globes, so if it starts picking up wins, I guess that's the favored bet this year.

 Best Director

 Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Alexander Payne - The Descendants
 Martin Scorsese - Hugo
 Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life
 Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris

 Damn. That's a lineup, with only one name I don't recognize immediately. That name is also attached to The Artist, which is red hot.

 Best Original Screenplay

 Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo - Bridesmaids
 J.C. Chandor - Margin Call
 Woody Allen - Midnight in Paris
 Asghar Farhadi - A Separation

 It would be great to see Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo win for Bridesmaids, but there's that movie The Artist again... I'm sensing a trend here.

 Best Adapted Screenplay

 Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash - The Descendants
 John Logan - Hugo
 George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon - The Ides of March
 Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (story by Stan Chervin) - Moneyball
 Bridget O'Connor & Peter Straughan - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  Ummmm... well, I've only seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It had a great script and great acting...

 Best Animated Picture

 A Cat in Paris
 Chico and Rita
 Kung Fu Panda 2 
 Puss in Boots
 Rango

I brought this up because Pixar's Cars 2, a pretty much dismissed sequel, is shut out. In its place? Puss in Boots? Nothing against Kung Fu Panda 2, which I haven't seen, but I heard that it didn't quite live up to the first film's breath of fresh air. Even Rango, while critically well received, was frequently returned to a store I used to work at because its mostly adult themes were lost on kids. Adults didn't seem all that thrilled with its "Chinatown for kids" story, but I'm still interested. I can't speak for the first two films, but if one of them doesn't win, I guess Rango gets it.

 Best Cinematography

 Guillame Schiffman - The Artist
 Jeff Cronenweth - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
 Robert Richardson - Hugo
 Janusz Kaminski - War Horse
 Emmanuel Lubezki - The Tree of Life

 I think you know what I'd pick. You read the review. That said, there's The Artist again...

 Best Editing

 Anne Sophie-Bion and Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
 Kevin Tent - The Descendants
 Kirk Baxter, Angus Wall - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
 Thelma Schoonmaker - Hugo
 Christopher Tellefsen - Moneyball

 Hrm. The Artist, anyone?

 I'm not going to say I'm surprised not to see Drive (too many confused people), Melancholia (too many people who hate Lars von Trier), The Guard (too Irish), or any of the other films on my best or near best of list. It seems that not being a blockbuster (or being a remake) derailed most of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's attention. I'm a little boggled by some of the acting nominations, which I chose to leave out but are easy to find. This year, aside from the omnipresence of The Artist, I have no clue. None at all. I turn it over to Neil, sometime in the near future.

Thoughts on "Awards Season"

Without fail, someone will ask me this week if I watched The Golden Globes on Sunday. The answer it, as it always has been, "No." Certainly, the dubious nature of the Globes is a motivating factor, I generally only watch The Academy Awards and try avoid the other shows whenever possible. When I was younger, the Cap'n was obsessed with analyzing, micro-scrutinizing, and trying to predict who would win and why.

Consider it the early phase of film fandom. In college, our cadre of "film geeks" spent hours debating the structure of nominations, the order of award ceremonies, etc. Long, ridiculous rationales about "so-and-so won last year so there's a better chance of such and such and this would make for the better meta-narrative surrounding this award-" it's enough to drive one mad. So I stopped following all of the SGA, DGA, BAFTA, Critic's Choice, Golden Globe, all of them. I limit myself to the Oscars, and I stopped trying to predict who would win two or three years ago*.

Part of this was the slow, creeping realization that if I can't honestly compare films that have almost nothing in common (let's say, for good measure, Inception and The Social Network, or even True Grit) but all made the "favorites" list of 2010, how was I going to predict the decisions of members of the Academy? As I grow older, I find ways to "rank" films I enjoyed the most, but that's certainly not a reflection of their box office prowess or entertainment value at first viewing - which is a little unfair, as your relationship to a film changes with time. I developed a system to avoid falling into a relativistic conundrum of "well, they're all good and all different so what does it matter?" Then again, when I do "year end" recaps, I make it clear they are subjective determinations, not the consensus opinion of writers, directors, producers, actors, critics, et al.

For example: I have MacGruber on my list of favorites, as well as Piranha. One of them is well regarded, but won't me showing up on any award show lists. The other was forgotten almost immediately after release and is broadly regarded - largely by people who never saw it - as "another bad SNL movie." Piranha, which proudly included its Rotten Tomatoes "Certified Fresh" stamp on DVD and Blu-Ray ads, won't be mentioned anywhere in the next few months (save for one exception below), a fact the cast opted to lampoon in a "For Your Consideration" video on Funny or Die. MacGruber, on the other hand, has probably one chance of making it to the podium.

This brings me to the one "award" worth looking into over the next few weeks: The Golden Raspberry or, as most people hear of it, the Razzie. Razzies are traditionally handed out to what I would refer to as "punching bag" movies: high profile films with well known actors that failed miserably and that no one saw but largely assumed were terrible anyway - films like Battlefield Earth, Freddy Got Fingered, I Know Who Killed Me, Gigli, Leonard Part 6, and Batman and Robin. Easy targets, not much imagination involved in making fun of them.

By most rationales, there are a few movies from this year that qualify for that, but MacGruber fell on its face pretty hard, making it a prime "punching bag," if only anyone remembered the movie existed. Unsurprisingly, it didn't make the short-list - this year's Razzie nominations aren't out yet - which isn't a shock to me. As I said, it has to be high profile enough that anyone can immediately hear the title and say "oh, that's a BAD movie."

Let's look at the short-list, which contains not many huge surprises, but seems to be missing some high profile, poorly received, under-performing films. The films in contention to be nominated "Worst Picture" are:

The Bounty Hunter
Clash of the Titans
The Expendables
Grown Ups
Jonah Hex
Killers
The Last Airbender
Little Fockers
Sex and the City 2
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Vampires Suck
Yogi Bear

Per usual, this is a list of movies nobody will defend, save for the vocal contingent who are going to be very surprised to see The Expendables up here (more on that in a second). There are two films that jump right out at me that fit the Golden Raspberry M.O.: Tron Legacy (not well received by critics and has yet to recoup its budget, by a long shot) and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which vanished from theatres a month after release). Throw in Kick-Ass if you like, but the reason it isn't on the list is the same reason The Expendables IS but Predators ISN'T: people won't immediately identify the film. Predators has the exact same rationale for inclusion as The Expendables (the same could be said for Machete) - but not the marquee recognition.

Tron Legacy could, it seems, end up in their new "Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D" category, where it would tangle with Resident Evil Afterlife, The Last Airbender and, apparently, Piranha 3D. See, the cheap and easy solution is to ignore that audiences liked the film, critics liked the film, and the studio was so happy with the response that they gave a sequel the green light before Piranha opened. It's easier to say "it's a 3D horror movie with gratuitous nudity, so it must be terrible." Scott Pilgrim, despite having all of the normal criteria for "Razzie" consideration - huge marketing push, well known star, director on the rise, colossal failure in connecting with audiences - won't make the list because, well, it's not a cheap punchline.

At this juncture, I realize that the Cap'n has essentially made my point about why "Awards Season" is impossible to predict, even with an award that caters to the easiest possible joke about value judgments in film. With that, it would perhaps behoove me to stop here.

* I'm almost positive the first and last time I printed out "nomination" sheets was when No Country for Old Men won Best Picture, much to the chagrin of There Will Be Blood fans.

Blogorium Review: Toy Story 3

In all honesty, I watched Toy Story 3 before leaving for New Mexico, and while I may watch the film again at some point in order to provide you with more insight, for the time being allow the Cap'n to indulge you with lingering memories of Pixar's 2010 offering (and undoubtedly Academy Award contender come March).

Toy Story 3 is, despite a number of borderline-hyperbolic reviews near its release, my favorite Toy Story (that would be Toy Story 2, although if we're opening up Pixar's entire catalog, I'm torn between Monsters, Inc., Wall-E, Up, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille). This is totally subjective, but I'm always willing to go on the record and say it's not even the best Toy Story of the (currently) trilogy, falling behind the second film's surprising depth and the first film's savvy story-telling. Toy Story 3 seems to have trouble balancing the conventions of "kids' movies" and Pixar's traditional "themes adults find appealing in an animated movie" narratives.

Normally, people don't notice the fact that there are obvious "kid friendly" gags in Pixar movies because the writers, directors, animators, and voice talent sell the broader pathos of the film in such a way that the lingering effect is to remember themes rather than moments. There were a handful of people quick to jump on Toy Story 3 for its "kiddie" moments, like Ken's dress up montage or Buzz Lightyear's "Spanish Mode", but it was largely a reaction to people who totally ignored those moments in favor of the "giving up your childhood and moving on" not-even-subtext-because-it's-right-out-in-front thematic arc.

The problem is that neither side is necessarily wrong, but what both of them seem to be missing is the fact that when Pixar is firing on all cylinders, the arguments almost never happen. Toy Story 3 is not a "masterpiece," nor is it simply a "kid's movie" unworthy of discussion. Its apparent inability to live up to either extreme category leaves the film open to a wide variety of other critiques, but the one distinguishing factor of Toy Story 3 that stuck with me - perhaps more than any other animated film since Watership Down - is the, at times, oppressively apocalyptic tone of the film.

In order to proceed, I will - out of necessity - venture into spoiler territory; there's simply no other way to address the imagery without pointing to a specific sequence late in the film. While much of Toy Story 3 is "about" dealing with a world that no longer welcomes you - in this case, the idea of toys being abandoned in a hostile, unfamiliar environment - including typical post-apocalyptic tropes like the city run by a jaded, bitter, and corrupt tyrant (Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear), this could easily be looked at as the circus mirror-image of Toy Story 2's "abandoned but collect-able" narrative, until Toy Story 3 takes an otherwise benign "peril" sequence and goes positively dark.

The junkyard sequence seems, at first, to be a standard "characters in peril" scene, with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the gang riding down a conveyor belt to the incinerator. The fact that Lotso betrays Woody's trust and flees for safety instead of saving our heroes isn't unexpected, although is it a little harsh considering the film is rated "G." Predictably, our heroes are saved by the space aliens, in a clever call back to their worship of "the crane" from Toy Story, which keeps the film in "safe" territory, but what happens between Lotso abandoning Woody and the others and their inevitable rescue is something tougher to explain to a child than "what happened to Bambi's mother?"

The conveyor belt dumps into a swirling whirlpool of garbage, bottoming out in the incinerator, a fire burning brightly enough that the entire sequence takes on a hellish orange / red tint, the first sign things are going very badly for our heroes. As they move closer and closer to the center, and accordingly, impending "death," the toys have something of an epiphany concerning their hopeless situation, and one by one embrace the fact that they - the protagonists of Toy Story 3 - are about to die. They join hands and silently embrace their inevitable death, and though we know they will be rescued, there is the awkward realization in adults that children in the audience are watching someone face their mortality and give up, content to die together.

Far be it from me to compare a film like Toy Story 3 to The Road, but there is something bleak, something hopeless about that moment. Watching the film alone, I was struck by how apocalyptic, how vaguely nihilistic the entire "incinerator" sequence (up to their rescue) was. That so many of the characters had already embraced a hopeless, loveless future earlier in the film only compounded it, but it's hard not to draw comparisons of that sequence in Toy Story 3 to the moment where Viggo Mortenson desperately considers shooting Cody Smit-McPhee rather than risking losing him to cannibals. And that's rough stuff, especially when one film is rated "R" and the other is a "G."

Toy Story 3 is problematic in that it doesn't integrate the goofy, predictable, pandering "kids humor" with the at times oppressively dark themes, and I must reiterate that this does not immediately disqualify it from some critical consideration. I would assume it won't win "Best Animated Film,' despite its many supporters, because while the film is resonant in some levels, Toy Story 3 leaves itself open to many valid criticisms, and in the end is only "pretty good," at least from where I'm sitting.

Unrelated (as much as possible)

I've been racking my brains trying to find something to write about other than the bizarre trifecta of celebrity deaths - Ingrid Pitt, Leslie Nielsen, and Irvin Kershner - because I just don't have enough anecdotes beyond repeating "The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I saw" or "The Naked Gun was a movie we watched during the first sleep over birthday party I remember" or "Ah, Ingrid Pitt. Where Eagles Dare and The Wicker Man, and oh yeah, Doctor Who*." That's really what I've got.

Other being enthused at the combination of James Franco and Anne Hathaway (who are consistently excellent hosts on Saturday Night Live) hosting the Academy Awards, I don't have much to add to that. Awards Season has been more of a Neil thing over the last few years, and I often find myself missing out on the shameless Oscar bait high profile end of year films. Yes, it's true: I'm more focused on Tron Legacy and True Grit than... well, that should give you some idea of how out of it I am. I'll be lucky to catch Get Low before the Oscar ceremonies, and I really want to see Get Low.

While toying around with ways to approach the forthcoming "Retro Reviews" column - which replaces "From the Vaults" in January - I found myself torn between reviewing films from my perspective now, or when I first saw them. During high school and early years in college, I saw perhaps more films than any other period save for 2007-2010. Many of the films I watched then I've never seen since (Lost in Space, Godzilla, The In Crowd), but some, like The Fifth Element, were revisited, and when I think about what I thought of Luc Besson's film the first time I saw it compared to the second, a review from that first experience might be as entertaining as a critical synopsis from today.

If I can make time in the next few weeks, I really hope to have reviews up for Harry Brown, I'm Still Here, the complete Metropolis, The Magician, Head, and possibly a revisiting of The Expendables outside of the sphere of that other movie opening the same day. And yes, I might look into Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That being said, I'm torn between Metropolis, I'm Still Here, and Harry Brown, which are sitting on the table with Ratatouille, Grindhouse, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club, The Wizard of Oz, and Best Worst Movie.

That being said, I have a sudden, pressing urge to watch The Wicker Man, Forbidden Planet, and The Empire Strikes Back...




* The Warriors of the Deep, if you were wondering.

Quick Review: An Education

One of the downsides to expanding the list of Academy Awards nominees from five films to ten is that it gives a movie like An Education the opportunity to sneak in when it really doesn't deserve to be there. I've considered spending more time and energy explaining why An Education is lackluster entertainment at its most pedestrian, but it's not worth wasting an entire review on. Therefore, I shall be brief.


Technically speaking, An Education is a competent film with a nice cast. The script is exactly what you'd expect this film to be: young girl in a slightly repressive family / society meets older stranger who awakens her to the world outside of schoolwork and middle class life, only to turn out to be "dangerous" or, at least deceptive about his real story. She rebels against the forces of rigid standards and medium expectations, gets hurt, learns something about what life is really like, then grows up. Cut to credits.

And that's it. That's exactly what happens in An Education without the slightest deviation. Throw in a little casual racism and antisemitism, set it in London in the early sixties, and you have a pretty boring movie. Seriously, if you've seen the kind of movie I mentioned in the previous paragraph once, you've seen An Education. Nick Hornby (adapting the screenplay from Lynn Barber's memoirs) wrote a screenplay that is utterly predictable from beginning to end. Lone Scherfig's direction is right down the middle, save for a terrible montage involving a lovers' trip to France halfway into the film.

The cast is really the only thing saving this film from the Cap'n turning An Education off before it ends, and even that's hit and miss. In my Crazy Heart review, I suggested that most of the actors work hard to overcome the lack of character they're dealt, but in An Education, it's even harder.

Carey Mulligan's Jenny gets the lion's share of screen time, but it doesn't help her that the script places her in the moral high ground no matter what, so that Jenny can even escape the events of the film and simply pretend they never happened when she finally gets to Oxford. Peter Sarsgaard's David is in the film long enough to reveal his secret, then he vanishes from the end of the movie entirely, as though he never existed. He's pleasant with a British accent but thoroughly untrustworthy from moment one, so it becomes a waiting game of "how naive is Jenny?"

Olivia Williams and Emma Thompson have thankless roles where, despite being proven correct in their suspicions of Jenny's relationship with David (and subsequent dropping out of school) have to be the villain who refuses to admit her back (Thompson) or the "oh, poor Jenny. You insulted me for having a terrible life and now you want me to help you get to Oxford" (Williams). Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour have nothing to do other than be duped by David, and Matthew Beard and Rosamund Pike serve no purpose other than to make you suspicious of Sargaard while Jenny defiantly throws her life away.

If you're about to say "well, she's learning something, stupid. That's why it's called AN EDUCATION," then allow me to swiftly rebuke your comment. Jenny starts the film planning to go to Oxford, and ends the film at Oxford. In fact, despite the fact that she spends several months with a thief who preys on racist old women to buy up their property when they move and who has a wife and child (and has done this very same cradle-robbing exercise before... oh, did I not mention that Jenny is 16 going on 17 in the film?), she simply returns to her studies after he ceases to be in the movie and based on the narration that closes the film, she simply behaves as though the affair never happened. She learned nothing based on the film we're presented.

At some point, I was hoping that An Education would do something - anything - interesting, but instead it plays the same notes you've heard over and over again without bringing something new to the table. Since the script, direction, and acting are all okay, I suppose that it's not surprising it ranks well on IMDB, but even for comfort food An Education is too blase. Alas, one little nomination will do wonders for a movie that doesn't deserve the attention...