Sunday in Tinseltown

Sunday is the Oscars, our greatest date with illusion. We know, deep down, that the odds are not in our favor in terms of the Academy picking true works of cinematographic art, based on its eight decades-long track record. We painfully remember how Rocky was chosen over Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver; The Sting was selected over Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers; The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King defeated Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River; The King’s Speech won over Daren Aranofsky’s Black Swan and Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone; Argo beat Amour just last year! There are too many more examples to mention. But there are always those little rays of hope based on the “upsets” that keep us glued to the set on Oscar night, mentally crossing our fingers that we’ll see something like when The Hurt Locker beat Avatar in a David and Goliath-type battle.

Industry vs art is the annual clash we face at the Academy Awards ceremony. And I must say that I agree with many film critics that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should begin by sticking to five nominees for the Best Picture category, mainly because we all pretty much know that arbitrarily adding four or five more is done basically to boost movie ticket sales.

This year, in this cinephile’s humble opinion, the five films that I would have loved to have seen competing for Best Picture are (in order of preference): Nebraska, 12 Years a Slave, The Dallas Buyers Club, Inside Llewyn Davis and Fruitvale Station.

Inside Llewyn Davis / Fruitvale Station

The Coen brothers’ wonderful movie about the randomness of luck, Inside Llewyn Davis, was incomprehensively not included among the nine films nominated and neither was Ryan Coogler’s tremendously heart wrenching film, Fruitvale Station, about the real-life racist murder of Oscar Grant (see post A Day in the Life).

However, the films that made the cut this year all have something noteworthy about them that merits an Academy Award nomination, even if not for Best Picture, with the dishonorable exception of The Wolf of Wall Street (see post: Despicable Him).

Of the remaining eight films competing for Best Picture, my least favorite films are Her and Gravity. Her is probably most noteworthy for its inventive story about the future of our iWorld and that’s what has it on the list of films nominated for original screenplay (although I hope The Dallas Buyer’s Club beats it in that category). Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity has the new technology and photography that have been hailed by critics the world over, and it is nominated for cinematography, visual effects and film editing in recognition of these qualities. Best Picture it is not (see post Lost in Space). Philomena has the moving story behind it and Judy Dench’s very good acting (she would be a wonderful “upset” to Cate Blanchet!). Captain Phillips was powerful in its story and, in my opinion, Tom Hank’s best acting to date. Astoundingly, he wasn’t even included among the Best Actor nominees, while Leo Di Caprio was! American Hustle has a little bit of everything, like very good acting, a story that is captivating, but it is overall a bit too light, not “strong” in any one aspect, it sort of reminds me of The Sting.

Bruce Dern and Will Forte in Nebraska

That leaves my top three pics for Best Picture. I would be exceedingly happy if Alexander Payne’s Nebraska took home the Best Picture award (see post Small Town Folks Like all of us) or if Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave won (see post A Time of Reckoning). And, while not in the league with the former two, I would most certainly not mind if The Dallas Buyers Club won due to its phenomenal acting, for I’m pretty certain that Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto will be taking home the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards (see post All the Lonely People).

12 Years a Slave has won the Golden Globes, the BAFTA, AFI Movie of the Year and other awards already. American Hustle won the Screen Actors Guild award and the New York Film Critics award, among others, so they seem to have a chance at the Oscar this year. However, if industry wins on Sunday, Gravity will be taking home the Best Picture Oscar. In the chart that follows, Gravity occupies first place in box office grosses among the nine nominated films, with a whopping 268 million dollars grossed in the US alone; a far, far cry from Nebraska’s 15 million, making Alexander Payne’s beautiful film the true underdog of the night. Bruce Dern won Cannes for his acting in the film and Alexander Payne has won best director in a number of international film festivals, but Nebraska beating out Gravity would certainly be the David v Goliath of the night of illusions. Fingers crossed.

Nominated Film	Box Office Millions of $ (US)	Critics  Top 3 Oscar Pics
		Rolling Stone	Entertainment Weekly	Surviving by Film
Gravity	268	2	1
American Hustle	141	3	3
The Wolf of Wall Street	111
Captain Philips	107
12 Years a Slave	48	1	2	2
Philomena	31
Dallas Buyers Club	24			3
Her	23
Nebraska	15			1

N

Dream a Little

Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

                  Peter Gabriel, Here Comes the Flood

Happy Valentine’s Day dreamers of the World! Film is still the great escape. Don’t forget these great romances the dream machine has churned out (with a piece of the script)! They’ll all go well with your favorite red wine tonight.

 

Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet: After what you've done for Lydia and, I suspect, for Jane, it is I who should be making amends.

Mr. Darcy: You must know. Surely you must know it was all for you.

You are too generous to trifle with me. You spoke with my aunt last night and it has taught me to hope as I'd scarcely allowed myself before.

If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes have not changed. But one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed...I would have to tell you, you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love...I love... I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.

--So many versions of this great Jane Austen romance, but I recommend director Joe Wright’s 2005 film with Keira Knightley, Matthew Macfadyen (above),and the great Brenda Blethyn and Donald Sutherland.

 

Notorious

Devlin: Try to sit up.

Alicia: Yes. Oh, Dev. I'm afraid... I can't make it because they gave me pills to sleep.             

Devlin: Keep awake. Keep talking.

Alicia: Yes. They didn't want the others to know about me.

Devlin: Keep talking. Go on. What happened? What happened?

Alicia: Alex found out.               

Devlin: And the others haven't?

Alicia: They'd kill him if they knew. They killed Emil.             

Devlin: Are you in pain?

Alicia: I don't know. The pills. … Say it again. It keeps me awake.

Devlin: I love you.              

--Cary Grant’s most noted romantic movie is An Affair to Remember with Deborah Kerr, but I've always felt that the intensity of the love affair is so much stronger in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, 1946, starring Grant and the amazing Ingrid Bergman (also more known for her other romantic movie Casablanca). There is love here, but also suspense in this movie about spying on Nazi’s in South America.

 

Some Kind of Wonderful

Keith: I love you. … I’m sorry, I didn't know.

Watts: You’re stupid. I always knew you were stupid.

Keith: You never told me.

Watts: You never asked.

He pulls away from him. He opens her hand and puts the diamond studs in her palm. She looks up at him with a huge smile.

Watts: I wanted these. I wanted ‘em.

Keith: They’re yours.

--Based on a John Hughes screenplay and directed by Howard Deutch this 1987 movie starts Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson and Eric Stoltz and gets the right kind of wonderful on friends that fall in love.

 

The Last of the Mohicans

Hawkeye: Will you go back to England?

Cora: I have nothing to go back for.

Long pause.

Hawkeye: Then will you stay in America?

She turns to face him.

Hawkeye: And will you be my wife?

Pause.

Cora: Yes.

They hold each other's eyes. She searches his face.

Cora: Where will we go?

Hawkeye: Winter with the Delaware, my father's cousins. And in the spring, cross the Ohio and look for land to settle with my father in a new place called Can-tuck-ee.

--Romance during the French and Indian War isn't something you’d think of as romantic, but with Daniel Day-Lewis as leading man to Madeleine Stowe, this 1992 Michael Mann movie is worth watching as much for the romance as for the story.

Strange Days

Mace: Looks like we made it, Lenny.

Lenny starts to grin.  He taps Strickland on the shoulder and signals for him to stop.  All around them people begin to shout the countdown to midnight.

CROWD: TEN!  NINE!  EIGHT!...

Lenny shouts with them.

Lenny (AND CROWD): SEVEN!  SIX!  FIVE!...

Mace grins at him and starts to chant too.

Mace:  FOUR!  THREE!  TWO!  ONE!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

The exultation of the moment flows through them as they lift their voice with the crowd in a great cheer. Balloons are released, confetti and streamers fly in a blizzard.  Couples grab each other and kiss passionately. Lenny sees all these people around him kissing. He and Mace look at each other.  It floods through Lenny's brain like a burst of fireworks.  Nothing ever felt more right. He grabs her and plants one on her like in the movies. She grabs his head and won't let him break even if he wanted to, which he doesn't.

--Directed by Kathryn Bigelow on a screenplay by James Cameron, this 1995 movie stars Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett as cop and former cop uncovering a police conspiracy in the not-to-distant future and falling in love in the process.

 

The Long Hot Summer

So you run, and you keep on runnin'...and you buy yourself a bus ticket and you disappear. And you change your name and you dye your hair...and maybe... just maybe...you might be safe from me.

--Directed by Martin Ritt based on stories by William Faulkner the movie stars the real life couple  Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and also  Orson Welles. Remade as a TV movie in 1985 with Don Johnson, Judy Ivy and Jason Robards, they are both good, romantic watches.

 

Silver Linings Playbook

Tiffany:  (Reading)"Dear Tiffany...

 She stops, surprised it is addressed to her.

Tiffany (Continues reading): "...I know you wrote the letter (long pause) The only way you could           meet my crazy...."

Pat: (RECITING) "...was by doing something crazy yourself. Thank you. I love you. I knew it the minute I met you. I'm sorry it took so long for me to catch up. I just got stuck. Pat." I wrote that a week ago.

Tiffany: You wrote that a week ago?

 Pat: Yes, I did.

Tiffany: You let me lie to you for a week?

Pat: I was trying to be romantic.

Tiffany: You love me?

Pat: Yeah, I do.

Tiffany: Okay.

She leans forward and kisses him, they kiss. Camera pulls away. Score comes in.

--I had to include a more recent romance, though it seems they get harder to come by in this time of dating apps -where people can be “swiped-away” as fast as flying, angry birds-, friends come “with benefits” (for the guys), and bromances  somehow seem to be stronger than romances. This 2012 movie by director David O. Russell has managed to capture romance of the old fashioned kind.

Drink up!

Philip Seymour Hoffman

When someone as talented as Philip Seymour Hoffman dies, in such a tragic way, at only 46 years of age, it makes us want to do something to express our shock and sadness. This is my way. I am truly moved by the death of a man who gave us his art and who we knew would continue to delight us with his acting, play writing and directing. I am truly saddened for his family. We all feel his loss.

As an actor he had tremendous range and a passion that made him stand out in any movie he was in, whether he was lead or not.  He was a quintessential American actor. When he was the lead, in movies such as Capote, The Master, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead or Synecdoche, New York, he was the embodiment of the character, to the last voice modulation or facial expression.

He won the Oscar in 2005 for Capote, very much deserved. But even when he wasn't holding the leading role, he stood out and it is no wonder he was nominated for so many awards in his supporting roles, such as for Doubt (2008), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), The Savages (2007), Empire Falls (2005) or  The Ides of March (2011).

As much as I admired him in those movies, I also loved him in The Talented Mr. Ripley, in Magnolia or the Big Lebowski or Almost Famous; and I wouldn't be surprised if many people (myself included) went to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire or Mission Impossible III in part because they knew it couldn't be a bad film because an actor of the caliber of Phillip Seymour Hoffman was in it. He was truly great as the evil Owen Davian in MI III.

There are thousands of posts, texts and feeds being written about this man today, all around the world, which is a tribute to someone who was able to contribute and share his art with so many, enriching us all in the process.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you will be truly missed!

His Girl Everyday

As the obsession with ourselves through technology grows so will movies that put it on the big screen for us to contemplate. In this case its Spike Jonze’s film Her. The amount of time people, especially young people, spend “selfie-ing” for Instagram, texting, video surfing, gaming and, pretty much, hovering over a smart phone, asking “Siri” to look something up, could certainly lead to a not-too-distant future like the one we see in Her. We are becoming so quite self-absorbed and egocentric that we prefer to use our gadgets to connect with people half way around the world who seemingly are “listening” to us, people we’ve never really gotten to know (and probably don’t want to) or may never even meet, all the while sitting in a room full of other folk who would cherish our attention.  The world in Her is such a world taken a notch higher; one where it’s easier to pay someone to write a personal letter, which a computer will instantly type as if it were hand written, than take the time or emotion to do so yourself. That is what Theodore Twombly’s occupation is in Jonze’s film; Theo is a modern day letter writer for other people, not for the illiterate, as they once were, but for the uncaring.

He is also a man who establishes a romantic relationship with an operating system, Samantha, a Scarlett Johansson voiced advanced prototype of Siri, that's designed to meet his every need. Joaquin Phoenix plays Twombly and his acting is undoubtedly the best thing about the film. Phoenix is probably one of the few actors that could pull off the nonsensical idea of a person who falls in love with an operating system without appearing to be someone suffering from severe schizophrenia.

The movie makes the point about relationships in today’s ego maniacal modern western society that I've reference above, but it does so only partially in the film because the message sort of gets jumbled in the mixture of genres that this film tries to embrace.

It is not quite a science fiction film about the relationship between a man and his computer taking on a life of itself (like the one between Dr. Bowen and Hal in Kubrik’s 2001 a Space Odyssey), because the scientific and futuristic parts of the story don’t have much consistency or really add up, given that the operating system in Her first starts to malfunction by becoming a stereotypical “demanding” and annoying girlfriend, who then connects to other operating systems, that sort of unionize and think themselves out of existence.

It’s not quite a romantic drama, though there are broken relationships in the movie, in particular, the one that supposedly has scarred Theo so much that he’d rather have a romantic relationship with his computer (see how that works out for him). And there is the relationship between Samantha the voice and Theo, but it’s hard to really feel the “chemistry” between Theo and his operating system, despite Scarlet Johansson’s supposedly very sexy voice.

So by default it sort of ends up being a romantic comedy, and it has been nominated for a Golden Globe under that genre, but we know it is unintentionally a comedy and we've already said it’s not romantic. We know that the movie is really trying to make the point about where we seem to be headed in relationships (i.e. we end up with ourselves, basically) and though we do laugh along the way, like with the video games, or with the situation itself, in order to have really been a comedy it should have been Tina Fey voicing the operating system and Simon Peg or Steve Carrel falling in love with it. This was not meant to be a comedy and it’s probably only a romance for those who adore their Siri now and day dream about loving a version that sounds like Johansson.

The other thing –quite minor- that annoyed me about the film is its utter lack of universality. It is so much a future of the well-off in the western hemisphere; a middle-upper class, and white American world.  This is no Blade Runner future city of Los Angeles. There is no pollution here, no social problems. There are no maids, janitors or homeless in the city of Her (yet the floors and streets are spotless and shiny); the people all have fancy operating systems with which they establish relationships and live and work in fabulously designed, stylish studio apartments, all on the wages of a letter writer, imagine that! This must be Spike Jonze’s world, and I guess he’s, well, rather self-absorbed with it, so he assumes that’s how it is and will be everywhere.

So ultimately this is a movie that ask us, as the audience, to sort of put our brains in sleep or rather airplane mode, sit back and take in the messages of our obsession with ourselves and technology. Power off.

The Good Things to Come

I began this blog in January of 2013. It seems I chose a good year to start because it’s been a great year to write about movies. Though unevenly distributed –the good ones concentrate towards the end of the year—2013 was a great watch.  I can truthfully say that I can’t chose one movie as my favorite because there have been some really good films out there, but so very different and good in different ways, that it’s hard to choose the top one, so I’m going for the Top Ten, like most movie sites.

The caveat to my top ten is that despite living in a fairly large city in the south, with some film festivals, technology and tools like the Internet, Netflix, Hulu, and Red Box, I haven’t been able to see many non-English language films (“ foreign films” in the US), or documentaries,  so I guess I can’t completely recommend the best films of 2013. But this is why I’ve created the chart that follows this commentary. The chart holds my picks, but also the Top Ten of 2013 for my favorite movie critics. I don’t always agree with one or the other, but A.O. Scott of the New York Times and Peter Traverse of Rolling Stone magazine are usually my best guides; to a lesser degree Manola Darghis also of the New York Times. I’ve also included the French film magazine that was my guide in my more youthful days, Cahiers du Cinema, with which in more recent years I tend to agree with less, more on a feminist basis than anything (I dislike misogynistic films or films where actresses have been mistreated, which some critics overlook when analyzing films), but it will add the non-English films to the list.

Inside Llewyn Davis

As a “reality check” of the forces that drive film these days –i.e. the industry- I am also including a column of the Top Ten films that made most money at the box office in the United States. It will come as no surprise that there are very few films on the critics’ lists that are also top money makers, the exception that confirms the rule being Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (it’s Oscar chances rise by leaps and bounds).

12 Years a Slave

Box office information is not something to disdain in today’s world, since it is increasingly a predictor of trends. In North American ticket sales alone $10.9 billion dollars were made; that’s the yearly economy of many a country in the world. It’s also important in terms of trends and the future of film itself, especially now that there so many movie streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon,  and the gazillion other non-legal ones, as well as new Cable TV series and movies.  It is interesting to note, as the New York Times does, that “Combined, three presumed best picture contenders — “Nebraska,” “Her” and “Inside Llewyn Davis” — have been seen by roughly one-tenth of the more than 10 million viewers who tuned in to the last episode of “Breaking Bad.””. I loved the last episode of Breaking Bad, so this is a cautionary tale for movie producers, directors and critics. No serious documentary made a deep impression at the box office, so there is another.

American Hustle

For those of us who survive by film we’ll still end the year with a sigh of relief for we know that, whatever the medium chosen, there are young and middle aged film makers out there, along with actors, cinematographers, illustrators, screenwriters, and more, raising the bar and excelling. They are a promise of more good things to come and that makes for a Happy New Year to all!

TOP TEN 2013

Surviving by Film	Rolling Stone Peter Traverse	The New York Times A.    O. Scott	The New York Times Manola Darghis	Cahiers du Cinema
Nebraska (Alexander Payne)	12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)	Inside Llewyn  Davis (Joen & Ethan Coen)	12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)	Stranger by the Lake ( Alain Guiraudie)
12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)	Gravity  (Alfonso Cuaron)	12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)	American Hustle (David O. Russel)	Spring Breakers ( Harmony Korine)
Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler)	The Wolf of Wall Street  (Martin Scorcese)	Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)	Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)	Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)
Inside Llewyn  Davis  (Joen & Ethan Coen)	Before Midnight (Richard Linklater)	Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener)	Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh)	Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)
American Hustle (David O. Russel)	Her (Spike Jonze)	A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang Ke)	Captain Philips (Paul Greengrass)	A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhang Ke)
The Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée)	American Hustle (David O. Russel)	All is Lost (J.C. Chandor)	The Counselor  ( Ridley Scott)	Lincoln (Steven Spielberg)
Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)	Captain Philips (Paul Greengrass)	Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)	The Grandmaster (Wang Kar-wai)	Jealousy (Philippe Garrel)
Captain Philips (Paul Greengrass)	Nebraska (Alexander Payne)	Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta)	The Great Beauty	Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (Hong Sang-soo)
Philomena (Stephen Frears)	Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)	Lee Daniels’ The Butler (Lee Daniels)	Her (Spike Jonze)	You and the Night (Yann Gonzalez)
Lee Daniels’ The Butler  (Lee Daniels)	Inside Llewyn Davis – Joen & Ethan Coen	Tie* (see below).	Inside Llewyn  Davis (Joen & Ethan Coen)	La Bataille de Solferino (Justine Triet)

*Tie for 10th: The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorcese), The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola), Spring Breakers, Pain and Gain, American Hustle.

TOP TEN BOX OFFICE: Iron Man, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Despicable Me 2, Man of Steel, Monsters University, Frozen, Gravity, Fast and Furious Six, Oz the Great and Powerful, Star Trek Into Darkness.