There are difficult films to review, and there are easy ones, and I worry the easy ones yield the least interesting post-screening thoughts. Allow me to test that hypothesis by comparing two movies from the festival, one of which was as hard to love as a Basilisk, and the other as easy to get along with as a particularly affectionate and adorable kitten. At the core of each is the power of performance to transmute the world, but while one is about the artifice of the mainstream and the compelling power of cinematic glamour, the other is about the ways in which a life in the arts is as much a journey for the performer as it is for the artist.
Shades of Caruso has to make a confession: the films of Alain Resnais are an unknown quantity to me. A shameful admission, yes, but the holes in my filmwatching are always terribly embarrassing. Full confession; it was only last year that I finally saw a film by Ingmar Bergman: The Virgin Spring. I think you’ll agree that this was a good starting point. As the film’s breathtaking, cathartic final moments occurred, I was wracked with sobs. Such artistry! Such incredible storytelling prowess! This was art, made by an artist, as powerful as everyone had said. I chastise myself for not enriching my life with the works of Bergman before then. What myopia on my part.
As for Resnais, I can’t imagine a worse starting point than this. The movie begins with a veritable who’s who of French cinema and theatre receiving a phone call proclaiming that the (fictional) playwright Antoine d’Anthac has died, and his last wish was that these actors, his friends in life, would come to his home in the mountains to enact one last request for him. This scenario is similar to that of Jean Anouilh’s play Cher Antoine ou l’amour raté, in which the family and friends of playwright Antoine de Saint-Flour are trapped in a castle in the Bavarian Alps after arriving for the reading of his will. It’s no coincidence that many of the actors summoned here have appeared in Resnais’ films before, including his wife Sabine Azéma.
This phonecall sequence, and the subsequent arrival of the actors at the house, is extremely repetitive, and what little I know about Resnais’ previous films is that repetition is something he has used in a narrative sense, fracturing time and rebuilding it into a non-linear narrative. Here it seems more to denote an acting exercise; the obvious fakeness of the back projection through the main door and the feeble puff of air blowing leaves in with them, contrasted with the theatrical expressions from the actors as they enter, selling us on the illusion of the set and the effect. After the third or fourth entrance, the artificiality of the situation becomes laughable.
The performers, joyful in their reunion and sad over the death of d’Anthac, gather in a screening room in comfortable sofas, ashtrays at the ready, to watch a film recorded by their friend, in which he reveals that La Compagnie de la Colombe has asked if it can put on a performance of his play Eurydice. d’Anthac wants the actors, who have all appeared in versions of this play before, to judge whether this new version is worthwhile. They settle down to watch a film of the performance, which is directed not by Resnais but by French filmmaker and actor Bruno Podalydès, brother of Denis Podalydès, who plays d’Anthac. Plays within plays, familial relations between filmmakers and actors, theatre and film and real life converging nicely.
The play we see resembles Anouilh’s Eurydice. I say resembles; a quick look at the Wikipedia page shows many details are different in the version shown here but I have no idea how much of the dialogue remains thanks to my ignorance of French theatre and literature. The actors are young, the performance set in an abandoned warehouse with a few items of furniture denoting a railway cafe and hotel room, with the only embellishment being an enormous pendulum that swings through the middle of the scene. I have a feeling that this symbolises something, but for the life of me I just cannot figure out what it could be. Something to do with politics?
Meanwhile the actors in d’Anthac’s house, including two generations of actors playing Orphee and Eurydice (Azéma and Pierre Arditi as the older versions, Anne Consigny and Lambert Wilson as the middle-aged version) watch this new version of the play, transfixed, until they spontaneously begin to recite the dialogue as it happens onscreen. The rest of the actors, who played the other characters there, join in, while Mathieu Amalric, who is the only one to play the mysterious M. Henri, sits in the background, with his nefarious nature passing over between himself and the character he plays. Or perhaps not. It’s impossible to look at him in repose and not think he’s being nefarious. For all I know this is my misunderstanding.
As the film progresses the actors begin to wander around the house, the background changing to become the sets of the play. Or at least, poorly done CGI versions of these imaginary rooms, now cavernous and ill-choreographed in relation to the actors. The technical errors here would at any other time be inconsequential, but as the movie is about the illusions created by theatre, as transposed to the medium of cinema, and then again into the world of virtual cinema using green screen technology, it’s hard to say whether this is an intentional choice or a result of cheap FX. It’s probably the latter, but even so, without meaning to, the aesthetics of this choice affect one level of the movie’s meaning. The vaulting fake rooms, unstable and flat, symbolising the unreliability of memory, perhaps?
Because surely the main point being made here is the ways in which a memory can be provoked, and how the process of interpreting a story either through adaptation or theatrical performance will pin something to a time in our lives. The actors here, as they are meant to have performed d’Anthac’s Eurydice, have experienced these moments dozens, hundreds of times, and they have been changed by the process as surely as the characters have by the narrative. At least that’s what Resnais seems to be saying, that the memories of a life lived can be revived by going through it once more, and by using actors and techniques and tropes and composers from his other movies (the score is by Shades of Caruso bête noire Mark Snow, of X-Files fame), this too becomes a Proustian trigger for his fans.
The play itself deals with the foolishness of Orphee, twisted by jealousy, as possibly false reports of Eurydice’s sexual history conspire to taint his love for her. She dies in a contrived accident, and he makes a deal with M. Henri to bring her back from the dead. The only catch is that he cannot look at her until sunrise, or she will return to death (a la the myth of Orpheus), but his cruel, selfish fury over her past and possible manipulation of him means he must look her in the eye to find out whether she loved him or not, causing her death. Later he is given the chance to meet her in death. Is this Resnais’ message that trying to pin down emotion or memory is bound to corrupt or kill it? Or did he just like the play?
Coming to this with so few facts at my disposal makes interpretation goddamned hard, so all I can go on is my visceral reaction to it, and that is that despite the flicking between different performers at each point in the play, it’s a retelling of that play with very little variation. Perhaps the choice of Wilson and Consigny for this scene, or Azéma and Arditi for this one, or the actors from La Compagnie de la Colombe, will have some significance in terms of what the play is trying to say at that moment, but without a greater awareness of the symbolism or history of Eurydice, the effect is dramatic stasis. If Resnais is merely saying that revisiting fond memories is nice, he achieves that quickly. Little else happens until the finale, all of it accompanied by Snow’s amorphous, buzzing music.
And that’s probably the bit that annoyed me the most. As the play finishes, and the actors warmly discuss the experience in memory-jogging they have just had, in walks d’Anthac, who was not dead at all. Cue a weedy synth fanfare from Snow and no emotion from the audience, who couldn’t give a damn about a fake playwright and his dumb joke, which was to see whether his friends and colleagues really loved him. If this wasn’t an obnoxious twist enough, we cut with almost comical haste to the next scene in which d’Anthac commits suicide in a similar forest locale to the one in which Orphee is expected to kill himself; d’Anthac looks his friends in their eyes, finds they loved him all along, and kills himself anyway.
So this is just a shaggy dog story? A joke about the impossibility of fulling appreciating what you have in the world while you live in it? A movie about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, but with love instead of particles? Hopefully this won’t be Resnais’ final movie (he’s 90 this year), and though I’m willing to take him at his word when he says this was not meant to be a testament to his career, you have to wonder whether this was a game for him. In that sense I salute his cheek, while at the same time feeling pretty cheated that I sat there through two hours of ugly CGI and miserable Mark Snow music while Resnais frolicked, filmicly, in order to make a brazen tribute to himself. The reaction from the audience I saw it with was muted; I was livid and couldn’t wait to get out of the room.
In my review of Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux I commented that it’s time the curent wave of hyper-critical filmwatchers made more of an effort to meet artists halfway, to give them the benefit of the doubt. A choice that might seem like an error can be assessed as an intentional choice on their part that we just don’t understand immediately, and dismissing something without consideration is damaging our dialogue with artists. It’s the same request I’d make of anyone who feels justified in dismissing, say, Lena Dunham’s Girls because the characters are unlikeable (they’re meant to be), or Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia because Kirsten Dunst’s character’s behaviour is random (it’s not; she’s depressed and her friends refuse to accept this obvious explanation).
These are just two common criticisms I’ve heard numerous times over the past year, both of which have annoyed me to distraction. And yet here I am about to dismiss You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet because the choices made by Resnais were either inexplicable to me or seemed to very quickly achieve what they set out to do before being laboriously repeated throughout the movie’s length. How quickly I abandon my principles because engaging with this work of art is too much hassle. My initial reaction to the movie was curiosity followed by concern and eventually boredom, leaving an after-taste of betrayal and a hangover comprised of self-recrimination and disappointment.
The problem is, You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet seems like an insular work, something that could only be parsed by Resnais experts or, as with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, something that is essentially only comprehensible to the filmmaker. With the latter, it’s not as big a deal because of the unique atmospherics surrounding the mysterious events therein, but Resnais’ movie feels even more indulgent for being so one-note. I wasn’t even a fan of Boonmee (as I pointed out at the bottom of this post, fully owning my philistinism and displaying exactly the impatience that I have railed against), but that was more interesting than this, an experiment that feels insubstantial.
To make matters worse, this inert exercise was screened while London cinemas were showing Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, a complex and ambitious art movie that shows exactly how this kind of thing should be done. Where You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet doodles in the margins of someone else’s work, Carax’s magnificent, uncategorisable work springs from his mind (a la Boonmee) and then expands to encompass cinema, culture, religion, the world. It contains everything within itself, so much so that watching it felt like a two-hour trailer for humanity. Where Nothin’ is static and frustrating, Motors is puckish, joyous, inclusive. Walking out of Resnais’ movie felt like I had escaped; Holy Motors felt like it was itself an escape from the troubles of the world. It is glorious.
And yet Resnais’ film has inspired me to complain for over 2000 words, whereas I struggle to find things to say about Argo, which is relatively simple but more interesting, more prosaically filmed but more thrilling, less ambitious but far more successful. Regular readers may already know that I’m totally in the bag for Maestro Affleck, and have been a fan ever since he sent himself up in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. His two previous directorial efforts are strong thrillers (can people kindly strip off the patronising addendum “for a Ben Affleck film”?) and he’s been turning out impressive performances for years. Hollywoodland, Changing Lanes, Extract; get thee hence if you disagree. Argo is his finest moment yet, but there’s little I can add to Todd Van Der Werff’s Twitter review:
Argo is oddly weightless but very entertaining. Its greatest joke is that it complains about Hollywood artifice, then devolves into it.— Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti) October 20, 2012
I’m tempted to just stop writing here, because that perfectly captures how I felt about Argo, but just for the sake of putting some effort into celebrating this vigorously entertaining thriller, here are some more words (90% of which will be adjectives). Argo details an elaborate rescue attempt made during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979; an event I dimly remember, from a decade which otherwise would just matter to me as the decade in which Star Wars was released, six years after I was born (that’s the correct order of importance, in my mind). While Iranian protesters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and captured 52 Americans, six others escaped and hid in the Canadian Embassy, their presence unknown, at least for a little while.
The precise details of what happened next were classified until recently; the original story stated that their escape was solely the work of Canada, which did not endear that country to the radical forces in Iran. The full story, here embellished and turned into a glossy thriller, is that CIA operative Tony Mendez concocted a plan to fake a sci-fi movie called Argo, convince Iranian officials that he was coming to the country to scout for locations, then rescue the six escaped Embassy workers by claiming they were the crew of the film. With Iranian gunmen closing in on them, Mendez had to work fast to get them out. At least, that’s what the film depicts, with all of the close calls and last-minute escapes you could hope for.
Post-movie discussions about the plausibility of Argo, or its solidity as a movie, may have led to me dropping a few points off its SoC Quality Total Score Number Quotient, but while sitting in a packed room, Affleck’s taut direction and the uniformly superb cast meant any concerns about Hollywood artifice or audience manipulation were easily ignored. Yes, Argo is a confection; alarmingly so considering the seriousness of the situation even now, as tensions between the US and Iran continue to this day. And yet it’s all done with such slick, confident authority, and such deftly handled sensitivity to the aggravated situation both then and now, that Affleck holds the audience in the palm of his hand. The resolution of the escape earned a surprise round of applause from the audience, and I’ve heard others say it happened at their screenings too.
The pleasures of this lightweight entertainment are legion, but special credit is due to the cast. Affleck gathered possibly the most impressive set of performers of 2012, including numerous SoC favourites such as Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, Titus Welliver, Željko Ivanek, Kyle Chandler and Keith Szarabajka. Even actors I’m agnostic about, like Chris Messina and Scoot McNairy (whose weaselly voice in Killing Them Softly violated my soul) do well here, with solid material and the presence of such an instinctively talented director. It’s a great ensemble picture, though this diverse cast makes Affleck’s decision to step in as lead and play the Latino Mendez more questionable than it already was, but as an example of his increased confidence as an actor, it’s good enough.
As for its “weightlessness”, I should stress that this is not a comment on the subject matter, or the heart of the story itself. After the bravura opening sequence — a clever recap of America’s appalling involvement in Iran’s history told via storyboards, followed by a nerve-wracking setpiece in which the Embassy is stormed by a gun-toting mob while the Embassy staff race to destroy sensitive documents — the bizarre story of the fake Argo pre-production kicks in. Comedy after drama, beautifully weighted and correctly dropped as soon as Mendez reaches Iran. Yes, it’s a crowdpleaser, but as I said in my long, fawning review of The Avengers, that isn’t easy to do, and filmmakers who get it as right as Affleck or Whedon should get way more credit.
That said, Affleck’s lucky that he’s working with such an amazing historical event. My reaction was similar to that when watching Ron Howard’s Apollo 13; how the hell can something this incredible have happened in my lifetime? Argo skips quickly through the politics, enough to give factual weight and perspective to the events, before bringing in Planet of the Apes make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman on top form) and even all-time comics legend Jack “King” Kirby (Michael Parks, sadly only around for one scene). If all of this seems too much to take, the credits feature images of the real participants in this drama, and even a quick comment from President Jimmy Carter, who signed off on the operation, grounding the incredible tale in real detail.
Perhaps I’m more forgiving of Argo‘s lightness because this comes from the George Clooney/Grant Heslov stable that gave us such almost-interesting films as Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Men Who Stare At Goats and Good Night, and Good Luck; films that usually feel about three drafts away from greatness, that stumble before the final act, that sometimes seem like they’re missing another few pages of script. This series of films from Clooney and Heslov are exactly the kinds of films I want to love but just can’t. Argo is the first thing from their production company that sticks the landing. Any concerns about its ephemerality or factual inaccuracy are easily dismissed because at least this ends, and ends well. I’ll take “rousing bullshit finale” over “will this do?” any day of the week.
But even if you take the final, exciting act of this thrilling movie as a journey too far into the realms of Hollywood contrivance, and not as a witty joke about the compulsive need to over-dramatise a story already fascinating, it’s worth remembering that the people involved really would had to perform as if their lives depended on it. As the Wired article that inspired Chris Terrio’s script says, the six escapees had to take on new roles and make them work, or they would have died. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet‘s achievement is that it highlights how acting shapes the lives of the actors. Argo shows us that in a world in which truth can be your worst enemy, performance, imagination and that act of subterfuge that is taking on a new persona can be the thing that keeps you alive. Perhaps Argo‘s not as trivial as it seems.
Why am I doing this? There was once a time I would dazzle all those around me as I applied an almost precognitive talent for award prediction to numerous hastily organized Oscar ballots. Oh how I was feted, carried high on the shoulders of friends and enemies alike, given ambrosial liquor to sup on from jewel-encrusted golden goblets. They were glorious times, my friends, and those efforts were the stuff of legend. But since making my predictions via this blog, my hit rate has dropped into the low fuckalls. Once Shades of Caruso was described as “usually fairly reliable“. Well, not in terms of Oscar predictions. So why put myself through this ordeal again? Why humiliate myself when my former predictive talents as a modern-day Cassandra have suddenly and inexplicably morphed into those of just some random lass called Sandra?
To be honest it’s only to justify having sat through the combined clusterfuck-a-thon of War Horse, The Iron Lady and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; three movies so wretched they should be investigated as hate crimes against my very soul. And yet here they are, given baffling nominational attention from the various elders who constitute the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The anguish caused by this triumvirate of terribleness, and their baffling inclusion on the Oscar shortlist, is the fuel that powered this epic post, so if you get bored to extinction by the time you get halfway down the page, blame Stephen Daldry, Eric Roth, Abi Morgan, Phyllida Lloyd, Lee Hall and Richard Curtis (Spielberg gets a free pass for Tintin, which was aceballs).
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: George Clooney – The Descendants
Jean Dujardin may have been winning awards by smiling a smile that honestly looks like it could melt through steel like Superman’s heat vision, but I think the Academy members are ready to give Gorgeous George the big prize at last, mostly just to get it out of the way. There are worse things that could happen; though I’d be more than happy to see the thoroughly handsome Dujardin win and do a little tap-dance or something, Clooney was the best thing about The Descendants (other than Shailene Woodley, who was also very good). It’s odd to look at the mostly quiet work he does here, the way he balances light comedy and heavy tragedy, and think back to the way his performances were merely an amalgamation of irksome tics when he was on E.R. and not-massively-popular action extravaganza The Peacemaker. Now look at him. He’s really very good. And still handsome. An Oscar win here is no bad thing.
Who Should Win: Gary Oldman – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
But of these five candidates, surely it’s Oldman’s prize. He’s survived the fallow years caused — I’m sure — by appearances in two Luc Besson movies with only Airforce One and Lost in Space to separate them, and has proved cynics (such as myself) wrong time and again. By now even his shaky appearances in crap like Red Riding Hood are usually worth watching. It’s enough to make me think he will take over from Sir Anthony Hopkins in the Endlessly-Entertaining-Actor-Shaped extra chamber in my heart once the great Welshman has sadly entered the Odinsleep. Tinker Tailor was an impeccably performed movie; picking out individual acting highlights is hard, but pretty much every moment Oldman is onscreen, like a shade sucking all of the light from the room, it’s as if everyone else has faded into the awful period-appropriate wallpaper. His voicework in Kung Fu Panda 2 was good too. We take Oldman for granted; time we stopped doing that.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Fassbender – Shame
Maybe it’s a good thing Fassbender didn’t get nominated. The outrage generated by that stupid-but-expected decision will power his career for a while longer as he comes to work on projects to be filed under the heading True Quality, as opposed to the gilded, establishment-approved version of art represented by the Academy’s often-mystifying choices. It also means that the inevitable dirty tricks campaign could dig up some pretty unpleasant stuff about Fassbender, and at this point in his career (or at any point, really) that’s not a good thing. Best he sits this one out until a year when a very driven producer doesn’t have a dog in this fight.
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Beginners was a good enough movie, one that made it okay to like Ewan McGregor again, but without the storming performance from Plummer I think it would be forgotten fairly quickly. His energy levels here are remarkable, and make an average movie unmissable. Hopefully people won’t go on about how he’s bound to win because he plays a terminally ill gay man who finds a new lease of life in his final years, thus completing some kind of Oscar-Worthiness Bingo card. He deserves to win because he deserves to win. It’s that simple.
Who Should Win: Christopher Plummer – Beginners
Though a spanner was thrown into the works when Max Von Sydow got nominated as “The Renter” in Stephen Daldry and Eric Roth’s monumentally awful Extremely Insensitive and Incredibly Corny. The great man has been acting for nearly 700 years now and has never won an Oscar, so surely he’s due one. Hell, make it a retroactive award for The Virgin Spring. Despite this, and despite the fact that he’s the only good thing to come of Daldry and Roth’s wretched miasma of relentless sentiment, it has to be Plummer who wins this. He’s been cranking out great performances for the past few years (he should’ve won for The Insider, to be honest), and if he gets this, he’ll have a BEGOT (not just your Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony quadfecta, but also a Bafta as well). If you don’t want to root for such an achievement, please fill out the order form below to request a new, fully-functional soul.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Sir Ben Kingsley – Hugo
Lots of folks complained about the numerous snubs in this nomination list, with much of the justifiable frustration directed at the miserable lack of Albert Brooks, but I’ve only seen a couple of people point out that leaving Sir Ben off the list for his superb work in Hugo was an egregious omission. Maybe Best Supporting Actor is the wrong category, as Uncle Georges is arguably the protagonist of this movie, but there’s more room for him here than in the crowded Best Actor slot (ahem Jonah Hill ahem). Sir Ben is in the same category as Sir Anthony Hopkins; he’s usually the most interesting thing in whatever movie he appears in, and Hugo is no exception. If it works at all, it’s because of his skill in bringing to life the sweet-and-sour mystery at the heart of the film.
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Who Will Win: Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady
A horrible inevitability has descended upon this category. Many are talking up the relative lack of Oscars Meryl has received despite being in the list of top twenty most awesome people in the history of the world, and I’m sure many people are aggrieved that she didn’t win anything for her impersonation of Dan Aykroyd in Julie and Julia, but even so, the thought of her playing a real live actual person is just too much. The Academy must have written this winner on their scorecards without even seeing the movie. She truly embodied the pluck and lovability of Margaret Thatcher completely (i.e. it was correctly completely absent from the movie). Plus there was a lot of make-up on her face. The assorted critics of the Daily Telegraph plumped for Viola Davis en masse, but I still think this is Meryl’s to win.
Who Should Win: Michelle Williams – My Week With Marilyn
And it would be the worst crime of the night. Don’t get me wrong; I genuinely adore Meryl Streep. She might even be my favourite actor, if not vying for joint fave with Jeff Bridges. Nevertheless, the obnoxious fractured editing by Phyllida Lloyd — which is obviously meant to mirror Mrs. Thatcher’s current unfortunate medical situation — means the movie never settles down long enough for us to have any idea what Meryl’s performance is like. As I tweeted after the godawful mess finally came to a close, it feels like a 100 minute trailer for a 17-hour-long movie, mostly made up of stock footage. It makes W.E. look like a coherent film, which I thought would be impossible. The glimpses we get of Meryl in excelsis suggest she did good work but I honestly can’t attest to that. So I say it should have gone to Michelle Williams. Cheeky of me, as I haven’t seen My Week With Marilyn; I’m burned out on such things thanks to The King’s Speech. But MW was unfortunate to have given a performance of such brilliance in Blue Valentine in the same year that Natalie Portman brought her A-game in Black Swan. Williams deserves to unlock the Reversal of Fortune Achievement for that. (1000 Gamerpoints)
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Tilda Swinton – We Need To Talk About Kevin
What else do I need to say? Excise the horrible cartoonish display by the otherwise excellent Jessica Chastain in The Help, and put Tilda in where she belongs. She’s said she’s happy to avoid going to the ceremony, but what about her fans, who look forward too seeing her appear in white dresses before being described as “androgynous” by every fashion expert? An essential part of the award season is now sadly missing. Plus she was phenomenal in WNTTAK. That too.
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Who Will Win: Octavia Spencer – The Help
This was a movie that made me very uncomfortable, much as The Blind Side did a couple of years ago, but at least The Help had great performances (and not-so-great, Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard) on its side. Octavia Spencer managed to out-act Viola Davis without having to do that snotty nose thing Davis does in so many movies; Davis even managed it again in Extremely Long and Incredibly Offensive, probably because she knew that disappointing us by not featuring it would have ruined hundreds of Extremely Twee and Incredibly Pretentious drinking games. This is another of the most predictable wins of the ceremony, and one I back almost 100%.
Who Should Win: Melissa McCarthy – Bridesmaids
Except that it would be so nice for a comedic performance to get an Oscar nod, and Melissa McCarthy’s much-loved work is the most likely possibility for many a year. Admittedly if she won over the other candidates there’s a possibility that in time she would be given the same treatment Marisa Tomei got when she won for My Cousin Vinny, but as someone who likes Marisa Tomei and My Cousin Vinny, and who has done a complete 180° on McCarthy now that I know she has more about her than was shown in Gilmore Girls (shudder), I’d back this win also. Not gonna happen, though.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Charlotte Gainsbourg – Melancholia
Fair to say that Uncle Lars’ Bedtime For Hitler storytelling at the Cannes Film Festival sank any chance that either Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg would get a nomination. I suspect the screeners for this sat unwatched on many an Academy member’s coffee table. A pity, as it was one of the highlights of the year. Gainsbourg was just as good in Antichrist, but maybe this kind of soul-baring work isn’t ever going to find favour with the assorted old white men who vote for these things. “Why, she’s just got the vapours,” they would say into their mug of restorative potions made from the tears of discarded Hollywood dreamers. “Just buy her an ironing board and be done with it.” And that, my friends, is why the Oscars mean jack shit.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
What Will Win: Rango
Ha ha ha ha ha ha Cars 2 didn’t get nominated ha ha ha ha ha. Reap the merchandising whirlwind, Pixar, and thanks for pissing on your legacy (until your next incredible film comes along and makes me forgive you for temporarily misplacing your soul). Anyway, Rango was the frontrunner over a year ago and nothing has changed since.
What Should Win: Rango
Seriously, why are we even talking about this? Rango‘s a masterpiece. End of.
What Should Have Been Nominated: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Of course, there was the amusing upset during the Golden Globes when Spielberg’s much-maligned performance-capture movie won the animation award, but then it didn’t get in here. There are lots of theories why, from “is it animation?” to “it’s not animation“, to “it wasn’t good enough”. Whatever the reason, its omission here is pretty bizarre, made all the worse by the nominations dropped into War Horse‘s trough. This vibrant, manic blast of imagination gets nothing while that risible failure gets a bunch of nods? Shocking. But it still wouldn’t deserve to win. Why? Because Rango. Like I just said a paragraph ago.
Achievement in Cinematography
Who Will Win: Robert Richardson – Hugo
I have a theory, for which I have absolutely no proof, that if the movie with the most nominations doesn’t win Best Picture, it will be given Best Cinematography as a consolation prize. The Artist might or might not not win many awards this year but I believe it’ll win Best Picture at the very least, which would leave Hugo wanting. As a result, I think Robert Richardson’s 3D cinematography will win out. Or Ludovic Bource will win for The Artist because he isn’t using that new-fangled technology? No, it’ll definitely be Richardson. Unless that lovely, clear, monochrome photography persuades the oldsters. ::is utterly undecided::
Who Should Win: Emmanuel Lubezki – The Tree of Life
If there is one word I could use to describe Malick’s meditation on cosmic gubbins and personal strife — other than pretentious, or powerful, or intricate, or unsubtle, or preposterous, or profound, or overlong, or ambitious, or breathtaking, etc. etc. — it would be luminous. Thanks to Emmanuel Lubezki’s work, this film glowed. It throbbed with the very life its titular tree is full of. Maybe it was just that we saw this on a good screen, brightly lit and digitally projected (a rarity nowadays), but it was so gloriously shot that I felt I was looking straight through a window into another world, or at least into the mind of Malick, and it was as beautiful a place as I had hoped.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Sean Bobbitt – Shame
In the past Bobbitt filmed a lot of Ye Olde Worlde settings for some of the seemingly infinite number of period adaptations made by the BBC, so it must have been a nice change for him to capture the most memorable images of New York in recent memory. Not that that mattered to the Academy, who don’t care about his ability to paint the city with terrifying reds, soft golds, and rainy greys. All they think is, “But he pointed the camera at a dong”, and that’s your lot. Sorry Sean. Maybe some day you’ll make a movie set during the first quarter of the 20th Century and the Academy members will be falling out of their bath chairs to give you a nod. Fingers crossed, eh?
Achievement in Art Direction
Who Will Win: Laurence Bennett and Robert Gould - The Artist
It’s in these technical categories that the two love letters to silent cinema will fight their most fraught battles, where the majority winner will be decided. As a result it’s hard to deduct who will win using my usual scientific rigour. Instead I have to rely on guesswork, and the thought that last year the Weinsteins managed to strongarm the Academy into giving Tom Hooper — TOM HOOPER — the award for Best Director. I’m sure Harvey has been going door-to-door this year, telling more anecdotes about how clever he was to acquire the rights to this, buying bunches of grapes for the voters and promising to give them back-rubs and what-not. Even though half of my brain is convinced the voters will be more charmed by the charming charming super super charming charm of Hugo (an excellent read, that), I think Harvey’s carpet-bombing techniques will win again. Plus the art direction on The Artist was very nice.
Who Should Win: Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo - Hugo
That said, the art direction on Hugo was even better. Dante Ferretti’s collaborations with Scorsese are always a feast for the eyes and his interpretation of what a semi-fantastical Parisian railway station would look like — with toy shops, overstocked bookshops and clockwork labyrinths included — is some of the best work he’s done. Plus he’s on a roll, having won his last two nominations for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barberof Fleet Street and The Aviator. So I could well be wrong here.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Maria Djurkovic, Tom Brown and Zsuzsa Kismarty-Lechner – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Friend-of-the-blog Beggar So’s Hat wisely noted that the shockingly grim production design of this was horribly snubbed. I hadn’t even noticed that. I think I tried to blot the miserable look of the film from my brain rather than be reminded once more of the horrors within. It made me think of my childhood, which now feels like it happened in the 50s and not the 70s like it actually was. It’s as if England was frozen in time for fifty years, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was just a snapshot of that. Which is to say, Mr. Hat was right. The production design on TTSS was worthy of many awards, especially this one, but also Grimmest Evocation of the Cigarette-Smoke-Stained Dilapidation of 20th Century Britain.
Achievement in Costume Design
Who Will Win: Mark Bridges – The Artist
Again, it’s all down to who will be the overall winner. If it’s going to be The Artist I have to go all in and give it to Mr. Bridges…
Who Should Win: Sandy Powell – Hugo
…while thinking that Sandy Powell’s work is more deserving. By now I must seem like a guy who hated The Artist, but I didn’t. I adored it. Hugo was the movie that left me cold, even though it’s obviously a thing of great precision, as intricate and lovely as the clockwork contraptions that litter it. But all that effort from Scorsese was futilely expended trying to shift the enormous rock that is my heart, and it wasn’t going to work. ::hands in film buff card::
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Eiko Ishioka – Immortals
Nevertheless, that’s not as big a crime as neglecting Eiko Ishioka’s brain-maddening work which so dominated Tarsem’s latest empty trinket. It’s especially frustrating as the world is now bereft of her singular genius. Creating works of art for ill-received genre movies directed by someone with… shall we say, a questionable grasp of narrative… means her work wasn’t really seen enough. When we see Mirror, Mirror later this year, it’ll be a bittersweet experience. And not just because it’ll almost certainly be desperately boring crap. #Uncharitable
Best Documentary Feature
What Will Win: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory
As usual I haven’t seen any documentaries this year, not even depressing ones about how the economy is about to explode with the force of a million megaprolapses, so I can’t really talk with any authority here, but I’d wager Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky will get the nod for campaigning successfully for the West Memphis Three. Unless the Academy is still mad at Berlinger for Blair Witch 2, which is understandable.
What Should Win: IDK SMDH
As I can’t say anything authoritative here, I’ll keep my fat mouth shut.
What Should Have Been Nominated: Tabloid
Yep, I didn’t even see Senna, the most critically acclaimed documentary of the year, but everyone I know who has seen it adores it. Nevertheless, I would’ve loved to have seen Errol Morris’ crazily entertaining Tabloid get some recognition. Perhaps because it’s so much fun it never stood a chance of getting any Oscar love; that old “comedy is too frivolous to be worthy of recognition” thing again. Which is a shame, because I’d say Tabloid has some pretty hefty points to make about news cycles, journalistic arrogance and human venality. It just also happens to be very amusing while it makes those points.
Best Documentary Short Subject
What Will Win: God Is The Bigger Elvis
Best Animated Short Film
What Will Win: La Luna
Best Live Action Short Film
What Will Win: The Shore
Okay, I’ll come clean. I haven’t got a clue about any of the nominees in any of the three categories clustered here, as was the case last year, so I’m just going to pick for the stupidest reasons. I just read about God Is The Bigger Elvis a few hours ago, La Luna because I like the name of the director (Enrico Casarosa), and The Shore because it’s made by Terry and Oorlagh George, and I always get annoyed that I confuse Terry George and Terry Southern even though their surnames and careers are completely different so I guess that’s an omen or something. Sorry to all of the nominees in these categories; I should give you respect, and instead I give you this excrement-soaked corsage. You deserve so much better.
Achievement in Film Editing
Who Will Win: Thelma Schoonmaker – Hugo
It’s arguable that Hugo was a bit slack, to be honest, and could have done with a bit of tidying up, but you’re a fool if you bet against Schoonmaker, who has won three of the six Academy Awards she has previously been nominated for (can you believe she didn’t win for Goodfellas? WT actual F?).
Who Should Win: Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
As I said last year, David Fincher’s editing team on The Social Network did a fantastic job of wrestling a ton of footage and talking to the ground and making it work as a narrative. they’re here again with a movie that’s less talky but just as complex (if not more so) than that. Dragon Tattoo may not have blown my socks off the way Fincher’s best work does, but it’s a great thriller, perfectly paced and seemingly effortlessly compelling. Baxter and Wall deserve this win twice over now.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Paul Hirsch – Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol / Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber and Mark Yoshikawa – The Tree of Life / Joe Bini – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Quick run through of my reasons here. 1) The best action movie of the year deserves a nod, especially when the action scenes are so clearly drawn and beautifully constructed. It was a joy to watch, and much of that was down to veteran Hirsch’s command of the AVID. 2) A team of five head editors wrestling with what was probably 65,000,000 miles of footage featuring kids running down alleys or Brad Pitt standing on a lawn, and in the end we get an impressionistic collage of mood and image as powerful as this? I may complain that Hugo was slack but any flabbiness here was probably intentional. The longueurs are as important as the moments of emotion, and the superb judgement of this team — and Malick — will probably become more apparent with each rewatch. 3) It’s as if Nicolas Roeg is making major motion pictures again, and Bini is as important as Lynne Ramsay in creating a fractured but exhaustingly scary like Kevin. Again, a major omission for this exceptional artistic accomplishment.
Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
What Will Win: A Separation
Of course the Academy has a talent for arsing this category up, which could be good news for Agnieszka Holland — I’d think of it as an award given in honour of her stunning Treme pilot; one of the best episodes of TV ever made – but honestly, how on earth could anything beat Asghar Farhadi’s magnificent family drama? I would’ve like to have seen it do a Crouching Tiger and get a Best Picture nomination as well, it’s that good (yes, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was nominated for both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture, a fact that seems to elude many professional Oscar prognosticators each year).
What Should Win: A Separation
Time spent thinking about this masterpiece since seeing it right at the end of last year has made it seem even more profound, even more exciting. I may not have seen any of the other films nominated here but still it seems only right that this wins.
What Should Have Been Nominated: The Skin I Live In
To be honest, though I enjoyed Pedro Almodovar’s macabre thriller, it still left me a little cold. I’m sure there’s some arcane reason why this wasn’t included (that’s usually the case; did Spain even offer it as a nominee?), but if that’s not the case then I guess its omission here is pretty surprising. Other than that, the majority of the foreign language movies I saw last year just weren’t good enough to warrant inclusion here. Even Peter Chan’s Wu Xia — a film which made it onto my best-of-2011 list — would seem out of place. The closest thing I can think of for inclusion would be Andrea Molaioli’s Il Gioiellino, the fictionalised dramatisation of the Parmalat fraud scandal, but even that’s too dry to really pass muster. ::shrug::
Achievement in Makeup
Who Will Win: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland – The Iron Lady
I almost feel like I’m saying this because it had the most make-up, mostly on Meryl’s chin for Thatcher’s later years…
Who Should Win: Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland – The Iron Lady
…but as Daisyhellcakes said when we tried to stay awake during this possibly endless collision of stock footage and poorly shot comedic shenanigans, “That’s a really convincing wattle”. And she’s right. It’s a really convincing wattle.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Contagion
The most startling physical transformation of the year was a digital effect; the enfeeblenising of Chris Evans in the first third of Captain America: The First Avenger is a baffling, seamless effect that convinces so completely that post-super-serum Evans looks somehow more wrong than the wimp. I’m tempted to say this should have been nominated just for the wicked Red Skull make-up on Hugo Weaving, but I think Contagion may be a more worthy nominee, for the nasty sweaty death pallor on the victims of MEV-1, Jude Law’s pasty face and rotten tooth, and one very fun autopsy scene.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
Who Will Win: Howard Shore – Hugo
I can’t actually remember a single note of it, even though I’m a big fan of Mr. Shore (his score for A Dangerous Method was particularly lovely; he does his best work for Maestro Cronenberg), but I doubt either of Williams’ scores will win (vote splitting), and there’s the possibility that Kim Novak really does have some insider information about how the soundtrack to The Artist did something unspeakable and illegal to Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo score. That leaves Shore’s score.
Who Should Win: Alberto Iglesias - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Of course, this wonderful score by Alberto Iglesias should be the frontrunner here for anyone who has ears. It’s an absolute corker, sinister and peppered with smokey-jazz moments; perfect for the film and powerful in its own right. And yes, I know this won’t be a consideration for the Academy, but the inclusion of this great, nerd-funky version of La Mer just shows how much care was put into the music. It’s such a great choice for the scene it accompanies that I did a joy-pirouette without leaving my super-comfy Odeon-Swiss-Cottage seat.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Michael Giacchino – Super 8
My favourite soundtrack of last year was Cecile Corbel’s delicate score for Arrietty, but as the movie wasn’t released in the US until this year, it wasn’t eligible. I’d like to say Hans Zimmer’s score for Rango should’ve got in, but considering the fuss over Ludovic Bource’s The Artist soundtrack, Zimmer’s re-appropriation of The Blue Danube and Ride of the Valkyries — not to mention similarities with Carter Burwell’s Raising Arizona score — mean it’s better off out of it. Giacchino’s Super 8 score managed to conjure up memories of some of John Williams’ work with Spielberg while remaining recognisably his own work. It might not be the best thing he’s done, but it played an important part in conjuring up the air of nostalgia that made J.J. Abrams’ homage work.
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song)
What Will Win: Man or Muppet (Bret McKenzie) – The Muppets
I’ve not heard the Rio song, but is there any doubt?
What Should Win: Man or Muppet (Bret McKenzie) – The Muppets
It’s just what a musical number should be. It’s thematically relevant, perfectly judged on a tonal level, it signals a big plot moment, it’s full of clever lyrical tricks, and it’s a proper showstopping earworm. It brought the house down at the BFI a month ago and I reckon this happens everywhere this movie plays. Is this the most assured winner of the night?
What Should Have Been Nominated: Star Spangled Man (Alan Menken / David Zippel) – Captain America: The First Avenger
Still, the feeble number of nominees here means there’s no real reason why Menken and Zippel’s entertaining pastiche of WWII propaganda songs didn’t get a nod. It’s not as good as Bret McKenzie’s song, but it’s still a witty and catchy tune. I guess the Academy members didn’t want to be reminded of the war that took place during their middle age. Yeah, I went there!
Achievement in Sound Editing
Who Will Win: Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom – War Horse
It might be a load of old chuff but I think War Horse will get at least one Oscar just because Spielberg and the rest strained so damn hard to make something timeless and noble that I bet someone will feel sorry for him. That’s not to say the work of Hymns and Rydstrom isn’t worthy of an award. The movie has a wide array of excellent whinnies, clip-clops, and gunfire.
Who Should Win: Ren Klyce – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Normally I’d pick Transformers: Dark of the Moon for two reasons: 1) to annoy everyone by continuing to not crap all over Bay’s carnage-laden doomfuck, and 2) because there were about one zillion sound effects in this movie, and I’m sure there was a small army of sound recorders trying to find the material for this movie’s sonic tapestry of boom. Nevertheless, I’ll pick Ren Klyce’s work on Fincher’s bleak midwinter tale for two different reasons: 1) I always tend to pick Ren Klyce because Ren Klyce is ace, and 2) the sound of Lisbeth Salander’s steel-toed boot clanging noisily against a very large metallic anus-seeking dildo has haunted me for two months. That counts for something.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Oliver Tarney and Mark Taylor – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
My two picks here (Nicholas Becker for Andrea Arnold’s glorious Wuthering Heights and Koji Kasamatsu for Arrietty) are again not eligible because of US release dates. Instead I’ll pick the team behind the sound effects in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. There’s some lovely work done during the action scenes, but also the thrum of Victorian London is captured as well as in the first movie, which was also deserving of a nomination.
Achievement in Sound Mixing
Who Will Win: Tom Fleischman and John Midgley – Hugo
Big noisy setpieces in a train station where every individual, important noise is clearly picked out? It’s a lock.
Who Should Win: Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Peter J. Devlin – Transformers: Dark of the Moon
The soundscapes of Michael Bay’s noisiest movies are widely loathed as merely a wash of explosions and screaming, but when blasted at with a good THX sound-system, it’s likely that the volume will deafen you to the amount of intricate work done here. It’s not just queueing up a bunch of banging and sticking it all in a blender; there’s more layering of sound than you’d think. Then again, I’ve always been a fan of percussion, so I’m more likely to enjoy an extended drum solo than the finely-picked notes of a symphony. Make of that what you will.
What Should Have Been Nominated: Peter Miller, Adam Kopald, J.R. Grubbs and Addison Teague - Rango
Among the many joys of this astounding triumph of animation is the lovely audio track, evoking the eerie silences of Sergio Leone’s classics while changing gears for some huge, complicated action scenes. Truly a feast for the ears as well as the eyes.
Achievement in Visual Effects
Who Will Win: Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
I’m tempted to say Hugo will win this too, but the furore over Andy Serkis’ performance and the technology used to capture it means this might have a shot, as a sop to the campaigners.
Who Should Win: Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier - Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Once more I’m picking complexity and logistical madness over subtlety or beauty, but the scale of the FX work in this movie is simply breathtaking. It’s also seamlessly integrated with reality; you’ll really believe Chicago had its arse kicked by robotic dickwads. The only caveat here is that they’re not really breaking new ground; we’ve seen this kind of thing before, just not on this scale. Nevertheless, my eyes boggled at the monumental mechanical madness, and I really appreciate that.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Douglas Trumbull, Dan Glass, Peter and Chris Parks – The Tree of Life
What a lovely welcome back for the legendary Doug Trumbull; a snub by his peers that probably would have stung if he had even noticed them, bearing in mind he is a colossus who bestrides the discipline of visual effects and probably thinks Digital Domain is little more than an interesting ant-farm. Bear in mind, this is a man who, while everyone else in the FX business was learning how to use a mouse, was either working on IMAX and Showscan technologies or trying to fix the BP oil-spill. Does he need an Oscar? If the FX industry members of the Academy can’t find it in their hearts to give this visionary the award he deserves, he can get over the insignificant pain by inventing another world-changing doohickey. Trumbull does not need your baubles.
Adapted Screenplay
Who Will Win: Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash – The Descendants
Hugo should win this considering the overwhelming critical praise for it in the US, but I have a feeling the sentimental Academy members will be more drawn to The Descendants, which is a very writerly movie with big dramatic beats, terminally ill people, confrontations that play out in unexpected ways, and speeches that run on for perhaps a bit too long. It also has a terrible voiceover in the first half of the movie that should make invalidate it, but I doubt that that’s a dealbreaker. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking because I want to see Dean Pelton win an Oscar? If so, can Magnitude come on stage for a celebratory “Pop pop!“?
Who Should Win: Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Much as I enjoyed Moneyball, mostly because Sorkin’s worst excesses were curtailed by the low-key performances and direction, I don’t think it’s the best script here. I also don’t think that honour belongs to The Ides of March; yet another Clooney / Heslov disappointment that feels four drafts away from completion. Surely Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the only logical choice here. It’s a labyrinth of words and actions and information but there’s emotion here, real aching pain. It’s a magnificent achievement.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Christopher Hampton – A Dangerous Method
As is Christopher Hampton’s expansion of his play The Talking Cure. Its absorption and translation of the ideas and theories of Freud, Jung and Spielrein into dramatic forms is breathtaking, made all the more memorable for its puckish wit and satisfying emotional charge. Though I’d resigned myself to seeing this underrated movie get little Oscar love I held out hope for this screenplay as the sole nominee, but no. What a pity.
Original Screenplay
Who Will Win: Woody Allen – Midnight in Paris
Remember all those days ago when The Artist won the Bafta for best screenplay and amateur comedians and film critics said, “How can it win best screenplay when there’s no words in it duhhhhh duuuuuuh a-duuuuuhhhhhhh?” Well I guess that won’t happen here, but only because the truly sentimental choice is to give Woody another Oscar for his latest self-indulgent wallow in nostalgia. Usually that yearning for simpler times is a subtext to his usual light middle-class semi-intellectual drama, but here it’s right at the fore-front. Who was the Twitter wag who said that this movie was like Woody’s “Things I like” list made celluloid flesh? Because well done, that person, you got it in one.
Who Should Win: Asghar Farhadi – A Separation
That victory for a second-rate script would be a crime when Asghar Farhadi’s brilliantly constructed, humane, intelligent, complex, multi-faceted screenplay has also been given a nod. In a perfect world this would’ve been the only nominee. If ever anyone asks me what screenplay I would pick as an example of brilliant screenwriting, I’ll pick George Gallo’s script for Midnight Run. If they couldn’t find that, I’ll pick this.
Who Should Have Been Nominated: Kenneth Lonergan – Margaret / Scott Z. Burns – Contagion
That said, I would’ve liked it if Kenneth Lonergan had received any kind of recognition for his notorious movie, but I guess there was no chance of that happening with the lawsuits flying back and forth like flaming buzzards of doom. Also, we’ve not even seen the full movie; I long for the director’s cut of this challenging and audacious movie. I also would’ve liked it if Scott Z. Burns got nominated for Contagion, but that’s because I’m a big Scott Z. Burns fan and I think he’s great so there.
Achievement in Directing
Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese – Hugo
Okay, hear me out. Yes, I think The Artist will win Best Picture. Yes, I know that Michel Hazanavicius won the Director’s Guild Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film Award, and that’s usually a pretty reliable marker of who will win the Academy Award, but I think Scorsese has played a blinder here; making a homage to the birth of cinema, eoo-goog-alising one of the earliest pioneers of the medium, and passionately campaigning for the virtues of film preservation within the film itself. A pretty ballsy move, to turn a children’s movie into a two-hour lecture about archiving and storage technology. The Artist might be a love letter to silent cinema, but Hugo is a billet-doux attached to a heart-shaped box of chocolate cherries with a bit of sexy lingerie hidden under the crepe-paper tray. There’s no way the assorted dodecagenarians of the Academy will be able to resist giving Scorsese his second director’s gong for this.
Who Should Win: Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life
Even though I really loved The Artist (I did! Honest!), and thought Scorsese did a good job of methodically stripped the magic from his children’s film by the time the final reel arrived just so he could prove a point, this category belongs to Malick. Alexander Payne served up a curiously listless dramedy, and Woody Allen woke up for a little while; not really work worth lauding. But Malick’s bold vision was even more daring than his usual work, happily comparing the travails of a family to the beginning and end of life. What brass balls. It’s the best thing he’s done since Days of Heaven, and more than deserving of some Oscar love. If they don’t do it now, they’ll only regret it in future when he suddenly starts making action movies starring Channing Tatum (mark my words, this will happen).
Who Should Have Been Nominated: David Cronenberg – A Dangerous Method
The great man can’t win. When he makes a genre movie — albeit a genre movie with an intellectual ambition that dwarfs almost everything else around — clueless critics proclaim that he’s little more than a provocateur debasing his better instincts. When he makes a movie that’s sober and thought-provoking, everyone whines that there’s not enough parasites or inappropriate vaginal images in it. So when he makes something as crystalline as this, so perfectly hewn and formally precise, critics say it’s too dry. “It’s too dry,” they say, drawing attention to what they think is an excessive dryness. Seriously, that’s all anyone could say. Well bollocks to that. It’s exactly what it needs to be, and Cronenberg is the only filmmaker in the world smart enough to get that right. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; one day critical opinion will swing back Cronenberg’s way. Sadly, not before voting ended.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
What Will Win: The Artist
Critical mass has been reached for The Artist. I don’t think anyone on the planet expects another movie to win, except Stephen Daldry, probably; a conclusion I’ve reached after enduring Extremely Bad And Just Generally Incredibly Incredibly Dire And Awful Jesus What A Stinker, which seems to have been directed by someone who has absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. I was tempted to predict a Hugo surprise here, but I think we all know that’s not happening. Harvey Weinstein has been prowling the streets of Hollywood like a cross between Batman, Wilson Fisk and P.T. Barnum, pimping out that movie for all he’s worth. It’s a foregone conclusion.
What Should Win: The Artist
And I’m absolutely fine with that. Not just because it’s the best movie of the nine nominees, but because I still think so fondly of it a victory in this category would make my night. I’m sure in time the numerous haters will multiply like mogwai under a waterfall, but for now a big win would almost feel like an extension of the movie’s deliriously happy vibe. Like a 4D experience for its fans. Plus it’s a last chance to see Jean Dujardin charm us with another impromptu dance. Vous dansez comme un nuage enthousiaste, vous bel homme!
What Should Have Been Nominated: Take Shelter / A Dangerous Method
If that vile… vile… thing with the obnoxiously precious title can get nominated, then surely anything can. Two of my favourites of last year are more than good enough to get in here, usurping Daldry’s slimy ode to sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-McSweeney’s-style precocity and Spielberg’s admittedly hilarious and Dadaesque World War One comedy The Adventures of War Horse: The Siren-Centaur Hybrid of Death, not to mention The (Wonderful Way White People) Help(ed Those Relatively Unimportant Black Folks). Put these two brilliant movies in there, dammit, and why not add Fast Five while you’re at it. That movie was better than at least seven, arguably eight of the movies in that list, even if only for the moment when The Rock and Vin Diesel crash through a wall during a fight. Better than Malick’s dinosaurs, I reckon.
That”s enough making a fool of myself in front of the entire internet. See you on the other side of the award ceremony, and what will likely be a really cozy opening monologue from Billy Crystal featuring at least one — maybe five — jokes about the lacklustre box office takings of Mr. Saturday Night. Mazel tov!
I had hoped this would be the last post, but as ever, I run off at the mouth. Fingers. Whatever.
Most Underrated Movie of the Year:The Invention of Lying
It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. It’s poorly directed, sloppily structured, paced badly, and apparently the original script is much stronger (I have yet to read it, sadly). Nevertheless, it’s also terrific brainfood, features an incredibly ballsy middle-act satire on religion that drew gasps of surprise from the audience we saw it with, and happily skewers the idea of romantic love as depicted in the movies. As expectations of real-world romantic love are often distorted by expectations generated by the fake movie world, it was nice to see this subverted with such glee. Ricky Gervais also surprised us with an emotionally powerful scene in a hospital. Real tears flowed down my shocked face. Who knew he had it in him?
Honorable Mentions:
G-Force (A clever spoof of action movie cliches mistaken for an empty and noisy kids movie.) A Christmas Carol (As I said before, a loyal and thoughtful adaptation with a lovely painterly look.) Pandorum (A committed performance by Ben Foster and a consistently bleak atmosphere make this worth watching.) Land of the Lost (Horrible final act but we laughed a lot on the way there. I also laughed a fair bit at Year One, especially at Oliver Platt. What?!??!) Duplicity (A very entertaining con-trick movie with a ton of very entertaining performances, especially from Clive Owen, star of the also-very-entertaining The International.)
Most Overrated Movie of the Year:Up In The Air
By the end of the year it felt like only a handful of critics had seen through the glossy, heartwarming sheen of polish that coated Jason Reitman’s phony feel-good confection. A quick look at Rotten Tomatoes shows Armond White didn’t like it, and along with his rant against Precious is probably the only other time I’ve agreed with him this year. Dana Stevens, Stephanie Zacharek, J. Hoberman, Karina Longworth and Keith Uhlich also resisted its sickly charms, along with a few other choice reviewers. I’m honestly not sure what I can say to top Will Leitch’s elegant takedown of the film, except that this is the one movie this year that almost had me all the way through to the end and then just lost me completely in the final act. The ridiculous U-turn of one character — as clunky a “twist” as anything I’ve seen in poorly plotted action movies — was the final straw.
Some great work from the cast still deserves praise, and there were enjoyable moments throughout, but I cannot forgive it for all the clangingly obvious metaphorical messages, its sneering distrust of anyone’s desire for isolation (Ryan Bingham is portrayed as a kind of crazy person for not wanting to hang out with his awful family), its attempts to streamline Walter Kirn’s unorthodox (and horribly overwritten) novel, or its final message. Yes, I can attest to the fact that unemployment can indeed have the unintended consequence of allowing a person to reconnect with his family, and the support and love that they can give is a wonderful thing. I’m a better person for that experience. However, as wonderful and as welcome as that is, there is still the gnawing uncertainty and fear that remains underneath it. Unemployment is not a betterment opportunity. It’s an absolutely fucking terrible and distressing situation. The mawkish attempt to spin it as a kind of freedom — using non-actors who had in fact just been laid off — made me want to set fire to the screen. When this wins 20 Oscars later this year, I will be saying the swearwords I reserve for special occasions.
Dishonorable Mentions:
Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire (This year’s Slumdog Millionaire. I just want to forget it happened.) Mesrine (I heard some people compare this rather average and overlong crime flick to The Godfather. Without irony! It’s a kind of madness.) The Hangover (A comedy with a structure but no jokes. Its success has left me utterly baffled.)
“Trying Too Hard” Direction Of The Year: Tom Hooper (The Damned United)
Some great performances and a nifty script by Peter Morgan forced to contend with all kinds of tricksy and unnecessary compositional flash. A shame, as it’s a good enough movie that even someone who hates football/soccer as much as myself was riveted throughout. This “award” might not seem like it, but consider this a recommendation. Ignore the attention-seeking framing. Enjoy the performances instead.
Best Movie of 2008 That We Saw in 2009:Rachel Getting Married
Nothing I can add to this post, really. It knocked our socks off and the memory of it lingers on. Simply an instant classic.
Honourable Mention:
Synecdoche, New York (Wrenching to watch, but fascinating nevertheless. I’d rewatch it to get a better view of it, but I’m too scared to endure it again.)
Worst Movie of 2008 That We Saw in 2009:The Reader
Lest this comment turn into a profane rant, let’s just say that letting this profoundly awful and ethically dubious piece of crap go past greenlight — let alone onto screens and into awards ceremonies — is a black moment for culture in general. I watched the whole godforsaken thing in a state of apoplexy, horrified at its weak moral arguments and shitty veneer of classiness. It’s the worst kind of empty Oscar-bait. I may have hated Crash, but it’s worth ten Readers. Bury it under a mound of salt. ::spits on movie::
Dishonorable Mention:
Punisher War Zone (One of the dumbest and most tedious superhero movies of recent times. The Punisher accidentally kills a cop and mopes in his lair for 80% of the movie? Yay fun!)
Most Baffling Movie of the Year:All About Steve
Even weeks after seeing it I have just no idea what the hell this movie was supposed to be doing. Appreciation of humour might be a completely subjective thing, but even taking its “comedic” efforts off the table, I’m still just not sure what was going on from one scene to the next. Are we meant to dislike Mary? Admire her? Love her? Hate Steve? Root for them both? Root for her and DJ Qualls’ nerdy character? What the hell was the sub-plot about the three legged baby? The worst comedy metaphor for abortion ever? What the hell is funny or logical about people protesting the amputation of a baby’s vestigial third leg? What tone was it going for? Why did a tornado appear in the middle of the movie? Oh God, it made my head hurt trying to keep up with it. I doubt even a re-edit could save this pitiful mess.
Dishonorable Mention:Yatterman
Takashi Miike’s version of the old anime series was certainly garishly coloured, hyperactive, and featured several cartoonish elements. That much he got right. It also featured a giant robot dog being attacked by a giant robot woman with missiles for nipples. The robot dog then sends an army of robot ants to attack the robot woman, and they agitate the nipple missiles so much she begins to have an orgasm. This makes the robot dog horny, and he proceeds to start kissing the woman, who by this point is yelling, “I’m coming!” She then explodes. It also features a man being absorbed into the butt of a creature called the God of Thieves, much buttock-exposure from one character who is creepily obsessed with his female boss, and a completely baffling love triangle plot that bogs down the entire movie and doesn’t seem to get resolved at the end. And yet it still it makes more sense than All About Steve.
Most Obtrusive Product Placement of the Year:Up in the Air
(The photo shown above is sponsored by MacCutcheon whiskey.) When we saw Up In The Air at the London Film Festival, the screening was sponsored by American Airlines. I barely noticed this fact. Half an hour into the movie, I was convinced I was watching an extended and expensive advert for the company. And Hilton Hotels. And Travelpro luggage. I’m not railing against product placement in movies: that would be futile, and besides, though something like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is full of fetishised footage of hot cars and gadgets, it has a kind of pointless gloss and trivial air about it that the commercial nature of it can be ignored as business as usual. In Up in the Air the product placement sometimes feels like the reason the movie exists. Some might argue that this is product placement done well, but during scenes where Clooney and Farmiga compare hotel keys and executive passes in airports, it was easy to forget that the movie was an adaptation of a novel, not the outcome of some godawful synergistic meeting of minds between AA and Hilton and Paramount. The product placement is woven directly into the DNA of the movie like some kind of awful high-budget Mac and Me, with characters even eulogising those products in their dialogue. If that’s that way it’s going to be done, fine. Just don’t expect me to listen to your heartwarming tales of connectivity at the end.
Dishonourable Mention:Love Happens
Walter (John Carroll Lynch) is grieving because his son has died after falling off some scaffolding at his construction site, and he blames himself. It has stopped him working, and he is close to financial ruin. And here comes Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) to get Walter out of his emotional slump by taking him and their therapy group to Home Depot, where he buys him a huge pile of tools for just under $3000, and this magically fixes his crippling emotional wound! Hey, you can kit yourself with everything a handyman needs for just under $3000 at Home Depot? Thanks, movie! That’s not at all horribly manipulative and staggeringly tasteless!
Most Disappointing Movie of the Year:The Men Who Stare At Goats
Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed this adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book. George Clooney is great value as the delusional Lyn Cassidy, and Jeff Bridges is even better as Bill Django. It is occasionally very loyal both to the book and the TV series Ronson also made (The Crazy Rulers of the World), and some of the setpiece moments are nicely done. However, when you go back and revisit the original materials, you realise how Grant Heslov and Peter Straughan waste a lot of energy on making the material seem wacky when it’s already mindbogglingly odd just on its own. Even worse, the final act is a complete disaster, full of childish slapstick that undercuts the two minutes of serious subtext. The hastily added battle-against-the-antagonist doesn’t help. By the end the tone wore on me. With the benefit of hindsight I’d find it hard to recommend it to anyone. Best to stick with the book and TV series. They’re funny and disturbing and rage-inducing, all in the right proportions.
Dishonorable Mentions:
Outlander (Really really long and kinda boring, though it gets some scenes really right.) Les regrets (Well made and absorbing, but too similar to director Cédric Kahn’s earlier movie L’ennui.) Two Lovers (Well observed and very well performed, but as with James Gray’s other movies, the emphasis on style and tone comes at the expense of dramatic oomph.) The House of the Devil (OMG it’s the scariest movie of the year! Except it’s actually just really slow and the ending is silly rather than scary. A damn shame. I really wanted to like it.) Franklyn (As with House of the Devil, the kind of low-budget labour of love I really wanted to support, but just couldn’t. I look forward to future films by both filmmakers, though.)
Not Disappointing, Not Great, But Still Worth Watching Movie Of The Year:Extract
As with Office Space, Mike Judge expends a lot of energy introducing a plot that gets abandoned two thirds of the way through and then just sort of gets resolved in a half-arsed manner. Also, lots of great character actors do terrific work, but often get given some rough material and unfinished arcs to work with. Nevertheless, this is the charm of Mike Judge’s work. It’s not polished or finessed, and even in this rough diamond state allows for more laughs — and satirical heft — than most comedies released. It’s just a shame that the energy peters out with such predictability (with the caveat that Ben Affleck is hilarious all the way through). Though it’s not fashionable to say it, I’m increasingly of the opinion that his strongest movie is coincidentally his angriest: Idiocracy. Every revisit to that movie makes me laugh more. Maybe in time it will be considered his best work.
Most Tediously Conservative Remake of the Year: Race To Witch Mountain
That’s right, it’s not The Taking of Pelham 123. That was indeed a terrible and pointless remake, but it at least had some awareness of what made the original memorable. Tony Scott and Brian Helgeland kept some moments that worked, threw out the rest, and added some very annoying modern accoutrements (post-Die Hard banter between villain and hero, swearing, the Internet). That sucked, but the latest remake of the Witch Mountain stories was a different kind of crappy remake. More mediocre than bad, but formed by a series of stupid and unadventurous choices. The original movie — directed by the quirky British director John Hough — was a peculiar beast, made during a period when Disney’s live-action movies felt like they were made by people who were thinking their story through instead of just glomming bits together from other films. Not all of those movies were great, but they were certainly lively. This remake dropped all of the atmosphere and ambiguous plotting in favour of a predictable Fifth Element carbon-copy complete with cab driver. It’s horribly boring, makes fun of SF fans, and completely wastes two of the hottest and most appealing lead actors ever (Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino, who should be running Hollywood by now). Avoid like the plague.
Okay, one more to go. It’s really trivial. That’s a warning.
We walked on a red carpet on Monday. I felt like an interloper, especially clad in hobo jacket, Converse, and Green Lantern T-Shirt, but it was still a weirdly thrilling moment. Getting tickets to the first UK performance of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! (oh, that infuriating exclamation point…) was an accident of timing, not an attempt to rubberneck at a glamour collision, but it’s fine. The London Film Festival seems to be pretty casual. Only Soderbergh, writer Scott Z. Burns and producer Gregory Jacobs were dressed to the nines, and even then they seemed relaxed. Seeing Soderbergh delighted daisyhellcakes, who has had terrible luck spotting celebrities in the past (so far she’s seen Johnny Vegas, Bill Bailey, Jeffrey Archer and Queen Nigella), but refused to take a picture of the great man, stating that it would be gauche. As I’d seen the Enter The Void audience eagerly snapping away at Gaspar Noé last week, I figured it would be okay, but after taking this blurry picture…
…I convinced myself that the final stutter in Soderbergh’s short speech was caused by him spotting me and thinking, “Dude, that’s totes gauche.” For the record, I’m sorry Mr. Soderbergh. I liked Solaris, if that’s any consolation.
The lack of a distribution deal for Enter The Void is making me unbelievably sad. Attending that screening was something I did on a whim after seeing Drew McWeeny become so enthusiastic, and now I realise that if I hadn’t gone I might never have had the chance to see it on the big screen. Just yesterday Edgar Wright was tweeting his frustration at having missed it, and it threw my good fortune into perspective. Is there any way to start a campaign to save it from oblivion on DVD, when the only distribution deal it has seems to be getting a release in Finland next April? As the version I saw was seemingly different from those at Cannes and Toronto, perhaps it’s still being fine-tuned, and then it will be put on the market again. Certainly there are longueurs at about the 100 minute mark, but I’m not sure what could be removed without ruining the flow.
The one thought I had would be for the Prince Charles Cinema to stump up for their very own print. Despite its punishing length, this is the perfect midnight-screening cult movie in waiting, with massive appeal to counter-cultural audiences and cinephiles who can understand what Noé is trying to achieve (a group that excludes J. Hoberman and Variety’s Rob Nelson, who completely missed the point of the movie). It would take time for them to get their money back, as the buzz on this film has yet to grow properly, but it would be a wise investment. Unless it did suddenly get a distribution deal and the film turned up elsewhere, but still, right now, it’s not looking too good.
Sadness over the fate of that one movie aside, the festival has been extremely enjoyable so far. Even the one movie I’ve not liked — Jason Reitman’s disappointing Up In The Air, which I hope to write about soon — has its pleasures, especially the terrific performances from George Clooney and Anna Kendrick. For the most part audiences have been great too, with enthusiastic responses to The Men Who Stare At Goats and The Informant! reminding me why seeing movies at the cinema can be a rewarding experience, though Mr. Honking McOverlaugh who sat behind us during The Informant! was a bit of a trial. Yes yes, it’s a very funny film, but Mr. Soderbergh is sitting at the back of the room and even your guffaws cannot reach that far, especially when my eardrums are absorbing 90% of the sound energy.
It’s not all roses, though. If you’re a new reader visiting this site after searching for info about London Film Festival screenings, please can I beg you to do the right thing and arrive at the screenings with plenty of time to spare? If you’ve not already picked up your tickets, there can be terrible queues, and that’s after navigating the barriers, security guards, and photographers blocking the pedestrianised roads of Leicester Square. The movies have tended to start a few minutes late, but there are no trailers or adverts, so if a film is supposed to start at, say, 16:15, the film will be on the screen at around 16:20, and arriving at 16:30 is going to piss a lot of people off. Oh, and the tickets have allocated seat numbers on them FOR A REASON. This message is directed at the numerous people who seem to love sitting wherever they want, and then look put out when they are evicted from their seats by ushers not long after the film has already started. I’m looking at you, selfish idiots who figured sitting by me was the thing to do and then ruined the start of Enter The Void and White Material, with extra bonus fuck you’s to the couple who turned up late at White Material and then left their phones on. Assholes.
I’ve had fun with the odd connections between the movies I’ve seen so far. The Informant! and Claire Denis’ White Material are centred by main characters (played with great skill by Matt Damon and the incredible Isabelle Huppert respectively) whose inability to see the dire consequences of their behaviour dooms them. In Soderbergh’s movie Mark Whitacre’s insanity is played for laughs for the most part, though those laughs run out by the end as you realise the man is so deeply embedded in his fantasy life that he doesn’t even seem capable of keeping track of it. Maria Vial — the protagonist of White Material — is in just as much denial, but perhaps even to the extent of not recognising her own cultural and ethnic background. Her ambiguous actions in the final moments of the film could be the product of derangement or berserk revenge, but whatever their origin, they were enough to deeply upset the lady sitting next to me. She seemed traumatised, poor dear.
Other connections abound. Jason Bateman teams up with Jason Reitman again for Up In The Air, and also features in Extract, which I’m hoping to see tomorrow. Melanie Lynskey appears in Up In The Air and The Informant!, and is similarly weak in each movie. Clooney appears in The Men Who Stare At Goats and Up In The Air, and co-produced The Informant!Up In The Air and Up (which I saw again on Sunday, though it was not part of the festival) is about men who find escape in flying, and learn to connect with others. The protagonists of White Material and Enter The Void are often filmed from behind: in White Material as a representation of how Maria is hiding her true face from herself and others, and in Enter The Void as a consequence of the PoV conceit. Enter The Void and The Men Who Stare At Goats features talk of esoteric beliefs, as well as the use of hallucinogens.
That was one of the things that annoyed me most about Goats. While Enter The Void took the use of hallucinogenic compounds seriously, Goats used it as a stupid punchline, with characters acting as if they were drunk and high-lariously falling over a lot and talking about how hungry they are. Goats was a lot of fun, but the relentlessly silly tone made it hard for the film to shift gears in the final act when we see the negative consequences of letting a bunch of insecure New Age dipsticks into the army. What was, in Jon Ronson’s excellent book, a sobering portrait of US psy-ops torture techniques gone weird is here transformed into a slapstick romp with one minute of “Oh noes, war is bad” added to give the protagonists something to fight for. The book still manages to be funny, but Ronson’s a skillful enough writer to juxtapose the wacky with the awful. Here it’s shoehorned in, and seemingly only to give a dramatic edge to the Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) character arc that suddenly appears midway through the movie. Writer Peter Straughan does some good work in translating the oddness of Ronson’s book into movie form, and keeps the funniest material mostly intact, but the artificial three-act structure and neatness of the final few minutes smack of laziness. Still, it remains very entertaining, and what it gets right it really gets right. Jeff Bridges — as New Earth Army leader Bill Django — perfectly channels the craziness of First Earth Battalion leader Jim Channon…
…and first-time director Grant Heslov is good enough to recreate the pictures shown in Channon’s manifesto: a lovely touch. It feels like the film will touch on all aspects of the insanity of war in a similar way to Clooney’s previous Gulf War film Three Kings, but even with the addition of warring Blackwater-esque security forces and asides showing Clooney and Ewan McGregor wandering through Iraq getting into scrapes, it never fully takes off. I’d still recommend it, though. As with Up In The Air, Clooney does miracle work holding everything together. It’s easy to forget what a great film star he is. He does comedy and drama equally well, and now he’s removed almost all of his tics, he can excel at both over-the-top dopey comedy or subtle and moving character work. We’re lucky he’s around.
My recommendation for The Informant! is much stronger. Though we were exhausted while watching, and were sitting in the Odeon West End which — unlike the Vue West End which is showing the majority of films — is not air-conditioned, it turned out to be almost as good as we had hoped. Spoilery trailers and press releases have given away the delusional nature of Mark Whitacre, but Soderbergh and ace writer Burns hide the depth of his craziness until a wonderful final act where everyone involved in the Lysine price-fixing investigation is shocked by his slowly unravelling web of lies. The cast doesn’t have a single weak link, with an unexpectedly complex performance from Matt Damon at the heart of the movie, but I have to give special props to Scott Bakula, who is particularly affecting as the enthusiastic FBI agent whose career goes awry thanks to Whitacre’s deceptions. His increasingly heartbroken face adds a bittersweet note to the zany proceedings. Props also to Joel McHale in his first dramatic role: weird seeing the snarky Soup host playing straight man to Damon.
I also heartily recommend White Material, but I’m still processing that one, so I won’t go on about it too much, except to say that a) Claire Denis has a mastery of pace and atmosphere that would shame other directors, but then you probably already knew that, and b) Christopher Lambert was good enough to make me partially forgive him for his dire performance in Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales. I can lay the blame for that on Kelly, I guess. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, after all.
