Category Archives: Film

Oscars

Americana, Film

The other day at lunch, Richard Taylor asked me to post my Oscar predictions – or, atleast, who I want to win. I have not seen all the nominated movies and have no insight on who will win. Who wins the various Oscars is really an Inside the Movie Biz political game. Who do people like, who do they admire but don’t especially like, who did they vote for last year and don’t want to vote for them again – you get the idea. 

I do obsessively read other people’s opinions on who will win, but, because I really don’t remember how accurate they were in the past, I don’t have much of an idea how good their predictions are. I sort of feel the LA Times is a good source because they seem to be the quasi-company paper; I like a website called the House Next Door because they seem to actually be thinking about the nominations; the New York Times because – well – its the New York Times and they have two different ways of predicting.

With those caveats, here are some predictions and what I liked the best of what I saw.

Visual Effects – Probably will win: Avatar; I hope will win: Avatar because that is what it was -and I mean this in the best possible way. 

Avatar

Cinematography – Probably will win: Inglorious Basterds; I hope will win; Inglorious Basterds – I just thought every shot in this movie was gorgeous.

Inglourious_basterds49-jpg
 

Best Actress: Probably will win – Sandra Bullock; probably should win – one of the actresses from one of the movies I didn’t see; I hope will win – Sandra Bullock

Best Actor: Probably will win – Jeff Bridges -his Dudeness – in Crazy Heart which I didn’t see; who I hope will win – George Clooney if for no other reason than he is willing to take a risk but he started off so off-putting and ended up so vulnerable.

Best Supporting Actor: Probably will win – Christoph Waltz; I sure hope so, he was great.

Best Supporting Actress – Mo’Nique; I hope will win -Vera Farmiga who was charming in Up In The Air

Best Original Screenplay: Probably will win – Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds; I certainly hope so. The only problem here, as I see it, is that Tarantino writes great scenes rather than great movies. The scenes don’t alway fit together into a great movie – he sometimes gets around the problems by putting the scenes out of order as in Pulp Fiction – but, wow, are the scenes great.

Best director: Probably will win – Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker; I hope will win – Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds

 


Best Picture: Probably will win – The Hurt Locker; Who I hope will win – Avatar. It was a staggeringly original total experience.

A Year of Good Movies (part 1)

Film

One of my favorite end of the year entertainments is looking at Ten Best lists, especially the Ten Best Movies. This year, I was surprised at, not only the movies I hadn't seen, but the number of movies I hadn't even heard of. So I thought I had better put my two cents in.

This has been a great year for good movies. Maybe not a great year for great movies; but, still, there were an amazing number of good movies. And…in the summer a burst of great movies. Granted, we didn't see very many movies this summer, having missed G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, for example, but what we did see was better than any summer I can remember.

The summer started with Up.  An allegedly kids cartoon about growing old, the meaning of life, friendship, and other childish concerns. It was engaging and moving. Then in no particular order, came Funny People, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, District 9, and Inglorious Basterds, ending with Julie and Julia.

Funny People is anything but funny and I think it got panned by a lot of critics because they were expecting fart jokes. Directed by Judd Apatow and starring Adam Sadler who is as good and complicated as he was in Punch Drunk Love, Funny People is about dying and community, money and isolation, hero worship and reality, and humor. If you are looking for a truly funny movie, then The Hangover can't be beat. It is a very funny movie about men doing very stupid things in Las Vegas, but they are not stupid and that is what makes it work.These two movies  sort of work together; the funny people not being funny and the serous people being very funny.

District 9  got great reviews but I thought it was the weakest of all the summer movies. But that really is only saying how good the other movies were. District 9 has lots to say while still being an engrossing scifi adventure.

The Hurt Locker and Inglorious Basterds were two very different war movies. But not war movies in the classic, Aldo Ray, sense (although Inglorious Basterds wants us to believe it is a classic Aldo Ray movie). Of the two, at first glance, The Hurt Locker, wants to be the most serious and it was serious and excellent but… Looking back at it over dinner after the movie, or the next day, it didn't always make sense. And I am not sure that it was anatomically correct: a firefight at the center of the movie seems to just start and stop at random, and why are they driving around the desert without backup, and the Colonel is unrealistically over the top enthusiastic. But, still, a powerful movie about men at war. The best description I have read of Inglorious Basterds is Jewish porn – and it is. It is my favorite movie of the year. Quentin Tarantino switches from scene to scene with no transition shots but we always know exactly where (and when) we are. And each individual scene is a near masterpiece: the photography is staggeringly good, the dialog brilliant, the contribution to the story arc pitch perfect. At the start of the movie, the evil Nazi – and he is very evil – pulls out a ridiculously large German pipe: when I mentioned it to Michele, she said I think it is Tarantino's way of saying This is a fantasy
. 

The summer ended with Julie and Julia. An obvious homage to cooking and food but also a uplifting movie about good marriages. A great way to end the summer. 

Avatar and IMDb

Film

Last night, we saw Avatar. To quote Roger Ebert, "Watching Avatar, I felt sort of the same as when I saw Star Wars in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron's film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his Titanic was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an
extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who
knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely."

Like Star Wars, we enter a whole new world:

Like Star Wars, it is not a great movie – it can even be argued that it is not a particularly good movie. It has a formulaic plot lines and characters we have all seen lots of times. But it is a total immersion into a new world. The depth and detail of the new world – especially in 3D – are mind boggling. Like Star Wars, it is as shocking – in it's way – as jumping into a cold river. We were away and all the distractions of the dry world were forgotten.

The best non-video example I can think of is to go to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). On the IMDb, the page for an old movie (for  the best effect – any effect, really – use the following links), like, Casablanca to pick a random example, is a very handy, fact-filled page of information. For new movies, Clint Eastwood's new Invictus, for example, the page is the same. But Avatar is a whole new ball game.  

Avatar-Neytiri-Movie