The Oscars '08: The Trouble Begins

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 20, 2008

This much we (I) know. Slumdog Millionaire is garbage. Today, prominent Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells wrote that he gets the feeling Millionaire is the current favorite for the Best Picture Oscar (he meant in a very gut feeling, not-saying-this-is-the-way-it-will-turn-out kind of way). But the fact that it is crap, and the fact that I have been reasonably happy with the last two winners (No Country and The Departed) leads me to believe something else will win. However, NO upcoming movies are exciting me.

I'll already think 2008 was a banner year even if the last month doesn't produce any classics. Reprise, Mister Lonely, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Be Kind, Rewind, Chop Shop, A Christmas Tale, Flight of the Red Balloon, and Speed Racer are all movies that in my world are exceptionally worthy "Best Picture" recipients. If anything, it is these movies' high quality that makes the actual Oscar seem important...it has to be something at least reasonably representative of the strong 2008.

The Dark Knight continues to get mentioned as a possible Best Picture nominee. I wasn't as blown away with it as a lot of people, but it's definitely a worthy choice. It's epic enough that it isn't "just a comic book movie," and it pulls off its "epicness" more respectfully than even some past Best Picture winners.

But what else lies on the horizon?

-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: The full gist of Wells' post was the advanced word he's gotten on Button is "meh," which makes him think it's no longer the favorite. Obviously, that is way-in-advance word and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, even among people who like it, comparisons to Forest Gump and exclamations about how much they cried seem to dot their praises. I'm worried Fincher, Eric Roth, and Co. overdid it in their effort to make a crowd pleaser and laid on the schmaltz a little too thick. I think everybody involved (Fincher, Roth, Pitt, Blanchett, etc.) are individually great, and that makes Button exciting to think about, but which of those people is going to put the breaks on if things were getting too Gumpy? Fincher doesn't seem to care too much about story, and Roth obviously wrote Gump, so we know he can go there (compare Gump to The Insider or The Good Shepherd, great restrained stories). I'm keeping my expectations low, but this could still turn out to be a masterpiece.

-Milk like the "seen: I bet Penn's really good. But this just looks-it-before" biopic. Meh. (see Penn below)


-Frost/Nixon: This is definitely a "seen-it-before." Ron Howard won't drop the ball, the performances will be good, but the chances of this movie surprising or exciting me in any way are 0. And yes, I can be certain of that without seeing it.

-Revolutionary Road: All along, this has seemed like a "more-than-they-can-chew" project for Mendes and Co., I feel like there are probably too many great things in that huge novel and the movie will end up just struggling to connect all the dots. But like Button, I'm cautiously optimistic just because of the amount of talent involved.

-Australia: I loved Moulin Rouge! This don't look like no Moulin Rouge!, unfortunately. It looks more like Baz's other two movies, which I've never had the slightest desire to see.

-Gran Torino: No. Just no. I don't see Eastwood surprising anyone anymore. This will be just OK.

-The Reader: "The Reader"? Not even TNT would approve that title. Oh wait, Stephen Daldry, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes? Sounds stuffy.

-The Wrestler: By all accounts it's great, but Arnofsky has never done it for me. That said, what's it competing against so far? I'm ready to embrace this movie if it's half as good as people say.

-Doubt: Another one I'm counting on at this point. A playwright adapting his own hit play with a great cast sounds dependable to me.




Che: My most anticipated of any of these, but it's huge length means the Academy would never go near it even if it was getting unanimous praise.








So what does this mean for us? Doubt, The Wrestler, Button, and Revolutionary Road seem like the four movies that could turn out great AND end up being nominated for Best Picture. Throw The Dark Knight in there and I'll definitely be happy. More realistically, two out of those four end up being good enough to deserve it and hopefully they're nominated and I have horses to root for.

Just please no Slumdog Millionaire.

Burn After Reading

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

SPOILERS AHEAD...

Most of the events that transpire in Burn After Reading are the result of a blackmail attempt involving a CD-R that basically contains Osborne Cox's (John Malkovich) whole life on it, from his financial records to his memoir. And the irony is, the disc is worth nothing.

Burn After Reading won't be popular with everyone, probably because if you copied all the good attributes from all the characters onto one CD, there'd still be a lot of empty space left. It's not that they're "bad" people, they're just unfulfilled. Cox has buried in his problems in booze, but everyone else is taking a stab at self-improvement. Cox's wife (Tilda Swinton) is planning for divorce, Harry (George Clooney) is engaged in several affairs, and most significantly, Linda (Francis McDormand) has simultaneously entered the online dating world and outlined several plastic surgery procedures that will significantly improve her appearance.

Their environment is loaded with allusions to sex, and for all their sleeping with one another, no one's particularly satisfied in that department. The gym where Linda works is called "Hardbodies" and she pines for a "Hollywood" body, while pop culture blatantly taunts regular folks' chances for sexual fulfillment: the popular date movie is called "Coming Up Daisy" (get it?) and features two movie stars with beaming, perfect smiles on the poster; Harry's wife has a tryst with Dermot Mulroney in a dressing room as the TV shows an impeccably cheerful chef vigorously mixing a salad. Even "Cox" (another Coens joke) isn't immune from this sexualized atmosphere, follows along half-heartedly with a workout TV show starring three seriously toned bodybuilders.

Unfortunately, Harry's situation is more representative of the characters' sex lives: he hasn't "discharged his weapon" in twenty years and has resorted to frequent jogging and building a sex chair intended to pleasure his lovers as his methods for release. Still, characters swap in and out of bed with each other, as if they think their next lover will be "the one." The Coens make it pretty obvious what they think of this approach: Linda delivers multiple ludicrous speeches about the merits of "staying positive," which drew some of the biggest laughs.

Ultimately, the CIA is the only organization capable of providing any perspective on the worth of these people's lives, and they do by completely dismissing their importance despite multiple fatalities. You can't help but agree with the decision about these people's worthlessness, but the movie's achievement is you still enjoyed watching them.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 18, 2008

I would put it #2 for best movies of the year thus far. The 7 really great movies this year are (in order):

Reprise

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Be Kind Rewind

Mister Lonely

Chop Shop

Flight of the Red Balloon

Speed Racer

Those would be followed by Encounters at the End of the World, The Dark Knight, Cloverfield, In Bruges.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona felt the closest to Annie Hall of any of the Woody movies I've ever seen (there are a lot I haven't seen). That doesn't mean I necessarily think it's his second best ever, but movies like Manhattan and Hannah and her Sisters (i.e. the relationship dramadies I think Annie hall is most often compared to) don't have the same balance of charm and fantasy that makes Annie Hall so great and it was really surprising to find it here, even though VCB isn't nearly as great a movie. It's very fun and engaging, and yet there's this really potent edge to the relationships lying underneath the surface. There are laughs here, just like Woody Allen comedies, and there are the same 'true' relationship moments that can be found in Annie Hall, and a lot of people would say 'Hannah' and Manhattan as well. So it really felt like a return to form by the Woodster, plus it's full of great performances and Barcelona art.

Maybe an indicator of whether you like the movie is how you feel about the title. One review I read said the title was the first indication that Woody has gotten lazy, and he thought the movie reflected that. I think 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona' is a clever title in the same vein of Old Woody (if that's lazy, what are: "Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Hannah and her Sisters," "Broadway Danny Rose," "Zelig," etc.?) and the movie reflects that, it's a throwback to Woody's Golden Age.

The Olympics and Why No One Cares

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 12, 2008

Rob, this is a follow-up to our earlier conversation...I consider it the icing on the cake.

Not only is Phelps 3 for 3 on gold medals, he's 3 for 3 on world records. Are you kidding me? Olympic sports are in the category with tennis, golf, etc....marginal sports where the technology is outpacing fan interest.

In fact, maybe that's a reason the most popular sports (baseball, basketball, football) are so great: even advancements in their equipment haven't skewed the game (obviously that's what's so threatening about steroids). While guys may hit more HR than they did fifty years ago, there is still a feeling of the ebb and flow of history and that's a crucial part of baseball. The Olympics have kicked it into high gear so fast that there is no sense of connection to earlier eras and that's how you end up with Phelps re-writing the record books.

Mad Men

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 31, 2008

I'm out. After six and a half episodes, there's nothing keeping me watching. It's well made, but I just can't get excited about it. And so, the world moves on without me.

Fight Scenes

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 28, 2008

Slate has a great slideshow about the progress of the fight scene. It takes ten scenes from the history of cinema, starting with The Big Country (1958) and ending with Eastern Promises (2007). The gist is that fight scenes are becoming increasingly fast paced and hyper-edited at the expense of spacial clarity and cinematic tradition.

However, I for one vastly prefer some of the more recent scenes to the more traditional examples. The Big Country clip seems like a joke, the few edits feel arbitrary and the wide shots make the action appear insignificant. And I've never been a fan of Oldboy which is too obviously artificial and never really engages me in the action. Meanwhile, The Bourne Ultimatum and Natural Born Killers clips completely enthrall me and are exciting to watch even without the context of the story. That makes me think the progression isn't a bad thing and I wonder if some people's objections to the fight scenes in movies like Batman Begins are the result of a generational difference.

Based on those ten clips, I would say the most important element in a good fight scene is to create a sense of urgency in the viewer and make sure the fight scene is consistently moving (unlike Return of the Dragon or The Big Country, where you are literally seeing the same punch/counterpunch routine as if the fighters are running in place). The Bourne Ultimatum continually raises the stakes faster than you can even keep up with what is going on, and that challenge to the viewer is what keeps it interesting.

A comparison is made to the heavy editing of musicals today (Moulin Rouge!, Chicago) and how the old Fred Astaire movies of yesteryear relied much more on action within the frame and not so many cuts. I would say that movies used to be confined by the amount of editing and number of angles they could get as a result of technical limitations, and that movies used to be much more about spectacle...you could watch Astaire dance in a single shot and be impressed merely by his ability. But these days we are probably quicker to disbelieve what we see...CGI and special effects are so good that we assume what we're seeing is a lie. So maybe fast editing is just a way of staying ahead of our doubts and thereby perpetuating the illusion.

Step Brothers

By Luke

ORIGINALLY POSTED JULY 25, 2008

The more I think about it, the more I think Step Brothers could have been a really good movie if Will Ferrell's crew wasn't so in love with their own shtick and didn't rely so heavily on over-the-top improvisation. The plot involving Ferrell's younger brother (and the younger brother's family) hint at a comedy that's just as funny and weird (they can keep the singing in the car scene) but a little more subversive and directly taking on issues of "growing up" and family politics. Things like John C. Reilly having an affair with the brother's wife don't go anywhere in the current movie, but imagine Step Brothers if it was Will Ferrell meets The Squid and the Whale. All the more "esoteric" visual humor worked for me: the synchronized sleepwalking, the dream sequences at the end, all the inventive clever things that you wouldn't immediately imagine when someone told you it was a movie about grown up stepbrothers. If you throw in a few more things like that and take out the "Will Ferrell says something outrageous that doesn't make sense" bits, you have a seriously trippy movie. I think Ferrell, Reilly, and Adam McKay are so funny that they can take a premise way over the top and I still like it. But if they tried for something other than belly laughs every five seconds, it could be more satisfying, and at least more interesting.