неделя, 17 април 2011 г.
The 2010 Oscar Race To Date
We're more than halfway through the year, so we should have seen more than half of the nominees in all of this year's Academy Award categories, right? God I hope not. Of course, we all know that most of Oscar's favorite children are released in the final quarter of the year, but there are usually a few nominees found in films released before August 1st. Notable nominees that were out by now in previous years included The Hurt Locker, Up, Frozen River, The Visitor, The Dark Knight, La vie en Rose, Away From Her, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. What could those nominees be from this year? What's the state of the race today? Let's take a look at a few of the major categories as they stand right now.
There's a chance that we've already seen all of the nominees in this category, something we won't be able to say again in this entire feature. We have undeniably seen two of the likely three (last year there were five but I don't think we can expect that to happen again) in How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3. They're IN. So, what's the third film? It could be Despicable Me if the Academy wants to spread the wealth to Universal. The film was well-liked enough and a hit with audiences. I think the highly-buzzed The Illusionist from the director of the nominated Triplets of Belleville will take that final spot but if Sony Pictures Classics bungles that campaign then Gru could finally get the respect he deserves and we will have the rare category that was filled by nominees with release dates prior to 8/1.
Last year it was The Hurt Locker vs. Avatar in both of these categories. So which films so far this year have a similar buzz? Inception certainly has the scope and remarkable ambition of sound design that it's likely to show up in both categories. Action films commonly appear here, especially blockbuster ones, so don't be surprised if Iron Man 2 or even Salt pops up. Other dark horse candidates are Clash of the Titans, Alice in Wonderland, and Green Zone, although all three are either too strongly disliked, too marginal a choice, or both. Finally, animation often makes an appearance and it seems possible that Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon will be multiple nominees. Expect one of them to multiply into at least one of the sound categories.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Inception. Photo by Stephen Vaughan. © 2010 Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Can we just give it to Inception now? Seriously? I mean is there any way that the scene where Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights security in zero gravity could possibly be topped? Personally, I think the film is a more momentous achievement of visual effects than Avatar merely for how brilliantly and seamlessly they work toward the final product. If Inception isn't nominated here, someone cheated. But what else? Alice in Wonderland made a mint and was HEAVY with special effects. Don't be surprised if it sneaks in. I don't think anyone was blown away by the work on Iron Man 2 but summer blockbusters often fill out this category. Which means The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Prince of Persia are screwed. They weren't big enough hits. Although with very few effects-heavy films on the horizon (other than the Potter film which seems a lock and the TRON movie), don't be surprised if a dark horse like Clash of the Titans or Burton's Alice sneaks in.
Inception is a masterpiece of editing. It's a sure thing here. And it's looking lonely. I adore Thelma Schoonmaker's work on Shutter Island but will it be too old to be remembered? I'm hoping that Scorsese's wildly underrated film sneaks into a few categories and this could be one of them, especially given her peers adoration for her remarkable career. After that? Slim pickings. Editing often matches up with Best Picture and most of the big boys in that category are coming later this year. Expect Lee Smith and nominees from three to four films we haven't seen yet, depending on the strength of the campaign I'm praying that Paramount is planning for Shutter Island.
Here's where Alice in Wonderland could get some love or this often-unpredictable category could pull out a nod for the historical accuracy of Robin Hood. They like period pieces. As with most tech categories, Inception is in. After those three? Nothing. The final two and possibly more will certainly come from the rest of the year.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ken Watanabe in Inception. Photo by Melissa Moseley SMPSP – © 2010 Warner Bros. Entertainment. I know. Broken record – Inception. Wally Pfister's been nominated three times before and this is arguably his best work. Robert Richardson's use of shadow, light, and space in Shutter Island is arguably even better than Pfister's and I hope it doesn't go forgotten. There are a few power players left to come including Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life), Roger Deakins (True Grit), Anthony Dod Mantle (127 Hours), Rodrigo Prieto (Biutiful), and Matthew Libatique (Black Swan). After Pfister and, hopefully, Richardson, they'll probably make everything else released so far this year easy to forget.
With two very strong contenders, arguably "locks," in this category this early in the year, I guess we should consider ourselves lucky. Lisa Cholodenko's script for The Kids Are All Right has apparently sunk in hard with liberal Hollywood and seems almost guaranteed, probably more than any category for a film that I expect to be a multiple nominee. Will Academy members see Inception as a purely technical film and ignore Christopher Nolan's labyrinthine script? I doubt it. I think they're both in. And they're joined by three films most of us haven't seen yet. The only possible exception is Chris Provenzano, C. Gaby Mitchell, and Scott Seeke's acclaimed-and-buzzing work on Get LowCrazy Heart wasn't nominated in this category. And that's a better script. but I think that film will be seen as purely an acting piece.
Only one lock so far – Toy Story 3. I know, I know, adapted from WHAT? All sequels are adapted as the story is based on characters created by another film. It's a debatably stupid rule in that something as unique as Toy Story 3 certainly requires a different skill set from adapting the last Harry Potter book. Whatever you think about the distinction, it's IN and a frontrunner for the win. Considering how often that animation plays in these categories, How to Train Your Dragon shouldn't be ruled out either. And Debra Granik's Winter's Bone has the kind of love that pushed Frozen River into this category. Don't rule that out at all. Finally, I'd love to see Laeta Kalogridis' brilliant take on Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island but that seems unlikely.
Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right. Photo by Suzanne Tenner – © 2010 Focus Features. First, my favorite performances that I know have no chance in Hell of being remembered in six months time – Michelle Williams & Patricia Clarkson in Shutter Island, Rebecca Hall in Red Riding 1974, Rebecca Hall & Sarah Steele in Please Give, Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet, and Imogen Poots in Solitary Man. Who might be remembered? There's a rumor/hope that Focus is going to push Annette Bening into Supporting Actress for The Kids Are All Right so as not to compete with Julianne Moore (and it's arguably more accurate as Moore is in more of the film). Wherever they put her, she's in. What about her co-star Mia Wasikowska? Less likely. And what of Marion Cotillard, the emotional core and femme fatale of Inception? I know she's likely to be on my ballot but probably not enough Academy members. That means that unless they make the Bening switch, we haven't seen a single nominee in this category. Good news when one considers what to look forward to this fall but pretty pathetic.
This category has been hard to fill out in recent years but there have been a few that I love that will almost certainly be ignored – Ben Kingsley & Jackie Earle Haley in Shutter Island, Niels Arestrup in A Prophet, Jonah Hill in Cyrus, and Tom Hardy in Inception. The last two winners for Best Supporting Actor were from summer films – The Dark Knight and Inglourious Basterds. Will it be a hat trick? Not unless something really shocking comes out of The Expendables. In all seriousness, we have probably not seen a single nominee in this category, much less a winner, just like Supporting Actress. If Focus can keep the wave of support for The Kids Are All Right rolling through awards season then it certainly wouldn't be too stunning to see Mark Ruffalo deservedly nominated but even that seems unlikely with the amount of Oscar bait still to come. Some have buzzed Bill Murray's work in Get Low but the role isn't emotionally resonant enough to linger through ballot time. After that? Nada. It's possible that we've seen the WINNER in lead actor and actress in Robert Duvall and one of the ladies from The Kids Are All Right but we haven't seen a single nominee in either supporting category. Weird.
Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right. Photo by Suzanne Tenner – © 2010 Focus Features.Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, Catherine Keener in Please Give, and Dakota Fanning in The Runaways – all great, all with as much of a chance of a nomination in this category as I have. Luckily, there are a few nominees here already in theaters. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore from The Kids Are All Right would compete for the WIN if the Oscars were tomorrow and they may still do that in six months unless Focus pushes one to the supporting category. And the buzz around Jennifer Lawrence's performance in Winter's Bone is deafening in much the same way Carey Mulligan's was last year. It's very possible that we've seen 60% of this category, more than any other major one. We certainly haven't seen 80%. There's some love for Mother and Child but I'm not sure it would even register on the radar if the nominations were due tomorrow much less months from now. And it looks likely that Tilda Swinton will get screwed again. She should have been nominated last year for Julia. She probably should get nominated this year for I Am Love. Deja vu for one of the best actresses working today.
There have been some great performances in small films that have no chance of registering beyond maybe a critic's citation or two – Paddy Considine in Red Riding 1980, Tahir Rahim in A Prophet, John C. Reilly in Cyrus, Colin Farrell in Ondine, Ben Stiller in Greenberg, and arguably career-best work by Michael Douglas in Solitary Man. As for nominees that potentially have a chance, one of the biggest stories of nomination season will be Leo vs. Leo. His work in Shutter Island and his work in Inception both deserve and will earn strong consideration. For some reason, I'm picturing a situation not unlike a few years ago when everyone thought that Leo would get nominated for The Departed and he ended up with a nod for Blood Diamond. It seems clear that Inception will score more nods than Shutter Island, but I'm going out on a limb and saying now that Leo will deservedly get a spot in the category for the latter. Of course, it might not matter as I believe we've seen our Best Actor winner already and he ain't named Leo. Robert Duvall's work in Get Low stands among the best career performances from one of the best actors that ever lived. If the Oscars were tomorrow, Duvall would be a slam dunk and I think he might still be at the end of the year. As for the other three nominees, some power players have fallen flat (Russell Crowe in Robin Hood, Matt Damon in Green Zone, Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland), leaving the category wide open for fall contenders.
Christopher Nolan on the set of Inception. Photo by Melissa Moseley. © 2010 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. They can't screw Nolan again this year. It just won't happen. He's in. His peers will recognize that Inception is the labor of love that more directors should embrace and encourage. Is there enough love for The Kids Are All Right to get Lisa Cholodenko into this still all-boy's club? I doubt it. That's an acting piece and Lisa could get a writing nod but I don't think she's in for director. Same for Debra Granik, who I expect will be ignored for Winter's Bone in favor of the power players like Joel Coen, Julian Schnabel, David Fincher, Terrence Malick, Danny Boyle, Mike Leigh, Peter Weir, Edward Zwick, and Darren Aronofsky – all with films left to be released this year. Is there room for Scorsese with that remarkable list of potential future nominees? Doubtful. And despite the love for The Ghost Writer, I also doubt that anyone's going to risk the stigma associated with the recent drama surrounding Roman Polanski. Which means that we've seen only one of the Best Director nominees of the year. No wonder we all think this one sucks so far.
Let's approach this category a bit differently. What would the ten be if we could only vote through films released so far?
Get Low
The Ghost Writer
Greenberg
How to Train Your Dragon
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
Please Give
Shutter Island
Toy Story 3
Winter's Bone
It's a tough list to fill out. Immediately, we can cut the underseen-and-unlikely-to-be-campaigned Greenberg and Please Give. They're really just on the list above to fill it out and I couldn't bring myself to put Iron Man 2 on it. That leaves eight. The Ghost Writer is great but there's NO WAY that they're nominating a Polanski film (don't bring up The Pianist … times have changed since then for the public perception of Roman). Down to seven possibilities. Get Low and Winter's Bone have a lot of fans but will probably play just as acting nominees. Guaranteed nominees if the Oscars were tomorrow but unlikely in six months. That leaves only five. After waiting so long to nominate a second animated film for Best Picture, will the Academy really nominate two this year? It's not as much of a stretch as you might think considering the undying love for How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3. The latter is IN (in fact, it might win) and I think that might push out the former. That leaves Toy Story 3, Shutter Island, The Kids Are All Right, and Inception. Scorsese's great thriller will pop up in a couple categories but won't have the overall support to get a slot. I expect that The Kids Are All Right will get enough writer and actor support to land in the top ten and Inception is a LOCK. Anyone who tells you differently is crazy. It may not be a lock to win – in fact, I doubt that it will – and may not have been a lock in the days of five nominees, but it's guaranteed enough tech nominees that it's in with ten choices. So, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, and Toy Story 3. Three nominees by August 1st. With less than half of the year to go, we have 70% of our Best Picture nominees yet to be released. It better be a strong Fall season.
MovieRetriever's 100 Greatest Movies: #34 Sunrise
The plot of Sunrise was adapted to Hollywood conventions from a naturalistic novella by Hermann Sudermann. It is wrong, however, to assume the changes were all for the bad, as so many critics have done. The film's plot is neither hopelessly sentimental nor melodramatic. It is true that Carl Mayer and F. W. Murnau, with a free hand from the studio, changed the tragic ending of the novella to a happy one for the film. This change can be viewed as an improvement upon Sudermann's gratuitously ironic ending of having the young husband's death occur after the couple's reconciliation. If not viewed as an improvement, the popular-art convention of the happy ending is certainly no worse than the naturalistic one of culminating a work with a tragic twist whether it is apt or not. Also the third party of the love triangle was, in the novella, a servant girl and, in the film, is a vamp from the city. On the basis of this change, all too many critics have accused Mayer and Murnau of setting up a simplistic "good-country" and "evil-city" polarity; however, they forget that the couple's experiences in the city, with all its modern delights, bring the husband and wife back together – or perhaps together for the first time. The plot allowed Murnau to draw upon his background in art history and literature, and above all it offered the basis for a cinematic narrative par excellence. This plot was made for the camera, especially in motion, and for the radical oscillations of lighting and mood that are so conducive to a temporal art like film. In such fertile soil, the talents of cameramen Rosher and Struss flourished.
Human characters, in Sunrise, are secondary to the true protagonist – the camera. The scenes in this film are neither conceived as a staged work, like so many silent films, nor as slices of actuality on which the camera allows us to spy. The premise of the film is that the camera will move; and that it will have any excuse to move. Plots and characters seem pretenses for movement and light; boats, dance halls, trolley cars, and other city traffic – not intrigue and love – are the true forces of motion in Sunrise. Akin to the ballets created by the avantgarde in the Paris of the 1910s and 1920s, patterns of movement seek their raison d'etre in the slimmest threat of plot. In addition, the camera (and the cameramen) have been allowed so much freedom that the camera soon takes on a life of its own. Even when the camera is at rest or pauses within a shot, the effect is electric.
According to the testimony of Rosher, Murnau was obsessed with capturing the play of light, especially as it occurred on the surface of the lake – either in nature or in the studio. Water, boats, moonlight, and reeds are pretenses for capturing the fleeting effects of light, much in the same way that clouds and waterlilies are used in Claude Monet's last paintings. Indeed, the film's frequent use of mist, dim lighting, and blurred exposures reminds one of Monet's work. This impressionistic concentration on light is not just limited to the scenes of the lake; in the city, glass replaces water. In the famous restaurant scene, lighted figures are seen dancing behind a glass window; people move in front of the window and are reflected in it; and the camera moves to catch the reflected light from different angles. The effect is shimmering.
A frequent complaint concerning Sunrise is that the film is divided into disjointed parts and stylized scenes often clash with more naturalistic ones. Murnau compared his own narrative structure to that used by James Joyce. Just as in Ulysses, there is a radical shift of style to match the spirit of different episodes; so too, in Sunrise, is there a fluctuation between the actual and the artificial. Murnau may have had another source for his scene-structuring in the German Expressionist theatre – especially in the works of Ernst Toller, where naturalistic scenes alternate with expressionistic ones. There are few films that depict such an astute sense of the spirit of place and the events that occur there, as, for example, where the husband secretly meets the vamp, and passes through a studio-set marsh with a broodingly low horizon lit by a moon shining through the haze. Also, the trolley ride taken by the husband and wife gives the sense of a location shot made in daylight; the joyful effect is complete down to the bouncing of the trolley car. The trolley soon moves into the city, actually a studio backlot construction, that is scaled larger than life in order to convey the awe of the country couple who are seeing the city for the first time. The actual only seems to be so. Acting, like the lighting and the sets, is conceived of scene by scene. Murnau took great pains in making the actors' gestures and facial expressions fit the moment; therefore, the styles of acting fluctuate between the naturalistic and the expressionistic. And over all there is the evermoving mercurial camera. In every way, each scene is contrived to have its own particular mood, and each fits with another like pieces of Byzantine mosaic.
Hollywood fell under the spell of Sunrise, and under its influence the camera took wings, only to have them clipped by the limitations of primitive sound equipment. In the long run, however, the lessons of Sunrise resurfaced in such films as John Ford's The Informer and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. The camera searching through the night and fog for a reflected gleam of light was a thematic and formalistic motif in these films. On the one hand, Sunrise culminated film's silent experience; but, on the other, it foreshadowed the first maturity of sound.
Release Date: 1927
Rating: Unrated
Starring: George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Bodil Rosing, Margaret Livingstone, J. Farrell Macdonald, Ralph Sipperly, Jane Winton, Arthur Houseman, Eddie Boland, Gina Corrado, Barry Norton, and Sally Eilers
Director: F. W. Murnau
Writer: Carl Mayer
Source Citation: Farnsworth, Rodney. "Sunrise." International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. 4th ed. Vol. 1: Films. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 1169-1171.
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MovieRetriever's 100 Greatest Movies: #52 Double Indemnity
Although James M. Cain's memorable novel of crime and passion, The Postman Always Rings Twice, predated his equally potent, similarly themed Double Indemnity by almost a decade, it is Indemnity that has proven the more influential, due largely to the uncompromising and suspenseful film writer-director Billy Wilder made from it. Wilder's film remains the model for just about every film noir of this type (Born to Kill, The Prowler, The Pushover, Body Heat, et al.) to come our way since.
Cain's novel was translated to the screen with the full force of the author's ugly tale of lust, greed, and murder intact. In fact, the film version is in many ways tougher than its source. Wilder's intention to make it so prompted his longtime partner, writer-producer Charles Brackett, to back away from the project even though he and Wilder were one of Hollywood's most successful teams. Brackett found Cain's book distasteful and felt the film would be little more than a "dirty movie." He told Wilder to get another collaborator. Wilder tried to get Cain himself, but the author was busy on another project, and Wilder opted for Raymond Chandler instead.
Chandler detested working with Wilder and disliked the final film. Cain on the other hand totally approved of what Wilder had done to his book, even considered it an improvement. The two works are certainly different. In addition to changing the names of Cain's main characters (in the book they are Walter Huff and Phyllis Nirdlinger), Wilder changed the ending and altered other aspects of the story as well. Whereas Cain unfolded his tale in a linear manner, Wilder revealed the fate of his protagonist in the opening scene. Insurance investigator MacMurray arrives at his office mortally wounded and confesses into the dictaphone of his colleague, Robinson, the murder plot and insurance scam gone awry that led to MacMurray's downfall. Wilder cuts back to the dying MacMurray several times, but for the most part the film unfolds as a series of flashbacks showing how MacMurray got embroiled with femme fatale Stanwyck in a scheme to murder her oilman husband, make it look like an accident, collect a bundle on the husband's double indemnity claim, and run away together. But when their scheme began to unravel, their relationship fell apart, and they wound up shooting each other. (In the book, the lovers get away with the crime because the Robinson character who is hot on their trail has no proof, but are doomed anyway due to their growing mistrust of one another.)
Cain loosely based his novel on the real-life Roaring Twenties case of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray who conspired to murder Snyder's husband for $100,000 in insurance money. Snyder and Gray were caught and went to the chair. An enterprising newspaper reporter smuggled a camera into the execution chamber and snapped a shot of Snyder moments before the juice was turned on. The ghoulish shot caused a furor when it was published in the paper. Wilder wanted to end his film with a similar scene showing MacMurray's execution in California's gas chamber. The scene was shot, but Wilder decided against using it; he felt it to be too strong and anticlimactic as well. He replaced it with the trenchantly written and beautifully performed final confrontation scene between the self-destructive MacMurray and the fatherly Robinson that movingly concludes this exceptionally fine and biting film noir. As MacMurray slumps to the floor, he tells Robinson how he'd been able to elude the dogged investigator. "Because the guy you were looking for was too close, Keyes. Right across the desk from you." "Closer than that," Robinson responds emotionally as the film fades to black.
Release Date: 1944
Rating: Unrated
Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Byron Barr, Richard Gaines, Fortunio Bonanova, John Philliber, and Clarence Muse
Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler
Source Citation: McCarty, John. "Double Indemnity." International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. 4th ed. Vol. 1: Films. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 346-348.
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Cloverfield's Comrades: VideoHound's Top Ten City-Wrecking Movie Monsters
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January 22, 2008Cloverfield's Comrades: VideoHound's Top Ten City-Wrecking Movie Monsters Posted by CoolerKing in Lists, FeaturesNow that the low-budget Cloverfield broke all January box office records, you can expect two things from Hollywood — a flood of new movies told from first-person POVs (romance movies recorded on cellphones, crime movies filmed on ATM security cameras, and so on) and a big, big resurgence in the skyscraper-sized monster genre.
And, as cynical as we can be, we have to admit that Cloverfield revived our long-gestating love with the creature feature and made us revisit some of our favorite man-in-suit, downtown-destroying monster movies of old. Here's a quick glance at VideoHound's top ten best-loved city-wrecking behemoths in movie history:
The nuke-u-lar picnic pests — radiation-giganticized ants, that is — from the 1954 classic THEM! GM CEO Roger Smith, scourge of Flint, Michigan, in Roger & Me (1989) Godzilla, destroyer of Tokyo (and mortal enemy of Raymond Burr), in Godzilla (1954) The Stay-Puft Marshmellow Man, the ultimate sugar-coated Fleet Week nightmare, in Ghostbusters (1984) Bruce the Shark, the archnemesis of Amity's Chamber of Commerce, in Jaws (1975) The Kevin Bacon-hatin' Graboids from Tremors (1989) Rodan, Godzilla's red-headed step-child and cousin to Pterri the Pterodactyl, in Rodan (1956) The Mighty Kong from King Kong (1976) — a much maligned production which gets extra brownie points for the blatant horniness Rick Baker brought to his performance as KongStripe, Kingston Falls' mogwai anti-christ, from Gremlins (1984) The Han River's mutated catfish/velociraptor from The Host (2007) Bookmark/Search this post with:











Posted by CoolerKing in Lists, Features - January 22, 2008 at 4:01 PM
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