Can you believe it's 2010?
Are you superstitious about how you start your filmgoing year? What will the first movie be? I'm aiming for Avatar in IMAX and a couple of other revisits before the top ten list commences in a day or three.
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Thursday, December 31, 2009
December. It's a Wrap
In case you're just joining us for 2010 or spent December at the North Pole without internet service. And if you are just joining us... what's your problem? You're supposed to be here daily. Hourly even. All year round. Quit slacking.
♫ "Sandra Sandra Sandra. Sandra Sandra Sandra" ♫
Sandra, Ciao!
Sandra, Ciao!
Nine Thoughts I Had... on Nine the musical. The critical drubbing it's getting is unfortunately vicious but it is rather obviously flawed
"In the Garden There is a Girl" JA made me rethink Shaun of the Dead. Good stuff
The Flourescent Globe Nominations a lively chat about the Globe announcements in the second season of TFE's podcast
The Two Sandras Bullock's golden twofer. Worth the hoopla?
2004 makes a case for best movie year of the decade
"In the Garden There is a Girl" JA made me rethink Shaun of the Dead. Good stuff
The Flourescent Globe Nominations a lively chat about the Globe announcements in the second season of TFE's podcast
The Two Sandras Bullock's golden twofer. Worth the hoopla?
2004 makes a case for best movie year of the decade
Brittany Murphy I missed her before she was gone
Natalie Portman & the "Three Block Rule" Live by it. She's a smart girl
Sell it to the Highest Bidder notes on Summer Hours
Julia & Rupert Matt revisits 90s romantic comedy classic My Best Friend's Wedding
"Play it Again, Clint" Best Pictures From the Outside In confronts Unforgiven and the immortal Casablanca
Natalie Portman & the "Three Block Rule" Live by it. She's a smart girl
Sell it to the Highest Bidder notes on Summer Hours
Julia & Rupert Matt revisits 90s romantic comedy classic My Best Friend's Wedding
"Play it Again, Clint" Best Pictures From the Outside In confronts Unforgiven and the immortal Casablanca
New Reader?
Got a couple hours? Read the best of January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November.
Coming in January...
2009 Top Ten and the 10th annual FB Awards. Plus: a trip back to Silence of the Lambs, more Avatar, more Oscar hoopla... and maybe even a trip to the Sundance Film Festival.
Got a couple hours? Read the best of January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November.
Coming in January...
2009 Top Ten and the 10th annual FB Awards. Plus: a trip back to Silence of the Lambs, more Avatar, more Oscar hoopla... and maybe even a trip to the Sundance Film Festival.
Online Film Critics Society Snubs Avatar For Best Pic!
So much for stereotyping all online critics as fanboys. Good set of nominees this year, veering from the usual suspects in a couple of key ways that are rather interesting.
Like Avatar for Director, but not Picture. No acting nominations that seem like completely lazy voting -- i.e. no one is getting nominated strictly because they were cast in a musical or a Clint Eastwood picture. Though I guess one could argue that three acting nods for Inglourious Basterds might be the online equivalent of those default kind of choices.
But most of all it's nice to see some critics group finally wising up about Tilda Swinton in Julia. I'm so proud of the OFCS today that I'm wishing I was a member but I have sadly never applied.
Like Avatar for Director, but not Picture. No acting nominations that seem like completely lazy voting -- i.e. no one is getting nominated strictly because they were cast in a musical or a Clint Eastwood picture. Though I guess one could argue that three acting nods for Inglourious Basterds might be the online equivalent of those default kind of choices.But most of all it's nice to see some critics group finally wising up about Tilda Swinton in Julia. I'm so proud of the OFCS today that I'm wishing I was a member but I have sadly never applied.
Year in Review Pt 3: That's So Gay!
<--- "Looking good Barbie!"Over at Towleroad I flame on to recount the highs and lows of gay(ish) cinema this year. Gay loosely defined of course. It's a speed read from last year's Milk Oscars through Valentino The Last Emperor and Brüno to this year's A Single Man buzz, with pit stops along the way to ogle the Hughs (Dancy and Jackman). Enjoy!
P.S. I forgot to mention Nine but that's more about actressexuality anyhow. And Guido Contini is definitely an actressexual.
Directors of the Decade: You Decide
Robert here. Moving forward, my Directors of the Decade series is going to get a little bit of a makeover. I'll still be featuring the best, most original, most significant directors working, but not limited to 2000-2009. I'll look back at their influences (and yes even movies made prior to the decade) but mostly I'll look forward toward the impact these great directors will continue to have on modern cinema.
Since we're putting Directors of the Decade to bed, I thought I'd ask you to share your top directors of this past decade (and the masterpieces they've made). Who do you love? Who has made a difference to you?
Since we're putting Directors of the Decade to bed, I thought I'd ask you to share your top directors of this past decade (and the masterpieces they've made). Who do you love? Who has made a difference to you?
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Year in Review Part 2: Burn the Negatives!
The title of this post is indefensible, exclamatory (!) and puerile. But these movies piss me off and if they can be super obnoxious, so can I. Now, in truth, I probably never see the absolute "worst" of the movies that play in theaters since I can pick and choose my own film menu. My New Year's Resolution is to be more constructive when I criticize (I'm not giving up criticism. That's mother's milk). I'd also like to be more positive in 2010.
Thus, I retract the titular command: No negatives of the following movies and performances should be incinerated ... instead let them live on as cautionary tales to actors and filmmakers. People are watching. Try harder.
Worst Supporting Actor
I've already expressed my concerned about the "too much!" of Stanley Tucci's continually nominated performance in The Lovely Bones. I don't know what the hell Richard Gere was doing in Amelia, do you? And I don't want Alan Arkin to do what he was doing in Sunshine Cleaning one more time. You won an Oscar for that performance already. Move on! Other than his suddenly legal elfin beauty, I can't see what Colin Firth could have possibly seen in Nicholas Hoult in A Single Man. In the end though it was clear that this would have to be a group "honor". I considered giving it to Everyone in G.I. Joe, none of whom seem to nail the cartoonishly one-note style that the movie desperately needs (not that they're playing whole octaves either, mind). I wasn't entirely crazy about what Stephen Lang was doing in Avatar but it's exactly what everyone in G.I. Joe needed to be doing. But in the end I have no choice but to hand this to the Muggy McMuggerson twins Jae Head and Ray McKinnon in The Blind Side. I partially blame them for Sandra Bullock's sudden Oscar contention. Standing next to them (and the unfortunately blank Quinton Aaron as "Michael Oher") she looks like some kind of genius dramatist. I guess that's a new way to be a "supporting" actor.
I've already expressed my concerned about the "too much!" of Stanley Tucci's continually nominated performance in The Lovely Bones. I don't know what the hell Richard Gere was doing in Amelia, do you? And I don't want Alan Arkin to do what he was doing in Sunshine Cleaning one more time. You won an Oscar for that performance already. Move on! Other than his suddenly legal elfin beauty, I can't see what Colin Firth could have possibly seen in Nicholas Hoult in A Single Man. In the end though it was clear that this would have to be a group "honor". I considered giving it to Everyone in G.I. Joe, none of whom seem to nail the cartoonishly one-note style that the movie desperately needs (not that they're playing whole octaves either, mind). I wasn't entirely crazy about what Stephen Lang was doing in Avatar but it's exactly what everyone in G.I. Joe needed to be doing. But in the end I have no choice but to hand this to the Muggy McMuggerson twins Jae Head and Ray McKinnon in The Blind Side. I partially blame them for Sandra Bullock's sudden Oscar contention. Standing next to them (and the unfortunately blank Quinton Aaron as "Michael Oher") she looks like some kind of genius dramatist. I guess that's a new way to be a "supporting" actor.
Worst Supporting Actress
Rachel McAdams seems completely lost in Sherlock Holmes, doesn't she? I love Jenny Beavan's costumes in the movie but Rachel seems lost inside of them. I got nothing from that performance. Nothing! I can barely remember her in the movie and I saw it one week ago. It breaks my hard to express my dismay about Betty White in The Proposal ("too much!") because she's practically our collective grandmother and she's absolutely my favorite Golden Girl. But this dishonor goes no contest to Rose Byrne an actress I have never warmed too. That said, she's not usually flat out awful the way she is in her shrill performance in Knowing. [spoiler] I wasn't so sad when the world ended because at least that meant I was rid of Rose Byrne and Nicolas Cage.
Rachel McAdams seems completely lost in Sherlock Holmes, doesn't she? I love Jenny Beavan's costumes in the movie but Rachel seems lost inside of them. I got nothing from that performance. Nothing! I can barely remember her in the movie and I saw it one week ago. It breaks my hard to express my dismay about Betty White in The Proposal ("too much!") because she's practically our collective grandmother and she's absolutely my favorite Golden Girl. But this dishonor goes no contest to Rose Byrne an actress I have never warmed too. That said, she's not usually flat out awful the way she is in her shrill performance in Knowing. [spoiler] I wasn't so sad when the world ended because at least that meant I was rid of Rose Byrne and Nicolas Cage.
Worst Actor
I dedicate this award to Nicolas Cage but I'm not actually giving him the prize for Knowing (in which he is typically terrible) because, he's won too many of these already. Plus I hear he's lunatic inspired in Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since Werner Herzog is directing him. Herzog is, as you know, quite good with certifiable movie stars (See also: Klaus Kinski). Larry David made me bonkers in Whatever Works because he doesn't modify his schtick at all to suit a different writer's voice and he's even less believeable as a romantic lead to young beautiful women than Woody Allen ever was. I wish Hugh Jackman had remembered to have fun as Wolverine in that X-Men Origins dirge. He was better the other three times he played the role. But the loser here is Channing Tatum as "Duke" in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra because I think he thinks that the movie was a drama. Oops. He is stupid hot. And I mean both adjectives emphatically.
I dedicate this award to Nicolas Cage but I'm not actually giving him the prize for Knowing (in which he is typically terrible) because, he's won too many of these already. Plus I hear he's lunatic inspired in Bad Lieutenant Port of Call New Orleans and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt since Werner Herzog is directing him. Herzog is, as you know, quite good with certifiable movie stars (See also: Klaus Kinski). Larry David made me bonkers in Whatever Works because he doesn't modify his schtick at all to suit a different writer's voice and he's even less believeable as a romantic lead to young beautiful women than Woody Allen ever was. I wish Hugh Jackman had remembered to have fun as Wolverine in that X-Men Origins dirge. He was better the other three times he played the role. But the loser here is Channing Tatum as "Duke" in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra because I think he thinks that the movie was a drama. Oops. He is stupid hot. And I mean both adjectives emphatically.
Worst ActressI seem to be in the distinct minority that would rather watch almost anything other than Kristen Stewart's mopey twitching ... even in Adventureland but I've already talked about that. It's too obvious to tell you that I thought Hilary Swank was embarrassing in Amelia but, so what, I did. She was stiff, stilted and sexless in a movie that needed an actress with spontaneity and fire. But this one is no contest: Hayden Panetierre plays the title role in I Love You Beth Cooper. Beth is a standard spoiled beauty who discovers that a less attractive 'loser' has real soul (funny how that's always happening in movies. I wonder who the movies are made for?) Panetierre can't even manage this stock character that thousands of actresses have explained how to play for the past century of film.
Hell's Multiplex
The Worst Pictures of the Year
10 Fighting
I still giggle when I think of Joe Reid's brilliant take on this Channing Tatum is a streetfighter drama. Is it really a comedy about retarded men having hardcore gay sex? If that's what the filmmakers intended maybe it's a masterpiece and it belongs on next week's Top Ten list?
I still giggle when I think of Joe Reid's brilliant take on this Channing Tatum is a streetfighter drama. Is it really a comedy about retarded men having hardcore gay sex? If that's what the filmmakers intended maybe it's a masterpiece and it belongs on next week's Top Ten list?
Hugh gives Channing the beat down
09 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Greedily hordes all the well known pitfalls of inferior superhero movies like they're actually merit badges: operatically self important, humorless, needlessly complicated backstories, the introduction of so many characters that none resonate, battles for battles sake, invulnerable characters that rob fight scenes of any actual drama... Note to filmmakers: if people cannot be killed or even injured it is SUPER boring to watch them fight. Unless the set pieces are insanely creative or well choreographed and these aren't. I will always love the X-Men. I grew up reading them. But the past two pictures have unfortunately cured me of all desire to see them on the silver screen.
08 The Lovely Bones
Greedily hordes all the well known pitfalls of inferior superhero movies like they're actually merit badges: operatically self important, humorless, needlessly complicated backstories, the introduction of so many characters that none resonate, battles for battles sake, invulnerable characters that rob fight scenes of any actual drama... Note to filmmakers: if people cannot be killed or even injured it is SUPER boring to watch them fight. Unless the set pieces are insanely creative or well choreographed and these aren't. I will always love the X-Men. I grew up reading them. But the past two pictures have unfortunately cured me of all desire to see them on the silver screen.
08 The Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson's nadir. Garishly colorful when it needs the beauty of a simpler palette, entirely negligent about tracking the true heart of its drama (a family torn asunder), weirdly repetitive about its most obvious plot points, lazy with emotional shortcuts and telegraphed character details. In short, a disaster. Most hated moment: [Spoiler] Did we really have to equate Susie Salmon's cathartic posthumous first kiss (which she's happy about by the way) with the extended coundtown scene of her mutilated dead body being rolled towards a garbage dump? It's the worst and ickiest cross cutting I've seen in a movie since Eric Bana's orgasm in Munich but at least the latter made a solid narrative point.
04 Push (Not Based on the Novel by Sapphire)
I don't often watch movies and think 'this would be way better as a TV series' but...yeah. Push spends a lot of time (a lot) setting up the mythology of an evil corporation that experiments and tries to control people with psychic powers. The prologue itself felt like it should have been extended by a half hour and function as a "pilot". But even accepting that they decided to make this convoluted premise into a stand alone movie, it's a huge inept mess. It rarely goes for laughs but I couldn't help laughing at one recurring gaffe. Every single time someone used one of their powers in a crowded room the extras mysteriously disappeared. I suspect they couldn't afford the extras for more complex special effects shots but you can't really show them in a scene and then make a quick edit to the same set with special effects occuring and remove the extras and not have the audience noticing the mass vanishing, you know? Worse yet this occurs in the climactic battle. A "pusher" is controlling a small group of armed men. It's actually a cool effect as she turns them like synchronized soldiers to attack any opponent. Then the emotional climax occurs. They're surrounding her like bodyguards in the medium shot, there's some close up drama and suddenly they're not in the scene any more. What... the... hell?
The third stupidest thing I saw in a movie this year: The recurring visual of a "bleeder", whose power is screaming really loud until people die from internal bleeding, removing his sunglasses so that he can scream (f/x magic makes his eyes crazy). Apparently you can't scream while you're wearing glasses. Who knew?
03 G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra
The stupidest thing I saw in any movie this year: constant fiery explosions UNDER WATER.
The second stupidest thing I saw this year (regarding movies): abundant people trying to make thumbs up excuses for this movie. Thank god that James Cameron finally came back to the cinema to remind people that action films can be thrilling and fun ... especially when you can actually follow what's happening and there's some beauty and style to the big booms.
02 The Ugly Truth Over the past few weeks I've been trying to catch up with films I'd missed during the year. I've rediscovered something I knew already: it can be easier to watch mediocre or outright bad movies than quality films. I suspect this is why the box office charts are so often littered with disposable junk. Bad and/or unambitious movies require almost nothing from their audience. But if you're not in the right frame of mind, a quality movie's best attributes may slip right by you. I suspect this is why more complicated movies often get the dread "boring" tag from the general public. Junk is easy to engage with on superficial levels if you're feeling tired, stressed, distracted or not completely on top of your game... and who doesn't feel those things regularly? But when a movie is reallllllllly bad and offensive, none of this applies. It can prove very difficult to watch. I actually briefly hated the cinema (my great love!) when the credits rolled on this one.
Who knew that Tom Cruise's 'sperm receptacle' nastiness in Magnolia could actually be played straight for romantic comedy. And that audiences were expected to sign on and swoon? I'd name this the worst movie of the year but for the saving grace/problem of Katherine Heigl. She is actually a natural at romantic comedy but she's totally using her powers for evil. She called Knocked Up out on its sexism and then made this...?
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I've already said my piece on Hayden earlier. But I would like to add that after the Home Alone franchise's elaborate pain-making slapstick and this movie's insanely violent "funny" moments (people wouldn't live through these things in real life) I do worry about writer/director Chris Columbus's sadistic streak. Maybe he should make a horror movie instead of all these sentimental pictures. He definitely likes to inflict pain.
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Whew. Got that out of my system. I'm nice from here on out as I pass out the FB Awards starting next week.
But before we get to the top ten movies of 2009 which movies made you crazy hateful this past year... which prompted your own berzerker rage? And if you love any of the movies I just barked at ... what's wrong with you? (Joking! Don't freak out) If you love any of these movies... teach us how to love them more.
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Channing "Russell" Tatum
This just in: Channing Tatum to star in a remake of Gladiator. "That movie is so old" a studio executive whined, "Time for a reboot!" The star suggested bringing sexy (shaved head) back but producers felt his skull wasn't shaped enough like Russell Crowe's so a pseudo caesar haircut would have to do!
Actually it's a still from Tatum's 2010 release The Eagle of the Ninth. I have no idea what it's about (I have no time to read... especially when there are pretty pictures to look at!) but like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood trailer it wants to remind you of Gladiator in a big big way. Are you not entertained ........ by the bald great-by-association ploy? More pictures including a strapping Jamie Bell here.
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Actually it's a still from Tatum's 2010 release The Eagle of the Ninth. I have no idea what it's about (I have no time to read... especially when there are pretty pictures to look at!) but like Ridley Scott's Robin Hood trailer it wants to remind you of Gladiator in a big big way. Are you not entertained ........ by the bald great-by-association ploy? More pictures including a strapping Jamie Bell here.
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Up in the Link
T Magazine Bryce Dallas Howards' new roles. Hasn't Hollywood realized she's a bad luck charm by now?Pajiba Would you watch James McAvoy create "James Bond" in a Fleming biopic?
Back Stage Blog Stage Wicked is still breaking Broadway records. Can they get the movie version made already? Strike while the iron is warm. And cast people who can sing please!
Sunset Gun Kim Morgan's top ten for 2009
Observations on Film Art the ten best pictures of
...by Ken Levine loves Up in the Air. This quote should probably be used on Vera Farmiga's FYC ads. Talk about flattering the real revelation is Vera Farmiga. Picture a taller, sexier, younger, straighter Ann Heche with the smarts and sassiness of Bogey’s Bacall. I love this woman! I want to write a movie just so she can be in it.
Movies Kick Ass completes the series '10 Movies That Defined My Decade'. If I made a list with the same name, we'd share #1
my internet... "essential blog post of the day" Hollywood parties sure do make for unexpected photo ops
And because I always think that letting the movies bleed into your every day life is a great idea, here's an Avatar-obsessed makeup tutorial.... "rawwwwrrr" [hat tip]
Curio: Filmstrip Scarf
Alexa here from Pop Elegantiarum with a little winter warm-up. Normally the idea of a piece of film fashioned into clothing sounds about as cool as a piano key necktie. But I'm digging this filmstrip scarf by Azure Knits, and not just because the holes are real. It's pretty understated, no? It might be a bit too literal to wear it to Sundance, but it works for a winter weekend. Azure sells her wares here.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Body Painting - Gold
Models show off highly inventive and creative interpretations of the classic Chinese dress Qi Pao and iconic cultural motifs to launch Australian Fashion Week.
Kobe Hardman. Photo: AFP
Kobe Hardman. Photo: AFP
Body Painting - Gold
Models show off highly inventive and creative interpretations of the classic Chinese dress Qi Pao and iconic cultural motifs to launch Australian Fashion Week.
Kobe Hardman. Photo: AFP
Kobe Hardman. Photo: AFP
Year in Review Pt 1: Baffling Comedy and Over Cooked Drama
Part 1 of ??? (Possibly Many)
Before I get to the movies I feel strongly about (i.e. worst and best), I thought I'd share the three which I'm not sure I "got": The Coen Bros A Serious Man, Lars von Trier's Antichrist (my gut reaction) and Jody Hill's Observe and Report.
All three verge on the deeply misanthropic which can be something of a turn-off even if you're otherwise amused by the nifty formal control, shock aesthetics, or pitch black comedy. I'd love to hear opinions from readers on where these movies succeed or fail because honestly, I didn't know what to make of them. Or, rather, I am unsure if what I made of them will last. I currently think the first two in particular are wildly over acclaimed but I'm open to being talked out of that. At the very least all three feel like exactly the picture the filmmaker(s) set out to make. There's something to be said for movies that don't feel at all about confused about themselves... even when they prompt confusion in the viewer.
04 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it okay. But why isn't everyone sick of this franchise yet? Two more to go still? I'm not sure if I have the stamina. Silver Lining: Jim Broadbentwas a welcome cast addition.
03 The Cove
See previous post. I haven't seen much of its competition but it's tough to imagine that there isn't a better documentary getting shafted with its trophy haul (10+ prizes already). From the limited docs I've seen this year I much preferred Prodigal Sons (genius) Anvil! The Story of Anvil! (multi-layered) and Valentino the Last Emperor (entertaining!) for starters. Silver Lining: Dolphins are awesome.
02 The Hangover
I avoided this film for a long time. Frat boy comedy has never been my thing and I'd heard about the "Dr. Faggot" jokes and the inappropriate justifications of the same ('that's the way people talk!' for a film that otherwise doesn't worry a lick about representing reality). Watching it proved to be quite a rollercoaster. For the first 15 minutes I was bored solid and annoyed by the sexism/homophobia, generic setup and pedestrian filmmaking. Then, suddenly, the movie became consistently hilarious for a full half hour (which is more than most comedies can claim) as the inexplicable absurdities piled up: the chicken, the tiger in the bathroom, the missing tooth, the police car. The absurdly ballooning 'what the hell happened' scenario provided lots of funny which then slowly deflated, punctured by increasingly less funny 'here's what happened' details. Then in the final half hour the film returned to its generic misogyny. The takeaway: Boys will be boys, warts and all. Ya gotta love 'em! [back slap!] Women on the other hand... If you have to put up with them (and you do, unfortunately) only blissfully ignorant wives and sexual bimbos are acceptable options. Silver Lining: And yet... lots of laughs.
Tomorrow: Hell's Multiplex: The Worst of the Year.
Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.I rarely make time to rewatch movies (so many new and old films to see for the first time) which is a shame since a second look can be valuable. Some critics and civilians are loathe to admit that their minds are changeable or that their opinions aren't the be all/end all, but why? There's always new points of view to consider and life experiences that should shift your paradigms.
~"Rashi" according to A Serious Man.
Huh?
Before I get to the movies I feel strongly about (i.e. worst and best), I thought I'd share the three which I'm not sure I "got": The Coen Bros A Serious Man, Lars von Trier's Antichrist (my gut reaction) and Jody Hill's Observe and Report.
All three verge on the deeply misanthropic which can be something of a turn-off even if you're otherwise amused by the nifty formal control, shock aesthetics, or pitch black comedy. I'd love to hear opinions from readers on where these movies succeed or fail because honestly, I didn't know what to make of them. Or, rather, I am unsure if what I made of them will last. I currently think the first two in particular are wildly over acclaimed but I'm open to being talked out of that. At the very least all three feel like exactly the picture the filmmaker(s) set out to make. There's something to be said for movies that don't feel at all about confused about themselves... even when they prompt confusion in the viewer.Hyperbole Gone Wild
Since this happens to be one of my intermittent "consensus" years, I actually like most of the films and performances that have been racking up the Oscar-buzz. That makes kicking the movies while they're up more difficult. Maximum flexibility required. So approach the following list of 'ridiculously overpraised' with the understanding that none of them are bad. So, let's also note the silver linings.
Since this happens to be one of my intermittent "consensus" years, I actually like most of the films and performances that have been racking up the Oscar-buzz. That makes kicking the movies while they're up more difficult. Maximum flexibility required. So approach the following list of 'ridiculously overpraised' with the understanding that none of them are bad. So, let's also note the silver linings.
Over Appreciated Movies
[This section of the year-end review is dedicated to you-know-who. I've had to declare him ineligible for this annual tradition lest his movies clog up the list each and every year, including this one]
04 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it okay. But why isn't everyone sick of this franchise yet? Two more to go still? I'm not sure if I have the stamina. Silver Lining: Jim Broadbentwas a welcome cast addition.
03 The Cove
See previous post. I haven't seen much of its competition but it's tough to imagine that there isn't a better documentary getting shafted with its trophy haul (10+ prizes already). From the limited docs I've seen this year I much preferred Prodigal Sons (genius) Anvil! The Story of Anvil! (multi-layered) and Valentino the Last Emperor (entertaining!) for starters. Silver Lining: Dolphins are awesome.
02 The HangoverI avoided this film for a long time. Frat boy comedy has never been my thing and I'd heard about the "Dr. Faggot" jokes and the inappropriate justifications of the same ('that's the way people talk!' for a film that otherwise doesn't worry a lick about representing reality). Watching it proved to be quite a rollercoaster. For the first 15 minutes I was bored solid and annoyed by the sexism/homophobia, generic setup and pedestrian filmmaking. Then, suddenly, the movie became consistently hilarious for a full half hour (which is more than most comedies can claim) as the inexplicable absurdities piled up: the chicken, the tiger in the bathroom, the missing tooth, the police car. The absurdly ballooning 'what the hell happened' scenario provided lots of funny which then slowly deflated, punctured by increasingly less funny 'here's what happened' details. Then in the final half hour the film returned to its generic misogyny. The takeaway: Boys will be boys, warts and all. Ya gotta love 'em! [back slap!] Women on the other hand... If you have to put up with them (and you do, unfortunately) only blissfully ignorant wives and sexual bimbos are acceptable options. Silver Lining: And yet... lots of laughs.
01 A Single Man
I'm sure some of you may feel that this drama about a gay man named George grieving his dead lover belongs in the grouping above. 'You'll change your mind about it! It's great!!!' But I can't shake the film school feeling that Tom Ford's debut gave me. Some people see enormously moving beauty. I see enormously self-conscious imitative beauty. Not that that can't blossom into something better. I look forward to Ford's next film. I just wish people hadn't been as quick to shower him with praise. George practically drowned in all of it in the dream sequence! What will there be left to say if Ford makes a truly great film next? Silver Lining: the original European trailer is so flawless and hypnotic that if we were grading trailers rather than the movies they're advertising this one would be an "A". The same grade applies to Colin Firth's heartbreaking performance, especially in the first half.
I'm sure some of you may feel that this drama about a gay man named George grieving his dead lover belongs in the grouping above. 'You'll change your mind about it! It's great!!!' But I can't shake the film school feeling that Tom Ford's debut gave me. Some people see enormously moving beauty. I see enormously self-conscious imitative beauty. Not that that can't blossom into something better. I look forward to Ford's next film. I just wish people hadn't been as quick to shower him with praise. George practically drowned in all of it in the dream sequence! What will there be left to say if Ford makes a truly great film next? Silver Lining: the original European trailer is so flawless and hypnotic that if we were grading trailers rather than the movies they're advertising this one would be an "A". The same grade applies to Colin Firth's heartbreaking performance, especially in the first half.
Inexplicably Praised Performances
It would be a gross exaggeration to say "worst" when it comes to these two performances but both are misjudged. That they should be in contention for acting prizes over more complex, careful and rewarding work would be maddening but for the Career Reward aspects of year-end hoopla. Both of these actors can claim fine "nomination worthy" turns in the past. And by "past" I do not mean earlier in December when these performances emerged.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as "Jean Craddock" in Crazy Heart
One of my friends recently told me I had taken "bad mood pills" the day I saw Crazy Heart. If reviews could speak they would undoubtedly say the same. It's just that I felt that I'd seen the movie a hundred times before and that it meandered dully whenever it drifted away from the musical performances (quite good) and into the romance and addiction drama. Jeff Bridges is terrific as "Bad Blake" but his excellence didn't feel revelatory to me in the way that seems to be elevating the film for others. Since when is Jeff Bridges not terrific when he's front and center? How can this be a revelation to people after The Big Lebowski, Star Man, The Door in the Floor, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Insert More Movies Here? I bought Bad Blake's instant lost puppy insinuation into Jean's life but I didn't buy her ready acceptance of the same. The conflict that arises in their relationship you expect but Jean's reaction to it was puzzling. It didn't feel at all organic to the character as Maggie had been playing her up till then. What about this woman would have made her cast her lot so quickly with such an obviously "Bad" man? She doesn't play the backstory. You have to get it from the screenplay instead. Did Maggie misplace her script or did they edit out a crucial character detail scene?
I still love My Maggie G and it's not like I don't root for her to walk Oscar's red carpet quite frequently (If there's a big surprise in Oscar's Supporting Actress list maybe it'll be her?) but it's hard not to expect more from her after the electricity and depth of her star turn in Sherrybaby (among others).
One of my friends recently told me I had taken "bad mood pills" the day I saw Crazy Heart. If reviews could speak they would undoubtedly say the same. It's just that I felt that I'd seen the movie a hundred times before and that it meandered dully whenever it drifted away from the musical performances (quite good) and into the romance and addiction drama. Jeff Bridges is terrific as "Bad Blake" but his excellence didn't feel revelatory to me in the way that seems to be elevating the film for others. Since when is Jeff Bridges not terrific when he's front and center? How can this be a revelation to people after The Big Lebowski, Star Man, The Door in the Floor, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Insert More Movies Here? I bought Bad Blake's instant lost puppy insinuation into Jean's life but I didn't buy her ready acceptance of the same. The conflict that arises in their relationship you expect but Jean's reaction to it was puzzling. It didn't feel at all organic to the character as Maggie had been playing her up till then. What about this woman would have made her cast her lot so quickly with such an obviously "Bad" man? She doesn't play the backstory. You have to get it from the screenplay instead. Did Maggie misplace her script or did they edit out a crucial character detail scene?
I still love My Maggie G and it's not like I don't root for her to walk Oscar's red carpet quite frequently (If there's a big surprise in Oscar's Supporting Actress list maybe it'll be her?) but it's hard not to expect more from her after the electricity and depth of her star turn in Sherrybaby (among others).
Stanley Tucci as "George Harvey" in The Lovely Bones
Momentum has been building to give this fine actor/writer/director his first Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor. I can totally support that (see previous Tucci enthusiasm). But if we're going to do that can't it be for Julie & Julia wherein he effortlessly supported the movie and the star (Meryl Streep) and did so with great charm and well judged simplicity. In The Lovely Bones he adds so many affectations to the killer that one wonders why the neighbors haven't come at him with pitchforks years ago. And all of it is unnecessary since Peter Jackson and his production team are already telegraphing what a terrible pervert he is through camera angles, lighting, makeup and wardrobe. George Harvey is a killer but this performance is O-V-E-R-K-I-L-L.
Momentum has been building to give this fine actor/writer/director his first Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor. I can totally support that (see previous Tucci enthusiasm). But if we're going to do that can't it be for Julie & Julia wherein he effortlessly supported the movie and the star (Meryl Streep) and did so with great charm and well judged simplicity. In The Lovely Bones he adds so many affectations to the killer that one wonders why the neighbors haven't come at him with pitchforks years ago. And all of it is unnecessary since Peter Jackson and his production team are already telegraphing what a terrible pervert he is through camera angles, lighting, makeup and wardrobe. George Harvey is a killer but this performance is O-V-E-R-K-I-L-L.
Ways to Be Wicked
That's only one man's opinion, mine. And yours? Which 2009 films and performances did you struggle to appreciate when everyone around you was swooning for them? And are you glad I declared a certain film ineligible so you didn't have to hear me bitch about it?
Tomorrow: Hell's Multiplex: The Worst of the Year.
*
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Exotic Car
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Picture
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Turbo Engine
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Side View
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Sport Car
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe Interior
2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe WallpaperFiat Punto Evo 2010
Fiat Punto Evo 2010
Fiat Punto Evo 2010 Interior
Fiat has released details about the Fiat Punto Evo, the evolution of the Grande Punto, will make its debut at the next Frankfurt Motor Show. The Fiat Punto Evo comes with a wide choice of Euro 5 engines, including a 1.3 second generation Multijet diesel and a 1.4 petrol engine with the revolutionary MultiAir technology developed by Fiat Powertrain Technologies and eventually to be incorporated in all Fiat Group engines.
The new Punto Evo also offers Start&Stop, the system that switches off and restarts the engine in stop-and-go traffic. Start&Stop is being introduced as standard on all Euro5 petrol and diesel engines. Another system making its first appearance on the Punto Evo is “Blue&Me-TomTom”, the new portable satellite navigation unit that lets you manage telephone, navigation and information functions on a practical colour touch-screen.
Tags: diesel engine, Fiat, fiat powertrain, Fiat Powertrain Technologies, Fiat Punto Evo, frankfurt motor show, petrol engine, powertrain technologies, Punto Evo, TomTom
The new Punto Evo also offers Start&Stop, the system that switches off and restarts the engine in stop-and-go traffic. Start&Stop is being introduced as standard on all Euro5 petrol and diesel engines. Another system making its first appearance on the Punto Evo is “Blue&Me-TomTom”, the new portable satellite navigation unit that lets you manage telephone, navigation and information functions on a practical colour touch-screen.
Tags: diesel engine, Fiat, fiat powertrain, Fiat Powertrain Technologies, Fiat Punto Evo, frankfurt motor show, petrol engine, powertrain technologies, Punto Evo, TomTom
Best Pictures... "Play it Again, Clint"
Nathaniel: Once again we apologize for the long delays between episodes. This Best Picture From the Outside In series… it’s a helluva thing.
1928----1943------------------------1992-----2007
We continue to pull one movie from either end of Oscar’s chronology, working towards the center of their eighty-plus year history. This match up brings us two of Oscar’s most respected prize-winners: Casablanca (1943) and Unforgiven (1992). Both films essentially begin with a sudden eruption of violence (a shooting and a slashing, respectively) followed by the intervention of local law enforcement (embodied by Claude Rains and Gene Hackman, respectively). World War II era Morocco and Wild West era Wyoming are dangerous and morally ambiguous places. They're also fine places to escape from one's past and start anew. At least that's how Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and William Munny (Clint Eastwood) see it.
Casablanca and Unforgiven toss out key plot points and introduce multiple supporting players before they get to Bogie and Clint, their twin heavyweight champions of American masculinity. It’s almost as if the stories have to spin madly from the start to create enough centripetal force to yank these two self-contained icons away from their isolation and pull them into the action.
I appreciate Clint's deconstruction of his own mythology through William Munny in Unforgiven but in the end I think he can't get enough distance from it. He is that He is as it were. Casablanca, on the other hand, benefits enormously from the distance that its director Michael Curtiz has while he gazes at his star. Rick's reluctance to star in his own movie, Casablanca, remains wonderfully fascinating. What's more I love the incongruous artistic friction between Rick's job as host of the party (Everybody Goes to Rick's was the original title of the movie) and his actual personality as displayed throughout the movie (bitter, unknowable and more than a little self-pitying) which never seem to jibe. Casablanca remains unbeatably gripping, especially once Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) has entered the film. The western is trickier to ride with as it run in circles and occassionally veers toward great scenes. I love Unforgiven's thematic gravitas but I always feel like it's a sell out in the end, backing away from its disturbingly sober guilt to engage in old fashioned consequence-free blood spilling.
But I'm jumping too far ahead. Back to the beginning... when did you know that you loved these movies? Or if you didn't love them (gasp), where did they lose you?
Mike: Unforgiven had me with its opening crawl, about a mother's dismay that her only daughter would marry "a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition," rolling over a lonely shot, mostly silhouettes, of a man burying his wife. There's that distance you mentioned, and it crops up again and again throughout the film in super-wide establishing shots and full-body long shots. It's also there in the self-consciously artificial eloquence of the crawl and of much of the dialog; later, Little Bill will ridicule the writing of Saul Rubinek's scribe (a mirror, perhaps, of piano-playing Sam in Casablanca?), but he doesn't notice that he tends to talk like he's in a penny dreadful.
Casablanca also had me from its opening, with the staccato narration about how people come to Casablanca "to wait... and wait... and wait," followed by that amazing shot of one of the usual suspects shot to death against a huge poster of Marshal Petain, and then the amusing interlude with the pickpocket advising some unsuspecting victims to beware of people exactly like him. It's that combination of dead-serious drama, somewhat overwrought melodrama, and diverting comedy that makes the film for me: it has all the elements of a typical Hollywood production, but it all comes together in a magical, perfect film.
Nick: At no point have I known that I loved Unforgiven, though I admire parts of it very much and think it's an exceedingly handsome film much of the time. And "thematic gravitas" pretty much hits the nail on its big cardinal virtue, give or take the way in which the framings and shot sequences often do look beneath the brooding 90s cinematography as though the movie were made four decades earlier, like Sam Fuller or somebody making a nasty double-biller for The Searchers. (You can certainly imagine Fuller opening a movie with this ghastly, misogynist violence, though his approach would have been even less timid.)
But I'm going to disproportionately focus on my misgivings, because the film's reputation always strikes me as excessive to its strengths. I agree with Nathaniel that Clint never manages enough distance from his own iconicity, partly because his acting feels so inadequate to the task. I rarely feel, despite the curdled force of the filmmaking in William Munny's two encounters with Gene Hackman's Bill Daggett, that this character has really transcended a past life of odious heartlessness, or that he's been pulled fully back in, or that it was all that difficult for him to get pulled back in, if that's what's happened. For sure the film's essay about corrosive violence works, but I just don't buy the arc it's supposed to have. At times, Eastwood's line readings border on the disastrous, but even when he's solid, he's often a mouthpiece for the film's assertions about William Munny while actually embodying someone too much like Clint Eastwood, and blurrily so: waffling between the aloofness of his most famous characterizations and the grotty naturalism that the script seems to require.
On that point, I've gotta add that, Hackman's Oscar notwithstanding, the unevenness of the film's other performances - a chronic problem in better and worse Eastwood pictures - limits the power of this one. And as marvelously as the film resuscitates a late 40s / mid 50s shooting and editing style, I often feel (as I do not in Million Dollar Baby) that the film sticks itself with unnecessary shots and some repetitive scenes, especially as Eastwood, Freeman, and Woolvert make their way to Big Whiskey. A lot of people lionize the "classical" filmmaking as though it's automatically tremendously succinct and disciplined, or vindicated in every respect by relations to past masters, and I just don't think it always is.
Mike: Just nudging back in: I think the film's uncertainty about whether Munny's transcended his past life of odious heartlessness is the point, and Munny shares that uncertainty; his constant "I've changed! I've changed! I'm not like that!" is a bit of a Munny doth protest too much. He's trying to convince himself and everyone around him, but I never really buy it: he's always full of fear of himself; he knows what kind of person he is, even if he doesn't want to be that person. He knows that all it will take is a little too much to drink or an encounter with someone who doesn't believe his protestations to let everything loose again. He's like a guy who joined a monastery disguised as a pig farm to hide from his addiction to chaos, and his incessant talk about dear departed Claudia is like a repetitive recitation of the rosary. I think that's why the super-Munny who emerges during the shootout at the end didn't throw me very much, because I saw that underneath the surface the whole time.
Humble Pig Farmer or No Good Killer?
Nick: Whereas I believe Eastwood's projection of what Munny "really is" only marginally more than his borderline-amateurish performance as Munny the pig farmer (which is too clumsy to me to work as a reflection of Munny's own ill-suitedness to that task). Beyond a few choice shots and moments, I don't feel the odious heartlessness, the addiction to chaos, the super-Munny, or the desperate self-convincing. I absolutely agree with you that the script works exactly as you say, but what all the moody sepia underlighting in the world and all the stark silhouettes against a tub-colored sky can't do (for me), and what Eastwood's acting wholly fails to do, is to put real conviction and emotional plausibility into the admirably ambitious, tragic pitch of these character beats. I actually buy Frankie's soul sickness and sour temper in Million Dollar Baby much more than what's going on with Munny... and speaking of protesting too much, I worry that in stacking so many chips in the square of Munny As Tragic Figure and Story As Morality Parable, the film almost totally misses the more immediate premise, swatted right in the character's name, that he's doing all this because he flat needs the cash.
Break the tie, Nathaniel!
Nathaniel: Unnhhh....I realize you're pushing your reservations to the forefront rather than focusing on what you do love about it, just for conversation's sake. But if I'm breaking a tie it doesn't come down in the movie's favor. BUT I mostly like the movie I should quickly add, for fear that it's über fans come at me with guns a blazin.
I love Mike's assertion that the monster is always still lurking and the man doth protest too much but I hadn't realized until reading your objections Nick, that what was missing for me was that kind of spine-tingling amorality/savagery that suddenly makes you uncomfortable with your pre-existing love for the iconic star you've come to see: I'm thinking of a couple of Daniel Day-Lewis moments in There Will be Blood or that beating scene in Bugsy where the otherwise charming and suave Warren Beatty suddenly seems considerably less human while shouting at a victim with blood streaming down his face. (Remember that?)
I also think the bookend scrawls spoil it. That is so hedging your bets. Especially with the sunset. It's as if Unforgiven knows that deep down it is a super impressively disturbing movie but it doesn't want to offend anyone who might need more in the way of catharsis and redemption or don't want to worry so much about how much they enjoy watching Clint Eastwood kill people. I guess I wanted more in the performance and in the movie that was tough to stomach. No pun intended but I'm thinking of the scene where the guy gets shot in his. You just have to deal with his howling and his bleeding and his terror about dying while everyone else in the scene is reduced to the uncomfortable act of seeing and hearing him expire. Great stuff.
Nick: The toughest thing for me to stomach in the movie is the scene where Eastwood, still a stranger in Big Whiskey, is so pitifully hunched under his hat in the bar, and Hackman is goading him for his firearms and fixing to show him some Daggett-style justice. There's something bracing about the scene's stress on Daggett's absolutism and about the way the shots, the edits, and Eastwood's body evoke how coiled up, angry, ambivalent, and outmatched Munny is in this moment. I wish the opening assault on Delilah resonated quite this much, or Ned's apprehension and murder, but the sloppy casting and directing of the women keeps slaking the force of the outraged-women plotline. Frankly, I worry that the film can't think or feel its way all the way these crimes; it uses them too much as plot devices that get a little overwhelmed by the thick, heavy atmosphere, and it verges on a cynical use of victimized women and a somewhat timidly coded lynching as another one of those crutches on which rests the re-emergence of Eastwood the Avenger that worries Nathaniel at the end.
I'm totally leaving it up to you to trust that I like this film much more than I'm admitting, but I find its flaws almost as galling as its almost instant canonization. I'll happily concede that the
acerbic challenges to Western mythology in the Hackman/Rubinek scenes almost works better for me than some of the foreground Will Munny stuff, and it's a much more engrossing second-tier storyline than I had remembered.
Whereas the 'second-tier' stuff in Casablanca is not only perfectly matched to the headlining relationship between Rick and Ilsa, but I can barely find a single thing in the movie that isn't enriched by its connections to everything else in the movie.
Nathaniel: Absolutely. I suffer forgetfulness when it comes to Casablanca, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise; every time I've seen the movie it's like my first screening of it. The thing that struck me most this time was, in fact, the secondary elements and how they reflect back on and complicate the main triangle of Rick, Ilsa and Victor. Like the young couple I had completely forgotten about, the impoverished Bulgarians.
Should the Mrs. sleep with Renault (Claude Rains) to get exit visas and hide it from the Mr. forever? Posing this indelicate question to Rick, he is brusque and judgmental 'Go back to Bulgaria'.
Nathaniel: ...that just as soon as he's bolted from all that projected sexual guilt and marital protectiveness, he's confronted with Ilsa and Rick, reentering his club. He rudely reminds Ilsa of her own hidden indiscretions with a reference to Paris and then he's bolting out of there too and back to the Bulgarians to do what amounts to a good dead. And then he's off again, (this movie is as restless as Rick himself) this time colliding with Renault, the villain in this particular scenario. But, that's so murky, because the movie is continually asking us to equate Rick with Renault (in spirit if not in temperament) each of them reigning over their own amoral fiefdoms.
Now, the situations and the characters are not at all perfect mirrors of one another (which is how clumsier movies often aim for this same effect) but we're still talking about a man of questionable motives confronted with a sexual triangle that casts a possibly harsh light on his own feelings in the other sexual triangle in which a woman has been unfaithful to a husband that she shields as much as she can.
Nick: Nathaniel, if you keep saying all this smart stuff, I’m not going to have anything to add except, “I know! I agree!” and Mike is going to keep being stultified into not saying anything. Stop being so quick and savvy!
Casablanca was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 3 (Picture, Director and Screenplay) but not for the acting which we raved so much about. Unforgiven was nominated for 9 and won 4 (Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman and Editing) but not for the screenplay that we raved so much about.
*
1928----1943------------------------1992-----2007
Casablanca and Unforgiven toss out key plot points and introduce multiple supporting players before they get to Bogie and Clint, their twin heavyweight champions of American masculinity. It’s almost as if the stories have to spin madly from the start to create enough centripetal force to yank these two self-contained icons away from their isolation and pull them into the action.I appreciate Clint's deconstruction of his own mythology through William Munny in Unforgiven but in the end I think he can't get enough distance from it. He is that He is as it were. Casablanca, on the other hand, benefits enormously from the distance that its director Michael Curtiz has while he gazes at his star. Rick's reluctance to star in his own movie, Casablanca, remains wonderfully fascinating. What's more I love the incongruous artistic friction between Rick's job as host of the party (Everybody Goes to Rick's was the original title of the movie) and his actual personality as displayed throughout the movie (bitter, unknowable and more than a little self-pitying) which never seem to jibe. Casablanca remains unbeatably gripping, especially once Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) has entered the film. The western is trickier to ride with as it run in circles and occassionally veers toward great scenes. I love Unforgiven's thematic gravitas but I always feel like it's a sell out in the end, backing away from its disturbingly sober guilt to engage in old fashioned consequence-free blood spilling.
But I'm jumping too far ahead. Back to the beginning... when did you know that you loved these movies? Or if you didn't love them (gasp), where did they lose you?
Mike: Unforgiven had me with its opening crawl, about a mother's dismay that her only daughter would marry "a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition," rolling over a lonely shot, mostly silhouettes, of a man burying his wife. There's that distance you mentioned, and it crops up again and again throughout the film in super-wide establishing shots and full-body long shots. It's also there in the self-consciously artificial eloquence of the crawl and of much of the dialog; later, Little Bill will ridicule the writing of Saul Rubinek's scribe (a mirror, perhaps, of piano-playing Sam in Casablanca?), but he doesn't notice that he tends to talk like he's in a penny dreadful.Casablanca also had me from its opening, with the staccato narration about how people come to Casablanca "to wait... and wait... and wait," followed by that amazing shot of one of the usual suspects shot to death against a huge poster of Marshal Petain, and then the amusing interlude with the pickpocket advising some unsuspecting victims to beware of people exactly like him. It's that combination of dead-serious drama, somewhat overwrought melodrama, and diverting comedy that makes the film for me: it has all the elements of a typical Hollywood production, but it all comes together in a magical, perfect film.
Nick: At no point have I known that I loved Unforgiven, though I admire parts of it very much and think it's an exceedingly handsome film much of the time. And "thematic gravitas" pretty much hits the nail on its big cardinal virtue, give or take the way in which the framings and shot sequences often do look beneath the brooding 90s cinematography as though the movie were made four decades earlier, like Sam Fuller or somebody making a nasty double-biller for The Searchers. (You can certainly imagine Fuller opening a movie with this ghastly, misogynist violence, though his approach would have been even less timid.)
But I'm going to disproportionately focus on my misgivings, because the film's reputation always strikes me as excessive to its strengths. I agree with Nathaniel that Clint never manages enough distance from his own iconicity, partly because his acting feels so inadequate to the task. I rarely feel, despite the curdled force of the filmmaking in William Munny's two encounters with Gene Hackman's Bill Daggett, that this character has really transcended a past life of odious heartlessness, or that he's been pulled fully back in, or that it was all that difficult for him to get pulled back in, if that's what's happened. For sure the film's essay about corrosive violence works, but I just don't buy the arc it's supposed to have. At times, Eastwood's line readings border on the disastrous, but even when he's solid, he's often a mouthpiece for the film's assertions about William Munny while actually embodying someone too much like Clint Eastwood, and blurrily so: waffling between the aloofness of his most famous characterizations and the grotty naturalism that the script seems to require.
On that point, I've gotta add that, Hackman's Oscar notwithstanding, the unevenness of the film's other performances - a chronic problem in better and worse Eastwood pictures - limits the power of this one. And as marvelously as the film resuscitates a late 40s / mid 50s shooting and editing style, I often feel (as I do not in Million Dollar Baby) that the film sticks itself with unnecessary shots and some repetitive scenes, especially as Eastwood, Freeman, and Woolvert make their way to Big Whiskey. A lot of people lionize the "classical" filmmaking as though it's automatically tremendously succinct and disciplined, or vindicated in every respect by relations to past masters, and I just don't think it always is.Mike: Just nudging back in: I think the film's uncertainty about whether Munny's transcended his past life of odious heartlessness is the point, and Munny shares that uncertainty; his constant "I've changed! I've changed! I'm not like that!" is a bit of a Munny doth protest too much. He's trying to convince himself and everyone around him, but I never really buy it: he's always full of fear of himself; he knows what kind of person he is, even if he doesn't want to be that person. He knows that all it will take is a little too much to drink or an encounter with someone who doesn't believe his protestations to let everything loose again. He's like a guy who joined a monastery disguised as a pig farm to hide from his addiction to chaos, and his incessant talk about dear departed Claudia is like a repetitive recitation of the rosary. I think that's why the super-Munny who emerges during the shootout at the end didn't throw me very much, because I saw that underneath the surface the whole time.
Humble Pig Farmer or No Good Killer?Nick: Whereas I believe Eastwood's projection of what Munny "really is" only marginally more than his borderline-amateurish performance as Munny the pig farmer (which is too clumsy to me to work as a reflection of Munny's own ill-suitedness to that task). Beyond a few choice shots and moments, I don't feel the odious heartlessness, the addiction to chaos, the super-Munny, or the desperate self-convincing. I absolutely agree with you that the script works exactly as you say, but what all the moody sepia underlighting in the world and all the stark silhouettes against a tub-colored sky can't do (for me), and what Eastwood's acting wholly fails to do, is to put real conviction and emotional plausibility into the admirably ambitious, tragic pitch of these character beats. I actually buy Frankie's soul sickness and sour temper in Million Dollar Baby much more than what's going on with Munny... and speaking of protesting too much, I worry that in stacking so many chips in the square of Munny As Tragic Figure and Story As Morality Parable, the film almost totally misses the more immediate premise, swatted right in the character's name, that he's doing all this because he flat needs the cash.
Break the tie, Nathaniel!
Nathaniel: Unnhhh....I realize you're pushing your reservations to the forefront rather than focusing on what you do love about it, just for conversation's sake. But if I'm breaking a tie it doesn't come down in the movie's favor. BUT I mostly like the movie I should quickly add, for fear that it's über fans come at me with guns a blazin.
I love Mike's assertion that the monster is always still lurking and the man doth protest too much but I hadn't realized until reading your objections Nick, that what was missing for me was that kind of spine-tingling amorality/savagery that suddenly makes you uncomfortable with your pre-existing love for the iconic star you've come to see: I'm thinking of a couple of Daniel Day-Lewis moments in There Will be Blood or that beating scene in Bugsy where the otherwise charming and suave Warren Beatty suddenly seems considerably less human while shouting at a victim with blood streaming down his face. (Remember that?)
I also think the bookend scrawls spoil it. That is so hedging your bets. Especially with the sunset. It's as if Unforgiven knows that deep down it is a super impressively disturbing movie but it doesn't want to offend anyone who might need more in the way of catharsis and redemption or don't want to worry so much about how much they enjoy watching Clint Eastwood kill people. I guess I wanted more in the performance and in the movie that was tough to stomach. No pun intended but I'm thinking of the scene where the guy gets shot in his. You just have to deal with his howling and his bleeding and his terror about dying while everyone else in the scene is reduced to the uncomfortable act of seeing and hearing him expire. Great stuff.Nick: The toughest thing for me to stomach in the movie is the scene where Eastwood, still a stranger in Big Whiskey, is so pitifully hunched under his hat in the bar, and Hackman is goading him for his firearms and fixing to show him some Daggett-style justice. There's something bracing about the scene's stress on Daggett's absolutism and about the way the shots, the edits, and Eastwood's body evoke how coiled up, angry, ambivalent, and outmatched Munny is in this moment. I wish the opening assault on Delilah resonated quite this much, or Ned's apprehension and murder, but the sloppy casting and directing of the women keeps slaking the force of the outraged-women plotline. Frankly, I worry that the film can't think or feel its way all the way these crimes; it uses them too much as plot devices that get a little overwhelmed by the thick, heavy atmosphere, and it verges on a cynical use of victimized women and a somewhat timidly coded lynching as another one of those crutches on which rests the re-emergence of Eastwood the Avenger that worries Nathaniel at the end.
I'm totally leaving it up to you to trust that I like this film much more than I'm admitting, but I find its flaws almost as galling as its almost instant canonization. I'll happily concede that the
acerbic challenges to Western mythology in the Hackman/Rubinek scenes almost works better for me than some of the foreground Will Munny stuff, and it's a much more engrossing second-tier storyline than I had remembered.
Whereas the 'second-tier' stuff in Casablanca is not only perfectly matched to the headlining relationship between Rick and Ilsa, but I can barely find a single thing in the movie that isn't enriched by its connections to everything else in the movie.
Nathaniel: Absolutely. I suffer forgetfulness when it comes to Casablanca, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise; every time I've seen the movie it's like my first screening of it. The thing that struck me most this time was, in fact, the secondary elements and how they reflect back on and complicate the main triangle of Rick, Ilsa and Victor. Like the young couple I had completely forgotten about, the impoverished Bulgarians.Should the Mrs. sleep with Renault (Claude Rains) to get exit visas and hide it from the Mr. forever? Posing this indelicate question to Rick, he is brusque and judgmental 'Go back to Bulgaria'.
Nick: He is incredibly peremptory, occasionally even cruel, for a protagonist we are obviously meant to admire. And it’s not as though Bogie is downplaying Rick’s unpleasant qualities, which is impressive in and of itself. But you were saying…
Nathaniel: ...that just as soon as he's bolted from all that projected sexual guilt and marital protectiveness, he's confronted with Ilsa and Rick, reentering his club. He rudely reminds Ilsa of her own hidden indiscretions with a reference to Paris and then he's bolting out of there too and back to the Bulgarians to do what amounts to a good dead. And then he's off again, (this movie is as restless as Rick himself) this time colliding with Renault, the villain in this particular scenario. But, that's so murky, because the movie is continually asking us to equate Rick with Renault (in spirit if not in temperament) each of them reigning over their own amoral fiefdoms.Now, the situations and the characters are not at all perfect mirrors of one another (which is how clumsier movies often aim for this same effect) but we're still talking about a man of questionable motives confronted with a sexual triangle that casts a possibly harsh light on his own feelings in the other sexual triangle in which a woman has been unfaithful to a husband that she shields as much as she can.
Nick: Totally. And I especially agree that the recurrent doubling of Rick and Renault—which might be a “beautiful friendship,” but it’s also a pretty unnerving conflation from the audience’s point of view—is the linchpin to all of the other complex and often queasy analogies that the film suggests along the way among its characters, and their endless, tough predicaments. Even with the Lorre and Greenstreet characters, you can see little glimmers of them in Rick. If anything, he comes across as sharing Greenstreet’s curdled pragmatism at least as much as Laszlo’s idealism, and even Laszlo is weirdly icy. It’s hard to match the Henreid performance with the superlatives we keep hearing about him, even though this isn’t the kind of film that goes for the blunt irony of the notorious hero who’s actually just a cold fish, or an asshole. He’s something idiosyncratic, remote, believably hard to label. Which only gets back to how amazing it is that Casablanca trusts its audience not just to parse out all of this plot but to accept the gradations of character and compromise at almost every turn.
a beautiful friendship? or something more troubling...
Nathaniel: It's interesting to me that the movie is so widely considered one of our most romantic because in some ways it's very dry eyed about the impracticality and selfishness of passionate love. This despite all those wet eyed closeups.
a beautiful friendship? or something more troubling...Nathaniel: It's interesting to me that the movie is so widely considered one of our most romantic because in some ways it's very dry eyed about the impracticality and selfishness of passionate love. This despite all those wet eyed closeups.
I do actually think that the weird mismatch between Casablanca’s immortal commemoration as this fabulous love story and the actual experience of the movie, which involves so much ethical trade-off and compromise and emotions that are completely dictated or at least regulated by immediate circumstances… this is getting to be an overly long sentence, but don’t you think that’s part of why the movie is so hard to remember, from viewing to viewing? There’s too much cultural weight accrued to the movie people probably want Casablanca to be (the paean to a love that conquers all, and agrees to sacrifice itself for the Greater Good), that I find it hard, too, to remember all the complexity and ambivalence in the Rick-Ilsa relationship, and how peripheral it often is to so much else in the movie. It’s like, the movie is just as “on” when all the denizens of the café are duking it out with their different national anthems. And when Greenstreet or Lorre or Conrad Veidt or exceptional, marvelous, droll, and flawless Claude Rains is on the screen, there is no indication that the movie is treating them as anything less than a lead character, or principal antagonist. There’s just so much going on! Even Sam is more of a character, with a real and rounded point of view, than the backgrounded songsmith that we inevitably expect in a Hollywood film of this epoch.
Which leaves me wondering, is Casablanca so phenomenally great, and such a universally loved classic, because a) it’s able to balance a love story with so many other elements of other narratives and genres, or because b) people implicitly realize that however much we want stories about love’s simplicity and perfection, we actually need stories about the difficulties and quandaries of love, and its failure to rise up above everything else in our lives, much less to conquer it, or because c) given all the cynicism and political nervousness in Casablanca, it’s a major miracle that the love story does resonate so powerfully, and that Bogie and Bergman have such phenomenal chemistry that even though their only scenes of full, sublime connection are far, far away in a flashback, the movie is able to make that feeling available to us, in no more than a few minutes of a jam-packed film?
You can play it again... and again
You can play it again... and againMike: I've been pondering this for a month. Honestly! How do I follow that exchange? By changing the subject.
I share Nathaniel's forgetfulness, as this feels like a new movie every time I see it. Which ties into my lame attempt to wrap this up: this time around I was paying attention to memories and their power over Rick, and that applies to Will Munny as well. "You must remember this" but neither wants to remember. Rick ran to Casablanca and his bar to escape his broken heart and his reputation as a freedom fighter, but the events of the film reveal that Rick's still as much of a bleeding heart as he ever was. Will Munny ran to a pig farm and the arms of an honest woman to escape his reputation as a cold-blooded killer, but (at least I argued) he can't escape the fact that his reputation is basically accurate. Just like you can't change the fact that the "Best Pictures from the Outside In" series is going to be plagued by long delays between installments, neither man can change his essential nature. It's an interesting pairing, especially coming after Schindler's List which presents its own mirror images, one guy who can't change what he is and another who manages to. Life and fate, predestination—I hope that's a big enough note to exit on.
Casablanca was nominated for 8 Oscars and won 3 (Picture, Director and Screenplay) but not for the acting which we raved so much about. Unforgiven was nominated for 9 and won 4 (Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman and Editing) but not for the screenplay that we raved so much about.all 16 episodes of "Best Pictures..."
A joint creation/production from Goatdog's Movies, Nick's Flick Picks and The Film Experience
A joint creation/production from Goatdog's Movies, Nick's Flick Picks and The Film Experience
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