So I did pretty well in terms of predicting the Academy's votes on my last blog entry; out of the 16 categories I predicted, I got 13 right. Missed on Best Director (though I had indicated it would be a tight race, and my prediction was for Cameron to narrowly edge Bigelow, so I wasn't far off), Sound Editing (made the rookie mistake of forgetting many people can't differentiate Sound Editing and Sound Mixing and hence vote for the same movie in both, especially if it's an action-filled Best Picture winner), and Adapted Screenplay (big surprise to me here, apparently I overestimated the support for Up in the Air and underestimated the love for Precious, which made off with this big prize). Overall an interesting night with a lot of suspense, and while my own vote would have gone another way (see earlier post on Avatar here) I loved The Hurt Locker and am happy to see it get the win since this will encourage more people to see a quality film that has not gotten the box office attention it deserves. And of course congrats to Kathryn Bigelow who now has an Oscar to go with a long and impressive career - can't wait to see what she does next.
With those award-based thoughts now offered, I wanted to note a few things about the show itself, both good and bad....
KUDOS to...
1. Kathryn Bigelow for her speech. She made history as the first woman to win Best Director, and I really liked how she obliquely noted this but didn't make a huge deal out of it herself (though Streisand and the going-to-commercial teasers took care of this). She won because she deserved to, not because of her gender, and while this was an important symbolic moment Bigelow herself choose to accept the award as a director rather than trying to be a representative for all women - and the fact is there's still a long way to go before the male-dominated directorial ranks give equal room for talented women. Bigelow provides female directors a role model by her actions, not by making herself a poster child (and let's face it, this win will open up some more opportunities for her but will likely have little direct impact on the hiring or non-hiring of other individuals).
2. Best Costume Design winner Sandy Powell. The start of her speech, about "Oh, I already have two of these," came off arrogant and off-putting (though I think it was intended humorously), but I loved how she ended it with a dedication to the many in her field who don't get their just recognition simply because they don't work on period films or musicals. Well-said. I've heard the same from make-up artists: the awards in that category tend to go to sci-fi or fantasy films requiring elaborate "effects" make-up jobs, but in a lot of ways it's harder to do natural, unnoticeable make-up work since we immediately notice things that look fake here but don't have the same pre-conceived notions about how a Romulan or hobbit is supposed to look.
3. Hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. I didn't particularly like the dual-host thing, and didn't think a lot of their prepared material was great, but they brought their game faces and I thought did what they could with what they had. Loved the couple of brief video segments of them in Snuggies watching the show and the Paranormal Activity parody.
4. The Oscar telecast producers for (a) their tribute to horror films, an important genre that doesn't get much awards recognition, and (b) bringing back last year's stellar idea of having another actor talk about each of the Best Actor / Best Actress nominees. Time-wise I'm sure this would be a disaster, but I wouldn't mind seeing this for more awards. And I liked that this year it wasn't necessarily past winners, but instead people who actually worked with that year's nominee. But I'm a little confused as to why it was someone from the nominated movie in most - but not all - cases.
5. The continuation of last year's telecast's attempt to explain some of the categories and what they do. Nice idea on the sound nominees to showcase a bit of last year's Best Sound Editing winner, The Dark Knight, to highlight what exactly the post-production sound crew does. Also really liked the way they introduced the short films, showing a couple of previous winners in this category who have gone on to become successful feature directors and having them explain why the short categories are important. I know some of the home audience finds these boring, and I liked that the Academy is trying to explain why they should stay.
6. Best Animated Short winner Nicolas Schmerkin (for Logorama). His acceptance speech was short, heartfelt, and left with a great joke: "It took us six years to make this sixteen-minute film. I hope to be back at these awards with a feature in thirty-six years."
7. Best Makeup winners Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow for Star Trek. Don't remember who said it, but one of them thanked director J.J. Abrams for "never settling for less than perfection - and that's why we're here." Great message to all the aspiring artists of any sort out there: don't settle for making it "close enough," do everything you can to make your work exactly what you want it to be - insist on perfection.
8. The Academy for picking Avatar for Best Art Direction. I had heard rumors that some old-school film people did not want to vote for this since so much of its design was computer-generated rather than actually physically made, and glad to see these did not pan out (or at least were not consequential enough to affect the vote). Whether it's done in "the real world" or on a computer, it takes artists to design how a filmic world is going to look, and Avatar had one of the most imaginative, fully realized worlds ever put onscreen. The right film won here.
but I did NOT like:
1. The Oscar telecast producers for ditching the Best Original Song performances, putting together a weird dance medley of the Best Original Score nominees, and most of all having James Taylor playing during the annual "In Memoriam" segment. Nothing against James Taylor, but is it too much to ask to put on some pre-recorded music and have everyone focus on the people who died in the last year for 3 minutes rather than needing to give them a live concert so they can focus on the musician playing instead?
2. The Oscar telecast director for quickly cutting away from the Best Documentary Feature winners for The Cove when one of them tried to hold up a sign with information about their cause. They made a film covering something they care deeply about, and you're going to give them an award for that but not let them try to spread the word about that cause? Ridiculous. As a side note, for the first time in a long time I hadn't seen any of the year's Best Doc Feature nominees prior to the awards, but am going to make it a mission to see them now, especially The Cove and Food, Inc. for their importance and The Most Dangerous Man in America because it sounds fascinating and I don't know much of the history about this topic.
3. The different amounts of time given to different people for their acceptance speeches. They do this every year, I complain about it every year, so why should this year be any different? But I hate it when certain stars (often the Best Actor / Best Actress winners) are given as long as they want to ramble on (I'm looking at you, Jeff Bridges) while other winners are shuffled off stage as quickly as possible - this is especially bothersome for categories like Best Visual Effects where there are multiple winners yet they get less time TOTAL to talk than the single winner of the acting awards. I know people want to see stars, but I don't think they're suddenly going to turn off their TVs if every Oscar winner were allotted the same amount of time - the current system is just pandering and the Academy should feel ashamed of it.
4. Best Documentary Short Subject winners Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett (for Music by Prudence). As detailed in the above note, I personally believe that everyone who wins should get a chance to speak, and that more time should be allotted for categories where more than one person is taking home an Oscar. That said, we all know how the system's actually going to work, and so generally people who could win together seem to have some sort of plan as to who will talk when. This acceptance speech, with the two of them fighting for the microphone and trying to talk over each other, was just embarrassing - not just for them, but for everyone watching. Though if it's embarrassing enough that it makes the producers come up with a better policy for how long winners have to speak, maybe it was worth it...
And one split decision:
I'm still not sure how I feel about the doubling of the Best Picture field to 10 films. On the one hand, it added some more drama and gave recognition to some quality films that otherwise would not have received nominations (District 9, for instance, or Up, which otherwise would have been relegated solely to the Best Animated Feature category despite being every bit as good as the live-action films). And I'm sure the Academy is pleased with itself for the variety of types of films nominated. But on the other hand, it does take away some of the prestige of being a Best Picture Nominee, and quite honestly I feel like not all the contenders were at the same level (my own picks out of the ten, were there only to be five nominees, would be Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up, and Up in the Air). So I'm withholding decisive judgment on this question for now - maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.
A good show all around, a lot of suspense in many categories (other than the acting categories, visual effects, and animated feature I thought these were all competitive races), and no major complaints from me about who won any of the awards.
Now it's off to try Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in this week of catching up on video games. Thoughts on that project coming soon...
Monday, March 8, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Last minute Oscar thoughts
Meant to get this up earlier, but spent the weekend catching up on Oscar nominees (District 9 and Inglourious Basterds both a lot of fun, but not of the caliber of some of the other Best Picture nominees IMHO) and playing video games for a piece I'm doing on video game surround (thoughts on games coming in a later post).
Anyway, here 10 minutes before the Academy Awards are my picks: both who I would vote for were I a member of the Academy and who I think will win. Given the tight time frame, will keep explanations brief.
Picture: Saw 8 of the 10 nominees (sorry The Blind Side and An Education, but I'll get to you soon!). I think The Hurt Locker will win, since it's hard not to be impressed with all elements of the film and it's something everyone can get behind, while Avatar is an amazing piece of work but could (justly) be criticized for its story/script and be seen more as a technical achievement than a "best film overall." But given its success at the box office and providing a jump-start for 3-D (with higher ticket prices, and something you can't get at home) I wouldn't be surprised if Avatar edges out The Hurt Locker on the strength of what it's doing for the industry as a whole. For reasons detailed in an earlier post, I personally would vote for Avatar. Any of the other eight contenders winning here would be a huge upset.
Director: Tight race between Bigelow and Cameron. Both deserve the recognition, and I'd be happy either way. But I think Cameron's going to edge out Bigelow here (though this race usually goes with Best Picture and I'm picking The Hurt Locker there) for the sheer enormity of his achievement and vision. He'd get my vote. One side note: having just finished Inglourious Basterds, I think that's Tarantino's best directing work since Pulp Fiction.
Actor: Have only seen Clooney and Renner in this year's race (of the two would vote for Clooney), the odds-on favorite is Jeff Bridges. Based on the strength of the rest of his work I'm willing to trust the crowd and pick him myself as well.
Actress: Wow, somehow only saw Sidibe here. Favorites are Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep in a close race. I'm guessing Bullock will pull out the win here; personally in a heavily biased opinion (having not seen the other nominees) I'll give Gabourey Sidibe my vote.
Supporting Actor: Another category where I've only seen one (jeez, I know I spent most of 2009 holed up in an office writing my book, but I have a LOT of catching up to do). But it was Christoph Waltz, who is the fave to win, and is also my pick having just watched his performance a couple hours ago and been blown away by it.
Supporting Actress: Finally, one where I've seen at least a few of the nominees. Mo'Nique is the smart pick to win, and I can't vote against her - this is a once in a lifetime performance.
Okay, just heard the opening number start, so no more explanations at all, just picks....
Original Screenplay: me: Inglourious Basterds; Academy: The Hurt Locker
Adapted Screenplay: me: District 9; Academy: Up in the Air
Animated Feature: Up (both)
Editing: The Hurt Locker (both)
Art Direction: Avatar (both)
Cinematography: Avatar (both)
Score: Up (both)
Visual Effects: if it's anything BUT Avatar, the race was rigged
Sound Editing: Avatar (both)
Sound Mixing: Transformers 2 (me); The Hurt Locker (Academy)
Okay, the show's now underway. I realize I haven't hit all the awards, but in the last six categories I've seen either zero or one of the nominees and don't know much about the others so I'd just be taking a stab in the dark. Enjoy the show!
Anyway, here 10 minutes before the Academy Awards are my picks: both who I would vote for were I a member of the Academy and who I think will win. Given the tight time frame, will keep explanations brief.
Picture: Saw 8 of the 10 nominees (sorry The Blind Side and An Education, but I'll get to you soon!). I think The Hurt Locker will win, since it's hard not to be impressed with all elements of the film and it's something everyone can get behind, while Avatar is an amazing piece of work but could (justly) be criticized for its story/script and be seen more as a technical achievement than a "best film overall." But given its success at the box office and providing a jump-start for 3-D (with higher ticket prices, and something you can't get at home) I wouldn't be surprised if Avatar edges out The Hurt Locker on the strength of what it's doing for the industry as a whole. For reasons detailed in an earlier post, I personally would vote for Avatar. Any of the other eight contenders winning here would be a huge upset.
Director: Tight race between Bigelow and Cameron. Both deserve the recognition, and I'd be happy either way. But I think Cameron's going to edge out Bigelow here (though this race usually goes with Best Picture and I'm picking The Hurt Locker there) for the sheer enormity of his achievement and vision. He'd get my vote. One side note: having just finished Inglourious Basterds, I think that's Tarantino's best directing work since Pulp Fiction.
Actor: Have only seen Clooney and Renner in this year's race (of the two would vote for Clooney), the odds-on favorite is Jeff Bridges. Based on the strength of the rest of his work I'm willing to trust the crowd and pick him myself as well.
Actress: Wow, somehow only saw Sidibe here. Favorites are Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep in a close race. I'm guessing Bullock will pull out the win here; personally in a heavily biased opinion (having not seen the other nominees) I'll give Gabourey Sidibe my vote.
Supporting Actor: Another category where I've only seen one (jeez, I know I spent most of 2009 holed up in an office writing my book, but I have a LOT of catching up to do). But it was Christoph Waltz, who is the fave to win, and is also my pick having just watched his performance a couple hours ago and been blown away by it.
Supporting Actress: Finally, one where I've seen at least a few of the nominees. Mo'Nique is the smart pick to win, and I can't vote against her - this is a once in a lifetime performance.
Okay, just heard the opening number start, so no more explanations at all, just picks....
Original Screenplay: me: Inglourious Basterds; Academy: The Hurt Locker
Adapted Screenplay: me: District 9; Academy: Up in the Air
Animated Feature: Up (both)
Editing: The Hurt Locker (both)
Art Direction: Avatar (both)
Cinematography: Avatar (both)
Score: Up (both)
Visual Effects: if it's anything BUT Avatar, the race was rigged
Sound Editing: Avatar (both)
Sound Mixing: Transformers 2 (me); The Hurt Locker (Academy)
Okay, the show's now underway. I realize I haven't hit all the awards, but in the last six categories I've seen either zero or one of the nominees and don't know much about the others so I'd just be taking a stab in the dark. Enjoy the show!
Monday, February 1, 2010
"Avatar" at last
Let me start by saying that I've been a huge fan of James Cameron's work since before I knew who he was. I love the "Terminator" franchise (save the past summer's McG-helmed disaster) - yes, including the oft-belittled "Sarah Connor Chronicles" that I am still naively hoping will come back as a mini-series or TV movie at some point to wrap up the loose ends - and I don't think the guy has made a movie that wasn't hugely entertaining. I saw Titanic at least six times in the theater, which should say it all.
Certainly Cameron is not a terribly prolific filmmaker, but when he does a movie he does it right. Even his most ardent detractors have to admit that he's as technically proficient a director as there is (and everything I've heard about his behavior on set and in post-production indicates that regardless of his people skills or ego, he knows what he wants and knows at least as much about the tech side of the craft as any other director out there). Personally, I'll admit to even having a soft spot in my heart for his corny dialogue and emotionally manipulative tricks - indeed, part of what I love about his movies is that I know I'm being manipulated, and I even know how, and it still works. Perhaps my favorite example comes from a scene about 2/3 of the way through Titanic (SPOILER ALERT for the two people on the planet who are both ignorant of historical fact and have not seen the movie: the boat sinks). The scene in question has Leo handcuffed to a pipe as the room he's in is slowly filling with water. It's been a tense build-up to this point, and there's still another hour of movie to go, so Cameron breaks the tension with a nicely placed bit of humor (never mind if it works with the characters or not): as Kate goes to find something to break the cuffs, Leo remarks to no one in particular "I'll just wait here, then." Minor chuckle, the tension ratchets back a bit to give some room to grow back as the climax approaches, and we continue on. Brilliant.
I'll also note that I remember hearing about the budget overruns on that movie and brashly doubting any profit could be made on its at-the-time record-breaking $200 million cost. Lesson learned, and learned well: never bet against Cameron, either critically or commercially. Of course, it's easy to say that now that Avatar's box office is approaching the $2 billion mark, but for the record I had no doubts that the movie would do well - the reason it took me so long to see it is that I was holding out for an IMAX 3-D screening, all of which were booked at the times I was free during its first couple weeks of release (and then I was out of town and/or teaching an intensive all-day course for the next three). It's worth noting that Cameron helmed the first movie budgeted at over $100 million (Terminator 2), the first budgeted at over $200 million (Titanic), and I'm sure the first to hit whatever Avatar's costs ultimately ended up being, and all of those made huge chunks of money. If I was a studio head, if he came to me looking for funding for a movie, at this point it would be tough to turn him down even if the budget was $1 billion...
Which brings me to Avatar itself. By now so much has been said about this movie, it seems almost pointless to try to add anything new. So here I won’t try to review the movie (it's worth seeing) or discuss its philosophical/societal implications (I think those who say that it's anti-religion are completely missing the point; it is pro-environment as some have complained, but it's a sad commentary on our society that anyone finds this offensive - are they anti-environment? It’s not like Avatar’s suggesting that all industry is bad, just that there are probably more thoughtful ways to interact with nature than blindly obliterating it without any consideration for the effects of doing so) or even argue about what it may say about our species (as depressing as it is to admit this, if humankind ever did reach another inhabited planet that had resources we wanted, there’s a pretty good chance that this is exactly how we’d behave. I was rewatching The Matrix the other day, and it occurred to me that Agent Smith’s line about humans being like a virus, a disease, would have been equally at home in Avatar...). Instead, I'd like to look at the movie from the standpoint of a cinema scholar/producer and muse a bit about what it accomplishes in terms of the cinema as an institution.
First, and perhaps most importantly from the industry's standpoint, it has reminded people of the magic of going to the movies. As home theater technology has improved and ticket prices have skyrocketed, people have over the past decade increasingly chosen to watch movies at home instead of going to the cinemas. Certainly I myself have had experiences where I've been at the theater and realized (when I just paid ten bucks to experience an out-of-focus the picture, or an incorrectly set-up sound system, or some loud person behind me talking the whole time) that I should have just waited for a movie to come out on Blu-ray and watched it at home (where I know my TV and surround system are set up correctly, I always get a good seat, and there's zero chance that I'll be seated in front of someone talking, or behind someone talking on their cell phone, or loudly unwrapping candies every thirty seconds...). But I digress... the point is that in recent years, moviegoing has lost some of its luster while watching movies at home has gotten easier and better. If you have a good sound system, big screen HDTV, and Blu-ray player, it seems hard to justify going out to the theater.
Yet Avatar is packing theaters, week after week. A lot of pundits (who either have some axe to grind with Cameron, or are just the type of people who want to attack anything that's successful, or are pissed that their own particular favorite box office draw has been surpassed in the record books) have been loudly griping that Avatar has not really been as successful as its grosses would suggest because its box office numbers have been falsely inflated by ________ (your choice of 3-D surcharges, IMAX pricing, and/or inflation). Not to act as an apologist for the movie, but give me a break. By any measure, the movie is an enormous hit, and if it’s been successful than at convincing people it’s worth the extra cost to see it in IMAX, 3-D, or both, that’s hardly a strike against it – rather, sounds like a smart business move. I’ve read numerous people arguing that Gone With the Wind is the “true” box office champ, yet none of them seem to care that moviegoers seeing that film in its first run often paid a premium, or that the box office numbers cited for it today include its multiple rereleases over the seventy years since its original release in 1939.
None of this is to say that Avatar is the undisputed champ of the box office – certainly inflation makes it difficult to compare movies from previous decades to one release today – just that regardless of how you slice the numbers, it’s bringing a LOT of people to the theater (idea: what about instead of charting box office numbers, we compare movies by number of admissions? That model would have its own drawbacks, but at least would shut people up about inflation, 3-D pricing, etc.). That’s a rarity these days, and something about which the movie industry is rightly excited: this film is reminding people that going to the cinema can be something extraordinary. And because of this, Avatar is increasing not just its own box office, but that of other films as well. At least anecdotally (I was discussing this with some students the other day, and they had the same feeling), it seems some of the people who were not regular theater-goers but went to see Avatar remembered that there IS something different about seeing a movie in a theater (as opposed to at home) and have gone back to see other movies as well.
Whether this is a long-term trend (or even one verifiable with hard evidence) remains to be seen, but it’s a start. My gut feeling is that it might continue if other movies can do the same thing as Avatar, which is to remind us of the “magic of the movies.” I’m not sure they can, which brings me to my second major point: Avatar does something new. Once in a long while a movie comes along that shatters expectations of what the cinema can do and be. In my film history textbooks, I read about the first audiences to see the Lumiere films, or the original King Kong, or the first Star Wars movie in its original release, and always envied them a bit: they got to see barriers being broken, see the movies really doing something new for the first time. Myself, I saw all these movies but too late – I had grown up in an era where they had always existed, where it was expected that pictures moved, that anything filmmakers imagined could be realized onscreen with special effects, where the Force had always been with us. Now I’ve had my "Star Wars moment." I can’t say that Avatar will take the same long-term place in popular culture as King Kong or Star Wars – to my mind, the story doesn’t hit quite the same primal nerves as those films – but I do think that looking back, we’ll remember it as a watershed for moviemaking that changed the landscape of cinema.
Why? Certainly the quality of the performance capture and level of integration of human and CG characters are pushed to new levels. I remember reading the script for Avatar (well, actually the extended treatment that itself ran longer than most scripts) when it was floating around the internet back in the late 1990s, and thinking vaguely that it would have to be animated since I could not imagine it being executed believably in a live-action film. Well, Cameron did it. Some have claimed that this is not quite the “photo-realistic” level of CG that the movie promises since the entire world is imagined, so we have nothing with which to compare it, and this is a reasonable argument. But it’s hard to deny that this may be the first movie to rely so heavily on main characters who are completely computer-generated, interacting with real live humans (Gollum in Lord of the Rings certainly comes close, but he was only one character in a large ensemble, and existed in a real-world environment rather than an entirely created one). There’s a shot near the end of the movie (SPOILER ALERT) where Neyteri (one of the Navi) and Jake (in his human form, i.e. Sam Worthington sans CGI) share an embrace, and for the life of me I couldn’t tell that they weren’t actually both there in the same space. Of course, it may say something about my level of emotional involvement that at this climactic moment I was trying to figure out how they did the visual effects rather than focusing on the emotions of the characters, but I’ll save that discussion for a bit later... the point is that the CG and human characters and environments were pretty seamlessly integrated.
But this isn’t really how Avatar “changes the face of cinema,” though it is cool. My sense is that these enhanced visual effects will be useful in a significant niche of the market, but hardly all of it (at least in the immediate future). Sci-fi and fantasy aficionados have to be licking their lips for the possibilities Avatar’s enhanced performance capturing makes possible, but it’s not like this will suddenly show up in every movie. Despite George Lucas’s claims to the contrary, it’s simply not cost-effective to do a whole movie with performance-capture and CG if it’s something that could easily be staged in the real world. Most dramas and comedies I expect will not find a whole lot of use for this technique.
No, what’s groundbreaking about Avatar (to my mind, at least) is that it shows how 3-D can be used in a way that engages the audience rather than pulling them out of the movie (as in: “ooh, look at that thing coming out of the screen at me, 3-D is so cool!”). Put another way, what’s amazing to me about Avatar is that it uses 3-D in a way that let me forget the movie was in 3-D in the first place. Paradoxical as it may seem, this is actually quite an accomplishment. Historically, 3-D cinema has more than once appeared, made some money as a novelty, and then disappeared once the novelty wore off. This cycle has been repeated at least three times, and possibly several more depending on who’s doing the counting. I’ve seen some 3-D movies, including both oldies like The Creature from the Black Lagoon (in the so-bad-it’s-good red/green version of 3-D) and some more recent releases such as Beowolf and Superman Returns in more advanced 3-D systems. In each case, I felt like the 3-D was a distraction as much as anything. With Avatar, I quickly forgot I was watching 3-D, except that I felt more like I was actually on Pandora than I would have in 2-D. If future 3-D releases can follow the roadmap laid out by this film (start the audience off with more wide shots, hold shots longer, and don’t pull the usual in-your-face 3-D stunts), then the current wave of 3-D may actually hang on and 3-D could become the “norm” for cinema.
If 3-D does become the standard for what “cinema” is (and its ridiculous grosses can’t help but make studio executives want to release all their future films in 3-D), James Cameron and Avatar will deserve the lion’s share of the credit for this. Isaac Newton famously said "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Fair enough, and it’s worth pointing out that Robert Zemeckis has for years been working on the performance capture and 3-D techniques, and that Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings crew laid a lot of the groundwork for Avatar’s breakthroughs (it’s no coincidence that Weta Digital, Jackson’s New Zealand-based FX house, did a lot of the work on Avatar). But just as we remember Isaac Newton for taking a giant leap forward from what the philosophers before him had imagined, Avatar is the film I believe we’ll remember for really showing what 3-D can do if integrated into the moviemaking process from the get-go and used as a tool for immersing and engaging audiences rather than simply “wowing” them. I noted above that I wasn’t always 100% engaged with the emotion and story throughout the movie – certainly I was not as emotionally involved as I was the first time I saw T2 or Titanic (though that may also have something to do with the fact that since I first saw those movies I’ve had years of training in making and studying films, so that it’s a lot more difficult today for me to completely ignore the filmmaking aspects of a movie than it was back then). But I was never not entertained, and a lot of that had to do with the fact that I felt like I was really in the space of the film, and it was so beautiful I was happy to just be there and look at the environment, the creatures, and the characters. If I movie can hold my interest for nearly three hours largely just through being beautifully immersive, that’s saying a lot...
I’ll leave with this thought: as the Oscars approach, there’s been a lot of talk about whether a crowd-pleaser like Avatar can win Best Picture against such more serious fare as The Hurt Locker. Obviously both are good films and worth seeing (since it seems everyone in the world has seen Avatar, I’ll assume you've already seen that one and exhort you here to go see The Hurt Locker, which deserves a much larger audience than it has drawn thus far). I think Bigelow’s film is more important to society as a whole and is more thought-provoking. But ultimately it’s a (very, very good) dramatic film like many others before it. Avatar’s something new, and changes the rules of what cinema itself is. And if I were an Oscar voter – that is, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I’d choose to recognize the film that advances cinema as both an art and a science beyond what anything before it has done, even if the story of that film is not as unique or socially significant as that of its competition. Of course, this has not always been the case in the past (Annie Hall over Star Wars; How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane), so whether the voters agree with me this time, we’ll have to wait until March 7th to discover. But whether it wins or not, my guess is Avatar'll be the one the history books remember...
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Catching up on media over the holidays (Part 3)
(apologies for the delay between this post and my last one, I was teaching a 2-week condensed course from Jan. 5 to Jan. 14 that left little time for anything else)
For most of the country the "holidays" are already over, but at my college the spring semester doesn't start until this Tuesday, so I guess I can get a little more use out of this title. This time it's a couple likely Oscar contenders that I missed in theaters but have now caught up with on Blu-ray.
The Hurt Locker
At the moment (though these things can change quickly), this appears to be the front-runner for Best Picture, having just picked up the top award from the Broadcast Film Critics; we'll see what happens at the Golden Globes tonight (though the Globes awards are rather meaningless, the winners do often go on to nominations for the Oscars).
Not surprisingly, the movie itself was very good - intense and engaging. It was more episodic than I had expected, but I think that probably was for the best; this is a case of form matching content, and I imagine that for those serving in a war, particularly in a specialty area like bomb disarmament/disposal life itself could seem episodic, with each mission a thing unto itself, and not necessarily a lot of connections between them. Every day you get up, and you go out on a new mission and don't know what's going to happen. The movie did an excellent job of conveying this sense, and putting us in the mindset of the soldiers in which anything and everything may be a threat or a friendly, and they have to make snap judgments about how to respond to each person, scenario, or place. By the end of the movie we're on the edges of our seats virtually all the time, because it seems like danger could be anywhere.
Strong performances by the cast all around, including a few familiar faces in small roles. One of the most impressive bits to me was simply the way that two different men move while wearing the bomb disposal suit - you get a lot of information about their personalities just from their walks. Sound design was very strong, and I liked that a lot of segments ran for extended segments without music, and the music was subtle in others so that you never felt it coming in and out. Also a lot of good dynamics play, building up to loud, oppressive sound in some places and then folding down to just ambient and Foley in others. Great job by Kathryn Bigelow and her crew on all areas of visual and sonic design.
My only major complaint is with the ending, and to some degree I think it's as much a testament to the caliber of the rest of the filmmaking as anything else. Without giving anything away, there's an extended speech/monologue (well, extended in comparison to the rest of the dialogue which is very sparse) near the very end and then a musical cue at the very end, both of which I could have done without. In the case of the speech, I understand what the motivation behind it must have been, but by the time I got to that point the rest of the film had so effectively (and more poetically) conveyed exactly what was said that it felt superfluous and should have put more trust in the audience (especially after the great line preceding it, which starts with "You know they need more..."). As to the music cue, IMHO it was simply over the top and seemed like it would have been appropriate to a straight-up, good guys vs. bad guys Willis/Stallone/Schwarzenegger action movie than to this much more thoughtful dramatic piece. I guess I can understand the conceptual rationale for this selection as it says something about the character being shown, but again I feel like the movie had already more powerfully said the same thing and this felt like a bit of a cheapening.
All in all, powerful stuff, and a strong entry in the "war classic" genre: a film that shows soldiers in war but is really about something much more primal. I have to say that thematically this reminds me a lot of a more subtly done The Thin Red Line (Malick's 1998 version) even though these two films are artistically worlds apart.
(500) Days of Summer
Movie #2 in last night's double feature (I almost picked up District 9, which I also still need to see, but was a bit worn out from The Hurt Locker and thought this romantic comedy might be easier to handle). According to Entertainment Weekly this is a likely Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay. And the script is fun, has some good lines (my favorite pair ran something like: "That's what would have happened in a world where good things happen to me" "Well, that's not the world we live in."), and I enjoyed both the non-chronological back-and-forth structure and some of the little surprises (including the nods to classic films, especially the hint of The 400 Blows at the end), even though the movie hardly breaks new ground in the relationship comedy genre. I don't buy Summer's final decision, but I did like the very end of the movie so was willing to cut it a little slack.
What impressed me the most about the movie, though, was the way it used a hodge-podge of cinematic devices that all seemed to work, without any of them seeming out of place even when they were only used once or twice (which is hard to do, since usually unusual stylistic choices stick out when only appearing once in a movie). Consider that ALL of the following "tricks" made at least one appearance during the course of the movie (minor SPOILERS, so skip if you want to stay totally fresh):
- direct address to camera by primary character
- direct address to camera by secondary characters
- an omniscient narrator
- split-screen pairing "real" and "imagined" versions of events
- animation
- musical song-and-dance number
- fake "old home video" footage
- repeating the same footage with different sound pairings at different points
- black-and-white in some points, color in others
- 2.35:1 widescreen in some points, 4:3 in others
Kudos to director Marc Webb and the whole crew for combining all these different tricks effectively without them ever being distracting to the audience or feeling inappropriate. So it's worth checking out for the creative decisions made, and I definitely liked the movie, but I'm not sure it's as good as some of the reviews/hype have made it out to be. Certainly I don't think it's the #227 movie of all time (current ranking on IMDB). However, given that the pickings in the romantic comedy genre tend to not be as strong overall as those in some other genres, if you're looking for an interesting film that doesn't just paint-by-the-numbers, give it a try and even if you're not "wowed," you shouldn't be disappointed.
For most of the country the "holidays" are already over, but at my college the spring semester doesn't start until this Tuesday, so I guess I can get a little more use out of this title. This time it's a couple likely Oscar contenders that I missed in theaters but have now caught up with on Blu-ray.
The Hurt Locker
At the moment (though these things can change quickly), this appears to be the front-runner for Best Picture, having just picked up the top award from the Broadcast Film Critics; we'll see what happens at the Golden Globes tonight (though the Globes awards are rather meaningless, the winners do often go on to nominations for the Oscars).
Not surprisingly, the movie itself was very good - intense and engaging. It was more episodic than I had expected, but I think that probably was for the best; this is a case of form matching content, and I imagine that for those serving in a war, particularly in a specialty area like bomb disarmament/disposal life itself could seem episodic, with each mission a thing unto itself, and not necessarily a lot of connections between them. Every day you get up, and you go out on a new mission and don't know what's going to happen. The movie did an excellent job of conveying this sense, and putting us in the mindset of the soldiers in which anything and everything may be a threat or a friendly, and they have to make snap judgments about how to respond to each person, scenario, or place. By the end of the movie we're on the edges of our seats virtually all the time, because it seems like danger could be anywhere.
Strong performances by the cast all around, including a few familiar faces in small roles. One of the most impressive bits to me was simply the way that two different men move while wearing the bomb disposal suit - you get a lot of information about their personalities just from their walks. Sound design was very strong, and I liked that a lot of segments ran for extended segments without music, and the music was subtle in others so that you never felt it coming in and out. Also a lot of good dynamics play, building up to loud, oppressive sound in some places and then folding down to just ambient and Foley in others. Great job by Kathryn Bigelow and her crew on all areas of visual and sonic design.
My only major complaint is with the ending, and to some degree I think it's as much a testament to the caliber of the rest of the filmmaking as anything else. Without giving anything away, there's an extended speech/monologue (well, extended in comparison to the rest of the dialogue which is very sparse) near the very end and then a musical cue at the very end, both of which I could have done without. In the case of the speech, I understand what the motivation behind it must have been, but by the time I got to that point the rest of the film had so effectively (and more poetically) conveyed exactly what was said that it felt superfluous and should have put more trust in the audience (especially after the great line preceding it, which starts with "You know they need more..."). As to the music cue, IMHO it was simply over the top and seemed like it would have been appropriate to a straight-up, good guys vs. bad guys Willis/Stallone/Schwarzenegger action movie than to this much more thoughtful dramatic piece. I guess I can understand the conceptual rationale for this selection as it says something about the character being shown, but again I feel like the movie had already more powerfully said the same thing and this felt like a bit of a cheapening.
All in all, powerful stuff, and a strong entry in the "war classic" genre: a film that shows soldiers in war but is really about something much more primal. I have to say that thematically this reminds me a lot of a more subtly done The Thin Red Line (Malick's 1998 version) even though these two films are artistically worlds apart.
(500) Days of Summer
Movie #2 in last night's double feature (I almost picked up District 9, which I also still need to see, but was a bit worn out from The Hurt Locker and thought this romantic comedy might be easier to handle). According to Entertainment Weekly this is a likely Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay. And the script is fun, has some good lines (my favorite pair ran something like: "That's what would have happened in a world where good things happen to me" "Well, that's not the world we live in."), and I enjoyed both the non-chronological back-and-forth structure and some of the little surprises (including the nods to classic films, especially the hint of The 400 Blows at the end), even though the movie hardly breaks new ground in the relationship comedy genre. I don't buy Summer's final decision, but I did like the very end of the movie so was willing to cut it a little slack.
What impressed me the most about the movie, though, was the way it used a hodge-podge of cinematic devices that all seemed to work, without any of them seeming out of place even when they were only used once or twice (which is hard to do, since usually unusual stylistic choices stick out when only appearing once in a movie). Consider that ALL of the following "tricks" made at least one appearance during the course of the movie (minor SPOILERS, so skip if you want to stay totally fresh):
- direct address to camera by primary character
- direct address to camera by secondary characters
- an omniscient narrator
- split-screen pairing "real" and "imagined" versions of events
- animation
- musical song-and-dance number
- fake "old home video" footage
- repeating the same footage with different sound pairings at different points
- black-and-white in some points, color in others
- 2.35:1 widescreen in some points, 4:3 in others
Kudos to director Marc Webb and the whole crew for combining all these different tricks effectively without them ever being distracting to the audience or feeling inappropriate. So it's worth checking out for the creative decisions made, and I definitely liked the movie, but I'm not sure it's as good as some of the reviews/hype have made it out to be. Certainly I don't think it's the #227 movie of all time (current ranking on IMDB). However, given that the pickings in the romantic comedy genre tend to not be as strong overall as those in some other genres, if you're looking for an interesting film that doesn't just paint-by-the-numbers, give it a try and even if you're not "wowed," you shouldn't be disappointed.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
broadcast football, technology, and awards
A note to my regular readers: I've rearranged the blog's organization for hopefully easier use, including a search function and a list of all movies/shows/games discussed, with links to the appropriate postings. Enjoy.
While prepping syllabi for the upcoming semester, I'm watching the first of this weekend's NFL wild-card playoff games (trying to get things done before the Packers-Cardinals game tomorrow afternoon so I can watch that one without trying to multi-task). And I was musing about the "yellow line," which I'm old enough to remember televised football without (yes, I realize the grammar of this sentence is a mess). For those who don't watch much football, this is a visual effect added to the broadcast feed (it is not on the actual playing field) to show the audiences at home how far down the field the offense needs to go to earn a first down (sometimes a blue line is also added to show where the line of scrimmage is).
Football has always seemed to me perhaps the ideal sport for television. I still think baseball may be the best sport to attend - nothing else quite has the same ring as "take me out to the ballgame" - but it's not very exciting to watch on TV, and simply because of the number of games played (162 games per season, per team, not counting the post-season?!) there's not really much on the line in any one game. In football, on the other hand, every game can make a difference to some team, so it's easy to take a rooting interest in almost any one. Additionally, it has plenty of guaranteed stops in the action (unlike, say, soccer) to facilitate insertion of commercials; major plays can happen at any time so you want to watch the whole game (unlike, say, basketball, where games are almost always decided in the last few minutes); and the advantages of TV, such as the ability to show replays and get explanations and commentary from the announcers about specific plays (assuming you have decent announcers - see my earlier comments on ESPN's thankfully-over-for-the-season MNF), really enhance the viewing experience.
So there are a lot of reasons I think football is good for TV, but I was thinking about just how big a difference the yellow line makes. What it does is make football a lot more accessible to everyone, whether or not they know much about football, in the same way that you don't have know all the intricacies of pitching in baseball or the pick-and-roll in basketball to understand the goal in each sport moment-to-moment (hitting the ball and getting the ball in the basket, respectively). Now anyone can simply look at the screen and know that the offense is trying to get the ball past that line, and the defense is trying to prevent them from doing so. It's just that simple. Great invention.
What many people may not realize is the complexity of the technology that goes into this seemingly simple addition to the broadcast. When it first appeared, it took an entire truckload of equipment to add the line just to the main wide view of the field, and the camera providing that feed couldn't pan or zoom. Today, it appears in just about every shot of gameplay used, and is so common it seems a natural part of the broadcast.
But think about what has to happen for that yellow line to appear to be on the field as the camera pans and zooms during a game:
(1) a processor has to know where on the field the first-down marker is
(2) it has to correlate that with the signal the camera's picking up, even as the camera may pan across the field, zoom in, zoom out, etc.
(3) along the first-down line, it has to examine each pixel in the image and determine - in real-time - whether that pixel represents part of the field (which may be green grass, white or some other color of marking, or some type of snow or mud) or a person (including players who may be wearing some of the same colors as the grass or markings on the field).
(4) for those pixels that are part of the field, it has to color them with yellow and track with camera pans and zooms to keep the right pixels yellow...
(5) ...except that once the play begins, players will be moving across the line and the computer has to immediately change those parts of the picture back to the original camera image as long as a player's in that part of the picture, and then immediately back to the yellow line as soon as a player moves off that spot.
Pretty impressive, huh? For anyone who's ever done greenscreen or motion tracking work, you can imagine how tough this is to do in real-time for a live broadcast - and really, the system makes very few mistakes given the tough job it has to do.
Video, film, and broadcast technologies are improving all the time, and in the big scheme of things the little yellow line on football game broadcasts is far from the most important. But it's a very tangible example of how much creative and technical innovation still goes into making movies and TV better, whether through specific visible results (like the yellow line) or through gradual improvements in overall visual or sonic quality. In the spirit of the latter, checkout this link to the just-announced winners of this year's Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who put on the Oscars). These are the awards that get a brief mention during the Academy Award telecast but are not actually presented at that ceremony. The people winning them may not get the coverage or acclaim as actors, directors, and other craftspeople involved in the film biz, but the movies we see would not be as enjoyable without their labors. Thanks and congrats to all of them.
While prepping syllabi for the upcoming semester, I'm watching the first of this weekend's NFL wild-card playoff games (trying to get things done before the Packers-Cardinals game tomorrow afternoon so I can watch that one without trying to multi-task). And I was musing about the "yellow line," which I'm old enough to remember televised football without (yes, I realize the grammar of this sentence is a mess). For those who don't watch much football, this is a visual effect added to the broadcast feed (it is not on the actual playing field) to show the audiences at home how far down the field the offense needs to go to earn a first down (sometimes a blue line is also added to show where the line of scrimmage is).
Football has always seemed to me perhaps the ideal sport for television. I still think baseball may be the best sport to attend - nothing else quite has the same ring as "take me out to the ballgame" - but it's not very exciting to watch on TV, and simply because of the number of games played (162 games per season, per team, not counting the post-season?!) there's not really much on the line in any one game. In football, on the other hand, every game can make a difference to some team, so it's easy to take a rooting interest in almost any one. Additionally, it has plenty of guaranteed stops in the action (unlike, say, soccer) to facilitate insertion of commercials; major plays can happen at any time so you want to watch the whole game (unlike, say, basketball, where games are almost always decided in the last few minutes); and the advantages of TV, such as the ability to show replays and get explanations and commentary from the announcers about specific plays (assuming you have decent announcers - see my earlier comments on ESPN's thankfully-over-for-the-season MNF), really enhance the viewing experience.
So there are a lot of reasons I think football is good for TV, but I was thinking about just how big a difference the yellow line makes. What it does is make football a lot more accessible to everyone, whether or not they know much about football, in the same way that you don't have know all the intricacies of pitching in baseball or the pick-and-roll in basketball to understand the goal in each sport moment-to-moment (hitting the ball and getting the ball in the basket, respectively). Now anyone can simply look at the screen and know that the offense is trying to get the ball past that line, and the defense is trying to prevent them from doing so. It's just that simple. Great invention.
What many people may not realize is the complexity of the technology that goes into this seemingly simple addition to the broadcast. When it first appeared, it took an entire truckload of equipment to add the line just to the main wide view of the field, and the camera providing that feed couldn't pan or zoom. Today, it appears in just about every shot of gameplay used, and is so common it seems a natural part of the broadcast.
But think about what has to happen for that yellow line to appear to be on the field as the camera pans and zooms during a game:
(1) a processor has to know where on the field the first-down marker is
(2) it has to correlate that with the signal the camera's picking up, even as the camera may pan across the field, zoom in, zoom out, etc.
(3) along the first-down line, it has to examine each pixel in the image and determine - in real-time - whether that pixel represents part of the field (which may be green grass, white or some other color of marking, or some type of snow or mud) or a person (including players who may be wearing some of the same colors as the grass or markings on the field).
(4) for those pixels that are part of the field, it has to color them with yellow and track with camera pans and zooms to keep the right pixels yellow...
(5) ...except that once the play begins, players will be moving across the line and the computer has to immediately change those parts of the picture back to the original camera image as long as a player's in that part of the picture, and then immediately back to the yellow line as soon as a player moves off that spot.
Pretty impressive, huh? For anyone who's ever done greenscreen or motion tracking work, you can imagine how tough this is to do in real-time for a live broadcast - and really, the system makes very few mistakes given the tough job it has to do.
Video, film, and broadcast technologies are improving all the time, and in the big scheme of things the little yellow line on football game broadcasts is far from the most important. But it's a very tangible example of how much creative and technical innovation still goes into making movies and TV better, whether through specific visible results (like the yellow line) or through gradual improvements in overall visual or sonic quality. In the spirit of the latter, checkout this link to the just-announced winners of this year's Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who put on the Oscars). These are the awards that get a brief mention during the Academy Award telecast but are not actually presented at that ceremony. The people winning them may not get the coverage or acclaim as actors, directors, and other craftspeople involved in the film biz, but the movies we see would not be as enjoyable without their labors. Thanks and congrats to all of them.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Catching up on media over the holidays (Part 2)
So I'm finally catching up on the new movies, TV, etc. My quick-hit thoughts (well, at least that was what was intended, and as I tend to do I ended up writing more than planned) on three movies seen this week:
The Princess and the Frog
It's great to see a solid 2-D hand-drawn animated feature from Disney after several flops and the studio's attempt at one point to abandon that style and rely solely on 3-D computer animation for its animated films. John Lasseter is a visionary filmmaker in the strongest sense of the word (as evidenced by Toy Story, Cars, etc.) but may be even smarter as an executive, helping people to flourish around him, and was wise to reinvigorate Disney's hand animation unit when Pixar was bought by Disney and he was given creative reign over Disney's entire animation business. This is the studio that brought us everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia in their golden age to The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid in their 80s/90s renaissance - which is why it's so exciting to see another good, solid entry in their catalog.
The Princess and the Frog (hereafter PATF) is not the best Disney animated film to date, but it's a well-done, engaging story that I expect kids and adults to be enjoying for years to come. From a sociocultural standpoint, this is a milestone in that it gives the hugely popular "Disney princesses" line a long-overdue African-American character in the film's heroine Tiana; the film mostly sidesteps the larger issue of what it means to be a poor black girl growing up in an economically and racially segregated city, and what possibilities this affords (or, more importantly, does not afford), but this is perhaps for the best, and I must admit (minor spoiler alert) that I liked that the film gave Tiana's rich white friend Charlotte a chance to show there was more to her than we had previously suspected at the end - though I couldn't help but wonder why Tiana's rich white friend Big Daddy could not have simply helped her out financially earlier on, since he clearly had more money than he knew what to do with and was aware Tiana could have used it to start her restaurant. But I digress...
The film's plot is predictable - in a good way, so perhaps "comfortable" would be a better word - and it's not really any surprise how things end up in a big-picture sort of way. Its details, though, are charming, from the amusing secondary characters who assist our heroes (what would a Disney be without memorable sidekicks?) to the very specific-feeling bayou, New Orleans streets, plantation house, and other settings. PATF is a feast for the eyes, and has enough genuine laughs and emotion to keep you engaged the whole way through. At ~1:40 it's just the right length, leaving you wanting just a bit more but still feeling successfully concluded.
When compared to the best of Disney's animated films, I have to admit that the songs are not up to snuff - upon leaving the theater, I couldn't remember a single memorable tune or lyric that I would want to hear again. It's not that the songs are "bad," just that they don't have the classic feel of something like "Under the Sea" or "Beauty and the Beast". But this is a minor quibble in a strong film, and I enjoyed the songs in the moment even if I didn't come out humming them.
One note of caution: not sure how this film got a "G" rating, though given how arbitrary the MPAA's ratings are and the fact that they generally assume any Disney animated movie is an automatic G, perhaps it's not surprising. I thought a couple of the scenes with the "Shadowman," particularly when he's summoning the spirits to his assistance (and later when - spoiler alert - he's getting dragged back to the nether realms with them) could be pretty intense for little kids. Adults will appreciate the strong visual style with which these are done, however.
Sherlock Holmes
Full disclosure: I'm a longtime fan of the Sherlock Holmes character, and have read all the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as well as a number of Holmes stories (both those true to the original style and those that spin Holmes in a new direction) by later authors. I even watch House religiously. So I was understandably worried when I heard Guy Ritchie had been entrusted with such a classic and close-to-my-heart character. The good news? It turns out my fears were only partially justified. True, the action scenes are put together with Ritchie's normal cut-too-fast-and-shot-too-close-to-make-sense-of style (he's like a low-rent Michael Bay, except not as good), and there's not much in the way of classic Holmesian deduction. And I'm not sure that the portrayals of Holmes and Watson here have much in common with the way Doyle envisioned them.
But that doesn't mean the movie's a failure. In fact, I quite enjoyed it as a "popcorn movie"; Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are a lot of fun to watch. It's just that it's not a "Sherlocks Holmes movie." The joy of the Holmes character has always been (at least to me) his ability to take tiny little things and deduce something larger from them. And we do get a bit of that in this film, but not enough to make it what the movie's really about. Instead, we get a bickering old married couple in Holmes/Watson (whose friendship today would certainly fall under the label "bromance"), a lot of fist-fighting and shooting, and a focus on the supernatural that's antithetical (for most of the movie at least) to Holmes' classic rationality.
On its own terms, it works. And I have to give credit where credit is due: this movie does a nice job with Watson. Too many of the older cinematic/TV incarnations of Watson paint him as a doddering fool who's only there to fulfill the plot need of Holmes having someone to whom he can explain his deductions at the end. This never rang true to me: Doyle makes it clear that Holmes and Watson have a real friendship, and I just don't buy that someone as intelligent as Holmes would tolerate spending his time with an idiot. So what I appreciated here is that Watson is made as intelligent and strong a force as Holmes. True, he may not have the same level of attention to detail or deductive reasoning as his more famous companion, but it's clear that he and Holmes feed off each other, and while Watson may get a thrill from accompanying his friend and watching him solve cases, Holmes cannot function without his friend as a sounding board and companion: he needs someone who not only understands his need for intellectual stimulation and hence puts up with his eccentricities, but also can hold his own in a conversation and is not afraid to call Holmes on his more ridiculous behaviors. So kudos on this relationship to the actors, screenwriters, and director.
Ironically, it is a structural element of the film that tries to mimic the structure of Doyle's original stories which is one of its biggest failings. In the classic short stories, Holmes tends to withhold his explanations until the end, when he reveals to Watson and/or his client and/or the police how he solved the case. No problem in a short story, where there is a single key mystery and usually one key observation Holmes made that showed him the answer. The problem with the film is that it raises a LOT of mysteries but (like the short stories) doesn't let Holmes explain anything until the end, when he's forced to give a five-minute monologue laying out all his deductions and explanations in a row, dragging what should have been the climax of the movie to a screeching halt. Far better would have been for him to reveal some of his reasoning throughout, and save the final explanation that ties it all together until the denouement, when it could have carried a lot more punch in a much shorter timeframe.
Go see the movie, you'll have fun, but don't expect something as memorable as the original character. My prediction? This film will make its money, and probably spark a franchise, but will be one of those that is quickly forgotten once it's over. It'll be one of those you watch on late-night cable TV years down the road, but not something you'd actively seek out. Given my feelings about what they've done with the Holmes/Watson relationship, though, I must admit I'll be keeping my eyes out for a sequel, hoping they can build on that strength but have a more truly Holmesian mystery for those two to tackle.
p.s. - keep your ears peeled for some interesting surround usage in the scene where Holmes and Watson investigate the factory on the river.... nicely used here, and I just wish they would have been as thoughtful about the surround the rest of the movie.
Up in the Air
Easily the best movie I've seen this holiday season thus far. The plot is predictable in both its large-scale movements and the in details of its execution, and there were very few "twists" you didn't see coming a mile away, including the ending. But for all that, it's a treat and hard to resist. The actors are superb, and it's a joy just to see them chew on these complex characters. Vera Farmiga is amazing (and gorgeous - why isn't she in more things?) and Anna Kendrick is outstanding in a role very different (but just as well played) as her Alice in the Twilight movies. But it's George Clooney's movie to carry, and he does it. I always forget how good Clooney can be until I see him flexing his muscles in a role like this. Just the range of smiles he uses throughout - truly happy, pretending to be happy, not happy, pretending not to be happy, etc. - and the amount conveyed through them is unbelievable.
The only one more impressive is Jason Reitman: in only his third feature, he's as confident a director as it seems there is working today - and it's a well-earned confidence. Often he's willing to forgo dialogue and let the visuals tell the story, and they do (check out the wedding sequence, which is extraordinary for what it conveys and how it does so, and feels effortless despite the work that has to go into staging any such complex sequence). But he's also not afraid to let the characters talk, and their dialogue (co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from the novel by Walter Kim) sparkles. It's natural and witty, and feels like exactly what these characters would say in these situations.
There's so much one could say about this movie - it's a slice of life, a relationship movie, a workplace comedy, and an insightful social commentary about modern life and work - and yet at the same time it's hard to say a whole lot about it since the joy of this movie is the little things: the way characters share moments, the editing rhythms, the sense of truth to it. So I'll leave it at this: this is a little gem of a movie, without the flash of so many other films this year but with far more emotional and intellectual engagement.
Between this and Precious, there are two movies out right now that are not getting the press and media attention of their bigger-budget brethren but deserve to be seen. Whether naively or optimistically, I'm a believer that movie audiences get what they deserve: if we go out and see terrible movies, the studios will continue to put out more of the same. If, on the other hand, movies like Up in the Air and Precious show that they not only can garner critical raves but also can attract audiences and make money, more character-driven pictures like these will get made. Go out and see them, and you'll be glad you did.
The Princess and the Frog
It's great to see a solid 2-D hand-drawn animated feature from Disney after several flops and the studio's attempt at one point to abandon that style and rely solely on 3-D computer animation for its animated films. John Lasseter is a visionary filmmaker in the strongest sense of the word (as evidenced by Toy Story, Cars, etc.) but may be even smarter as an executive, helping people to flourish around him, and was wise to reinvigorate Disney's hand animation unit when Pixar was bought by Disney and he was given creative reign over Disney's entire animation business. This is the studio that brought us everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia in their golden age to The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid in their 80s/90s renaissance - which is why it's so exciting to see another good, solid entry in their catalog.
The Princess and the Frog (hereafter PATF) is not the best Disney animated film to date, but it's a well-done, engaging story that I expect kids and adults to be enjoying for years to come. From a sociocultural standpoint, this is a milestone in that it gives the hugely popular "Disney princesses" line a long-overdue African-American character in the film's heroine Tiana; the film mostly sidesteps the larger issue of what it means to be a poor black girl growing up in an economically and racially segregated city, and what possibilities this affords (or, more importantly, does not afford), but this is perhaps for the best, and I must admit (minor spoiler alert) that I liked that the film gave Tiana's rich white friend Charlotte a chance to show there was more to her than we had previously suspected at the end - though I couldn't help but wonder why Tiana's rich white friend Big Daddy could not have simply helped her out financially earlier on, since he clearly had more money than he knew what to do with and was aware Tiana could have used it to start her restaurant. But I digress...
The film's plot is predictable - in a good way, so perhaps "comfortable" would be a better word - and it's not really any surprise how things end up in a big-picture sort of way. Its details, though, are charming, from the amusing secondary characters who assist our heroes (what would a Disney be without memorable sidekicks?) to the very specific-feeling bayou, New Orleans streets, plantation house, and other settings. PATF is a feast for the eyes, and has enough genuine laughs and emotion to keep you engaged the whole way through. At ~1:40 it's just the right length, leaving you wanting just a bit more but still feeling successfully concluded.
When compared to the best of Disney's animated films, I have to admit that the songs are not up to snuff - upon leaving the theater, I couldn't remember a single memorable tune or lyric that I would want to hear again. It's not that the songs are "bad," just that they don't have the classic feel of something like "Under the Sea" or "Beauty and the Beast". But this is a minor quibble in a strong film, and I enjoyed the songs in the moment even if I didn't come out humming them.
One note of caution: not sure how this film got a "G" rating, though given how arbitrary the MPAA's ratings are and the fact that they generally assume any Disney animated movie is an automatic G, perhaps it's not surprising. I thought a couple of the scenes with the "Shadowman," particularly when he's summoning the spirits to his assistance (and later when - spoiler alert - he's getting dragged back to the nether realms with them) could be pretty intense for little kids. Adults will appreciate the strong visual style with which these are done, however.
Sherlock Holmes
Full disclosure: I'm a longtime fan of the Sherlock Holmes character, and have read all the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as well as a number of Holmes stories (both those true to the original style and those that spin Holmes in a new direction) by later authors. I even watch House religiously. So I was understandably worried when I heard Guy Ritchie had been entrusted with such a classic and close-to-my-heart character. The good news? It turns out my fears were only partially justified. True, the action scenes are put together with Ritchie's normal cut-too-fast-and-shot-too-close-to-make-sense-of style (he's like a low-rent Michael Bay, except not as good), and there's not much in the way of classic Holmesian deduction. And I'm not sure that the portrayals of Holmes and Watson here have much in common with the way Doyle envisioned them.
But that doesn't mean the movie's a failure. In fact, I quite enjoyed it as a "popcorn movie"; Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are a lot of fun to watch. It's just that it's not a "Sherlocks Holmes movie." The joy of the Holmes character has always been (at least to me) his ability to take tiny little things and deduce something larger from them. And we do get a bit of that in this film, but not enough to make it what the movie's really about. Instead, we get a bickering old married couple in Holmes/Watson (whose friendship today would certainly fall under the label "bromance"), a lot of fist-fighting and shooting, and a focus on the supernatural that's antithetical (for most of the movie at least) to Holmes' classic rationality.
On its own terms, it works. And I have to give credit where credit is due: this movie does a nice job with Watson. Too many of the older cinematic/TV incarnations of Watson paint him as a doddering fool who's only there to fulfill the plot need of Holmes having someone to whom he can explain his deductions at the end. This never rang true to me: Doyle makes it clear that Holmes and Watson have a real friendship, and I just don't buy that someone as intelligent as Holmes would tolerate spending his time with an idiot. So what I appreciated here is that Watson is made as intelligent and strong a force as Holmes. True, he may not have the same level of attention to detail or deductive reasoning as his more famous companion, but it's clear that he and Holmes feed off each other, and while Watson may get a thrill from accompanying his friend and watching him solve cases, Holmes cannot function without his friend as a sounding board and companion: he needs someone who not only understands his need for intellectual stimulation and hence puts up with his eccentricities, but also can hold his own in a conversation and is not afraid to call Holmes on his more ridiculous behaviors. So kudos on this relationship to the actors, screenwriters, and director.
Ironically, it is a structural element of the film that tries to mimic the structure of Doyle's original stories which is one of its biggest failings. In the classic short stories, Holmes tends to withhold his explanations until the end, when he reveals to Watson and/or his client and/or the police how he solved the case. No problem in a short story, where there is a single key mystery and usually one key observation Holmes made that showed him the answer. The problem with the film is that it raises a LOT of mysteries but (like the short stories) doesn't let Holmes explain anything until the end, when he's forced to give a five-minute monologue laying out all his deductions and explanations in a row, dragging what should have been the climax of the movie to a screeching halt. Far better would have been for him to reveal some of his reasoning throughout, and save the final explanation that ties it all together until the denouement, when it could have carried a lot more punch in a much shorter timeframe.
Go see the movie, you'll have fun, but don't expect something as memorable as the original character. My prediction? This film will make its money, and probably spark a franchise, but will be one of those that is quickly forgotten once it's over. It'll be one of those you watch on late-night cable TV years down the road, but not something you'd actively seek out. Given my feelings about what they've done with the Holmes/Watson relationship, though, I must admit I'll be keeping my eyes out for a sequel, hoping they can build on that strength but have a more truly Holmesian mystery for those two to tackle.
p.s. - keep your ears peeled for some interesting surround usage in the scene where Holmes and Watson investigate the factory on the river.... nicely used here, and I just wish they would have been as thoughtful about the surround the rest of the movie.
Up in the Air
Easily the best movie I've seen this holiday season thus far. The plot is predictable in both its large-scale movements and the in details of its execution, and there were very few "twists" you didn't see coming a mile away, including the ending. But for all that, it's a treat and hard to resist. The actors are superb, and it's a joy just to see them chew on these complex characters. Vera Farmiga is amazing (and gorgeous - why isn't she in more things?) and Anna Kendrick is outstanding in a role very different (but just as well played) as her Alice in the Twilight movies. But it's George Clooney's movie to carry, and he does it. I always forget how good Clooney can be until I see him flexing his muscles in a role like this. Just the range of smiles he uses throughout - truly happy, pretending to be happy, not happy, pretending not to be happy, etc. - and the amount conveyed through them is unbelievable.
The only one more impressive is Jason Reitman: in only his third feature, he's as confident a director as it seems there is working today - and it's a well-earned confidence. Often he's willing to forgo dialogue and let the visuals tell the story, and they do (check out the wedding sequence, which is extraordinary for what it conveys and how it does so, and feels effortless despite the work that has to go into staging any such complex sequence). But he's also not afraid to let the characters talk, and their dialogue (co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from the novel by Walter Kim) sparkles. It's natural and witty, and feels like exactly what these characters would say in these situations.
There's so much one could say about this movie - it's a slice of life, a relationship movie, a workplace comedy, and an insightful social commentary about modern life and work - and yet at the same time it's hard to say a whole lot about it since the joy of this movie is the little things: the way characters share moments, the editing rhythms, the sense of truth to it. So I'll leave it at this: this is a little gem of a movie, without the flash of so many other films this year but with far more emotional and intellectual engagement.
Between this and Precious, there are two movies out right now that are not getting the press and media attention of their bigger-budget brethren but deserve to be seen. Whether naively or optimistically, I'm a believer that movie audiences get what they deserve: if we go out and see terrible movies, the studios will continue to put out more of the same. If, on the other hand, movies like Up in the Air and Precious show that they not only can garner critical raves but also can attract audiences and make money, more character-driven pictures like these will get made. Go out and see them, and you'll be glad you did.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Time for holiday movies.... like "Star Wars"?
Most of today was spent cleaning and otherwise prepping for Christmas - which it looks like will be a white one, oddly enough for Dallas. Left the TV on in the background throughout the afternoon, on Spike which was showing the original Star Wars trilogy. Twice. We jumped in partway through Return of the Jedi, made it through the original ("A New Hope"), and are now midway through The Empire Strikes Back. I guess Spike figures that Christmas movies or not, the beauty of showing these is that on a day when people are busy with so many things on and off, (a) everyone knows these well enough to jump in at any point and (b) they're instantly engrossing. Well played, Spike.
I guess I should clarify my comment that they were showing "the original Star Wars trilogy." By that I mean "Episodes IV-VI" as opposed to the "new trilogy" (a.k.a. the "not-nearly-as-good-as-the-original-but-Lucas-needed-to-put-an-addition-on-his-mansion-or-something-so-he-popped-out-another-three-Star-Wars-movies trilogy"). But of course they're not really the "original" version of those movies, they're the redone versions. Which inevitably raises three "Star Wars special edition" points in my mind (avoiding any mention of Greedo, or the obvious point that the original Star Wars was a landmark film and it would be really nice if Lucas would continue to make it available as it was originally released, as an object of study if nothing else):
1) The scene with Jabba in the Millenium Falcon's hanger is stupid, looks terrible, and adds nothing to the movies - in fact, it takes away from them. I wasn't even in the room when it aired this time, but it's very existence continues to bother me to no end.
2) Hayden Christianson now at the end of Return of the Jedi. Discuss. (For my money, it makes as much sense as any other actor being there - at least in this case it's someone else who played Anakin Skywalker....)
3) The new music at the end of RotJ. I think (based on completely unscientific anecdotal evidence) that I may be in the minority on this, but I totally prefer the original, more campy music. It sounds like what this celebration might have actually been like, rather than simply "score music" which is what it is now.
I realize that in my last post I mentioned that I would be catching up on this year's movies, and here I am posting about movies from thirty years ago. For this I can only offer the following explanation:
a) I felt like posting something, and in my defense this is the first time I've posted on Star Wars...
b) it's a busy time of year and I haven't made it to the theaters again since Precious
c) part of the reason I haven't made it to the theaters is that I've been busy playing GTA IV, which I also promised in my last post to do. So I wasn't totally lying. That game deserves a more detailed posting - which it will get - but suffice to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the complexity and completeness of the world Rockstar has delivered. And I'm glad that I've progressed far enough in the game that I actually have some "real" ways to make money (granted, most involve criminal activity, but at least I'm being hired for such activities rather than just beating people up in the streets and hoping they have a couple bucks so I can buy a hot dog, which is where I was at in the game a few nights ago).
Okay. Back to Empire Strikes Back and/or GTA IV for me. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night-of-movies-and-video-games-or-whatever-entertainment-floats-your-boat!
I guess I should clarify my comment that they were showing "the original Star Wars trilogy." By that I mean "Episodes IV-VI" as opposed to the "new trilogy" (a.k.a. the "not-nearly-as-good-as-the-original-but-Lucas-needed-to-put-an-addition-on-his-mansion-or-something-so-he-popped-out-another-three-Star-Wars-movies trilogy"). But of course they're not really the "original" version of those movies, they're the redone versions. Which inevitably raises three "Star Wars special edition" points in my mind (avoiding any mention of Greedo, or the obvious point that the original Star Wars was a landmark film and it would be really nice if Lucas would continue to make it available as it was originally released, as an object of study if nothing else):
1) The scene with Jabba in the Millenium Falcon's hanger is stupid, looks terrible, and adds nothing to the movies - in fact, it takes away from them. I wasn't even in the room when it aired this time, but it's very existence continues to bother me to no end.
2) Hayden Christianson now at the end of Return of the Jedi. Discuss. (For my money, it makes as much sense as any other actor being there - at least in this case it's someone else who played Anakin Skywalker....)
3) The new music at the end of RotJ. I think (based on completely unscientific anecdotal evidence) that I may be in the minority on this, but I totally prefer the original, more campy music. It sounds like what this celebration might have actually been like, rather than simply "score music" which is what it is now.
I realize that in my last post I mentioned that I would be catching up on this year's movies, and here I am posting about movies from thirty years ago. For this I can only offer the following explanation:
a) I felt like posting something, and in my defense this is the first time I've posted on Star Wars...
b) it's a busy time of year and I haven't made it to the theaters again since Precious
c) part of the reason I haven't made it to the theaters is that I've been busy playing GTA IV, which I also promised in my last post to do. So I wasn't totally lying. That game deserves a more detailed posting - which it will get - but suffice to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the complexity and completeness of the world Rockstar has delivered. And I'm glad that I've progressed far enough in the game that I actually have some "real" ways to make money (granted, most involve criminal activity, but at least I'm being hired for such activities rather than just beating people up in the streets and hoping they have a couple bucks so I can buy a hot dog, which is where I was at in the game a few nights ago).
Okay. Back to Empire Strikes Back and/or GTA IV for me. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night-of-movies-and-video-games-or-whatever-entertainment-floats-your-boat!
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