Alright, enough moping around. Time to buck up, kiddos. Now, where were we ... ah, yeah, let's talk Oscars for a sec ...
- So about this year's Oscar noms - well, mostly they seemed to be pretty sound picks. The two movies that to me were not only two of the year's best, but maybe two of the decade's best - THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN - both received, deservedly, a number of nominations, including Best Picture. Juno, a movie that I really loved as well, got a ton of noms, only adding fuel to the backlash against it.
What else I liked:
- Daniel Day Lewis is of course a near lock for Best Actor, so it's great to see him get recognized, along with Viggo Mortenson, who probably should have won something a few years ago for his awesome turn in A History of Violence, but is now being honored again for his turn as a badass Russian gangster in EASTERN PROMISES. Similarly, Johnny Depp's nomination is in my eyes no token gesture - he was absolutely great in SWEENEY TODD.
- As far as Best Supporting Actor - well, I can't complain as the Oscar noms 100% line up with the five supporting actors I had previously named as the year's best. I think you've got to give it to Javier Bardem, but this category is positively loaded with deserving talent.
- I'm glad to see Ellen Page get the nom for JUNO, even if by this point wa a foregone conclusion. To me she was awesome in that film and deserves all the recognition awarded her. I'm not as familiar with the other actresses in the category, but I have nothing but admiration for Page. Speaking of which, I'm also happy to see Juno up there in the Best Picture category. I hate that some people write it off for being a "small" movie. Last I checked, The Catcher In the Rye was a "small" book ... To me, it's great to see a quirky comedy recognized to this extent, and all of the haters on this one need to expand their horizons a bit.
- Supporting actress is another tough one to call, but my pick has long been Tilda Swindon - she was great in MICHAEL CLAYTON and I'd love to see her win.
- Pleasantly surprised to see RATATOUILLE nominated for best original screenplay - it did have a phenomenal script that deserves to be placed in the same category as other heavy hitters. In the adapted category, No Country and There Will Be Blood are no-brainers, and of course the same goes for those two when it comes to Best Director.
- Finally, I have a lot of snubs to get to in terms of what I didn't like, but I don't mind seeing certain pictures like American Gangster and Into the Wild go largely unrecognized. Both had very admirable aspects (cinematography in Gangster, supporting cast in Into the Wild), but to me both underdelivered a bit as compared to expectations.
What I Didn't Like:
- In the lead actor category, I was a bit surprised to see George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones pop up. I didn't see In the Valley of Elah, and Clooney was very good in Michael Clayton ... but, there were so many great lead actors this year, it was jarring to see so many great performances omitted. Bradd Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James. Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn (two movies very much snubbed in general by the Oscars). How about Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men?!? He, Tommy Lee Jones, and Javier Bardem worked together to make No Country an awesome acting clinic.
- As far as Leading Actress, I admit many of my personal picks, like Christina Ricci (Black Snake Moan) and Carice Van Houten (Black Book), were pretty much doomed to fly under the Oscar radar. But how about Amy Adams for Enchanted? Sure, it may seem like a not-so-serious part, but it's hard to watch the Disney film and NOT be blown away by Adams ... Also, it's too bad the perenially great Helena Bonham Carter wasn't give a nod alongside Johnny Depp. In terms of Supporting Actress, I was surprised to see that none of Juno's great turns from Alison Janney or jennifer Garner were noticed ... I really liked Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone, but the movie itself wasn't quite strong enough in my mind to be worthy of Oscar nominations ...
- Speaking of Juno, I totally admire the work director Jason Reitman did with it. Same goes for Tony Gilroy with Michael Clayton. Still, I'm surprised to see either get a Best Director nomination. As good as those two were, I still would have loved to have seen Andrew Dominik get a nod for Jesse James ... In any case, I've got to think this category is a lock for either the Coens or PTA.
- Surprised that Aaron Sorkin's much-talked-about script for Charlie Wilson's War wasn't acknowledged, but here's one I would have loved to have seen nominated: SUPERBAD. A great comedy screenplay is hard to come by, and as great a script as Juno had, Superbad was also deserving of some props. As usual, it's hard for traditional comedies to get any props. I mean, how about some noms for WALK HARD ...?!? At the least you'd think that one or two of the film's hilarious, satirical songs might get a nomination, seeing as how Enchanted's soundtrack got THREE.
- One category that really irks me is Documentary. For some unfathomable reason, THE KING OF KONG never even made it to the final round of consideration for the Oscars, despite being an amazing, amazing film. It would have been spectacular to see Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell sitting in the Oscar audience, or maybe even doing Kong-on-Kong battle live at the ceremony.
- Finally, it is just kind of sad, as many have pointed out, to see the reportedly atrocious NORBIT get any kind of nom whatsoever, even if it is just for makeup. There were so many cool movies that could have gotten a bit of Oscar glory in the place of Eddie Murphy's latest embarrassing vehicle. What about STARDUST, for example, which did a stunning job of turning Michelle Pfeifer into a rapidly aging wicked witch? How about GRINDHOUSE, which saw a whole host of old-school makeup f/x employed in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror ...? Or come on - what about 300 - which saw some amazing creatures brought to grotesque life in an epic action movie? And one last thing - I feel like BEOWULF deserves SOME kind of technical nomination for its stunning use of 3-D, a trick that may well represent the future of cinema.
In any case, it should be an interesting awards show, and I'll be happy if either No Country or There Will Be Blood comes away with the top prize. Be sure to stay tuned though, as I'll have more Oscar thoughts and predictions over the coming weeks ...
TV STUFF:
Some quick reviews for you after an action-packed Monday night of TV, courtesy of FOX:
- PRISON BREAK delivered one heck of an episode this week, with a ton of action, intrigue, and intensity. The $#%# really hit the fan as a coup to dethrone Lechero as ruler of Sona threw a wrench in Michael and co's plans to escape. It was great seeing Scofield and Mahone work together to take on Sammy's group of insurgents, and Bellick having to take on Sammy in a potentially deadly fight was also simultaneously hilarious and ultra-gripping. I've really been enjoying the show's fast pace and crazy cast of characters, and I can only hope that in this strike-shortened season we get some good resolution to the current plotlines. My favorite scene: Sammy nonchalantly climbing up the escape shaft that Scofield had helped construct, taking a moment to taunt Michael, only to get unceremoniously killed as the shaft collapsed right on top of him - leading to Lechero taking out Sammy's goons and reclaiming his position as king of Sona. As always, good ol' fashioned two-fisted fun.
My Grade: A-
- Similarly, it seemed like business finally picked up this week on THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. It seemed like the show's blend of action, sci-fi, and humor finally got into a good groove this week, and I thought there was a real imagination-expanding spark to all of the scenes involving the evil Terminator robot and his attempts to regenerate his old body. Finally, it felt like the cooler aspects of the Terminator mythology were really coming into play and being used to generate some great visuals to boot. The relationships between John, Sarah, and Cameron were also fleshed out here to good effect. John questioning his role as a soon-to-be hero and savior, Sarah examining her own morality, forced to decide whether or not to kill scientists now before their creations wreak havoc in the future, and Cameron trying to figure out humanity and high school while learning to play by Sarah's rules. A lot of really interesting dynamics were set up here, and if the show can keep up this episode's momentum we could be in for a great ride.
My Grade: A-
- And now, a review of one of the first BIG movies of '08 ...
CLOVERFIELD Review:
- In theory, the concept of doing a "found footage" movie, especially in this day and age of omnipresent video-capturing, is a pretty intriguing one. Way back when I was in high school, I remember seeing The Blair Witch Project and being totally intrigued by the entire premise. Not only did I love the idea that this might be "real" footage that we were witnessing, but I loved the fact that the movie really was essentially just a couple of young fillmmakers going out with a consumer camera and making a cool little horror movie. In fact, the movie was a huge influence on me and my friends. Living in wood-sy Connecticut, everyone wanted to go out into the woods in our backyards and do our own version of Blair Witch. It's why there were so many parodies at the time - the movie was an easy target to emulate and satirize, and so it's no wonder that a bunch of fellow Camp Shalom counsellors and I went and made a series of Blair Witch-style parodies to present to our campers.
Now, Cloverfield is the next logical step in the whole "homemade movie" theatrical movie phenomena - a film that takes a premise suited to a big-budget spectacular, that of a rampaging, Godzilla-like monster on the loose in New York City, and films it from a man-on-the-street, home-video perspective. If a giant monster ever really DID rampage through a major metropolitan city, then this, in theory, is what it would really look and feel like to be there.
So, does it work?
The first thing I have to say, before I get to the movie itself, is that Cloverfield made me feel really sick while watching it. If I was doing it over, I would make sure to sit in the very back of the theater. I do sometimes get motion sickness from certain video games and whatnot, but I've never seen a movie that made me feel like this one did. I know not everyone will have the same issue as I did, but the fact was, this movie was simply hard for me to fully enjoy as much as I might have due to just how shaky and jerky its camera work was.
Now, did all the shaky handycam work contribute to the overall effect of the film? To some extent, sure. The movie has a great you-are-there feeling, most of the time. I did have some problems with the overall technique though ...
For one, I did think the jerkiness of the camera was overdone. For the sake of clarity and ease-of-viewing, it could have been toned down a notch. Certainly, the camera managed to steady itself conveniently whenever a Nokia or Sephora logo was being prominently displayed in the background ... This leads to another problem - the way the footage was presented just wasn't always as realistic as it should have been. There are times when there's NO WAY that any sane person would be worried about filming what's going on, during which the camera stays on. There are times when the camera doesn't focus on what it logically would be focused on (ie the GIANT MONSTER) and instead darts back and forth between the different characters. And then, the biggest problem ... in Blair Witch, the characters were themselves filmmakers out to make a documentary. Here, our cameraman, the nerdy and awkward Hud, doesn't even want the responsibility of filming his friend's going-away party at the film's beginning. To imagine that this guy, of all people, would be compelled to document ever waking moment of the monster invasion, while he and his friends' lives are at stake, is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.
That's another problem with Cloverfield - the characters are simply not all that likable or compelling. Now, this is kind of a tricky situation - the characters are obviously and purposefully made somewhat generic to make it easy to kind of insert yourself into their shoes. However, a big part of the film's conceit is that we are supposed to buy our main lead risking everything to go after the girl who he may or may not love. Okay, true love (and a one night stand) conquers all, I guess we can accept that. But then, why in the world are a bunch of this guy's random friends (more like aquaintances, really) following him to certain death? I just think that in the quest to present us with a bunch of "everyman" characters, Cloverfield loses a little something. It would have been fun, for example, to see a really tight-knit group of likable characters caught up in this situation, people who we could really root for and care about, rather than a bunch of generic stars seemingly right off the CW reject-list.
Now, that's where Cloverfield is lacking, but where it positively excels is in the sheer aura of intensity it creates. Like another JJ Abrams project, LOST, Cloverfield is masterful when it comes to manufacturing suspense through incredible, pulse-pounding buildup. The film starts on a mundane going-away party in NYC - a bunch of twenty-somethings creating typical twenty-something drama. It's effective at establishing the calm before the storm and creating that you-are-there feeling. It's that real-world vibe that helps make the movie so scary and affecting. You can't help but think of 9-11 when things really begin to take a turn for the nightmarish. The party-goers rush to their building's rooftop, the TV is turned on - what's going on?!?! - and suddenly all hell has broken loose - I mean, there's the head of the Statue of Liberty lopped off and rolling towards a mob of screaming and terrified New Yorkers, and it's a true cinematic moment of "holy $#%^!".
Again, Cloverfield does an amazing job of creating an atmosphere of total panic and chaos. In that light, it's one of the most immersive movies out there - almost akin to a literal rollercoaster ride - complete with feelings of nausea. It definitely is an intense, visceral movie.
As for the monster, well, the film does a great job at first of making you wonder just what the hell it is. The fact that the full size and shape of the beast is mostly masked is a great call, as it adds to the sense of mystery and dread. It's not like you see it and go "oh, it's a giant dinosaur, I get it now." You see this creature and you do wonder ... WTF is that thing? Only later on in the film, when you do see the creature in full and in broad daylight, does it get a bit goofy.
Overall, Cloverfield is a definite must-see in my view, but I think it's more disposable entertainment than truly memorable moviegoing experience. As immersive and intense as the movie is, it could have used a little of the Spielberg-ian knack for mixing a sense of gee-whiz awe and wonder with great character moments that help elevate a movie beyond the level of sci-fi cheese. In fact, lame ending aside, Spielberg's own War of the Worlds was a great example of Big Disaster movie done to cinematic perfection. Cloverfield is a fun ride in its own right, but it really is essentially a movie-as-themepark ride. Get on, go for a ride, get off, feel exhilirated if not slightly queezy.
My Grade: B
- Alright, that's all I've got for now. Back later with more. Peace out!
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