Archive for Film
Usually, the talk about the Oscars on the night before the nominations is over who will be nominated. This time, most of the talk is over whether the ceremony will be held at all, due to the ongoing writers’ strike, which has already reduced the glitzy Golden Globes to a sober press conference, because no stars would cross the WGA picket line. This may be a more interesting subject than this year’s crop of films. I actually found few films that I was that excited about, and there were many others I haven’t seen, so it seems ridiculous of me to make predictions. Nevertheless. . .
For Best Picture: Both No Country For Old Men and There Will be Blood seem to have a lock on two of the top slots because of all the critics’ awards they’ve received. Both, from all accounts, are exceedingly grim dramas. Will the Academy have room for an exceedingly grim musical and nominate Sweeney Todd?
Other than the top two, the race seems wide open. Other possibilities: Juno, already high in critics’ affections and moving up fast at the box office (the tiny indie comedy is now no. 4). The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Michael Clayton. Into the Wild. Maybe even Once, the little Irish musical drama that won the year’s highest critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes (98%). Falling further and further behind are other films, including American Gangster and Charlie Wilson’s War.
The biggest question about the Best Picture race though, seems to be: will Antonement win a spot? It won the Golden Globe for Best Drama, though this doesn’t mean much, since these awards aren’t highly regarded. But then Entertainment Weekly put the two attractive stars Keira Knightly and James MacAvoy, on its cover ad devoted the cover story to the film. But there is an increasing feeling it will fall out of competition, just as Dreamgirls did last year.
There is always one out of left field surprise. EW also rounded up some online commentators with their attempts to spot the upset contenders. I was delighted to read the following.
“Forget Juno. The real feel-good movie that should be nominated and win for Best Picture is Ratatouille. But since ‘toons have their own category, don’t count on any miracles here. (Pete Hammond, The envelope, LA Times – theenvelope.latimes.com).
Another writer was much more definite.
“SURPRISE! Ratatouille earns Best Picture, Best Director, Screenplay and Animated Feature nominations, and takes the lead in the Best Picture race. (Sasha Stone, awardsdaily.com).”
Of course, since I’ve already written that I think Ratatouille is a better film that Atonement, you won’t be surprised at my prediction (and hope) that Ratatouille will take Antonement’s spot in the Best Picture Race. Come on, Ratatouille even made the AFI’s top ten list of the year!
A few other predictions:
Ratatouille will get a nod for Best Original Screenplay for Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, as will Juno for Diablo Cody.
Charlie Wilson’s War could still earn a Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Aaron Sorkin. This could be Hollywood’s nod to the rash of political dramas; most of the others didn’t do well at all at the box office in a year when everyone went to the movies to forget the grim crisis in Iraq.
Ellen Page will get a Best Actress nomination for Juno. Don’t completely discount the possibility of one or more of the rest of the excellent supporting cast (Alison Janney, J. K. Simmons, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, even Michael Cera) joining her. You can expect a surprise (but really not so surprising) Best Actress nomination for Amy Adams in Enchanted. She certainly redefined the fairy take princess for all time in this delightful film. For Nikki Blonsky, who was so delightful in Hairspray, the question may be whether she is actually nominated for Best Supporting Actress, as newcomers (they used to call them “ingenues”) so often are, or whether she will be nominated in the lead category, as she was at the Golden Globes. For the Oscars, I think she’ll make the Supporting Actress category.
Philip Seymour Hoffman richly deserves a Best Supporting Actor nod for Charlie Wilson’s War. Complicating the situation, he may also be nominated for his lead performance in The Savages. This type of split race often means the nominee won’t win either award. It’s sad when some people are so talented they cancel themselves out! But because of all the heavy-duty competition in the Best Actor race, the supporting race may be his spot. But I also hope Peter O’Toole is nominated in this category for Ratatouille. Part of me really wants to have him win, so he can receive a “real” Oscar before he dies. Besides he was really superb in his role as the world’s most feared restaurant critic.
It will be only a few hours before we are all find out — that our predictions are all nonsense!
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Not very much time to post here before the Oscar nominations are announced. I’ve been continuing my efforts to see at least a few of the likely-to-be-nominated films. I’ve seen precisely two. So here goes.
I finally got to see Juno right after I got back from Christmas vacation. All except the late 11 o’clock showing were once again sold out here in NY, this time at the Times Square theater. So I finally got in the last showing of the evening. And the film was as delightful as people had been saying.
Juno MacGuff is a self-confident, quirky sixteen-year-old outsider with a smart mouth. The film opens as she takes a yet another home pregnancy test and confirms once again that yes, she’s going to have a baby. Her first instinct is to go to the “Women Now” clinic for an abortion. But she unexpectedly meets one of her classmates outside picketing the place - who tells Juno that her baby even has fingernails. She goes inside nevertheless. The sleaziness inside, the casual assumption that she is going to continue to be sexually active, and the insistent handing out of condoms really turn Juno off. But it’s the fingernails that haunt her. She leaves before her appointment. This must be the most resounding prolife moment in a movie this year.
The baby’s father, her classmate Paulie Bleecker (Michael Cera), is too dumbfounded to offer any advice when Juno tells him about the baby. Their single sex act was more experimental than passionate. So Juno figures she’d best move on from that relationship, and begins to make plans to find the perfect couple to adopt her baby. Her parents (J. K. Simmons and Alison Janney) turn out to be surprisingly supportive. The adoptive couple, of course, have to be really cool people, from Juno’s perspective. She approves of Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), and and Mark (Jason Bateman), a glamorous yuppie couple. She especially approves of Mark, a songwriter, and a fan of some of the same obscure 70’s bands she loves. They have a hilarious conversation about this early on; when Juno says of one band “You had to have been there,” Mark replies grumpily, “You weren’t even born then!” Things seem great. But unfortunately for Juno things don’t always turn out as you hope. She becomes an outcast at school, where she refers to herself as “The Cautionary Whale.” Even the ultrasound technician judges her. She now suspects that she’s actually in love with Paulie, who’s just invited someone else to the prom. And even Mark and Vanessa aren’t exactly what they seem. There are many surprises, heartbreak and heartwarming developments along the way.
The film’s sparkling script and quirky characters are standouts — though admittedly the hipster quotient of the dialogue frequently approaches surreal levels. And the script at times passes over much of the obvious in its search for the quirky, including the physical discomforts of pregnancy, and some of the recriminations real parents might offer. Some of the late second and third act developments are a little thin. But the movie has a genuine heart, and a brilliant young lead actress, Ellen Page, who can actually make that hip dialogue seem as if it’s realistically coming out of a human mouth — not only that, but this particular individual girl’s mouth. This warm movie has come out of nowhere to become a possible dark horse Best Picture contender.
I’ve also seen Charlie Wilson’s War - in some ways more delightful than I expected, and in other ways a disappointment. A brilliantly witty script with something of a letdown at the end. Some good acting all around and a particularly brilliant performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a rogue CIA agent who’s a model of keen intelligence, deadpan wit and unflappable cool — all wrapped up in a schlubby pot-bellied figure and unkempt mustache. Believe it or not, he’s based on a real person. But it’s getting late, I still have the Oscar nominations to write about — and more on the film will have to wait for later.
Other films I’ve seen: Enchanted, Hairspray. Those I’ve missed include many of the top contenders: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men; There Will be Blood. The Assassination of Jesse James. The Savages. And on and on. I desperately hope to see Once on video soon. Now on to the Oscars.
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I had been hoping I would at last be able to compile a “Top Ten” Movie list this year. Now we’re at the very end of the year, and I’ve realized that, because of all my work on the book and the documentary, I have barely even seen ten movies all year. Not much of a basis for comparison. Not that I haven’t made an effort to see more - I tried twice to see Juno at the theater in Union Square, but it was sold out both times, no doubt a result of the great word of mouth that film has been receiving.
What I can do in my next few posts is give a roundup of what I’ve seen and talk about some favorite films of the year. Today I want to compare the very best film I saw all year, but one which is very unlikely to get a Best picture nod come Oscar time, with what many people believe is one of the front runners for Best Picture consideration. You might be surprised at which comes out on top.
One is Antonement, a high-toned epic love story, set in England and France against the backdrop of the 1930’s and World War II. This is the type of film that usually gets the Academy salivating. It’s also a type of film I normally love, an intelligent period piece. This one also happens to be about another subject close to my heart - the artist and the artist’s path. Specifically, it’s about the power of art to harm or heal. The other film is actually about more or less the same subject: an animated family film called Ratatouille about an aspiring chef who happens to be a rat. Ratatouille seems to have a lock on Best Animated Film — I can’t imagine anything else winning — but is unlikely to get a Best Picture nod, which is almost always reserved for more high-toned material. But which film more successfully delivers its message about art?
The first hour of Atonement is terrific: fast-paced, an intriguing plot and a multitude of characters interacting. On her wealthy family’s English estate, a precious, 13-year-old budding writer, Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), has just finished her first play and is desperately trying to get her visiting cousins to act in it. Frustrated in that attempt, she is gradually drawn into the unfolding drama of love between her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley), and Robbie (James McAvoy), their young gardener. Misunderstanding her scene she sees by a fountain and another seen through a library door that should have been closed, Briony puts these and many other things together erroneously, and the result is a story she concocts that she may or may not actually believe herself, a story that unjustly sends Robbie to prison.
After this first exciting climax, the story falls apart dramatically, especially because there is very little to the rest of the story. It’s an extended denouement detailing the consequences of that first act drama. Almost five years later, we slog for a long time through Robbie’s wartime experiences in France (the military enabled him to get out of prison), intercut with a brief re-connection between him and Cecilia, and the now grown Briony’s efforts to pursue the artistic path as a means to atone for what she did. But the atonement aspect, which should hold the story together, isn’t very convincingly developed, in spite of a very good performance by Romola Garai as the older Briony, who takes over from the sensational Ronan. We don’t learn much about Briony’s ideas about art, how they develop and change from when she is 13, or exactly how she hopes to use them to atone. Even how she feels about art as something that is part of her soul is largely absent. The last act delivers a startling reversal, as the elderly Briony finishes her last book, but it’s not one that gives much of an answer to the questions about art raised in the film. We’re led to believe — and this is all I can say without giving too much away — that a false happy ending is somehow better than a genuine tragedy.
I’m not going to say that the ending of the Ian McEwan novel this is based on, which I haven’t read, is this trivial; many people who have read it insist that the development of the artistic theme, particularly in the ending, is much stronger in the book. Because of the tricky plot structure, among other things, it seems as though the book’s meaning is ultimately unfilmable. When the shallow meaning that results is combined with the heavy dose of pretentiousness, at least in the telling of the later part, the film is ultimately hollow.
The film that truly succeeds in exploring art is Ratatouille, produced by Pixar, which has been responsible in the last few years for one critical and commercial hit after another, including Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. It combines some of the best and most solid storytelling of the year with multi-leveled, subtle and even profound themes wrapped up in its lighthearted humor and breathtaking animation. This is a film that everyone from five to ninety-five can enjoy on some level.
Remy, a young rat living in the French countryside, is also a budding artist with food - his sensitive nose and palate seek out the rarest combinations of flavors. This puts him at odds with his large family who, like all normal rats, eat only to live. They’ll swallow anything, including garbage, that’s not actually poison. Remy knows that he is somehow set apart and is often impatient with his family. The film’s most poignant moments involve him trying to explain to his brother Emile just what he sees and feels and tastes when he comes across a new combination of spices or herbs. Emile doesn’t see it at all, and Remy is frustrated; and yet he doesn’t fully appreciate his brother’s loyalty to him.
Catastrophe intervenes and Remy is separated from his family, ending up in Paris, and of all places, Gusteau’s restaurant, made famous by its owner, Remy’s idol, the late chef Aguste Gusteau. Now it’s under the control of Skinner, a pint-sized tyrant who has taken over Gusteau’s empire and wants to devote it to fast food. Remy, communing with Gusteau’s ghost, at first expresses alarm when he sees Linguini, the lowliest member of the restaurant staff, whose job is to mop the floors, trying to “fix” some soup on the stove after he has accidentally spilled a good part of it, with disastrous results. Gusteau comments that even Linguini is a member of the staff. Remy knows that Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” but he can’t help muttering, “that doesn’t mean that anyone should!”
After Remy himself has “fixed” the soup, it becomes a hit, and Linguini is given credit for it, the two have to collaborate to keep Linguini at his job. Remy now has access to the kitchen, holding onto Linguini’s hair under his hat, and guiding him in his movements as Remy remains the guiding mind, always trying to keep Skinner (and above all the Health Inspector) from finding out there’s a rat in the kitchen. Not only that, Remy and Linguini will soon have to face the formidable restaurant critic, Anton Ego (superbly voiced by Peter O’Toole), who has apparently never met a dish he actually likes. There’s much more to the hilarious plot, but there is even more to the subtle exploration of Remy’s personal and artistic growth.
Remy has started out with a great deal of talent, moderate self-assurance, and a certain scorn for those not as talented as himself. Unlike Briony, he doesn’t actually misuse his talent, but he still lacks a real understanding of the nature of his medium, food, the needs of his “audience,” or of the artist’s true goals. He eventually learns a great deal about his gift, about collaboration, and about family. The scenes in which director/writer Brad Bird and co-writer Jan Pinkava show this are marvels of narrative skill, in which themes are seldom directly pointed out but illustrated in action.
When Remy first teams up with Linguini, the two have to learn to be patient in communicating, because Remy can’t speak human language and has to express his ideas through gestures and eloquent shrugs (when he is speaking with his rat family or to Gusteau, he has the voice of Patton Oswalt). Often their deepest communication takes place through food. On the first morning after Remy spends the night at Linguini’s apartment, he apparently disappears. Linguini is sure his rat has run out on him — until he discovers Remy in the kitchen cooking omelets for the two of them, an act which cements their friendship.
Later, after their first exhausting night of work at the restaurant, Linguini takes his “little chef” outside and offers him dinner — not anything he has cooked himself, fortunately, for he still has absolutely no skills in the kitchen — but some cheese, bread and grapes. Remy gratefully accepts this very simple meal. He is learning to open himself to food as communication, and to the inner meaning of art as something given from love.
This is what I originally wrote, and when I was almost finished and ready to post, I found an article in which Bird has confirmed that this is indeed the movie’s theme: “Cooks are givers, and rats are takers. In the larger world there are people who are givers and people who are takers. Cooking, feeding people, is a giving act. All art at its best is a giving act that continues to give as long as the art is consumed.” (quoted from Time).
The idea of cooking as a collaborative art and the interplay of skills required by a whole team of artists are also given a great deal of play in the story. It’s amusing to speculate that the story is on one level a kind of allegory for the collaborative work of the creative team in a movie studio like Pixar. The suspicion is strengthened by the presence of an owner and top chef who is all for a bland, mass-produced product rather than true art. The fact that the mass-production kings at Disney studios now own Pixar adds some spice to this speculation.
The story’s themes are further developed in the treatment of the anorexic restaurant critic Anton Ego, whose pride has so warped his taste that he can’t even enjoy food as basic nourishment (His motto is “If I don’t absolutely love it, I don’t swallow!”).
The story’s climax, which takes place on the fateful evening when Anton Ego comes to eat at Gusteau’s, shouldn’t be spoiled for anyone who hasn’t seen it; not merely out of critical consideration, as with Atonement, but because it’s too good to be spoiled. It simultaneously gives us a satisfying resolution to the plot, the greatest development of character, and the culmination of the movie’s themes (it’s amazing how few films can deliver this successfully). It involves Remy moving beyond simple technique and using everything he has learned as an artist in the preparation of one very simple and surprising dish. . .and the healing quality of art is given a richly satisfying demonstration.
Ratatouille has received almost unanimous critical raves. A few critics have even launched comparisons to famous food films like Babette’ s Feast, another of my all-time favorites. Ratatouille lacks the deep religious and spiritual themes of Babette’s Feast, but is an equally valid expression of the theme that true artists give all of themselves to their work. It also dramatically shows how food can heal individuals and bring people together, in a way that Antonement only tries and fails to do.
Because Ratatouille is now on DVD and Atonement is still in theaters, you can make the comparison for yourself. Maybe you’ll agree that Ratatouille deserves that Best Picture nod.
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There is little time to write before I leave for Assisi on Wednesday, but I did want to get in a word about the writers’ strike in Hollywood.
And that word is: support the writers! The writers may be the most neglected people in Hollywood, but they are the most important. No TV show or movie exists without them. The director has no “vision” to put on film without us. Costumers and set designers and cinematographers have no work without us. I say “us,” of course, because I someday hope to be among them. But whether you are a writer or not, you are affected by this. The quality of the TV shows and movies you watch depends a good deal on the writers.
The issues at stake might seem small, but are really all-important for the future. Back in the 1980’s, when the home video market was first getting started, the WGA (Writers Guild of America) agreed to give up a good part of their residuals or royalties, for video sales of the movies they wrote, in order to help that budding industry get off the ground. Twenty years later, DVD sales make up the largest percentage of most movies, more even than they make in theaters, and the producers and studios have never made up that money to the writers or changed the rate.
Now the Internet is fast becoming a major delivery system for TV and movies. And the producers are once again refusing to pay the writers their fair residuals for this media, but rather the 80% off rate, and for those sites that allow viewers to watch TV episodes on line free, they are giving the writers nothing — on the flimsy excuse that content delivered this way is “promotional only” — though the studios are making millions of dollars of advertising on those sites, just as they do on broadcast TV.
This is blatant hypocrisy, since the studios have insisted since day one on getting their fair share of internet revenue and preventing piracy, or downloading their internet content for nothing. Now they are doing the same thing themselves to the writers.
Most writers in Hollywood are not rich. They might write one or two movies or TV shows a year, if that, and the rest of the time, to pay their bills and care for their families, they have to rely on outside jobs — and on residuals. There are some people I know — including my screenwriting professors at Act One — on that picket line. And they now have the support of a great deal of Hollywood behind them — look at the number of famous actors on the picket lines. Let’s hope the writers will finally get their due.
The writers need our support. You can sign a petition to send to the producers here. There are already more than 13,000 signatures. Mine is there. I hope yours will be too.
(As I update this on Saturday, there are some 35,000 signatures there!)
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and while you’re munching your candy corn, take a look at this bit of Christian writing on horror films (”How Monsters reveal what Matters Most):
From Halloween, to Predator, to Silence of the Lambs, to Terminator, even to the supernatural mayhem of The Evil Dead, when the “good guys” win it feels less and less like a noble victory and more and more like survival of the fittest. And, thanks to the tiresome preponderance of the “double ending” — in which the psycho sits back up again with fifty bullets, two butcher knives, three cork screws, and two pipe bombs in him — the “good guys” almost never win. No matter how spectacular or artful the film may be, one leaves the theater — virtually every single time — feeling like you’ve barely survived a bone-crunching car wreck. Not like a spectator who found himself drawn into a soul-stirring battle.
This is partly because, under the shadow of materialism, there is no place for the moral “absolutes” that once gave fire and dignity to Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing in the Hammer vampire films. As Tom Hutchinson has noted, “A deeply sincere man, [Cushing] once said that he fervently believed that the reason the kind of horror films in which he was involved had found such favor with the public was because they were about the eternal conflict between good and evil; something he thought was too often dismissed in the other arts of contemporary days.” Well, the anti-philosophical, materialistic element only present in the “other arts” at the time of Cushing’s major films (late Fifties, early Sixties) has finally caught up with the horror film. Today, officially, there are no eternal, objective standards of good from “on high” to back up Van Helsing’s unflinching condemnation of Dracula’s corruption. (Nor is there a Christ to back up that crucifix he is carrying). Thus, even if materialism isn’t an obvious theme in modern cinematic horror, the influence is still there. And this is shown by the painfully obvious fact that filmmakers are losing their belief, not merely in the power of good to overcome evil, but in the credibility of any good at all.
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