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Oscar nominations will be announced on January 22. We’re counting down to the big day by tackling some tough questions and spouting some mad opinions. The final topic: What is your biggest hope for the nominations?
John: Give Jenkins the Recognition He Deserves
I loved me some Richard Jenkins in The Visitor. He did so much with a fairly restrained character without ever seeming one-note or bland. The film loses a bit when it meanders to other topics and characters, but when Jenkins is on the screen it shines. His journey from detached and solitary to a man reengaging with society is entirely engrossing. He’s never showy and he nails his character’s awkwardness and slow gain in confidence. I said last year that I loved Casey Affleck in Assassination of Jesse James for making his character absolutely perfect. It’s a sentiment I extend to Richard Jenkins. Of course that’s partly a writing triumph, but a great performance is what makes it transcend into something very special. I hope voters dig far into their screener pile to find this film released months ago. At this point Jenkins is very much on the bubble and it could go either way. If his name is announced tomorrow I will be very happy.
Brian: Don’t Forget Sarah Marshall
Any love for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A screenplay is all I really ask for, but a best song nomination wouldn’t be out of the question. Goofy, charming, and sentimental — I’m consistently surprised by the staying power of that film on my Top 5 list.
Adam: Living and Dying With Dark Knight and In Bruges
If anyone is reading this blog at all they would have recognized my love for The Dark Knight and In Bruges (in fact, I saw In Bruges for the second time the other day and it definitely held up). I would love to see TDK sweep the nomination categories as well as the awards. And, it would be nice to see In Bruges get credit for its screenplay, art direction, cinematography, and supporting acting. The art direction & cinematography nods were added to my wish list after the second viewing. The choice of locations, camera angles, and shots are actually very well done. They enhance the story and feel of the movie so subtly that you might not even notice it the first time around, but their effects can not be overstated. I also (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) agree with Brian. A nod to Forgetting Sarah Marshall would be a nice addition to screenplay and song – but I won’t hold out hope.
Jared: Just a Genuine Surprise Would be Nice
Sure, I’m rooting for some long shots to receive nominations (some of which are probably obvious, none of which I’ll be so foolish as to jinx). Most years I’d be hoping not to see certain people get nominated, but I think the only film even sniffing the Oscars that I actively disliked this go round was Synecdoche, NY (with the caveat I’ve maybe three or four movies left to see). But my biggest wish for the Oscar nominations is for my picks to be pretty wrong and to see a good amount of surprises. Part of that desire, to be sure, is the selfish wish for some added excitement to this relatively mundane Oscar season. But I also think there are many nominees who seem to be in the mix just because everyone is resigned to the fact that they should be nominees. I’d love to see some wild cards in there, some picks which really excited people. Sure, preferably they’d be nominees I’d be excited about as well, but if Synecdoche sneaks into the screenplay category and I can bash it for a few weeks, that’d be OK.
That’s it from us. Here’s hoping for some happy Grouches tomorrow morning!
Last year I took a look (and listen) at the eligible original songs. It was a pretty satisfying endeavor with some gems and otherwise interesting tunes in the list of 59. I’ll even occasionally revisit my 2007 Oscar songs Rhapsody playlist.
So I happily decided to try it again in 2008. Yikes. This year’s crop of 49 is a pretty shabby group. And fully 22% come from High School Musical 3: Senior Year alone.
This year we have youtube embedding capability. To keep the post from being dozens of bandwidth-draining clips, I will just embed the ones I think should be experienced while the rest will merely be linked.
The Best
Bruce Springsteen contributes the title song to The Wrestler. It plays as the film fades to black from its highly emotional climax and into the credits. It’s perfect for the moment and a terrific song on its own. A sure nominee and the front-runner for the win.
Oscar nominations will be announced on January 22. We’re counting down to the big day by tackling some tough questions and spouting some mad opinions. Today’s topic: We tend to look at what we call the big eight categories in picture, director, acting, and writing. But what about all those other categories, the ones on the second tier on the left sidebar? What are our wishes for nominees in the technical and smaller profile categories?
Jared: Give The Fall Some Visual Love
The Fall may be the most visually stunning film I’ve ever seen. But don’t take my word for it, here’s someone who actually knows what he’s talking about, and how to express it, Roger Ebert: “Tarsem made one of the most astonishing films I have ever seen. It is all the more special in this age of computer-generated special effects, because we see things that cannot exist, but our eyes do not lie, and they do exist, yes, they really do.” The only thing more incredible than the visuals in the film may be the fact that none of them were computer-generated. The style in the lengthy story sequences is nothing short of breathtaking, and the “normal” half of the film shows Tarsem, Ged Clarke, and crew have extraordinary range. Superlatives cannot do justice to the movie’s visual impact. Sure, the film went bold where others have done an excellent job with a much more subdued style. Still, it would be a travesty for The Fall to miss the Oscars.
Adam: “Dracula’s Lament” a Killer Tune
It seems the Academy mainly used a dart board for the selection of contenders for Best Original Song. The only two in the top 5 contenders rank (in my mind) as songs worth of consideration – “The Wrestler” and “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire. I would LOVE to see “Dracula’s Lament” (from Forgetting Sarah Marshall) in serious talks of nominees, but I feel as it is not to be. Who says a rock/comedy musical number can’t be a serious Oscar nominee? Can anyone honestly say that when the words “And when I see Van Helsing I swear I will SLAY HIM…AHH HA HA” without thinking “OSCAR”? Jason Segel’s hilarious/moving song about how difficult it is being Dracula is matched only by its accompanying performance in the film. How can you NOT nominate a song that comes with its own puppets? How did Enchanted get 3 songs nominated last year and this doesn’t even warrant consideration? They should nominate it for the sole reason of the awesome performance it would bring to the Oscars.
John: Kung Fu Panda a Rare Non-Pixar Home Run
Well the other two jerks are talking about my two favorite niche categories in Best Song and Best Art Direction. I’ll have a Song post up in a few days to expound on that as much as I want (expect some Jenny Lewis love) but let me turn to Animated Feature. WALL-E will win and one has to think Waltz With Bashir will grab the second slot (and with the buzz for Bashir maybe it could pull an upset?). But what will go into slot number three? Barring a foreign outsider it’ll be Bolt, Horton Hears a Who!, or Kung Fu Panda. I haven’t seen Waltz With Bashir but Kung Fu Panda was actually my favorite animated film of the year, even beating that cute Pixar robot. (See the list of eligible films here.)
Recent Dreamworks animated films have been too full of pop culture references without being clever or funny enough; Shrek the Third was absolutely putrid. But Panda bucks that trend. It’s genuinely funny – very funny – with an interesting story, great characters, and beautiful animation. I had an absolute blast watching it- it’s the epitome of solid entertainment.
Since I’m pulling together this post I give myself authority to make another pick. Slumdog Millionaire also deserves some love in smaller categories, but some seem so likely that it’s not worth going into them really in depth. Cinematography, certainly, for the way Mumbai comes alive in the film. AR Rahman’s score is lovely and delightfully different for an Oscar film. And let’s get at least one of the eligible songs, “Jai Ho” or “O… Saya” (featuring M.I.A.!) nominated for a fun Bollywood performance on stage at the Kodak Theatre. Maybe not as cool as Jason Segel’s puppets, but close.
That’s what we say. So all you lovers costume, sound, editing, and visual effects, what say you?
Clint Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski (from Gran Torino) may be the manliest character ever caught on film. Sure, guys may aspire to be suave like Bond, badass like Bourne, and lethal like Bruce Lee or Rambo, but deep down we know those are unrealistic exaggerations. Fun to be for a day, but maybe not much longer. Kowalski, though, is what we all wish and fear we might be when we reach seventy. Kowalski’s material possessions exemplify masculinity. He has a garage full of tools he’s accumulated over his lifetime, a more realistic version of what MacGyver represents. He’s got the cool car, obviously, which he keeps in immaculate condition. Comfortable around guns, he saw combat and received a medal, something which most guys wish they could say they’ve done, even if they have absolutely no desire of actually doing it. Most of all, he doesn’t take nothing from nobody. He is his own man, unencumbered by anyone and certainly not by whatever these things you call “feelings” are. If he wants to spend his life on his front porch, drinking PBRs (of course) by the six-pack, hurling racial epithets when mere grunting isn’t an effective enough method of communication, he damn well will. Kowalski isn’t cynical, exactly, just entirely comfortable with where he is and entirely unwilling for anyone to suggest otherwise. And, of course, has a faithful dog by his side. But as the pinnacle of masculinity he is, naturally, the ultimate joke.
The actual movie is almost irrelevant here. Gran Torino is a pretty standard tale of neighborhood justice – bad guys start picking on the good guys, main character learns something about himself, someone has to make a sacrifice. Nothing particularly new or exciting. The non-Eastwood actors were seemingly chosen to contrast the awesomeness of the man. And it involves Hmong community probably because they provide an easy group for Eastwood to slur an entertainingly large number of different ways, but don’t have vocal enough support to affect the box office.
No, Gran Torino is pretty much entirely about Eastwood tearing through every scene. I’m still not entirely sure how he manages to be so incredibly over the top (to the point where a mere grunt elicited raucous laughter in my theater) and yet have the film maintain some semblance of gravitas. The concept is hard to grasp, as all the other actors are serious, the plot is serious, and Eastwood’s character is the most serious of them all, yet he turns out genuinely funny. His Kowalski is cantankerous, curmudgeonly, and ignorant, but also a reminder that as annoying as other people are, it is pretty hard to avoid them. Eastwood single-handedly makes the film worth watching.
I’d been eagerly anticipating Slumdog Millionaire for some time. Normally I try to temper such expectations, but heck, last year Juno would have been my preseason favorite and it ended up one of my top films of the year. If we catalogued such things, Slumdog Millionaire would have been my preseason pick this year. Unfortunately, I would have picked incorrectly.
I did like the movie, and I’d feel comfortable recommending it to just about anyone. Structuring the film around an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire framed things nicely. Maybe not the most sophisticated of techniques, but one still inspired nonetheless. Along with Quiz Show, Starter for Ten (like I’ll ever get off that horse), it forms a nice triumvirate of movies with a trivia game show as at least a subplot, and I think I speak for all bar trivia-goers in suggesting that Hollywood would do well to churn out a few more.
Mostly, though, I just don’t have anything to say about the film. It didn’t affect me as much I thought (or hoped) it would. The central romance was fine, but I don’t think Simon Beaufoy (the screenwriter) or Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan (the co-directors) did a great job establishing the connection between Jamal and Latika. A few more shared scenes wouldn’t have hurt, perhaps. To me, it seems that Jamal longs for Latika because she’s the only girl he’s ever met. And Latika wants to be with Jamal because…he’s on the outside? It isn’t entirely clear.
The film doesn’t really have a main character, not if you count current, younger, and youngest Jamal as separate characters. Which makes for an interesting ensemble. But, emblematic of the movie as a whole, most of these characters deserve to be better fleshed out. Jamal’s brother Salim, for example, is barely sketched out in all his incarnations. And really, Salim’s actions drive the plot at least as much as those of Jamal. But the reasons for Salim’s pivotal shifts tended to be too subtle. Latika herself is more of an object for Jamal than a filled-out character. I did, however, really like the game show host, and thought his character was very well done.
In a nutshell, the movie just felt a little too distant, too hesitant to starkly dive into anything. I found it too muted to really blow me away. That’s not to suggest I found the movie anything less than enjoyable. I just didn’t think it managed to break through and become something special or memorable.
A few side notes: John and I were wondering if there’s some sort of law requiring Irrfan Khan to be in every movie with a U.S. wide release and is set in India. Not that it would be a problem, because he’s pretty great. Just curious. Also, I think Slumdog Millionaire just adds further proof to the notion that every movie would be better if it added a song and dance number. And Freida Pinto is really pretty. Just throwing that out there.
And finally, I’m curious to see if Dev Patel ends up with a Supporting Actor nomination. Going for him is the movie’s current status as a seeming near-lock to get nominated (and possible favorite status to win the whole shebang) and the lack of any other actor from the movie to nominate. There’s also a relative dearth of name actors and juicy roles under consideration. (The Golden Grouches underground campaign for Bill Irwin notwithstanding.) The catch may be that his is a sort of nontraditional supporting character, in that the movie is really about him. Additionally, Jamal’s character traits are more those of a main character (likable, gets the girl in the end, plucky, underdog). Could voters not vote for him, thinking he belongs in the best actor category, and instead go with someone in a more standard supporting role, like James Franco or Eddie Marsan?
The heavy hitters of this year’s Oscars have just started passing through town, so I can’t really compare Slumdog Millionaire to other Oscar bait. In a sense, I feel the same about the film as I did about The Departed. Both are perfectly fine movies, but I don’t really understand how anyone could consider them the best of anything.
Something about Grace Is Gone caught my eye a few months before its release. I guess it was before it became apparent that most of these Iraq movies were going to be critical and box office bombs. I’m also something of a sucker for a well-made tearjerker, plus John Cusack is all-around pretty terrific. Alas, Grace went nowhere during the Oscar season despite buzz for Cusack. It made it to a grand total of 7 theaters in December for just two weekends before disappearing (it then reappeared for two weekends in late January). But even after it bombed it continued to haunt me. Our local arthouse had its poster up well into the spring. It became a recurring theme at Golden Grouches screenings to laugh at how often we’d see the trailer long after it exited theaters.
Finally, finally I was able to see it once it came out on DVD and get that monkey off my back. It’s not superb, but it is better than many of the other War on Terror films that came out in late 2007 like In the Valley of Elah and Rendition. It keeps the story narrowly focused on Cusack’s Stanley Phillips, a man who loses his soldier wife in Iraq. There are no flashbacks, mysteries, or battle sequences- just a solid dose of understated anguish. Faced with telling his two daughters of their mother’s death, he cracks and instead takes them on an impromptu road trip to a Disney World-style resort in Florida.
Yes the tears flowed a little throughout, but there’s a line between earned emotion and manipulation and Grace Is Gone likes to meander back and forth across the line. Read the rest of this entry »
Movie: Feast of Love
Released: 2007
Stars: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear
With: Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair, Missi Pyle, Fred Ward
Reason for Watching: Trailer made it look decent.
I Can Name This Movie In One Note: Quasi-pastiche about love and life for couples, middle class style.
You Should See This Movie Because: It features Morgan Freeman narration. Which is always great. I’m pretty much a sucker for Greg Kinnear and his variations on the naive/sad sack character as this point (and that’s more than just a Little Miss Sunshine reference, thank you very much), it is one of my favorites.
Selma Blair topless lesbian scene. And even before it happened, I was thinking she was looking cuter than she sometimes does.
You Shouldn’t See This Movie Because: It isn’t particularly good. The story never really gets off the ground. The movie can’t really decide if it wants to be a pastiche or not, so the storylines tend to mesh awkwardly.
“Falling Slowly” (the Oscar-winning song from Once) plays over a rather explicit sex scene. That will freak the heck out of you.
The sex scenes in general tend toward the explicit, which isn’t normally a bad thing, but they really seem to throw off the pacing in the movie, as if they were in the movie at the behest of a producer, or someone desperately trying to establish some sense of tension or appeal.
Bottom Line: My impression is that most people missed this movie last year, and that’s probably for the best.
Why are all these posts concentrating on little categories like “Best Actor” and “Best Director” when what we all really care about is Art Direction and Costumes? In the course of seeing all of the films nominated for the big eight I ended up seeing most of the films nominated for all those other categories they hand out awards to in the middle 2 hours of the Oscar telecast. Since you obviously care about my make-up preferences, please, read on!
Best Song
“Falling Slowly” Once, “Raise it Up” August Rush, “Happy Working Song” Enchanted, “So Close” Enchanted, “That’s How You Know” Enchanted
For some reason I feel like I already covered this category. But since the Academy stupidly ignored my recommendations, let’s take a look at these inferior choices.
The clear winner for me is “Falling Slowly.” It’s the central song in the wonderful musical Once that embodies the heartbreak and loneliness of the main characters. “Raise it Up” is actually fairly offbeat and I imagine it works well in the film, schmaltzy as it surely is. Nothing against Enchated, but if one of its triumvirate wins it better be “That’s How You Know,” a clever take on the Disney fairy tale tune set in modern times. “Happy Working Song” is a cute but uninspiring ditty while “So Close” is a toothless and unmemorable love song.
Snubs: See my breakdown of the eligible songs to find about a dozen songs I liked better than all the non-Once songs. Read the rest of this entry »
I wouldn’t usually consider myself a fan of musicals. Some I like, some I don’t, but there’s no special affection. Hairspray had me hooked from its first infectious beat. That great opening scene where Tracy walks to school, singing the praises of her city completely drew me in. From there it was a non-stop 2 hour love affair.
Hairspray is just infused with such exuberance and positive energy that it’s impossible to keep the smile off your face. It’s the epitome of a feel-good movie but it’s not schmaltzy or cheesy: it earns its goodwill. It has a simple but well-executed message of tolerance and following your dreams and that music and dancing is toe-tapping and dazzling.
The performances are pretty good and where lacking at least the actors really threw themselves into their roles. John Travolta picked up a Golden Globe Supporting Actor nod, but I didn’t think he was that strong. I did very much appreciate how much fun he had in his cross-dressing role- there was no holding back there. The Baltimore accent sort of faded in and out but I just about fell out of my chair laughing when his first line was, “Would you keep that racket down? I’m tryin to arn in here!” Nikki Blonsky also got the Globes love though again I only found her decent. I’m certainly hoping to see her in more films in the future though. Read the rest of this entry »
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