Oscars 2011

1st- What I think will win. Underneath, in brackets what I want to win (I only am choosing the most important categories). Okay, on to the Oscars!! Excited to see James Franco and Anne Hathaway host.


Actor-Colin Firth
(Colin Firth)

Actress-Natalie Portman
(Michelle Williams)

Supporting Actor- Christian Bale
(Christian Bale)

Supporting Actress- Melissa Leo
(Amy Adams)

Animated Feature- Toy Story 3
(Toy Story 3)

Art Direction- Inception


Cinematography- Black Swan
(Black Swan)

Costume Design- Alice in Wonderland

Directing- The Social Network
(The Social Network)

Documentary Feature- Waste Land

Documentary Short- Killing in the Name

Film Editing- The Social Network
(The Social Network)

Foreign Language Film- Biutiful

Makeup- Barney's Version

Original Score- The Social Network
(The Social Network)


Original Song- If I Rise

Animated Short Film- Day and Night

Live Action Short Film- The Confession

Sound Editing- Inception

Sound Mixing- Inception

Visual Effects- Inception

Adapted Screenplay- The Social Network
(The Social Network)

Original Screenplay- The King's Speech
(The King's Speech)

Best Picture- The King's Speech
(The Social Network)

Hustle

Three years after Ocean's 11 hit theaters Hustle aired on British television. A resurgence in shows about con men seems to have hit Britsh airways following the popularity of the Ocean's movies. Hustle stars Robert Vaughn and cast of British actors who have previously worked in British television and theater. In each episode of Hustle the "family" of con men find a mark to con, seduce him or her into their fake world and then con them out of large amounts of money (think The Sting or any of the Ocean's movies). They never con an innocent or good person. Their targets are the wealthy and the immoral and in doing so feel that they are not theives but rather modern day Robin Hoods.

Each episode is cleverly put together. The formula is always the same but there is still a feeling of adventure and tension as each con is planned and carried out. Occasionally, the show takes a different spin on the formula and starts an episode at the end of the con jumping backwards to the beginning so the audience can see how they got to that point. The effect of this storytelling ploy is much greater than following the con in chronological order. As Hitchcock proved with his bomb under the table scenerio, the tension is greater when an audience already knows about the danger. If the audience sees the bomb under the table, but none of the characters are aware of it there is much more suspence. In some Hustle episodes the tension builds because the audience already knows where the con is heading. The audience sees a moment of danger and then must wait through the entire episode while the suspense gradually increases until the episode nears that moment again. It is this that makes Hustle so entertaining to watch.

While the plot is what drives a con story, it is the relationship between the con men/women that makes these stories so entertaining that people watch them over and over again. When scoring a long con (a con which takes a lot of preparation and has many steps) the people doing the con must act as a family. It is such intense work that they have no time for a life outside of the con world so their life is the con and the people performing the con. In Ocean's 11/12/13 or The Sting the dynamics between all the men preparing the con is perfectly played by the actors. The real life friendship between Paul Newman and Robert Redford that audiences saw on screen in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the perfect relationship to exhibit in a con movie like The Sting. Sarcastic and witty, these two actors played off each other so well that their relationship dominates over the basic plot of the movie. Similarily, in Ocean 11 the relationship between Brad Pitt and George Clooney (and evenutally Matt Damon in the later movies) is the focus of the film. The plot does drive the first Ocean movie, but it is the relationship between Pitt and Clooney that makes the movie bringing people back for more in the future installments.
This comradery between con men isn't as strong in Hustle. The five member team says that they're a family but fall short in showing the audience that they really are that close. The episodes focus so much time on the con that the relationships between the con men and their lives are missing. Instead of seeing their relationships play out and seeing their struggles in dealing with the life of a con we are told about it. In a show like Mad Men or Sopranoes we aren't told how to feel about a character; instead we watch as their character's relationships develop and observe as they make decisions which then affect and change each character's lives. The plot is enriched by the characters because as an audience we have more of a connection through our interpretations of those characters. In Hustle so little time is spent on characterization that we have to be told how to feel about each person and in return the show doesn't grow and develop as greatly as other shows on tv right now.

What this means for me and my desire to keep watching the show is that while I had fun seeing the first season, I lost interest by the second. Hustle is still airing on British tv so there are people who feel connected to it and still enjoy watching it; but for me I must agree with Debbie Reynold's in Singing in the Rain, "Once you've seen one, you've seen them all."

Happy Valentine's Day Week

Happy Valentine's Day Week Everyone!

I have been really busy lately with school and more school and even more school. Because of all my work I haven't had a chance to watch a new movie lately so instead of writing about a new movie I have decided to make a list of my top 10 romantic movies. Two reviewers from my favorite magazine, Entertainment Weekly, wrote their choices for the best movies to watch on Valentine's Day which got me thinking about what I would choose. So here's my list:

1. Roman Holiday- The movie which I have previously written about takes the number 1 spot. What can seem more romantic than a handsome and kind stranger, a beautiful and charming princess and a city that is the setting for this perfect Cinderella story?

2. It Happened One Night- Another classic. This is one of the movies that really made a huge impression on me as a kid. The wonderful screwball comedy still resononates thanks to the wonderful chemistry of the two stars, their great comedic timing, and a great script with many wonderful scenes. Who could forget Claudette Colbert sticking her leg out in the street to stop a car or Clark Gable teaching her how to dunk a donut perfectly; a true artform which still reminds me of my grandfather.

3. When Harry Met Sally- This is a movie which I watch once a year when I'm in the mood. I'm not a huge fan of Billy Crystal but in this movie he is perfect. Meg Ryan's Sally is charming, sweet and totally neurotic. The journey of a relationship, which has a rough start, then grows into a friendship and ends as a relationship, never gets old. Especially wonderful are the short interviews with couples describing how they fell in love. 

4. The Notebook- While most movies made from Nicholas Spark's novels end up being cheesy and unrealistic, The Notebook seems genuine and sentinmentally perfect. It is easy to see that the actors Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were really falling in love during the filming. The movie captures the essence of a budding new romance and tugs at your heartstrings in the scenes when the two characters have grown old. Is there a more heartwrenching moment in a movie as when the older Noah, played by James Garner, watches as his Allie, who is suffering from Alzheimers, come back to him for a second and then quickly slip away, lost in the disease? Every time I watch Garner fight back tears of pain and helplessness I'm left in tears as well.

5. Casablanca- "Here's looking at you kid". "Play it again Sam". Bogie. Bergman. The song, As Time Goes By. Every scene is memorable and dripping with romance. For a film that was rife with problems and was not supposed to be anything special it has become one of the most copied movies of all time. It's truly the ultimate romance.

6. Some Like It Hot- Not your traditional romance, two men dress as women and join a girl's music group to go on the lamb from the mob, but it's by far one of the most romantic movies ever made. Marylin is charming and sincerely sweet in a role that seems to have been the culmination of the trials of her personal life as well as all of her previous characters. Is there a funnier or more romantic ending to a movie as when Jack Lemon's character Jerry, dressed in drag, tells his male admirer Osgood that he's not actually a woman but rather a man only to have Osgood reply, "Well, nobody's perfect." It brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.

7. Jerry Maguire- Before Tom Cruise went crazy, jumping on Oprah's couch and kissing Katie Holmes all over the world, he was a private and believable movie star. In Jerry Maguire he is at his best as a sports agent who can only love himself. The movie has the right amount of cheese with lines like, "You had me at hello," as well as great moments of male comradery between Maguire and his only client, football player Ron Tidman (Cuba Gooding). And the cherry on the cake is Renee Zellweger's character's young son (Jonathan Lipnicki) who gives one of those perfect child perfomances. He's cute and funny and manages to steal every scene he's in, even from Cruise.

8. Sleepless in Seattle- Another Meg Ryan movie has made it on my list. This romantic comedy borders on the cheesy but keeps itself in check with great performances by Ryan and Tom Hanks. My admiration of Seattle has made me feel even more connected to this movie. The two actors only come together in the final scene but the journey they take to get to the Empire State Building on Valentine's Day is sentimental for all the right reasons.

9. Ikiru- You may wonder if a story about an old man who learns he has cancer and then tries to find the meaning of life is really a romantic movie but to me this is one of the most genuinely moving films I have ever seen. At first Takashi Shimura's Watanabe is a tragic character, a man who has spent his whole life doing nothing honorable and has had nothing to live for. It is at his funeral, which takes place in the second half of the movie, that we learn he is not tragic at all but rather more of a gentle hero. In his search to do something more with his life he has met a young woman, full of life and energy and through their friendship he has made a difference with the short time he had left.

10. Pride and Prejudice- While I loved watching the BBC version of this movie, my favorite is the Kiera Knightley version. In college my best friends and I watched this movie over and over and over. Knightley has the perfect amount of zest, brainiess and upper class elitism for Elizabeth Bennet. And while Colin Firth is completely to die for as Darcy, Matthew Macfayden, brings the stern Darcy a softer and gentler side. An interesting side note, An Education's Carey Mulligan makes an apperance in this movie as one of the Bennet sisters.

So that's my list. I'm sure there's some movies I have left out but these are the ones I come often come back to when I'm in a romantic mood.

Black Swan and The Wrestler

My plan for this post is to compare the movie Black Swan with The Wrestler. The director of both films, Darren Aronofsky, has said that Black Swan is a companion piece to The Wrestler. It is very easy to see the connection between the two. Both films are about people pushing their bodies and minds to reach perfection in art and sport. In both films Aronofsky’s camera follows Mickey Rourke and Natalie Portman’s characters like an entourage behind its hero. In moments of action the camera spins widly around creating an urgency and rhythm to both art forms.  Portman and Rourke both pushed their bodies to extremes in order to play their roles. Portman stuck to a strict ballerina regimen and learned to dance so well they were able to use her dancing for the majority of shots. Rourke pumped his body so full of steroids that he is barely recognizable as Randy the Ram. I could go on and on with more similarities but it doesn’t matter. No matter how much one compares the two they are not equal; one is a great film and one is a good film. Watching the two back to back brought out the flaws of Black Swan and emphasized the tenderness and toughness of The Wrestler.

Portman’s performance has gotten a lot of critical acclaim and is winning lots of awards, and while she is impressive in the role, on second viewing her acting seems limited. In terms of her dancing she has managed a great feat but that is only one half of her performance. Through most of the film her eyes have a look of panic in them but they lack other emotions. When I compare it to a very similar performance like Catherine Deneuve’s in Repulsion it seems to lack the true madness necessary for the character to be believable. In Repulsion Deneuve is mentally unstable right from the beginning, just as Portman’s character is, but slowly Deneuve’s character loses herself in her own insanity just as Portman’s character should. Deneuve wanders around aimlessly, maniacally itching at her body and as the movie continues her character becomes so disturbed that she is disturbing to watch. There is a sense of danger that grows not from tricks with the camera but from her performance. Throughout Black Swan it seems that Portman stays rather one dimensional. She is a frightened perfectionist and spends the whole movie projecting exactly that. If it wasn’t for the tricks of the camera, pulling the skin off her index finger or seeing her exact reflection in other people numerous times, there is no way we could really know she was suffering from mental instability.

The script for Black Swan also seems to be one dimensional. Other than a broken toenail and repetitive practice the dancer’s strife and hard work is missing. Only in a few scenes do we get a chance to learn more about Portman’s Nina. One that comes to mind in particular is the scene in which Nina calls her mother to tell her she got the role as Swan Queen. In that moment, as she fights back tears of joy, it is apparent this girl will not be able to handle the task at hand. Scenes like this are seldom in Black Swan, especially as Nina’s mental instability takes over and the movie becomes one horror moment followed by the next.

Compare this to The Wrestler where we not only see life in the ring but also the life a wrestler leads outside of the ring. What makes the movie fascinating are all the details such as wrestlers discussing how the match will play out or Randy going through his preparations for a match- going to a tanning booth, bleaching his hair, buying steroids and shooting up. All these elements add to our appreciation and understanding of the difficulty and work that goes into a job such as wrestling. In Black Swan the plot focuses on the same things over and over. Nina can’t break through and connect with the darker side needed for the black swan. Over and over she dances beautifully but never reaches inside herself to conjure out the demonic swan. It’s no wonder Portman’s performance seemed a bit one dimensional, her character never has a chance to show how she grows.

Rourke on the other hand had a character with so much depth and so much humanity that it’s hard to imagine he didn’t win the Oscar. With his long, stringy hair, silly putty face, and wallowing eyes he looks a bit like the cowardly lion. No matter where he is there is magic around him. When working at the deli counter he flirts with the young and the old while serving potato salad bringing a smile to everyone’s face. In a strip club he defends the stripper who he has befriended from a bunch of young men who are demeaning her. And standing in a ring, surrounded by hundreds of admiring fans, his charisma and charm make him the popular wrestling hero that he has been for twenty years.

Rourke’s performance is so tender and heartbreaking that Aronofsky lets it to dominate and carry the movie. In every scene he lets the camera rest of Rourke’s face and allows Rourke tell the story. In Black Swan Aronofsky has done the exact opposite. To show madness he uses the camera. With fast cuts and manic camera movements an emotional thrill and nervous tension is created. To show terror he uses tricks of the eye. To show suspense the music gets ominous with just the right amount of foreboding tones. The audience’s emotions are manufactured in Black Swan. In The Wrestler he has allowed for the script and the actor to provide the audience with the necessary emotions, which is why The Wrestler is so much more genuine and haunting than Black Swan.

127 Hours

How do you show one man’s inner thoughts, his inner feelings, his inner struggle? In the autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place Aron Ralston tells in great detail the story of how he went for a hike in Canyon Lands, Utah, got stuck in a canyon for five days when his arm got jammed between a rock and the wall of the canyon, and survived by cutting off his own arm with a dull knife. Ralston tells his story using first person narrative which allows every emotion and thought to be expressed and understood. For a writer it is not difficult to tell this story effectively but for a filmmaker this is colossal challenge. For over an hour the story is confined to one man, deep in a canyon by himself. According to the real Aron Ralston, the mental and physical journey he went through was life changing, even spiritual. In order to convey this to a film audience a director has to be incredibly creative and skilled, which is exactly what 127 Hours director, Danny Boyle, is.

The movie starts off with a bang. The music, which was composed by A.R. Rahman, who also composed the music for Slumdog Millionaire, has a fast paced, rhythmic energy to it, similar to the music from Slumdog. The music plays an important role throughout the entire film. In moments when Aron is losing track of reality the music creates an otherworldly soundtrack to Aron’s thoughts. And in the climactic scene where Aron amputates his own arm, the music creates a sense of adrenaline pumping intensity heightened in the moments as he plucks away at his nerves.

The opening credits set the tone for the rest of the movie. The screen is cut into three vertical bars containing images of crowds of people and images of James Franco’s Aron getting ready for his trip to Utah. It is these places, a stadium, an escalator, a city street, all overflowing with people that Aron is running away from. The real Aron was so inspired by the books, Into the Wild and Into Thin Air that he left his high paying job at Intel and moved to Colorado to work in a store which sold outdoors equipment. Like the characters in those two books Aron needed to separate from society, to be out in the wild, and to push himself to physical and mental extremes. This fabulous opening montage, with snazzy music and split screens, emphasizes that Aron is a man cut off from this world and in search for adventure outside of confines of the city.

Within the first twenty-five minutes of the movie Aron has fallen to his doom, trapped inside the canyon. The claustrophobic feel of the story is opened up by Boyle’s cinematic techniques. To show the isolation of Aron’s location Boyle pulls the camera out of the canyon, taking us farther and farther into the sky, until we see the thin slice of rock which Aron is confined between. From this visual technique it is apparent that Aron has no chance of being noticed by hikers or rescue searchers. When Aron takes his contacts out and puts them in his mouth to moisten them, images of Aron getting out of the shower and putting in his contacts at home immediately follows. These images lead into other images and sounds. We see Aron ignore a call from his mom, a missed chance to explain where he might be going. The next image is of Aron photocopying guidebook pages and telling his boss that he isn’t sure where he’s going; yet again another missed opportunity to tell of his destination. In these short few seconds we are aware that no one probably knows where Aron is, thus making the danger of the accident even more palpable.

As the days drag on and Aron runs out of food and water he begins to hallucinate and imagine things of his desire. The real Aron wrote in his book that he would dream about different kinds of drinks so Boyle recreates these imaginings by using music and fast paced shots of all different kinds of people drinking. Many of the hallucinations in the movie were really things that the real Ralston claimed to have had. Boyle uses these hallucinations to take us out of the tiny world the film is set in as well as to give us some information about who Ralston was before he got stuck in the canyon. Images of his sister playing the piano while his mother and father sit on a couch and images of an ex girlfriend and a bad breakup give us the background information necessary to understand this man a little more. The hallucinations are also horrifying. With each image we are taken away from the terrifying reality that he is stuck in the canyon; when we are brought back to the dark, cold and solitary confinement of the canyon our sense of doom and dread increase greatly.

Expecting that he would die the real Ralston began recording taped messages on a video camera back to his family. While only one of these has ever been shown to the public due to the sensitive nature of the messages, they allowed Boyle to have the character Aron express what he was feeling and show us the rollercoaster of emotions he was going through.

I have talked with a few people who don’t understand why it was necessary to show so graphically the scene in which Aron amputates his own arm. The whole experience is shot mostly in close-ups and extreme close-ups allowing the audience to be as intimately connected with this man as possible. We are going through every step and every emotion that Ralston went through in order to understand exactly what he felt during this impossible journey. Ralston has explained that while cutting off his arm was painful (in reality it took him 40 minutes), it was also extremely freeing. For five days he had been stuck between a rock and a wall. He was extremely close to death and almost without hope.  When he finally cut his arm free it was a cathartic and joyous moment. As an audience we already know the story. We already know that he cuts off his own arm and lives to tell about it. By showing the horrific experience, detail for detail, we forget what we know and relive the experience, every emotion, every horror and the triumph of what Aron does to survive.

Of course all of this wouldn’t have been a convincing story if it hadn’t been for Franco’s performance. For most of the film Franco is by himself. He has the difficult task of showing a man who went into the canyon, cocky and self assured and left the canyon grateful for life and everyone in it. Emotions of desperation and despair cross Franco’s face in moments when his attempts to free himself are unsuccessful. Wit and charm exude from Franco when he interviews himself on his camera as if on a game show in a scene which is both heartbreaking and clever. And in the end, Franco exhibits determination and bravery in the last hours when Aron’s body was dying but he was unwilling to give in. It is a subtle performance by Franco and in his subtly he conveys this whole range of emotions so perfectly that you believe in every step he takes, even when he begins to amputate his arm.   

After watching this movie I could not get it out of my mind. Images flooded back to me whenever I thought about it. I have never been one who loves survival tales but I love stories about human beings pushing themselves to extremes. Boyle and Franco were able to create a portrait of a man that is so stunning that I could not take my eyes away. While it may not be for everyone, I think 127 Hours is a fascinating and remarkable film.