Saturday, February 23, 2013
And the winner is...
I was torn this year on what to choose. Out of the nominated films, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained and Life of Pi are my favorite films. I am eliminating Zero Dark Thirty because I don’t believe the film accomplished anything artistically. The story was well told. It was a much better film than Argo in the delivery of its story. But for me the winner of the Best Picture award must be a film you can look back and say that it was a film that made a pivot in film history. Which leads us to my final two: Django and Life of Pi. These are two polar opposite movie experiences. I want to say Django. It was the more pleasurable movie experience. It pushed the boundaries. Or so I thought. QT is like that kid in school that waves his arms in the air to answer a question. You can’t possibly avoid him. Life of Pi has a quieter demeanor. It doesn’t beg for your attention. At the end of the day, its beauty is impossible to ignore. Its story is simple, but it is told with a style that is reminiscent of the masters of the past.
Django
“We know that he is a student and champion of exploitation films. He digests their elements and reforms them at the highest level of their ambitions. The point of the exploitation genre is to grab people on the basis of the shocking material itself, regardless of such elements as movie stars, budgets, artistry, profundity or anything else. In the hearts of many moviegoers there stubbornly lurks the desire to be... exploited.
This is an irrefutable fact: On the post-holiday weekend I'm writing, "Django" ended second at the box office with $20 million. "The Hobbit" was third with $17.5 million, and "Les Miserables" fourth with $16 million. The weekend's #1 top-grossing film was a retread, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D," with $23 million. This could be misleading; "Django's" current total is $106 million after only two weeks, but it's revealing.
What Tarantino has is an appreciation for gut-level exploitation film appeal, combined with an artist's desire to transform that gut element with something higher, better, more daring. His films challenge taboos in our society in the most direct possible way, and at the same time add an element of parody or satire.”
–Excerpt from Roger Ebert’s review of Django Unchained
There was no film as controversial as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. This is where you fake surprise. I included an excerpt of Roger Ebert’s review of Django because it made me look at QT’s (as Ebert calls Tarantino) films from a perspective I have never thought of before. What is an exploitation film?
“Exploitation film is an informal label which may be applied to any film which is generally considered to be both low budget and of low moral or artistic merit, and therefore apparently attempting to gain financial success by "exploiting" a current trend or a niche genre or a base desire for lurid subject matter.” –Wikipedia.
Examples of exploitation films: blaxploitation (Jackie Brown), Carsploitation (Death Proof), Chambra/samurai films (Kill Bill), Naziploitation (Inglorious Bastards), Sexploitation (QT’s next film Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!), Spaghetti Westerns (Django Unchained).
So in other words, QT is exploiting exploitation films. How QT is that?!?
Tarantino includes his trademark flare for violence in Django Unchained. I recently started to listen to the audiobook by Michael Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”. There is a section in the book where a character attends a film course and complains that a musical (the Band Wagon with Fred Astaire from 1953) is on the syllabus with one of QT films (Kill Bill). The professor lays into the character and explains how QT has likened his use of violence to the American Musical. So, where a director like Vincent Minnelli would use music in a movie, QT uses violence. What I took from this (whether it is true QT said this or not) was that music, like violence I assume, can act as sort of an anchor in our souls. In movies, as in life, we can get so lost in the cerebral nature of things that we forget about our evolution and the role fight-or-flight, or music for that matter, has had in the shaping of our experience.
The subject matter (QT making light of slavery) and his use of the n-word in his films has made this a controversial film. Obviously, I think these are taboo materials for a white director. Spike Lee is quoted as saying in regards to Django, "I cant speak on it 'cause I'm not gonna see it. All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me...I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." In 1997, he called out QT’s “excessive” use of the n-word and that he thought “something was wrong with him (QT)”. This controversy made me think of Oprah’s and Jay-Z’s, now settled, dispute over Jay-Z’s use of the n-word. Here is an excerpt from their 2009 interview:
Oprah: Speaking of conversations, when I met you a few years ago, we discussed our disagreement over the use of the N word and misogynist lyrics in rap music. Do you believe that using the N word is necessary?
Jay-Z: Nothing is necessary. It's just become part of the way we communicate. My generation hasn't had the same experience with that word that generations of people before us had. We weren't so close to the pain. So in our way, we disarmed the word. We took the fire pin out of the grenade.
Oprah: I was once at a Jay-Z concert, and there was a moment when everybody—including white people—was screaming the N word. I gotta tell you, it didn't make me feel good.
Jay-Z: That's understandable.
Oprah: But it didn't seem to affect you. You were having a good time up there onstage.
Jay-Z: I believe that a speaker's intention is what gives a word its power. And if we eliminate the N word, other words would just take its place.
You know, hip-hop has done so much for race relations, even with its ignorance—which, by the way, we do have to take some responsibility for. But even without directly taking on race, we've changed things just by being who we are. It's difficult to teach racism in the home when your kid loves Jay-Z. It's hard to say, "That guy is beneath you" when your kid idolizes that guy.
Oprah: I'll give you that. But when I hear the N word, I still think about every black man who was lynched—and the N word was the last thing he heard. So we'll just have to disagree about this.
Jay-Z: It's a generational thing.
Two years later, ‘“Oprah recently had an aha! moment while reading Jay-Z’s new book, Decoded. In the book, Jay-Z writes, “Rappers are young black men telling stories that the police, among others, don’t want to hear.” “Reading this, I realized I was among ‘the others,’” Oprah says. “I appreciate this book so much that I made it one of my favorite things and I’m proud to say, I get it now.”’
What is my point with this? My point is that there are different points of view. Welcome to the post-modern age where no one is comfortable with taboo subjects. Tell a person not to eat that or touch that in a book, and it is a foretelling that, at some point, that person will. Race amongst the younger people I work with is spoken about more freely than I would have ever imagined. It is also can be a subject capable of igniting a fight as fast as it always has been. This will always be a subject Americans will be grappling with.
I liked Django. I liked the theme. For me, I thought it was a rich idea to make a black slave get revenge on white plantation owners. Django is a classic hero. There are some fantastic scenes in this movie. No one makes a movie like QT. I was really disappointed when I researched exploitation films and found all these movies genres that QT has basically ripped off. When I think of QT’s films, I think of originality. Yet, so many of his movies are just adaptations of other films. Still, I think he needs to be given credit for what he has done for films. It is similar to Duchamp’s moustache on the postcard of the Mona Lisa, a Dadaist’s “anti-art”. So, is it art? Is it not art?
There was no film as controversial as Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. This is where you fake surprise. I included an excerpt of Roger Ebert’s review of Django because it made me look at QT’s (as Ebert calls Tarantino) films from a perspective I have never thought of before. What is an exploitation film?
“Exploitation film is an informal label which may be applied to any film which is generally considered to be both low budget and of low moral or artistic merit, and therefore apparently attempting to gain financial success by "exploiting" a current trend or a niche genre or a base desire for lurid subject matter.” –Wikipedia.
Examples of exploitation films: blaxploitation (Jackie Brown), Carsploitation (Death Proof), Chambra/samurai films (Kill Bill), Naziploitation (Inglorious Bastards), Sexploitation (QT’s next film Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!), Spaghetti Westerns (Django Unchained).
So in other words, QT is exploiting exploitation films. How QT is that?!?
Tarantino includes his trademark flare for violence in Django Unchained. I recently started to listen to the audiobook by Michael Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”. There is a section in the book where a character attends a film course and complains that a musical (the Band Wagon with Fred Astaire from 1953) is on the syllabus with one of QT films (Kill Bill). The professor lays into the character and explains how QT has likened his use of violence to the American Musical. So, where a director like Vincent Minnelli would use music in a movie, QT uses violence. What I took from this (whether it is true QT said this or not) was that music, like violence I assume, can act as sort of an anchor in our souls. In movies, as in life, we can get so lost in the cerebral nature of things that we forget about our evolution and the role fight-or-flight, or music for that matter, has had in the shaping of our experience.
The subject matter (QT making light of slavery) and his use of the n-word in his films has made this a controversial film. Obviously, I think these are taboo materials for a white director. Spike Lee is quoted as saying in regards to Django, "I cant speak on it 'cause I'm not gonna see it. All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me...I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." In 1997, he called out QT’s “excessive” use of the n-word and that he thought “something was wrong with him (QT)”. This controversy made me think of Oprah’s and Jay-Z’s, now settled, dispute over Jay-Z’s use of the n-word. Here is an excerpt from their 2009 interview:
Oprah: Speaking of conversations, when I met you a few years ago, we discussed our disagreement over the use of the N word and misogynist lyrics in rap music. Do you believe that using the N word is necessary?
Jay-Z: Nothing is necessary. It's just become part of the way we communicate. My generation hasn't had the same experience with that word that generations of people before us had. We weren't so close to the pain. So in our way, we disarmed the word. We took the fire pin out of the grenade.
Oprah: I was once at a Jay-Z concert, and there was a moment when everybody—including white people—was screaming the N word. I gotta tell you, it didn't make me feel good.
Jay-Z: That's understandable.
Oprah: But it didn't seem to affect you. You were having a good time up there onstage.
Jay-Z: I believe that a speaker's intention is what gives a word its power. And if we eliminate the N word, other words would just take its place.
You know, hip-hop has done so much for race relations, even with its ignorance—which, by the way, we do have to take some responsibility for. But even without directly taking on race, we've changed things just by being who we are. It's difficult to teach racism in the home when your kid loves Jay-Z. It's hard to say, "That guy is beneath you" when your kid idolizes that guy.
Oprah: I'll give you that. But when I hear the N word, I still think about every black man who was lynched—and the N word was the last thing he heard. So we'll just have to disagree about this.
Jay-Z: It's a generational thing.
Two years later, ‘“Oprah recently had an aha! moment while reading Jay-Z’s new book, Decoded. In the book, Jay-Z writes, “Rappers are young black men telling stories that the police, among others, don’t want to hear.” “Reading this, I realized I was among ‘the others,’” Oprah says. “I appreciate this book so much that I made it one of my favorite things and I’m proud to say, I get it now.”’
What is my point with this? My point is that there are different points of view. Welcome to the post-modern age where no one is comfortable with taboo subjects. Tell a person not to eat that or touch that in a book, and it is a foretelling that, at some point, that person will. Race amongst the younger people I work with is spoken about more freely than I would have ever imagined. It is also can be a subject capable of igniting a fight as fast as it always has been. This will always be a subject Americans will be grappling with.
I liked Django. I liked the theme. For me, I thought it was a rich idea to make a black slave get revenge on white plantation owners. Django is a classic hero. There are some fantastic scenes in this movie. No one makes a movie like QT. I was really disappointed when I researched exploitation films and found all these movies genres that QT has basically ripped off. When I think of QT’s films, I think of originality. Yet, so many of his movies are just adaptations of other films. Still, I think he needs to be given credit for what he has done for films. It is similar to Duchamp’s moustache on the postcard of the Mona Lisa, a Dadaist’s “anti-art”. So, is it art? Is it not art?
Zero Dark Thirty
There was no shot of the towers falling at the start of this movie, only a phone call of a person inside the building calling an emergency operator. The director Kathryn Bigelow had the audience sit in darkness as you listened to a woman who knew she was going to die.
Since 9/11, there has been no bigger story than the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Political ideology aside, 9/11 conspiracies aside, Zero Dark Thirty is the CSI of how Bin Laden was discovered and killed. This movie works as a political thriller.
Of all the actresses nominated (I haven’t seen Amour or the Impossible), I thought Jessica Chastain performance the best.
There has been some discussion about this film in conversations I have had and in the news I’ve read. Was Jessica Chastian’s character Maya, a composite of three people (I read it was based on a real person who cannot be identified for security purposes)? Should they have included the torture scenes in the film? Was it too patriotic? I didn’t think the movie over dramatized real events. But who am I to say? Or, who are you to say? I am happy that this film raises those questions for some people. This film wasn’t made to be a documentary. It also wasn’t made to be a one and done history lesson on a chapter in American history that continues to alter the direction of the country. To have lived during this time, I needed to see this movie as an act of catharsis. It succeeded on every level for me.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Argo
There was a time in Hollywood mythology that Ben Affleck was headed to the pyres of the “has beens”: Forces of Nature, Reindeer Games, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, Daredevil, Gigli, etc. From 1998 to 2006, Ben was being laughed at by Richard Roeper for crying too much in movies to 2002’s crown jewel of "Sexiest Man Alive" by People Magazine. For any other joe, this might seem like he was living the dream. Everyone other than Ben Affleck, who will be forever be matched with his Good Will Hunting buddy, Matt Damon. While Affleck was kicking it with J.Lo, Damon was on his way to a very impressive Hollywood resume. While both were credited for co-writing Good Will Hunting, in 2006 it was almost self-evident that Affleck had ridden the coattails of Damon and would be forever cast in his shadow. That all changed with Affleck’s directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007. Out of nowhere, Affleck has gone on to produce “Gone Baby Gone”, “The Town” in 2010, and this year’s “Argo”, three solid, technically superb films. Currently, Argo is the by far the favorite to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Picture. I recall an interview I read with Beck, who was describing his new album at the time, "Midnite Vultures". To paraphrase, he described the album as a tank. And that if any critics tried to find any weaknesses in it they couldn’t. He spent the time looking at it from all angles and there were no soft spots. Affleck’s films are tanks. There are no soft spots. But they are still tanks.
Silver Lining Playbook
Silver Lining Playbook is the most playful film of David Russell’s since Flirting with Disaster and Spanking the Monkey. Comedy seems to be his natural element. Or at least the films I like the most of his. Even in his comedies, it isn’t comedy for laughs sake. Silver Lining Playbook is no exception. Bradley Cooper excels as Pat and Jennifer Lawrence continues her streak of wonderful performances, as Tiffany.
Both have their own mental issues. While it is common in love stories to play out the theme of “ you are the only one for me,” I cannot recall a movie that brings together two characters that are quite as peculiar as these two. Their flaws and strengths complement and beautify the other. It is funny because it is painfully honest. There is nowhere for the characters and the audience to hide. The final scene is so gorgeous and unpredictable.
The film’s unorthodox delivery masks the love story that is at the movie’s core. And a beautiful love story it is.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
The Miserables
Musicals are hard to judge for me, especially when they don’t break out into dance. It is strictly singing. It is a little foreign, and I suppose you just have to go with it. As the film moves on it gains its own momentum and it caries you into the story.
Anne Hathaway seems to be in the film for less than 15 minutes but is the favorite to win supporting actress. Her role seems to warrant the most compassion out of anyone in the film and her performance matches that weight of her character.
Veterans of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd production, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen provide comic relief and play the role of heralds moving the plot along. I found Les Miserables to be entertaining and well-produced. Every actor I thought shined in their respective roles.
Anne Hathaway seems to be in the film for less than 15 minutes but is the favorite to win supporting actress. Her role seems to warrant the most compassion out of anyone in the film and her performance matches that weight of her character.
Veterans of Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd production, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen provide comic relief and play the role of heralds moving the plot along. I found Les Miserables to be entertaining and well-produced. Every actor I thought shined in their respective roles.
the 13th Amendment
The creation of the 13th Amendment is what Lincoln should have been called. Daniel Day-Lewis will walk away with his third Oscar for Best Actor. Lincoln, more than George Washington, is the most important figure in American history. For Day-Lewis to not play this part it would have been a tragedy. The role seems destined for him. Supposedly, DiCaprio got Day-Lewis in touch with Spielberg to play this part. The fact that Spielberg and Day-Lewis either worked together or had not been in touch previous to this film bewilders me. However, thank you Leonardo. Day-Lewis brings Lincoln to life, despite appearing very hunched and brittle throughout the film. Very similar to Amistad, Lincoln captures a moment in American history and plays it note by note. There are no cuts to Lincoln as a child or other times in Lincoln’s life. It about the end of the Civil War and his passion for the abolition of slavery. Spielberg reportedly delayed the release of this film until after our recent election because he didn’t want the film to be accused of swaying the election. That, or he wanted it to be released in the Oscar month of December. But for me, that sums up Spielberg. Why not ruffle some feathers? As he has aged as a filmmaker, he has been more conservative, and therefore, more boring. Spielberg can make a film like Lincoln in his sleep, which unfortunately moves his bar higher than any living director. I grade Spielberg more by what he doesn’t do, than what he does do. He has the ability to make films that moves the shape of society and instead he chooses to lap it up for the Academy.
Beasts of the Southern What?
Misleading frames of Beasts of a Southern Wild would make an unknowing person believe the movie was more magical and set in a fictional world. While there are giant wilderbeasts for some reason coming in and out of this movie, the film is about impoverished natives of the New Orleans region prior to a hurricane, assumably Katrina. The film’s protagonist is a young, black girl named Hushpuppy, played by a precocious Quvenzhané Wallis. Quvenzhané is the youngest actress to ever be nominated and deserves the recognition. Going into the film, I was expecting the movie to be more of a mythological based film that played out the differences between that world and harshness of the modern day New Orleanseque region. But there was very little of that. The symbolism of these beasts in the film went over my head. I was unsure of what their purpose was to the film and the story. Either I am too simple-minded to get it (which is a very possible reason) or the film misplayed a card that was supposed to bring more meaning to the film. I thought by the end of the movie I was looking at a pile of loose strings that had the appearance of a beautiful, artistic movie, but left me with more unanswered questions and a feeling of deep unsatisfaction.
Friday, February 15, 2013
...And the countdown begins...
The countdown begins for this year’s Oscars. I have had the chance to see almost all of the Best Picture nominees this year, with the exception of Amour. I have already written my review of “Life of Pi,”which if anyone desired to read it could scroll down through previous posts. I will attempt to get a short summary of the films this year as I did last year.
Something new I wanted to do this year was recognize two young actors whose performances stood out.
The first is Elizabeth Olsen. 
Sister of the famous Olsen twins, Elizabeth starred in the film “Liberal Arts”. I mistook her for Maggie Gyllenhall when I first saw her. 
The second film I watched with her this year was “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding”. I thought her presence in both of these films made them stand out. I think she has a tremendous future and look forward to seeing her star rise. 
The second actor that seemed to be ubiquitous in all of the films I loved this year was Mark Duplass. 
“Safety not Guaranteed,” with Aubrey Plaza, was a creative, independent film that won over most people that watched it. “Your sister’s sister” was one of my favorite films I watched this year.
It starred Emily Blunt and Rosemarie Dewitt. And lastly, he made an appearance in “Zero Dark Thirty”. How is that for the trifecta?
Sister of the famous Olsen twins, Elizabeth starred in the film “Liberal Arts”. I mistook her for Maggie Gyllenhall when I first saw her. 
The second film I watched with her this year was “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding”. I thought her presence in both of these films made them stand out. I think she has a tremendous future and look forward to seeing her star rise. 
The second actor that seemed to be ubiquitous in all of the films I loved this year was Mark Duplass. 
“Safety not Guaranteed,” with Aubrey Plaza, was a creative, independent film that won over most people that watched it. “Your sister’s sister” was one of my favorite films I watched this year.
It starred Emily Blunt and Rosemarie Dewitt. And lastly, he made an appearance in “Zero Dark Thirty”. How is that for the trifecta?
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