Post "The Big Night": Oscars 2008

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I don't really have much to say about this year's Academy Awards; most of the ceremony went as was expected (e. g., Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Joel & Ethan Coen, Diablo Cody, even Tilda Swinton) and, the few times when it didn't (e. g., cinematography, visual effects), those nominees who probably should have won (e. g., Roger Deakins, the team from Transformers) don't really need golden statuettes to validate their works or their talents. The only comments I do want to make are words of congratulations to those nominees from tonight whose wins showed the Academy really getting it right - which is most definitely something to acknowledge - ahem, CrashRobertoBenigniChicagoCharlizeTheronHappyFeetJamieFoxxCrash, ahem - sorry, something in my craw. Anyway, back to the kudos: Congratulations are well due to Christopher Rouse (Editing), Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman (Animated Short), and Marion Cotillard (Actress in a Leading Role!), who looked beautiful and whose win made the night for me.

So close a Year in Film (2007); so open a Year in Film (2008). I'm excited! Are you?

The SpyGlasses Full (2007)

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Seeing as Valentine's Day has now ended and the Academy Awards' televised ceremony is now less than 10 days away, I think it's time clear for me to start announcing my little 'award' recipients. To begin, I'll start with some of the visual categories; and I shall add to this list every day preceding the Oscar telecast, for - after all - anything announced afterward, I feel, does run too close to looking either deferential or oppositive.

Best Costuming
Atonement
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Juno
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
La Vie en Rose

Best Make-Up
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
La Vie en Rose

(16 February: Tonight two of the audial categories:)
Best Sound Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Ratatouille
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Transformers

Best Sound Mixing
The Bourne Ultimatum
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
La Vie en Rose

(17 February: Tonight Editing(!):)
Best Editing
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Darjeeling Limited
Into the Wild
No Country for Old Men
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

(18 February: Tonight the shorts:)
Best Animated Film (Short)
Everything Will Be OK
I Met the Walrus
Madame Tutli-Putli
My Love
Peter & the Wolf

Best Live-Action Film (Short)
Hotel Chevalier

(19 February: Tonight tonight is all about the music:)
Best Original Score
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Alexandre Desplat, Lust, Caution
Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild

Best Original Song
"To Be Surprised" by Sondre Lerche, Dan in Real Life
"That's How You Know" by Alan Menken, Enchanted
"Guaranteed" by Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild
"Rise" by Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild
"Falling Slowly" by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, Once

(20 February*: Tonight the writers:)
Best Screenplay (Original)
Diablo Cody, Juno
John Carney, Once
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Don Hertzfeldt, Everything Will Be OK
Tamara Jenkins, The Savages

Best Screenplay (Adapted)
Andrew Dominik, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Ronald Harwood, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
John Logan, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
James Vanderbilt, Zodiac

*An interesting note that I just myself recognized: No film has yet garnered more than a single 'award' from me. What a diverse year this has been. Perhaps the tally will change tomorrow?

(21 February: Tonight the rest of the visual categories:)
Best Art Direction
The Darjeeling Limited
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
There Will Be Blood

Best Cinematography
Robert D. Yeoman, The Darjeeling Limited, Hotel Chevalier
Slawomir Idziak, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Roger Deakins; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men
Janusz Kaminski, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon**
Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood

Best Visual Effects
The Bourne Ultimatum
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I Am Legend
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Transformers

**And Le Scaphandre et le Papillon becomes the first film this year to receive more than one recognition.

(22 February: Tonight the supporting players and the foreign-language film:)
Best Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Phillip Seymour Hoffman; The Savages, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Jennifer Garner, Juno
Evanna Lynch, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Samantha Morton, Control
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Best Foreign-Language Film (Feature-Length or Short)
Lust, Caution
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
La Vie en Rose

(23 February: Tonight the lead actors and the director:)
Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Ryan Gosling, Lars and the Real Girl
Emile Hirsche, Into the Wild
James MacAvoy, Atonement

Best Actress
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Julie Christie, Away from Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Laura Linney, The Savages
Ellen Page, Juno

Best Director
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Andrew Dominick, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Jason Reitman, Juno
Julian Schnabel, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

(24 February: Tonight the feature-length films and my top ten of the year:)
Best Live-Action Film (Feature-Length)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Into the Wild
Juno
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best Animated Film (Feature-Length)
Persepolis
Ratatouille
The Simpsons Movie

2007's Top Ten:

• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Into the Wild
• Juno
• Michael Clayton
• No Country for Old Men
• The Savages
• Le Scaphandre et le Papillon
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

(Bold denotes winner; italics, a noteworthy second.)
Great work!

Vanity Fair on Hitchcock

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Vanity Fair just recently printed a photographic (and textual) retrospective on Mr. Hitchcock's work, a pictorial series of stills representing some of the director's best known films reimagined and reshot with actors from today's Hollywood by photographers Art Streiber, Julian Broad, and Norman Jean Roy. The printed photos, which collected embody a beautiful revisualization of the included films, feature actors like James MacAvoy and Emile Hirsche in scenes like the dining-car conversation from Strangers on a Train (see included) and attempt to recast the Hitchcock allure onto those some of today's most prominent filmmakers. The series is a thoroughly enjoyable endeavor and a glad recommendation: do check it out (here).

Review: Cloverfield

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Genre: Thriller (Apocalyptic)

Cloverfield is the latest attempt at an uncommonly popular subgenre of the thriller. Like past attempts (e. g., 28 Days Later, Godzilla), it follows the same basic structure of the subgenre, in which a contemporary, perhaps somewhat idealistic, reality is relatively early in the film shaken to its very core and practically thus upturned entirely by the sudden and fatalistic intrusion of an mal du force outsider into it. Whether that outside force be creature, illness, or even environment (e. g., Deep Impact), the resultant plot details are always the same: People freak, panic ensues, and tragedy generally befalls anyone - and everyone - involved. Yet Cloverfield, unlike its predecessors, attempts to go rogue on this apocalyptic quest, by ushering in a first-person, though largely narrated, camera as the sole vehicle for filming. Furthermore, it abandons the typically wide array of character types and cast members, in favor of a more concentrated and tidy four - five, at most. These two tweaks, as well as the utilization of (for the most part) realistic/credible dialogue, do to distinguish the film from its fellows; however, they are not enough to fully bring the subgenre out from B- - even C-movie hell. The novelty of the slight redesign diminishes completely as soon as the apocalyptic outsider arrives and, instead of expanding and becoming more complex, the characters too diminish, winnowing down dimensionality to its flattest and simplest, as the plot drags on. Thus, predictability quickly emerges, out of a plot also eschewing dynamism, and tone and balance are shaky at best, despite the obvious attempts at jokes to, if only for a moment, "keep it light, keep it gay, keep it fragrant." The argument of the film becomes halved, half focus on the 'carpe diem' motivation and the other half on the question-of-the-greater-good motivation, and the dichotomous ending does in no way resolve the two. Subtexts about a subconscious Zeitgeist of terror for potential impending doom(s, on various fronts and for various reasons) are premature at best, and the metaphor of the intrusive outsider does not congress well with any of the options (e. g., the demon inside oneself that is irrational anger and/or reticence, the pressing of a moral question, the general need for catharsis), with the slight exception of its auxiliary creatures (that attack people as individuals and whose bites force 'expression'). Finally, does no one get it that films in this subgenre are always less powerful (i. e., both less significant and less scary) when the impending doom, the intrusive threat, is completely revealed?? (Hello, M. Night Shyamalan!) All that said - and despite its intrinsically apocalyptic bend - Cloverfield falls short of utter catastrophe. Its special effects are some redemption and its quick, yet fixed, instants of focused photography are at times significant. Plus, the acting was certainly above the level usually found (though less frequently of late) in films of this subgenre (or genre general). Nevertheless the bottom line remains, in a word: prosaic.

Grade: C+/C

(After writing this review, I checked out Manohla Dargis' review of the film on the Times' website. I felt compelled by the insight of her words to post these few extractions here:

"For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought the filmmakers might be making a point about how the contemporary compulsion to record the world has dulled us to actual lived experience, including the suffering of others — you know, something about the simulacrum syndrome in the post-Godzilla age at the intersection of the camera eye with the narcissistic “I.” Certainly this straw-grasping seemed the most charitable way to explain characters whose lack of personality (“This is crazy, dude!”) is matched only by their incomprehensible stupidity. Smart as Tater Tots and just as differentiated, Rob and his ragtag crew behave like people who have never watched a monster movie or the genre-savvy “Scream” flicks or even an episode of “Lost” (Hello, Mr. Abrams!), much less experienced the real horrors of Sept. 11.

And, so, much like a character from a crummy movie, Rob hears from an estranged lover, Beth (Odette Yustman), who, after the attack, begs for help on her miraculously working cellphone. Against the odds and a crush of fleeing humanity, he tries to rescue her (unbelievably, ludicrously, the others tag along), which is meant to show what a good guy he is. But heroism without a fully realized hero proves as much a dead end as subjective camerawork that’s executed without a discernible subjectivity. Like too many big-studio productions, “Cloverfield” works as a showcase for impressively realistic-looking special effects, a realism that fails to extend to the scurrying humans whose fates are meant to invoke pity and fear but instead inspire yawns and contempt.

Rarely have I rooted for a monster with such enthusiasm."

Manohla, I completely understand.)