Academy Awards

a word about the Oscar nominations

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Quvenzhane Wallis in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Mainly, I’m just so glad that Beasts of the Southern Wild was nominated for Best Picture and that its star Quvenzhane Wallis (now nine years old) was nominated for Best Actress.  Both are very deserving of nominations, and it would have been easy for the Academy to overlook such a small indie film and its first-time director and actress.

For the most part, the Academy avoided leaving out the obviously deserving and rewarding the ridiculously underserving – very few big brainfarts this year.  I am completely baffled that Ben Affleck of Argo and Kathryn Bigelow of Zero Dark Thirty did not receive Best Director nods; (I would have passed over David O. Russell and Michael Haneke).  But that’s just about my only quibble.

Eight of the nine nominees for Best Picture are currently playing at your local theaters (although Amour is harder to find until next weekend).   Beasts of the Southern Wild is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streams from a host of VOD services.

You can also find Flight at the theaters and watch Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington.  The Sessions, with Oscar favorite Helen Hunt, is still lurking in some second run houses.  Among the nominated documentaries, Invisible War is available on Netflix Instant and some VOD services, while Searching for Sugar Man is available from several VOD services (although pricey).

DVD of the Week: Monsieur Lazhar

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This week’s pick is on my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

A fifth grade class in Montreal loses its teacher in just about the worst possible way – she hangs herself in their classroom at recess.  Monsieur Lazhar is about how the kids face this trauma with their replacement teacher, an Algerian immigrant.  The school gets a psychologist to lecture to the kids, but bans them from otherwise mentioning the suicide in class – a rule designed to minimize the discomfort of the administrators and parents.  Meanwhile, the school’s zero tolerance rule against touching children means that the kids can’t get a reassuring hug.

The new teacher, Monsieur Lazhar (well-played by Mohammed Fellag), is a traditionalist who demands respect but with humor and compassion.  He also seems oddly ignorant of modern teaching methods.  Although mild-mannered, he is fiercely devoted to protecting the kids.  That devotion keeps him from sharing his own burden with the children, for we learn that he, too, has reason to grieve.

Monsieur Lazhar was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar and won Canada’s equivalent of the Best Picture Oscar.  The child actors are superb.  It’s an uncommonly sweet and powerful film.

DVD of the Week: A Separation

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A contemporary Iranian couple had planned to leave Iran for a better life in the West, but, by the time they have wrangled a visa from the bureaucracy, the husband’s father has developed Alzheimer’s. The husband refuses to leave his father and the wife leaves the home in protest. They are well-educated and secular. The husband hires a poor and religious woman to care for his father (and she does not tell her husband about her job). Then there is an incident which unravels the lives of both families.

This is a brilliant film. Writer-director Asghar Farhadi has constructed a story in which the audience sees and hears everything that happens, but our understanding of the events and characters evolve.  We think we know what has happened, but then other narratives are revealed.  Likewise, the moral high ground is passed from one character to another and to another.  It’s like Rashomon, but with the audience keeping a single point of view.

Much of that point of view is shared by the ever watchful teenage daughter of the educated couple.  She desperately wants her parents back together, views everything through this prism and is powerless to make it happen.  She is played by Farhadi’s real life daughter.

Religion towers above the action – and not in a good way.  It guides the actions of the religious couple into choices against their interest.  The Iranian theocracy restricts the choices of the secular couple and of the judges trying to sort everything out.  Almost every character is a good person who is forced to lie to avoid some horrific result otherwise required by the culture.

One final note:  it will be a lot harder to make an easy joke at the expense of American lawyers after watching the Iranian justice system in A Separation.

The realistic angst of the chapters makes this a difficult film to watch – not a light date movie for sure. But the payoff is worth it, and it’s a must see.

This film was on the top ten list of over 30 critics and is Roger Ebert’s top-rated film of 2011.  It won the 2011 Foreign Language Picture Oscar.  Because regular folks like us could only see it in 2012, it made my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.

DVD of the Week: The Artist

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If you still haven’t seen the Best Picture Oscar-winning The Artist, you don’t have any excuse because it’s now available on DVD.  It’s a magical romance that writer-director Michel Hazanavicius gives us through the highly original choice of an almost silent film.  Set in Hollywood from 1927 through 1929, it is the story of a silent film star who is left behind by the startlingly immediate transition to talking pictures.

The French actor Jean Dujardin won the Best Actor Oscar as the silent star, a charismatic and ever-playful guy whose career is trapped by the shackles of his own vanity.  While on top, he treats an ambitious movie extra (Berenice Bejo) with kindness; she remembers when she becomes a star of the talkies.

Dujardin’s star, whose films resemble those of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.,  is a joker with a knack for the grand gesture.  He also has an adorable Jack Russell terrier that serves as his companion and co-star.

Hazanavicius is so skillful that audiences that have never seen a silent film soon become enraptured by the story and invested in the fates of the characters.  It’s a visually and emotionally satisfying film.

John Goodman and James Cromwell are excellent in supporting roles. 

(BTW, in real life, Berenice Bejo has two children with Michel Hazanavicius.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvifS2QOun4]

And, courtesy of photographica in the Movie Gourmet’s LA bureau, here is co-star Uggie the Jack Russell terrier celebrating Uggie Day in Los Angeles.

Susan Tyrrell: celebrating the cheap and tawdry

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Susan Tyrrell in FAT CITY

Last week I recommended Turner Classic Movies’ broadcast of the under appreciated Fat City (1972) .  It’s the story of boxer on the slide who inspires a kid to become a boxer on the rise.  Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrrell give dead-on performances as pathetic sad sack barflies. Tyrrell was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  Sadly, Susan Tyrell died on Saturday.

In this wonderful 2000 profile in LA Weekly, Tyrell said,  “The last thing my mother said to me was, ‘SuSu, your life is a celebration of everything that is cheap and tawdry.’ I’ve always liked that, and I’ve always tried to live up to it.”

Footnote: a comedy of awkwardness reveals two guys choosing misery

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A rising Talmudic scholar sees his career-topping prize accidentally awarded to his grumpy father.  This potentially comic situation reveals a character study of the two men.  At the beginning, we see the father as bitterly sullen.  As the story peels back the onion, we see the pomposity and narcissism in both men.

As you would think from watching the trailer, the first two-thirds of the film is very funny.  In fact, the scene of an academic meeting in a cramped office is one of the funniest moments you’ll see in any movie this year.  However, once the father makes a discovery, the movie darkens as the two men miss every chance to grasp selflessness.

As the end of the movie nears, the filmmakers create tension that makes the ending too abrupt for me, with too little payoff.  I think that the filmmakers of A Separation, by winding down the end of the movie, created a much successful ambiguous ending.

I admired Footnote more than I liked it, and, indeed, the critical consensus warmed to the film more than I.  Footnote won the screenplay award at Cannes and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Capturing the essence of the film perfectly, Roger Ebert wrote, “The Talmud provides guidance to Jews about how to lead their lives, but these two Jews have learned nothing that helps them when they find themselves in an impossible situation.”

some random thoughts on tonight’s Oscars

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Oscar deserving Michele Williams (with Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller) in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

I’m really not too exercised about tonight’s Oscars because I trust that it will a good night for my favorites among the nominated films:  The Artist and The Descendants.  Most of the nominations are relatively deserved, so it’s not like two years ago, when I was gnashing my teeth over the battle between The Hurt Locker (my fave) and Avatar (NOT my fave).

I am really rooting for Michele Williams to win the Best Actress Oscar.  Her performance is deserving, and she warrants recognition as the best of our younger actresses – and one who bravely picks quality scripts (Brokeback Mountain, Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine).

If you’re betting, the three biggest locks are Christopher Plummer for Supporting Actor,  Rango for Animated Feature and A Separation for Foreign Language Picture.

 

this year’s Oscar Dinner

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Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.

Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2012.

COCKTAILS AND STARTERS

First,  The Artist inspired both strawberries (George Valentin was breakfasting on strawberries while avoiding his wife’s glare) and whiskey (George later downs more than his share).

From Moneyball, we have a ballpark hot dog.

DINNER

Fried chicken from The Help and turnips (remember the ruined crop?) from War Horse.  This also kinda fits with the 50s meat-and-potatoes fare that Jessica Chastain was serving up to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.

When George Clooney and Shailene Woodley show up at the beach bungalow in The Descendants, wine is offered.  And we have selected a French wine, a Bordeaux that Michael Sheen in Midnight in Paris can continue to prattle on about.

DESSERT

From Hugo, we have one of the stolen croissants he subsisted upon (although we bought our croissant) served with some of the jam made by the Niels Arestrup character in War Horse.

We are bypassing the most obvious choice on the movie menu – Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help.  Instead, The Wife is making a Big Apple pie for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.


Looking foward to this year’s Oscar Dinner

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The Movie Gourmet's culinary tribute to 127 HOURS and WINTER'S BONE

Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was the ice sculpture of severed hands for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone. We also had Appletinis for The Social Network, cowboy beans for True Grit, and steak and organic roast vegetable salad with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. (I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.)  You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.

The pickins are slimmer this year, but fortunately I have found food and/or beverages referenced in or inspired by the Best Picture nominees.

You may remember George Valentin’s uneasy breakfast with his wife in The Artist, or the ruined crop in War Horse, or Jessica Chastain serving up some 50s  fare to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.  One thing for sure:  Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help will make an appearance!

 

The Help: a waste of great actresses

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Viola Davis in THE HELP

Well, given the upcoming Oscars, I should weigh in on The Help and its four Oscar nominations.  Based on the well-received novel by Kathryn Stockett, it is the story of black maids raising white children amid the hatefully poisonous racism of 1963 Jackson, Mississippi.  Unfortunately, the film is overlong, plodding and wastes the talents of an unholy multitude of our greatest actresses.

I am told by The Wife that the characters in the novel are full and textured.  The problem with the movie is that the characters are cartoonish cardboard cutouts of real people.  Unfortunately, Stockett’s novel was adapted by director Tate Taylor, and he stripped any hint of nuance or ambiguity from virtually every role.  Octavia Spencer and Allison Janney play characters that have a mix of human virtues and foibles.  But the rest of the awesome cast – Olivia Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Cecily Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Emma Stone – must play either saints or bitches.

Davis and Spencer are nominated for acting Oscars, and I wish them well.  But here’s a baffler – Chastain is a brilliant actress who has delivered not one but FIVE superb performances this year (Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, The Debt, Coriolanus, Texas Killing Fields), yet she is nominated for the one role written so broadly that she is obviously acting (The Help).