academy awards

The Nominees Should Be...

Brett McCracken — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:42:19 -0800

Today was the deadline for the 5,777 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to turn in their completed nominations ballots for the 2010 awards. The resulting nominations will be announced February 2 and the ceremony will be March 7.

I’m sure I’ll be mostly disappointed when the nominations are actually announced (and Avatar gets 9 nominations), so I’ll take this opportunity to put forth the nominations I’d like to see, if I could have my way:

Best Picture
Summer Hours
The White Ribbon
Inglourious Basterds
The Hurt Locker
A Serious Man
Invictus
The Last Station
The Road
Up
Bright Star

Best Director
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon
Jane Campion, Bright Star
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Lorna’s Silence

Best Actor
Viggo Mortenson, The Road
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Best Actress
Tilda Swinton, Julia
Abbie Cornish, Bright Star
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Arta Dobroshi, Lorna’s Silence

Best Supporting Actor
James McAvoy, The Last Station
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Paul Schneider, Bright Star

Best Supporting Actress
Gwenyth Paltrow, Two Lovers
Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Julianne Moore, A Single Man

Best Foreign Film
Still Walking (Japan)
Letters to Father Jacob (Finland)
The White Ribbon (Germany)
The Headless Woman (Argentina)
Gomorra (Italy)

My Alternate Oscar Nominations

Brett McCracken — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:19:37 -0800

Over at Relevantmagazine.com yesterday, I wrote about who I predicted would win this Sunday’s Academy Awards. I mentioned that this year’s nominations were among the worst I’d ever seen, and that if I could come up with my own nomination list, it would probably be about 80% different than what the Academy came up with. Well, below is my own alternate set of nominations in fifteen of the top categories (totally disregarding eligibility rules). And it looks like they are actually 73% different… but you get the point.

Best Picture
Paranoid Park
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Rachel Getting Married
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Director
Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park
Charlie Kauffman, Synecdoche, New York
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Woody Allen, Cassandra’s Dream

Best Actor:
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Benicio Del Toro, Che
Michael Fassbinder, Hunger

Best Actress:
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Kristen Scott Thomas, I’ve Loved You So Long
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Michelle Williams, Wendy & Lucy
Juliette Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon

Supporting Actor:
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Chris Messina, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Jeffrey Wright, W.

Supporting Actress:
Viola Davis, Doubt
Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married
Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married
Tilda Swinton in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Documentary:
Man on Wire
American Teen
Encounters at the End of the World
Standard Operating Procedure
The Unforeseen

Best Foreign Film:
The Class (France)
Hunger (Ireland)
Silent Light (Mexico)
Let the Right One In (Sweden)
Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

Best Original Screenplay
Synecdoche, New York
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Rachel Getting Married
Gran Torino
Burn After Reading

Best Adapted Screenplay
The Darkest Knight
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Paranoid Park
Frost/Nixon
Doubt

Best Original Score
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Darkest Knight
Synecdoche, New York
Revolutionary Road
Cassandra’s Dream

Best Original Song
Bruce Springsteen, “The Wrestler” (The Wrestler)
Clint Eastwood, Jamie Cullum, “Gran Torino” (Gran Torino)
Peter Gabriel, “Down to Earth” (Wall E)

Cinematography:
Revolutionary Road
Paranoid Park
Ballast
Chop Shop
Hunger

Art Direction
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mister Lonely
The Fall
Australia
Synecdoche, New York

Costume Design
Australia
The Fall
Mister Lonely
Revolutionary Road
The Dark Knight

OSCAR RACE: Harvey vs. The Ram

Craig Detweiler — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:49:03 -0800

Slumdog Millionaire will win the Academy Award for Best Picture. But what about the acting categories? Months ago, I championed two big performances in small movies. I was thrilled to see Melissa Leo nominated for Frozen River and Richard Jenkins honored for The Visitor. Both films are modest in scope but grand in their execution. They put a human face on the immigration issue, exploring lives on the margins, at the edges of the American dream. For independent films, it is a victory just to be nominated. So who will win the Oscar?

Best actor has become a two horse race: Harvey Milk vs. Randy the Ram. The Screen Actors Guild honored Sean Penn for his compassionate portrait of San Francisco supervisor, Harvey Milk. Mickey Rourke gave a poignant acceptance speech at the Golden Globes for his bruised and broken down role as The Wrestler. Both Oscar campaigns are fueled by the connections between reel life and real life.

Milk has grown in relevance after Proposition 8 overturned the California Supreme Court’s affirmation of gay marriage. The movie focuses upon Harvey Milk’s role in repealing a 1978 proposition prohibiting gay people from serving as public school teachers. It celebrates Milk’s trailblazing election while reminding viewers how tenuous gay rights remain thirty years on. Milk carries a message Hollywood wants to highlight on Oscar night.

Yet, The Wrestler also contains a compelling meta-story. The faded glory of pro wrestler Randy the Ram is mirrored by actor Mickey Rourke’s turbulent career. Rourke and the Ram both struggle with addictions, distance themselves from those who seek to help them, and self-inflict all manner of pain. A victory for The Wrestler would complete Rourke’s professional rehabilitation. And Hollywood loves a comeback story.

Beyond the back-stories, how does the work of Penn and Rourke compare? Both films are a form of canonization. They are steeped in suffering, in determination, in perseverance. Milk and The Wrestler are tragedies, stories of fighters who are cut off far too soon. But the grainy cinematography of The Wrestler contrasts with the studio glow that burnishesMilk. Will Academy voters go for gritty or polished, handheld or upheld?

Milk venerates an enduring role model for gay activists and progressive politicians. Dustin Lance Black’s script shows how gradually Harvey discovered his calling as “the Mayor of Castro Street.” The road from small business owner to tireless community organizer was full of false starts and disappointments. But Milk and the movie never stop recruiting us to join their cause. Sean Penn’s Harvey Milk charms us with a quick smile. He relishes the challenge of wooing skeptical voters. He talks his lovers into enduring another grueling campaign. His singular focus is shown to have a substantial personal cost. Thanks to Penn’s compassionate performance, we feel with and for Harvey.

The sunny optimism of Milk is counterbalanced by the creepiness Josh Brolin brings to his portrayal of Supervisor Dan White. In a year without Heath Ledger’s Joker, Brolin would have garnered an Oscar. His haunted, stuffed shirt unravels in an entirely believable way. White doesn’t seem like a monster–just a repressed, angry and average American. He stands in for our worst tendencies, the dark side of our culture that rages against Harvey Milk’s happiness.

The Wrestler presents Rourke as a “sacrificial Ram.” A handheld camera follows the Ram through the bowels of decrepit arenas. Director Darren Aronofsky places us inside the ring, amidst the Ram’s blood, sweat and tears. We see the tricks of the wrestling trade, from hidden razor blades to cabinets full of painkillers. We understand how much entertainment is built into the wrestling biz, as the competitors discuss their moves before they enter the ring. Scenes of staples piercing the Ram’s bronze body make us wince. The Wrestler descends into a theater of cruelty.

Much has been made of Rourke’s tendency to hide as an actor behind sunglasses or accents or tics. The Wrestler reveals and revels in all his scars. Rourke’s performance feels naked and unguarded. It is out there, in the ring, for all to see. Marisa Tomei matches him in her role as a fading stripper. She reveals even more flesh and bears her wounds with equal empathy. The Wrestler veers dangerously close to exploiting its actors. But Tomei’s fearless performance deserves another Oscar as best supporting actress. She provides a living embodiment of hope, a potential escape route from the Ram’s downward spiral.

So who will win the Oscar for Best Actor? Sean Penn’s volatile reputation vanishes within the warmth of Milk. Penn disappears in the role, allowing Harvey to emerge. Rourke and the Ram merge their professional and personal demons. The movie and role could not have happened without Rourke. For my money, best actor belongs to those who travel the farthest, who take us on the deepest ride. Rourke has traveled a long way from his professional heights. But Penn goes further in inhabiting a different place and space and person. He finds the soul of a secular saint, a beacon of light amidst a dark era. We’re dragged down with the Ram. We transcend our circumstances with Milk. Best actor in 2008? Sean Penn.

Review: The Class

Brett McCracken — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:12:54 -0800

One of the films nominated in the upcoming Academy Awards’ best foreign film category, The Class is also the first great film I’ve seen in 2009. It’s a film that compelled me from start to finish and left me feeling more curious and inquisitive about the world. Not every film does this for me.

The film—which won the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival—is a slice-of-life look at one classroom in a junior high in Paris’ 20th arrondissement, a working class neighborhood on the city’s far eastern edge. This is blue collar suburban Paris, where immigrants outnumber “natives” and racial tension is thick. And yet the school and students look strikingly similar to a typical American junior high—while also markedly different.

The Class is one of those films that looks and feels like it might be a documentary; and in some senses, it is. Sure, it is “fiction” and the story somewhat scripted, but the film features real people—not actors—in their real roles as teachers, students, parents, etc. It feels like a journalistic investigation into the heart of French public education in 2008; which is pretty much what it is, fiction or otherwise.

The film is based on a book, Between the Walls, written by a real French schoolteacher about his experiences in the classroom over the course of a year. What makes The Class such an interesting adaptation is that the author of the book (François Bégaudeau) is also the star of the film, portraying a version of himself as a young, idealistic teacher trying to inspire a motley crew of variously motivated 14-year-olds. Likewise, the students in his classroom, as well as their parents, and the other teachers in the school, are all playing versions of themselves. This is a real school; These are real lives. It’s a strange blend of life lived and life portrayed. It’s sort of like The Hills meets Mad Hot Ballroom meets Frontline.

Director Laurent Cantet worked with all these amateur “actors” through a system of weekly workshops and improvisations which unfolded over the course of an entire schoolyear. This thoroughly French approach to filmmaking (can you imagine an American studio ever having the patience for a year-long shoot for an arthouse film?) probably accounts for the utterly organic, cinema verite feel of The Class. The fluid cameras feel unobtrusive; the direction invisible; anything “cinematic” comes across only in the occasional shift of focus depth or otherwise artistic shot setup.

Mainly, the film just “lets be” its subjects. The Class is unencumbered by any sort of real plot or script. Rather, it is a series of events, of conversations, of laughter and hardship and students who are alternately unruly, apathetic, and ambitious.

It’s a film that presents us with a complicated social environment: a public school classroom. It’s amazing to watch the nuance and complexity with which Cantet and his improvising subjects navigate the litany of power struggles, adolescent energy, class, race, and French national identity (it’s a French class) being negotiated on a daily basis throughout the school year. Like all teachers, Bégaudeau has his share of model students, trouble students, and downright problem students. And like all classrooms, there are various cliques, stereotypes, and neuroses (pride, fear, inadequacy) both expressed and unexpressed.

But at the end of the day, a class is just a temporary thing—a fleeting band of humanity tossed together for a time, to learn and struggle and push forward in life. Nothing of great surprise or significance happens in The Class, you might think. It’s just a year of somewhat stereotypical school. But this is the drama of life, of thoroughly contemporary life as it is fought through in 2008. And The Class reminds us that the drama of everyday life is sometimes the most miraculous kind.

The Nominations Are In - Who Got Snubbed?

CJ Casciotta — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 11:32:37 -0800

In my goal to beat McCracken to it (you lose this time sir but you’ll always be a better writer than me) here are my thoughts on this morning’s Oscar nominations.

“The night is always darkest before the dawn.” A great line from a great film. This morning however, after the Oscar nominations were announced, I was hoping for a little more “Dark Knight” than I got.

We were all hoping 2009 would be the year a superhero movie was nominated for best picture… and rightfully so. Iron Man was sophisticated, mind-blowing, and fun. Christopher Nowlan’s Batman sequel didn’t stop at making its mark as an epic action flick. Rather, it undoubtedly shifted into the realm of “excellent film,” inadvertent of its iconic protagonist. It was a piece that dueled with the relevant and the timeless, a piece that dared to ask such bold questions and discuss such profound dilemmas in ways only the medium of visual storytelling could accomplish. Sure, it’s no surprise Heath Ledger’s brilliant spin on the Joker landed a nod for best supporting actor, but when his competition includes Robert Downy Jr. for the sophomoric Tropic Thunder, it would be blatant disrespect for the deceased to snub him.

Apart from that nonsensical addition, the lists for best actors and actresses both leading and supporting is surprisingly just. You’d be hard pressed to find someone unappreciative of Brad Pit’s unprecedented portrayal of Benjamin Button, and old man who gradually grows younger, or the magnetic, raw quality Mickey Rourke brought to The Wrestler. As I had hoped last month in my review of Button, the Academy acknowledged Taraji P. Henson’s arresting performance as Queenie, the most heroic and endearing of the film’s supporting cast. It puts me at ease to see the quartet from Doubt acknowledged for their efforts. Big shots like Adams, Hoffman, Streep, and the lesser-known Viola Davis possessed the teamwork and synergy it took to make Doubt’s leap from the stage to the big screen moving. Giving a nod to Richard Jenkins for his quirky, quiet portrayal as Walter Vale in the Visitor was an equally great move. The guy is a tremendous character actor, commanding and subtle all at the same time and his role in Burn After Reading was the only thing that kept me awake.

Wall-E and Slumdog Millionaire get what they deserve. They’re both innovative films with great music to back them up. While one could argue that Wall-E has a place alongside The Dark Knight in the best film category, there’s little doubt it will take home “best animated feature against Bolt and Kung-Fu Panda.

Oh, and where were these films?:
Gran Torino
Revolutionary Road
Synecdoche, New York

These three, ESPECIALLY Clint Eastwood’s compelling and beautiful Gran Torino (shame on the academy for not even giving him a nod), should have seen much more praise.

With the exception of those and a few other grave oversights, the 2009 Oscar nominations are an interesting and somewhat fair reflection of this past year in film. My hope is that Slumdog will come out victorious as best picture with David Fincher taking home Best Director for Benjamin Button. I’ve still yet to see Frost Nixon, The Reader, or Milk (which, correct me if I’m wrong, only seems to be getting hype because of its hyper-relevant, sensitive subject matter).

For a complete list of 2009 Oscar nominations click here.