There seems to be a growing consensus that you can’t say “two thousand-something” any more — you have to say “twenty-ten” or whatever. This has been the only century since the acceptance of the Gregorian or Roman calendars in which English-speaking people have referred to a year by saying the word “thousand.” This has mainly been due, I suspect, to the grammatical influence of Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve been a twenty-something advocate since ’01, to no avail.
I’ve been feeling more and more persuaded over the last couple of weeks that Zoe Saldana deserves a Best Actress nomination for her motion-capture performance as Neytiri in Avatar. In the manner of a silent-film actress Saldana’s emoting is necessarily broad, and I understand the uninformed suspicion that it’s not she who deserves the credit as much as the motion-capture tweaks that fine-tuned her performance, but my heart knows what it feels. Saldana got me.
Don’t even mention Meryl Streep‘s Dan Aykroyd-y performance in Julie & Julia alongside Saldana’s. When I think of Avatar I think first of the 3D-eyeball-sex aspect, and then the final embrace moment between big Neytiri and Sam Worthington‘s little Jake. That was a huge sink-in for me. I was responding to a woman — her bravery, conviction — and not a technology. I felt her character and emotionality as fully as Carey Mulligan‘s in An Education.
I regret to say that apart from the motion-capture suspicion there’s a slight downside afflicting Saldana’s chances. I don’t mean to sound like a snob, but she doesn’t speak like a cultured actress or, to be completely frank, a woman of great character or feeling in the interviews that she’s done to support the film. She’s a New Jersey neighborhood girl who lived for several years in the Dominican Republic, and she seems to “talk the walk” in this respect. And that argues with what I want from an Oscar-calibre actress. Neytiri has “it”; Saldana not so much.
I watch and listen to Saldana, and I don’t think RADA or Stella Adler or HB Studios. Or a higher education of any kind. Or some kind of up-from-the-streets Edith Piaf kapow factor. I’m trying to fight my way past this, but I felt more enthusiasm for her Avatar performance before seeing her on “Late Night with David Letterman” than after.
And yet MCN’s David Poland is dead-on when he says the following:
“I have been struck by how many people, Academy members included, have remarked on the emotional weight of Saldana’s performance holding [Avatar] together. She is both very physical and very raw emotionally… something we have not really seen since Ms. Weaver in Mr. Cameron’s Aliens.
“There is a lot of education to be done here. My interviews with Cameron and WETA’s Joe Letteri took me through both the intent of the filmmakers and how this first-time ever process truly allowed the actors to do all of their traditional acting work, even as they were computerized.
“But the bottom line is, this is a strong piece of acting. It is a full-out performance. And by the middle of the film, you believe in who Naytiri is, above and beyond being 10 feet tall, blue, and nearly naked. This is a testament to Zoe Saldana’s work. She deserves serious consideration for a nomination, as any other actress who had given a performance like this would.”
Pete Hammond says the following: “The reason Saldana will not get an acting nom is that the whole area of performance-capture is a very controversial one for actors. SAG even has a committee devoted to exploring the negative aspects of it and what it eventually will mean for actors.”
I’d like to add 50% agreement to a recent AOL Moviefone poll verdict, which is that Megan Fox was the worst and the sexiest actress of 2009. I concur with the “worst” part because no other actor in an ’09 film seemed quite as falsely mannered to me — as devoid of anything recognizably human. There’s nothing behind her eyes. She really does seem to exude the personality, attitude and talent level of a porn star.
I’m talking mainly about her acting in Jennifer’s Body, of course. You can’t judge anyone by their performance in either of the Transformers films.
The dead-eye factor is also why I don’t find Fox sexy. So many under-25 guys fail to realize that looks are only a third of the package. (And less when you’re talking about Fox’s porn-star package.) No woman can be called genuinely sexy unless they have a quality about them that suggests (a) they’re emotionally approachable and (b) they’d be breathtaking in bed if and when you scored. Fox doesn’t seem approachable to anyone except for guys offering this or that material or portfolio enhancement, and you can’t believe porn stars during sex — it’s all terrible “acting.”
I guy I knew in college said something really eloquent once about a girl he’d recently met: “The sex was so good, I cried.” That would never occur if you happened to get lucky with Megan Fox.
A Manhattan street artist sold this to a friend, who turned around and gave it to me for a Christmas present. I don’t like to wear anything brown (not even underwear or socks) but this is exceptional. Research hasn’t revealed what “Il Maco” means.
Jett, who tunes out on certain subjects every so often, just asked who the likely Best Supporting Actor winner will be, and when I said “Christoph Waltz, the milk-sipping Nazi Colonel from Inglourious Basterds,” he said “what?” He’s seen Quentin Tarantino‘s film and was okay with it, but the Waltz certainty shocked him. Write a fast piece about why you just said that, I suggested. He’s not responding so I guess not.
This was a banner year of Stephen Lang in Public Enemies and Avatar — why isn’t he in the loop? Peter Capaldi‘s potty mouthed rage-hound performance in In The Loop made him a major indie star. Alfred Molina‘s awkward English dad was wonderfully bent and vulnerable in An Education, and Peter Sarsgaard was curiously sly and winning as Carey Mulligan‘s odd-duck older boyfriend. Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty shone brightly in The Hurt Locker. Christian McKay in Orson Welles and Me! And James Gandolfini‘s In The Loop general turned me around like few smallish comic performances have this year. (Between this and Gandolfini’s comic vulgarian in God of Carnage, who knew?)
Why does it have to be Waltz, Waltz, Waltz and nothing but?
“While there is violence galore in Ian Fitzgibbon‘s A Film With Me in It, the lion’s share is accidental,” writes critic Marshall Fine. “That’s the joke in this blackly humorous Irish film. People drop dead at an alarming rate in this movie, and the deaths are unbelievably accidental — and are certain to seem so to the authorities.
Doherty or Moran? You decide.
“Unemployed actor Mark (Mark Doherty) and his would-be writer-filmmaker friend Pierce (stand-up comic Dylan Moran) are ne’er-do-wells, renting flats in the same building from the same gruff landlord (Keith Allen), who is badgering them for their respective rents. Mark has spent the rent on other bills – like heat for the flat and gas for the car – but he hasn’t told his girlfriend Sally (Amy Huberman), with whom he lives, along with his paralyzed brother Dave (David O’Doherty).
“As Mark tries to figure out how to keep from being evicted, he suffers a mini-plague of accidents within his ramshackle apartment. Let’s just say the apartment’s rattletrap fixtures and shaky furniture claim a series of victims in record time, forcing Mark and Pierce to figure out how to dispose of the various corpses without landing in jail for something they didn’t do.
“There’s a wonderful comic chemistry between the taciturn Doherty and the alternately blase and panicked Moran. Doherty seems mostly to be in shock, while Moran – as the would-be screenwriter – keeps trying to puzzle out the situation as though it were a movie he was watching.
“It’s a slight film but an explosively funny one. I happened to see it at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008 — and now it’s finally being released (who knows how briefly) at lower Manhattan’s IFC Center. It may roll out elsewhere – or turn up in some video-on-demand delivery system. By all means, make an effort to track it down. It will make you laugh – hard.”
Why don’t I believe Fine’s last sentence? If A Film With Me in It is that funny then why wasn’t it acquired for a bigger, broader release out of Toronto? And why didn’t the IFC people invite me to see it?
Orangutans have very expressive faces. Nothing startling in this. I first realized it when I was in third or fourth grade. I thought that Clyde, the orangutan who co-stared with Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can , performed well, but I’d like to see someone try to direct an orangutan into a straight drama. “Without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own…”
With Nine not doing as well as it could and Harvey Weinstein feeling the financial pressure even more, I’ve no desire to add to anyone’s grief. But from a sporting perspective I’m wondering if anyone besides myself is perturbed in the slightest that Mo’Nique and Christoph Waltz, portrayers of a gruesome twosome in Precious and Inglourious Basterds respectively, have been so relentlessly predicted to win Best Suppporting Oscars?
Because so many pundits and critics groups have predicted both to win, I would love to see one or both apple carts overturned. Just for the pleasure of seeing certain people shout “no!…no!”.
A Mo’Nique loss would be especially glorious, but the odds are almost insurmountable. And no one seems persuaded that her competitors are formidable enough. I’m actually of two minds about Waltz. He’s apparently a nice fellow and was, admittedly, enjoyably cunning in that first IB scene in the farmhouse and, as mentioned, I feel badly enough for Harvey as it is. It’s only that something in me seethes when the same thing is forecast by so many, especially when the performances in question aren’t, to be honest, especially rich or startling or unique, but because they’re showboaters — they arrest your attention and stay with you.
The Gold Derby Buzzmeter has been updated and Avatar got a big bump. It’s still trailing Up in the Air, but only by a couple votes. Invictus is seen as a Best Picture hopeful?
The trailer for James Mangold‘s Knight and Day (20th Century Fox, 7.2.10) suggests it may be the only formulaic throw-away movie of Tom Cruise‘s career.
Which isn’t to suggest that it is that. Trailer always accentuate the most stupidly appealing aspects of any film, etc. It’s just that Cruise — think about it — has one of the best track records of all time in terms of almost making quality-level, or at least quality-aspriring, films. (What’s his all-time worst? Far and Away? Days of Thunder? Cocktail?) And he’s been maintaining this brand for 30 years now. He’s never really made a 1980s Chevy Chase movie in his entire life.
When all is said and done I suspect that Knight and Day may turn out to be a tad more substantial than this. Fletch meets Collateral?
I mean, you look at Cameron Diaz‘s behavior and expressions in the trailer and you go, “What is this? How could the esteemed director of Walk The Line, 3:10 to Yuma and Copland have made such a thing?”
I haven’t read the script, but the idea, I’m figuring, was to deliberately go light and zingy and commercial in order to make money. If this happens, Cruise will have begun to disperse that uh-oh cloud he’s been carrying over his head since the couch-jump.
In all modesty, I would like to believe that my 2009 war against the Blu-ray grain monks may have been…well, at least a significant anecdotal factor in the evolution of industry thinking about how to wisely master Blu-rays of classic films. I ranted about this over and over, but the best-written column article on the subject, called “Damn Sand,” ran on 2.28.09. I am genuinely proud of how I put the case.
And here it is again, the second 2009 looking-back post for the purpose of filling column inches as everyone kicks back and does nothing until January 2, 2010:
Sandstorm-strength grain is a technological blight that classic-era filmmakers had no choice but to work with as best they could. Bring the great directors back to life — Wilder, Lubitsch, Fleming, Capra, Hawks, Ford, Griffith, Keaton, Hitchcock — and they would all say, “Yes, naturally, obviously, of course…ask Lowry Digital‘s John Lowry to do what he can to tastefully take down the grain levels in our films! Because we want our films to be seen, and we never liked that damn grain gravel to begin with.”
Take no notice of the present-day monks who say that grain is beautiful, vital, essential. Excessive grain is a visual hindrance to be fought tooth-and-nail down to the last dying breath. Because if they have their way the grain monks, who care only about the perpetration of their own dweeby world in the Abbey of St. Martin in rural France, will strongly discourage today’s younger generations of film lovers (as well as generations to come) from even thinking about watching the great classics.
I suspect that younger film lovers are as averse to Arabian grainstorm images as I’ve been all my life to silent films. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m always putting off watching this or that great silent classic on DVD because of a lifelong impatience with lack of dialogue (among other tinny ’20s elements that tend to get in the way for a TV generation guy like myself, such as the exaggerated acting styles and too-often static cinematography). I watch these films but grudgingly. I’m not proud of this, mind, but it’s a fact. And I’m probably more receptive to movie lore than your average non-pro film buff.
The younger folks of today (i.e., 25 and under) regard movies made before the ’90s as old, and films from the big-studio era as Paleozoic. Silent films are almost totally out the window for my two sons (who are 20 and 19), but to foster at least some degree of reverence and affection for the 1930-to-1970 era, the old films have to be semi-watchable in a cleaned-up way, and by this I mean aesthetically free of any rickety aroma.
That doesn’t mean they should be degraded down to a plastic visual realm akin to digital video games, as some irrational monks on this site have suggested. It means de-graining them with respect, taste and affection. But it also means removing the damn sand already, or as much as possible without violating the core intentions of the filmmakers.
These guys didn’t love grain. Their films were covered with the stuff — hello? – because they had no choice.
Grain reduction can be done correctly, reverently. Look at the Blu-ray Pinocchio (which Some Came Running’s Glenn Kenny has just written about), or the Blu-ray Casablanca. (I’ve never seen the Blu-ray of Michael Curtiz‘s Robin Hood — how is it?)
And that means one thing — elevating John Lowry and his grain-reduction technology to a position equal to that of Jonas Salk and his 1950s polio vaccine.
But before this happens there can be no more tolerance of the monk aesthetic. These people are equivalent to the ultra-right-wing Hebrew rabbinicals who’ve been the most persistent opponents of accord with the Palestinians. Due respect, but people on my side of the issue need to get all Torquemada on their ass. The more the monks get to call the shots about transferring old films to high-def formats, the worse things will be as far as the future of film culture will be. Because they are standing in the way of the church taking in new members and making new converts.
The very survival of the culture of classic film lovers over the next ten to twenty years and beyond is at stake. These well-meaning purists are doing everything in their power to preserve the celluloid grain reality of the past (okay, for the “right” reasons, granted) but are, I suspect, dimming enthusiasm among GenY and GenD viewers for pre-1970 Hollywood classics in the bargain.
This issue has only come to the fore with Blu-ray technology because now you can see the grain much more clearly. I popped in an eight-year-old Dr. Strangelove DVD the other day and was shocked at how much grainier it looks on my 42-inch Panasonic plasma than on my six year-old 36″ Sony analog flat-screen.
High-def, in short, is exposing the granular reality of how these films look more than ever before. In the same way that the most recent digital mastering of George Pal‘s War of the Worlds (’53) exposed the wires holding up the Martian space ships. Only an oddball like DVD Talk‘s Glenn Erickson would say that seeing the wires is an okay thing. (“There was no CG wire removal in 1953,” Erickson wrote in ’05, “and it would be detrimental revisionism to change the picture now [so] learn to live with it.”) The wires obviously weren’t intended to be seen, and the obvious remedy is to go into the current transfer and digitally remove them — simple. That’s all I’m talking about in general. Remove the stuff from older films that distracts the viewer from the dream state that movies are supposed to lull you into. Because grain is the worst waker-upper of all.
In a figurative way the monks already have already been excommunicated or I wouldn’t be referring to them as monks, but they clearly hold sway among the current generation of film preservationists and restoration experts (Robert Harris, Grover Crisp, Ned Price, George Feltenstein, Scott McQueen, etc.) and at the Criterion Co., which is pretty much mad monk central these days, to go by their work on the Blu-ray of The Third Man.
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