Do you want to read a Bluray review that hems and haws and tap-dances on the fence rail and goes badda-bop and badda-beep? Then read Martin Leibman‘s Bluray.com review of the brand-new William Friedkin and Owen Roizman-approved French Connection Bluray, which I creamed over a couple of days ago.
Clearly the new Bluray represents the film as originally shot and seen — 16mm-ish, rugged, gritty –with some reds and oranges popping through extra vividly. There’s no question this is the version to have and hold instead of that godawful blotchy, muddy, desaturated Bluray that Friedkin mastered and had released by Fox Home Video in 2009.
But Leibman, striving for a tone of balance and fairness and detachment, can’t bring himself to just say that. Largely because (we eventually learn) he doesn’t agree, but also because the changes haven’t been passionately explained.
“In a case like this, then, with an argument existing for one side” — i.e., the way the film looks on the new Bluray — “and none, really, for the other, it comes down to personal preference. The majority seems to prefer, or at least has demanded in the past, a transfer more in line with what this release offers.”
“Seems” to prefer? Hey, Martin…don’t go out on a limb!
Here’s my favorite line in his review: “At the end of the day, it makes for a fun little comparison but serious viewers have certainly been put in something of a pickle with this one.”
Believe me, Martin — nobody but nobody feels like they’re in a pickle with this thing. The bad version has been discredited, pure and simple, and the Munchkins are marching around the town square singing “ding-dong, the witch is dead.”
To my knowledge there’s only one person who might be saying that it’s a 50/50 thing, and that some might prefer the ’09 version and some the new one blah blah and what a pickle, and that’s MCN’s David Poland. Poland actually wrote the following when Friedkin’s bleachy version was released in early ’09: “The French Connection on Blu-ray is one of the great additions to the highest shelf of my Blu-ray library, up there with The Godfather, the Kubrick films, and Pixar.”
Leibman finally comes down on the side of the 2009 version near the end of the piece, not because of what he sees and feels or thinks but because the new version lacks the passionate defense or explanation from Friedkin to explain why the natural hues have been reverted back to.
“Considering Friedkin’s rather passionate and convincing argument on the old release, however, it’s difficult to argue against it, especially considering that there’s no such explanation here save for a blurb on the box proclaiming the approval of both the director and the cinematographer for the new transfer,” he writes.
Have you ever read such a load of gooey gelato bullshit in your life?
What Leibman is saying, in effect, is this: “Seeing is not believing because the visuals alone are not enough. A persuasive argument and/or explanation for the natural look and tone of this new transfer must be included on an extras supplement or on a printed statement of some kind, or the Bluray itself must necessarily suffer in the minds of critics like myself. It’s not enough, in short, for this new Bluray to look better. It has to be accompanied by a persuasive theory.”
If the “lacks a persuasive theory” remark rings a bell, it’s from Tom Wolfe‘s The Painted Word.
Comic-book artist Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, a.k.a. “Moebius,” died today in Paris of cancer, at age 73. Not being a comic-book guy, I first became aware of Moebius when he was referenced in a line of Quentin Tarantino dialogue from Crimson Tide (’95). Moebius drew a two-issue Silver Surfer comic book (under the title of “Parable”) in ’88 and ’89. Jack Kirby was the original Surfer creator, of course — even I knew that.
(l.) Moebius Silver Surfer; (r.) the Kirby version.
From Crimson Tide:
Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (i.e., Denzel Washington): Rivetti, what’s up?
Petty Officer First Class Danny Rivetti (i.e., Danny Nucci): I’m sorry, sir. It’s just a difference of opinion that got out of hand.
Hunter: What about?
Rivetti: It’s really too silly to talk about, sir. I’d really just forget about…
Hunter: I don’t give a damn about what you’d rather forget about. Why were you two fighting?
Rivetti: I said, the Kirby Silver Surfer was the only real Silver Surfer. And that the Moebius Silver Surfer was shit. And Bennefield’s a big Moebius fan. And it got of hand. I pushed him. He pushed me. I lost my head, sir. I’m Sorry.
Hunter: Rivetti, you’re a supervisor. You can get a commission like that.
Rivetti: I know, sir. You’re 100 percent right. It will never happen again.
Hunter: It better not happen again. If I see this kind of nonsense again, I’m going to write you up. You understand?
Rivetti: [No answer]
Hunter: Do you understand?
Rivetti: Yes, sir.
Hunter: You have to set an example even in the face of stupidity. Everybody who reads comic books knows that the Kirby Silver Surfer is the only true Silver Surfer. Now am I right or wrong?
Rivetti: You’re right, sir.
Hunter: Now get out of here.
Rivetti: Yes, sir.
And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about how I should be fully knowledgable about comic-book culture if I want to write about or reference any movie based on a comic book, etc. I hate fucking comic books for the dumb-down, pandering-to-bloated-junkfood-eating-geek effect they’ve had upon the plots of way too many mainstream adventure movies. I deeply respect the artistry of great comic books and high-end comic-book artists, and I’ve have spent many an hour studying the great stuff at Golden Apple, etc. But God, how I hate all abut a very select fraternity of comic book movies (i.e., Nolan’s Batman films).
It takes years to really understand some films, and in a certain sense to stand up to them. Particularly those made by world-class filmmakers — films with lots of style and jazz up their sleeves. If you ask me the Chicago critics in this early ’99 video clip — Roger Ebert, Michael Wilmington, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ray Pride and Dann Gire — were so swayed by Stanley Kubrick‘s reputation as a genius-level director that they couldn’t quite bring themselves to just look at Eyes Wide Shut for what it really was and just say that.
Last night I re-watched the Eyes Wide Shut Bluray, and of course, as usual, I was sucked in start to finish. But I’m even more convinced now than ever before that this is one of the most soulless wanks (in terms of actual content as opposed to the look and mood of it) ever created by a major director.
You really need to listen to McDowell in this clip. He worked with Kubrick, knew him well, obviously saw through to the bottom of him. Once you’ve done that, read on.
Here’s how I put it way back when:
“I once referred to Eyes Wide Shut as a ‘perfectly white tablecloth.’ That implies purity of content and purpose, which it clearly has. But Eyes Wide Shut is also a tablecloth that feels stiff and unnatural from too much starch.
“Stanley Kubrick was one of the great cinematic geniuses of the 20th century, but on a personal level he wound up isolating himself, I feel, to the detriment of his art. The beloved, bearded hermit so admired by Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg (both of whom give great interviews on the Eyes Wide Shut DVD) had become, to a certain extent, an old fogey who didn’t really get the world anymore.
“Not that he wanted or needed to. He created in his films worlds that were poetically whole and self-balancing on their own aesthetic terms. But as time went on, they became more and more porcelain and pristine, and less flesh-and-blood. Eyes Wide Shut is probably the most porcelain of them all.
“I remember writing two or three pieces in ’99 and ’00 about how Eyes Wide Shut was a fascinating stiff that essentially portrayed of the decline of Stanley Kubrick. I remember bully-boy David Poland unloading ridicule in my direction because of this. All to say that it gave me comfort to come upon a similar judgment in David Thomson‘s re-review of Kubrick’s final film, which is found on page 273 of Have You Seen…?.
Here’s the first paragraph and two sentences at the article’s end:
“This is the last film of Stanley Kubrick — indeed, he died so soon after delivery of his cut that the legend quickly grew that he intended doing more things to his movie. But it’s hard at the end not to see the substantial gulf between the man who knew ‘everything’ about filmmaking but not nearly enough about life or love or sex (somehow, over the years those subjects did get left out).
“Not that the film lacks intrigue or suggestiveness. Mastery can be felt. It is just that the master seems to have forgotten, or given up on figuring out, why mastery should be any more valuable than supremacy at chess or French polishing.”
The last two lines of Thomson’s review: “It is a shock to find that the film is only 159 minutes. Every frame feels like a prison.”
From my March 2000 review: “If you want your art to matter, stay in touch with the world. Keep in the human drama, take walks, go to baseball games, chase women, argue with waiters, ride motorcycles, hang out with children, play poker, visit Paris as often as possible and always keep in touch with the craggy old guy with the bad cough who runs the news stand.
“Kubrick apparently did very little of this. The more invested he became in his secretive, secluded, every-detail-controlled, nothing-left-to-chance lifestyle in England — which he began to construct when he left Hollywood and moved there in the early ’60s — and the less familiar he became with the rude hustle-bustle of life on the outside, the more rigid and formalized and apart-from-life his films became.
“Kubrick’s movies were always impressively detailed and beautifully realized. They’ve always imposed a certain trance-like spell — an altogetherness and aesthetic unity common to the work of any major artist.
“What Kubrick chose to create is not being questioned here. On their own terms, his films are masterful. But choosing to isolate yourself from the unruly push-pull of life can have a calcifying effect upon your art.
“Kubrick was less Olympian and more loosey-goosey when he made his early films in the `50s (Fear and Desire, The Killing, Paths of Glory) and early `60s (Lolita, Dr. Strangelove). I’m not saying his ultra-arty period that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey and continued until his death with A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, resulted in lesser films. The opposite is probably true.
“I’m saying that however beautiful and mesmerizing they were on their own terms, these last six films of Kubrick’s were more and more unto themselves, lacking that reflective, straight-from-the-hurlyburly quality that makes any work of expression seem more vital and alive.
“So many things about Eyes Wide Shut irritate me. Don’t get me started. So many others have riffed on this.
“The stiff, phoney-baloney way everyone talks to one another. The unmistakable feeling that the world it presents is much closer to 1920s Vienna (where the original Arthur Schnitzler novel was set) than modern-day Manhattan. The babysitter calling Cruise and Nicole Kidman ‘Mr. Harford’ and ‘Mrs. Harford.’ (If there is one teenaged Manhattan babysitter who has ever expressed herself like a finishing school graduate of 1952 and addressed a modern Manhattan couple in their early 30s as ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.,’ I will eat the throw rug in David Poland‘s apartment.) The trite cliches that constitute 85% of Cruise’s dialogue. The agonizingly stilted delivery that Kidman gives to her lines in the sequence in which she’s smoking pot and arguing with Cruise in their bedroom. That absolutely hateful piano chord that keeps banging away in Act Three.
“The ultimate proof that Kubrick was off his game in his final days? He was so wrong in his judgment that the MPAA wouldn’t hit him with an NC-17 rating for the orgy scene that he didn’t even shoot alternative footage he could use in the event he might be forced to prune the overt nudity. He was instead caught with his pants down and forced to resort to a ridiculous CGI cover-up that makes no sense in the context of the film. (Would Cruise’s sexually curious character be content with just seeing the shoulders and legs of the sexual performers as he walks through the mansion? Wouldn’t he make a point of actually seeing the real action?)
“No one has been blunt enough to say it, but Kubrick obviously played his cards like no one who had any serious understanding of the moral leanings of the culture, let alone a good poker player’s sense of the film business, would have. He played them like an old man whose instincts were failing him, and thereby put himself and Warner Brothers into an embarrassing position. I wish things hadn’t ended this way for him, but they did.
“I hope what I’ve written here isn’t misread. I’ll always be grateful to have lived in a world that included the films of Stanley Kubrick. He’s now in the company of Griffith, Lubitsch, Chaplin, Eisenstein and the rest. Prolific or spare, rich or struggling, lauded or derided as their artistic strivings may have been, they are all equal now.”
Like I said a few weeks ago, Viola Davis is always playing characters defined by their work — social worker, CIA agent, bad mom, domestic maid, space engineer, nurse, cop, policewoman — and never by personal longings or creases or compulsions.
Add Jordan to Davis’s next two roles — a librarian helping kids deal with hauntings in Beautiful Creatures and a genius recruited by the government to help defeat an alien insect race in Ender’s Game — and it’s even more obvious she’s fallen into a major, major rut.
8:35 pm: Tom Cruise presenting the Best Picture Oscar to The Artist. And to all a good night. I don’t get Hazanavicius saying thanks to Billy Wilder three times. Not that Wilder’s example isn’t always worth pointing to. I’m sure there’s an explanation.
8:24 pm: Colin Firth is presenting the Best Actress award with the same tributes and clips. (Rooney Mara looks so much more alluring and intriguing as Lisbeth Salander, studs, punctures and all, than the way she does tonight with those bangs….no offense.) And the Oscar goes to Meryl Streep!! Sasha Stone freaks out! The over-62 crowd says no to Viola Davis. This is the shock-surprise we’ve been waiting for. Wasn’t in the cards, or at least the cards that many (most?) were consulting.
8:15 pm: Each Best Actor nominee is getting a “you went, guy” tribute from Natalie Portman plus a clip. And of course, the Oscar goes to Jean Dujardin. So The Artist will win only five Oscars, right? Best Costume Design, Best Musical Score, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture. THR’s Scott Feinberg had predicted seven, no?
8:03 pm: It’s kind of nice to run the death reel so late in the show (i.e. after the Best Director Oscar). It shows a greater degree of respect, I think, than to run it, say, at the halfway mark. The “Wonderful World” accompaniment is very nice also.
7:50 pm: We’re in the final moments, and Michael Douglas is about to hand the Best Director Oscar to Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist. The envelope opens and the Oscar goes to “the happiest director in the world right now…sometimes life is wonderful.”
7:42 pm: Terry George‘s The Shore wins the Oscar for Best Short Film, Live Action. The Oscar for Best Documentary Short goes to Saving Face. (Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone predicted that the Japanese tsunami & cherry blossom film would win…what happened?) The Oscar for Best Animated Short goes to The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.
7:32 pm: Reese Witherspoon‘s favorite movie is Overboard, the Goldie Hawn-Kurt Russell comedy? I’m sorry but that’s really lame. And it explains a lot.
7:16 pm: Angelina Jolie presenting the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar to what I presume will be The Descendants. And it does. Good call. And the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, tipped for Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris, goes to Woody Allen.
7:18 pm: Cymbal-smashing Will Ferrell and Zach Galifinakis present the Best Song Oscar to “Man or Muppet.” Retire this category forever…please.
7:13 pm: And the Oscar for Best Motion Picture Score…uh-oh, here comes another Artist win, right? Yep. Kim Novak has just made a gagging sound (or pantomined it) and fallen on the floor.
7:09 pm: Crystal’s “I know what they’re thinking in their seats right now” bit…hmmm, not bad. Much better: “Thank you, Tom [Sherak] and thank you for whipping the crowd into a frenzy. Mr. Excitement.”
6:59 pm: Melissa Leo announces the winner of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, which of course has been owned by Christopher Plummer for a long, long time. And it’s his now. The oldest actor to win an Oscar…ever. Plummer saying to his fellow nominees that “I’m so proud to be in your company”…nice.
6:55 pm: Emma Stone isn’t funny. Ben Stiller: “Perky gets old fast.” The Best Visual Effects Oscar goes to…let me, guess, Hugo again? No — it should go to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Throw ’em a bone! Apes! Apes! Naah…Hugo. Its fifth Oscar so far. Hugo is the bone. The bone collector.
6:47 pm: Best Feature Animation Oscar, presented by Chris Rock, will go to Rango, of course. And it does. Director Gore Verbinski comes up on stage and says “this is crazy.” Nope — completely in the cards.
6:42 pm: The sound sounded wrong during Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow‘s little routine (which I didn’t get). And Undefeated win the Best Documentary Oscar! Which I felt was probably in the cards. Did they Oscar show producers cut the sound off on the Undefeated guys?
6:40 pm: I despise my internet service provider, which slows down every Oscar night without fail. (You guys really suck!) And I loved that Cirque du Soleil routine…who didn’t? Awesome, brilliant, etc.
6:24 pm: The Best Editing Oscar goes to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo…great! No issues! Although I wouldn’t have minded a win by the Moneyball guy. And the Best Sound Editing Oscar goes to Hugo, which now has three.
6:20 pm: The Wizard of Oz focus-group bit is pretty good, I must say. “Cut the Rainbow song…the flying monkeys,” etc. Very agreeable.
6:12 pm: Octavia Spencer — no surprise — wins Best Supporting Actress Oscar. I remember that very first press gathering at the Beverly Wilshire with Octavia last July, etc. With no air conditioning.
6:08 pm: A Separation wins Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar — naturally, deservedly. Never a question about this in my head. From that first Telluride screening onward.
5:59 pm: Various movie stars talking about various seminal movie experiences — meaning, metaphor, aspiration — is easily the best thing on the show thus far. “Can I please do that?”
5:55 pm: Best Costume Design Oscar goes to…The Artist. Okay, it had to win something sooner or later. Suck it up, be a man. The Iron Lady wins Best Makeup Oscar! That’s fine…well deserved.
5:46 pm: The Artist stopped twice! Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction goes to Hugo‘s Robert Richardson and Dante Ferreti. The little people are happy and dancing! Two bones have been tossed!
5:41 pm: Billy Crystal‘s CG movie-visitation montage + cornball Milton-Berle-Bob Hope Friar’s Club song-medley is the same routine, basically, that he performed in ’97 or whenever it was when Jerry Maguire was in the running.
5:27 pm: At the very least the ads should be good. In fact, the ads need to be to counterbalance what we all know is likely to happen. Please, God, give us a surprise, an upset, a shocker…anything.
Yes, another 1.85 vs. 1.33 aspect ratio piece on Criterion’s Anatomy of a Murder Bluray. But no, not another “1.85 fascism” rant. I’m…well, I guess I am talking about fascism. Otto Preminger‘s 1959 film looks sublime at 1.33. Needle sharp and comfortable with acres and acres of head space. Plus it’s the version that was shown on TV for decades. It looks stodgy and kind of grandfatherly, and that’s fine because it’s your grandfather’s movie in a sense. Boxy is beautiful.
It is perverse to deliver the Bluray — obviously the best that Anatomy of a Murder has ever looked on home screens — with one third of the originally captured image chopped off. Flip the situation over and put yourself in the shoes of a Criterion bigwig and ask yourself, “Where is the harm in going with the airier, boxier version?” Answer: “No harm at all.” Unless you’re persuaded by the 1.85 fascist view that a 1.33 aspect ratio reduces the appeal of a Bluray because the 16 x 9 plasma/LED/LCD screen won’t be fully occupied.
The above comparison shows that cropping the image down to 1.85 from 1.33 doesn’t kill the visual intention. In the 1.85 version James Stewart simply has less breathing room above and below his head. But the comparison below makes my case. A scene in a small jail cell. The boxier version is clearly the preferred way to go. It feels natural and plain. The 1.85 version delivers a feeling of confinement, obviously, but Otto Preminger wasn’t an impressionist. He was a very matter-of-fact, point-focus-and-shoot type of guy.
Yesterday Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney, filing from the Berlin Film Festival, posted an eloquent review of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky‘s Francine, a.k.a., the Melissa Leo “cat movie” that I mentioned three or four days ago.
Melissa Leo, Keith Leonard in Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s Francine.
“A minimalist, image-based character study that is almost impossibly fragile and yet emotionally robust, Francine is a legitimate discovery. It’s propelled by Melissa Leo’s remarkable title-role performance, rigorous in its honesty and unimpeded by even a scrap of vanity. Made on a shoestring, this first narrative feature from husband-and-wife filmmaking team Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky is raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity.
“The austere approach and stark naturalism invite comparison with the work of Kelly Reichardt, and the subject specifically recalls Wendy and Lucy. The earliest films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne also come to mind while watching. But Cassidy and Shatzky, whose backgrounds are jointly in photography and documentary, have their own voice and their own nonjudgmental gaze.
“As a window into a life of seemingly irreversible dissociation, the film performs the uncommon trick of being wide open and pellucid while simultaneously shut tight and opaque.
“One of the interesting aspects of Francine is that despite the unsettling intimacy of the portrait, only sparing use is made of facial closeups — the usual short-cut to accessing an introspective character. Dialogue figures just as frugally, and psychological background is entirely withheld. But still we come to know the woman onscreen, speculating about her history and contemplating her future after the film has ended.”
Your typical American yahoo believes that under the skin many if not most Islamics are radical anti-Americans who have to be guarded against and certainly can’t be trusted. A more benevolent, open-hearted view is that we’re all God’s children and we have to accept our differences. Sean Stone, 27 year-old son of director Oliver Stone, belongs to the latter camp. He announced today from Iran, where he’s shooting a documentary, that he’s converted to Islam.
This is the kind of thing that bright willful types sometimes do in their 20s. Stone is trying to define himself. What matters in the end is blood, and Stone is half-Christian and half-Jewish so this is a phase — a “statement.” He’ll be sipping martinis with super-models in Paris next year or the year after. I met him once at a party in Manhattan. He believes in passion, wildness and the search for ecstasy by way of truth.
“The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with,” Stone said in a telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony. “It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets.” According to Iran’s Fars news agency, Stone had become a Shiite and had chosen to be known by the Muslim first name Ali.
The Artist dominated the BAFTA awards this evening — Best Picture, Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Best Actor (Jean Dujardin), Best Original Screenplay (Hazanavicius), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Music. With each successive award I felt number and number. I am berefet of all feeling…nothing. I’m a cypher sitting in a leather chair.
Previous Update (1:32 pm Pacific): Nobody with their mind and feet half-planted in the real, non-movie-blogging world (like me) gives a damn about the BAFTA awards. The BBC America broadcast is delayed until this evening, and you can’t even watch a live feed online. There’s Twitter, of course, and the blow-by-blows on various film fanatic sites (like In Contention) but who cares anyway? It’s already turning into a celebration of Artist and Hugo love.
All right, I can support the BAFTA guys giving Tyrannosaur director Paddy Considine their Best British Debut award…fine.
Wait…the BAFTAs gave Best Foreign Language Film to Pedro Almodovar‘s The Skin I Live In? Almodovar never makes a bad film and I enjoyed Skin as far as it went, but c’mon — it’s unmistakably one of his lesser efforts. And they blew off A Separation to do this?
Guillaume Schiffman‘s black-and-white cinematography for The Artist was won a BAFTA award. But it didn’t offer a scrupulous recreation of a late 1920s film, which is what The Artist is all about (revisitings, film styles, getting it right) and what it should have been. It looks a little too glossy and fluid. 1920s films were much more static and antiquated looking.
THE WINNERS:
Best Film: The Artist.
Best Actor: Jean Dujardin, The Artist. Wells response: Sigh..whatever.
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady. Wells response: Maybe this isn’t such a shocker. The Brits voted for a story that portrayed, or at least reflected, their own history and culture. A vot efor Viola Davis would have obviously been a vote portraying or reflecting American culture, so there you are,
Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Wells response: Why not a BAFTA award for director of most widely-liked default consensus film of 2011?
Best Animated Film: Rango. Wells response: I understood and appreicated of what Rango was up to, but I was bored.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Wells response: Brits standing up for their own.
Best Documentary: Senna. Wells response: Why not?
Rising Star Award: Adam Deacon. Wells response: Who’s Adam Deacon?
Best Original Screenplay: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Wells response: Better than the original screenplays of Midnight in Paris or A Separation? This is lunacy.
Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help. Wells response: This means Meryl’s not winning Best Actress…right?
Best British Film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners. Wells response: Fine.
Best Production Design: Hugo
Best British Debut: Paddy Considine, Tyrannosaur
Best Foreign Language Film: The Skin I Live In. Wells response: They’re serious?
Best Makeup: The Iron Lady.
Best Costume Design: The Artist. Wells response: Those 1920s outfits were wonderful! I loved them! So accurate!
Best Cinematography: The Artist. Wells response: Not that special, certainly not deserved.
Best Film Editing: Senna.
Best Sound: Hugo.
Best Music: The Artist. Wells response: Give me a break!
Best Visual Effects: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
Nobody cares!
The BAFTAs are not even being broadcast live in the UK. They take the raw footage and edit it all into a two-hour package — and then the show is broadcast a couple of hours later.
Why didn’t the friends of the late Bingham Ray arrange for a simultaneous New York and LA double-header memorial — one at Manhattan’s Paris theatre (which happened today) and the L.A. version happening at Busby’s (5364 Wilshire Blvd, between Cloverdale and Detroit), which is set for next Friday, 2.17? Probably due to an audio-visual presentation that can only play one place at a time. Indiewire‘s David D’Arcy has written a nice story about the New York event.
It’s funny, but during all the years I knew Ray we never compared notes about working for Sid Geffen in the late ’70s. Ray worked as a projectionist at the Geffen-run Bleecker Street Cinema in ’80 or thereabouts, or so I recall. This wasn’t long after I was toiling as the manager editor of Sid’s Thousand Eyes Cinema Guide. I’m sure we crossed paths but for whatever reason we never talked about it. That’s because neither of us really let our hair down and “talked” to each other, ever. We would spar and laugh but never share. Ray once called me “the Devil himself,” which I always thought was a bit harsh.
Nominees for the Best Animated Feature Oscar are almost always the same hip family ghoulash. Mostly Pixar or DreamWorks-produced, big distributor, voiced by big-name actors, big budget, aimed at kids and adults. Even when they’re from outside the U.S., like A Cat in Paris, they still feel like typical family-friendly fare. Which is why it’s pleasing that at least one of this year’s nominees — Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal‘s Chico and Rita — doesn’t do the usual usual.
It’s an adult Cuban jazz romance that spans decades and involves a love affair between a man and a woman who actually smooch and disrobe and have sex in the early stages (a huge commercial no-no in the animation realm). The animation is primitive on one level but refreshingly different on another — it’s drawn to a different drum. And it has a sweaty, sensuous soundtrack, composed by Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes with additional tunes by Freddy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Cole Porter and Thelonious Monk.
I didn’t feel patronized by Chico and Rita. I felt i was watching…hell, I was watching something that actually dared to stand outside the family-friendly arena. But charmingly, winningly.
Chico and Rita can’t win the Oscar, of course. The winner has to be the amusing, financially successful Rango! Gore Verbinski‘s Rango! It’s a decently made thing, for one. And it’s got Johnny Depp as a lizard (kewl!) and it’s an hommage to Sergio Leone films and shit. It’s the hip thing to stand by if you want to be hip, and who doesn’t? Plus Verbinski and Depp are really loaded from their Pirates of the Caribbean profit-share payments and…well, it’s hard to not award a film made by a couple of really rich guys, y’know?
It’s all a rigged game, it always stays the same, the fix is in, the rich get richer, etc.
The only thing that threw me about Chico and Rita is that it’s been playing the festival circuit and commercially overseas since 2010, and yet it took the better part of two years to finally open in the States (i.e., today). The other thing is that it feels a little bit odd that an adult animated film is being distributed by GKIDS Luma Films, which has an association with kiddie movies. GKIDS president, Eric Beckman, runs the New York International Children’s Film Festival.
I spoke to Beckman about this a couple of days ago, and he said this is why he added the name “Luma” to the company title — it signals a separate interest and attitude.
“We didn’t pick up Chico and Rita until recently,” Beckman said. “We saw it at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival. We chased the damn thing for a year, talking mainly to Cinetic, holder of US rights, and getting nowhere. We finally just called producers of the film directly and we had a deal signed in two weeks. That occured last September, or five months ago.”
Chico and Rita opens today at the Angelika on Houston Street and then on March 9th in Los Angeles.
“I love films that take chances,” Beckman said, “and so far Chico and Rita seems to be playing really well with general audiences. It’s not a little kids’ film, and the music is amazing and it’s a big epic thing, spanning 60 years…it has a lot in common with The Artist and old MGM musicals.”
Let’s hear it for Cuban cartoon characters who play music and smoke cigarettes and get rousted by the cops and walk the sad streets and endure the loneliness and all that other classic adult stuff. Because it doesn’t happen often enough.
The 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival’s “It Starts With The Script” happened at 11 this morning at the Lobero Theatre. The paneiists included JC Chandor (Margin Call), Jim Rash (The Descendants), Mike Mills (Beginners), Will Reiser (50/50) and Tate Taylor (The Help). IndieWire columnist Anne Thompson moderated. For the first time since I’ve attended this festival I missed it, but at least I got some photos.
(l to. r) J.C. Chandor, Will Reiser, Anne Thompson, Mike Mills, Jim Rash, Tate Taylor, Roger Durling.
SB Film Festival director Roger Durling, Descendants co-writer Jim Rash.