Five Academy Award Nominees in Five Days

I have to tell this background story, since this is my blog, so to speak...

When I lived in Los Angeles, I went to the LA run of "A Chorus Line" fresh from NY, sitting in about fifth row orchestra, middle. I was thrilled. I loved the show. I loved the story. I loved the songs. I briefly met Michael Bennett (the original director of the Broadway production). Afterward, Rick took me to the stage door. I met and got autographs from the entire cast on the huge fold-out program (which I still have). Did I mention I loved the show? I laughed, I cried, and when Bennett died from HIV, I cried again. I couldn't wait to see the movie. And I thought, "It's directed by the guy who just won Best Director Oscar for 'Gandhi,' Richard Attenborough (of "The Great Escape" fame). This is going to be great!"

When the movie came out, I went opening day. I wish I had a camera for a the before and after shot. You would have seen a smile wiped right from my face. Some stage plays do not translate well to movies. From what I've heard, many, many people loved "Les Miz" (the play) and went to see it again and again. But like "Phantom" the movie is not too good. The funny thing is, the fans really want it to be good and are afraid to say anything. But I know they must be supremely disappointed, which is a shame. The theater is a wonderful place. If you've never seen a play in New York, go... the sooner the better. And I will tell you from years of experience that very few musical plays translate well into films, very few.

Regardless of what cinemabon might write about Argo, his opinion even though based on his film experience is disputed by reputable film critics who have had much more experience than I, even though the Academy of Arts and Science might prefer cinemabon's position which seems a rather odd turn of events here considering. I believe that cinemabon's argument is weak because it contains a strong bias between truth over art, that artistic license must be sacrificed for telling an authentic documented, by the letter narrative. For me the importance of a movie and in this a dramatic thriller is not so much truth but how a story is told and how in impacts me emotionally and intellectually not scientifically based on testable hyptheses in under laboratory conditions. If I wanted supposed truth, I'd watch documentaries, but I usually prefer theatrical films based on artistic merit instead. cinemabon's argument is more like those critics from the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA, not as a film critic.

It's a miserable, disappointing experience to watch the movie version of Chorus Line, among my most favored Broadway Musical, limited though my Broadway experience is. I too was devastated by how awful the movie version was and it was a real wake up call for me. I had so looked forward to being able to just buy a copy of the DVD and watch in again and again at my leisure. Now I shutter and regret that the movie version failed me...and I miss the opportunity to see re-experience the ONE ever again in all its glory.

Well, Tab, when you start the movie "based on real events" then it should be close to the mark. To make things up for the sake of drama is fictionalizing events and that's a stretch when the purpose of your film is to recreate actual events. It would be as if I put Germans in the cockpit over Pearl Harbor because I thought it would make a better film. That's not what happened. There were no Germans in the cockpit. You can't excuse a filmmaker when they start to just make things up just because they want to spice up the ending and make it more dramatic. This isn't because I did a little digging. The British State Department (like our own) were upset over the way Afflect altered events. Even the Canadians voiced protests. But in addition to the fabrications, there are other weakenesses in the storyline, especially the appeal to patriotism which is like waving the American flag and saying anyone who doesn't salute is a traitor. I'm glad you like the film. But the Hollywood Foreign Press has been wrong about many films in the past. They are a small group of individuals and not filmmakers. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is made up of film professionals - the artists who actually make the movies - directors, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, editors, set designers, costume designers, makeup artists, etc. They know the work it takes to make a movie and they are pretty good at judging what constitutes a well-made film. While we can argue as to their choices (which sometimes are based more on sentiment than on accomplishment), overall, they do a damn good job of picking individuals who deserve recognition. Remember, it is an honor to be nominated and that in itself is a win in my book.

When Ben has been nominated and winning film directorial awards:

Golden Globes winner
British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nomination
African American Film Critics Association winner
Broadcast Film Critics Association winner
Central Ohio Film Critics Association nomination
Chicago Film Critics Association nomination
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association nomination
Denver Film Critics Society winner
Detroit Film Critics Society nomination
Directors Guild (DGA) nomination (this nomination and Ben's absence of an Oscar nomination is particularly telling)
Florida Film Critics Circle winner
Houston Film Critics Society winner
International Press Academy nomination
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle winner
Online Film Critics Society nomination
Online Film Critics Society nomination
San Diego Film Critics Society winner
Southeastern Film Critics Association winner
St. Louis Film Critics winner
Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association nomination

I think you're right, cinemabon, on the ones you're considered that survive scrutiny. Not sure we hve to divide them up that way, LINCOLN best writing, SILVER LININGS best acting, etc.


You haven't dealt specifically with several, AMOUR, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, LIFE OF PI, which you may not have been able to get a look at. AMOUR is probably out of the running, because it's a French film by an Austrian director, but it has Haneke's severe greatness and more humanity, if feels like, than usual; he is a consummate craftsman and his two 80-something actors, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignat are impressive; they got the best actor awards at Cannes last year. I like PI, though it may be too oddball (and Indian) to be considered. I'm not sure about BEASTS, but Armond White is quite possibly right in his devastating criticism of its urban white boy view of southern black experience. (He's black; he gets to say that.)

I think you made that point before, tabuno, about Ben Affleck having been widely awarded in smaller critic venues -- and the Golden Globes and BAFTA aren't small.

And yes, cinemabon, I also found that without profound research one found many were unhappy with the way ARGO fudged events to make the Americans look better and jazz up the ending.

Anybody ever read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick which was made into Bladerunner (1982). Movies based on, inspired by...the insistence on truth as opposed to logical inconsistency is like me having to enforce my interpretation of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible (1996) being literally based on the television series which it really took huge liberties and at first I thus despised the movie until I watched it again and enjoyed it as a movie, not a documentary. This slippery slope argument can't be won because there will always be some requirement by the very nature of film to edit, make composite characters, slice and dice to make a movie interesting, compelling, representative, symbolic, figurative...poetic, interpretative, subjective...

A movie is better examined on its technical film merits and the emotional and intellectual experience as a movie not as a factual, literal depiction of real events. Having watched Fail Safe (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) with their Department of Defense disclaimers incorporated into each movie that such movies could never actually occur in real life...well I guess they must be based on some truth, but ultimately fail the whole truth test and therefore must be bad movies.

When you're dealing with specific historical events it's not just a matter of truth vs. logical consistency. The same issue comes up with ZERO DARK THIRTY. Boal/Bigelow are making a hash of a complex process and a very recent historical event in the interests of a unifying protagonist and a feminist theme. Would you have had Tony Kushner and Stephen Spielberg muck around with the events in LINCOLN in this fashion? The irony is that ARGO is a crowd-pleasing actioner, and ZD30 is a drab semi-documentary, but both distort history.

By its very nature, Les Miserable is about the masses attempting to revolt against the powerful, wealthy, educated elite and so to we have a movie that also is cast in the same light with its mainstream masses of the people watching this movie using non-professional singers as most of the audience is and who might also share the delight of singing in the shower. Thus this movie which represents Victor Hugo's focus on the masses, so to the movie itself is for the masses and thus embraces its values and beliefs in what constitutes a common but enlightened entertainment. Thus for a person more than half a century old, this movie fits perfectly with my common sense of music and thus resonates at the same frequency of understanding and empathic embrace of its presentation. As I've discussed elsewhere, the quality of the common movie has improved over the past decade and continues to do so...thus we the people of the dwindling middle class have the benefit of experiencing great movies suited to our less than film-educated senses. Unfortunately, such perhaps profit-driven movies for the masses has also degraded to some extent the higher principled standards of formal movie theory. But for the rest of us, we get the benefit of a substandard standard.

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By its very nature, Les Miserable is about the masses attempting to revolt against the powerful, wealthy, educated elite and so to we have a movie that also is cast in the same light with its mainstream masses of the people watching this movie using non-professional singers as most of the audience is and who might also share the delight of singing in the shower.

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You're said this before also. I think it's an argument that could have absurd consequences. We can't sing so we should have a musical movie in which the characters are played by people who can't really sing? The idea that we would like to go to see movies in which all the singers are no better than people singing in the shower is ludicrous. We go to see professionals at work. All of the cast members in LES MIZ can sing. They are just in many cases more known as actors than as singers, and the live-action recording instead of post-synch soundtrack tends to produce singing performances more heartfelt than polished. Eddie Redmayne had to prove he could sing to get the role of Marius.

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the quality of the common movie has improved over the past decade and continues to do so

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Sorry, I missed that and can't imagine what it would mean. What is "the common movie"? I thought we were seeking movies that were uncommon. I see a lot of common movies. I don't like them and I don't see any sign they are getting better. How can they, if they're common? And how can you, tabuno, say you are not film-educated, when you know so many films and care passionately about them?

I just don't know what you're talking about here.

Friday, January 18, 2013 – Day five
“The Impossible” – directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

(Spoilers) Disaster movies have been part of film history since Moses parted the Red Sea. We are fascinated by tornados, hurricanes, dust storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis. The bigger the disaster, the more people want to see its impact on society. Since the advent of widescreen, color, and stereo sound the disaster is a cash cow for studios that have drummed out just about every variety from upside-down ocean liners to end of the world scenarios. The difference with “The Impossible” is that while the disaster is in the foreground, the story of one family’s struggle to rise above this calamity is at the core of the film. Separated when the giant wave strikes, the family faces the impossible journey of finding one another inside a wasteland that spreads across several thousand miles of shoreline.

There is no admission of alteration at the start, no “based on actual events” mia culpa. Instead, the director simply states, “A true story.” With that declaration, we should expect the story to stick to the facts. However, with the permission of the Belón family, Spanish director Juan Antonia Bayona made the decision to blur the main characters’ nationality in order to make the film more internationally commercial (the Belón family are Spanish; the film’s Bennet’s one presumes British). In fact, all of the actors are English/American origin. Unlike the treatment given other factual recreations this week, the Belón family actually participated in the film’s production, meeting with the actors to help hone their performances.

It’s hard to imagine these events took place eight years ago this past Christmas. People all over the world sat riveted to their televisions watching the aftermath of the worst natural disaster the world has ever witnessed. The scale of destruction is still difficult to grasp. The Bennet family, on vacation in Thailand, are staying in an ocean front resort not far from the epicenter. Without warning, (unlike some locations that could see it coming), the Bennet’s and others were completely caught by surprise by not just one but two huge tsunami waves that destroyed the shoreline and permanently altered its shape.

Director Bayona opens with a shot of a jet plane flying over a wide peaceful blue ocean, benign and harmless. When the family arrives at the resort, they are informed by the manager that the third floor rooms are sold out. He moves them to a ground floor suite. Although Maria Bennet protests at first, the manager opens the ocean front doors and we see a beautiful view of the shoreline, with angular palm trees dotting the space between the resort’s pool in the foreground and the beach. The world resembles of one of paradise. As the story continues, we find the hotel is full of European tourists who either play in the pool or romp near the ocean, snorkeling, playing ball on white pristine sands, or simply laying out in the sun. Christmas morning is documented by the family and the following day starts out just as peaceful as the last. When a gust of wind snatches Maria’s bookmark out of her hands, she walks over to a large glass wind barrier to retrieve it. The glass begins to vibrate. She looks up. A flock of birds takes flight. A roar fills the air. Everyone realizes something is wrong and turns toward the ocean. At several hundred miles an hour, foaming brown water full of debris bursts through the trees and engulfs everyone and everything. The screen goes black. What follows is a journey of terror, a tumbling, gasping for air, in a turbulent turgid pool that shows no mercy. Bodies are hurdled against immovable objects, or a variety of junk in the murk strikes people as the water rushes around them. Buildings, trees, everything in the water’s path succumbs to the power of the tsunami. With eyes, ears and mouths full of water, it is difficult to orient and swim let alone know where you are. Maria finally breaks the surface and locates her oldest son just as he spots her. For the next twenty minutes of film time the two try to keep each other in sight in hopes of escaping together. But nature continuously forces them apart and the first struggle in the aftermath of this disaster comes when Maria and Lucas finally survive the initial two blasts of water by sheer luck. Maria does not know if her husband has survived. Lucas (Thomas Holland), whose performance is so masterful that it largely carries crucial elements of the film’s story throughout its middle sections. The young actor should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar as his performance is pivotal and compelling.

Through all of the anguish, frustration and chaos around the Bennet’s, we know the end is inevitable as the story is being told by the family. In fact, the end of the film is the only joyous moment Bayona gives us. The rest of the images are filled with masses of dead bodies, miles of debris field, and the sadness of broken families. The only other bright spot comes when one of the children Maria and Lucas rescued in the beginning is reunited with his father. Otherwise, the carnage that remains is too terrible to fathom, piled up before us in shot after shot until we grow numb from its bombardment. The last shot of a jet flying back to Singapore over a wide calm blue sea now carries a subtle message, that Mother Nature can rise up and inflict terrible damage in the wink of an eye.

The film’s special effects and set decoration, the incredible hospital scenes and even the numerous crowd scenes which were so painstakingly recreated are praiseworthy. Naomi Watts performance is good, memorable, but not the best I’ve seen this season. She mostly moans under an oxygen mask on a variety of stretchers. Note to cameraman, “Lock down your camera when shooting Geraldine Chaplin!” I felt seasick from the wavy unsteady handheld shot that wasn’t necessary at night by the campfire. Overall in considering Oscar nominations for acting, as I haven’t seen Amour, I can only judge “The Impossible” against the other films I’ve seen. I’d still pick the cast of “Silver Linings Playbook” over any other in terms of acting performance with the exception of Daniel Day Lewis who was a very strong Lincoln. Still, Brad Cooper is no slouch either.

My Oscar pix are as follows:
Best Picture: Lincoln, Django Unchained, or Silver Linings Playbook
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis or Brad Cooper
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence
Best Supporting Actor: Robert DeNiro (I would have picked Tom Holland)
Best Supporting Actress: Jackie Weaver
Best Director: David Russell for Silver Linings Playbook (Tarantino wasn’t nominated) or Spielberg for Lincoln if it’s picked Best Pix
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson for Django Unchained (although he’s already won which might limit his chances but his WAS the best) or Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi
Costume Design: Anna Karenina
Film Editing: Michael Kahn (one of the best in the business)
Foreign Language: Amour
Make up: The Hobbit
Music score: Thomas Newman, Skyfall
Best Song: Skyfall by Adele
Production Design: Lincoln
Sound editing: Skyfall
Sound Mixing: Life of Pi
Visual Effects: Life of Pi
Best Screenplay Orig: Django Unchained
Best Screenplay Adapt: Beasts of the Southern Wild or Lincoln
Argo and Zero get shut out!

FYI - I did see Life of Pi and wrote a review on this site, Chris.

tabno, I thought this was cinemabon's thread (his "blog," as he said), ours only to comment on his osts about the five Oscar films he was going to report on. Your posts here are random and inappropriate, I'm afraid. I was addressing cinemabon when I said I thought he had not seen LIFE OF PI. I was referring to a post he made that I can't currently locate. There is a thread in the Forums for THE IMPOSSIBLE: http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.p...Bayona-2012%29.

tabuno: why post your Oscar predictions here, and not on the Academy Awards nominations thread cinemabon started? http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.p...rd-Nominations. I agree with you that Tom Holland gives a great performance. All this would have gone more appropriately on other threads, not this one.

I don't know whether to say thank you or I love you, but you inspire me, Chris/Oscar/Johann/Tabuno/Howard etc. I really can't be a critic unless I seek out all of the films up for consideration. So I am extending my viewing pleasure by adding TWO more Oscar contenders today. Granted, they are on video, but I hope to give you an update later that will help round out my list/predictions.

I love a good fight over principles. Don't ever think that by challenging what I say you upset me in any way/shape/form. I'm a big boy. I can defend my stance (although I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong, as with Django and Tarantino). But as with any person, words of encouragement are always appreciated.

See you in the dark... only in this case today, in front of a video screen.

Cinemabon,

You're contributing greatly to Filmleaf's Oscar/Best Movies of 2012 discussion by staging this personal mini film festival now. I also appreciate your integrity and flexibility in sticking close to observations and altering your pre-viewing assessment of DJANGO. You and I and Johann and a lot of other people now agree that it's a great movie. However silly or outrageous or fanboy-mad his movies are, he's a consummate filmmaker. I also was really glad that despite apparently having an aversion to seeing it, you watched LES MISERABLES too and did a detailed assessment. And for these further movies on home video, "bonne vision" as the French say.

I went to your website and read your analysis/review of "The Impossible" which was thorough and outstanding, Chris. I can't understand why you aren't picked up by a major publication. I guess you need a better agent than the one you have.

http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/vi...c71533b7187fc0