A couple days ago i watched Marty, the 1955 Best Picture winner. In case you haven't noticed, a careful blend of Turner Classic Movies and DVR have been really helping this blog out this summer.
The movie is about a 34-year-old bachelor whose younger siblings are all married, and who is getting a lot of pressure from older people (like his mother, and customers at the butcher shop where he works) to settle down, or on the other hand, pressure from his peers to continue a lifestyle of bar-hopping, or perhaps finding certain streets to see just what kind of action they could find (for a cost, surely). Well, he gives into the bar-hopping one night, but inadvertently finds a girl who had been ditched by her date. They hit it off and spend several hours just talking and getting to know each other. The next day, the same people pressuring him to find a girl have changed their minds (for instance, his mother realizes she doesn't want to lose her last child to marriage because she'd be left all alone), and his friends urge him to not waste his time on a girl they deem less than attractive enough. In the end, Marty decides that what he wants and what makes him happy are the things he should be focusing on, and calls her up. i suppose the rest of the story is the material for a different movie.
All in all, i really enjoyed this film. It taps into fears that i think a lot of college students have - that we'll end up 34 years old working a mediocre job, having still not found the one we want to spend the rest of our lives with. frankly, it's an outcome that scares me sometimes when i let it. However, there's something to be said for patience. There's also something to be said for pursuing things the right way in the first place, and another thing to be said for knowing what we are capable of and having reasonable expectations. If we stay grounded and patient, then anything exceeding expectations gets to come as a wonderful surprise! and if we stay on an appropriate path from the beginning, those disappointments are more likely to fall few and far between. The right things fall in to place as long as we push just enough and not too much in the right directions. So here's hoping that after college i can seek after jobs and a career that are right for me and make me happy, never settling for something less-than, and never taking something more-than simply because of the attraction of a pay check or a reputation. Sometimes patience, reason, and (dare i say it) righteousness can actually pay off.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
We have no way of knowing where the heart is. See, every human is different.
okay, i have FOUR more! but i'm going to keep it brief.
The New World - this movie's mainly about Pocahontas, a bit about John Smith, and a bit about John Rolfe later on. overall, i enjoyed it. it's a bit slow, and relies heavily on voice-over for character insight, and consider the movie is a little bit heavier on character than plot, that makes it pretty important. like with Terence Malick's earlier film (he's only made 4 in the past 40 years, with a 5th coming out this year) The Thin Red Line, i found the voice over a tad distracting because it's all quite deep and profound in its insights and i'm not sure if that is somehow pretentious, or simply true to the characters. i've seen each film only once, and feel they both deserve a repeat viewing eventually to see if they just require more effort than perhaps i put in.
All of that aside, very good performances all around, and really, truly, remarkably beautiful to look at. it was filmed (entirely?) on location in America, predominantly in Virginia, i believe, and frankly, it was a wonderful reminder that there really is a lot of beauty remaining in North American nature. we tend to forget the power of that particular kind of creation as we celebrate our cities and skyscrapers and roads, etc. i found it even a little ironic that the recent Avatar, which many felt simply ripped off the story of Pocahontas for the sake of an environmentalist nature was actually less a celebration of native cultures and the creation of nature than it is a celebration of man's ability to create those environments in computers. this movie is the real deal - several actual breathtaking images just about make this movie worth the viewing regardless of the other elements and slow pace.
Whatever Works - Woody Allen's most recent, from last year, starring Larry David (who i absolutely love with Curb Your Enthusiasm). i've only seen about 6 Woody Allen movies, but i've generally enjoyed all of them, and while he's bit a little hit or miss the past decade, and this movie in particular got mixed-to-negative reviews, i actually really enjoyed it. a little too slow paced to pull off its own quirkiness, but i felt like it was a good sort of homage from Allen to some of his own earlier works. random character reversals (the bourbon-drinking conservative Christian southern belle mother becomes a hip NYC photographer/artist), unlikely relationships, and the main character breaking the fourth wall to provide commentary to the audience that no one else can see, etc. it was fun, is what i'm saying, and sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.
While cleaning my room yesterday, i popped in a DVD i have with about 18 early Alfred Hitchcock movies, none of which i'd watched yet, and selected The Lady Vanishes. All of these movies are prior to 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca, and therefore prior to the period when Hitchcock really started making the "Hitchcock movies" that we're more familiar with. However, while he might not yet have been an auteur as we use the word, he was still quite a talented director. The Lady Vanishes was a fun, exciting thriller with a little bit of Nazi related paranoia and espionage, all taking place in the confines of a train. It was a good time. As per usual, it's nice to see older movies that can still resonate and be a good thrilling thriller. In fact, several elements of this film were recycled a few years ago in Flight Plan, starring Jodie Foster, which just goes to show that sometimes good film making is just that, and it never ages.
Finally, this morning i watched Vera Drake. Set in 1950, it's about a mother and cleaning lady who performs abortions in her spare time. she does it for free, primarily for working class (or lower) girls who are "in trouble and need help." regardless of anyone's opinions on the issue, there's no doubt that she is doing it simply out of the kindness of her heart and a sincere desire to help people in need. Wonderful performance from Imelda Staunton (who most people would recognize as Professor Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). It was a very sad transition to see between the first half, where Vera is such a happy bubbly person, trying to do good, and the second half after she has been caught by the police where she is quite simply a bit of a crying mess. (She was arrested due to a report after a girl gets sick from the operation, the first instance of this Vera has ever experienced, and information she is sincerely troubled by, and surely feels responsible and guilty for). Regardless of one's opinions on the issue, it was really a good film, and worth checking out for the sake of placing a human face on the issue that we don't frequently focus on.
that's all for now - maybe soon i'll have gotten through a book and i can tell you about that instead of movies. peace.
The New World - this movie's mainly about Pocahontas, a bit about John Smith, and a bit about John Rolfe later on. overall, i enjoyed it. it's a bit slow, and relies heavily on voice-over for character insight, and consider the movie is a little bit heavier on character than plot, that makes it pretty important. like with Terence Malick's earlier film (he's only made 4 in the past 40 years, with a 5th coming out this year) The Thin Red Line, i found the voice over a tad distracting because it's all quite deep and profound in its insights and i'm not sure if that is somehow pretentious, or simply true to the characters. i've seen each film only once, and feel they both deserve a repeat viewing eventually to see if they just require more effort than perhaps i put in.
All of that aside, very good performances all around, and really, truly, remarkably beautiful to look at. it was filmed (entirely?) on location in America, predominantly in Virginia, i believe, and frankly, it was a wonderful reminder that there really is a lot of beauty remaining in North American nature. we tend to forget the power of that particular kind of creation as we celebrate our cities and skyscrapers and roads, etc. i found it even a little ironic that the recent Avatar, which many felt simply ripped off the story of Pocahontas for the sake of an environmentalist nature was actually less a celebration of native cultures and the creation of nature than it is a celebration of man's ability to create those environments in computers. this movie is the real deal - several actual breathtaking images just about make this movie worth the viewing regardless of the other elements and slow pace.
Whatever Works - Woody Allen's most recent, from last year, starring Larry David (who i absolutely love with Curb Your Enthusiasm). i've only seen about 6 Woody Allen movies, but i've generally enjoyed all of them, and while he's bit a little hit or miss the past decade, and this movie in particular got mixed-to-negative reviews, i actually really enjoyed it. a little too slow paced to pull off its own quirkiness, but i felt like it was a good sort of homage from Allen to some of his own earlier works. random character reversals (the bourbon-drinking conservative Christian southern belle mother becomes a hip NYC photographer/artist), unlikely relationships, and the main character breaking the fourth wall to provide commentary to the audience that no one else can see, etc. it was fun, is what i'm saying, and sometimes there's nothing wrong with that.
While cleaning my room yesterday, i popped in a DVD i have with about 18 early Alfred Hitchcock movies, none of which i'd watched yet, and selected The Lady Vanishes. All of these movies are prior to 1940 Best Picture winner Rebecca, and therefore prior to the period when Hitchcock really started making the "Hitchcock movies" that we're more familiar with. However, while he might not yet have been an auteur as we use the word, he was still quite a talented director. The Lady Vanishes was a fun, exciting thriller with a little bit of Nazi related paranoia and espionage, all taking place in the confines of a train. It was a good time. As per usual, it's nice to see older movies that can still resonate and be a good thrilling thriller. In fact, several elements of this film were recycled a few years ago in Flight Plan, starring Jodie Foster, which just goes to show that sometimes good film making is just that, and it never ages.
Finally, this morning i watched Vera Drake. Set in 1950, it's about a mother and cleaning lady who performs abortions in her spare time. she does it for free, primarily for working class (or lower) girls who are "in trouble and need help." regardless of anyone's opinions on the issue, there's no doubt that she is doing it simply out of the kindness of her heart and a sincere desire to help people in need. Wonderful performance from Imelda Staunton (who most people would recognize as Professor Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). It was a very sad transition to see between the first half, where Vera is such a happy bubbly person, trying to do good, and the second half after she has been caught by the police where she is quite simply a bit of a crying mess. (She was arrested due to a report after a girl gets sick from the operation, the first instance of this Vera has ever experienced, and information she is sincerely troubled by, and surely feels responsible and guilty for). Regardless of one's opinions on the issue, it was really a good film, and worth checking out for the sake of placing a human face on the issue that we don't frequently focus on.
that's all for now - maybe soon i'll have gotten through a book and i can tell you about that instead of movies. peace.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Pterodactyls Are Pterrifying!
Last night was A Single Man. i don't have much to say about it specifically, except to say that it was very good and also quite sad, but not in a particularly depressing way - visually really wonderful, a lot of visual style. Some have considered it "over-stylized" but i disagree, on the basis that, well, i just didn't think so.
Colin Firth was absolutely wonderful. It takes a special performance to not reveal certain things. i found myself seeing some mild similarities to The Reader (in my opinion, the movie that should have beaten Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture), in that both dealt with a certain kind of taboo relationship, and main characters who were trying (and succeeding) to hide elements of their pasts (being a Nazi or being a gay man whose partner had died). It was an awesome performance - restraint is so much more effective in a performance, but so much less celebrated. it brought enough gravity to the movie to balance out the stylization of the visual appearance.
This morning was the 1933 King Kong. and i'll tell you, it was really good! of course, the special effects are now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain amount of realism, and the acting style is now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain grounding in actual human behavior, but it was still an engrossing story that played out with a lot of excitement. i was especially surprised at how faithful Peter Jackson's 2005 version had been to the original. When watching it, i kept thinking, "Whoa, was that really in the original? Dinosaurs? Island people? King Kong fighting a T-REX?!?!" But sure enough, it was all in the original (even Kong breaking the T-rex's jaw bone!). It makes me want to go back and watch the newer version again now because i think it was a whole lot smarter than i had realized at the time. It essentially takes a story and movie that already works on many levels (seriously, just watch the original version, and you'll see, it still holds up in a lot of ways), kept all of the function elements, and brought the effects into our own century so we could watch it without snickering.
This movie was yet another reminder to me that if an old movie has been deemed a "classic" on one level or another, if it has that kind of reputation, the odds are that it deserves it, so go watch it!
Lemon out.
Colin Firth was absolutely wonderful. It takes a special performance to not reveal certain things. i found myself seeing some mild similarities to The Reader (in my opinion, the movie that should have beaten Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture), in that both dealt with a certain kind of taboo relationship, and main characters who were trying (and succeeding) to hide elements of their pasts (being a Nazi or being a gay man whose partner had died). It was an awesome performance - restraint is so much more effective in a performance, but so much less celebrated. it brought enough gravity to the movie to balance out the stylization of the visual appearance.
This morning was the 1933 King Kong. and i'll tell you, it was really good! of course, the special effects are now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain amount of realism, and the acting style is now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain grounding in actual human behavior, but it was still an engrossing story that played out with a lot of excitement. i was especially surprised at how faithful Peter Jackson's 2005 version had been to the original. When watching it, i kept thinking, "Whoa, was that really in the original? Dinosaurs? Island people? King Kong fighting a T-REX?!?!" But sure enough, it was all in the original (even Kong breaking the T-rex's jaw bone!). It makes me want to go back and watch the newer version again now because i think it was a whole lot smarter than i had realized at the time. It essentially takes a story and movie that already works on many levels (seriously, just watch the original version, and you'll see, it still holds up in a lot of ways), kept all of the function elements, and brought the effects into our own century so we could watch it without snickering.
This movie was yet another reminder to me that if an old movie has been deemed a "classic" on one level or another, if it has that kind of reputation, the odds are that it deserves it, so go watch it!
Lemon out.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Where the part is used for the whole, the specific for the general.
Okay, i have two movies already.
the first - The French Connection - 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture, i finally got around to it because i could dvr it on AMC. i thoroughly enjoyed it for several reasons. it's a cop/detective movie where Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider try to find some french guys and catch them smuggling heroine into the country. it was complex enough to merit a movie, but simple enough to not be confusing. It's based on a true story, as well, if the epilogue had any merit to it.
It had a great early 70s look and feel to it - a lot of shaky camera work, but in a gritty "we didn't really have a choice, it's a giant camera and we had to run around with it" way, instead of the Paul Greengrass, intentional nausea way (which, for the record, i also enjoy when implemented well). as with most movies made before, say, 1990, i was struck by the pace. it's slower, but never uninteresting. there are several chase sequences that go on for a decent amount of time, but the chases are frequently on foot through NYC, and frequently unaccompanied by music. that's just the kind of thing that most movies cannot get away with nowadays. there was one really great chase where a car is trying to keep up with a subway train, but it wasn't littered with explosions or anything, just a few brief near-misses and small crashes.
for 2-hour movie, a lot happens in a way that feels like not a lot is happening, and still manages to be exciting. who does that anymore? as for awards and status - i think it definitely merits its place as a Best Picture winner in the context of it's day as one of the earlier cop movies moving towards a more realistic approach to the style before the genre got copied and rehashed into attempts at box office success with less narrative integrity. i do question Gene Hackman's Oscar for Best Actor, not because he wasn't good, but because it appeared to be a fairly simple role to play - some good dialogue, a lot of passion for catching the bad guy, but frankly, i didn't see much of a "character" outside of the function of the movie. but oh well, still worth checking out for all the other reasons.
Now, on to the second movie, which i watched this morning - Synecdoche, New York:
i'll be honest, i do not have a clue how to respond to this movie. it was wonderful, fascinating, sad, crazy, a little disturbing, (very) darkly funny, and just all around a really awesome kind of movie-going experience that we don't really get a lot of these days. you have to really work to keep yourself engaged in order to follow parts (that is, without getting frustrated at the oddities), but at the same time, that's not difficult because the movie is so engaging in spite of the occasional frustration. for what it's worth, i'll direct you now to Roger Ebert's review of it. he doesn't quite make more sense of it, but he's at least more eloquent when talking about the movie he would later call the best film of the decade.
Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (who is responsible for writing some of my favorites - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - one can immediately expect a weird movie. but it's some how more than that - about a theatre director who wants to create a massive theatre piece with a miniature reproduction of new york, art is constantly imitating life constantly imitating art constantly imitating life constantly imitating... and on and on. it's about the performances we play as ourselves (a phenomenon i once remarked on when mentioning All About Eve), and about remembering to remember that everyone else in the world is playing themselves, and that ours is not the only story, it's just usually the only one we choose to focus on. at it's most depressing themes, it is about the utter hopelessness of our ever finding happiness because we keep delaying smaller happinesses in confidence that something better will come along. however, i simply cannot believe that is truly Kaufman's worldview, so i suspect there is something deeper at play, some irony which i can only glean from repeat viewings (of which i'm sure there will be several down the road).
i am reminded now of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in which the central theme, as written, was something like, "The spirit gone, man is garbage." but i do not believe that Heller or Yossarian truly believed the spirit to be gone, in the same way that i believe Kaufman does not believe our lives are a truly a waste, but rather that we must work that much harder to be honest with ourselves and appreciate the goodness while it is there. at a sort of climactic scene, a character in the play, a minister at a funeral, goes off with the following (and forgive the profanity, as i am merely quoting):
"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."
is the problem here whether what he is saying is true or false? or is the problem that he has devoted so much energy to dwelling on these complexities and uncertainties that he has, perhaps, not only drained life of the joys it does have to offer, but also drained himself of the capacity for recognizing them?
Maybe Synecdoche, New York, is the town where one man is meant to represent us all? i wonder if the Whole has ever been asked how it felt about being represented by just One Part of it? i think, just maybe, Synecdoche, New York is less of a worldview expounded as the narrative of a sad life than it is a cautionary tale. but i'll have to figure it out next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, or the time...
the first - The French Connection - 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture, i finally got around to it because i could dvr it on AMC. i thoroughly enjoyed it for several reasons. it's a cop/detective movie where Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider try to find some french guys and catch them smuggling heroine into the country. it was complex enough to merit a movie, but simple enough to not be confusing. It's based on a true story, as well, if the epilogue had any merit to it.
It had a great early 70s look and feel to it - a lot of shaky camera work, but in a gritty "we didn't really have a choice, it's a giant camera and we had to run around with it" way, instead of the Paul Greengrass, intentional nausea way (which, for the record, i also enjoy when implemented well). as with most movies made before, say, 1990, i was struck by the pace. it's slower, but never uninteresting. there are several chase sequences that go on for a decent amount of time, but the chases are frequently on foot through NYC, and frequently unaccompanied by music. that's just the kind of thing that most movies cannot get away with nowadays. there was one really great chase where a car is trying to keep up with a subway train, but it wasn't littered with explosions or anything, just a few brief near-misses and small crashes.
for 2-hour movie, a lot happens in a way that feels like not a lot is happening, and still manages to be exciting. who does that anymore? as for awards and status - i think it definitely merits its place as a Best Picture winner in the context of it's day as one of the earlier cop movies moving towards a more realistic approach to the style before the genre got copied and rehashed into attempts at box office success with less narrative integrity. i do question Gene Hackman's Oscar for Best Actor, not because he wasn't good, but because it appeared to be a fairly simple role to play - some good dialogue, a lot of passion for catching the bad guy, but frankly, i didn't see much of a "character" outside of the function of the movie. but oh well, still worth checking out for all the other reasons.
Now, on to the second movie, which i watched this morning - Synecdoche, New York:
i'll be honest, i do not have a clue how to respond to this movie. it was wonderful, fascinating, sad, crazy, a little disturbing, (very) darkly funny, and just all around a really awesome kind of movie-going experience that we don't really get a lot of these days. you have to really work to keep yourself engaged in order to follow parts (that is, without getting frustrated at the oddities), but at the same time, that's not difficult because the movie is so engaging in spite of the occasional frustration. for what it's worth, i'll direct you now to Roger Ebert's review of it. he doesn't quite make more sense of it, but he's at least more eloquent when talking about the movie he would later call the best film of the decade.
Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (who is responsible for writing some of my favorites - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - one can immediately expect a weird movie. but it's some how more than that - about a theatre director who wants to create a massive theatre piece with a miniature reproduction of new york, art is constantly imitating life constantly imitating art constantly imitating life constantly imitating... and on and on. it's about the performances we play as ourselves (a phenomenon i once remarked on when mentioning All About Eve), and about remembering to remember that everyone else in the world is playing themselves, and that ours is not the only story, it's just usually the only one we choose to focus on. at it's most depressing themes, it is about the utter hopelessness of our ever finding happiness because we keep delaying smaller happinesses in confidence that something better will come along. however, i simply cannot believe that is truly Kaufman's worldview, so i suspect there is something deeper at play, some irony which i can only glean from repeat viewings (of which i'm sure there will be several down the road).
i am reminded now of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in which the central theme, as written, was something like, "The spirit gone, man is garbage." but i do not believe that Heller or Yossarian truly believed the spirit to be gone, in the same way that i believe Kaufman does not believe our lives are a truly a waste, but rather that we must work that much harder to be honest with ourselves and appreciate the goodness while it is there. at a sort of climactic scene, a character in the play, a minister at a funeral, goes off with the following (and forgive the profanity, as i am merely quoting):
"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."
is the problem here whether what he is saying is true or false? or is the problem that he has devoted so much energy to dwelling on these complexities and uncertainties that he has, perhaps, not only drained life of the joys it does have to offer, but also drained himself of the capacity for recognizing them?
Maybe Synecdoche, New York, is the town where one man is meant to represent us all? i wonder if the Whole has ever been asked how it felt about being represented by just One Part of it? i think, just maybe, Synecdoche, New York is less of a worldview expounded as the narrative of a sad life than it is a cautionary tale. but i'll have to figure it out next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, or the time...
Monday, May 17, 2010
From the Ashes Again
i will attempt yet again to resurrect my blog this summer. having tried several subjects - general Christianity/faith questions, movies, books, random news and updates - i am going to try to focus this time on one thing: movies. there are several movies i am trying to watch almost all the time. From trying to complete AFI's top 100 list, to watching Academy Award winners for Best Picture, and slowly but surely checking off the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, there's always something for me to rent, DVR, or stream online.
if the opportunity arises to tie in a movie i watched with some Christian ideal, i will of course try to do that. i intend to limit my posts to older movies, those i've watched for the first time, or stuff i've not yet seen from some of my favorite directors, generally avoiding anything i see at the theater unless it was just mind-blowing enough to merit a response.
hopefully, in my movie reviews/analyses/responses, i will feel compelled to write about other things. i have a long list of books i hope to read this summer as well (a list of about 18 so far - i'll be lucky to get around to about 8).
anyway, on the great experiment - i intend to have at least 1 movie watched by the end of the day.
if the opportunity arises to tie in a movie i watched with some Christian ideal, i will of course try to do that. i intend to limit my posts to older movies, those i've watched for the first time, or stuff i've not yet seen from some of my favorite directors, generally avoiding anything i see at the theater unless it was just mind-blowing enough to merit a response.
hopefully, in my movie reviews/analyses/responses, i will feel compelled to write about other things. i have a long list of books i hope to read this summer as well (a list of about 18 so far - i'll be lucky to get around to about 8).
anyway, on the great experiment - i intend to have at least 1 movie watched by the end of the day.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Oscars again
So i didn't do as well as i'd hoped in my task of watching all the nominated films. Some of them i simply couldn't find. Other times my computer had some trouble with the sites i was using to watch them...trouble like getting viruses demanding my computer hard drive be replaced. There are some categories i've not seen all the nominees for, but in most of those cases, the ones i haven't seen aren't terribly likely to win anyway. Below is my list of who i think should win in the categories, and who i think will win. Here we go.
Best Picture - I think Inglourious Basterds is the best of the bunch - i think it had a really awesome commentary on the relationship between cinema and history (i.e. cinema's power to change and influence history), as well as a great genre juxtaposition by placing western style over a WWII setting. My #2 is maybe Up, but i'd need to see it again to be certain. The Hurt Locker is more likely to win, and i'll be okay with that, it is almost as deserving and does great work to place the audience in the action and the tension with the characters. If Avatar wins, as much as i do enjoy it, well that will be sad because it's simply not the best of the best this year. My hope: The Hurt Locker and Avatar split votes, and Inglourious Basterds gets enough #2's and #3's to come up in the middle and win for the upset.
Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow. She's probably most responsible for creating the tension and atmosphere that makes the film work so well. She deserves it, and will probably win.
Best Actor - i haven't seen Crazy Heart (this is the movie most likely responsible for my virus problems), but from what i hear, Jeff Bridges isn't merely getting a lifetime achievement award, he actually gives the best performance of the group. So there. i also haven't seen Colin Firth in A Single Man, though i suspect if i did, i'd be partial to that performance.
Best Actress - i'm gonna say Sandra Bullock has the edge for the actual win, and it's actually a very good performance, in my opinion. However, despite the relative inexperience, i think the best actress was Gabourey Sibide in Precious. She might never make another movie (let's be honest, she's not the easiest actress to cast...), but this one should be enough.
Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds, all the way.
Best Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique's gonna win, and she deserves it. i wondered for a while how much of it was just play acting, pretending to be mean, and then i remember some of the things she had to do for the role. For example, she had to throw a mentally handicapped little girl on the floor and call her a monster. i don't see how you can do that and not have to be giving a tremendous performance without being a monster yourself. That said, my #2 is definitely Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air.
Best Original Screenplay - Inglouious Basterds deserves it, and i think it will win because people will want to reward it in more than one category. There's competition from The Hurt Locker, though, which in my opinion simply doesn't deserve it for two glaring reasons: it's yet another screenplay with biased, limited, and all around insulting portrayals of officers in the military and that whole Jason Bourne-esqu sequence where the guy goes off base with a pistol to find that kid...it was weird. it worked for the character's emotions...but not as a plot point in the movie. totally distracting, doesn't deserve to win.
Best Adapted Screenplay - Up in the Air. Just the best screenplay here.
now on the to technicals:
Film Editing - The Hurt Locker - again, my point about all the tension building, playing on the audience, a lot of that happened in the editing room. My #2 would be Inglourious Basterds, partly because i want it to win as much as it possible can, and partly because it's a movie that understands how to let shots linger before rushing off to the next one - although that technique did work well for The Hurt Locker because it was used well.
Cinematography - i know i know i know, James Cameron invented a camera to shoot Avatar. But more and more over the past semesters i've been learning to appreciate cinematography as the composition of images and those images' effects on the audience. And i'm sorry, but the majority of the images in Avatar were created in post-production by a visual effects team, probably with the director of photography in the background saying "Oh no, more light there," while pointing at the screen. If there were a category for Best Digital Photography, i'd give Avatar that Oscar, but there isn't yet (i suspect there will have to be eventually). For now, i'm going my preference is Inglourious Basterds, and the likely winner is The Hurt Locker. For me, The Hurt Locker was just a little too shaky, with just a few too many quick zooms to really best the best. It was the best way to do that film, yes, but while it ran as fast as it could, other films ran faster. The White Ribbon was also really awesome camera work...but i think a lot of its effect came from the black and white (it did look an awful lot like a old film, with its framing and all), but that color scheme came in post, not in production...so i'll rule it out on a technicality.
Art Direction - i've heard the The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is possible the deserving winner here, but i've not seen it. i'd give it to Nine (which is a much better movie than critics would have you believe - not a great film, no, but it was good, not terrible like the reviews let on). Again, Avatar has the best chance of winning, but again, i think it's cheating. The designs are tremendous, but they were implement in large part by a visual effects team, and there's a separate category for that.
Costume Design - Again, i liked Nine's stuff best of what i saw, but the Oscar tends to go more period film here, so i think The Young Victoria has the edge over the spoiler Bright Star. The other two aren't likely.
Makeup - anything other than Star Trek is an upset, and pretty much undeserving.
Original Score - Up. gorgeous stuff, and again with Pixar, there are entire sequences that rely on the music alone to accompany the story the images create (the same reason Wall-E deserved to win last year, and was robbed by Slumdog Millionaire's just-like-every-other-Bollywood soundtrack)
Original Song - Crazy Heart - best song here, and sometimes that really is enough to win.
Sound Mixing - The Hurt Locker does some really cool stuff blending together the natural sound and effects to again work towards creating an entire atmosphere for the audience
Sound Editing - Avatar had the most to work with here and put it all together better than the other movies.
Visual Effects - Avatar. obviously.
Animated Feature - Up
Documentary Feature - The Cove
Foreign Language Film - The White Ribbon (though really, it's anyone's game, and Un Prophete could easily upset)
Documentary Short - The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Animated Short - Logorama (or maybe A Matter of Loaf and Death)
Live Action Short - The Door
So there's that. 24 categories, 24 predictions, plus a few places where i just said what i wanted to happen. We'll see how it goes tomorrow night.
Best Picture - I think Inglourious Basterds is the best of the bunch - i think it had a really awesome commentary on the relationship between cinema and history (i.e. cinema's power to change and influence history), as well as a great genre juxtaposition by placing western style over a WWII setting. My #2 is maybe Up, but i'd need to see it again to be certain. The Hurt Locker is more likely to win, and i'll be okay with that, it is almost as deserving and does great work to place the audience in the action and the tension with the characters. If Avatar wins, as much as i do enjoy it, well that will be sad because it's simply not the best of the best this year. My hope: The Hurt Locker and Avatar split votes, and Inglourious Basterds gets enough #2's and #3's to come up in the middle and win for the upset.
Best Director - Kathryn Bigelow. She's probably most responsible for creating the tension and atmosphere that makes the film work so well. She deserves it, and will probably win.
Best Actor - i haven't seen Crazy Heart (this is the movie most likely responsible for my virus problems), but from what i hear, Jeff Bridges isn't merely getting a lifetime achievement award, he actually gives the best performance of the group. So there. i also haven't seen Colin Firth in A Single Man, though i suspect if i did, i'd be partial to that performance.
Best Actress - i'm gonna say Sandra Bullock has the edge for the actual win, and it's actually a very good performance, in my opinion. However, despite the relative inexperience, i think the best actress was Gabourey Sibide in Precious. She might never make another movie (let's be honest, she's not the easiest actress to cast...), but this one should be enough.
Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds, all the way.
Best Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique's gonna win, and she deserves it. i wondered for a while how much of it was just play acting, pretending to be mean, and then i remember some of the things she had to do for the role. For example, she had to throw a mentally handicapped little girl on the floor and call her a monster. i don't see how you can do that and not have to be giving a tremendous performance without being a monster yourself. That said, my #2 is definitely Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air.
Best Original Screenplay - Inglouious Basterds deserves it, and i think it will win because people will want to reward it in more than one category. There's competition from The Hurt Locker, though, which in my opinion simply doesn't deserve it for two glaring reasons: it's yet another screenplay with biased, limited, and all around insulting portrayals of officers in the military and that whole Jason Bourne-esqu sequence where the guy goes off base with a pistol to find that kid...it was weird. it worked for the character's emotions...but not as a plot point in the movie. totally distracting, doesn't deserve to win.
Best Adapted Screenplay - Up in the Air. Just the best screenplay here.
now on the to technicals:
Film Editing - The Hurt Locker - again, my point about all the tension building, playing on the audience, a lot of that happened in the editing room. My #2 would be Inglourious Basterds, partly because i want it to win as much as it possible can, and partly because it's a movie that understands how to let shots linger before rushing off to the next one - although that technique did work well for The Hurt Locker because it was used well.
Cinematography - i know i know i know, James Cameron invented a camera to shoot Avatar. But more and more over the past semesters i've been learning to appreciate cinematography as the composition of images and those images' effects on the audience. And i'm sorry, but the majority of the images in Avatar were created in post-production by a visual effects team, probably with the director of photography in the background saying "Oh no, more light there," while pointing at the screen. If there were a category for Best Digital Photography, i'd give Avatar that Oscar, but there isn't yet (i suspect there will have to be eventually). For now, i'm going my preference is Inglourious Basterds, and the likely winner is The Hurt Locker. For me, The Hurt Locker was just a little too shaky, with just a few too many quick zooms to really best the best. It was the best way to do that film, yes, but while it ran as fast as it could, other films ran faster. The White Ribbon was also really awesome camera work...but i think a lot of its effect came from the black and white (it did look an awful lot like a old film, with its framing and all), but that color scheme came in post, not in production...so i'll rule it out on a technicality.
Art Direction - i've heard the The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is possible the deserving winner here, but i've not seen it. i'd give it to Nine (which is a much better movie than critics would have you believe - not a great film, no, but it was good, not terrible like the reviews let on). Again, Avatar has the best chance of winning, but again, i think it's cheating. The designs are tremendous, but they were implement in large part by a visual effects team, and there's a separate category for that.
Costume Design - Again, i liked Nine's stuff best of what i saw, but the Oscar tends to go more period film here, so i think The Young Victoria has the edge over the spoiler Bright Star. The other two aren't likely.
Makeup - anything other than Star Trek is an upset, and pretty much undeserving.
Original Score - Up. gorgeous stuff, and again with Pixar, there are entire sequences that rely on the music alone to accompany the story the images create (the same reason Wall-E deserved to win last year, and was robbed by Slumdog Millionaire's just-like-every-other-Bollywood soundtrack)
Original Song - Crazy Heart - best song here, and sometimes that really is enough to win.
Sound Mixing - The Hurt Locker does some really cool stuff blending together the natural sound and effects to again work towards creating an entire atmosphere for the audience
Sound Editing - Avatar had the most to work with here and put it all together better than the other movies.
Visual Effects - Avatar. obviously.
Animated Feature - Up
Documentary Feature - The Cove
Foreign Language Film - The White Ribbon (though really, it's anyone's game, and Un Prophete could easily upset)
Documentary Short - The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Animated Short - Logorama (or maybe A Matter of Loaf and Death)
Live Action Short - The Door
So there's that. 24 categories, 24 predictions, plus a few places where i just said what i wanted to happen. We'll see how it goes tomorrow night.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Current Project
Oh no! So i haven't been blogging all that much. i'm having a little bit of trouble with that particular new years' resolution. but just to keep everyone informed, i'm currently working on watching all the movies nominated for Oscars this year. i'm going to try to something for the first time this year, and that is to watch the documentaries, foreign films, and shorts in addition to all the main movies. it's gonna be a good time, and then in a few weeks i'll be able to give my solid honest opinion on what should win what.
though i can tell you now that i've seen all the best picture and director nominees, and i think Kathryn Bigelow was the best director and Inglourious Basterds was the best picture. and i'm not likely to change my mind. reasoning for both of those opinions will follow in the coming weeks.
though i can tell you now that i've seen all the best picture and director nominees, and i think Kathryn Bigelow was the best director and Inglourious Basterds was the best picture. and i'm not likely to change my mind. reasoning for both of those opinions will follow in the coming weeks.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Ken
A little less than a week ago i attended a memorial service for Kenneth P. Strong, who was my beginning acting professor when i was a freshman here at UNC. He had brain cancer. It was in remission when he taught my class and for another year after that. But it came back, and the few times i ran into Ken last semester, the toll it was taking on him was growing more apparent.
When we got the email saying he had died, i wasn't entirely surprised - he had resigned near the end of last semester, so it was really a matter of time. But at the specific moment i opened the email, Ken wasn't what was on my mind, so it still came as a bit of a shock.
And then the memorial service proved, well, more difficult than i had anticipated, given the inevitability of the situation. i was struck particularly by two remarks. the first came from McKay Coble, the drama department chair. she showed a picture of Ken in character as Uncle Vanya, screaming, and explained that it was both like him - in his tremendous talent - and unlike him because the picture looked so mean. Ken wasn't mean. She said he could not comprehend meanness. Why would someone choose that over kinder alternatives? Second, i remember Ray Dooley commenting on his ceaseless sense of humor. Even through the cancer, he found ways to make people smile, seeking out the laughs to be had.
What really got me about these remembrances was when i thought back to my time in class with Ken, really thought about what he was like, and i was reminded of all these things. His enormous kindness and humor. And how he ended ever class by telling us, "I love you!" And as much as i despise cliches, i can't get over the idea that this is precisely the kind of man that i should be trying to live like. So here i am, and i'm going to do my best to understand meanness less than i do, and to always look for the humor around me and share it with whoever is close by.
But don't worry, i'll be careful out there.
When we got the email saying he had died, i wasn't entirely surprised - he had resigned near the end of last semester, so it was really a matter of time. But at the specific moment i opened the email, Ken wasn't what was on my mind, so it still came as a bit of a shock.
And then the memorial service proved, well, more difficult than i had anticipated, given the inevitability of the situation. i was struck particularly by two remarks. the first came from McKay Coble, the drama department chair. she showed a picture of Ken in character as Uncle Vanya, screaming, and explained that it was both like him - in his tremendous talent - and unlike him because the picture looked so mean. Ken wasn't mean. She said he could not comprehend meanness. Why would someone choose that over kinder alternatives? Second, i remember Ray Dooley commenting on his ceaseless sense of humor. Even through the cancer, he found ways to make people smile, seeking out the laughs to be had.
What really got me about these remembrances was when i thought back to my time in class with Ken, really thought about what he was like, and i was reminded of all these things. His enormous kindness and humor. And how he ended ever class by telling us, "I love you!" And as much as i despise cliches, i can't get over the idea that this is precisely the kind of man that i should be trying to live like. So here i am, and i'm going to do my best to understand meanness less than i do, and to always look for the humor around me and share it with whoever is close by.
But don't worry, i'll be careful out there.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Christian Students Today
A few days ago at the first Intervarsity large group of the new semester, Alex Kirk told about this time he was asked to go to some place talk to a bunch of apparently important people (i've lost some of the nuances of the tale in the last few days) on the subject of Christian students today. While i don't remember what Alex had to say about Christian students today, i remember him mentioning something about the "challenges" we face. And that got me thinking. What are some of the biggest challenges to Christian students on college campuses? To the development of our own faith and to our ability to witness to other people. (i continue to be uncomfortable with words like witnessing and ministering.)
It is the second stumbling block that first came to mind - what are the things that keep us from being able to reach non-believers and seekers on our campuses?
And the conclusion i came to, first and foremost, was this:
Conservative Christian leaders on television. From pastors with megachurches on Sunday mornings, to talking heads with political ties on the Sunday news shows. (i'm always particularly struck by the irony that Christians on television come out most on the sabbath, keeping it holy in a delightful blend of the Church and the State, depending on which channel you watch.)
Using television to reach a large audience can be a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. But there's some sort of flaw in the system. It appears that the people who most want to get the attention of the large audiences are the ones who are most extreme in their beliefs (and in the case of Christianity, that is usually a conservative extreme), and that in turn makes it so that the wider audience's primary view of what all Christians are like is directly influenced and skewed by the appearance of Joel Osteen telling us all how God wants us to be wealthy so that we can be happy (a rather interesting interpretation of the Rich Young Ruler story).
So, when us college students want to share our faith with our fellow students, not only do we have to deal with the issues of suffering, sex, pride, greed, and above all self-centeredness, but we have to do it while also trying to correct the image these fellow students have formed about where we're coming from. It's not always about saving souls from Satan.
We aren't trying to judge them just because the Talking Heads are. We aren't all discriminatory and we aren't all supporting our political opinions with our spiritual beliefs (or if we are, we at least know that they aren't always the same thing). And even if we pledge allegiance to the flag, we know that there are some allegiances that are more important.
Television has almost completely undermined any clean slate we Christian students may have to work with on the campus around us - and given the tarnish of sin, most of those slates are already pretty dirty. We have to take 3 steps back before we can ever take a step forward. And given the fact that Christianity is a religion that at its most basic level demands primarily that we love each other and take care of each other, it shouldn't be such a difficult thing for college kids trying to figure their lives out to be open to hearing about. But it is.
So in the meantime, we'll keep on doing what the apostles did. Looking for opportunities, sharing what we know to be true with the people who care enough to listen, and sharing meals with people as often as possible, because nothing is ever going to beat the impact that having someone sit down and engage with you like a unique and valuable part of God's creation can have on a person. Not blogging or reading books, not hearing sermons from men in expensive suits, and certainly not being talked at by a television screen.
It is the second stumbling block that first came to mind - what are the things that keep us from being able to reach non-believers and seekers on our campuses?
And the conclusion i came to, first and foremost, was this:
Conservative Christian leaders on television. From pastors with megachurches on Sunday mornings, to talking heads with political ties on the Sunday news shows. (i'm always particularly struck by the irony that Christians on television come out most on the sabbath, keeping it holy in a delightful blend of the Church and the State, depending on which channel you watch.)
Using television to reach a large audience can be a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. But there's some sort of flaw in the system. It appears that the people who most want to get the attention of the large audiences are the ones who are most extreme in their beliefs (and in the case of Christianity, that is usually a conservative extreme), and that in turn makes it so that the wider audience's primary view of what all Christians are like is directly influenced and skewed by the appearance of Joel Osteen telling us all how God wants us to be wealthy so that we can be happy (a rather interesting interpretation of the Rich Young Ruler story).
So, when us college students want to share our faith with our fellow students, not only do we have to deal with the issues of suffering, sex, pride, greed, and above all self-centeredness, but we have to do it while also trying to correct the image these fellow students have formed about where we're coming from. It's not always about saving souls from Satan.
We aren't trying to judge them just because the Talking Heads are. We aren't all discriminatory and we aren't all supporting our political opinions with our spiritual beliefs (or if we are, we at least know that they aren't always the same thing). And even if we pledge allegiance to the flag, we know that there are some allegiances that are more important.
Television has almost completely undermined any clean slate we Christian students may have to work with on the campus around us - and given the tarnish of sin, most of those slates are already pretty dirty. We have to take 3 steps back before we can ever take a step forward. And given the fact that Christianity is a religion that at its most basic level demands primarily that we love each other and take care of each other, it shouldn't be such a difficult thing for college kids trying to figure their lives out to be open to hearing about. But it is.
So in the meantime, we'll keep on doing what the apostles did. Looking for opportunities, sharing what we know to be true with the people who care enough to listen, and sharing meals with people as often as possible, because nothing is ever going to beat the impact that having someone sit down and engage with you like a unique and valuable part of God's creation can have on a person. Not blogging or reading books, not hearing sermons from men in expensive suits, and certainly not being talked at by a television screen.
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