The 84th Annual Academy Awards

I love the Oscars.

This won’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s been watching or listening to the show, but it’s true. I love the Oscars. And I make time for them. Since 2002, I have watched the Oscar telecast and been amazed, moved, stunned and occasionally bored rigid by the night.

Last night/this morning was a night of few surprises but a lot of heart.

The biggest surprise seems to be The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo winning for Best Editing. Most of the other big awards went the way they were supposed to. But more of that later.

Billy Crystal was on top form, taking hosting duties for the ninth time. He made for an affable and charming host with the occasional barb thrown in for good measure (his little crack about being in Christian Bale’s eye-line before the volatile actor came on to announce Best Supporting Actress was rather nice). He also made a very touching personal tribute to former Academy producer Gil Cates, who passed away in the last year, before the ‘In Memoriam’ segment.

It may just have been me, but the ceremony felt a lot more streamlined this year. It may be due to the fact that there were nine films nominated for Best Picture, but they dispensed with individual segments for each of the Best Picture nominations; instead, they played together as a montage before the main prize was announced. Similarly, there was no full performance of the songs nominated for Best Original Song; a bit of an odd oversight considering there were only two songs, and I would have paid good money to see the Muppets on the Oscar stage. All of this brought the running time in to approximately three-and-a-quarter hours (including copious ad breaks).

On to the awards themselves.

Unsurprisingly, The Artist took Best Picture. It also took Best Director (Michel Hazanavicius), Best Original Score (Ludovic Bource), Best Costume Design (Mark Bridges) and Best Actor for Jean Dujardin. As you may know, I plumped for George Clooney in the Best Actor category but, hey, five out of six ain’t bad (and I did better than last year!). The Gallic exuberance of Hazanavicius and Dujardin in their acceptance speeches was truly touching and they are both very worthy winners.

Not to be outdone, the other paean to the art of the movies, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo also took home five technical awards (Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects)- again, all well-deserved. Even without the 3D addition, Hugo is one of the most visually stunning films of the last twelve months.

No surprises in the other acting awards with Meryl Streep picking up her third Academy Award, after twenty-nine years, for The Iron Lady; Octavia Spencer ‘freaking out’ after being awarded Best Supporting Actress for The Help and Christopher Plummer giving a very dignified and lovely acceptance speech when he picked up Best Supporting Actor for his role in Beginners (which makes him the oldest actor not only to win Best Supporting Actor but to win a competitive acting Oscar; at 82, he surpasses Jessica Tandy who won at the age of 80 for Driving Miss Daisy)

The guest hosts for each award, as usual, varied in quality. My personal favourites were Chris Rock presenting the award for Best Animated Feature (in those two minutes, he showed more edge and charisma than he did when he actually hosted the Oscars); Emma Stone and Ben Stiller presenting Best Visual Effects (with Stone skewering some of Stiller’s previous Oscar appearances, which I have personally found increasingly insufferable) and the cast of Bridesmaids who paired off to present the three Short Film sections. There was also some wonderful banter between Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow as they presented Best Documentary Feature.

All in all, an absolutely wonderful night celebrating the best in movies.

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Below is the full list of winners at the 84^th Annual Academy Awards:

Best Picture: The Artist

Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)

Best Actor: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)

Best Actress: Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen (Midnight In Paris)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash (The Descendants)

Best Animated Feature: Rango

Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation

Best Original Song: ‘Man Or Muppet’ from The Muppets

Best Live Action Short Film: The Shore

Best Animated Short Film: The Fantastic Flying Books Of Mr Morris Lessmore

Best Documentary (Short Subject): Saving Face

Best Documentary (Feature): Undefeated

Best Visual Effects: Hugo

Best Sound Editing: Hugo

Best Sound Mixing: Hugo

Best Art Direction: Hugo

Best Cinematography: Hugo

Best Original Score: The Artist

Best Costume Design: The Artist

Best Make-Up: The Iron Lady

Best Editing: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Congratulations to all winners!

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed - it's been something of a long night.

Tez

Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (UK cert. 12A)

Christopher Plummer once described working with Julie Andrews like 'being beaten to death with a Valentine's Card'. There were scenes when watching Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close that I felt like I was being waterboarded with golden syrup. At times, the film is so sickly-sweet, so relentlessly sentimental that you can almost feel yourself drowning in schmaltz. It's also shamelessly emotionally manipulative, which is fair enough as it's dealing with an emotional subject. But it lacks any kind of subtlety.


The plot is fairly straightforward: a year after his father (Tom Hanks) dies in the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, nine year old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) finds a key in his father's possessions in an envelope with the name 'Black' on it. He decides it is a quest left behind for him by his father and therefore decides to seek out all people with the surname Black who live in New York. Along the way, the hyperintelligent, precocious and very earnest Oskar starts to learn the lesson that sometimes in life there isn't an order to or reason for something happening.


When a film or a novel is told through the eyes of a child, I feel that the success (or otherwise) of the endeavour is directly related to how sympathetic you feel toward the child. Therein lies one of my main problems with the film. There are several moments in which Oskar's behaviour- most notably towards his long-suffering mother (Sandra Bullock)- made me feel incredibly unsympathetic towards him. There is an idea that Oskar may have Asperger's Syndrome- a test proved 'inconclusive'- but even with this condition to ameliorate or excuse or justify some of his behaviour, I still felt that his petulant outbursts undermined what I felt for him, particularly when he tells his mother he wishes she had died in the World Trade Center instead of his father. However, when his father is presented as such a saint (as the film does, and it's in these scenes which the treacly sentiment chiefly presides), his mother is always going to look second-best.


With an occasionally unsympathetic main character, it falls to the supporting characters to stop the film from becoming unwatchable. Luckily, there is a strong supporting cast here (with the exception of Tom Hanks who I found fairly bland). Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright add some real class as Abby and William Black, who are linked to the mystery of the key. There's also nice support by Zoe Caldwell as Oskar's Teutonic grandmother and Sandra Bullock turns in a nice low-key performance as Oskar's mother. Which leads me on to Max von Sydow, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor for his role as 'The Renter', a mute man who rooms with Oskar's grandmother and who becomes involved in Oskar's quest around New York. Von Sydow doesn't utter a word throughout but he puts in a dignified performance and, whilst the revelation of The Renter's true identity isn't exactly a surprise, he fulfils an important role in helping Oskar come to terms with the noise and the busyness of the city.


I'm going to be honest now, if this film had not been nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, I would not have gone to see it. My main reason for going was to find out what made the Academy voters decide to acknowledge this movie with the top accolade.  Having now seen the film, the decision to put this into the race for Best Picture is a fairly mystifying one and makes the exclusion of better-executed and better-performed films (such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) seem an egregious oversight.


I want to make it clear that I didn't hate this film; I was just very aware of being emotionally manipulated throughout which really isn't my idea of a fun night at the movies.


Rating: 2.5 out of 5


Tez

Death Wish (1974)

After I heard the news that this to be remade with Joe Carnahan at the helm (and no doubt Liam Neeson in the title role)  I realised I had never seen the original. I've seen Parts 2 and 3 but not the original – so why not track it down and take a watch?

Death Wish, directed by Michael Winner and starring Charles Bronson, is something of a classic and cult status movie. Released in 1974, and based on the novel by Brian Garfield, the premise is basic – Bronson's wife and daughter are attacked in their own home and his wife is killed, so Bronson starts to clean up the streets by himself as a vigilante.

The film is not an easy watch. I get the impression that the filmakers seem in part confused to what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? Is it a drama? is it a action movie as the latter 80s sequels became? (the sequels feel almost a parody of themselves). The original feels like a noir thriller. Bleak is the word that best sums up the style and tone of the piece. 

Let's talk about that scene and get it out of the way. We all know what scene- the rape and battery of his wife and daughter. Yes, the scene is haunting, disturbing and all the above- it's a difficult view. The main thing thats disturbing is the mother is beaten and the daughter is forced to engage in a sexual oral act.

Now here's the thing. After you've seen the film in full, you ask: why? Why did Michael Winner feel the need for this scene to be this strong? You would think to give Bronson's character a real motive for the things he does. Well, yes and no – the problem is Bronson never finds out what actually happened.

Sure, he knows his wife was killed. But his daughter becomes catatonic from shock and then during the film has a complete psychological breakdown and she never talks or tells anyone what happened to her. Not to be to graphic, but the medical staff wouldn't have known what had happened as penetrative rape did not take place. This is what is perverse to me– Winner directed this scene, he orchestrated such a graphic scene and there just is no need for it to happen for the story to progress. It's a horrible scene and a complete waste of time. Bronson's character would have had enough motive to become a vigilante without the rape – because he didn't know about it! It's a paradox– wrapped up with an obviously perverted director. 

Leaving that scene now.... the film has a plodding pace- where events just unfold without any great thought, where Bronson goes on a revenge murder spree. He starts off small and then slowly gets more daring and blatant with his killings of the muggers, purse snatchers and drug dealers of New York. What's unforgivable for a film is not caring for a character– and this film is guilty. I didn't care about Bronson. His performance is more wooden than a Chippendale wardrobe– he is just terrible. What is interesting is the politics within New York Mayor's office as Bronson strikes – the crime rate has actually lowered and the police officer in charge is told to find who's doing it and not to arrest them, but to get them to leave the city, to literally get out of Dodge! This is a nice nod to westerns and a nice touch overall.

The film leaves you with a mixed bag of emotions – namely this sick feeling in your mouth because of the unnecessary rape scene, a central character with the emotion of a chimp, a perverted old man directing and a hidden interesting thriller wanting to come out!

I will watch the re-make and I will hope for a version that's worth watching. I like the premise, I love (Spolier) that the central character never finds the peole responsible for his wife's death, he gives out justice on anyone he can find. I will be interested to see how they can make it believable in a modern city that someone could do this. I mean, we live in a modern media/tech world where every street has CCTV and every person has camera on their phone. I look forward to seeing these answers.

As for the original – avoid it, or just watch the TV version!

Rhys

Mini-Countdown: Five Favourite Meryl Streep Performances

Last week, Meryl Streep was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She is the most nominated actress in the history of the Academy Awards with seventeen nominations- fourteen for Best Actress and three for Best Supporting Actress- and two wins (Best Supporting Actress for Kramer Vs Kramer and Best Actress for Sophie's Choice). She seems almost certain to win her third Oscar, after twenty-nine years, for The Iron Lady. In honour of this genuinely classy lady, here are my five favourite Meryl Streep performances (in chronological order).


1. Madeline Ashton in Death Becomes Her (1992)

Streep is often considered to be a 'serious' actress but shows impeccable comic timing in this deliciously over-the-top black comedy from Robert Zemeckis. Appearing as a narcissitic, manipulative diva yearning to stay young and beautiful forever, Streep's performance positively crackles and she handles a good line of bitchy banter with co-star Goldie Hawn.




2. Clarissa Vaughan in The Hours (2002)

As the modern-day embodiment of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, Streep gives a lovely performance in this Stephen Daldry drama. Whilst co-stars Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore were Oscar-nominated for their roles, Streep's performance was slighly overlooked in favour of her role in Adaptation. It's a real shame because this is a nicely judged performance in a truly special film.




3. Senator Eleanor Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

It's no mean feat to remake a film and have it turn out as good as the original. Luckily, Jonathan Demme's adaptation of John Frankenheimer's classic 1962 political thriller is as good and that's in no small part to Streep's portrayal as the domineering and utterly ruthless mother of Sergeant Shaw. It's a steely, chilling performance with an unsettling layer of ambiguity with the mother-son relationship.




4. Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Glacial, withering, a razor-sharp put-down never far from the pursed lips, Miranda Priestly is an absolute gift of a part for any actress and Streep plays it to the hilt. She  barely raises her voice to deliver devastating sideswipes to hapless underlings in a silky-smooth tone. Rumours persist that Miranda is based on New York fashion doyenne Anna Wintour; Streep really makes the part her own.




5. Julia Child in Julie & Julia (2009)

Streep's turn as chef Julia Child is a pure joy. It's a beguiling and consummate performance, going beyond mere minickry (although she's nailed Child's strident tones). Absolutely tenacious and strong-willed, the 'Julia' scenes of the film- as she attempts to become a cordon bleu chef amongst the men of 1950s Paris- provide a warm and wonderful heart for the movie 




So, there are mine. What about yours? Did Streep's performance in Mamma Mia! raise the roof, or do you prefer her as a suspicious nun in Doubt? Perhaps her performances as Lindy Chamberlin or Karen Silkwood do it for you? Or maybe her Oscar-winning performances in Sophie's Choice or Kramer Vs Kramer? Let me know in the comments box below.


Tez

Programme 8: Man On A Ledge, Real Steel and Oscar Predictions

Programme 8 is now available to view above! (click here to watch on VideoMajic.TV)

We take a look at Man On A Ledge, Rhys gives his take on Real Steel whilst Tez gives his predictions for who will win at this year's Oscars.

Podcasts can be found at Podbean and iTunes.

Enjoy!

Review: The Grey (UK cert 15)

This is not going to be a typical review – rather a dissection, due in great part because of the way the film has made me feel.


But, fear not, I’m going to split this into two – I’m going to write a review without spoilers and then I’ll delve deeper with spoilers. So if you’re reading this and you haven’t seen the film – stop reading when you see HERE COME SPOILERS.


So the film! It’s the story of a group of airplane crash survivors, a plane that full of rough-round-the-edges men who all work at a remote oil refinery. The story of survival starts with seven survivors in the middle of an icy, snowy wilderness. This gives the film a visual palette that could have been easily overused, with photography danger of a white-out screen. Joe Carnahan escapes this visual representation of a snowscape – a director of photography’s nightmare. The director gives us a chilling enemy to our characters, in many ways twice as fierce as the story’s real villains- the wolves (which are unfortunately underused) When they are on screen they are great, scary and realistic. What lets them down is how the filmmakers have badly edited together the attacks of the wolves – using far too many close-up shots and the shaky cam technique!


Their journey over the course of film is, I’m glad to say, backed up by a quite frankly fantastic first act. The build up in the opening scenes, where we’re introduced to this lonely, outcast world the men live and work is just superbly carried out. Liam Neeson is set out as a man at the end of his wits, hearing his inner monologue was fascinating and well written and shot.


However, the film never lives up to this great introduction. The film revs its engines up and delivers a great 20-30 minutes of cinema. But, as soon as the plane crashes and dumps these men into wilderness, as does the director who dumps us into a wilderness of never ending clichés and obvious plot devices – where (sadly predictable) one by one each man dies and leaves us with the star Liam Neeson alone to face the wolves! 


The film gives us an interesting premise but fails to deliver any real feeling of terror, any caring for characters and a lacklustre ending (which is not a spoiler, just an opinion!)


I would give it 2 out of 5- and I’m being generous.


HERE COME SPOILERS.


The greatest misfortune this film has is the pace. We see characters die, namely the first two deaths – the first being genuinely scary (if predictable) when the first night of the crash they sleep in the wreck and each take watch – the first death is the man on watch taking a pee! From this moment on, it’s as if the director has taken a pee all over the movie. The next death is the weakest of them – who is walking at the back of them- this would never happen and such a disappointing death to what is easily the most interesting and well-rounded of the characters.


But what comes after this is, beyond a doubt, terrible – it was here that I said to myself  ‘one by one they’re going to die  and leave the star of the film alone at the end’ – what’s worse is I was right!


Each death become ridiculous – the only death that was fitting within the story was one of them dies in his sleep in the cold, the others are dispatched through drowning (while getting his foot stuck), one gives up and sits and waits for the wolves and the worse example of all – during one of the heinous dialogue scenes where they’re talking round a campfire sharing stories of home, one man actually says ‘when I get home to my little girl....’ ‘I heard this much and all I could hear in my head was … DEAD!  And guess what? One scene later, after falling from a tree, the wolves eat him at the bottom!


This film was about people travelling to survive – I was thinking all the time watching this ‘shall I travel to the exit and survive or see what the ending is?’  I waited for the ending – which is the worse part of the film – they all die. THEY ALL DIE!!! The film ends on a bleak note where Liam Neeson tools up with a knife and some broken bottles and the wolf runs towards him and....... that’s it! The screen went black and we’re left knowing he dies. Don’t get me wrong, bleak endings can work (case in point, The Mist) but it didn’t work here.


This film is by far the worse film I have seen in years. 


Rhys

Review: Coriolanus (UK cert 15)

If you asked most Shakespeare fans to name the Bard’s plays, it would be a rare occurrence for someone to name Coriolanus first. It’s arguably one of his lesser-known plays, written around 1608. It’s quite a tricky play and this is the first big-screen adaptation of it, directed by Ralph Fiennes (who not only makes his directorial debut but also plays the eponymous character).

The setting of the play has been changed from Ancient Rome to a modern Balkanised warzone, which ‘calls itself Rome’. Caius Martius (Fiennes) is a soldier for Rome, whose mortal enemy is the Volscian general Aufidius (Gerard Butler). After a particularly crushing defeat of the Volsces at the town of Corioles, Martius is lauded and given the name ‘Coriolanus’. When Coriolanus is asked to run for the Senate, his contempt for the hoi-polloi leads the public tribunes to denounce him as a traitor and have him banished. Coriolanus then tracks down Aufidius and offers himself as a soldier to the Volsces to bring Rome down…

It’s a powerful portrayal of the downfall of a great soldier, directed with some real visual flair by Fiennes (especially with the very visceral battle scenes especially, played without music so you hear every grunt, groan, stab and shot). The quieter scenes are no less powerful, as Fiennes allows the characterisation to grow surrounded by an eclectic but powerful cast.

I was as surprised to learn that Gerard Butler was doing Shakespeare as I was when he was cast as the Phantom of the Opera. Luckily, Butler can speak Shakespearean verse better than he can sing and provides a decent foil for Fiennes in their scenes together. Jessica Chastain rounds off a year of amazing supporting roles by playing the slightly thankless role of Virgilia, Coriolanus’ wife. She only has a few scenes but plays them well- starting as an anxious figure awaiting his return but growing in confidence throughout, to the point where she attacks the public tribunes who banished her husband.

John Kani and Brian Cox appear as Coriolanus’ comrades and friends, both of whom deal with Shakespearean verse as if it were second nature to them. There are two lovely performances by James Nesbitt and Paul Jesson as the public tribunes whose sly, wheedling, snake-in-the-grass politicking gets Coriolanus banished. To round the cast off, giving one of the strongest supporting performances I’ve seen this year to date, is the utterly brilliant Vanessa Redgrave. Every scene she’s in is so riveting and she speaks the verse so fluently that it’s a joy to behold. Volumnia is one of those great but oft-overlooked roles in the Shakespearean canon and Redgrave grabs it by both hands, never more so in the final scene where Volumnia goes to Coriolanus, now allied with the Volsces, to plead for Rome.

Updating Shakespeare to modern times is nothing new (you can thank/blame Baz Luhrmann for that) but there is something interesting at play to see what would have been messengers and soothsayers represented by scrolling 24-hour news. Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow pops up in a few places to deliver the dread news of banishment or victory. When Coriolanus meets the public, many of them have mobile phones recording the encounter; similarly, the public meeting where Coriolanus is denounced is done in a television studio. Bizarrely, none of this seems out of place, given the setting and isn’t overly intrusive.

This isn’t going to be for everyone. Coriolanus is an intense play and the transition to film hasn’t softened it. If you’re a fan of Shakespeare and haven’t seen or read this play, it’s an accessible and well-made film full of stand-out performances. Personally, I enjoyed it very much but I can appreciate it may have a rather niche audience.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Tez