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Oscars for 2014 films

I’m hoping to see all the Best Animated Short and/or Best Live Action Short nominees at The Spectrum in Albany before Oscar night.

“Everyone knows” that the only reasons that the Oscars matter is so 1) audiences can go to some obscure movie and complain, “THAT was Oscar-nominated?” or “THAT was an Oscar winner?” and 2) writers can put it in someone’s obituaries: “Oscar winner John Wayne…” The Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, will take place on February 22.

As I’m still in movie season mode, which runs, approximately, from November to March when it’s colder, and the better movies tend to come out, I may still see a few more films before Oscar night, or shortly afterward.

I’m pleased that I managed to see the two Best Picture nominees that were released early in the year, Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. (I’m going to link to my reviews of the films I saw, on the first mention.)

Are there Oscar snubs? Should Jennifer Aniston have been nominated for Best Actress in Cake? Should The Lego Movie, which I liked, have been on the list of animated features? Perhaps. I do appreciate this breakdown of “The Whitest Oscar Nominees Since 1995” because he names names; THIS should have been chosen instead of THAT. I don’t necessarily AGREE with the analysis.

Wow, there are a number of Oscar-nominated films this season based on real events: American Sniper, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Mr. Turner, Selma, The Theory of Everything, Unbroken, Wild.

Best Costume Design

#Milena Canonero, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Mark Bridges, Inherent Vice
#Colleen Atwood, Into the Woods
Anna B. Sheppard and Jane Clive, Maleficent
Jacqueline Durran, Mr. Turner

I’m rooting for Budapest, because these costumes defined the characters so well, though Into the Woods was worthy.

Best Documentary — Feature

Citizenfour
Finding Vivien Maier
Last Days of Vietnam
The Salt of the Earth
Virunga

Citizenfour, which is about Edward Snowden, played at Proctors in Schenectady for three days, but I didn’t catch it. Finding Vivian Meier is about this woman who took thousands of photos, discovered only after her death. I’ve seen a woman involved in The Last Days of Vietnam, a harrowing period, on The Daily Show. Wish I had seen these.

Best Visual Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist
Guardians of the Galaxy, Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould
#Interstellar, Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher
X-Men: Days of Future Past, Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

Interstellar was impressive, though the film itself was sometimes tedious. Sometimes they give this to the big box office champ, which would be Guardians of the Galaxy. AND it reviewed well overall.

Best Sound Editing

American Sniper, Alan Robert Murray, and Bub Asman
#Birdman, Martín Hernández and Aaron Glascock
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Brent Burge and Jason Canovas
#Interstellar, Richard King
Unbroken, Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro

Best Sound Mixing

American Sniper, John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, and Walt Martin
#Birdman, Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and Thomas Varga
#Interstellar, Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten
Unbroken, Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and David Lee
#Whiplash, Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley

Four movies in common in these categories. For mixing, I’m rooting for the fifth, Whiplash, which had a sound in the music competitions that had a visceral impact. But Birdman was good too, and based on just the previews of American Sniper, I figure the competition will go to one of those two.

Best Animated Short

The Bigger Picture
The Dam Keeper
Feast
Me and My Moulton
A Single Life

Best Live Action Short
Aya
Boogaloo and Graham
Butter Lamp
Parvaneh
The Phone Call

Best Documentary—Short

Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper
White Earth

I’m hoping to see all the Best Animated Short and/or Best Live Action Short nominees at The Spectrum in Albany before Oscar night, but I almost never see the documentaries anywhere, except, occasionally, online.

The best supporting players, in alpha order.

Best Production Design

#The Grand Budapest Hotel, Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
*The Imitation Game, Production Design: Maria Djurkovic; Set Decoration: Tatiana Macdonald
#Interstellar, Production Design: Nathan Crowley; Set Decoration: Gary Fettis
#Into the Woods, Production Design: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock
Mr. Turner, Production Design: Suzie Davies; Set Decoration: Charlotte Watts

I really thought Budapest was quite remarkable visually.

Best Film Editing

Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, American Sniper
#Sandra Adair, Boyhood
#Barney Pilling, The Grand Budapest Hotel
*William Goldenberg, The Imitation Game
#Tom Cross, Whiplash

Putting together a coherent story that was filmed over twelve years will almost surely mean a win for Sandra Adair for Boyhood.

Best Animated Feature

#Big Hero 6
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of Princess Kaguya

I liked Big Hero 6, but have no real info on the others.

Best Original Song

#“Everything Is Awesome” from The Lego Movie; Music and Lyric by Shawn Patterson
*“Glory” from Selma; Music and Lyric by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
“Grateful” from Beyond the Lights; Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me; Music and Lyric by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond
#“Lost Stars” from Begin Again; Music and Lyric by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois

“Everything Is Awesome” is such a cheeky song. I thought the music from Begin Again was fine, and functional for the movie. Will the Academy voters throw a crumb to the fine song from Selma here? Or does it go to the dying Glen Campbell?

Best Original Score

#The Grand Budapest Hotel
*The Imitation Game
#Interstellar
Mr. Turner
#The Theory of Everything

Though I’m a music kind of guy, I don’t feel particularly savvy at comparing scores while watching a movie, because it becomes part of the texture of the whole. Maybe this is where Interstellar will win.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard, Foxcatcher
#Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White, Guardians of the Galaxy

From the preview, they managed to make Steve Carrell look REALLY creepy in Foxcatcher. Budapest is great, but, from the ads, so is Guardians, which I’m guessing will win.

Best Original Screenplay

#Birdman, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
#Boyhood, Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher, E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
#The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy

It could well be Boyhood, or Birdman, which I did not love, but which won the Golden Globes. But I’m rooting for Budapest, which was wacky fun.

Best Adapted Screenplay

American Sniper, Jason Hall
*The Imitation Game, Graham Moore
Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson
#The Theory of Everything, Anthony McCarten
#Whiplash, Damien Chazelle

I suspect American Sniper will win, but I’m rooting for Whiplash.

Best Foreign Language Film

Ida, Poland
Leviathan, Russia
Tangerines, Estonia
Timbuktu, Mauritania
Wild Tales, Argentina

There were years I’d get to see one or two of these, but not this time out. Does anyone out there have any opinion on these?

Best Cinematography

#Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman
#Robert Yeoman, The Grand Budapest Hotel
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, Ida
Dick Pope, Mr. Turner
Roger Deakins, Unbroken

I’m guessing Birdman, though Roger Deakins on unbroken is a name I actually recognize, so maybe that. Of course, I’m rooting for Budapest.

Best Supporting Actress

#Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern, Wild
*Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
#Emma Stone, Birdman
#Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

Without Patricia Arquette’s steady presence, Boyhood doesn’t work. She won the Golden Globe over three of these four women, and she deserves the Oscar. My only knock is that it’s hardly a “supporting” performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Robert Duvall, The Judge
#Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
#Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
#J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

I’ll tell you a selfish truth: I was enjoying Whiplash being this little movie that no one heard of, but that I liked a lot. Then Simmons had to spoil it all by winning the Golden Globe against all four of these guys. He deserves to win the Oscar.

Best Actress

Marion Cotillard, Two Days One Night
#Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Gone Girl played for a week at the nearby Madison Theatre, but I missed it. Jones was fine but didn’t feel like “best actress” material. I never heard of Two Days One Night. Still Alice, for which Julianne Moore won the Golden Globe, hasn’t even come to town yet. Hard to judge.

Best Actor

Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
*Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
#Michael Keaton, Birdman
#Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

I suspect it’ll be Keaton, who won a Golden Globe for Comedy or Musical over Redmayne, who won it for Drama.

Best Director

#Alexandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman
#Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher
#Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
*Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game

I’m guessing this will be Boyhood’s director Linklater since he won the Golden Globes over the Birdman and Budapest. He’ll get a point for the vision thing.

Best Picture

American Sniper
#Birdman
#Boyhood
#The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
#The Theory of Everything
#Whiplash

If it were not very good, the fact that Boyhood took a dozen years to make wouldn’t have mattered. Had it been more conventionally made, with different actors as the boy, and makeup for the adults, it wouldn’t likely have had the same impact. But ever since I saw Boyhood, I was convinced it would win Best Picture. The way they vote, only in this category, is such that, if the voter thought Birdman or Selma or The Grand Budapest Hotel were the best films, but Boyhood was surely second or third on their ballots, it would win.
***
SamuraiFrog reviews Grand Budapest Hotel HERE. He reviews all the other Best Picture nominees, including his brilliant dissection of American Sniper, HERE.

At Central Casting, Hollywood’s Bit Players Need to Stand Out Before They Can Blend In.

The Human Seat Warmers

MOVIE REVIEW: Selma

Selma’s Bloody Sunday took place on my 12th birthday.

It seemed like the obvious thing to do. The Wife and I went to see the movie Selma on the Martin Luther King holiday, which also celebrates Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Arkansas Mississippi, and, notably, Alabama.

While The Wife dropped off the Daughter at the sitter’s, I waited for her, and for the massive crowd to see this film. And there was a stream of people coming in the Spectrum Theatre, to see… American Sniper, which, to be fair, had just opened, while Selma had opened the week before. Still, our theater was about 85% full.

You must understand that I recall these events extremely well. Bloody Sunday took place on my 12th birthday. I remember Andrew Young, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and others. I surely remember Sheriff Clark. When a guy named James Reeb comes on the screen, I say to myself, “He was a Unitarian minister from Boston.”

So here’s my review: it was great. Director Ava DuVernay was visionary in recreating the feel and look of the period. David Oyelowo didn’t so much look or sound like Martin Luther King Jr., as embodied his essence. The same can be said for Carmen Ejogo as
Coretta Scott King.

But I was having trouble writing this review, not because I didn’t know how I felt about the movie, but rather because I didn’t know what to make of the “controversy” around it. Specifically, it had to do with the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson, played extremely well by Tom Wilkinson. Even before we saw the film, an in-law had mentioned that “Selma, the film, is not exactly true.” After seeing the movie, all I can say is: claptrap.

It’s not that Selma should be impervious to being critiqued. It’s only that the criticism, which the ‘Selma’ director responded to, seems disproportionate to the total picture. Folks who well know the Alan Turing story found The Imitation Game enjoyable, even while recognizing that it’s far different than the actual events. Walt Disney didn’t actually go to London to pursue the “Mary Poppins” author, as it was portrayed in Saving Mr. Banks.

In the case of the film Selma, I believe not everything was factual – the reference to the Birmingham church bombing was in 1963, not as chronologically close to the 1965 Selma story as it might have appeared. But it showed a greater truth about a people being terrorized by racism.

Bill Moyers, who I admire greatly, thought the film was wrong in suggesting that LBJ was behind J. Edgar Hoover’s sending the “sex tape” to Coretta King. I had a chance to talk with a film critic, and we both thought the movie was far more ambiguous than that.

These two articles pretty much reflect my sentiment: It’s Critics of ‘Selma’ Who Are Distorting Civil Rights History and What’s really behind the “Selma” backlash.

I didn’t agree with this section of the article from Slate: “The film’s running time is a swift two hours; I wouldn’t have minded an extra 30 minutes to learn more about the rest of the civil rights pioneers (all real historical figures) who march arm-in-arm on the front lines with King.” The film, as it says at the end, is not a documentary. There are plenty of them already about this era.

This was an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, especially considering the movie doesn’t use the actual words from MLK’s speeches, for copyright reasons.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Imitation Game

The film The Imitation Game flashes back to Alan Turing’s childhood prep school.

If it weren’t for Alan Turing, you might not be reading this or much else on the Internet. He “was an English mathematician, wartime code-breaker and pioneer of computer science.”

But he was pretty much just a name to me until my friend Mary and I went to see The Imitation Game last week, as usual at The Spectrum in Albany. It was a story about how Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and fellow mathematicians (including Matthew Goode, from the TV show The Good Wife, as Hugh Alexander) try to crack the enigma code that the Germans were using to transmit their movements.

The code was thought to be unbreakable because the number of calculations needed to suss it out was far greater than the human mind could tally in hundreds of years. But, Turing wondered, what would happen if one could devise a MACHINE to figure out what another machine was doing?

This was a difficult sell, in part because Turing was awkward, and, understandably, arrogantly confident in his talents. He was not a “people person.” When he finagles some control of the project, he uses a crossword puzzle to recruit a couple more people, including a young woman (Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke).

The film flashes back to Turing’s childhood prep school, where he was bullied and had but one very good friend. It also jumps forward, where the police, investigating a break-in at Turing’s house, discover secrets about his past and present life, including his homosexuality, which was a crime in 1950s Britain.

Despite his current popularity – type in BEN in IMBD, and Benedict Cumberbatch is the first name to pop up – I had only seen the lead actor in one other role, a small but important part in August: Osage County; he was quite good.

Here he carries the film, though Knightly and the other actors are also very good. The film uses some stock war footage, and, interestingly to me, it doesn’t look as obviously different as in some films I’ve seen.

The negative reviews – they were 90% positive on Rotten Tomatoes – chide the movie for taking Turing and making him less interesting, less nuanced than he should have been portrayed. Moreover, the screen overlay coda of his ultimate fate was considered a bit of a cheat. Since I knew only the name, I can’t speak to the former. The latter argument has some validity, I suppose, but a late scene in the movie does explain the situation to my satisfaction.

Bottom line: I watched what was on the screen, without the background on Turing, and found myself quite entertained and informed.

MOVIE REVIEW: Big Eyes

I’m so glad I saw Big Eyes before Amy Adams won the Golden Globe as best Lead Actress in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical.

The movie Big Eyes could have been called Big Lie, for that’s what Walter and Margaret Keane shared. The paintings of children with eyes disproportionally huge peepers were painted by Margaret (Amy Adams), but Walter (Christoph Waltz) was superior at schmoozing and promoting; surely him taking credit for her paintings would be OK, wouldn’t it? He liked telling the story of his time painting in Paris, so he could chat up the press about his wife’s art, even if he claimed them as his own.

I’ve been fascinated by the effect of the lie, especially since I read the book Lying by Sissela Bok some years ago. Either the lie eats away at you, or it overtakes you, as the lie becomes the new reality. That’s what happens in Big Eyes.

I’m so glad I saw this movie before Amy Adams won the Golden Globe as Best Lead Actress in a Motion Picture- Comedy or Musical. I really liked the performance, but it’s subtle. Anyone expecting scene-chewing will be disappointed.

Big Eyes is a comedy or musical? Music DOES play a part in that the Cal Tjader group is playing at the hungry i nightclub where Walter initially hawks the paintings. Vince Guaraldi, the pianist/composer most associated with the Charlie Brown music, played with Tjader’s group for a time.

The real situation comedy comes at the end, in the courtroom scene, though the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair narrative was darkly funny, I suppose, with Terence Stamp as a New York City art critic; now HE can chew scenery.

I’ve seen Amy Adams in about a dozen films, from The Muppets to American Hustle. But I’d never seen Christoph Waltz, even though he was also in a Muppets film, plus more serious fare, such as Django Unchained. He’s very good here as, initially, a very sweet and charming guy.

Some guy in my row in the theater said afterward, “That was a Tim Burton film?” It wasn’t particularly Burtonesque, except for one scene, teased in the trailer. This is not a BIG film, telling an epic narrative, but as one critic noted, an “entertaining take on a pop culture footnote.”

One of the negative reviews, by Rick Kisonak, notes: “It suggests Margaret was a browbeaten victim of her husband’s greed while making it clear she was actually a willing participant in the ruse.” I think the critic, and he’s not the only one, missed the point about how subtle manipulation can take place in relationships. He’s also putting post-feminist values in a pre-feminism situation.

Interesting how religion plays a role in Margaret’s narrative, at two different points, to very different results.

Last observation: the story is based on real events. Those paintings of kids with big eyes REALLY creeped me out when I was a child, and they seemed to be EVERYWHERE, part of the real Walter’s marketing genius.

MOVIE REVIEW: Into the Woods

James Corden, who I did not really know, is the breakout star of Into the Woods.

Somehow, I had managed never to have seen any iteration of the popular stage musical Into the Woods, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. despite the fact that it played on Broadway in 1987, and has been produced many times, including “a 1988 US national tour, a 1991 television production, a 1997 tenth anniversary concert, and a 2002 Broadway revival,” among others. The Wife and The Daughter saw a production at the local theater, Steamer No. 10 a couple years back.

As for the movie version, which the three of saw at the Spectrum on the first Sunday of 2015:
“The musical intertwines the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales and follows them to explore the consequences of the characters’ wishes and quests.” The main characters are taken from stories of:
Little Red Riding Hood – Lilla Crawford (the Annie on Broadway in 2012-2014), with Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean) as the Wolf
Jack and the Beanstalk – Daniel Huttlestone (the movie Les Misérables), with Tracey Ullman as Jack’s mother
Rapunzel – Mackenzie Mauzy, with Billy Magnussen as her prince
Cinderella – Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), with Christine Baranski (TV’s The Good Wife, the movie Chicago) as her stepmother, Tammy Blanchard, and Lucy Punch as her stepsisters, and Chris Pine (new Star Trek movies) as her prince

There’s a framing story involving a baker (James Corden, who’ll be replacing Craig Ferguson on a late-night talk show), his wife (Emily Blunt from The Devil Wears Prada) with Meryl Streep (also The Devil Wears Prada, now that I think of it, and a whole lot more) as the witch who has a curse on the couple. They need to gather items associated with the other four stories.

It’s all good fun. The singing is strong. Corden, who I did not really know, is the breakout star. Pine and Magnussen have a duet, Agony, that is just a hoot. The Baker’s Wife is perhaps the key character, and Blunt is strong here. Many observers, including the Wife, thought that Red Riding Hood was annoying and the Wolf creepy, but I thought that was what they were supposed to be. Jack is much more likable, and he’s a thief.

They mostly live happily ever after, and apparently, that’s how Act 1 of the musical ends. I heard this story of the out-of-town tryouts for the theatrical production, with composer Stephen Sondheim literally running out to the parking lot telling patrons that the show was not over.

Act 2 is somewhat darker. This is epitomized in a terrific song called “Your Fault”, which I HAVE seen performed on TV – perhaps on the Tonys some years back? I understand a movie is necessarily truncated from its source material. Since it’s a Disney movie – and marketed so heavily on its channels that the Daughter wanted to see the film more than I – thematic elements have been removed. Obviously, I can’t comment on what I’d not seen, but the solution as presented worked for me. And while it had “some suggestive material,” the Daughter was fine with it all.

In other words, I liked it quite a bit, though it dragged, briefly, in places. Interesting that at Rotten Tomatoes, the audience liked it less than the critics. Some, I imagine, are Sondheim purists. Critic Leonard Maltin says that this movie adaptation of a Broadway show actually IMPROVED on the original.

Let’s face it, you either buy into the notion of people breaking into song on a regular basis, or you don’t. Somehow it flowed very well here, perhaps in part because there was the narration, by the Baker, to break it up. Also, it was so fantasy-laden, the singing seemed less jarring than, say, in Sondheim’s West Side Story – which I love – but which is more based in reality.

Pictures: top, l-r, Kendrick, Corden, Streep, Huttlestone, Ullman, Mauzy; bottom, l-r, Pine, Blunt, Depp, Crawford, Baranski, Magnussen.

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