Oscar Season Bits & Pieces - Best Actress

Emmanuelle Riva

The Hollywood Reporter has released its annual Actress Round table which means that Oscar season is now in full swing. I always look forward to those because Best Actress is always my favourite category. This year looks to be a strong one; there are so many good movies already released and a couple of big mega movies just around the corner.

Let's dig by each category, the major ones of course. I'll provide my take and predictions. Let's start with  :

Best Actress - coming up Best Actor and  Best Supporting Actor
My vote goes to Emmanuelle Riva in Amour. What a performance : heartbreaking and full of moving melancholy and surprising strength. I hope she gets nominated. Going against her is that it's a foreign language film and even people who love it acknowledge that it is a difficult movie to sit through. It deals with inevitable decay, old age and death after all. Going for her is that everyone who sees the movie comes out marvelling at the performance.

Jennifer Lawrence

The pundits world would have you believe that Jennifer Lawrence is the front runner. I don't believe it. Don't get me wrong; I think Lawrence is the best thing about Silver Linings Playbook. I wanted to see more of her character; and therein lies the problem. It's a supporting role really. The story is Bradley Cooper's and she's there as his love interest. She's much better than him but because of how little she gets to do I don't think it's an Oscar winning performance. She has the big speech in her money scene and for that she'll be nominated. However even that speech's payoff is not emotional enough in my opinion. It kick starts the plot for the last third of the movie but does not affect the characters lives in a major way. I understand that Hollywood wants to reward her for The Hunger Games, she's young, hot and a box office draw. Still can't see this performance wining Best Actress.

Jessica Chastain

 I think this will be a match between Naomi Watts in The Impossible and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty.Details of how big and central to the plot Chastain's role have just emerged. That got a lot of excitement. She has momentum from last year, not only for the nomination from The Help but for all the other movies she appeared in. Everyone acknowledges her as The Next Big Actress, set to join Meryl, Kate and Cate as a perennial Oscar nominee. Watts has lots of goodwill from her previous nomination plus she apparently gives a big emotional performance, suffers and cries a lot. Which she is fantastic at and why she was nominated for 21 Grams. A lot of people still talk about Mulholland Drive a decade after it was released, so lots of goodwill there. The problem with The Impossible is that the trailer is too manipulative, it dares you not to tear up. Is there a good movie behind that? Will people show up for suffering porn? If yes she will be unstoppable.

Marion Cotillard

Marion Cotillard is getting raves for Rust and Bone. I'll see it Friday, then I can make an informed decision. Although so far what I read seems to mixed with more praise going to her co-star  Matthias Schoenaerts. There is also young Quevenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild. She carries that unique lyrical movie on her little shoulders and for that she wil be rewarded. Keira Knightely is very good as Anna Karenina as she has been in her last few movies. But the response to that movie has been sharply divided. I loved it, it worked for me. 

Emayatzy Corinealdi

There are a few performances that are not getting much attention but are still amazing. Emayatzy Corinealdi gives a subtle piercing performance in Middle of Nowhere and announces herself as a major talent. Kirsten Dunst is all brittle edges and angry frustration in Bachelorette taking a highly unlikeable character , making her human while being very funny. And the most likeable celebrity presence on twitter, Melanie Lynskey,  gives a touching performance in Hello I Must Be Going. She made me palpably feel her disappointment and then her quiet resolve and tentative hope.

Predicted 5 : Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Emmanuelle Riva, Quevenzhane Wallis, Naomi Watts.

Who do you think will be nominated? Tell all in the comments.

A few stray thoughts on Argo

This is not a review just a few stray thoughts........


- It's a movie movie in the best sense. It keeps you entertained, provides some humor, some thrills, characters to care about but doesn't tax you too much.

- Has a couple of simple but thrilling set pieces. The one at the end of the movie had me at edge of my seat, willing the characters to go where I knew they'd end... but still thrilling. It probably didn't happen that way in real life but it's a movie.... dramatic license. I was OK with it.

- I wish the screenplay developed Affleck's main character beyond the stock ""excellent at his job, trying to spend more time with kid". We've seen that many times. He's based on a real person after all!!

- Things go too smoothly throughout. Too straightforward and simple. Yes the rescue idea is called out as being bad but everybody gets on board. The Hollywood setting up of the fake movie also goes without a hitch. Is this how it happened in real life? There is no real conflict.

- My fave line : Ladies and Gentleman alcoholic beverages can be served now as we just crossed out of Iranian air space"". As I used to travel in Middle East that announcement always meant the party can start, has more meaning in the movie; still fun to hear it.

- Don't understand the Oscar buzz for Alan Arkin. He's very funny but hardly in the movie. Yes he has almost all the funny one liners but that's "best"of year?

- Chris Messina; when are you going to get a meaty movie role? Nice to see you pop up everywhere and lead on The Mindy Project, though.

Terrible Terrible Paperboy

Efron, McConaughey, Kidman and Oyelowo in The Paperboy

I was really excited to see The Paperboy. Critics online were crapping on it in a major way. But there was all the campy elements that I read about. Those were what got me really excited. Plus Nicole Kidman always makes interesting choices. Which other actress has a varied career that includes The Hours, Dogville, Birth and Moulin Rouge to name just four great but disparate movies.  Lets just forget about Just Go With It and Trespass.

The Paperboy, directed by Lee Daniels of Precious fame,  tells the story of the titular character (Zac Efron), his brother, a journalist (Matthew McConaughey), the journalist's writing partner (David Oyelowo) trying to free a death row inmate (John Cusack) with the help of the inmate's pen pal and intended (Kidman). It takes place in the 1960s in swampy humid South Florida and is narrated by Efron's nanny/housekeeper (Macy Grey). It's as crazy as this synopsis implies.

It started OK but then it became unbearable.The characters didn't make sense, shocking scene followed shocking scene for no reason. Yes the famous one with Kidman peeing on Efron, but also two strange graphic sex scenes with Kidman & Cusack, And it was full of blood and gore that  it didn't earn with a coherent story. By the end I was looking away willing it to end.

But its not all bad. The period costumes were right on target. Daniels also an a great ear for capturing the nuances of race in that era and a few of the minor characters read authentic.

The acting is so - so. Efron is fine and he looks very good in the tighty whitties he spends most of the movie in.  But Cusack on the other hand was just plain bad. Macy Gray and Nicole were trying to do something interesting. Kidman goes all out, it's the kind of performance that would be called ballsy just for the crazy stuff Daniels & his screenplay put her through. McConaughey's character goes through a lot of crazy things too. But what story or vision are they serving? A very incoherent one at best that does not really even care about the story or its characters.Agree with critics who crapped on it - it alienated all the affection I had beforehand by being terrible.

The first movie of 2012 that I absolutely loathed ... and I have seen Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

A few thoughts on Lincoln

I attended the not so secret screening of "Lincoln"at the New York Film Festival tonight. I was hoping the secret film is Django Unchained or Zero Dark Thirty but I was pleasantly surprised with Lincoln. I expected it to be a fuddy duddy reverential history lesson and since it's Spielberg I thought it would be sappy.

The movie is a sorta thriller about the behind the scenes machinations of passing the 13th amendment and abolishing slavery. The players include Lincoln, his family, his cabinet, some congress me and other politicians and military men.

I was really surprised by the humor in the movie. Even though it is still a history lesson that felt too stiff and sedate for the most part, there was a lot of humor. It protrayed Lincoln not just as the great and savvy politician he is but also as a man prone to telling long stories. While the stories were long, there were also laughs. It took time to show his relationships with his family and the his staff at the White House.

Daniel Day Lewis is very good as Abe. I know there were complaints online about the voice but it works within the movie context. And I'm sure he did his research and that''s how Lincoln sounded. It's a quiet performance with no flash and no big scenes; in fact he is not in the most thrilling scene.

Sally Field aquits herself admirably as Mary Todd Lincoln and delivers the movie's biggest laugh in a scene with Tommy Lee Jones. She also gets a big screaming match with Day Lewis that was a wallop of a dramatic scene.

 Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens with a lot of wit and sarcasm. I would venture to say that his performance will be an awards magnet. Not just for the humor but because his character is the only only that has an emotional and personal connection to the historical events that all the others lack.

There is David Strathairn - as William Seward - who starts strong but fades away and off camera two thirds into the movie. Joseph Gordon Levitt felt too contemporary as Robert Todd Lincoln specially when he first appears. There are also roles for John Hawkes, James Spader (gets a lot of laughs), Jackie Earle Hailey, Walton Goggins, Jared Harris... lots of men in gray wigs and beards.

Below the line from cinematography to art direction to costumes are all first rate. And I applaud Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner for not going the full lifetime but rather concentrating on an smaller interesting story.

All in all entertaining historical story but not exactly a wow movie.

Movie Short Takes

After a summer traveling abroad I am back in New York and catching up with movies. Here are tiny reviews of movies I saw recently:  

The Dark Night Rises : Overpraised and very loud. I saw this on a lovely sunny day in Wales - there are so few of these - and I regretted leaving the sun to see it. Anne Hathaway was good and its always a pleasure to see Joseph Gordon Levitt but I had several problems with the movie. The politics were very muddled while trying to be topical; is the movie really against the Occupy movement? Christian Bale was doing the same tortured hero he always does; nothing new to see there. Tom Hardy was undermined by the mask covering half his face - really Chris Nolan you hire the biggest sexiest lips on a man in the movies and then hide them, really?

The Amazing Spider Man - Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are very charming together. I totally bought their romance and the chemistry was combusting. The rest of the movie was just blah.

Magic Mike - In my mind the best movie I saw this year to date. It was very refreshing, amid the summer glut of super heroes; to see a character driven movie. Who would've thought this would be it? And I liked that it didn't glamorise striping; the ugly underbelly of drugs and self loathing was all there on screen. Channing Tatum proved his current omnipresence is justified with a charming, understated natural performance. Matthew McConaughey does what I think is a riff on his perceived public persona is wining and probably his best performance ever.


Ted - Opened the same weekend as Magic Mike as the above meme attests and it is perfect counter programing. I remember laughing a lot but can't remember any of the jokes or performances now. Apparently entertaining but not memorable.

Bachelorette - Another very funny movie. But more memorable. This movie about a trio of mean girls attending their fat friend's wedding carrying along years of resentment and dashed hopes is caustingly funny. Its also not afraid of honestly portraying its protagonists in all their loathsome qualities. While Kirsten Dunst is funny and brittle as the main mean girl, Lizzy Caplan steals the movie with an all out funny performance full of pathos as the girl who refuses to grow up lest she face her teenage demons.

More shorts takes coming soon about Fall movies The Master, Hello I Must Be Going and End of Watch.

2011 in Film: The Year of the Surprise

Now that the Oscar season has ended, it’s time to reflect on the movies of 2011. I agree with the general consensus that this was not a great year for movies. While there were a few little gems out there, there were no masterpieces.

I will remember 2011 for the surprises I discovered while watching movies. For the most part they were good surprises that jolted me and took me to unexpected places. The movie that most represented that was A Separation, a movie that zigged whenever I thought it would zag. Starting a small domestic drama about a couple separating it quickly becomes a moral mystery and a parable about class and sexism. Full of wonderful honest performances it was my biggest surprise of the year. And while it was very specifically an Iranian story, commenting on society and regime, it was universal in its themes and how the characters dealt with their predicaments. Don’t want to give away too much, because its merits come from being surprised.

Another little gem of a surprise was Weekend. I went in completely blind into that one, invited by a dear friend for a movie night out the Brooklyn Film Festival. It turns out to be a beautiful complex honest love story. And a gay one at that and you know those are very rare. Not only was it a good love story, but it was very cinematic with nods to the classic “Brief Encounter”, including the climatic train station scene. But the biggest surprise was the open raw performances of its leads Chris New and Tom Cullen, in my mind the discoveries of the year.

Another jolting performance surprise was Adepero Oduye in Pariah a lesbian coming of age story. The movie stayed away from clichés while delivering a story we’ve seen before. That is the clash between the gay teenager and her conservative religious mother. But the surprise was in the specificity of the story, very New York, very Brooklyn, very unique and particularly as it become a rallying cry for independence “I’m not running, I’m choosing”.

Looming large over 2011 was Michael Fassbender who it seemed like he was in every movie released. I’m not complaining, more Fassbender please. That he, along with James McAvoy, made X-Men watchable even interesting, wasn’t the biggest surprise he gave us. Back to that in a minute, but can we please get the sequel we deserve X-Men: Magneto and Xavier the Love Story?

The biggest Fassbender reveal was his disquieting kinetic performance as a sex addict in Shame. What a wallop of a performance that was, and what a movie. The movie rightfully depicts addition as an inescapable trap. Visually and with little dialogue, relying completely on Fassbender’s performance it conveys that trap closing in. Watch him jog around the open streets of Manhattan coming across as a big Metropolis monster trap of emotional unavailability.

Another surprise in “Shame” is Carrey Mulligan’s revelatory performance as Fassbender’s unhinged sister. I didn’t think she had all of that in her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her masterful depiction of a train wreck; a character so in touch with her emotions she can’t help but burn bright and leave havoc behind her. The dichotomy of the two characters, one so open and the other so closed off was fascinating to see and what made this movie such a surprising gem.

Mulligan was also in Drive, another gem. This one was the best “movie” movie of the year. A genre thriller full of exciting escape scenes , funny violent villains and a hero who doesn’t say much, all set to the best movie soundtrack of the year. What’s not to love? And it cemented Ryan Gosling’s reputation as the leading man of these times.

I was also surprised by Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I read that it was confusing, slow and hard to follow. But I found it a mesmerizing whodunit that takes you on an enjoyable journey to the big reveal. And when that happens it is so much more than just who was the spy? It is a complex character reveal that keeps giving in surprising ways as you remember little vignettes from what unfolded before.

I will end with The Help. I, like many people of color who were loud about it this year, did not want to like this movie. It is 2011; Obama is in the White House, why should I watch another movie about black maids who are “saved” by their white “friend”. But what I discovered was that the main arch of the story was Abileen Clark finding her voice. While yes, Skeeter helped her and was the catalyst, it was Abileen who changed, became stronger and radically changed her life and the lives of those around her. And Viola Davis elevated the movie with her piercing quiet performance. She made it so much better than it had any right to be, because I was rooting for Abileen. And what other movie had this many great characters for women? Evil, funny, righteous, depressed, ambitious- it was a bonanza of interesting female characters and these actresses knew they were lucky and dug deep and gave us an entertaining moving film.

What did you think of 2011 in film? What were some of your favorites?

Final Oscar Predictions in All Categories

For the very first time in a long time I'm not passionately invested in any of the nominees this year. With exception of 2; Viola Davis in Best Actress because of her eloquence so far at acceptance speeches and TV appearances. But mostly because of her emotionally piercing performance that elevated a movie that had no right being this good.

The other nominee is A Separation, the best movie of 2011 bar none. Hopefully it will win Foreign Language and my day would be great if it rightfully wins Best Screenplay. I believe that screenplay is the most brilliant in bringing in new narrative structure since Pulp Fiction 17 years ago.

The best films of the year, in my opinion, were Drive, Shame, Weekend and of course A Separation. Of course the Academy ignored almost all of them. I'll be watching hoping for some funny moments and great speeches but apart from the 2 I mention above I don't care who wins.

Finally here are my predictions in all categories. I plan to win that pool this year!

Picture : The Artist
Director : Michel Hazanavicius - The Artist
Actor : Jean Dujardin - The Artist
Actress : Viola Davis - The Help
Supp Actor : Christopher Plummer - Beginners
Supp actress : Octavia Spencer - The Help
Org Screenplay : Midnight in Paris
Adapted Screenplay : The Descendants
Foreign Language Film : A Separation
Animated Feature : Rango
Original Score : The Artist
Original Song : Man or Muppet
Art Direction : Hugo
Cinematography : The Tree of Life
Costume Design : The Artist
Makeup : The Iron Lady
Documentary Feature : Paradise Lost
Sound Mixing : Hugo
Sound Editing : Hugo
Visual Effects : Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Editing : The Artist
Animated Short : The Fantastic Flying Books
Live Action Short : Tuba Atlantic
Doc Short : Saving Face

RIP Whitney

It's not right and it's not OK. There are just no words. Whitney and her songs have been a part of my life always. It is such a sad sad day. I don't think another celebrity death has ever hit me so hard.

Meryl Streep - Villian

Meryl Streep is in a neck to neck race with Viola Davis for best actress this year. I'm on Viola's side all the way. While both movies are not great, The Help was moving entertainment that I enjoyed. The Iron Lady was a terrible movie with Meryl being its only redeeming factor. I call it "Too Much Old Lady". Why chose to spend so much time with a totally fictionalized period of Thatcher's life when there is so much more to choose from? Meryl please better movie next time.

I'd like Streep to play a totally unsympathetic character. She went there slightly with Plenty, A Cry in THe Dark and She-Devil. Here is my fantasy : an aging former mob moll who is now a vicious contract killer out to kill her former boss. Get Martin McDonagh to write and direct, Morgan Freeman to play the mob boss and Joel Edgerton & Dominic Cooper to play his henchmen who are chasing her. Joseph Gordon Levitt to play her long lost son. She gets to curse and swear &kill mercilessly in long elaborate action scenes. I even have a title "Killing Sophie".

Would you see this?