Revoking My Movie Reviewing

This may very well be my last post on this website. The reason for this is because one well-written article has single-handedly reshaped my views on all of film criticism. It is because of the reasons brought forth that I feel inept to continue to review movies. That is, until I can fully absorb all that has been brought forth to my attention. Here is the article in its entirety. I hope you will be enlightened just as I have been:

WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT MOVIES
Armond White takes aim at the critics who write with their thumbs.
(originally posted here: http://ftl.nypress.com/21/17/news&columns/feature3.cfm)

By Armond White


There’s more writing about movies these days than ever before. In print and online, it’s never been worse—especially on the Internet where film buffs emulating the Vachel Lindsay-Manny Farber tradition are no longer isolated nerds but an opinionated throng, united in their sarcasm and intense pretense at intellectualizing what is basically a hobby.

Although criticism is everywhere, and some online reviewers prove themselves honest and less beholden to the power elite than print critics, the problem is this: So many Internetters get to express their “expertise,” which essentially is either their contempt or idiocy about films, filmmakers or professional critics. The joke inherent in the Internet hordes (spiritedly represented by the new REELZ-TV program The Movie Mob) is that they chip away at the professionalism they envy, all the time diminishing cultural discourse—perhaps as irreversibly as professional critics have already diminished it themselves.

Recently, professional critics have felt a backlash from this Internet frenzy. Print publications restructuring to keep up with the web have dismissed or offered buyouts to noticeable numbers of employees, including critics. Trimming these fatted ranks is a result of basic disrespect for criticism as both a true journalistic profession and a necessary intellectual practice.

This backlash follows a perfect storm of anti-intellectual prejudice: Movies are considered fun that needn’t be taken seriously. Movies contain ideas better left unexamined. Movies generate capital in all directions.
The latter ethic was overwhelmingly embraced by media outlets during the Reagan era, exemplified by the sly shift from reporting on movies to featuring inside-industry coverage. Focusing on weekend box-office totals—now a post-Sabbath religious habit—first legitimized movie-talk for that era enthralled with tax shelters, bond-trading and pro-trust legislation (peaking with Reagan’s regressive repel of the landmark 1949 Paramount Decree, giving back monopolies to the studios). This sea change in media attitude was typified by the American launch of Premiere magazine (finally trimmed away two years ago), which perverted movie journalism from criticism to production news. It familiarized the production of movies, not like the trade publications Variety and Hollywood Report do for industry participants, but by simply jettisoning exegesis and replacing interest in content with production stills, personality profiles and a humor column that witheringly trivialized the critic’s pursuit.

This disrespect for thinking—where film criticism blurred with celebrity gossip—has resulted in today’s cultural calamity. Buyouts and dismissals are, of course, unfortunate personal setbacks; but the crisis of contemporary film criticism is that critics don’t discuss movies in ways that matter. Reviewers no longer bother connecting movies to political or moral ideas (that’s was what made James Agee’s review of The Human Comedy and Bosley Crowther’s review of Rocco and His Brothers memorable). Nowadays, reviewers almost never draw continuity between new films and movie history—except to get it wrong, as in the idiotic reviews that belittled Neil Jordan’s sensitive, imaginative The Brave One (a movie that brilliantly contrasts vengeful guilt to 9/11 aftershock) as merely a rip-off of the 1970s exploitation feature Death Wish.

If the current indifference to critical thought is a tragedy, it’s not just for the journalism profession betraying its promise of news and ideas but also for those bloggers. The love of movies that inspires their gigabytes of hyperbole has been traduced to nonsense language and non-thinking. It breeds a new pinhead version of fan-clubism.

••••••••••••

What we don’t talk about when we talk about movies these days reveals that we have not moved past the crippling social tendency that 1990s sociologists called Denial. The most powerful, politically and morally engaged recent films (The Darjeeling Limited, Private Fears in Public Places, World Trade Center, The Promise, Shortbus, Ask the Dust, Akeelah and the Bee, Bobby, Running Scared, Munich, War of the Worlds, Vera Drake) were all ignored by journalists whose jobs are to bring the (cultural) news to the public. Instead, only movies that are mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral or socially retrograde and irresponsible (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Army of Shadows, United 93, Marie Antoinette, Zodiac, Last Days, There Will Be Blood, American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Letters From Iwo Jima, A History of Violence, Tarnation, Elephant) have received critics’ imprimatur.

That there isn’t a popular hit among any of these films proves how critics have failed to rouse the moviegoing public in any direction.

Critics customarily show their allegiance to Hollywood blockbusters, granting them inordinate attention in the entertainment pages, but that’s not the way to build an enlightened public or a healthy culture. You can’t praise the Pirates of the Caribbean movies or the Bourne movies and then expect benumbed thrill-riders to sit still for A Prairie Home Companion, Neil Young: Heart of Gold or Munich. The critical consensus toward denial forsakes what really inspires passion in moviegoers—those priceless moments when a movie addresses personal emotion (Dakota Fanning asking “Are we still alive?” in War of the Worlds) or informs some confounding social experience (Broken Sky’s young lovers alienated by soulless disco beats).

Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories is a perfect example of what critics don’t talk about. Shotgun Stories should have rocked film culture. Ideally complementing the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, it questions the temperamental and social sources for modern behavior. Nichols tells a Faulknerian, Snopes-like story of male fecklessness and the reality of frustration in the American working class. We are introduced to three Hayes brothers in Arkansas: Son (Michael Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs) are totally rudderless—gambling, coaching basketball, womanizing—yet succumbing to the instinct for vengeance passed on to them by their bitter, resentful mother. This recognizable sense of family isolation (the flipside of The Darjeeling Limited) reveals a warped masculinity that goes to the heart of American experience. Shotgun Stories is set in a Red State community, but the truth of its ineffectual, slatternly men can be seen across the country, even in Blue State parochialism.

Its story of warring clans (sympathetic reprobates mirroring sympathetic churchgoers) confirms a concept of brotherhood that has wide-ranging application, but it is primarily, stunningly empathetic. Like last year’s family drama Black Irish (another good, modest film that critics lost), Shotgun Stories deals with fundamental experiences that media consensus ignores. When Son and his siblings crash the funeral for their father (who left them behind when he remarried to begin a second family), it starts a stupid, unstoppable feud. Things get nasty and then work out tragically: It’s the opposite of There Will Be Blood, where things begin tragically then work out nastily—a trajectory that slakes the dissatisfaction and lack of control that spooks our everyday lives. Yet Shotgun Stories dramatizes human compulsion.

P.T. Anderson creates aestheticized tension and a floridly melodramatic, false sense of history that’s easy for critics to endorse. Blood is meant to impress, while Shotgun Stories is meant to be felt. Director-writer Nichols shows a weird yet authentic sense of classical style. This doesn’t feel like a regional work, nor is it a movie-soaked movie like The Darjeeling Limited. It’s between the two. Nichols understands countrified living and American habit that may repel urban reviewers: But it allows him to jump off from Hatfields-McCoys legend into a non-condescending vision of how slackerdom really manifests itself. He counters the meretricious tendency of Richard Linklater, Gus Van Sant and Judd Apatow films whose celebrations of American sloth have blunted the sensibilities of critics trying to keep up with industry fads.

There’s hardly language or space in our class-based, Hollywood-pledged film journalism to deal with the way Shotgun Stories keeps its Faulknerian roots while branching out to a new sense of American behavior. (When Boy’s car radio blasts a Ronnie Montrose song, suddenly reminding him of Kid, it’s the kind of richly authentic moment we used to only get in documentaries like Joel DeMott’s Seventeen.) Nichols’ lyric sense of location—of men and women keeping their own balance as they walk, argue and clash—conveys a complicated spiritual agony. Being a non-hipster film meant that Shotgun Stories was off established critics’ radar screens. Even I, shamefacedly, only caught up after it had opened; but it’s been the most resonant American movie so far this year.

Son, Boy and Kid’s actions (you have to be in touch with your own American roots to feel the humor in those names; the only thing left out is Phil Morrison’s Junebug) point toward a common, unknowable future. Nichols uncannily combines hope and despair. On appearance, Shotgun Stories is a world away from the attention-grabbing topicality of critics’ faves There Will Be Blood, In the Valley of Elah, Redacted, Rendition and The Kingdom; it’s quiet, almost elliptical like George Washington (David Gordon Green is the producer). Yet this terse family epic may be the Iraq War movie we’ve waited for without being able to articulate exactly what we wanted. Nichols’ complex mix of native resentment and culturally bred fury also contains knotted-up affection and pride. Shotgun Stories is genuine. When it ends, it isn’t over. It’s something to talk about.

••••••••••••

To discuss movies as if they were irrelevant to individual experience—just bread-and-circus rabble-rousers—breeds indifference. And that’s only one of the two worst tendencies of contemporary criticism. The other is elitism.

This schism had an ironic origin—the popularization of film criticism as a consumer’s method. A generation of readers and filmgoers were once sparked by the discourse created by Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris during the period that essayist Philip Lopate described as ìthe heroic era of moviegoing.î The desire to be a critic fulfilled the urge to respond to what was exciting in the culture. Movie commentary was a media rarity in those days and relatively principled (even the Times’ Arts & Leisure section used to present a forum for contrary opinions). And then the television series At the Movies happened. Its success, moving from public to commercial broadcast (who can tell the difference anymore?), resulted in an institution. Permit an insider’s story: It is said that At the Movies host Roger Ebert boasted to Kael about his new TV show, repeatedly asking whether she’d seen it. Kael reportedly answered “If I want a layman’s opinion on movies, I don’t have to watch TV.”

Kael’s cutting remark cuts to the root of criticism’s problem today. Ebert’s way of talking about movies as disconnected from social and moral issues, simply as entertainment, seemed to normalize film discourse—you didn’t have to strive toward it, any Average Joe American could do it. But criticism actually dumbed down. Ebert also made his method a road to celebrity—which destroyed any possibility for a heroic era of film criticism.
At the Movies helped criticism become a way to be famous in the age of TV and exploding media, a dilemma that writer George W. S. Trow distilled in his apercu “The Aesthetic of the Hit”: “To the person growing up in the power of demography, it was clear that history had to do not with the powerful actions of certain men but with the processes of choice and preference.” It was Ebert’s career choice and preference to reduce film discussion to the fumbling of thumbs, pointing out gaffes or withholding “spoilers”—as if a viewer needed only to like or dislike a movie, according to an arbitrary set of specious rules, trends and habits. Not thought. Not feeling. Not experience. Not education. Just reviewing movies the way boys argued about a baseball game.
Don’t misconstrue this as an attack on the still-convalescent Ebert. I wish him nothing but health. But I am trying to clarify where film criticism went bad. Despite Ebert’s recent celebration in both Time magazine and The New York Times as “a great critic,” neither encomium could credit him with a single critical idea, notable literary style or cultural contribution. Each paean resorted to personal, logrolling appreciations. A.O. Scott hit bottom when he corroborated Ebert’s advice, “When writing you should avoid cliché, but on television you should embrace it.” That kind of thinking made Scott’s TV appearances a zero.

Unfortunately, it is this very process of affirming the Ebert institution that contributes to confusion about what film criticism has lost. Time marvels that Ebert “typically would give thumbs up to two or three” of the “four or five films up for review on his weekly TV show” without asking if it’s credible or disingenuous. (It will take a separate article to expose the absurdity of a TV show bearing Ebert’s name without his presence, whose interchangeable roster of ineffectual reviewers loyally prevaricate in Ebert’s manner—a “criticism” show owned and sponsored by the Disney conglomerate!)

In the Ebert age of criticism, the Aesthetic of the Hit dominates everything. Behind those panicky articles about critics losing their jobs (what about autoworkers and schoolteachers?), lurks the writers’ own fear of falling victim to the same draconian industry rule: Most publishers and editors are only interested in supporting hits in order to reach Hollywood’s deep-pocket advertisers. This is what makes traditional criticism seem indefinable and obsolete, leaving web criticism as a ready (but dubious) alternative.

The Internetters who stepped in to fill print publications’ void seize a technological opportunity and then confuse it with “democratization”—almost fascistically turning discourse into babble. They don’t necessarily bother to learn or think—that’s the privilege of graffito-critique. Their proud non-professionalism presumes that other moviegoers want to—or need to—match opinions with other amateurs. That’s Kael’s “layman” retort made viral. The journalistic buzzword for this water-cooler discourse is “conversation” (as when The Times saluted Ebert’s return to newspaper writing as “a chance to pick up on an interrupted conversation”). But today’s criticism isn’t real conversation; on the Internet it’s too solipsistic and autodidactic to be called a heart-to-heart. (Viral criticism isn’t real; it’s mostly half-baked, overlong term-paper essays by fans who like to think they think.)

And in print, “conversation” is regrettably one-sided. Power-sided. This is where the elitist tendency sours everything. The social fragmentation that fed the 1980s indie movement, decentralizing film production away from Los Angeles, had its correlative in film journalism. Critics everywhere flailed about for a center, for authority, for knowledge; they championed all sorts of unworked-out, poorly made films (The Blair Witch Project, Gummo, Dogville, Southland Tales) proposing an indie-is-better/indie-is-new aesthetic. The sophomoric urge to oppose Hollywood fell into the clutches of Hollywood (i.e., Sundance). Similarly, the decentralized practice of criticism now scoffs at former New York Times potentate Bosley Crowther, while crowning a network of bizarro authorities—pompous critics who replace Crowther’s classical-humanist canon with a hipster/avant-garde pack mentality (from The Village Voice to Time Out New York to IndieWire).

The new inclination is to write esoteric criticism. Post-Tarantino cinema has wrung the pop aesthetic dry, so the new gods of criticism have made totems of movies so unwatchable and so unappealing that they prohibit the basic pleasure and amazement of moviegoing. Critical babble doesn’t talk about what matters, but it sustains Ten Current Film Culture Fallacies: 1)“The Three Amigos” Iñárritu, Cuarón and del Toro are Mexico’s greatest filmmakers while Julian Hernandez is ignored. 2) Gus Van Sant is the new Visconti when he’s really the new Fagin, a jailbait artful dodger. 3) Documentaries ought to be partisan rather than reportorial or observational. 4) Chicago, Moulin Rouge and Dreamgirls equal the great MGM musicals. 5) Paul Verhoeven’s social satire Showgirls was camp while Cronenberg’s campy melodramas are profound. 6) Brokeback Mountain was a breakthrough while all other gay-themed movies were ignored. 7) Todd Haynes’ academic dullness is anything but. 8) Dogma was a legitimate film movement. 9) Only non-pop Asian cinema from J-horror to Hou Hsiao Hsien counts, while Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou and Stephen Chow are rejected. 10) Mumblecore matters.

These delusions derive from an elitist, art-for-art’s-sake notion. It’s the “Smart About Movies” syndrome allowing bloggers and critics to feel superior for having suffered through Dead Man, Ye-Ye, Gerry, Inland Empire—movies that ordinary moviegoers want no part of and that hardly reflect a community of citizens or the New Millennium’s political stress. It may be a coincidence of social class that most movies are made by people espousing a liberal bent, but it is the shame of middle-class and middlebrow conformity that critics follow each other when praising movies that disrespect religion, rail about the current administration or feed into a sense of nihilism that only people privileged with condos and professional tenure can afford.

Routine reporting from Cannes and Sundance is another expression of journalists’ perks that encourage a sense of elitism. Fact is, those fests are remote from how most people experience or relate to film culture. Like the weekend grosses list, it promotes a false sense of being informed—not art interpretation or feeling. And festival favorites aren’t discussed in fundamental terms. Critics talk around what’s happening inside Pedro Costa or Apichatpong Weerasethakul movies. Instead, they call the latter “Joe”—proof of their in-group shamelessness. They’d rather make xenophobic jokes about Weerasethakul’s exotic name than actually deal with the facts of his Asianness, his sexual outlawry and his retreat into artistic and intellectual arrogance that evades social categorization. Such hipoisie canonizing is as unhelpful as TV’s pop reviewers who only respect banal Hollywood blockbusters. They also, consequently, discuss the Oscars as a plebiscite that readers must dutifully and mindlessly observe. It’s entertainment—weakly.

Avoiding the substance of movies in film discussion has worsened beyond Ebert’s TV glibness. Recall how few critics were able to apply standard Judeo-Christian readings to No Country for Old Men (let alone The Passion of the Christ) but remained perplexed or aggrieved. Contemporary criticism doesn’t deal with politics, morality or history. That’s why critics wrote head-in-the-sand responses to the obvious Clinton censure in David Mamet’s The Winslow Boy and praised socialist Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy as if it were an Anglophile’s Merchant-Ivory pageant. They even let pass the Paranoid Park scene of a security guard’s vivisected torso crawling across railroad tracks—surely the most egregious movie moment of the decade. Critics say nothing about movies that open up complex meaning or richer enjoyment. That’s why they disdained the beauty of The Darjeeling Limited: Wes Anderson’s confrontation with selfishness, hurt and love were too powerful, too humbling. It’s no wonder that the audience for movies shrinks into home-viewership; they also shrink away from movies as a great popular art form.

These desperate stakes became even more alarming with the recent announcement of the Museum of the Moving Image’s Second Annual Institute on Criticism and Feature Writing—a project seemingly designed to further confuse the profession. Offering a session on marketing and publicity, the MMI’s Institute implies that flackery is part of critical journalism, and that’s really the root of the problem—sanctioning the way in which critical journalism has blurred its mandate into promoting the industry, not the art form. It overlooks any chance for criticism to unite while enlightening the audience, keeping it divided. There is no “conversation” when what we say when we talk about movies is driven by elitism or commerce, both now horribly combined in Queens. Hollywood’s emphasis on impersonal product then holds sway over art. Ideas get smothered in formula, and hype becomes the language of so-called discourse.

Does the training of movie critics matter if they aren’t taught to preserve the idea that movies must affirm our humanity? The public deserves critics who appreciate when an audience wants to be moved, encouraging them to experience catharsis at World Trade Center or War of the Worlds. But when people walk out of Paranoid Park feeling bewildered and unedified, where do they turn? What do they talk about?

"There Will Be Blood"

COMING TO DVD Tuesday, April 8th:

"There Will Be Blood" (2007)

Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier, Kevin J. O'Connor, Russell Harvard
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

The story is very simple. A man builds an oil empire by exploiting a small California town in the early 1900's. The story works great (although it comes off just as confusing as "No Country For Old Men" does with its similar novelesque sequences), but I would venture to say this is more of a character study than an epic tale. It was (loosely) adapted from the Upton Sinclair novel "Oil!" by director P.T. Anderson (whose films "Magnolia" and "Punch-Drunk Love" are quirky masterpieces). This may be his least humorous movie to date displaying both boldness and maturity.

"There WIll Be Blood" is really about an epic character which is what engages the movie's audience far more than anything else. Taking Daniel Day-Lewis' character out (or replacing the character with a lesser actor) would show how thinly engaging many aspects of the movie are. I'm glad Daniel Day-Lewis got his Best Actor Oscar (deservedly so considering he carried this nearly 3 hour movie solely based on his charisma).

This is a very well made movie. The main character, Daniel Plainview, is worth the price of admission (or rental). I would maybe put it in my Top 10 (or maybe 15) of the year. I wondered how this movie could get nominated for Best Picture at this year's Oscars, and I realized it came out at the exact perfect time. When it appeared "No Country For Old Men" had no strong competition, I imagine others wanted to crown another favorite but who? "Juno" was too small. "Michael Clayton" was too unpopular. "Atonement" ran out of steam early on. "There Will Be Blood" was next in line. This is all just my theory of course.

I feel like I should say more (about Paul Dano's role [which is probably too big for him to handle at this point] or the infamous "milkshake" conversation), but there really isn't all that much left to be said here about my opinion of this movie.

TWO HUMOROUS ANECDOTES ABOUT MY THEATER EXPERIENCE:
1.) This was easily the darkest theater I had ever attended (made more astounding being the fact that it was a matinee). I walked in just as the previews were beginning and not a single reflection of the audience was made by the flickering screen ahead. It was pitch black. I stood by the door with my hat's brim covering the screen to allow my eyes to adjust as fast as possible (before anyone came in and wondered what I was doing there). I feared sitting in the back row worrying I would wind up in someone's lap. Twice I stepped down the aisle only to find my eyes still unprepared for the journey and made my way back to the door. After a couple previews, I managed to grab an empty aisle seat (most of which were full of people in a similar predicament). The best part was watching the other people walk down the aisles, fresh from daylight, stumbling over their own lack of sight. I had to bite my knuckles a few times to avoid boisterous laughter.

2.) Even better than this was the two black gentlemen in their mid to late 20's at the front of the theater. The movie's title came up, and one guy said (loud enough for the whole theater to hear) "Alright let's see some blood!" I thought either this was a joke or these guys were in for a three hour snoozefest. If it were the latter, I don't think you could get any farther away from the kind of movie they were looking for. I have to give the guys credit for sticking it through the first 40 minutes (the first 10 having very little sound at all). They both got up, but, just before leaving, one of them turned to the audience, and, with an explanatory tone said, "There ain't no blood!" That line has stuck with me since, and it still gives me a chuckle when I say it to myself. It wasn't until after leaving the theater that I thought of the perfect retort (which, being so perfect, I would have overcome my shyness and belted it out):
"There will be!"

BIT O' TRIVIA: While on location in Marfa, Texas, "No Country for Old Men" was the neighboring film production. One day, director Paul Thomas Anderson and his crew tested the pyrotechnical effects of the oil derrick fire, causing an enormous billowing of smoke, intruding the shot that Joel Coen and Ethan Coen were shooting. This caused them to put off filming until the next day when the smoke dissipated from view. Both this film and "No Country for Old Men" would eventually become the leading contenders at the Academy Awards a year and a half later.

My Oscar Reaction

UPDATED: February 28

I will try updating this post as time goes by because I took a TON of notes (just about every detail). So for now, I will give a few general responses:

It helps to know that they only had like 13 days to put this year's Oscars on, so I forgave a lot of things (quick montages, bad camera choices, poor jokes). Jon Stewart is one of my least favorite hosts. I figured they chose him because it was an election year, and the election itself is gaining much popularity. Too much political humor was used certainly, but I guess that's what Stewart does best (even though he didn't say anything gut-bustingly funny). My favorite line (executed in deadpan): "Film Editing. Wow. Somebody just won their Oscar pool on a guess."

"No Country For Old Men" won a lot of major awards (including Best Picture). What's more surprising is that it's heavy-handed competition ("There Will Be Blood") didn't win any of the major awards. I expected TWBB to pick up some, but NCFOM just about took them all. The speeches were mostly well prepared and kept surprisingly short. Those that didn't prepare or forgot their speech still delivered for most of the time.

I was really looking forward to Enchanted's big musical number, but I found it underwhelming and... unrehearsed. "Once" took away Best Song. They performed well, and it's a really great song. It was nice to see the two actors/songwriters holding Oscars on that stage.

Diablo Cody got her "Juno" screenplay. She was very overwhelmed, but who wouldn't be when you write your first movie script and then get handed an Oscar by Harrison Ford?

Well... I have more to add later. Just keep an eye on that "Update" status at the top for more to come. Now, here are the winners with a smatter of reactions:

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
Winner: Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) - Alexandra Byrne

I said Atonement. Oh well.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM OF THE YEAR
Winner: Ratatouille (2007) - Brad Bird

Probably should've gone to "Persepolis" (France's submission for Best Film Of the Year). But nobody would've really understood that. Really enjoyed Brad Bird's dedication to his high school counselor who "prepared him for the movie business" by persisting that he couldn't do it.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
Winner: Môme, La (2007) - Didier Lavergne, Jan Archibald

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECTS
Winner: The Golden Compass (2007) - Michael L. Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris, Trevor Wood

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
Winner: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) - Dante Ferretti, Francesca Lo Schiavo

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Winner: Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men (2007)

Bardem thanked his mom in Spanish. Very touching. I caught "Es por Espagna."

BEST SHORT FILM, LIVE ACTION
Winner: Mozart des pickpockets, Le (2006) - Philippe Pollet-Villard

BEST SHORT FILM, ANIMATED
Winner: Peter & the Wolf (2006) - Suzie Templeton, Hugh Welchman

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Winner: Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton (2007)

BEST WRITING, SCREENPLAY BASED ON MATERIAL PREVIOUSLY PRODUCED OR PUBLISHED
Winner: No Country for Old Men (2007) - Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND EDITING
Winner: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - Karen M. Baker, Per Hallberg

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND
Winner: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - Scott Millan, David Parker, Kirk Francis

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Winner: Marion Cotillard for Môme, La (2007)

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING
Winner: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - Christopher Rouse

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM OF THE YEAR
Winner: Fälscher, Die (2007)(Austria)

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES, ORIGINAL SONG
Winner: Once (2006) - Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová(“Falling Slowly” )

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Winner: There Will Be Blood (2007) - Robert Elswit

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES, ORIGINAL SCORE
Winner: Atonement (2007) - Dario Marianelli

BEST DOCUMENTARY, SHORT SUBJECTS
Winner: Freeheld (2007) - Cynthia Wade, Vanessa Roth

BEST DOCUMENTARY, FEATURES
Winner: Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) - Alex Gibney, Eva Orner

BEST WRITING, SCREENPLAY WRITTEN DIRECTLY FOR THE SCREEN
Winner: Juno (2007) - Diablo Cody

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood (2007)

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN DIRECTING
Winner: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007)

BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
Winner: No Country for Old Men (2007) - Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin

"No Country For Old Men," "One Day In September," "Fog of War"

Introduction:
Hello, fellow moviewatcher! So I'm still trying to figure out how I want to steer this site. I had the idea to use it as a way to track the movies I've been watching. I figured I could break it down into three categories. As an added bonus, I'll try to add a morsel of trivia. I'm still not certain about the frequency of my posts, but you can expect way more posts here than my MySpace/Facebook blogs, so be sure to make this a bookmark and check often. Let's get started and see how things works!


























IN THEATERS:

"No Country For Old Men" (2007)

Starring Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones
Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

This movie is INTENSE. Like "United 93" intense. Like it would be hard for me to go back and re-watch this. I was off-kilter for about a day and a half. I was SO glad I didn't catch the matinee. Without revealing too much, I'll say the movie is about a soulless killer (Javier Bardem) with a psychosis on par with the Joker and Two-Face. There are people chasing people and everyone is out to kill somebody. There are a series of mind games that will keep you vested in wanting to know "Is he smart enough to figure it out?" It unfolds very much like a novel. In fact, when it ended, I turned to the person I saw the movie with and said, "I bet the book ends the same way." Sure enough, the last page is virtually word-for-word the last scene.

What works so well is that all the characters are very intelligent and very crafty and even humorous. The cinematography and the sound are also top notch. The landscape is haunting. The sound is atmospheric and almost minimal except when used with great effect for violence. It is my choice for best sound of the year.

The movie is considered by many to be the best of the year. It was nearly unanimously praised upon release. I felt it was too oblique and far too intense to be my favorite of the year, but I'm not going to argue with anyone about it. It certainly is one of the Top 10 (if not the Top 5) of the year as far as a technical achievement. Also, look for the Coen brothers' trademark colloquial dialogue, realistic use of violence, and maybe a few shadows from their past achievements.

BIT O' TRIVIA: Heath Ledger had been in talks to play Llewelyn Moss, but withdrew to take "some time off" instead.



























ON DVD:

"One Day In September" (1999)

Directed by Kevin MacDonald.

The 1972 Munich Olympics were interrupted by Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage. Besides footage taken at the time, we see interviews with the surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey, and various officials detailing exactly how the police, lacking an anti-terrorist squad and turning down help from the Israelis, botched the operation. (Synopsis written by Jon Reeves)

This documentary won the 1999 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. That's all it took for me to watch it. I wished I had read the description because the only thing I knew about the event was that Israeli hostages were taken during the '72 Olympic games in Munich. I was very captivated by every turn of events right until the end. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that things went from bad to worse. Even more frustrating is the increasingly open opportunities officials gained yet were consistently (and with greater degree) botched up. It's a tale where the bad guys win, and that's always very sad. The hardest thing to watch was the Palestinian terrorists' bodies given a hero's welcome to their home country. As for expectations, I should've asked, "When is the Best Documentary winner ever an uplifting kind of movie?"

BIT O' TRIVIA: The Israeli version is narrated by Rafi Ginat and includes updated information regarding the claims of the families against the German authorities in the subtitles at the end of the film.



























RE-VISITING:

"Fog of War" (2004)

Directed by Errol Morris

Robert MacNamera was the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson. Simply told, it's a rundown of his 11 Rules of War. However, it is told with breathtakingly bold frankness with enough exciting history lessons that it is hard to look upon it as "just another boring documentary." It's hard to put in words why this works so well, but it does. MacNamera's words work wonderfully as a 21st century version of Sun Tzu's "Art of War." It is my 2nd favorite documentary of all time (next to Bowling For Columbine), and I would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in history, war, or just movies in general. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of 2004.

BIT O' TRIVIA: McNamara originally agreed to an hour-long interview for the Errol Morris PBS series, "First Person" (2000). The interview lasted eight hours and McNamara stayed for a second day of interviewing. He also returned months later, for two more days of interviews. Morris found himself with more than enough material for a feature-length documentary.

"I Christen Thee..." - My Oscars 2008 Reaction

In the wake of this morning's announcements for the Academy Award nominations of the movies of 2007, I have decided to begin my maiden voyage into the blogosphere (well, Facebook and MySpace notwithstanding).  So let's sail on!

My biggest joy this morning comes from Juno's 4 nominations (Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Directing and Best Picture).  Actress and screenplay were shoo-ins.  I didn't think it could pull off directing or picture considering the strong competition this year, but alas, the Academy gave it due recognition.  Yay!  "No Country For Old Men," "There Will Be Blood," and "Atonement" were all expected for their respective nominations.

Movies I'm glad and a little surprised to see a lot of nominations for:  "The Butterfly and the Diving Bell," "Lars & the Real Girl," "Michael Clayton."

The biggest snub?  The unflinching abortion documentary "Lake of Fire."  It was going to be my prediction to win.  Another huge snub:  Josh Brolin for "No Country For Old Men."  With other praiseworthy performances in nominated films "American Gangster" and "In the Valley of Elah," Brolin managed to slip through the cracks somehow.  I also would've liked to have seen "Hairspray" and "Across the Universe" get some more technical nominations (there's only one nomination between the two of them).

Jon Stewart returns as host this year.  He is humorously uncomfortable being a cable talkshow host amongst the world's biggest movie stars.  My highest hopes are that Steve Martin will return some day.  And I know we all would like to see Billy Crystal host again.  Perhaps next year?

Here are the list of nominees accompanied by my reactions:

BEST PICTURE

'Atonement'


'Juno'


'Michael Clayton'


'No Country for Old Men'


'There Will Be Blood'

"Juno" may be the underdog, but "Michael Clayton" was somewhat unexpected.  It was forgotten by audiences, but it is certainly considered one of the strongest movies of the year.



BEST DIRECTOR

Julian Schnabel, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'


Jason Reitman, 'Juno'


Tony Gilroy, 'Michael Clayton'


Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 'No Country for Old Men'


Paul Thomas Anderson, 'There Will Be Blood'

A lot of credit is given to the writing and acting in "Juno," but it can all be easily trashed by an untalented director.  It takes talent to pull quality together.  Reitman's previous (and first) film was my personal favorite movie of 2006, "Thank You For Smoking".



BEST ACTOR


George Clooney, 'Michael Clayton'


Daniel Day-Lewis, 'There Will Be Blood'


Johnny Depp, 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'


Tommy Lee Jones, 'In the Valley of Elah'


Viggo Mortensen, 'Eastern Promises'

No surprises.  Daniel Day-Lewis has the strongest buzz (sorry, Depp fans).  Some people thought Ryan Gosling could get a nod for "Lars & the Real Girl."  I figured his role in last year's "Half Nelson" was sufficient enough.



BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett, 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'


Julie Christie, 'Away From Her'


Marion Cotillard, 'La Vie en Rose'


Laura Linney, 'The Savages'


Ellen Page, 'Juno'

Julie Christie was the only true given here.  Cate Blanchett was famously trumped by Gwyneth Paltrow's "Shakespeare In Love" back in '97.  Maybe Blanchett will get a win for the same role.  Marion Cotillard and Laura Linney are very fine choices for nominations as well.



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR


Casey Affleck, 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'


Javier Bardem, 'No Country for Old Men'


Philip Seymour Hoffman, 'Charlie Wilson's War'


Hal Holbrook, 'Into the Wild'


Tom Wilkinson, 'Michael Clayton'

Javier Bardem is the least surprising but maybe the most deserving.  Casey Affleck is the most surprising.  Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance was my personal favorite supporting role for the year, and I was elated to see his name announced (I didn't think he'd get it due to his Hanks-like knack for winning performances).



BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett, 'I'm Not There'


Ruby Dee, 'American Gangster'


Saiorse Ronan, 'Atonement'


Amy Ryan, 'Gone Baby Gone'


Tilda Swinton, 'Michael Clayton'

Cate Blanchett is rightfully (but not unexpectedly) nominated for her interpretation as one of the 9 personalities of Bob Dylan.  Amy Ryan was a shoo-in for "Gone Baby Gone" and could win.  Tilda Swilton is a bit of a surprise, but she is worthy for every role she's in imo.



BEST FOREIGN FILM


'Beaufort' (Israel)


'Counterfeiters' (Austria)


'Katyn' (Poland)


'Mongol' (Kazakhstan)


'12' (Russia)

I haven't heard of any of these.  I didn't know Kazakhstan made movies.  Very strange considering how competitive this category has gotten over the past decade.  The only one I thought could make it was "Persepolis," but that didn't even make the shortlist (most likely to make room for Best Animated Feature Film).



BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY


Diablo Cody, 'Juno'


Nancy Oliver, 'Lars and the Real Girl'


Tony Gilroy, 'Michael Clayton'


Brad Bird, 'Ratatouille'


Tamara Jenkins, 'The Savages'

I'd like to see Diablo Cody win.  Everything here is a delightful surprise, especially Brad Bird's "Ratatouille."



BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY


Christopher Hampton, 'Atonement'


Sarah Polley, 'Away From Her'


Ronald Harwood, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'


Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 'No Country for Old Men'


Paul Thomas Anderson, 'There Will Be Blood'

Most interestingly, all but one also directed the film they wrote (the exception being "The Diving Bell...").  I predicted Sarah Polley for a darkhorse director.  Instead, she was thrown a nod for writing.  No other surprises here.



BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM


'Persepolis'


'Ratatouille'


'Surf's Up'

"Ratatouille" and "Persepolis" (a French cartoon about an Iranian girl who can't return home, unanimously praised by critics) were both givens.  It'll be a showdown between the two.  Interesting trend with third entries here.  It reminds me of other bizarre entries such as "Shark Tale" and "Jimmy Neutron." 



BEST ART DIRECTON

'American Gangster'


'Atonement'


'The Golden Compass'


'Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'


'There Will Be Blood'

That's all very nice.


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'


'Atonement'


'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'


'No Country for Old Men'


'There Will Be Blood'

"Atonement" gets a lot of talk for its 5 1/2 minute tracking shot (similar to last year's winner "Children of Men").  "No Country For Old Men" certainly excelled here.  "The Assassination of Jesse James..." was the biggest surprise for me here.



BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE


'No End in Sight'


'Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience'


'Sicko'


'Taxi to the Dark Side'


'War/Dance'

The subject of the Iraq war dominated the shortlist.  It's more surprising to see that all but one ("Sicko") focus on war.  I've seen three of the five here.  I would give the award to "No End In Sight" (an incredible walkthrough of how we got to where we are in Iraq), although "Sicko" was easily one of my favorite movies of last year (it made me both guffaw and tore my heart all within 90mins).  "Taxi..." was way too dark and saddening for me.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

'Atonement'


'The Kite Runner'


'Michael Clayton'


'Ratatouille'


'3:10 to Yuma'

I like it when Pixar gets nominated for anything.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG


'Falling Slowly' from 'Once'


'Happy Working Song' from 'Enchanted'


'Raise It Up' from 'August Rush'


'So Close' from 'Enchanted'


'That's How You Know' from 'Enchanted'

"Once" was a shoo-in.  It'd be nice to see it win.  Very glad to see "Enchanted" get THREE songs nominated.  It may upset with "That's How You Know."  All these songs being performed for the telecast (assuming hopefully that there will be one) should make for an entertaining show.



BEST MAKEUP

'La Vie en Rose' 


'Norbit' 


'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'

The two things I hear about "La Vie en Rose":  "The actress is superb!" and "Incredible make-up job!"  I know very little else plot-wise.

BEST FILM EDITING


'The Bourne Ultimatum'


'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'


'Into the Wild'


'No Country for Old Men'


'There Will Be Blood'

Glad to see "Bourne Ultimatum" get nominaed.  If that doesn't win, then whatever wins Best Picture will get it.



BEST SOUND EDITING


'The Bourne Ultimatum'


'No Country for Old Men'


'Ratatouille'


'There Will Be Blood'


'Transformers'

Pixar's sound editor is the best in the business.  The way that sound is used in "No Country..." just blows you away.  "Transformers" is a great nod, just so people can say The Academy Award nominated film "Transformers"!



BEST SOUND MIXING


'The Bourne Ultimatum'


'No Country for Old Men'


'Ratatouille'


'3:10 to Yuma'


'Transformers'

Wait... there's another one of these?  ;)



BEST VISUAL EFFECTS


'The Golden Compass'


'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End'


'Transformers'

All very worthy competitors.  This category is usually relegated to 2 entries.  I'd like to see it extended to 5 some day.



BEST COSTUME DESIGN


'Across the Universe'


'Atonement'


'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'


'La Vie en Rose'


'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'

I'm happy with everything chosen here, especially "Across the Universe."  I think ATU deserves a nod for Art Direction way more than anything, but with only 1 nomination, I'm glad to see it get noticed at all.

"There Will Be Blood" and "No Country For Old Men" both tie for leading with 8 nominations.  "Atonement" and "Michael Clayton" tie for 2nd place with 7 nominations each.  The telecast is planned for Sunday, February 24th. This will be one interesting race. See you in 33 days!

If you'd like to know more, you can visit AMPAS' official website:  http://www.oscar.com