One blog. Two opinions. One zillion films.

Hello? Tammy? Sorry to be away all week. Oscar fatigue.  Slumdog Hangover. 

The show was fun to watch. Then I made the mistake of reading about the same show I had watched, only learn that this Oscars telecast was, in fact, terrible. Also, it was the best Oscars EVAH! Boyoboy, people really get worked up about every little thing.

I am a sucker for the wingnuts. They’re so cute when they’re angry, which is always. They say “no one watches the Oscars anymore.” Then they shriek when Sean Penn points out that homophobia is stupid and obsolete. So they’re watching after all. Who else is going to count cuss words and errant bosoms? 

• I liked Hugh Jackman. Here’s a man who’s comfortable in his own skin. The New Depression chintzy-looking sets for the opening number was inspired; Anne Hathaway aced her little Nixon bit, a good sport as well as a knockout; the Dieter bit for The Reader was a hilarious non sequitur that left everyone watching in India going “wha’?”

• As they handed out Oscars, they used the chronology to explain how movies are made. Somehow they never got to the accounting part.

• Steve Martin and Tina Fey finally brought the real funny. For posterity I must post this exchange:

Fey: It has been said that to write is to live forever.

Fey: Yet, we all know the importance of writing, because every great movie begins with a great screenplay.

Martin: Or, a very good idea for the poster. But usually, with a screenplay.

Fey: And every writer starts with a blank page.

Martin: And every blank page was once a tree.

Fey: And every tree was once a tiny seed.

Martin: And every tiny seed on Earth was placed here by the alien king Rondelay, to foster our titrates and fuel our positive transfers.

• I predicted that Dustin Lance Black would win for best screenplay but at the last minute I changed my Londy ballot to Wall-E. D’oh! Great speech by Black. I hope it eases the pain of a lot of young lives.

• Tammy, now do you know what the art director does?

• After all the fuss, I had YouTubed Joaquin Phoenix’s Letterman stunt. (I don’t buy the mental breakdown story, although it could be that Phoenix’s Kaufmanesque high-wire act might fail, thus causing . . . oh, never mind.) Anyway, Ben Stiller’s spoof was quite funny and it left everyone watching in India going “wha’?”

• There was little appeasing the moral scolds this time around. We saw clips of men kissing men, simulated robot sex, an young actor who played a vampire presenting — and apparently he’s a real vampire, a blow-up doll where Sarah Jessica Parker used to be, and then Bill Maher casually dissed a few billion god-worshipers.

• The lowest point? That dorky, grim song-and-dance routine. Hugh Jackman then announced, “The musical is back!” No it’s not, Hugh, and that routine proved why. When Jackman credited Baz Luhnmann, it reminded me of the “free-form jazz odyssey” scene in This is Spinal Tap: “Derek Smalls on bass! He wrote this!”

• The highest point? Man on Wire winning for best documentary. (It’s my favorite film of 2008.) Phillippe Petit crashed the stage, did a magic trick, balanced Oscar on his chin, pretended to almost drop it, and insinuated himself forever in Oscar greatest-hits clips.

Dav,

I’m sitting at home, nursing a sour tummy.   A friend sent me a NYT link about rich people putting great art up for collateral, in order to borrow money…glorified pawn shops looking like chic art galleries.  Buried in that story was another link.   A link to the Oscar’s Hollywood Carpetbagger.   Very fun.

Who is the Bagger?  I won’t guess, as my Oscar voting score was so slump.

T.

Dav-

I’m changing my Oscar vote for Best Score to “Benjamin Button.” Heard the scores this morning on NPR and was most moved by the music.

I feel old!  V-Day beat my butt!   The last two evenings saw much improved critical mass, audience-wise.   Over 200 last night.  I watched about 3/4 of the show and the cast was AWESOME.

I met Mr. Ed yesterday. He’s a horse, of course!  Tell you about that when I see you and K. later.

T.

.

Tam, K and I enjoyed Frozen River, a relatively light-hearted romp after watching you and the rest of the cast perform A Memory, A Monologue, a Rant and A Prayer. (Very strong and effective stuff. I just wish this and The Vagina Monologues were seen by the crowd that is least likely to see them, teenage boys.)

Frozen River is simple and unaffected, and we liked its naturalism. Because movies routinely show one enormous event per act, a smart filmmaker can use our expectations to create suspense. That’s what Courtney Hunt does here. A young boy with a propane torch, a car crossing a iced-over river, a desperate woman with a gun — we know what’s going to happen. Don’t we?

I also like the way winter is another authentic character — a cold, slushy, bitter, changing winter the way we know it in Jackson Hole. There are quibbles — is it 20 below or isn’t it? — but on the whole the snow is real snow, none of those digitized wafting snowflakes of recent fashion that I’m already tired of seeing. (I’m looking at you, The Reader and Benjy Button.)

That said, Melissa Leo’s on-the-money performance won’t win the Oscar. In fact, I’m changing my Meryl prediction to Kate. The Reader is yet another case where the Holocaust is used like steroids in the Oscar game. A so-so movie yet Kate Winslet’s subtle performance deserves praise — I gave her short shrift in my review. Winslet puts a haunting face on Hannah Arendt’s remarkable phrase that came out of her Nuremberg reporting: “the banality of evil.”

Winslet’s Hanna Schmitz was a guard for the SS, one of the millions of regular folk who went along with Hitler because that was the easy, “patriotic” thing to do. During her trial, Schmitz explains why she let nearly 200 Jews burn to death. They were prisoners, she said, and if she had tried to save them they would have escaped. Her job was to prevent their escape. Period. No redemption, no feeling, a monster because she’s just doing her job. Banal, evil. Winslet carries her character every inch of the way with a trace of deadness in her eyes and you have to wonder if she was born that way.

.Dav-

Yep, most of us are in the same rowboat this year. Flying blind.  Glad you scored Frozen River, and I know you’ll let me know what you think.

I know you won’t have the WASPs-being-boring-and-insipid problem!

Ok.  I’m picking my picks I feel particularly partial about picking:

*Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke

Best Actress: It may be Streep, but I hope it’s Melissa Leo

( It’s the new austerity, as you once noted.  I think too many portrayals of famous men and women have won Best awards in recent years.  These two acting turns reverse that. )

*Best Directing: Danny Boyle/Slumdog

*Best Supporting Actor:  Heath Ledger. And this is tough, because I’ve enjoyed three other performances very much.  But I’m not deserting Heath now.  And he should have won for Brokeback.  -

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis.

Best Original Screenplay:  I’ll pick Frozen River.

Best Screenplay Adaptation: Frost/Nixon

Best Visual Effects:  Iron Man

*Best Editing: Slumdog

Best Art Direction: I’ve never been sure what this means.  I’ll pick Dark Knight.

*Best Costume Design: The Duchess

Best Original Song: WAll-E

*Best Cinematography: Slumdog

1/2 *Best Original Score: Button  ( Doh!  I was right the first time! Slumdog!)

*Best Animated Film: WAll-E

Best Sound Editing: Dark Knight

1/2 *Best Makeup: Hellboy II: The Golden Army. ( Because Heath’s makeup was the only real stand out in Dark Knight, and Benjamin Button was just weird…maybe they’ll toss B.B. the bone, though.)

Tam

Okay, Tammy, with the Londy List by my side from the  Jackson Hole Daily — whoo-eey, Ella’s Room! — here’s how it’ll all go down.

Picture: Slumdog Millionaire. The other four look crotchety and asthmatic by comparison.

Actor: I’m going to go out on a limb: Frank Langella. Maybe the Penn-Rourke contest will split that vote, and you can never go wrong with the deserving old pro who hasn’t gotten his gold yet.

Actress: Meryl. Although when I turn in my official ballot I might change that to Melissa Leo, depending on how she plays to mine eyes tonight. Update: I changed this to Kate Winslet. See “Freezing” post above.

Director: Dannyboy. Only Boyle and Ron Howard belong in this category anyway. Milk and The Reader are unexceptional efforts as directors go, and David Fincher’s The Prune Who Grew Down is remarkable only for converting massive amounts of money and technical expertise in a hollow gourd of a movie. (If only Fiincher would have made more of the scenes when Brad Pitt looked like Dick Cheney.)

Supporting Actor: It should be Robert Downey Jr. He turned a dicey concept into a sharp and hilarious performance. But Oscar seldom likes comedies unless it’s a heartwarming Holocaust romp. My second choice is Josh Brolin. Still, I rented Darkened Is the Knight a couple of weeks ago hoping to revise my initial dim view of it. Nope. The movie is still a mess while Heath Ledger is stunning in his every frame. So it’s Heath Ledger, which is fine by me.

Supporting Actress: Viola Davis. Davis upped the ante for what gets an Oscar. It used to be, you’d better turn on the waterworks. Now, you’d better add some snot to your tears. Seriously, although she has one scene we saw her entire life. 

Original Screenplay: They’ll give it to Milk — Prop 8 backlash — even though it’s the least accomplished of this bunch — and I have yet to see two of them. I just know Happy-Go-Liucky is awesome because Mike Leigh is awesome.

Adapted Screenplay: A toughie. Doubt and Frost/Nixon are buffed and smart, both by accomplished playwrights. But won’t Slumdog Millionaire need extra swag to bolster its Best Pic gold? I say Slumdog. Ya gotta love the concept of gaining trivial knowledge through a series of traumas.

Visual FX: Benjy Button. All those nominations. It’s got to win something.

Editing: The Dark Knight. All those tickets sold. It’s got to win something. 

Art Direction: Button again. Lots of decades to artify.

Costume: The Duchess. When it doubt, go with the most enormous dresses.

Song: “Jai Ho,” which I think is Slumdog’s big dance number. An obsolete category, by the way. 

Cinematography: Slumdog. 

Original Score: Slumdog.

Animated Film. Wall-E. It’s absurd that Wall-E is not a Best Picture nom. However, I wonder if they’ll decide that Pixar pwns this category for too long and that can no longer be? A group of professional animators gave their blessing to Kung-Fu Panda last month.

Sound Mixing: The Dark Knight. Somehow I think explosions count for a lot in this category.

Sound Editing: Button. A lot of sound in a lot of movie.

Makeup: Button. The academy can never get enough of that young-beauties-all-wrinkled stuff.

Tammy,

Three things.

One, most Jacksonites will be identically handicapped. 

Two, there’s so much Oscar-obsessed chatter and gossip and rumors and whingeing out there, I’m not sure that actually seeing a movie helps one predict.

Three, Nate Silver is on the case. During the election Silver’s site, fivethirtyeight.com, out-predicted everyone else in the polling biz, and he became one of the few non-dreadful talking heads on TV.

Just scored Frozen River from Main Event.

–dav

David,

Word has it The Wrestler will not make it to town before Sunday’s Academy Awards.   How will we vote will a full deck for that major Oscar category, Best Actor?

Fixed!  The fix is on!  Me thinks the movie must be a big favorite if it ain’t here.

Will Frank grade on a curve?

Tam

Tammy, I ducked out to catch The Reader, finally making my tally 5-for-5 in the Best Pic dept and one-upping you as Oscar looms. (They’re next Sunday. Are you ready for some footlights?) Londy’s Oscar ballot is online here.

The story is intriguing, hardly deserving the soaping up it has gotten. Daft, lonely older woman takes up with impulsive teenage boy. (It’s Hollywood lovemaking — nobody laughs, ever.) But of course the affair cannot last, and his heart is wounded, and years later he goes to law school, and he happens to observe a war crime trial featuring you-know-who, and he fails to come forward to help her off the hook.

One sighs at the dilemmas we face in life. He kept secret some embarrassing information; she dutifully helped Nazis kill a few more to add to their millions. So little time, so many mistakes in judgment.

Poor Ralph Fiennes. His character gets to snuggle with Kate Winslet, but his 15-year-old self is played by someone else. Both Fiennes and Winslet are great interior actors –here they far surpass the material they are given — but this movie is not about peoples’ interiors. It’s weird watching a movie that seems to know it’s being watched.  The screen is not a stage but rather a device calculated to twang audience heartstrings. A solemn piano constantly tinkles, pages of books are leafed lugubriously, and by the time the Holocaust makes its cameo appearance the movie has slowed to drip, drip, drip.

It’s a good movie the way ponderous, earnest Holocaust-themed movies are always “good” though its flashing neon moral superiority is not my cup of tea. On the other hand, there is an uneasy take on catharsis and redemption in the final reel. Still: why The Reader qualifies for a Best Pic nom, when Wall-E and Iron Man and, hell, even Tropic Thunder display superior craftsmanship across the board, is a question that only a sage of life’s mysteries can answer. Paging Benjamin Button.

David,

I want to post something decent about Frozen River; this may not be the day to do that because my post Valentine’s fuzz brain, but here goes.

Frozen River may be my favorite movie.   Melissa Leo is my pick for Best Actress.  She blows all other competing performances away;  hers is not a performance.  She’s gone, baby, gone into her character, Ray Eddy.   To watch Frozen River is to forget you’re watching a movie and to feel you are in the middle of Ray’s desperate, gray upstate New York existence.  Up there, mud season never ends.   I haven’t seen Kate Winslet’s two films, and I don’t have to.  No way anyone beats Leo’s portrayal of a woman at the end of her rope, living in a broken down trailer with two boys and no way to put food on the table—dinner one night consists of popcorn and Tang–other than to begin smuggling aliens over the Canadian border.  To avoid the authorities and border crossings, she drives her charges across a frozen river.  Aliens are folded up and packed in the trunk of her Dodge Spirit.

Streep’s Bat Nun feels fake and stagey in comparison.   She may take the Oscar, but I hope not.

The movie depicts poor whites and Native Americans living in proximity, interacting, and there’s prejudice in both camps.   Ray’s gambler husband has deserted her and their two boys.   Ray needs to make a balloon payment on a new double-wide trailer; she doesn’t have the cash.  Through a series of incidents that come close to ending in violence, Ray becomes the smuggling partner of Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk woman whose poor vision keeps her from taking decent jobs, and whose baby is in the hands of her mother-in-law.   Upham’s performance is pitch perfect as well.  Upham hails from Kalispell, Montana.

This is a powerful film.  It deserves to take one Oscar, and I hope it wins more.  Frozen River doesn’t take sides–both women are gritty, both are trying to retain control over their lives.    I was completely immersed in the story; in these dire circumstances all the characters remain calm; they move to solve the impossible situations engulfing them.

An amazing debut for writer-director Courtney Hunt.