Monthly Archives: February 2015

Midnight in Paris

Establishing shots at the beginning of the film are divine, and if I wasn’t in Paris already, I’d be booking my flight! Funny how the toast of Manhattan, consummate New Yorker Woody Allen, now seems to be smitten with Paris. Is the City of Light his new inspiration?

Owen Wilson is quite taken with Paris in the 1920s. He’s a writer who’s spent years grinding out scripts in Hollywood (successfully, it seems) but wishes he’d had the guts to write novels in Paris instead. He’s visiting the city with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), who’s had enough (“If I never see another charming boulevard or bistro -) but he’s still bubbling with anecdotes of Monet and Hemingway and their fruitful time lost in their art. While he’s out chasing the ghost of Joyce down cobbled streets, the clock strikes midnight and an old Peugeot drives up, full of merry-makers. Turns out – spoiler alert – that it’s Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

We never know whether this is magic or mental health, but he now possesses the ability to slip back to his favourite time period, 20s era Paris, and he gets invited into Gertrude Stein’s (Kathy Bates) famous salon. Bates is lovely but I have to say, Wilson’s earnestness is what really sells this piece. He’s wide-eyed and worshipful of his heroes. It’s major wish-fulfillment and it’s fun to see all these giants come to life.

Rachel McAdams starts to get annoyed that he disappears every night, but how can he resist? Hemingway himself has offered to edit his work! Woody Allen’s script sings with treasures for book-lovers, and in this film, I can combine with my love of literature AND film (AND Paris, incidentally). Owen Wilson is just as bowled over – particularly when he comes across a beautiful muse (and mistress) to many famous artists (Marion Cotillard), but what a conflict between his actual fiancée in the present tense, and the people who get him but may just be figments of his fertile imagination.

This movie is not for everyone and that’s okay. And it’s not just about being well-read. You just either feel the charm or you don’t. Allen sprinkles the scrip liberally with treats that add up to a veritable feast (a moveable feast?) – you get the sense that he must have had fun writing this, which is perhaps why he won the Oscar for Best Orignal Screenplay (though he never attends to pick up his statuettes). If any of the above has sounded interesting, or if you just need another excuse to fall in love with the City of Possibility, then put this on your list.

Oscars 2015: Best Costumes, Makeup, and Hairstyling

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Costume Design

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Inherent Vice

Into the Woods

Maleficent

Mr Turner

Most people would rather talk about what Angelina Jolie wears to the ceremony than what she wore in the almost irredeemable Maleficent and I can’t say I really blame them. This is one of the more popular leave the room to make more popcorn moments of the ceremony. We might be joining you in the kitchen too since the Oscar for Best Costume Design won’t even affect our pool. All lour of us have agrend on Grand Budapest.

The only real competition I can see is Mr Turner, a film that deserves as much honourable mention for its costumes as it does for Production Design. Its painstakingly researched attention to detail is one of the movie’s key strengths. Who knows? The Academy went through the trouble of nominating the movie four times so they obviously appreciated it. Maybe they’ll throw poor Mr Turner a bone.

But I wouldn’t bet on it. Having taken home the BAFTA in the Costume Design category last week, Grand Budapest is a safe bet. Besides, let’s face it- it’s much more fun to look at.

Makeup and Hairstyling

Foxcatcher

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Guardians of the Galaxy

This is never the easiest race to call. I never thought they would have given 2010’s The Wolfman an Oscar for anything but they did in 2011. All bets are off in this category.

I split from the other Asshoes on this one. Jay, Sean, and Luc have all predicted yet another win for Grand Budapest but my gut has me taking a chance on last summer’s crowdpleaser Guardians of the Galaxy. Why not? All four of us have predicted several wins for Budapest. The makeup artists and special effects teams had a hard job to do in making these characters believable.

So that’s my vote.

Oscars 2015: Cinematography, Visual Effects, and Production Design

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If you’re reading this, I assume that you’re either passionate about production design or trying to get whatever advantage you can find on your Oscar pool. Some describe these as the boring categories, mostly because whoever comes up to accept the award is likely to look like they have never spoken in front of a crowd in their life. But these are the people who have made some of our favourite movies this year so good. Besides, with the acting awards being mostly a done deal this year, the annual Assholes Oscar pool will be decided on categories like this.

Cinematography

Birdman

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Mr Turner

Unbroken

Ida

For the past five years, this award went to big movies (Avatar, Inception, Hugo, Life of Pi, Gravity), all of which you could see im IMAX 3D. This pattern doesn’t help us this year, unfortunately. I won’t comment on Unbroken because I have not yet seen it. I am assuming its between Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel. Since I started watching, the Oscar has gone to a Best Picture nominee 16 out of 20 times. Either way, watching Mr. Turner felt a little like homework and the disorienting and unconventional framing in Ida is likely to alienate a lot of voters.

Of the four of us, Luc and Jay predicted a win for Birdman and Sean and I are voting Grand Budapest. I’m regretting my decision already. Wes Anderson films feel almost perfect shot for shot. You get the sense that nothing happens by accident, that shots are framed exactly how he wanted and capturing exactly what he wanted. But birdman is bananas. Giving the appearance of one long continuous take, the camera frantically follows characters backstage and even through Times square. I think the word I used was “exhilerating” to describe my experience when I reviewed Birdman in December. I don’t know which of the two will win. But Birdman really should.

Visual Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Guardians of the Galaxy

Interstellar

X-Men: Days of Future Past

This is the fun part. This is the category that honours the movies that we actually want to see. Since I started watching, past winners include Independence Day, The Matrix, and Spiderman 2. This year is rare in that out of the five nominees, there’s not a single one that I hate. My favourite X-Men, my favourite Planet of the Apes, and my favourite Captain America. All in one category.

There’s not much in X-Men or Captain America that I haven’t seen before and I think we can safely rule either of these two out. Other than that, it’s anybody’s game. Jay and Luc predicted a win for Interstellar and Sean and I are voting Guardians of the Galaxy.

I couldn’t always tell what was going on in Guardians but I could almost tell it was awesome. The action was spectacular but even better was the creation of two characters- Groot and Rocket- that moved seamlessly around the human actors. They were so believable that they were able to even have comic chemistry with the others.

Production Design

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Imitation Game

Interstellar

Into the Woods

Mr. Turner

The assholes agree for once. All four of us predict a win for Grand Budapest Hotel. Nothing seems out of place in a Wes Anderson film and visually this seems to be one of his most meticulous. Of the other nominees, only Mr. Turner gives it a run for its money. Mike Leigh worked so hard to recreate Turner’s time and place that it got in the way of telling an interesting story. In fact, Mr. Turner probably deserves to win here. But the assholes are united. Grand Budapest will win.

Moulin Rouge!

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Happy love day, everyone! Whether single or otherwise engaged, Valentine’s day is a great day to curl up under a fuzzy, warm blanket and have a cozy day (or night) watching movies that make you believe in love. Today I’m writing about Moulin Rouge!, not just because it’s a great love story, but because Sean and I are in Paris and to celebrate our own VD, we’re taking in a show at the actual Moulin Rouge! Located in the Pigalle section of Montmartre, it was the birth place of the can-can, a seductive dance done by courtesans with split knickers. It was a place where the rich could “slum it” in a safe and fashionable district. And yes, they really had a huge elephant statue right in the middle of the garden, just like in the movie. This past October it celebrated its 125th anniversary. Even the movie is aging – can you believe it’s already 14 years old?

source: ericisadrug.tumblr.com

Filming was halted for two weeks in November 1999 after Nicole Kidman fractured two ribs and hurt her knee while rehearsing a dance routine for the movie. If she’s being filmed from the chest up, it’s probably because she’s sitting in a wheelchair.

source: maryjesu.tumblr.com

The necklace worn by Satine was made of real diamonds and platinum and was the most expensive piece of jewelery ever specifically made for a film – wowza! The Stefano Canturi necklace was made with 1,308 diamonds (!), weighing a total of 134 carats and was worth an estimated cool million.

source: thewickettwitch.tumblr.com

Originally, the green fairy was going to be a long-haired muscly guy , which Ozzy Osbourne was tapped to voice. Obviously it was changed along the way to the current “Tinker Bell” incarnation, played by the fabulous Kylie Minogue, but Osbourne still gives voice to the fairy’s guttural scream when it turns evil. How cool is that?

source: blindlyfromyidols.tumblr.com

The movie was shot largely at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, with no location filming at all, which means the Paris landscape was digitally produced and the two longest visual effects shots (as of 2001) appear in this film. So while famously Parisian, it’s also famously fake.

However you’re celebrating today, and even if you’re not celebrating at all, I wish you love, happiness, popcorn, and movies. I’m off to the Moulin Rouge with my sweetie, and I’ll let you know if they still wear the split knickers 😉

Oscar 2015: Best Screenplays

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The original and adapted screenplay categories are two of my favourites every year. This is traditionally where the Academy attempts to correct its worst Best Picture snubs, with many of my favourite movies of the last 20 years being nominated- or even winning- a writing Oscar despite having been ignored for the main prize.

Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Boyhood

Birdman

Foxcatcher

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Nightcrawler

Whoever wins next Sunday will be in good company. Since I started watching 20 years ago, previous winners include screenplays for Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Almost Famous, and American Beauty. These are some of my favourites of all time and I am happy to say that I think this yea’s nominees will make for another exciting race.

Luc was probably right to predict a win for Birdman with Grand Budapest being possibly its only real competition. With Boyhood and Birdman being the clear Best Picture frontrunners though, I’d be a little surprised if neither one wins. And the unquestionable emotional impact of Boyhood is much more a credit to Richard Linklater as a director than it is to him as a writer. Like Luc, I predict a win for Birdman.

And it really should win. The script is maddeningly layered as it often seems to be commenting on itself- poking fun at its cast and its critics. Besides, the dialogue has a rhythm to it that makes it a blast to listen to and would probably even make a really good read which to me is one of the best signs of a great script.

That being said, Wes Anderson movies are always well-written and The Grand Budapest Hotel is no exception. It has a great rhythm too with humour at the most unexpected times that caught me completely off guard. Nightcrawler deserves honourable mention too finding a fresh take on the news media satire. Both funny and distrubing, writer Dan Gilroy gave Jake Gyllenhaal his best part so far and, neglected in other categories, I’m glad to see Nightcrawler get nominated for something.

Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

American Sniper

Inherent Vice

The Imitation Game

The Theory of Everything

Whiplash

How many times have you heard “The movie was okay but the book was better”? It’s not easy to adapt “material previously produced or published” as we saw in 2003 nominee Adaptation. More often than not, I find the pickings to be slimmer among the Adapted Screenplays than the Original ones. This year especially.

I finally watched American Sniper last night and found it seemed to lack focus. What it was “about” seemed to change several times as the movie went on and any scene taking place before Kyle’s first tour was completely unnecessary and disrupted the flow of the film.

I’m glad the two-hour-plus bad trip that was Inherent Vice was nominated for something and the great Paul Thomas Anderson did Thomas Pynchon’s hippie noir the justice it deserved. Anderson has made better movies than this though and, since Inherent Vice was marketed as a comedy, he would have been wise to let us in on the joke just a little bit more.

Director James Marsh gave us more poetry in the images in The Theory of Everything than writer Anthony McCarten did in the screenplay. The movie worked very well and everyone involved deserves some credit for that but the cinematography and acting by the two leads are probably the main reason we’re even discussing The Theory of Everything at all during awards season.

The Imitation Game, on the other hand, is extremely well-written. Mathematicians breaking codes can be a tough sell for a night at the movies but writer Graham Moore helped make this a crowd-pleaser, what Jay called “The Avengers for math nerds”. Still, Moore’s screenplay relies on a few cliches too many, particularly frustrating in a film that is for the most part so well-written.

That leaves Whiplash. Damien Chazelle’s script wouldn’t even be in the top 3 if it would have to compete with the nominees in the Original Screenplay category but it is a clear winner here. The psychology of both teachers and musicians is insightful and, better yet, Chazelle has written a part for the underrated J. K. Simmons that has virtually guaranteed him an Oscar. Whiplash is probably going to be remembered for Simmons’ performance but it’s an all-around good movie and, if justice is served, it should win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

For a complete list of nominees, click here.

Last Tango in Paris

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If you notice a theme here over the next 10 days, you’re both perceptive and right. I’m off to Paris and to celebrate, I’ll be posting – guess what? – reviews of movies set in Paris! Mais oui!

I must be in a weird mood, and I’m trying not to read into the fact that the first Paris movie I thought was none other than the craziest of crazies: Last Tango in Paris. If you’ve seen it, you can’t forget it. Marlon Brando plays Paul, a man mourning his wife’s suicide. He meets a young woman, Jeanne (Maria Schneider), when they both view the same apartment with intention to rent. They begin fucking. It was a “no strings attached” relationship before those words really existed. So stringless in fact that Paul insists they share absolutely no personal information, not even first names. The affair continues, graphically, for quite some time, until one day Jeanne shows up to find the apartment empty and Paul gone, without a word of goodbye.

But the story doesn’t end there! They meet again, on the street, and this time Paul, in his grief, spills his story, but Jeanne finds that this loss of anonymity is not exactly to her liking, disillusioning in fact.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci was inspired by his own sexual fantasies to make this film. He opens it with two paintings by Francis Bacon, which he visited frequently in real life at the Grand Palais Royal. The film’s palette draws heavily from the colours in these paintings, which reminded Bertolucci of Paris in the winter. He had lofty ambitions for the film, inspired by great art, but what he turned out was instead akin more to pornography?

Why? Because both stars felt “violated and raped” by the process. Maria Schneider, young and naive at the time of filming, felt manipulated into filming some of the more graphic scenes, including one in which Jeanne is sodomized (butter being the infamous lubricant of choice) but the “real tears” are Maria’s, who felt humiliated. Her shock and revulsion make it impossible not to feel guilty by association. Brando was so incensed that he refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after filming wrapped.

Opening in 1972, of course there was great controversy. People in Paris faced weeks of lineups since foreigners from neighbouring countries with greater censorship laws flocked to see it where they could. In New Jersey, protestors called “Pervert!” to those who dared to see it, and the viewing prompted housewives to apparently “vomit in disgust.”

Nevertheless, the film was undeniably ground-breaking and free, and 40 years later, we’re still talking about it.

The Maze Runner

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This movie isn’t terribly sophisticated but it’s also not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I suppose coming from me, and my skeptical expectations, that’s actually a bit of a compliment. But don’t get too excited: I’m not telling you to watch it. But maybe rent it for your kids, ahem, “young adults.” You know, if they’re not already sick to death of the genre, having been bombarded with The Hunger Games and Divergent and their like. The kids are well-cast and it’s surprisingly well-acted. The first half of the movie is actually pretty interesting, and then it starts to fall apart. The ending is weak and confusing (guess I should have read the book!) and though it’s clear that this is just another trilogy in the making this particular movie actually feels more like a second of three than a first. You can safely move this to the bottom of your pile.

My 2015 Oscar Predictions

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Oscar season is always a time of year I look forward to. A bunch of my asshole friends and I get together and eat some food, have some drinks, make some bets, shit on some actors and generally have a great time.

In the spirit of competition and fun I thought I would post my Oscar picks in order to get the other assholes talking. Let the games begin!

Best Picture: Boyhood

Best Director: Richard Linklater

Best Actor: Michael Keaton

Best Actress: Julianne Moore

Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette

Best Original Screenplay: Birdman

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Imitation game

Best Animated Feature: How To Train Your Dragon 2

Best Foreign Film: Ida

Best Documentary: CitizenFour

Best Cinematography: Birdman

Best Film Editing: Boyhood

Best Production Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Costume Design: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Score: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Song: Glory

Best Visual Effects: Interstellar

Best Hair & Makeup: The Grand Budapest hotel

Best Sound Mixing: American Sniper

Best Sound Editing: American Sniper

Best Live Action Short: Aya

Best Animated Short: Feast

Best Documentary Short: Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1

Oscars 2015: Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

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In recent years, you can burn out on online Oscar debates before the nominees have even started writing their speeches yet but in 1995 all I had was Siskel and Ebert and Entertainment Tongith. I was 13 years old and hadn’t seen most of the movies but the way they talked about Oscar night, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. I laughed through Letterman’s monolgue (probably pretending to get some of the jokes), had strong opinions on Pulp Fiction and Shawkshank Redemption without having seen either one, and celebrated when my two favourites (The Lion King and Speed) each took home two statues. Awards season has been like Christmas for me ever since.

Now, I watch all the movies or at least as many as I can. No category is too minor for me and have sat through more shiity movies than I can count just because they were nominated for best Costume Design or Makeup. I don’t always agree with the winners and have found myself yelling at the tv more than once but I’m back every year with a renewed- and delusional- hope that this time justice will be done.

Best Supporting Actor
Robert Duvall- The Judge

Ethan Hawke- Boyhood

Edward Norton- Birdman

Mark Ruffalo- Foxcatcher

J. K. Simmons- Whiplash

This category has been one of the surest bets of the night for years now. Recent winners include Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight, Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, and Jared Leto for last year’s Dallas Buyers Club. Even before the nominations were announced, no one had a chance against any of these guys and with J. K. Simmons as an undisputed frontrunner, this year is no exception.

He deserves it too. I finally got around to seeing Whiplash a couple of days ago and was on edge almost every time Simmons was on screen. He’s intimidating even when he’s not being overtly mean and scary even when he’s making you laugh. Best of all, he’s unpredictable, which is more than I can say for the Best Supporting Actor race this year.

It’s not that his competition is completely unworthy. I’m not sure anyone in the world is more irritating to me than Ethan Hawke is but even I had to admit that he was likeable and believable as the still maturing father in Boyhood. He’s in most of my favourite scenes in the movie- my personal favourite being his awkward safe sex talk. And of course there’s Edward Norton, one of the better performances in one of the best acted films of the year.

How Mark Ruffalo was even considered for a nomination is a complete mystery to me and I’m still not sure I understand how it happened. Channing Tatum would have made more sense.

Finally, I have nothing bad to say about Robert Duvall. All other things being equal, he’s by far the best actor in this category but there’s only so much that even he could do to elevate the hokey writing and uninspired directing in The Judge.

J. K. Simmons wins. Anyone else would be a huge upset.

Best Supporting Actress

Lately this has been the Academy’s chance to show us how much it celebrates diversity, doing its best to make up for an obvious caucasian bias in the other acting categories. Recent winners include Penelope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Monique for Precious, Octavia Spencer for The Help, and Lupita Nyong’o for 12 Years a Slave. The list of nominees this year are not nearly as diverse- or as interesting- as it had been in recent years.

Patricia Arquette- Boyhood

Laura Dern- Wild

Keira Knightley- The Imitation Game

Emma Stone- Birdman

Meryl Streep- Into the Woods

I think we could have done better.

Dern, for Wild, seemed to come out of nowhere. I’m not sure I heard even a hint of speculation that she’d be nominated. I don’t get it.

Neither Knightley or Stone are able to stand out in their own movies, let alone among the other nominees. Knightley plays an important part in The Imitation Game and we learn a lot about Alan Turing from his relationship with her character but the movie belongs to Benedict Cumberbatch and to give anyone else in it an acting award would be bizarre. As for Stone, I thought she seemed to struggle with the demands of all the dialogue that she had to memorize in Birdman. She mostly rises to the occasion and has some fantastic moments but she’s really not in the same league as Michael Keaton or Edward Norton.

Meryl Streep’s nomination makes sense. She can’t help being amazing in almost everything and has some of the best scenes in Into the Woods. But do we really want to see her up there again acting like she had no idea she was going to win? She’s already been honoured three times for better performances.

This leaves, by process of elimination, Patricia Arquette. I’d have no problem with a win for her and Boyhood was possibly my favourite movie of the year. I still struggle with the idea of calling this the best supporting performance of the year since Richard Linklater went to great lengths to try and make us forget that we were watching a performance. Her work in the film is still impressive and she’s likely to take home the Oscar.

For an asshole’s discussion on the parts available to women in Hollywood, click here.

Belle

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First off, thank you to all my fellow film-lovers who brought this movie to my attention. It seems to have slipped under the radar over here but I’m infinitely glad I had the chance to watch it.

Belle recounts the true story (in broad strokes – little is known of her life) of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the half-black, bastard child of a Royal Navy Captain in 18th century (slave-trading) England. Her father loves her deeply (as he did her deceased mother) and when he ships out to India, he appeals to his uncle to care for her in his absence. A Lord and Chief Justice, the uncle tries to raise her, along with another (white) niece, with the privileges she is due while teaching her the important barriers of her skin colour. “Too high in rank to dine with the servants, too low in rank” to dine with her family. She has enough to feel a sense of belonging, and just enough to feel left out. At court, her uncle must decide an important case about slaves as he resists acknowledging their similarity to his beloved niece.

I just watched Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond The Lights and thought she was a stand-out, but this film makes clear that her career will be one to be reckoned with. She’s very subtle and deliberate and saves Belle from being merely a curiosity. Instead she is painted as a woman conflicted, a woman carrying the weight of her race for everyone to see. And this movie is also about class, and (perhaps even foremost) about gender. It would seem that her skin colour can be compensated for with enough money, but her gender leaves her with few options. She must either find a good husband or be invisible like her aunt (Penelope Wilton, tragic and invisible). In the film, Belle’s uncle (Tom Wilkinson, formidable) is challenged to draw a parallel between his niece (who is constantly referred to by the ugly word “mulatto”), and slaves insured as human cargo. Are they not worth the same? Is she not worth the same as any other debutante? The film asks the same question of us but poses it too lightly. I can only imagine the controversy her presence in the family home must have caused, and yet I must imagine it because the script glosses right over the indecencies that certainly occurred. The story focuses on romance, or lack thereof, as befits their station and the time, and covers social implications inadequately. Belle lacks the self-starting spark that would make her the pioneer the script so badly wants her to be.

The script has been controversially attributed to Misan Sagay, despite director Amma Asante

The artwork that inspired the movie

having written 18 drafts over 3 long years. Sagay is an American member of the writer’s guild and took it to her union, which decided in her favour against non-member Asante (who is based in Great Britain). Wilkinson and Wilton have expressed ‘incredulity’ at the decision, because they had “only seen and worked from a script written by Amma”, With or without accreditation, this is an imperfect but impressive first full-length feature and Asante is sure to give voice to more great stories over time.