Son of Saul

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A few days ago, I wrote about my experience with the movie Mustang, Turkey’s submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. I was a little disconcerted by the hearty laughter from the audience at our local Bytowne cinema at the battle of wits between a little girl and her mean (and probably violent) uncle. Even though the film’s director takes a hopeful and sometimes humorous approach to some tough material, I was way too nervous for this girl to laugh. I was reminded that night how differently two people can experience the same film.

Competing with Mustang for the Oscar is a film that even the Bytowne crowd can’t (and didn’t) find funny. Son of Saul is set in a Concentration Camp but is unlike any Holocaust movie I’ve ever seen.

There’s so much going on around Saul as he navigates his way through the camp in search of a rabbi who can help him give his son a proper Jewish burial. But we rarely see any of it. First-time feature director Laszlo Nemes used the Academy aspect ratio of 1.375:1, which I’d be lying if I claimed to understand exactly what it means but I gather that it produces an unusually narrow field of vision. The camera is usually either right in his face or right over his shoulder so we can see the camp only from his point of view. We have only the off-camera cries of anguish to remind us of the atrocities in the background. Through the eyes of Saul, there are no Oskar Schindlers, no Roberto Benignis to pretend for us that this is all a game.

This is some bleak material that is expertly shot by Nemes. With a technical prowess that occasionally reminded me of Alfonso Cuarón, I would have expected Son of Saul to move me more than it did. Mustang, for example, may not have the same flawless attention to detail but still managed to elicit an emotional response from me that I just couldn’t seem to manage with son of Saul. I was more impressed with the filmmaking than I was captivated by the story.

The D Train

14 Replies

Back in the 90s when I loved me some bad TV, I watched a show that only managed 21 episodes over its 2 seasons, but man was I hooked. It was called Second Noah and I’ve often wondered if I made it all up as I seem to be the only earthling to remember it (ever so fondly).

IMDB is backing my story up and reminding me that it was about a writer who married a zookeeper, and then adopted 8 kids and untold number of cute animals. That was all background as far as I was concerned because the hunky oldest son, naturally a bad boy, was played by James Marsden. So that’s how I discovered him (and also Joey Lauren Adams of Mallrats fame, who played his edgy girlfriend). You can bet I was all over him in Disturbing Behaviour, was disappointed some idiot covered his handsome face in X-Men, had my ardour cooled when he appeared briefly in Zoolander as John Wilkes Booth, but anyway, he’s bona-fide Hollywood now and mugging like crazy in this new movie with Jack Black, also known (apparently) as Bad Bromance.

Jack Black plays a family man who thinks high school were his glory days. He’s not exactly right – he was a loser then and he’s a loser now, but he’s super keen on organizing his 20th high school reunion. His classmates aren’t quite as excited so he flies to L.A. to convince the class’s most famous and successful alumni (James Marsden) (who has just appeared shirtless in a national Banana Boat commercial) to accept the invitation.

Turns out, hotshot commercial actors are only fun up to a certain point. And what point is that? Well you’ll have to watch to find out. The truth is, this is a pretty standard comedy. Jack Black plays uptight pathetic weirdo remarkably well and James Marsden takes no effort at all to play too handsome for his own good, successfully pulling off man jewelry and sexy salt and pepper stubble. Katheryn Hahn, Jeffrey Tambor, and Mike White (sadly underused) round out a funny cast in a not funny enough movie. As a dramedy it manages to fail on both counts, offering no character development and only half-hearted chuckles. But as a vehicle for seeing James Marsden’s dreamy pecs, it’s aces – fair warning though, it comes with a heaping side dish of Jack Black’s tits as well, so you know, really think about whether you’re up for that.

Director’s Guild Awards

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Drum roll please! This weekend’s prestigious Director’s Guild Awards, hosted by the effervescent Jane Lynch, made history when Alejandro G. Iñárritu took 2016dgaw001 home top prize for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for his brilliant work on The Revenant. This is the first time in the Guild’s history that a director is rewarded in back-to-back years (he won last year for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)). The nice thing about these awards is that directors are the first to admit that they do not work alone. There are lots of people sharing in Iñárritu’s win. His directorial team includes:

Unit Production Managers: Drew Locke, James W. Skotchdopole, Doug Jones, Gabriela Vazquez

First Assistant Director: Scott Robertson, Adam Somner

Second Assistant Directors: Megan M. Shank, Matthew Haggerty, Jeremy Marks, Trevor R. Tavares, Jasmine Marie Alhambra

Second Second Assistant Directors: Brett Robinson, Kasia Trojak

Who are these people and what do they do? Excellent question! A unit production manager (UPM) is hired by the producer to do the fun admin-y stuff to manage a film’s budget. Based on the shooting script, the UPM will create a working budget related to the physical production. The producer stays on top of “above-the-line” expenses, ie, the creative stuff that gets the ball rolling pre-production: securing the script, writers, actors, directors, budget producers, that kind of thing, fixed costs that no matter what scene is cut or special effect is scrimped on will still be paid the same. The UPM gets tasked with the less glamourous crew, the “below-the-line” costs, contracting with gaffers, makeup artists, sound engineers, all the “little people” who turn up and work hard to actually turn good ideas into reality. Plus he or she will be negotiating deals for location, equipment, etc.

An assistant director on a film has a full schedule: they track daily progress against the almighty production schedule, take care of logistics, prep the daily call sheets, check in with cast and crew, keep order on a busy set, and make makeup sure everyone’s safe. The first assistant director (1AD) is directly responsible to the director and runs the floor or set; they have to accurately estimate how long it will take to film a scene – whether several pages will be shot quickly, or one emotional paragraph may take all day. The 1AD is the communicator on set: all directions to the rest of the crew from the director will run through him or her. The second assistant director (2AD) creates the call sheets and then makes sure that all the cast is ready to follow through, revenant putting them through make-up and wardrobe. The call sheet tells cast and crew what scenes and script pages are being shot today, and where. They will provide exact start times (which rarely turn out to be all that exact), and addresses of shoot locations, and transportation arrangements so everyone can actually get there and maybe even park legally. It should also have contact info for the important crew, safety notes, maybe weather reports, sunrise\sunset times, and where to find the nearest hardware store when you inevitably need another extension cord. The second callsheet second assistant director (22AD) (yes, that’s their real title) comes on board when the production is big and\or complicated. You can be sure the 2AD is checking on Brad Pitt’s mustache while the 22AD is making sure there’s a dozen ladies in hoop skirts behind him, or a thousand extras in zombie makeup, or that all the parking meters are fed. This really frees up Alejandro Iñárritu to laze about in his director’s chair fantasizing about Leo’s frosty breath, or Wes Anderson to deliberate between Egyptian blue and Ultramarine, or Steven Spielberg to play another practical joke on Tom Hanks.

2016dgaw002 I’m also crazy excited to tell you that Alex Garland won for Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director. Recognize his name? He’s the man behind 2015’s break-out indie success and seriously one of my favourite films of the year, Ex Machina. Remember the name, he’s only getting started. His directorial team includes:

Unit Production Manager: Sara Desmond

First Assistant Director: Nick Heckstall-Smith

Second Assistant Director: Ray Kenny

Also noteworthy: recipient of Outstanding Directorial Achievement in 2016dgaw011
Documentary, Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land.

These three directors may be men, but you’ll have noticed there are lots of females sprinkled in amongst their support teams, which I can only hope means the ladies are movin on up. Here’s a lovely lady worth highlighting – Mary Rae Thewlis was the recipient of the Frank Capra Achievement Award, given to an assistant director or unit production manager in recognition of career 2016dgaw013 achievement. Thewlis worked under Martin Scorsese on The Age of Innocence as a DGA trainee. She worked on the Tupac Shakur movie Above the Rim as the key second assistant director and under director Jon Avnet as second second assistant director on Up Close & Personal and then spent a lot of years at Law & Order originally as Second Assistant Director and eventually First Assistant Director. Kudos to her, and may she be an inspiration and example of hard work to aspiring young film makers everywhere.

A director is only as good as his or her team, so pick wisely, folks. It’s not just true of the movies. Find talent and nurture it.

Mustang

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I saw Mustang, as I see most foreign language films, surrounded by baby boomers. In Ottawa, the Bytowne is really the only place to go for foreign, documentary, and most independent films. The other thing about the Bytowne: Old people love it, partly because it’s reasonably priced but also because they can ask each other “Who’s she again?” without fear of getting shushed because their neighbours were most likely wondering the same thing. So I wondered at some points whether the hearty laughter coming from the audience during this tale of female oppression was the reaction that the director was hoping for.

To be fair, I’m not at all confident that I know exactly what reaction Deniz Gamze Ergüven was going for with her debut feature. Mustang can shift tones pretty quickly and, for once, I don’t mean that as a criticism. We first meet Lale (Güneş Şensoy, who’s just wonderful) and her four sisters on their way home on the last day of school in their small Turkish village. When they run into a group of boys, it’s off to the beach to sit on their shoulders and splash each other. In a Hollywood movie, this would just be a throw-away scene for a Best Summer Ever montage but, in this time and place, it’s enough to set in motion a chain of events that are just plain infuriating. Word spreads fast about the sisters’ scandalous behavior and their livid uncle immediately pulls them out of school and keeps them home to learn to cook, clean, and be good future wives. Worried that their reputation as corrupted girls would get worse, he rushes to marry them off as soon as possible.

They’re just good kids who like to have good silly fun. To see them oppressed in the name of sexist religious fundamentalism is an outrage. Ergüven’s trick is that she has made a film that effectively captures the cruelty of the situation but is always watchable -sometimes even entertaining- and almost never unpleasant. She is as committed to portraying the girls’ resilience in the face of oppression as to the oppression itself.

There are occasional scenes of very broad comedy in which I’m sure the Bytowne crowd’s laughter was exactly what Ergüven was hoping for. In the ever-escalating battle of wits between Lale and her mean uncle, I can’t be sure. I couldn’t laugh at Lale’s increasingly clever plots to sneak out of the house. The cost to her freedom and, eventually, her safety once she’s inevitably caught made me way too nervous.

It’s a credit to Ergüven that she’s made a film that could affect audience members so differently. Mustang calls attention to gender inequality and injustice that is as hopeful as it is frustrating. Through her faith in one young girl’s fighting spirit. her feature debut is a worthy nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

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The eponymous teenage girl (Bel Powley), aka Minnie, loses her virginity to her mother’s boyfriend, Monroe (Kristen Wiig/Alexander Skarsgard) – don’t worry, they “aren’t possessive.” Obviously that should not have been the only obstacle, and she knows this isn’t ideal, but in her words, she’s ugly, and who knows how many offers will come her way.

So this isn’t one of those easily watchable movies, it’s not “enjoyable” or “comfortable.” It’s awkward in the ‘He only sleeps with my Mom or she’d suspect something’ kind of way that rings true for those of us who put up with our mother’s creepy boyfriends in our own childhoods, but true in the way that we’ve buried way down deep and aren’t anxious to revisit.

Don’t worry, the awkwardness doesn’t end there – anyone for random cartoon penises? Our heroine isn’t exactly likeable – relatable, maybe, but self-involved like any teenager, won’t stop talking about herself, only we don’t have the luxury of sending her to her room. And in a movie about a young girl being bedded by her mother’s boyfriend, she shouldn’t be the villain. And, okay, she’s not: Skarsgard’s 1970s mustache is, but my sympathy for her ran short.

Don’t get me wrong – on the whole, I’m still liking this film. It’s bold and unconventional, frank and non-judgemental, which, given the topic, is refreshing. Bel Powley is self-possessed, mixing sexual, spiritual and artistic awakening confidently. Kristen Wiig shows a lot of restraint in her role from the back seat. And writer\director Marielle Heller bravely bears witness without passing judgment – but it’ll make you squirm.

That’s the point, I guess. The diary of any teenage girl would make you squirm. I kept a diary myself – luckily not as a teenager (that was my poetry writing period, which, believe me, is worse) but as a little girl. It’s silver and has a unicorn on the front and stickers of Joey McIntyre from The New Kids on the Block, aka, my former future husband, littering the inside covers. The sickly-sweet pink pages feature lots of my extra-large loopy handwriting talking about boys, recess, how wonderful I was, and what a rotten cook my mother was, and would always be. Cringe-worthy stuff. Reminds me of a documentary I watched a while back called Mortified Nation – a series of events across North America where people stand at a microphone and read embarrassing excerpts from childhood diaries. Audiences laugh warmly along with the reader, who through some form of catharsis realizes that whatever mortifying inner thoughts we had as a tortured teenager, most were pretty commonly shared. And in a way it’s nice to look back on a time when we were young and innocent and everything was fresh and exciting, and we were self-absorbed enough to wallow in it, and to write it down for posterity, as if anyone would care.

Did you keep a diary in your youth? Is it filled with sexual transgressions? Does it tell of a wild and misspent youth? Are you embarrassed? Would you stand up and read it aloud to a room full of strangers?

…

Would you print an excerpt from it in the comments?

SAG Surprises

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Idris Elba took home the trophy for best supporting actor. Sylvester Stallone, considered the front-runner in the same Oscar category, wasn’t even nominated at the SAG awards, perhaps because the Creed momentum didn’t really pick up until after their nomination ballots were in. Or maybe it’s just because he’s crap and he’s never acted a day in his life.

Last weekend The Big Short took home the top prize at the Producers Guild awards, but it was Spotlight proving they’re still neck in neck, taking home the top SAG award (outstanding performance by a cast) and

boosting their success rate to about 10/20 now. Next weekend the Directors Guild will add their considerable voice to the tally, and they tend to be better predictors than almost anybody. Either way I’m angry – neither of these was the best thing I saw last year, and neither would probably breech my top 10.

Otherwise it was pretty standard: Leo won. Brie Larson won. Alicia Vikander won over Kate Winslet for supporting work in a role that is clearly anything but (she’s great in The Danish Girl, but that’s a lead role if we’re being honest, which apparently we aren’t).

Mad Max: Fury Road was justifiably honoured for outstanding action performance by an ensemble.

And the stuff that really matters: who looked pretty.

SAG loser but style winner Helen Mirren

Damn. Kate Winslet, born to vamp.

Sleeping With Other People

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In one of the opening scenes, Jason Sudeikis is standing in the middle of a New York City street getting yelled at by whichever woman he bedded the night before. Lots of confused tourist are driving by. I know they must be confused tourists because the same blue Beetle convertible drives by no less than 5 times during this short scene, and must literally be pulling constant U-turns to do so. Other cars make appearances even more often – a gray SUV can’t stop driving by them, and I counted a half dozen drive-bys before I gave up.

So that’s my review of the movie. It’s so generic that I literally counted cars.

Jason Sudeikis is likeable; Alison Brie is bland and has the charisma of a houseplant. These two late-bloomers lose their virginity to each other in college and then spend years whoring it up until their paths re-cross. The story never gets remotely close to anything original and is often trying to be funny, I believe, but falling short. Way short.

Sundance, Long Distance

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Stupid back surgery caused us to strike Sundance from our dance card this year, but we were there in spirit.

Some of the best films of Sundance so far:

Agnus Dei: Set in a Polish convent attacked by Russian soldiers at the end of WWII, you know this one won’t be an easy watch. But word has it it’s beautifully acted by a strong female ensemble, including Agata Kulesza, who you may remember from last year’s feel-good drama, Ida.

The Birth of a Nation: The story of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion – bound to be powerful, unflinching, and explosive, Fox Searchlight picked it up at this year’s festival for $17.5M, a new Sundance record.

Certain Women: Based on three short stories (by Maile Meloy) that tell tender and character-driven tales around emotional quandaries. Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, and a stunner of a performance from Native American actress Lily Gladstone.

Manchester by the Sea: Another slow-burning character study by director Kenneth Lonergan, this one stars Casey Affleck as a guy struggling to overcome his failures as a husband and father – but the other people in the movie know something about him that we, the audience, do not.

Morris From America: Craig Robinson’s going to surprise us all with this excellent performance as a father losing his grip on his son, a teen struggling to find his place while over in Germany. The script is supposedly charming without being cute and I hope it’ll be a sweet surprise.

Sing Street: John Carney (Once, Begin Again) is up to his old tricks with another intimate musical that some say is his best yet (I LOVE Once, was a bit less enthusiastic about Begin Again). This one’s an ’80s throwback that’s of course full of dizzying romance and super likeable characters that will, let’s face it, probably leave us tender-hearted viewers in tears.

This year’s most divisive title:

Swiss Army Man: Paul Dano is stranded on an island, and instead of a volleyball named Wilson, he “befriends” a farting corpse, played by Daniel Radcliffe, who teaches him about what makes life worth living, and also which body parts might be used to get him back home – heavy subjects for such a weird and wacky movie. Lots of people walked out of this one but reviews are mixed, with some really enjoying this ode to abnormality.

The Abyss

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Rewatching the original Star Wars trilogy seems to have made me nostalgic for the 80s. And when the latest Star Wars instalment recently sailed past Avatar and Titanic to become the highest grossing movie ever in North America, I couldn’t help but think of James Cameron’s other work, the stuff that he made before appointing himself the king of the world.

Aliens, Terminator and Terminator 2 are all wonderful and all high on my list of movies to make Jay watch (a list that has shrunk considerably in the last few weeks), but the first James Cameron movie that comes to my mind is The Abyss. To me, that’s the true precursor to Avatar and Titanic, the movie that hinted at what James Cameron was capable of (both good and bad).

The Abyss is near and dear to me, mainly because it provided one of the first signs that I was destined to become an Asshole Watching Movies. In the early 90s I became really obsessed with letterboxed movies even though we had a 30 inch (at best) tube television. This was before DVDs so my options

LaserDisc on the left, DVD on the right. I have enough trouble finding shelf space for my DVDs, thank you very much.

were either letterboxed
VHS (few-and-far-between) or LaserDisc (too-expensive-for-an-unemployed-teenager). But my parents, seeing my interest, indulged me by renting a LaserDisc player on a few occasions, and The Abyss was the first movie I ever watched on that strange format (on two 12″ discs!).

As for the movie itself, The Abyss is an underwater odyssey that is a bit of a mess, both on screen and behind the scenes. Again, it seems obvious in hindsight given James Cameron’s later works, but at the time it seems to have been a surprise that The Abyss’s production went way over time and way over budget. Filming consisted of 15-18 hour days and lasted 140 days total. Total cost: a reported $70 million, which if accurate would make it the most expensive movie ever at the time (surpassed by Terminator 2, which was surpassed by True Lies, which was surpassed by Waterworld, which was surpassed by Titanic). It is not a coincidence that all but one of those movies was made by James Cameron. He clearly has a talent for spending money. abyss13

When you watch the Abyss, though, you can see where the money went. All the diving scenes are practical effects and the movie looks amazing for it. The underwater scenes were shot 30 feet deep for up to five hours at a time in 40 pound helmets. There were
other costs than money that resulted from this underwater mayhem. Complaints from cast and crew were rampant. Ed Harris refuses to ever talk about the film to this day. James Cameron almost died when he lost track of time and ran out of air at the bottom of the 7,000,000 gallon water tank, and then on his way to the surface was given a broken emergency regulator, so when he thought he would finally get a much needed breath of air, he got a lungful of water instead. Knowing all that makes me wonder whether the end product, as beautiful as it is, was worth the trouble. Watch it and tell me what you think. In my view, the climactic visit to the “aliens” is a bit of a letdown and the ending seems rushed (which is particularly problematic for a movie that’s this long).

The original theatrical cut (which I have never seen) was released in 1989 and was 145 minutes long. The Abyss is one of the first forays into CG but the technology was not quite there yet so a climactic scene had to be cut because Industrial Light & Magic just couldn’t get the world- The-Abyss-Water-Face destroying waves to look right. Technology had advanced significantly by 1993, and so a special edition was released with 25 minutes more footage, including the ending as it was originally conceived. The CG effects hint at what is to come from Cameron and ILM (or, by the time the special edition was released, what had already come). The tentacle water effects in particular are very close relatives of the T-1000’s liquid metal goodness in T2 and they seem to hold up a lot better than most early CG (maybe because CG is used so sparsely in The Abyss).

Interestingly, we’ve kind of come full circle, moving away from CG in favour of practical effects (Mad Max: Fury Road being a prime example). Kwame Opum of The Verge calls practical effects, “vinyl for cinema”, and as someone with a large record collection, that comparison feels right. It makes me wonder where James Cameron, formerly a practical effects adherent, stands on the issue today since Avatar was so CG-heavy. Perhaps we’ll get a sense of that if Avatar 2 ever gets made, but that’s a long way off as it’s been delayed again and will not come out until 2018 at the earliest.

In the meantime, dust off your LaserDisc copy of The Abyss and enjoy!

Over the Top

21 Replies

Strange things are happening lately. Sylvester Stallone won a Golden Globe and is nominated for an Oscar. I’ve made Jay return to George Lucas’ glory days and watch the original Star Wars trilogy for the first time, which is something she swore would never happen. And since these sorts of things come in threes, I like my chances of convincing Jay to watch Over the Top, which I just found out is on Netflix. Especially because Jay is still on oxycontin recovering from her back surgery.

Over the Top is a hidden gem in the same way as a lump of coal. It was a very 80s attempt to reboot Rocky: take Stallone, put him in another salt-of-the-earth role where his muscles do the talking, give him a wholesome never-quit attitude, and add in Robert Loggia as the villain for good measure. The ingredients are all here but this movie is absolutely awful. So awful I can’t help but love it.

First, Robert Loggia. This is exactly how I feel when I see him in anything.

He was the best (RIP, Mr. Loggia) and he really chews the scenery here. Which is fortunate because in Over the Top, Stallone shows absolutely no charisma, the arm-wrestling bad guy is the most boring villain you could think of, and the kid Stallone is fighting for is so annoying, spoiled and entitled that you think all the way through that Stallone would gladly take $500,000 to never have to see him again.

over-the-top-poster

Second, trying to get us to cheer for Stallone’s down-on-his-luck arm wrestler is so misguided it hurts. Is there even such a thing as an up-on-his-luck arm wrestler? Are any of these guys in good financial standing? I don’t know how legitimate the World Armwrestling League is, but the champion only gets $20,000. So that was probably like $10,000 in 1987 dollars. If you’re driving a semi across the country like Stallone does in Over the Top, I guess you can save money by sleeping in the cab, but how much are you left with at the end of the day even if you are good/lucky enough to win? Just one more reason you wonder why Stallone wouldn’t take the $500,000 [SPOILER ALERT] rather than selling his truck (HIS ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME) so he can pull a Pete Rose and bet on himself to win the contest [END SPOILERS]. See how much you are going to love this movie?

Third, the music is the worst thing imaginable. Any song that was cheesy to make the cut for Rocky IV can probably be found on Over the Top’s soundtrack. No Easy Way Out is literally too good a song to be in this movie. I didn’t think that was even possible but it’s true. The featured ballad is a Kenny Loggins wuss rock gem, and the soundtrack also features songs from Sammy Hagar, Eddie Money and Asia. It is probably the perfect music to arm wrestle to, if you have the urge. And after watching Stallone [SPOILER ALERT] rock his way to victory [END SPOILERS], I predict that you are going to have that urge.

I give Over the Top a score of one man against the world out of the world. But since the one man is 2016 Golden Globe winner and 2016 Academy Award nominee Sylvester Stallone, that’s actually a very good score.