Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 9 of 12

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8.
Part 9 of 12:

The Lego Movie

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Shawn Patterson

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Morgan Freeman, Elizabeth Banks, Will Ferrell, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, Keegen-Michael Key, Jonah Hill, Charlie Day, Shaquille O'Neal, Channing Tatum

I don't get it. I mean, I know that everyone was, like, really mad that this got "snubbed" for Best Animated Feature, but why? The Lego Movie is a movie that is designed to sell a product – and I don't just mean The Lego Movie itself but more Legos – and if this isn't totally clear to you watching the film, the DVD helpfully contains a commercial for LegoLAND. The film itself is premised upon the idea that what we all really need to do is throw away the directions and start building things based upon our own imaginations. This is what the so-called Master Builders in the film do. But if the movie pretends to be against conformity, it preaches it all the same, asking us to buy more Legos, and, by the end of the film, telling us just how much fun conformity can be. (If the female protagonist initially says she hates the song "Everything Is Awesome", both she and the male protagonist admit to loving this bit of conformist culture at the film's end.) Being just like everyone else isn't so bad, as long as you can pretend otherwise. "I'm just like everyone else, too, but don't tell anyone." Also the phrase "piece of resistance", a pun on the phrase pièce de résistance must've been uttered upwards of fifty times. It was driving me crazy.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #75 out of 80

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Glen Campbell & Julian Raymond

Director: James Keach
Cast: Glen Campbell

I haven't seen this yet, but the song is pretty incredible when you understand the story of the documentary. Campbell has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the film documents his farewell tour. In the nominated song "I'm Not Gonna Miss You", he sings "You're the last person I will love / You're the last face I will recall / Best of all / I'm not gonna miss you / Not gonna miss you." Pretty moving lyrics, if you ask me, and I'm looking forward to this film, despite my usual lack of interest in documentaries.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not Ranked

Begin Again

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Gregg Alexander & Danielle Brisebois

Director: John Carney

Cast: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, James Corden, Adam Levine, Hailee Steinfeld, Mos Def, Catherine Keener, Cee Lo Green

This is charming! First of all, it's a romantic comedy in which the two lead characters are not romantically involved. They revolve around one another, and spend their time together, but romance between the two of them is never really a topic of the film. It's fascinating... and refreshing. The performances are cute, the premise is cute, and the whole thing is fun and well done. And James Corden is so funny! He wins in every single one of his scenes. This is fun stuff. I am not ranking it as, like, one of the best films of the year or anything – it's quite a slight little thing – but Begin Again is good at what it is doing, and it's nominated song "Lost Stars" is a central part of the film. It's a good nomination.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #49 out of 80

Beyond the Lights

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Diane Warren (Pearl Harbor, Music of the Heart, Armageddon, Con Air, Up Close & Personal, Mannequin)

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood

Cast: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nate Parker, Minnie Driver, Richard Colson Baker, Danny Glover, Darryl Stephens, Elaine Tan, Isaac Keys, Tyler Christopher, Benito Martinez

I honestly have no idea what this is about, but I am imagining it's about the pressures of being a star (wake up baby, a star is a slave). Nate Parker is an actor I love, so I am kind of excited about this, but I missed it when it played here because there was a ridiculous snowstorm on the only day it played in Hanover. So I will have to wait to see Beyond the Lights until after the Oscar ceremony. As for Diane Warren, you can see above that all of her nominations have been for ridiculously poppy (if hugely popular) songs. They've all been big hits on the radio – "Music of My Heart" for 'NSync and Gloria Estefan, "There You'll Be" for Faith Hill, "How Do I Live" for Trisha Yearwood and LeAnn Rimes, "Because You Loved Me" for Céline Dion, "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" for Aerosmith, and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" for Starship. But have you heard this Beyond the Lights song on the radio? It's called "Grateful" and it's a saccharine mess.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not Yet Rated

L.A. Update #2

I've been keeping busier. Last night I went to see Luisa Fernanda at Los Angeles Opera. It was delightful. I hated the set, but I had never seen a zarzuela before, and this was a really cool experience particularly because I got to hear Plácido Domingo sing the lead male role. Boy does that man have a voice!
Being downtown made my heart ache to live in Los Angeles again. There's Southern California and there's Southern California. I realized today that I like living in Tallahassee a lot better than I like living in La Verne (where my folks live). Everyone is so white out here and it all feels so... I don't know how else to describe it except by using the word fake. Everything is a chain store: chain coffee and chain restaurants and chain clothing stores and more chain restaurants. Chain hardware stores and chain movie rental stores. Chain jewelry stores, chain bagel shops and chain auto mechanics. It's a town without a bookstore. At least Tallahassee feels lived in. It's an eerie feeling: like living in a big Hollywood movie where everything is predictable.
But downtown doesn't feel like that at all. It feels different and new and messy and unpredictable. I went to the opera with Derek. We didn't even dress up: jeans and dress shirts. And we had a great time. It's just so nice down there. And the weather! I love Los Angeles.

I finished Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's book Epistemology of the Closet which is really brilliant. And I started Foucault's The History of Sexuality Part II: The Use of Pleasure, but I am getting a little bored. I need some fiction in my life, I think. Maybe I will pick up some Noël Coward for a lark.

I've been watching movies too. Melville's Bob le Flambeur (1956) is easily as good as his later masterpieces Le Samouraï and Le Cercle Rouge. I am in LOVE with Jean-Pierre Melville. This man makes some brilliant fucking movies. Bob is an über-cool heist film without a heist. And it's an obvious predecessor to what would be called the French New Wave. The French New Wave would have been unthinkable without Bob le Flambeur (or, I think, Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, another must-see from the 1950s.) It's a mid-1950s noir, betraying Melville's fascination with all things Yankee, but it's attitudes and self-satisfaction are unmistakeably French. Add this one to your Netflix queue.

Captain Blood is your standard Errol Flynn swashbuckler. The first one, I think. I'd never seen it, and I liked it a lot. There isn't quite enough swordfighting for my taste, but it's totally fun nonetheless and the cinematography is amazing. It also stars Olivia de Havilland, who was in all of those 1930s Errol Flynn pictures with him—before she finally escaped with Gone with the Wind and started racking up Oscars for her shelves.

Everyone's been hailing Once as a new kind of movie musical. It's a really good film, but it isn't really a watershed event in movie musical history or anything like that. Actually, it's not even really a musical so much as it is a movie with a lot of music in it. The movie follows an aspiring musician in Ireland as he records his first album and falls in love. It's filled with songs that he strums out on a guitar. I really liked it, and it has a near-perfect ending, but don't go in expecting it to change your life. It's just a really cool indie.

And Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is no Oldboy. That's all I'm saying.