Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 3 of 12

Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3 of 12:

Interstellar

5 Nominations

• Original Score: Hans Zimmer (Inception, Sherlock Holmes, Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, The Prince of Egypt, As Good as It Gets, The Preacher's Wife, The Lion King, Rain Man)
• Production Design: Nathan Crowley (The Dark Knight, The Prestige) & Gary Fettis (Changeling, The Godfather: Part III)
• Visual Effects
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, John Lithgow, Mackenzie Foy, Michael Caine, David Gyasi, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, Matt Damon, Ellen Burstyn

Ok, so I wasn't the biggest fan of this when I first saw it. (It's a time-travel movie, but it swears it's all about love.) But it's grown on me since then, and I keep ranking other things below it, because Interstellar was pretty to look at, even if so much of it was silly and half baked. Hans Zimmer's score, it should also be noted, is my favorite of this year's nominees. It won't win, but I find myself listening to it at work. It's very, very good; one of my favorite Zimmer scores in recent years, and one of this year's best. The effects, too, are top notch, and I expect them to go home with the Oscar.

Will Win: Visual Effects

Could Win: Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

My Rating: #47 out of 74

Mr. Turner

4 Nominations

• Cinematography: Dick Pope (The Illusionist)
• Original Score: Gary Yershon
• Production Design: Suzie Davies & Charlotte Watts
• Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran (Anna Karenina, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice)

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Timothy Spall, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, Joshua McGuire, Karl Johnson, Lesley Manville, Martin Savage, Jamie Thomas King, Karina Fernandez

#dickpoop started trending on Twitter after Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs mispronounced his name on nomination morning. Oops. Honestly, I loved Mr. Turner and it's in my top ten, but four nominations is a lot for a film that is as difficult to love as this one is. I am surprised it did so well with the Academy. I find Gary Yershon's nomination to be especially surprising, given his score's simplicity and the relative lack of publicity that this film got. But unlike films that were latecomers to the game this year (Selma, Cake, A Most Violent Year), Mike Leigh's movie played at Telluride and had lots and lots of time to sink in with voters, steadily gaining positive buzz from critics throughout the fall. Mr. Turner probably won't take home any statues, but I am delighted that a movie I loved this much got so many nominations.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Costume Design

My Rating: #10 out of 74

Into the Woods

3 Nominations

• Supporting Actress: Meryl Streep (August: Osage County, The Iron Lady, Julie & Julia, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada, Adaptation., Music of the Heart, One True Thing, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, Out of Africa, Silkwood, Sophie's Choice, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Deer Hunter)
• Production Design: Dennis Gassner (The Golden Compass, Road to Perdition, Bugsy, Barton Fink) & Anna Pinnock (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Life of Pi, The Golden Compass, Gosford Park)
• Costume Design: Colleen Atwood (Snow White and the Huntsman, Alice in Wonderland, Nine, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Memoirs of a Geisha, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Chicago, Sleepy Hollow, Beloved, Little Women)

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Emily Blunt, James Corden, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huttlestone, Chris Pine, Lilla Crawford, Christine Baranski, Tracey Ullman, Johnny Depp, Billy Magnussen

When you look above at this list of nominations, you'll see that each of Into the Woods's four nominees has already been nominated multiple times. This is a big studio picture, and the studio paid a lot of money to hire all the best people. They did, and four of those people wound up with Oscar nominations because they are all excellent, well-known artists. But Into the Woods is a phone-in job for all four of them, as well as for most of the rest of the team on this movie. It's a lazy, boring, joyless adaptation of the stage show that is, in fact, never more than a filmed stage version of the show itself. In writing this post, I kept trying to find an image from the film that wasn't the same tired sound stage that served as the backdrop for most of this movie's scenes; they just aren't out there, though. Most of this film took place in what is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same location. As for Meryl Streep, she basically acts as though she is in a completely different movie than the rest of the cast of Into the Woods; the whole performance feels a little off kilter. I know the Academy loves her, but she doesn't need to get nominated every single year, does she?
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #68 out of 74

Unbroken

3 Nominations

• Cinematography: Roger Deakins (Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Angelina Jolie

Cast: Jack O'Connell, Ishihara Takamasa, Garrett Hedlund, Domhnall Gleeson, Finn Wittrock, Jai Courtney, C.J. Valleroy, Alex Russell, Maddalena Ischiale, Vincenzo Amato

Honestly, it is time for Roger Deakins finally to win an Oscar. Look at that list up there! He has shot some gorgeous, gorgeous films and never won. He ain't gonna win this year, either. Jolie's film was not widely loved by the Academy, and it is a little bit of a mystery to me as to why this was so. Was it too obviously Oscar-bait for them? Did it not make them feel good enough about themselves? Was it too ethnic (Italian)? Was it that it was a WWII movie about the Pacific theatre instead of the European theatre? Who knows. In any case, the Academy just didn't go for it, and they aren't going to go for it on the big night either. I should also note my own frustration, here, that this year's very, very good war movie – Fury, which boasted excellent performances, great art direction, awesome sound mixing and editing, a great script, and realistic violence – is nowhere to be found among the nominees despite its being far superior to any of the other war movies this year.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #54 out of 74

The J.M.W. Turner Movie

Watching movies with all of the geriatrics of Hanover who have squeezed into the enormous Spaulding Theatre to see these Telluride movies has really started to mess with my head. First everyone loved The Imitation Game, then most people were grossed out or bored by Wild, and two nights ago the audience was openly hostile to Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh's film about the British painter J.M.W. Turner. But I was loving it.

I don't want to recommend Mr. Turner to folks, though. It's a tough film. Aren't all of Mike Leigh's films tough? Mr. Turner is tough in a different way than Another Year or Secrets & Lies or Vera Drake, though. Mr. Turner begins by being tough to understand. Like, what are those people actually saying? Turner's father speaks in an intensely thick dialect, and Turner himself (played by Harry Potter's über-creepy villain Timothy Spall) spends the majority of the film literally grunting. It becomes his way of speaking as he gets older, too, so that by film's end he responds to almost anything addressed to him with a pig-like grunt. At the end of the film this is quite amusing, but at the beginning it is frustrating and confusing. Thirty minutes into the movie, though, it all becomes fine, and one hasn't missed anything anyway.

The film is not a standard biopic, beginning when Turner is a young man and following him until his death. Instead, Leigh addresses Turner during his decline. He is an older man, set in his ways, stubborn, messy, disgruntled, hardened by years of neglect by the art establishment. For me this was a fascinating study. The film does not spend time flashing back to when he was young and beautiful and full of life or any such thing. Nor does the film locate the source of Turner's rebellious and outrageous behavior in some childhood trauma (à la Ray, The Imitation Game, Walk the Line). There is no explaining Turner. There is only dealing with him. 

But Mr. Turner is really funny. Leigh moves deftly between social satire that is uproariously funny and then very serious scenes in Turner's private life. Nearly every sequence in the art world is both a beautiful re-enactment of petty nineteenth-century artists' squabbles and a hilarious send-up of the same. There is an absolutely brilliant sequence in which art critic John Ruskin starts a discussion of how to paint the sea. Turner sits in the corner, grunts responses, and then asks the most important artistic question that can be asked: Do you prefer lamb and kidney pie or veal and ham pie?

And there are two genius scenes regarding the future of art. Turner sits in front of a daguerrotype machine and has his picture taken. It's a fascinating sequence about ways of behaving as one is confronted by new technologies. And then there is the future of painting. Turner observes the work of those who would come after him with curiosity, confusion, and (of course) disdain. But Mr. Turner doesn't weep for Turner, and it doesn't treat him as a saint. In many ways he is a grotesquerie, a ridiculous imp in the art world, a disgusting misogynist at home, a tender lover with his partner, a stubborn, difficult artist with his patrons, and a confused, awkward guest at parties.

Leigh's movie intercuts these sequences of private life and the social world of nineteenth-century England with the beautiful sunsets and sunrises Turner is known for painting, as well as images of trains, landscapes, and, of course, the roiling sea. Here, only, do we truly see the world from Turner's point of view. Leigh only allows us access to the artist in this oblique way, by showing us the paintings themselves in a new way. In many ways he gives us brief, cinematic versions of the paintings. Turner sees the world as fast, beautiful, and enormous, and his own position in that world is our position as we look at his paintings: we are so tiny. And the world itself majestically, terrifyingly, bustles right on by us.

I loved this movie.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 4 of 14

Blue Jasmine

3 Nominations

• Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There., Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Notes on a Scandal, The Aviator, Elizabeth)
• Original Screenplay: Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris, Match Point, Deconstructing Harry, Mighty Aphrodite, Bullets over Broadway, Husbands and Wives, Alice, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Manhattan, Interiors, Annie Hall)
• Supporting Actress: Sally Hawkins

Director: Allen

Cast: Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, Hawkins, Alec Baldwin, Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Stuhlbarg, Peter Sarsgaard, Louis C.K., Max Casella

I sort of hated this, and I fail to understand how this managed a Best Original Screenplay nomination, especially in a year that was more crowded in Original than it was in Adapted (it is usually the other way around). Allen, by the way, is the most nominated screenwriter of all time with 15 nominations and 3 wins. Billy Wilder is the next runner up, with 12 nominations and 3 wins. On the Supporting Actress front, I am really happy for Sally Hawkins. Her nomination was sort of a surprise (she took Oprah's spot!) but she has been doing solid work in Hollywood since her breakthrough in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, and she deserves this. Blanchett has the Oscar in the bag, and, again, this is well deserved. She is superb in Blue Jasmine (no matter how bad I think the film itself is) and she has never won, despite being excellent in absolutely every movie in which she has appeared. [Actually, I will make one exception to this: that Good German mess.]
Will Win: Actress

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #66 out of 75

The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug

3 Nominations

• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Visual Effects

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman, Ken Stott, Graham McTavish, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, John Callen, Stephen Fry, Sylvester McCoy

This is an epic mess, filled (as all its predecessors have been) with sweeping vistas, long crossings over very thin bridges, rather a lot of bad dialogue, and an always present sense of foreboding and doom. This particular film is also about running. It is the second in a planned trilogy and ends with a cliffhanger. The most recent film in The Hobbit series also received three Oscar nominations – Makeup, Production Design, and Visual Effects – this second one exchanges Makeup and Production Design for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing primarily because of the increased amount of swordfighting, running, and dragons slithering over mountains of golden treasure. But, look: the magic, if not the money, has gone out of Jackson's Middle Earth franchise. The Lord of the Rings trilogy garnered a whopping 30 nominations and 17 Oscar statuettes. All of those films were nominated for Best Picture. If the Academy has enough good will that it feels as though it needs to nominate this franchise, it certainly does not have enough good will to vote for it to win – certainly not over Gravity, which should best this film in all of its categories.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #55 out of 75

August: Osage County

2 Nominations

• Actress: Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, Julie & Julia, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada, Adaptation., Music of the Heart, One True Thing, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, Out of Africa, Silkwood, Sophie's Choice, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Deer Hunter)
• Supporting Actress: Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman, Steel Magnolias)

Director: John Wells

Cast: Roberts, Streep, Julianne Nicholson, Ewan McGregor, Margo Martindale, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Dermot Mulroney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Misty Upham, Sam Shepard


Meryl Streep again, huh? I guess I'm the only one who is surprised that this film got talked about as much as it did. It was a big Tony-award-winning play that was heralded as the most important USAmerican play in a decade or whatever, but Tracy Letts' adaptation misses the mark. It's strangely stagey in places it doesn't need to be, and Letts refuses to cut the dialogue he loves so much (he had a similar problem with the John-Wells-directed Killer Joe). If the director was confused about what to do with this film, the marketing people appeared similarly puzzled. The trailer for August made it look like a delightful comedy à la Albert Brooks, and those posters! One was a house with roof coming off of it in some sort of hinge motion and the other was Julia Roberts beating Meryl Streep into the floor. In truth, this movie was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. The acting is top-notch across the board, and Streep and Roberts are both deserving. But this needed to be made into a film instead of simply filming a play. And let's just be honest and ask ourselves if Julia Roberts played a supporting character or gives a supporting performance in this. Really? How do these things happen. In any case, both of these women have Oscars. (Streep has three.) Neither will be winning another on March 2.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #52 out of 75

2011's Nominees: Part 5 of 12

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

2 Nominations:

  · Best Animated Feature

  · Best Score: John Powell

Director: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, T.J. Miller

 
So much fun. Also, this film swept at the Annie awards this year, and though it is expected that Toy Story 3 will win the Animated Feature Oscar (you will recall that TS3 is nominated for five Oscars), the Annie sweep had to feel good for the HtTYD team. Good for them. I liked this film more than TS3 too, so I am with them, although, truth be told, I pretty much love dragons and see all movies with dragons in them, so if you make a movie about different varieties of dragons and that involves a dragon that is basically a giant pet cat, you can bet I am in. I love that this got nominated in the Score category, by the way. John Powell has never been nominated before.

Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #17 out of 50

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1

2 Nominations:

  · Best Art Direction: Stuart Craig (The Elephant Man, Gandhi, The Mission, Dangerous Liaisons, Chaplin, The English Patient, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and Stephenie McMillan (The English Patient, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

  · Best Visual Effects

Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Bill Nighy, Fiona Shaw, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes

 
After a couple of stinkers, David Yates hits one out of the park with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. It is not only filled with thrilling sequences and plenty of suspense, but the sensitive moments avoid being cloying, and Yates manages to hit all the right emotional notes. The Potter films continue to be contrived in terms of plot – there is one near-escape after another, and the possibility of magical things happening is always present and a little predictable after a while, but this is rather a good film, and if the plot feels contrived the characters and their feelings do not. HP7 is satisfying, exciting, and surprising. And I never thought I'd say this, but I actually think it deserves both of the Oscars for which it is nominated and also deserved a nomination for Original Score – now that they've moved completely away from Williamsesque composition and down darker paths, the music has become both intriguing and beautiful.

Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #19 out of 50

ANOTHER YEAR

1 Nomination:

  · Best Original Screenplay: Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky)

Director: Leigh
Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight, Oliver Maltman, David Bradley, Martin Savage, Michele Austin, Imelda Staunton, Karina Fernandez

 
To say this movie is good is a vast understatement. This is a film by a master filmmaker at the top of his game—it is his fifth nomination for writing. The film is extraordinary: subtle, sensitive, filled with tiny insights about people, and I found it ultimately devastating in a  quiet, disturbing, middlebrow way. It is also filled with fabulous performances and if it had been released in, say, October, it probably would have racked up a few more nominations. Lesley Manville gives the performance of a lifetime here (she is this year's Kristin Scott-Thomas in I've Loved You So Long

) and Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent are great as usual. Imelda Staunton, in a smaller role, gives a rich, captivating performance. I also really loved seeing Karina Fernandez in a bigger part when she was so brilliant in Leigh's last movie. 

Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #6 out of 50

Weekend with Too Few Movies

My nights fill up these days. I somehow seem to have plans for every night of the weekend nowadays. This started some time around the beginning of this month. The summer weekends it was exactly the opposite. It was a dearth of society, seriously. Naturally, now that I'm busy every night of the weekend, I wish I had a night to myself. Ah well.

The truth is, it will all get better when Valparaiso opens. When that happens, I'll be able to do banal things like going to the grocery, and doing my laundry during the week, which will leave the weekend free for sleeping in, reducing my Netflix queue, going wine-tasting in Temecula with my lush/friends and partying the night away.

I went to see my college friend Marcos Tello in a show called Boyle Heights last night in (gasp!) Boyle Heights. The show was kind of silly, but took itself very seriously. It was about an educated woman wanting to escape Boyle Heights and then learning to love it and appreciate it warts and all... she escapes the barrio and then moves back and celebrates the barrio. This seems arrogant to me, but perhaps it's just extremely earnest and not as presumptuous as I think. The acting was bad across the board except for my friend, who was wonderful. He even made me cry at one point. He was so good; I was very impressed. I don't recall him ever doing such good work. Afterward, I hung out with him and his new girlfriend (also in the show, and also good.. they were the only two) and a bunch of their other friend. We went to Lala's in Hollywood. It's Argentinian food... and it was pretty good and not over-priced.

Tonight, Elizabeth and I went to see Vera Drake at the Laemmle's Sunset 5. It was good for the most part: very sad. But it has some very powerful moments and has its heart in the right place politically. Imelda Staunton will be nominated for an Oscar for this movie. I don't think there's much question about it. Fine Line would have to really screw something up for it not to happen. I though the movie got boring in the middle: there are some long pauses that don't feel like they're merited. This is really my only complaint. I think the movie is overly long in places and not as tight a film as I would've liked, but it's powerful nonetheless. I think I'm going to put it right below Good Bye, Lenin! at number 19.