This Must Be the Place (2011)

This Must Be the Place is the oddest, quirkiest Paolo Sorrentino movie – his first in English – and it boasts one of the weirdest Sean Penn performances. I don’t know… I don’t think I’ve made sense of this. I will say that it was quite funny at times; it really cracked me up, but this was only occasional. It’s just odd. I don’t even think I expect comedy from Sorrentino in this way. Who knows.

Oscar Nominations 2021: 6 of 9

1. The Power of the Dog, Dune, Belfast, and West Side Story

2. King Richard, Drive My Car, Don't Look Up, and Nightmare Alley

3. CODA, Licorice Pizza, Being the Ricardos, and The Lost Daughter

4. The Tragedy of Macbeth, Encanto, No Time to Die, and Flee

5. Tick, Tick... Boom!, Parallel Mothers, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and The Worst Person in the World

Cruella

2 Nominations

• Costume Design: Jenny Beavan (Mad Max: Fury Road, The King's Speech, Gosford Park, Anna and the King, Sense and Sensibility, The Remains of the Day, Howards End, Maurice, A Room with a View, The Bostonians)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, John McCrea, Mark Strong, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Emily Beecham, Kayvan Novak

I did not really care about this movie, and I waited a very long time to see it. It suffers from the same central problem that plagues The Devil Wears Prada: to wit, it loves its central villain, makes her the most fabulous character in all creation and then expects us to dislike her. Well, I didn't. I guess we're supposed to think she's terrible for committing lots of murders and stealing other people's designs and being a really good editor. But in a world like this where literally everything is fake and the reality is all just surfaces, how can one hate someone who is almost pure surface, who is supremely the best at surfaces? Also this movie is, for some reason, two hours and twenty minutes long. My other real gripe is that it didn't seem like Emma Stone was having very much fun. It felt really earnest for a really long time. Ok but there is something I want you to notice about Jenny Beavan's career. Her earliest nominations are all for Merchant-Ivory films – adaptations of novels by Henry James, E.M Forster, and Kazuo Ishiguro. Then she makes Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility, and she continues to dress rich British people, including kings. Then she makes Mad Max: Fury Road and wins. And now she's going to win again. I thought this was a longshot until I saw it. The film is filled with awesome dresses and creative silhouettes. My money is behind Jenny Beavan.

Will Win: Costume

Could Win: Makeup & Hairstyling

My Rating: #48 out of 58

Spencer

1 Nomination

• Actress: Kristen Stewart

Director: Pablo Larraín

Cast: Stewart, Sally Hawkins, Jack Farthing, Sean Harris, Timothy Spall, Jack Nielen, Freddie Spry, Stella Gonet, Laura Benson

I've written about this film here. I think Spencer is a polarizing movie, and the central performance is equally polarizing, although I fall firmly on the side of thinking Stewart is wonderful in it. There has been lots of drama with this nomination. Stewart was long considered the favorite to win the Oscar in this category, and then Nicole Kidman somehow won the Golden Globe award instead. This was followed almost immediately by a snub from the Screen Actors Guild, who thought Lady Gaga and Jennifer Hudson deserved nominations. Insanity. This was all rectified when Stewart scored her first Oscar nomination on February 8, but things were definitely touch and go. Smart money now says the favorite to win Best Actress is Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but I'm sticking stubbornly to Stewart. She's a hard-working actress who has been churning out excellent indie performances for years, and her performance in Spencer is lovely. I think she deserves this, and I think the votes will split in her direction.

Will Win: Actress

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #15 out of 58

The Hand of God (È Stata la Mano di Dio)

1 Nomination

• International Film: Italy (The Great Beauty, Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediterraneo, Open Doors, Cinema Paradiso, The Family, Three Brothers, Dimenticare Venezia, The New Monsters, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, La Ragazza con la Pistola, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, La Grande Guerra, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Filippo Scotti, Marlon Joubert, Toni Servillo, Teresa Saponangelo, Luisa Ranieri, Renato Carpentieri, Massimiliano Gallo, Betti Pedrazzi

I adore Paolo Sorrentino, as you probably know. And The Great Beauty is one of my favorite films of all time, so I fully expected to love The Hand of God... and I did. It's a beautiful, very funny film, even quirky according to Sorrentino standards. The performances are excellent – particularly by Teresa Saponangelo and Luisa Ranieri – and the editing, photography, and design are all impeccable. It's the usual perfect Sorrentino movie, directed with supreme confidence. I loved this. It's on Netflix, and if you haven't seen it yet, I recommend it.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #8 out of 58

Lunana: a Yak in the Classroom (লুনানা)

1 Nomination

• International Film: Bhutan

Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji

Cast: Sherab Dorji, Ugyen Norbu Lhendup, Kelden Lhamo Gurung, Pem Zam, Sangay Lham

I've been rooting for Lunana since Bhutan submitted it for the 2020 Oscars but it was disqualified because it was never released because of the global pandemic. Then Bhutan submitted it again for the 2021 Oscars (a couple of countries did this), and it seemed a real longshot. This got a final slot in the five nominees for International Film. Drive My Car, Flee, and The Worst Person in the World all got multiple nominations, and so it's clear that they were shoo-ins for the category. There still remained a large amount of competition, including Finland's Compartment No. 6, which already had a U.S. distributor, Iran's A Hero, directed by multiple winner Asghar Farhadi, and Austria's Great Freedom, which I was also rooting for – since it stars Franz Rogowski and is about a gay prisoner. In any case, Lunana scored a nomination! The film itself, however... is pure Disney. It's a sentimental plot through and through: young man who wants to leave Bhutan is forced to teach small children in the most remote school in the world, high in the mountains. He is resentful and bitter, but then he slowly learns to love their way of life. It's sweet and wholesome, and the vistas are gorgeous. This movie does get better at its end – the last twenty minutes are actually excellent. But, and I hate to say this, you've seen plenty of movies just like this before. Whatever. I'm glad Bhutan got its first nomination, I'm glad Pawo Choyning Dorji made this movie, and I'm glad I saw it.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked; this is a 2022 release.

7. Cyrano, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Luca, and Raya and the Last Dragon
8. Spider-man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Free Guy

9. House of Gucci, Coming 2 America, and Four Good Days

A Quote from My Coworker

Chari: It's like at the beginning of The Great Beauty when one of the Japanese tourists dies.
Aaron: Those tourists were Chinese, Chari.
Chari: ...I told you I was a bad Asian.

The Knight of Cups, the Melancholy Drifter

I can totally see why no one liked Knight of Cups, and indeed (especially after To the Wonder), why people are wondering if Terrence Malick has simply run out of things to say. 

Knight of Cups includes Malick's usual lush, gorgeous imagery, and his typical whispered voiceovers, but this film is not The New World or The Tree of Life. The subject matter here is Christian Bale playing a kind of washed up or tired screenwriter who has no subject matter to work on. (If, indeed, Malick himself is the screenwriter who can't think of anything to say, this makes a great deal of sense, but I don't think I'll go there.) But this isn't a film about Hollywood or screenwriting or Los Angeles, really. Sure, it is filled with gorgeous images of Southern California, certainly – from Descanso Gardens to Santa Monica to Hollywood Boulevard to Skid Row – and there are some great sequences in Las Vegas, with beautiful, stunning images. And the parties in Knight of Cups are also really fun, although they lack the energy and wit of the parties in, say, The Great Beauty or even, dare I say it, The Great Gatsby.

That is because Knight of Cups is not a film about Hollywood moviemaking or money or Vegas or even Los Angeles. It's a film about a man and "the women he has loved" or somesuch nonsense. And the Malick voiceovers, therefore, are all inanities about romance and losing a person and things like that. When Natalie Portman says, somewhere in the film's third act, "I know you have love in you", I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Why does it matter whether you think he has love in him or not? What I mean to say is that Knight of Cups' subject matter is just not compelling. I actually even think that this film would have been better without the voiceovers – I am fairly certain I would have liked it better if it had simply been a series of images of him with these various women, his brother, his dad, and the few bits of actual dialogue we got. Instead, the voiceovers dumb everything down, and they are so short and clichéd that they seemed to me like finger painting on the surface of a Rothko.

Still, the images: They're stunning. Nearly every frame bursts with beauty. And it was a pleasure for me to see Los Angeles itself photographed so gorgeously. Most of the actors, too, do lovely work. Armin Mueller-Stahl and Antonio Banderas were particular highlights, to my mind. I still think the film is unmissable. I wouldn't have skipped it, even if I didn't love it.

And I am not going to worry to much about Malick and whether he's lost his mojo. He is the master and this is what he's interested in right now. Eventually he's gonna work through whatever he's working through about love and masculinity, and young women frolicking amid blowing curtains, and then maybe we'll get something else. He doesn't owe me anything.

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 8 of 11 (Best Original Song)

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.

Spectre

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Jimmy Napes & Sam Smith

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott

I heard people thought this was boring. It wasn't as good as Skyfall, certainly, but apparently I was one of the only people in the world that thought it was sort of fun. Eh. Oh well. The opening sequence of Spectre was definitely its coolest setpiece, but in general I thought it was sort of fun. I loved Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci (obviously – why isn't she in more American movies??), and I liked the way that this Bond movie became a little bit more about the team of Q, M, Moneypenny, and Bond and not just the lone wolf himself. (Thomas Newman's score is excellent, too.) There were two main problems with this new Bond caper. One was that the villain sort of sucked. Everyone loves Christoph Waltz. The man has two Oscars and he works a ton, but he is totally flat in Spectre, and I am not even sure why. The villain's villainy in this film just isn't that interesting or sadistic, and by comparison he is just no match for the creepy/sexy/weird quality of Javier Bardem's Skyfall villain. The other problem is the film's just general tone which is morose and regretful. Skyfall was this, too, of course, but Spectre positively revels in the dead and the way they haunt us. The first sequence takes place at a Día de los Muertos celebration, but from there we get sad messages from the grave, a sad dying father who shoots himself, another sequence at a funeral where Monica Bellucci mourns her husband. The entire plot, even, is related to the idea that MI6 itself is a relic and needs to be retired. The tone is just too morbid: Bond needs a vivacious reboot for sure. (I think one of the problems with James Bond nowadays is that he and those films are both sort of inextricable from the nostalgia that exists about previous Bonds and previous Bond films. Both of the Mendes Bond movies attempt to deal with that nostalgia head on, with, it seems to me, differing levels of success.) Frankly, I am not so crazy about Sam Smith's weepy song, either, and was a little surprised to see "The Writing's on the Wall" get nominated, but here it is, and I expect it to win now that it's here. It seems like a sensible consensus choice.

Will Win: Original Song

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #42 out of 67

Youth

1 Nomination

• Original Song: David Lang

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Robert Seethaler, Luna Mijovic, Heidi Maria Glössner, Helmut Förnbacher, Ed Stoppard, Paloma Faith, Jane Fonda, Madalina Ghenea, Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Mark Gessner, Nate Dern, Alex Beckett, Roly Serrano, Leo Artin

This was one of my favorite movies of the year. It is a lot like Sorrentino's previous film La Grande Bellezza in style, although Youth is a much more sentimental movie, and one that explores feelings a great deal more than Bellezza. I still adored it; Sorrentino's frames are so rich, so full, and his filmmaking is so confident. It's just amazing movie-making. I think he is a master. I have to say that I was a little surprised that the Academy didn't like this more than it did. Jane Fonda was pretty close to scoring her eighth Oscar nomination for her turn as an aging actress, but it didn't happen. Maybe this was Fox Searchlight's fault for the way it promoted it, or maybe Sorrentino just isn't people's thing. I don't really understand. If any movie this year is specifically aimed at old white men it is definitely this one. Perhaps this underlines my very serious theory about the real Academy voters not actually being old white men but being old white women (old Academy wives). Youth is very male. It's nominated song, David Lang's "Simple Song #3", is absolutely gorgeous and there was no question about its nomination. It's not a pop song, so that will hurt it with voters, certainly, but I have been listening to it for months now. It's a real feather in David Lang's cap. I should also note that it is a very important part of the film itself, much of the film's action revolves around the song, and we hear little phrases from it throughout the film, so that when we hear it in its entirety in the film's third act, it has the ability to be deeply moving.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Original Song
My Rating: #3 out of 67

Fifty Shades of Grey

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Ahmad "Belly" Balshe, Stephan Moccio, Jason "DaHeala" Quenneville & Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Marcia Gay Harden, Eloise Mumford, Victor Rasuk, Jennifer Ehle, Luke Grimes, Max Martini, Callum Keith Rennie, Rita Ora, Dylan Neal

This is awful. I've written in detail about how I think this film is a kind of rape fantasy, so I won't really go into anything about this movie here, but I will say that I was super into this song when it came out (the song is "Earned It" sung by The Weeknd). It really is a great tune with a great beat and The Weeknd is this kind of neo-R&B artist, that I will admit to liking a lot. So I was loving this song, and listening to it rather a lot – which is when I noticed that the chorus rhymes the lyrics "So I love when you call unexpected / 'Cause I hate when the moment's expected". And now I can't get out of my mind that expected and unexpected aren't so much words that rhyme as they are, you know, the same word. But whatever, I keep trying to let it go. It's still a fun song. (But goddamn, this movie is bad, if not downright offensive.)
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #66 out of 67

The Hunting Ground

1 Nomination

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

Director: Kirby Dick

It is, perhaps, one of the great ironies of this Oscar season that another of the nominated original songs is from a film that attempts to document the problem of rape on college campuses. If Fifty Shades of Grey is a film where no always means ask again, The Hunting Ground is a film that wants to combat the real danger to which many women are subject on college campuses across the country. The Hunting Ground is doing really well when it is using testimony to inform its audience of the real crisis in USAmerican higher education, whereby the schools, which should be interested in helping students, in keeping students safe, and in, well, basic ethical principles, have become beholden to the dollars of their donors, particularly fraternity members, who prevent these institutions from dealing with absolute epidemic of sexual violence that exists on our campuses. The Hunting Ground is not a great film, though, and it jumps from story to story in a way that often feels inorganic and awkward. In many ways the film is not about taking on the universities using Title IX, and when the film is not about this, it feels messy. Still, when it is about this The Hunting Ground is, frankly, terrifying. In any case, this issue is close to my heart, and I am glad we are talking about this more frequently, more openly, and more vehemently. There is no more important issue on college campuses today, if you ask me. As for the song, Gaga sings, and the lyrics are chilling. Diane Warren – who wrote the very popular pop songs from Armageddon ("I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing"), Up Close & Personal ("Because You Loved Me"), and Con Air ("How Do I Live") – received her eighth nomination for "Til It Happens to You" (why it is missing that other l in the title I am not really sure), but she will have to go home empty handed yet again. One day, Diane, one day.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Unranked (Documentary)

Racing Extinction

1 Nomination

• Original Song: Antony Hegarty & J. Ralph (Chasing Ice)

Director: Louie Psihoyos

This movie is a serious wake-up call. The images of the thousands of shark fins removed from slaughtered fish are chilling enough, but Racing Extinction also spends a great deal of time on the way manta rays are being driven to extinction so that their gills can be harvested. And it documents the acidifying of the world's oceans. Racing Extinction is a truly sobering look at the planet and what we are doing to it. This movie should convince absolutely anyone that we need to change our way of living and become better caretakers of the planet on which we live. It is simply unacceptable – in fact the film's argument is that it is mass suicide – for us to continue to destroy this planet. I am sold, and I encourage everyone to watch this movie. J. Ralph also composed the haunting melody that underscored the Jeff Orlowski environmentalist documentary Chasing Ice, but the song from Racing Extinction, "Manta Ray", also boasts the talents of Antony Hegarty, the second transwoman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award (the first, by the way, was Angela Morley, the composer of The Little Prince and The Slipper and the Rose). Antony's lyrics are truly haunting: "Without biodiversity / I'm nothing / It's like I never existed // Without my home / With no reflection / I cease to exist //  And my children / Are dying now / Inside me". Yikes. Because Racing Extinction's subject matter is "how do we get this information out to people?" I am hopeful that the filmmakers use the Oscars themselves as a platform for their important message.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Unranked (Documentary)

More 2015 Films. Awards-Season Edition. Part 1.

Confession. I have other writing deadlines that I should be working on and other reading I am supposed to be doing. But I am in Los Angeles, and I've been here for about 5 days. In that time I have seen 4 movies. And if I don't write down some thoughts, then I'm bound to forget everything.

The best of this bunch – and one of my favorite films of the year – is Youth, Paolo Sorrentino's new movie about two octogenarians (Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel) relaxing in a hotel in Switzerland. Caine plays Fred, a retired composer and conductor, and Keitel plays Mickey, a brilliant filmmaker who is working on his next movie with a team of young writers.

Youth is the follow up to 2013's The Great Beauty, and it is very similar in style to the earlier film. Its themes are somewhat similar, too, although I think Youth is more introspective, more about how we behave with the people around us, than The Great Beauty was. But Youth is filled with extraordinarily fascinating characters (Paul Dano, Rachel Weisz, Robert Seethaler, and Jane Fonda are all excellent in supporting roles), powerful dialogue, and lots and lots of magic. This movie, perhaps, has even more magic than The Great Beauty. There is a gorgeous shot early on in the film where Caine is walking on a tiny footpath in Venice. He's just above water level and is surrounded by many Venetian buildings lit up gorgeously. Coming toward him on the bridge is Miss Universe. They inch past one another comically and then continue. It looks like a tribute to Fellini's Casanova at the same time as it looks like something only Sorrentino could dream up.

Vacationing with Paul Dano

Fellini comes up again and again while I watch Sorrentino's movies, and he makes me like Fellini even more. He seems to have imbibed all of Fellini and then coupled it with dance music and irony and a kind of hopeless utopianism. I absolutely loved this movie. It is everything I need from a film. This is a film I wanted to see again as soon as it ended, a film made by a master of the craft (and he's still very young!). There are numerous sequences I could describe that are unforgettable – an extraordinary section where a retired football player (an homage to Diego Maradona) kicks a tennis ball repeatedly into the air without it ever falling, a running joke about a couple that doesn't speak at dinner, an entire bizarre and beautiful section with Adolf Hitler – these sections just keep coming in Youth. The film is consistently surprising, constantly beautiful. As in The Great Beauty, beauty is everywhere around us. And the final sequence – a gorgeous song by David Lang – is the most deeply moving scene of a film I've seen this year. I cannot recommend this enough

Oscar possibilities for Youth: not too many. Jane Fonda is looking good for a supporting actress nomination, although it seems insane to me that no one is talking about Harvey Keitel for best supporting actor. He is amazing in this movie. David Lang should also snag a best original song nomination for "Simple Song #3".

* * *

Lebanon's foreign language submission to the Academy Awards this year is a film by Naji Abu Nowar called Theeb (Wolf). It is an exciting little film with several surprise reversals in it. Theeb is a sort of combination character study slash adventure film slash coming-of-age story. It is by turns strangely erotic and oddly sentimental. In fact, I should say that I think what Theeb is is what Bone Tomahawk sort of wished it could have been. It also boasts an excellent performance from an actor named Hassan Mutlag, a murderer turned father figure who is much more fascinating than the child at the film's center.

But Theeb isn't quite as exciting as I wanted it to be, and it doesn't quite have as much to say as I wanted it to say. This may be (I've noted it before) related to my own impatience with films about children growing up or films that see the world through the eyes of a child. (In fact, I am sort of positive that this is part of the reason I was rather soft on the movie.) But Theeb is also a kind of love letter to a way of life that has passed. The film is set in 1916 during World War I and it mourns the passing of desert guides as the railroad arrives. This struck me as odd, too, since there are, of course, still nomadic peoples who live in the desert and raise animals the way Theeb's family does in the film.

In any case, Theeb is a good little film with some interesting and surprising plot twists, but it never really got under my skin.

Oscar possibilities for Theeb: One. This film made the shortlist of 9 possible nominees for Best Foreign Language Film out of the original 81 submissions. I can't see it actually scoring one of the final five slots, but it could happen.

More movies to come in the next couple of days.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 10 of 14

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Italy (Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediteranneo, Open Doors, Cinema Paradiso, The Family, Three Brothers, To Forget Venice, Viva Italia!, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Girl with a Pistol, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, The Great War, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Galatea Ranzi, Pamela Villoresi, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Giovanna Vignola, Giusi Merli, Sonia Gessner, Luca Marinelli

I have written about this enough times, I suppose. It is the best movie of the year, and there is simply nothing like it. I have even seen it a second time. I had a chance to see the film in the local IMAX theatre and I jumped at the chance. It hit me just as hard the second time, and my friends and I talked about it for days afterward. You will notice that Italy's previous nominations include films by Fellini, Tornatore, De Sica, Pontecorvo, Risi, Monicelli, and Scola (but strangely not Antonioni, Bertolucci, or Bellocchio): Sorrentino is in good company. And if some of the Italian masters have been left off of this list, the film to which La Grande Bellezza has most often been compared is La Dolce Vita, which also missed out on a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination. In who's-going-to-win news, they just recently changed the rules for voting for the winner of this Oscar. Formerly, an Academy member had to see all five of the nominees in order to vote for the winner. This is no longer the case, which means that voting for the winner of Best Foreign Language film will follow the same type of group-think as the rest of the winners. This year, however, that means that the best film of the year in any language will win Best Foreign Language picture.

Will Win: Foreign Language Film

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #1 out of 81

The Broken Circle Breakdown

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Belgium (Bullhead, Everybody's Famous, Farinelli: il Castrato, Daens, The Music Teacher, Peace in the Fields)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Johan Heldenbergh, Veerle Baetens, Nell Cattrysse

This is Belgium's second recent nomination (their most recent was the totally awesome Bullhead – check it out). I haven't seen this picture yet, but Netflix assures me it will be out on DVD on the eleventh of March, a good nine days late for the Oscars. So I will see it then, I suppose. I can tell you that this is a melodrama about a relationship between a bluegrass musician – the film is filled with Bluegrass music, in English no less – and a tattoo artist. It is based on a play by Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, and Van Groeningen's film was nominated for six European film awards where Veerle Baetens won Best Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Césars. You can watch the trailer here.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: Not ranked

Omar (عمر)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Palestine (Paradise Now)

Director: Hany Abu-Assad

Cast: Adam Bakri, Waleed Zuaiter, Leem Lubany, Baher Agbariya, Majd Bitar, Walid Abed Elsalam, David Gerson

Here's another one I haven't seen. This is Hany Abu-Assad's second nomination in this category, but the film looks, well to be honest, it doesn't look all that great. You can watch the trailer here. Omar played at Cannes in 2013 and will be released in the U.S. on the 21st. The poster features the back of Omar's head as he kisses his love-interest in the film, and above their heads are the words "An incredible love story". Apparently, they are assuming we won't watch the trailer so that we can know what the film is actually about. Actually, if you're feeling like you probably will see this film, take my advice and don't watch the trailer. It gives way too much away.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

L'Image Manquante (The Missing Picture)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Cambodia

Director: Rithy Panh

Cast: Randal Douc

This is Cambodia's first nomination ever, and it is very exciting for another reason, too. L'Image Manquante is a documentary about atrocities perpetuated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and this is the first time in a very long time that a documentary has been nominated for Best Foreign Language film. This is a huge deal all around. I don't think the film can win, but this nomination does demonstrate the Academy's interest in cinema from all parts of the globe. This was never in doubt, really, but there has not been a film from the Asian mainland nominated in this category for over five years. The Academy has for the last twenty years consistently ignored submissions by India, South Korea, Vietnam, China, even Hong Kong. I am not saying this is instantly going to change, but this nomination is a step in the right direction. The film is slated for release stateside on March nineteenth. You can see the trailer here.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

Jagten (The Hunt)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Denmark (A Royal Affair, In a Better World, After the Wedding, Waltzing Regitze, Pelle the Conqueror, Babette's Feast, Harry and the Butler, Paw, Qivitoq)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Thomas Bo Larsen, Susse Wold, Anne Louise Hassing, Alexandra Rapaport, Lasse Fogelstrøm

Mads Mikkelsen has starred in three of the last four nominees for Denmark in this category. Apparently it is a winning combination. Obviously, Mikkelsen is a big star, and this goes a long way to making this film as good as it is and in it getting this nomination. In fact, though, the high quality of Jagten has as much to do with the legendary director of the first Dogme 95 film, Thomas Vinterberg, as it does with Mikkelsen. Jagten is a kind of Arthur Miller's The Crucible for the twenty-first century. It is a terrifying, nail-biting witchhunt, that drove me and my roommate absolutely nuts watching it. One wants to scream at the movie screen. This film gets its hooks into you and then drags you around for a little bit. This is excellent, unsparing filmmaking, and it is totally in line with Vinterberg's other work. Denmark has won this award recently, though – for Susanne Bier's 2010 In a Better World (a much-deserved win) – and it won't be taking home the trophy this year unless there is an enormous upset.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: #19 out of 81

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 6 of 14

Despicable Me 2

2 Nominations

• Animated Feature
• Original Song: Pharrell Williams

Director: Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud

Cast: Steve Carrell, Kristin Wiig, Russell Brand, Benjamin Bratt, Steve Coogan, Miranda Cosgrove, Elsie Fisher, Dana Gaier, Ken Jeong


I did not care for the first Despicable Me, and much of the charm of this second one is lost on me as well. The film's main gags involve beating its characters to a pulp without them getting injured – this bit of humor is at its most egregious when Gru goes on a date with a rude young woman who is then tranquilized and tied to the top of a car and thrown around like a giant sack of potatoes. Still, #2 does feature a few laugh-out-loud moments, and Steve Carrell is very charming. Even more importantly, Benjamin Bratt is absolutely excellent in this. He plays two characters and both are a blast (and there is a nice shout-out to Stanley Kubrick in one of his sequences). The music in Despicable Me 2 is its best feature, though, and the film is filled with great original songs by Pharrell Williams – who is A.) everywhere these days and B.) kind of genius. His song "Happy" is so catchy, and so much fun, that I am starting to think it is the only contender that might be able to beat Frozen's song "Let It Go". The awesome music videos out right now for "Happy" (there is an official one here and then there is the 24-hour version) definitely up its chances. But in the end I don't really expect it to win.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Original Song

My Rating: #60 out of 79

The Great Gatsby

2 Nominations

• Production Design: Beverley Dunn & Catherine Martin (Moulin Rouge!, Romeo + Juliet)
  
• Costume Design: Catherine Martin (Australia, Moulin Rouge!)

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Cast: Tobey Maguire, Leonard DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke, Isla Fisher, Amitabh Bachchan

If only this film had been a film only about parties. Alas, it purports to be a film with a storyline, and worse! It purports to be a film version of one of the great USAmerican novels. It is neither of these things. Instead it is an enormous, opulent, cartoon version of a real story. And it has some awesome party sequences. But this film is not without merit: Catherine Martin will deserve her second Costume Design Oscar when she wins on March 2. It will be, in fact, well deserved. The entire film feels like it was simply an excuse for Martin to design the gorgeous frocks and suits she made for this movie. I was less sold on the production design - it often looks as cartoony as the acting, personally, but I see why it has shown up here, as well. There was a film version of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby made this year, but it is called The Great Beauty not The Great Gatsby. My advice, if you're thinking of seeing Baz Luhrmann's mess of a film? Go see Paolo Sorrentino's version.
Will Win: Costume Design

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #71 out of 79

Lone Survivor

2 Nominations

• Sound Mixing
• Sound Effects Editing

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Alexander Ludwig, Eric Bana, Yousef Azami, Ali Suliman, Dan Bilzerian

The National Board of Review named Lone Survivor one of the ten best films of the year. No one else seemed to notice. I've posted about my problems with the movie already, so I won't go into that. I just want to say that while these nominations might've seemed to come out of nowhere, they really didn't. All of the critics groups saw this and many respected it, as the National Board of Review mention indicates. And the film really is technically awesome, especially in the sound department. These guys end up falling down some difficult cliffs at one point, and it is actively wince-inducing, as the audience can hear the crunching of bones. It is pretty great stuff. As film theorist Stephen Prince has argued in his book on violence in classical film, the sound information we receive as we watch a film is directly related to our empathy for the person suffering violence. Sounds of anguish or pain have been directly censored (silenced) by the MPAA, because they make violence more difficult for an audience to watch. The sounds in Lone Survivor, then, do their job, asking for the audience to empathize with the four men who get surrounded by men who wish to kill them. These sounds of agony go away, of course, as the helicopters swoop in and the full might of the U.S. military is felt, but the sound work is very, very good. (Not that this film can beat Gravity for either of its awards, because it cannot.)

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #67 out of 79

The Best Movie of the Year

Everything that The Great Gatsby could have been, The Great Beauty actually is.

A couple of years ago when Paolo Sorrentino’s film Il Divo: the Spectacular Life of Giulio Andreotti was nominated for Best Makeup, no one had heard of this movie. (Or maybe it was just me who didn't have it anywhere near my radar.) In any case, my friends and I were shocked by how much we loved this movie, especially the fast-paced editing and the cleverness of Sorrentino’s visual style. Il Divo was a movie that was visually fascinating, and because of that, it was a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed, despite having no previous interest in Giulio Andreotti or the Italian political process in general.

La Grande Bellezza multiplies Sorrentino’s style by ten. This film is a party. And it is a fun one. The Great Beauty is La Dolce Vita by way of the sexiest rager you’ve ever attended. It’s a love-letter to the city of Rome, but not one you’ve ever seen before. This picture is modern Rome, through and through: what’s ancient about the city are simply the remains of antiquity. The main character, Jep, lives a modern, fabulous existence in an ancient city, waking up with a view of the Colosseum from his bedroom window, and drinking orange juice while he looks over the wall into a convent-school. Modernity, antiquity, and religiosity overlap, fold in on one another. And so, by the way, do Renaissance architecture, club music, picturesque gardens, and performance art. Rome is in ruins, but on top of those ruins, among them, the city teems with new life, new art. New money as well as old. Gabriel Fauré, Arvo Pärt, Yolanda Be Cool, Zbigniew Preisner, Lele Marchitelli. The oldest profession and the youngest novitiate.

The plot of La Grande Bellezza is about an aging novelist, who penned a masterpiece in his twenties but hasn’t written a thing since. Why haven’t you written anything since your first great novel? everyone asks him throughout the film. I went out at night, he always responds. Jep has chosen to become a socialite. And he’s great at it. Like the narrator of Remembrance of Things Past (Proust appears as a kind of leitmotif for the entire film as well as being an obvious inspiration), Jep is a keen observer of his society and his friends. He loves parties. He is the king of parties. And he knows everyone. He sees the depth and complexity in all of the shallowest people.

So the film is about wealthy Roman society people, but it's also about growing old and feeling as though one hasn't accomplished what one set out to accomplish... or, well, anything at all. Jep is chasing "the great beauty", or, if you prefer, the green light across the water. And he feels as though he's either given up chasing it or, perhaps, been chasing the wrong light for the last forty years. Of course, Jep doesn't know quite what he hopes to find or what he'll do when he does find it, but the movie follows his search for it.

And La Grande Bellezza does more than this, as well. As Jep is a keen observer of the people in his circle, we learn much about them, too, and much of this is fascinating, studied, and powerfully empathetic. Jep also sees a lot of art – performance art as well as fine art – and the film is studded with performance sequences and cinematographic explorations of old manors, as well as gorgeous shots of outrageous fashion. And the editing. I cannot say enough about the way this film moves through spaces, reflects Jep's mood, finds beauty in the mundane, while at the same standing in total awe of our ancient predecessors or absolutely great art. The film is overboard at all points. And so I fumble with my description. La Grande Bellezza is a film about wildness, the uncontainable, but the film is always formally on point; Sorrentino always knows what he's doing. His main character Jep even has a tendency to find all of this grandeur completely banal. He can simply stare at a piece of art and see nothing of the great beauty for which he searches. It all feels as though it's been done before.

It is a superb testament to the filmmaking abilities of Paolo Sorrentino that he can make a film about a man who is exhausted by the life he leads into a completely compelling, vivid, and beautiful portrait of an ancient city. Sorrentino captures Rome perfectly. La Grande Bellezza is Fellini for the twenty-first century. It is more than that, even. Sorrentino has made a movie that spoke to me deeply about my own search for inspiration, for novelty, for beauty in the everyday.

We're all on the brink of despair, Jep says during an uncharacteristically tense moment. All we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little... Don't you agree? 

But his cynicism is belied by Sorrentino's film. When, on an outdoor walk in Rome, Jep encounters Fanny Ardant on a staircase and shares a quick greeting with her before she disappears into the night (and disappears from the film), I was nearly giddy with delight. The beauty is everywhere. If Jep is right and we are all on the brink of despair, Sorrentino's film tells us that we are also always surrounded by beauty. At least in Rome, anyway.

Summing Up 2013

1. What did you do in 2013 that you'd never done before?
Watched Florida State with the ACC championship. Taught a class of PhD students. Insanity.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I actually did. I had resolved to write two chapters of my book, but instead I decided to send a chapter out for publication and work on another article. These things have worked out, so now I will turn back to the book in 2014. I did resolve to get much better at French, and I have definitely done that. Resolution for 2014, though, is to get back into shape. I have let myself gain some winter weight at the end of 2013.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! My friends Danny & Ashley had a beautiful baby girl named Arlene Gail. She is gorgeous. And my friends Jill & Mike had a son just a couple days ago named Emerson Allen. I get to meet him in March.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My dear friend Irma lost her canine companion Texas. We also lost one of the most important people in Queer Theory this year: José Esteban Muñoz. Both deaths were truly heartbreaking.

5. What countries did you visit?
None this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013?
I need a place I can call home. Moving around like a nomad is fine, and the schools where I have been working have been fun, helpful, educational, and exciting. But I'd like to start dwelling somewhere.

7. What dates from 2013 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Bill & Meghan's wedding, of course! It was August 31st and it was a weekend of splendiforous events.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Insanity!

9. What was your biggest failure?
My failure to find a tenure-track position for 2013-2014. It all is working out, of course, but it felt awful at the time. The job market is no fun, y'all.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing too horrible.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A ticket to the ACC championship game in Charlotte, NC on December 7th. Go Noles!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
I have been so proud of my sons Dayne and Jordan this year. They are doing their thing: working hard and making lives and careers for themselves in new cities.
Edward Snowden and anyone else who fights the multiple apparatuses of the State.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The U.S. Congress, as usual. What a bunch of idiots.
The State of Florida.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Paying off my car, which I finally did last month.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Visiting California. Seeing Arlene for the first time. Hanging out with Cruz and Sofia. Meghan and Bill's wedding. The annual meeting of the American Society for Theatre Research in Dallas (so many good friends!).

16. What song will always remind you of 2013?
Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell's "Blurred Lines".  

I feel so lucky

You wanna hug me

What rhymes with "hug me"?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter.
c) richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Okay, this is crazy, but my favorite things to do are read and watch movies. I wish I could manage to do those things way more than I do. I am becoming more of an introvert as I get older, and reading and seeing films feed me in a particular way that I find comforting and exciting. At this stage in my career, I am not allowed to read as much as I'd like: I am supposed to be publishing, which means I have to write more and read less.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Evaluating myself based upon the often arbitrary demands of the current job market. I also wish I spent less time in meetings run by people who do not value other people's time.
I also wish I'd done less complaining about the demands of the current job market. And less complaining in general. (Except for all the complaining I've done about people who don't value the time of others. Those complaints are merited.)

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
In California! I'm here right now, in fact. It is warm and I am comfortable and happy, baking cookies, hanging out with my parents, visiting with my friends, playing with my sobrinos, and going to the cinema with my sister.

21. Did you fall in love in 2013?
Nope.

22. How many one-night stands?
Four. Three were awesome; the other one wasn't bad per se, but I only did it because I knew it would be a fun story to tell later.

23. What was your favorite TV program?
Orange Is the New Black.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
A couple of truly heinous students. Yes.

25. What was the best book you read?
The first two volumes of Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove. I'm almost finished with the third, The Guermantes Way. I'm listening to this epically long novel on audiobook in the translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff, and it is enriching my life considerably.
I would also recommend Boccaccio's Decameron from the fourteenth century, which I finally read. It reads very swiftly and is endlessly entertaining.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I know nothing about music, but I spent my year listening to Justin Timberlake and James Blake.

27. What was the best piece of theatre you saw?
Back to Back Theatre's Ganesh versus the Third Reich
John Tiffany's production of The Glass Menagerie with Cherry Jones and Brian J. Smith is a close runner-up. I saw it at the the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge.
(But honestly I didn't go to the theatre very much this year.)

28. What did you want and get?
To be published in a top-tier journal. The article isn't out yet, but it will be soon. And I am finished with all of my edits, including extensive conversations with the copy-editor.
 
29. What did you want and not get?
I really was hoping for a job last year, and I did not get one. The 2014 season is a whole different ballgame, though. Things look great.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
The Great Beauty followed by Blue Is the Warmest Color

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
My friends Katie, Viktor, and Yasser took me out to a restaurant in White River Junction, and then we had beers at an underground dive bar there afterward. It was very very nice.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
A nicer kitchen.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013?
Dress up. Always dress up. A pair of great shoes has the power to separate you from the city you might be consigned to live in.

34. What kept you sane?
Rounds of Say the Same Thing with Deborah and Jordan.
Chats with Patrick McKelvey, Kate Bredeson, and Joe Cermatori.
After-work drinks with my colleagues at Florida State.
Shopping trips with my mother.
Hikes in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Vermont with Caleb.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Chris Messina

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
Politics in the U.S. is broken. I have been yelling about it for what feels like at least ten years, but the Congress just gets worse. The thing I paid attention to the most this year was the trial of George Zimmerman. It felt like a kind of Floridian Dreyfus Case: I would rather cross the street than speak  to someone who thought George Zimmerman ought to go free.

37. Whom did you miss?
This year was another year of missing everyone. I divided my time between Florida, Virginia, and New Hampshire, and traveled all over. So I missed my friends in Los Angeles, missed my friends in New York, my friends in Seattle, my friends in Tallahassee, and my friends in Lynchburg.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
Katie Bland

39. Tell us a valuable life-lesson you learned in 2013:
A couple of really important things:
1) I thought by switching careers from performance to something else I was moving into a less cutthroat career path. Not true. Finding a job is difficult no matter what you're doing. So if you want to be a performer, work hard and keep doing it. I wasn't cut out to be a performer, and my new career path is a much better one for my sensibilities, but trying to get a good job is exactly like auditioning and constantly facing rejection.

2) Friendships are great. Focus as much as you can on the ones who are around you every day. The ones from earlier in your life won't go away completely, they will just change in level of importance. I learned this year that for extroverts, being around people is energizing, but for introverts, being around people saps energy from us and being alone rebuilds our stores of energy. I have a lot of great friends, and I am very very grateful for them, but I have started to become closer and closer to friends around whom I feel more energized, relaxed, and encouraged.

3) Say yes to challenges or things that might seem a little difficult. Some of my favorite experiences this year (the ACC game, the Capitol Truffle Collection, traveling to Virginia for Sonnets and Chocolates) have been from deciding to do something whole-hog that actually was kinda inconvenient.

40. Share an important quote from 2013:
How dreary a monotony must pervade those people's lives who, from indolence or timidity, drive in their carriages straight to the doors of friends whom they have got to know without having first dreamt of knowing them, without ever daring on the way to stop and examine what arouses their desire.
—À la Recherche, volume 2