Oscar deserving Michele Williams (with Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller) in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN
I’m really not too exercised about tonight’s Oscars because I trust that it will a good night for my favorites among the nominated films: The Artist and The Descendants. Most of the nominations are relatively deserved, so it’s not like two years ago, when I was gnashing my teeth over the battle between The Hurt Locker (my fave) and Avatar (NOT my fave).
I am really rooting for Michele Williams to win the Best Actress Oscar. Her performance is deserving, and she warrants recognition as the best of our younger actresses – and one who bravely picks quality scripts (Brokeback Mountain, Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine).
If you’re betting, the three biggest locks are Christopher Plummer for Supporting Actor, Rango for Animated Feature and A Separation for Foreign Language Picture.
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.
Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2012.
COCKTAILS AND STARTERS
First, The Artist inspired both strawberries (George Valentin was breakfasting on strawberries while avoiding his wife’s glare) and whiskey (George later downs more than his share).
From Moneyball, we have a ballpark hot dog.
DINNER
Fried chicken from The Help and turnips (remember the ruined crop?) from War Horse. This also kinda fits with the 50s meat-and-potatoes fare that Jessica Chastain was serving up to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.
When George Clooney and Shailene Woodley show up at the beach bungalow in The Descendants, wine is offered. And we have selected a French wine, a Bordeaux that Michael Sheen in Midnight in Paris can continue to prattle on about.
DESSERT
From Hugo, we have one of the stolen croissants he subsisted upon (although we bought our croissant) served with some of the jam made by the Niels Arestrup character in War Horse.
We are bypassing the most obvious choice on the movie menu – Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help. Instead, The Wife is making a Big Apple pie for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
The Movie Gourmet's culinary tribute to 127 HOURS and WINTER'S BONE
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was the ice sculpture of severed hands for 127 Hours andWinter’s Bone. We also had Appletinis for The Social Network, cowboy beans for True Grit, and steak and organic roast vegetable salad with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. (I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.) You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.
The pickins are slimmer this year, but fortunately I have found food and/or beverages referenced in or inspired by the Best Picture nominees.
You may remember George Valentin’s uneasy breakfast with his wife in The Artist, or the ruined crop in War Horse, or Jessica Chastain serving up some 50s fare to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life. One thing for sure: Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help will make an appearance!
Well, given the upcoming Oscars, I should weigh in on The Help and its four Oscar nominations. Based on the well-received novel by Kathryn Stockett, it is the story of black maids raising white children amid the hatefully poisonous racism of 1963 Jackson, Mississippi. Unfortunately, the film is overlong, plodding and wastes the talents of an unholy multitude of our greatest actresses.
I am told by The Wife that the characters in the novel are full and textured. The problem with the movie is that the characters are cartoonish cardboard cutouts of real people. Unfortunately, Stockett’s novel was adapted by director Tate Taylor, and he stripped any hint of nuance or ambiguity from virtually every role. Octavia Spencer and Allison Janney play characters that have a mix of human virtues and foibles. But the rest of the awesome cast – Olivia Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Cecily Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen and Emma Stone – must play either saints or bitches.
Davis and Spencer are nominated for acting Oscars, and I wish them well. But here’s a baffler – Chastain is a brilliant actress who has delivered not one but FIVE superb performances this year (Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, The Debt, Coriolanus, Texas Killing Fields), yet she is nominated for the one role written so broadly that she is obviously acting (The Help).
There are two reasons to see Pina 3D – to watch modern dance and to marvel at the use of 3D in a dance film. This documentary shows the work of the late German choreographer Pina Bausch performed by her dance troupe; it’s at least 90% dance performance.
But the singular feature of the film is director Wim Wenders’ use of 3D – the movie audience is transported on to the stage with and among the dancers. It’s been easy to dismiss 3D with all the crap 3D product out there, but master directors like Martin Scorsese (Hugo) and Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams) can use the technology to make a film even more brilliant. Wenders (Paris Texas, Wings of Desire) does that with Pina.
Now, if you don’t like modern dance, you’re not going to like this movie. But, if you do, you should catch this film during the week or two that it will be out in theaters in Real 3D; I’m not going to recommend it in 2D unless you’re a huge dance fan.
The Oscar nominations are out, and there are few of the head scratching inclusions and omissions that we frequently see. Of the Best Picture nominations, The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo and Midnight in Paris all made my Best Movies of 2011. Although they didn’t make my Best of the Year list, War Horse and Moneyball are very good movies that I recommend. I haven’t yet seen The Help, which is, by all accounts, a fine film. Although I hated The Tree of Life, it was the biggest art film of the year and much praised by mainstream critics. The one jaw dropper is the critically scorned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which exploits 9/11 in the pursuit of a three hankie weeper.
My biggest disappointments were the snubbing of Michael Shannon’s performance in Take Shelter and the innovative screenplay by Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman for Young Adult.
The acting categories seem a little light to me this year with the exception of Best Actress, with two performances for the ages by Michele Williams in My Week with Marilyn and Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady.
I’ve seen Potiche, which opens April 1. It’s a delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery, the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine DeNeuve (as if she needs one). DeNeuve plays a 1977 potiche, French for “trophy housewife”, married to a guy who is a male chauvinist pig and the meanest industrialist in France. He becomes incapacitated, and she must run the factory. It’s smart and quick like the classic screwball comedy that American filmmakers don’t make anymore.
Jane Eyre also releases April 1. I’m not on the edge of my seat waiting for a Bronte bodice ripper, but many of my readers are. Stars the excellent Mia Wasilova from Alice in Wonderland and The Kids Are All Right.
Carancho: Well, they have ambulance chasers in Argentina, too, and that seamy world is the setting for this sexy and violent noir thriller. Stars Ricardo Darin of The Secrets of Their Eyes and Nine Queens. Won Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Will release widely on April 8.
Hanna is a paranoid thriller starring Saoirse Ronan as a 16-year-old raised in the Arctic Circle to be a master assassin by her rogue secret agent father (Eric Bana), and then released upon the CIA. She is matched up against special ops wiz Cate Blanchett. Hanna is directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist). Releases April 8.
Poetry: This is the story of a Korean grandmother who goes to a poetry workshop and begins to understand the real characters of the people she lives amongst. Highly praised at Cannes. Releases widely April 8.
Restless: Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Milk, Paranoid Park, Last Days, Elephant) directs (from IMDb) “the story of a terminally ill teenage girl who falls for a boy who likes to attend funerals and their encounters with the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze pilot from WWII.” The girl is played by the very promising Mia Wasilova, who had a tremendous 2010 with The Kids Are All Right and Alice in Wonderland. Releases April 8.
In a Better World/Haevnen releases April 15. This won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. It was directed by the great Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier (Brothers/Brodre, After the Wedding, Things We Lost in the Fire). A Danish do-gooder returns from Africa to face family problems with his estranged wife and their vulnerable, bullied son.
The Princess of Montpensier: This film, admired at Cannes, is an adaptation of a well-known short story about a young woman who is forced by her father to marry – but not the man she loves. It is set in late 16th century France amid the French religious wars. Look for it on April 22.
Elizabeth Taylor was a fine actress and a compelling screen presence. The movies are full of extraordinary beauties, but few could better dominate a camera’s attention.
She won her Oscar for Butterfield 8, which was entirely her vehicle. But my favorite Elizabeth Taylor performances were in the ensemble casts of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Giant. Although A Place in the Sun is Montgomery Clift’s movie, Elizabeth Taylor is essential – if an 18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor fell in love with him, what man wouldn’t at least think about killing for her?
Here’s you chance to see the Oscar-winning performance by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in The Fighter. Mark Wahlberg stars as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Bale) and his powerful, trashy mom (Leo). As one would expect, Bale nails the flashier role of the addict, deluding himself about both past glories and his importance to his family. Leo is almost unrecognized under her teased hair, and is accompanied by a hilarious Greek Chorus of adult daughters, each trashier than the last.
The boxing scenes are very well done, and Wahlberg matches Sylvester Stallone and Hilary Swank in making us believe that he is, indeed, a boxer. See my list of 10 Best Boxing Movies. It’s also on my list of Best Movies of 2010.
In recommending Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter as my DVD of the Week, I mentioned the amazing tsunami scene at the beginning of the film. You can easily find and watch this sequence on YouTube by searching for “Hereafter tsunami”.
Here’s a featurette by Scanline VFX that illustrates how they created the Oscar-nominated special effects for Hereafter.
To compare it with the real thing, here are some real tsunami videos from last week.
