Oscar nominations 2011 – No Big Surprises

The Oscar nominations for 2011 are in, and there are few surprises so far. There is a lot of love for The King’s Speech (12 nominations), because it is a British film about royalty with a handicapped protagonist who overcomes his affliction whilst developing an unlikely friendship with a social outsider. I mean, come on… The Town did not receive the much attention, despite a well-deserved nomination for Jeremy Renner as supporting actor.

Other films much featured are: True Grit (10), Inception (8), The Social Network (8), The Fighter (7),  Black Swan (5) and Toy Story 3 (5). In the best picture category I put the Dutch release dates of films not yet shown here.

The Oscars will be awarded during a ceremony February 27^th.

Best Picture
Black Swan (3 February)
The Fighter (24 March)
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King’s Speech (17 February)
127 Hours (unknown)
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit (10 February)
Winter’s Bone

Best Director
David O. Russell – The Fighter
Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech
David Fincher – The Social Network
Joel And Ethan Coen – True Grit
Darren Aronofsky – Black Swan

Best Actress
Natalie Portman  – Black Swan
Annette Bening  – The Kids Are All Right
Jennifer Lawrence  – Winter’s Bone
Michelle Williams  – Blue Valentine
Nicole Kidman  – Rabbit Hole

Best Actor
Javier Bardem – Biutiful
Jeff Bridges – True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg – The Social Network
Colin Firth – The King’s Speech
James Franco – 127 Hours

Best Supporting Actress
Amy Adams – The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter – The King’s Speech
Melissa Leo – The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld – True Grit
Jacki Weaver – Animal Kingdom

Best Supporting Actor
Christian Bale  – The Fighter
John Hawkes  – Winter’s Bone
Jeremy Renner  – The Town
Geoffrey Rush  – The King’s Speech
Mark Ruffalo  – The Kids Are All Right

Best Original Screenplay
Another Year – Mike Leigh
The Fighter – Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington
Inception – Christopher Nolan
The Kids Are All Right – Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg
The King’s Speech – David Seidler

Best Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours -  Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy
The Social Network – Aaron Sorkin
Toy Story 3 – Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkrich
True Grit – Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Winter’s Bone – Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini

Best Animated Film
Toy Story 3
The Illusionist
How To Train Your Dragon

Best Foreign Film
Biutiful (Mexico)
Dog Tooth (Greece)
In A Better World (Denmark)
Incendies (Canada)
Outside the Law (Algeria)

Best Score
How to Train Your Dragon – John Powell
Inception – Hans Zimmer
The King’s Speech – Alexandre Desplat
127 Hours – A.R. Rahman
The Social Network – Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Best Song
Coming Home from Country Strong – Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
I See the Light from Tangled – Music by Alan Menken Lyric by Glenn Slater
If I Rise from 127 Hours – Music by A.R. Rahman Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
We Belong Together from Toy Story 3 – Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

Best Cinematography
Black Swan – Matthew Libatique
Inception – Wally Pfister
The King’s Speech – Danny Cohen
The Social Network – Jeff Cronenweth
True Grit – Roger Deakins

Best Costume Design
Alice in Wonderland – Colleen Atwood
I Am Love – Antonella Cannarozzi
The King’s Speech – Jenny Beavan
The Tempest – Sandy Powell
True Grit – Mary Zophres

Best Art Direction
Alice in Wonderland – Robert Stromberg, Karen O’Hara
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – Stuart Craig, Stephenie McMillan
Inception – Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias and Doug Mowat
The King’s Speech – Eve Stewart , Judy Farr
True Grit – Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh

Best Visual Effects
Alice in Wonderland –Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – Tim Burke, John Richardson, Christian
Manz and Nicolas Aithadi
Hereafter – Michael Owens, Bryan Grill, Stephan Trojanski and Joe Farrell
Inception – Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb
Iron Man 2 – Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright and Daniel Sudick

Best Sound Editing
Inception – Richard King
Toy Story 3 – Tom Myers and Michael Silvers
Tron: Legacy – Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague
True Grit – Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
Unstoppable – Mark P. Stoeckinger

Best Sound Mixing
Inception
The King’s Speech
Salt
The Social Network
True Grit

Best Documentary Feature
Exit through the Gift Shop
Gasland
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land

Best Live Action Short Film
The Confession
The Crush
God Of Love
Na Wewe
Wish 143

Best Animated Short Film
Day & Night
The Gruffalo
Let’s Pollute
The Lost Thing
Madagascar

Best Documentary Short Subject
Killing In The Name
Poster Girl
Strangers
Sun Comes Up
The Warriors Of Qiugang

Best Editing
Black Swan
The Fighter
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network

Best Make-up
Barney’s Version
The Way Back
The Wolfman

The Matrix Regenerated?

I know that the The Matrix sequels from 2003 disappointed many. And I recognize that the films had flaws, major flaws, but I still liked them a lot, if only for the richness of ideas that can be read into them, or extracted from them. Still, I was really disappointed to read today that the Wachowskis (originally Andy and Larry, now Andy and Lana) have finished treatments or scripts for two new Matrix films. Keanu Reeves, who played protagonist Neo in the first three films told this to journalists while promoting another film, Henry’s Crime.

The Matrix regenerated then? In 3D, obviously. Guys, just let it be. Leave the films alone and move on. And definitely don’t bring back Neo, his story arc is complete. The spectacular action scenes that the Wachowskis are known for can just as well be used for other projects, for instance the sci-fi flick Cloud Atlas they are now producing. That film, with Tom Tykwer helming and Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Natalie Portman starring sounds far more interesting.

Did Ricky Gervais go too far? Or was he just funnyas hell?

“I’m not going to do this a second time anyway.” Ricky Gervais delivered a spicy opening monologue, and some brutal introductions, when he hosted the Golden Globes in 2010. They weren’t gonna ask him back for a second time, right? Wrong.

 

Much has been said about Gervais’ over the top performance last week, but fact of the matter is, the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organizers of the Golden Globes) knew what they were paying for. “I warned them” giggled a content Gervais at the end of his opening. Surprised that the HFPA did not think he had gone too far the first time, Gervais pushed the limit even further this year.

Result: in four minutes Gervais managed to insult Charlie Sheen, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, everyone working on The Tourist and Sex and the City 2, the HFPA, Cher, The ‘Church’ of Scientology, John Travolta and Tom Cruise (implicitly) Hugh Hefner and Hugh Hefner’s fiancée. Midway through the show Gervais disappeared for an hour, sparking online rumors that he had been fired ‘live’. But then he returned, closing of the show with a ‘thank you’ to God, ‘for making me an atheist.’ I’m not sure how (or: if) James Franco and Anne Hathaway plan to top that when they host the Oscars later this year.

 

But did Gervais go too far? Robert Downey Jr. thought so. But then again, he got the full load of Gervais sarcasm. Tim Allen and even the always polite Tom Hanks weren’t amused. Steve Buscemi was scared shitless when Gervais mentioned Boardwalk Empire, and very relieved when it proved not to be a target. But Robert de Niro and Chris Noth were having a great time, and Johnny Depp was a sport. Humor is subjective, and perhaps we can judge Gervais only by his own standards. He seems to have a pretty clear idea of them.

Hathaway as Catwoman, Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises

A surprising confirmation yesterday from Warner Brothers concerning the notoriously secretive The Dark Knight Rises project, Christopher Nolan’s third and, probably, last Batman film.

Warner Borthers stated in a press release that Tom Hardy, whose involvement in the film was confirmed earlier (he worked with Nolan on Inception as well) will star as the character Bane, a hyper-intelligent and super-muscular drug addict/villain (in the comic books). Meanwhile Anne Hathaway, of former The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada fame,  will take on the role of Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne’s troubled love interest. Catwoman is not mentioned in the release, but there seems to be little point in bringing in Seline Kyle if she won’t turn into Catwoman as well.

These choices are surprising. The wise-cracking Hardy was in my opinion a shoe-in for The Riddler, whereas Hathaway has too much of a girl-next-door image to see her strip into a latex cat suit. On the other hand: Nolan’s bad guy choices were contested but ultimately successful previously: Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul were risky baddies for Batman Begins, as they were not as well known as for instance The Joker. Also, the first announcement that Heath Ledger would be The Joker in The Dark Knight was controversial. And we all know how that turned out.

So let’s for now have trust in Nolan’s judgment, and look forward to The Dark Knight Rises, which is due to hit cinema screens (classic and Imax, no 3D thank God) summer 2012. Its cast was already known to star Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon.

Low budget, good idea?

Low budget films can be good films if they are based on good ideas. But not all good ideas make good low-budget films. So much for logic. 

This sprang in my mind when I read two little bits of film news yesterday. The first concerns the film Rubber (Quentin Dupieux, 2010): A serial killer film with as its protagonist a homicidal car tire with psycho-kinetic powers. Eehm… What?

This sounds like a really bad idea, and the trailer does not help much to change that opinion. It is self-reflexive in an eerie way, with two (2!) film buff characters. Yet there is also something fresh and tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing that might make the film acceptable video-fodder for late night film marathons.

Much less appealing is Juan of the Dead (Alejandro Brugues). A Spanish-Cuban horror-comedy about sea-spawn zombies trying to take over the little island of Cuba, while the Cuban government believes it to be a trick from American instigators. The title Juan of the Dead is a direct rip-off from Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004), which in turn was a parody of George A. Romero’s classic zombie movies. So like Scary Movie, which was a parody of already-a-parody Scream, Juan of the Dead is not going to be very appealing.

Hilarious trash – the New Kids: Turbo review

Do you remember, in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, the movie that the four heroes go and see? The one that screws up their vocabulary in such a way that it “warps their fragile little minds”, according to Cartman, and leads to a war between the USA and Canada? It was called Terence and Philip: Arses of Fire and its real-life equivalent now plays in Dutch cinemas.

It is called New Kids: Turbo and is originally based on a set of short television sketches in which five redneck young men from the Dutch province of Brabant challenge all standards and notions of decency and civilized behavior. They profess verbal and physical violence, ridicule the handicapped, intimidate the other inhabitants of the village and drink cheap beer. A lot. Just to give you a hint: episode two from season three.

Having already been translated in German, the New Kids now have their own long film, and nobody is spared. For a start: not the boys themselves, who get shot, punched, stabbed, sacked and hit by cars. But worse of are: old people, cops, soldiers, dogs, pregnant women, the mentally handicapped, Jews and Belgium. No-one is safe near the New Kids.

The story of the film is but an excuse to put as much vulgarity in 90 minutes as is humanely possible: Brabant is hit hard by the economic crisis, and for various reasons the New Kids loose their jobs and their social welfare. Their response is to stop paying. For anything. This soon leads to violent confrontations with the local copper, the armed police and finally the Dutch army, and to riots in the entire country. Emotional character development is restricted to Gerrie, who has to earn the respect of his friends and find his father, and to Rikkert, who has to win back the love of his pregnant (but not from him) girlfriend.

Some extra flavor is provided by cameos from famous comedians (Hans Teeuwen, Theo Maassen), DJs and by the hilarious soundtrack, full of 1990s happy hardcore. The funniest scene however involves a pragmatic old resistance fighter who found his own way of earning an extra buck during World War 2.

Is New Kids: Turbo gross, disgusting trash? Yes it is. Is it terrible filmmaking? Certainly. Although the special effects are acceptable. Is it any good? At no point. Was it funny? As hell.

Tiresome, Annoying, Infantile… – The Scott Pilgrim vs. the World review

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is supposed to be a film for which I am the target audience. Twenty-something, geeky, film-literate male. But boy, did this film misfire on me. And I am not the only one. The film has a very present fan base online, but failed to be a box office success. Wonder why? Well: Scott Pilgrim… is for a start annoyingly loud and flashy. It inserts computer game graphics and sound effects into the cinema experience and this is not a good thing. It is more than any other thing incredibly tiresome. And it is part of the general childishness of the film.

Scott Pilgrim…’s protagonist, Scott Pilgrim, is a twenty-something no-good unemployed bass player in the garage rock band Sex Bob-omb. And, to speak with a cliché, poor Scott. He is not the best bass player in the world, hell, he is not even the best bass player in Sex Bob-omb. He dates ADHD Chinese high school girl ‘Knives’ Chao, but falls in love with pink-haired (oooh, mysterious…) Ramona Flowers. Scott ditches Chao, but then figures out he has to fight and beat Ramona’s seven evil exes if he wants to be with her. 1990s Nintendo style.

Scott Pilgrim is played by Michael Cera, and it should now be clear: Michael Cera is not funny. He is not even likable. He was in a supporting role Juno, but that appears to have been an exception. Cera sucked in Superbad and he sucks as Scott Pilgrim. His repertoire consists of three interchangeable shades of grey expressionless faces. It suffices that director Edgar Wright has to paste computer graphics over Cera’s face in order to communicate to the audience that Scott ‘gets it’. Unless that was intended as a joke. I did not think it was funny.

And there is more that is not funny about Scott Pilgrim versus The World. For instance, it is not funny to start your film with ‘A long time ago, in a country far far away’ if the movie is set in 1990s Toronto. That is silly, and not in the good-old Monty Python-esque way. It is also not funny to have Scott think that the L-word refers to ‘lesbian’. And then, when it is made clear that he is wrong, to ‘lesbianS’. And then to have him make that same mistake again at the end of the film when he should have grown up (or at least that is suggested). As it is not funny to have one of the evil exes, the goth lesbian (why does she have to be a goth?) say “Your BF is about to get F’d in the B.” That is just infantile.

The computer game references are probably funny to those who know the video games, or care about them. Well, I know the games, but I couldn’t care less. Winning a life, so that you have a  second chance to do things right is… Well, it is not as bad as the ‘cheating’ in Prince of Persia, but it comes close.

Edgar Wright made funny films with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so let’s not bash him. But he does need to get his act together and make something better and more appealing next time. Without Michael Cera.

Scott Pilgrim… is a self-referencing comic-book adaptation about video games. And that is just too much geeky-ness in one room. Tiresome.

2011 – Short Preview:

We kick the year of in the middle of the awards season. The big ones are of course the BAFTAs, the Oscars and the Golden Globes (although this year’s comedy nominations suggest that they’ve lost their minds there). Main contenders (apart from last year’s Inception, Toy Story 3 and A Winter’s Bone): 1) Darren Aronofsky’s ballet film Black Swan. 2) Horror based on a true story in Danny Boyle’s 127 hours. 3) British Royalty, handicaps and Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. 4) Coen Brothers Western remake True Grit. 5) Family drama with awards darling Nicole Kidman Rabbit Hole and 6) The Fighter, a boxing drama starring Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale.

There will be a trainload of mostly uninteresting comic book movies coming out. Captain America: First Avenger, The Green Lantern, The Green Hornet, Thor, X-Men: First Class are all completely uninteresting and instantaneously forgettable. Well, that’s the guess. The only one I am really looking forward to is Cowboys & Aliens, because it has cowboys. And aliens. And Daniel Craig. Finally I hold my heart for Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn, because the first pictures were, well, awful.

 

 

 

 

The Adventures of Tin Tin: The Secret of the Unicorn

Looking forward at this year’s comedy offerings one must not set one’s hopes too high. We get The Hangover 2 (bwerk)… Johnny English 2 (nooo!) And we get Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and a sweary alien in Paul (mwah) and if anything is to save the year it must be Your Highness, a medieval set comedy piece the trailer of which suggests that it is at least in the same league as Robin Hood: Men in Tights. In romantic comedy we see two films (No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits) about people having sex without having a relationship. Which is about as unfunny as, well, pornography.

Your Highness

BLAMs then. The original Big Loud Action Movies of this year are JJ Abrams super secretive Super 8 and Paul Bettany versus vampires in Priest. Sequel fare there is in Sherlock Holmes 2 (with the amazing Noomi Rapace joing Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law), Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (which is promised to be at least less dorky then its predecessors) and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, in which Jeremy Renner steps up as the pupil of Tom Cruise. Furthermore there are a gazillion films about aliens attacking earth (see also: Paul and Cowboys & Aliens)

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

Pixar has as yet its most unpromising offering in years, with Cars 2. Disney continues its classic track of the last two years with Winnie the Pooh and other animation hits might be Rango (which looks greatly odd) and Gnomeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare then: The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor (Titus) will be a real treat, but I am taking the airplane-in-an-emergency-landing-head-between-your-knees position for Anonymous, a Roland EMMERICH! Take on the Bard’s lifetime.

Stuff I need not mention: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II, Pirates of the Carribean: At Stranger Tides.

The Christmas Holiday Film List Review

For starters; let me wish you a happy 2011. If this year’s top ten films list proves to be as good as last year’s, then 2011 will indeed be very happy.

I haven’t written here in over a week, because of the holidays. The holidays provide for many people an occasion to go to the cinema and see one of the holiday-season films. Not for me. For me the holidays (Christmas but also summer) are the perfect time to jump on the couch and catch up with stuff that I missed over the year (or even earlier). It is a pity that video rental stores are dying out, because renting a film for a day or week is the best way of seeing a movie you would not pay 8 euros for in the cinema, or 15 on DVD. So here’s a little list of mini reviews of the films I saw over the last week:

Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona is not as dreary as his other recent films, but the fact is that Allen hasn’t found new subjects (Sex, Death & Despair) since the 1970s, and also seems to have lost his sense of humour in that decade.

8 Femmes (Francois Ozon) was better as a play. The film feels overly theatrical, although the actresses’ performances are very good.

Stumbling over Home Alone 2 (Chris Columbus) on television on a gray December 27 afternoon is always a pleasure. A rare instance of a sequel as good as the original, and a Christmas film with a Christmas atmosphere that is never cheesy.

The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson) is just about saved by the acting of Rachel Weisz. But the story – about two con-man brothers – is overly complicated and annoying, particularly in the second hour

Exam (Stuart Hazeldine) was if anything one of the most original thrillers of the last two years. That this also leads to a somewhat artificial exposition after the climax is easily forgiven.

National Geographic’s Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure is a 40 minute animated documentary (more about that here) of late Cratecean sea dinosaurs that comes with 3D glasses. Incidental images of super sharks and dino’s jumping out of the water are spectacular, but the depth is off and the colors get all crazy. Does not bode well for 3D television.

Alexander Revisited is the 3.5 hour long director’s cut of Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Although te story does make more sense in terms of character development, the overlong running time, chatty exposition scenes and Anthony Hopkins’ omnipresent voiceover explain (if not fully justify) the studio’s insistence on cutting the original film down to a more blatter-friendly length. Angelina Jolie still sounds like a Russian bad guy and Colin Farrel looks even more pained than before.

The Road (John Hillcoat, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy) was my highlight these holidays. A bleak and grim vision of a post-apocalypse future, but with at its heart an intensely humane story of the love between father and son. Stand-out acting from Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smith-McPhee. The films feels a bit episodic and may have one cannibal scene too many, but these are minor drawbacks.

Which brings me to the biggest let down of all. I do not understand how this film was considered the ‘best comedy in years’ (not only by its own marketing team, but by a flock of reviewers as well). I am talking of course about The Hangover (Todd Philips). The film is not the lowest of the lowest in modern American comedy, but the fact that it is said to stand out thanks to a) a baby jacking off, b) Zach Galifisomething in his bare butt and c) Ed Helms loosing a tooth and accidentally marrying a stripper is beyond me. The tiger and THAT cameo do not save it. If this is the best in years than I can now officially proclaim American film comedy stone dead in the water.

That being said I of course hope to be proven wrong in the coming year. So please, let it be a happy 2011.