Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Post-Oscars
Regular readers know all about my kids' birthday parties. Our annual Oscar party is my one regular time of the year to practice my party skills for a (mainly) adult audience.
I am, I must admit, a total psychotic when I'm in party preparation mode. Remember that reality show Hell's Kitchen? Yeah, like that.
Sunday afternoon, I went through my annual ritual of freak-outs and last-minute fussing. There was a nice bit of comic timing right at the end of that. Every year, as soon as the clock ticks over to our posted invitation time, I start babbling "No one's coming! It's a flop! We have no friends!" Mrs. Mentok has learned just to smile and nod until it passes. This year, I was interrupted mid-sentence by the doorbell. Har!
Let me set the stage for you: Guests stream into our humble little bungalow. As they come in, they pay $2 entry fee into our Oscar pool (all categories, incl. technical awards like sound mixing). They're issued half of a playing card, which is their ticket to fabulous door prize awards we hold during commercials (dollar store finds, some regifting and some truly over-the-top prizes donated by guests).
Finally, everyone gets one marshmallow, which they are allowed to huck at the screen at someone or something that annoys them (e.g. Marion Cotillard's speech).
Then we all get liquored up, settle in and watch the show.
This year, for the first time, we used our home theatre projector system for the show. Of course, in one of those perfect Murphy's Law moments, the movie screen decided to fall out of the ceiling two hours before show time, but we got it fixed in time and it was a big hit. That $350 I spent on a data projector on Boxing Day is the best home entertainment investment I've ever made. I have friends who have spent thousands of dollars on big screen TVs, so I enjoyed pointing out to them how much bigger my screen is.
Attendance was down a little. There were almost enough chairs for everyone. I prefer it when we have people crammed in like sardines on the living room floor plus a healthy kitchen party on the go, but we were maybe six people away from being at that point.
You are no doubt wondering what I thought of the show. The sad fact is that I never get to watch much of it. Too busy playing host, you know. But from the bits I caught:
- like everyone is saying, the show was pretty lackluster this year. The relative lack of writing showed. Stewart did an OK job as host, but you could tell that he was eager to get off the stage as soon as possible.
- that freakin' Bourne Ultimatum killed me on my entry for our Oscar pool. I had gone with Transformers all the way on the technical categories.
- hands up: how many of you want to shoot that Marion Cotillard? That had to be the sappiest acceptance speech since Sally Field. I find it hard to believe she's 32; she totally comes off like a 21-year-old bimbo.
- the most elegant lady of the night, hands down, was Canada's own Ellen Page. Boy, she's great, isn't she?
- what the hell was Miley Cyrus even doing at that event, much less presenting? Between that and the ever-so-fascinating Barbara Walters Special, Miley's agent must have spent a fortune on bribes.
- it was a low-scoring year for our Oscar pool. The top score was 15; mine was 13. Mrs. M came in second with 14, but unfortunately that just stuck us with a second prize we were hoping to get rid of (a Magic Bullet blender kit we've been trying to regift).
All in all, it was a pretty low-key event in Hollywood, but our guests seemed to have a good time. They keep coming back, year in and year out, so that's a good sign, isn't it?
And you folks, how did you make out with your Oscar pools?
posted by Mentok @ 10:13 a.m.,
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Oscar Reviews Part Five: No Country for Old Men
What is there to say about the Coen brothers that hasn't been said a million times before? Their askew view on the world makes their films among the best made in modern times.
No Country for Old Men is my favourite of the Oscar contenders (although There Will Be Blood is a strong second). It is a very violent movie about a regular poor Texas cowboy/righand who becomes the focus of an extensive, multi-sided manhunt when he stumbles across the cash from a drug deal gone bad.
It is too bad that the movie is so violent, because it makes the movie less accessible, so fewer people will appreciate the sheer quality of the film.
This is a movie about change, random chance and the ultimate change and randomness of death. This theme is emphasized many times throughout the movie. "Can't stop the tide" is a refrain we hear several times.
Much has been written about the creepy sociopathic villain of this movie, Anton Sigur. To me, this character represents death. The other characters seem to suggest this: "If you see him, you're already dead;" "You can't negotiate with him." The only way you can dodge Death in the short term is by fluke luck, as symbolized by the coin-toss challenge Sigur frequently offers his victims. On the whole, the Sigur character acts more like a force of nature than like any sort of human character.
There is no point where this movie takes the easy, conventional Hollywood path. There are no happily-ever-afters. At many points, our hopes are raised; rescue or escape seem in sight, but these are always only temporary respites. Sooner or later, Death catches up with everyone and he doesn't care about your excuses, doesn't care about how tough you are, how cool you think you are, how much money you have or any other part of your back story.
The best performance of the movie belonged, of course, to Tommy Lee-Jones. As the old-school small-town sheriff following the drug deal case from a distance, he stays mainly aloof from the main story yet still connected to it, like some Olympian god watching down from a celestial mountain top. Finally, he comes close to facing Death, but backs away. Knowing that he may not be so lucky again, he retires.
The film ends with further reflections and examinations on death, transition and randomness. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it, but those who have know what I mean. When I saw the movie, as soon as the credits started rolling, a bunch of people in the theatre said out loud "what the hell kinda ending is that?"
A perfect one, for this film. A perfect one.
posted by Mentok @ 5:32 p.m.,
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Saturday, February 16, 2008
Oscar Reviews Part 4: Atonement
Picture this scene: An old woman is walking a dog down a foggy street in London. She enters a phone booth... but it isn't a phone booth, it's Tardis and the old woman is really Doctor Who in disguise. Doctor Who exits the booth and finds himself in the middle of a vast alien spacecraft. He unravels his scarf and whips it out, turning it into a light saber. Only now he's no longer Doctor Who but Batman. Batman with a light saber? He discovers an oval portal guarded by a shimmering red force field. He bashes at the force field again and again, struggling to enter the oval portal....
This isn't a scene from Atonement. This is a scene from a dream I had after I fell asleep watching what is quite possibly the most boring movie ever made.
Even the characters appear to be fighting sleep.Director Joe Wright has succeeded in combining the most tiresome aspects of Upstairs Downstairs with the most emasculating aspects of The Notebook and, for good measure, a twist ending more cliched than M.Night Shyamalan on his worst day.
The sad thing is that, due to the PSWEA* factor I identified last year, this movie is in serious danger of winning Oscars for acting.
The only thing that might save us from such a travesty is that the characters rarely, if ever, shout. Instead, they use that upper class Edwardian style of speech in which people seem to SPEAK IN CAPITAL LETTERS while making their eyes go wide but never actually increasing the decibels of their voices.
Save your money. Dead boring.
* PSWEA - People Shouting With English Accents, the gold standard of Great Acting in Hollywood
posted by Mentok @ 11:14 p.m.,
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Oscar Reviews Part 3: Juno
Yes, this movie is all it's hyped to be.
Funny, witty, charming; and it does these things in ways that are not at all formulaic. Well, OK, maybe the whole approach-retreat romantic plot was a little formulaic, but there's only so many ways to do romantic comedy.
The basic plot, which has been widely advertised by now, involves the trials and tribulations of a very bright, witty pregnant teen girl.
Halifax actress Ellen Page has been rightfully hailed far and wide for her brilliant performance. But the strength of the film rests on solid performances from all the supporting cast. Veteran character actors J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney deserve special recognition for their nuanced performances as Juno's parents. They manage to pull off being both laughable foils and mature, realistic characters with equal aplomb.
While listening to all the witty banter in the film, I had this niggling feeling at the back of my mind that I had heard it somewhere before. It came to me afterwards that Juno and her friend Leah were extremely reminiscent of the main characters in Ghost World, starring Thora Birch and (a much younger) Scarlett Johansson. It would be interesting to watch the two films back to back.
By the way if you haven't yet visited writer Diablo Cody's blog or Myspace page, do so with all due haste. They're a hoot!
I don't buy many movies, only ones I'm pretty sure I want to watch over and over. This will be one of them.
posted by Mentok @ 9:55 a.m.,
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Sunday, February 10, 2008
Oscar Reviews Part 2: Michael Clayton
Meh...
Apparently, lawyers are sleazy, blood-sucking whores. And, for those of you who didn't see Erin Brockovich, apparently big multi-national companies can sometimes be corrupt and amoral.
It's a good thing we have George Clooney around to tell us stuff like this, 'cause otherwise we'd never figure them out.
In a year in which there were so many other great films that broke the tired old Hollywood mold, this movie was just more of the same-old, same-old, like something generated by a plot wheel. I was distinctly underwhelmed.
Ending on a positive note, I must say it was refreshing to see Tilda Swinton playing a role that was not a magical creature or Shakespearean character. She's still kinda freaky lookin', though.
posted by Mentok @ 2:53 p.m.,
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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
There Will Be Blood
I haven't done movie reviews for awhile and, with Oscar season approaching, I'd like to rattle off reviews of all the Best Picture nominees, starting with the one I saw most recently: Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood.
The plot is no doubt familiar to most readers by now. A ruthless oilman, Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) develops a life-long rivalry with Eli Sunday, a preacher in a California town where Plainview is developing a massive oil discovery. At the same time, Plainview deals with his troubled relationship with his adopted son, who is struck deaf in a drilling accident. While Plainview grows very rich, none of his relationships work out well and his life is ultimately empty.
First, let me say a few words about Daniel Day-Lewis' performance. Many critics have written a great deal about this performance and I will be no exception. Many have called Day-Lewis one of the outstanding acting talents of our time. I go further than that. I say Day-Lewis is the unparalleled master of the fine art of squinting and lurching. No one can bring a character to life through squinting and lurching quite like Day-Lewis. If you believe, as I do, that squinting and lurching is an under-appreciated art form, then this film, like Gangs of New York, is a movie made for you.
Quite apart from the squinting and lurching, this is a great film. Kubrickian. Is that even a word? Kubrickoid? Kubrickesque? It was a lot like something Stanley Kubrick would do. Not the cinematography, unfortunately, but the film's cynical view of humanity and especially it's quirky but inevitable ending are very much in the style of the old master.
All the mainstream critics have gone on at length damning the Plainview character, describing him as a sociopathic liar and equating him with Anton Sigur from No Country for Old Men as one of the great movie villains of our time.
I think they've got it all wrong. I did not see that at all.
Certainly, the Plainview character is misanthropic - doesn't care much for other people - but that's a long way from being a sociopath. The character clearly craves human attachment: he obviously loves his adopted son and willingly believes a man who shows up claiming to be his half-brother because, as Plainview admits outright, he can't handle the loneliness of the life he's chosen.
All the other critics claim that Plainview simply uses his adopted son as a sales prop, but that claim is based an entirely on an angry, drunken rant the character makes near the end of the film. There is no evidence anywhere else in the film that this is true.
As for being a liar, Plainview is a singularly bad liar. By my count, he only lies twice in the movie and each time he gets caught doing it and stumbles badly trying to recover from them. The rest of the time, he speaks more honestly than most of the other characters in the movie.
Speaking of which, I'm shocked that so few critics noticed that the preacher Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano of Little Miss Sunshine fame) is at least as much, if not more, of a villain than Plainview. Sunday is egotistical, greedy, vain, vindictive, physically abusive and probably sexually abusive. Above all, like all faith-healers, he is a total charlatan.
Ultimately, these colourful characters are just symbols. As I see it, this is a story about America and about those brothers, Capitalism and Evangelical Christianity, that have contended for America's soul since the country's inception. The two at times appear to support each other, but in the end their passions are so obsessive and ridiculous that they can't help but be both self-destructive and mutually destructive.
The theme of brotherhood is a motif throughout the movie. Plainview is initially led to the oil find by Sunday's twin brother, who seems determined to destroy Eli. When a man claiming to be Plainview's own long-lost half-brother shows up, he is Plainview's mirror image, a failure in every way that Plainview is a success. On top of that, I suspect we are supposed to infer something from the fact that Sunday's fathers name is Abel.
I must admit that I had low expectations going into this movie. I expected it to be in the mold of Gangs of New York, a high-concept period piece produced for no other purpose than to secure lucrative Oscar nominations. It has done that, but it has earned them. It is a good movie, in fact a great movie worth seeing two or three times.
posted by Mentok @ 10:39 p.m.,
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