Kinematoscope

Leading questions about the many movies not in the top 250


Dogtooth

What is it?

It is a Greek film, and one of five 2010 Oscar nominees available on Netflix Instant, which is neat (the others are I Am Love (costume), Alice In Wonderland (art direction, costume, VFX) and documentaries Restrepo and Exit Through The Gift Shop).

Dogtooth made a surprising showing in the Foreign Language category despite being COMPLETELY INSANE.

What do you mean by that?

Let's list some things prominently featured in Dogtooth- incest, self-battery of the Fight Club variety, prostitution, fake pregnancy, cat murder, alternate vocabularies, fake translations of Sinatra songs, and a bizarrely sticker-based acheivement system.

Wait, what?

Okay- it's about two parents that have raised their three children, now younng adults, in complete isolation for reasons that are never explained. They don't let them watch television or go outside of their walled-in property, and they tell them that if they do, stray cats will tear them apart with their claws.

Also they tell them they have a brother that went outside the fence and met a super-violent death. And they give certain words false definitions, seemingly just ones that would imply the existence of a world outside: "telephone," for example, is what they call saltshakers.

For real?

For real. The whole movie is pretty much just about this family's insane home life.



But what happens?

Well, the dad works at some sort of office, and he pays a female security guard there to come home with him and sleep with his lone son, I guess to satisfy the son's natural urges? This has been arranged before the film starts.

Naturally bringing in an outsider causes some minor ripples in the weird stasis they've set up, but the film is not structured in a very linear way.

Is the film's look as insane as the story?

Nope, it's a beautiful, aethestically pleasant film. The family's compound has a rather large yard, and a pool, which makes for some great compositions during what appears to be summertime.

The parents aren't made to be villains, at least not by music cues and camera angles. They clearly have their reasons for everything they do, even if these reasons are never made clear to the audience in the slightest.

The director, Giorgos Lanthimos, has solidly positioned himself as a master of artful, bizarre simplicity much like Lars Von Trier or Michael Haneke. But don't ask me exactly what he was trying to say.

Should it be on the countdown?

Not quite, but it's definitely a intriguing debut feature. You spend the entire film sort of waiting for it to unravel into a nightmare, when the real frightening part might be how normal it seems to everyone involved.

Oscar prognosticating is the bread and butter here at Kinematoscope, but the late-game reversal of fortune in the race has sapped my enthusiasm for it this year.

So instead of the month-long Oscarthon, we'll have an abbreviated Oscar week, with some longer posts leading up to the ceremony. Today, some technical awards!



Best Sound Editing

Inception- Richard King (2/3)
Toy Story 3- Tom Myers (0/2), Michael Silvers (1/5)
TRON: Legacy- Gwendolyn Yates Whittle (0/1), Addison Teague (0/0)
True Grit- Skip Lievsay (0/3), Craig Berkey (0/2)
Unstoppable- Mark Stoeckinger (0/2)

Since it bears repeating every year, this category pertains to the creation of sound effects, mostly. So it's the guys making footsteps on foley stages and recording elephants to stand in for aliens, and so on. The consensus seems to be that any time there's an actiony blockbuster with critical respect, it takes it- last year The Hurt Locker broke this rule, but since Inception fits the bill and is still a huge underdog for other awards, it seems like an easy walk for their soundpeople this year.

I can't argue- they did have to decide what Paris folding in on itself would sound like, after all. Repeat viewings make the scene where everything explodes for no reason seem like shameless Tech-baiting, as well.



Best Sound Mixing

Inception- Lora Hirschberg (0/1), Gary Rizzo (0/2), Ed Novick (0/2)
The King's Speech- Paul Hamblin (0/0), Martin Jensen (0/0), John Midgley (0/1)
Salt- Jeffrey J. Haboush (0/1), William Sarokin (0/0), Scott Millan (4/7), Greg P. Russell (0/13)
The Social Network- Ren Klyce (0/2), David Parker (2/5), Michael Semanick (2/7), Mark Weingarten (0/1)
True Grit- Skip Lievsay (0/3), Craig Berkey (0/2), Greg Orloff (1/2), Peter Kurland (0/2)

The Susan Lucci of the season is Salt's Greg P. Russell, now on his fourteenth nomination without a trophy to show for it- he was partners for a long time with current record holder Kevin O'Connell (0/20). But no one's giving Salt an Oscar, get real- it's one of the few nominees for anything that I haven't seen, because it sounds ridiculous (if competently made).

Inception looks primed to win here as well- bear in mind I've gotten both of the sound categories wrong for three straight years, though. Mixing, in particular, seems harder to predict, because the two front runners for Best Picture have elbowed their way into the field. I can think of no compelling argument for The King's Speech, sonically, but The Social Network has the much heralded scene in which Eisenberg and Timberlake have to shout a long, complex conversation over the din of a nightclub (see above). That could draw some votes.



Best Visual Effects

Alice In Wonderland- Ken Ralston (4/6), David Schaub (0/0), Carey Villegas (0/0), Sean Phillips (0/0)
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Pt 1- Tim Burke (1/2), John Richardson (1/4), Christian Manz (0/0), Nicolas Aithadi (0/0)
Hereafter- Michael Owens (0/0), Bryan Grill (0/0), Stephan Trojansky (0/0), Joe Farrell (0/0)
Inception- Chris Corbould (0/1), Andrew Lockley (0/0), Pete Bebb (0/0), Paul J. Franklin (0/1)
Iron Man 2- Janek Sirrs (1/1), Ben Snow (0/3), Ged Wright (0/0), Daniel Sudick (0/3)

I'm not sure if the expansion to five nominees will make this category easier or harder to predict. In any case, recent history has provided us with one slam-dunk nominee to choose every year, except for the year they reminded us that quantity does not equal quality by dismissing Transformers. This year the showiest, largest effects picture is also the lone BP nominee, so Inception will take this one easily- my favorite part is that the most memorable effect, in this age of CGI trickery, was the old-school spinning hallway fight, achieved by simply rotating the entire set.

So mark this one down in pen, not pencil. Inception is on pace for a sweep! Also, I highly recommend the VFX featurette embedded above for the criminally-snubbed TRON: Legacy, because not only is it neat, but it eschews the usual talking heads and the "Let's Explain What The Film's About, Even Though Anyone Who Cares Enough To Watch This Already Knows" nonsense common to featurettes.

Best Documentary Feature

Exit Through the Gift Shop
GasLand
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land

Best Foreign Film

Biutiful
Dogtooth
In a Better World
Incendies
Outside the Law

These will be the only two categories in which I haven't seen all or most of the nominees, because I just don't watch enough documentaries and the foreign films take forever to get here. As notable as Banksy's street-art campaign in LA for Gift Shop has been, I'm betting on the timelier and indisputably not staged Inside Job to take it. Maybe the director will also wear a gorilla mask, just 'cause?

And Foreign? Who knows? In years of going on the record, I've only gotten this category right once, and that was on an easy, Holocaust-based call (The Counterfeiters). I feel pretty confident that the only one I have seen, Dogtooth, is too crazy to win, and also that Biutiful will lose simply for being the recognizable one that we all expect. Susanne Bier's In a Better World will also be a popular choice, given her name recognition, so nay on that. I'm going with Outside The Law- it's a period piece, which breaks the tie with Incendies.

Thus concludes part one. Stay tuned for more predictions. I promise not to pick with my heart this year.

Another category in which I'm reduced to educated-ly guessing. Someday I'm gonna be a real film-critic type with access to foreign films and shorts in a timely manner.

Let's see what we're dealing with.

1. Ajami


An ensemble crime drama set in the Ajami neighborhood of Tel Aviv. I can't really get the thrust of the plot from the trailer, but it's drawn comparisons to City Of God, which are never a bad thing.


2. The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada)


A portrait of the fallout in Peru from the violence related to the Shining Path uprising, in particular the mass-rapes used by the army as a military strategy. The title refers to the folk belief that women so abused would pass the trauma and fear to their children through breast milk.

3. A Prophet (Un Prophète)



A French Arab moves up into the mafia after being sentenced to six years in mafia-run prison. This is my favorite trailer of the five, if that counts for anything.

4. The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)


An Argentine Justice Agent looks back to try and solve a 25 year old murder case, in a film that looks very sweeping and traditionally Oscarish.

5. The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)


A village in pre-WWI Germany is beset by a rash of unexplained crimes. And even though this is the favorite for the Oscar (based on its Golden Globe win and nomination for cinematography), I will never see it, because Michael Haneke's films rub me the wrong way.

Spoiler Alert: you will never get answers to any mystery raised in The White Ribbon. None. You'll just get long, suffocating shots that make you claustrophobic, people awkwardly staring at each other, and heavy-handed metaphors about purity. I can say all this without needing to watch more than the trailer.

ETA: I'm abruptly switching my pick to Un Prophete on the basis of the Cesar awards and this category never going as planned. You think it'll be Waltz With Bashir? Nope: Departures. Pan's Labyrinth looks like a sure thing? Nope: The Lives Of Others. And so on.