Kinematoscope

And now the big one itself. After covering them in depth elsewhere, let's just briefly list them in reverse order of likelihood.

10. The Blind Side

Quick, what's the only Best Picture nominee without any acting or writing nominations? If you said The Blind Side, you're wrong- it's Avatar, come on. But with only Sandra Bullock's likely win behind it, The Blind Side looks like this year's mediocre film that rode one actress to knocking more deserving fare out of the BP race (last year it was The Reader- heyo!).

9. A Serious Man

Do you think the Coens are starting to wonder if they should try adapting preexisting works more often? Even with a warm critical reception, their ode to late 60s Minneapolis suburban Judaism is an also-ran this year.

7-8. Up, An Education

Thanks for playing, animated films. We'll take you seriously someday. And British films without royalty of some kind? Get real.

6. District 9

In a perfect world, this would be toe-to-toe with Avatar for matching its technical acheivements with, you know, being well-told. But again, we can't all have $150 Milllion promotional budgets.

4-5. Up In The Air, Precious

Can't decide which erstwhile front-runner has fallen into fifth place after looking like a sure thing in September and October, respectively.

3. Inglourious Basterds

What if you make your "masterpiece" and it's just not good enough? Will Tarantino sob quiet at home?

2. Avatar

There seems to be a late swell of supposed support for the juggernaut sci-fi film, but does anyone really want to hear Cameron speak? Ever?

1. The Hurt Locker

It just feels right.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

It was solidly entertaining and "important," like a fine Oscar-flavored wine. Even as someone let go at the beginning of 2008 due to the down economy, I didn't find the firing interviews intercut with the main story all that moving, but the stars and the even-handed direction make it a worthy effort.

George Clooney in particular is his usual self, which is a blessing for the film overall, but a little bit of a hindrance for the character- does anyone really buy that someone so seemingly mature would be hung up on collecting airline miles? I didn't, and the early-film petulance as Ryan Bingham tried to cling to his solitary way of life rang a little false as well. But Clooney, the eternal bachelor, was of course the perfect choice to play the second half of the film as he contemplates coming down to earth.

Would I See It Again?

I think so- the supporting cast, especially Anna Kendrick, make it worth repeat viewings, and I find the subtle Rolfe Kent score growing on me. Reitman knows, of course, how to find a catchy soundtrack, and found airports fertile ground for memorable images.

Again, I could care less about the idea of being fired. Most of the victims in the film are shrugged off as soon as they leave the screen, except for one late breaking revelation (mild spoiler) about a woman who commits suicide, an element seemingly played for laughs and then mined for underserved pathos.

Other than Jason Bateman's well=played sleazeball, there's nothing really gained from the entire premise. But everyone is just so damn likeable, and Young MC randomly shows up!



What Did It Acheive?

Around the time of the Toronto film festival, it looked like Up In The Air was the clear Best Picture frontrunner, and Clooney was on the was to his second Oscar. The tides clearly have changed since, as Bridges will win easily, and voters loved The Hurt Locker and District 9 so much they forgot to even nominate Up In The Air for Editing (a deathblow).

But Reitman is now in the critical stratosphere, having moved from farce (Thank You For Smoking) and tweeness (Juno) into Serious Oscar Movies. Kendrick should get work outside of Twilight sequels for sure, and Farmiga can add Oscar nominee to her growing resume. Clooney- he was already a huge likeable star.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

Whether it worked for me or not, the employment crisis angle lends a lot of timeliness to Up In The Air that will fix it in memory. It's also somewhat universal for anyone who's ever traveled alone. It hits a lot of cliches (a groom with cold feet? Really?) but has the right cast and director to hit them very well.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

We're well past the point that we should just amend the dictionery to contain:

Pixarian- adj.- of consistently superior quality.
The ballplayer put up winningly Pixarian numbers from season to season.

Up continues the 10 film winning streak, this time all the way to the Best Picture race. The story is whimsically simple, something of a regression from recent concepts like Wall-E and Ratatouille: widower grows cranky, leaves society by tying balloons to his house.

My verdict was good, not great.

Would I See It Again?

Sure, I guess- I actually put it on my Christmas list before seeing it on blnd faith, and I can't say I'm dissapointed.

It's just a bit of a letdown after Wall-E, a film that deserved a Best Picture nomination last year even before the expansion, given the field (cough). And although the image of the house is unique and the animation splendid as always, it's by far the most pedestrian Pixar concept so far: the list goes toys come to life, bugs run a circus, toys come to life again, monsters harvest screams for power, clown fish loses son, superheroes faced with lawsuit, talking car gets lost, rat wants to cook, last robot on earth falls in love, and then... old man is cranky?

And the characters aren't terribly rich, either. As wonderful as the opening montage of Carl's lifetime with his wife was, he's a pretty generic cranky-old-dude archetype for the rest of the film. His little sidekick Russel is a pretty run of the mill annoying kid, until some revelations about his parents' divorce halfway through.



What Did It Acheive?

Second highest grossing Pixar film, and of course along with Avatar the first animated Best Picture nominee since Beauty And The Beast. And we all know that it's bringing in the fifth Animated Feature Oscar on March 7th.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

I did see, at some point, Pete Docter's other Pixar collaboration, Monsters, Inc., but I find my memories of it very sketchy. So I'll have to get back to you. Though only a few moments in Up made me roll my eyes as much as Billy Crystal's tired Vaudevillian schtick (namely when the dogs played poker and obvious gags like the GPS falling).

Maybe it doesn't help that it's the first Pixar movie with human protagonists, as I found myself wondering a lot of pragmatic questions, about how long it would take to float to South America and so forth. Pixar's great at animals and robots, but it might still be south of the uncanny valley for humanfolk.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

There's a moment in A Serious Man when Michael Stuhlbarg, as a put-upon Jewish physics professor with his life falling apart, goes to the second of three rabbis for counsel. The rabbi tells him a story of a dentist confronted with a bewildering mystery, one that turned out to have no answer. A frustrated Stuhlbarg asks "Why even tell me the story?!"

As much as I like the Coen Bros., I have to say: seconded.

A Serious Man is executed well, and clearly complete in its nostalgia for the suburbs of Minneapolis in 1967, but I was sort of left wondering why we were bothering to visit. There are questions raised, but little pontificating and no answers at all.

The "black comedy" seems to be mostly terrible things happening to Stuhlbarg's character, as well as interminably long pacing while we wait for old Jewish people to speak- a very similar scene late in Intolerable Cruelty makes me think the Coens and I differ greatly in how funny we think old men wheezing for breath happen to be.

Would I See It Again?

Nyet. No thank you, I'm afraid. Is this the license the Coen brothers are granted after winning four Oscars apiece? An inscrutable labor of love to their own childhoods that's as dour and humorless as they seem to be in interviews?

It would help if the film were focused to Stuhlbarg alone, but several scenes follow his pothead son about to have his bar mitzvah- I can't think of any reason the story necessitates that we follow him at all, other than that the directors were about his age at the time that's depicted.



What Did It Acheive?

Well, 87% of critics disagree with me in general, according to Rotten Tomatoes, and enough AMPAS voters as well. And beyond any issues I had, it's certainly a finely crafted movie, with Roger Deakins beautiful framing and the ever popular "Roderick Jaynes" cutting together one great sequence in the middle (during the second rabbi's story).

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

Not in particular. Maybe it would speak to me more if I were religious myself, but I found it empty.

Sure, there's a universal idea there- as Stuhlbarg says, "Why Me?" But I get enough of that movie outside of the theater.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

It was certainly quite the acting showcase, if nothing else. Gabourey Sidibe more than earns a lead actress nomination, and nearly every scene Mo'Nique is in leads to one of those patented Oscar Moments that pave the way to an unstoppable awards run.

Lee Daniels sets a sort of frenetic early pace that really makes it seem like the second half of the film is dragging, but I can see why Precious: Based on that film "Push" that had Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning earned an editing nomination over Up In The Air.

The story itself is almot pathologically relentless- it got to the point where (spoiler) after the late revelation that Precious also has AIDS I was kind of throwing up my hands. What is this, "RENT"? It might have been less of an extreme pile-up if Daniels hadn't made the travails of the beginning so thoroughly in our faces. Between the fluttering images, rapid Requiem For A Dream-style edits, and horror-film flashbacks, it's hard to have anything left for the home stretch.

Would I See It Again?

I'm going to abstain- even the dramas that leave me utterly speechless are things I'm unlikely to watch again. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think I missed much the first time around.

The thing is, Precious: Based on the "Push" Sign Often Seen On Doors wants to have it several ways at once: powerful character drama, light-hearted coming of age story, and wry social commentary (Precious has several fantasy sequences of being a model or movie star that jar with the rest of the movie).



What Did It Acheive?

A best picture nomination is no small feat for an indie movie about uncomfortable subjects (and we all know that Precious: Based on the song "Push" by Matchbox Twenty is one of the five "real" nominees).

Time will tell if it launches careers, but it certainly has one Oscar in the bag as of yesterday.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

I'll certainly carry the viewing experience longer than most other films, and I'm always happy with clunky titles.

I mean, Precious: Based on a Tie in the Game Of Blackjack is the best title since The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford!

One more note: Paula Patton plays a pretty standard heart-of-gold teacher very well, but the real supporting turn I was impressed with? Mariah Carey summons up a gravelly voice and an odd wig and puts in a few great scenes as a prickly social worker. She wasn't all that likeable, but she seemed like a real person that wanted to help. The movie ends with a key confrontation scene between the two leads, but Carey's mediating presence in that scene is important.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

Plenty of fun, easy to forget is the best way to describe it. It's like somebody asked Quentin Tarantino "if you could time travel, what would you do first?" and instead of just saying "I'd kill Hitler" like a normal person he went and made this movie instead.

It's full of some labored pacing, in my opinion- at this point, hasn't QT done enough Mexican standoffs? Enough tension filled conversations in which double agents are desperate not to be discovered?

But that's just his style, I guess.

Would I See It Again?

Just watched it for the second time, and found it just as much fun, I'd say. It helps, in certain situations, to know that Jews are hiding under floorboards the whole time, or to know that the bar scene won't go on forever.

Though there's no way to replicate the first time you see it and (spoilers from here) Hitler and Goebbels are riddled with bullets. It sort of makes you realize that movies aren't beholden to reality, which I suppose should be obvious to begin with, but hey.

Take Valkyrie, based on a real-life failed plot to kill Hitler. Basterds I think relies on the same exact tension until the final fifteen minutes or so, when it just goes "Psych!" and everything explodes brilliantly.

Not sure if I need to own it, though- it's got some annoying Tarantino quirks that I've never really been down for. The title, which he's referred to as both "a Basquiat-esque touch" and the "Tarantino way of spelling it," is just ridiculous to me. If there is an explanation, no doubt it's more pointless than withholding the name of The Bride in the Kill Bill movies. Hans Landa, while I loved Christoph Waltz's portrayal, is a character that can only exist in Tarantino-world, making us listen to him chew things and take forever to get to the point at every opportunity.



What Did It Acheive?

Well, it's the most profitable and lauded Tarantino film to date, and it's definitely a dark horse for Best Picture. It's easy to think it would have a real chance at winning if the camera panned up whenever they were scalping people, or if Samuel L. Jackson didn't randomly narrate flashbacks from time to time.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

Brad Pitt ends the film as a mouthpiece for Tarantino, claiming "this might just be my masterpiece," but I can't say I agree. It's fun, sure, and I liked it.

But it's just a little on the surface for me. Though it's told chronologically, it's still split into five parts, and each one is either a tense standoff or a melee- things like characterization happen in between all these moments. I could've standed to lose one subplot or another to actually build up the others.

And there's no morality here- it's basically Godwin's law made into a film. Only Waltz is frightening, and he jumps at the chance to betray the rest of the Nazis, who to a man are incompetent, buffoonish, and shrieking cowards. I expected them to start stepping on rakes and falling down stairs. It makes the potshots taken at the Third Reich's propoganda films seem a little hypocritical.

Goebbels in particular is portrayed as a simpering egomaniac that's convinced he's creating the future of cinema- maybe it's just me, but doesn't that stray a little bit into self-parody?

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

Oh man was it good. Seriously, you should go rent it. After countless Iraq war films, we finally found the right combination of narrative hook (following an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit from bomb to bomb) and perfect director (Kathryn Bigelow, who knows her way around the right amount of fear, thrills, and action).

The result? A tense, quick, terrifying trip to Iraq- one without any sort of "message" beyond taking us to the forefront of the new kind of war. It helps that the leads are virtually unknown- Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty all do such great work it's easy to miss cameos by Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, and Evangeline Lilly.

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Would I See It Again?

In fact I just watched it on DVD for the second time, after seeing it in theaters in August- I was mildly concerned that it wouldn't pack the same punch, since I knew what would explode and what wouldn't, but that just made it more gripping, somehow.

The episodic plot leads to so many memorable moments, and the fact that it's so true-to-life makes them stick with you. You know what I felt when Home Tree fell in Avatar? Not a thing. But when Renner pulls a wire and six IEDs shake out of the dirt all around him, my stomach dropped into my shoes.

Watching it again with all of the Oscar nominations in mind gave me an appreciation of the craftsmanship as well (the first time I was too busy being all like "No WAY!" and stuff). The surprise nomination of the score seems right on to me- it was half dissonant tones blended with engine noises, sirens, and car horns, and it even had a recurring vaguely western theme if you listen for it.

Shots are framed with smoke and fire- The Hurt Locker moves from garbage strewn city streets to arid desert to a harrowing night seamlessly- only when Renner's character returns to the states does the world seem alien.



What Did It Acheive?

Financially, not that much- though robust DVD sales are encouraging, The Hurt Locker would be the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner ever (which would make Avatar the highest-grossing loser, natch).

But it's a masterpiece of filmmaking, and should lead to huge career boosts for Renner, Mackie, and especially Bigelow regardless of what it wins or loses. I mean, her last movie was K-19: The Widowmaker!

And I'm trying not to take it personally, but a victory over Avatar would be a triumph of the critical success over the popular consensus, and I'm all for it. If I want the biggest ticket to win every time, I'll just watch the Grammys.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

And how. I was astonished when I wrote the Sound Mixing category preview, how many specific scenes I remembered before I had even re-watched it. The individual subplots might not be terribly complex- Geraghty's in particular has the most predictable outcome in one late scene- but they're really just incidental to the experience of the film, if that makes sense.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

I'd give it a solid three stars. A remarkable ensemble cast gets lots of mileage from Nick Hornby's script- a script that's decidely unhornbian, really.

Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Peter Saarsgard, Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike all put in memorable turns around Carey Mulligan's powerful lead performance. Emma Thompson even pops up for three scenes as the school headmistress.

Lone Sherfig's direction is solid, if not visually memorable. I did enjoy the score by the appropriately-named Paul Englishby.

Would I See It Again?

Probably not, though I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to avoid it. That's not necessarily a knock against the film- well realized coming of age stories just don't make up a large part of my dvd library, except for the Harry Potter series.

Maybe if I were more of an Anglophile I'd want a copy of it for the period setting, the vintage cars and old teacups and school uniforms. There's a certain Londonness to it that you have to admire- constant rain, a grey palette, a longing for Paris that everyone seems to share (or at least everyone we're supposed to like).

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What Did It Acheive?

Primarily it launched Carey Mulligan to stardom, and perhaps elevated Nick Hornby to legit screenwriter status, but the latter was seemingly inevitable. And fans of "Bleak House" tell me so was the former.

It also snuck into the Best Picture race, of course, thanks to the new Rule of Ten, giving it three nominations and the ability to slap it on the DVD case in deceiving font sizes (e. g. "3 Academy Award nominations including BEST PICTURE").

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

A vague sense, I'm sure- though exact quotes are already slipping from my mind. I'm probably being unfair to how straight it was played: Nick Hornby is an idol of mine, and his work led to certain witty expectations.

One of the things I liked best about it sort of hurts it in this regard- it seemed real. The girl and her parents, the mature way people dealt with each other- even late film revelations are handled with a minimum of dramatic "Oscar scene" moments. Which is great, but not earth shattering. As much as I resent plot twists and "For Your Consideration" freakouts for the sake of themselves, they do stick in the mind a little better than things that could actually happen to people. Does that make any sense?

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

For a largely unheralded August action-flick, it was pretty awesome. It starts out in the very trendy as-of-late documentary format- like a big-budget episode of The Office, only about the inner workings of the Alien Affairs department of MNU.

Copley was a welcome surprise, bringing gravitas to what sounds like it could be a very campy role- that is, (spoiler) slowly transforming into an alien. The aliens are well-realized CGI, with what sounds like a language all their own. Sure, the reasons they were there, leaderless, and unable to leave for the entire time were sketchy and unexplained, but it was worth it to get compelling extra-terrestrials who don't actually look that human for once (unlike James "she's gotta have tits" Cameron's attitude in Avatar).

The second half devolves into a splatterfest, sure, but if you can stomach it it's pretty emotionally satisfying. And the ending is the first Obvious Sequel Set-Up that's excited me in quite a while.

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Would I See It Again?

Check, and check. There's not a whole lot to be gleaned on repeat viewings, but it's still compelling and fun. The calibre of the nominations it recieved speak clearly to its quality: Picture, Editing, and Screenplay.

I'm on board for the DVD, and a potential District 10.

What Did It Acheive?

First, the budget: District 9 proved you can match things like G. I. Joe by spending just $30 Million, if you spend it wisely, and tell a smart story.

But here's the thing: I like this film a lot on its merits, but I wasn't taken by the political allegory. Yes, it parallels the events of apartheid, in particular the mass eviction from "District Six." But it doesn't really have much to add.

It has some clear bad feelings about xenophobia and government reliance on corporate militias, but not much beyond that those things suck.

And the racial undertones are a huge mixed bag- why are the aliens, the stand-in for the black population of the apartheid era, explicitly described as aimless, unintelligent, and worker-drone types? Why are the Nigerian gangs violent, voodoo-practicing cannibals?

But still, when the big ship started to move, I was like "Awe. Some." And I was at rapt attention.



Will I Remember It Years From Now?

And then some. If nothing else, it corrected my tragic lack of knowledge about South Africa under apartheid (yeah, I bet I'm not the only one to Wikipedia it right after getting out of the theater. Just saying.).

It's a shame that it's clearly not a player in Picture, Visual Effects, or Adapted Screenplay next month, and it would be a huge upset for it to win Editing. But this is the kind of thing people were excited about the expansion to 10 nominees for in the first place: the oddball films about aliens and things that normally get forgotten.

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

You know what? It was a lot better than I thought.

While there are some big issues with selective white blindness going on with this film, and indeed it carries a condescending tone overall, the performances actually shine through about 75% of the time. It led to an affecting story, and I'd say an effective movie overall.

That doesn't erase the clumsy way it handles an entire half of the city of Memphis (apparently you cross some line in the middle and go straight from mansionland to a crime-infested hood) and the backstory of its central character (I mean its central non-Sandra-Bullock character of course).

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Would I See It Again?

Nope. Not much below the surface of this one, despite all of the things it had going for it- especially Carter Burwell's restrained score.

It's a shame that while The Blind Side crosses $240 million at the box office, the VERY tonally similar and far superior tv show Friday Night Lights had to be saved from cancellation by DirecTV, and will get terrible ratings when it finally airs on NBC this summer.

The fourth season of that show features a shift in focus to the less affluent part of a smaller town, but it manages to tone down the contrast between the holy American-dreaminess of the football field and the seeming hellishness of urban living.

The Blind Side, despite touching characters, glides through this disparity only quick enough to make it seem nearly incontrivertably huge. The rest of the film is just a fish-out-of-water story, with some maudlin southern sentimentalism bleeding in here and there.

So no, not going on the shelf.



What Did It Acheive?

Other than to push Sandra Bullock toward a little gold statuette, not much.

And look, I don't care how much of the story is true. I'm sure Michael Lewis' book is great, but we're talking about Best Picture here. Being true doesn't get you anywhere with me. There's a book and a screenplay in probably half of the NFL Draft picks each year, if only because suceeding in sports is such a quintessentially American fable. But beyond a bookending voice-over by Bullock that feebly attempts to relate the importance of the starting left tackle (who protects a right-handed quarterback's blind side) to the themes of the film, The Blind Side doesn't really aspire to be more than about a family.

I suppose its prolonged box-office success is also an acheivement, one much heralded as a triumph for a humble little film that focuses on "family values" and so forth. And while it appeals to Christian values (when the Touhy's take Michael Oher in), name drops the NRA, and has a sly wink to George W. Bush, it doesn't get anywhere near polemic. The most charged moment in the film, on a left/right scale, is when Kathy Bates' character (a private tutor) admits that she's a democrat as if she's confessing to killing a man.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

If it wins Best Picture, I sure will, but otherwise it will likely fade into a quiet oblivion. Sandra Bullock might not be the best of the five nominees (it's the only performance I've seen so far, but I'd put money on Helen Mirren anyday), but it wouldn't bother me if she won.

If I re-watched The Blind Side, I suspect I might grow much more impatient with its racial politics and "aw-shucks" narrow vision, but for now it's hard to dislike all that much.

Still, we couldn't have nominated Star Trek instead?

A ten part series on the Best Picture nominees, structured around four basic questions.

Was It Any Good?

Well...I guess it was. If that seems reluctant, it's because I'm not sure if I saw it because I wanted to, or because I knew the rest of the world was going to see it, AMPAS included.

It's entertaining, sure, if overlong, stilted, cliche-ridden and stuffed with weird racial undertones. For all the cynicism with which I watched it the first time, I was noticably rooting for the good guys in the climactic showdown- mostly because the under-mentioned Stephen Lang played such a greatly cartoonish villain.

But "good"? Meh. Since comparisons to Titanic are clearly impossible to avoid: the second half breakdowns of both films are impressive, but Avatar manages to make Titanic's first half look like a master case of nuanced storytelling.

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Would I See It Again?

Full disclosure: I saw it twice. Once, I snuck into a 2D showing after I saw Sherlock Holmes around Christmas. Then, after weeks after record paying grosses and everyone saying how the 3D effects were the BEST THING EVER OMG, I went out to AMC and caught the IMAX 3D "Experience."

Do I plan on buying it? Not at all. Would I watch it again on cable? If there were nothing else on. For all the wow-factor of the effects (even if 3D someday becomes commonplace in a home theater setting), the story is only as compelling as any run-of-the-mill actioner.



What Did It Acheive?

I'm not going to argue with the momentousness of the work that went into Avatar. They created an entire virtual world, revolutionized motion capture, Jim Cameron invented a new type of camera or something and grew six extra arms over the course of shooting.

I guess my real question is: how impressive is all that measured against the current field of CGI ubiquitousness? It's everywhere, and pretty soon 3D is going to be everywhere too.

To use a sports anaolgy, is Avatar Babe Ruth, head and shoulders above the field, or is it Barry Bonds, hitting home runs only slightly more often in a juiced-up field? Clearly it's paving the way for hugely successful 3D block-busters to be commonplace, but in 2D it didn't impress me in any unusual way.

I wish the Special Effects artists well at the Oscars, and I hope they're working on speeches already. But all the bells and whistles in the world don't make up for weak storytelling, not when it's Oscar-time.

Will I Remember It Years From Now?

I will, but for mixed reasons. It's visually striking and technologically memorable, but it has some easy pop-culture punchlines that will follow it, from the "Pocahontas with blue people" plot to (sigh) "unobtainium."

I'll remember the Avatar/Hurt Locker, Cameron/Bigelow Oscar narrative more than Avatar itself, especially watching Cameron give speeches and self-implode any goodwill he might've had brewing.

But Avatar isn't going to be treated well in my memory, and sadly, it's making Titanic look better and better all the time.

So as you may have heard, yesterday the Oscars (or AMPAS, if you prefer) announced the decision to increase the field of Best Picture nominations from five to ten.

With various reactions around the internet (Spout always does a great job rounding up the consensus), I find myself mostly liking the idea. Why, you ask? Let’s make a list.

1. Nothing Should Get Skipped Over Now, Finally

Right?

Some years we’re lucky enough to get well more than five films that deserve inclusion, but usually we only see three of them make it, while the rest get skipped over for whatever the studios have politicked into the field (like The Reader last year, or Juno the year before).

Now, theoretically, nothing should be relegated to the perennial sixth contender.

2. The Ratings For The Telecast Could Improve

Everyone seems to think this move is in response to the outrage over The Dark Knight’s snub last year, but honestly anyone who was really mad about it was probably the type of person who still watched the Oscars anyway (like I was, and did).

I would bet that this is more of an inclusive way to cast a wider net for the telecast- if they were worried about just certain films getting overlooked, they could have gone with six or seven nominations, or made the number conditional on some sort of voting rubric (both of which make more sense than randomly doubling the total).

But by increasing it to ten, AMPAS is more or less guaranteeing that a random moviegoer will have seen at least one of them.

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3. It Doesn’t Really “Dilute The Prestige” Of A Nomination

Just saying. Actual films nominated for Best Picture since 1990: Ghost, The Godfather Part III, Scent Of A Woman, Four Weddings And A Funeral, Babe, Jerry Maguire, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, In The Bedroom, The Hours, Seabiscuit, Ray, Sideways, Crash, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, and The Reader.

Now, clearly this is all my opinion, but not one of those screams “Best Picture” to me, even though they’re pretty good (except Crash and The Godfather Part III, which are awful by all accounts).

If you insist on thinking that a nomination is now half as noteworthy, then at least undeserving nominees are only half as egregious. Those who have the free time already decide which of the five nominees are also-rans as soon as the field is announced, now they just have five more to add to that list.

4. It Makes Me More Excited For This Year’s Oscars

Hey, it’s the first time since Casablanca that this has happened! At least it’s novel. Plus, with no frontrunner at this early stage, it’s fun to imagine the possibilities. As many speculate, this seems to push things like Star Trek and Up into the “likely contenders” category, instead of crowd pleasers that would certainly have been neglected.

Now I have to completely revise my likely Best Picture nominees list, which has just been in my head until now. For fun, here it is after yesterday, in no particular order:

Invictus (Eastwood film about Nelson Mandela)
The Informant (Soderbergh film starring Matt Damon)
Shutter Island (Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio)
The Road (Pulitzer-winning book made Viggo Mortensen movie)
Biutiful (Javier Bardem starrer from the director of Babel)
Star Trek
Up
Broken Embraces (Almodovar/Penelope Cruz collaboration du jour)
Brothers (Jake Gylenhaal vehicle from the director of In America)
Avatar (James Cameron’s new Sci Fi epic).

And I had to actually look things up to think of ten! That’s the crazy part. This is to say nothing of films that I am iffy about (for BP, anyway) that become contenders if the reviews are good, like Public Enemies, The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Lovely Bones, Nine (the musical, not the CGI rag-doll apocalypse thing)- and even the crazy longshot odds for Where The Wild Things Are must’ve just doubled.

So you’ve got a tentative thumbs up from me, Academy, but I was already gonna watch anyway. Hopefully such a major move makes you less afraid to overhaul categories that need it even more, like Original Song, Original Score, and Foreign Film.

My only real “aw” thought is how sad it is for the entire field in 2007, the only year that I’ve been following this stuff that could’ve sustained ten real nominees. You had the Academy’s five, which included two masterpieces (No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood), one near-masterpiece (Atonement), an awesome throwback thriller (Michael Clayton) and the fun but happy-to-be-there Juno. But it was such a great year that it would have been nice to add The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Sweeney Todd, Zodiac, Away From Her, and something actually popular like The Bourne Ultimatum or Ratatouille.

Ironic that I am about to defend a movie which contains a trial.

I am a huge fan of The Reader. I saw it multiple times. I purchased the soundtrack. I read the book – though that was before the movie came out. I think it deserves any accolades it receives, I feel that it should have received more Academy Award nominations, and I feel that it will be rewarded on Oscar Night. I thought so well of it, I placed it in the two spot on my top ten of the year.

However, The Reader has been met with much criticism and tends to divide people into “love it” or “hate it” categories. While it is understandable that people will not have the same reaction to a film, has a film in recent memory been so polarizing? Why do people take great issue with the film?

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One issue that I discussed is the ambiguity that exists in the film and how it makes Germans seem less culpable for their crimes during World War II. Ron Rosenbaum and Rob Lurie saw that film is a “revisionist” (Rosenbaum, 2009) account of Germany during and post-World War II. Rosenbaum critiques Hanna as being overly “sympathetic” (Rosenbaum, 2009) and chastises Daldry’s depiction of nudity in the film.

Rosenbaum goes on to call The Reader “the worst Holocaust film ever made” (Rosenbaum, 2009). His concern about a New York Times article depicting Hanna as someone who overcomes a disability is not without merit because of a poorly constructed page layout by the Times.

I found Rosenbaum’s treatment of The Reader to be overly harsh. He does not like the film, which is fine with me. I wholly understand that every film is not going to be enjoyed by all. I understand that Mr. Rosenbaum read the film much differently than I did. However, what I find hurtful and negligent on his behalf is the use of hyperbole – he called The Boys in the Striped Pajamas “the worst Holocaust film ever made” earlier this year and he called Life Is Beautiful “disgusting” upon its release ten years ago – and the fact that he does not mention countering viewpoints in his article. That is his editorial decision, but I find the argument poorly constructed because he also proclaims that Hanna’s character would not be able to exist because SS Propaganda was distributed through Der Stϋrmer, making it impossible for Hanna to be illiterate (Rosenbaum, 2009). His argument is undermined by Rob Lurie who acknowledges that there might have been circumstances allowing for a few Hannas to be illiterate and function in the SS (Lurie, 2009).

A few days after Rosenbaum’s article, Rob Lurie wrote an article for The Huffington Post where he takes issue with The Reader. Lurie’s article works much better because he engages opposing viewpoints and makes some concessions. Lurie acknowledges the film as “well made” (Lurie, 2009) and finds Winslet and Kross’ performances “nuanced” and “well developed” (Lurie, 2009).

Lurie’s concern was that film would give “ammunition to Holocaust nay-sayers” (Lurie, 2009) and the omission of the “postwar awareness” (Lurie, 2009) affects the outcome of the film.

While I disagree with Lurie’s initial concern about The Reader becoming a flag-bearer for Holocaust doubters, I find his concern about the film’s omission of Hanna reading Holocaust Literature – as her character does in the novel – compelling.

I find the omission acceptable. The film is attempting to get away from the novel in some respects for thematic purposes. Perhaps it was best summarized by Erica Abeel of IndieWire. In an interview with Stephen Daldry regarding the film, she states: “Rather than viewing it as inferior or equal to its source material, it deserves to be viewed simply as a freestanding creation: provocative and likely to divide viewers, affecting, and exquisitely filmed in hues that capture the quality of memory.” (Abeel, 2009) This statement coincides with the concept that Daldry, David Hare, and Bernard Schlink were going for. Schlink said that, “voiceovers are a cop out” (Abeel, 2009) and worked extensively with Daldry in Hare in creating the film.

Though there was a disagreement, the omission of Hanna reading the works of Primo Levi and other Holocaust survivors (more on this later), Schlink is happy with the end product and has been on tour promoting the film. If the author of the book is content with the changing of the message – which took persuading from Daldry and Hare based on the notion that the viewer will arrive in the same location of the reader of his book – then why is the audience allowed to take issue with it? The author ultimately gave his blessing, allowing for the omission of Holocaust literature because the book and film are not actually Holocaust works.

Schlink himself has said the novel is about “German guilt” (Rotten Tomatoes, 2009) and Brad Brevet eloquently explains that “The Reader is not a Holocaust movie” (Brevet, 2009). The film is about moral dilemmas that must be resolved between people and within people.

The film is about two people who cannot identify with who they are, come to terms with who they are, and are adversely affected by it. Hanna’s illiteracy is not solely lacking the ability to read. Abeel and Brevet stated in their articles that her illiteracy is compounded by her inability to express herself and that she is “emotionally illiterate” (Abeel, 2009) as well. This internal confusion and fear that resides within Hanna is superbly drawn out by Winslet’s haunting performance.

However, Winslet is not the only character with issues. Michael lacks the maturity in the first two acts of the film and the emotional capacity in the last act to define himself. Early on in the film, Michael loves Hanna after merely three weeks. Yet, that love is actually reciprocated by Hanna, and not just through sexual means. Michael gives a teary speech where he says, “I can’t live without you. The thought of you leaving kills me. Do you love me?” It was not until the second time that I noticed it, but Hanna nods. Again, she is crippled by her inability to come to terms with her emotions, yet Michael’s are so manic because of his lack of worldly experience.

The middle act shows Hanna again being unable to cope with the internal conflict that resides inside of her. She cannot face having the world know she is illiterate. While Rosenbaum was quick to equivocate, “She would rather go to prison for murdering 300 people than admitting she cannot read” (Rosenbaum, 2009). Brevet points out that Rosenbaum’s article is “filled with such snarky, passivity, and deep seeded hatred” (Brevet, 2009) that he is not watching the film and attempting to judge it on its merits. The message the film conveys is not as blunt or trivial as Rosenbaum would have the reader believe, but about “German guilt” (Rotten Tomatoes, 2009) as Daldry, Hare, and Schlink have stated.

To summarize it, The Reader is truly not meant to be viewed as a Holocaust film. If someone views it as such, the film will fail her or him.

Roger Ebert pondered,

“Is The Reader a Holocaust movie? No. In terms of its two central characters, it is a movie about lacking the courage to speak when we should. That’s something I think we all can identify with.” (Ebert, 2009)

Mr. Ebert, who I have a tumultuous relationship/understanding with, put it simply what the movie is meant to be about.

I think the movie is technologically sound and well-crafted. The cinematography, art direction, and costumes are top notch. I felt Nico Muhly’s score was egregiously overlooked during the nomination process because it is the most beautiful score of 2008. I feel that Daldry’s direction is purposeful, method, and has achieves a grand level of success. More over, I feel that Winslet’s performance was nothing short of stellar.

Claudia Puig of USAToday wrote in her review of The Reader that “a tale of eroticism, secrecy, and guilt is bound to stir discussion” (Puig, 2009). The filmmakers have achieved this by the praise and criticism the film has received.

My concern is that people are too often looking for the superficial when it comes to a film because they want to escape. Like Lena Olin says in The Reader “if you seek catharsis, go to the theatre.” However, most people want to be entertained. I will admit The Reader will not have the same thrills as The Dark Knight. It will not have the feel good story that Slumdog Millionaire has. The Reader offers an exploration into human emotion: how we connect, disconnect, lie, do not do the right thing, feel guilty, and feel remorseless. Sometimes that can be more profound than anything else, the identification with another on film because that may be how we feel too.

I am not trying to equivocate all this in direct comparison with the Holocaust because, again, The Reader is not about the Holocaust. I am not trivializing the “greatest trauma of the 20th century” (Spiegelman, 1998) by making it seem simple. I speak about the content of a book and film and how the two central characters in it can be made people that an audience can identify with.

In the end, The Reader does leave the viewer with a lot of questions, but they are the types of questions that have a great affect on the viewer.

Part Five of a Five Part series previewing the Best Picture nominees.

I have a love-hate relationship with Roger Ebert’s work. It is really more hate than love, but he does make some statements that I completely agree with. Pulp Fiction was the Best Picture of 1994? Agreed. However, he does make some ridiculous ones as well that leave me shaking my head in disbelief. When I read Ebert’s proclamation that "Slumdog Millionaire was the Best Picture of the year and will undoubtedly receive a lot of attention come Oscar time." I found myself skeptical and weary of that statement, especially after reading a synopsis of the film.

So, the expectations were very high when I saw the film on rather crowded opening night at the Downer Theatre on Milwaukee's east side.

After seeing the film, I walked away from Slumdog Millionaire looking for greatness. As a stand alone movie it is good, but it was not great. The intangibles that make so many movies great – a fantastic performance, the dialogue, music, whatever – were not present. How could this movie fail to live up to the hype even though it had received near universal acclaim?

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Is the soundtrack electrifying? Yes, one of the ten best of the year. A. R. Rahman’s score is high energy when it needs to be, somber at the right moments, and has some great songs. Danny Boyle’s love for music is evident in his willingness to let Rahman compose and perform the music.

How about the performances in the film? They left me unmoved to the point that I was glad when they finally moved from the small children to the teenagers merely because it was something new. Admittedly, I found Dev Patel’s wide-eyed, innocent performance fun, but I think it loses some value for me because he – as in Dev Patel – is experiencing through the actual experience of making a feature film. The small children? Cute at times, though I felt like the children were not being allowed to act. The teenagers? Indifferent. If you are going to have rambunctious, murdering teenagers, take a page out of the City of God playbook. I almost wanted to laugh when a teenage boy shots a man in the head during a confrontation. I just was not buying it.

The cinematography was good in the film. I felt that it does not merit a place among the best of the year, but it was very good considering the array of the color palate the film was working with.

What about Danny Boyle’s direction? Out of the five Best Picture nominees this year, this film clearly has its director’s fingerprints all over it. You can almost feel Danny Boyle’s energy on the screen. However, how much of it was really him? If he co-directed the film with a person from India, while on location in India, how much of it is really him? I want to believe that it is him – all of it – but I wonder. The DGA is usually so critical of directors who attempt to do co-directed pieces. In 2005, when Robert Rodriguez said he wanted to give Frank Miller a co-direction credit on Sin City, the DGA told him, “No.” Rodriguez ended up quitting from the guild because of the politics and rigid rules. So, how does Slumdog work its way around that?

Is there anything that I actually enjoyed, aside from the music and camerawork? I enjoyed Simon Beaufoy’s script. I think it was a good adaptation, I think that is worked to the best of its abilities.

To me, the movie fails to live up to the hype and it falls short of great. It services as a functional film that screams to the audience, “Hey! Do you know about India? No!? Well, here you go!” It focuses on the stringent caste system of India, which is enlightening, but not revelatory. Class systems have existed and still do exist, so for people to call it “searing” is a bit over the top. The movie seems mesmerized by incorporating the Taj Mahal, but then turning the rest of the country into stereotypical Asian mainland – bustling, crowded, polluted.

In ten years, people will reflect upon these Oscars. I think this award season – not the show itself, but the season – will remain in everyone’s mind for two reasons: One, the lack of The Dark Knight in consideration for Best Picture, Best Director, etc. Two, the fact that Slumdog Millionaire has not aged very well as a Best Picture winner. I feel that anyone of the other nominees, save Frost/Nixon, will have aged and matured better than Slumdog Millionaire. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, and The Reader may be remembered for their faults, their performances, and a slew of other ideas, but they will have aged better.

It is like reflecting on the 1997 Oscars. Sure, Titanic may have been the Best Picture of that year, but was it really? In hindsight, and some separation, was L.A. Confidential not the Best Picture of that year? Was the Academy just swept up on Titanic fever? Probably, but that becomes completely irrelevant once James Cameron proclaims that he is “king of the world!”

So, when Danny Boyle and Christian Colston claim the top prize on Sunday, I hope they do not make such a condemning statement. That is the only advice I can give them on their undeserved juggernaut.

Part Four of a Five Part Series previewing the Best Picture nominees.

For all of his status as an offbeat visionary, and my claim to be a film geek, I'd only seen four Gus Van Sant films before I saw Milk in December. This includes his three most conventional films: a commercial and artistic success (Good Will Hunting), a cult classic (To Die For), and a regrettable foray into the conventional (Finding Forrester). My only experience with full-on, experimental Van Sant was 2003's Elephant, a slight-to-the-point-of-insubstantiality rumination on school shootings, told out of order with long stretches where the camera does nothing but wordlessly follow students through hallways.

So it might be unfair, but Elephant made me reluctant to give Last Days or Paranoid Park my money, and clearly helped me drag my heels in catching up with Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. I like Van Sant as a visual storyteller, but I just can't get into his cinema of aggressive paralysis- if nothing's happening, wake me up when something is. With this mentality, I understand that I'd sleep through most of Gerry.

But when I heard the premise and cast of Milk, and then saw the trailer, I found my reluctance waning- it looked like Van Sant had found a subject worthy of moviegoers patience, and he was the perfect director to put an end to cookie-cutter biopics of recent years (it's not good when Walk The Line can parody films about Ray Charles and Johnny Cash without really having to try that hard).

But did the expectations of a massive audience reign Van Sant in too far?

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Milk certainly starts out dreamily artistic- Danny Elfman's relatively non-melodic score (for Elfman, anyway) somberly opens over a montage of police raiding gay bars and clubs in the 50s and 60s, leading eventually to the televised announcement that Harvey Milk and the Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, had been shot and killed.

From there, however, we're treated to a largely conventional biography- a linear story of Milk's progression into public office follows, punctuated by the occasional framing device of Milk dictating his biography and will into a tape recorder, eight days before his assassination. The usually players are there, the only exception is the all-male cast- the initially supportive spouse that can't make the entire journey (James Franco), the new young thing that turns out to be a bad idea (Diego Luna), a protege to mentor into greatness (Emile Hirsch).

It sort of leaves me torn- Milk is a great story, and it's almost refreshing to see homosexual relationships handled in a frank, straightforward way (not in too much of a say, Will and Grace way, if you know what I mean), but where was Van Sant?

Harris Savides' cinematography retains the biggest influence of Van Sant's style- loving shots of Penn and Franco pan at asymetrical angles and fade into white, one memorable shot is imposed on the side of a beating victims distress whistle, and the real life mourners of Harvey Milk carrying candles down the streets in a miles-long procession is memorably recreated.

And even as a storyteller, Van Sant doesn't mince facts or give in to idolatry- he doesn't decide to omit the fact that Milk lost elections several times before his victory, or the fact that that victory was over another homosexual man, eventually. And I particularly enjoyed the small focus on Milk's assassin, Dan White, a fellow supervisor that had earlier invited Milk to his child's christening.

This relationship could have been painted with much more seething antagonism than was shown, but Milk depicts the ill-fated colleagues as professionals at a loss to understand one another, and civil until things begin unraveling for White. Van Sant also resists the urge to focus on the trial, ludicrous "twinkie" defense and terrible insufficient conviction of White for manslaughter.

And of course, the director surely had a lot to do with coaching out the performances, especially of younger stars like Hirsch, Franco, and Luna who were pitch perfect in drumming up subtlety or anxiety (Luna's character) when called for. Penn and Brolin aren't exactly the smallest egos to wrangle under control either, if consummate professionals.

The whole cast, really, managed to capture a sense of togetherness that the movement engendered- it might be that the issues they fought for are still of vital importance, or the appeal of flesh and blood heroism against archival footage of villains like Anita Bryant. But you care about these people, and their victories and defeats.

Every now and then, biopic tropes chime in and interrupt the naturalism, be they true stories or not- in particular, a random call to Milk from a wheelchair bound young gay man contemplating suicide seemed a bit heavy-handed, as did his later thankful call after he escapes his unsympathetic family. Harvey Milk is inspiring enough without making him larger-than-life. Let the facts (and Sean Penn) worry about Harvey Milk, and keep the story out of the way.

When all is said and done, Milk is a moving, artfully beautiful film- if someone of no previous reputation had directed it, I doubt I'd wonder what could have been done differently. But Gus Van Sant is Gus Van Sant, and for once I had signed up to see where his wildest flights of fancy could take a moving story. I was willing to sit through Elephant-level indulgence, because it was off of Van Sant's shoulders to get me to care in the first place, for once.

It might not be fair, in the end, to think of it that way- does Milk get nominated for every guild award under the sun and Best Picture if Van Sant goes off the rails? Probably not. And it may not even have retained the small touches that set it apart without him on the project to begin with. So along with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk is one the two films that I'd be much happier to see win the Best Picture Oscar over Slumdog Millionaire, as well as the only two nominees that don't provoke my The Dark Knight exclusion anger.

Part Three of a Five Part series on the Best Picture nominees.

When The Dark Knight was regrettably left out of the Best Picture competition, it left The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as the lone crowd-pleaser among the nominees. As it turns out, Slumdog Millionaire was simply waiting for its nomination to rollout nationwide, and it will cross $100 million as well, but Button will end up with the clear lead at the box office when all is said and done.

But as crowd-pleasers go, it's certainly inspired mixed reactions: critics liked it overall, but they didn't necessarily like it to the tune of Oscar winner, settling at 71% positive on RottenTomatoes.com. Word of mouth is relatively love it or hate it- it's beautiful! It's way too long! The romance is flat! The romance is moving!

I certainly enjoyed it, enough to see it again within a week (making it and The Dark Knight (four times, one in IMAX!) the only two films I saw more than once in theaters in 2008), but certain elements did seem to wear on me a little more the second time through. But they continue to grate more with time, or will Button settle on my shelf as a flawed but grandiose piece of filmmaking?

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Let's get my single biggest complaint out of the way- screenwriter Eric Roth, apparently motivated by the recent death of a parent, decided to have the film framed as an elderly woman, on her deathbed in a hospital amidst the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, relating her life story to her daughter by way of a mystery diary among her possessions.

So instead of the film begging in 1918 with the voice-over "My name is Benjamin, Benjamin Button," we get to spend twenty minutes trying vainly to understand a heavily accented, wheezing Cate Blanchett in old age makeup tell a random story about a backwards clock, and then ask her daughter to start reading Benjamin's diary, which transports us back with those words. Over the rest of the film, we occasionally come back to the hospital, usually serving no purpose other than pausing the story, or to hear a motivation from Blanchett that was pretty clear anyway.

Only once does any memorable element arise- (spoilers aplenty from here) the daughter turns out to be Benjamin's, and in the diary are postcards and letters written to her, but never sent. A letter, voice-overed in by Pitt, is set to a montage for a nice moment, cinematically, but the whole thing could've be worked in some other way.

The whole setup leads to plenty of logistics issues by setting a fantastic, era-spanning story in a modern, socially relevant context (not once does the daughter quibble with the whole "aging backwards" thing), plus it puts an exclamation point on the biggest criticism of the film, and my other big complaint:

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button takes place in a fairy-tale, magic New Orleans where there is no racism whatsoever, nor any race-related issues encountered by the African-American matron of an old folks home raising a white (if odd-looking) child she found on a doorstep.

In the film's defense, it would be difficult to address race during the story without it feeling like a callous footnote, though it has plenty of time to do so. But the addition of a framing device consciously set during a disaster which brought a huge focus on racial inequalities in the region, that focuses solely on the plight of two affluent white people- well. That sort of highlights the lack.

Beyond that however, I couldn't find a single thing wrong with the film- in fact, when I'm able to fast forward the framing bits, I'll be witness to a masterpiece. It's easier to write about the flaws of a film than the strengths any day, but there's a wealth of majesty in Button that's more than deserving of 13 Oscar nominations.

Fincher, in a triumphant arrival to the truly mainstream, still lights everything in blue or orange, but works flawless technical mastery in every department, from the digital mapping of Brad Pitt onto smaller actors to the World War One battle between a tugboat and a submarine. The film moves seamlessly in design and costuming from the begginning of the twentieth century to the near-present without having to reference too many specific events to spell out signifiers for us.

I've never been one to complain about a film's length, personally- I think something basic and arithmetical in me logically assumes I got more for my $9.00 that way- and Button certainly didn't overstay its welcome, framing device aside. Journeys should feel like journeys, and we need time for two life stories to unfold.

The central romance is realized well enough for me- plenty of people have pointed out that Roth just wrote Forrest Gump again (simple southern boy meets bohemian dancer girl as a child, later they reunite but she pushes him away, finally they reconnect but it ends tragically), and that Button mirrors that film in general arc, replacing the historical reimaginings with reverse aging wizardry, but so what? Art repeats itself, and if I saw Button first, I'd like it more. In an era of film with so many pointless remakes, I think I can stomach two great films that run parallel to one another.

The melodrama is even well-punctuated by occasional levity- did I ever tell you I was struck by lightning seven times? And the theme "life is what you make it" might've been a bit less than people were expecting, given the supernatural premise, but that doesn't make it less resonant.

All in all, it would be great if Button lost the framing device and engaged with race relations in a meaningful way, but it would be greedy to ask for brilliance to fall left and right into theaters every year (2007 spoiled us, it really did). The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a testament to the cinema of spectacle, of wondrous vision and achievements not possible in other media.

I think it'll demand plenty of repeat viewings- and not just for Lightning Guy. Though he's pretty awesome.

Part Two of a Five Part series on the Best Picture Nominees.

Not that you asked, but I am nearly twenty five years old. I was born in 1984, seven years after the series of interviews of Richard Nixon by David Frost. Nixon is fully the past for me- he's a pop-culture character, he's jowls and double peace signs getting into a helicopter, he's not a crook. I understand the importance of his administration, the near-impeachment, the resignation, the Watergate scandal.

But maybe because I didn't live through it, my reaction to Frost/Nixon is: "meh." It's great that we finally get to see a fictional portrayal of Nixon admit that he made mistakes, and it's certainly nice that the real Nixon did as much in the real thing more than thirty years ago, but that doesn't really make for an outstanding film.

Ron Howard's by-the-numbers, stagy (based on a play), and laregly anticlimactic drama is certainly professional, flashy, and well-acted. But even with the inclusion in various critical lists and guild nominations, and its de facto inclusion in the final five for the Best Picture honor, it's not pulled in a single noteworthy award or top honor- it's an also-ran. Everybody seems to feel like we need to include Frost/Nixon for the same reasons that we need to teach History class in high school.

My question: do we? (Need to include Frost/Nixon in awards season, I mean. I know we need to teach History.)

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In an interesting moment of cultural cross-promotion, the real life David Frost has popped up on talkshows promoting the sale of a DVD containing the real life interviews that the play, Frost/Nixon, and its film adaptation were drawn from. It makes for an obvious question: why not just watch the real thing?

Or to put it another way: what does Peter Morgan's (and by extension, Ron Howard's) Frost/Nixon add to history?

The answer: not much, based on the movie.

The cast, of course, is winning: Michael Sheen and Frank Langella do very capable jobs as the intrepid interviewer seeking to prove his journalist chops and the disgraced president spinning to save any sort of legacy. (Good thing they had plenty of tape to study). Matthew Macfayden is solid as Frost's producer, Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell (Whoo! Sam Rockwell!) provide some comic relief as a pair of researchers. Kevin Bacon ably plays Nixon's loyal bodyman, and Rebecca Hall (Whoo!  Rebecca Hall!) even shows up as Frost's support and eye-candy.

Ron Howard retains the ability to build to profound moments, Hans Zimmer's score is proficiently cinematic, the story is peppered with some interviews of the minor characters, talking about the events sometime later as if they knew how important they would be...

It's certainly a solid job, all around. But why was it hard to stay awake?

Maybe because there are precious few moments that tell us anything we didn't already know. The film is torn between a desire to highlight what it clearly finds a significant moment in American history and a desire to humanize Nixon into a man neither consciously villainous nor ignorantly assured of the righteousness of his actions. Langella certainly deserves plenty of credit for embodying a man largely through personality and manner, rather than focusing on any of the quirks that we immediately think of when we hear the name.

But Frost/Nixon can't have it both ways: beyond the normal movie-clues that we're witnessing is important with a capital "I," it makes the conscious decisions to inflate them more than the original play.

My biggest complaint was those cutaway interviews: like an episode of The Office, it wasn't clear when those interviews occured, who was conducting them, or why Frost and Nixon did not appear giving them. But the supporting players were more than happy to sit down at an unspecified point (none of them appeared much older than they did in the story) and pontificate- even Rebecca Hall's character, a girlfriend that stays with Frost during his time in California but is largely not privvy to the preparations for the interviews, as far as we can see.

In short, who cares? As you'll see in my writeup of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, I'm quickly developing a pet peeve for stories that are weighed down by unnecessary framing devices- let at tale speak for itself, from beginning to end. At least the Button device makes it clear the way in which the story is being related to us- these cutaways in Frost/Nixon are just confusing, unexplained moments to hit us in the face with the things the movie would like us to know are dramatic: Frost's hidden funding problems, Nixon's silence on the helicopter ride after resigning.

I did sort of enjoy the most dramatic non-interview moment in the film: Nixon drunkenly places a phone call to Frost, late at night, and talks about how they both feel the desire to succeed because they come from the low class.

It's a human moment, a dramatic speech, and Langella nails it. Later, Sheen mentions the phone call in passing, and Nixon looks troubled and flustered, as if he didn't recall it. Great element, I'm thinking- it added to the story, and I'm not concerned whether it happened in real life or not.

But at the very end, in case you weren't clear that that moment was Important and Dramatic, Nixon's last question to Frost is something along the lines of "Did I really call you that night?" Thanks, Frost/Nixon. I had really forgotten that bit of the film from an hour ago. Glad you reminded me how clever you are.

In conclusion, let's let my man Sam Rockwell, speaking in one the many cutaways in which someone analyzes the events of the film for us, ironically explicate my problem with Frost/Nixon as a whole:

"You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot....David [Frost] had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon's face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist."

Man, good thing I just watched all that unfold, if it was that important. Frost/Nixon, in the time it took from the screen to awards season, got the same treatment- its failings ceased to exist in the shadow of the subject matter (which many people in this country not born in the eighties remember personally).

So if I were ever asked for a pullquote about Frost/Nixon, I'd have to go with "Best episode of The American Experience* ever!"

*It's a documentary show on PBS. I watch a lot of PBS, and I'm proud of it, but not in an annoying, hipster, anti-establishment way.

Part One of a Five part series on the Best Picture Nominees.

I didn't like The Reader. I was impatient for it to be over when I saw it, I cared little for any of the characters, as a result I looked for little to love in any of the aesthetic presentation. In a somewhat stunning difference of opinion here on Kinematoscope, Dave listed The Reader as the number two film of the year and gave it nine hypothetical Oscar Nominations, while I listed it nowhere and gave it none.  (In the spirit of this, Dave will be writing a rebuttal to this post.)

I will say this- I'm probably short-changing the work of many technicians and film professionals for their superb work in putting The Reader together because I have inherent problems with the storytelling. But that's the way it is- you get biased, it's hard to shake. But why did I dislike it in the first place?

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For starters, I hated it before I saw it. First, the Weinsteins created a fuss by rushing it to theaters, telegraphing their intention to Oscar-bait to the world and angering producer Scott Rudin- they also, by way of the Dimension branch of the company, delayed the release of The Road, a film I couldn't be more excited to see, to focus on promoting just the one. 

And then, nearly every preseason indicator seemed to imply that The Dark Knight, my favorite film of 2008, was a lock for a Best Picture nomination, while The Reader hardly got any awards notice. But The Reader appeared in place of The Dark Knight, breaking up a group of five seemingly unstoppable films, making a direct comparison between the merits of the two films inevitable.

As Dave said, I should be equally incensed by The Dark Knight also being passed over for a bowl of cinematic oatmeal in Frost/Nixon, but the damage was done.

Now, with The Reader being nonsensically buzzed about as a potential spoiler to the Slumdog Millionaire juggernaut (don't kid yourself, Entertainment Weekly), I'm trying to reconcile the acclaim with the queasy feeling it gives me in my stomach.

Here's my question: who is/are "the reader" that the title refers to? (Lots of spoilers from here on, by the way). The central character of the film is allegedly a character named Michael, who reads to Hannah Schmitz as a teen and later as an adult, by cassette tape.

But The Academy has roundly rejected the attempt by the studio to market Kate Winslet's Hannah as a secondary character- she is nominated for and likely to win leading actress. Is she "the reader"? Her character eventually overcomes illiteracy while in prison, and learns to read.

Then I found out that the German title of the Bernhard Schlink novel on which the film is based is "Der Vorleser." This translates to "The One Who Reads Aloud." ALOUD! The Reader is not supposed to be about Hannah- Michael reads aloud to her, and it is his complex desire to both understand her and condemn her, which he finds to be impossible, that makes the heart of the story.

The novel is narrated by Michael in the first person, inherently limiting the perspective to his character. By contrast, The Reader the film revels in Winslet at every opportunity- her naked flesh, closeups of her face during the trial (Michael can mostly see the back of her head), and pained looks of conflict on her face at her job, where Michael is not present at all. It elevates her presence to a flesh and blood character, which is why I both agree with the acclaim for Winslet's performance but am starting to understand why I find the film revolting. Bear with me.

This is a holocaust film. And not a traditional one- it's set in post WWII Germany, and it attempts to grapple with the younger generation of Germans facing the impossibility of coming to grips with the atrocities committed by the older generation. The novel does this by having Hannah appear as a frustrating enigma, a relic of the Holocaust- she shows no remorse, but deep shame at being illiterate. She claims to not think about the past, but in the end commits suicide and wills her meager savings to survivors of the Holocaust.

That's fine for a secondary character in a novel that we see only in the recollection of another. It's downright ludicrous for a character brought to life by the best actress of her generation.

For example- in the novel, Michael abruptly says "Next morning, Hannah was dead." The enigma vanishes as abruptly as she appeared. In The Reader, we get to SEE Hannah preparing to hang herself. Writing the letter. Piling books on the table. We are being told by the eye of the camera that witnessing this is important, that we should care about this in a profound way. The score swells.

And that's where The Reader loses me. Hannah as a character I find ludicrous- she objectively weighs illiteracy and the primary responsibility for the burning death of 300 people, and decides that illiteracy is worse. I suppose that's a value judgment, but I really don't need to spend another hour and a half with any person or character that makes that decision.

And that would be fine, if I were following Michael around watching him debate going to see Hannah in prison, but deciding against it. No, we get to see Hannah anxiously looking up, wondering who her mysterious visitor is. But Michael turns around- we see her realize no one is coming. Poor Hannah... wait, why should we care, The Reader? Who is this movie about?

It's what has plenty of historians troubled as well, about both the novel and the film. In both stories Hannah signed up for the SS because she was offered a promotion at another job where her illiteracy would be made clear. But she would have known, people argue, exactly what she was signing on for. That's where the accusations of revisionist history come from- The Reader seems like it's absolving the wider part of Germany for knowing what was going on, portraying them as a high minded rabble that roundly condemned the atrocities as soon as they found out, after the Holocaust was over.

To sum up by asking random rhetorical questions: Is portraying a character as human portraying them sympathetically? Is the eye of the camera inherently the eye of the story? Is it cheap and emotionally manipulative to trade on the narrative weight of the Holocaust without showing it? In the same way, is it manipulative to show us the vulnerable naked flesh, shameful illiteracy, and suicide of a Nazi war criminal without showing us her crimes?

I'm sure a lot of people differ from my responses to the above questions, clearly very greatly. But I think there's a big difference between "raising complex moral questions without easy answers" and having nothing to actually say. Der Vorleser, the novel, I think had plenty to say. But The Reader translated the title wrong, and lost the message in the Oscar campaign.

But to be fair, without the nomination it's doubtful I would've seen it, and without its upsetting inclusion over other films I cared about, it's doubtful I could find the energy to be so critical.