Superlative Sunday :: the 2012 Oscars and how I felt about them

I… am still on the fence about this last year in movies, honestly.  That 2011 was the year I started hyperactively blogging everything I saw (and thus seeing a lot) has helped me realize that 2011 was not a year where I actually cared about a lot of movies.  (I suppose extending that into things I’ve seen so far this year, as that’s the Oscar Year.)  I mean, the only three movies I bought were comic-based/book-based/hyperstylized action drama fantasy insanities (Sucker Punch, X-Men: First Class, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2) and the only other one I gave a damn about was Hugo (I really should buy that, too).  If we’re counting this year, too, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Lots of feelings.  I’m looking at my post from last year’s Oscars, and not a single movie that I discussed gave me ambivalent feelings.  Feelings of “it’s good, but not great” or “I knew it was good, I just… didn’t care.”  That was the overwhelming consensus this year, I’m afraid.

The Artist (Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role [Jean Dujardin], Directing, Costume Design, Music [Original Score])
I just.  I might be unsophisticated and lame, but while I recognized this as a good movie, yes, and Dujardin’s performance was good, and the costumes were good (I do like that era), and the music was good (it had to be, to carry a film), it just… didn’t stay with me.  I think I expect too much from movies.  I expect them to make my heart hurt (whether from sad or from extreme happy).  I expect them to, I don’t know, make me feel something.  Something.  Other than “oh, well, okay.”

Beginners (Actor in a Supporting Role [Christopher Plummer])
I have mentioned my feelings about this movie briefly, yes.  I have acknowledged how I approve of Christopher Plummer’s winning ALL the awards for his performance.  I will take this moment to say that: this movie actually made me feel something.  I gave a damn about the characters (all of them) and I loved that, while happy and sometimes whimsical, in a milder Amelie kind of way, it wasn’t perfect.  The ending wasn’t a happy ending.  I have nowhere else to say that, and realize that I never did, but since a lot of the reason that things otherwise nominated (The Descendants, for example) seem to be, at least in part, because they have that “real life story with an imperfect but not terrible ending” — this had that.  And I liked them, all of them, a lot more. 

The Descendants (Writing [Adapted Screenplay])
I saw another blogger, Deadline‘s much more important Nikki Finke, saying this: “while I’m at it, the Academy has its head up its ass for not nominating the final Harry Potter movie.”  I get behind this as a fangirl, because I have been one since I was eleven and they were eleven, it’s just a part of who I am, but I also get behind this in a more technical way.  I had many issues with the adaptations of the Harry Potter books into movies back in the day, when I was younger and I’d read the books more recently.  But not because they were bad movies.  Because I was nitpicky and I wanted more of my favorite details.  I’ve been on a rewatch spree lately, though, and I can honestly say that it doesn’t matter to me anymore.  Are there things I still want (Tonks [Natalie Tena] and Lupin [David Thewlis])?  Are there things I still think were a waste of time (the copious gratuitous nature shots in Prisoner of Azkaban)?  Yes.  Are they still very solid, very good movies that stay true to the spirit of things?  Yes.  And was the adaptation of Deathly Hallows perfect and wonderful, even with details missing because they’d been missing before and continuity and time?  Yes.

Oh, and I guess that The Descendants was a passable choice, even if I would have given this one to something else (Hugo, probably, just because I wanted it to win everything).  I haven’t read the book, and never will, but it didn’t suck.  It was good, I suppose.  So.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Film Editing)
I don’t really know how to judge this category, but since I really did like this movie a lot, I’m good with this.  They didn’t even have a score nod (I guess since The Social Network got one and won it last year, it would have been too much) but I would have wanted that, too.  (Note to self: buy this album now.)  And I knew Rooney Mara wouldn’t win.  I didn’t expect her to.  I’m just happy she got nominated.  But I still got to stare at her a few times, so I won’t complain.  Nope.

The Help (Actress in a Supporting Role [Octavia Spencer])
Okay.  Sure.

Hugo (Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects)
As has already been made abundantly clear: this was my Best Picture choice.  Out of immense affection for it, out of a feeling that it was a completely solid film.  It actually made me feel things.  It did the “love letter to cinema” thing that seemed to be the point of this year’s ceremony (and is always good).  It had a really good story.  It had really good characters.  It had beautiful everything-it-won-for, yes, but I wanted it to win so much more.  And I feel like people didn’t know what to make of it.  People thought it was just a kids’ movie, maybe, or they thought it was too weird, or it was too techie-something.  (Which is funny, considering that some movies that have been just techie have gotten buzz as being Great Films for that very reason.)  But it wasn’t.  It was a movie about kids, but it was a movie about adults too.  It was a movie about kids that weren’t too stupid or too, too precocious (I mean, they were precocious, but not in the painful way).  It was a movie that was strange, but strange is good.  It was a movie that had a lot of visual effects and hyperrealism, but this assisted the story.  It was a book that was, in part, about a filmmaker’s robot, for crying out loud.  Of course there were going to be special effects.  It took place in a world that wasn’t quite our own, stylistically, but it was never distracting.  It was beautiful.  It was a fairy tale for grown-ups that happened to have children and robots in it, but it was brilliant.

The Iron Lady (Actress in a Leading Role [Meryl Streep], Makeup)
I have not seen this.  But really.  From what I can see, the makeup had very good street makeup, very good age makeup, very good fake teeth for Meryl Streep.  But again that is not the same as transforming people into convincing-looking goblins or something.  Or, barring that, transforming Glenn Close and Janet Teers into semi-convincing pseudomen.

Midnight in Paris (Writing [Original Screenplay])
I don’t know what I would have actually done in this category.  I can’t, with honesty, do the thing that a lot of people have and say “oh, Bridesmaids,” because I… have unresolved feelings about that movie.  But I do appreciate that it was women being funny for a while, and that was good.  I didn’t see two of the nominees.  (I’d never even heard of Margin Call.)  But I don’t really know if this sits well with me, either.  Woody Allen can write Woody Allen, I feel like.  Here, he had the one “complex, artistic” male protagonist, and a cast of shallow supporting characters.  All of the women (and most of the men) may as well have been paper dolls.  It wasn’t exactly predictable, from the beginning, but once it got going I could see through it.  It was very pretty, but it wasn’t… again, I didn’t feel anything.

The Muppets (Music [Original Song])
In short, YES.

Thank you, Academy, for not giving any of these awards to War Horse or Moneyball, which were, again, serviceable films, but not the best in any of their categories.  No thanks for not putting on a great show (other bloggers discuss this much better than I could, so I won’t).

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on The Artist

I… don’t know what to think, actually.  It’s one of those times where I recognize that it’s really good, and I understand why, but I just couldn’t connect to the material, so I have no emotional reaction.  I think I might resort to bullet points again.

• Jean Dujardin is really skilled at being a charming d-bag.  And I understood his conflicts, I really did.  Even if sometimes I wanted to shake him and tell him to find a more productive way to deal with his problems than getting drunk all day.  Even if he couldn’t get another job because it was the Great Depression, he could have not crashed and burned so hard.
• Also, the film he made to save the day?  Was completely ridiculous, and I don’t know if it was supposed to be bad on purpose, or if it was supposed to be touchingly of its time.  Peppy (Berenice Bejo) seemed to like it, and cried, but is that sentimentality at work?  ‘Cause really.  One of the times I actually laughed out loud during the movie was when Valentin’s character in the movie was drowning into the quicksand and the female character tried to pull him out and he just announced via title card, “Farewell.  I have never loved you.”  I don’t know if that was supposed to be funny, but it… really was.  It was so abrupt and callous.
• Does it make me heinous and uncultured if I needed more title cards?  I feel like there were conversations that the characters would have, serious conversations, and I’d understand the gist of what they were feeling, but I wanted to know what they were saying.  I’m a dialogue person, I suppose.
• I also laughed when Peppy first introduced herself.  It was then that I acknowledged that this wasn’t going to be a movie that took its genre farther (there were times when it tried, but not enough).  This was a movie that celebrated its genre exactly how it was.  I’m still undecided on how I feel about that.
• Similarly, I laughed when Valentin told her she needed to set herself apart and drew the beauty mark on her face.  Really?  That’s going to set her apart?  A tiny dot?
• All of the actors had very expressive faces, though.  So good for them on that.
• It probably also makes me uncultured that my favorite character was very possibly the dog.  He facefloored multiple times and it was just so darn adorable.  (Animals facepalming/faceflooring/facetailing/etc. are just really cute, okay?)  He was also the smartest one there a lot of the time.
• And it makes me similarly uncultured that when Valentin was staying at Peppy’s house and stumbled into the room full of artifacts of his old life, all covered in sheets, my first thought was an immediately invented alt-canon.  It may have involved either cryogenic freezing or murdering and then embalming.  But I think that would have been a wacky twist, and I acknowledge that it is uncultured, yes, and also really, hideously morbid.
• The twenties/thirties and Old Hollywood are really, really pretty, though.  I’m a big fan.
• It was fascinating to watch this in a theater full of people, though.  As a social experiment.  One person laughed loudly at the beginning of the film (I don’t remember at what exactly, but it wasn’t that funny) and from then on, every time that person laughed, a lot of the other people laughed too.  There was gasping at the “suspenseful” moments and there were whispers about “what’s going to happen!” and “oh, I really liked that” and I just had to wonder how many of these people were actually that engrossed in the story and how many of these people were just trying to seem intellectually acceptable because they’d been told to appreciate this movie in various ways.  It was kind of a social experiment, and luckily, one that I didn’t have to pay the people around me to participate in: theoretical crowd mentality.

–your fangirl heroine.

Superlative Sunday :: the 2012 Golden Globes and how I feel about them

By show/movie, to simplify.  With things that only got one win, but that I haven’t seen, listed at the end; things I haven’t seen, but got more than one win, I’ll usually have something to say regarding.

The Descendants (Motion Picture, Drama; Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama [George Clooney])
I… haven’t seen this.  I keep telling myself that I’m going to, but then I decide that I’m not in the mood for a serious movie about an inspirational for-all-intents-and-purposes-single-at-the-moment-as-per-his-wife’s-coma father and a teenage daughter with attitude and some other things.  My tastes don’t always run that way.

The Artist (Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical; Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical [Jean Dujardin])
Also haven’t seen this (it’s not to my town yet, all right?  Our independent theater doesn’t have that many screens, and they usually get things on the late side of timely).  And sure, I’d have picked others in both categories (I mean, I have… weird Bridesmaids feelings, but that’s a lot to do with the marketing, and I don’t know if it was winworthy, but 50/50 was adorable) but I’m sure it’s deserving.  This does bring up the point of the “Comedy or Musical” category being… odd.  From what I can see, this isn’t a wholly comedic film.  But it’s got dancing?  My Week With Marilyn also doesn’t look particularly funny.  Not all musicals are funny, Golden Globes and other award shows.  Just because there’s music doesn’t mean it’s automatically lighthearted and silly.

Beginners (Supporting Actor [Christopher Plummer])
I don’t think I can actually say how much this movie surprisingly made me really, really happy.  I’m not one for romance, usually (and I’ll admit I mostly watched it becaues Ewan McGregor is good business and I love Melanie Laurent with all my heart) but it actually managed to win me over.  And Christopher Plummer’s performance was brilliant and heartstring-tugging, if you’re one whose hearstrings get tugged on.

Hugo (Best Director, Martin Scorcese)
So deserved.  Please let this continue to happen.

Homeland (TV Series, Drama; Actress in a TV Series, Drama [Claire Danes])
Is right at the top of my “I’m going to sit down one day when I have nothing else to do and watch all of this immediately” list, I swear.  I saw part of the first episode, and I was interested, but we just forgot to keep up (we have so many other things to do).  I will say that I’m sure it was well-deserved, even if I was rooting for Boardwalk Empire to take it again, and the periodical flashes over to the Homeland table made me happier than any other table, period.  For this very important reason:

Oh, Morena, who… may be why I originally intended to watch Homeland in the first place, but it seems like an interesting show in its own right, too.

Mildred Pierce (Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for TV [Kate Winslet])
I’ve said it before, and hopefully I won’t have to say it again.  I had serious Mildred Pierce problems, but I love Kate always, so I wasn’t too upset.

Game of Thrones (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV [Peter Dinklage])
Keep on winning the awards, man.  I’m okay with this, he’s brilliant and definitely the only one in the category I actually cared about.  (Cinema Verite was good, really good, really really [okay so my Patrick Fugit was in that, too] good, but Tim Robbins played such a d-bag that I couldn’t root for him.)

American Horror Story (Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV [Jessica Lange])
Someday soon, Kelly Macdonald had better win something, because she’s brilliant, and she keeps getting nominated, but she doesn’t win, ever, and I understand why, but still.  Jessica Lange was also brilliant on this show, as messed up as it really was, as ridiculous as it could be, and I wouldn’t have pegged her for being the winner, but she did a nice job, so I’m not complaining.

 

The Iron Lady
My Week With Marilyn
The Help
Boss
Modern Family
Episodes
Enlightened
Modern Family
Downton Abbey
Luther

–your fangirl heroine.