A Late Protest Against the Oscars

So what is wrong with Hollywood and the Academy?

Some of their decisions are great. Argo was a fantastic film and deserved to win best picture. The costumes in Anna Karenina were incredible. The costume designer for that deserved the praise she was given. The effects in The Life of Pi were mind blowing. I haven't actually seen Lincoln but from what I have heard the movie was average but the performance by Daniel Day-Lewis was amazing. But Best Actress going to Jennifer Lawrence? I mean....What the what?

Fair enough she is a good actress and she played her part in Silver Linings Playbook pretty well. But what was that role if it wasn't just a rom-com type role? There was nothing special about it. Nothing that made me jump out of my seat, or cry because there was too much emotion, or shock me or anything along those lines really. It was a fairly solid performance but did she deserve to win Best Actress for it. No. I'm not thinking so.

Lets go through the list of other (much more deserving) nominees shall we. 

Amour is truly an incredible movie. I cried the whole way through it. And then I cried for ages afterwards and I could not function like a proper human being for the rest of the day (and or week). This film deserves all the praise that it has received and more. Emmanuelle Riva  is beautiful and her performance in Amour is both riveting and devastating. I don't think I had prepared myself emotionally for the impact this film would have on me. Riva's performance is burned into my memory. It is not a movie that I will not forget easily as it touched me so deeply.
But, alas, no win for Riva.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is my pick for 2012 and has probably taken the trophy of my favourite film (for now). And what a beautiful film it was. It blew me away. I was lost for words. Crying because I was happy but crying because I was filled with sadness. The beauty of the story and the beauty of the characters was all a bit much for me. Ben Zeitlin is a bit of a genius and now Quenzhané Wallis is queen of independent film. And rightfully so. She is so great she is only 9 years old. How a 9 year old can affect me so much I don't know. She is just brilliant.
But she didn't win.

Zero Dark Thirty was one of the more controversial films of the past year. Jessica Chastain plays the woman that finally ended the 11 year man hunt by locating America's most wanted. The crap that this woman had to deal with and the situations she was in everyday were insane. She was recruited straight out of school and this was her whole life. Considering that no one knows the exact biography of this lady, Chastain does a g reat job and I really felt her hopelessness and loneliness. Her performance wasn't as astounding as the two previously mentioned but it was still a really great performance.

Then there is Noami Watts. If yo have read my review on The Impossible then you will already know how I feel about this lady and this performance. I didn't like it is enough said. 

Silver Linings Playbook is basically a rom-com. It doesn't offer much more than the same boy meets girl and after a few complications and confusions, gets with said girl. These movies are a dime a dozen and just because somebody changes the context slightly, doesn't make it a great film. I don't know who Jennifer Lawrence paid for her o win this award bu there was something seriously wrong with her winning it. There was nothing special about that performance, nothing that really took me by surprise. So she would occasionally scare a guy when he was on a run and stalk him. Maybe yell a little. Why hand someone an Oscar for this. I am sure we all do this at least once a day. 

And I don't know if this was just in Australia, but during the ad breaks for the Oscars they would say who this particular show was brought to you by;  "This program is proudly brought to you by...Silver Linings Plaaybook." I kid you not. Someone was seriously plugging that movie and through the movie all that people that were nominated for it.

Contrary to what I have been writing, I did enjoy this movie. I didn't love it but I thought it was a lot of fun. I also didn't hate Jennifer Lawrence's performance. Although it does make me super angry now that she has won.

Also on a little side note, posing with your award giving the finger? I mean maybe some people like Meryl Streep who own at life (acting) could get away with this because she is so ridiculously amazing in everything she does (including getting the flu- Poehler and Fey 2012) but not when you are so new to the game and don't deserve the award you have "won".


I thought this was judged on acting. 

Anna Karenina

Joe Wright's new film, Anna Karenina, is simply intriguing. While not perfect and whilst Keira Knightly's face is still very annoying and occupies too much screen time, it is a very fascinating adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's original book.

The film is based around the character Anna (Keira Knighly). She is married to Alexi (a quite unrecognisable Jude Law), a member of the Russian government, with whom she has a son. When she travels to Moscow in an attempt to get her brother's wife to stay with him after he has cheated on her, she happens to meet a young officer with whom an infatuation and romance grows. In the midst of a very conservative Russian aristocratic society, Anna's actions come with devastating consequences. (There are also some other little side stories but that is the general gist of it).

There have been a HEAP of adaptations of this book, including an adaptation with Vivien Leigh and another with Greta Garbo. There has been a Russian film (or two...) and even a musical version as well as a few TV movies and a few mini series'. So maybe adding another Anna Karenina to this long list was an interesting choice. Having not seen any of these other adaptations though, I don't mind.

This film looks great. It is really fascinating the way they have done it. It is really well directed, the music is awesome and fits in so well to what is happening on screen, the sets are glorious, the costumes are divine and the cinematography really highlights all of these things. There are some really beautiful, breath taking scenes. Quite frankly this film is unlike anything I have ever seen but I am by no means saying it's perfect. There are many things that do not fit quite right.

 It is set as if it is in a theatre or on a stage. They are backstage, above stage, on stage, in the audience, in the stalls. It is really constructed, overly stylised and heavily choreographed but these things are what makes the film work. It is when the film strays away from this stylised stage setting that things fall a part. When the film leaves this tight, constricted setting it becomes a little disorientating. I don't know if these divergences from the stage setting are for symbolic reasons or not but on a one dimensional scale, it's a strange choice to leave the stage setting.

Also, at the start of the film the scenes change like they would on a stage with a backgrounds lifting up and another one being lowered down and the extras move props around and the way the film flowed was really awesome. But by the end of the film this had kind of dissipated. The film didn't flow as well and the setting were almost normal. I am sure you could read into it, figuratively speaking, that as Anna falls out of the public eye and into disgrace her life becomes less like a stage or something along those lines but not everyone wants a lesson in imagery and symbolism now that they have left school. (I love getting into the symbolic meanings in things. The IB program has ruined my sense of fun.)

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, while he does a fairly good job, seems miscast. For me, he seems too young and small for this part. Maybe his youth is part of the character, I am not sure, I have not read the book. But I didn't fully believe in the hardcore love and obsession that the two main characters had for each other. I just wasn't 100% convinced. But Keira Knightly still annoys me. There is just something about her face that I can't deal with. There were a few times in this movie where I was generally confused as to what emotion she was trying to portray but the director obviously likes her or you could say has some kind of obsession with her, as he has put her in his last three movies including when he miscast her as Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. *small rant over*

Above everything else, this really is an intriguing film. I got sucked into this weird aristocratic world where the Russians are obsessed with everything French, with their strange values about marriage and relationships and their crushing, overbearing, judging society. This film brings up a lot of questions and if you like to analyse things to get to the ambiguous meanings of films then this one is a good one to do that with and if not, then it is still something that is worth seeing just to see how they have done it. That being said not everyone will like this film but if you have seen Django Unchained then you should go see this. If you haven't seen Django Unchained then go see that. NOW.

Fey and Poehler

Two of the greatest ladies in the world.
My love for them is infinite. I cannot describe.

Poehler and Fey

 2016
Bitches get stuff done

Disney's Paperman

This is a great animated short. I think it is even nominated for an Oscar.

Paperman.

The Impossible

This movie is filmed very well. It looks good.
And it is very sad. Well actually, it's heartbreaking.
But that's it.

It's based on a family who go to Thailand for Christmas in 2004 and their struggle to survive and find each other after the devastating Tsunami hits.

Naomi Watts has been nominated for an Oscar for this performance but she doesn't really do anything. At the start she smiles and then she screams and cries and is in a lot of pain. Otherwise she doesn't do all that much. I didn't really think that this was a particularly breath taking performance. I will say that to me, it seems that when acting, being in pain would be easier than acting other things. But I am not an actor so maybe I am wrong. Her character doesn't change or go through any sort of character development and she isn't really in it all that much compared to her movie son, Lucas (Tom Holland). I just wasn't taken by her performance. I wasn't a huge Naomi Watts fan before I saw this and I wanted this movie to make me like her more but that didn't happen. 

Ewan McGregor is good although maybe a little wasted in this role. I mean think back to Danny Boyle's Trainspotting. Ewan was awesome in that. Here he just seems very restrained and in my opinion, his character is pretty silly sometimes. No common sense.

But a saving grace for this movie is the kids, the two younger sons, Thomas and Simon (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast). They are so adorable and that would have been enough but they are also really good actors. This movie is an achievement for them as it is so heavy emotionally and they are so little. And Tom Holland does well. He has most of the movie riding on him and many emotional scenes but he does very well for someone so young.

But this wasn't enough to sell this movie for me. There was something about this movie that was very off-putting. From when I saw the trailer I just shuddered and the shudder continued. It just had a dirty feeling to it and I couldn't shake it. Here is this horrific disaster where many people lost their lives and their families. This event is something that people are never going to forget and here is Hollywood putting these perfect Hollywood faces on it and making a money grubbing movie about it. I feel like they are taking this away from the people who suffered through this event.

It may be based on a true story about a Spanish family but I don't see why (apart from to make money) they have to put these rich, white faces on it. It may make people understand the horrific circumstances of it all better but I still feel that it is a little culturally ignorant or that it ignored too many other stories. To be honest, I was more interested in the stories of people around this family. I wanted to know and learn about more families and what they went through rather than this one.

I remember when this Tsunami hit. I was in England with my family. I was 11. One of the only reasons I remember it was partly because it was all the news could talk about but more because I remember coming out of seeing Mary Poppins at the theatre and they had all these donations buckets. I was just excited about putting money in a bucket. I didn't understand the severity of it at all. And this movie did make me want to go back and tell 11 year old me to put more money in that bucket, even though I was young and in a foreign country and any money I had wasn't my own but my mothers.

I have heard that Hoyts is donating $1 of every ticket sold to see The Impossible to UNICEF Australia. This is only one cinema chain across Australia and only $1. I think that this movie should be donating most of it's profits to organisations like UNICEF and disaster recovery across the world. That might make me like this movie better.

Also, the title. I mean, really?

Les Miserables

As one who has seen this musical A LOT (my siblings and I have been dragged to every production we could ever possibly attend as it is our mother's favourite musical of all time), I was skeptical when I heard that they were making this epic musical into a movie (for the second time). To be perfectly honest, I didn't think they could pull it off. But here I stand, very much corrected. You haven't seen anything like this before, unless you have seen the film and then you don't count. 

This is not just a story but an epic journey. An epic journey that takes you through so many emotional highs and lows and one that is surrounded by history (even if most historians call it a bastardisation of Victor Hugo's original novel). In summary it goes a little something like this; In 19th Century France, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is hunted by policeman Javert (Russell Crowe) after he breaks parole. Years on, he agrees to care for the daughter of Fantine (Anne Hathaway), one of the workers in the factory that he now owns. His life is changed forever (obviously). But it's not all about him. In pre-revolutionary France there is a lot happening and this musical attempts to cover everything. It's one emotional roller coaster.

Directed by Tom Hooper, known for The King's Speech, this is a revolutionary movie (not just because of the content) but because of the way he has decided to film the entire thing. All the songs are recorded live. (This is the revolutionary part of it but this is a big thing, especially for musicals.)

What Hooper has done by recording the singing live and not having his actors attempt to do some awful lip syncing, is allow for all the emotion to seep through. You see and feel the emotion of the songs in a way that the musical can't do. After seeing this movie, if you go back and listen to the original cast soundtrack (like I did) you will find that it seems like the cast are just singing, without emotion. Just singing a pretty song. It's like comparing yourself to how you sing inside your head to how you actually sound out loud. Huge difference right? Well that's what this is like.

So how do the cast cope with this revolutionary method? Well they owned it. (pwned it really)

Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe, who I thought could be this movie's downfall gives a solid performance. I mean it's not all that great but it's not that bad either. He does well.

Daniel Huttlestone who plays Gavroche, who is normally a character that I find very annoying, was great. Huttlestone seems so comfortable around the camera and really brings out the best parts of his character. And the same goes for young Cosette, Isabelle Allen. Although neither of them get much screen time, they really shine for the moments that they do get.

Samantha Banks
(Do you see what I am talking about with the waist?)

Amanda Seyfried sings high and wobbly and fits Cosette very well. I mean Eponine is always better and that proves true again here with Samantha Barks and her incredibly tiny waist.
 

Eddie Redmayne isn't as annoying as I usually find him and has a really great voice, surprisingly. When he and Seyfried sing their harmonies, it's just so pretty. Well when anyone one is singing in harmony it's so pretty.

Hugh Jackman

 The way Hugh Jackman's character, Valjean, changes, look wise, is pretty incredible but his voice, at times, disappointed me. Everything else is fine but there are times when the haunting melody got lost behind him almost mumbling the words and not holding on to the notes. But I am being very picky cause his performance is amazing. 





Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as Thénardier and Madame Thénardier respectively are fantastic. They break up all the devastating emotional parts of this film with great interludes of comedy and they do it so well. They are so comfortable in these characters and it really shows. They just look like they are having so much fun.

Anna Hathaway

And then there is Anne Hathaway. Her performance is, well, words can't even describe. It's brilliant, harrowing, heart wrenching and any other big, complex words that portray the same emotions and brilliance as those. Her version of I Dreamed a Dream is raw emotion and it's devastating to watch. At that moment, if you are not crying in your seat in the dark cinema, surrounded by strangers, then you are the worst person to exist. Ever. I mean what's wrong with you? She is laying everything she has out to bare for you and you don't even have the courtesy, no, the compassion to shed a few tears to show that you are human. Unbelievable. This really is an amazing performance. If she does not win the Oscar for this then it will be a crime. Haters can hate but Anne Hathaway is every woman!

There was just one problem. It's not that major, it was something that really got on my nerves. And for this I must complain to cinematographer Danny Cohen and editors Chris Dickens and Melanie Oliver. The filming and the editing for some reason unbeknownst to man, decided that it was going to jump around the entire film. I must ask why? Why would you, when you have such a big, elaborate and intricate set, only have extreme close ups of peoples faces? It makes everything feel claustrophobic. And why, after such long, sustained close ups, would you have so many cuts that you are constantly jumping from one shot to the next every few seconds? It was very distracting. There will be these beautiful, still scenes filled with all this emotion and then the editors decided to go to town and undo all that emotion by jumping all over the place, moving in and out, far away, side to side, back and forth, up and down.

Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen

This film was shot mostly using a hand held camera by Danny Cohen. I am okay with the shakiness of handy cams but this was over a little over the top for me with all the cutting as well as the hand held. This all being said, it didn't stop me from getting immersed in the film and the songs and the characters. I loved it. The music is so great and everyone really did a great job on this film.


This is a great adaptation. It's not to say that I won't go and see the stage musical again because I will (probably countless times) but when it's not showing or when I don't have the money to see it, then this will suffice very nicely.

It's Bond, Quality Bond

I feel rather ill qualified to write this as I have only ever seen Daniel Craig as James Bond. Well I have seen one other James Bond film and it was a Pierce Brosnan Bond film and I am not a fan of that guy and it was awful. So, as is obvious, I am not a die hard fan but I am going to write this anyway.

The latest Bond film, Skyfall, blows the rest out of the water.

Bond is injured whilst trying to retrieve a lost hard drive containing the names and locations of MI6 field agents (seriously, why would you put all that on a hard drive if there was the slightest possibility that it could be stolen?).  Meanwhile, MI6 headquarters get some pretty personal attacks

Craig is a great Bond. He pulls off very suave and very confident very well. He seems much more at home in the role after the first two films. Judy Dench is a Dame for a reason, because she is awesome. She plays M with a perfect amount of cold heart and repressed emotion. Ralph Fiennes does well with his relatively small part and he is a welcome face. And the Bond girls, or should we say women now?

But the show is stolen by Javier Bardem. He revels in this part. He is the perfect amount of crazy to make a really great, really memorable villain. The whole time he has this creepy calm demeanor and every facial expression and every action had me twisting in my seat because you could just tell that this character was off the rails but he is smart and that is scary. You never really know what this guy is going to do. He just messes with you 100% of the time. 

Sam Mendes, the man behind it all, deserves a lot of praise. This is not an action for the sake of action, there is an entertaining and engaging plot behind it. This is not only a great film plot and acting wise but it's great looking. The cinematography is pretty brilliant. There are many scenes that are just really pretty to look at. Well actually, most of the scenes are really pretty to look at and this is a welcome change. The shots of Istanbul that have been in other movies like Argo and Taken 2 don't even compare to the ones in Bond. And it's really nice to be able to have a pretty looking fight scene or motorbike chase. But the scenes in China and Scotland, I could look at them all day.

There are a few things that weren't quite great. Length wise, I think it was a little long so there are some points where things slow down a lot and even though this is so much more than an action movie, I still wanted it to move a little quicker at times. But all in all it was entertaining and pretty to look at.

For all the Bond fans out there I think this will be a great addition to the franchise and fans will appreciate the nods to previous Bonds and previous movies. Those who are new to the whole thing, like me, will be able to appreciate this as a quality movie with a bit for everyone that looks pretty incredible.