Kevin's Movie Blog

The front page of Ain't It Cool News tonight is sporting ecstatic reviews of THE AVENGERS (Quint: "Joss Whedon took a flying leap at the extremely well set up ball and spiked it so hard that there’s a permanent indentation in the earth where it hit") and a link to the just-released HD trailer for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES which makes me want to wet my pants. I don't even like the Bane story line, but just as with THE DARK KNIGHT (2008), this has the look of a movie that is so well made it doesn't leave you a choice in the matter. I can't be the only person who watched this and thought "I'm not sure I can see Anne Hathaway as Catwoman--oh wait, I just did."

This has the feel of a movie summer that will be a tad overwhelming. A few weeks before the July premiere of DARK KNIGHT we also have the Spider-Man reboot, followed by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY on December 14th. I don't have a precise grasp on the cultural forces which have conspired to cause the devotion of such colossal wealth, energy and ingenuity towards pleasing my personal tastes in the year in which I turn 39, but I am grateful.

Interesting NYT op-ed: The Downside of Cohabitating Before Marriage.

I thought this was interesting and well-written. It also reminds me of my on-again-off-again parallel fantasy reality in which I am educated and working in clinical psychology, rather than law. I went to a pretty high-falutin' university, but despite having a strong engineering program, Princeton has a pronounced theoretical bias to its bachelor of arts programs, and no program at all in clinical psychology (at least for undergraduates). When I was there in the early 1990's, the psychology department was perhaps the weakest of all the university's academic programs, and certainly weaker than the psychology programs offered at scores of other institutions regarded as being less prestigious. This may be because the understanding of human psychology at a theoretical level is still in the dark ages. Most of what I learned in the two psychology courses I took there is that all the weak theories that have ever been proposed to explain human psychology can be easily discredited, and that exceptionally weak correlations are the best that can be expected from crudely devised psychological experiments. So I majored in English instead--maybe I would have anyway--and wound up in law school one year after graduation.

Now I work in mental health policy for the state legislature, and occasionally get vicarious thills from going to behavioral health conferences or interacting with mental health and chemical dependency professionals working in state funded programs.

Anyway, big digression, but interesting and provocative article. FTR, girljim and I did cohabit for about four months in 2004 prior to getting engaged, but while I already can't recall the specific conversations, I'm quite sure we both regarded it as a serious commitment, taken only after we were both sure engagement would be coming and reasonably imminent. Not that there aren't other perfectly acceptable ways of doing things.

I'm running behind today--haven't starting watching the Blu-Ray of THE HELP yet, and girljim is putting together a baked macaroni & cheese for the telecast later.

So, I haven't seen THE HELP yet, but I saw the other eight Best Picture nominees, and all of the nominees for Best Director, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Original Score. Here are my picks:

BEST PICTURE
HUGO. It's just that good. I also loved THE ARTIST and WAR HORSE. MONEYBALL, THE DESCENDANTS, TREE OF LIFE, and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS I have on a slightly lower tier, but I recommend all of them without much hesitation (some might not be for everyone). I had some problems with EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE.

BEST DIRECTOR
Logically, this has to go to Martin Scorsese, but I am just so impressed with Michel Hazanavicius that I pick him instead. I want to catch up with his James Bond parody O.S.S. movies.

BEST ACTOR
Jean Dujardin for THE ARTIST. Sorry, but THE DESCENDANTS was not George Clooney's career performance--I liked him better in both MICHAEL CLAYTON and UP IN THE AIR, for starters.

BEST ACTRESS
I should reserve judgement, because Viola Davis is supposed to be the favorite for THE HELP, but c'mon--it's Meryl Streep. Really, it is.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
All three of the films I've seen in this category have great screenplays, but I would like to see the award go to BRIDESMAIDS.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
No GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO? Humph. I liked MONEYBALL enough that I read the book after seeing the film, but I would have liked to have seen Soderbergh's version--I guess I have to pick HUGO. Or MONEYBALL.

ART DIRECTION
All five films in this category had brilliant art direction. You know, it's HUGO again, but I will cheer for any one of them except perhaps HARRY POTTER--because a billion jillion dollars is reward enough for that franchise.

CINEMATOGRAPHY
HUGO. All the other nominees had superb cinematography.

COSTUME DESIGN
THE ARTIST.

MAKEUP
This is THE IRON LADY all the way. I would have liked to have seen that one nominated for Best Picture.

ORIGINAL SCORE
John Williams owns this one, but he has two nominations, one for WAR HORSE and one for THE ADVENTURES OF TIN TIN. I will pick TIN TIN, which should have been nominated for Animated Feature Film.

SOUND MIXING
What is sound mixing again?

Okay, that's it until after the telecast.

Hollywood moves weirdly in pairs sometimes. Remember the two asteroid-striking-the-earth movies (DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON in 1998), or the two volcano eruption movies (DANTE'S PEAK and VOLCANO in 1997)? Now we have two moving tributes to an even greater cataclysm--the invention of talking movies. The two Oscar nomination leaders, HUGO and THE ARTIST--both gorgeous films--both feature recreations of 1920s silent movies, both dramatize the impact of technology on silent film artists, and both present narrative and formalist reflections on the artifice of visual storytelling.

Both of these films are made by obvious masters. ( Read more... )

How do you judge if a film is successful? Just asking whether you enjoyed it is surely not enough. Some films are designed to evoke joy--Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) springs to mind--but more aim for the release of baser emotions. Did I like it? is a fine question to ask a film like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL (2011), but it does not seem fair to apply this question to a film about childhood trauma induced by the senseless death of a parent during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

You might ask, ( Read more... )

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

Also known as Kari-gurashi no Arietti (2010).

Edited to add: This is the best Studio Ghibli film I've seen since SPIRITED AWAY (2001), and probably a lot less intense for the younglings, manly adult crying notwithstanding. The film is adapted from The Borrowers (1952), apparently with a free hand to judge from the plot summary of the book on Wikipedia.

Woody Allen has directed 46 films in 46 years (including a handful of shorts), starting in 1966 with WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? through the upcoming NERO FIDDLED in 2012. During that time he has written three other produced films and written and sometimes directed eleven plays. This is mind boggling. The last Woody Allen film I saw before this one, VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008), was absolutely terrific.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is really quite good. ( Read more... )

Squee! This movie has Tony Head--Giles, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer--playing scenes with Meryl Streep! Ripper is forced to submit his resignation to Karen Silkwood! You go, sir! This appears to be not quite his first big screen role, as he was also featured in last year's GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE (2011). Still--big step! It feels like seeing someone from the old neighborhood making good. Does this mean no more gigs narrating Doctor Who Confidential?

My feelings for Tony aside, this is actually quite a serious film. ( Read more... )

The sun rises on a field of golden grass as 300 cavalry officers rise out of hiding, mount, and ride hard for the enemy's tents with drawn sabers and cries of war on their lips. Columns of soldiers labor up hills driving horses dragging grotesque machines of war. A stallion gallops over the tops of trenches at dusk, leaping over the refuge of the Allied soldiers into No Man's Land in a panicked search for freedom. This is the stuff of WAR HORSE. The magic lens of Steven Spielberg gets the stuff that should be impossible to get: vistas, action, and through lines that transmute something as unimaginable in scope as the Great War into a framework we can chew on and process culturally. No one cuts together a scene so deftly. It's not just that you can't believe what you're seeing--he makes you think you saw things he doesn't even show you. No matter if the scene is told from the point of view of a horse or whatever, there's a hand firmly on the lead that will draw you safely and securely to the other side, hitting just the right points of catharsis on the way.

( Read more... )

The greatest joy to be had in this adaptation of John le Carré's 1974 novel comes from the period recreation of early 1970's London and its intelligence community, all those great chunky phones and devices and dumbwaiters, with flashbacks dating back to the rollicking 1950s and 60s. The second is what survives of the essence of le Carré. I'm pretty sure I have never read a le Carré novel nor seen another direct adaptation of his work, but there is something about the structure and essence of this story which I immediately identify as le Carré. Awareness of it seeps in somehow, I guess.

The third is Gary Oldman's Oscar-nominated performance as George Smiley, upper-middle-aged intelligence officer forced into retirement then recruited to come back sniff out a mole in the upper echelons of MI6. Smiley is the anti-James Bond, a paunchy bureaucrat who is a cuckold instead of a ladykiller. Smiley is animated by passions and loyalties that are buried deep, so deep that externally he seems to barely move and would be the wallflower in any work or social setting. But determination and integrity will out, and drives him forward inexorably to a solution to this mystery.

Oldman's performance is minimalistic indeed to the point of seeming inert. I am tempted to say it is overrated. But he has a couple really good scenes, yes--one scene of drunken reminiscence in particular, and he should be credited for the specificity of the mannerisms than define this character.

As a film, no, this is not great. It is conceived as a slow-burning character drama, but it's mostly just slow. The cinematography fails us--the camera never is in quite the right place, never quite captures the right hooks to make us care about the characters or the story, which is too muddy. As a consequence, the first hour seems quite looooong. The le Carré essence draws you in eventually. A little too eventually.

My list of movies to see before the Oscar telecast consists of all films nominated for two or more awards, plus selected films nominated for a single award that pique my interest.  I'm giving myself a pass on the documentaries and foreign films, expect for A SEPARATION (2011), which is also nominated for best original screenplay.

There are 27 films on this list and I've only seen 6 10 so far; of the remaining 21 17 films, 11 are available on Blu-Ray and all but two three of the others are playing at a theater near me (the rest are probably still playing somewhere in Seattle).  If my tally is correct, I've seen films that account for 27 64 of the 85 nominations.  I will not complete the list by February 26, especially with the Legislative session on.  We'll see how far I can get.  Anyone want to go to the movies?

( The List )

The New York Times has an unusually perspicacious (and fascinating!) article on this year's nominees. My takeaway is that the Academy's choices are unusually substantive this year. Check out these two graphs describing the Best Director nomineees:

Conventional wisdom among Hollywood’s Oscar campaigners says the best director nominations help to identify the real contenders for best picture, by culling out movies whose filmmakers did not quite make the cut. By that standard, “The Help,” a vastly popular movie with Oscar-friendly themes — about racial bias and conciliation — has a problem, as its director, the relative newcomer Tate Taylor, was snubbed. So was Steven Spielberg, as the director of “War Horse,” another best picture nominee.

Instead, the directing nominations went to Michel Hazanavicius for “The Artist”; Alexander Payne for “The Descendants”; Woody Allen for “Midnight in Paris”; and Martin Scorsese for “Hugo,” along with Terrence Malick for “The Tree of Life.” Only Mr. Hazanavicius has not previously been nominated in the category.

That's a great list of directors. The awards seem to be spread out over a wide selection of interesting films, which I'm going to enjoy catching up on over the course of the next month.

A full list of nominees is here. The Oscar telecast is on Sunday, February 26.

Martin Scorsese to everyone else, about making movies in 3D: You've been doing it wrong.

This film is really seriously good and you owe it to yourself to catch it in 3D before it leaves the theaters. Unless, I guess, you've got one of those new-fangled 3D televisions but I would see it in the theaters anyway. This is a children's movie, the first of Scosese's career, based on Brian Selznik's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007). It's a children's movie the way they used to make them. It includes everyone, without excluding adults, by employing a sophisticated story that never panders. It is not made of sass and fart jokes, like some thrice-awful SHREK clone. It's about wonder and creativity and nighttime in Paris and finding your place in the world and really cool machines--giant clocks and gears and pendulums and this wicked cool automaton. Hugo wants to fix the automaton because it was left to him by his father, but he is now, in 1931, an orphan boy living in a train station (the Gare Montparnasse) where he winds the clocks to stop the authorities from investigating the disappearance of his uncle. He runs from a police inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and befriends an old shopkeeper (Ben Kingsley) and the shopkeeper's goddaughter and this is a good movie, filmed mostly in live action, with enhanced digital backgrounds.

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (2011) was a good movie too, better than SHREK at least, but it assumed it couldn't hold the audience's attention without throwing showy fastballs out to the back row every four seconds or so. Boom! Razzmatazz. HUGO holds the audience by just doing it. Which is not to say there aren't moments that take your breath away--a lot of them.

There's a theme worked through it of magic tricks made through machines--did I mention the film is also a biopic of silent film genius Georges Méliès?--which mirrors the magic of Scorsese's 3D camera and the tricks employed in making this outstanding film. There's a shot I can't stop thinking about which is tight on the long-nosed face of the inpsector's dog. Instead of pushing in, Scorsese slowly pulls the eyes of the camera apart and without getting larger, the dog's head just grows more and more 3D. He's got a million ideas how to use the camera and it's like no one ever made a 3D movie before. We'll be hearing more about this one come Oscar time.

Update: HUGO is Harry Knowles' favorite film of the year.

The New York Times covers the main reason I had to stop being a public defender.

That and the other main reasons, of course, such as exhaustion, burn-out, marriage, other interests, etc.

Still--I'm very grateful to see this reported. It's a bad day when you have to tell someone who trusts you "I believe you are innocent of these charges, but you'd be a fool not to plead guilty and pay this fine/go to jail/go to prison." And the moral hazard for prosecutors is enormous.

Clip from THE DARK KNIGHT (2008).

Jedi Kittens!

So--everybody on the Internet but me had already seen that, right?

Don't forget to watch Jedi Kittens--Behind the Scenes.

Sometimes I think that since I now rarely use this site to post movie reviews, I should use it instead to post my thoughts on more serious subjects, such as spirituality, public policy, morality, or whatnot. Fortunately for most of you, laziness is a powerful disincentive.

Anyway, here is a link to a blog post I really responded to this morning about the execution of Troy Davis (h/t Alex Pareene). The comments from "Kevin" are mine.

One thing I learned from my days as a public defender (and my usual response to the "how can you represent guilty people?" question) is that when something goes down, you never know what really happened unless you were there. If you were there, you still may not know. For me, what "really happened" never made much difference in how I approached the case (okay--I own up to getting squicked by sex offenses against children). The intermittent possibility of factual innocence was just another petal on the strange special flower that was each case. All of my clients had one thing in common--they were in trouble.

It distresses me sometimes when I find out that people think I'm a serious person. I would much rather be seen as easy-going and approachable. Then I read stuff like the comments I posted on that blog and think, I am one serious motherf**ker. It's a wonder I ever laugh at all.

I'm giggling as I type these words. I promise.

FWIW, this article is really hilarious. However, if I screw up the HTML I apparently won't be able to edit and fix the link.

Last Male Heir to Bloodline Watches Movie Alone on Laptop.

Edited to add: Apparently it's getting better, and is related to another denial of service attack.

girljim has been complaining that she can't even log on to LJ lately, and I keep getting fail messages when I try to edit my entries.

I take it editing entries is bad form, but I edit constantly. Sue me.

So far, most of the angst I've heard about livejournal has been largely without foundation from my perspective except for temporary disruptions due to denial-of-service attacks or whatever. But it's possible things have been falling apart and I just haven't noticed.

Not so much for me, I'm at work. The New York Times has a wonderful page with 20 photos of same sex couples who were able to get married in New York on the first day it was legal, with 30 seconds of audio (if you click on the photo) from each couple describing how happy they are. Maybe I get sentimental about marriages because I am so happy in my own marriage. Grab a hanky and check it out.

Thirteen minute production diary from the set of THE HOBBIT with costumes and dialogue here.

This is almost too much. I am constantly amazed at the stones of Peter Jackson and these Weta people.

Time to add TheOneRing.net back into the daily Internet rounds.

Check out this photo!

Also:
Explanatory blog post.

More photos from Flikr.

The 1925 Scopes Monkey trial occurred when biology teacher John Scopes agreed to be the defendant in a case designed to test a Tennessee law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the classroom. Scopes was prosecuted by the state in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Grand pooh-bah politician and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan came to Dayton to join the prosecution team. The ACLU and Baltimore Herald sent Clarence Darrow, prominent criminal defense attorney, to lead the team of defense lawyers representing Scopes. The trial was one of the first to be broadcast by radio and became a national sensation. ( Read more... )

From the BBC.

Sarah Jane Smith was the greatest. Her return to DOCTOR WHO in 2006, thirty years after leaving the show as a regular, is my favorite David Tennant episode. THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES was at best uneven, but she was the anchor that held the show together. How many television shows are anchored by a 60-year-old woman who's never been a movie star? Ridiculous as TSJA was, the show was sold on her integrity. You believed that someone like Elisabeth Sladen would make the world a better place.

Done with house cleaning, got the cable set up, no guests have arrived yet, so here's some quick commentary. As of yesterday I managed to see all 10 of the Best Picture nominees, and it's a great bunch. Here is my ranking of the 10 nominees:

1. The Social Network
2. The Kids Are Alright
3. True Grit
4. 127 Hours
5. The Fighter
6. The King's Speech
7. Inception
8. Winter's Bone
9. Black Swan
10. Toy Story 3

But ranking is a stupid exercise. It could be done more honestly as a 3-way tie for 1st, and a 4-way tie for 4th.

All in all I saw films that account for 78% of the nominations. Here are my picks (but not predictions, these are the films I would vote for) for some major categories. ( Read more... )