LAMB Devours the Oscars: A Look at the Best Director Nominees

Well, here we are again kiddies.  That time of year where the fine folks over at the LAMB (The Large Association of Movie Blogs, for the initiated amongst you) take volunteers to write about the Oscars.  After writing on the Doc Shorts in 2011, and Art Direction last year, I find myself assigned to the Best Director category this time around - my first choice actually.  With that said, let us now delve into, what is probably the most controversial category this year.

By now, anyone who is anyone has heard of the great snub handed to both Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck.  I can understand, but not agree on one snub, while not understanding but totally agreeing on the other.  Bigelow, not getting nominated for the brilliantly brazen Zero Dark Thirty, is a real shame.  If I had a ballot, she would surely make my top five, but, in a way, her snub is understandable.  First, she is a woman in the manly world of Hollywood.  Yeah, she is the only woman to ever win the Best Director Oscar - for the Hurt Locker in case you didn't already know - but Hollywood is very much a boy's club.  Very much a boy's club indeed.  There is also the whole controversy over the film and its showing of American torture techniques.  I say get over it people, but I am sure this was a factor in her snub as well.

As for Affleck's snub, this is much more questionable a thing.  Affleck is loved in the industry.  His film Argo, though political as well, is set far enough in the past, as to not offend too many people.   This, and the fact that he has won pretty much every award for directing that has been given out this awards season.  I know I, along with just about every other Oscar postulater on the web, had Affleck  listed as a lock to get a nomination.  It was surely the biggest snub of this Oscar year.  Making it even more noticeable, is the fact that the Director's Guild nominated Affleck, Bigelow, Spielberg, Ang Lee and Tom Hooper, and then only gave Oscar nods to two of these (Spielberg and Lee), and then had the audacity to name Affleck the winner!?  Putting aside that the DGA and the director's branch of the Academy are extremely similar in their membership make-up, and therefore should nominate basically the same group of people, this is just crazy.  Then again, even though I like Affleck, and am a big fan of his first two films as director, I was not overly impressed with Argo myself, so Affleck not getting nominated is not that big of a deal to me.

Of course, all this snubbing and controversy has probably assured Argo the Best Picture Oscar - just for spite alone, if for no other reason.   And to answer any possible questions about the possibility of a write-in vote campaign, it is not going to happen.  Such a thing was once allowed, but after Hal Mohr "stole" the Best Cinematography Oscar, via a write-in campaign, back in 1935, the Academy changed the rules and disallowed any future write-in winners.  There have been a couple times in Oscar history when the subject has again been breached - most recently in 1988, when Michael Moore's Roger and Me failed to get a nomination for Best Documentary, and in 2008, when The Dark Knight was supposedly snubbed, the latter of which caused the Academy to up the ante to ten nominees for Best picture.  But no, it will not happen this year, as no write-in vote will be counted.  Perhaps we can all hope for a last minute reprieve (though not a big Argo fan, after all this craziness, even I want the guy to win now) but otherwise...not happening.  But enough of all this woulda coulda shoulda nonsense.  We are here to discuss the five nominees that are actually nominated.

Let's start out with the three nominees that really have no shot in Hell of winning come February 24th.  This, of course, is said with just a bit of trepidation, since I was so sure Affleck would get nominated back on January 9th, but here we go anyway.  First up, we have a pair of first time nominees.  Benh Zeitlin for his directorial debut, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and legendary world master, Michael Haneke, for his harrowing Amour.  Zeitlin's film has some beautiful moments in it - and it did make my Best of 2012 list (coming in at no. 20) - but neither he, nor his film, are likely to win here.  The nomination is his real award.  As for Haneke, he is one of those rarities - a Best Director nominee for a foreign-language film.  It has happened just twenty-one times in the Academy's eighty-five year history, most recently, before this year, was in 2007.  The two-time Palme d'Or winner (for The White Ribbon in 2009, and Amour this past year) finally joins that club this year.

Haneke, who incidentally is just the fifth Austrian-born nominee in this category (the others being Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinnemann and Josef von Sternberg) and the first to be nominated for a film actually made in Austria (the other nominees were all already working in Hollywood when they were nominated), will surely win an Oscar on February 24th.  Amour will win Best Foreign-Language (he says with such confidence) and that Oscar will go to Haneke, but for Best Director, it is highly unlikely.  Then again, a surprise victory for Haneke is probably more likely (however miniscule a chance it is) than a victory for David O. Russell.  Sure, his film, Silver Linings Playbook, is up for eight Oscars (including one in each of the four acting categories - last done by Reds in 1981), and for a short moment in time, it was seen as a possible frontrunner for Best Picture (a long gone moment by now), but it just doesn't seem like that important of a picture to give the Oscar too.  Of course, don't tell that to star Jennifer Lawrence, who is probably going to beat out the much more deserving Jessica Chastain in the Best Actress category.  Russell, who was nominated once before, for 2010's The Fighter, is another one of those, like Haneke and Zeitlin, where the nomination is the award.  Still, it would be fun to hear Haneke's name called on Oscar night.  Maybe that would make Lars von Trier a sudden frontrunner for next year's awards.  Maybe not.  Anyway, let's get to the two nominees, that could actually win this bitch.

I suppose conventional wisdom would say that Steven Spielberg is the most likely to win (unless the Academy board of Governors come through on that last-minute stay of execution on Affleck and his write-in votes) but we should not count out Ang Lee just yet.  Until recently, and the snub factor for Argo's eventual win (and Affleck, being a producer on the film, will still receive an Oscar if it wins BP), Spielberg's Lincoln has been the frontrunner for the top prize, and that is likely to transfer over to a Best Director Oscar - Spielberg's third, if it does indeed happen.  But then you have Ang Lee and the seeming love for Life of Pi - nominated for eleven Oscars, second only to Lincoln's twelve.  Granted, Pi will most likely win a couple tech awards (Art Direction the most likely of these), but this love could transfer to a Best Director award as well.  Funny enough, both Spielberg and Lee have won Oscars, while their respective films did not.  Spielberg won Best Director in 1998, while his Saving Private Ryan was beaten out by Shakespeare in Love for the top prize.  Meanwhile, Lee took home the Oscar in 2005, for Brokeback Mountain, while the godawful Crash inexplicably took home Best Picture.  Barring a surprise victory by Haneke (seriously, I would love this to happen), this scenario will happen again this year for one of these two directors.

So, who do I think will win?  Right now I am leaning ever-so-slightly toward Ang Lee, but I won't be making my final Oscar predictions until the night before the Oscars, so who knows who I will eventually mark off on my ballot.   Well, I suppose that is it for now.  Hopefully the fine folks who run the LAMB, like my contribution to their .  Not that I would actually change it if they didn't, but it is nice to please people...sometimes.  Anyway, there ya go.  See ya on the 23rd, with my final Oscar predix.  Well, I'll see you before that, as I will still be posting new reviews and other such fun items, but you know what I mean.

What Film SHOULD Win the Best Picture Oscar?

There has been a lot of talk, in certain circles, about which film is going to walk away with the Oscar.  Will it be Lincoln, or will Argo make a lat minute sneak attack and take home the top gold?  For what it's worth, I believe the latter will end up happening on February 24th.  Director Affleck's snub at the Oscars - while winning pretty much every other award known to humanity - is probably the one defining element that will make such a thing happen.  But then, we are not here to talk about who or what WILL win the Oscar, but instead, who or what SHOULD win the damn thing.  And this is your chance to say so.

I first opened this poll the day of the Oscar nominations announcement, and so far 136 votes have been cast.  Pretty damn good, if you ask me, but it could be better - which is the exact reason why this post exists.  To let everyone know that it is here, or there, or wherever cyberspace really is.  So get your vote on everyone.  If you were handed an Oscar ballot, who would you pick?  Would it be the thrills of Django or Zero Dark Thirty?  Would it be the heartache of Beasts or Amour?  Would it be the suspense of Argo or the stature of Lincoln?  Would it be spectacle of Les Mis, or Miz, if you prefer?  Would it be the ADD comedy of Silver Linings or the sheer visual audacity of Life of Pi?  Which film would you pick to take home the gold?  

All you have to do is go on over to the poll - found conveniently near the top of the sidebar of this very site - and choose which of the nine BP nominees is your favourite.  And please remember, feel free to post as many comments as your heart desires (the more, the merrier - we can never have enough comments), but in order for your vote to count, you must click on the actual poll itself.  The poll will go on until Friday, February 22nd, and the final results will be posted right here (same bat channel and all that) on Saturday, February 23rd.  And, incidentally, speaking of the Oscars, my predictions for the big night will be posted early on Sunday, February 24th.  So go vote people - and send everyone you know this way too.  Let's rock the vote!

Film Review: Fisher Stevens' Stand-Up Guys

This film, starring Al Pacino and Christopher Walken as aged ex-small time gangsters, may not have the heft and/or depth of many of these actor's younger day roles, but it still manages to resonate quite strongly at times, making for, if not a powerful film, at least a quaint one.  Granted, Stand-Up Guys, directed by actor-turned-director Fisher Stevens (you know, that guy from Short Circuit that used to be intimate with Michelle Pfieffer), is not what one would call especially creative in any particular way, but Pacino, with his over-the-top chutzpah, and Walken, with his low-key zen-like approach, play off each other quite nicely, and it is in this back-and-forth, where the movie succeeds.

Ostensibly, the film is about small-timer Valentine "my friends call me Val," a man enjoying his first day out of prison in 28 years, and his life-long best friend, Doc, who we learn early on (as early as the trailer actually), has been ordered to kill said best friend.   What we actually get, is basically a hang-out movie, where the fun is in watching Pacino as Val and Walken as Doc, just bantering back and forth, be it dramatically or comedically, even occasionally somewhat poignantly.  Like I said, the movie is not especially imaginative, and nothing really happens that even the most unobservant of moviegoers sees the proverbial mile away, but it is great fun to watch Walken and Pacino play off each others seeming whims.  And about halfway through the film, we get to see Alan Arkin as well, playing another old small timer gangster - the wheel man as it were - n what amounts to a relatively tiny part.  And, incidentally, once you have seen the film, you too will see the irony in my describing Arkin's part as tiny.

There are even the occasional Tarantinoesque moments, like when Walken and Pacino help a woman enact revenge on her assailants, complete with baseball bat and testicle joke.  Hell, Stevens even casts a Tarantino actress, Vanessa Ferlito of Death Proof lap dancing fame, in the vengeful role.  Then you have the ending.  Not to give anything away, but how else could this film end than the way it does.   Overall, perhaps not a great film by any stretch, but still a hell of a lot more entertaining than I ever imagined it could have been.  It's fun to see Pacino and Walken playing these parts, and being allowed the freedom to just throw caution to the wind, so to speak, and do what they do best.   It makes one recall the Pacino of Dog Day Afternoon or the Walken of The Deer Hunter.  Sure, these roles are nowhere near the level of those performances, but when compared to much of what these actors find themselves stuck in lo this past decade or so (perhaps Walken not as noticeably, as he manages to shine through even in lesser films), Stand-Up Guys, even as hokey as it gets near the end, is a welcome respite indeed.

Film Review: Ang Lee's Life of Pi

I must admit that, even being less than a rabid fan of the CGI-addled cinema that is so prevalent today, I think Ang Lee's CGI-heavy Life of Pi is a pretty goddamn good-looking film.  Pretty goddamn good-looking indeed.  Granted, the story is rather trite, even with the heavy issues it tackles, but at least it looks good.  Sure, there times when the computer-generated Bengal Tiger, looks quite fake, but considering they could not, nor would not, get a real tiger to do the things he is meant to do here (not without ripping off some faces that is), this is more than a fine replacement.  At least he isn't as bad as Jar Jar Binks.  But seriously, Ang Lee has fashioned a stunning visual work together here, and that alone is enough to recommend such a work - even if the story gets real tiresome, real quickly, and we are left wallowing around inside a schmarmy mess of emotional manipulation, and a bunch of new agey clichés and sucking narrative twaddle.  But hey, it is still goddamn good-looking at least.

Granted, the aforementioned new agey clichés and sucking narrative twaddle that permeate the film, are something the mainstream moviegoer will most likely fall for, hook, line and sinker (to use my own cliché'd saying), which is why the movie was such a hit (as was the original novel by Yann Martel) and is currently up for eleven Academy Award nominations.  Yes, most of these Oscar nods are in the technical categories, which is all fine and dandy (remember, goddamn good-looking), but it is somehow up for Best Picture and Screenplay as well.  This just goes to show that even those who work in the movie industry can still be taken in by such emotional fakery and cheap uplifting hooey as is Life of Pi.  But, once again, it is goddamn good-looking.  The visuals that Lee engulfs his film in - from the gorgeous colours that are India, to the wide open space of the seas and the stars and all the life within, to the vibrations of ten thousand meerkats running across a so-called magical island, to that damn Bengal Tiger again, to the most amazing flying fish attack one is most likely ever to see - are just purely spectacular.  Just purely spectacular.  There are actually some moments in the film that one could call downright mind-blowing.  One of the few 3D movies to use the technology to its best and fullest extent.

Now, even though the film is full of hokey sentimentality (and this criticism coming from an avowed sentimentalist such as this critic), the underlying idea of the film - the mystical over the mundane, the magical over the middling, art over truth - is a statement that rings very true with my own thoughts of the artistic, the spectacle, the grand illusion.  It is just too bad, we have to take such a narratively cheap road to get to such an idea.  Perhaps I am a bit too harsh on the storytelling of the film, for I do share its ultimate thoughts, its ultimate goals if you will, but then again, perhaps that is exactly why I am being so harsh on it all.  Lee has done much better (The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain are more than mere proof of that) but then Lee has been more mundane as well (Lust, Caution and Taking Woodstock are sad reminders of this).  What we get with Life of Pi, is a a lot of hokum, that luckily, eventually does enlighten itself with an ending that gives way to not just the obvious mysticism of the story (just more of the same hokum), but to the whole idea of art and beauty and what one would choose to believe.  Oh yeah, and it's goddamn good-looking as well.

Film Review: Walter Hill's Bullet to the Head

The two big stalwarts of 1980's action movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, both have movies currently residing in this nation's multiplexes.  Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand, is a comeback for the one time California Governator, while Stallone's Bullet to the Head is another in a seemingly never-ending onslaught of Stallone action vehicles.   Schwarzenegger's film, directed by Korean L'enfant terrible, Kim Jee-woon, is a semi-deconstruction of the action genre, with Arnold toying with his own image.  Stallone's film, directed by Walter Hill, a man seemingly well past his prime, is a straight-forward actioner, that seems to think it is still circa 1987.  For the most part, Schwarzenegger's film succeeds in what it is attempting to do.  For the most part, so does Stallone's.  Unfortunately, Scwarzenegger's film is attempting to be a post-modern genre satire, while Stallone's is merely trying to be the same ole same ole, which I suppose makes Schwarzenegger the rejuvenated winner here, and Stallone, the tired old loser.

Full of stereotypes and clichés that went out of fashion twenty-some years ago, Director Hill, a filmmaker that has been out of fashion for even longer, and star Stallone hand us the runnest of mill action flicks.  A take-off on Hill's last good film, 1982's 48 Hours (yes, the director had a run of fun films back in the late seventies and early eighties), Stallone plays Jimmy Bobo, an aging hit man, opposite Fast and Furious alum, Sung Kang, as Taylor Kwan, a do-gooder cop, who have teamed up to track down a Big Easy kingpin.  Full of typical jokes - Kang's cop calling Stallone's hit man old, and Stallone digging at Kang with a slew of light weight racist jabs - the film progresses along without ever becoming the cheeky monkey it so desperately needs to succeed.  If one were to put away Kwan's omnipresent smart phone (a running gag, aimed at Stallone being old), this film could fit in at pretty much any moment in 1980's cinema - and unlike the aforementioned Schwarzenegger vehicle, The Last Stand, this is not a badge of honour for its nostalgic homage, but rather a scar of dishonour for showing us nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing even interesting.

Sadly, we really get nothing here.  Even in Stallone's Expendables films, we get some laughs and a nice fight or two.  Here, we are left wanting, wanting, and wanting some more.  Even the climactic fight between the scarily buff 66 year old Stallone (let's just say that if he were a baseball player, he would be more akin to A-Rod than Derek Jeter) and killer stud Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, the new Conan), we are given the unorthodox axe battle - complete with the one truly funny line in the whole damn film, and that is given away in the trailer - but even so, it is still quite run of the ole mill.  I guess what I am trying to get across here, is that I just did not dig this film.  Too straightforward, and not enough fun.  Whereas, The Last Stand poked fun at itself, Bullet to the Head takes itself way too seriously to really be any fun whatsoever. Sad really, since Stallone has done good work in the past - just watch Cop Land to see that.  And even sadder yet, since Hill has done some damn good work himself as a writer/director - The Long Riders, The Warriors, the often underappreciated films like The Driver, Southern Comfort and Streets of Fire - but all a long time ago.  In the end, it's just sad, and that is all.

Film Review: Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies

The undead are quite hip these days.  Between The Walking Dead on TV and a slew of video games and comics on the subject, zombies are the thing.  I know, I proudly call myself an Undead Head.  So why not try your hand at a zombie rom com - a zom com if you will.  Such an undertaking is a slippery slope however.  One wants to make humour out of the zombie apocalypse, aimed at a relatively younger audience, but not so young that you delve into the tweeny Twilight territory that such an endeavor could easily find itself lost within.  What writer/director Jonathan Levine manages to do with the material - based on the novel of the same name by Isaac Marion - is to create a (pun very much intended) living, breathing zombie movie that not only pokes fun at the genre, but also acts as a loving homage to said genre.  A biting (yes, pun intended once again) fun-loving deconstruction of both zombie films and romantic comedies.  All-in-all, Warm Bodies is a surprisingly spry and humourous tale.

Warm Bodies, both book and movie, also takes a stab at being an updated, post-zombie apocalyptic rendition of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, with the story of Julie, one of the survivalists living in a walled-in city, away from the walking dead, and one of those very same dead, named R by Julie, who saves her from harm, and hides her away in his airplane hideaway.  A story of star-crossed lovers, one of whom happens to be a brain-eating undead kid who could be shot in the head at any moment by Julie's dad, who just so happens to be the head of the survivalist city.  Meanwhile, all of R's "friends" just see Julie as their next meal.  See, Romeo and Juliet...with a twist.  However, the crux of this post-modern Romeo and Juliet tale is not how these two warring "families" do not get along, but how they can come together.  When R rescues Julie from marauding undead - corpses they are fondly nicknamed by the survivors - something in him begins to be reborn.  Slowly this happens to most of the so-called zombies, including M (I am guessing, standing for Mercutio), and hope for the human race begins to spark.  Of course, Julie's dad still wants to shoot R in the head.

Actually, the film is quite enjoyable.  Playing with the genre - we are even given a wry joke about the typical musical montage - the director (the equally wry 50/50) gives us a loving tribute to the rom com, while birthing a whole new sub genre, the aforementioned zom rom com.  And no, I cannot take credit for coming up with that one, but I'll use it to death anyway.  But I digress.  The film stars Nicholas Hault (you know, the boy from About a Boy, as well as Beast from the revamped X-Men, and the title character from the upcoming Jack, The Giant Slayer) as the intrepid R, and Theresa Palmer (the Sorcerer's Apprentice's girlfriend and the requisite hottie kick ass alien sidekick in I am Number Four - she was Number Six), and both do a fine job with the roles.  Why John Malkovich appears as Julie's dad, I do not know.  The role is rather lackluster, and anyone really could have played such a role.  I don't think we needed Malkovich, or if we did, we could have at least given him something more interesting to do.  Anyway, in sum, Warm Bodies, holds its own in the genre.  It may not have the satiric wit of its closest genre brethren, Zombieland, and never even comes close to the biting wit of its own godfather, Shaun of the Dead, but it definitely ain't that bad.

Film Review: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Sometimes it is a good thing to have such a terrible movie as Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, come out so early in the year.  That way, you don't have to spend the rest of the year, wondering if you will have a film bad enough - godawful enough - to top your eventual worst of the year list.  And trust me when I say that this movie could very well be that film.  The sad part is, there will probably come several films to take its place before year's end, but for now, we certainly have ourselves a perfectly fine, er, I mean perfectly rotten, place holder.  But seriously folks, this film really is just that bad.  Really.  Just awful.  How the producers and/or director (who, incidentally, is the same fella who gave us the much more enjoyable Dead Snow, the Norwegian, zombie Nazi film from a few years back), managed to get an actual flesh and blood Oscar nominee in Jeremy Renner, to do this film, even though there is no feasibly possible way this was one of those "the script was good, but the film just didn't work out" kind of things, is quite remarkable.  He's the new Bourne, and he's in The Avengers movies, there is no way he just needed the money.  He  seems like a pretty smart guy in interviews, so it could not be plain stupidity.  Perhaps it was blackmail of some sort.  Yeah, let's go with that.  Blackmail it must have been.

Seriously, for real this time.  This film, in the same vein as last year's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - though without the spark of whimsy that was that film - is the tale of the grown-up brother and sister of Grimm's fantasies.  They just happen to be a pair of kick-ass witch hunters now.  I suppose, psychologically speaking, when a witch tries to stuff you in her oven when you are in the formable years of childhood, you will probably have a thing against witches when you grow up.  Apparently, aside from this rabid hatred of witches, if you eat a candy house as a child, you will grow up with a severe case of diabetes, or as it is called here, the sugar sickness.  Whether such a sickness was even known when this film took place (one assumes the setting is somewhere in the 18th or early 19th Centuries), or whether there were injections for such, I really do not know - nor am I even interested enough in the film to bother looking up such a thing.  Perhaps a quick call to Wilfred Brimley would help explain things.  But, in the case of this ridiculous film - the somewhat high tech weapons that blend in with the crossbows and magic wands we can just toss off as a case of willing suspension of disbelief, and leave it at that - do we really need to know, or even care about any of this?  Probably not.

Granted, thanks to the casting of Famke Janssen as the head witch, the nerds and fanboys can imagine a battle between Hawkeye and Jean Grey, but otherwise, yeah, probably not.  Worst film of the year?  Like I said earlier, there will probably be worse.  Yes, it would take a substantially steaming pile of cinematic shit to top (or is that bottom) this one, but I have the utmost faith in Hollywood to do just that thing.  There are a lot of films I tend to avoid like the plague (Adam Sandler films, Tyler Perry crap, anything to do with a Wayans sibling), all of which would be healthy candidates for any worst of list, so this one may end up being the worst for me personally.  Then again, who knows what the next eleven months will bring.  After all, there is a new M. Night Shamalamadingdong film coming out later this very same year, so who knows.  As of right now though, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, is penciled in at number one in my tentative worst of 2013 list.  Only time will tell if it can be beaten.  My better judgement is saying that I hope this does not happen, but the darker recesses of my mind, almost feel it is a challenge to find such a film.  Perhaps I should stop listening to that part of me, and just hope for the best - which, to get one final dig in, is most certainly not what this film was, is, or ever will be.

Astaire/Rogers #1: Flying Down to Rio (1933)

The following is the first in a ten part series on the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  Enjoy.

Fred Astaire began dancing on the stage when he was just five years old, partnering with big sister Adele.  Comparatively a late bloomer, Ginger Rogers entered Vaudeville at sixteen, as a spur of the moment addition to Eddie Foy's traveling show.  In 1933, these two hoofing talents came together for the first of what would eventually be ten films as dancing partners - all but the final one, at RKO.  This inaugural film was called Flying Down to Rio, but unlike their successive nine celluloid partnerships, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were not the stars of the film.  The film was actually a starring vehicle for the beautiful Mexican actress, Dolores Del Rio.  Fred and Ginger were merely supporting players for her and male lead, Gene Raymond.  Nothing but a goofy musician and a smart-mouthed singer, respectively, to Raymond's suave, womanizing band leader, and Del Rio's Brazilian debutante.  But that didn't stop director Thornton Freeland from putting them out there on the dance floor together - and, as they, whomever they may be, are prone to say, a legend was born.  Well, that and the fact that they pretty much steal the film out from under Del Rio and Raymond.

Though Astaire was a well known and well renowned star of the stage in 1933, this was only his second film - the first being a small part as himself in the Joan Crawford/Clark Gable vehicle, Dancing Lady, earlier the same year - while Rogers was already an established comedic and musical actress, albeit as a second banana type - such precoders as A Shriek in the Night, Hat Check Girl, and most notably, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, were already under her tight belt.  Not so incidentally, this not only marks the first pairing of Astaire and Rogers, but also the first, and only, time where Ginger actually got billing above Fred.  But it is not the billing we are looking for in an Astaire/Rogers musical, it is, of course, the dancing, and even though we have to wait a good third of the way into the film before we finally get that dancing, get it we finally do.  Granted, we have to sit through the silly antics of love child Raymond, trying to put the moves on spitfire Del Rio, before this happens, but happen it finally does.  And please don't get me wrong, for I can watch Dolores Del Rio do just about anything, at anytime, but the film doesn't exactly have a strong script or a very powerful director.  But I digress.  We are here to talk about the dancing of Fred and Ginger.  The many and multifaceted Latin charms of Dolores Del Rio are another story for another day.

For cinematic history's sake, the first time any of us ever get to see Astaire and Rogers dancing together, it is a Brazilian number (we are in Rio after all) called the Carioca.  The number was written, specifically for the film, by Vincent Youmans (music), and Gus Kahn & Edward Eliscu (lyrics), and is choreographed by Dave Gould and Hermes Pan, the latter of whom became Astaire's long time regular choreographer.  The number is a blend of the Samba, Maxixe, Foxtrot and Rumba, and is danced with the dancers foreheads together.  A rather strange dance, and certainly not one of Astaire and Rogers' best moments, but still fun to see these two great hoofers getting to play at meet cute.  The highlight of the film though, is the final, titular number.  Sung by Fred Astaire on the ground and danced by Rogers and a slew of chorus girls, while all tied to planes flying over the Rio de Janeiro nightclub that most of the action takes places.  Why the number is set up like this, is a somewhat convoluted scenario involving a mostly unseen trio of Greek gangsters, who have gotten the club's owner to seemingly lapse on entertainment permits.  How exactly it solves this problem by having the dancers in the air, while the band and singer are still performing outside the club, I have no idea, but it is a fun set-up to see Rogers and all her girls high-kicking it over the streets of Rio.  Of course, all these air acrobatics are done on the ground, using rear projection - and trust me, it shows, quite hilariously at times, most notably when one chorus girls plummets to what at first appears to be her death, only to be caught by an apparently lower flying plane of chorus girls.  Even with the obvious fakery abounding, it is a rather spectacular number - even if Fred and Ginger are several thousand feet apart through the duration.

And in the end, even though it is Del Rio's film, it is a final shot of Astaire and Rogers, who close the film out - a pair of slightly known second bananas, who steal the film out from under its stars, and cause enough of a commotion to warrant them doing another nine films together, this time as the bonafide stars of the screen.  Eventually the pair would split up (rather amicably, as opposed to tabloidish rumours to the contrary), and Rogers would go on to more dramatic fare, winning an Oscar in 1940 for the title role in Kitty Foyle, while Astaire would partner up with many more leading ladies, such as Rita Hayworth, Judy Garland and Cyd Charisse, eventually receiving his one and only Oscar nomination, at the tender age of seventy-five, for The Towering Inferno.  But all of this came well after these two great hoofing legends first made history - or perhaps, prehistory - in Flying Down to Rio.  Next up for the duo would be The Gay Divorcee, the following year.  That film would co-star the great comic character actor, Edward Everett Horton, who would go on to co-star in several more Astaire/Rogers musicals.  But that is a story best left for the second installment of our Fred and Ginger story.

Some Idle, Fresh-From-Viewing Thoughts on Quentin Dupieux's Absurdist Film, Wrong, Follow-up to That Murderous Tire Movie

If, by chance, any of you fine folks out there, saw, and liked, Parisian-born, electronic musician turned filmmaker Quentin Dupieux's last film, titled Rubber, and ostensibly centered around an abandoned car tire that somehow attains sentience, and goes on a killing spree, murdering people with, what seems to be telekinesis, then it is a pretty good bet that you might just like the director's new film as well.  But, if you are one of those who thought Rubber was a, let's say, steaming pile of dog shit, then it is an equally good bet that you should probably avoid this new film like the veritable plague.  Lucky for me, I am in the former group, and not the latter, so Dupieux's simply titled, Wrong, though not as flat-out enjoyable as Rubber (less frantic but more cerebral indeed), is just my so-called cup of tea.  Granted, this tea may very well have been laced with something (think David Lynch meets Charlie Kaufman), but it still tastes pretty darn good to me.    

Now, to set up the plot of this film for the non-initiated, may be a little difficult.  Sure, I can tell you that the film is about a man named Dolph, who loses his dog, Paul.  I can let you know that in actuality, Paul has been kidnapped by a a mysterious self help guru who goes by the name of Mr. Chang.  I could also mention that there may be man/dog telepathy involved, as well as mind control, matter-of-fact returns from the dead, odd occurrences, such as a palm tree suddenly becoming a pine tree, or a torrential downpour inside an office building, that is never even questioned (much like the ever-burning house in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York), and to top it all off, time itself may have no meaning whatsoever.  Oh yeah, and we get to see the inner thoughts of a dog turd as well.  And, these things are merely the tip of the batshitcrazy iceberg that is Quentin Dupieux's aptly titled, Wrong.  Trust me, once you experience the film's opening shot, you will know whether you are in the rightest of places or in the the wrongest - all depending on which side of the fence you were on with Rubber.

Wrong will be available on VOD come February 1st, and will hit theaters (in NY/LA at least, and probably not any farther) on March 29th.  A full review of all the insanity will come sometime in between those two dates.  Until then, perhaps you want to take the chance and check out this film.  Then again, perhaps you do not.  

Film Review: David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook

After he finished watching David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, a friend of mine called it a chick flick for guys.  I suppose, that is one way of looking at it.  Here's another.  Russell's adaptation of Matthew Quick's best selling novel, is an audience pandering, cliché-addled, overlong, even at barely just two hours, achingly middle-of-the-road attempt at being quirky and funny and, ultimately poignant.  In other words, a fail.  Perhaps not an epic fail, for there are still things to like about the film, but a fail nonetheless.  Director Russell began his directorial career, back in 1994, with the Sundance hit and Independent Spirit Award winner, Spanking the Monkey.  The film - an acerbic black comedy about incest and masturbation - showed great promise for its budding director.  Ever since this debut, Russell's films have become increasingly less edgy, and increasingly more mainstream, finally becoming replete with a typical mainstream mundane attitude - or perhaps saying lack of attitude would be more apropos.   

Following a career that went, after Spanking the Monkey, from the early days of the funny Flirting With Disaster (one of Ben Stiller's few enjoyable films) and the satirical Three Kings (probably the director's best film), to the mediocrity that was I Heart Huckabees (a mere Wes Anderson wannabe) and the sheep-in-wolf's-clothing that was 2010's Oscar winner The Fighter (outside of a brilliant performance by Christian Bale, the film was trite and expected), comes the director's least edgy film yet - and such a claim is made even more palpable by the fact that Russell, much like in The Fighter, seems to believe himself to be just as edgy here as ever.  The main problem here, as is the case with most mainstream films, is that nothing ever surprises.  At no point during this film, which incidentally is about a man getting out of the mental ward, after being locked up for beating up his wife's lover, and having to go back home to live in his childhood home, was I ever surprised at what a character does.  At no point, did I ever say, "Wow, I did not see that coming."  Granted, once you have seen as many films as this critic has - five digits, easily - that moment of surprise comes less and less easily with each passing year, but here, the by-the-book mechanizations of narrative storytelling get especially heavy handed indeed.

Granted, Russell's film is a fail, but, as I more than alluded to earlier, it is not an epic fail.  The thing that keeps this inexplicably well-awarded film from, as they say, stinkin' up the joint, are the performances handed in by its leads - Jennifer Lawrence, and especially, or at least more surprisingly, Bradley Cooper.  Lifting themselves above the trite material, Cooper and Lawrence do a fine job showing crazy, without ever going overboard on it.  But even these quite nuanced performances cannot save an otherwise mediocre work such as this.  Sure, the film is, in no way, something to include on anyone's worst of the year lists, but in an even more troublesome scenario, the film just aches of a staid pedestrianism - which in my book, is a much worse fate than being truly bad, or even rotten.  To finish my review off with yet another reiteration of a theme - something Russell's film does in veritable spades, yeah, we get it, you want to be a better person - Silver Linings Playbook is mere middlebrow folderol, made popular by the mainstream moviegoer's desire to see unthreatening, unoriginal and ultimately uninspired stories.  Sure, newly-minted Oscar nominees Cooper and Lawrence keep things going as best they can - Bobby D. and Jacki Weaver are along for a pair of Oscar nominated rides as well, but in no stand-out kind of way - but the quirk and edge of Russell's earlier films is just, as Kansas would say, dust in the wind.

Film Review: Kim Jee-woon's The Last Stand

With his stoic, larger-than-life on screen presence, Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Olympia, one time box office champ, former two-term California governor, and the freakin' Terminator himself, could be considered the modern day equivalent to Gary Cooper.  Then again, perhaps not.  Seriously though, to get this out of the way right away, Schwarzenegger is an atrocious actor.   No doubts about it, he is simply terrible.  He should not even be used in the same breath with an actor such as Cooper, unless it were to help describe what opposite ends of the acting spectrum look like together.  Just godawful.  With that said, I must admit to having enjoyed quite a few of the Austrian "actor/politician's" films.  And yes, quotes, air or otherwise, need to be put around both of those occupations.  The first two Terminator films were fun.  Both The Running Man and True Lies were enjoyable - even Last Action Hero had its moments - and Total Recall is one of my favourite sci-fi films of the last thirty years.  Granted, the Austrian Oak's oeuvre is bulked up with the lion's share of things like Commando and Red Sonja and Raw Deal and Red Heat and Twins and Kindergarten Cop and Jingle All the Way and Batman and Robin and so on and so on and so on.  Still, every once and a while, we hit on a good one.  Maybe not top grade beef, but still a pretty good chop now and again.  And that is just what we get with The Last Stand - not Grade A by any means, but still a pretty good chop, if you are willing to dig in and take a bite.

The Last Stand, directed by Korean director Kim Jee-woon, making his English language debut, marks the return of Schwarzenegger to leading roles.  After a decade's absence from film - other than a few cameos, most notably in pal Sly Stallone's Expendables films - and eight years spent as laughing stock-cum-governator of the great state of California - including his very own sex scandal and a quick kick to the curb from the Kennedy compound - Schwarzenegger returns as LAPD hero turned small town sheriff Ray Owens, who must hold off an onslaught of a cartel leader and his small army of ridiculously over-armed killers.   With its rag tag team of misfits, up against seemingly insurmountable odds, the film is a sort of take-off on Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, which in turn was a cinematic reply to Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, and its indictment of Hollywood blacklisting (ooh, see, there's that aforementioned Gary Cooper connection), and probably owes just as much to John Carpenter's urban Rio Bravo remake, Assault on Precinct 13.  Kim Jee-woon's first Hollywood film plays fast and loose with genre conventions, and even though it never goes quite far enough to be considered a deconstruction of said genre, its ever-climbing ridiculous scenarios, blatant riff on the cartoonish American gun culture, and the excessive 1980's-esque action mentality - wait til you see Ah-nold go mano y mano with the cocky cartel leader - make for a fun movie indeed.

Sure, Schwarzenegger still hasn't learned to act in his years away, and now returning as disgraced governor turned back into action hero, he is still just godawful, but let's face it, he really has no need to truly act, as long as he is playing such roles as he is playing here.  Riffing on his age - he is 65, but I wouldn't call him an old guy to his face - as well as the conventions of the genre that made him an inexplicable star, Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Last Stand, go together quite well.  Yes, Kim Jee-woon's direction has been more than a bit stunted by the Hollywood machine, but that is to be expected.  Many foreign directors have come to the states with dollar signs in their eyes, only to be disappointed by their outcome.  Both Eisenstein and Murnau fled back to their respective homes, and more recently, anyone who knows anything about cinema, will surely agree that John Woo's Hong Kong films are far superior to his American ones.  Still though, even in his stilted form, Kim manages to breathe a bit of life into the old Austrian horse, as well as into the action-comedy genre itself.  Surrounding Schwarzenegger with a plethora of interchangeables - Eduardo Noriega as the psycho cartel leader and Peter Stormare as a ticky head henchman are the closest we ever get to a stand out performance - as well as the stereotypical hapless federal agent (Forest Whitaker in a role well beneath him), the stereotypical crazy gun nut (Johnny Knoxville, pretty much just being Johnny Knoxville), and the equally stereotypical smokin' hot woman ass-kicker (Jaime Alexander, last seen as the Goddess Sif in Thor), the film may not be Grade A sirloin, but it ain't no McDonald's burger either.  What we get with The Last Stand is still a pretty good chop.

Battle Royale #10: Battle of the Japanese Masters (The Results)

And another Battle Royale has come to an end.  You were asked to make your choice between two Japanese cinema giants - Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa.  Now, as some have told me, perhaps this is an unfair fight, for Kurosawa is so well known throughout the world, while Ozu is not nearly as famous in the West.  Maybe an Ozu vs. Mizoguchi fight would have been a better choice - a fairer fight.  But alas, 'twas not to be.  This is Ozu vs. Kurosawa, and since, I am assuming now, that most of my so-called fan base (if one can call it that without sounding too egotistical) are of the more cinephiliac bent, there should be no one claiming to not knowing the work of Ozu.  And let's face it, anyone who likes cinema, should be well aware of the works of Yasujiro Ozu, and if they are not, then shame on them.  But I digress.  Let us get on with the results of this supposedly slanted tenth Battle Royale.  

Of course, perhaps the preceding paragraph was merely just a way to more easily break it to all those Ozu fans and voters out there, that there boy lost the fight.  Yep, that's right fight fans, Kurosawa beat out his mentor and champion, by a cool four votes.  With 46 votes being cast (and yes, that number could and should be higher), the man who gave the world Seven Samurai (a film in my personal top ten btw) beat out the man who gave that same world Tokyo Story (not in my top ten, but still a great work of art), by a score of 25 to 21, or 54% to 46%, if you will.  Perhaps this is due to more people - more voters - being familiar with the works of Kurosawa over Ozu.  Perhaps not.  My vote went to Kurosawa, but that's just me.  I'm a fan of Keisuke Kinoshita after all, and no one knows who that is.  Anyway, congrats to AK and all that.  Let's talk about that aforementioned rather weak voter turnout this time around.  Pathetic even.  

So far, in Battle Royale history, our best turnout was the Battle of the Hollywood Hoofers, where Astaire took down Kelly, 34 to 32.  For those of you unskilled in basic math (and that is probably me a lot of the time), that is 66 votes cast, way back in our second battle.  Godard and Truffaut almost matched that, when they pulled in 64 votes in their battle, which, incidentally, was won by Godard, 34 to 30.  But other than those two rounds, voter turnout has been mostly in the fortysomething range, even dipping as low as a mere 28 when De Havilland took on her sister, Fontaine, and lost 15 to 13.  So my question, ladies and germs, is where the hell are all my voters!?  I know those classic and foreign film cinephiles are out there in cyberspace somewhere.  Must I pit Adam Sandler against Will Ferrell to get people to notice?  Clooney vs. Pitt?  Edward vs. Jacob!?  Now, even though I dig both Clooney and Pitt (my vote goes to Brad), and watch as much modern cinema as I do classic, I am not going to do that with the Battle Royale.  No sirree.  I will stick with the classics of cinema.  

That being said, the goal, as I have been saying since almost the beginning, is to get those votes into the triple digits.  I know we can do it people.  I know we can.  But such an argument is null and void right now, since this Battle Royale is over and the next one will not be appearing until March 1st.  Why March 1st, you ask?  I will tell you.  As I am sure you have noticed, I have an Oscar poll running right now (unless you happen to be reading this more than a month after I have written it, then this whole thing is pretty much null and void) and since I do not want competing polls, Battle Royale will not return until after the Oscars.  So March 1st it is - and this one is going to be a real battle of the sexes.  Oh yeah, and get prepared to vote and making all your friends vote as well, because we are getting that vote count well into the triple digits, baby!  Until then, have fun.

Film Review: Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad

When a director makes his debut with a film that is so fun and rompy, so out-of-the-box insane, so full of giddy surprises and cheeky attitude, you cannot help but look forward to what comes next.  Well, the director in question is Ruben Fleischer, and the debut film is 2009's acerbic and witty Zombieland.  Two years later, Fleischer made his followup.  It was the rather lackluster, but still quite witty 30 Minutes or Less.  Sure, it did not live up to the hype of being the sophomore work of the guy who made Zombieland, but it was, by no means, a failure.  Perhaps just a misstep.  The sophomore jinx maybe.   Something that, in theory, could be remedied by the director's third film, the long anticipated and ultimately delayed Gangster Squad.  Of course, whenever the studio decides to push back the original release date from September of 2012, and possible Oscar consideration, to the cinematic no man's land of January 2013, you know something is off.  The thing that is off in this case, is the movie itself.  Almost totally lacking the wryness of his first film, and not even able to live up to his second, Fleischer's third film makes one wonder if Zombieland wasn't just a fluke after all.

Fleischer's third film is set in an appropriately noirish late forties L.A. - everything shimmers, but always with a dark foreboding - and stars Josh Brolin as Sergeant John O'Mara, lovingly and quaintly called Sarge by his buddies, a super stud cop-cum-alter boy, and apparently one of the few honest cops in the LAPD of the time; Ryan Gosling as Sergeant Jerry Wooters, a cocky fellow officer with no respect for authority, with the face of a choir boy gone wrong and the proverbial heart of gold; and Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen, the local mob boss, who has worked his way up from a Joe Palookaville youth to being the prospective next Al Capone or, since we are in Hollywood here, the next Tony Camonte.  Fine premise indeed.  Toss in Fleischer's Zombieland hottie, Emma Stone, as Mickey's moll, and Jerry's love interest (yeah, that's a good idea kid), and Nick Nolte as the stereotypically hard-as-nails police chief, and you have the makings of a damn fine movie.  A damn fine movie indeed.  The only real problem is finding that damn fine movie, because I am not sure where that prospective damn fine movie got to.  It definitely was not up on the screen that I happened to be watching. 

Slickly made - the film does look quite good, and I suppose that is at least something - but rather staid in its storyline.  Sort of a cookie-cutter type manual for how-to-make a period gangster film.  Which is a shame, since Zombieland (and we keep going back to that one, don't we?) was about as far from a cookie-cutter type manual for how-to-make a zombie film, as could be.  I think Fleischer, working more with the studio than he did in his more independently-minded debut, which is always a bitch, not-so-secretly wanted his film to be L.A. Confidential, and it most certainly is not that.  Brolin is one note, Gosling is too wishy-washy and Stone is really nothing more than a pretty face and a hot body in a slinky red dress - and this too is a shame, since all three are more than capable of taking on these roles.  The only real stand out in the crowd is Penn's mob boss.  Sure, it is as stereotypical as stereotypical can get - and to be honest, I think, for the sake of comedy, this is done purposefully - but Penn pulls it off with his usual panache.  Otherwise though, the film just simply falls flat.  Just like last year's Lawless and Killing Them Softly, two disappointing, albeit to varying degrees, films from directors who have done good enough work in the past to warrant, perhaps inevitably so, a bit too much giddy anticipation.  But at least those films had enough going for them that they were not total wastes of times.  I am not sure I can say as much for Gangster Squad.