Posted: March 3, 2013 | Author: coloneldoctorspenceresquire | Filed under: Award Shows, Movie | Tags: Argo Fuck Yourself, Argo Oscar Win, Oscar Complaints, Rocky and Argo, The Oscars and America |
The Oscars were on a weekend or so ago. They’re a massive circle-jerk that, for one reason or another, tens of millions of people tune in to watch and be subsequently disappointed by, year in and year out. We’ll keep on making this mistake until
Crash 2: Crash Harder finally breaks our faith in The Academy. In the mean time, dirtballs like myself will use the Oscars to gauge the way Americans feel about themselves, and what we collectively feel as though we have to atone for. A bit harsh? Perhaps, but the best picture can be an effective measure to find out how we feel about ourselves as a nation.
In times of prosperity, we tend to look towards examples of cinema that show how great we are as a nation and how we’re super good at moving on and being cool about our fathers and father’s fathers being jerks to various minorities. Take disenfranchised Puerto Ricans, for example, in the most awarded musical of all time, West Side Story, we’re privy to all manner of “look how human brown people can be!” And that’s not to say that the movie is bad, it isn’t, but it’s indicative of the time and place when it was released and subsequently awarded in. We look at a disenfranchised group of people and see them as living, emoting human-beings. Granted, with this particular movie, we’re seeing the same story retold for the umpteenth time, but given the area in which is was released, forcing people to digest something somewhat unpalatable in a form in which their familiar is often the best way to go about something as bold as telling Alabama circa-1960 that brown people might be worth a damn. Though to be fair, I can’t imagine the box-office revenues from Alabama for West Side Story were terribly significant, feeling pretty, witty, and gay still aren’t terribly high on their priority list.
Following this, we descend into a period of turmoil we hit the 60′s and America starts to burn from the inside out. In much the same way that movies in the 1930′s were about happiness and prosperity while having a tinge of bittersweet sadness (I’m looking directly at you
Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Grand Hotel, It Happened One Night, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and every other major film of the era, realistically speaking.) Instead of getting to the point where the films that receive Academy Awards are the movies that challenge us in any real way (
Dr. Strangelove, To Kill a Mockingbird, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, etc.) we get lulled back into a feeling of escapism. What wins the Academy Awards of the era?
Oliver!, a film whose tagline exclaims is “MUCH MUCH MORE THAN A MUSICAL!”
The Sound of Music, a movie that, while
good rarely strives for much more than that. It’s good, but mostly inoffensive and easily digestible. Similarly digestible and bland, while entertaining nonetheless,
My Fair Lady won the award in 1964.
This escapism continues for years and years until we get to a fascinating year, 1976. In 1976, the following films are nominated for best picture, Rocky, All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, and Taxi Driver. Three of those movies are some of the finest examples of cinema, period, one is a gorgeous example of cinematography and the first ever use of a Steadicam, and the other is Rocky. Before I get pelted with stones for saying anything mildly disparaging of the movie Rocky while also having a Y-chromosome, let me first say the following, like most of the Academy Award winning movies of the 1960′s, Rocky is good. There’s precious little wrong with the movie, but I’ve often wondered why it won over something as good as Network, one of my favorite movies of all time, or something as breathtakingly original, at the time, as Taxi Driver was. And the answer, so far as I can tell is this: Rocky was the best picture to encapsulate the feelings of the country at the time. That will always be the movie that wins best picture, always.
At the time of its release, the US was basically in shambles, at least as close to the term as we’ve gotten in modern history. We’re just coming off of losing our first war in Vietnam, we’re getting used to the fact that we can lose a president to deceit and corruption, and almost losing a shitty president to a would-be assassin, Sara Jane Moore, and then Carter wins the presidency. Carter is a wonderful guy, but at the end of the day, no one’s going to run to the top of a tall building and scream about how proud they are to be American because of him. Simply put, people aren’t proud of much. They don’t feel like they can root for much, and when we feel that we’re the down-trodden, what’s the first thing that we, as Americans love more than anything else? A movie that let’s us feel at least two of the following things: pride, intelligent, and full of blood-lust to some extent.
Rocky gets all three. Which brings me to the year 2012, economically speaking, we’ve been downtrodden for some time. Most of the world hates us, and the best comebacks we have aren’t in the form of handshakes, they’re in the form of RC planes that are really effective at killing civilians. Which weirdly enough don’t seem to be making too many friends internationally. So, as before, we’ve got the set-up. We have some movies that are thought-pieces, that attempt to be, in a sense, Oscar-bait, we have some movies that I adore, but will basically never win an Oscar for best picture… and then we have “Rocky.”
Argo is an updated version of
Rocky. It’s a movie where, going in, you basically know the outcome, there’s not a huge reason to feel suspenseful throughout, but it’s well-written and genuine through and through. There are great moments that we can always call back to (Argo-fuck yourself comes immediately to mind,) and we as an audience can feel a genuine sense of pride. Does it matter that, at the end of the day, many events in the film are half-truths, and realistically, the Canadian government did most of the work? Of fucking course not! This is America! We got to look our then (and now) enemy, Iran in the eyes and give them a big middle finger. We got to whip our dicks out and have the stones to say “The best work of art produced in the past 12 months is something that shows how 5 or so people fooled your entire damn country.” And you know what?
They feel the exact same way.
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Posted: January 16, 2013 | Author: coloneldoctorspenceresquire | Filed under: Movie, Review | Tags: Jason Clarke, Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, Osama Bin Laden death, Oscars, S.E.A.L. Team 6, Zero Dark Thirty Overrated, Zero Dark Thirty Sucks |
Zero Dark Thirty is fucking terrible. Oh that felt incredible to say “out-loud.” Goddamn, I have literally never walked out of a movie, but Zero Dark Thirty almost pushed me over the edge. It is actually difficult to have a movie full to bursting with controversy that literally bored me to tears. But what’s worse than boredom? This movie is remarkably stupid and poorly written and acted with all the care and craft of a high-school musical.
The movie opens with some guy torturing some other guy. We’re supposed to think that it’s rough and edgy… because the doe-eyed white lady is clearly concerned. She reminds the suspect to “not be a naughty liar.” So she’s a softie, right? But literally 2 minutes later, scruff beard-man talks to a colleague and says “She’s a raw new recruit, someone to fear.”
Wait. What?
The confusion increases as she spends the rest of the movie bouncing between RoboCop and scared almost… damsel in distress. She’s one of the most inconsistent characters I’ve ever seen, literally no hyperbole here. In the middle of the movie, she’s devastated(?) by another character dying… a character that she’s had two interactions with, the first of which was being mocked by her. The second they’re best friends? Sort of? Then she dies as a result of a monumentally stupid decision that’s telegraphed from a mile away (pro-tip, maybe don’t let terrorists into your military base.) Then she gets blown up. And as an audience we’re sad because we’re told to be sad. Doe-eyed girl is sad, so we’re EXTRA sad. She even starts drinking. *Gasp*
Then, from her sadness comes a moment that was so stupid that I almost left the theater. James Gandolfini goes “WELL HOW TO WE KNOW HE’S IN THIS SUPER-HOUSE? I DON’T BELIEVE THIS!” And then she goes “WELL IN THE MOTHER FUCKER THAT FOUND THIS HOUSE.” I did not make up that line. Some of this review is schtick, because I hated every minute of it, but that line actually happened. Doe-eyed looks into the camera and says “I’M THE MOTHER FUCKER THAT FOUND THIS HOUSE!” The audience in my theater ERUPTED with laughter.
This was the moment where I almost walked out of the theater. Once again, she shifts abruptly from soft to badass for no reason other than shitty writing and acting. It’s so bizarre, she doesn’t even change her tone. If she’d ended it with an innocent giggle and a “teehee!” it would not have seemed out of place. There’s a gigantic disconnect between her character and the events of the film. Saying someone is force to be reckoned with does not make them a force to be reckoned with.
As a brief aside, I brought this up following the viewing, and I was greeted with cat-calls and my friends calling me sexist. I’ll admit, this could sound sexist to an extent. In so many words, it sounds like I’m asserting that femininity is inherently weak. Not so, there are plenty of examples of femininity being strong, assertive, and a force to be reckoned with. Kill Bill is a terrific example of this. Beatrix is an unstoppable force, beautiful, yet vengeful. She’s doing everything she can to avenge her daughter’s supposed death, and yet at the end of the film, we see her as soft and loving.
And speaking of loving, there is literally no motivation for any character in the film. There’s not a personal relationship to speak of. People just act and we’re supposed to root for them because they’re white. Or monkeys. That’s not racist, that’s literally a plot-point in the film. We’re supposed to feel for monkeys who are killed off camera. Because they belong to beardy-guy. He actually says with his human mouth, “Goddamnit… they killed my monkeys…” BEAT. Like a human died. That’s how the scene plays out. Then later in the movie, doe-eyed girl is approached by a different younger, doe-eyeder girl, who then asks to have lunch with her. At which point she goes “I DON’T EAT OUT. TOO DANGEROUS.”
Why? She eats out several other times in the movie. Important plot points happen in restaurants. Like her character inexplicably being at the Marriot bombing in Pakistan. Bull shit. I do not believe that her character, who was supposedly based on a real “person” was there for a minute. It was so stupid and convenient. No, Kathryn Bigelow, you just wanted to blow up some brown people while we, as the audience, could watch doe-eyed girl react to the “horrors of war.”
Unlike
The Hurt Locker, the cinematography is horrid. We just look at a thing, then look back at doe-eyed girl for how to feel. There’s not a single moment in the film where we, as an audience, are hit with anything remotely controversial. Is torture good? Just look at her face. Is bombing good? Just look at her face.
Which brings me to my largest point and biggest gripe. This movie is just fucking stupid, racist, and a chest-thumping. Yeah, we killed an 80 year-old man because he bombed us. We didn’t stop until that asshole was dead. Go us. Most pop culture that deals with this sort of thing is at least honest about it. It doesn’t purport to be anything more than a good-ol-fashioned “OOH-RAH!” This pretends to be art. At least Kid Rock has the good taste to just come out and say “Warrior” is a masturbatory exercise.
I elected not to use the names of the characters in this review because I didn’t need them. There are two characters that exist and the rest are wholly superfluous. We just look at the white girl and know she’s the good guy. It’s a thoughtless exercise filled with tedium and literally no tension.
The movie opens with the line “I own you.” And for most people watching and enjoying this film, that sentiment is spot-on.
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Posted: January 12, 2013 | Author: saidhayley | Filed under: Movie, Review | Tags: Academy Awards, Candie, Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained, jamie foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar buzz, Oscar nominations, Oscar predictions, Oscar snubs, Oscars, Quentin Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson |
Django Unchained is a brash film that tackles pre-Civil War America in all its racist, ridiculous, and blood-soaked glory. This film, it almost goes without saying, is not for everyone. The humor ranges from sweet to downright disgusting, and the violence starts out strong and escalates to a volatile finish. That being said, if you love Tarantino, you’ll love this. It’s bold done right – in-your-face storytelling that revels in the knowledge that boundaries are meant to be stepped on, laughed at, and ultimately, obliterated.
Plot Overview
This wild ride revolves around the partnership between Django and Dr. King Schultz, an enterprising German expatriate. In three sweeping acts, Tarantino takes moviegoers through Django’s transformative journey from enslaved bounty hunter to masquerading Mandingo buyer to victorious angel of vengeance. Dr. Schultz is, for most of the movie, Django’s Virgil, leading and even enabling the lost man through the circles of white supremacist hell. At its heart, this film is really about Django’s quest to be reunited with his wife, a slave sold to the deliciously villainous Calvin Candie. However, oddly enough, that storyline turns out to be the least compelling, a fragile frame upon which the characters and side stories of a far more intriguing nature can be displayed. Not that it really matters. By the time Django seizes his revenge – out of a pile of dead bodies – all minor complaints are cast aside by the cleansing force that only a good shoot’-em-up finale can deliver.
Oscar Nominations
- Best Picture
- Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino
- Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz
Chances of Django riding away with Oscar gold this February? Pretty low. The violent masterpiece is already steeped in multiple racial and gun control controversies, but the real truth is that this just isn’t the Academy’s usual cup of tea. With Daniel Day Lewis method-acting his way through Lincoln and American heroes taking out Bin Laden over in Zero Dark Thirty, there isn’t a lot of room for this bloody film that amuses as often as it horrifies. Really though, as cliché as it sounds, it is an honor just to be nominated. The Academy has never been the biggest fan of Tarantino, but it still recognizes his talent…albeit at a conservative trickle. (Though it’s worthy of note that Tarantino did at least take home an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Pulp Fiction.)
On the other hand, the Academy already loves Waltz: they gave him the same award he’s nominated for now just four years ago. However, that role was a bit meatier and nastier. It would be hard for anyone to out act Waltz as Nazi nightmare Colonel Hans Landau– even Waltz himself. He certainly puts his all into Dr. Schultz, but Schultz – bless his heart – can’t hold a candle to Landau.
Oscar Snubs
- Best Director: Quentin Tarantino
- Best Supporting Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio
- Best Supporting Actor: Samuel L. Jackson
I suppose someone – not me – could make a case that Jamie Foxx deserves a nomination. Personally, I found his portrayal of the titular character merely suitable; it never seemed to move beyond a straight interpretation of a phenomenal script. The lack of nominations for those listed above is a different story. No one directs like Tarantino, and yet the man is still without a directing Oscar. I would have been happy if either DiCaprio or Jackson nabbed a nomination, but only awarding Waltz with the honor makes little sense after actually watching the movie. Once the story moves to its hearty middle, Waltz all but disappears under the stunning force and personality of Candie and his manservant Stephens, played by Jackson. (And not to gripe, but how did Alan Arkin beat out both these men to receive a nomination? I loved Arkin’s turn in Argo – another great movie of 2013 – but his character hardly makes a blip on my radar compared to the craters created by the denizens of Candieland.)
Trivia
- Spot Quentin Tarantino in a rather long (and explosive) cameo as an Australian miner.
- See any blood dripping mysteriously down Calvin Candie’s arm? Turns out Leonardo DiCaprio accidentally cut himself in a scene, but the camera kept rolling and he kept acting. Seriously, where is that man’s Oscar?
- Tarantino wrote the screenplay with Will Smith in mind for the title role, but the actor turned it down.
- Do you love action figures and Tarantino movies? Well, you’re in luck: Django toys are out of the manufacturing stage – and into a fire pit of controversy and protest.
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