Oscar Nominations

Nominations are out. What does everybody think?

While I thought that a couple of films were overlooked by the Academy, seeing the list of nominations made me realize what I overlooked this year...

1. Children of Men. From what I hear, this one should have been in the Best Picture/Director categories. Fortunately, it's still playing and I definitely want to see it before the Oscars.
2. "Royal Films" - I saw Marie Antoinette, but not The Last King of Scotland or The Queen.
3. Little Children I know nothing about.
4. Volver, The Devil Wears Prada, Half Nelson, Letters from Iwo Jima - The latter is still playing at Highland now, and the others are in my Netflix queue... There's now way I'll see them all anytime soon.


My Beef(s) with the Academy?
- To nominate the big tickets - Superman, Pirates, and Poseiden - for something like Best Visual Effects... just to get their names in the mix? When really The Fountain offers at least as much... no, more because of the unique, personal look the relatively small scale effects produce...
- Also, I'm not sure Little Miss Sunshine belongs in the Best Picture category. I hate to say that I think so just because it's a comedy, but maybe that's all it is. To me, Little Miss Sunshine doesn't carry enough weight to stick in the category, at least not this year. Could any comedy? I guess Fargo did it. Often in this category it seems like we're comparing apples and oranges.
- And it seems like the Academy felt bad for not nominating Dreamgirls for Best Picture and instead gave it spots in every other available category... The academy knew Dreamgirls wasn't Oscar worthy, I think this is their way of acknowledging the hype. But what other films had their nominations sacrificed for that to happen?
- Also overlooked? Besides what I heard about Children of Men, for Best Picture... Who Killed the Electric Car, and maybe Dave Chapelle's Block Party for Best Documentary. Aaron Eckhardt, Thank You for Smoking, but that was crowded territory.... The Fountain! for [at least] Cinematography, Score. Was Everything is Illuminated out in time for last year?

What else?

Printable Ballots can be found here. Keep tuned for Oscar party information!

Feb Selection

Alright, here is the selection for our next screening.
(drumroll)
...
Le Samourai (1967)

Streep makes two saves

There are three reasons to see the Prairie Home movie: Dusty and Lefty (The always fabulous John C. Reilly and sometimes good Woody Harelson) and Meryl Streep as one of the Johnson sisters. Otherwise, the movie serves only to remind the audience why it is a radio show. There is no story, no plot is developed. Imagine the stellar Tommy Lee Jones wasted on a role where he takes a few drinks of water while we watch him watching some singers with guitars on stage. Wasting his talent is like taking a box of handmade exquisite truffles and giving them to your dog.

When she was bantering with Streep, Lily Tomlin was good as the other Johnson sister, but her singing voice is so bad that she wasn't believable playing the role of a radio singer.

Meryl Streep’s performance almost made the movie worth it for me. She had a lot of fun doing the role, singing, improvising lines, playing Minnesota girl, she was entirely convincing.

As she was in The Devil Wears Prada. With these two movies, Streep is back on my A-list. (I didn't think I'd forgive her after Bridges of Madison County.) She inhabited both roles so completely. In this Prada role, she was smooth and svelte, caustic and unflappable. The movie itself, unfortunately, was boringly predictable and vapid.

Has anyone seen Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang? I highly recommend.

That is all,

Juli Hagstrom

The Scent of Vice and Virtue

A specific analysis of Tom Tykwer’s new film, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

While the theater filled with the laughter that often erupts when an audience is not sure how to react to a particular scene, I remained quiet, filling with excitement from a series of revelations that had suddenly come together. Amidst the laughter I witnessed one of my favorite paintings coming alive on the screen, Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Before my eyes was an R-rated version of the famous triptych’s lust-filled center panel. Every moment became increasingly painterly and left me reaching at more deep meaning than I had sensed before. Up until this moment I was watching a film about a gifted, perhaps autistic, murderer with a knack for winning over his theater audience. After this scene, however, the film was about all of the characters and their cumulative embodiment of vice and virtue.



Bosch’s well-known paintings usually revolve around the seven deadly sins: luxuria (lust), gula (gluttony), avaritia (greed), acedia (sloth), ira (wrath), invidia (envy), and superbia (pride). His depiction of mankind’s history with these vices was most often monstrous and chaotic. Unlike Bosch, however, Perfume, does not outright mention sin, only eludes to flaws and consequences generated by all of the character’s actions. This subtlety provides an interesting way of presenting these themes to the audience. Vice and virtue are not typically as cut and dry as films often make them out to be. Perfume requires the audience to look deep to decide which is which. Good and evil skirt along a vague line where either could be equally revered or despised. The main strength of this film is allowing the audience the opportunity to decide their own conclusion without the comfort of knowing what is morally correct.

According to Catholic scripture, the seven sins are opposed by the seven contrary virtues: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, forgiveness, kindness and humility. If Perfume is reflective of reality, those virtues are breed from sin, polar opposites made apparent by mutual existence. For example, where greed reigns, charity is apparent if only by the horror of its absence. My personal reflections have allowed me to find examples of these interactions through the film that have truly shaped its interest for me.

Davin's Showing

Hey all,

Finally I will be showing up to one of these screenings. We are going to try something different as well. A weekend showing. oooOOOOoooo exciting! Saturday February 3rd, 7:00 at Anna & Bjorn's. Hopefully this can work for many people. I am still kicking some film ideas through my head, and it will be decided upon/posted soonish.

-Davin

Red Hats

We had a pretty good discussion of the film An Angel at My Table at Steve's screening (held back on the 2nd of this month). Since then, I've thought about and briefly researched the film, but during these explorations I encountered a startling series of events that seem beyond coincidence! I'll tell my story and let you decide what it all really means...

The film, to me, mainly spoke in colors. Red. Janet's hair was outrageous. In her youth especially the red was so bright... It was like a punch in the face. "THIS COLOR/HAIR MEANS SOMETHING," the film screamed at me. The bright red hair became symbolic of [young] Janet's uniqueness, her unspoiled imagination, the bright/fiery/intense world that she lived in, but that was only alive in her head. What we get is just a peak, through her hair (what's leaked out), of Janet's inner-world.

The contrast between Janet's inner-world and the real, outer-world is turned up with the filmmakers choice to work in complementary color schemes. In some scenes, everything around Janet (the walls, furniture, and clothing) is bathed in various shades of green ("opposite" of red). In France (maybe in other places too), Janet often wears green herself, as if we're to believe that she's integrated herself into this new life, or that she's found out who she really is. We can see, however, that she's only fooling herself into believing that she's a happy citizen of earth (France). She cannot fight the fact that she comes from planet Janet, and that she can only return there to find out who she really is.

Even as she grows older, but before she fully enters and is affected by the real world, her hair begins to fade. Like E.T.'s glowing heart, her hair is a sign of her well-being, her life-force. Some people even "steal" her life-force directly, by wearing bright red dresses, hats and shoes in her presence (her sisters do this for sure). These people now have the confidence, or at least optimism that Janet once possessed in childhood.

Janet's red hair got me thinking of another person in Literature (No, not Carrot Top, a fictional character.) who is identifiable by a red cap. In Catcher In the Rye, Holden Caulfield dons a red hunting cap when he goes out on the town. Like Ms. Frame's hair, I gather that Holden's red cap is significant in the way it visually separates the passionate Holden from the comparatively drab world. But I also remembered something my high school English teacher told us about the historical/cultural significance of a red cap and how it relates to death, especially in Scotland. Because Holden and Janet share a similar ancestry (Scotland/UK), I thought it would be pertinent, but I couldn't find anymore info on that track. Maybe that was a long shot anyway.

But this is where it gets weird.

I grew tired of looking through my fruitless search results for various combinations of "red cap symbolism Scottish," and found myself, once again, on Wikipedia where I found a page about Red Hat. A very general page where different entities, clubs, brands, etc., were listed because they somehow affiliated themselves with, well... red hats.

I spent some time looking over the entry on the linux distribution Red Hat, clarifying for myself, exactly what that was, and then I took a quick look at The Red Hat Society entry. I was tickled purple to see that this group was nothing much more than a bunch of older ladies wearing purple clothing and red hats... with no other real function than to get together and... wear purple clothing and red hats. I didn't think about the group again, until the next day.

That next day (last Saturday) Anna and I were being our opulent selves, walking through the Walker Art gallery and luncheoning at the Asian inspired, California gourmet restaurant 20.21 when, low do I behold, a group of ~50 year old ladies, in purple, wearing red hats! It clicked instantly. This was a group of Red Hatters! I told Anna what I could remember from what I happened to read the night before about the ladies, and we both agreed that it was very strange that I see this after just learning about it. We both spend time contemplating our existence and the function of coincidences like this in life, pay our check, and leave, never to be the same again.

You may have realized by now that I am no longer talking about An Angle at My Table, and I confess that I never intended to go back to the subject again in this post. I did enjoy that film, however, and I'm grateful to Steve to choosing a film I would have not seen on my own. And as much as I want to share my thoughts and hear yours about it, I also wanted to share this story that probably wouldn't be possible with out the Film Club, and seeing Steve's film choice in particular.

An Angel at My Table

We had a great screening over at Steve's the other night. I wasn't able to write my thoughts yet (and now I can't for a week!), but for those of you who couldn't make the screening and want to see the film, we watched An Angel at My Table (1990).

Happy Viewing!
Bjorn