tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36363221269040879262024-03-18T10:20:12.027-05:00Land of The NerdsWelcome to Land of The Nerds, where I, Lisa Laman, use my love of cinema to explore, review and talk about every genre of film imaginable! Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.comBlogger3369125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-8995374149384963952024-03-18T10:19:00.003-05:002024-03-18T10:19:14.656-05:00In Laman's Terms: What Have Been The Biggest Neon Movies At The Box Office?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKS3MdfF6959GcGTW-TgGBD21HUpRP3M4CUxgy2F5CqIHE34Al3CTmBIRUPKM8ONMJSgnV6LUnUWs9KAIN9hwgznB8y_wqdpcknZiAK_ODFRd3_UJYNdbvAGGSxKhksGW4FYej13_tvwDgN7EFbb65Cmh8RTFuiWCoSvO6J6L-rARMBql1DW8Xd6nxvw/s225/neonlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKS3MdfF6959GcGTW-TgGBD21HUpRP3M4CUxgy2F5CqIHE34Al3CTmBIRUPKM8ONMJSgnV6LUnUWs9KAIN9hwgznB8y_wqdpcknZiAK_ODFRd3_UJYNdbvAGGSxKhksGW4FYej13_tvwDgN7EFbb65Cmh8RTFuiWCoSvO6J6L-rARMBql1DW8Xd6nxvw/w374-h374/neonlogo.jpg" width="374" /></a></div><p>Everyone knows about A24 in the modern cinema landscape. That label's become the de facto champ of modern arthouse studios. Heck, when I was at a <i>Problemista </i>press screening a few weeks back, I overheard the guy next to me recounting how he'd previously explained <i>Problemista </i>to a friend of his by saying "it's the new A24 movie." But also out there pumping new oddball movies into movie theaters (like this weekend's latest evil nuns horror movie <i>Immaculate</i>) is Neon. <a href="https://variety.com/2015/film/news/where-to-invade-next-release-date-michael-moore-1201625016/" target="_blank">Technically founded in September 2015</a> (though it didn't have a name when it first began acquiring movies), Neon hit the ground running in April 2017 with the criminally underrated <i>Colossal</i>. Since then, the studios released the Best Picture Oscar winner <i>Parasite </i>and a bevy of other acclaimed movies, including superb 2023 movies like <i>Anatomy of a Fall </i>and<i> The Royal Hotel</i>.</p><p>As the seventh anniversary of Neon approaches in April, it's worth asking...what does Neon's box office track record look like? What are the biggest Neon films in history? Let's take a look at those questions! To me, my box office geeks! Let's get down to some nerdy analyzing! </p><p><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-mojo-undergoes-dramatic-overhaul-1249672/" target="_blank">Because Box Office Mojo has been reduced to a shell of its former self</a>, The-Numbers is the only accessible place to get concrete box office data on Neon's box office track record. The numbers we'll be looking at today <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/domestic/all-movies/theatrical-distributors/neon" target="_blank">come from this website</a> and only concern the North American box office hauls of these movies. Here's a helpful screengrab of the 25 highest-grossing Neon films domestically:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnmaybkH7NzHiSRXoJMr2EhyC6v-jNAOeYP7O4fW1HquUidueAP8IQHttxx4nNZofrKtwFWK_FQzYvr7tr1Nz0LTIwO6neo1ZnO9f2PKr5dsUBgeJ8iIxB-pVe7fl2xEMSDgBSPcV6CC3-tGQPT1WBG8QETD0qxk-IBjKSb2SzPwTE_VYPlS5jtinAQ/s664/THENUMBERSNEON.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="664" height="473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXnmaybkH7NzHiSRXoJMr2EhyC6v-jNAOeYP7O4fW1HquUidueAP8IQHttxx4nNZofrKtwFWK_FQzYvr7tr1Nz0LTIwO6neo1ZnO9f2PKr5dsUBgeJ8iIxB-pVe7fl2xEMSDgBSPcV6CC3-tGQPT1WBG8QETD0qxk-IBjKSb2SzPwTE_VYPlS5jtinAQ/w531-h473/THENUMBERSNEON.jpg" width="531" /></a></div>Unsurprisingly, the two biggest Neon movies are also two of its biggest Oscar contenders. It's also worth mentioning that only two Neon features have ever cracked $20 million domestically. Only four have exceeded $10 million in North America. Breaking things down more intricately, it's fascinating how instrumental documentaries were to the early days of Neon. <a href="https://collider.com/ethan-coen-directorial-debut-jerry-lee-lewis-trouble-in-mind/" target="_blank">I just recently wrote for Collider</a> how A24 has a poor track record with properly handling documentaries. The studio rarely produced or distributed such titles before November 2019. Even as their documentary output has ramped up, A24 has taken to dumping these titles onto streaming with no fanfare. Meanwhile, Neon's earliest hits were documentaries like <i>The Biggest Little Farm</i>, <i>Amazing Grace</i>,<i> Three Identical Strangers</i>, and <i>Apollo 11</i>. <div><br /></div><div>Five of the 14 biggest Neon titles domestically are documentaries, a statistic that encapsulates how integral such titles have been to this studio's box office track record. In 2018 and 2019, Neon bolstered its credibility by filling a void in the theatrical marketplace. Other arthouse studios (Fox Searchlight, A24, Annapurna, etc.) weren't releasing many documentaries period. Neon delivered these titles to theaters with solid marketing campaigns, catchy hooks that grabbed the attention of audiences, and slow-burn theatrical release rollouts that allowed word-of-mouth to develop. It's a shame Neon has largely abandoned documentaries since 2022 (though the studio has documentaries like <i>Seeking Mavis Beacon</i> and <i>Orwell </i>on the horizon). They gave these titles a major boost in their theatrical presence while documentaries gave Neon some of its biggest box office success stories.</div><div><br /></div><div>A similar phenomenon is at play with Neon's solid track record with releasing foreign-language titles. Even beyond the obvious massive success of <i>Parasite</i>, 20% of Neon's top 20 films are foreign-language titles. Two of the studio's ten biggest films ever in North America aren't in the English language! Again, Neon found a domain other studios weren't dabbling in (pre-2022, A24 had minimal forays into foreign-language titles, save for the occasional <i>Menasche</i>, <i>Minari</i>, and <i>Climax</i>). In the process, they filled a void other studios were ignoring. Heck, the studio even got a bizarre foreign-language masterpiece like Titane to a $1.44 million domestic haul, a sum that outshines more accessible English-language titles from the Neon library like <i>Eileen </i>and<i> Vox Lux</i>. <i>Anatomy of a Fall</i> edging out Infinity Pool for the title of highest-grossing Neon film from 2023 (despite the former title never entering wide release) should be a sign: foreign-language films need to be Neon's bread-and-butter.</div><div><br /></div><div>The highs have been high for Neon in its first seven years of existence...so what've been the lows? Mostly just stabs at trying more mainstream fare. Initially, Neon struggled to gain any kind of momentum for movies it opened immediately in wide release. Titles like <i>Assassination Nation</i> and<i> The Beach Bum</i> just wiped out immediately on opening weekend. The studio has also demonstrated some truly baffling release decisions for titles that could've been slamdunk crowdpleaser. The 2019 charmer <i>Wild Rose</i>, for instance, should've been that summer's <i>Begin Again</i>. Instead, Neon refused to expand it beyond 195 theaters, thus ensuring its box office run would be limited. This same studio also kept excellent titles like <i>Clemency </i>and<i> Little Woods</i> in bizarrely few theaters.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even for English-language narrative titles it's giving a greater theatrical push to, Neon stumbles. Last year's <i>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</i>, for instance, was advertised as being "in theaters everywhere" April 14, 2023. On that day, it only expanded into 142 locations. It ended up going into 530 nationwide theaters the following weekend. Not only was that not accurate to its marketing campaign, but that placed <i>Pipeline </i>directly against the wide-release expansion of <i>Beau is Afraid</i>. No wonder <i>Pipeline </i>couldn't make more than $725,655 domestically! So far, the studio's foray into wide release horror movies (like <i>It Lives Inside </i>and<i> Infinity Pool</i>) has not yielded much in the way of big box office grosses nor widespread critical acclaim. Immaculate has been advertised heavily (Sydney Sweeney even mentioned it in her SNL monologue from a few weeks back) and is anchored by a very recognizable leading lady. Maybe it'll break Neon's streak of struggles to break into a marketplace A24 has cornered for modern moviegoers.</div><div><br /></div><div>To its credit, though, the team at Neon has done well with launching certain English-language narrative titles. <i>Colossal </i>did a decent $3.19 million in April 2017, while <i>Pig </i>was one of the first arthouse hits in the wake of theaters shutting down in March 2020 thanks to its $3.18 million gross in July 2021. <i>Luce </i>did solid numbers back in August 2019 with a $2.01 million haul despite never playing in more than 235 locations. Most surprisingly, <i>Spencer </i>did a tad better than I remembered with a $7.08 million haul in November 2021, back when the arthouse sector was still getting its sea legs back. It's one of only eight Neon titles to clear $5 million domestically, which makes that gross extra solid.</div><div><br /></div><div>Neon's box office history is unexpectedly reassuring in terms of what moviegoers will show up for. Neon made more money from <i>Perfect Days</i>, <i>The Worst Person in the World</i>, and <i>Portrait of a Lady on Fire</i> than its more mainstream-skewing genre titles like <i>In the Earth </i>and<i> Assassination Nation</i>. Moviegoers will show up for new challenging things. You just have to put them into theaters! Neon's biggest box office hits come from delivering titles that no other arthouse outfit (not even A24) would touch. When it comes to launching something like <i>Ferrari </i>or <i>Infinity Pool</i> (both of which could've come from any studio), things get a little thornier financially for the studio. If there is a major bright side for the company, it's that its recent slate of titles has been among its most lucrative movies ever. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>Perfect Days</i> is set to narrowly exceed the $3.19 million domestic haul of <i>Colossal </i>in its North American run. That means six of the 17 biggest Neon movies ever have been released over the last 14 months (from January 2023 to March 2024). This also means the arthouse studio has delivered six $3+ million grossers over that same period of time. For comparison's sake, <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2022/distributor/Neon" target="_blank">Neon only had three movies in all of 2022</a> scoring $3+ million domestic hauls. Even in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2019/distributor/Neon" target="_blank">Neon only had four $3+ million grossing movies</a>. It's 100% true that this increase is largely because Neon is now doing more costly immediate wide releases for its movies. However, slow-burn performing arthouse titles like <i>Perfect Days</i>, <i>Origin</i>, and <i>Anatomy of A Fall </i>all scoring $3+ million domestic hauls between October 2023 and March 2024 suggest this studio is ramping up its box office prowess. Who knows, maybe Neon will score enough box office hits that I'll eventually overhear people at screenings saying "oh, I told my friends this is the new Neon movie"...<br /><p><br /></p></div>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-70323806194849235132024-03-17T08:45:00.001-05:002024-03-17T08:45:09.243-05:00In Laman's Terms: I Can't Stop Thinking About The Dancing Scene in 35 Shots of Rum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pF_TMriiRYUEZLCn33Fs0DlfVR08AJcQbYr1VdYMsp_vchHB9Z-xc8tqmPfsNsBXqAVsYC2t0eRfaSJtQo1boQINPQTAkNsOrhH6juZx2rLYdp0nj4wTmnwZqEjgF6Y-_0rahbuxhe3iA5S7Zd4_38-Hjq-soXZwfH19kWrylkpbtS3f30JTh8-oNQ/s2808/35shotsofrum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1488" data-original-width="2808" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5pF_TMriiRYUEZLCn33Fs0DlfVR08AJcQbYr1VdYMsp_vchHB9Z-xc8tqmPfsNsBXqAVsYC2t0eRfaSJtQo1boQINPQTAkNsOrhH6juZx2rLYdp0nj4wTmnwZqEjgF6Y-_0rahbuxhe3iA5S7Zd4_38-Hjq-soXZwfH19kWrylkpbtS3f30JTh8-oNQ/w528-h281/35shotsofrum.jpg" width="528" /></a></div><p>Dancing is one of the most beautiful sights in cinema. There's a reason <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=635Mh9iNt4A" target="_blank">some of the earliest movies captured ballet dancers</a> or two people doing simple dance movies. Dancing is such a cathartic exercise. It's how we express emotions, passion, or jubilation that words cannot convey. It's also just deeply evocative to watch on-screen, especially when it concerns two people becoming physically intimate in the acting of dancing. Iconic director Claire Denis is no stranger to the power of cinematic depictions of dancing thanks to the unforgettable ending of her 1999 masterpiece <i>Beau Travail</i>. No offense to that stirring conclusion (which really is a masterwork of filmmaking), but for my money, the greatest Denis dance sequence comes in one of her slightly later movies. That title would be<i> 35 Shots of Rum</i>, a 2009 Denis directorial effort <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7j9iSbz0qc" target="_blank">that contains a dancing sequence</a> I cannot remove from my brain.</p><p>Some context: <i>35 Shots of Rum</i> is a quiet character study chronicling the lives of father Lionel (Alex Descas) and adult daughter Josephine (Mati Diop). The duo live together in an apartment building and have carved out a life where they rely heavily on each other. Lionel is a widower and Josephine is a woman who never knew her mother. A sense of loneliness permeates these two leaving them dependent on each other. As <i>35 Shots of Rum </i>goes on, the script by Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau depicts Josephine beginning to develop a life beyond just her relationship with her father. Both she and Lionel start to realize there may be more to existence than their rapport.</p><p>This realization is especially apparent once Lionel and Josephine seek shelter from the rain inside a bar. Joining the pair is Noé (Grégoire Colin), a neighbor in their apartment building with feelings for Josephine. As everyone settles down in the bar, Lionel and Josephine initially dance together to the tune of "Siboney", a Ralph Thamar tune. Then, the songs change. The Commodore's ditty "Night Shift" begins to play. This is when Noé enters the frame and, without saying a word, indicates he wants a dance with Josephine. Lionel retreats from the shot, leaving these two people as the only folks in the shot. </p><p>Denis and Agnès Godard do not have the camera blink away as Lionel and Josephine start to dance together. Nor are more intimate shots employed to fit the standards of typical romantic movie sequences. Instead, the camera is kept away from the characters and their initial physicality is framed in a cold unbroken shot. There isn't immediate rapturous love between these two. There is a bit of awkwardness as they try to publicly dance together. The precise placement of the camera and the refusal to cut away accentuates that self-consciousness beautifully. When the camera finally does cut away, it's to a close-up shot of Lionel looking on in intense distress. He's bottling up his emotions, but Alex Descas still vividly conveys how conflicted this character feels. Lionel is witnessing first-hand how his daughter has a life beyond him.</p><p>Returning to Josephine and Noé,<i> 35 Shots of Rum</i> gets a lot of power from how exceptional Diop and Colin are at dialogue-free acting. In the hands of these performers, one feels a rollercoaster of emotions watching Josephine and Noé navigate the ritual of dancing. For a moment, there seems to be a sensual sweetness to their interactions, especially the way their fingers interlock. Then Noé will become a little too enamored with clutching Josephine's hair. A sense of unease suddenly fills every inch of the viewer. With the camera not cutting away, the viewer observes Josephine and Noé exploring whether or not they work well together in real time. Eventually, the dancing fizzles out, with the duo sitting down at nearby chairs. Both look distraught with what just happened. I love Colin's body language for Noé in this moment, his right arm stretched towards Josephine (but not touching her) while his head is tilted at the ground. </p><p>Colin's physicality here communicates vividly how Noé is torn between his feelings for Josephine and a desire to live independently (Noé is always threatening to leave the apartment complex and move far away). Meanwhile, Diop curls Josephine's two hands together, eyes staring off into space as she fully absorbs what it was like to dance with Noé. Neither Colin nor Diop need dialogue to convey these complicated interior worlds. Their slightest actions say so much about Noé and Josephine. Meanwhile, Denis and Varda have kept the camera so intensely focused on Noé and Josephine on the dance floor. Once these two characters sit down, it becomes mildly disorienting (in a good way) to suddenly see them in the background of a shot. As Noé and Josephine recover, the camera cuts away from these two to a server at the bar preparing a dish. We follow this woman as she brings the dish to its intended customer. As she does so, the camera only captures Noé and Josephine as background figures to the larger bustling eatery. As this pair of figures ruminates on their dynamic, they become disassociated from the dance floor and even the other people around them. The camerawork mirrors their relationship to the wider world by forcing them into the background. It's a mesmerizingly detailed bit of camera work reflecting how the multi-faced visuals of <i>35 Shots of Rum</i> mirror the incredibly nuanced characters on-screen.</p><p>After watching his daughter dance with Noé, Lionel proceeds to get on the dance floor himself with the kindly woman who let him and his group into this bar. This moment and the entire dance sequence thrive on a transfixing sense of ambiguity. Is Lionel doing this to "spite" his daughter? To show her that he too is capable of existing without her? Perhaps his reasons are more innocent. Perhaps he's trying to stave off the loneliness that's clearly consuming his recently retired friend Rene. Maybe he even feels genuinely attracted to this lady. All the ambiguity in this sequence excitingly reminds one of the opening sequence of <i>Past Lives</i>. There, a pair of off-screen figures try to decipher the dynamic between the three lead characters of <i>Past Lives</i>. They don't know these people, they never will. Yet they're trying to decode these mysterious lives from the small physical clues they can gleam from across the bar.</p><p>The dancing sequence in <i>35 Shots of Rum</i> leaves viewers and even this film's in-universe character in a similar situation. Without any dialogue or ham-fisted visual cues to hammer home character motivations, there's a thrilling sense of realistic ambiguity to the actions of everyone on-screen. Meanwhile, folks like Josephine and Lionel aren't talking to one another in this scene. They can only watch from across the room, trying to interpret what's going on in the other person's mind. With so little direct communication, they and the viewer are left to stew over the meaning behind every tiny movement. There's love, hate, contempt, affection, pain, and everything in between swirling around on that tavern dance floor. All those paradoxical emotions require deeply intricate performances. The actors inhabiting this unforgettable<i> 35 Shots of Rum</i> sequence are more than up to that challenge.</p><p> Meanwhile, the very precise visual language of this entire scene is just as remarkable as the work delivered by individuals like Descas and Diop. It's especially great how Denis and Varda subvert the wider shots of Josephine and Noé dancing with later claustrophobic images of Lionel swaying the night away with a lady. Capturing his time dancing in cramped confines suggests how trapped this man feels. He is torn between the realization that his daughter is growing up into an independent person and his burning desire for the status quo to remain. He cannot escape his sense of entrapment even whilst dancing "romantically", hence the tight close-up shots.</p><p>Even the needle drop choice here is a perfect pick that ingeniously compliments the complicated tone of this <i>35 Shots of Rum</i> scene."Night Shift" by Commodores totally sounds like a great dancing song with its irresistible groove, pounding drums, and vocals that ooze with desire. However, there's also something bittersweet to the tune. Perhaps it's the wistful nature ingrained into the tune by way of it being a tribute to Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye. Maybe it's the way the chorus vocals seem to echo endlessly as if they're being sung into a void rather than a dance floor packed with sweat and sexual energy. "Night Shift" is equally effective at being both a toe-tapper and a wistful melody. Those nuanced qualities make it the perfect backdrop to this 35 Shots of Rum sequence, which transverses as many different emotions as the song. "Night Shift" can communicate the potential burgeoning between Josephine and Noé. Its lyrics also beautifully crystallize the mindset of a man a bit too trapped by the past. </p><p>Every little detail of this dancing sequence in<i> 35 Shots of Rum</i> absolutely transfixed me. It's a scene that just aches with realistic depictions of yearning, longing, and quiet despair. It's also a sequence that reminds us all just how glorious dancing is in the world of cinema. Whether it's an intricately choreographed display of Gene Kelly's masterful dancing or the more realistically messy dancing seen in <i>35 Shots of Rum</i>, this physical act is a perfect fit for the world of movies...especially when it's being brought to life by a director like Claire Denis!</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-34191347316060101962024-03-16T09:04:00.002-05:002024-03-16T09:04:18.640-05:00In Laman's Terms: The Oscars Don't Have a Viewership Problem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif_fFqKKR0srmtrL6DQ1sv1NfOijoo4urERNjjtGzd2L2KfprqfcPqYwANgDkWJCcwR978w4F8U92BgkUl5FDOY7V9s_-9kL1TojOQhWNNCWIMZdiwHh1R1favFyT4EkMPruvAvk18RQVB-Prc-_YEpwxzCuKS9Pi7uRX036oCYVknID0vftXOcStMag/s1480/iltoscars2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="833" data-original-width="1480" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif_fFqKKR0srmtrL6DQ1sv1NfOijoo4urERNjjtGzd2L2KfprqfcPqYwANgDkWJCcwR978w4F8U92BgkUl5FDOY7V9s_-9kL1TojOQhWNNCWIMZdiwHh1R1favFyT4EkMPruvAvk18RQVB-Prc-_YEpwxzCuKS9Pi7uRX036oCYVknID0vftXOcStMag/w544-h306/iltoscars2.jpg" width="544" /></a></div><p>Back in February 2022, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2022/02/please-stop-trying-to-fix-the-oscars.html" target="_blank">Bilge Ebiri wrote an excellent essay for Vulture</a> breaking down how the Academy Awards trying to be self-hating will never solve the show's perceived "problems." It was a fantastic rebuke against the deluge of jokes in the ceremony at the expense of the long runtimes of Best Picture nominees and other gags seemingly directed at folks who'd never tune into the Academy Awards in 2024. Ebiri astutely pointed out that many of these problems stemmed from the Oscars constantly trying to be "broader" to correct supposed issues with the show's viewership. However, this writer flat-out called out this perception for what it was: false. Ebiri pointed out how the Oscars still dwarf all other non-sports television programming in terms of viewership (more on that shortly). Yet, ABC and the Academy continue to fret over the Oscars no longer being viewed by as many people in 2024 as they were in 1998.</p><p>The folks behind this award show need to heed the words of Ebiri. The Oscars don't have a viewership problem and it's bizarre that this conceit persists year after year.</p><p>Thanks to a helpful chart compiled by <a href="https://www.ratingsryan.com/2022/04/academy-awardsoscars-nielsen-ratings.html" target="_blank">Ratings Ryan</a> (based on first-hand sources like Variety news articles from when the ceremonies first aired or Nielsen ratings reports), one gets a helpful glimpse into how many viewers and (in the case of pre-1974 shows) households this show has regularly dragged up. Looking at the history of these numbers, one can see that the Oscars don't have a viewership problem as defined by the Academy and ABC. For the purposes of this piece, let's just look at the shows from the 1974 awards onward, which counted viewers (the same metric used to measure Oscar viewership today).</p><p>For most years before the year 2000, the Oscars regularly garnered 40+ million viewers, though the show could sink to sub-40 million viewers on several ceremonies when the Best Picture nominees weren't universally seen. Unsurprisingly, the ceremony where<i> Star Wars</i> was nominated for Best Picture scored more eyeballs than the ceremony where<i> Out of Africa</i> was up for the same award! The least-viewed of these pre-2000 occasions was the 59th Academy Awards ceremony, with 37.19 million viewers tuning in to watch <i>Platoon </i>score Best Picture. These ceremonies existed in an era without streaming programming competition, DVRs, and the highest-profile HBO shows you could watch were <i>Maximum Security</i> and <i>Philip Marlowe, Private Eye</i>.</p><p>In March 2003, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tv-ratings-for-oscars-plunge/" target="_blank">CBS News</a> ran a piece proclaiming "TV Ratings For Oscars Plunge" in response to the 74th Academy Awards scoring 33.1 million viewers, the lowest viewership of the Oscars at that point. The outlet pointed out that the then-recent finale of <i>Joe Millionaire</i> outpaced the Oscars in viewership, a reflection of just how hot reality programming was in this era. Whispers about troubling Academy Awards viewership had abounded before, but now there were constant eyeballs on the numbers this show generated. In the age of the internet, people had more accessibility to the historical records of Nielsen viewership for Oscar ceremonies. Meanwhile, news outlets had a fresh virtual landscape they could make money off of by delivering pieces with eye-catching headlines like "the Oscars in viewership turmoil."</p><p>As the 2000s continued on, Oscar viewership hit another low in February 2008 with 32 million viewers, which <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/oscars-a-ratings-flop-sunday-105611/" target="_blank">The Hollywood Reporter</a> dubbed "a ratings flop" for the kind of numbers a FOX executive would kill for in 2024. Despite being a "ratings flop," <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2008/tops-in-2008-top-tv-programs-single-telecasts/" target="_blank">Nielsen </a>still reported at the end of the year that the Academy Awards were the most-watched TV program of the year that didn't pertain to sports or the Olympics. More people were still tuning into the Oscars than to watch that season's final two contestants of<i> American Idol</i> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-jE3c1wQg" target="_blank">rub shoulders with the star of </a><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-jE3c1wQg" target="_blank">The Love Guru</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-jE3c1wQg" target="_blank">.</a> </i>As the years went on, the Oscars continued to score as the biggest non-sports telecast of a typical year, <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2013/tops-of-2013-tv-and-social-media/" target="_blank">such as in 2013</a> <a href="https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2015/tops-of-2015-tv-and-social-media/" target="_blank">or in 2015</a>. Even with these accomplishments, outlets like Time Magazine were still running headlines about how <a href="https://time.com/3719000/oscars-ratings-2015/" target="_blank">"TV Viewers Deserted the Oscars This Year"</a>.</p><p>Interestingly, the Academy Awards ceremonies fended off sinking below the nadir viewership of the 80th Academy Awards until the 90th Academy Awards, which became the first-ever Oscars to secure below 30 million viewers with 26.54 million viewers. Since then, the Oscars have never returned to the 30+ million viewership domain. The last three shows scored in the 16.675-19.5 million viewership range, with the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021 securing an all-time low viewership of 10.540 million viewers. Chalk that one up to the first year of COVID-19 leaving both everyone unable to watch the new movies and the Best Picture nominees from scoring much of a pop culture footprint.</p><p>There's no question the Oscars have slipped in viewership, with the 96th Academy Awards being down by roughly 47% from the 37.30 million viewers who tuned into the 87th Academy Awards nine years ago. However, that's more emblematic of how live TV viewership trends have shifted than anything else. Unless you're the Super Bowl, people are tuning into live TV less and less in an age of YouTube and streaming. For comparisions sake, let's look at the average viewership of <i>NCIS</i>, one of the biggest scripted shows on TV. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170103093822/http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/final-same-day-viewer-averages-for-2015-16-football-ncis-lead-charts/ " target="_blank">This program averaged 16.61 million viewers for the 2015-2016 season</a>. For the 2022-23 season, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-2022-23-every-primetime-network-show-ranked-1235508593/" target="_blank">it plunged down to 9.86 million viewers on average</a>. Across both of those seasons, <i>NCIS </i>was the third-most watched scripted program on television. It's just that the numbers needed to reach that spot have changed drastically in just a handful of years.</p><p>The same phenomenon is happening to the Oscars, which (save for that 2021 ceremony) still ranked as <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/top-rated-shows-2022-yellowstone-ncis-oscars-fbi-super-bowl-1235475629/" target="_blank">the most-watched non-sports telecast of 2022</a> <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/most-watched-shows-2023-ncis-oscars-blue-bloods-super-bowl-yellowstone-1235854795/" target="_blank">and of 2023</a>. Now, all these numbers and analysis shouldn't be perceived as bootlicking for ABC and the Academy, but rather a call to action to those entities. There's clearly no real problem going on with Oscars viewership that's exclusive to this awards show. Dwindling live numbers to this program are a result of shifts in how people consume television, not folks inherently abandoning the Oscars. However, this means that the folks behind this awards show need to focus less on "improving the ratings" and concentrate on matters that would actually benefit this event. Instead of straining to conjure up "viral moments" meant to boost viewership, let's get those Oscar categories for stunt performers and voice actors finally implemented into the show! Let's make gender-neutral acting categories! Let's ban anyone from the Oscar who (in the future) introduces the Best Animated Feature category with some snide remark about "did you let your kids fill out the voting form for this one?" There are plenty of ways the Oscars need to improve. Clearly, as Bilge Ebiri pointed out two years ago, viewership woes are not one of them.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-66916453250812368492024-03-15T08:56:00.001-05:002024-03-15T08:56:48.928-05:00In Laman's Terms: The Simpsons And Its Era of Lengthy Couch Gags<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxaa99pMhGoRwfDuEoyTNsdW1y6TJ_77zxuBuEpyzYD-4GBnpby5-mKlws7FsoEM3ILKzlDmEekhtWI3XcoHZqZ4etxM_7iLLn7SvIhvNzWKauOtjB-ISJByEOI_QXjlWmacRztDeOKbT-XWCwdErhX2MQzagS0PPQRkIyntZCGt6E2FngYWpWU6-rQQ/s1390/simpsonscouchgag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1390" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxaa99pMhGoRwfDuEoyTNsdW1y6TJ_77zxuBuEpyzYD-4GBnpby5-mKlws7FsoEM3ILKzlDmEekhtWI3XcoHZqZ4etxM_7iLLn7SvIhvNzWKauOtjB-ISJByEOI_QXjlWmacRztDeOKbT-XWCwdErhX2MQzagS0PPQRkIyntZCGt6E2FngYWpWU6-rQQ/w591-h290/simpsonscouchgag.jpg" width="591" /></a></div><p>Even if you've never seen an episode of<i> The Simpsons</i>, chances are you know the lengthy opening sequence that precedes most installments of the show. The show starts in the clouds before having the camera zoom through Springfield and resting on Bart writing up a phrase on the chalkboard. The opening sequence then follows each member of the Simpsons family before concluding with everyone meeting up at the house. As they arrive in the domicile, a "couch gag" occurs. Such a gag involves the five members of the Simpsons family trying to sit down on their couch but something goes wrong. It's a lengthy kick-off to an average <i>Simpsons </i>episode, but this set-up has proven to be one of the most iconic elements of the program.</p><p>Believe it or not, though, for a while there, these opening sequences were even longer! For nearly a decade of the program's history, there were extremely long couch gags that ate up airtime and attempted to give the show some "viral" moments. This is...The Era of Lengthy Couch Gags!</p><p>For nearly the entire first 20 years of <i>The Simpsons</i>, the show rigidly adhered to its opening sequence format. Shorter versions of this opening (which included just the chalkboard and couch gags or even just the latter element) would be implemented for many installments, but there was always something preceding the proper episode. The demands of cramming all the narrative demands of a traditional <i>Simpsons </i>episode meant that every second counted on this program. This necessitated that couch gags be short and to the point. Occasionally, slightly longer couch gags (like one involving the family doing a chorus line dance that transitions into a big Vegas-style production) would be implemented. However, these gags (largely limited to installments from seasons 3 and 4) were done out of necessity to boost up an episode that ran short. They weren't prepared as a showcase for unique artists or as homages to other programs. Plus, there was a cap on how long they ran. The thought of these gags going on for more than 60 seconds would've been incomprehensible in the era of 1990s television.</p><p>However, in March 2007, the episode "Homerazzi" broke viewer expectations by delivering a couch gag that wasn't confined to just the house of The Simpsons. This gag followed a single-cell organism version of Homer Simpson navigating the entire process of evolution. Various Springfieldianites were rendered as dinosaurs, possums, fish, and other critters. The entire sequence culminated with Homer arriving on the couch with the rest of his family, causing Marge to inquire "what took you so long?" Running 70 seconds, the couch gag redefined the visual and length possibilities of this staple of <i>The Simpsons</i>. There's never been official word on why the crew behind the show suddenly decided to go in this expansive direction with the couch gag after so many years. </p><p>One possibility, though, is <i>The Simpsons Movie</i>. "Homerazzi" debuted just four months before that theatrical release. Perhaps the artists and writers behind <i>The Simpsons</i> were getting so jazzed with the creative possibilities of making a movie that they looked to bring some of that audacity to the small screen. Whatever the reason, a new world of possibilities opened up just in time for a new decade of the show's history. <i>The Simpsons</i> was about to enter its 20s, not to mention the world of high-def animation. With these events on the horizon, lengthier variations on the couch gag were about to become a lot more common. The first HD episode of The Simpsons ("Take My Life, Please) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFngerErhhw" target="_blank">featured a 47-second long couch gag</a> that saw the titular family chasing their couch all across the world and even into outer space. The second-ever HD episode, "How the Test Was Won," would contain a similarly lengthy couch gag depicting the Simpsons family strolling through a series of iconic sitcom backdrops.</p><p>Initially, these longer-form couch gags had their uniqueness defined by their expansive scope. The Simpsons no longer just encountered strange events in their living room. Their couch gag exploits could take them to any TV show or country. However, the era of the lengthy couch gag would soon be defined by two key elements: participation by outside artists and attempts to go "viral". Both of these elements could be seen in the entire opening sequence of the 2010 episode "To Surveil With Love," which saw the denizens of Springfield lip-syncing to the Ke$ha tune "Tik Tok." Combining an incredibly popular song/person with<i> The Simpsons</i> was clearly a move on the part of the producers to get some extra eyeballs on the show. This was the age of "going viral" on YouTube, after all. Programs like<i> Saturday Night Live</i> and <i>Jimmy Kimmel Live</i> were already having great success in the late 2000s with standalone shorts and segments that took on another life online. The pre-episode segments of The Simpsons were ample territory for this show to create its own equivalent to "Dick in a Box" or "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck."</p><p>Having broken the seal of using the opening sequence of this show as a way to cross-promote with other artists, the couch gags began to take on a whole new lengthy life of their own. In October 2010, the episode "MoneyBART" took these possibilities to dark places by having Banksy (then at the height of his fame) draw up an opening sequence depicting sweatshop workers making Simpsons episodes, merchandise, and DVDS in deplorable conditions. Where are these workers located? Within the 20th Century Fox logo, of course! It was a really subversive piece of material that smuggled biting commentary on the conditions that produce escapist American entertainment within a mainstream sitcom episode. </p><p>Later lengthy couch gags would bring in other guest artists to give the Simpsons world a unique visual spin, with folks ranging from Bill Plympton to Eric Goldberg to Don Hertzfeldt all delivering couch gags that could only have come from their brains. Meanwhile, in April 2013, an additional new precedent for lengthy couch gags was set when the episode "What Animated Women Want" featured a quasi-crossover with <i>Breaking Bad</i>. This segment opened the door for later couch gags like a 2015 segment that saw Rick and Morty (literally) crash-landing onto the Simpsons family. A pair of later couch gags would also make use of the world and animation style of <i>Robot Chicken</i>. Let's also not forget the season 28 premiere that featured a couch gag based on the opening to <i>Adventure Time</i>, complete with vocals from that show's creator, Pendelton Ward. </p><p>These lengthy couch gags allowed<i> The Simpsons</i> to inhabit new visual styles and even mediums of animation (like stop-motion). These attributes lent some exciting artistic virtues to such segments. Meanwhile, FOX and the producers had to be happy with the hefty YouTube viewcounts for couch gags that attracted the<i> Rick & Morty</i>, Ke$ha, or <i>Breaking Bad</i> fanbases. Bizarrely, they were attached to episodes that were often downright forgettable. After experiencing a brief creative resurgence in the initial years after the show switched over to high-definition,<i> The Simpsons</i> went into a creative rut in the mid-2010s (save for episodes that were executive-produced by Matt Selman). Installments like "A Test Before Trying", "YOLO," or "Luca$" felt like the creations of writers keeping a show alive out of obligation, not creative fervor. While the couch gags suggested<i> The Simpsons</i> could be anything, the episodes themselves were largely lifeless.</p><p>By the end of the 2010s, the lengthier couch gags began to whittle down in presence. Occasionally more ambitious segments (like a parody of the opening of <i>Succession </i>or the Simpsons family members portraying Queen performing their 1985 Live Aid concert) would emerge, but the couch gags were becoming briefer again. The age of "going viral" had changed significantly in just a decade, with TikTok now being the main platform to go viral on rather than YouTube. The lengthy couch gags actually clashed with the short-form videos most popular on TikTok. This diminished their importance on a financial or exposure level. Meanwhile, it was more difficult than ever, even just in the span of a few years, to come up with concepts for eye-catching crossovers with other shows. The age of "Peak TV" meant there was more programming out there than ever before. It was hard to figure out a pop culture-defining program (like<i> Breaking Bad</i>, for instance) that the Simpsons family could rub shoulders with in a couch gag that would immediately make the internet go crazy. Would an <i>Ozark</i>-themed couch gag really set the world on fire?</p><p>There's also the simple fact that the current version of<i> The Simpsons</i> has bigger fish to fry. In a 2023 <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/the-simpsons-is-good-again.html" target="_blank">Vulture </a>interview about the creative resurgence of this sitcom, showrunner Matt Selman observed that an average <i>Simpsons </i>episode now has as much effort put into it as the typical "Treehouse of Horror" installment. With modern <i>Simpsons </i>outings engaging in more unconventional narrative structures and plotlines, all the creative juice isn't just going into the couch gags. Heck, for season 34, seven episodes (to date) have eschewed the entire <i>Simpsons </i>opening sequence, including the couch gag! We're now living in a radically different era of <i>Simpsons </i>storytelling, which means the era of lengthy couch gags has been put into storage (or wherever you put old couches...a nice farm upstate?)</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-26183342608841747082024-03-12T12:56:00.000-05:002024-03-12T12:56:27.172-05:00Love Lies Bleeding is a Grimy Treat for Chaotic Gays and Crime Movie Buffs Alike<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bqee1KBktq6noaH1-37NNT4X3609ONitlbzkfxLL6inHNiXqjOjyIOLOoeXaRIprc3DcxvjY2BdnNmyoZe0k-qzhZ_liqCOHbl2s_vuQy5IzWBdeyXoBielZlWUbPxsguwhVHVjLYGvDi1Agqt_yBePUdg9RG3QvwMY5jpr-_DEM4hXjxMbQP6drzA/s755/loveliesbleedingp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bqee1KBktq6noaH1-37NNT4X3609ONitlbzkfxLL6inHNiXqjOjyIOLOoeXaRIprc3DcxvjY2BdnNmyoZe0k-qzhZ_liqCOHbl2s_vuQy5IzWBdeyXoBielZlWUbPxsguwhVHVjLYGvDi1Agqt_yBePUdg9RG3QvwMY5jpr-_DEM4hXjxMbQP6drzA/w367-h544/loveliesbleedingp.jpg" width="367" /></a></div><p>We stare at our flesh every day. We obsess over every bump, bruise, curve, and anything else on our bodies ceaselessly. Meanwhile, we fixate over the bodies of others we’re attracted to. Their noses, their lips, their arms, they fill our lovesick imaginations with yearning. Whether it's our own fleshy vessels or somebody else's, the human body is always on one's mind in very exaggerated terms. We tend to see our own bodies as hideous while lionizing the bodies of others as aspirational or romantically desirable. Like David Cronenberg and Julia Ducournau before her, writer/director Rose Glass understands this fascination to a tee and that’s why the filmmaking of <i>Love Lies Bleeding </i>is so exceptional. This universal fascination, not to mention the heightened ways we all examine bodies, is filtered in creative musclebound terms throughout this deeply transfixing feature.</p><p>Taking place in New Mexico in the 1990s, Lou (Kristen Stewart) is a gym manager who finds herself deeply attracted to bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O'Brian). As we see the two lock eyes for the first time, Glass and cinematographer Ben Fordesman establish the visual motifs of <i>Love Lies Bleeding</i>. Close-up shots of bulging muscles fill the screen as other gym inhabitants jump rope, do lifts with their dumbbells, and push their bodies to the limits. Jackie, it turns out, wants to win a bodybuilding competition more than anything else in the world. Before we even learn this trait about the character, Glass and Fordesman plunge us into her point of view by covering the silver screen in intimate shots of muscular folks pumping iron. Pain and sweat looms large over Jackie's mind. No wonder those elements deeply inform the focus of<i> Love Lies Bleeding's</i> camera in its earliest scenes.</p><p>Those striking shots establish the visual norms of a rollicking dark ride of a movie that creates such incredible imagery out of a fascination with the human body. Many of those images come from Lou and Jackie's most physically intimate scenes together. The duo's initial sexual encounters are covered in bright red lighting that perfectly communicates the sense of passion they feel exploring each other's bodies. Better yet, their actions together are deeply idiosyncratic rather than derivative of other cinematic depictions of two women boning. I love the very specific examples of physical passion (like Lou nibbling on Jackie's toes) that emerge when they're lounging together. These small moments of human behavior lend such specificity to Jackie and Lou's relationship.</p><p>Of course, <i>Love Lies Bleeding </i>isn't just about dykes boning each other in cramped bedrooms (though that would be a fine movie too!) The script by Glass and Weronika Tofilska radiates plenty of dark tension from the get-go. Lou is running from a traumatic past stemming from her father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), while Jackie's determination to be the best bodybuilder around (aided by her increasing dependence on steroids) brings out some of her most violent tendencies. The level of torment these two have to deal with never seems to end, though for the sake of spoilers, let's leave things vague as to how that torment escalates. Put simply, <i>Love Lies Bleeding</i> is just a fantastically entertaining crime thriller. It does exactly what an entry into this genre should: keep you on the edge of your seat and leave viewers recoiling at the nastiness on the screen.</p><p>Fordesman's cinematography perfectly leans into the visual norms of noirs with memorable shots of darkened roads or people in black voids illuminated only by bright red lighting (a previously sensual color in<i> Love Lies Bleeding</i> warped into something ominous). Imagine the vibes and imagery of <i>Blood, Simply</i> mixed in with chaotic bursts of dark humor. The images of<i> Love Lies Bleeding</i> are incredibly striking and they're made all the more remarkable thanks to the assured directing of Rose Glass. She realizes the complicated tone of the proceedings with so much confidence. <i>Love Lies Bleeding</i> can go from genuinely sweet to erotic to unnerving to darkly comical with all the assuredness of a musclebound bodybuilder benching 200 pounds of iron. On paper, the unpredictable tone should render the feature an erratic mess. Instead, adhering to so many cinematic flavors just gives one more bang for their ticket money.</p><p>Anchoring the feature is Katy O'Brian as Jackie, who delivers the first major star-making turn in the pantheon of 2024 cinema. O'Brian subverts cinematic norms for how beefy women are "supposed" to behave by portraying Jackie with such endearing genuine affection for Lou. The way she portrays Jackie adorably asking Lou if she's coming to her bodybuilder competitions is just so darn sweet. O'Brian handles the romantic side of Jackie so well that it makes her adeptness at capturing this character's darker shades all the more impactful. Playing opposite O'Brian is Kristen Stewart, who proves especially great here with exquisitely executed comic line deliveries. Two especially hysterical moments in the third act hinge on Stewart delivering conceptually "normal" phrases (one of which consists of a solitary word) in the most bizarre scenarios. Her timing in these two line deliveries is utter perfection and demonstrates how precise Stewart is as a performer. </p><p>We're obsessed with our bodies. Chances are, if you like movies with striking visuals and unhinged lesbians like I do, you'll also be obsessed with <i>Love Lies Bleeding</i>. Go forth, reader, and experience what the big screen was made for: messy queer women being gay and doing crime.</p><p>Addendum: Composer Clint Mansell (a man most famous for his frequent collaborations with director Darren Aronofsky) has been a bit on autopilot in his film score assignments in recent years. I can't remember any distinctive qualities of his scores for <i>Sharper</i>, <i>Mute</i>, and <i>In the Earth</i>, while his orchestral work on <i>Peacemaker </i>(which he did with fellow composer Kevin Kiner) failed to really stand out against that show's hair metal soundtrack. However, Mansell delivers possibly his strongest work ever as a film composer with his magnificent<i> Love Lies Bleeding</i> score, which just oozes personality and ominous vibes. The most intense scenes of this movie are given further jolts of life thanks to Mansell's compositions, which ride a nice balance between evoking a 1980s setting without letting those influences totally define the personality of his tracks. </p><p>Second Addendum: In <i>Love Lies Bleeding</i>, Anna Baryshnikov plays the lovesick and manipulative queer lady Daisy. At one point, Baryshnikov portrays a giddy Daisy sitting in a diner booth and just rapidly tapping her nails on the table. It's a burst of distinctive human behavior I'll never be able to forget, she's so good in this role.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-66502695229553658642024-03-11T09:16:00.005-05:002024-03-11T09:16:57.460-05:00In Laman's Terms: How Long Can Netflix Keep Up Its Oscars Pursuit?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl1BJjpDBTUtXaYTGG0g1qWWhGoQP7ulCZZA0aVO6gl5YajpYirhIjXuscvReOc9SLXC1hJLC6b66QtiGMax5V83OjXCi-qvL0iM3My9ilmAlUfzp1FEoUIBpm1QumDmi7UVwgXQDoqVRFIhGfGXikz9dhVc6foaeS0MuBI75CTB8oaZqC9yHTLMqVGg/s1016/LucyPullingFootball.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1016" data-original-width="962" height="513" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl1BJjpDBTUtXaYTGG0g1qWWhGoQP7ulCZZA0aVO6gl5YajpYirhIjXuscvReOc9SLXC1hJLC6b66QtiGMax5V83OjXCi-qvL0iM3My9ilmAlUfzp1FEoUIBpm1QumDmi7UVwgXQDoqVRFIhGfGXikz9dhVc6foaeS0MuBI75CTB8oaZqC9yHTLMqVGg/w486-h513/LucyPullingFootball.jpg" width="486" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos after being told Netflix will totally finally win a major Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Back in November 2015, Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos revealed to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/ted-sarandos-dream-have-someone-840935/" target="_blank">The Hollywood Reporter</a> that his greatest dream in the entertainment industry was to have an Oscar winner "thank Netflix" on stage. This comment came a month after Netflix released its first original narrative film, <i>Beasts of No Nation</i>. Two years later, <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/netflix-the-oscars-the-battle-for-the-future-of-film" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a> reported that Sarandos was keen on using lots and lots of Netflix money to pursue Oscars. This streamer was looking for validation in the film industry through Oscar wins, with their moves inspiring headlines like<a href="https://www.indiewire.com/awards/industry/netflix-oscar-ted-sarandos-mudbound-1201844192/" target="_blank"> the June 2017 IndieWire piece "Netflix's Next Big Move? Hacking the Oscars"</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/business/media/netflix-movies-oscars.html" target="_blank">a February 2019 New York Times piece entitled "In Bid to Conquer Oscars, Netflix Mobilizes Savvy Campaigner and Huge Budget".</a> </p><p>For a moment, it looked like Netflix might become the new powerhouse in the award season landscape. Studios eschewing mid-budget and adult-skewing features in the mid-2010s gave Netflix an easy in to attracting filmmakers boiling down to "we'll make the movies Warner Bros./Paramount/Disney etc. won't make anymore." This is how Netflix ended up with a 2019 award season slate anchored by new Martin Scorsese, Noah Baumbach, Mati Diop, and Fernando Meirelles movies. The COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters and forcing everyone to their choices for most of 2020 and 2021 suggested that Netflix might've become the master of the Oscars for the foreseeable future by default.</p><p>Cut to the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024 <a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/news/oscars-2024-netflix-apple-wins-streamers-1235935496/#:~:text=Netflix%20collected%20its%20one%20win,live%20action%20short%20film%20category." target="_blank">and Netlfix only took home one Oscar win</a> (for Best Live-Action Short for <i>The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar</i>) from its 17 nominations. This mirrors the situation at the 94th Academy Awards two years ago when Netflix also won a solitary Oscar (for Best Director for Jane Campion for <i>The Power of the Dog</i>), <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/netflix-oscar-nominations-2022" target="_blank">though that year the streamer had 27 nominations in the mix</a>. This lack of major Oscar wins is something that begs the question...how long can Netflix keep up its costly Oscar pursuits?</p><p>Netflix scored its first Oscar nomination back at the 86th Academy Awards (recognizing the best of 2014 cinema) for <i>The Square</i>, a documentary hailing from Egypt told largely in Egyptian Arabic. In hindsight, this nomination is intriguing partially because this ceremony occurred the same year Netflix started releasing original narrative motion pictures. However, starting Netflix's Oscar career with a foreign-language documentary also reflected the kinds of movies and pop culture Netflix has helped to make more mainstream in the last decade. The rise in popularity<a href="https://www.thewrap.com/squid-game-effect-foreign-language-streaming-boom/" target="_blank"> of foreign-language television shows</a> <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/documentary-streaming-age-filmmaker-debate-ethics-payments-1235221541/" target="_blank">and documentaries</a> in recent years has been widely attributed to Netflix and other streamers making those projects more accessible to the general public. It's only fitting that the presence of Netflix at the Oscars would begin with a production that fits into both of those molds.</p><p>While Netflix quickly became an Oscar fixture in the Best Documentary feature camp (it even scored two nods in that category at the 88th Academy Awards in 2017), getting into the biggest categories at the ceremony was a lot trickier. Only on Netflix's fourth go-round in the award season circuit (for the 2018-2019 season) did the streamer break into the Best Director and Best Picture categories (with <i>Roma</i>). Netflix hasn't lost its grip on the most high-profile Oscar categories in terms of nominations since it broke through. The streamer is now going on six consecutive years of Best Picture nominations and had a four-year Best Director nomination streak that included two wins in the category (though the streamer has been shut out of the category during the last two ceremonies). In the acting categories, Netflix has proven quite skilled at garnering nominations, with 25% of the acting nominees at the 96th Academy Awards belonging to Netflix movie performances. </p><p>Looking over the history of Netflix's Oscar nominations, though, it's shocking how few awards the streamer has managed to actually win over the years. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/media/netflix-academy-awards-oscars.html" target="_blank">Netflix's spending on award season campaigning is infamous at this point</a>, yet it hasn't yielded many big victories. There are no Best Picture winners in the Netflix library. Only one acting Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress for Laura Dern in <i>Marriage Story</i>) has ever been won by the streamer. Netflix has failed to secure any victories in either of the two Screenplay categories. Best Original Song, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, all these Oscars have eluded Netflix. Meanwhile, companies with way less money to spend (like A24) have been churning out modern Oscar darlings like<i> Everything Everywhere All at Once</i> and <i>The Zone of Interest</i>.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM2Gt94zBSxZQlvj2uEPDJsnMgqKjGpOAC36t8T41eDPZhyMPfjm2DOxF7A5nKBOMaZZS7qdI_UdIFm3ssRIYityId_IxF5Y-P4dIkuaCf-NkQSjXLybxQg3Yv4pGLuXgWKVQeGIjZM3BjHqZEWSq3ik9UBRi2u5aqjgvgngmfkoNCdEtyuQpAHOue_w/s3107/henrysugarspool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1748" data-original-width="3107" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM2Gt94zBSxZQlvj2uEPDJsnMgqKjGpOAC36t8T41eDPZhyMPfjm2DOxF7A5nKBOMaZZS7qdI_UdIFm3ssRIYityId_IxF5Y-P4dIkuaCf-NkQSjXLybxQg3Yv4pGLuXgWKVQeGIjZM3BjHqZEWSq3ik9UBRi2u5aqjgvgngmfkoNCdEtyuQpAHOue_w/w529-h298/henrysugarspool.jpg" width="529" /></a></div><p>Netflix hasn't been a total bust at the Oscars (it scored seven wins at the Oscars last year across several different categories), but it's clear Netflix hasn't become a titan of the award show. The streamer's struggles to break into the Oscars are a microcosm of how Netflix's original film division just isn't nearly as successful or game-changing as its TV operation. When Netflix started dropping TV shows all at once in a binge-model format, the entire game changed. Meanwhile, Netflix's release strategy of debuting movies on its platform (after maybe two weeks of theatrical play in 30-ish theaters) with no promotion hasn't really become a widely imitated approach. On the contrary, Amazon MGM Studios and Apple TV+ are now embracing theatrical releases as a way to get on people's radar.</p><p>Netflix's eschewing of theaters may make Sarandos and other Silicon Valley types feel like "disruptors", but it's clearly hurting their movie operation on many fronts. Netflix can never be home to a big visually lavish spectacle like <i>Dune: Part Two</i>, nor could it ever house slow-burn arthouse hits like <i>Parasite </i>and<i> Poor Things</i>. Plopping movies of all stripes and sizes into an algorithm slush makes it impossible to find those titles or ensure they have a pop culture lifespan longer than an afternoon. This problem undoubtedly is hurting Netflix's chances at the Oscars*. The streamer has the money to get its movies on the radar of Oscar voters, as seen by the 17 nominations it secured this year. However, the company's films don't leave as much of an impact as titles like <i>Oppenheimer </i>or <i>Everything Everywhere All at Once </i>that flourish on the big screen. It's easy to see who will win in the duel between a movie you can watch on an app and a movie you can experience on an IMAX 70mm screen. Plus, Netflix's dedication to releasing as much "content" (God, I hate that word) as possible means that it's hard for individual titles to stand out. <i>May December</i> was one of 2023's best movies. It also could've secured more than one Oscar nod if Netflix's awards team didn't have to divvy up its attention across so many movies.</p><p>Anyone with eyes can see that Netflix's movie operation is clearly not working to a comical degree. <a href="https://deadline.com/2024/01/netflix-ted-sarandos-scott-stuber-original-films-earnings-1235802824/" target="_blank">Sarandos can brag about the supposedly "massive" viewership audience</a> of these original titles all he wants. It doesn't mean anyone in the real world is talking or cares about <i>Rebel Moon</i>.<a href="https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2024/streaming-unwrapped-streaming-viewership-goes-to-the-library-in-2023/" target="_blank"> Even the Nielsen viewership chart for the most-watched streaming movies of 2023</a> reflects this reality, with Netflix only score one slot in the top ten most-watched streaming movies of 2023. Coming in at number ten (behind nine movies that all played in normal theatrical releases first before they went to streaming) was Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, a sequel to a theatrical release film. Given<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix-revokes-some-staffs-access-to-other-peoples-salary-information-11673380248" target="_blank"> the company's lack of pay transparency</a>, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-05-08/writers-strike-netflix-wga-hollywood-labor" target="_blank">infamously bad labor practices</a>, contempt for the livelihood of movie theaters (and more importantly, all the working-class people whose paychecks depend on those locations), <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90653850/why-netflix-movies-look-so-weird" target="_blank">normalization of subpar cinematography standards</a>, <a href="https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/ricky-gervais-trans-jokes-netflix-special-supernature-1235275966/" target="_blank">and support of transphobic comedians,</a> it's hard not to relish Netflix's struggles both at the Oscars and in the original film space. Once again, tech bros are figuring out that they can't just buy being an artist or talented. Turns out throwing lots of money at the wall can't suddenly turn your studio into Janus Films. Who knew?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgY8fqSLCMuV3EujeQwUoEtoXWChxAQ4b4mUebIK1GAMr7pOn1K3HI07dp2xYc9nF4nTFbvMltFw_M3mIUJFt69yv7d58NUQBiVPfCaUIvsXcFGEdd310ydrq8GcTL6xZ8pmYzFEbYjuYMdbEL1Y-BeLTyvK2nEkG_mI8w_5G_lN3m0PTMM98AzuDIQ/s4876/MaestroTheSpool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2743" data-original-width="4876" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOgY8fqSLCMuV3EujeQwUoEtoXWChxAQ4b4mUebIK1GAMr7pOn1K3HI07dp2xYc9nF4nTFbvMltFw_M3mIUJFt69yv7d58NUQBiVPfCaUIvsXcFGEdd310ydrq8GcTL6xZ8pmYzFEbYjuYMdbEL1Y-BeLTyvK2nEkG_mI8w_5G_lN3m0PTMM98AzuDIQ/w507-h285/MaestroTheSpool.jpg" width="507" /></a></div><p>Something that fascinates me, though, is that Netflix's future may hinge less on Oscars. I'm sure Sarandos is still harboring his desire to get up on that Oscar stage someday, but Netflix's recent company changes indicate a tweak in its media priorities. Scoring a $5 billion deal to be the home for WWE Raw for ten years already had folks questioning how much money the streamer will be putting into original movies in the future. Then there was the news last week that Netflix will be airing its first-ever live boxing match (between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson). One can expect such star-studded boxing matches to factor heavily into Netflix programming in the future, which will eat away more at the company's finances. When you start seeing Jake Paul programming on Netflix, it's a clear sign that the company is moving away from the days of <i>Atlantics</i>.</p><p>Then there's the hiring of Dan Lin as the new head of Netflix's film division, replacing Scott Stuber. Before coming to Netflix, Stuber was one of the leaders of Universal Pictures before becoming a go-to producer at the studio behind <i>Minions</i>. Stuber's hiring indicated Netflix wanted to create partnerships with the sort of prolific and even award season-friendly filmmakers that Stuber always rubbed shoulders with at Universal. Lin, meanwhile, is a producer known for branded genre fare, like the<i> Sherlock Holmes</i>, <i>LEGO</i>, and <i>It </i>movies. Netflix clearly wants Lin to work his magic at elevating the streamer's genre movies from <i>The Gray Man</i> and<i> Heart of Stone</i> to something more resembling Lin hits like <i>The LEGO Movie</i>. Save for producing <i>The Two Popes</i>, Lin isn't well-versed in award-season titans, suggesting that his time at Netflix will be more about mainstream cinema and less about Andrew Dominik's <i>Blonde</i>.</p><p>Of course, Netflix may have already been shifting away from the days of Roma/All Quiet on the Western Front/The Power of the Dog long before Dan Lin got hired. As of this writing, Netflix's 2024 slate doesn't have a lot of major dramas that conceptually seem like they could be Oscar fodder beyond <i>The Piano Lesson </i>(the streamer's newest Noah Baumbach and Guillermo del Toro movies won't be ready until 2025). <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/tiff-sales-netflix-strike/" target="_blank">Granted, Netflix purchasing a trio of major films at the 2023 edition</a> of the Toronto International Film Festival does suggest the streamer could eventually buy up a big 2024 Cannes or TIFF title that takes them to the 97th Academy Awards. However, for now, it does look like Netflix's future in its tormented original films division may not be just focused on securing Oscar glory. The middling viewership numbers for Netflix 2023 award season contenders <a href="https://theankler.com/p/netflixs-troubling-zack-snyder-maestro" target="_blank">like </a><i><a href="https://theankler.com/p/netflixs-troubling-zack-snyder-maestro" target="_blank">Maestro</a>, Pain Hustlers, </i>and <i>Fair Play </i>are almost certainly giving the streamer further incentive to focus its cinematic exploits. Sorry Ted Sarandos, you'll have to wait (possibly forever) to hear someone thank Netflix in a Best Picture acceptance speech.</p><p>* Yes, <i>CODA </i>won the Best Picture Oscar after eschewing a traditional theatrical release. It launched in the wonky year of 2021, when theatrical release patterns were still in flux. Plus, Apple TV+ has switched over to prioritizing theatrical runs.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-444541286709635432024-03-10T14:14:00.002-05:002024-03-10T14:14:55.965-05:00In Laman's Terms: The Recent Dune Reboots That Never Happened<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokRmAAMv4Lhe6KpecwbtCvm3qQaOaUiIW18R22ZuxX10lPh_s10PotM3Rd_HWqKtbAMLinQsF2WYtFzlBjDY9Y_3rsjDTvd0ZQIAKpjjeF6ekZJQ6Y4pBDD6IKNRe3LsR3QTk-gIwm2qzoaS0kNjfg72HAXmhl65Hr4tfhWa-vKY-89b86qzaKR18PA/s2240/dune2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1493" data-original-width="2240" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokRmAAMv4Lhe6KpecwbtCvm3qQaOaUiIW18R22ZuxX10lPh_s10PotM3Rd_HWqKtbAMLinQsF2WYtFzlBjDY9Y_3rsjDTvd0ZQIAKpjjeF6ekZJQ6Y4pBDD6IKNRe3LsR3QTk-gIwm2qzoaS0kNjfg72HAXmhl65Hr4tfhWa-vKY-89b86qzaKR18PA/w465-h310/dune2.jpg" width="465" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">OK, now imagine this image came from a <i>Dune </i>movie directed by the <i>Taken </i>guy and it's Alex Pettyfer and Adelaide Kane playing Paul and Chani, respectively </td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Today, the modern </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dune</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> movies have become as
synonymous with director Denis Villeneuve as the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dark Knight</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> trilogy was
intertwined with Christopher Nolan or </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Barbie</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is with Greta Gerwig. It’s
not just that Villeneuve pulled off this adaptation that seemed impossible, but
like Nolan and Gerwig, he delivered a big-budget blockbuster that also felt
like it could only come from the mind of one particular auteur. In the wake of
Villeneuve’s increasingly famous take on the </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dune</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> mythology in cinema,
it’s easy to sometimes forget about the other filmed adaptations of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dune</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">,
like David Lynch’s 1984 movie or that Syfy miniseries at the dawn of the 21</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">st</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
century.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Even beyond those two pre-2021 projects, though,
Hollywood has also tried gallantly many times to turn this project into a big
blockbuster. Of course, turning Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi text into a cohesive
movie is not an easy task…just ask Alejandro Jodorowsky! In the 21<sup>st</sup>
century, countless studios tried their hand at turning <i>Dune</i> into a
motion picture before Villeneuve finally cracked the code and got this
production off the ground. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya turned out to be
perfect choices to anchor <i>Dune</i>…but how else could a modern-day <i>Dune</i>
movie have looked? What other ambitions for a <i>Dune</i> feature were once set
to flow into movie theaters?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Earliest 21<sup>st</sup> Century Stabs at “Dune”
Movies</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the very end of 2007, news broke on the prospect of
<i>Dune</i> finally riding back into movie theaters more than two decades after
Lynch's <i>Dune</i> movie debuted. For context on how long ago this was, the </span><a href="https://www.firstshowing.net/2007/dune-being-adapted-again-this-time-by-peter-berg/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FirstShowing</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
news piece about this development begins with the writer noting that they'd
rather be exploring their new HD DVD player than writing up news about a 21<sup>st</sup>
century <i>Dune</i> adaptation! This version of the text was supposed to be
directed by Peter Berg, with the filmmaker describing himself as a massive fan
of the book who planned to make a spectacularly expansive adaptation of the
source material. At the time, Berg’s inaugural foray into big-budget
blockbuster cinema (<i>Hancock</i>) was still months away from release, so it
was still unclear to the general public if the man behind <i>Friday Night
Lights</i> could handle a VFX-heavy feature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By March 2008, Berg was officially onboard as the
director </span><a href="https://variety.com/2008/film/features/berg-to-direct-dune-for-paramount-1117982560/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">and
the project had a studio home: Paramount Pictures</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
While Universal Pictures had released the original Lynch <i>Dune</i>, Paramount
was now eagerly holding onto Berg’s <i>Dune</i> as a movie that could keep up
the studio’s blockbuster movie momentum. Thanks to deals and purchases it had
made with outfits like Marvel Studios and DreamWorks SKG, Paramount was riding
high in the late 2000s on projects like <i>Transformers</i>, <i>Iron Man</i>,
and others. Paramount wanted to keep the good box office times rolling and that
meant taking a chance on adapting a source material others may have found
impenetrable</span><a href="https://collider.com/peter-berg-is-not-directing-dune/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
By October 2009, though, Berg had
departed</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> the project due to disagreements over budget with
Paramount (who wanted to keep costs under $175 million). At the time, the two
candidates Paramount was most eagerly eyeballing to take over the proceedings
were Neill Blomkamp and Neil Marshall, the former of whom had just helmed the
lucrative <i>Distinct 9</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the wake of Berg’s departure came inarguably the
darker period of development for a modern-day <i>Dune</i> reboot: </span><a href="https://collider.com/chase-palmer-is-now-writing-dune-for-director-pierre-morel/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">the
moment Pierre Morel was slated to</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> direct the feature. Interestingly,
Morel and final <i>Dune</i> director Denis Villeneuve are both of French
ancestry (the former being purely French, the other being French-Canadian), but
the two filmmakers couldn't be more different otherwise. Morel got big in the
late 2000s after helming <i>Taken</i>, a project that not only catapulted Liam
Neeson to action movie stardom but also put this EuropaCorp veteran on the
radar of all Hollywood studios. Well-known for his action films that emphasize
dim lighting, “gritty” realism, and sloppy editing, Morel made sense to direct <i>Dune</i>
from a cynical studio executive perspective (“<i>Taken</i> made money! <i>Dune</i>
from the <i>Taken</i> guy will also make money!”) It was an incoherent choice
from all other perspectives. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Demise of This Original “Dune” Movie</span></span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By the end of 2010, things were already looking
slippery for this new iteration of <i>Dune</i> once Morel </span><a href="https://collider.com/ouija-pierre-morel-taken-edward-kitsis/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">was
approached to direct a proposed blockbuster movie adaptation of <i>Ouija</i></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
This filmmaker clearly wasn’t narrowing his focus solely on Arrakis. This made
it no surprise that </span><a href="https://collider.com/paramount-dune/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Paramount
flat-out abandoned the project by March 2011</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, despite spending
four years trying to make a modern-day <i>Dune</i> blockbuster work. At the
time, it was revealed that Paramount's grip on the film rights to <i>Dune</i>
had expired and that there was initially potential interest in taking pieces of
this <i>Dune</i> movie to another studio movie. However, the prospects for a <i>Dune</i>
resurrection were considered bleak even back in 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In hindsight, the loss of those rights can be chalked
up to Paramount going through an incredibly turbulent time at the dawn of the
2010s </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/business/media/paramount-pictures.html"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">that
would spell doom for the studio for much of the ensuing decade</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
</span><a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/article/ed4135388164/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Though
Paramount loomed large over all other studios at the domestic box office in
2011</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">,
it had alienated many of the players behind its biggest hits. Paranormal
Activity 3 producer Jason Blum had a movie deal at Universal Pictures.
DreamWorks SKG had moved over to Disney/Touchstone Pictures. The Mouse House
had also bought up Marvel Studios, which supplied two big hits for Paramount in
2011. If Paramount circa. 2011 couldn’t keep these massive titans on the studio
lot, what hope did an oddball property like <i>Dune</i> have of sticking around
at the label?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It also didn’t help that <i>Dune</i> was clearly a
property Paramount first got attached to in 2007 because of the biggest hits of
the early 2000s. Even as late as 2007, features trying to replicate the success
of <i>Harry Potter</i> and <i>Lord of the Rings</i> were common. Every studio
wanted to reach into the past for a beloved series of books that could be
translated into a lucrative saga of blockbusters. Paramount totally saw <i>Dune</i>
as its key to getting in on the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> action. By March 2011,
though, Hollywood’s priorities shifted to making <i>Twilight</i> knock-offs
(And would morph once again a year later into producing pastiches of <i>The
Hunger Games</i>). <i>Dune</i> no longer fit the mold of the default
blockbusters Hollywood wanted to mimic, which likely made it easy for Paramount
to say goodbye to the property.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It would take nearly six years after Paramount’s <i>Dune</i>
movie </span><a href="https://collider.com/dune-movie-tv-legendary/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">fell
apart for Legendary Pictures to secure the film rights</span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
to this text and pave the road for the Villeneuve’s version of the property. In
the years in between, there was nary a whisper of other potential <i>Dune</i>
reboots, with the density of this source material likely petrifying financiers
from giving this property another chance on the big screen. All that waiting
around turned out to be the right move given all the acclaim that’s greeted
Villeneuve’s <i>Dune</i>. Plus, taking things slow and steady with this
property saved the world from witnessing visions of <i>Dune</i> from the
directors of <i>Hancock</i> and <i>Taken</i>!<o:p></o:p></span></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-16833543555788582422024-03-09T09:08:00.003-06:002024-03-09T09:08:39.392-06:00In Laman's Terms: Hugh Jackman's Musical Opening Is Still One of the Best Oscars Moments of the 21st Century<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJypmL_avbI4-v-cHPadEWzFkhNCJxHE1jxuN_U1bSdHKY85B9a0phwcwLBa_RIiLan9exMfY8aG140bAucjTPi1KNkam8oi-xLIMpWqXS49pBzCNNN46F1UtW2sDfCE1gUd1BjQouZLrnfLURb37BKHO_u3O-_Hvih0Fkp7uE-Nk5zmeDVsjtjTZAg/s1024/iltoscars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1001" data-original-width="1024" height="407" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNJypmL_avbI4-v-cHPadEWzFkhNCJxHE1jxuN_U1bSdHKY85B9a0phwcwLBa_RIiLan9exMfY8aG140bAucjTPi1KNkam8oi-xLIMpWqXS49pBzCNNN46F1UtW2sDfCE1gUd1BjQouZLrnfLURb37BKHO_u3O-_Hvih0Fkp7uE-Nk5zmeDVsjtjTZAg/w416-h407/iltoscars.jpg" width="416" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The opening segment of the Academy Awards is often
tough to crack, but some years, it feels like the people behind this show
aren’t even trying. This is particularly true in the modern world (read: 21</span><sup>st</sup><span style="font-size: 12pt;">-century
Oscar ceremonies), where the Academy Awards often seem negatively daunted by
the legacy of this show. This means that the people behind this program produce
opening sequences that just seem either too derivative of the past or too quick
to leap into weird mean-spirited meta-commentary. The latter phenomenon could
be seen in all the cursed musical numbers from host Seth MacFarlane that kicked
off the 85th Academy Awards, while the 83rd Academy Awards saw hosts Anne
Hathaway and James Franco strolling through famous 2010 movies like they were
the second coming of Billy Crystal.</span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Even more restrained stabs at reimagining how the
Oscars can start end up going nowhere interesting. Just look at the 93rd
Academy Awards, which began with a lengthy shot of Regina King just walking
through Union Station and to the program's stage. Where’s the pizzazz and
imagination in all of these sequences? What material is being served up right
away to the viewer that’ll keep them glued to the screen for the three-hour
spectacle that is to come? Thankfully, there is one Oscar ceremony that knew
how to kick things off perfectly. Hugh Jackman's hysterical opening musical
number from the 81st Academy Awards in February 2009 was a thing to
behold...and a masterwork in how to begin an Oscars ceremony just right!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">What Was Hugh Jackman’s Oscar Opening
Segment?</span><b style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Given that Hugh Jackman’s famous for his exploits in
the world of live musical theater, it’s no surprise that he’d kick off his gig
as a live entertainer at the Academy Awards with a song-and-dance routine. In
an inspired move, though, the song that kicked off the 81<sup>st</sup> Academy
Awards was informed by real-world tragedies happening outside the Kodak
Theatre. The 2008 economic recession had hit America devastatingly hard in the
months directly preceding this show., Jobs had been lost. Budgets were tighter
than ever. Unemployment was skyrocketing. Done poorly, the 81<sup>st</sup>
Academy Awards making jokes related to this economic crisis could’ve been
tone-deaf and staggeringly miscalculated. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Shockingly, though, Jackman didn’t crumble under the
pressure. Instead, he was at the center of an inspired musical number that saw
him putting together cardboard props and raggedy sets under a “tight budget”
inspired by the recession. The result was a set-piece that wasn’t ignorant of
the hardships of reality but also didn’t trivialize them. Plus, the concept of
a “low-budget” Oscars opening ceremony led to ingenious visual gags (like a
series of crude dolls used to represent Benjamin Button at various stages of
his life) that were unlike anything else in the history of the Oscars. This
wasn’t a musical ditty that felt like it was retreading past ground, this was
something fresh that could only have existed circa. January 2009.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The writing of the musical number was also incredibly
solid, a trick accomplished by the murderer’s row of outstanding writers
assembled for this piece </span><a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-history-of-hugh-jackmans-oscars-opening-number.html"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">(including
Ben Schwartz and Dan Harmon!)</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> Many award show musical
numbers are cute, but have lyrics that rarely rise above that level. Jackman’s
song was actually hilarious, particularly the verse where he talks about how “I
haven’t seen <i>The Reader</i>,” an inspired way to get around talking about
such a dark movie in a bubbly musical number. Actual wit abounded in this tune
on so many fronts and made it something you could hum and titter at in equal
measures.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Best of all, it was a musical number that reflected a
passion for the movies nominated that year. The cardboard props were meant to
reflect the economic realities of early 2009, but they also reflected a
ramshackle endearing love for cinema reminiscent of the “Sweded” movies in <i>Be
King Rewind</i> or the “series finale” at the center of <i>Brigsby Bear</i>.
When you don’t have infinite studio resources at your disposal, passion can
carry a low-budget endeavor. That kind of passion came through at the opening
of 81<sup>st</sup> Academy Awards, which suggested that a love for movies would
endure no matter what economic restrictions were in place. Having Jackman
finish off the number by belting out passionate long notes about how he’s, in
many ways, all of these Oscar-nominated movies (aren’t we all?) was a great
capper to the song that conveyed so much enthusiasm for the films this program
was recognizing. Compare that to the detached Jo Koy or Ricky Gervais
monologues that kicked off modern Golden Globes ceremonies, for instance, and
it becomes clear which of these entertainers knows how to star in an award
show.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hugh Jackman Never Returning to the
Oscars is a Good Thing</span><b style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Not only have future Oscars failed to deliver opening
numbers equally enjoyable, but this is also, to date, the only appearance of
Jackman as a host at this award show. Jackman didn’t run the goodwill generated
from his 81<sup>st</sup> Academy Awards appearance into the ground with endless
further hosting gigs that tried to replicate the lightning-in-a-bottle success
he got the first time around. Instead, Jackman’s Oscar hosting stint seems to
have been a one-and-done affair. Some years, when the Oscars are really lacking
energy, it’s easy to wish Jackman would come back and spruce things up again.
However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s good that Jackman didn’t overstay
his welcome or tarnish the memory of this exquisite Oscar opener.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s also become even easier to appreciate in
hindsight how deftly Jackman and the crew behind the 81<sup>st</sup> Academy
Awards managed to reflect the inescapable brutalities of reality in the middle
of a bubbly awards show. You don’t want to capsize the zippy atmosphere of the
Oscars, but also, it’s foolish if you don’t acknowledge the harsh realities
viewers themselves can’t escape. That’s a tough balance to walk, but subsequent
Oscar ceremonies have often eschewed even trying to execute that balance! Most
egregiously, the 93<sup>rd</sup> Academy Awards presented an Oscars that acted
like the world didn’t shut down because of COVID-19 13 months prior. </span><a href="https://people.com/movies/oscars-2021-reveal-how-they-pulled-off-maskless-ceremony/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20theatrical%20nature,nominees%20and%20publicists%2C%20Variety%20added."><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Nobody
on-camera ever wore face masks</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">, while the Academy </span><a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/news/oscars-zoom-backlash-ceremony-1234937105/#:~:text=Popular%20on%20Variety,the%20trek%20to%20Los%20Angeles."><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">instituted
a strict policy forbidding actors from accepting awards virtually</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">In hindsight, such mandates were clearly made to just
make the Oscars look “normal” for viewers and advertisers. In execution, all
they did was make the Academy Awards feel creepily detached from the realities
of living in the middle of a health crisis that had taken countless lives. Such
gross miscalculations make the miracle of Jackman’s 81<sup>st</sup> Academy
Awards opening number all the easier to appreciate. This performer and the
show’s writers didn’t run from real-world topics that could be considered
“buzzkills”, they ran towards them and found inspired idiosyncratic sources of
humor in the process. Leaning into “unpleasant” real-world events only made the
81<sup>st</sup> Academy Awards opening number more entertaining, not less!<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Jackman's performance is even easier to appreciate
thanks to subsequent Oscar hosts, who haven't come anywhere close to his level
of showmanship or sense of fun. Not everyone who’s hosted the Oscars since
Jackman has been a dud, but folks like Seth MacFarlane and James Franco
certainly solidified themselves as all-time bad hosts. Meanwhile, folks like Neil
Patrick Harris disappointed compared to the potential they carried while
someone like Jimmy Kimmel (who’s gearing up for his fourth hosting gig across
eight ceremonies) is a painless presence but he's not really memorable as a host
unless he’s skewering Matt Damon (a gag he carried over from his late-night
show). Hugh Jackman’s work would’ve been exceptional under any circumstances,
but subsequent underwhelming Oscar hosts make his virtues as an entertainer
easier than ever to appreciate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Hugh Jackman’s 83<sup>rd</sup> Academy
Awards Opener Was Truly a Golden Moment</span></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Subsequent Oscar ceremonies have inundated audiences
with snark, endless homages to past Oscar hosts, and Amy Schumer. These
negative qualities have often been so unpleasant to watch that they make one
yearn for the Academy Awards to ditch hosts altogether! Hugh Jackman’s work
kicking off the 83<sup>rd</sup> Academy Awards, though, showed off how good an
Oscar host can be. These figures can come into this award show and get the ball
rolling with lots of razzle-dazzle, wit, and an infectious love for movies that
reminds us all why we tune into this ceremony year after year. The dismal track
record of post-2009 Oscar hosts suggests those qualities may be sparse in
modern entertainers, but at least we all got to feel them once more when
Jackman belted out his opening number.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: times;">Since this 2009 Oscars stint, Jackman’s gone on to
play Wolverine a further six times (a seventh is on the way with <i>Deadpool
& Wolverine</i>), headlined movies like <i>Bad Education</i>, and starred
in various stage and movie musicals. He’s done a lot of interesting work…but
this 83<sup>rd</sup> Academy Awards opening number may be his greatest work as
a performer in show business. Not only did Jackman have the chops and great
writers to execute a winning opening musical number, but that year’s bevy of
Oscar-nominated films provided ample material for great visual gags. It was the
perfect confluence of events that resulted in an Oscar opening number like no
other…and one we’re unlikely to see replicated in effectiveness anytime soon.</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-69625527387366760142024-03-08T11:09:00.002-06:002024-03-08T11:09:47.132-06:00Dune: Part Two Lets the Spice and Great Filmmaking Flow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnchKlIMkKTRuxpyUylBfpMRIXHxrKgFQq6ElZWRhY5RHScMhwsGz5bK5jVbdKEm5ddf-GTBHG5lGjrp68zVo4XvRo3w49Mk5Ls_S6JeHecbFRLGfXtYp7VR8g_B5OyYMf_P-jQPuEGAXE74I8qOLTJ2i18xUG5LgHA7KhUKyX6OVVBxRPRXm6zEHRrg/s755/dune_part_two_ver14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="518" height="662" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnchKlIMkKTRuxpyUylBfpMRIXHxrKgFQq6ElZWRhY5RHScMhwsGz5bK5jVbdKEm5ddf-GTBHG5lGjrp68zVo4XvRo3w49Mk5Ls_S6JeHecbFRLGfXtYp7VR8g_B5OyYMf_P-jQPuEGAXE74I8qOLTJ2i18xUG5LgHA7KhUKyX6OVVBxRPRXm6zEHRrg/w455-h662/dune_part_two_ver14.jpg" width="455" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Back in March and April 2020, I'd awaken in the morning and just lie there, considering the way the COVID-19 pandemic was impacting everything in the world. Being who I am, I also considered whether or not movie theaters would ever reopen and if they did, would there be wonderful films still playing in those cinematic cathedrals? Was everything just going to get sent to the Netflix algorithm black hole? Would filmmakers have any more inclinations to make big grand swings in the realm of filmmaking? Such queries left me overwhelmed under the covers in those unpredictable months. Cut to 2024 and I got to watch <i>Dune: Part Two </i>on a massive IMAX screen. While certainly nowhere near the best new release movie I've seen since the pandemic shut down theaters (that honor goes to <i>Drive My Car</i>),<i> Dune: Part Two</i> is one of the most reassuring post-March 2020 theatrical titles I've witnessed on the big screen. </p><p>Visual imaginations that can only be properly rendered on a gigantic silver screen are not dead. Fresh unforgettable images and performances that belong to a new generation are being realized. The cinematic cycle is continuing on, thank goodness. Even as someone who had gripes with the original <i>Dune </i>movie, writer/director Denis Villeneuve has done applaud-worthy work on <i>Dune: Part Two</i>. With this follow-up, he's crafted an immersive blockbuster that would register as something special even if it didn't feel extra reassuring after movie theaters nearly vanished forever.</p><p><i>Dune: Part Two</i> already gets a leg up on its predecessor by kicking off its runtime with immediately compelling material. The original <i>Dune </i>could get bogged down in too much set-up and exposition, whereas <i>Dune: Chapter Two</i> kicks things off with a tense sequence depicting Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet), Chani (Zendaya), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and other Fremen fighters trying to evade newly-arriving Harkonnen soldiers. The scope of<i> Dune: Part Two </i>as an overall movie is massive, but here in this opening sequence, Villeneuve ingratiates audiences back into the desert world of Arakis with a compelling claustrophobic suspense sequence. Our heroes are pinned down in the desert, desperate to evade being noticed by their enemies. They're not looking to destroy a planet at this moment, they just want to survive to see another day. Cinematographer Greig Fraser and editor Joe Walker opt to capture their plight in a restrained number of frames, which really lets the tension bubble and boil.</p><p>After this gangbuster opening, <i>Dune: Part Two</i> gets underway with a plot concerning Paul grappling with the widespread perception among many of the native Fremen people that he could be the prophesized Chosen One figure known as Lisan al-Gaib. His grappling with the idea of embracing this mythic status in Fremen society comes as several different parties begin to descend on Arakis to exploit it for their own means. The devious Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) sends his nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) to Arakis to wipe out any possible rebellion on the planet while Emperor Shaddam IV (Christopher Walken) is keeping a close eye on this planet and its developments. Paul now has so many eyes on him. Under all that pressure, he could become a hero for the ages...or possibly something much more human...</p><p>We get a lot of big-budget movies these days thanks to studios shifting their focus almost exclusively towards tentpoles and streamers spending every penny they have to make "real" movies. Unfortuantely, this has just resulted in a glut of costly movies like <i>The Gray Man</i> or <i>Argylle </i>that leave you wondering where all the cash went. These films aim for overwhelming ecapism, but merely just remind viewers of cheap filmmaking. Denis Villeneuve and company, by contrast, have crafted with <i>Dune: Part Two</i> something that earns its grand scope. It harkens back to mid-20th century epics or<i> Lord of the Rings</i> with its transportive qualities rather than <i>The Tomorrow War </i>or any other modern-day tentpole schlock.</p><p>The realms on-screen are translated from Frank Herbert's text with such lived-in detail and, best of all, a welcome sense of showmanship. Villeneuve loves darker realism in his works, but he's also happy to indulge in the most preposterous elements of the <i>Dune </i>universe and especially the most outlandish visual possibilities of this domain. The evil Harkonnen planet alone is a wondrous sight, a gloriously monochromatic realm that asks "what if Fritz Lang had made <i>Star Wars</i>?" Grand touches in this space like fireworks that just shoot off what look like dark ink blots into the sky are such terrific stylized flourishes. You won't see those kinds of images in just any film and they speak to the culture of death and misery these beings have immersed themselves in.</p><p><i>Dune: Part Two's</i> maximalist sensibilities extend to deeply committed performances by an outstandingly stacked ensemble cast (Javier Bardem and his comic hops are the MVP of the entire film) as well as Hans Zimmer's incredibly pronounced score. I just wanted Zimmer's orchestral compositions to wash over me, they're so entertainingly brash and brimming with personality. There's so much passion emanating off these tracks. Combining them with the striking images on-screen makes <i>Dune: Chapter Two</i> a welcome example of blockbuster cinema that tantilizes the eyes as well as the ears. It also makes a great case for more modern blockbuster scores that aren't afraid to take risks and make themselves noticed. No more of those Lorne Balfe or Benjamin Wallfisch scores that just fade into the backgrounds of the movies they inhabit! More scores infused with Zimmer's <i>Dune: Part Two</i> gusto! </p><p>Even with all these positive attributes, there are nitpicks and qualms I have with <i>Dune: Part Two</i> in some respects, including some aspects of its racial politics and certain supporting characters that could've used an extra scene or two to get further fleshed out. But, as director Joel Schumacher once said, "no one pays to see under the top," and <i>Dune: Part Two</i> certainly is a reminder of that. This feature delivers where it coutns in conjuring up all the wondrous oversized imagery and breathtaking scope you could want from this kind of movie. I once feared movies like this would never get made or released again theatrically in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Boy was I glad I was wrong.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-77779606717656361752024-03-06T11:00:00.000-06:002024-03-06T11:04:53.389-06:00Kung Fu Panda 4 Lacks the Punch of its Predeccesors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVDWdSkt8TEXl21EUPkFKcR54Gqv6tZNtBaGeqXysUqrudXRPGn0qEjEHdyAUEEjf7q-Y0w1p4bhcr3R6iO45u_V3sG2VRU1Vx5s8omfzqDgWBkUhie9vnrGckHoLwalRFGjvTcobs9wkFpNiRBictMt6XLGov763DRyDX6zV-s5PcOKWtU0IK-VBbLQ/s755/kfp4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="676" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVDWdSkt8TEXl21EUPkFKcR54Gqv6tZNtBaGeqXysUqrudXRPGn0qEjEHdyAUEEjf7q-Y0w1p4bhcr3R6iO45u_V3sG2VRU1Vx5s8omfzqDgWBkUhie9vnrGckHoLwalRFGjvTcobs9wkFpNiRBictMt6XLGov763DRyDX6zV-s5PcOKWtU0IK-VBbLQ/w427-h676/kfp4.jpg" width="427" /></a></div><p>We are now in the budget-conscious era of DreamWorks Animation cinema. In its days as an independent outfit, DreamWorks titles <a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/production-company/DreamWorks-Animation" target="_blank">would regularly rack up budgets ranging from $145-175 million</a>. Not every title the studio produced needed such exorbitant prices (did <i>Mr. Peabody & Sherman </i>or <i>Turbo </i>need to cost only slightly less than the first <i>Dune </i>installment?), so it wasn't surprising when Universal purchased the studio and began mandating much lower budgets for new DreamWorks titles. Opting for tamer budgets has inspired some lovely new visual schemes in modern DreamWorks titles like <i>The Bad Guys</i> and <i>Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,</i> which have traded in uber-realism for excitingly abstract stylized imagery. Going cheaper has given more wiggle room for these projects to take visual risks.</p><p>Unfortunately, <i>Kung Fu Panda 4 </i>doesn't benefit from its reduced budget. <i>The Last Wish </i>leaned into a significantly smaller price tag than its predecessor to create a whole new visual language for <i>Shrek </i>installments. <i>Kung Fu Panda 4 </i>just tries to do a standard <i>Kung Fu Panda </i>adventure in way too lean confines. The end result is a movie that keeps reminding you of better more lavish installments in this franchise while also failing to justify why we're still dragging out this animated saga.</p><p>Dragon Warrior Po (Jack Black) is still a panda who fights for good, but it's time for him to take on a new role in his duties as a warrior. Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) has revealed to Po that he must choose a successor for the position for the position of the Dragon Warrior. Po has no plans to give up his status as the Dragon Warrior and he gets a great excuse to kick that can down the road once the villainous Tai Lung (Ian McShane) suddenly reappears. This isn't just the return of an old foe, though. This is the new baddie The Chameleon (Viola Davis) posing as Tai Lung as part of her evil plan to take over the world. Teaming up with experienced thief Zhen (Awkwafina), Po will need to take down this new nemesis and uncover an unexpected ally in the scheming Zhen.</p><p>There's no question that the best parts of <i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i> are when director Mike Mitchell leans into unique visual flourishes that feel incredibly unique compared to the previous three <i>Panda </i>installments. Many flashback scenes this go-around, for instance, feature CG characters inhabiting intentionally abstract hand-drawn spaces. This motif is best exemplified by a flashback showing an adolescent Zhen growing adept as a thief. The passage of time is communicated with a spinning camera across an unbroken shot that shows the white fox engaging in all kinds of criminal behavior against different vividly colored backgrounds. It's a shot <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn_9PyoWr1U" target="_blank">that echoes a famous scene from <i>Hunt for the Wilderpeople</i></a>, not typical<i> Kung Fu Panda</i> imagery!</p><p>Unfortunately, the default animation style of<i> Kung Fu Panda 4</i> just opts to mimic the previous movies but with way less polish and budgetary restrictions more apparent than ever. New location Juniper City, for instance, is just a rehash of the bustling Gongmen City from <i>Kung Fu Panda 2</i>. Apparently only ten animals live in the Valley of Peace now while several pre-existing characters once voiced by costly celebrity voices amusingly just stand around in the background of certain scenes like massive action figures. Most disappointingly of all, the fun and zip of <i>Kung Fu Panda</i> fight scenes has been lost. director Jennifer Yuh Nelson's deft touch with executing lively action sequences is sorely missed. In the past, it felt like the characters in this universe were practically bursting with energy. Now, Po and friends typically have rigid movements when they're just standing around talking while their physical skirmishes are totally forgettable. Even The Chameleon's ability to shapeshift into various other animals doesn't result in exciting new possibilities for action sequences and instead allows <i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i> to remind viewers of adversaries from past movies.</p><p>Returning <i>Kung Fu Panda </i>scribes Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger teamed up with DreamWorks Animation veteran Darren Lemke (who colloborated with Mike Mitchell on <i>Shrek Forever After</i>) to cook up the <i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i> screenplay. Alas, this trio is also content to just regurtitate elements of past <i>Kung Fu Panda</i> movies by embracing a plotline about Po struggling to accept a new role of leadership that hews too closely to his personal conflict in <i>Kung Fu Panda 3</i>. Credit where credit is due, their script does know the necessity of slowing down for some quieter moments (even if the more vulnerable dialogue is tin-eared). Unfortunately, too many of the big action and narrative beats are generically realized this go-around. Most disappointingly, a potential subversion of the norms of how <i>Kung Fu Panda</i> movies end is quickly thrown away in favor of a more generic punch-heavy climax. It's a flaw that encapsulates how <i>Kung Fu Panda 4 </i>keeps showing audiences the ingredients for something new and then serves them a dish they've had before. </p><p>If there's any entertainment to be found here in<i> Kung Fu Panda 4</i>, it's in a subplot involving Po's two fathers, goose Mr. Ping (James Hong) and panda Li Shan (Bryan Cranston), going on a quest to help their offspring. It's always when long-running franchises find glorious chemistry in unexpected chemistry pairings and the Ping/Shan shenanigans fit that bill nicely. Hong and Cranston's vocal performances mesh well together and the duo delivers the funniest moments of the entire movie with some very solid line readings. Jack Black remains as amusing as ever as Po, while franchise newcomer Ke Huy Quan is also an MVP of <i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i> thanks to his delightful work as a violence-obsessed Sunda pangolin. Unfortunately, in terms of the voice cast, Awkwafina doesn't quite click as Zhen. Despite showing skills with more emotionally complex live-action performances in titles like <i>The Farewell</i>, Awkwafina just sounds off anytime she has to get vulnerable or serious as this character. Lines meant to lend insight into Zhen's psyche just register as hollow thanks to Awkwafina's line readings.</p><p>That problem may come down due to misdirection on the part of Mitchell, a filmmaker whose career is littered with helming family-friendly sequels (<i>Shrek Forever After</i>, <i>The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part</i>, the live-action segments of<i> The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water</i>) that struggle so hard to capture the magic of their predecessors. Whatever wit Mitchell brought to <i>Sky High</i> in 2005 has largely been absent from his forays into animated sequels and<i> Kung Fu Panda 4</i>, unfortunately, continues this trend. The problems with this follow-up go far beyond a noticeably reduced budget. <i>Kung Fu Panda 4</i> doesn't sink to the nadir of DreamWorks Animation fare, but boy is it a step down from what audiences are accustomed to when it comes to the big-screen exploits of the Dragon Warrior. </p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-72927548147923510242024-03-01T08:53:00.001-06:002024-03-01T08:53:04.423-06:00Thank God for Hundreds of Beavers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73HFItFTP9UUYJlqsdcQfULLjlOXmrXWfVPMsmAuIh846oNNcw242A60nU_nIk6Ni_uRPw04L3dgRn6b_gjXCzHZdu1ZNKiciAkUXdqUPjk-gpFsZKEnRmi2_iBX1VP64qXRAh4ZyctTV59QhkYHUffEAz4gyhMkAeYotxG-yYP1CIooJ9zyzth2fVw/s3000/hundredsofbeaversp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="2000" height="671" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg73HFItFTP9UUYJlqsdcQfULLjlOXmrXWfVPMsmAuIh846oNNcw242A60nU_nIk6Ni_uRPw04L3dgRn6b_gjXCzHZdu1ZNKiciAkUXdqUPjk-gpFsZKEnRmi2_iBX1VP64qXRAh4ZyctTV59QhkYHUffEAz4gyhMkAeYotxG-yYP1CIooJ9zyzth2fVw/w447-h671/hundredsofbeaversp.jpg" width="447" /></a></div><p>Modern comedy movies are in a rut. 2023 signaled a mini-creative resurgence for the genre between <i>Bottoms</i>, <i>Joy Ride</i>, and <i>Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret</i> (not to mention the absurdist genius of mega-hit <i>Barbie</i>). However, the last six or seven years of American comedies have mostly been disposable fodder filmed indifferently and written without much more effort. Just think back to movies like <i>Tag</i>, <i>Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates</i>, <i>Daddy's Home</i>, and countless others. Projects with unimaginative gags and camerawork cribbed from forgotten CBS sitcoms. <a href="https://www.avclub.com/stuber-is-stupid-1836080742" target="_blank">A.A. Dowd's A.V. Club review</a> for the lackluster <i>Stuber </i>astutely noted that "this is very much a 2019 studio comedy, which means that our heroes’ misadventure doubles as a self-help seminar." That pretty much sums up how modern comedy movies operate. Even something full of dog poop and boners like <i>Strays </i>feels obligated to dedicate lots of screentime to the lead canine explaining his character arc to his abusive owner in didactic terms.</p><p>Classic comedy movies that snuck up on you how much you were invested in the characters (like <i>The Muppet</i> Movie or <i>The Princess Bride</i>) and yukfests that are focused just on silly laughs (like <i>Airplane! </i>or any classic Mel Brooks comedy) are in short supply. American comedy movies are now seemingly required to follow the "Save the Cat" approach to filmmaking to a tee and be filmed with no sense of visual panache. Thank goodness then for modern great comedies like <i>Bottoms</i>, <i>Barbie</i>...and<i> Hundreds of Beavers</i>. Hailing from director Mike Cheslik and the realm of Northern Wisconsin,<i> Hundreds of Beavers</i> is the wacky homage to vintage <i>Looney Tunes</i> cartoons and silent cinema you never knew you needed in your life. While modern comedy movies like<i> Anyone but You</i> and <i>Strays </i>get bogged down in too much dialogue, <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> is a masterful reminder of the power of pure visual comedy.</p><p>The set-up for <i>Hundreds of Beavers </i>concerns Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), a former Acme Applejack employee who finds himself stranded in a frozen wasteland. This being the 19th century, it's time for Kayak to hunt some animals for food and money. All the animals around Kayak (rabbits, wolves, raccoons, and, of course, beavers) are played by humans in animal suits, though our protagonist treats them like normal woodland critters. It's the classic Elmer Fudd vs. Bugs Bunny routine set in a snowy landscape, with Kayak taking on the Fudd role as he's constantly one-upped by the animals around him. A chance to earn the hand of The Furrier (Olivia Graves) in marriage spurs Kayak to step up his game as a fur trapper, especially when it comes to slaughtering the nearby beavers.</p><p>Written by Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the script for <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> is nothing short of a miracle to behold. What at first seems like a simple translation of classic Warner Bros. cartoon dynamics into live-action keeps expanding its scope and imagination in such thrilling ways. The world Kayak inhabits has a very specific geography to it and no supporting character or animal (no matter how seemingly disposable) turns out to be superfluous. Always finding new ways to keep elements like a testy woodpecker or a cave of wolves in the story ensures<i> Hundreds of Beavers</i> never gets episodic in structure. Best of all, this storytelling approach inspires so many great gags. It's a delight to watch elements like Kayak's snow-people companions or the various traps our protagonist employs evolve throughout the feature. Just when you think you've seen this film do everything possible with human-sized rabbits, for instance, <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> comes up with another great visual joke involving those critters.</p><p>The entire feature is also a testament to what miracles can happen with stripped-down character designs. This is a virtue I was reminded of when watching the 1914 short film <i>Gertie the Dinosaur </i>for the first time earlier this week. The very first animated character in the history of cinema, Gertie is adorable in her sparse design, with eyes and body language that leave so much to audience interpretation. Similarly, the intentionally simplistic animal costumes (with their permanently open eyes and occasionally discernible zippers) are so charming to watch. You can project so much into the broad body language of these animals and their faces, while any variations to their default appearance (like X's over the eyes of animals when they "die") immediately register as hysterical. Like Gertie the Dinosaur, <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> shows that restraint can often be a gift, not an inhibition.</p><p>All the thought that's clearly gone into making sure these costumes work as vessels for inspired jokes speaks to how much effort informs the madcap silliness of<i> Hundreds of Beavers</i>. It's hard work making effective ludicrous comedy cinema, otherwise, we'd get yukfest's this good every week. Cheslik's direction of the performers, for example, demonstrates a staggeringly deep understanding of the nuances of both silent cinema acting and typical behavior of pre-1960s cartoon characters. The monochromatic color scheme of the feature is realized with terrific skill, while gags leaning on jokes going on juuuuust long enough (like a close-up shot of Kayak struggling "endlessly" to pick up a coin from a wooden surface) are expertly executed. The folks behind Hundreds of Beavers have taken a cue from vintage jokes like the rake gag on <i>The Simpsons</i> in understanding timing well enough to understand just when an elongated joke goes from annoying to hysterical.</p><p>There are tons of intricate details nestled within the chilly wittiness of <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> that speak to what a hysterical accomplishment this movie is. However, the greatest compliment I can impart to this motion picture is that it left me cackling constantly. It's easy to become disillusioned with modern comedy movies when you watch something like <i>You People, Vacation Friends</i>, or <i>Fool's Paradise</i>. Such titles leave one wondering if this genre simply can't work anymore. These movies in the 2020s are simply destined to have garbage cinematography and scripts more interested in "proper" plot structure than jokes. But much like last year's <i>Bottoms </i>and <i>Barbie</i>, <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i> is a reminder that great comedy cinema can still exist. Watching Mike Cheslik and a supremely talented cast & crew execute this outlandish premise with so much care, precision, and humor is a glorious thing to behold. Modern comedy movies may be in a rut, but you wouldn't know it from watching the ingeniously ludicrous triumphs of <i>Hundreds of Beavers</i>.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-33009848716929730122024-02-28T09:00:00.000-06:002024-02-28T09:00:51.011-06:00Mini-Reviews: Bob Marley: One Love, Drive-Away Dolls, Orion and the Dark<p>Folks, there are quite a few new wide releases out right now, so why just limit one review to one movie? Ahead, let's dive into bite-sized reviews of three February 2023 releases (Bob Marley: One Love, Drive-Away Dolls, and Orion and the Dark) and break down whether they're worth giving a watch within the crowded pop culture landscape. First up, let's look at the latest in Hollywood's endless string of music biopics...</p><p><b>Bob Marley: One Love</b></p><p>The story of Bob Marley is brought to life in <i>Bob Marley: One Love</i>, a very standard music biopic coming courtesy of director Reinaldo Marcus Green. Kingsley Ben-Adir inhabits Marley while Lashana Lynch plays the musician's dear partner, Rita Marley. If there's any real critical issue with <i>Bob Marley: One Love</i>, it's just that it lacks much energy or narrative drive. It wants to operate like a standard narrative film (this isn't meant to be a hangout title in the vein of classic Richard Linklater productions), but it also never gives immense conflict in its story enough time to breathe or weight to feel impactful. Rita Marley has a near-death experience that ends up getting resolved in side dialogue delivered in voice-over by a doctor. Record executive disagreements over the cover of Marley's <i>Exodus </i>album end up having few ripple effects on the plot. Even Marley getting harassed at a British bar by a white guy just fizzles out and never goes anywhere.</p><p>As a result of these choppy narrative decisions, the story of <i>Bob Marley: One Love</i> lacks urgency and the characters never feel truly alive. Green's generic visual impulses as a director also make the proceedings feel extra stale (it's shocking cinematographer Robert Elswit lensed this movie,, surely the cinematographer of There Will Be Blood can do better than this?!?). If there's a saving grace, it's that Ben-Adir and Lynch are very good in the lead roles while tons of excellent Marley tunes dominate the soundtrack. Still, you can see those lead actors do even better work in other projects worthy of their talents while all those Marley songs are available on a slew of music formats. There's really not much super specific to <i>Bob Marley: One Love</i> that makes it a must-see.</p><p><b>Drive-Away Dolls</b></p><p>Ethan Coen embarks on his first solo directorial effort with<i> Drive-Away Dolls</i>, which concerns two lesbians who get in over their head in a crime snafu. Whereas Joel Coen's inaugural solo directorial effort <i>The Tragedy of Macbeth</i> seemed designed from the ground up to be different from "a typical Coen Brothers movie," Ethan Coen has opted for a premise that seems like a mixture of <i>Burn After Reading</i>, <i>Intolerable Cruelty,</i> and <i>Fargo </i>(among other Coen Brother farces). Alas, Ethan on his own can't capture the comedic magic of "you've got a pantyhose on your head." <i>Drive-Away Dolls</i> is really hampered by a strange script and weird pacing that makes the whole thing feel truncated from a larger, superior film. It's like audiences are watching a rapid-fire montage of a comedy movie rather than an actual film.</p><p>This leaves the proceedings feeling oddly inert, while punchlines are devoid of proper set-up and lengthy set-ups lead to no really impressive gags. Throw in some distractingly bad scene transitions and and <i>Drive-Away Dolls </i>(much like the dismal filmmaking in <i>Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind</i>) suggests Ethan Coen just lacks some necessary chops as a standalone filmmaker. Still, the proceedings are made watchable by enjoyably chaotic lesbian antics as well as committed lead performance from Margaret Qualley that finally made me understand the hype behind this leading lady. While Qualley felt a bit forgettable in <i>Stars at Night</i> and dreadfully miscast in <i>Sanctuary</i>, she's having a ball as the anchor of <i>Drive-Away Dolls</i>. She carries the torch from George Clooney in the pantheon of Southern dim-witted Coen Brothers protaganists while making that archetype her own. She's a hoot. Now if only the film she was headlining would stop undercutting its best attributes.</p><p><b>Orion and the Dark</b></p><p>Given that it's a DreamWorks Animation movie that dropped onto Netflix at the start of February 2024 with no fanfare, you'd be more than forgiven for not knowing that<i> Orion and the Dark</i> even existed. This adaptation of a famous children's book concerns Orion (Jacob Tremblay), a young boy with fears about everything, especially the dark. One night, the personification of Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) visits Orion and promises to help him get over the fears that are controlling his life. This adaptation is penned by Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind projects like <i>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</i>, <i>Anamolisa</i>, and <i>Synecdoche, New York</i>. He's the "ideal" guy to work with a studio that produced<i> Trolls World Tour</i>...though, ironically, he previously worked for the studio doing uncredited rewrites on <i>Kung Fu Panda 2</i>!</p><p>Kaufman actually brings more of his personality to this title than you'd think, including through a narrative structure that spans a surprising amount of time and an emphasis on lead characters growing old before our very eyes. Director Sean Charmatz (making his feature-length directorial debut) doesn't bring as much distinctiveness to the visuals of <i>Orion and the Dark</i>, but he executes the feature with a willingness to let the tone be a tad more complicated than expected. Some of the more kid-friendly jokes here feel more obligatory than hysterical, while the story would've also benefited from a tighter scope (expanding the narrative to include personifications of various other nighttime phenomena takes some of the focus away from Orion). Still, as far as Netflix kid's movies go, <i>Orion and the Dark</i> is a perfectly pleasant watch.</p><p><br /></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-1675537400562900602024-02-03T08:09:00.005-06:002024-02-07T14:29:33.401-06:00Argylle Makes a Case For Straight People Never Directing Movies Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNa9LBC5WpvBkh5IXoh0HtY_cFKhyZ0KYOaFgpKxZdphl7ChgvFh5P005d3Bc3AnwZASr2PU2JurA4oVey9T6s2-fQDK9i9OTTV8VyNfI0_xWjdA33UCWZCgjzRTMGBwNkFdXjQkikQzgWQb8OodvwamumFF_O61kQy38vJxvxhKsOOkj3maNjYHrxUQ/s755/argyllep.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="652" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNa9LBC5WpvBkh5IXoh0HtY_cFKhyZ0KYOaFgpKxZdphl7ChgvFh5P005d3Bc3AnwZASr2PU2JurA4oVey9T6s2-fQDK9i9OTTV8VyNfI0_xWjdA33UCWZCgjzRTMGBwNkFdXjQkikQzgWQb8OodvwamumFF_O61kQy38vJxvxhKsOOkj3maNjYHrxUQ/w412-h652/argyllep.jpg" width="412" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>"The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life." </p><p>That iconic line from<i> Female Trouble</i> ran all throughout my mind during <i>Argylle</i>. The latest spy movie from Matthew Vaughn embodies many traits of cis-het culture to a tee, but especially one strange thing about straight people: they can't be sincere. After all, straight comics are the ones who pioneered the "I hate my wife!" routine of stand-up comedy. Straight folks are obsessed with musicians like Imagine Dragons who never plumb deep enough emotions that their songs couldn't play in T-Mobile commercials. Straight individuals love stuff like<i> South Park</i> or Ricky Gervais, which promote the idea that nothing matters. There's no reason getting invested in anything. Being detached and stuffing down your emotions is cool.</p><p><i>Argylle </i>embodies this phenomenon eerily well. It wants to be a love letter to spy movies, but it's idea of "love" is just name-dropping classic spy movies. To demonstrate any greater love or complicated relationship with spy movies would require vulnerability and "that's so gay, bro." Keeping it emotions close to its chest, <i>Argylle </i>subsequently has none of the conviction that made those espionage-laden movies work. It's too busy frantically trying to be "stupid" or "silly" or (perish the thought) "gay", like so much straight media. Who would want to see something preposterous? Outlandish schemes to save a person's life can't transpire in <i>Argylle </i>without super-spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) grinding the proceedings to a halt with dialogue like "you're telling me you [insert ridiculous plan here] after five years of not holding a gun?!?" There's an emphasis on lots and lots of convoluted in-universe lore, but good luck in uncovering any sensual tension or sense of interior life to the characters. <i>Argylle </i>is at least quite sincere in making sure its characters constantly reach for Apple devices or talk about "FaceTime." It is an Apple TV+ Original Film after all!</p><p>You've seen the trailers for <i>Argylle </i>if you've been to a theater in the last few months, you know it's about author Ellie Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) discovering that the spy novels she's penned line up with real-world events. This makes her a target by an evil organization led by Ritter (Bryan Cranston). What the marketing doesn't clarify is how hilariously <i>Argylle </i>functions as a reflection of both Fuchs and Vaughn having such a surface-level understanding of women. Conway's personality is defined by the most rudimentary understanding of interests traditionally coded as "female". She used to be an ice-skater, she loves her cat, she gets emotional easily, at one point we see her doing yoga. I'm shocked they didn't also have her obsessed with pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks or talk wistfully about watching <i>The Saddle Club</i> as a youngster.</p><p>Conway's adventures don't just demonstrate old-school approaches to how women behave in movies, though. Her exploits across the globe also show that screenwriter Fuchs is determined to subvert spy movie norms by sucking all the fun elements out of this genre (sex, exotic locales, cool fight scenes) and replacing them with...lore. Characters in <i>Argylle </i>either stand around or sit on sunny porches delivering exposition, with the film way too enamored with didactically explaining every nook and cranny of various plot twists or character revelations. There is no confidence in the audience's intelligence, we have to have our hands held through everything. "Delightfully," such exposition dumps typically occur against terribly-realized green-screen locations. It's like <i>Arrested Development</i> season four all over again, as a bunch of famous people "talk" to one another against digital backdrops while clearly never ever being in the same room as the other person. There is no visual splendor to compensate for <i>Argylle's </i>wordy screenplay. </p><p>The visual elements are especially tedious in the action sequences, a mish-mash of punching and slashing that epitomize Vaughn's recurring problems with shooting fight scenes. Here, way too many quick cuts undercut potentially fun scenes like Aiden and (in Conway's visions) Aubrey Argylle beating up baddies on a train. The worst offender, though, is a climactic scene with such a fun premise involving a lead character sliding around on oil and slicing the necks of bad guys with a knife. A great hook for a fight scene is realized through a simulated single-take "shot" with an incredibly obvious CGI double. The digital camera spins around the room without any weight to it, which instills a weightless quality to the actions of the "humans" in the scene. There's nothing tangible in this fight scene, not the background, not the violence being enacted, not even the person slipping and sliding on the oil. It all looks like a cut-scene from one of the early <i>Shrek </i>movies 20 years ago. It's understandable if you've come to <i>Argylle </i>solely for the violence. Alas, you'll leave disappointed since the biggest fight sequences are so poorly realized in camerawork and editing. </p><p>This emphasis on lots and lots of exposition and sterile visuals totally misunderstands why people like spy movies in the first place. Similarly, the score for <i>Argylle </i>is a dreadful creation and a total insult to the legacy of great spy movie scores composed by the likes of John Barry and Bernard Herrmann. The thrill of spy adventures inspired those and other musicians (like <i>Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation</i> composer Joe Kraemer) to concoct collections of compositions brimming with zesty fun and tangible suspense. You could feel the tingle of tension soaking through the scores of movies like <i>North by Northwest</i>, which helped accentuate the propulsively exciting nature of those espionage features. Composer Lorne Balfe, meanwhile, just hits all the familiar instrumental and sonic beats you'd expect from a modern American blockbuster. This score doesn't have to inhabit a spy movie, it could be found on the soundtrack for any big-budget action movie made in the last five years. Rubbing further salt in the wounds, Balfe's work, much like his score for fellow spy movie <i>Mission: Impossible - Fallout</i>, leans too heavily on motifs cribbed from his frequent creative partner Hans Zimmer (the <i>Inception </i>"bwaaam" noise shows up in a key fight scene). The heteronormative urge to be "normal" permeates the lifeless score of <i>Argylle</i>, which never engages in the kind of musical boldness that defined the greatest spy movie scores. At least Balfe's dreadful compositions are consistent with the cinematography and writing of the piece.</p><p><i>Argylle </i>is just totally soulless material, it's devoid even of the rambunctious naughtiness of Vaughn's earlier films like <i>Kick-Ass </i>and the first <i>Kingsman </i>title. Both of those features are a mixed bag (especially the disappointingly thin <i>Kick-Ass</i>), but they at least have a pulse and convey the idea that they were made by human beings. Their flaws and especially juvenile sense of what "subversion" looks like have more verve than Vaughn on autopilot. The only food for thought <i>Argylle </i>offers is how it provides a vivid demonstration of how many cis-het people digest cinema. Movies are always in communication with the medium's past, which can lead to fascinating features that pay tribute to yesteryear while evolving the art form forward. Think of how Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese took the skeleton of <i>The Searchers</i> and used it to inspire <i>Taxi Driver</i>. For many folks today, though, classic movies are just something to be name-dropped, they're "content" to reference, not art to study and evolve from. Vaughn has a character in <i>Argylle</i>, after he's done duking it out with spies on a train, literally name-drop "<i>Strangers on a Train</i>", a cringey moment that just hits you over the head with a creative influence that's already obvious. A great Hitchcock movie is only brought up in <i>Argylle </i>to get a "remember that?" fan-service pop out of viewers. This is how Silicon Valley tech bros and studio executives want folks to view art, as just objects to reference, not art to preserve or cherish. <i>Argylle </i>is an anemic, forgettable piece of "content" as a standalone movie, but it does function well as a terrifying glimpse into warped cis-het attitudes about the world. "Sick and boring," that's <i>Argylle </i>to a tee.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-91759687948807396812024-01-30T10:32:00.000-06:002024-01-30T10:32:22.852-06:00Ranking The Best Pictures Nominees at the 96th Academy Awards<p>Shockingly, the line-up for Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards wasn't too shabby, especially compared to other Best Picture line-ups in the past. Granted, these nominees inevitably can't compare to Best Picture line-ups like the 48th Academy Awards nominees (<i>Jaws</i>, <i>Dog Day Afternoon</i>, <i>Nashville</i>, AND <i>Barry Lyndon</i>?!?). However, looking over the history of this category, the 96th Academy Awards Best Picture contenders may be among the top five (or at least top ten) best collections of Best Picture nominees in terms of average quality across all the motion pictures. Not all of the films up for this award in 2024 are the greatest movies ever made, but in the past, there's usually been at least one outright awful movie that squeezed its way into the Best Picture category (<i>Crash</i>, <i>The Reader</i>, <i>The Blind Side</i>, <i>The Broadway Melody</i>). The 96th Academy Awards Best Picture contenders, thankfully, are devoid of an all-time bad motion picture.</p><p>On the contrary, it's a pleasant surprise to see a wide variety of movies (from wacky comedies to courtroom thrillers to avant-garde explorations of how genocide is carried out by everyday people) in terms of genre and filmmaking ambitions represented across the 96th Academy Awards Best Picture nominees. Two foreign-language titles made outside of America even cracked the category while three separate nominees were helmed by women, the first time in history either of those events ever happened. There were lots of quibbles to be had with the general 96th Academy Awards nominees, but this was pretty robust Best Picture line-up. Let's dive into those nominees now and rank them from worst to best, in the opinion of this humble critic. Onward to the nominees!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">10. Maestro</h2><p>One biopic has to always slip into the Best Picture nominees, it's practically a requirement. At least Maestro has more interesting visual flourishes than past biopic nominees like<i> Hacksaw Ridge </i>or <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>. Plus, Carey Mulligan is really great in the lead role. Still, director/writer/leading man Bradley Cooper weaves a bit too stuffy of an atmosphere for his Leonard Bernstein tale to inhabit. The humanity of the central characters never feels as vibrant or tangible as it should. Sparodically impressive in terms of filmmaking, <i>Maestro </i>still leaves one cold.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">9. American Fiction</h2><p>The marketing for <i>American Fiction </i>puts the feature's satirical material (concerning what kind of art from Black creators is considered "commercial" in America) front and center. However, the actual movie centers a good chunk of its screentime on exploring the familial woes of Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), including his strained relationship with brother Clifford "Cliff" Ellison (Sterling K. Brown). Writer/director Cord Jefferson juggles a lot of material here and inevitably not all of it is equally successful (some key personal developments for Monk feel too rushed especially). However, the emotional beats and gags that land here are downright superb while Brown is a riot in his supporting performance.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">8. The Zone of Interest</h2><p><i>Jonathan Glazer</i> paints a portrait of how the unspeakable happens in <i>The Zone of Interest</i>, a feature focusing on a Nazi family living in a "perfect" home right outside of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Though audiences never see the interior of that camp, billows of smoke reach for the sky in the background of individual shots, and the sound of gunfire dominates the soundtrack. The horrors are just off-screen, but they're also chillingly in the frame through the way people are so nonchalant about the extermination of human beings. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">7. The Holdovers</h2><p>Don't let its lower ranking on this list fool you:<i> The Holdovers</i> is the real deal as far as feel-good drama/comedies go. A bittersweet tale anchored by a trio of great performances, <i>The Holdovers</i> concerns three damaged human beings trying to find some solace in each other's company at Christmastime. Screenwriter David Hemingson shows real chops as a writer in executing the big emotional scenes and callbacks of <i>The Holdovers </i>without lapsing into insufferable treacle. Conceptually, <i>The Holdovers</i> sounds familiar, but in execution, it's something special.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">6. Oppenheimer</h2><p><i>Oppenheimer </i>should've been the movie where writer/director Christopher Nolan finally bit off more than he could chew. Instead, it represented a new peak for Nolan as a filmmaker. The audacious filmmaking (including seamless shifts across time in the non-linear narrative) lends a relentlessly propulsive quality to a story of scientists and playing God. This isn't a stodgy recreation of history, it's something laced with urgency. A murderer's row of great actors, meanwhile, makes even the most throwaway characters in <i>Oppenheimer </i>totally captivating. Nolan's ambition for Oppenheimer sounded daunting, but he pulled this extraordinary film off with incredible skill</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">5. Anatomy of a Fall</h2><p>You've seen many courtroom drama movies, but it's doubtful many of them were quite as compelling as Justine Triet's <i>Anatomy of a Fall</i>. A murdered husband and a suspected killer of his wife spurs the plot of this French feature, which does masterful work delivering exciting new developments in the case and especially in committing to an ambiguous atmosphere. One never knows where our protagonist's loyalties lie, especially with Sandra Huller bringing this woman to life through such a riveting performance. You'll be on the edge of your seat watching both Huller's character navigate this trial and Triet deliver a courtroom drama that changes the game for this genre.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">4. Killers of the Flower Moon</h2><p>It's staggering to watch a movie like <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, which is so expansive in scope, so grand in ambition, but also so devastating in its depiction of cruelty. Within the runtime of this feature, an expansive narrative is told depicting how even "friendly" white people are complicit and actively engaging in the dehumanization of the marginalized. It's a brutal motion picture whose story of genocide against indigenous people just happening with nobody stepping in to stop it is, unfortunately, all too relevant to the modern world. <i>Killers of the Flower Moon </i>takes place in the early 20th century, but Scorsese's searing filmmaking makes this story an essential watch for 21st-century moviegoers.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">3. Barbie</h2><p>It's amazing that Barbie is here as a Best Picture nominee. Academy voters seemed to think <i>The LEGO Movie</i> being based on a toy was enough to disqualify it from the Best Animated Feature nominees years ago...yet Barbie made it into the Best Picture category?!? What a miracle, just like how <i>Barbie </i>as a movie is a tender wonderful miracle unto itself. For one thing, it's just a whole lot of fun to watch, with its dazzling production design and mastery of absurdist humor. Unsurprisingly (given her brilliant use of pathos in<i> Lady Bird</i> and <i>Little Women</i>), writer/director <i>Greta Gerwig</i> also makes Barbie something that touches on something so profoundly human that the only response is to cry. Laughs, tears, unforgettable outfits, <i>Barbie </i>has everything any movie should have!</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">2. Poor Things</h2><p>Writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos has refined his style of oddball cinema (told with aloof yet precise camerawork and dry line deliveries) to a tee over the last two decades, but rarely has it felt as fun or subversive as it does in <i>Poor Things</i>. That's likely because the film's protagonist, Bella Baxter, is the rare Lanthimos protaganists who isn't detestable. In the past, Lanthimos has made narratives around characters you love to hate or you're fascinated by because you see your own shortcomings in them. Baxter, meanwhile, is somebody we root for in her quest for independence and discovering the world. This distinctive type of protagonist in the canon of Lanthimos movies results in the filmmaker taking his craft to new exciting heights of creativity, all while also expanding his skills in terms of drawing out such extraordinary performances from actors and working with captivating sets. <i>Poor Things</i> carries all the great traits of classic Lanthimos movies, but it's also a mesmerizing accomplishment because, in many important ways, it's unlike anything else this man has ever made.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">1. Past Lives</h2><p>At the end of the excellent 2023 book <i>Burn it Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change</i> in Hollywood, author Maureen Ryan references Samwise Gangee's "there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo" speech from <i>The Two Towers</i> as an example of "the magic trick" the best movies pull off. "Why does it move?" she ponders, "I could list the reasons, but they wouldn't fully explain it." Sometimes, Ryan posits, art produces emotions in viewers that can't be properly communicated in words. It just is magical, moving, and wonderful. That's how I feel about <i>Past Lives</i>. It's a masterwork from head-to-toe, in terms of its acting, cinematography, score, the finest touches of writer/director Celine Song's filmmaking...it's all just a miracle to witness. The absolute best movie of 2023, <i>Past Lives </i>is, inevitably, also the champ of the crop of nominees in the 96th Academy Awards Best Picture field.</p><p><br /></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-986594364570154302024-01-13T10:13:00.000-06:002024-01-13T10:13:02.117-06:00Origin is an ambitious but not fully successful epic<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofT1IkES80Lf-YXFYbhTIYHKpMQ_GeZvfHF4PzQQddd9fV_nlDgEEq6cE2ChJbKshOCCpRIyeS_GN0vTszMBb5FffVf2aiwyR6CPYtcpXlBv5FFwJeRx0NKYxtecUSMm5QsOBLEbgc-sLLQJCNOk2Z54fQdq0F8X2nS-GZJYOekY7loZ96ZqKhF2s9A/s755/originp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="594" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofT1IkES80Lf-YXFYbhTIYHKpMQ_GeZvfHF4PzQQddd9fV_nlDgEEq6cE2ChJbKshOCCpRIyeS_GN0vTszMBb5FffVf2aiwyR6CPYtcpXlBv5FFwJeRx0NKYxtecUSMm5QsOBLEbgc-sLLQJCNOk2Z54fQdq0F8X2nS-GZJYOekY7loZ96ZqKhF2s9A/w401-h594/originp.jpg" width="401" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>Origin </i>is not a straightforward adaptation of the 2020 book <i>Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents </i>by Isabel Wilkerson, which proposed the idea that caste systems are to blame for global forms of inequality. It's technically the story of Wilkerson herself (portrayed by Aunjane Ellis) as she embarked on writing that text. Reeling from endless horrific personal tragedies, Wilkerson begins a globe-trotting exercise that takes her everywhere from Germany to India to a BBQ hosted by her cousin Marion (Niecy Nash-Betts) to explore how inequality festers. With this project, writer/director Ava DuVernay is looking at parallels between historical atrocities as well as making something deeply intimate...how do we keep going in the wake of turmoil? When we lose people close to us, how does that void get filled?</p><p>There's a lot of heavy material in <i>Origin</i>, with DuVernay's grasp sometimes exceeding her reach. Her script especially struggles to figure out when the on-screen images should do all the talking. Expository narration from Wilkerson often dominates visually striking glimpses of the past, a move done to potentially make this material more accessible to audiences unfamiliar with the history of countries like India or Germany. However, many of these lines (like Wilkerson's remark that two students in 1930s Germany had "stumbled onto something momentous") aren't clarifying impenetrable details of the past. They're just saying things that could easily be communicated through camera angles or music cues. Speaking of dialogue, there's also an odd habit in the writing of having figures like Wilkerson recite staggering horrific historical facts (like the number of deaths stemming from the slave trade), but in a "cheer-worthy" manner. The mere stating of the truth is meant to be akin to the big crowdpleaser moments from a <i>Star Wars</i> or Marvel movie. It's a rhythm evocative of John Oliver's "mic-drop" moments on <i>Last Week Tonight</i>, where he condemns some horrific atrocity and the crowd applauds approvingly. That dynamic doesn't really translate to film, particularly one as somber and grounded as <i>Origin</i>.</p><p>DuVernay's always had a knack for powerful images dating back to her indie works like <i>Middle of Nowhere</i> and that gift is clearly present throughout <i>Origin</i>. It's just a shame those images are often undercut by extraneous narration. DuVernay's script also would've benefited from just going all-in on being a three-hour epic (the feature already runs for 135 minutes) just to give the various personal problems in Wilkerson's life more room to breathe. The increasingly dire health struggles of Marion are especially underserved by how much material <i>Origin </i>is trying to juggle in just one movie. Niecy Nash-Betts is so compelling in her on-screen performance as Marion and she has fantastic believable chemistry with Aunjanue Ellis. Those feats just make it more disappointing that this character's medical problems just keep fading in and out of the runtime. A lengthier runtime could've given this and other personal aspects of Wilkerson's life a better chance to develop.</p><p><i>Origin </i>does struggle as a screenwriting exercise, but it's far from a lost cause as a movie. For starters, DuVernay and cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd make this independent production look incredibly crisp by shooting the proceedings on 16mm film. There's a deeply lived-in quality to the images of <i>Origin </i>thanks to this choice and that classical filming detail especially helps the period-era sequences feel extra authentic. DuVernay also executes her script with some truly inspired visual flourishes, such as a scene of a distraught Wilkerson trying to get herself "presentable" that's captured without dialogue, from Wilkerson's hip, and at a tilted upward angle. Every detail of the camera's presence in this scene is rich with fascinating details, including the decision to use a low-angle shot (typically used to indicate formidable characters awash with power) on a deeply vulnerable person who can barely contain her tears. <i>Origin's </i>script may often stumble, but its visuals are unquestionably sublime.</p><p>Unfortunately, those sharp filmmaking sensibilities are also often in the service of images that, unfortunately, aren't as distinctive as they could be. <i>Origin </i>is ultimately still enamored with depictions of Black teens getting shot, Indians in lower-economic classes trudging through human defecation, and Nazi men in love with Jewish women. These events and tragedies have obviously happened throughout the history of human history, which explains why they're also very common sights in period pieces or features contemplating global depictions of prejudice. For its epic scope, <i>Origin's </i>greatest shortcomings are that it struggles to expand the visual language of the suffering of the marginalized on-screen while its human drama isn't given enough room to breathe. </p><p>Still, even with these defects, there's lots to appreciate and get enamored with in <i>Origin</i>, including a string of compelling performances. Aunjane Ellis, for her part, is great at capturing the vulnerability and academic confidence of Wilkerson, both sides of the coin are vividly-realized in her assured hand. Supporting performers Niercy Nash-Betts and Jon Bernthal impress in their screentime, while Audra McDonald gets an unforgettable sequence depicting a woman being openly vulnerable about classism she experienced as a child. In the wake of this testimony, Wilkerson clutches this woman's hand and quietly thanks her for her vulnerability. It's a moment of tender emotional connection so nicely realized on-screen, both in terms of the performances and filmmaking, that it encapsulates why <i>Origin </i>is impossible to dismiss fully. Any movie that can deliver a scene this good is doing something right, even if it's a drastic step down in quality from previous DuVernay directorial efforts like <i>Selma </i>and <i>When They See Us.</i></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-84251779538385799392023-12-30T09:29:00.006-06:002023-12-30T09:29:50.704-06:00Creative Confidence and Emma Stone's Masterful Acting Make Poor Things a Must-See <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZwxFnoSemIGNcSh0oUsvXp5GidrP3_CSQF3Fkla263Az1NBTeBwdOeWRWx_nErqVWZ4fehVm5DJOF-YVU4Pcn0hHr9ywiw-2hm8C5luXuKHtNTUR8bebTYAC_nZKQhyphenhyphen-8vKvglzNjvm6j4AhhzQ4NFO8ujOnro0-dKOditgnauzXO46Qr_cZrOblV2g/s755/poorthingsp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="660" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZwxFnoSemIGNcSh0oUsvXp5GidrP3_CSQF3Fkla263Az1NBTeBwdOeWRWx_nErqVWZ4fehVm5DJOF-YVU4Pcn0hHr9ywiw-2hm8C5luXuKHtNTUR8bebTYAC_nZKQhyphenhyphen-8vKvglzNjvm6j4AhhzQ4NFO8ujOnro0-dKOditgnauzXO46Qr_cZrOblV2g/w445-h660/poorthingsp.jpg" width="445" /></a></div><p>Have you ever wanted to plunge yourself into a movie? Just grab the edges of the frame and dunk your entire body inside? That's exactly how I felt watching<i> Poor Things</i>, the latest movie from the delightfully sick mind of director Yorgos Lanthimos. Like his seminal film <i>Dogtooth</i>, <i>Poor Things</i> is about an isolated soul with no knowledge about the wider world. Like his 2016 motion picture <i>The Lobster</i>, <i>Poor Things</i> is about how ridiculous "normal" social routines are. In the vein of his 2018 film The Favourite, Poor Things is rife with sexual tension and brought to life through an outstanding Emma Stone performance. However, simultaneously,<i> Poor Things</i> feels like a whole new era of the filmmaker's career. The intentionally subdued color palette of <i>The Lobster</i> and realistic locales of <i>The Killing of the Sacred Deer</i> are eschewed for luscious vibrant imagery that feels akin to everything from the works of Powell & Pressburger to episodes of <i>The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack</i>. It's like the earlier (already superb) works of Lanthimos were a foundation being built for the glorious house that is <i>Poor Things</i>.</p><p>Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) isn't like other girls...she's been brought back from the dead. How did that happen? Well, Dr. Godwin "God" Baxter (Willem Dafoe) found the body of a pregnant woman dead in a river after an apparent suicide. Naturally, this scientific mind decided to take this lady's corpse, put her baby's brain inside her head, and then revive the organism. The result was Bella Baxter, who now has an entirely new consciousness and, as she ages mentally, is growing more and more enamored with the outside world. Jerk supreme Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) promises to show Baxter the world and take her everywhere she wants to go, a trip that inspires <i>Poor Things </i>to switch from monochromatic colors to a wide array of hues utilizing every shade in the rainbow. This voyage also leads to Baxter figuring out nuances of the world and discovering just who she is as a person.</p><p>Confidence courses through every vein of <i>Poor Things</i> (an adaptation of the Alasdair Gray novel of the same, with the script penned by Tony McNamara). That's always been key to why Lanthimos movies work so well, they execute outlandish premises and inexplicable human behavior with nary a wink to the camera. However, <i>Poor Things</i> is an especially assured achievement from this filmmaker. Best of all, that conviction manifests throughout the feature in such proudly overt ways. The outstanding costumes are colorful creations full of bold flourishes and poofy sleeves, for instance. Richly detailed sets stretch out to the heavens and revel in their artificiality, they remind one of colorful versions of backdrops from vintage expressionistic films! Meanwhile, the score by Jerskin Fendrix is a masterfully brash creation that isn't afraid to get noisy. Discordant instruments (like strings on a harp getting plucked strangely or the harsh clanging of a triangle) and deep-pitched wailing sounds dominate the sonic landscape of the film. A track like "Reanimation" is full of appropriate momentousness (not to mention a blaring organ and an ominous high-pitched wail) to accompany the sight of Bella Baxter being brought to life. There's so much pomp and circumstance in these compositions and the entire film is all the better for that grandeur. Ferndrix's score functions as a great musical extension of Bella Baxter's personality (we truly feel her pain with the aid of these music cues) while these qualities also coalesce into a score unlike any I've ever heard before.</p><p>Bella Baxter doesn't hide her true feelings or ambitions...it's great that elements like Fendrix's compositions or those sets are similarly proudly prominent. Many filmmakers may be wary of coming off as "silly" or "not serious" by embracing the absurd, but Lanthimos and crew always opt for the stylized when it comes to realizing the world of <i>Poor Things</i>. The result is a movie overflowing with so much infectiously endearing creativity that it's impossible not to get soaked up in all the twisted mayhem. <i>Poor Things</i> encapsulates many of the sights and images that could only be accomplished in cinema, the sort of glorious spectacle that the big screen was made for. If you're going to make a story this bizarre, you should really lean into all of its most preposterous possibilities. <i>Poor Things</i>, with its endlessly creative visuals and score, does just that.</p><p>Best of all, <i>Poor Things</i> does one of my favorite things any story in any artistic medium can do: give us a protagonist worth caring about in the middle of confines divorced from reality. Bella Baxter may travel to real-world locations like Paris in <i>Poor Things</i>, but they sure don't look like any destinations you could travel to in the real world (that's a compliment!) Her surroundings are intentionally at odds with normalcy, yet Bella Baxter is a lead character who's endlessly compelling. Everything from the writing to Robbie Ryan's cinematography and especially Emma Stone's performance renders Baxter with a sense of humanity. She's an oddball, but she's not a punchline nor are we meant to gawk at her "weirdness." On the contrary, <i>Poor Things</i> invites us to view the world through Bella Baxter's eyes and realize just how moronic normal conventions of everyday life (particularly when it comes to gender roles) are. Mesmerizing sequences like Baxter wandering around Lisbon on her own (the first time she's ever been truly independent in her life) touch one's soul as we bear witness to just how much the outside world means to this lady. There's a beating soul to <i>Poor Things</i>, a movie that often casts off reality to the wind to hysterical results.</p><p>Much of that soul does come from Stone, who once again indulges in her chops for weirdo comedy by inhabiting Bella Baxter. What's immediately striking about her on-screen work is her physicality, specifically the way she portrays Baxter as someone who is still getting the hang of the finer nuances of walking. For the rest of the movie, Stone keeps masterfully contorting her body language to reflect Baxter's growing knowledge of the wider world. It's a tour de force performance just in physicality alone, the fact that she always nails such precise pieces of outlandish comedy just makes Stone's work all the more amazing. Plus, it's downright remarkable how much Emma Stone sheds her movie star image for this role. When I was watching <i>Poor Things</i>, I truly felt like I was watching Bella Baxter, I wasn't just watching Stone taking on a role or reminder of this leading lady's many other roles from the last 16 years. Bella Baxter is a totally idiosyncratic creation and much of that uniqueness emanates from Stone's total commitment to such an unusual role.</p><p>Stone is backed up by a totally game-supporting cast who are also unforgettable in such transfixing ways. Mark Ruffalo has been getting a lot of hype for his enjoyably despicable work as just the worst human, but I also want to throw some roses towards Hanna Schygulla and Kathryn Hunter in their key supporting roles. Neither performer sticks around on-screen for long, but they each leave an enormous impression with the screen time they do get. Schygulla makes for a great understated but confident counterpart of Stone's Baxter, while Hunter's unpredictable work as a brothel owner consistently keeps viewers on their toes. Of course, the MVP of the supporting cast has to be Willem Dafoe, who brings such interesting levels of lived-in reality and nuance to a character (the mad scientist playing God) that has existed in cinema for nearly a century. You've seen this archetype before, but you've never seen a character quite like Dr. Godwin "God" Baxter thanks to Dafoe's tremendous performance.</p><p>For both movie geeks and just folks looking for a good time at the movies, <i>Poor Things</i> is a scrumptious cinematic feast. You'll want to gorge on the cinematography, request seconds of all the great comedy beats in the script, roll around in the costumes, stare in awe at the performances, and send your compliments to Yorgos Lanthimos for crafting something so original and daring. When the COVID-19 pandemic first shut everything down, I truly wondered if movie theaters would even exist anymore. I didn't dare to dream that one day somebody could once again wander up to a movie theater and spend a few hours in the dark immersed in something they've truly never witnessed before. Thankfully, that day has come.<i> Poor Things</i> is here and it's just the kind of movie you too will want to plunge head-first into.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-66889238484956490262023-12-22T10:19:00.006-06:002023-12-22T10:19:52.287-06:00Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom isn't interesting even with a heroic octopus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWazEyBnHZ25R3OKy0wCt0nC1cAqlv0wUvVW_1YffARNnD0DeVgOw-WCb_6pB9LUarZwzvjT2rFzobZR3CJrlA0qPf8LYRNQ5hRZTGe7Y6gnCVcSVAK0h03ubvWrbrIvgQZ4qExKdlYO35TXP8ZwaKYNsoexg6976kQ2nwHpwXoNcWpVFbBi8HBMqYnQ/s755/aquamanp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="692" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWazEyBnHZ25R3OKy0wCt0nC1cAqlv0wUvVW_1YffARNnD0DeVgOw-WCb_6pB9LUarZwzvjT2rFzobZR3CJrlA0qPf8LYRNQ5hRZTGe7Y6gnCVcSVAK0h03ubvWrbrIvgQZ4qExKdlYO35TXP8ZwaKYNsoexg6976kQ2nwHpwXoNcWpVFbBi8HBMqYnQ/w467-h692/aquamanp.jpg" width="467" /></a></div><p>You can spend all the money in the world on a movie but you can't automatically make it compelling. No matter how many dollars and cents you throw at a motion picture, it will not suddenly transform into something memorable or fun. <i>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i>, like so many expensive American blockbusters, encapsulates this beautifully. Warner Bros. has tossed a king's ransom at this title in the hope of replicating the enormous box office success of the initial <i>Aquaman</i>. In the process, they've lost the zest that made that original feature work. Though better than fellow 2023 DC Extended Universe titles like <i>The Flash </i>and <i>Shazam! Fury of the Gods</i>, <i>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom </i>just isn't very interesting. The money is on the screen, but it might as well be burning in real-time.</p><p>Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa) doesn't much like being the ruler of Atlantis, especially since he has to split time between aquatic royalty duties and taking care of his son on dry land. All of this gets thrown for a loop when the villainous Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) resurfaces and begins a nasty plot involving burning Orichalcum to raise the temperatures of the planet. This climate change scheme involves melting a lot of ice and is connected to ancient trident that's giving Black Manta a lot of power. To stop this foe, Curry will have to team up with his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) by breaking him out of prison. Now it's a buddy/cop movie where people keep saying Orichalcum (emphasis on those last three letters) a lot.</p><p>Why is the music in a blockbuster like <i>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i> so bad? This thing took years to produce, countless souls burning the midnight oil to realize this, and the best anyone could think of for needle drops were "Born to be Wild" and "Spirit in the Sky"? The latter song was already in a DC Extended Universe movie! Please, superhero movies, learn that other songs exist beyond Dad Rock from the 70s and 80s. The score by Rupert Gregson-Williams is also a wash, save for some interesting electronic flourishes in a scene where Arthur and Orm entertain a crime region known as the Sunken Citadel. Otherwise, Gregson-Williams leans on generic music cues, especially when it comes to emphasizing punchlines like Orm's befuddlement at Arthur knocking down a giant statue. A veteran of Happy Madison comedies and animated children's films, the sensibilities of Rupert Gregson-Williams as a composer just never fit with <i>Aquaman </i>as a movie. You need a rousing old-school sensibility in the music, not somebody who treats the most outlandish plot elements with sonic indifference.</p><p>Then again, perhaps the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams is just a byproduct of the ambivalence soaking<i> Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i> down to its bone. To be fair, there are some enjoyable Saturday Morning Cartoon flourishes in here (like an evil lair located in a volcano or an octopus sidekick) that at least keep the proceedings from being dreary. Some of the practical sets and costumes look neat, but these are anomalous qualities in a film that's too busy to ever commit to one thing to its fullest potential. Aquaman's fatherhood woes, for instance, vanish for nearly 2/3 of the movie. This kid seems so important in the initial half-hour of the <i>Lost Kingdom</i> before getting sidelined quite easily.</p><p>Worst of all are the attempts to wring buddy/cop humor out of Arthur and Orm, a dynamic that Jason Momoa is just not equipped for as an actor. The endearing performer has a great grin and a physical presence to die for, but he's just not good at witty banter. His poorly-written punchlines especially land with a thud in Momoa's hands. Worst of all, this dynamic never goes anywhere fun or interesting, it's just another disjointed piece of the wonky puzzle that is <i>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i>. The first <i>Aquaman's </i>willingness to shift genres on a dime felt like an infectious imaginative creative team at work. Here, attempts to be <i>An Inconvenient Truth</i>, <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, and <i>48 Hrs</i> just reek of indecision over what an <i>Aquaman </i>follow-up should look like.</p><p>I did have to laugh, though, at how the climax of<i> Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</i> eventually involves Arthur and Orm staring down the ghost of an ancient underwater ruler, an entity brought to life through CGI. Yes folks, the DC Extended Universe, in its final installment, managed to squeeze in one more digital bad guy before the lights went out. In the tradition of Ares, Doomsday, Sabbac, and so many others, this undead foe concludes a pricey blockbuster with CG ripped straight out of <i>The Mummy Returns</i>. Some things never change, including how no amount of money can make your movie entertaining...not even if that movie briefly involves Topo the octopus (who, per Nicole Kidman's Atlanna,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIKrARqj4RU&pp=ygUMdG9wbyBhcXVhbWFu" target="_blank"> is quite good at musical instruments</a>!)</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-80738054830508173662023-12-19T10:00:00.001-06:002023-12-19T10:00:00.148-06:00The Color Purple Provides a Disjointed but Frequently Engaging Reimagining of a Familiar Tale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtJj_-U3EeuWhuBqMPuQVTrEAGJZSIlXiU8ZE2sxPNFkmzTOo-b2kUnXEC1i1DnuM1_juzm87lXvilkOeGnDZBmanPsaPJ7Lbjc8kb6a87sMGLi3uqdnou3GB8BfAddLS68acdyPehddA-5Nt4l9M8ZUGfi8RxilwL_ZuotmhcFhKvoBN-L55BmeCBA/s755/colorpurplep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="613" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtJj_-U3EeuWhuBqMPuQVTrEAGJZSIlXiU8ZE2sxPNFkmzTOo-b2kUnXEC1i1DnuM1_juzm87lXvilkOeGnDZBmanPsaPJ7Lbjc8kb6a87sMGLi3uqdnou3GB8BfAddLS68acdyPehddA-5Nt4l9M8ZUGfi8RxilwL_ZuotmhcFhKvoBN-L55BmeCBA/w414-h613/colorpurplep.jpg" width="414" /></a></div><p>The 2023 movie incarnation of<i> The Color Purple</i> is this year’s <i>Doctor Sleep.</i> Both are extensions of 1980s Warner Bros. movies built on conceptually paradoxical creative aspirations. <i>Doctor Sleep</i> director Mike Flanagan aimed to adapt a Stephen King novel, be a sequel to the most famous King adaptation of all time, and address that horror author's criticisms of <i>The Shining</i>. Similarly, director Blitz Bazawule wants to make sure this new <i>Color Purple</i> film restores key elements of Alice Walker’s original book (namely the queer material involving the film's protaganists), properly adapt a stage musical, provides a big Christmastime spectacle movie for Warner Bros., and be a loving tribute to the original 1985 movie. Being pulled in so many contradictory directions ends up resulting in a disjointed feature, but the best moments of <i>The Color Purple</i> do capture why this particular story has endured for so many decades (beyond Warner Bros. executives wanting to capitalize on familiar brand names).</p><p><i>The Color Purple</i>, for those unaware, concerns the life of Celie Harris-Johnson (played as an adult by Fantasia Barrino), who initially navigated the trials of everyday existence with her sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey). The two are separated after Celie is forced to be a wife to Albert "Mister" Johnson (Colman Domingo), an abusive man with evil in his heart. As the years wear on, Celie endures endless strife but is also given glimpses of a wider, more beautiful world beyond the walls of Johnson's house Many of these peeks come from traveling singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) as well as the outspoken personality of her friend Sofia (Danielle Brooks). Through her bonds with other women, Celie clings to the truth that there is more to life than the torment she's suffered.</p><p>Bazawule's approach to filming <i>The Color Purple</i> is to have the performances pitched in a manner evocative of classical mid-20th-century musicals. This influence also extends to the fantasy backdrops of certain musical numbers, such as a lovestruck Celie singing about a bathing Avery on a gigantic record player or those same two characters harmonizing on a glitzy 1920s dance floor. These digressions away from reality harken back to similar sequences in <i>Oklahoma!</i> or <i>Singin' in the Rain</i>, where stylized sets and fantastical backdrops encapsulate the vivid emotions of key characters. Even scenes firmly set in "reality" often feature crowds of extras ready to go to start dancing at a moment's notice, even if all everyone is doing is nailing up advertisements. Considering modern musicals like <i>The Little Mermaid </i>tend to strip away all bombast in favor of "realistic" musical numbers of a guy just singing on a hill, such homages to classic musicals in <i>The Color Purple</i> are more than welcome.</p><p>However, the visuals of <i>The Color Purple</i>, unfortunately, betray those old-fashioned tendencies. Bazawule and cinematographer Dan Laustsen have opted to shoot this title with digital cameras and exceedingly bright lighting that just makes everything look too plastic and artificial. Classic mid-20th-century musicals tended to make the spectacular feel like something you could reach out and touch. This new <i>Color Purple</i> oddly contradicts its vintage influences with imagery that feels distractingly modern. There are lovely touches in the camerawork of <i>The Color Purple</i>, including one scene that clearly functions as a homage to one of the visual motifs of Julie Dash's <i>Daughters of the Dust</i>. However, the sterile digital look of things does undercut the film's commitment to realizing this story in a manner evocative of vintage musicals.</p><p>Marcus Gardley's screenplay, meanwhile, also struggles to satisfactorily balance out classical and modern impulses. Whatever incarnation of <i>The Color Purple</i> you're watching, it's going to be a brutal story that puts its characters through endless hardship. Gardley's script preserves that but it also wants to evoke mid-20th-century musicals in its very arch depictions of human emotions (a quality carried over in Bazawule's direction of the actors). Harrowing displays of anguish are rapidly followed up by people dancing while nailing up signs and vice versa. Some of these intentional shifts in tone do work nicely in communicating ideas like how often joy in Celie's world can vanish in an instant or, in the case of Sofia's storyline, how white people can make everything worse in the blink of an eye. Still, too often Gardley's script seems to be caught between a desire to engage in emotionally raw material and the spectacle impulses innate in musical numbers. The result is a film that sometimes feels disjointed in tone rather than intriguingly nuanced.</p><p>The greatest saving grace to this version of <i>The Color Purple</i>, though, is quite simple: the actors are great and when it comes time to put on a show, the movie delivers. The connective tissue getting there is wonky, but performers like Fantasia and Danielle Brooks belt their hearts out whenever their big numbers come up. If there's anything that helps save a messier musical movie, it's simply delivering when it's time for people to harmonize. Plus, the best tunes in <i>The Color Purple </i>really lend a bullhorn to the inner voices of these characters, in the process showcasing the humanity that the world wants to erase from women like Celie. These grand sequences, then, function as an interesting new interpretation of Alice Walker's original work. This 2023 <i>The Color Purple</i> looks towards music to reaffirm the enduring spirit of the downtrodden, which is a sense of perseverance that's always defined this yarn. That's an interesting way to utilize the language of musical cinema to make an old story feel new, even if <i>The Color Purple</i>'s execution of its musical impulses (particularly visually) leaves a bit to be desired. But hey, it’s unspeakably tough to make a remake/sequel built on so many contradictory artistic impulses. Just ask <i>Doctor Sleep</i> director Mike Flanagan!</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-63589224291272880542023-12-18T13:49:00.001-06:002023-12-18T13:56:14.265-06:00Lisa Laman's Top 25 Movies of 2023<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaShKLENz_Kg6Wm2DYq8j1Q-iwA5CUgedEZa4unPb_3-o-niBKN4Gepw0K8hXUAdZ1_xJTMlNlJq5exFRlKz07WEHDtxyP_zz9rUbCqg0EmGQreOfgmKk0avbKyK3c86VYuHNqLfCKp9RoVkq_yP5r2OgevczRoIzosBwPzNzUzrZiazFoGPRELcVcA/s2048/creech.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="2048" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEaShKLENz_Kg6Wm2DYq8j1Q-iwA5CUgedEZa4unPb_3-o-niBKN4Gepw0K8hXUAdZ1_xJTMlNlJq5exFRlKz07WEHDtxyP_zz9rUbCqg0EmGQreOfgmKk0avbKyK3c86VYuHNqLfCKp9RoVkq_yP5r2OgevczRoIzosBwPzNzUzrZiazFoGPRELcVcA/w521-h215/creech.jpg" width="521" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">TFW you saw a lot of good movies in 2023.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>Well, here we are once again. The end of another year. On a personal level, 2023 was both an exciting year (yay, I finally got to come out as a trans lady!) and an exhausting 12 months (living with depression will do that). Life is complicated. It's rarely one thing for long, for good and for ill. But one constant across the year was movies. There were lots and lots of new features to see this year and it was difficult to whittle a list of the standout movies from this year to just 25. Still, after much work, I've plucked 25 standout titles <a href="https://letterboxd.com/lisafilmfan/list/2023-watchlist/" target="_blank">selected from the 219 (and counting) new releases I saw in 2023.</a> Movies were unspeakably helpful in making this year a lot more bearable and exciting...I hope this list opens up your eyes to certain films and reminds you of the wonders this medium of storytelling can provide.</p><p>Onto the list, which, for once, I've arranged in an actual ranking instead of just alphabetical order! Let's start with...</p><p><span style="background-color: red;"><br /></span></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">25. Oppenheimer</span></span></h1><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Christopher Nolan made the apotheosis of a Christopher Nolan movie in 2023 and it was fantastic. A devastating horror film about man’s capacity for evil, Oppenheimer had bold filmmaking to spare. Oh, and Cillian Murphy crushing it in the lead role didn’t hurt either!</span></span></p><h1 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">24. Cannibal Mukbang</span></h1><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tired of stale cinematic exploits? Chow down on this horror/comedy that isn’t always easy to watch but boy is it creative. <i>Cannibal Mukbang</i> wears its cinematic influences (ranging from 2000s rom-coms to the heaven scenes in <i>The Exorcist III</i>) on its sleeve, but it's all in service of a twisted bit of fun genre entertainment that will undoubtedly influence future generations of grindhouse cinema homages. It's all held together by a masterful lead performance of April Consalo, who channels the energy of Amy Adams and <i>Jennifer's Body</i> with equal levels of aplomb. Dig into this one folks, it's a feast for twisted souls like yours truly!</span></span></p><h1 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">23. A Thousand and One</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></span></span></h1><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The walls of the past are depicted with such care by writer/director A.V. Rockwell in A Thousand and One. Her deft touch as a filmmaker is a key reason this story is so richly compelling. Teyana Taylor’s unforgettable lead performance doesn’t hurt either.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">22. Godland</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The cinematography of Godland alone earns it a place on this list. A plethora of breathtakingly composed images set against the relentlessly undaunted landscapes of Iceland define this feature’s visual style. It’s a glorious motion picture to witness, especially since all those frames are in service of a story vividly chronicling the folly of man’s desire for control. </span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">21. Fallen Leaves</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Some of the movies on this list stood out in the realm of 2023 cinema by being gargantuan cinematic accomplishments. Others, like Fallen Leaves, were so great because they were so streamlined, so relaxed. Sometimes, all you want out of a movie is to follow a quiet romance and two people navigating working-class woes. Small joys of everyday existence often provide such essential serotonin in reality...movies like Fallen Leaves recognize and build on this truth beautifully. </span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">20. Joyland</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Whether we realize it or not, we're all confined by restrictive societal expectations. Director Saim Sadiq movingly captures how widespread those suffocating gender, economic, familial, and other expectations can be within <i>Joyland</i>, a terrifically rendered feature that makes great use of a claustrophobic aspect ratio and a terrific ensemble cast. Alina Khan especially stuns in a performance rich with personality and authority, she grabs your attention so effortlessly whenever she comes on-screen.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">19. The Zone of Interest</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There's not much to say about<i> The Zone of Interest</i>, but not because the film is lacking in substance or virtues worth clamoring about. It's just that writer/director Jonathan Glazer's harrowing depiction of normalized complicity in genocide really is just one of those movies that needs to be seen to be truly understood. One can talk about the power of its measured camerawork or its avant-garde filmmaking accentuations, but the strikingly chilling images making up <i>The Zone of Interest</i> say so much more than any descriptions ever could.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">18. Godzilla Minus One</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">From the moment Godzilla just shows up out of nowhere in the prologue of <i>Godzilla Minus One</i> and begins tearing up everything in sight, it's clear this movie is going to deliver the goods. Godzilla is thoroughly terrifying in this sequence, a relentless creature of incalculable might. Meanwhile, the human drama surrounding this iconic beast in this scene is actually interesting!! These qualities carry over into the rest of the motion picture, which turns into a story about working-class souls recovering a passion to live in the face of immense horrors. One of the longest-running franchises in history felt brand new with <i>Godzilla Minus One</i>.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">17. Nimona</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">N.D. Stevenson's graphic novel <i>Nimona </i>came to life this year in a vibrant computer-animated feature of the same name that touched the soul by embracing such a fascinating complicated tone. Veering between anarchic fun and intimate explorations of what it's like to exist as a societal outcast, <i>Nimona </i>captured how queer existence can go from laughs to tears in a matter of seconds. It also looked sharp as a tack in its imaginative animation and contained no shortage of memorable voice-over performances. A movie deemed unsuitable for release by Disney turned into one of the most heartfelt cinematic accomplishments of 2023.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">16. Ear for Eye</span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">There are images, editing choices, and stirring pieces of writing from <i>Ear for Eye</i> that will never leave my brain. Writer/director debbie tucker green adapted her own play of the same name for this feature, but anyone expecting a straightforward recording of a stage show will be astonished by green's ingenuitive filmmaking. Impressionistic backgrounds, sharp cuts between shots, and vividly penned testimonies from the characters bend the mold of what a "conventional" film looks like. A blend of the claustrophobic scope of a play with the intimate visuals only a film can provide, <i>Ear for Eye</i> was nothing short of a stunning accomplishment.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">15. Monica </span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I can't stop thinking about Trace Lysette's performance in Monica...maybe I never will. The way she communicates years of internalized thoughts with her eyes. Her delicate interactions with Patricia Clarkson speak volumes about the fractured dynamic between their characters. Lysette's gift for playing unbridled joy during a scene where she's portraying a lady just getting ready for a fun night out. Trace Lysette's work on-screen is a gift...so is the rest of <i>Monica</i>.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">14. Anatomy of a Fall</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's always a treat to watch a movie that quietly takes a sledgehammer to audience expectations of how a certain genre "should" play out. So it is with <i>Anatomy of a Fall</i>, which constantly zigs when you expect it to adhere to the norms of a typical courtroom drama. Its bold deviations from the likes of <i>A Time to Kill </i>(especially in its quiet, haunting ending) encapsulate a sense of wild creativity that made <i>Anatomy of a Fall</i> one of the year's most gripping titles.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">13. All of Us Strangers</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Even if you've heard ad nauseum about how <i>All of Us Strangers</i> is going to make you cry, you're not prepared for just how emotional this feature is. Quiet longing permeates every frame of the proceedings and Andrew Scott's lead performance just aches with unresolved emotional angst. The allure of the past defines writer/director Andrew Haigh's work here, with this man especially excelling in realizing such quiet yet deeply moving interactions between the lead character and his dead parents. <i>All of Us Strangers</i> will leave you sobbing, no question, but it will also leave you astonished at the gifts of artists like Haigh and Scott.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">12. Showing Up</span></h2><p style="color: #222222;"><span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;">Kelly Reichardt movies are such wonderful quiet gems and Showing Up is no exception. In the hands of a master filmmaker like her, a wounded pigeon and an impending art exhibition are far more absorbing than the biggest stakes of this year’s largest blockbusters. It’s also a riot packed with terrific performances, including yet another outstanding turn from Michelle Williams in a Reichardt movie. The quiet triumphs of<i> Showing Up </i>speak louder than words! </span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">11. Asteroid City</span></h2><p style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;">Wes Anderson went to the desert with <i>Asteroid City</i> for one of his most challenging and boldest works yet. Shifting between two narratives and a slew of different perspectives across an expansive ensemble cast could’ve resulted in a disjointed mess. Instead, <i>Asteroid City</i> was one of Anderson’s best explorations yet of searching for meaning that can never be obtained. Plus, it’s jam-packed with memorable characters and performances, right down to a quirky alien that doesn’t need to say a word to capture your heart. Achingly vulnerable and so darn funny, <i>Asteroid City</i> was quintessential Wes Anderson and all the better for it!</span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">10. The Battle</span></h2><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial;">Writer/director Vera Egito plops viewers right into the middle of an October 1968 skirmish between a Left-Wing Student movement and fascists in the transfixing motion picture <i>The Battle</i>. Divided up into 21 chunks, all captured in lengthy single-takes, Egito's camera never blinks away from these lives that the Brazillian government is trying to erase. This saga is told with such magnificent camerawork that straddles that tricky line between being impressive as a filmmaking technique without distracting from the characters. Instead, the unwavering eye capturing <i>The Battle</i> just makes the proceedings so intense that you won't be able to exhale until long after the credits finish rolling.</span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">9. May/December</span></h2><p style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial;">Director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch really keep audiences on their toes in <i>May December</i>. Scenes like Charles Melton’s character smoking weed for the first time Dan alternate between humorous to devastatingly sad in the blink of an eye, with neither emotion getting undercut by this complicated tone. On the contrary, <i>May December’s</i> nuanced atmosphere just made it all the more distinctive and offered even more juicy material for its two leading ladies to sink their teeth into. Was there any other movie this year that could shatter your heart and then make your sides hurt laughing at the sight of a High School boy trying to impress Natalie Portman by touching the ceiling?</span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">8. The Teachers’ Lounge</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of my favorite things about movies is how they can get you invested in an environment, sport, occupation, or anything else you may have never given much thought to before. In the case of <i>The Teachers' Lounge</i>, a middle school becomes the perfect backdrop for a tale of betrayal and the limits of being a "good apple" in a corrupt system. The claustrophobic rooms and hallways of this center for education become appropriately suffocating in this story while the performances by the main cast (especially leading lady Leonie Benesch in one of the year's best turns) are all the more compelling in such intimate confines. I never gave much thought to the backdrops of <i>The Teachers' Lounge</i> before this movie started...but now I'll never forget them.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">7. Killers of the Flower Moon</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's easy to take for granted just how good <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is. Of course, a new Martin Scorsese movie would be something special. Yet, much like <i>Silence</i>, <i>Flower Moon</i> is a towering epic that reaffirms how Scorsese hasn't lost his touch as a filmmaker after decades of being in the game. He's still capable of producing images that hit you right in the heart and make you question the world you inhabit. Oh, and Lily Gladstone...even with the deluge of praise she's received, we still haven't appreciated her richly detailed work here enough.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">6. Barbie</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How insane it is that we finally got a live-action Barbie movie and it was great? What could've been a two-hour commercial instead was another terrific Greta Gerwig directorial effort that also felt like it was crafted in a lab to make me happy. A gorgeous-looking feature that combines absurdist humor with homages to filmmakers like Jacques Tati and contemplations of how we figure out who we actually are. <i>Barbie </i>was a joy to watch, a melting pot of tones and bold creative swings that perfectly matched how many different meanings Barbie dolls have taken on over the years. Needless to say, this was one movie that was more than Kenough.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">5. Bottoms</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Bottoms </i>accomplished a lot of feats that many modern comedy movies can't even begin to nail, including delivering cinematography that felt like it belonged on the big screen. Most importantly, though, it delivered the kind of hysterical laughs and sharp writing that you just want to quote to your friends endlessly. Writer/director Emma Seligman channeled cinema's dense past of sex comedies in crafting <i>Bottoms </i>and ended up creating something way funnier than any of its thematic predecessors. Of course, in the defense of those earlier films, how could they possibly compete with <i>Bottoms </i>given that none of them were anchored by actors as gifted as Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri? Two outstanding actors fully committing to relentless horny silliness...now that's how you make a new comedy movie classic!</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</span></h2><p><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial;">They did it, somehow. Miles Morales got another outstanding adventure after <i>Into the Spider-Verse </i>with <i>Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse</i>. The animation was bolder than ever, but what really clicked with this installment was how much humanity coursed through every vein of this feature. Voyages across a variety of multiverses were always in service of the intimate struggles of Morales and Gwen Stacy, ditto a barrage of instantly iconic action sequences. Oh, and this title also gave the world Peter Parked-car. This really was a miracle movie.</span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">3. Trenque Lauquan</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A woman has gone missing at the start of <i>Trenque Lauquan</i>. Why? Was she unhappy? Did she get mad at her job? This initial mystery soon gives way to a sweeping four-hour-long saga that reveals that <i>Trenque Lauquan</i> isn't a straightforward mystery movie so much as a meditation on how women can possibly establish their own personalities detached from society's judgemental gaze. Director Laura Citarella demonstrates such impressive control in handling this epic yarn, which earns every minute of its expansive runtime. Nothing is quite as it seems within<i> Trenque Lauquan</i> and 2023 cinema was all the better for those unexpected qualities.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">2. Kokomo City</span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">What does it look like to be a trans woman in cinema? The D. Smith documentary<i> Kokomo City</i> offers countless depictions of trans existence through its interviews with a slew of Black trans women sex workers. The scope of this project solidifies that there are endless ways to be a trans person, contrary to the norms of on-screen depictions of trans lives throughout the history of cinema. Even beyond the way it subverts toxic standards in movies, though, <i>Kokomo City</i> is still a tremendous accomplishment in filmmaking. Its monochromatic color palette and dream-like digressions make it a stunning visual exercise while the various interviews are rife with unforgettable anecdotes that range from emotionally raw to downright hysterical. There's no shortage of amazing people in the trans community. How fitting then, that,<i> Kokomo City</i> would also be jam-packed with amazing qualities.</span></span></p><h2 style="color: #222222; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: large;">1. Past Lives </span></h2><p style="color: #222222; font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the end of the excellent 2023 book<i> Burn it Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood</i>, author Maureen Ryan references Samwise Gangee's "there some good in this world, Mr. Frodo" speech from The Two Towers as an example of "the magic trick" the best movies pull off. "Why does it move?" she ponders, "I could list the reasons, but they wouldn't fully explain it." Sometimes, Ryan posits, art produces emotions in viewers that can't be properly communicated in words. It just is magical, moving, and wonderful. That's how I feel about <i>Past Lives</i>. I've written so much about this feature since its June 2023 debut, yet I haven't scratched the surface of its joy nor have I come close to fully capturing what a meaningful gem writer/director Celine Song crafted here. No rambling run-on sentences I could conjure up can fully communicate why it's such a joy to see Greta Lee's character swinging her arms with excitement on a New York street as she prepares for a Skype session with a childhood friend. Nor could anything I say capture how utterly devastating that quick cut from the present to the past is in the final scene of<i> Past Lives</i>. This movie endlessly delivers the kinds of emotions, filmmaking, performances, and so much else that defies description. Something as good as <i>Past Lives </i>is, as Maureen Ryan put it, magic. </span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-53224006815094011372023-11-17T11:00:00.005-06:002023-11-17T11:00:00.137-06:00Wish is a Walt Disney Animation Studios Fan-Film That Gets Lost in Its Lore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAVn7QX5uQk8eSTVGTHRhuE8DdLRH7EDL4lxE01H6TFg9rv0Ql3rmK2P_U6_6APdSNHJjfaX6Ygrql5Mzb1YgCeKhWBAXhW3nyDFMFqcshEhzGbSKz7rj1usRi4vAsmw894zMChbg5R4am0tBg7EXTH4-DmqVA3DSbbkm36dBQAZ_RPBUKj61Cn8y2cA/s755/wishp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="852" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAVn7QX5uQk8eSTVGTHRhuE8DdLRH7EDL4lxE01H6TFg9rv0Ql3rmK2P_U6_6APdSNHJjfaX6Ygrql5Mzb1YgCeKhWBAXhW3nyDFMFqcshEhzGbSKz7rj1usRi4vAsmw894zMChbg5R4am0tBg7EXTH4-DmqVA3DSbbkm36dBQAZ_RPBUKj61Cn8y2cA/w575-h852/wishp.jpg" width="575" /></a></div><p> “What would Walt do?” It was a phrase that gripped Walt Disney Animation Studios in the wake of the passing of Walt Disney in 1967. The response to this figure’s demise was to just make new animated features mimicking the greatest hits of past Disney classics. Though the era of <i>The Fox and the Hound</i> and <i>Robin Hood i</i>s in the distant past, <i>Wish</i>, the latest Walt Disney Animation Studios feature, harkens back to that query. As an animated feature debuting in a year when Disney is celebrating its 100th anniversary of existence, <i>Wish </i>wants to be to animated Disney movies what Margot Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie was to Barbie's. "You close your eyes, think of an animated Disney movie, it's me!" Meanwhile, its animation style, which uses CG to emulate tentpoles of hand-drawn artistry, also clearly indicates that the phrase “What would the <i>Spider-Verse</i> movies do?” loomed large over the production. Oh, and Wish comes courtesy of the key creative team members behind the <i>Frozen </i>movies (including director Chris Buck and writer Jennifer Lee), so also throw in the phrase “What would Elsa do?” into the cinematic stew. </p><p>The creative influences of <i>Wish </i>are apparent. Less clear once the credits begin to roll are the qualities that would make this feature so idiosyncratic that future Disney titles would want to imitate it. </p><p>Hailing from directors Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, <i>Wish </i>concerns Asha (Ariana DeBose), a 17-year-old girl living in the Kingdom of Rosas. This is a seemingly idyllic paradise ruled over by the magical King Magnifico (Chris Pine), who has the power to grant wishes. Everything seems perfect in this domain until Asha discovers the wicked secrets behind Magnifico's rule. Distraught over the darkness that's been lurking in plain sight all along, Asha, in a moment of desperation, makes a wish upon a night star that gives her...an actual shooting star by the name of Star. This charmingly designed critter from the cosmos has some magical abilities of its own, including making Asha's pet goat Valentino talk with the smooth voice of Alan Tudyk. Star could be the key to taking down Magnificio...but can an ordinary girl really challenge a master of dark magic?</p><p>Between this and <i>Frozen II</i>, screenwriter Jennifer Lee seems to be way too fascinated with overcomplicated lore that feels clumsily improvised. Awkward key plot beats related to King Magnifico’s corrupt rule (namely that you forget about your wish after he “takes” it) are hurriedly introduced in lyrics or throwaway pieces of dialogue that are easy to miss. The mechanics of the wishes themselves seem to fluctuate in a way that doesn't feel like organic extensions of a whimsical fairy tale but rather a byproduct of sloppy writing. It’s also hard to grasp a discernibly real-world parallel to all the fantasy tomfoolery that Lee and company want audiences to be deeply invested in. This isn’t just supposed to be a classical fairy tale, like <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, where everything's meant to be heightened and removed from our world. <i>Wish </i>wants to elicit tears from viewers and have its fantasy world remind moviegoers of their own. That’s hard to do when this entire realm feels so vaguely defined and aloof from the discernible reality. Compare that problem to the stories of <i>Moana </i>and <i>Encanto</i>, which effortlessly interwove recognizable real emotions and experiences into unabashedly fantastical stories. This balance between the preposterous and emotionally tangible can work…Lee’s script for <i>Wish </i>just gets too lost in lore, explanations, and obvious metaphors to get that balance right. </p><p>The plot beats that do work in Wish are effective enough to make one wish this whole movie was better. If only the screenplay trimmed down the avalanche of comic sidekick characters (why does Asha have seven additional wacky human friends plus two “critter” companions?) in favor of fleshing out its better narrative impulses. That tug of war between impressive details and derivative elements also carries over to the animation of <i>Wish</i>. The backgrounds here are glorious creations, downright perfect recreations of the kind of painterly sights Eyvind Earle and the like made their bread and butter in the mid-20th century. Establishing shots in <i>Wish </i>devoid of any characters actually look like they could’ve been lifted from a hand-drawn movie from the 50s, it’s an astonishing merging of animations past and present. </p><p>Unfortunately, those backgrounds and other lovely visual qualities (like the welcome emphasis on bright colors that make even nighttime scenes easily visible) are paired up with humans and animals who look no different than standard CG Disney humans from the last 15 years. This time, though, those humans have extra rubbery-looking skin (a byproduct of the unique lighting schemes of <i>Wish</i>) while the often stilted facial expressions seem extra lifeless compared to the old-school backgrounds. Imagine the emotions that could be conveyed if these figures were rendered in good old fashioned hand-drawn animation. The dissonance between environments from<i> Sleeping Beauty </i>and characters lifted from crowd shots of <i>Big Hero 6 </i>never coalesces into something interesting and instead just remains eternally annoying. It’s very odd <i>Wish </i>showed so much ambition in its backdrops, yet opted for human designs that look so familiar. If you want to truly follow in the footsteps of modern CG animation achievements like <i>The Mitchells vs The Machines</i>, <i>Nimona</i>, and the <i>Spider-Verse</i> movies, you have to embrace distinctive visual impulses in every department, not just with backgrounds!</p><p>A similar mixed bag is the music of <i>Wish</i>. Given that this is the "ultimate" Walt Disney Animation Studios movie, it shouldn't be a surprise that <i>Wish </i>is also a musical, with an array of tunes written by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice. The best of these tracks are the ones that lean into being the kind of songs you could only do in a musical like Magnifico's deliciously wicked "This Is The Thanks I Get?!" or the rousing battle tune "Knowing What I Know Now." Weaker on the soundtrack are tracks like "This Wish" and "At All Costs" that are more in line with songs you'd find in a Pasek & Paul musical in that they just sound like generic pop ditties. The former track is especially disappointing since DeBose is fully committed in her vocals in this take on the "I Want" song, but the forgettable lyrics let her down. Also underwhelming is the score by Dave Metzger, a veteran of Disney's music department (he worked as an arranger and orchestrator for countless scores in the studio's past). His compositions aren't bad, but they're often lifeless and fail to demonstrate much of a personality, particularly in the instruments they employ.</p><p>More consistently successful than the visuals and music in <i>Wish </i>are the vocal performances. The actors assembled here do perfectly cromulent work with the writing they've been handed, with DaBose especially working overtime to inject more personality and life into Asha compared to how this figure is written in the script. A committed novice cast, undeniably cute elements (that Star character is clearly made to spawn stuffed animals, but I wanted to give him a hug all the same), and utterly stunning backgrounds can't erase the nagging feeling, though, that <i>Wish </i>leaves a lot of potential on the table. In trying to create a "celebration" of Disney's past, <i>Wish </i>just feels like a hodgepodge of the studio's greatest hits. It lacks the wit and heart that helped give an extra sense of personality to previous Mouse House homages like <i>Enchanted </i>or <i>Tangled</i>. "What would Walt do?" was clearly a question weighing heavily on the minds of Buck, Veerasunthorn, and company when it came to making this animated musical. However, just as that query drove Walt Disney Animation Studios into the ground in the 70s and 80s, so too does such adherence to the past weigh down <i>Wish</i>.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-77779846724595417952023-11-08T11:00:00.008-06:002023-11-08T11:00:00.128-06:00The Marvels Is A Disjointed Superhero Movie Buoyed By Its Lead Performers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtQSW5l_3wug0PqcQ16sypHulTCb4qSg-FTUdjstK3PBTywJkgLB88W-NhsJy1q9chKlIJPd0oM1eG4JvLGOzGkrM6XdmW227YJz0-i3ThXZduhZwDccIc1ZK5GrpQXjljRj6zYbHNLNu6MEFzq6U3zpQajTHzcWI0Lb0y3IOGtw9h3tWaY0qBNE1b2w/s755/themarvelsp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="713" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtQSW5l_3wug0PqcQ16sypHulTCb4qSg-FTUdjstK3PBTywJkgLB88W-NhsJy1q9chKlIJPd0oM1eG4JvLGOzGkrM6XdmW227YJz0-i3ThXZduhZwDccIc1ZK5GrpQXjljRj6zYbHNLNu6MEFzq6U3zpQajTHzcWI0Lb0y3IOGtw9h3tWaY0qBNE1b2w/w481-h713/themarvelsp.jpg" width="481" /></a></div><p>Despite being connected to so many previous Marvel Cinematic Universe properties (<i>Captain Marvel</i>, <i>Ms. Marvel</i>, <i>WandaVision</i>, <i>Guardians of the Galaxy</i>, they all get referenced here),<i> The Marvels</i> is at its best just being a breezy good time. Whenever writer/director Nia DaCosta just settles for making a wacky comedy, this is an amiable feature. Unfortunately, the impulse to go big that's plagued nearly every Marvel Cinematic Universe feature in the wake of <i>Avengers: Endgame</i> is on display here again. <i>The Marvels </i>is torn between the two wolves inside of itself: one that wants to be silly and one that wants to be a spectacle-driven blockbuster. The tug-of-war across those ambitions results in a disjointed movie largely buoyed by its lead performances.</p><p>Outer space superhero Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is working solo in the deepest corners of the cosmos when she is alerted to the evil machinations of Kree warrior Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton). This baddie has secured a bangle that gives her immense power and entangles Danvers with the abilities of two other superheroes. Now, whenever Danvers, astronaut Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and New Jersey teenager Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) use their respective superpowers, they trade places with a member of the trio. This situation has ensured that these three have to work together to stop Dar-Benn, who is targeting a slew of planets as part of a deeply personal mission. It's time for another Marvel team-up, which excites superhero devotee Khan to no end. </p><p>I'm sure Marvel Studios executives are reading a review written by a humble Texas bimbo, so let me say this to everyone in charge of these movies and TV shows: please stop treating the Kree and Skrull stuff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with such seriousness. The former group especially is so boring in this and <i>Captain Marvel</i>, yet their lore is treated with such stone-faced rigidity. Anytime <i>The Marvels</i> cuts back to Dar-Benn and her generic revenge mission (plus a backstory meant to make her the umpteenth MCU villain who is "actually right"), one is bound to roll their eyes. Please, either make these alien races more compelling or stop returning to them so often. Despite a committed performance from Zawe Ashton, Dar-Benn's whole presence in <i>The Marvels </i>is a massive problem in the proceedings. She just feels disconnected from the rest of the feature, a UPN sci-fi show baddie inhabiting something with sillier inclinations. Plus, her eventual villain plot in the third act gets so big in scope that it's impossible to get dramatically invested. </p><p>If the villain of <i>The Marvels </i>is a massive weak point, at least its three heroes are a treat to watch. In a happy surprise, Larson, Parris, and Vellani have terrific chemistry together. Who needs large explosions when you can just watch the three of them try to juggle or jump rope together? Their interactions are lots of fun, even when the third act gets swallowed up by half-hearted character arcs and muddled dramatic beats. Best of all, the heavy emphasis on Kamala Khan turns out to be an inspired choice for the film as a whole. She's such a delightful creation, full of infectious enthusiasm, and an opening scene cribbing from the visual aesthetic of the <i>Ms. Marvel</i> TV show that puts audiences into one of Khan's hand-drawn fan-fictions is lots of fun. Plus, Iman Vellani's performance is endlessly charming. While fellow 2023 Marvel Studios title <i>Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania</i> was disappointingly devoid of personality, Kamala Khan's presence in <i>The Marvels </i>alone gives this feature a pulse.</p><p>Almost as entertaining as Vellani's performance are the handful of sequences where <i>The Marvels </i>really cuts loose and embraces its silliest impulses. Specifically, a set piece where our three leads arrive on a planet extremely familiar to Danvers and a key climactic sequence involving Goose the Cat/Flerken provide the creative high points of <i>The Marvels</i>. The former sequence also allows one to appreciate both the terrific costume design work on display here and the fact that much of <i>The Marvels</i> has actually been shot on nicely detailed sets. Yay for not just leaning on The Volume in shooting blockbuster movies! DaCosta and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt lend a polished look to this tentpole that helps make it as digestible as it is. </p><p>Such visual details, along with some well-realized hand-to-hand fight scenes, are unfortunately often marred by choppy editing and restrictive camerawork that often won't let individual shots breathe for too long. Several gags in <i>The Marvels</i> are undercut by an unwillingness to let jokes play out in extended unbroken images, with the cuts between shots disrupting the comedic rhythm of these gags. Unfortunately, <i>The Marvels</i> can't outrun its strongest drawbacks, particularly when it comes to an overstuffed story hinging on dramatic stakes one just can't get invested in. Thankfully, whenever it leans just on the silly gags and chemistry between its three leads, <i>The Marvels</i> recovers some of its footing. If nothing else, it solidifies Iman Vellani as one of the great discoveries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, please make her the centerpiece of these movies going forward.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-40993968146700429412023-11-07T09:08:00.003-06:002023-11-07T09:08:26.833-06:00The Holdovers Is a Melancholy Yet Deeply Movie Exploration of Holiday Season Grief<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-A7Wrd7lPk3fpsF1X6tcu65rUOQ5XWWRdW9xxWEIm_d6H85bbVuoGAZVNF532y5xXvzqRbpVTETdjQzvgeoq1e41UAdRa_YWZ89IAsz9i_QIos-nW4cLovOyd2iDalKKx-PMPvgW9H1v-0TvLuM3nICQ_UXPTJwuc189vTl3l-dF2-yE5huZFnQ60tw/s755/holdoversp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="587" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-A7Wrd7lPk3fpsF1X6tcu65rUOQ5XWWRdW9xxWEIm_d6H85bbVuoGAZVNF532y5xXvzqRbpVTETdjQzvgeoq1e41UAdRa_YWZ89IAsz9i_QIos-nW4cLovOyd2iDalKKx-PMPvgW9H1v-0TvLuM3nICQ_UXPTJwuc189vTl3l-dF2-yE5huZFnQ60tw/w396-h587/holdoversp.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><p></p><p>Who doesn't get a little sad at Christmastime? Though it's often called "the most wonderful time of the year", Christmas can also be a challenging experience. There are often toxic relatives you've got to deal with at parties. The emphasis on "unity" and "togetherness" in all those billboards or holiday-themed passages can exacerbate your loneliness. Plus, the holidays coinciding with the end of the year can lend an innately wistful reflective quality to one's mind at the end of December. Thoughts can turn to looking back on the preceding 12 months and contemplating the future rather than living in the Yuletide joy of the moment. The end of the year can be a tricky thing to navigate. <i>The Holdovers</i>, a new film from director Alexander Payne, fully runs into those hurdles to make a bittersweet Christmas movie that's also oddly comforting. Any reminders that one isn't alone in experiencing severe emotional problems can be unexpectedly reassuring despite the heavy subject matters being broached.</p><p>The Holdovers focuses on Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a legendarily stern teacher at the prestigious school Barton Academy. Nobody on the campus, across the teachers and students, likes this curmudgeon who prefers to spend his days hidden away in this school rather than exploring the wider world. Screenwriter David Hemingson (impressively making his feature film screenwriting debut here) makes the wise decision to establish Hunham's crankiness in a fashion that establishes the character's abrasiveness without totally alienating viewers. We see this man's off-putting personality on full display in his interactions with his students, but most of those students are rich male jerks. Having a teacher (a job that notoriously pays little) wielding a little power against these nepo babies isn't exactly "noble" behavior, but it's also a very entertaining way to cement Hunham as an unlikeable soul. Rather than going the expected route of showing Hunham as "bad" by being explicitly ableist, homophobic, or racist,<i> The Holdovers</i> opts to make him more complicated. His grievances against these wealthy kids are somewhat warranted, it's just his way of communicating those frustrations (and his unwillingness to let anybody in emotionally) is deeply flawed.</p><p>After making it clear that we're watching a very detached academic soul living as a shell of himself, The Holdovers proceeds to its central conflict. Hunham is spending the final weeks of December watching over students who have nowhere to go for the holidays. Eventually, he only has one such student to look over: Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a kid who's not quite a jock, nerd, or any other easy High School archetype. He's just messy (Tully has so many family issues) and is unwilling to roll over for Hunham. Also on the campus? The head of Barton Academy cafeteria, Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph). She gets along nicely with Hunham and is grieving the recent death of her son in Vietnam. </p><p>What if<i> The Browning Version</i> was directed by Hal Ashby? It'd look a lot like <i>The Holdovers</i>, which is a compliment. This Payne feature can't hit the highs of <i>Version </i>or Ashby's greatest movies, but leaning so much on cinematic magic of the past leads to <i>The Holdovers</i> scoring its own cinematic highs. For starters, the entire motion picture is a three-hander acting exercise between Giamatti, Sessa, and Randolph, and on that front, it's an exceptional experience. It's so good to see Giamatti in a major motion picture again and his skillful work at making Hunham so unabashedly irascible is consistently engrossing. There's a believable level of authority to Giamatti's line deliveries and physicality, but also a sadness beneath those expressive eyes that exude vulnerability even in the character's most unlikeable moments. Meanwhile, Dominic Sessa is an incredible find in his acting debut as Angus Tully. I especially liked the messy way he portrays a teenager navigating emotional quandaries beyond his years. There's such an authenticity to Sessa's depiction of Tully in turmoil that you feel like you're watching an actual teenager out of their depth rather than a cozy cinematic depiction of people in that age range.</p><p>As for Da'Vine Joy Randolph, well, those of us who watched<i> Dolemite is My Name</i> four years ago always knew she has incredible chops as an actor. She's absolutely riveting here on all fronts, including her terrific chemistry with both Giamatti and Sessa. Especially unforgettable is a key dialogue-free scene involving Lamb visiting her sister's house. Randolph doesn't need words to grip your eyeballs, she proves captivating so effortlessly. She and the other actors here are framed through a visual sensibility established by Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld that's meant to make<i> The Holdovers</i> look like a movie that would've been produced in the early 1970s (the era in which the story takes place). I wish more of the second half of <i>The Holdovers</i> leaned into interesting visual flourishes rooted in the filmmaking norms of this decade, but there's still an engaging and cozy lived-in quality to its imagery that's hard to resist. Extra bonus points too for how <i>The Holdovers</i> was captured with digital cameras, yet various post-production processes gave it all the delightful imperfections (like film grain) of something shot on 35mm. Some movies that go down this road of shooting digitally and then adding in the 35mm visual qualities later just look strange, but <i>The Holdovers </i>totally fooled me into thinking it was shot on vintage Kodak film.</p><p>Payne and Hemingson's approach to <i>The Holdovers</i> doesn't so much rewrite the book as it does build on cinema's past to make an enjoyable and effectively melancholy new feature. That's perfectly fine by me when the final product is both actually engaging to watch and such a drastic improvement on Payne's last movie, <i>Downsizing</i>. Keeping the scope of this story so intimate doesn't just let one appreciate the outstanding trio of performances anchoring<i> The Holdovers. </i>It also gets you so comfortable with these characters that even the most conceptually schmaltzy moments in the third act feel totally earned. What a nice gift for the holidays to see a feature like The Holdovers handle that sort of material so nicely. </p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-28987848160916200182023-10-30T08:07:00.002-05:002023-10-30T08:07:00.151-05:00Priscilla paints a humanizing portrait of its titular subject<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcAYbAAqF-MQxuPxAjhXCQ1DYzk190l2NckjHejkXczbZ3MLor-ESjK66OyA_dXmXGU8LZR9VHP_-MggPW981XECUA5aPYqvY3tp4kIuDciQkyJ1Xqqwgp4yyjziXdtg3kBCiF-VBE_H9pyh-u0hth3Mlexs5pxkGRawB9_OHGNzXw4b7SXu0ZROwAag/s755/priscillap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="511" height="616" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcAYbAAqF-MQxuPxAjhXCQ1DYzk190l2NckjHejkXczbZ3MLor-ESjK66OyA_dXmXGU8LZR9VHP_-MggPW981XECUA5aPYqvY3tp4kIuDciQkyJ1Xqqwgp4yyjziXdtg3kBCiF-VBE_H9pyh-u0hth3Mlexs5pxkGRawB9_OHGNzXw4b7SXu0ZROwAag/w418-h616/priscillap.jpg" width="418" /></a></div><p>Both a sense of entrapment and a disconnect from reality permeate the directorial career of Sofia Coppola. <i>The Virgin Suicides</i>, for instance, was all about a collection of teenage girls withheld from experiencing the real world. <i>The Bling Ring</i> was a story about ordinary teenagers searching for an exciting escape from their lives by breaking into the houses of celebrities and taking their possessions, in essence believing owning these items will make them like their famous idols. Meanwhile, <i>Marie Antoinette </i>recalls the life of the titular royal figure as someone totally detached from the reality of her subjects as she enjoys an existence of luxury in her lavish domicile. Even Coppola's low-key yarn 2020 <i>On The Rocks</i> continued these themes by following Rashida Jones as a woman trapped by the thought of her husband having an affair and bamboozled that everyone else finds her unreliable father so charming. How come nobody else can see the man she's known all her life?</p><p>These qualities, as well as a penchant for glorious production design, lending urgent verve to period pieces, and an overall empathy for complicated women characters, have made Sofia Coppola's career incredibly fascinating to watch unfold. Coppola continues her biggest thematic fascinations with <i>Priscilla</i>, a motion picture that chronicles the relationship between Priscilla Presley and Elvis. Much of the discussion around <i>Priscilla </i>will inevitably center around comparisons between it and Baz Luhrmann's 2022 feature <i>Elvis </i>and understandably so given that they're both distinctive creative visions about one of the most prolific American musicians of all time. However, in the middle of all that discussion, let's also not forget to appreciate <i>Priscilla </i>as a standalone piece of art and another triumphant feather in Sofia Coppola's artistic cap.</p><p><i>Priscilla </i>begins in 1959, as a fourteen-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) is invited to attend a party involving Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). At this shindig, Elvis begins to immediately express a fondness for Priscilla, a relationship that Coppola frames from the start as incredibly creepy. The exchanges between a grown man and a 9th-grader are usually rendered by Coppola and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd through these wide shots that go on and on. The lengthy nature of these images, particularly one chronicling the duo's first Christmas together, emphasizes the incredible awkwardness and stiffness between these two people. These are not starstruck lovers, this is a relationship built on an incredibly inappropriate and off-balance power dynamic from the start. This concept is impressively rendered in Coppola's hands while the emphasis on Elvis as a self-infatuated guy with a tendency for murmuring provides a great contrast to typical hagiographic pop culture portrayals of "The King."</p><p>From here, <i>Priscilla </i>chronicles its titular lead getting swept up in the life of Elvis Presley and becoming his go-to lover, to the point that she's asked to come stay at Graceland. This location is one we've all seen on postcards, in films, everywhere imaginable. Its go-to visual aura is one of cozy Americana, it's a depiction of lavish living that we're supposed to wish we could have. Within this story, though, Graceland is quickly transformed into a prison. It isn't long before Priscilla Presley finds that her life as Elvis's spouse is endlessly constrictive. She can't even play with her dog outside without being told not to "make a spectacle of yourself" while she's forbidden to have a job or bring any of her friends over. "No outsiders at Graceland," she's told. It's classic abusive behavior, cutting off your partner's external life so that they can only find value in you.</p><p>Its truly impressive how well Coppola and company transform the interior of Graceland, a place we've seen all our lives in media as so ritzy and glamorous, into feeling like such a suffocating nightmare. The emptiness of this vast space (captured in haunting wide shots) serves as a visual extension of how hollow Priscilla feels inside navigating this toxic relationship. An especially harrowing depiction of how draining and insulting this experience is for Priscilla comes in an early sequence showing her sitting down at a dinner table with Elvis and his cohorts. At this bustling meal, the camera lingers on just Priscilla's face as nobody asks her any questions about herself or even really acknowledges her existence. Cailee Spaeny does remarkable work communicating with the gentlest twitches of her face this sense of unease, of recognizing that she's being ignored. There are so many people around her, she's sitting next to one of the most famous singers of all-time...yet she's never felt so alone. It's a heartbreaking moment that offers such a subtle but moving window into Priscilla Prelsey's soul.</p><p>Speaking of her, Cailee Spaney is outstanding here as Priscilla Presley. Back in 2018, Spaeny suddenly showed up in four separate movies (<i>Pacific Rim Uprising</i>, <i>Bad Times at the El Royale</i>, <i>On the Basis of Sex</i>, and <i>Vice</i>), an abrupt uptick in cinematic appearences that had me wondering what was going on. No offense to Spaney's work in any of those films (she's pretty good in <i>El Royale</i>), it just led me to wonder "why is Hollywood so fixated on this one actor?" Priscilla is basically a feature-length demonstration of how there's been so much hype surrounding Spaeney. Whether it's handling the subtlest yet most meaningful pieces of body language from Priscilla or accurately portraying this woman across multiple stages of her life, Spaeny crushes the assignment. Playing opposite her is Jacob Elordi, a dude from <i>Euphoria </i>that the gays and gals on the internet can't stop talking about as a new heartthrob. Props to Elordi then for subverting that image by communicating palpable intensity and intimidation in his version of Elvis, which is more reminiscent of Daniel Day-Lewis's whiny <i>Phantom Thread</i> character than any other version of Elvis Presley I've seen in cinema. The way Elvis is always speaking out the side of his mouth or the way Elordi delicately injects this singer's Southern twang into his vocals without lapsing into a stereotype, these are all such great details underscoring a well-realized performance. Maybe I'll also join that Jacob Elordi fan club, even after being terrified and repulsed by this man's version of Elvis Presley!</p><p>Unsurprisingly, because this is a Sofia Coppola movie, <i>Priscilla </i>also looks gorgeous in terms of its visuals. The color scheme of the feature is full of beautiful-looking warm colors, with those hues providing an especially interesting contrast whenever they're utilized in toxic environments like Graceland. The overwhelming utilization of bright red in a climatic scene depicting Elvis Presley's Vegas hotel domicile, for instance, is downright inspired. Similarly creative are the ways this feature indicates the passing of time exlucisvley through imagery and not through didactic dialogue, such as the depiction of endless empty plates being picked up by a housekeeper outside of Elvis and Prsicilla's bedroom. These kinds of flourishes and creative touches tend to work towards those key themes of entrapment and disconnect from reality that has always been around in the works of Sofia Coppola. Whether you explore it as a fascinating extension of that director's thematic fixations or just as a standalone piece of cinema, <i>Priscilla </i>is bound to impress.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-66127093739500911182023-10-24T08:50:00.000-05:002023-10-24T08:50:51.550-05:00Killers of the Flower Moon Is Another Towering Martin Scorsese Achievement <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWf-sIkleADw7MAd8qTlRy_IiCWfyDtAZvccOKIhSN4ZrgvhPXe-qyyGa1Hrtw0w5l6i7Wt8CJvkMsg99kOTo2OcavPipsAYrBJOVQVwHG0S5u_ecwOwtxZ88gqoBp-mCnDLtoCmfr_pw8P8NMSE7oApcb81RTzhtdZcxSGaAt2epjfqnStlc-J8lmSA/s755/killersmoonp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="821" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWf-sIkleADw7MAd8qTlRy_IiCWfyDtAZvccOKIhSN4ZrgvhPXe-qyyGa1Hrtw0w5l6i7Wt8CJvkMsg99kOTo2OcavPipsAYrBJOVQVwHG0S5u_ecwOwtxZ88gqoBp-mCnDLtoCmfr_pw8P8NMSE7oApcb81RTzhtdZcxSGaAt2epjfqnStlc-J8lmSA/w546-h821/killersmoonp.jpg" width="546" /></a></div><p>When I was in a film noir class in college, I was told of this story that Orson Welles tried to mount a major movie in the 1940s with an all-Black cast that couldn't get any financing. The chief reason for this? Welles planned to have the film's characters stare directly into the camera and studio executives thought that was too transgressive. To have Black people get close-ups and gaze into the audience, like white lead actors do all the time, was just too much. I can't find any evidence of this story existing, maybe it's just one of those showbiz legends, but it does reflect a reality of who gets photographed and how. It's also a yarn that entered my head during<i> Killers of the Flower Moon</i> during moments recreating real-life photographs of Osage denizens like Mollie (Lily Gladstone) staring directly into the camera. Figures brutally erased from history are center-frame, gazing into the viewer's soul. </p><p>Such images emerge in a narrative that begins with oil being found on land belonging to the Osage tribe, a collection of indigenous people residing in Oklahoma. This discovery allows this population access to new levels of wealth and attracts the attention of some incredibly scummy outsiders. This includes Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), who travels to Oklahoma to join his uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), in living in this territory. Hale puts on airs of being accepting and loving of the Osage, but he's always scheming ways to get more and more of that oil money for himself. One key part of this plan ends up involving a romance between Burkhart and Mollie, a connection that blossoms as more and more of the Osage are "inexplicably" murdered. The police (led by Sheriff King Shale) refuse to investigate. White folks are indifferent to the idea that indigenous people are dying off. Mollie and her Osage brethren feel like they're going insane. <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is a cinematic testament to how normalized the horrors of colonialism and violence are in American history. The most unspeakable acts of brutality are just another day's work for the white characters here.</p><p>There are many unforgettable moments in <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> (penned by director Martin Scorsese as well as screenwriter Eric Roth), but one I especially can't get out of my mind is a tender moment in<i> Killers of the Flower Moon</i> when siblings Mollie and Anna (Cara Jade Myers) pause on a staircase to express their love for one another. The duo have a realistic sibling dynamic within <i>Flower Moon</i>, with the two sometimes being at odds with one another while ultimately always having each other's back. "You are my wealth," Mollie quietly reminds Anna while holding her close. There are no eyes on either of them, they just want to express their love for one another. It's such a beautifully-acted sequence accentuated by restrained but powerful camerawork.</p><p>It's also a moment that plays out as a great contrast to any instance where Ernest Burkhart and Willian King Hale are alone. Separated from others, there is no sense of fondness between these two people. Burkhart mostly seems intimidated by King Hale, while the latter character always has a crocodile grin cemented on his face around his nephew. In their exchanges, they only scheme. Whether it's funerals, town parties, weddings, or anything else, their sole focus is on hurting other people, particularly the indigenous Osage community. Mollie and Anna recognize that there is no replacement for the love between people. Burkhart and King Hale are terrifying husks of human beings driven by capitalistic desires. The way such personalities are just nonchalantly depicted on-screen is emblematic of just how chilling so much of <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is. This is a film where racism is not a "surprising" quality, it's an element interwoven into every facet of American society.</p><p>Everywhere you look in<i> Flower Moon</i>, from condescending newsreels reporting on the Tulsa Massacre to the casual presence of the KKK in a local parade, one sees white supremacy and the dehumanizing of people of color. A scene shot from Mollie's point-of-view (accompanied by a powerfully written monologue told in voice-over) where we see all these white people spilling off of trains, eager to get a hold of that oil money, captures this hauntingly well. These individuals Mollie is eyeballing don't need to have Klan masks on to be intimidating, to be reminders of the entitlement of white people. The brutally frank depiction of racism and colonialism is also reflected in the matter-of-fact framing of any instance of white characters killing the various members of the Osage people. These horrific slayings are captured by Scorsese and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto in extended single-takes and wide shots, usually with no accompanying music. You just hear bullets going off and footsteps trudging through grass or gravel on the soundtrack. It's a stark and bleak way of depicting these gruesome killings, a devastating portrait of these senseless actions devoid of any sensationalism. The "normal" way they're shot (with no extra flourishes like discernible color grading or slow motion) hideously communicates how, for the white killers, this is "justified" or "untroublesome" behavior. It's an ingenious bit of filmmaking that just makes your soul ache.</p><p>As someone who went through all my remaining Martin Scorsese narrative film blind spots in the month leading up to <i>Flower Moon</i> (save for <i>New York, New York,</i> that feature's not available anywhere!), it's impressive to see how his directorial prowess hasn't budged with age. This man still has such a precise visual sensibility and a gift for using cinema to render the normalized injustices of the real world. It's also intriguing to see shots in here that echo unexpected classic entries in his filmography, like a shot lingering on Mollie being berated by an off-screen Burkhart mirroring a similar image of the unnamed female lead of <i>Who's That Knocking At My Door</i> being yelled at by Harvey Keitel. However, I was also struck by how <i>Killers of the Flower Moon </i>allows Scorsese to deliver plenty of new images or bursts of filmmaking that feel unprecedented in his visual toolkit. He's still discovering new exciting ways to tell stories in this medium and it's making for such rich cinematic accomplishments.</p><p>Another standout in <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, though, is easily Lily Gladstone. This performer's been crushing it from the get-go with her remarkable work in the 2016 Kelly Reichardt movie <i>Certain Women</i>, but boy is Gladstone operating on another level here. Just the way she's able to utilize the tiniest corners of her face or even her throat to convey powerful internalized emotions inside Mollie is enough to grip your eyeballs. Gladstone's facial expressions are a gift and she proves equally adept at making Mollie's pronounced displays of emotions compelling. A moment where she wails in despair after hearing devastating news will haunt my nightmares, there's just years and years of pain in that noise. There are plenty of memorable turns in <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, including DiCaprio reminding us all that he's best at playing weasley scumbags always in over their heads. However, this is Lily Gladstone's movie, her performance is nothing less than a towering achievement. </p><p>Martin Scorsese movies have always carried more than a pinch of outrage at the despicable behavior normalized in society. In <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i>, though, this thematic motif is realized in an especially haunting manner, as the film's 206-minute runtime lets viewers witness the elimination of an entire society by way of powerful white people doing whatever they want. This is how genocide occurs, right in front of everyday eyes and through the actions of ordinary souls. Scorsese has taken a medium that's typically erased the hardships and humanity of non-White Americans and used it to shine a spotlight on often-ignored historical atrocities. <i>Killers of the Flower Moon</i> is not an easy watch, but that's precisely what makes it a staggering filmmaking achievement...along with that Lily Gladstone lead performance.</p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3636322126904087926.post-35101528402985109012023-10-15T11:08:00.008-05:002023-10-15T11:22:59.602-05:00Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour hits glorious creative high notes<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1pcnH-enbwzlyZ3CI27g_Qr-j9K9FqwqEqWacK-KFacyQaP-jOIYe4AW5keKYN0Ot1ZGjVlZHbGxf8C0zPJatspvoIdJmkhVdG1-caXqdZAcGXz5iHdNN_OTxsQBp-F7K246YMYUkXtnGx0Kp-gY-22XLwlcpvsHPdLzfHoRky9tyKzA1LQGQe3N3w/s755/erastourp.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="503" height="693" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN1pcnH-enbwzlyZ3CI27g_Qr-j9K9FqwqEqWacK-KFacyQaP-jOIYe4AW5keKYN0Ot1ZGjVlZHbGxf8C0zPJatspvoIdJmkhVdG1-caXqdZAcGXz5iHdNN_OTxsQBp-F7K246YMYUkXtnGx0Kp-gY-22XLwlcpvsHPdLzfHoRky9tyKzA1LQGQe3N3w/w461-h693/erastourp.jpg" width="461" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager, I
distinctly remember sitting in my bedroom, listening to the country music station
96.7 The Texas Twister, and hearing something unexpected on the radio. I was so
used to hearing older or thirty-something dudes in this genre that the sudden
presence of a voice that clearly belonged to a teenage girl took me by
surprise. This wasn’t somebody singing about their “brand new girlfriend” or their
desire to check ladies for ticks. This was a woman signing about romantic
longing, the feeling that a single artist can take you back to memories of the
past, or being invisible to somebody you can’t stop thinking about. I was
raised to believe all teenage girl angst was just pointless drama, a bunch of
blathering originating from how “emotional” ladies were. Hearing Taylor Swift’s
voice on the radio, though, these problems didn’t sound like “blathering.” They
sounded important. They sounded personal. They sounded like things I’d been
through. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Save for the trials of Charlie Brown in classic
Peanuts comics, I’d struggled to find pieces of pop culture that made me feel
normal in being sad as a youngster. Wasn’t this supposed to be the best time of
my life? It sure didn’t feel like it most days. The emotionally complicated
ditties of Taylor Swift made me feel a little less alone in that moment. From
there, me and this artist were inseparable. In my late Middle School years, I’d
clutch my green iPod Nano loaded up with Taylor Swift songs and listen to these
tunes as a way to calm me down when I got overstimulated. Yes, I’m a repellant
white girl Taylor Swift fan and I have been for almost two decades. That doesn’t
mean I worship everything Taylor Swift touches (the album <i>Reputation</i> is
a total mixed bag and her working with David O. Russell on <i>Amsterdam</i> is
a disgraceful moment in her career), but a lot of her tunes have resonated with
me on a profoundly important level.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">All that’s to say, the new concert movie <i>Taylor Swift:
The Eras Tour</i> always sounded like something that would be up my alley.
However, watching it (my first time watching the Eras Tour in any context), I
was still blown away. I was prepared to enjoy the songs, but I was not
expecting the level of visual razzle-dazzle this production delivered. For
those not in the known, <i>Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour</i> chronicles a filmed
version of the Los Angeles stop of Swift’s Eras Tour, a concert experience
where the titular singer delves into tunes from each one of her albums. From <i>Speak
Now</i> to <i>evermore</i> to <i>Lover</i> and everything in between, they all
get highlighted. Plus, nearly all of them are performed on stage with the same
level of extreme visual maximalism, with the only restrained exception coming
during a pair of acoustically sung tunes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I found myself often being a total rube during <i>Eras
Tour</i>, just going “woah!” or “wow!” at the sheer scale of the LED screens
Swift was performing against or the quickness with which she changed into
different costumes. It really does feel like some form of magic the way this
conceptually limited stage space is constantly transformed into everything from
a pool to an isolated cottage to a catwalk where Swift and her dancers can seductively
strut their stuff. The uber-pronounced executions of the various songs, which are
performed alongside everything from gigantic clouds (that initially looked like
the head of the Rock-Biter from <i>The Never-Ending Story</i>) to people trapped
in boxes, dazzle the eyes and provide great visual extensions of the assorted
tunes. These are tracks that often encapsulate such BIG emotions and now the <i>Eras
Tour</i> provides creative images that reflect the expansiveness of those
feelings.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Just in terms of set-pieces and spectacle, <i>Taylor
Swift: The Eras Tour</i> is a triumph, particularly in how it’s able to
organically shift between so many different visual moods (like quietly ominous,
sexually provocative, or cheekily playful, just to name a few) without missing
a beat. But something else that I found impressive watching this film (at the
risk of sounding like a press release) is how gifted Taylor Swift is at working
a crowd. When she’s leading up to the introduction of the performance of the
song “The Man,” for instance, it’s just so much fun to see her teasing the
crowd with increasingly obvious hints about what ditty is next on the tracklist.
Somehow, her displays of being emotionally moved by all the love expressed by the
crowd also come off as shockingly genuine. Most impressively, though, when it’s
time for her to perform sadder songs like “All Too Well,” she’s able to capture
that intimate vocal quality that drew me to her in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When I was first listening to “Teardrops on My Guitar”
or “Tim McGraw” in 2006, what emotionally transfixed me was that Swift totally
sounded like she was singing directly to me. My mind immediately captured an
image of me and Swift sitting in a room, her strumming away on a guitar and talking
about her recent emotional woes. In that moment, it felt like only I was
listening to these melodies in the coziest confines. Somehow, even though she’s
performing in front of countless souls in the massive SoFi Stadium in the <i>Eras
Tour</i> movie, Swift conjures up that quality again for her more low-key
songs. Even as you can see endless seas of concertgoers in the background of
certain shots, Swift’s vocals still make you feel like she’s singing this tune
directly to you. It’s a gift that’s only more apparent when you’re watching her
performing songs on a massive movie theater screen.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Speaking of which, the experience of watching <i>Eras
Tour</i> in a cinematic setting certainly provides a stirring approximation of how
sweeping it would be to watch her perform live in person. Even in my sparsely attended
Saturday afternoon digital projection screening (no IMAX or Dolby Cinema
flourishes!), the sound of roaring crowds came through loud and clear on the
speakers. Meanwhile, director Sam Wrench and the various editors make sure the
various songs are so crisply realized on-screen (no shaky or clumsy editing to
undercut key emotional moments in the track list) that the sheer visual
imagination of this particular concert is unmistakable. The team's versatility in terms of filmmaking chops also ensures that the unique personalities of each tune are nicely realized on the screen. More aggressive quick cuts dominate the editing of the various <i>Reputation </i>songs, for instance, while calmer editing and longer takes are the default visual norms for the quieter acoustic dittoes or <i>folklore </i>tracks. Cuts to the crowd are also used sparingly, which helps to quietly cement the idea that Swift's stage is like its own isolated world. It's sometimes nice to see the wide array of souls being transported live by the music, but the decision to keep the camera almost exclusively focused on the performers (rather than constantly cutting to the crowd or backstage material) heightens the immersiveness of all those elaborate backdrops. The simultaneously intimate and sweeping camerawork really makes viewers feel like they could get lost in all the intricate detail put into those sets!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Like the best pieces of camerawork or editing, these visual touches are so well-integrated into <i>Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour</i>, you don't even notice them as they occur, they just work seamlessly into reinforcing the images and atmosphere on-screen. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">The flourishes in the editing and direction make it often breathtaking to watch Swift's musical prowess on a movie theater screen. The mind reels to
imagine what it’d be like to be there in person watching this material unfold
live and absorbing all that energy from the audience! Still, don't take that comment to mean that the movie version of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Eras
Tour</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, is an inferior product. Sam Wrench and company provide a fantastically rendered cinematic time capsule of
this event. Their work deftly makes it clear why this specific musical shindig has become
such a pop culture phenomenon.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Also, props to the folks who were in charge of
whittling down what songs from the various eras of Swift’s career should be
played in the concert. Inevitably, some of my personal favorites were excluded
from the concert (“Welcome to New York”, “I Wish You Would”, “Picture to Burn
(Homophobic Version)”, you shall not be forgotten), but that was always going
to happen, they were never going to cram every single Swift classic into one
concert movie. The songs they chose are a fantastic line-up of Swift hits and
feature enough variety in sound and aesthetics that the concert doesn’t quickly
become repetitive. The highest compliment I could offer <i>Eras Tour</i> is
that viewers will be leaving the theater raving about their favorite
performances, not grousing about what tunes didn’t make the cut. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If you’re not already a fan of Taylor Swift, I’ll be
the first to admit that <i>Eras Tour</i> won’t be a movie that suddenly makes
you a believer. Also, the nitpicky film critic in me must note that <i>Eras
Tour</i> can’t quite stand up to the all-time greatest concert films like <i>Stop
Making Sense</i> and <i>Beyonce Homecoming</i>. David Byrne and Beyonce, your
concert cinema crowns are not being relinquished today. However, <i>Taylor Swift:
The Eras Tour</i> is still an impressive cinematic experience providing enough
spectacle to make the likes of Cecil B. DeMille grin with approving pride. It was a marvelous experience to witness the same qualities that made me immediately connect to
Taylor Swift’s music on The Texas Twister in 2006 still so gloriously apparent on a movie theater screen in 2023. If you think you'd even enjoy</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> a little bit, go see it on a massive screen with friends and prepare to be blown away.</span></p>Lisa Lamanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02966787111894027173noreply@blogger.com0