Late Oscar buzz
On the ball as always, the Oscars have just happened so here is a personal roundup of this year’s main contenders (plus one that surprisingly wasn’t). Not that I’ve seen all the Best Picture nominees, of course. I really can’t be bothered with Avatar, no matter how pretty it may be. Precious promised to be such heavy going that I shied away from it, leaving the whole “grief porn” debate aside. And I somehow managed to miss out on The Hurt Locker, which is unfortunate seeing as it won. Hey, if someone paid me to write these things then I’d clearly make more of an effort. Sorry about that.
Anyways, I had the chance to see a preview screening of Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress turn in The Blind Side this evening. For the uninitiated, this is the real life story of a southern belle who decides to take in a poor, uneducated black kid named Michael who has become an NFL offensive tackle. The feelgood cliches come pretty thick and fast, with ripe “Honey you’re changing his life!” “No, he’s changing mine”-style dialogue, an ultra-sanitised view of the ’hood (Michael’s crackhead mother doesn’t exactly look like she’s stepped out of The Wire, put it that way), and a helpful little guide to the left tackle position at the beginning just to make sure that football philistines aren’t put off.
The biggest cliche of all is that everyone loves Sandra Bullock, it’s just a shame she makes such lousy movies. To be fair, I’ve not seen many of them, not really being in the target demographic. This is better than the horrid Crash at the very least, and although it’s hardly a challenging piece there’s something utterly charming about Sandra that even all those years of chick-flick dross can’t subdue. The Blind Side succeeds on its own terms, and Bullock carries it with ease.
The general rule is that film adaptations are always worse than the original book, and to fully enjoy such films you ideally shouldn’t have read the source material. In the case of The Road, I felt like I should have read the book to fill in some of the blanks, as the film is quite opaque and sketchy. Apparently the book doesn’t go into huge detail on how or why the apocalypse happened, but that’s not what I felt was missing - rather I wanted to know a bit more about this guy and his family, details that the intermittent flashbacks only hinted at.
Still, a picture paints a thousand words, and everything looks suitably apocalyptic. John Hillcoat, who also directed the Nick Cave-scripted western The Proposition is obviously at home with desolate, fractured landscapes. It was also nice to see Michael K “Omar” Williams, risking becoming typecast as a robber (or was he?). Overall, a worthy if slightly underwhelming experience, perhaps signified by the fact that it didn’t make the cut for Best Picture even though it was clearly intended that way.
It’s always a mystery as to why some films attract that Oscar buzz and not others. Or rather, it’s a mystery as to what makes the studios get behind certain films as their annual Oscar-bait. Up in the Air is a perfectly decent romantic dramedy that at least tries to do something different with the genre, with an original conceit (nomadic sacking machine, essentially) and a pleasing cynical streak that’s nonetheless not sour enough to scare all the horses.
But why push this? The presence of gorgeous George and Juno director Jason Reitman gives it some pedigree - although Diablo Cody rightly received the lion’s share of the praise for that film and Clooney, watchable though he always is, barely gets out of second gear here. Should he really have been in the running for an Oscar for basically doing his regular schtick? Syriana was on the other day - now there’s a film where he actually stretches himself by playing a sad-sack character who’s literally and metaphorically tortured. Similarly, Anna Kendrick (who reminded me of Tom Cruise for some reason) and Vera Farmiga both give well-judged performances, but there’s no way I’d have been campaigning for Oscar nominations for either of them if I’d seen the film upon release.
I do disagree with Mark Kermode about the ending, which I found satisfyingly melancholy rather than formulaic. To be fair, if I’d seen ’Air sans Oscar buzz I’d have probably enjoyed it far more.
The expanded 10-strong shortlist for Best Picture is quite depressing if you think about it. Rather than doubling the length just so that a couple of better-known films can be included, hopefully snaring a few more viewers for the ceremony in the process, why don’t they try and market the original shortlist better and, y’know, maybe try and educate people as to the benefits of cinema that makes you think rather than spending all your marketing budget on Transformers 5: The Shitstorm or whatever? (Tsk! How fanciful!)
An Education, Inglourious Basterds and Up are all dealt with here, which leaves District 9 and A Serious Man as the other ones I’ve not yet seen. Still, they won nowt and won’t be remembered as even being nominated a few years from now. Such is life. The other major winner was Crazy Heart, which finally brought Jeff Bridges an Oscar. Funnily enough, even though I loved The Wrestler last year (wherein a fading, grizzled star tries to get his shit together for one last term in the spotlight) last year, Crazy Heart (fading, grizzled star tries to get his... oh, you know) just sounds like formulaic dross with no reason to exist other than to get Jeff his statuette, and gives me no desire to see it. I think this is known in the wrestling trade as being a “mark”...
Finally, now that all the Oscar-fodder has been released (Blind Side aside), it’s interesting to note how much utter dross is currently clogging up the listings. In the last couple of weeks we’ve had movies starring Robert de Niro, Harrison Ford, Colin Farrell, Renee Zellweger, Uma Thurman and John Travolta, for all of whom a release is normally a very big deal. Just how bad must these latest offerings be for them to be trundled out during this Bermuda Triangle-style dead period? Which goes to show that just because you’re a huge star, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have better taste than the rest of us, or that you don’t have to spend time working on shitty projects. Makes me feel a bit better anyway.
Anyways, I had the chance to see a preview screening of Sandra Bullock’s Best Actress turn in The Blind Side this evening. For the uninitiated, this is the real life story of a southern belle who decides to take in a poor, uneducated black kid named Michael who has become an NFL offensive tackle. The feelgood cliches come pretty thick and fast, with ripe “Honey you’re changing his life!” “No, he’s changing mine”-style dialogue, an ultra-sanitised view of the ’hood (Michael’s crackhead mother doesn’t exactly look like she’s stepped out of The Wire, put it that way), and a helpful little guide to the left tackle position at the beginning just to make sure that football philistines aren’t put off.
The biggest cliche of all is that everyone loves Sandra Bullock, it’s just a shame she makes such lousy movies. To be fair, I’ve not seen many of them, not really being in the target demographic. This is better than the horrid Crash at the very least, and although it’s hardly a challenging piece there’s something utterly charming about Sandra that even all those years of chick-flick dross can’t subdue. The Blind Side succeeds on its own terms, and Bullock carries it with ease.
The general rule is that film adaptations are always worse than the original book, and to fully enjoy such films you ideally shouldn’t have read the source material. In the case of The Road, I felt like I should have read the book to fill in some of the blanks, as the film is quite opaque and sketchy. Apparently the book doesn’t go into huge detail on how or why the apocalypse happened, but that’s not what I felt was missing - rather I wanted to know a bit more about this guy and his family, details that the intermittent flashbacks only hinted at.
Still, a picture paints a thousand words, and everything looks suitably apocalyptic. John Hillcoat, who also directed the Nick Cave-scripted western The Proposition is obviously at home with desolate, fractured landscapes. It was also nice to see Michael K “Omar” Williams, risking becoming typecast as a robber (or was he?). Overall, a worthy if slightly underwhelming experience, perhaps signified by the fact that it didn’t make the cut for Best Picture even though it was clearly intended that way.
It’s always a mystery as to why some films attract that Oscar buzz and not others. Or rather, it’s a mystery as to what makes the studios get behind certain films as their annual Oscar-bait. Up in the Air is a perfectly decent romantic dramedy that at least tries to do something different with the genre, with an original conceit (nomadic sacking machine, essentially) and a pleasing cynical streak that’s nonetheless not sour enough to scare all the horses.
But why push this? The presence of gorgeous George and Juno director Jason Reitman gives it some pedigree - although Diablo Cody rightly received the lion’s share of the praise for that film and Clooney, watchable though he always is, barely gets out of second gear here. Should he really have been in the running for an Oscar for basically doing his regular schtick? Syriana was on the other day - now there’s a film where he actually stretches himself by playing a sad-sack character who’s literally and metaphorically tortured. Similarly, Anna Kendrick (who reminded me of Tom Cruise for some reason) and Vera Farmiga both give well-judged performances, but there’s no way I’d have been campaigning for Oscar nominations for either of them if I’d seen the film upon release.
I do disagree with Mark Kermode about the ending, which I found satisfyingly melancholy rather than formulaic. To be fair, if I’d seen ’Air sans Oscar buzz I’d have probably enjoyed it far more.
The expanded 10-strong shortlist for Best Picture is quite depressing if you think about it. Rather than doubling the length just so that a couple of better-known films can be included, hopefully snaring a few more viewers for the ceremony in the process, why don’t they try and market the original shortlist better and, y’know, maybe try and educate people as to the benefits of cinema that makes you think rather than spending all your marketing budget on Transformers 5: The Shitstorm or whatever? (Tsk! How fanciful!)
An Education, Inglourious Basterds and Up are all dealt with here, which leaves District 9 and A Serious Man as the other ones I’ve not yet seen. Still, they won nowt and won’t be remembered as even being nominated a few years from now. Such is life. The other major winner was Crazy Heart, which finally brought Jeff Bridges an Oscar. Funnily enough, even though I loved The Wrestler last year (wherein a fading, grizzled star tries to get his shit together for one last term in the spotlight) last year, Crazy Heart (fading, grizzled star tries to get his... oh, you know) just sounds like formulaic dross with no reason to exist other than to get Jeff his statuette, and gives me no desire to see it. I think this is known in the wrestling trade as being a “mark”...
Finally, now that all the Oscar-fodder has been released (Blind Side aside), it’s interesting to note how much utter dross is currently clogging up the listings. In the last couple of weeks we’ve had movies starring Robert de Niro, Harrison Ford, Colin Farrell, Renee Zellweger, Uma Thurman and John Travolta, for all of whom a release is normally a very big deal. Just how bad must these latest offerings be for them to be trundled out during this Bermuda Triangle-style dead period? Which goes to show that just because you’re a huge star, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have better taste than the rest of us, or that you don’t have to spend time working on shitty projects. Makes me feel a bit better anyway.
Comments
I completely agree about Up in the Air - I really didn't think there was anything particularly special, let alone Oscar-worthy about it.