| 21 March 2010
Film historian Robert Osborne.
The Academy Awards have been going through a transition lately, with notable rule changes to either improve the voting process or at least increase ratings for the annual telecast.
Still, the awards themselves remain of value, says film historian Robert Osborne, the genial host of Turner Classic Movies.
“I care about the process, and I do think we wouldn’t have as many good films as we have today if there wasn’t an Oscars process. Which is why I think it’s worth protecting, because I do think it gives people something to shoot for,” says Osborne, who will talk on movies and the Academy Awards at Delray Beach’s Crest Theatre this Thursday afternoon. “I think a lot of people would just go for the buck and make nothing but ‘Dumb and Dumber’ if there wasn’t a chance to maybe get a recognition like an Academy Award.”
He considers himself a traditionalist when it comes to the way the Academy votes on its awards, yet he is not against this year’s increase in the number of Best Picture nominees to 10. “I’m not actually. I think it’s kind of a good idea. I was really against it at the beginning, because in most years you can barely find five films that deserve to be up for the top Oscar.
“When I go over the past lists or those years that had 10 nominees, like 1938, there were a lot of really good movies, but out of the 10 that were nominated, there were really only five that were justified being on that list. But it did include such films as ‘Test Pilot’ with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, and you get ‘Four Daughters,’ which introduced John Garfield to the screen, and you get ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ with Errol Flynn. And when you look back, it does give you a more balanced idea of the kind of films that were made then.
“Now you could say that ‘Test Pilot’ is not going to win Best Picture over ‘Jezebel’ or ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ or ‘Pygmalion,’ some of the great movies that came out that year, but it does give a nice feeling for the whole year when you look at it.”
If Osborne speaks authoritatively about the history of the Oscars, it could be because he has long been the author of The Official History of the Academy Awards, which is revised every five years. The latest edition, also titled 80 Years of the Oscars, has just been released, a gorgeous, but hefty coffee table book.
“Yes, one doesn’t have to go to the gym anymore,” quips Osborne. “You just carry that book around with you. It works as free weight. We’re going to have to put wheels on it pretty soon, so you can wheel it around like baggage at the airport.”
The Academy gives the book its endorsement, but Osborne is adamant that the organization does not approve or veto any of its contents. “Years ago, the Academy came to me, because I’d written another book on the Oscars and said they wanted me to go through their files and put in anything that I wanted to put in that was part of the actual history of the awards,” he says.
“When I did the earlier book, there were still people around who were with the Academy when it was first organized. They were very cautious about whatever was put in the book,” he says. “But all those people are long since gone and now they really wanted an official history. They wanted me to go into how certain names were taken off certain accomplishments because they were tinged by accusations of Communism, all that kind of stuff. All of that is included in there. Nobody ever took anything out at all.”
Not that Osborne was inclined to write an exposé of the Oscars.
“My approach has never been a negative one about things like that. I would never be critical of a decision made in the Academy Awards process. I don’t want to revise history and say, well, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ should never have won in 1952, because ‘High Noon’ was that year and ‘The Quiet Man.’ Back then, obviously people had reasons for voting that way or it wouldn’t have won. It’s the record of what actually happened, not my opinion of what should have happened.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Osborne comments on this year’s winners in the performance caregories. “Well, if I was voting, I certainly would have voted for Mo’Nique,” best supporting actress for Precious. “I certainly would have voted for Christoph Waltz,” best supporting actor for Inglourious Basterds.
“I certainly would have voted for Jeff Bridges,” who won best actor for Crazy Heart, “although Colin Firth (‘A Single Man’) would have been very close in there.”
When it gets to Sandra Bullock, though, Osborne concedes that her best actress win for The Blind Side was probably more about popularity than artistic achievement.
“Well, in that case, sure. But I didn’t think any of those women had a really demanding role. There was no really great role for a woman this year,” he says.
“It was a little bit [like that] with Jeff Bridges, too. Because these are people in the industry voting, and they’ve all worked with him. They all know what a professional he is, and what a good guy. How he always delivers the goods and he’s not gotten the recognition before.”
As to the Oscars ceremony, he says, “Well, I thought it was good, but I didn’t see it on the air, I saw it in the theater. There it was quite spectacular. I could have used a little more of Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin,” the evening’s co-hosts. “I thought they were witty and charming. It seemed that after the opening, they kind of disappeared, and I think the show could have used a little more of them.”
Otherwise, Osborne adds, “I love it when they’ve got various actors coming out and talking about the nominees. But I do think they should talk about their work, not about how swell they are or how easy they are to work with or how good-looking George Clooney is. We’re well aware of that.
“And there was such controversy over the memorial thing, because Farah Fawcett was left out and various other ones. And I do think that because it is the Academy Awards and about the movie industry, I think that segment could be extended, and you could leave out things like that salute to thrillers. I didn’t quite know what that was doing in the show.”
So, Robert, if you ran the Oscars, how would they be different?
“Uh, well first, I wouldn’t want to run then, because you can’t please everyone and everyone now is a critic,” he sighs. “I would appeal, as much as I could, to get those people who are rarely on an Oscars show. I love that year that had all those Oscar winners sitting onstage. To get those people that, even though they’re not part of the year’s competition.
“I mean, they should have had Javier Bardem as an Oscar winner on that show. He was there. Try to get Michael Caine to come and Sean Connery to come, some of these people we don’t see all the time. The real royalty of Hollywood. And get them involved, so it’s not just about the people who walk the red carpet or the starlets.
“The one thing I thought it really lacked this year was some specific recognition for ‘Avatar.’ Because I think that’s an extraordinary movie. It’s a movie I had no interest in seeing. I don’t like blue people, don’t like sci-fi. So I thought, everybody’s talking about it, I’m just going to go to a matinee and watch like an hour of it. I’ve got my book I want to read and I’m going to go have lunch, just have a nice quiet afternoon.
“Well, five minutes in I was so hooked. I think it’s extraordinary what it did. I’m not sure it should have been given the Best Picture award, but I think it certainly deserved an honorary Academy Award of some kind for what it does and what they did with it, because I think it‘s quite revolutionary,” he says. “To go away with a few minor awards, as it did, I don’t think it got what it deserved. I think ‘Star Wars’ was the same way. It came out the year that ‘Annie Hall’ won. That’s a wonderful movie, but ‘Star Wars’ was so revolutionary for its time.”
This is a taste of what you are likely to hear from Osborne at the Crest. “I’m going to talk about all this and also answer any questions that people may have about the Academy Awards process. Or about Turner Classic Movies, how that works,” he says.
Instead of some illustrative moments from last year’s top films, “I’ve got some little film clips to explain me,” Osborne says. “In case people are coming and they don’t watch TCM, I want to kind of explain why I’m up there mouthing off so much.”
Asked why he thinks film fans will enjoy his talk, Osborne pauses and responds, “Well, I do have a good background in movies and the Academy Awards. If they watch TCM and like the kinds of things I talk about there, they might be interested. Other than that, I can’t think of a reason in the world anyone would want to come hear me.”
ROBERT OSBORNE, Crest Theatre, Old School Square, 51 N. Swinton Ave., Delray Beach. 2 p.m. Thursday. Tickets: $25-$40. Call: (561) 243-7922, ext. 1.
| 10 March 2010
Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service (Disney’s Studio Ghibli)
Release date: March 2
Standard list price: $19.99 each
Girls always rule in the films of Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s top animator and one of international cinema’s most empowering feminist voices. In his four most prominent Western exports – Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and the recent Ponyo – Miyazaki’s protagonists are girls, from princesses to hat shop workers, whose fantastical journeys change themselves and the worlds around them. In Miyazaki’s tender dreamworlds, there is no such thing as a patriarchal hierarchy. Women aren’t just equal; they’re usually smarter than the men and are more equipped to save the world.
Of course, they’re still adolescent girls, prone to teenage insecurities and harboring fragile tear ducts. This is especially true of three of Miyazaki’s older titles reissued by Disney in two-disc editions this month: 1986’s Castle in the Sky, 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro and 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, each boasting informative new making-of featurettes.
Before delving into the best of these early works, a polite disregard for the one movie that doesn’t stand the test of time or adulthood: Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki’s adventure tale of a princess and a young miner who attempt to find a supposedly mythical sky castle while being pursued by a rickety gang of sky pirates and a corrupt military machine.
Cartoonish in the most infantile sense of the word, Castle in the Sky is silly and predictable, sacrificing storytelling and depth for two hours of almost nonstop action. It lacks the idyllic whimsy of Miyazaki’s later films, and its comic relief is head-scratchingly obtuse. It’s notable solely for its fabulous set designs of the titular castle and other complex edifices, but even these can be seen as phantasmagoric M.C. Escher knock-offs.
My Neighbor Totoro couldn’t be more different in tone and substance, and it’s a welcome change. Centering on two young sisters who endure their mother’s hospital-bound illness with the help of a few friendly forest spirits, Totoro dares to be slow-paced and contemplative from time to time – box-office poison for many children’s works.
Though comparisons to Alice in Wonderland are apt (Miyazaki is an avowed Lewis Carroll devotee), Totoro is less a fantasy than a real-world study of coping. It’s a truly successful family film in that, unlike most of them, it doesn’t talk down to adults or pander to children, striking a deft medium between lightness and darkness, comedy and tragedy.
And finally, in my favorite Miyazaki film, Kiki’s Delivery Service, an adolescent witch’s coming of age makes for an enlightening parable about acceptance, tolerance and self-confidence. Leaving home on her broomstick to live away from her parents for the first time, Kiki settles on a small town that’s seemingly unwilling to accept a witch into its populace. Unaware of any special abilities she may possess, Kiki transforms her known distinguishing talent – her ability to fly – into a delivery service for the town’s residents.
On her routes, she witnesses bountiful kindness and snobbish ingratitude, learning much about the way the world works and battling her insecurities in the process.
Kiki is exactly the kind of character girls will find inspirational, and more than any other protagonist in these films, she anticipates Miyazaki’s later heroines. Peppering his film with dark undercurrents – including an exciting action set-piece surrounding an upturned dirigible – Miyazaki again strikes a concordant balance between whimsy and reality.
Much like the brave-yet-vulnerable, confident-yet-insecure girls at the heart of these pictures, it’s clear Miyazaki himself had yet to blossom into the maturity and sophistication of his later work. The animation is crude, particularly when held up to Pixar’s incomparable standards, and not all of his storytelling conceits walk his now well-worn tightrope of kidvid accessibility and arthouse inventiveness. But two of these underrated titles represent peeks into the visionary looking glass of a future master.
The Beaches of Agnès (Cinema Guild)
Release date: March 2
SLP: $23.99
At 81, Agnès Varda, the director of the 1962 French New Wave classic Cleo From 5 to 7 reinvents cinema once again, this time in the genre of the autobiographical documentary. One of the most overlooked movies of last year, The Beaches of Agnès is a cineaste’s dream from the first frame to the closing credit.
In this literally self-reflexive film, Varda sets up a collection of mirrors, gazes at herself and proceeds to walk backwards through the memories of her life, from childhood to her beginnings as a photographer to her emergence in the New Wave and her romantic relationship with fellow auteur Jacques Demy.
Employing archival film clips, split screens, picture-in-picture, superimpositions and newly filmed documentary diversions, Varda reanimates old film stills and reenacts old memories, all the time with the formalistic boldness and playfulness of someone a quarter her age. The Beaches of Agnès feels every bit like a swan song, and what a lovely, ceaselessly creative way to conclude a life in cinema.
The generous Cinema Guild disc includes an essay by critic Amy Taubin, two shorts about the making of the film and Varda’s magical 2003 short Le Lion Volatil.
The Wedding Song (Strand)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $24.99
This uninhibited drama set in Nazi-occupied Tunisia centers on a multicultural ghetto and two 16-year-old best friends fixated on marriage: Jewess Myriam (Lizzie Brochere), set to be betrothed to a much older man, and Muslim Nour, whose heart is set on an unemployed man, closer to her age, that her father permits her from marrying.
As outside influences shape the apolitical teenagers’ nascent ideologies, the two girls’ friendship becomes a microcosm for the way Third Reich propaganda divided otherwise stable communities, pitting friend against friend, and certainly Arab against Jew. But Karin Albou’s film doesn’t limit its rage to the stoking of hatred and the Nazi atrocities that followed.
More than any ethnic or religious discrimination, it details the subjugation of women in general with excruciating detail, something that ultimately reconnects the two friends. Its most shocking scene involves a genital waxing, shot in the kind of extreme, gooey close-ups that would never make its way past a Hollywood censor. It’s painful to watch, but it’s the unforgettable backbone of the filmmaker’s aggressive feminist argument.
The Stoning of Soraya M. (Lionsgate)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $19.99
This latest, nasty example of torture porn from Passion of the Christ producer Stephen McEveety should have been the moving, enraging women’s picture to end them all. Instead, it’s an exploitative propaganda film whose clunky script and artless direction border on the embarrassing.
A proudly unsubtle attack on the Dark Ages inequalities of Sharia law, The Stoning of Soraya M. is based a 1994 book of the same name about an Iranian woman unjustly accused of adultery (she was found cooking for a friend’s widowed husband) whose protestations to the legislative status quo lead to her eventual stoning at the hands of her ravenous, bloodthirsty community (a climactic sequence offensively shot by director Cyrus Nowrasteh as if it were a multi-angle, action-sports extravaganza).
Designed to provoke gut reactions from guilt-consumed limousine liberals as much as anti-Islamist right-wing xenophobes, this is self-important dreck designed solely for Western export, and it makes me wonder what adventurous filmgoer is cloistered enough to find any of this remotely eye-opening.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
| 08 March 2010
Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker.
Leave it to Steve Martin to sum up Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony with a final ad-lib, calling the broadcast so long that “Avatar now takes place in the past.”
At three-and-a-half-hours, it actually ran longer than James Cameron’s bloated, 3-D science fiction epic, which got left in the dust by the documentary-like The Hurt Locker, directed by Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
Kathryn Bigelow.
The Oscars show was awfully long, but it was one of the more entertaining awards fests in many years. It began with such an obvious, but previously overlooked, touch of introducing all10 best actor and actress nominees onstage. How could no one have thought of that before?
Neil Patrick Harris kicked the show off with a reasonably clever song, No One Wants to Do It Alone, which sounded like a sanitized version of a Marc Shaiman party song. Then came Martin and his co-host Alec Baldwin to toss off roast one-liners about the nominees (“There’s that damn Helen Mirren.” “No, Steve, that’s Dame Helen Mirren.”) Compared to such dud past emcees as David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Chris Rock, Martin and Baldwin were just what the show needed.
Nominees were introduced with longer -than-usual clip montages of their performances, which were another plus. Ditto the best song category, which was cut down to size, with the nominees all lumped in one sequence, not unlike best costumes. A real time- (and ear-) saver.
Ben Stiller was back with an elaborate makeup award introduction in which be entered as an Avatar blue creature, spouting verbiage that was part Navi and part Hebrew. At least he self-effacingly admitted that the bit “seemed like a better idea in rehearsals.”
It was 10:06 EST before Avatar won its first Oscar, for art direction, and Hurt Locker was already building momentum. By the time the best director category came up and Barbra Streisand came out to present it, you just knew that she was chosen because she would be announcing the first-ever woman to win it -- Bigelow.
There was an unnecessary and rather redundant montage of horror movies, another attempt by the Academy to seem more populist. Still, it could have easily been cut to save time.
Following on last year’s winning idea of having past actor winners talk about the current nominees, this year it was colleagues or co-stars of those in the running for the performance awards. Precious producer Oprah Winfrey for Gabourey Sidibe, Fabulous Baker Boys co-star Michelle Pfeiffer for Jeff Bridges. Nice and personal and rather touching.
Yes, Sandra Bullock won best actress for The Blind Side, marking a painful victory for likeability over acting achievement. (Didn’t any voters see Mirren in The Last Station?) So, as promised, I will submit my resignation to the Academy in protest, even though I’m not a member of the Academy. I did like Bullock’s speech, which began “Did I really earn this or did I wear you all down?” Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Sandy.
I didn’t think there were many surprises in the awards, but then I got 19 out of 24 right. (Curse you, short subjects!) Too bad that Up in the Air left the Kodak Theater empty-handed, but at least The Hurt Locker, another small, independent film won the top Oscar, despite the Academy’s attempt to manipulate the system towards bigger, more mainstream fare.
(A list of Sunday night's winners can be found on the official Oscar site.)
| 06 March 2010
A scene from The Hurt Locker.
And then there were 10.
No, not by a process of elimination, but by inflation. I’m talking about the new, probably not improved, look for the Academy Awards, with its revised voting dynamic for best picture. Not only are there 10 nominees for the top Oscar, but members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be ranking their 10 choices, with number one choices receiving 10points, the second getting nine and so forth.
According to the academy, this is all in the name of being more inclusive, but the reality is the desire to boost their slipping broadcast ratings for the broadcast ceremony. It airs live this Sunday night ( 8 p.m. on ABC-TV) and seems likely to drone on even more than usual with so many more nominees vying for airtime.
You can probably trace the genesis of this revised format to the snub two years ago of the mainstream commercial and critical hit, The Dark Knight. It got squeezed out by smaller, independent films which more fit the profile of best picture winners in recent years. Potential viewers were less involved in the ceremony without a big popular film to root for, and so they never bothered tuning in. In droves.
The best picture category this year is large enough to include the audience-friendly, but depressingly ordinary The Blind Side, the quirky, but unlikely-to-win District 9, and Pixar’s high-grossing, family fare Up, only the second animated film to be nominated for best picture. Up has no chance in this field, either, but its inclusion here means that it is a shoo-in for best animated feature, which it probably would have won anyway.
I am not a big fan of the Oscars, feeling that they select the wrong films and artists too much of the time, with votes cast for a variety of reasons other than excellence or achievement. Still, I would argue the purist line for the tradition of five best picture nominees rather than a watered-down list of 10.
We can expect this year’s show to get that ratings bump, but it will be due more to the presence of blockbuster Avatar, which has made more money (more than $700 million domestically, at the latest count) with a vast number of moviegoers have seen it, the main reason they will bother to tune in.
Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side.
For the first time since the first year of the Oscars, the show will be co-hosted, by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, an interesting odd couple that has generated added buzz. Do not expect the wit of the heydays when Billy Crystal was emceeing or even the charismatic success last year of Hugh Jackman, but the Baldwin and Martin team will probably not be dull.
To compensate for the extra time spent of the added Best Picture nominees, the word is that this year’s producer Adam Shankman (Hairspray) has eliminated the production numbers for each Best Song candidate. Sounds like a smart move, considering some of the tuneless nominees in recent years.
Even though there are 10 films in the running, this is really a two-horse race. In this corner is Goliath (the mega-successful science fiction yarn with landmark 3-D visuals, Avatar) and over there is David (the powerful Iraq War story made on a tight budget, The Hurt Locker). Mind you, whatever went up against Avatar would be cast as David, but even with its wide distribution, The Hurt Locker is at the bottom of the pack in attendance and box office.
Still, both films pulled in nine nominations and there is that wonderful tabloid match-up in the best director category between Avatar’s James Cameron and his ex-wife, Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow.
Expect Avatar to jump out ahead in the first hour of the broadcast. It really is a technical marvel that deserves to win most of the early awards, but if The Hurt Locker wrests a few away, like Sound Editing or Sound Mixing, it could be a big night for the small picture. I figure it to be close in statuette totals, but look for the best picture bragging rights to go to the Iraq War film.
In the acting categories, expect sentiment and likeability to win out over genuine performance achievement. Indications are that this is Sandra Bullock’s year to win (for the overrated The Blind Side), versus, say, the great Helen Mirren, so brilliant in the little seen The Last Station. Think of Bullock as this year’s Julia Roberts in the year she won for Erin Brockovich. It’s not much of an acting workout, but if Bullock is ever going to get an Oscar, it will be for this movie, so the Academy will rise up and say, “We like you, Sandy. We really like you.” (Do make a point of seeing Mirren in The Last Station. Please.)
Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.
The case for Jeff Bridges is pretty much the same, another industry favorite, but at least he is a four-time nominee and his performance as the alcoholic country-western singer is quite good, so he will win as best actor. If you want to see the best performance in this category, watch Colin Firth in A Serious Man. He had always been seen as a light comedy lightweight, and this work as a grieving gay professor should change all that.
In the supporting categories, there have been two performers who have swept the preliminary awards and had better have another acceptance speech in them. I’m talking about Mo’Nique in Precious and Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds. And it would be hard to argue that they are not extremely deserving.
Below is the full ballot of my picks. Yes, I have money riding on the outcome in a small pool among friends. If I do not win, you will not hear any more about it from me.
Hap's Oscar Predictions
Here are the probable winners at Sunday night’s Oscar ceremony, in my opinion at least:
* Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
* Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
* Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
* Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
* Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
* Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious
* Best Documentary Feature: The Cove
* Best Documentary Short: China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
* Best Animated Feature: Up
* Best Foreign Language Film: Un Prophète (France)
* Best Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker
* Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
* Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker
* Best Art Direction: Avatar
* Best Animated Short Film: A Matter of Loaf and Death
* Best Live Action Short Film: The New Tenants
* Best Visual Effects: Avatar
* Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria
* Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker
* Best Original Score: Up
* Best Original Song: The Weary Kind
* Best Makeup: Star Trek
| 28 February 2010
While we’ve been dedicated to reviewing the newest movies to hit theaters on a regular basis, we here at ArtsPaper know that most viewing is done at home these days. Many movies already debut on pay television concurrently with their theatrical release, and many quality films either don’t receive theatrical distribution or don’t play in the comparatively small South Florida market.
Quite simply, to ignore DVD is to ignore the future of cinema -- as sad as that may sound to purists like myself.
Every couple of weeks I’ll be looking at some of the most interesting DVDs to hit the shelves, focusing particularly on the ones that fly under Blockbuster’s radar. Here’s the first installment.
Hunger (Criterion Collection)
Release date: Feb. 16
Standard list price: $29.99
With art-film distribution shrinking and theater bookers growing increasingly unimaginative, Hunger is just the kind of movie destined to slip through the cracks. The hyperlimited release of this punishing British drama – in Palm Beach County, it played for one week at one theater – is a great shame. Hunger should have been an event movie, and in the auteur-valuing ‘70s, it would have shaken up the moviegoing mainstream. Thankfully, the Criterion Collection has helped cement Hunger as the masterpiece it is with a superlative DVD.
The debut feature from writer-director Steve McQueen (no relation to the late Hollywood tough guy), Hunger dramatizes the events leading up to, and culminating in, the 1981 hunger strike by imprisoned members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army against the Thatcher-led British government.
The prisoners, members of a paramilitary guerrilla organization, struck to attain political status, and they eventually did – after 10 strikers, led by Irish national hero Bobby Sands, starved themselves to death (Most of this is not explained in the film, and it may help to first look at the informative 1981 news program The Provos’ Last Card, which is included on the DVD as a supplement).
McQueen, a visual artist whose early shorts were projected onto art gallery walls, wanted viewers to feel fully immersed in the prison experience, and indeed, Hunger engages on an almost tactile level. McQueen’s camera glides poetically over the prisoners’ feces as it’s smeared into modern art on the concrete walls, their discarded food as it congeals into goulash in the cell corners and their urine as it’s poured under the doors toward janitorial extinction.
We then get a sense of the unconscionable abuse suffered at the hands of the prison guards, filmed with unflinching, cover-your-eyes authenticity. Heads are slammed into walls, and every orifice is probed. Attempts at prisoner retaliation yield only bloodier beatings. It looks uncompromisingly real.
McQueen accomplishes all of this with an economy of words as well an austerity of images. There’s almost no dialogue in the picture aside from its herculean theatrical centerpiece: a 23-minute conversation, filmed largely in a single-take long shot, between Sands (Michael Fassbender) and a Catholic priest (Liam Cunningham) who tries to persuade the angry inmate not to go through with the hunger strike.
When Sands finally does, in the movie’s final third, the results are even more harrowing. It’s a tour de force of dedication from Fassbender, whose emaciated frame begins to look exceedingly unhealthy until it’s all bloody cysts and saggy flesh on bones.
In the enlightening interview with McQueen included on the DVD, he calls the 1981 hunger strike the most important event in contemporary British history. But he never bogs the film down in political didacticism, letting the untraditional beauty of his images provide the message. McQueen treats us to a body’s physical deterioration with medical-school veracity and distance, leaving us angered and shaken to the core – more so than in almost any overtly political polemic.
A director poised to become an international arthouse darling, McQueen has already been tapped to film the story of another significant figure, African musician and activist Fela Kuti.
New999
$9.99 (E1 Entertainment)
Release date: Feb. 23
SLP: $22.49
The witty script and idiosyncratic insights of this feature from Israeli director Tatia Rosenthal are enough to carry it, and its stop-motion animation style will make it either doubly fascinating or frustratingly distracting, depending on each viewer’s disposition.
Nevertheless, $9.99 is a marvel of three-dimensional, deep-focus cinematography, and the film’s subject matter is no less ambitious than the meaning life, which can be found in a little boy’s piggy bank or a visit from a drunken angel as much as a $9.99 book on the topic. The story weaves together a mosaic of lonely characters mostly situated in the same apartment complex – from a brokenhearted stoner who imagines talkative Lilliputians on his turntable spindle to a single father dealing with the trauma of watching a homeless man shoot himself in front of him.
In the end, we may not understand the meaning of life, but we can appreciate that happiness can come in the strangest of packages. Anthony LaPaglia and Geoffrey Rush contribute voice acting to two of the characters.
BadGirls2
Bad Girls of Film Noir, Vols. 1 and 2 (Sony)
Release date: Feb. 9
SLP: $19.99 each
Women were never more dangerous or seductive than in classic films noir, and these two four-film compilations honor some of more obscure, and nastiest, femme fatales from noir’s heyday, 1946 to 1953. Each film is new to DVD, and while the designation of noir can be used a bit liberally (Bad for Each Other, with Charlton Heston as a returning Korean War vet, is more of a straight-up melodrama), these films provide deeper insight for noir fans who have already seen Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Heat and the other heavy hitters, and wish to delve further.
There are no major directors on any of these projects, but there are B stars galore, from Ida Lupino to Gloria Grahame to Cleo Moore. With titles like Women’s Prison and One Girl’s Confession, these are the kind of movies that probably can be judged by their covers, but that isn’t always a bad thing. Only a schlocky noir would christen a movie about a dame from the wrong side of the tracks who tries to go straight by learning photography with the title Over-Exposed. Gotta love that.
clint-eastwood
Clint Eastwood: 35 Films, 35 Years at Warner Brothers (Warner Home Video)
Release date: Feb. 16
SLP: $129.99
How much Clint is too much Clint? According to Warner Brothers, there is no such thing. This 19-disc collection comprises 34 movies Eastwood made for Warners – as actor, director or both – from 1968’s Where Eagles Dare to 2008’s Gran Torino. It includes a short film by critic Richard Schickel, who wrote the definitive biography on Eastwood, plus a 24-page booklet and rare correspondence and photos, packaged in a double-wide gift box.
Dirty Harry and its numerous inferior sequels are here, of course, as well as masterpieces like The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven and Mystic River. There’s also garbage in here; I’d pity the fool who braves the hackneyed waters of Firefox and The Rookie. But this set also includes underrated classics such as Bird, White Hunter Black Heart and A Perfect World.
Hopefully, a set like this will bring renewed interest to Eastwood works that have been unjustly ignored.
John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.
