Oscars – Page 3 – Ripple Effects

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

How many movies have inspired you to read the original book or story right after you’ve watched it? You might think of films like The Kite Runner, Atonement, or Away From Her. But a cowboy flick?

Yes, it sure did for me. And while I’m still looking for Elmore Leonard’s book Three-Ten to Yuma and other stories to read his short story, the source material for this film, I can’t wait to write the movie review. It’s also timely because of the recent release of the DVD.

This is one film that should have received a lot more attention at the Oscars. It got two nominations, one in Original Score, the other in Sound. Well it did get a nod from the Screen Actors Guild for an Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture nomination. It’s also a nominee for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Ben Foster) Satellite Awards. But if it’s being touted as the best Western since Unforgiven, then why aren’t there any more commotion? Anyway, I’m here to stir some ripples.

This is a modern remake of the highly acclaimed 1957 movie with Glenn Ford. I missed that one. This new version sees Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, Ben Foster and Peter Fonda join hands to create an action movie with a heart and mind. In a way, it’s one typical western, with gunslinging outlaws, headed by the notorious Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), aided by his despicable right-hand man Charlie Prince (Ben Foster), a defenceless cattleman (Christian Bale) and his family, and a few lawmen pathetically trying to enforce some sort of law and order.

I’m captivated by the riveting sequences and twists of the plot leading to the engrossing climax at the end. Anything typical is only a backdrop for the ultimate moral dilemma it sets up for its main characters. Basically it’s a duel of will and conscience for Crowe and Bale. 15 year-old Logan Lerman is right on a par with these two veteran actors.

The movie surprises me with the intense and deep depiction of psychological battles, internal conflicts, and moral choices one has to make in the face of life and death. Its fast action scenes, effective camera works and great acting from the whole cast mask the deeper issues the story is challenging us to ponder: What makes a man? What is the most important legacy a father can leave to a son? I say mask because you think you’re just watching, but actually you’re thinking. How we need this kind of movies these days. The poignant ending is what makes the film beautiful and rewarding.

From Jane Austen to Elmore Leonard…it’s all about life.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

The 80th Academy Awards

Just a few days to the Oscars and I still haven’t written my take on the grand event of the year. Let me catch up.

I’ve been asked about my view on the nominees. Having seen all of the movies in the Best Picture category, I’ve to admit my opinion may very well differ from other critics’. Case in point is No Country For Old Men, one of the two favorites to grab the Best Picture Oscar. I may well be ostracized for saying this, but I feel that the movie is way overrated. In this already dysfunctional and desensitized world of ours, why would we still need a 2-hour movie showing the dark and evil side of human by graphically depicting the deepest hell evil can raise through a psychotic killer let loose, introducing new ways of killing and getting away with it, on and on with no end in sight? I admit I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy’s book, maybe he’s more well-meaning than the film adaptation, having chosen William Butler Yeat’s line for his title.

Call me ‘traditional’ or ‘moralistic’, when I go to see a movie, I still look for something ‘wholesome’. Yes, I’ve long passed that stage when, as a child watching a movie, I would constantly be asking whether a character is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But now as a meaning-seeking adult, I still yearn for the ‘point’ of the film. Despite the chaotic world we’re so used to nowadays, I believe there still remains in us a vacuum that can be filled only by ideals transcendent and relationships meaningful. And film, being a visual form of communication, can be a powerful medium to express this kind of human quest. And that is one of my main criteria of a worthwhile piece of entertainment.

Ok, so here’s Arti’s take on the major categories. Who will win and who I’d like to see winning can be very different.

Best Picture: Even though No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are the critics’ favorites, I prefer Atonement.

Best Actor: While I haven’t seen Johnny Depp’s performance in Sweeney Todd, I think Daniel Day-Lewis has done an impressive job in There Will Be Blood and may well get to take home the golden statuette.

Best Actress: I’d love to see Julie Christie win another Oscars. The last time was more than 40 years ago, which I didn’t get to see. I think she well deserves another one with her performance in Away From Her.

Best Director: Although the favorite is the Coen Brothers for NCFOM, I’d like to see Julian Schnabel receiving it for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Best Adapted Screenplay: I have 3 favorites here, Atonement, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Away From Her. If I must choose one, I’d just wish to see lovely Sarah Polley winning it for Away From Her.

As much as I’ve enjoyed the movie Atonement, I don’t think it’ll grab the hearts of the voting members of the Academy. I can see it winning a couple in the minor categories like Best Costume, Best Art Direction, Best Music (Score), and hopefully Best Cinematography.

And, with all the rave Canada is making about Juno, and I’m glad to see it receive 4 major nominations, Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, I’ve a feeling that the ‘Little Miss Sunshine episode’ may not be repeated this year. And, if I’m right, let’s just say getting these 4 Oscar nods is already phenomenal for so young an ensemble.

Click on ‘Movies Reviewed’ above to read my reviews on some of this year’s Oscar Nominees.

And…let’s occupy ourselves with meaningful endeavors to pass these three long days of anticipation…

Away From Her Movie Review

Update March 4: Away From Her won 7 Genie Awards last night in Toronto, Canada. Among them are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

In light of all the awards Julie Christie is garnering in this Awards Season, first winning the Best Actress Golden Globe, then getting an Oscar nod, and just now winning the Screen Actors Guild’s Best Actress Award all for her role in Away From Her, plus director Sarah Polley’s Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, I’m re-posting here my review of the movie I wrote 8 months ago in May, 2007. For those who missed the movie released in theatres last year, it’s timely to read the review and watch the DVD of this beautiful Canadian film, in preparation for the Oscars coming up February 24, 2008.

Away From Her

Away From Her (2006)–How can you turn a good short story onto the screen without compromising its quality? … By turning it into a screenplay written by an equally sensitive and passionate writer, and then, through her own talented, interpretive eye, re-creates it into a visual narrative. Along the way, throw in a few veteran actors who are so passionate about what the script is trying to convey that they themselves embody the message. Such ‘coincidents’ are all happening in the movie Away From Her.

Sarah Polley has made her directorial debut with a most impressive and memorable feat that I’m sure things will go even better down her career path. What she has composed on screen speaks much more poignantly than words on a page, calling forth sentiments that we didn’t even know we had. As Alzheimer’s begins to take control over Fiona, what can a loving husband do? Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent stir up thoughts in us that we’d rather bury: how much are we willing to give up for love, or, how would we face the imminence of our loved ones’ and our own mental and physical demise.

Based on the story by Alice Munro, ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’, Polley brings out the theme of unconditional love not with your typical Hollywood’s hot, young, and sexy on screen, but aging actors in their 60’s and 70’s. It may not be as pleasurable to watch wrinkled faces hugging and kissing, or a man and a woman in bed, bearing age spots and all, but such scenes effectively beg the question: why feel uncomfortable?

Why does love has to be synonymous with youth, beauty, and romance? It is even more agonizing to watch how far Grant is willing to go solely for love of Fiona. Lucky for us, both writers spare us the truly painful at the end. It is through persistent, selfless giving that one ultimately receives; and however meager and fleeting that reward may seem, it is permanence in the eyes of love. And it is through the lucid vision of a youthful 27-year-old writer/director that such ageless love is vividly portrayed….Oh, the paradoxes in life.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

***

The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007)

DivingBellAndTheButterfly

Update Feb. 23: Julian Schnabel just won the Best Director Trophy and Janusz Kaminski the Best Cinematographer at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica today.

Update Feb. 11: Ronald Harwood just won the Best Adapted Screenplay at the BAFTA (British Academy for Film and Television Arts) Awards in London last night.

Director Julian Schnabel is an established New York artist/painter. Adhering to the ‘neo-expressionist’ style, his work has been exhibited at galleries around the world. In The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Schnabel has turned into a master of realism as he vividly captures the traumatic experience of Jean-Dominique Bauby, not with a paintbrush, but with the potent use of the camera.

Jean-Do Bauby was the Editor-In-Chief of Elle magazine in France. At the age of 43 he suffered a stroke. His whole body was paralyzed except his left eye. He became a sufferer of a rare condition of “locked-in syndrome”: while he was able to comprehend what others were saying to him, he could not communicate with them. As if trapped inside a diving bell deep in the ocean tethered to life by a single chord, he was encased in his own body, completely isolated from the outside world.

With the help of his speech therapist Henriette in the hospital, Bauby learned to use what was left in his ability: the blinking of his left eye. With this minimal movement, he opened up a portal of his inner world. By painstakingly blinking to select the letters of the alphabet, Bauby was able to dictate to his therapist his memoir, completed a few days before his death. This film is the visualization of the book. To read my review and excerpts of the book, click here.

Imagine watching a movie with blurry camera work, frames cutting off the full head of people, and sometimes camera angle so close-up to a face you feel suffocated, …blurry shots, indefinitive dialogues…This is the realism of Julian Schnabel, the film director. He wants the viewer to look out from the left eye of Jean-Do Bauby.

Fortunately viewers are spared lengthy display of such realism, because in the memory of Bauby’s past experiences and in his imagination, we are able to see sharply focused and beautiful scenes… reality may be blurry and shaky, memories and dreams are clear as crystal.

From the artist eye of Julian Schnabel, to the blinking eye movement of Jean-Do Bauby, the film captures the poignant struggle of a human striving to live every single minute of everyday. It depicts the power of the mind and spirit, the humor that sustains, the painful yearning for love and intimacy, the daily human condition magnified a thousand times due to debilitation, the whole physical being tethered on the blinking of an eye and the inner searching of a soul alive.

Mathieu Amalric has a demanding role to play as the paralyzed Bauby, for his whole acting is confined to his one left eye. I must say he has done a remarkably engrossing and convincing feat.

Marie-Josée Croze (Best Actress at Cannes for The Barbarian Invasions, 2003), by taking up the role as therapist Henriette Durand, has the equally demanding task of looking into the camera and reciting the French alphabets numerous times, and each time, with passion, pathos, and persistence, each time transmitting a new beginning, a new hope.

Max von Sydow (with film credits too numerous to mention), the veteran actor playing the role of Bauby’s 92 year-old father, equally shut-in, yet ever alive in spirit, the only character seeping sentiments, however restrained. It is exactly because of such restraints that pathos gets through.

And Emmanuelle Seigner, the ex-wife of Bauby, the mother of his three children, the keeper of memory, creator of new experiences, and the butterfly for the soul trapped in the diving bell. A marvellous character.

Very poignant acting, a very dynamic and powerful movie, and, despite its subject matter, an uplifting film for every living, breathing, and feeling soul.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is nominated for 4 Oscars: Best Cinematography, Best Directing, Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay. For the full list of Oscar Nominees, click here.

~ ~ ~ ½ Ripples

Canadian Content at the Oscars

Ellen Page

Sarah Polley

Update Feb. 25: Diablo Cody won the Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars last night. To read my Oscar Results post, click here.

Update Feb. 23: Juno just won the Best Feature trophy at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica today. Ellen Page won the Best Actress Award and Diablo Cody won the Best First Screenplay Award. To read my Independent Spirit Awards post, click here.

I’m glad to see some significant Canadian representation in this year’s Oscars Nominations:

Toronto’s Sarah Polley, the now 29 year-old director of Away From Her, getting the nod for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Ellen Page, the 20 year-old Juno star from Halifax, Nova Scotia, for Best Actress.
Jason Reitman, Montreal-born director of Juno for Best Director.
The film Juno, directed by a Canadian, starring two young Canadians Ellen Page and Michael Cera, and filmed in B.C. getting a Best Motion Picture nomination. (Even though it isn’t classified as a Canadian film due to its American producer Fox Searchlight)
Of course, others like directors David Cronenberg (Eastern Promises) and Paul Haggis (In The Valley of Elah) both have Canadian roots.

To read my review of Juno and Away From Her, just click on the movie title. (Update: To read my review on Ellen Page’s new movie Smart People ( 2008 ), click on the title.)

Also, while some call 2007 “Oscar’s Year of the Man”, it is all the more exhilarating to see the two young Canadian females Ellen Page and Sarah Polley acknowledged in a very male-dominated industry in the U.S.

Who cares what country they’re from, you may ask. Well, I do, because I once had to correct someone who strongly believed that Michael Ondaatje, the writer of The English Patient (1996), was an American author. And for that matter, just for clarification, Sarah Polley’s screenplay of Away from Her is adapted from Canadian writer Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over The Mountain”. And, watch for another Canadian literary icon Margaret Laurence’s novel now being turned into film, The Stone Angel (2007), also with Ellen Page.

Just a little clarification, Canada is more than just Margaret Atwood.

Congratulations Julie Christie!

Julie Christie

Update Jan. 28: Julie Christie has just won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress for her role in Away From Her last night in L.A. Congratulations again!

Update Jan. 22: Julie Christie has just been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Away From Her, and Sarah Polley for Best Adapted Screenplay. Sarah: Dreams do come true! For a full list of Oscar Nominees, click here.

A glamourless Globe for Best Actress (Drama) went to Julie Christie, how fitting! A no-nonsense recognition for some no-nonsense acting for her role as Alzheimer sufferer Fiona in Sarah Polley’s Away From Her.

Once described by Al Pacino as “the most poetic of all actresses” Julie Christie’s movies have been cinematic icons of an era: Darling (1965), Doctor Zhivago (1966), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), The Go-Between (1970)…Yet, at 66, she has downplayed her achievement and shunned the attraction of fame and celebrity.

Christie has long avoided the glitz and glamour of stardom, appearing in only a selectively few films, evading the limelight that could have been hers. In an interview with the New York Times last year at the release of Away From Her, she was asked about her name as a legend. Christie responded: “I have no connection with that person at all…that person has gone.”

The British actress could have it all, if she had embraced such a life, but she chose to devote her time and passion to social activism and political causes. Living almost reclusively away from the public eye for the past decades, Julie Christie just might not show up at the Golden Globe ceremony even if there were one.

…but then, she probably would though, for her young Canadian friend Sarah Polley. Christie wouldn’t want to miss the chance of bringing honor to Polley’s directorial debut, having met her while filming No Such Thing (2000) together.

Polley wrote the screenplay Away From Her, based on Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”. As she was writing, she had in mind Julie Christie and Canadian veteran actor Gordon Pinsent playing Fiona and Grant. At first, expectedly, Christie turned her down. But finally, Polley’s persistence over the years paid off. At 28, Polley was inspired enough to pull together two veterans in their 60’s and 70’s to make a film about old age, love, loss, and Alzheimer.

Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley once said about Away From Her in an interview:

“I don’t’ think that there’s any chance that I would get nominated. I mean I really hope that the actors have a shot at it …it would be such a dream come true if they were acknowledged…”

In a recent interview with The Toronto Globe and Mail, Polley felt ‘strange’ and ‘surreal’ about the recognition the $4.5 million production has received.

Of course she was delighted with Christie’s win, she also added:

“If there’s any note of reluctance on my part – of not enjoying all of this fully – is that Gordon’s performance is also stunning … and I just don’t want his work in the film to be undervalued.”

Ooh…it’s satisfying seeing the humble exalted…To both Julie Christie and Sarah Polley, Congratulations! I hope to see more nominations and awards coming your way at the Oscars.

Juno (2007)

Update Feb. 23: Juno just won the Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica today. Ellen Page won Best Actress and Diablo Cody the Best First Screenplay.

Update Feb.11: Diablo Cody just won the Best Original Screenplay for Juno at the BAFTA (British Academy for Film and Television Arts) Awards last night in London.

Update Jan. 22: Juno has just been nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay.

Just 13 days into the New Year and we’ll have the 65th Golden Globe Awards…so little time for so many movies to watch before then. But, I’m glad I got a glimpse of a few of the nominees and I’ve to say, so far, my time well spent.

By now, Juno is no surprise. This little indie film has been nominated for Best Picture (Comedy or Musical) by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for a Golden Globe. Not bad for the young cast led by Canadian actress Ellen Page from Halifax and Michael Cera of Arrested Development fame, to be up against Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts of Charlie Wilson’s War, or for first time screenwriter Diablo Cody getting the Best Screenplay nod. That she has already won 6 awards for Juno could well lead her way into the Oscars.

The pleasant surprise about Juno is not just the stylish motion graphics in the opening title sequence, the hip music and witty dialogues, the affable characters, or the teenage culture it depicts, but the implicit message this film is getting across. Director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking, 2005) has again created another social commentary, but this time, making a more powerful and affective statement.

Juno is a 16 year-old high school girl, very forthcoming, very lively, very self-assuring, and…very pregnant. What she intends to do about her predicament and how her Dad and stepmom react form the backbone of the story. And…what a fresh and welcoming perspective the plot brings to the screen in this day and age. I’d say, a very brave movie indeed. In the story, the young characters may not have their act together, at least they have the fundamental element to deal with their situation, their genuine humanity, and their respect for life.

In contrast, the character that Jason Reitman (Arrested Development, The Kingdom, 2007) plays shows that adults may still need to grow up, or, that the road to maturity is a life-long journey. Let’s not judge so quickly…

A heart-warming and pleasant movie for the new year. No, it’s not promoting teenage pregnancy, but a viable alternative and a very humane solution to the problem. In an imperfect world, a close to perfect scenario.

~ ~ ~ Ripples