Posts Tagged ‘Academy Award’

  
Saturday, September 12th, 2009

Soundtrack Saturday: “American Beauty”

by Kelly Stitzel

It’s been Beatles week here at Popdose, but I’m not going to write about any of the Beatles’ movies. Nor am I going to write about any of the movies that are soundtracked using all Beatles songs or Beatles covers (I did really want to write about 1976’s cover-filled All This and World War II, but I’ve never actually seen the movie, and it’s not available anywhere). Instead, I’m writing about a movie that contains one Beatles cover by one of my favorite artists, whose untimely death was one of the tragedies of my music-loving life.

American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes’s directorial debut, turns ten this year. It also happens to be the first film I’ve written about for this column that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I saw it in the theater twice — once with a friend and once with my mom — and I was truly blown away by it at the time. I don’t think the plot was necessarily what did it for me, though Alan Ball did write a fantastic script, for which he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

The best part about the movie for me was the performances. I think every actor playing a major role in American Beauty was amazing (though I was less impressed with Mena Suvari, I have to admit). And while I was rooting for Richard Farnsworth to win Best Actor in 2000 for his beautiful performance in The Straight Story, I do think Kevin Spacey deserved the award. I’ve seen American Beauty on a lot of “most overrated films” lists, and while it no longer has the same impact as it did ten years ago, I still love it.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Featured, Featured - Frontpage, Film, Soundtrack Saturday | Comments

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

DVD Review: “Milk” and “Slumdog Millionaire”

by Jeff Giles

Milk (2009, Focus Features/Universal)
purchase this film from Amazon: DVD | Blu-ray

For any film fan, there’s no pleasure quite as distinctive as sitting down to watch a new movie from a director you know you can not only trust, but whose work boasts its own distinctive visual style. The advent of digital film and the increasingly corporate culture of the major studios have helped weed a lot of the more idiosyncratic directors out of the system, but there are always at least a few of them on the landscape, and 2008 saw new releases from three of them: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight), Gus Van Sant (Milk), and Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire). As luck would have it, all three of them were sizable hits, and all of them earned some measure of attention from the Academy during Oscar season. TDK has been out on DVD and Blu-ray for some time now, and by the end of March, both Milk and Slumdog will have joined it on the home market.

Milk, the Sean Penn-led biopic of trailblazing San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, reached store shelves on the 10th, just in time for the last bit of Oscar buzz to give the Best Picture contender a boost on the sales and rental charts. Penn, of course, earned an Academy Award for his portrayal of Milk, and for good reason — as is his wont, Penn doesn’t play the character so much as he inhabits him, disappearing inside Milk’s distinctive mannerisms and New York accent — even his hairstyle — until you no longer really see him. Penn’s near-exclusive focus on serious roles is easy to mock, and I certainly wouldn’t complain if he pulled another Spicoli out of his bag before he’s through, but there’s no denying he does excellent work. For an actor this well-known to vanish inside a public figure as iconic as Milk requires truly impressive actorly prestidigitation.

Penn got most of the attention, but Milk’s biggest asset is probably Van Sant’s eye; his restless camera meshes well with the archival footage used in the film, and the saturated, bleached-out look he uses helps the movie retain an uncommon degree of warmth for what is, ultimately, a garden-variety biopic with a stellar pedigree. Harvey Milk is an American hero, and Van Sant does an admirably nimble job of retracing his steps from cautiously closeted New York professional to political firebrand, but he never really gets inside Milk the way Penn does; no matter how beautifully filmed and performed they are, the details of Milk’s life still feel like points on a curve. Van Sant’s camera entranced me, and his stellar cast (which also includes Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, and James Franco, all of whom turn in wonderful performances) impressed me, but Milk rarely moved me; for a truly heavyweight look back at the man, I’d still recommend Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in DVD Reviews | Comments

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

DVD Review: “Ironweed”

by Bob Cashill

Siskel and Ebert went two thumbs up on Ironweed in 1987, but most other reviewers joined audiences and went thumbs down, way down, on this adaptation of William Kennedy’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner, which is only now making its DVD debut. I decided to take a second look to see if it had improved with age. No dice.

It’s an honorable failure—but, still, a failure. In this it’s not unlike Blindness, which I previously reviewed on the site. Both are taken from contemporary literary classics, and both are directed, as it happens, by South Americans abroad: Ironweed was Argentine Hector Babenco’s followup to Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), for which he was an Academy Award nominee. Lust for Oscar gold was no doubt a factor in both productions, and Ironweed, at least, came close, as its two stars, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, were nominated. I suspect the actors, who became friends on the set of Heartburn the previous year, put their feet up at the Shrine Civic Auditorium and had a good time, confident that they had done their best but knowing they hadn’t a chance at winning given the movie’s tepid reception.

For them, it was a riches-to-rags story, removed from the posh Manhattan of the Mike Nichols comedy-drama to the doleful Depression-era Albany of Ironweed, where they’re alcoholic tramps. Kennedy’s capital-set novels, which include Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game and Very Old Bones, are terrific reads, but if there was ever a movie in Ironweed, Kennedy, who adapted, didn’t find it. (There was a movie, a good one, in another of his upstate novels, the gangster portrait Legs, which may have gotten him his only other screenwriting credit to date, The Cotton Club.)

The synopsis supplied by the DVD distributor, Lionsgate, pretty much hangs a “Keep Away” sign over the production. “Francis Phelan (Nicholson), a drunken former baseball player is running away from life and the painful, guilty memories that haunt him. Helen Archer (Streep) is Francis’ longtime girlfriend and partner in drink. Together they lament the misery of life and ponder their tragic pasts, hoping to find a way to free themselves from their troubled lives. Told in a series of drunken flashbacks, Ironweed is a dark portrait of Depression-era hopelessness and a searing character-driven drama.” Ponderings of miserable lives, dark portraits, drunken flashbacks…and did I mention it’s 143 minutes long? Tumbleweeds were blowing in theaters stuck with Ironweed. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in DVD Reviews | Comments

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

No Concessions: Academy Awards Night

by Bob Cashill and Scott Malchus

storagecanoecaEven if you don’t like what the Academy Awards represent–those questionable nominees, that PR flackery, all the “industry” sanctimony–it’s more than possible to enjoy the show itself. Didn’t we all kind of grow up with it? I watched it with mom, in college, in Hong Kong, Italy, and San Jose, CA, with my Oscar posse in Manhattan and now in Brooklyn, with my family (not that I kept my infant daughter up).

For me, 2008 stretched from 6:30pm EST and the first red carpet roundup on ABC (Phoebe Cates, in red, was the premiere star sighting, if she and husband Kevin Kline still rate in the firmament), through Barbara Walters’ 28th pre-show special (with Barbara chatting up the Jonas Brothers on purity, Anne Hathaway on her state of mind–”happy”–Mickey Rourke on suicide, and getting a lap dance from show host Hugh Jackman), a second, official red carpet roundelay with the A-listers (tip: Wear Chopard, win an Oscar) and onto the show, a promised “new look” Oscars. Just under midnight, Oscar’s 81st was (finally!) one for the books. I swapped a few thoughts with Scott (Kung Fu Panda) Malchus, who began with this as we move semi-chronologically, Reader-style, through the evening:

Scott Malchus: When I was a child, I loved Academy Awards night (it was a Monday back then). I was one of the many who dreamed of someday holding one of those gold statues and thanking all of the people I knew, etc. (BC: It can still happen, Slumdog. Thank me from the podium.) Something happened in the late ’90s when these awards lost some of their glamor to me. It was probably around the time that Harvey Weinstein was campaigning the shit out of Shakespeare in Love that I realized that these awards weren’t so much about quality, but about marketing. Convince enough people that your movie is the best and they’ll probably vote for it, even if they haven’t seen the movie. Each year since my kids have been born, I take less interest in the awards to the point that I completely forgot when the nominations were announced this year.

Of course, one of the things that existed when I was younger that doesn’t now is the mystery of who might actually win. With so many award shows, anyone can follow the trends and easily predict who will win. That said, there always seems to be one or two upsets in the major categories, usually the Supporting Actor/Actress slot. I hope that holds true this year, too. (BC: There were exactly two upsets, but not there.)

Bob Cashill: Well, we made it through the ABC Red Carpet segment, which you deemed “atrocious.” (Wear Chopard next year and see how you feel.) You’re jazzed about the hard-working Michael Giacchino finding time from Lost to act as musical director. I’ve interviewed David Rockwell a few times about his set design work, and as we move on in I like what he’s done, giving the space a cooler, more intimate nightclub feel–but I’m not sure about what they’ve put up there on center stage. It’s not Hugh Jackman–he’s a consummate pro–but it didn’t quite come off. Not an Allan Carr disaster, but not a slam dunk, either, for the “new look” Oscars. (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in No Concessions | Comments

Monday, February 16th, 2009

DVD Review: “Inside Moves”

by Scott Malchus

512b5ioyesl_sl500_aa240_A young man named Roary enters a high rise building and takes the elevator to the top floor. Walking through the halls with the confidence of someone who belongs there, he seems to escape notice. In an empty conference room, he opens a window and, in a long, silent moment filled with dread and and almost grace, Roary leaps. His body smashes into a parked car and he’s rushed to the hospital. So begins Inside Moves, the 1980 film directed by Richard Donner (The Omen, Superman, Lethal Weapon) that is now finally finding a home on DVD.

John Savage stars as Roary, whom, we learn through the opening credit sequence, damaged one of his legs permanently in the fall. Upon his hospital release, Roary takes up residence in a cheap hotel. Depressed and bored, he goes out for a drink and wanders into Max’s, a dive bar that caters to society’s outcasts, including Stinky (Bert Remsen), who is blind, Blue Lew (Bill Henderson), who is confined to a wheelchair, and Wings (Academy Award winner Harold Russell), who wears prosthetic arms. These three men spend their days drinking the swill Max gives them, playing cards and sharing stories. There’s a lot of laughter and voices raised, but all in fun. The guys immediately take Roary in as the stray he is and become his family. When Roary reveals he’s crippled in one leg because of his failed suicide attempt,, Stinky rubs the back of his head to comfort him. It’s the first of many moments when the movie grabs your emotions and makes you look past the Hollywood conventions of Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin’s screenplay.

The most significant person Roary meets in the bar is Jerry, the young, lanky bartender who has dreams of becoming a pro basketball player. Only problem is, Jerry has a bum knee that needs an operation. Jerry is also in a dead-end relationship with a heroin addict who prostitutes herself for smack. Any money he tries to save to get that operation ends up going to support his girlfriend because he thinks he can save her. Jerry is wrong. A very young David Morse plays this role. You may recognize him from St. Elsewhere, The Green Mile, or the countless number of recent movies in which he’s cast as the heavy (like Donner’s recent 16 Blocks). Roary and Jerry become fast friends and after a chance pickup game against a pro player named Alvin Martin (Harold Sylvester), they are convinced that Jerry could go all the way someday.  (more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in DVD Reviews | Comments