Some quick thoughts on this morning’s nominations…
Best Picture – 9 films, wow. I called 6. Extremely Loud and War Horse haven’t been on my ‘must see’ list, but now I feel obligated…
Best Actor – Gary Oldman, it’s about damn time!!!!! (yes I’m biased, been a fan for decades before he played Commissioner Gordon).
Best Actress – The Globes have made this more interesting than we thought it would be. Viola or Streep? I guess we’ll see…
Best Supporting Actor – Very eclectic list, I just got around to seeing Warrior last week so it’s nice to see people remembered this movie and Nick Nolte.
Best Supporting Actress – Pleasantly surprised for Melissa McCarthy, she really did steal Bridesmaids out from under a great cast of comediennes.
Best Director – What a list!!!! And the crazy thing is the favorite is the only name who’s not already a Hall of Famer!
Best Screenplay – Combining the two categories to ask the question, will Woody show up for a group of his most loyal fans?
So the last thing I did this weekend was go out and see Red Tails for myself. I thought it was cool; not the ‘savior’ for black cinema but also definitely not anything that set ‘the movement’ back a hundred years. The box office numbers came in well, which I think was the one thing everyone who had an investment in this film really wanted in the first place.
Whether you want to point the finger at Lucas or not, one thing I will say is that it’s been awhile since I’ve seen so many people express an opinion about a black film before it was released. As I told a friend today, the ‘conversation’ this film produced has been as worthwhile as the film itself. So now that the dust has settled so to speak, where do we go from here? Let’s pick apart some of the things that came up.
‘The future of black cinema is/was at stake.’ Um, no. My cynical side has to answer this one, but (like most Hollywood movies), anything short of record breaking numbers just means we’ll eventually get back to the status quo. Which means the next ‘big budget’ Hollywood film about black folks will come out…whenever another billionaire with a heart of gold decides to finance one. If I can go full Devil’s Advocate on you, I could make the same argument about nearly every decent drama, every film with a female protagonist that isn’t a romantic comedy, and on and on. The system as it is currently setup is Franchise/Tentpole or Bust. Before the screening I went to, there were trailers for the next Tyler Perry film and Battleship. Yes, ‘You sank my Battleship!’ Battleship. It’s the world we live in.
So does that mean the audience should give up? Not at all. Actually, in some ways the game has gotten better. I remember when ‘Daughters of the Dust’ came out, I heard about for a few years before, and eventually, my public library had a copy that I was able to check out. Conversely, thanks to these here interwebs, when a black project has great word of mouth (like the Awkward Black Girl series that I was late to the party on but enjoyed), we have YouTube and KickStarter to view and support the projects we want to see almost instantly. As a result of the system going in more of a corporate direction, the next group of filmmakers are coming out of the gate saying “Eff it!” I know there’s no way you’ll develop a film like Pariah, so we’ll find our own means to make it and get it to the masses. Like everything else in life, Hollywood goes in cycles, and there are more than a few signs to suggest we’re about to have a redo of that early 90s feel: ’We’re telling our stories for our audiences, Hollywood can make all the crap movies they want’.
So I guess we’ll all see where it goes from here. Oscar nominations come out in the morning, this discussion may continue sooner as opposed to later…
So like a lot of you, I’m getting geared up to see Red Tails in a couple of weeks. To get my mind ready for that, I went on Netflix Instant this weekend and rewatched A Soldier’s Story for the first time in what must have been 2o years. The trailers already let us know that in terms of action sequences there’s not going to be a contest between the two films. But as far as story goes…the jury is going to be out for a few more weeks. I never wrote about this really good film when I did this blog’s signature list a couple of years back, but it’s never too late to do an honorable mention breakdown. You can search the blog if you aren’t aware/forgot what the five categories stand for:
Relevance: The film is about a black captain going down to Louisiana during World War II to do an investigation of the murder of another black officer, most likely by the Ku Klux Klan. Need I say more?
Legacy: Men of Honor is a great film, and I have a soft spot for Cadence (Oh don’t you know, that’s the sound of the man, working on the chain…ga-a-ang!), but I can’t look at Red Tails without looking at A Soldier’s Story as a direct descendant with its period story and primarily black male cast. Is there a Denzel Washington, a David Alan Grier, a Howard Rollins, a Robert Townsend in the movie about to come out? Could be; time will tell I guess.
Craft: I named four black actors and there’s another five faces you know in this movie as ‘That Guy’ even if you would have to look up their names. The film is based on an off Broadway play, and there’s enough A game in this film to replace the actors who were replaced from the Broadway production.
Crossover: Not much. To this day this is one of those, by us for us films.
Apollo: Outside of the references to the Negro Leagues that definitely went over my head as a kid, I completely forgot Patti LaBelle was in this movie. Doing Patti LaBelle things. And yes, that’s a compliment.
So we’re all on to Red Tails in a couple weeks. The standard has been estabished…
I heard a lot of mild criticism when J. Edgar came out so I didn’t have my hopes real high when I finally got a chance to see it. It’s not a bad film by any means, but against the best work of either Clint Eastwood or Leonardo DiCaprio, this film definitely falls into both men’s second tier.
The film tells the story of the rise of the F.B.I. and its controversial figurehead, J. Edgar Hoover. This film isn’t an action flick by any stretch, so the sections about the Bureau (like the Lindbergh case) aren’t dramatically interesting until a third act revelation. Like most character studies, this film revolves around the relationship the main character has with others. In this case it’s Hoover’s relationship with his mother (an icy Judi Dench), and his ‘right hand man’ at the Bureau (played by Armie Hammer). The real Hoover was supposedly a closeted homosexual, and where Eastwood’s film really shines is in exploring both why J. Edgar was repressed in his sexuality and even more telling, how living a secret life possibly opened the door to an obsession with other people’s secrets. If you want to go all the way with it, does selling the world on one big lie make it easier to sell others (including yourself) on a hundred other smaller lies over the course of a lifetime? It’s an interesting thought.
You can add me to the chorus of those who think Leo was miscast in this role, but can’t say it was a bad business decision. Even with Clint’s pedigree, I doubt Warners would have signed off on Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the title character (but that would have been something!)
I went into Hugo with literally no expectations. It was a Scorsese picture, but definitely not a typical “Martin Scorsese’ picture. It’s a 3D film (bleh) but Hugo is a complete family film (by far the best use for that technology in my opinion). I came out of Hugo not overwhelmed, but pleasantly surprised that the film I thought I walked into 5 minutes in, morphed into something more ambitious by the time I walked out.
An orphan boy lives in a train station and keeps the clocks tuned. He’s constantly at odds and on the run from a local shopkeeper (played by Ben Kingsley) who accuses him of theft, and a beat cop (played with subtle humor by Sasha Baron Cohen) whose trying to send him straight to the orphanage. The story of how these various men (and others) relate to and are connected to each other is charming, and another tribute to the master storytelling ability of Scorsese. Like any of us have doubted that ability for the past 30 years!
Without giving away the plot points that I didn’t know about walking in, I will say it’s interesting to wonder if this is the direction Scorsese may be going next. The Departed got him his Oscar but to me that’s not even among his top 3 crime films; recently he’s done more documentaries which are nice change of pace pieces. Is ‘Marty’ going to take a cue from his buddy DeNiro and start doing more family friendly fare? Hmm, don’t know how I feel about that but I guess we’ll see.
Regardless Hugo is a nice film that at the moment seems to be stuck in a year (or an awards season at least) of several high quality films. I guess we’ll see where it lands…
First off, hope everyone had a nice New Year. Now let’s get back to business…
As I watched Midnight in Paris, I appreciated the irony of this particular story. A writer who spends quite a bit of time daydreaming about his idols finds a time warp that allows him to hang out with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and company. Some people have been hyping this film as Woody Allen’s best film in years (I disagree). But I will say this film more closely ‘feels’ like Woody’s most celebrated films (such as Annie Hall and Manhattan) than anything he’s made recently. So I wonder how many of the critics who’ve fawned over the film are overly nostalgic themselves for the Woody Allen films of the 70s and 80s? Is he making a comment about his own career arc and fan base? I don’t think so actually but it’s a sign of respect for the man that I’m even thinking about it and throwing it out there.
Led by Owen Wilson in the ‘Woody’ role, and featuring a stacked supporting cast including Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, and Adrien Brody, the thing I took away the most from Midnight is that Woody still has ‘it.’ I know a lot of film lovers, but I know very few (I think) who still plan to be active when they get to Woody’s age, let alone put out high quality work. That statement alone makes the film worth watching.
So 99 times out of 100 when I’m sent sides (an audition script), I can look at the product as a whole, look at where the character fits into the story, and build something from the ground up. But there was one screen test I did this year where I had to do things a little differently…
2Pac.
When I first heard about the project (when Antoine Fuqua was still attached), I was actually aiming for the part of Mopreme, one of Pac’s older relatives who in the story (real and fictional) acted as his conscience. Then word went out that there was an open call for the title role, and they wanted an ‘unknown’. To be truthful, I was still a little hesitant (since at this point I’m older than Pac was when he was murdered), but after a few ‘Fuck That!’ conversations and reminders that every biopic I like uses this rare technique known as ‘makeup’, I decided to go in.
So now it’s a question of craft. Creating a completely original character is one type of challenge. But how do you create a character that based off a real person whose own persona is iconic in its own right? We all know what Pac looked like, we know how he sounded when he talked, how he sounded when he rapped. If you do a pitch perfect impersonation, you’re seen as an impersonator and not an actor. But you stray too far away from the public persona, and you’re rejected for not being ‘accurate’ or ‘realistic’. This is why playing real people, living or dead, is generally seen as the greater challenge.
So the sides went out and as a 2Pac fan I recognized it instantly from my teenage years. You have to take me at my word when I say I didn’t rewatch this until after I did my screen test:
So I learned the words, thought about the emotions behind them (frustration) and made some choices. Part two of the screen test was doing any Pac song that we liked. The choice I made in that regard was to stay away from his best known videos, where again we all have an established ‘visual’ performance to go with the lyrics. I lucked out a little since my favorite Pac song doesn’t have the ‘iconic’ video to go with it.
So my last gift for you this year, my loyal readers, is the screen test I did for ‘Tupac’. You can judge for yourself if the choices I made ‘worked’ or if I could’ve gone farther with it. I heard John (Singleton) is calling the shots now, so if you’ll excuse me I have to go butter up one of my fellow Trojans.
The Christmas weekend is upon us, and African-American Short Films (featuring Lady In My Life) will be showing this weekend in some of my favorite cities to visit:
Louisville Station: WKYI / IND Date: 12/23 Time: 11:00PM
Alexandria, LA Station: KALB / NBC Date: 12/24 Time: 12:00PM
As far as book to film translations go, Moneyball is an entertaining movie that keeps the spirit of the book. ’How does a small market team compete/win in the imbalanced world of modern baseball?’ Brad Pitt produces and stars as Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s GM who ‘revolutionized’ the game by incorporating new math formulas into figuring out how to build a good baseball team for little to no money.
Now, that plot description is not remotely cinematic; what the film does well is frame the story as a forward thinking man (Beane and his mathematical genius sidekick played by a still portly Jonah Hill) who comes up against friction at every turn. The old school scouts whose years of expertise are being thrown out; the players who have been conditioned to believe they’re washed up, Beane’s own self doubt at knowing this is his ‘last chance’ to make something of himself. I’m enough of a sports fan to know (SPOILER ALERT) the Oakland Athletics haven’t won a World Series in this timeframe. I won’t ruin where the film ends, but I thought it was satisfying.
So does that make it a good film? It is. But like making a crime film, the bar is impossibly high for what makes a ‘great sports film’. During the Q&A after the screening I attended, someone asked the filmmakers how they felt their baseball film stacked up against Field of Dreams or 61*. Whether you feel the question was a little rude or not, the filmmakers said they only focused on making the film they were making (good answer). And the film they made was entertaining.
I’ll say this upfront; I won’t be remotely surprised if this wins Best Picture next year. It’s not exactly a genre, but Hollywood loves a well done film about ‘the making of Hollywood’. Sunset Boulevard, Singin in the Rain, and the list goes on. ”The Artist” makes fairly direct references to these and other films. That’s not meant to be a slight at all; this film is probably the most charming movie I’ve seen since Slumdog Millionaire.
Released as a black and white film, and driven by a great sound design, “The Artist” tracks the end of the silent film era and the birth of ‘the talkies’ through its two main characters: the Douglas Fairbanks-esque George Valentin, and up and coming starlet Peppy Miller. The love story of the film is fairly straight forward; the appeal of ‘The Artist’ comes from three great performances (yes, I’m including the scene stealing dog), a good concept, and exceptional execution. The fact that it was made by a French director doesn’t hurt either. Again, not a crack, just saying that it adds to the film’s ‘exotic/outsider’ appeal.
This one was fun to watch, I’m sure we’ll be talking about this one again in a couple of months…
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