Less a race than a ping-pong match, this year's battle for Best Director has shifted favor from an obvious lock to a popular spoiler and back again, leaving us one more not-quite-certain category to pay attention to on February 26. Not long after The Artist stormed out of Cannes, Michel Hazanavicius established a surge of directorial momentum that hardly let up, its reach even cracking the Indie Spirit lineup, which isn't exactly known to invite the Oscar frontrunner to the party. But as the season stretched on, and a certain genre-defier (kids' flick? Biopic?) began performing exceedingly better than expected, a Picture/Director split seemed more and more probable, with Martin Scorsese potentially benefiting from Hazanavicius's lack of notoriety. A Golden Globe win strengthened suspicions about the Hugo helmer, as did a subsequent tally of 11 Oscar noms for the 3D cineaste fantasy. Could this be the year the Academy honors both men who blew the industry a nostalgic kiss? One of them certainly has the firm voter support to make the generosity possible. Still, as everyone from the DGA to the folks at BAFTA will testify, odds are the rise of Hugo was a mere bump on The Artist's fated path to glory, which now looks like it may encompass Best Actor too. Continue Reading »
At the risk of milking a joke whose teets have been sore for weeks, The Artist's musical score will do just fine without Kim Novak's vote. In the hierarchy of Oscar scandals, which have a way of surfacing every season (just ask THR subscribers), the ire of an old Hitchcock muse is meager compared to blockbuster-bashing emails and history's tackiest FYC ads. So, rest easy, Ludovic Bource, for your rape charges won't take you the way of Herman Cain, and few Academy members will be able to resist the sprightly notes subbed in for Jean Dujardin's dialogue. If anything, The Artist's perfectly legal Vertigo sampling will strengthen that skim-off-the-cream nostalgia, which has yet to relent in its ability to charm the Depends off Novak's peers. Continue Reading »
Bridesmaids is just glad to be invited, no? A "memorable" quote from the film according to IMDb: "You're like the maid of dishonor." Which makes me, an admitted fan of the film, cringe and feel as if I'm misremembering its high hit-to-miss ratio. Margin Call possibly fares worse, because is a line like "I don't get any of this stuff" a refreshing acknowledgement that market-speak is a language that even stock brokers struggle with or a sure sign that J.C. Chandor was too lazy to do his homework? Also out is Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, which faces the uphill battle of having to appeal to voters resentful of actually having to read the screenplay while watching the film. Then there's Michel Hazanavicius's blasé approximation of a silent film that would have been forgotten and lost to time—or an attic fire—had it been actually made in 1925. The reason The Artist won't win is easy: Continue Reading »
Historically a haven for the quirk, verve, and humor that can't quite crack the tougher races, the Original Screenplay category will openly welcome a movie like Bridesmaids, which may have a fiery fanbase and a sure shot at Supporting Actress, but isn't about to compete in Best Picture, no matter how hard the mainstream dreamers squint their eyes and pray. The script nom might strike some as a snub-amending bone-throw to a buzz-building comedy, but Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo actually deserve to be in contention for their dialogue-driven hit (unlike The Hangover, another R-rated giggler with Best Pic whispers, to which Bridesmaids is belittlingly compared). Still, pink-clad comediennes with volatile bowels are bound to be outclassed by Midnight in Paris, the Golden Globe and Critics' Choice victor that's all set to squeeze another gold man onto Woody Allen's crowded mantle. Continue Reading »
The directing race has boiled down to nine names, four of which you can pretty safely etch into stone. Michel Hazanavicius, whose surname becomes quite easy to spell after constant repetition, is your frontrunner, as both he and his film seem rather insurmountable at this point. Martin Scorsese is next in line for the prize, boosted by a victory at the Golden Globes and the bonus of being Martin Scorsese (if the Academy wanted to split picture and director for one big cine-stalgia duet, the Hugo helmer would surely be sitting pretty). Alexander Payne will hear his name called for The Descendants, a movie that should be snagging more love for its makers than for its blandly reliable star. And Woody Allen, Oscar Hall of Famer and all-around oxymoronic humanist misanthrope, is a shoo-in for his adorable, CliffsNotes time machine, Midnight in Paris. Continue Reading »
Since The Artist's ubiquity is even growing tedious for those who kneel at its grayscale altar, let's just stick to the facts: In all of Oscar history, only nine films have won Best Picture without an editing nod, and in the last 31 years, no Best Picture winner has been left out of the editing category. So, yes, this year's intertitled frontrunner will compete here too, marking a first-time nomination for editor Anne-Sophie Bion (director Michel Hazanavicius is also credited as co-editor). Standing in the way will be fellow female splicer Thelma Schoonmaker, a bona fide Oscar treasure who'll land her seventh career nomination—and possible fourth win—for cutting yet another contender for bestie Martin Scorsese. The third sure thing in this category certainly seems to be The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, whose wickedly sharp work from last year's winners, Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (The Social Network), will yield its most deserving nomination. Continue Reading »
Jay-Z has a new song, which Today's Kathie Lee Gifford wishes it had a melody.
While Kim Novak protests about the use of Vertigo's music, a bigger backlash is gathering pace as Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist charms its way to the Oscars.
Related: Sean O'Neal, for The A.V. Club, elaborates on Novak crying rape.
[Editor's Note: Oscar Prospects is your weekly analysis of an awards contender and how it's likely to fare come Oscar nomination morning. The column is comprehensive, so beware of spoilers.]
This season presents two Oscar contenders, Hugo and The Artist, that both bask in the dreaminess of cinema's early days, but from polar opposite ends of the technological spectrum. Whereas the latter is a famously black-and-white, French-made silent picture, Hugo is a mega-budget spectacle and the biggest pairing of heavyweight director and 3D since Avatar (it's also the most sophisticated movie yet to employ the format). In terms of awards chances, The Artist—which, appropriately enough, bears a key theme of overcoming technology's relentless propulsion—most certainly has the edge, and did even before yesterday, when it netted five major Independent Spirit Award nominations, earned two wins from the New York Film Critics Circle (including Best Picture), and landed fifth on Sight & Sound's polled list of the best films of 2011. But no one should assume that the soldiering forward of a powerful, atmospherically similar frontrunner means that Hugo can't also perform well. Besides, it's Martin Scorsese. Continue Reading »
The nominations for the 27th Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced this morning in Los Angeles, and Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter and Hazanavicius's The Artist (which few realized was eligible) led the pack with 5 nods a piece.
[Editor's Note: Oscar Prospects is your weekly analysis of an awards contender and how it's likely to fare come Oscar nomination morning. The column is comprehensive, so beware of spoilers.]
There are still more than two months to go before 2011 closes up shop, and guys like Fincher and Spielberg deliver their latest Oscar-ready opuses, but as of now, no film this year is poised to collect more Academy Award nominations than The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's silent movie about the silent era that has so many great things going for it, it's hard to organize them all in your head. In no way is this meant to imply that "great" and "Oscar" are linked, but rather that The Artist boasts an all-encompassing panache and irresistibility that, save the inevitable handful of backlashers and contrarians, is going to deeply enchant scads of people, Academy members especially. And yet, as easy as the accusation may be, the film—as some writers have already pointed out—doesn't seem to be actively dangling the carrot. It is genuinely that good, and it unfolds in a milieu that's bursting with an embarrassment of inherent virtues.
Set in Hollywood between the years of 1927 and 1931, when talkies began to displace silents and stars like George Valentin (Cannes Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) found themselves dropping from A-List to extinction, The Artist offers a richly nostalgic interpretation of one of the most romanticized periods in cinema's history, an industry smooch that's bound to win it even more favor than its brilliant, timeless commentary on the ever-changing state of technology at large (not to mention its perfectly natural and logical inclusion of a certain stock market crash). It almost instantly drops itself into the canon of movies about making movies, and its universal accessibility—otherwise known as hater fuel—will provide voters with the characteristic reassurance that, not only would their endorsement reward something of great value, but something that, goshdarnit, people really like. It will absolutely be one of your Best Picture nominees. Continue Reading »
With The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius stretches a feather-light gimmick to feature-length. The writer-director's tribute to silent movies begins with a movie buff's tongue-in-cheek premise: What if we made a silent movie about the silent film era, where the stars all act the same way in their real lives as they do in their film-within-a-film movies?
It all begins at the end of Hollywood's silent film era, as star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) and aspiring starlet Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) meet cute and fall for each other. The rest of the movie chronicles their long journey to a happy ending while their careers careen in opposite directions as he laughs off the talkies as a fad, fading into impoverished obscurity, while she embraces the new technology and becomes one of its biggest stars.
The two mug like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, exaggerating the already extreme expressions and gestures employed by most of the stars of that era. George flashes his blindingly white grin on the red carpet like Dudley Do-Right, and Peppy's signature move—on screen and off—is a two-fingered whistle followed by a blown kiss. But then everyone in this world overacts, even the studio head (John Goodman) who bellows things like "the public is never wrong!" and the audience members who radiate oversized emotion at a screening, some clapping their hands to their cheeks in amazement. Continue Reading »
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest cinematic breadcrumb trail, follows a group of conflicted institutional figures (lawyer, doctor, police chief, mayor) trying to reconcile the difference between public record and fairy tale. Both inevitably become part of the same communal lie, markers of deep-seeded social and familial manipulation. Throughout Ceylan's sprawling anti-mystery, where these "respected" men escort a criminal around the desolate Turkish countryside fruitlessly trying to find the body of a murder victim, fact and fiction often overlap through lengthy conversations and shared memories. But this isn't a form of togetherness binding the men. Ceylan is purely interested in slowly unveiling a thematic can of worms that will tear them apart one long take at a time.
Limited character perspective develops mystery and tension during the long and arduous all-night police search. The characters are sectioned off into three vehicles, and we listen in on segments of each group's meandering displays of verbal one-upmanship. Ceylan weaves the men's competing voices together in interesting ways, overlapping dialogue and sound design to maximize a sense of character and place. As with Distant, Ceylan revels in hypnotic extreme long shots of the countryside, capturing the wind in the trees, a falling apple rolling down a stream, and the endless rolling hills of Anatolia. His static camera examines long character exchanges from afar, usually in one master shot, extending the duration and importance of seemingly minute details about each character. Continue Reading »
Hollywood is a windfall business. Stars are easily born, but once the the cracks in their public image start to show, careers can evaporate in 24 frames per second. This scenario describes many of the silent-era stars stripped of their powerful stature by the invention of talkies in the late 1920s. The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's beguiling new silent film about these iconic personalities dumbfounded by the sound revolution, tap dances through the end of an era with effortless panache. Striking black-and-white cinematography and brilliant flourishes of sound amid an otherwise silent landscape give The Artist its stylistic identity, but this story of evolution and adaptation is all about the power of on-screen chemistry.
George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a titanic personality, hamming it up in adventure films and real life with equal measure. Despite his endless charisma, George's eyes reveal hints of loneliness, further confirmed during a Citizen Kane-esque montage of cold-shouldered breakfasts with his wife (Penelope Ann Miller). Always accompanied by a tenacious Boston terrier, his co-star in all situations, George bumps into an aspiring young actress named Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo) while leaving a packed theater premiere. Their initial meeting spins into a feature-length flirtation of knowing glances, charming asides, and fateful disappointments, a dual character arc that aligns with the technological changes taking place in cinema. Classic Hollywood music becomes a crucial confidant for the characters, magnifying Dujardin's welling eyes and Bejo's lovely smile during key close-ups. Continue Reading »
To say that OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a hideously distended continuation of OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies's one-note joke would be unduly kind. Both spy spoofs assume that that the sexism and just flat-out ass-backward conservative thinking inherent in the original OSS 117 pulps and accompanying film adaptations are much more entertaining than the generic spy formula that served as the backbone for those stories. In the late '50s and the '60s, OSS 117 was France's answer to 007, Ian Fleming's inescapable rugged spy-about-town. He treats women like coat racks and minorities like adorable pet sidekicks. He's a fascist with a license to thrill, making him the perfect target for director Michel Hazanavicius's smart-ass takedown. Like Cairo, Nest of Spies, Lost in Rio is so in love with its sloppy jokes and plodding putdowns of modern-day progressivism that it never really takes off. Continue Reading »
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest cinematic breadcrumb trail, follows a group of conflicted institutional figures (lawyer, doctor, police chief, mayor) trying to reconcile the difference between public record and fairy tale. Both inevitably become part of the same communal lie, markers of deep-seeded social and familial manipulation. Throughout Ceylan's sprawling anti-mystery, where these "respected" men escort a criminal around the desolate Turkish countryside fruitlessly trying to find the body of a murder victim, fact and fiction often overlap through lengthy conversations and shared memories. But this isn't a form of togetherness binding the men. Ceylan is purely interested in slowly unveiling a thematic can of worms that will tear them apart one long take at a time.
Hollywood is a windfall business. Stars are easily born, but once the the cracks in their public image start to show, careers can evaporate in 24 frames per second. This scenario describes many of the silent-era stars stripped of their powerful stature by the invention of talkies in the late 1920s. The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's beguiling new silent film about these iconic personalities dumbfounded by the sound revolution, tap dances through the end of an era with effortless panache. Striking black-and-white cinematography and brilliant flourishes of sound amid an otherwise silent landscape give The Artist its stylistic identity, but this story of evolution and adaptation is all about the power of on-screen chemistry. 
Links for the Day: Directors Guild of America Nominations, Coachella Lineup, Kim Novak Raped by The Artist, War Horse Illustrated Review, & More
by Ed Gonzalez on January 10th, 2012 at 11:34 am in Links for the Day
The Directors Guild of America has announced its 2012 nominees.
Pope Benedict says gay marriage is a threat to humanity's future.
Speaking of real threats to our future, Pat Buchanan might not be coming back to MSNBC.
Coachella's 2012 lineup has been announced.
Jay-Z has a new song, which Today's Kathie Lee Gifford wishes it had a melody.
While Kim Novak protests about the use of Vertigo's music, a bigger backlash is gathering pace as Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist charms its way to the Oscars.
Related: Sean O'Neal, for The A.V. Club, elaborates on Novak crying rape.
Continue Reading »
Tags: Brian De Palma, Coachella, Dario Marianelli, Directors Guild of America, Film Comment, gay marriage, Jay-Z, Kathie Lee Gifford, Kim Novak, Michel Hazanavicius, MSNBC, Passion, Pat Buchanan, Pope Benedict XVI, Sean O'Neal, Steven Spielberg, The A.V. Club, The Artist, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Today, war horse
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