At this point, being a Meryl Streep diehard who also cares about Oscar hoopla is a kind of brutal self-flagellation. Year after year, be it a silver fox in a royalty role, a can't-miss Brit in a Holocaust film, or a rom-com sweetheart awarded for years of box-office gajillions, there's always someone younger, fresher, or less-anointed to make voters feel better about passing on Streep, their near-perennial Oscar queen. This year, of course, the guilt-free alternative is Viola Davis, whose movie-carrying brilliance in The Help is fortified by the unavoidable race discussion, which, whether you pray at the church of Tate Taylor or Tavis Smiley, is all but certain to catapult her to victory. Up to now, Streep and Davis have more or less split the precursor trophies, and Streep has a fresh Kennedy Center Honor and Berlinale career kudo in her corner, but it's next to impossible to imagine Davis's snowballing awards narrative being derailed in the place where it would wring the most tears. Yes, a 2012 Best Actress win for a black woman in a maid role sends all kinds of regressive messages, but stronger yet is the voter urge to self-congratulate by coloring Oscar history, however sad the truth of the matter. Indeed, Streep had better hope she stays in her seat, for a win might make her look as monstrous as the shrew she so embodies in The Iron Lady. Continue Reading »
[Editor's Note: House Rewind is a collection of House articles from the month gone by—a recap of the posts you loved and those you might have missed.]
In the second episode of Season 1 of our SlantCast, R. Kurt Osenlund dished on the Oscars, while Jaime N. Christley sat down with filmmaker Joe Swanberg.
In the latest installment of the ever-popular "Conversations" series, Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard chatted about 3D.
Leading up to the announcement of the Oscar nominations on Jan. 24, Eric Henderson and R. Kurt Osenlund made nominee predictions in the Academy's top categories. They fared best in the areas of Picture, Cinematography, and Directing (but don't miss Eric's killer write-ups on Best Actor and Adapted Screenplay).
If you want a good cross-section of Oscar habits, look no further than this year's top five candidates for Best Actress. In Michelle Williams, you have the eternally baity case of star playing star, and this time the star being played just might be history's brightest. In Tilda Swinton, you have a classic case of Academy catch-up, wherein voters nominate a brilliant talent for minor work as a means to remedy past snubs. Category fraud is exemplified by Viola Davis, whose push as a leading star is, admittedly, a falsity of the filmmakers and not of any voting body, but who should nevertheless be considered as supporting. In Glenn Close, there's you're wholly undeserving knee-jerk nominee, armed with a shameless checklist of Oscar-y draws like gender-bending, homosexuality, uglification, makeup effects, period details, decades-long commitment, and "past-due" desperation. And as for Meryl Streep, well, she's an Oscar habit in and of herself, isn't she? Continue Reading »
[Editor's Note: In On the Rise, the House profiles an exciting new talent whose career, be it behind the camera or in front of it, is worth watching.]
There are a lot of breakout stars, but there aren't too many like Rooney Mara, a relative unknown who, thanks to Hollywood's juiciest female role, has been fiercely groomed for superstardom and hurled into the popular conversation. Recent ingenues like Elizabeth Olsen and Jennifer Lawrence have seen their directors' good faith pay off at modest festival unveilings, where their out-of-nowhere performances wowed crowds and set off storms of buzz. Mara, however, has been programmed to be in their company, her out-of-nowhere impact predetermined by a director of similar good faith and a character who entices just about everyone, from magazine editors to goth lesbians to book-loving grandmothers. A molded muse if ever there was one, Mara went from stealing scenes in David Fincher's The Social Network to morphing into the auteur's vision of pop culture's baddest vigilantess since The Bride, maybe even since Ellen Ripley. Her pierced, paled, and punked-out new look—a world away from the pretty, conservative chic she displayed as The Social Network's Erica Albright—began trickling out in glimpses, with outlets like W Magazine carefully unrolling the black carpet to introduce the stateside incarnation of Lisbeth Salander. We were beckoned, and we gladly took the bait, yet through it all Mara remained silent and mysterious, an inaccessible figure literally poked and prodded as she assumed her fated, scrutinized position as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Continue Reading »
[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.]
Even the T-shirts are meticulously placed in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, like the one with the Nine Inch Nails logo that cutely nods to composer Trent Reznor, or the one that reads, "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck," and was probably given precise holes and tears by David Fincher himself. Fincher has certainly grown to be quite peerless when it comes to presenting the oxymoronic aesthetic of polished grunge, and his latest marries that look with the themes of techie alienation, investigative obsession, and cold, impossible love that have run through recent works like The Social Network, Zodiac, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The craftsmanship of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is as indicative of Fincher's formal gifts as anything he's created, and, so as not to disappoint the critics who've always chided his films for being chilly, he's even rigorously considered the story's climate, taking many opportunities to hurl snow at the screen for good, cheeky measure. All that unignorable, masterly exactitude is going to net a lot of enthusiasm for this film in the Academy's technical branches. Whether the enthusiasm will go much further than that is another story. Continue Reading »
[Editor's Note: Poster Lab is your weekly dose of movie poster dissection, wherein the House examines the pluses, minuses, and in-betweens of the poster design(s) for a buzzworthy film.]
It's hard to decide whether Sony has done a better job promoting David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with its own in-house marketing, or with outside sources like a sneak-peak, in-character W Magazinephotoshoot with Rooney Mara. Either way, the combined effort is working, helping to drum up a great deal of interest in a Hollywood adaptation of a tale whose outcome virtually everyone knows, either via Stieg Larsson's pen or Swedish cinema's take on the trilogy. The halfway point of the promotional one-two punch seems to be a little Tumblr site called Mouth Taped Shut, which regularly posts exclusive Dragon Tattoo production stills and recently released the film's newest poster, an artful alternative for those who don't warm so well to Nipplegate-style sensationalism. There's some talk around the web saying the poster isn't studio-backed, and is simply getting major press for an independent designer. Whatever the source, this new one-sheet is a jewel of accessible design, putting forth the necessary story elements and faces without compromising what's been a hard and edgy film lead-up.
Like the previous poster, the new one opts for black and white, a choice that proves as necessary for conveying mood as it does for evoking classic noir. It is yet another triumph of character-within-character superimposition, which this year has already factored into very handsome designs for Jane Eyre and Martha Marcy May Marlene. The implication here is that Daniel Craig's Mikael Blomkvist is forever trying to get at the inner-workings of Mara's Lisbeth Salander, while himself being an increasing presence in her brilliant mind. Amid their stoic looks (and amid that great, spiky coif), we get the delicate inclusion of pressed-plant leaves (denoting long-dead case subject Harriet Vanger), and that central swirl that's fast become Salander's signature earring. The better details, though, are the small elements that make up great design, like the precise place in which Craig's left side touches Mara's lips, and the choice to mark the lower edge of her silhouette with a zipper's teeth. It's classy line quality, and it speaks to Fincher's own meticulousness. Continue Reading »
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