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Posts Tagged: The Help

Oscar 2012 Nomination Predictions: Score

by on January 15th, 2012 at 11:49 am in Awards, Film

Drive

All this talk about Meryl Streep and very few are editorializing much on when the Academy will give John Williams an award just for being America's most Kennedy Center Honor-ific film composer. He's been trophied more often and more recently, but it's still been a pretty long stretch since 1993. Both Williams and Steven Spielberg have been laying low since the latest Indiana Jones movie blew up in everyone's face, but they've returned in tandem and it's hard to see how the Academy's music branch will be able to a) resist, and b) choose one over the other. So expect them to have their cake and eat it too, citing both the traditional Wagnerian triumphalism of War Horse (which, up until the last two weeks, seemed a frontrunner for double-digit nods) and the more varied, synth-assisted, Prokofiev-tinged themes from The Adventures of Tintin. Continue Reading »




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Oscar 2012 Nomination Predictions: Costume Design

by on January 12th, 2012 at 3:00 pm in Awards, Film

Captain America: The First Avenger

While one hopes that those nominating for Costume Design will be keen to acknowledge the subtle ways that clothes complement character, like the vision obstruction caused by the bonnets in Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff or the dirtiness of the period duds in Bertrand Tavernier's The Princess of Montpensier, history has certainly shown that pomp and spectacle win the day. And if your pomp and spectacle are housed in a castle setting, all the better. So look for Anonymous, the year's flashiest bit of dolled-up royalty, to handily nab a slot here, if not the win. (There's plenty of precedent for this, as The Duchess, another frilly film with minimal Oscar traction, took the trophy three years back, and Shakespeare in Love, which also showcased Elizabeth I in all her lavishly collared regalia, nabbed it in 1999). Continue Reading »




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Oscar Prospects: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by on December 21st, 2011 at 5:51 pm in Awards, Film

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

[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 »




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House Rewind: October 2011

by on November 1st, 2011 at 7:30 pm in The House

House Rewind: October 2011

[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 our extensive coverage of The New York Film Festival, House contributors reviewed Le Havre, 4:44 Last Day on Earth, A Dangerous Method, Martha Marcy May Marlene, This Is Not a Film, The Turin Horse, and The Descendants, among many other titles.

In the latest installment of The Conversations, Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard discussed Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.

In the new series Oscar Prospects, R. Kurt Osenlund looked at the Academy Awards hopes for buzzworthy contenders Carnage, Moneyball, The Artist, and The Help.

In Music, the House added to its Playlist the latest from Charlie XCX, Icona Pop, Small Black, & Hands and Teeth; Kurt Vile, AU/Palais, & Phantogram; and Shimmering Stars, Amanda Mair and Cate Le Bon.

Reporting from The São Paulo International Film Festival, Aaron Cutler offered coverage of such films as The Kid with a Bike and A Trip to the Moon, Jeanne and Hanezu, and Outside Satan and Breathing.

Continue Reading »




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Oscar Prospects: The Help

by on October 27th, 2011 at 3:30 pm in Awards, Film

The Help

[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.]

The Help represents a pitiful lack of progress, and that's hardly an indictment of the ways its characters and events are depicted onscreen. This is an affable, predominantly inoffensive bit of goes-down-easy middlebrow fare, whose crimes are mainly those of uninspired screenwriting technique (underwritten roles, conveniently sidestepped conflicts). Yet, the film's inherent iconography incited a storm of knee-jerk disgust from cynics and ax-grinders, who took to Twitter with a litany of rants about Mammies, magical negroes and fried chicken. A counterattack of support for the film soon followed. The subject of race in the movies will always get people talking, but that this minimally provocative mainstream fluff was met with such exhaustive, tempestuous discourse feels culturally puerile, like tamed dogs fending off wolves on the hunt for the next Birth of a Nation. Now, the discussion of a movie that might have just as well come and gone with the rest of August's releases has spilled over into the Oscar race, an arena in which there is, in fact, discussion to be had.

If people are looking for something to complain about, a better target would be the preposterously thriving Oscar whiteout, which last year led to the favoring of grotesque turns from Christian Bale and Melissa Leo over every incredible performance in For Colored Girls. This year, the only two black performers poised to be honored with nominations are those who play maids, a fact that's far more contemptible than anything Tate Taylor presents in The Help. And the meager nomination tally won't merely be a fault of the Academy, either, as there certainly wasn't a wealth of baity work available for people of color this year, a year in which the only high-profile part that recent Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe can boast is, yes, a maid—in a Brett Ratner movie. Continue Reading »




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Understanding Screenwriting #79: The Help, The Whistleblower, Fury, and more

by on August 29th, 2011 at 12:30 am in Film

Coming Up In This Column: The Help, The Whistleblower, Red-Headed Woman, Hold Your Man, Fury, They Won't Forget, but first…

Fan Mail: Rob Humanick is thanking me for making sure I got the period at the end of the title of Crazy, Stupid, Love. I would love to accept kudos, but I only put in the commas. It was Keith Uhlich, our eagle-eyed editor, who picked up on the period business. This is not the first time, nor the last, that Keith has saved me from looking like a total idiot in print. Or rather in pixels.

I am afraid I am way too straight to see what David E. calls the "gay envy" in straight films. In the case of Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love. (see, I got the period right this time) Gosling's character seems to me to be a living embodiment of a guy obsessed with Hugh Hefner's 1950s Playboy ideal. As Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a straight guy is just a straight guy.

The Help (2011. Screenplay by Tate Taylor, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett. 146 minutes)

The Help

Yipee, it's August, take one: That means there is finally a film in the multiplexes without stuff we have been inundated with all summer:

There are no comic book heroes.

There are no comic book characters from other Marvel comics that are only in this film to help promote future comic book movies.

There are no explosions, other than dramatic ones.

It is not, in any theater, in 3-D.

Nor is it in any Imax theaters.

There are no aliens.

It is not a tentpole for a future film series.

It is not the next, nor the last, tentpole from a previously established series.

There is not a single teenager in the film.

No actors change bodies in the course of this film.

There are no couples that are trying to have sex without emotional complications.

Except in reference to a certain pie, there is no use of bad language.

There are no fart, dick, or homophobic jokes.

There are no pirates, talking animals or talking cars in this film.

The African-American characters are not just in the film to be killed off so the white hero can get revenge.

However, just to let you know this is indeed a film from the summer of 2011, Emma Stone does appear in the film, but in a serious role. Continue Reading »




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