Categories
Awards Season Thoughts

Oscar Special Mentions

As the awards season comes to a close, let’s forget about the campaigning and debate about what would or should win and reserve a special mention for some of tonight’s nominees.

In what has been a strong year these are various people I think deserve special mention, regardless of whether they win tonight.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

Javier Bardem in Biutiful: The most powerful performance of the year was Bardem’s searing portrait of a decent man on the edges of modern Barcelona.

Don’t Forget Me
Biutiful at MOVIECLIPS.com

Although the film’s relentless focus on death turned off dweeby critics, Bardem’s acting will be remembered for years to come.

Christopher Nolan for Writing and Directing Inception: The enormous commercial success of Nolan’s career has strangely obscured his very real creative accomplishments. Fashionable contrarians and elederly members of the Academy were turned off by the gorgeous labyrinth that was Inception, mainly because it was ‘too loud’ or ‘too clever for its own good’.

The fact that Nolan (as director) and his veteran editor Lee Smith were snubbed still hints that some Academy members don’t get his films. But for a generation of filmmakers it will be discussed, analysed and appreciated for years to come.

Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter for editing The Social Network: One of the crucial aspects of Fincher’s drama that makes it work is the phenomenal edit job by Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter.

It might take a couple of viewings to fully appreciate, but the criss-crossing timelines and overall construction of sequences is masterful. Some Academy voters might not have got the film on first viewing but repeated viewings highlight the dazzling, but often understated, work that went into it.

Roger Deakins’ cinematography for True Grit: Although already something of a legend for his amazing body of work, Deakins managed capture the haunting beauty of the west in True Grit whilst providing some indelible images.

Many people think it is his time to be awarded an Oscar and who would begrudge him a statuette this year?

The Visual Effects in Inception: The team at British SFX house Double Negative who worked on Nolan’s film (Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley, and Peter Bebb) deserve a lot of credit for helping build convincing dreamscapes through live action and CGI.

The inventive blend of real locations, stuntwork and CGI were stunning and in the hotel fight sequence, limbo city and the overturning of Paris have set a new standard for effects work at this level.

The score for The Social Network by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: One of the most startling and arresting scores in recent memory was this wonderfully discordant electronic score. The way in which the dialogue driven opening scene gives way to the unsettling title sequence is one of the most memorable film transitions of the year.

Just a few minutes later the urgency of the Face Smash sequence is powered by an unforgettable frenzy of beats and noise. In some ways the score to the film is what gives the film it’s unique flavour, with no cliched strings or cliched tracks from the time, it gives the story a distinct and original feel.

The Sounds of Inception: People always get confused between sound mixing and sound editing. To simplify, editing involves how the parts are assembled, whilst mixing is about the whole soundscape is put together.

It is a crucial and often undervalued aspect of movies and in the case of Inception, Richard King did an incredible job of recreating the sounds of all the different dream levels, which involve trains, guns, explosions, punches, car chases. The construction of the audio landscape in Inception was one of the great unsung reasons as to why it worked so well.

Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job: The documentary category this year is incredibly strong but Charles Ferguson’s documentary about the financial crisis deserves special mention.

Brilliantly dissecting the way Wall Street has essentially captured a generation of politicians and held society hostage for their own ends, it is a chilling reminder of how the political orthordoxies of the last 30 years have wreaked havoc but largely gone unpunished.

Full list of Oscar nominations for 2010-11
Official Oscars site
83rd Academy Awards at Wikipedia
> Analysis at Awards Daily and In Contention

Categories
Cannes Festivals

Cannes 2008 Reactions: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen’s latest film Vicky Cristina Barcelona is having it’s out of competition premiere at Cannes tonight.

The film is about two young American women named Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) who come to Barcelona for a summer holiday only to get involved with a local painter (Javier Bardem) and his tempestuous wife (Penélope Cruz).

Todd McCarthy of Variety thinks it is sexy and funny:

‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ is a sexy, funny divertissement that passes as enjoyably as an idle summer’s afternoon in the titular Spanish city.

With Javier Bardem starring as a bohemian artist involved variously with Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, pic offers potent romantic fantasy elements for men and women and a cast that should produce the best commercial returns for a Woody Allen film since “Match Point.”

And, in the bargain, if Barcelona wants even more visitors than it already attracts, this film will supply them.

Richard Corliss of Time rates it as Woody’s most engaging since Crimes and Misdeameanors (which by my reckoning is high praise indeed):

It’s hard not to feel warmly toward Allen after VCB, his first vital movie since Match Point three years ago (we quickly throw the veil of oblivion over Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream), and maybe his most engaging large-scale effort since, let’s say, Crimes and Misdemeanors nearly 20 years ago.

It doesn’t percolate with the inventive comic situations or quotable one-liners of the films that established his meta-movie credentials, Annie Hall and Manhattan; but, like them, this one is about people whose jobs are incidental to their real vocations of falling in love and messing things up.

Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere was less impressed:

The only parts of Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona that feel truly alive and crackling are the Spanish-language scenes between Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz.

I never thought I’d see the day when one of the great comedy writers of the 20th Century would write unintentional howlers, but this happens every so often in VCB, and I was not happy to witness this.

Ty Burr of the Boston Globe enjoyed it, despite some reservations:

I think I enjoyed Woody Allen’s new movie, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” a lot more than I should have. Certainly more than the people who gave it scattered boos after its Out of Competition screening here last night.

…In other words, the movie’s inordinate, even ridiculous fun, despite an overly chatty narrative track (not sure by whom at this writing) that I wanted to slap down after about five minutes.

An even bigger problem is a persistent, obnoxious and thoroughly unwanted narration track that makes this story of overlapping, off-and-on love affairs in present-day Barcelona so on-the-nose and over-explained that I was feeling actively hostile less than 15 minutes in.

Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter was admiring, especially of the performances by Bardem and Cruz:

…the film belongs to Bardem and Cruz. This is a Spanish version of “Private Lives,” a couple that cannot live apart or together, whose love will always burst into fiery combat.

Their scenes are some of the funniest Allen has ever put on film, and the culmination of this love/hate tango is not to be missed.

A voice-over narration for once actually works, urging the story on and slipping us past talk of art and poetry.

Javier Auirresarobe’s cinematography and Alisa Lepselter’s editing are unusually sharp, even by Allen’s high standards.

Kim Voynar of Cinematical feels it is one of Allen’s best films in years:

Cruz turns in a performance that’s better, even, than her Oscar-nominated turn in Volver; her Maria Elena is on-the-edge crazy, but is also very funny and engaging.

Mike Goodridge of Screen Daily thinks its his best film since 1994’s Bullets Over Broadway:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, his first of several Spanish ventures, is as close to consistently delightful as Allen has been able to deliver since 1994’s Bullets Over Broadway.

Given a dramatic boost by the vitality and charisma of Spanish superstars Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, this sunny romantic comedy could well be the director’s biggest audience-pleaser in years.

Allen has created one of his best works in years, a film that is funny, philosophical, and imaginatively explorative of the meaning of love and desire.

The film is going to be distributed in the US by The Weinstein Company and gets a release there on September 5th.

Here is the international trailer:

And here is Woody, Rebecca Hall and Penelope Cruz sitting down for the press conference:

> Vicky Cristina Barcelona at the IMDb
> Cinematical report on today’s press conference
> Stills from the film