MOB: Where we stand

Winter's Bone predictably dominated the Independent Spirit Award nominations with 7, including nominations in 3 out of the 4 acting categories (Jennifer Lawrence in lead, with John Hawkes and Dale Dickey supporting). The Kids Are All Right just behind with 5, with a shocking omission of Julianne Moore in Lead Actress despite six nominations in that very category — beat out by the likes of co-star Bening, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Lawrence, surprises Greta Gerwig for Greenberg (who I had predicted in Supporting...what do I know?) and Michelle Williams who turned out to be the only nomination for Blue Valentine (I had predicted co-star Gosling would make it, but not her).

Tomorrow we have the more industry friendly awards of the Satellites announcing their nominations; again, generally an inconsequential group. The Annies also announce their nominees tomorrow rewarding fields of animation this past year where Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon and Tangled have been critical and commercial hits, with Sylvain Chomet's (of Triplets of Belleville fame) The Illusionist paced to be a critical darling as well. Day after, the National Board of Review announces its winners, and it's all downhill from there. Read more!

MOB: Independent Spirit Awards Predictions

How exciting! Oscar season has kicked off unofficially today with the surprise news that Anne Hathaway and James Franco have agreed to co-host next year's Academy Awards ceremony. Earlier tonight, we saw the Gotham Awards hand out the first awards of the season, where Winter's Bone came out on top with wins in the top prize as well as for its accomplished ensemble cast. Gotham's prizes in the past have gone for the likes of The Departed and, most recently, The Hurt Locker. They're less successful more often than not, though. Special shout out to recognizing the brilliance of The Oath this year in its Documentary category, which got left off the Academy's shortlist. Shame, though, since it really went about the topic of terrorism in an unconventional way that communicates and enlightens in volumes.

Before I go on to my predictions of what will be announced tomorrow as the nominees of the Independent Spirit Awards, a quick run-through of the immediate calendar of awards being handed out soon: we got the ISA nominations tomorrow, nominations from the Annies and the Satellite Awards the day after that, and then the more "official" kickoff to the precursor season with the announcement of the National Board of Review's awards on Friday. DC kicks off the first of the local critics awards the following Monday.

Note: One really ought not to trust my opinion on the following choices. I wrote these up quite a while ago out of boredom, but most of them are fillers for lack of coming up with anything else and I'm not even exactly sure what constitutes an "independent" film these days.

Best Feature:
Black Swan
Cyrus
The Kids Are All Right
Rabbit Hole
Winter's Bone

Best Male Lead:
Jim Carrey - I Love You, Phillip Morris
Robert Duvall - Get Low
Phillip Seymour Hoffman - Jack Goes Boating
James Franco - Howl
Ryan Gosling - Blue Valentine

Best Female Lead:
Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence - Winter's Bone
Julianne Moore - The Kids Are All Right
Natalie Portman - Black Swan

Best Supporting Male:
John Hawkes - Winter's Bone
Richard Jenkins - Let Me In
Bill Murray - Get Low
John Ortiz - Jack Goes Boating
Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right

Best Supporting Female:
Greta Gerwig - Greenberg
Ann Guilbert - Please Give
Sissy Spacek - Get Low
Marisa Tomei - Cyrus
Dianne Wiest - Rabbit Hole

Best Director:
Darren Aronofksy - Black Swan
John Cameron Mitchell - Rabbit Hole
Lisa Cholodenko - The Kids Are All Right
Debra Granik - Winter's Bone
Matt Reeves - Let Me In

Best Screenplay:
Cyrus
The Kids Are All Right
I Love You, Phillip Morris
It's Kind of a Funny Story
Life During Wartime

Best First Screenplay:
Blue Valentine
Happythankyoumoreplease
Howl
Night Catches Us
Tiny Furniture

Best First Feature:
Blue Valentine
Get Low
Howl
I Love You, Phillip Morris
Jack Goes Boating

Best Foreign Film:
Animal Kingdom
I Am Love
I Killed My Mother
Micmacs
Wild Grass

Best Documentary:
Babies
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
The Oath
Restrepo
The Tillman Story

Best Cinematography:
Black Swan
Blue Valentine
Howl
Let Me In
Winter's Bone Read more!

Reviews: Blue Valentine

It took ten years for director Derek Cianfrance's vision of Blue Valentine to come to the screen. After every grueling day of filming, it is reported that Michelle Williams would scream throughout the entire car ride home from set. Though its sex scenes were relatively tame, they were still viscerally affecting enough to earn it an NC-17 rating from the MPAA — usually reserved for the most extreme of content. Though filmed in a vérité style, the film is as cinematic as it is blisteringly real. It's a film that grabs you by your throat, and refuses to let go.

Some average moviegoers will take a look at the trailer and wonder what it's about. Well, the story line is really rather simple. It's an examination of a couple, played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, jumping back and forth between past, at the start of their relationship, and present, as it crumbles apart. It's a character study, and the character is the marriage between Gosling's Dean and Williams' Cindy. It would do you an injustice for me to give away too much of the details of how the film unfolds, because a lot of the film's greatness lies in its little pieces. The details. Small and large puzzle pieces alike of this mosaic of a contemporary married couple, and you as an audience are trusted to place the pieces together as you see it and come to your own conclusions of the characters' situation.

Many of these pieces are offered by the two central performances by Gosling and Williams. Both play their parts with the honest and often unsettling realism of the rest of the film. Between the two of them, it's almost four performances you're really looking at — one for each of them in their youth as well as them slightly older. Ryan Gosling's first performance is that of a young man from a broken past who manages to remain as idealistic and joyful in his youth as he is a thick-skinned and hard worker. At his core, though, he's a man who aims to please — whether in the loving care that he took to decorate the nursing home room of the old war veteran he helped move in or the exuberance in which he romantically serenaded Cindy with his songs, and it's that natural tendency in him for love that we see remain most strongly when we shift to the present. We see how torn apart he is over the loss of the family dog, we see just how fantastic of a father he is to their daughter Frankie, and we see how devoted he is to keeping this marriage alive. On the outside, though, he carries the air of a broken man. We see the physicality in which Gosling got balder and fatter, but his ambitions have greatly lowered and he hardly sees himself getting much further in life than he is at this point. Gosling is said to have based his performance upon imitating writer/director Cianfrance, thereby offering perhaps what could be the more relatable side in the movie to more people by playing his role in the same eyes as the film is directed in.

But I would assert that just his equal is Michelle Williams as Cindy. Williams had some added difficulties in being the much less mature half in the portrayal of her character's high school years — not to mention the trauma inflicted upon her then — to being the more mature half in the present. She constantly berates Dean when simply being playful with Frankie, as she doesn't "want to have to clean up after two kids." She is faced with mounting pressures from her demanding nursing job, not to mention her home life with Dean where their marriage is very clearly on the rocks. Williams does a brilliant job filling in the gaps of what may seem like questionable judgment on the page of the script. How can she possibly let go of such a great father to her child? Why such a change of heart? How did she get so mature? How did she end up going through with keeping her baby?

Of course, I do give a lot of the credit to Ms. Williams for taking on these challenges and giving in a performance as thoughtfully well rounded and emotionally affecting as Gosling. And, by the end of the film, I did feel like I could perfectly understand both sides to their stories. In fact, possibly the greatest strength and testament to the effectiveness of their performances is how well they worked in harmony with one another (or appropriate lack thereof). Their chemistry was real, almost undeniable, and their interactions with each other carry the weight of their past experiences with one another and how central the other has been in their lives. But a lot of the credit, for all of these accomplishments, also deserves to go to the enormously accomplished screenplay. The film is really quite revolutionary, as far as I've seen, in the way it depicts real life topics like abortion and human sexuality with a frank and refreshing honesty. Whether it's Dean moaning that he deserves a little more affection or how in-your-face and truly horrifying the actual procedure of an abortion is displayed (as opposed to the "pro-life" argument framing it as an "easy way out" of sorts). The depiction of a high school pregnancy was also one shown with a refreshing honesty that neither glamorized it nor demonized it. It simply was what it was, just as everything else seen in the film, which is its strongest attribute.

And the whole thing made for cinema as compelling as it can be. And that's the thing — it is truly cinematic. The performances pulled from the actors themselves seem like enough evidence for Cianfrance's directorial breakthrough without even mentioning the performance from child actress Faith Wladyka, the best since Justin Henry in Kramer vs. Kramer. But whether it be from the crisp cinematography that could at one moment elate you as it breaks you the next, or the jump cut editing between the present and past, it is a film that truly captures the delicate balance possible between a blistering realism and truly visual cinema. There were points during the film where I had suddenly realized how literally breathless I was, and for how long. For the two hour running time of the film, I had forgotten that I had to go to the bathroom beforehand. When the two hour running time had finished, much sooner than I had expected it to, there was a palpable sense of devastation in the audience I saw it with. You could feel it. It was a knockout. Read more!

Meet the Contenders: Andrew Garfield in "The Social Network"

When we first meet Andrew Garfield's character Eduardo Saverin, he asks his best (and virtually only) friend Mark how he's doing. He had read his blog post that he had broken up with his girlfriend that night, and he assures Mark that he's there for him. This sets up the character of Eduardo, whom Aaron Sorkin introduces in the script as "a sweet looking Brazilian sophomore who almost always wears a three-piece suit." It is safe to conclude that Sorkin draws him as easily the most sympathetic character in his behemoth achievement of screenwriting, regardless of whether or not you believe his side is right or wrong. The case could very easily be made that his side is wrong, or perhaps simply undeserving of the hefty cash settlement his character likely received. Frankly, he was naïve; he tackled a revolutionary and visionary concept with old-fashioned and traditional business methods he had picked up in his Harvard education. He couldn't comprehend the capacity of facebook's potential nor it's viral nature. Thus, as Mark had warned, he got left behind.

Andrew Garfield's performance leaves room for such judgments to be made. He allows himself to be imperfect — extraordinary in his own right, but human enough to have flaws like any other. His Eduardo is brimming with humanity, bursting at the seams with love, affection, self-conscious insecurity, desire, envy, possessiveness, puerility, motivation, and some social ineptitude. Any actor could have coasted to a great performance with the character offered by Sorkin's script, but it's Andrew Garfield who takes charge to make Eduardo as fleshed out living, breathing, and humane character on every level possible. He ultimately takes the character of Eduardo from written to wholly emotional, and he does so with a searing realism. He disappears under this character with ease. Some have even said that where Jesse Eisenberg is William H. Macy delivering the distinctly wordy dialogue of David Mamet with a Shakespearean cadence where it concerns Sorkin's screenplay, that Andrew Garfield is Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross — reading off the trademark dialogue in a way that still sounds wholly his own and that you'd attribute strictly to the character more than its inceptor.

That is to both of their credit. Andrew Garfield's performance wouldn't work without Jesse Eisenberg's to play against. We need to see Saverin's offer of love and support in the beginning of the movie to be met with Mark's cold dismissiveness. We need to see Eduardo time and time again reach out emotionally to Mark with little in return. One could theoretically assert that Eduardo is actually in love with Mark, who does not share his affection. At least, that's to the extent to which we see Eduardo lend his whole love and his whole self to Mark with a devotion and trust that make his end betrayal particularly heartbreaking. This is evidenced the petty bitterness and jealousy that he venomously directs at Justin Timberlake's Shaun Parker when he manages to capture Mark's heart and full attention. Attention that Eduardo craves. The warmth Garfield instills in Eduardo is crucially contrasted by the cruel coldness in Eisenberg's Mark, which also makes the latter much more in tune and connected to the idea of facebook than the former ever understands (he as a co-founder doesn't even know how to change items of his profile like his relationship status).

This unrequited love Eduardo feels for Mark gets down to a central insecurity and vulnerability that Garfield portrays with a delicate bravura that required to put all of himself out there, his portrayal of a friend wanting so much more emotional satisfaction out of his relationship that probably confronts some unsettling truths among many halves of such friendships. And he does so with such a devoted strength that you could pick up on cues in his subtle physicality throughout the film. He's drawn into Mark's ultimate betrayal to begin with because of a phone conversation that has Mark ending up being so friendly and open to Eduardo (to a suspicious extent) that has Garfield smiling from ear to ear, even after the scolding he had received from Mark for immaturely freezing his business account. It's an attitude and they are words that he's been longing to hear from his best friend directed at him.  He then confidently shows up in California and signs the contracts without the slightest inkling that his friend had just betrayed him and ultimately kicked him out of the company at the likely urging of Shaun Parker's corrupting influence.

Garfield puts forth much of his physical self throughout the film, in fact, and in a way that informs to emotions that pent up inside his character throughout the film's duration. Garfield is very much informed by the past of Eduardo, who is a Brazilian immigrant raised in Miami and became educated enough to be in Harvard. You can hear it distinctly in the impressive dialect Garfield dons for his accent, and in the general rhythm of how he carries himself. It's hard to describe, but having several Brazilian American friends, I can attest to this general aura that Garfield mysteriously nails in a way that's authentic and believable. He additionally forms his character in other ways; in the way he moves, when he awkwardly inches towards Mark in a dance wearing a Caribbean islander hat, when he shoves his hands as deep into his pockets as possible, when we shift to the present day court proceedings where Eduardo's broken heart can't even stand to take one look at Mark. Sign of a true master of his craft, he manipulates his body in a way that both subtly paints a nuanced portrait of his characters but also elicits an emotional response from the audience necessary in their experience of the film.

For instance, when Eduardo first shows up in California. Shaun barely notices the door knocks but opens it to find Eduardo drenched in the rain, ready to turn back to his taxi. He looks at Shaun with the puppy dog eyes that Garfield employs for the first time that communicate his sea of pain and hurt. Expecting to see his best and only friend, he sees the man who may have very well taken that away from him. The salt is added to the wounds the audience feels when it's revealed that Mark was meant to pick Eduardo up at the airport an hour prior, but he essentially forgot about him and left him alone in the pouring rain. Slowly he unravels his levels of stress in New York City trying to find investors, aggravated that Mark hadn't remembered when he told him he dropped his planned internship months prior (or perhaps hadn't listened). He says he's scared of his girlfriend, and he's coming to see how much Mark hadn't told him about their progress with facebook. Even then Mark is hardly listening, and this starts to snowball into what will become an avalanche of suppressed emotional pain for Eduardo into the film's climax.

The Social Network as a film has, as a central credit, a consistent pace that keeps you on your feet and keeps your ears on the ready. But, easily, the most exhilarating and compelling scene is, understandably, the climax, where Eduardo Saverin unleashes his fury upon Mark and Shaun and plans for his wrath, which just happens to be in the form of one of the two court cases at the center of the film. It's the clearest marriage of Sorkin's writing, Fincher's direction and the ensemble's acting, starting from when our jaws drop to the floor when it is revealed to us how much Eduardo's shares had dwindled down to by facebook's one millionth member. Arguably, though, it's Andrew Garfield who takes center stage. He goes to that unspeakable place for an actor that separates the greats from the greatests when, in a rage, his character delves into what I would dub 'emotional chaos.' We sense this earthquake coming as Eduardo glides towards Mark, yelling his name, and slams his laptop into this explosive supernova of pure and unadulterated anger — informed by the new contract. Informed by stress of his life in New York City and in his relationship. Informed by the jealousy that Shaun Parker had hijacked the company he worked with Mark to get off the ground. Informed by the purity of love that he time and time again blanketed upon Mark, his truest and best and virtually only friend, who turned out to betray all of that on such a monumental scale. Your eyes are glued to the scene. His delivery of the scene's closing line easily makes for the most invigorating and most bad-ass line delivery of the year: "You better lawyer up, asshole, because I'm not coming back for the 30%. I'm coming back for everything." Empire Magazine's on-set report chronicled this climactic moment, including a tidbit that Garfield, per instruction from David Fincher, had leaned in to Eisenberg's ear before shooting that scene and sharply hissed, "you're a fucking dick and you betrayed your best fucking friend. Live with that." The article goes on to describe the atmosphere the day that scene was shot, giving sense of the grueling method where Fincher demands as many takes as possible of the same scene, which the actors find liberating at times but is challenging of a scene requiring this much energetic emotion. "Under strip-lighting, amid desks and cool Cali-kid extras, Garfield has spent 90 minutes in an emotional maelstrom. Snatching and smashing. Snatching and smashing. Snatching and smashing. At 12.45 a.m. on a Friday in December 2009 - day 34 of the 70-day shoot, take 10 of this set-up - Fincher shouts across, ‘Andrew, disintergrate it! The computer: disintergrate it!’ It is a bastard hard scene: bringing rage and hurt again and again and again. Garfield, in dapper dark suit and perfect US accent, is excellent, but drained. After stumbling over the same word one too many times, he bellows an expletive. Eventually, 25 Apples will be obliterated. At 5.05 a.m., the various set-ups are exhausted, as is Garfield, when Fincher offers blessed words - ‘Cut it! Movin’ on’ - and shakes his hand. Garfield calls out to the crew, ‘Sorry if I was an asshole!’ He wasn’t. He was human. That’s what Fincher employed him for." And that's ultimately the greatest testament to that scene, in which Garfield provided for one of the most impressively explosive displays of acting perhaps ever caught on film by an actor of only his age.

That's also where his entire performance succeeds the most — in its humanity. A performance that can only be thought of as a gift to audiences, like the one I watched the film with who stayed through the credits just to catch his name. The one they called "that kid" before the start of the movie now had a name, and it was his performance that unanimously dominated the conversation as the moviegoers emptied out. Plenty of actors can make lemons into lemonade, and the lemonade in this character was very well already offered by Sorkin's screenplay and Fincher's efficient directing. But Garfield managed to make Mount Olympus out of it. It's the pièce-du-résistance so far of an already glowing and well decorated career from this actor, and it's a staggering achievement. It may very well be the performance of the year. Read more!