Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Love Letter



The night that Michel Hazanavicius wrapped up the race with a DGA win, I found myself rewatching The Artist for the first time since I'd first seen it at the New York Film Festival in around October. I had never minded it sweeping the awards, and it was never quite my first choice but I always admired it and found it to be perfectly pleasant and clever.

But such may have been short selling it, I believe. Mark Harris jokes that the film has been labeled one of nostalgia falsely considering most of us were not around for the era the film chronicles, thus we can't feel nostalgic about it. But I rewatched it just feeling nostalgic for having watched it the first time a few months ago, and nearly every image was memorable in a way you just don't find with cinema these days. The Artist will be a film forever remembered as a classic precisely because of that — because you can say, "oh, remember that scene in the film?" with nearly every scene and it'll be clear and crisp in your mind as the day you'd first seen it, whether you realize it or not, the same way you can with so many gems of the most classic Hollywood films. Hazanavicius deserves full credit for expressing this story through such salient, memorable images throughout the film.

It's very much a cinematic picture in it's own right — it wouldn't even be fair to call it a period piece, since I believe the film doesn't actually take place in a real world. It takes place within the realm and universe of a silent film from that era, its characters are characters themselves from the kind of movies from that time, and more than just sheer cute gimmick, it is such a passionate homage to those films and a beautiful love letter.

It's no wonder, then, that this will almost certainly be the most deserving Best Picture winner, in my mind, since Slumdog Millionaire a few years ago. Like The Artist, Slumdog was a love letter to the Indian culture and likewise, brilliantly, infused elements far and wide from it ranging from the country's booming rise in globalized industry and development to the very conventions and sentimentality in the films of Bollywood that so many of the impoverished populations escape into with joy, dancing, sadness, redemption, morality, and more. Audiences fell for Slumdog Millionaire for the same reason they'd fall for any Bollywood film as so many now love and will come to love The Artist for the same reason classic Hollywood films came to define our culture in the past century. Read more!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Final Oscar Predictions

Best Picture:
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball


Best Director:
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
David Fincher, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo


Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Démian Bichir, A Better Life
George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Michael Fassbender, Shame
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Tilda Swinton, We Need To Talk About Kevin
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

Best Original Screenplay:
50/50
The Artist
Bridesmaids
Midnight in Paris
A Separation

Best Adapted Screenplay:
The Descendants
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Moneyball
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Cinematography:
The Artist
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two
Hugo
The Tree of Life

Best Art Direction:
Anonymous
The Artist
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two
Hugo
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Costume Design:
The Artist
The Help
Hugo
Jane Eyre
My Week With Marilyn

Best Editing:
The Artist
The Descendants
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
Moneyball

Best Visual Effects:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two
Hugo
The Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
The Tree of Life

Best Makeup:
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two
The Iron Lady

Best Original Score:
The Adventures of Tintin
The Artist
Hugo
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
War Horse

Best Original Song:
“Star Spangled Man,” Captain America: The First Avenger
“Life’s a Happy Song,” The Muppets
“Pictures in My Head,” The Muppets
“So Long,” Winnie the Pooh

Best Sound Mixing:
The Artist
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two
Hugo
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Super 8

Best Sound Editing:
The Adventures of Tintin
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
Rango
Real Steel
Super 8

Best Animated Feature:
Arthur Christmas
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Rango
Winnie the Pooh

Best Foreign Language Film:
Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
A Separation (Iran)
Footnote (Israel)
Omar Killed Me (Morocco)
In Darkness (Poland)

Best Documentary:
Bill Cunningham: New York
If a Tree Falls
Pina
Project Nim
We Were Here Read more!