Django Unchained

When I heard that Quentin Tarantino was making a western, my first thought was that it would more or less be like this:

This is what most Tarantino movies, when you think about it, can be reduced to, isn't it? Or is it just me who feels the need for a towel every time Tarantino jerks a hot new steaming cinematic cumshot onto the faces of the general public?

While watching it, I wondered what the odds were that Tarantino made Django Unchained as a Western so that his violent down South blacksplotation mega-fantasy could take place during a time in American history where all of the white characters could get away with saying "nigger" as many times as their hearts desired without heeding the cries of racism that some of his former films have inspired?

And come on, that's what Django Unchained is. It was advertised as Tarantino's take on the Spaghetti Western, and okay, yes it does have Ennio Morricone music and does take place in the West, but really I think he would much prefer the film be know as the first historical instance of Blacksplotation.

Just like killing off Hitler in Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino has recreated Blacksplotation by taking it back to the beginning of slavery, well before its original cinematic origins. Genius historical revisionism or pompous child-man doing whatever the fuck he wants, however the fuck he wants to? I can't quite tell anymore. Maybe a bit of both?



Hell, even the wife Django is trying to save is named Broomhilda Von Shaft. These two are, in Tarantino's own words, supposed to represent the great great great grandparents of one John Shaft.

Needless to say, Djagno is one bad mutha...shut yo mouth!

As such, Django Unchained is pure Tarantino: hip, fun, violent, over-long, needlessly self indulgent, aimless, imbued with movie references so deep and obscure that it would take a spreadsheet just to track them all and made up of a lot of great scenes which are, as is often the case, cushioned by some awful ones.

Don Johnston's Big Daddy Kane character is a particularly unfortunate creation that doesn't serve a single purpose in a 165 minute film, other than an endless scene in which a bunch of clansmen complain about the eye holes in their hoods. It's the kind of film-stopping scene that you'd expect from an Eli Roth movie.

But yes, ultimately Django Unchained is a hell of a lot of fun. It's well shot, well acted, well scored and, for the most part, well written. For what it's worth, it's also clearly the work of a man with a singular vision.

There's also a lot of bad ass slow-mo shots of Jamie Foxx as Djago unholstering and laying waste to room fulls of people. These scenes are so unabashedly hip that I almost felt inclined to label it gun-fu or something like that. Oh right, John Woo already did that 27 years ago.

Just saying...

So, at the end of the day, either you buy into Tarantino's pretensions or you don't. I personally think he's a talented hack who's brilliance is sometimes overshadowed by the fact that he has no personal artistic restraint and that his films are simply jumbled assortments of pieces from other movies. The saving grace is, of course, that Tarantino has seen more movies than most of us combined and knows it.

 

Beginners

Beginners is a very funny film but it isn’t a comedy. Sometimes the funniest ones aren’t. Instead it’s a drama. I don’t mean to use that word to imply the heavy-handedness that it sometimes connotes but to use it in that lovely way that David Mamet defines it. It’s about a collection of characters who find themselves in a moment and who we watch as they try to figure it out and do with it only the best that they possibly can given the circumstances.

True drama does not force us into feeling anything other than the empathy or scorn we acquire along the way. Beginners is thus a peek at these people as they love, lose, hurt, jump for joy and ultimately feel their way forward one step at a time. There is no beginning or ending to this story; just the momentary glimpse we are treated to that starts with the opening credits and closes with the ending credits to which we nod our heads and give thanks that we were blessed to have been invited along for the ride.

The story takes place between two intercut time periods. One involves Hal (Christopher Plummer, as illuminating as he’s ever been) whose wife of 40 years has died and who now, in old age himself, has come out of the closet as being gay. It’s not that Hal just woke up one day and realized he was gay, but did what was the right thing at the time and respected his wife until she was no more. That’s how things were back then. It’s not how they are anymore. Sometimes the most profound truths are found in the broadest of spaces.

The other story involves Hal’s son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) who is picking up the pieces and getting himself together after his father’s death. Oliver, a quiet graphic artist who cared for his father right up until the end, finds himself alone and awash in a sea of confusion. His only companion seems to be Hal’s dog, who he communicates to through subtitles, his job isn’t rewarding his creativity and nothing really seems to matter.

At a party Oliver gets a little drunk and meets a quirky French actress Anna (Melanie Laurent of Inglourious Basterds fame) who can only speak through post-it notes due to a throat infection and who leads a life as unstable and confusing as Oliver’s. The two hit it off instantly.

What’s most remarkable about Beginners is how well it juggles it’s drama to strike an even balance in that rare middle ground between comedy and tragedy. The film intercuts these two time periods so that we don’t labour on Hal’s death, which is intercut with scenes of Oliver finding his footing again through Anna, which is offset by Hal’s death and so on down the line; the past and future coming together to create one complete portrait.

The film is smart in that it doesn’t let itself be defined by any single one of its characters. It isn’t pinned down to one overbearing theme or tone or meaning. It’s thus a film of just-so-happens: The film isn’t about an old man being gay but just so happens to have one; it isn’t a film about a young man trying to find himself after his fathers death but just so happens to have one; and it isn’t a love story about two awkward and confused people coming together but it just so happens to have those as well. They are there, but they don’t get in the way of the film being about their life as they live in it, one day at a time.

There’s every possibly for the film to fly off into a messy spiral. It could have been socially conscious of the taboo of coming out as gay, it could have been another weepy indie melodrama about lonely hearts or it could have been a too-hip-for-it’s-own-good exercise in style as director Mike Mills' first feature Thumbsucker was.

Instead it slowly strikes an even and honest balance which manages to allow it to not be tied down by any conventions. Beginners is a film that is so gleefully comfortable just being itself. It takes pride in simply having the courage to be about these people, in the time that they lived and it represents them with respect and care. Any movie can be about something. It takes a truly courageous one to admit that it’s about nothing but the people that it is about and does that to the very best of it’s abilities. This is one of the year’s best films.

Water for Elephants

There’s an uncanny shot in Water For Elephants that jumped out at me the moment I saw it. It involves the rising of a big top circus tent. Five men stand around a pole with sledgehammers and each hammer it in one swing at a time, moving in a clockwise motion while being filmed from above. It reminded me of one of those old MGM musical swimming pool numbers. What was uncanny about it for me was we’re so used to everything being done with computers and special effects that choreographing 5 men with sledgehammers is a rare treat that is easily taken for granted in this day and age.

The moral here is that it seems like there’s something decidedly old fashioned going on these days. The Adjustment Bureau was focused more on a love story than actio; Source Code put ideas first over all that boom boom pow stuf; Fast Five was a fun big budget B-movie with action sequences where one could see what was actually going on and now Water for Elephants gives us two great elements of American storytelling: Prohibition and the circus. It’s not a great movie, but it easily brings to mind the greats that made us fall in love with going to the movies in the first place.

Jacob (Twilight’s Robert Pattinson) is on the verge of graduating from veterinary school when he catches wind of his parent’s death in a tragic car crash. Distraught and lost, Jacob packs up his few belongings and heads for the train tracks. The train he hops on just so happens to belong to the circus.
Here Jacob meets two key people in his journey: Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) the beautiful star of the show and her husband August (Christoph Waltz) who is also the ruthless owner of the circus. Jacob convinces August to hire him on as a live in vet, something that those Ringling Brothers don’t have and Jacob quickly becomes August’s right hand man.

However, the relationship isn’t smooth. When August orders Jacob to repair the leg of Marlena’s star horse he diagnoses the situation as a lost cause and kills the animal to relieve it of its pain. This incident forces August to invest in a new star attraction: an elephant that Marlena and Jacob both love and bond over but August believes to be a dumb beast that better make his investment back for the struggling road show and who he treats with cruelty and anger.

As the story goes, Jacob is horrified by August’s treatment of the elephant while also falling in love with Marlena and trying to hide an affair from August that would set him off, prompting one of his favourite pass times which involves throwing passengers off the moving train.

Director Francis Lawrence and his cinematographer do a good job of capturing the beauty and magic of both the American countryside as well as the circus itself, which brings to mind fond memories of Fellini’s best films about the circus as well as Hal Ashby’s illuminating cross country depression tale Bound for Glory.

It ultimately makes sense that most of the film’s pleasure is derived from its ability to be nostalgic without becoming a simplification, which is helped greatly by present day bookends as the invaluable Hal Holbrook narrates the tale. The story itself is run-of-the-mill and drags in the centre when there’s a lot of training of an elephant that, to be honest, doesn’t have much personality. And yet the film captures the freedom and dread of a time period in which riding the rails, having no connection to anything but the next stop and the next show, was both majestic and frightening because, although freedom has it’s certain poetry, it also comes with the harsh reality that a time will come when one either has to grow up or die off.

From a technical point of view, the film’s greatest asset is the presence of Christoph Waltz, who so deservedly won his best supporting actor Oscar for Inglorious Basterds and is now, one film at a time, proving himself an invaluable presence. August is more of less the drive that keeps the story going as he represents the drama that exists between the two star-crossed lovers. What Waltz does is not so much make August a villain, as a man who so determinedly knows nothing but his own way and that way is force and cruelty. Although August is manipulative and heartless he is never evil so much as he is a desperate man trying to keep afloat in a desperate time. It’s the one human element that allows the film to rise above simple nostalgia and be good in its own right.

My Last Word on the Oscars

I'll be glad when tonight is over because it will be the longest possible time until the blog world is bombarded with ceaseless posts about everything Oscars again. It's not that I blame people, we have to find our inspiration somewhere, but really, once you reach a certain point, there's only so much Oscar coverage one can take. This doesn't mean that people out there who I respect didn't do a good job in their writing and it doesn't mean I didn't read it, I just didn't comment about it very much. That said, I recognize the ugly double standard that is going on here right now as I myself give my final word on the Oscars, which are happening, as probably everyone knows, tonight. That said, if you don't want to read this or put too much thought into it, well, I don't blame you. But, if nothing less, maybe you'll just read it because you like me and find my style somewhat entertaining and want to know how good I am at this whole political voting thing. Hey, it's a possibility. So I won't prolong it anymore: here's my predictions on who will win tonight, who should win, and anything else that comes to mind. Best Documentary: The Cove will win because it has the most prolific reputation amongst the nominees. It's that simple really, although Food Inc. may have a shot too. Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon because it took the Golden Globe and the Golden Palm at Cannes, plus it's the only one of the nominees I've heard of so that has to count for something, no? Best Animation: I'll say this: Disney is taking home a prize in this category tonight. What I'm curious about though is whether or not Up's place in the Best Picture category will mean a split vote for the film and The Princess and the Frog will take it? Oscar certainly does love a comeback and Dinsey's first 2D animated feature since Home on the Range certainly falls into that category, even if it didn't do quite the business it should have. My vote's still on Up though. Pixar just seems too unstoppable. Beat Visual Effects: Avatar. Duh. Best Original Song: Crazy Heart's got this one covered. When a film has more than one song nominated it tends to split the vote, as is the case with Princess and the Frog; Nine was uninspired and Crazy Heart took the Golden Globe award. Personally though, I prefer Flyin' and Fallin' from Crazy Heart, but that's just me. Best Adapted Screenplay: A tough category. I'm going to eliminate District 9, An Education and In the Loop right away. It seems to be an even draw between Precious and Up in the Air. Precious has the advantage in that it pretentiously announces that it is based on a book right in it's full title, which I refuse to type out in whole, but Up in the Air is the better film, so I'll vote for it. Best Original Screenplay: It's unfortunate that Inglourious Basterds came out in a year of hugely prolific films because, in any other year it would have been a no-brainer to give it this award. I'd still like to see Tarantino go home with this one. He is, after all, the best writer of all those nominated. I think it will probably go to The Hurt Locker out of default though. Inglourious Basterds doesn't seem like it will win anything else in the major categories except best supprting actor, which means it doesn't really have much of a shot here either. Best Director: I know Kathryn Bigelow is going to win unless the Academy goes against the Director Guild by not picking the same winner, but that rarely happens. In theory though, the best choice would be Lee Daniels. Not because Precious has the best direction (and really, does Daniels really need anything to increase his already pompously sized ego?), but because the Academy is sometimes accused of trying to atone for their past mistakes (Paul Giamatti is nominated for Cinderella Man after being overlooked for Sideways, etc.). This then reminds me of several years back in which the Academy were deemed homophobic for letting Crash win Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain (people seem to have forgotten though that they gave Phillip Seymour Hoffman the acting trophy for playing an openly gay man in Capote that same year). I also assume that if Brokeback Mountain had won people would have cried that the Academy is racist too. How better to atone for this than giving the award to a gay, black director? It's just a thought. Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. Don't argue, just accept the inevitable. Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz. See above. Best Actress: A lot of people are rooting for Merly Streep, but I don't know, her performance as Julia Child came off more as imitation to me than actual acting. It also doesn't help that Julie and Julia was a wholly uninspired film. Therefore I'm voting for Sandra Bullock. We'll forget All About Steve and say that 2009 was a huge comeback year for Bullock and we all know Oscar loves a comeback. Best Actor: It seems like Jeff Bridges is the forerunner in this category for Crazy Heart and his performance certainly does deserve the award. However, Oscar is sometimes know for pulling some fast ones in this category (Alan Arkin over Eddie Murphy, Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke), so could the award maybe go to Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus? I haven't seen the film myself so I can't comment on the quality of the performance, but Freeman is the only nominee who played a real-life character and Oscar history dictates that the Academy seems to favour actors who play real people. My vote's still on Bridges though. Best Picture: It's between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'm going with Avatar. It made billions of dollars, revolutionized film technology and The Hurt Locker may have shot itself in the foot over the controversy caused by it's producer writing stupid letters basically begging Academy members for votes. Also, considering how Oscar seems to be going for viewers this year instead of prestige, Avatar is the best bet. With that out of the way I hope everyone enjoys the show and (partially) hope Tarantino can refrain from spitting on people during the red carpet. It still irks me that John Hughes will be getting his own tribute when Patrick Swayze and Eric Rohmer will simply be limited to getting their picture in a montage. Oh well, I'll live, I think.

Oscar Nominations Are Out

Of course, today is the day where every critic and blogger weighs in on the pleasant surprises and bitter disappointments of this years Oscar nominees, which were announced today. I won't go over them in a super amount of detail seeing as so many people already have, but I will make a few small observations and ideas on who I think will win in each category.

• Meryl Streep is, not surprisingly, nominated for her performance as Julia Child in Julie and Julia. It's another example of a mediocre movie getting recognized come awards season just because of Streep. Who will win is kind of a toss up in this category. It's nice that two youngins were nominated for Best Actress in Carey Mulligan for An Education and Gabourey Sidibe for Precious, but considering the year Sandra Bullock is having she may end up grabbing the award for The Blind Side.
• Best actor will go to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. That's all there is to say here.
• A couple of surprises for the supporting actor category came in Woody Harrelson for The Messengers and Christopher Plummer as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station, but neither of them will dismount Christoph Waltz as the villain in Inglourious Basterds who has been expected to win since the moment the film debuted at Cannes.
• Supporting Actress will go to Mo'Nique for her amazing performance in Precious. Penelope Cruz is a surprise as she nabbed a nomination for her performance in Nine, the under preforming, uninspired musical remake of Fellini's 8 1/2. This adds special irony to the underground rumblings that the Weinstein Company had paid their way to a Golden Globe win for the film. However, it wouldn't be a true Oscar ceremony without Harvey Weinstein sneaking in someone in a role that doesn't deserve the recognition.
• Will the animation category be shaken this year with Pixar's Up scoring a Best Picture nomination? The one entry that offered it any competition, Ponyo, is absent from the category. 
• Once again Pedro Almodovar gets completely overlooked in the Foreign Film category, not snagging a nomination for his Broken Embraces. Although the Academy has pulled some fast ones in this category in the past (Pan's Labyrinth losing to Lives of Others in 2007), Michael Haneke's White Ribbon seems to be the front-runner here.
• As good as Inglourious Basterds and Up in the Air are, the clear competition in the Best Director category will be between former spouses James Cameron for Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. Cameron won the Golden Globe, Bigelow won the Director's Guild prize. The Director's Guild is usually the best predictor. Although I think Precious is a decent movie, I don't think Lee Daniels is a good enough filmmaker to be a competator.
• And now, Best Picture. There are 10 nominations this year. I don't think there needs to be, as none of the other 5 seem like they have a chance against the five that would have been up for nomination in the first place (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Precious and Inglourious Basterds). I appreciate seeing the Coen Bros.' A Serious Man getting some recognition and Up gets a spot for animation, but really, District 9? Of all the good blockbuster entertainments in 2009, was District 9 really better than The Hangover or 500 Days of Summer?
• Once again, Best picture will come down to The Hurt Locker and Avatar.
• The Blind Side is also up for best picture. I haven't seen it and have sort of purposely avoided it because, even though it could be an uplifting and moving experience, I'm still a little skeptical about how, in 2009, Hollywood still feels that it needs a white person to tell a black person's story.
• Finally, I'll repost a comment I left over at Sergio Leone and the Lefthand Fly Rule about the Academy's decision to have 10 nominees for best picture in order to hopefully open up the awards and let in films that were known more for their popularity than artistic merit:

"It's almost as if, by expanding the nominees to ten in an effort to get more mainstream movies nominated and translate that into more viewers, the Oscars are dulling their own significance. Now, instead of striving to be great art, all a film needs to do is be a big hit. Under this logic, why not nominate Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as best picture? Surely there must have been some booms of applause at the multiplex for that one, no? In my opinion this is just plain silly. An Oscar nomination has always been a way for smaller or bigger more artistically sophisticated films to get marketed to a wider audience. If films like The Hangover, as good as they are, start getting nominated because of the ten slots, then the entire aura created from getting an Oscar nomination will be dulled and rendered meaningless (not that an Oscar win means much in reality, but you know what I'm saying). The Oscars, at their core, are a celebration of film for people who think of film as an art, a feeling, an emotion, a scent of some sort of magic in the air, etc, not just as pure entertainment and time passing titillation. Love the films they rejoice or not, they aren’t for the kids who spend every weekend of their summer gobbling popcorn at the multiplexes. Don't get me wrong, I love dumb summer entertainment as much as the next, and see no value in elitism or snobbery, but the moment those films enter into the Oscar circle is the moment the Oscars lose their specificity." Find a complete list of the nominations here.

Golden Globes 2010

So I just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was the first time I've ever watched the entire show because, quite frankly, I don't care much about television and the Golden Globes always seemed to me to be the poor man's Oscars. They aren't as funny, as shamelessly glamours, and their comedy categories give a certain credibility to films that would otherwise be thrown on the scrap heap to be forgotten about as history moves on without them. I'm talking about stuff like The Proposal, It's Complicated, Sherlock Holmes, Julie and Julia, and Nine. I'm not going to talk about the winners and whether or not they were truly the best in their category (okay I'll do it once: 500 Days of Summer was clearly a better film than The Hangover, and really, Robert Downey Jr.?) because, unlike other years, I haven't seen all the nominees and therefore don't have the adequate information to pass informed judgements. What I want to do is make an observation. The other day I was reading Matt Singer's brief review of An Education over at Termite Art and he made the comment that TV is getting so good that it is beginning to overshadow the cinema. This comes as absolute horror to me as someone who has lived and breathed cinema and kept TV at even greater than an arms length away. But as I was watching the Golden Globes and seeing all the TV nominees for shows I've never seen like Big Love, Dexter, True Blood, Glee, and so on, I realized that Singer was maybe on to something, especially when compared to those above listed nominated films like Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.

Then I got to thinking back over what were the most popular films of 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, New Moon, Night at the Museum 2, Terminator: Salvation, and the absolute stinkiest of them all, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. It was a depressing realization: Hollywood really was in the crapper this year. It's 2009 and instead of producing our own contemporary classics the best we can do is honour a hack musical remake of one of Fellini's most invaluable masterpieces? Then Martin Scrosese took the stage to accept the Cecil B. Demille Award and things got worse for me. Sitting through a montage of one of America's most value directors' work, I was left thinking: There were more essential, classic, absolutely unforgettable moments in those few minutes of montage then there have been in all of 2009. I considered myself definitely depressed. And then, with the TV awards behind and the major awards just over the horizon, I was reminded that, even if 2009 looked and felt like a total wash, amid all the meaningless wreckage, were films made out of the very stuff that make us fall in love again and again with the cinema every day of our lives. Film's like Inglourious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar. Then Jeff Bridges, one of America's true acting treasures, won best actor for Crazy Heart (a film I have yet to see) and was given a standing ovation. "Yes," I thought, "these moments are the reason why we film lovers stick it out even through the worst of years." It was a reminder of what is still, after over 100 years of history, the most unchanged fundamental necessities of film: good actors, playing strong characters, immersed in good stories. Then, as Avatar began winning all the big awards, I was indeed satisfied in my realization that the most popular film of the year was also the best. It wasn't the one about mutant super heroes, vampire lovers, living museum displays, intergalactic robots or any other such gimmick. It wasn't based on a theme part ride, a video game or a toy chain. It wasn't a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or any other such quick money making scheme. It was a bold, beautiful, original piece of art and a glorious entertainment to boot. And it is a film that I hope Hollywood has learned a valuable lesson from: that people essentially crave and are drawn to new concepts and new ideas that are presented in classical film conventions (stories told with pictures). In 20, 10, even 5 years Twilight and Transformers will simply be the bad aftertaste of an era in filmmaking in which big studios thought they could get away with phoning it in. So, in spite of everything, I must hold my head up high and look forward to tomorrow because, no matter how bleak it may look right now, as history has proven and as Brandon Lee so truthfully said in The Crow: "It can't rain all the time." A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found here, and probably just about everywhere else too.