The Adjustment Bureau

Rumor has it that when the original Young Turks of the Cashiers du Cinema gathered years after the fact for a round table discussion one of the topics was with regards to how they had argued so hard towards the director as the artist of his own work that when he was finally given artistic freedom, he didn’t know what to do with it.

That is, in one way or another, the logic behind the Adjustment Bureau as explained by Terrence Stamp’s Thompson in one of those film stealing monologue scenes. It’s that free will is just an illusion. Sure we can chose what tie to wear and what tooth paste to use, but give a person real power over themselves and we get the Dark Ages or World Wars. Thus there is a Chairman who has a plan devised for everyone and when we step off course, he sends his men to give us all a nudge back into fulfilling the destiny that was set out for us.


That’s the story told anyway in the new film of the same name which places Matt Damon and Emily Blunt into, what is essentially an old fashioned melodrama with the ideas surrounding them loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick short story that, just possibly, Alex Proyas also had in mind when he dreamed up his masterpiece Dark City. It’s the foregrounding of this romance that essentially holds the movie together, giving it human momentum within a story that hasn’t been given half as much though by its writer/director George Nolfi as say was given to the aforementioned Dark City or even Inception for that matter. But then again, the old adage still stands: love conquers all.

Damon plays David Norris, a former bad boy turned senate hopeful in New York who looks poised to win until a picture of some former college hijinks is put into print and Norris loses. In the bathroom, before his speech on election night he meets Elise (Blunt) and immediately establishes a connection until she is chased away, no name or number having been given, by a pair of guards looking for her for crashing a wedding upstairs.

Norris, smitten and frustrated, manages a speech that night that is honest and compelling and looks like it will set him on course for a win come next term. Meanwhile, on a bus to his new job, he meets up with Elise and they manage to exchange numbers. However, this wasn’t the plan for Norris who, upon arrival to the office, finds men in suits erasing memories from his co-workers. They give chase but are inescapable. Their hats, we are later told, allow them the power to go through doors and be teleported around the city like magic. It’s a neat trick that doesn’t get much more logical an explanation than this.

Norris is told of this mysterious Chairman and this divine plan that has been written for everyone and is mapped out in convenient animated books which, despite their power, look less impressive and versatile than Ipads. Apparently God hasn’t caught up with the times. But now, reeling myself back in, I’ve gone and made an important assumption that the film wisely doesn’t. These men don’t stand in for angels nor the Chairman for God, although the parallels are there. We know this Chairman, we are told, by many different names and have met him but never know as he appears in a different form to everyone.

The thing is, Norris was never meant to meet Elise and her presence, if a relationship is allowed to develop, will throw both of their destinies off course and will ultimately, if Thompson is to be believed, ruin both of them. Therefore, the agents follow Norris, “nudging” him every once in a while in order to keep him on the fast track to greatness and away from Elise. The logic here though is a bit murky: if the agents need to keep nudging Norris back on track, aren’t they changing also, by doing so, the destinies of those around them, in a Butterfly Effect-like manner? Are there other agents who need to come in and nudge everyone else back on course after an initial nudge? That must require a lot of man power. Maybe in the sequel we can go backstage at the Bureau and see the Chairman going through the recruitment process.

The film is wise in that it doesn’t explicitly draw a religious parallel, which would ultimately ground it in some sort of reality and make it into something it isn’t.

And then the story ultimately becomes a romantic thriller in which Norris, with the help of one optimistic agent played by Anthony Mackie, tries to avert the agents, tries to get back to Elise, even if it means changing the course of his entire life. It’s a nice premise for which Damon and Blunt can cast a likable couple that we generally hope find each other and features a world in which chases are handled by foot and not computers and are filmed in long takes and edited with logic not a blender.

And that’s what you get for your money. Here’s a film that is well acted and made and spreads a little bit of logic in with a little bit of illogic. It doesn’t have the sweep of say Inception, but unlike that film it does have an emotional drive towards some sort of foreseeable end point, which makes it not nearly as compelling but engaging for its own simple, earnest reasons. It won’t provide any food for thought that will justifiably leave anyone discussing it several weeks from now but then again, neither did Inception.

The King Spoke and He Said: The Oscars Kind of Sucked This Year

 
• 2010 will be remembered as the year that nothing worth remembering happened at the Oscars.
• Anne Hathaway could very well be a great Oscar host with lots of life and energy (if she'd give up the oh my gosh I'm hosting the Oscars references), but what was with James Franco? He looked like that if he didn't go backstage and start cooking up a shot he was going to go into withdrawl.
• I think the Academy found their host next year in Kirk Douglas.
• It's sad that the most talked about thing this year was Melissa Leo dropping the F-bomb.
• There was a moment when Wally Pfister was accepting his award when he thanked Christopher Nolan for being his master and Nolan half smiled as if to say, "Yeah thanks, even though it should be me up there."
• Apparently Ophrah talking about the human condition did nothing for Joel Cohen who decided he'd rather pick his ear than listen.
• Randy Newman has been nominated for Best Song 20 times and won twice which is kind of ironic because he essentially made a career out of writing the same song over and over again (to be fair, his songs were one of the things that kept the Princess and the Frog from being great). Out of four nominees, only the 127 Hours song had any personality at all. However, in his attempt to be "good TV" Newman did give one of the funniest and lightest speeches.
• Tom Hooper managed to make thanking his mom actually sound sweet and meaningful.
• I have no idea who this kid who won best short feature is, but he's certainly going places.
• Susanne Bier won an Oscar. This makes me happy. She doesn't get enough credit for what she does.
• You can tell Aaron Sorkin is a great writer. He gave the most literate and confident speech. He reminds me a bit of David Mamet.
• I desperately wanted the Social Network to win more awards just so that there could be more hilarious cutaway shots of David Fincher looking completely unimpressed as people thanked him.
• Was it just me or were Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis really awkward to watch?
• The opening montage was so uninspired that I thought for a second I was watching Saturday Night Live
• The opening monologue wasn't much better. Where is Carrie Fischer when you need her?
• Billy Crystal managed to revive the show a little and a video was played of Bob Hope doing one of my favourite Oscar lines "Or as it's called at my house: passover," but this was awkwardly melded into a way to introduce Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law
• Speaking of: if there has to be 2 hosts, these 2 get my vote for next year.
• Since when have the honorary Oscar recipients ever been brought on stage and not allowed to make a speech?
• How did David O. Russell and Christian Bale work together without anyone getting hurt?
• I got 2 wrong this year and 3 wrong last year. I'm getting better

The King Will Speak at Tonight's Academy Awards

I write 2 Oscar posts. The one I am doing right now and the one I will write after the show. I personally don't see the need for any more than that because what makes the Oscars fun is the concept of the Oscars and what they represent, which is glamour and old Hollywood excess. It doesn't matter who wins. Winning an Oscar is about the equivalent of picking a name out of a hat (except foreign film). The voter need not see a single one of the nominated films to cast their ballot and they don't even need to be the one doing the voting. So, the awards are meaningless, which is why I don't dwell on them and don't get up in arms over Christopher Nolan not getting nominated or whether or not Toy Story 3 should be allowed to be nominated in Best Picture and Best Animation. Life's too short, let's just enjoy the ride and see how my ability to predict political voting is this year.

Best Foreign Film: This category is always up in the air and one I get wrong because A) I haven't seen all of the movies and B) the voters have to have seen all the movies. Regardless, I'll take my best guess and do what I did last year, going with the Golden Globe choice of Civilization because I think Susanne Bier is a brilliant filmmaker who doesn't get nearly the credit she is due in North America.

Best Animated Feature: The truly best film in this category will not win. Nothing has a shot over Toy Story 3, which made the most money in 2010 and tricked just about everyone into thinking it was a great movie due to 10 minutes at the end.
Who Should Win: The Illusionist
Who Will Win: Toy Story 3

Best Adapted Screenplay: I think this will be one of the categories where the true best will shine and may be one of the only awards, besides Original Score, that the Social Network will walk away with.
Who Should Win: The Social Network
Who Will Win: The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: I always wonder what the Academy considers to be a good screenplay. Is it the dialogue, the structure, the characters? If it's dialogue and character than Inception doesn't have a chance. Not that it it does anyway. I actually have the insider advantage here as I covered the screenplay for The King's Speech about a year ago and indeed, it was very good. I wonder if I'll get a raise when it wins?
Who Should Win: The King's Speech
Who Will Win: The King's Speech

Best Director: The Golden Globe went to Fincher. The DGA went to Hooper. The DGA usually is the definitive word. If Hooper wins this one, and I think he will, The Social Network doesn't have a chance at best picture as King will probably also sweep the acting awards and Oscar generally doesn't argue with the DGA. Poor Aronofsky. His time will come eventually.
Who Should Win: David Fincher
Who Will Win: Tom Hooper

Best Supporting Actress: This is a tough one. I think we can strike out Jacki Weaver because Animal Kingdom doesn't have the push behind it that would lead to a win. Melissa Leo and Amy Adams could potentially split the vote and cancel each other out for The Fighter, leaving Helena Bonham Carter and Hailee Steinfeld. Oscar loves the British but Steinfeld should win for her scene alone in True Grit between herself and the crooked business man. Last year in the writing category I picked the actual best performance and was wrong so I think I'll go with the obvious this year instead.
Who Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld
Who Will Win: Helena Bonham Carter

Best Supporting Actor: It's down to Christian Bale and Geoffry Rush. Oscar likes weight loss and weight gain but King, I think, is going for a sweep and Oscar almost always votes British so I will too.
Who Should Win: John Hawkes
Who Will Win: Geoffry Rush

Best Actress: I think this one is fairly obvious although I'm not so sure Portman truly was the best, her performance being one part of Black Swan's whole. I found Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole to be far more engaging to Portman's "acting" in Black Swan. However, Oscar likes stars who put themselves through physical strain and Portman certainly did that, plus, Kidman gave one of those "quiet" performances that Christina Bale, at the Golden Globes, said no one really ever gets noticed for.Wouldn't it be fun if Oscar pulled a punch and let Anette Benning, who is just as deserving, have the win?
Who Should Win: Nicole Kidman or Anette Benning
Who Will Win: Natalie Portman

Best Actor: Let's continue to vote British.
Who Should Win: Jesse Eisenberg
Who Will Win: Colin Firth

Best Picture: Not much to say here. Once again, despite 10 nominees, just as it always was when there was 5, the race comes down to two. The Social Network was the best movie of the year for me, but the King's Speech is more of an Oscar movie and currently has much more momentum behind it. Plus, if Hooper and Firth win there's no chance for the Social Network to take it.
Who Should Win: The Social Network
Who Will Win: The King's Speech

One Minute Review: The Last Song

The Last Song is a perfectly serviceable Nicholas Sparks adaptation which is, more often than not, right around where Nicholas Sparks adaptations lay. It has the Sparks standbys: the budding romance between two unlikely lovers who start out on the wrong foot, the inevitable death of a key figure, and the trials and tribulations of maintaining a relationship between two people who's backgrounds are so wholly different. And, of course, the pretty bow-tie that everything is always wrapped up in.

The thing is that Sparks is such a middle-of-the-road writer (doing about what he has to and not much more) that his work requires a director who can cut through the melodrama and provide the proper background against which it can soar. The Notebook (still the best Sparks adaptation) found the scope and breadth to provide exactly the right note on which the audience could invest in it. The Notebook was  thus less a Nicholas Sparks adaptation and more a romance in the classic Hollywood vein of a pedigree we rarely ever see anymore. Melodrama can be big but it can't be shameless. That's often where Sparks fails as he meanders aimlessly from one heart tug to the next.

The Last Song sits right in the middle: it's nice, kind of sweet, tugs on the heartstrings a little and then fades away. Maybe it's because the story revolves around a character who is infinitely less interesting than just about everyone around here. Maybe that's partly to blame on star Miley Cyrus who can do broad children's entertainment (for what it's worth) but struggles here with the nuance of involving drama. 

Faring better is Greg Kinnear, so warm and natural, conveying emotions without even so much as trying, as Cyrus' father who is the most emotionally involving thing in the movie until he's unfortunately secured into the role of script convenience in the third act. 

And then the movie ends, leaving one no better or worse from having seen it. A collection of episodes that don't really find the emotional pull to add up to anything substantial. If you want to think of it in relative terms: It's not as good as The Notebook or A Walk to Remember and nowhere near as awful as Nights in Rodanthe.

The Top 10 Movies of 2010

I'm with William Goldman who says there is is no such thing as the 10 best movies of the year, only the ten that the writer liked the best. It may be possible to argue for the best movies of the year but that would probably require that all the critics sat down and did a shot-by-shot analysis of ten of the same movies and spoke about things such as canted angles and split diopters and mise-en-scene and wide lenses and long lenses and long takes and deep focus and all those other vast technical things that make up filmic language and affect the way we see things, mostly unconsciously.

That's why I have named my list the Top 10 Movies of 2010. They aren't the best (I haven't seen every movie in 2010 so how could they be?), but rather the ones that moved me in some way the most because it is my belief that all art has the ability to move us in one of two ways: emotionally or intellectually (the best of which often does both) and that's what this list of films did.

The list however, isn't complete. I thought I could do better (which explains it's delay in arriving) but I've finally given up. As of this writing I still haven't seen The King's Speech, Somewhere, 127 Hours or Another Year. It is what it is.One of the film's is from 2009. Deal with it. It's my list. I saw it in 2010 and it deserves the recognition. Just to be fair, I've put it at number 10 if that makes the blow a little easier.

I'm also doing something a littler different this year. Instead of making a separate post for the worst films I'm just going to list them without explanation. Life's too short and it's hard coming up with ten different ways to say something sucked.

So, at long last, here is my 10 favourite films, but first, those honourable mentions that would have made the list were it not for those other 10 (some of them, of course, are from last year but were seen in 2010):

Sin Nombre, Whatever Works, Management, Shutter Island, Rudo Y Cursi, Hot Tub Time Machine, Away We Go, Summer Hours, Death at a Funeral, Everlasting Moments, Orphan, The Losers, Sugar, The Cove, The Messengers, In the Loop, Just Wright, You Don't Know Jack, Knight & Day, The Invention of Lying, Inception, Amreeka, Moon, Legend of the Guardians, Salt, The Karate Kid, 2012, Dinner for Schmucks, Flame & Citron, Bandslam, Taking Woodstock, Easy A, The Princess and the Frog, The Road, The Book of Eli, Pirate Radio, District 13: Ultimatum, Trucker, Morning Glory, Winter's Bone, Remember Me, The Trotsky, Public Speaking, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, She's Out of My League, Unstoppable, A Small Act.

10. Michael Jackson's This is It - Michael Jackson's This Is It doesn't sound like a good idea on paper. It's a collection of footage shot before the death of the pop icon, rehearsing for his upcoming comeback tour. However, despite how excellent the music is and what a true professional Jackson was, what this document truly reflects is just how few gifted contemporaries Jackson had. In a day when songs sound more like they were spit out of computers with no human involvement and performers sing in concerts to tapes and put on spectacles to mask lack of talent, Jackson actually sang, on a stage, to music that can be reproduced entirely by real instruments. And when his voice didn't have the power to reach the notes it needed, he utilized back up singers. This is It is thus a bittersweet farewell to one of pop music's last true talents.

9. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World - This film proved that if filmmaking is moving towards being nothing more than computer generated flashes of light and sound then it may as well still also be funny and entertaining and involve characters that we like and want to go on the journey with. Chalk it up to the combination of Michael Cera's ever charming screen personality and Edgar Wright's frantic imagination and ability to squeeze visual comedy out of every crevice of the film. Wright, a director of excesses who, finally after three tries, has found a platform in order to let his tendencies soar as opposed to bog down a story, goes to great painstaking detail in order to create the actual feel of a graphic novel and video game, while still allowing enough room for the characters to shine through, even if the story does dive into repetition. You wouldn't want every movie to be like this, but you're glad this one is.

8. Chloe - Mistaken and written off by many as trash, Atom Egoyan's Chloe is another dark and intelligent exploration of the lives of people who are all, in some way, emotionally connected. Like Egoyan's other works, but more straight forward this time, Chloe starts out at a distance and slowly zooms in in order to reveal relationships and connections in a light in which they didn't appear before. Taking the shape of an erotic thriller but delivering a fascinating character study of sex and need and desire, Chloe is also one of the few films that takes sex seriously and deals with it in an intelligent and mature manner.

7. True Grit - True Grit is, I guess, the only straight genre film by the Coen Brothers and shows that the madcap duo can play by the rules just as well as they can bend them. Stripped back and adhering to the conventions of the traditional western (while also finding the language and humor of the book that was lost in the earlier John Wayne adaptation of the same name) the Cohen's prove what master storytellers they are, building a film by creating one great scene after another. True Grit plays like a collection of short films that all run together. There's the scene with our young heroin haggling with a crooked business man, Rooster Cogburn's courtroom scene and so on, building up to a whole which is probably the entertainment of the year.

6. Hereafter - Another misunderstood film, this is an intelligent and compelling meditation on life and death that ends with the ultimate truth on the subject: that no one really knows. It involves three separate stories from around the world, who are connected by their encounters with death and who will all ultimately come into contact with one another. But the film, masterfully directed by Clint Eastwood, is not so much about story or plot as standing back and quietly meditating on how fragile life really is, how unexplainable the mysteries of the universe are and how little control we really have over the time we have here. The film doesn't claim it believes in a Heaven or not, but opens itself up to the possibility that there is, just maybe, something profound out there that cannot be explained. Than again, maybe not.

5. It's Kind of a Funny Story - Ryan Fleck and Anne Boden make genre films that stand outside of genre conventions and instead present real character dramas. They've made one film about a drug addicted teacher, one about a foreign baseball player and now one about a kid who checks himself into the mental ward at a hospital. Despite what a plot outline would suggest, the film avoids all opportunity to make fun of the colourful people who populate the ward and instead focuses on their hero and his journey toward discovering that maybe life isn't as bad as he thinks while he is accompanied by another young girl and another (Zack Galafinakis in a brilliant dramatic turn) mysterious fellow who has closed off his baggage from the world. The film avoids every opportunity to become cutesy or preachy and instead just follows this boy up to a realization that is both nice and utterly realistic in its open-endedness.

4. Rabbit Hole - Like Hereafter, Rabbit Hole is another meditation on death and all the mysteries of the universe from a completely different angle. This one is a quite, stripped back drama about a family coping with the loss of their young son. One of them is distant and has emotionally removed herself from the world, finding group meetings a joke and scorning her mother (Diane Wiest stealing the show) for trying to relate to her, and the other who is open and confused and resents how his wife is trying to erase their son as if he never existed. The film raises all the hard questions and delivers none of the easy answers. What begins as a simple drama slowly expands into questioning the entire nature of the universe.

3. Greenberg - There is a scene in which Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller in his best performance since Your Friends & Neighbours) steps gallantly into a swimming pool, stands at the edge, nobly prepares to swim a length and then sputters, coughs and gags his way to the ladder on the other side. That scene essentially defines Greenberg whose most noble actions end up pathetic attempts to prove nothing in particular. And as hard as it is to like this pompous man who fails at life, spends his time writing complaining letter to large corporations, has just recovered from a mental breakdown and is now taking some time off to just do nothing, Stiller kind of has you admiring the guy at the same time. Maybe that's the genius of Noah Bambauch's film: it never quite let's you know how to feel about this guy who can't quite do anything right, especially the on-again off-again romance he develops with his brother's assistant, but is still kind of admirable in his dedication to doing nothing at all. Greenberg is so fascinating because he is everything you wish you could have been and also every reason why you didn't.

2. Black Swan - Black Swan is another study in which director Darren Aronofsky follows a character unmercifully towards their own destruction as they try to reach for something that is just ever so slightly out of their human reach. This time it's a ballet dancer who has been set up with the nearly impossible task of taking the lead in a new version of Swan Lake. She's perfect for the role of the White Swan but is too meticulous and rigid for the part of the Black Swan. She is slowly driven mad in her attempt to unlock her personal hang-ups (parental, emotional, sexual) in order to unleash her inner black swan. Barbara Hershey, as her over bearing mother steals the show.

1. The Social Network - Here's a film that conveys a story that exists inside a paradox: the world's most popular social networking site was creating by a guy with next to no social skills whatsoever. The Social Network is thus a fascinating study of how one kid, so oblivious to the world around him, went on to create a phenomenon that has defined a generation and changed the way we relate to people and communicate with one another. The film is perfectly directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, who manages to create amazing dialogue that explains complex things in a way that is both compelling and yet can be understood by anyone watching. Like Fincher's last masterpiece Zodiac, The Social Network creates drama not through plot twists and turns but by piling mounds of information onto an exciting case. Jesse Eisenberg also deserves credit for his role as Matt Zuckerberg who gets to act the best scene in his career as Zuckerberg addresses a lawyer who he has been largely ignoring. As close to perfect as any other film this year.

The Bottom 10 Films of 2010:

Honourable Mentions: Valentine's Day, The Ugly Truth, Dead Snow, Ghosts of Girlfriend's Past, Franklyn, I Can do Bad All By Myself, Pandorum, The Final Destination, Sorority Row, Grown Ups, Couples Retreat, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, Whiteout, Armored, Nine, The Spy Next Door, Legion, Daybreakers, The Bounty Hunter, Furry Vengeance, Going the Distance, Love and Other Drugs

10. The Lovely Bones
9. Twilight: Eclipse
8. Killers
7. Year One
6. Kick-Ass
5. The Other Guys
4. When in Rome
3. The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day
2. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
1. Sex and the City 2

Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole is one of those movies that starts out about the death of a child and slowly opens up into new ideas and new realizations until it finally arrives at profound questions about the infinity of the universe, the mysteries of space and time, the complexities of happiness and the impossibility of life and death. It makes you realize just how finite and un-malleable time really is; how large and impossible life can be; how truly insignificant we are within whatever it is out there beyond the solar system that we have no concept of and that could, beyond all living logic and reason, stretch on forever and ever amen. It makes us appreciate the little, simple things that we can grasp onto and understand because, when it all comes down to it, it is all we really know in this big, complex mess of a world. What’s above the clouds and beyond the stars isn’t for us to know, which is fine; we've got our own stuff to deal with anyway.


That’s what Rabbit Hole is about. It’s about whittling the world down into manageable things in order to take steps forward, one day at a time; to find order in the mess and ultimately guide a life into, hopefully, happiness with as little destruction and suffering along the way as possible.

Oh yes, this is a movie of ideas. All true drama is. Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Nicole Kidman) have lost their young son. Howie moves on while trying to appear as if life continues. He willingly goes to the loss groups and finds comfort in watching a video of him and his son on his Iphone.

Becca however, seems composed and yet cold, putting everything inside. She's confused but doesn’t know about what; can’t stand the pathetic people at the group; wants to rid the house of everything that reminders her of her son; and resents her mother (Diane Wiest), who also lost a son, for trying to relate to her. Her son, after all, was a 4 year old who ran out on the road while her brother was a 30 year old heroin addict who overdosed.

Soon Becca, off from work, begins following the boy who hit her son until they finally meet face-to-face and talk in the park. She finds comfort in him, realizing that he is just a boy, riddled with guilt, trying to move on. Was he going too fast that day? It hardly matters in the grand scheme. The two spark up a friendship of sorts in so much as that they feel that each is probably essential to the others recovery, or else just a way for Becca to continue to hold on as best she can. He may have taken her son but, is he really to be blamed? Is anyone?

And then the movie, without breaking it’s narrative simplicity or quiet emotional power, begins pulling back to reveal larger, more profound concepts, not just about life and death, but about the universe and the possibility that maybe there is another, alternate one where, right now, in their suffering, these people could be happy.

It’s not so much a question of Heaven, but rather a question of if this is all there is. Is life only as it appears before us? What you see is what you get? Or are there things out there, working, somewhere else out of our sight, where things are better, happier, nicer? A place where little boys can’t be taken away because they aren’t 30 year old heroin addicts? Maybe there isn’t and such thinking is just a means to grab on to any semblance of hope in order to cope with the hand you’ve been dealt. The movie doesn’t try to answer these questions. How could it? These thoughts are simply the logical extension of death, which, in a sense, gives one a whole new perspective on life.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell who has done an about face from the flamboyance and excess of his first two features Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. Here Mitchell isn’t flashy or sexy but rather stark and desolate as he allows his characters to cope with this situation on their own natural emotional terms. Sometimes humour sneaks through, but then again, why wouldn’t it, as humour seems the only natural way to cope with tragedy.

And then the film ends, as Hereafter did, with the three most profound words that can come in any work that deals with life and death: I don’t know. That is, after all, all we every really know on the subject.

The Golden Globes 2011 Plus a Celebrity Connection

To all the people who spend weeks and/or months writing about awards shows in advance, making predictions, guessing who will what to whom and when and live blogging and all that jazz, well I am not for you, or you are not for me, or however Shakespeare put it. In other words, to this mind, it's kind of a waste of time. Of course awards shows are fun to watch and talk about for about five minutes after the fact, but other than that, who cares? Like year end lists, awards don't represent what the Best Movie of the year is. How could it, there is, to quote William Goldman, no such thing; simply the reflection of which movie a group of people decided they liked more than the others. But regardless, while I should really be finishing that Rabbit Hole review or working at becoming a better critic, here's my 2 cents on what happened last night:

• Jason Segel, my favourite comedic leading man, got the biggest laugh of the red carpet when he did a rendition of Meat Loaf's I Would do Anything for Love. When a Jim Steinman musical finally happens, if ever, I vote Segel in the lead.
• Some have praised Ricky Gervais for mocking a ridiculous institution to it's face but I don't know, his routine throughout the night felt more like simply an amplification of last year. He tried to be quicker and more offensive while forgetting to be clever or laugh-out-loud hilarious and most of his targets were easy ones. The Charlie Sheen joke was Letterman grade stuff, suggesting the Hollywood Foreign Press take bribes was funny when he did it last year and really, Robert Downey Jr. rehab jokes jumped the shark when Downey announced the best special effects category at the Oscars a couple years ago. My vote for next year: Joan Rivers.
• Speaking of Downey, he stole the show, as expected, with a line to Gervais, ""Aside from the fact that it's been hugely mean-spirited, with mildly sinister undertones, I'd say the vibe of the show is pretty good so far, wouldn't you?" And then went on with an introduction that started off funny and dragged on longer than it should have. 
• The only movie that deserved recognition, The Kids Are All Right won for best Picture - Comedy. Really, was The Tourist, Red or Burlesque better than Morning Glory, Hot Tub Time Machine or Easy A? 
• Clair Danes won for her performance in Temple Grandin and it was sweet to see the real Temple sitting there with her and yet all I could think of was how William Goldman said that his academy vote will never go to "alcoholics or retards" because they are the easiest roles to play.
• Christian Bale showed up as Charles Manson doing Jesus and yet, outside of saying "shit" on network TV, dropped some serious truth when he thanked Mark Whalberg for giving a quiet performance (the ones that no one ever recognizes) for him to give a loud one. There's something to be pondered here about the nature of acting and whether or not "award" type of performances are really great acting or not. I guess that explains why Colin Firth took it over Jesse Eisenberg.
• David Fincher looked miserable, just adding to his reputation as being an impossible man to work with. Seeing him win reminded me of one of my favourite Fincher stores as told by Sharon Waxman in Rebels on the Backlot. When one of the Fight Club producers heard Helena Bonham Carter's line to Edward Norton "I want to have your abortion," she begged and begged Fincher to change it. Finally he agreed on the condition that he got to change it to whatever he wanted and it would have to stay. Fine she agreed, nothing could be worse. Until she heard the new line: "Best f**ck I've had since kindergarten," and she begged him to put the other one back. 
• Al Pacino, you've won so many awards, why, all these years into your career, can you not compose a coherent acceptance speech?
• David O. Russell didn't headbutt anybody. Guess it's good George Clooney wasn't on site.
• Good for you Diane Warren, it's a great song even if the movie is suppose to be crap.
• Trent Reznor won a Golden Globe. Both of us have apparently grown a lot since The Downward Spiral.
• Dear Lea Michele: you are not attractive, you cannot act and your voice sounds like a poor man's Vanessa Hudgens. Make of that what you will. 
• Inception didn't win anything. Good. It won't win Oscars either. It doesn't deserve them and it makes me sad to think that movies like True Grit or Rabbit Hole didn't get a nominations so that this one could. 
• Robert De Niro's speech was a better indictment of the HFPA than anything Gervais did and his quip to Matt Damon, "I loved you in The Fighter" was hilarious. Usually de Niro is so stern. Good for him. 
• All that said, Helena Bonham Carter made me think of Hitchcock's Vertigo in which Jimmy Stewart tries to transform a woman into a a former dead love:

Could Hena Bonham Carter actually be Edward Scissorhands in Disguise? You Decide