2016 Academy Awards Part 1

Photo: Chris Rock, presenting at the 2016 Academy Awards, from Patrick Fallon for the New York Times.

A lot of quick things to say about the 2016 Oscars--so much, it may take a few posts.

--Not to be lost in the controversy is that Chris Rock unequivocally said that Hollywood IS racist.

--The scroll of names the winners want to thank is not working for me. At all.

--The pop-up info about the presenters works for me only if I'm interested in the presenter.

--The producers and directors of this telecast are clearly working hard to improve the ratings. The ticker of names, the pop-ups, the displays, the pictures of the nominees behind the presenters, and the tricky camera angles centering those pictures as the presenter describes that person's performance...lots of changes. Many of them aren't bad, but the presenters aren't enjoying the moving camera in front of them. They just want to read the teleprompter and get the hell offstage.

--Nominated Best Picture films I've seen this year: The Revenant; The Martain; Bridge of Spies; Mad Max: Fury Road. I really wanted to see Spotlight, and I wouldn't have minded seeing The Big Short.

--Ten films can be nominated for Best Picture, but only eight were. Two of the many overlooked: Sicario and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Those two, and The Revenant, were the best ones I saw.

--Anyone see Andrew McCarthy in the many ads for his new TV show, The Family? It's been a long time since Weekend at Bernie's and Pretty in Pink, I guess.

--Lots of good cinematography this year, more than usual, from my movie-going experience. Emmanuel Lubezki's third consecutive win for Best Cinematography is unheard of. Probably the first time ever, in Oscar history. But his work in Gravity, The Birdman, and now The Revenant makes him worthy.

--By the way, Mr. Trump, the past three Best Director Oscar winners--all Mexican. Just sayin'.

--It's been long-predicted that Mad Max: Fury Road would sweep the technical awards. Well-deserved.

--I like the music the Academy chose to play to shut down the winner's over-long speech: The Ride of the Valkyries.

--I also like seeing celebrities taking selfies with their celebrity fans.

--I blogged about Mark Rylance's performance in (the otherwise underwhelming) Bridge of Spies earlier this year, and I've said he deserves the Award for Best Supporting Actor. (Full disclosure: I have not seen Creed.) Rylance had not received a single award from the other places (Screen Actors Guild; New York Film Critics, etc.) and I didn't expect him to get this one. Neither did anyone else--except for all the Academy's actors who didn't vote for Sylvester Stallone here. I thought this award, the Best Actor to Leonardo DiCaprio and the Best Actress to Brie Larson were all locks tonight.

--DiCaprio and Larson are still locks, though.

--And Stallone won't have another chance to win another Oscar.

To be continued...

The Revenant -- Movie Review

Photo: from the film's Wikipedia site

Very gripping, in-your-face film with fine performances and great directing and cinematography. The setting is really the main character of the film, and there are long stretches of it, with little action or dialogue, so you'd better like it. I did, like I do watching Terrence Malick films, but if you don't, this film may be an ordeal for you. (It's supposed to be an ordeal, but more on that later.) This scenery does for beautiful negativity what Malick's does for gorgeous serenity. It's all supposed to be taking place in the northern climes of the Louisiana Purchase in 1823, though most of it was actually shot in the Canadian Rockies and in Argentina. But I'm gonna call it the Arctic, 'cause that's sure what it seemed like to me. Unless you're an expert hiker and really know your landscapes, it'll seem that way to you, too.

There are so many shots of snow, trees, rivers and streams that it'll either strike you with awe or with annoyance. These shots are supposed to be metaphysical; yet they're also supposed to nail the point home that this is a beautiful, but desolate and unbelievably harsh landscape. The movie is more about survival in this setting than it is about revenge or anything else.

In no particular order, DiCaprio's Hugh Glass has to survive the greed of his fellow trappers; the anger and desperation of Native American tribes (three of them are mentioned in this movie); the unlawfulness of French trappers and traders (which includes murder, kidnapping and rape); the freezing temperatures; the blizzards and snow; starvation and dehydration.

And, oh yeah--that bear.

Photo: Hugh Glass (or an 1800s James Cromwell?) and DiCaprio, from The Telegraph's article of the real Hugh Glass

This is not a film for the squeamish, though the bear attack was not as bloody and brutal as we've heard. (Or maybe I'm just battle hardened.) More disconcerting is the frequent brutality of many forms. You know how in most movies guys get one bullet to the head or one stab in the chest and that's it, they're done? Not so here. And violent things happen to CGI bears, bear cubs, moose, elk and wild dogs, too. And a horse, from that cliff clip we've all seen, when Leo and Horse go over. And Leo uses that horse like Han Solo did to another creature in Jedi, but even more so here. Yuck!

And it's all very realistically written, acted and directed. If you've seen last year's Best Picture winner, Birdman (and if you haven't, you should), then you know that Innaritu--last year's Best Director--really likes close-ups. And I mean, close. So much so, so often, that the frozen wilderness will seem claustrophobic, though it's all open space and wide expanses. But the camera is right on these guys. Not in their face, exactly, but closely above them, or beside them, or under them. There aren't too many distant shots of these actors. If they're on screen, they're taking up the whole screen. So be ready for that you-are-there feeling that this type of direction generates. You'll feel like you're in the Arctic with them--and you'll feel like you can't wait to get the hell out of there. An interesting achievement, that: You'll be glued to the screen (no small feat, since it's over two and a half hours long), but you'll be so overwhelmed by the brutality and the conditions that you want to be able to leave. I got the feeling, somewhat, that I was trapped.

Which was the director's goal, of course, and he succeeds. The film is an ordeal, and I mean that in a positive way. You suffer along with everyone--and everyone does suffer. This movie is about suffering and survival, and it does not have a solid, clear, winning ending. Consider yourself warned.

Photo: The director, Alejandro Inarritu, and Leonardo DiCaprio, from the same Telegraph article

DiCaprio deserves his nomination, and I'm not sure I saw a better leading performance this year. I don't mean that negatively, but nobody has stood out for me in terms of an obvious win at Oscar-time. I suppose DiCaprio is that guy.

Tom Hardy also deserves his nomination, as did Mark Rylance, whose performance I liked a little bit better. He didn't have the conditions to play off of, as Hardy does, and he says a lot more than Hardy does. (Tom Hardy, since his performance as Bane, seems to have specialized in roles that require minimal verbosity. He says more here than he does in Mad Max, but not by much.) I still feel Benecio del Toro deserved an Oscar nomination for Sicario, which itself was also not nominated. His was the best supporting performance I've seen this year. It's hard, as I mentioned in another entry, to compare his performance to Rylance's, because they're so different: his is exceptionally harsh and cold, and Rylance's is very powerfully quiet and nuanced. But del Toro's role and Tom Hardy's role are actually quite similar--though Hardy evoked quite a bit of Tom Berenger in Platoon for me here--and they both play guys who are cold and evil to the core, and who don't change. This was a nice change, by the way. Hardy says some very memorable things at the end of Revenant that you may not soon forget.

So go see this film if all of the above sounds like your cup of tea. Speaking of that, you will want something hot to drink after you see this, because the surroundings are so much the main character of this film that you will feel like you've just spent two and a half hours in the frozen, bloody Arctic.

P.S.--I always sit through the credits, so here I saw a name I haven't seen since the early-80s: Lukas Haas. Can you guess the movie? He was the little boy with Harrison Ford in Witness. Yeah, my mind works like that--I didn't even have to look it up. It hit me in the theatre. It's an illness.