Feed: Cinema Musings - AggScore: 10.6

The Plan (short film) – Trailer

New Website for The Plan Short Film

Announcing a new website for the short film, The Plan, directed by Vivek Sharma, written and produced by Andrew Stone. Check it out here:

www.theplanshortfilm.com

Trailering Martha Marcy May Marlene

I'm excited to see this Sundance award-winner starring Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister of the Olsen twins) in a breakout role, and the fabulous John Hawkes, who was nominated for an Oscar this year for Winter's Bone. The film is about a damaged woman, haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, who struggles to re-assimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult. The film opens on October 7th.

The Inspirational Sports Film

Clockwise: Rudy, Field of Dreams, Chariots of Fire, Secretariat, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and The Pride of the Yankees

At the end of Rudy, we see the title character carried by his teammates across a football field as the crowd jubilantly cheers for him, and the musical score rises to its orchestral climax. In this film, as opposed to some less believable sports films, Rudy’s dream is to play for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team. Considering Rudy is only 5’6” and has terrible grades, the odds are strongly against him to ever play in a game for Notre Dame. We see him talk his way into Holy Cross, the nearby Junior College, and talk his way into getting a tutor to improve his grades. Rudy comes from humble beginnings, growing up in a lower middle class steel town in Illinois, so being financially strapped, he again talks his way into working on the maintenance crew for the Fighting Irish, getting access to the field, and sleeping in a cot in the maintenance crew’s office at night. Like all sports films, all the odds are against Rudy, but somehow he triumphs despite that. But, luck certainly plays a part. People in Rudy's life are pulling for him all along, even if his family wants him to stop dreaming and accept his fate as a worker at the local steel mill where his father and brothers work. Another fortunate thing, few college football teams at the time allowed non-scholarship “walk-ons” as did Notre Dame. Rudy made it onto the team as essentially a “human tackling dummy” for practices, and didn’t play in actual games. In the film’s climax, the coach allows him to play at the end of his last game in his senior year, essentially because the team was ahead enough in the game that they couldn’t lose. It’s still a nice story (Rudy did score a sack) but he didn’t score the winning touchdown. He simply played in a game (two plays) for Notre Dame. So, in the end, it’s a story worth cheering for because it is possible. We see the triumph of the human spirit. But, there’s no magic in Rudy. It’s a true story told well. It has the familiar clichés, the swelling score and the triumphant ending to boot, but Rudy’s life goals are not superhuman, they’re down-to-earth.

In the superhuman realm, we have Field of Dreams. A man (Ray Kinsella played by Kevin Costner) who owns an Iowa farm hears a voice whisper in his ears, “If you build it, he will come.” He sees a vision of a baseball field, and figures out that Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the Black Sox Eight who was banned from baseball for throwing the 1919 World Series, is supposed to come back and play on that field that he is supposed to build. Shoeless Joe had a Series-leading .375 average, and many believe he did not throw the Series, even if he knew about the plot to throw it. So, this magic field that Ray does build is about lost dreams and second chances. Along the way, Ray hears the voice again saying, “Ease his pain” and “Go the distance.” This leads him on a journey to meet a writer who he must take to a baseball game, and the ghost of a doctor who missed his chance to play a game in the Major Leagues. Meanwhile, his wife and daughter are surprisingly supportive, and can see the baseball-playing ghosts as well after Shoeless Joe and his teammates do show up on the field. But, the antagonistic brother-in-law is closing in on Ray, as they are literally about to lose the farm if he doesn’t take down the magic field and replant corn.

This all sounds corny and silly, and it is, but it’s also emotionally affecting. It’s hard to explain why. This is a film that I saw when I was thirteen, and on the big screen those blue Iowa skies in the film were breathtaking, and still are, but other elements such as the overbearing score by James Horner makes the film seem dated. (Even if scores still do that today, this one is particularly ostentatious.) The actors: Costner, Ray Liotta, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, and Amy Madigan are excellent, and make you want to believe in the reality on the screen. In one of the final scenes, we find out “If you build it, he will come” wasn’t about Shoeless Joe after all, but was about Ray’s deceased father coming back, playing a game with his idols, and about Ray’s dream coming true, having one last catch with his father. This is the kind of plot that aims to pull at the heartstrings, and it works despite all the reasons it shouldn’t.

The theme of these Inspirational Sports Films is generally “having faith” or “believing.” One would think these are religious films, and they are to some extent. In Rudy, it’s no coincidence that he goes to a priest for advice as to how he can fulfill his dreams, and then joins a religious institution. In Field of Dreams, Ray and his wife are ex-hippies who feel out of place in their Christianity-based community, but they embrace a spiritual path nonetheless, and never question whether ghosts or angels can exist, so they must have some sort of faith guiding them, whether in an organized religion or not. In other films of this genre such as Chariots of Fire, the title actually comes from the Bible, and the story centers around two athletes who compete in the 1924 Olympics. One, Harold Abrams, suffers religious persecution for being Jewish at Cambridge University in 1919, while the other, Eric Liddell, is a Scot who is a devout missionary running for the “glory of God”, and who refuses to run on the Sabbath when his Olympic “heat” for the 100-meter-run is taking place on a Sunday. In the end, it all works out; his teammates figure out a way for Liddell to run, and it is glorious, and there is a synthesized Vangelis score to highlight the victorious run, with close-ups and slow-motion to tease out those final moments. It is the moment when humans feel like Gods, and all that physical and emotional pain earns its bountiful rewards.

In The Pride of the Yankees, the story of Lou Gehrig, played by a “too-old” Gary Cooper, Gehrig has to hide the fact that he’s trying out for a professional baseball team from his German immigrant mother who is devoutly religious, and who thinks it beneath Gehrig to play in such a sport. But, Gehrig is such a class act and such a success, that he eventually turns his mother into a die-hard baseball fan. And, in The Legend of Bagger Vance, a film that uses the game of golf to philosophize about life, Will Smith plays an almost otherworldly golf caddy that helps Matt Damon’s character “find his swing”. You see, as Bagger puts it, you have to find your own game and your own swing that’s unique to you. It’s actually not a bad piece of advice, and of course this works like gangbusters. Once Damon’s character finds his swing, he hits shots no human could ever hit. This Eastern Philosophy approach to the Sports Film is supposed to reassure the audience that with the right approach you can do anything. But, this film is less effective than a film like Rudy because it strains credulity. Bagger is a fable, so it doesn’t need to be completely real, but Jedi golf tricks are just silly in my opinion.

If suspension of disbelief is a requirement in viewing an Inspirational Sports Movie, then Secretariat, a true story mind you, requires a little of that. I’ve seen the clips of Secretariat miraculously winning the Triple Crown in record beating time, but it still feels like a “magic horse” movie to me. Perhaps it’s the glossy anamorphic framing, and the too-perfect period detail, but this film feels as much of a fable as Bagger Vance does. But, Secretariat’s owner, Penny Chenery had faith, and miracles do happen. These films are supposed to lift one up, and make one believe anything’s possible. But, possible and likely are two different things, and Secretariat is really just a one in a billion chance story that is only very temporarily uplifting. I like my dreams based in some sort of reality. That’s just me. Regardless – Hollywood will still keep making magic horse movies, just because they can.

Here is a clip from Field Of Dreams.

Mildred Pierce Parts I & II

Kate Winslet as Mildred Pierce

The first two parts of Todd Haynes’ five part miniseries, Mildred Pierce, aired last night on HBO. The adaptation of the James M. Cain novel from 1941 is structured very differently from the film of the same name from 1945, starring Joan Crawford in her Oscar winning role as Mildred. Instead of the film noir vibe that the 1945 film has, Haynes opted for a slow-building drama that has political and social undertones interwoven in its fabric.

It’s slightly hard to adjust to the pacing of a five part miniseries. It’s about the length of two and a half films, but it doesn’t have the luxury of building character arcs in the way a TV series can. Most miniseries of late seem to have been dedicated to wars or royals, so it’s rare that HBO would make a five-parter on a period drama of this kind. But, if this story about the Thirties is really about today, then it makes sense that HBO would gamble on this, in order to cash in on the prestige of making a sweeping story for our time. The economic woes of the Thirties, and Mildred’s trouble finding employment, are some of the parallels that writers Todd Haynes and Jon Raymond are drawing to our modern day world. One scene in particular, where Mildred is seeking a job as a receptionist and is told that the job has become obsolete, seemed particularly pointed.

Though Haynes has made an effort to make this less stylized than his previous period works, such as Far From Heaven (2002) and Poison (1991), this miniseries still has echoes of those films in the fussed-over camera framing and art direction, and the blocking and dialogue that seem “stagey” at times. But, Haynes excels at creating compelling female characters, and when he needs to, he allows his scenes to breathe and his characters to hit the right emotional notes.

Kate Winslet is the perfect Mildred, with just the right mixture of toughness and warmth. As the story slowly reveals Mildred’s world: her divorce, her financial woes, her ambitions, her love life, and her difficulties with her daughter, Veda, the layers of Mildred are slowly peeled away. It’s quite a luxury for an actor to get well over five hours to dedicate to portraying one character, and Winslet is expert enough at her craft to dole out little bits of Mildred at a time for the audience to chew on, but not enough that there isn’t some mystery that remains. I loved the scenes where Winslet as Mildred, starts formulating her plan to open a restaurant. Considering that Mildred is on her own raising two children in the Depression-Era, waitressing and baking pies just to scrape by, it's so ballsy that she takes a chance on herself and risks losing what little she has to create something bigger and better for her and her children. One of my favorite scenes of these first two parts of the miniseries, is when her neighbor (played beautifully by Melissa Leo) comforts Mildred about her shame of becoming a waitress. Haynes and Winslet show the depth of Mildred’s pride in this scene, which most likely will be the key to this character. Mildred’s pride is what makes her so successful, but also what drives her to spoil her daughter. But, I’m getting ahead of what was shown in Parts I and II.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**
In the final, heartbreaking moments of Part II, when Mildred loses her youngest daughter and comforts herself by clinging to Veda, the story builds to a satisfying emotional climax. I look forward to what Haynes and company bring to Parts III through V of this well-done miniseries. I suspect Evan Rachel Wood (as older Veda) will do her best to upstage Winslet, just as Veda would do to Mildred.

Trailer – Essential Killing

Essential Killing by Jerzy Skolimowski starring Vincent Gallo

Here's a trailer for the upcoming Tribeca Film release, Essential Killing. The plot: a man named Mohammed (played by Vincent Gallo) is captured by the US military after killing three American soldiers. After a harsh interrogation, he escapes when a military vehicle transporting him overturns on a slippery road. The film then becomes a survival story in a snowy forest.

The film is written and directed by acclaimed Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski (Moonlighting, 1982). There's an interesting, slightly snarky, interview in Vice with the director about his difficulties working with Gallo on the film. But, then he goes on to call Gallo "sensational" and "phenomenal" in the film. So, I guess that's the price he had to pay working with Gallo. Total Film's Phillip Kemp calls Gallo's performance a "tour de force" and gives the film 4 out of 5 stars. Gallo also won the coveted Volpi Cup for Best Actor from the Venice Film Festival last fall, and the film has won a handful of awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Venice.

Gallo, who's had a somewhat successful career as a director (though he really just had one success with Buffalo 66 and a somewhat disastrous run with Brown Bunny) has never done a role this challenging. He ran through the snow barefoot in -35C weather! I've always thought of him as having a schtick, and not really a great actor. But, hey, maybe he's never had the right roles to challenge him as an actor. We shall see. The fact that he doesn't speak during the entire film is probably greatly beneficial in making him convincing in the role. (Ooh, that was harsh)

The Great Elizabeth Taylor Dies at 79

Here is a clip of my favorite scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from 1966, one of my all-time favorite films and performances. Director Mike Nichols had this to say about Taylor:

"The shock of Elizabeth was not only her beauty. It was her generosity. Her giant laugh. Her vitality, whether tackling a complex scene on film or where we would all have dinner until dawn. She is singular and indelible on film and in our hearts."

2011 Releases – Hugo Cabret

One of the 2011 movie releases that I'm most looking forward to is Martin Scorsese's Hugo Cabret. Based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabretby Brian Selznick (published in 2007), the story revolves around a twelve-year-old orphan boy named Hugo in turn-of-the-20th-century Paris, who lives in the walls of a train station and tends to the clocks, while thieving what he needs to survive. His deceased father, a clockmaker, discovered an automaton (robot) that Hugo is trying to get to function. Meanwhile, as his relationships with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth at the train station become intertwined, his undercover life and his secrets are in danger of being discovered by the outside world. Sounds cool, right!

The film is inspired by the life and work of filmmaker Georges Méliès, who made some of the earliest sci-fi films, and who was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects, including: multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films. The character of Méliès is played by Ben Kingsley in the film, as the the owner of the toy booth. Here is Méliès' most famous film, A Trip to the Moon / Le Voyage Dans La Lune from 1902:

And how could I not include a nod to the Jonathan Dayton/Valerie Faris directed music video masterpiece (I'm not joking) ode to Méliès' Tonight Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins from 1996:

The book is 500+ pages, and a unique melding of pictures and words. Click here to get a slideshow of the first images of the book (you need Flash to view).

As far as Scorsese scoring a hit with this film, I think that the family nature of the material will take some of the pressure off, and allow him to have fun with it and be a little less serious minded. The problem with some of Scorsese's recent projects, including Shutter Island and the pilot for Boardwalk Empire, which were both period pieces, was that the production design (the almost fetishistic detail) overwhelmed the story and characters . Scorsese is best when he does intimate stories, and though this has all the indications of another overproduced period piece from Marty, let's hope that he can bring some of the warmth and personality of his more intimate films to something of this scale.

Hugo Cabret is set to be released in the US on November 23, 2011 by Paramount.

Big Drama for Big Love

The Henricksons of HBO's Big Love

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

For those who’ve followed the HBO series Big Love for the past five seasons, the series’ main conceit is that faith will keep a family together. Through thick and thin (and I mean it) we’ve seen prophets rise and fall and rise again, the mental and physical slavery of life on a compound, financial corruption, murder (many different varieties including antediluvian poisonings, and near-death by a plastic bag over the head), incest, statutory rape and other kinds of sexual abuse, kidnapping, black market parrot trading, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the odd family dynamics of the Henrickson family. It’s interesting that polygamy became one of the least sensationalist elements of the series. After these five seasons, we’ve grown to know Bill, his three wives, Barb, Nicki, and Margene, their nine children, and their extended family and friends both on and off Juniper Creek. As far as creating a fully realized world on screen, the HBO series has done so successfully. How else could its audience feel so much for characters so far-removed from society’s norm?

On Sunday’s penultimate episode of the show, titled Exorcism, the story comes to a head as multiple plot points are teeing-up to be hopefully resolved in the series finale, airing next Sunday, March 20th. Bill, being investigated for marrying a minor (Margene was only 16 when he married her), could potentially face jail time up to twenty years. Considering Bill is a sitting State Senator, this news could result in a real media shitstorm, not to mention the potential financial and emotional downfall of his family. If this weren’t enough, Nicki returns from being held captive and nearly executed by her brother, Alby, the reigning prophet of Juniper Creek, who will stop at nothing to bring down his nemesis, Bill.

While paranoia ramps up as Alby, who’s disappeared, could rear his head at any moment with Bill in his crosshairs, Nicki decides this is the perfect moment to send her newly adopted teenage daughter, Cara Lynn, to an Orwellian boarding school. Nicki really breaks down in this episode, understandably so, in the aftermath of finding out that her fifteen-year-old daughter was having relations with her significantly older math teacher. Nicki’s already fragile emotional state becomes more fractured when she tells her daughter that nobody can ever love someone like her. It would be easy to cast Nicki off as a villain, but the show has already laid the groundwork for Nicki’s emotional instability, going back to her forced marriage at the age of 14, her early life of manual labor and severe oppression on Juniper Creek, and especially her relationship with her creepy father (the former prophet Roman Grant) whom she worshipped and then reviled to the point where she pushed him down a flight of stairs, almost killing him. We know that deep down Nicki cares for Cara Lynn almost fiercely, and that her behavior comes from a place of fear that what was done to her cannot be done to Cara Lynn.

Margene, always the rube that falls pray to odd moneymaking ventures, has finally quit working for Goji Blast, a pyramid scheme of sorts that also does humanitarian work. I’m not sure the series has done as good a job of explaining this obsession Marge has with having her “independence” as it has with Nicki’s odd behavioral outbursts. Margene needed an identity on the show because being sweet wasn’t interesting enough, so the series writers gave her some plotlines concerning her financial and personal autonomy, but I’m not sure it all adds up. If she’s so motivated by the idea of independence, then why is she also the cheerleader for this family which requires her to share a husband with two other women, and co-raise their children? One could say that she was too young when she got involved with Bill to know better, she was a minor after all, but Margene has never expressed that she regrets being in this family. She seems to want to continue being in it, despite all the hardships. The writers have reasoned that her motivation is mostly the humanitarian aspects of selling this Goji Juice, but what about helping her own family first? Perhaps this will be addressed in the finale, but as it stands now, Margene the “do-gooder” has been quite hopeless in holding together her own family, and coupled with her failed business ventures, she comes off as pathetic more than someone on a journey.

Then we have Barb, the matriarch of the family. This whole season, Barb’s arc has been about her wanting to be the priesthood holder for the family (along with Bill) and breaking away religiously from the rest of the family. She believes that a woman should be able to be a priesthood holder, even though the “principal” that Bill and Nicki (and Margene to a lesser extent) follow says that women can’t be the priesthood holder. This plot line has taken up a whole lot of screen time this season, and I thought it was all leading toward Barb finally divorcing herself from the family. This was especially apparent when Barb and Bill got legally divorced in order for Bill to legally adopt Nicki’s daughter, Cara Lynn. Barb has been finding herself this season, with her wine drinking and sneaking about to participate in religious meetings that Bill wouldn’t approve of, but I hope that all of this isn’t treading water until the finale. It would be silly to build a story line about Barb’s religious awakening and strong personal beliefs about the priesthood, only to have her holding hands with the rest of them, dancing in a circle as the series ends.

If the end of this second to last episode is any indication, we’re in for high drama in the series finale. Alby enters the State Senate Office, gunfire blazing, and has a High Noon style face off with Bill until Bill shoots Alby in the shoulder and tells him it’s over. Though intense, this is where the show goes wrong. The problem with Big Love, the last few seasons especially, is that the show overcompensates for having way too many characters by giving them big dramatic moments. This season there have been a few less storylines, but the show still feels overstuffed and silly at times. I haven’t even gone into Bill’s mother’s venereal disease induced dementia, and his son Ben’s proposal to start his own polygamist family. But, Big Love has carved out its own unique place in TV history, and when all is said and done, some over-plotting and bizarre digressions aside, the show has stayed true to itself and its themes all along. We feel for these people, despite disagreeing with their lifestyle, and maybe that’s the point. The show has always clearly delineated between the types of polygamists the Henricksons are verses the Grants on Juniper Creek, and by doing so we’ve seen a different kind of TV family emerge as the dust settles. It’s hard to know exactly where it will all land, but the fact that this family has stuck together through all of this craziness is somewhat inspiring, even if the road getting there was often a carnival sideshow.

Genie Awards

Incendies by Denis Villeneuve

The winners of the Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscars) were announced Thursday night. The Oscar-nominated film Incendies by director Denis Villeneuve took home eight awards. The film, about a pair of twins who make a life-altering discovery following the death of their mother, will get its US release on April 22nd. Barney's Version, which was close behind with seven awards, is the story of serial monogamist Barney Panofsky, played by Paul Giamatti. The film took home three of the acting awards for Giamatti as Lead Actor, Dustin Hoffman as Supporting Actor, and Minnie Driver as Supporting Actress. Lubna Azabal from Incendies took home the award for Lead Actress. Here is the list of winners:

Best Motion Picture
Incendies - Luc Déry, Kim McCraw

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Paul Giamatti - Barney's Version

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Dustin Hoffman - Barney's Version

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Lubna Azabal - Incendies

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Minnie Driver - Barney's Version

Achievement in Direction
Denis Villeneuve - Incendies

Adapted Screenplay
Denis Villeneuve - Incendies

Original Screenplay
Jacob Tierney - The Trotsky

Best Documentary
Last Train Home - Lixin Fan, Mila Aung-Thwin, Daniel Cross

Achievement in Art Direction
Claude Paré, Elise de Blois - Barney's Version

Achievement in Cinematography
André Turpin - Incendies

Achievement in Costume Design
Nicoletta Massone - Barney's Version

Achievement in Editing
Monique Dartonne - Incendies

Achievement in Make-up
Adrien Morot, Micheline Trépanier - Barney's Version

Achievement in Music - Original Score
Pasquale Catalano - Barney's Version

Achievement in Music - Original Song
Mary Milne - The Trotsky - "Already Gone"

Achievement in Overall Sound
Jean Umansky, Jean-Pierre Laforce - Incendies

Achievement in Sound Editing
Sylvain Bellemare, Simon Meilleur, Claire Pochon - Incendies

Best Live Action Short Drama
Savage - Lisa Jackson, Lauren Grant, Lori Lozinski

Best Animated Short
Lipsett Diaries - Theodore Ushev, Marc Bertrand

User's Choice Award
Jay Baruchel

Claude Jutra Award
Jephté Bastien - Sortie 67
Honourable mention: Peter Stebbings - Defendor

Golden Reel Award
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Producers: Don Carmody, Jeremy Bolt, Robert Kulzer,
Distributor: Alliance Films
Total Canadian box office in 2010 – $7,026,559