Academy Awards 2012

[Noodle Lizard]

I remember seeing a video of Terry Gilliam nail-on-head criticising 'Schindler's List' for exactly the same reasons why the film rubbed me so the wrong way. I'll have to dig it up, almost everything that man utters is correct, "correct" as in concurring with my own thoughts and feelings to the letter...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CAKS3rdYTpI

That video is great.  I wasn't aware anyone in the industry had actually dared to speak out against Schindler's List - but I agree wholeheartedly with him.  I hadn't given it as much thought (SL being about success, when the Holocaust was about failure), but the film always struck me as being hugely overrated in that dreadful, sensationalistic and oddly self-congratulating way.

As far as Holocaust movies go, though, I think The Pianist did it fairly well.  But I haven't seen very many others dealing with the subject.

[danyulx]

'The Pianist' is a good film.. wipes the floor with 'Schindler's List' anyway. Having one's own mother perish in Autschwitz would certainly give a filmmaker a head-start in dealing with the subject matter in a manner it deserves, i.e. in non-sensationalist and non-melodramatic way...

Though a documentary, 'Shoah' is pretty much the be-all and end-of all Holocaust Flicks, which'll never be topped. Devastating. I watched the first four-hour part one night before going to bed then the second-half the next morning first thing upon waking up. And it took me about a week to recover from. It battered me.

I've seen loads of 70s Nazi-ploitation films in my time too. Most of them atrocious - unless you're severely drunk - but you do get the odd, bitter gem here and there, none of which I can remember the titles of at the moment.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'm kind of confused by his comments. It's a film about a man who helped rescue Jews during WWII. It hasn't been fabricated. It's an interesting, at times uplifting story but I doubt anyone came out of the cinema with a smile on their face. He could have done a film just about all the misery but I don't see anything wrong with making a film which has a small amount of light in a very dark story. And the overall message, that one person can make a difference even in the worst circumstances, is a good one. You could level the same complaints at The Pianist, "Oh there's all this horror going on and we're supposed to care about this piano playing dude?". Brazil aside, I don't rate Gilliam as a filmmaker very highly so I take his critiques with a pinch of salt.

[phantom_power]

'The Pianist' is a good film.. wipes the floor with 'Schindler's List' anyway. Having one's own mother perish in Autschwitz would certainly give a filmmaker a head-start in dealing with the subject matter in a manner it deserves, i.e. in non-sensationalist and non-melodramatic way...

What is wrong with a bit of sensationalism and melodrama? People know how awful the holocaust was, every film on the subject doesn't have to be all about that grimess. What's wrong with wanting to see a chink of light in all the black? Obviously not all films should have happy endings but there is room for all sorts of approaches to a subject matter.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Having one's own mother perish in Autschwitz would certainly give a filmmaker a head-start in dealing with the subject matter in a manner it deserves, i.e. in non-sensationalist and non-melodramatic way...

Though if both Polanski's parents had been killed in the Holocaust chances are the film would have been even better.  It's a pity his entire family weren't done for, etc. etc.

[El Unicornio, mang]

What is wrong with a bit of sensationalism and melodrama? People know how awful the holocaust was, every film on the subject doesn't have to be all about that grimess. What's wrong with wanting to see a chink of light in all the black? Obviously not all films should have happy endings but there is room for all sorts of approaches to a subject matter.

Exactly. I've seen plenty of films and documentaries on the subject, and there's room for a film like Schindler's List, which at the end of the day is an interesting true story which deserved to be told.  As far as educating people, young people especially, on the holocaust, it's done more than the likes of Shoah could to reach a large audience. Great documentary, but good luck getting a child to sit through ten hours of interviews with old people. Also, the director of Shoah rubs me the wrong way, constantly bleating on about how people shouldn't say this and shouldn't say that about the holocaust.

[biggytitbo]

That video is great.  I wasn't aware anyone in the industry had actually dared to speak out against Schindler's List - but I agree wholeheartedly with him.  I hadn't given it as much thought (SL being about success, when the Holocaust was about failure), but the film always struck me as being hugely overrated in that dreadful, sensationalistic and oddly self-congratulating way.

As far as Holocaust movies go, though, I think The Pianist did it fairly well.  But I haven't seen very many others dealing with the subject.

Schindler's is 90% a very great film in my opinion but it's spoilt by some dreadful, totally ill-advised sequences, especially the 'red coat' bit and the horrible intrusion of sentimentality at the end when Schindler breaks down.

[buntyman]

I went to see The Artist last night and I enjoyed it. A 7/10 film for me, it was very well made with some good, expressive performances. I'd agree with what others have said though that it was a good novelty but certainly not likely to pave the way for more of the same. There was a good half hour or so, around the time the main guy left his film studio and the girl's career took off that really dragged and I was close to nodding off. I wasn't a big fan of the ending though as I liked the main guy a lot more at the start and thought his silent films looked a lot more entertaining than the crap dancing one he was making at the end.

[Harpo Speaks]

Brilliantly made with brilliant music, but Best Picture? No.

It's a worthy winner from the BP nominees though (with the caveat that I haven't seen Hugo and ELAIC of the nine).

Isn't there anything to be said for the fact that Best Picture went to a film that is foreign, black and white, and largely silent?

Schindler's List is a good, but flawed film. Personally I preferred it to The Pianist though.

thought his silent films looked a lot more entertaining than the crap dancing one he was making at the end.

Spoiler alert

'Goodbye Norma! I never loved you!'

[close]

[Dead kate moss]

Aren't the Academy Awards - spectacle of the ceremony aside - becoming increasingly irrelevant now the internet is here. The average age of an Academy is a member is 62. Meanwhile imdb, Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes is a more reliable guide to whether a film might be... good. Before the internet you didn't have access to loads of reviews, usually just what Barry Norman thought of it (and he hated/didn't understand wide genres of movies - action, horror, sci-fi) in favour of Oscar type MOR stuff.  Imdb movies is definitely a better guide, if not perfect for older films, of gauging quality or 'good movie-ness' than which films won the most Oscars, which are so often a dreary, worthy bunch.


http://brassmonkeyshow.com/2012/02/25/the-oscars-and-slow-people/
A blog, comparing what was nominated/won in 1984 compared to what wasn't.
Bachelor Party should have won of course.

[danyulx]

What is wrong with a bit of sensationalism and melodrama?

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with either. I'm just saying both rub me the wrong way, personally, taste-wise.. in a film dealing with the Nazi Holocaust. I'll let him off in E.T.

I pray Jerry Lewis' 'The Day the Clown Cried' gets a release one day. It sounds fascinating. The plot on wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Clown_Cried - sounds fucking harrowing, the ending. Apparantly Harry Shearer of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap-fame is one of the very few people to have seen it, and said: "..seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is."

[Phil_A]

Regarding The Artist, I think it's interesting that one of the most dramatic scenes is underscored by music from a film released in 1958. Hollywood is still trading off Bernard Herrmann's genius, 37 years after his death.

[danyulx]

Though if both Polanski's parents had been killed in the Holocaust chances are the film would have been even better.  It's a pity his entire family weren't done for, etc. etc.

I'm not sure what you're sardonically insinuating here, what your point is. But it seems pretty blatant an artist, a filmmaker who's - unfortunately -  been directly, painfully affected by the serious issue at hand is very likely going to have a much more valid, meaningful (less sensationalist, less sugary, i.e. shite) take on it than someone who hasn't. Which is by no means to say the person who hasn't shouldn't be allowed to make their film, etc, etc. It's just there's a decent chance it could all end up a bit "Schindler's List". Unless he's some sort of artistic genius, visionary - who can take on and handle anything - that is, which Spielberg certainly isn't, in my book.

I made the statement that I wouldn't be surprised if many Holocaust survivors have taken issue with Spielberg's film – on the basis that I probably would myself, if I were one - without actually knowing for a fact if any had, when I did. And I weren't wrong. Here's what Hungarian writer and survivor of three concentration camps Imre Kertész had to say about the film, in my opinion getting right to the heart of matter, particularly in sentence 2: "Spielberg [...] has and can have no idea of the authentic reality of a Nazi concentration camp. I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of 'civilization' as such) and the very possibility of the Holocaust. Why should I, as a Holocaust survivor and as one in possession of a broader experience of terror, be pleased when more and more people see these experiences produced on the big screen—and falsified at that?"

[Famous Mortimer]

I think criticising the film for not being an accurate look at concentration camps is a little pointless - mercifully, very few people now living have ever been in one, so it's not like the huge majority of the viewing public would know anyway. Does it say something important about the time, the place, and about humanity in general? I thought it was pretty damn good...but I'm sorry for bringing it up, only mentioning it because the point was made that apparently, all recent Oscar winners will be forgotten in 5-10 years time. If that film irritates you, pick another one because the point still stands.

Also, no-one ignores historical films that play fast and loose with historical truth - pick pretty much any film you like set more than 5 or 6 generations ago and I'll bet it takes huge liberties. As of Montreal said, "we want our film to be beautiful, not realistic". Take "beautiful" and substitute it for the word of your choice - passionate, truthful, interesting, funny...

I'd still say, after defending them over the past few pages, you should take best picture Oscar winners with a pinch of salt, but don't dismiss them out of hand. Some of them are quite good. It sparks discussion about great films like this one, unlike pretty much any award ceremony there is.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'm not sure what you're sardonically insinuating here, what your point is. But it seems pretty blatant an artist, a filmmaker who's - unfortunately -  been directly, painfully affected by the serious issue at hand is very likely going to have a much more valid, meaningful (less sensationalist, less sugary, i.e. shite) take on it than someone who hasn't. Which is by no means to say the person who hasn't shouldn't be allowed to make their film, etc, etc. It's just there's a decent chance it could all end up a bit "Schindler's List". Unless he's some sort of artistic genius, visionary - who can take on and handle anything - that is, which Spielberg certainly isn't, in my book.

I'm not sure I agree with the logic that someone who was directly affected by specific events would be better at telling the story of something much broader and more complex. Surely if you've been mentally/emotionally affected you're more likely to make something which is affected by your own emotional responses? Also, Schindler's List is not sugary. It's not even really a film about the holocaust, that's just the backdrop to the story of a man who helped to save some people during that time.

[Dead kate moss]

If we look at those books that are about the author's own terrible abusive childhood, they tend to be sensationalist and melodramatic, and perhaps not well written. A good writer/artist does not need to have experienced what they write about, it may help though. I'd rather have a great writer write about something he has merely researched than a first-hand survivor write it all shitty like. Or both can be good or bad, yeah that's my answer.

[danyulx]

I think criticising the film for not being an accurate look at concentration camps is a little pointless

Me, I'm not criticising it for being "factually inaccurate", for not showing the Holocaust in grim, gory documentary detail or the like. But for being artistically/emotionally/morally/philosophically inaccurate - to me anyway, to my sensibilities and taste. For exactly the same reasons Gilliam feels so in the interview clip I posted, which is why I did.

Surely if you've been mentally/emotionally affected you're more likely to make something which is affected by your own emotional responses?

You make a good point.. in fact you're spot on.  But where I arse-backwards differ in opinion is I genuinely believe filmmaking from a deep-down emotional, perhaps even irrational, responsive level – even channeling - is making a film authentically, even if your emotions and feelings are all over the shop, where logic and wanting to create a "broad and complex picture" doesn't even come into it. Maybe you will create a broad and complex picture, but it'll be by the by. Here's where greatness is born. The great, visionary filmmakers made and make films straight from the gut, I reckon, it seems to me. I doubt there was much traditional intellect or partiality involved at all, at least where dealing with the heart of it all.

If we look at those books that are about the author's own terrible abusive childhood, they tend to be sensationalist and melodramatic, and perhaps not well written.

This "genre" of books you're talking about aren't even worth bringing up though. They're nothing more than tabloid newspapers in book form, published for no other reason than to make money titillating closet sick bastards who are also thick in the head. If I remember rightly a few fair of these authors – the big shots - have since been caught out for making it all up! Or at least highly exaggerating the nightmare-horror of their childhoods. Maybe they got a few kickings here and there but that was about it.

A good writer/artist does not need to have experienced what they write about, it may help though.

Spot on. This was actually my point.. but I think it came out a bit wrong.

Spielberg is not a great artist, by any stretch. Though I'm not knocking 'Jaws' or anything. I love it.

Polanski is at least capable of great art and has had direct, visceral, hardcore experience in the subject he's dealing with.

I have little doubt if Kubrick got around to making his Holocaust epic, 'The Aryan Papers', which he spent about five researching before giving up because he couldn't deal with it anymore, it was doing his head in, it would've been his great masterpiece amongst masterpieces. Which is saying something.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Spielberg is not a great artist, by any stretch. Though I'm not knocking 'Jaws' or anything. I love it.

Possibly "great artist" would be pushing it, but I think Spielberg makes great entertainment, which I think is an art form of its own. He knows how to thrill an audience. He might not have been the best choice for a holocaust film but I think he stretched himself quite far, if you look at the films he had done previous to that. I think he knows his limitations, knows he's not Kubrick, but he's tackled a couple of serious, heavy films since then with mixed success. Saving Private Ryan, although featuring some nice battle scenes, failed for the most part, but I think Munich was very good and looked fantastic. He really reigned himself in on that, aside from possibly the final shot with the twin towers.

I'm quite looking forward to his upcoming Abraham Lincoln film, Day-Lewis is playing the lead which I'm almost certain will be worth seeing. Anyone see War Horse? Heard it was good but the title alone made me hesitant to see it as I figured it might be the wrong side of schmaltzy.

[CaledonianGonzo]

I really enjoyed War Horse, but then I quite enjoy drama, sentiment and so forth.  It meandered a little story-wise in the middle, but parts of it were stunning cinema.

[Dark Sky]

Possibly "great artist" would be pushing it, but I think Spielberg makes great entertainment, which I think is an art form of its own.

I think of Spielberg as being very much in the Hitchcock vein of making entertaining, populist films which nevertheless are hugely influential and many of which push technological techniques.  Like Hitchcock, I doubt he or his best works will be truly appreciated until after he's gone.

So saying, War Horse looks shite, and I'm glad it didn't win anything because it means people won't be saying to me things like, "oh, you haven't seen War Horse?!  But it won three Oscars, you know! It's really good, it won lots of Oscars!  You should see it, it won Oscars!"

[Dead kate moss]

Spielberg's greatest talent is his story-telling. Knowing how to frame stuff, getting the beats right, delivering tension, etc. Many of these - example, we see a character and what they are looking at via a reflection, or like in Jaws or Jurassic Park - things suggest another thing, ripples in the glass of water mean monster is coming, we make the connection - have become a bit overused by him, and he often/usually fails to reach the artistic heights he'd like when doing serious stuff and then we get loads of worthy sentimental stodge like that slave ship one. Ans as Gilliam rightly says, he doesn't like ambiguity at all. Also his sense of humour is typified by the fact he thought Steven Spielrock was a good joke when producing the Flintstones movies. But those story-telling, technical gifts are still what gave us Jaws and Raiders, and plenty of movie-makers haven't got an ounce of his skill in that area.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Wouldn't disagree with any of that - he just seems to have a natural flair for pure cinema and there are still knockout sequences in his dud movies (e.g. the prison-ship escape sequece in Amistad).

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yep, even in Jurassic Park 2, which wasn't that great from what I recall, there's the brilliantly tense scene on the cracked glass. He can usually be relied on for at least one thrilling set piece.

[yokel]

I'm kind of confused by his comments. It's a film about a man who helped rescue Jews during WWII. It hasn't been fabricated. It's an interesting, at times uplifting story but I doubt anyone came out of the cinema with a smile on their face. He could have done a film just about all the misery but I don't see anything wrong with making a film which has a small amount of light in a very dark story. And the overall message, that one person can make a difference even in the worst circumstances, is a good one. You could level the same complaints at The Pianist, "Oh there's all this horror going on and we're supposed to care about this piano playing dude?". Brazil aside, I don't rate Gilliam as a filmmaker very highly so I take his critiques with a pinch of salt.

I like Gilliam and I agree with you to be honest, but as for Munich...well, here: http://angryarab.blogspot.com/search?q=munich
Let's just say Spielberg's not very good at tackling complex political issues without making someone, usually the one the U.S. hates, the bad guy.

Though if both Polanski's parents had been killed in the Holocaust chances are the film would have been even better.  It's a pity his entire family weren't done for, etc. etc.

Gonzo, what exactly are you satirizing here?

[CaledonianGonzo]

Not satirising anything - the conversation has moved on, but (as covered by both Unicornio and DKM) you don't have to have personally suffered through something to be able to tackle it in artistic terms.

At any rate, IIRC Spielberg did have relatives die in it so, unless you want to argue the toss about which relatives were murdered, he has just as valid a personal reason for tackling the subject as Polanski.

And, IMHO, etc., made by far the better film about the subject.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I like Gilliam and I agree with you to be honest, but as for Munich...well, here: http://angryarab.blogspot.com/search?q=munich
Let's just say Spielberg's not very good at tackling complex political issues without making someone, usually the one the U.S. hates, the bad guy.

I'm not sure that a rabid anti-Israeli blog is the best place to get an even-handed review of Munich.

[yokel]

Well, personal bias talking there I suppose, I just don't think the Palestinian plight(and that's  an understatement) gets that much attention from Hollywood higher up filmmakers. Not that I believe in a Zionist occupied government though I do agree with Chomsky that there's a special relationship between Israel and the U.S., but that's off topic.
As for the 2012 Oscars, I really wanna see A Separation and Bullhead now.(I plan to start a gangster film thread sometime soon)
And why the hell did they use What  A wonderful world for In memoriam? I'd rather they use something new like "The Parting Glass", just an idea.

[Eis Nein]

"rabid anti-Israeli" is a term as vast and encompassing as the CMB.

http://www.committeeforisrael.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/CAP-MM-NYT.jpg

[Famous Mortimer]

I really enjoyed The Artist.

A fairly slight story and moral (be nice to people on the way up) but beautifully made and Dujardin was absolutely top-drawer in it.