The Sessions and the Oscar Bubble

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Besides the obvious geekdom of loving movie nostalgia, the other reason I enjoy researching the Oscar races is because of what these awards have meant to our culture. More so than any other art form in the past century, the movies have a way of predicting, commenting upon, and reflecting our times. The Oscars have always been at the forefront of this social commentary. Now the results are not always an easy black and white ratio. So as to say, if we are in happy times then happy films win or in sad times, sad films win. People work in strange ways and the yearnings of our social consciousness can come out of left field.

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Hawkes Calmly Soars in The Sessions

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Early on in Mark O’Brien’s quest to find sexual pleasure, he quips something to the effect of, “Sex is the most serious thing in life, it’s even all over the bible.” From this line, The Sessions gains much of its perspective on people’s never-ending battle with animal urges. O’Brien’s projection of the importance of sex in his own life dictates the point-of-view of the film as a whole. Knowing that The Sessions is based on the short story O’Brien wrote about his experiences, helps alleviate some of the cornier occurrences. The movie plays out as O’Brien wanted it to be told. Nonetheless, even if hindered by some overly sentimental moments, The Sessions succeeds as a frank and friendly story about the role of sex in our quest to find companionship.

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“What’re We Making A French Movie Now?”: Seven Psychopaths

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Too self-aware to follow through on Lynchian overtones and too batshit bizarre to be a gleeful, man-fest in the vein of Guy Ritchie, Seven Pyschopaths is a tonally difficult film that succeeds only up to the point you are willing to sit back and let it do its thing. The second feature by Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker, Martin McDonaugh, Psychopaths has much of the brash, dark humor that made In Bruges so charming. However, the ensemble cast of characters splits the focus in multiple directions, thus diffusing the endearing humanity that grounded In Bruges in an unexpected way. Instead, one silly bit just leads to another silly bit like an unraveling ball of yarn.

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Holy Motors About To Land On US

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Leos Carax’s new film, Holy Motors, has been playing to perplexed audiences since it first screened at Cannes earlier this year. It currently has a 92% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and began rolling out to select theaters yesterday. Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge can be counted as one of the most exhilarating and disturbing experiences I’ve ever had watching a movie. There’s a sensual image of Juliette Binoche with an eye patch and Denis Lavant swooning her like a a lush vagabond with Paris exploding in the background that plays in my head any time I feel happy to be living in a metropolis. I’m not sure if that image is actually in the movie, but it’s in my head either way.

Admittedly, I have no idea what to expect from Holy Motors, a film that’s been called everything from “a revitalization of cinema as we know it” to “a good bit of nonsense.” This bizarre new trailer, made for America, has me curious.

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Lebanon’s Reputation v. Homeland

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

It was reported recently that the Lebanon government is taking action against the producers of Homeland for its potentially damaging portrayal of the formerly infamous city of Beirut. In the second episode of this season, Beirut becomes a bull’s-eye of terror when the CIA narrowly misses assassinating their most wanted target. Afterwards, a band of hooligans chase our hero through the streets, seemingly for no good reason, and fire an onslaught of weapons at her.

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UPDATED: Oscars 2013 Predictions

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Recent screenings of Lincoln and Flight seem to have locked both leading actors for a  nominations – at least as locked as they can be at this point in the race. There’s rumblings that Anne Hathaway may be pushed as a lead for her performance in The Dark Knight Rises, which will likely ruin her chances of getting nominated for that film. The thinking behind the change is that Hathaway will generate a lot of support for Les Misérables, therefore canceling her out for TDKR (actors can only get nominated once per category). As for films in the Best Picture race, Argo still appears to be the frontrunner, with only four major threats still yet to be seen – Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, Hitchcock, and Les Misérables. I have a feeling none of these will much a huge dent.

The poor box office performance for The Master may hurt its chances of getting enough traction. I’ve always felt people over-think box office in relation to critical acclaim, except that greater box office numbers usually means greater likelihood of exposure. If more people see it, more people will WANT to see it. It’s the Avatar/My Big Fat Greek Wedding thinking. But, really, how many people saw the last three Best Picture winners? Not many. That said, The Master is a confrontational film that’s about very big, controversial ideas. Ideas that fly in the face of many people in Hollywood, including some of its biggest stars. There’s no show of hands as to who’s a Scientologist in the Academy, but the intellectual deduction that the film isn’t actually about the religion, won’t translate to people who are believers. In this case, the bad box office will play to the favor of people already hoping the film will just go away. And slowly it is going away.

BOLD = my pick to win as of today

Best Picture:
Argo
Silver Linings Playbook
Lincoln
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Django Unchained
Moonrise Kingdom
***********
Promised Land
Amour
Hitchcock
The Master
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Anna Karenina
The Impossible
Flight
Zero Dark Thirty

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Planning Coincidence: The Game (1997)

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

The Game is a mind-bending metaphor for the bizarre and dirty side of American life where everything’s coincidence and everything’s destiny. A Titanic-sized ship couldn’t house the newspaper clippings about the corruption through bad business practices that have come to light since The Game was released in 1997. As a result, the macabre torture suffered by Michael Douglas’ billionaire investment banker plays like a society exacting revenge for years of unwittingly handing themselves over to moneymakers. The film, directed by a young David Fincher, appeared amidst a fruitful time for inventive narratives in Hollywood. However, the challenging, unrelenting story was received with tepid reviews. If not for the recent success of its maker, The Game may well have faded into obscurity, buried beneath more critically-accepted, similar films from the time.

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Rosemary and Roman and Mia

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Continuing today’s theme of New York City, Central Park, and, uh, fear… here’s a great photo the Criterion Collection released of Mia Farrow and Roman Polanski on the set of Rosemary’s Baby.

The Collection is set to release the first ever Blu-ray of the classic horror film on October 30th (DVD Beaver Review Here). Just in time for Halloween, naturally.

The digitally restored disc includes:

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Burns’ Central Park Five Defines New New York

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Let me preface by saying that I haven’t seen Central Park Five yet, so I have no clue whether it actually “defines” one of the major cities on the planet. It’s quite possible this film, like many great documentaries, sets out only to exonerate people who have been wrongfully accused of a heinous crime. A story that, nonetheless, should be told because these men were innocent and a city dropped the ball.

For me, though, the Central Park jogger story shaped an impactful
portion of my childhood. As a kid growing up in New York in the early
90s, this horrible rape (a word I remember misusing over and over, causing some severe embarrassment for my parents) marked the first bit of scary news I remember being able to process and digest. Everybody remembers that one crime that they hear at four or five years old, when they might first be able to associate it with fear. People may not go into places like alleyways or cornfields, because something bad has been so burned into their memories. I will never step into Central Park at night because of this one event. The crime swept through New York, for reasons I could only mildly comprehend at the time. Looking back, it single-handedly defined the city that I grew to have a loving, difficult, and important relationship with.

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Klosterman Goes To Bat For Room 237

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

The best recent film that nobody saw was Jon Foy’s Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. Room 237, an upcoming documentary that seems to rake strikingly familiar terrain to Foy’s masterpiece, has just gotten a nice write-up by Chuck Klosterman over at Grantland. Klosterman focuses primarily on the movie’s take on what he calls “Immersion Criticism,” which is basically a respectful way of saying “Obsession- That-Borders-On-Insanity.”

This is something I’ve decided to call “Immersion Criticism,” because it can’t really be done unless you watch a movie 10 or 100 or 1,000 times. It’s based on the belief that symbolic, ancillary details inside a film are infinitely more important than the surface dialogue or the superficial narrative. And it’s not just a matter of noticing things other people miss, because that can be done by anyone who’s perceptive; it’s a matter of noticing things that the director included to indicate his true, undisclosed intention. In other words, it’s not an interpretive reading — it’s an inflexible, clandestine reality that matters way more than anything else. And it’s usually insane.

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