Not That Anyone Cares, But Why I'm Not Writing About the Oscars This Year

Meh. Not since 1995's ceremony - where, after winning 5 other awards, Forrest Gump won the Best Picture award competing against both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption - have I been so unexcited about an Oscars show. I mean, somehow Gump is back again... er, wait... I mean Benjamin Button... competing against some equally slight films. And it seems like it's a foregone conclusion that one of my least favorite movies of the year, the extremely overrated Slumdog Millionaire, will win a slew of awards (probably even the Best Picture award). So what's in it for me this year? Why bother picking any of the races, if I can't even muster the interest in the proceedings this year? Like I said... meh! So I'll skip the races I'm bored with and just bring up a couple of points of interest, so to speak. Best Actor looks like the most interesting one with Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke being the front-runners. While personally, my heart's with fellow Miami boy, Mickey Rourke, I fear that his overexposure this awards season may have worked against this man of mystique. So Sean Penn may run out with this one, which wouldn't be all bad since he gave a hell of a performance in Milk. And karmically speaking, maybe this is a reward for being one of the few directors to keep Rourke working during his low period in 2001's The Pledge. Kate Winslet should win for The Reader, only who knows why she was even nominated for that. Penelope Cruz and Viola Davis are another interesting race to look at for Best Supporting Actress (Taraji P. Henson, I loved you in Hustle and Flow, but I don't see what merited the nomination this year). Wall·E is a shoo-in for Best Animated feature. But honestly, it should have competed in the Best Picture category where it could have, and should have, easily won. The only upset of the night would occur if for some mysterious Academy-related reason, Heath Ledger would lose the Supporting Actor award. Posthumous nominations have a bad record at the Oscars. The technical awards this year? This one gets a "Who REALLY cares?" from me. When you have The Dark Knight - a movie that has a near-unintelligible third act - up for Film Editing, and Benjamin Button up for Best Makeup - when in fact, most of its makeup achievements are perked up by CGI - then what really comes to mind is how much the nomination process, and even the categories, are in need of an overhaul. With Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) named executive producer this year, the actual Oscar ceremony might prove to be the most interesting aspect of the evening. Hugh Jackman (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), a pretty talented showman when performing live, is the evening's host. Michael Giacchino (Lost) is conducting the orchestra. And they've even tried to spice things up a bit by keeping its roster of presenters secret. I'm hoping this all adds up to a surprisingly exciting evening. I usually make a day of this. Despite disagreeing with most of what is usually awarded, as a movie lover it still excites me to see a day in which my passion for movies is shared in celebration by others. But expect Slumdog Millionaire to sweep most of its nominations, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - though slight, still a bit of an underrated film - to lose most of its noms. If this happens, then predictability will still reign on another stale awards night. The 81st Academy Awards airs Sunday night on ABC at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET.

Best of 2008: Performances and Creative Achievements

As I continue reviewing the best that cinema had to offer in 2008, I'd like to pause before listing the 10 best movies of the year this Friday, and reflect on some individual achievements today. Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler - It is a bravura performance that reveals enough about Rourke to dispel any questions about the limitations of his expressiveness due to the punishment his face has taken over the years. Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Doubt - Streep is so convincing that she convinced her writer/director to rethink the point of his Iraq war parable. Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight - Some wonder whether this performance would be awarded the amount of recognition it has received if Ledger hadn't died. But even if the spectre of his death did not haunt the film at its edges, it would still be the spookiest submergence of an actor's personality in a role that I've seen all year. Best Supporting Actress: Chiara Mastroianni, Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - Mastroianni charms the viewer with her portrayal of Sylvia, the beguiling daughter-in-law that discovers her life might have been different had she known earlier that two of her husband's relatives competed amongst themselves to win her heart. Even resignation to being a housewife is not enough to mask her incandescence, not an easy achievement when sharing the screen with her legendary mother - the great Catherine Deneuve. Best Ensemble Cast: The cast of Rachel Getting Married - Whatever my problems with its phony setting, Anne Hathaway's tour-de-force performance is still not enough to steal the spotlight from the rest of this film's supporting players. Bill Irwin and Debra Winger - playing her divorced parents - and Rosemarie DeWitt as the titular older sister Rachel give raw improvisatory performances that illustrate the love and recriminations that bind a family. And even the minor players in the film seem to have a life beyond the confines of the movie. Best Newcomer: Laura Ramsey, The Ruins - In what could have been the thankless role of whining victim that seems to always be the center of attention during the early parts of a horror film, Ramsey instead gets sympathy for refusing to play the character as weak. With more spunk than any of her fellow monster fodder, Ramsey's character manages to be the one that the viewer can most identify with in this surprisingly effective, underrated thriller. Best Comeback: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler - My own review for the film points out how it's not really a comeback if you haven't gone anywhere. And Rourke has been very present and engaged in his career for quite a few years, now. But let's just say that Hollywood has finally let him out of the doghouse. Be glad that he is now more marketable than ever, and he can start playing some leads again. Best Animated Film: Wall·E - I talked about this film in Monday's post, but I'll reiterate. This one is strong enough to be counted alongside some strong competition for best movie of the year. Best Documentary: Waltz with Bashir - A documentary that is totally justified in its animated presentation. The truth being revealed here is not about the Israeli director's involvement in a disturbing attack on Lebanese. It is about how his mind fails to reconcile his participation in the attack with his own opinion of the violence he's capable of. Best Foreign Language Film: Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - Desplechin captures everything that drives this traditionally American genre, the family reunion film; adapts it with an eye to French sensibilities; remembers to give it visual and aural flourishes; and does it in a completely realistic way. Aside from its performances, Demme's Rachel Getting Married compares pretty poorly to this film. Best Cinematography: Colin Watkinson, The Fall - A stunning visual achievement that eschews CGI marvels for actual in-camera artistry. Best Original Score: Grégoire Hetzel, Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) - The lush score serves as a warm counterpoint to the sharp squabbling that pervades this film. Best Original Song: Bruce Springsteen, The Wrestler - The devastatingly tragic Randy "The Ram" Robinson is captured by this simple lyric, "...Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before..." Best Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Truly supporting the story, the effects are marvelously picaresque when depicting Button's travels, and unusually subtle when illustrating his gradual decline into youth. Best Adapted Screenplay: Nicholas Meyer, Elegy - Best known for his Star Trek films, Meyer succeeds at adapting Philip Roth, an author whose sensibility has been notoriously difficult to capture. Based on The Dying Animal, the film is an example of Meyer's theory on the central appeal of a movie, "A good story to me is one that, after I’ve told it to you, you understand why I wanted to tell it.” Best Original Screenplay: Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York - Kaufman's creations are always wildly original. But this movie consistently inverts expectations in a way that would both impress and confound screenwriting teacher Robert McKee (the real-life one, not the Brian Cox character from Adaptation). A downbeat look at one artist's impulse to make a mark in life that celebrates the mundane and condemns the obsessive pursuit of creative accomplishment. Best Director: Steven Soderbergh, Che (Roadshow Version) - Soderbergh takes pains to present an objective film about a controversial historical figure in the most unexpected way possible. He makes two movies about him. The first part, The Argentine, builds Guevara up to be a revolutionary hero. The second part, Guerilla, tears him down by demonstrating his arrogance and remoteness towards his comrades. Together, they form a well-rounded look at why Guevara is both glorified and demonized. On Friday, I'll post my top 10 films of the year. But because I don't want to address the following in that post, here are the worst films I saw this year, in alphabetical order: A Corte do Norte (The Northern Land), dir. João Botelho - Visually sumptuous, but pretentious to the extreme, this Portuguese film was stultifyingly boring. Flawless, dir. Michael Radford - Demi Moore should never play a Brit again, but especially not in a period drama opposite Michael Caine. Hounddog, dir. Deborah Kampmeier - Dakota Fanning should never be raped in a film again, but especially not in a period drama that pretends it has something important to say about exploiting children. Pineapple Express, dir. David Gordon Green - I admire David Gordon Green's films. Judd Apatow's films make me howl with laughter. But David Gordon Green directing a Judd Apatow film? Not so much. Slumdog Millionaire, dir. Danny Boyle - That Gran Torino is being accused of racism for wearing its controversy on its sleeve while Boyle's celebrated film is practically drowning in white ethnocentric prejudice is the real crime. For more on the Best of 2008: Best of 2008: Animated Features Best of 2008: Oscar Nominations Open Thread Best of 2008: The 10 Best Films of the Year

TV Trailer: Caprica

by Tony Dayoub

If you've seen the current incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, then you know it does for science fiction drama what The Dark Knight does for comic book movies. It elevates it past its genre trappings to reflect on today's world events.

But for those who don't buy into spaceships and the like, for those who like their drama a little more grounded, comes a prequel called Caprica. More of a multi-generational story of rivalry between two families, the Adams and the Graystones, in the vein of Dynasty or the current Dirty Sexy Money, Caprica is set fifty years earlier.

It tells of how the events now playing out on Galactica first began in a setting not too different from our own. Starring as Joseph Adams is Esai Morales (NYPD Blue, La Bamba) and as Daniel Graystone, Eric Stoltz (Pulp Fiction, Mask). Also cast so far are Polly Walker (Rome) and Paula Malcolmson (Deadwood).


No word yet on the exact premiere date, but it will appear on the Sci Fi channel. I'll update you with more information as it becomes available.

Click on the picture above to be redirected to the Battlestar Galactica website where you can catch a preview of Caprica.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight - Gotham Story: The Tragedy of Harvey Dent, or Part Two: The Actual Film Analysis

by Tony Dayoub



Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is the second act of the epic he started in Batman Begins (2005). It is now becoming clear that he is not satisfied in simply rehashing the familiar story of The Batman (Christian Bale). Slowly emerging from behind the vigilante's cape is a more ambitious crime saga that is really an examination of the corrupt, made-up city of Gotham. There are nods to other directors that have with equal ambition taken on the dissection of a crime-ridden burg. But Nolan has the advantage that Gotham is fictional, and its tale is represented in the tragedy of the movie's true protagonist, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).


The movie picks up shortly after the end of the first film. The Batman has inspired a wave of copycats that hinder more than help in his crusade against Gotham City's criminal elements. Mobsters like The Chechen (Ritchie Coster) and Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts) are uniting against this common enemy. Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) of the Gotham police has now formed a Major Crimes Unit staffed by his most trusted cops, some of which may have fallen to the corruption plaguing the town. All of this is just setting the stage for the introduction of two important players. The Joker (Heath Ledger), an element of chaos, is a psychotic who reflects the evil underbelly of Gotham. Harvey Dent, an element of order, is the new District Attorney. Though coming up through the ranks of Internal Affairs investigating some of Gordon's own MCU cops, he is not above bending the law as a means to an end, the salvation of Gotham City. Dent represents Bruce Wayne's best hope for stepping out from behind the mask allowing him to reunite with the love of his life, A.D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Together The Batman, Gordon and Dent form a powerful troika that is Gotham's best chance for vanquishing its criminals. But will the new unknown variable of The Joker disrupt the equation?

That all of these protagonists share the stage serves to spotlight that it is in this chapter that Gotham City emerges as the central character. It had been alluded to earlier, in Batman Begins, when Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) explained that his goal was to bring down the morally compromised Gotham. Thomas Wayne (Linus Roache), Bruce's father, had been at the opposite end of the spectrum, trying to save the city. Both served as metaphorical fathers to The Batman, the outcast with his finger in the dike, trying to keep the flood of evil from overtaking Gotham, but resigned to the fact that his battle may be a perpetual one.

Nolan took great care in the casting of the fictional Gotham. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he chose Chicago, a city whose past is rooted in corruption as well, to double for Gotham. It's geography serves Gotham well, with its elevated trains running high over the dangerous streets. Its prohibition era story of outlaws hijacking the law, as told in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) is obliquely referenced, when The Batman intimidates Maroni on a rooftop, and the response is laughing skepticism that The Batman would ever kill a criminal and break his moral code. This scene is a quote of De Palma's finale when G-Man Elliot Ness similarly threatens Capone henchman, Frank Nitti.

More explicitly referenced is Michael Mann's Heat (1995), in the film's opening bank heist scene. Loud, violent, and committed in broad daylight, like in the climactic bank heist of the previous film, the nod to that film is made more apparent by the appearance of William Fichtner. Playing a doublecrossing financial mastermind in Heat, here he plays a bank employee literally packing some heat, as a gun-toting bank manager protecting his mob employers' financial interests. And like in this movie, the crime saga Heat is an exploration of the moral decay prevalent at all levels of the law in a city, L.A.

Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker is haunting. I won't say much about it here, because it has been talked about plenty. But it does merit all the praise being lavished on it, and it is sad that it is Ledger's final role. The spectre of evil hangs over this Joker like no other one before. While Jack Nicholson's iteration of the role seemed to erase any notion of Cesar Romero in the part, Ledger's take on it reduces Nicholson's performance to a mere postmodern, hipper imitation of Romero's. Because the character bursts forth fully formed, that is with no origin story to tell you how he became The Joker; because Ledger so completely subsumes himself into the part; and because of Ledger's untimely death, there is a spooky dimension to the performance that so disarms the viewer, that the very appearance of the villain in the frame is cause to sit on the edge of one's seat.

The rest of the cast, from Christian Bale to the smallest cameo by Tiny Lister, is equally exemplary, without the added attention brought to their performances by an unfortunate death, as in Ledger's case. But Aaron Eckhart must be singled out for his ferocious, swaggering performance as Harvey Dent.

Dent is the "White Knight" to The Batman's "Dark Knight." He is the local boy, who rose up through the ranks of Gotham's corrupt political system the hard way. Not born to privilege like Wayne, not working outside the law like The Batman, Dent has had to play by the city's rules to withstand its evil influences. Fighting corruption from within, he shows a sardonic tendency to nonetheless be open to it. Bending, though not breaking, the law, he has been able to circumvent the city's decay, and emerges as a heroic option to take up the crusade started by The Batman, bringing it out of the shadows and into the light. So it is all the sadder when The Joker's metaphorical defacing of Gotham leads to the literal defacing of Dent himself.

Taking on the nickname given to him while at Internal Affairs, Two-Face, The Batman and The Joker now serve as the metaphorical fathers to Gotham's twisted new incarnation of fairness. Harvey "Two-Face" Dent now embodies both justice and vengeance, order and chaos. Trusting his two-headed coin - one fine, one scarred - to make all of his decisions, Dent now personifies the only system he's ever considered to be fair, random chance.

At the end of this film, it is on the edge of this two-headed coin that Gotham stands, precariously capable of falling to either side depending on whether The Batman's crusade succeeds or fails. Gotham's story... to be continued?

Movie Review: The Dark Knight - My Dark Night, or Part One: How My Wife Always Comes Through in a Crunch

by Tony Dayoub



All summer, I had slowly been getting caught up in the Batmania gripping the country this weekend... as I did when I was a five-year old catching episodes of the Adam West series on The Skipper Chuck Show on WTVJ in Miami... as I did in June of 1989, when I went to the midnight screening of Tim Burton's Batman at the General Cinemas' Miracle Center 10... as I had been doing now, trying to convince my wife to find us a babysitter for this weekend so we could go see the movie together. Movie geekouts are so much more fun to share with someone else. And the hype on this movie had built to such a crescendo.


Alas, my wife displayed little interest. Who could blame her? Knowing only the Batman from TV and cinema, she was not far off when she explained that the character always seemed a little stiff, especially compared to the more dynamic Marvel characters she knew from the multiplex. I, of course, knew the seventies-era Darknight Detective interpreted by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, the one we got a glimpse of in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005)) where he faced Ra's Al Ghul, an O'Neil and Adams creation. Would I be expecting too much in hoping we'd see more of him in The Dark Knight?

I secured tickets for one of the many Thursday midnight screenings blanketing North America, ostensibly an effort to have my review up on Friday, but really caught up in a Batmania relapse. This action may seem unimpressive, but in fact, it is pretty major once you consider that I have a tendency to fall asleep at any movie I start watching after 10pm. This results in me confusing it with hating the movie since the only other movies I fall asleep at are ones that I despise. However, when I am confident that I can have a nap sometime during the day before catching the movie, I can neutralize any ambivalence I have towards seeing it so late.

Yeah, I know... I'm only 36, but I've got one foot in the nursing home already.

I make it to the theater, sit through some astounding trailers for Ridley Scott's Body of Lies, Quantum of Solace, Watchmen, and the teaser for Terminator: Salvation. The film starts, and immediately my attention is riveted by the opening bank heist scene. As the movie rolls past the one hour mark, I continue to grow enthralled. Just after the police funeral march setpiece, many of my fellow theatergoers start running out of the theater and yelling. Suddenly, the movie stops, and the theater management comes in to explain that a reel of the film was spliced out of order. I've had bad luck with this before. Due to the late hour, they aren't able to fix it, or keep the theater open since their staff will be leaving soon for the night. So we are all given two passes to make up for the problem.

Have you ever been at the dead center of an angry mob with no way out? I was seriously fearing for my life about the time that one guy that always instigates these kinds of things starts yelling, "I don't want your stupid passes. I paid to see The Dark Knight tonight, and I'll wait till 3 or 4 a.m. if I have to. And I think everyone here will do the same," with echoes of "Yeah, Dark Knight," heard throughout the mob.

Needless to say, we were unable to see it that night. I lost precious sleep and time for no good reason, and I couldn't get my review up on Friday as I had hoped.

But the good news is that my wife moved heaven and earth to get us a babysitter last night, and slipped out of work on time (which is rare for her line of work on a Friday) allowing us to see the film together in its entirety... which is, funny enough, the way I wanted to see it in the first place. I was happy. I loved the film. She loved it, and all is right in my world, again.

This article is therefore dedicated to her for being so supportive of me, this site, and my sometimes obsessive love of cinema. I love you, Dee.

Gotham Story: The Tragedy of Harvey Dent, or Part Two: The Actual Film Analysis will follow later today.

Heath Ledger

by Tony Dayoub


Heath Ledger was found dead today. He was 28.

First coming to prominence in lighter roles, like in 10 Things I Hate About You, the first glimpse of deeper talent lay in his performance in the grim Monster's Ball. In it he played Sonny, son of Billy Bob Thornton's Hank, a son caught in the devastating cycle of psychological abuse that father unleashes on son after being victimized himself by his father before that.

And though one can argue that Brokeback Mountain is vastly overrated, Ledger's portrayal of Ennis Del Mar is not. He is the anchor in that movie and says significantly more in his depiction of unfulfilled love than his costar Jake Gyllenhaal in a far more understated characterization.

The legacy he leaves behind is incomplete for now. His final performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight will not be seen till summer.