CINEMA SEEN - "Oscar-rizing 2009!"
By William Margold

     So this is what all the hours in dank movie theaters consuming enormous amounts of rarely fresh popcorn and swallowing gallons of odd tasting lemonade during 2008 have come down to: predicting the Oscar winners in the six major Academy Award categories.
     Now I must search my heart and my mind and play them against each other so that by the time that I’ve made my "predictions"---my soul is content.
     That I’m not spending any more space on this introduction should suggest to you that I’m taking my "predictions" about what and who will happen on Sunday evening February 22---much more seriously this year---which of course, should suggest to you that I am deranged, deluded, and demented, for taking anything associated with "predicting the Oscars" seriously in the first place.

     BEST ACTRESS---Perhaps the easiest of all categories to "predict" because the only contender worth a damn is the lovely lady pictured here in the bathtub---KATE WINSLET---for her eloquently understated work in the effectively thought provoking "The Reader." Her lackluster and non-threatening competition includes unremarkable turns by an annoying Anne Hathaway (in the even more annoying "Rachel Getting Married), a sluggish Angelina Jolie (in the Clint East-"wooden" "Changeling"), a woeful Melissa Leo (in the yawn-and-squirm-inducing "Frozen River"), and a strident Meryl Streep (in the about as shocking as finding a mouse in the communion wafer box "Doubt").

     BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS---Easily the least interesting category this year, but PENELOPE CRUZ as the fiery Maria Elena in Woody Allen’s quirky "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" stands a couple of lovely shoulders above the rest. Penelope’s four also-rans include a dismal Amy Adams and an unmoving Viola Davis (both from the aforementioned dullard "Doubt"), an ordinary Taraji P. Henson (from the odd but oddly uninvolving "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and a sullen Marisa Tomei (from the unconvincing "The Wrestler").

     BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR---Quickly eliminating Philip Seymour Hoffman for his tepid turn in the dubious "Doubt"...biding farewell to Michael Shannon who might have been a stronger contender if he had had more scenes in the routine "Revolutionary Road"...and admitting that Josh Brolin was appropriately unnerving, and delivered the best performance of all the cast members (as Dan White) in "Milk"---it comes down to my favorite character etching of 2008...the perceptively hilarious Robert Downey Jr. (whose colorful immersion into acting added considerable shine to an already glowing "Tropic Thunder")---and the late Heath Ledger (who maximized malevolence during his warped romp as The Joker so much that it diminished the overall effect of "The Dark Knight"). A tie between Downey Jr. and Ledger would be great...but Academy Award ties are even rarer than Detroit Lions winning seasons, so sardonically, because fate dealt him the Death card, I must go with HEATH LEDGER.

     BEST ACTOR---Richard Jenkins (as an overwhelmed everyman) was nice in "The Visitor" and of course, nice guys don’t usually finish first. Brad Pitt was intriguing but was also a victim of way too much "movie magic" in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Mickey Rourke was more caricature than character as "The Wrestler." Sean Penn was too saintly, and I felt he only skimmed the surface in "Milk." So my "prediction" here is FRANK LANGELLA (in "Frost/Nixon") who made the role of the Watergate weary Richard Nixon an all-consuming, sense shattering, emotionally exhausting experience that was equal parts pathetic and empathetic, supremely tinged with commanding bravado. I rank Mr. Langella’s moments as Nixon with what Burt Lancaster brought to the screen as "Elmer Gantry." And when you think about it...what politician isn’t a con man? And what rabble-rousing speech to the masses isn’t a revival meeting?

     BEST DIRECTOR---Stephan Daldry dawdles during "The Reader." Gus Van Sant doesn’t manage to make "Milk" boil over with either meaning...or tension. David Fincher had way too much to work with and didn’t deliver enough, or paradoxically might have had too little to work with, and delivered too much during "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Ron Howard did his job admirably and made "Frost/Nixon" thoroughly compelling. But DANNY BOYLE answered every question put to him, and created a genuine cinematic surprise in the process with his "Slumdog Millionaire."

     BEST PICTURE---"The Reader" was adequately uncomforting but really amounted to one great performance (by Ms. Winslet). "Milk" was timely (considering the foolish fate of Prop. 8), and made us care...just not enough. The living life backwards gimmick of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was simply too curious for its own good. "Frost/Nixon" was history in a very neat package...perhaps a little too neat. Therefore...SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, with its magnetic theme of life being a gritty as well as a gossamer web of questions and answers kept me fascinated throughout the India-based drama.
     (Readers of last week’s column might remember that I ran a picture of "Slumdog" as part of the artwork for what [or whom] I said I wouldn’t be "predicting" to win. However, after reconsidering the situation, and because I already lose enough being a Detroit Lions fan...I decided to at least try and ease my pain here. Remember that I said, "I’m taking this Oscar predicting business very seriously.")

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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, February 19, 2009 issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Missing The Cut!"
By William Margold
     By the time that you are reading this column I should have "almost" completed watching ALL of the nominated productions and performances that will be contending for the major honors when Oscars 2009 airs on ABC on Sunday evening, February 22.
     Thanks to the facility of Netflix, and the generosity as well as the fearlessness of various associates who provided numerous screeners (some of which foolishly threatened the sacrifice of favorite pets if it were discovered that they had been loaned out)---thereby precluding my having to spend precious time in dark little theaters catching up with elusive titles---the football free weekend preceding The Super Bowl was a blur of one film after another...resulting in the following page primarily consisting of a six-fingered fistful of performances by females who didn’t make the final cut.

     I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG---With very rare exceptions ("King of Hearts" and "Das Boat"), I have never enjoyed having to read movies. If this fact offends my effete brethren in the film reviewing community, then so be it...and they are all welcome to turn their pointed noses up whenever we are in the same auditoriums. And although it doesn’t take much effort to figure out what Kristin Scott Thomas is up to as she painfully etches a lady who is consumed by the guilt of being involved in the death of her son, I still found the suffering through the French and German transposed into sub-titles tedious and unrewarding. And with the exception of one outburst, Ms. Scott Thomas’ performance didn’t do very much for me--- (in any language)---and therefore I wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t nominated.

     HAPPY-GO-LUCKY---Talk about a film that needed sub-titles...this empty-headed English language throw away was so unintelligible that I almost wore out my rewind button trying to hear what un-nominated actress Sally Hawkins and her co-stars were muttering about under Mike Leigh’s meandering helming. Sally (as Poppy) is a bright-eyed, bushy tailed creature, who sees the sunny side of every storm cloud, and who, had she been around during The Blitz, would have probably thought how nice London looked by bomb-light.

     THE DUCHESS---Keira Knightley did not get nominated for her efforts in this pretty but genuinely pointless piece of historical ho-hummery about a lady who is unable to bear a son for the Duke of Devonshire, who is portrayed by Ralph Fiennes with just enough mannered evil that I was perversely content throughout the two hours that it took out of my life. Quite frankly though, it was the score that captured my interest more than the images, as I kept hearing the strains of the stuff that Rachel "Cider House Rules" and "The Legend of Bagger Vance") Portman has gloriously produced, and I delighted to discover that she had indeed created the music for this film as well. In fact, in honor of Ms. Portman, I wrote this column while the strains of her soaring "Cider House" score warmed my senses.

     NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH---Magnetically appealing to my journalistic ways, director Rod Lurie’s tale of a news writer Kate Beckinsale) who refuses to divulge her source when she outs a CIA agent (Vera Farmiga) is the tragically perfect example of a late December release that got buried in the BIG holiday film shuffle. Both actresses weren’t nominated...and both ladies are outstanding, with Ms. Beckinsale staunchly suffering with such supposedly protected by The First Amendment nobility, that I felt ashamed by the fact that I am proud to be an American, when what this country was based on is being eroded by fear-mongering politicians...every day! Many, many years ago, while cutting my journalistic teeth at Santa Monica College, I tumbled upon a student presidential race bribe scandal, and reported the story, but never gave up my source, much to what I thought was the enduring enmity of my advisor. However a few years later, when I encountered her while I was interning at The Santa Monica Outlook, she extended her hand, and said that my actions had made her proud.

     ELEGY---A searing and insightful look at an older man’s highly introspective (and frightened of failure) infatuation with a younger woman, the Isabel Coixet directed mini-masterpiece caught me off-guard, and hit home with quite a number of below the belt/acutely painful punches. Ben Kingsley, aging with pompous perfection, plays a professor who falls under the spell of his dangerously attractive student---the radiant Penelope Cruz, who should have been nominated for Best Actress here, but wound up getting a Best Supporting nom for her work in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"---which she might win for, because of her performance in this film. (Yes...it works that way...sometimes!) In fact "Elegy" which was adapted from Philip Roth’s novella "The Dying Animal" is so personal to me (my great love relationship was with a lovely lady who was a decade and a half younger than me, and I was afraid of losing her all through the five years that we were together)---that I just might track down the written work, and force myself to read it---an action that I find just about as much fun as dealing with sub-titles.
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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, February 5, 2009, issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Underwhelmed Times Three"
By William Margold

     Rather than disrupt a good night’s sleep (comforted by watching the first two hours of the new season of the annoyingly wonderful LOST just before turning in) to stagger blearily into my living room to watch the Academy Award nominations "live" at the ridiculously early time of 5:30am last Thursday morning, I simply cheated disorientation (as well as precluded crankiness for the rest of the day) by scheduling my VCR to record the announcements, and then got up, much more rested, and watched them at the much more reasonable 8:30am.
     And now the countdown to the Oscar presentations on Sunday, February 22 begins. And as mentioned in last week’s column, my next quartet of Cinema Seens will be devoted to the discussion of what (and who) made the final cut...and of what (and who) didn’t...culminating with my Feb. 19 "Prediction Piece"---wherein I will put my movie watching/evaluating insights on the line for all to revel in...or ridicule over.
     Herein, although not wanting to look like I am enjoying myself too much, I’m going to knock around a trio of heavy hitters that, for any number of reasons, failed (with the exception of a supporting performance) to make the cut.

     VALKYRIE---Nazis and their interminably futile attempts to knock off Hitler are ploddingly presented in this Bryan Singer directed bore-wurst that gives Tom Cruise very little to do except fail. Cast as "good Nazi" Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (who probably thought that there really was soap in those showers), Cruise gets an eye knocked out early on, and fashions a patch that would make a pirate proud throughout the rest of the film, which at least makes him slightly more dimensional than his costars that include Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Terrence Stamp. Tensionless and tedious, the production eventually becomes history mired in the quicksand of seemingly good intentions gone awry. However, with really nothing very likeable about any of the characters in the film, I kept thinking that even had the plot to assassinate Adolph been successful, and the head of the snake had been cut off...the venom of what the Nazis perpetrated upon the world was still going to be as virulent throughout the rest of the beast.

     REVOLUTIONARY ROAD---A very sour serving of Salinger (as in J.D.) that places pretty hamsters Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the barbed wire treadmill that is commuter train close to New York, Connecticut suburbia circa 1955. Directed listlessly, with one exception, by Sam ("American Beauty") Mendes, this is much more "American Brittle" with the end result being that I really didn’t give a damn if the characters shattered...or not! All of this is being done a whole lot better (and commandingly) right now on AMC in the MAD MEN cable television series...with one exception...the presence of an actor named Michael Shannon, who, in two extended scenes of raging emotions (and remarkable insight) tears up the screen. Although most likely to lose out to Heath Ledger in Best Supporting Actor category, Shannon scorches the senses, and of course steals the film. Only problem... "Revolutionary Road" isn’t worthy of Shannon’s theft.

     GRAN TORINO---The temptation to label Clint Eastwood’s miserable, and misery-inducing excuse for a motion picture---"Dinosaur Harry"---and allow it to disappear would be the humane way to let it go away...forever. But I guess, much like the grumbling grouch that Clint (who also laconically directed the dismal doings) portrays, my milk of human kindness has long soured, and I am compelled to kick Clint’s cinematic cur while it’s down. Spewing racial epithets with virtually no conviction (let’s just say Clint’s Walt Kowalski doesn’t really call "a spade"..."a spade"--- and slants his other ethnic slurs with all the menace of a Q-tip rather than a dart), he grouses in breathy sound bites resembling the gargling of razor blades, swilling beer, while waiting (of course, impatiently) for Father Time to catch up with him. And when he finally finds a genuinely unconvincing excuse to go out on his own terms, what was designed to elicit my tears simply got another yawn out of me.
     Sardonically, just before his supposed "noble act"---he drops his faithful dog off with his irksome neighbors---whose eating habits are rumored to lean toward turning canines into cuisine.
     And in a final note of irony...I listened close enough to the sullen script to learn that Clint’s character is a long time Detroit Lions season ticket holder. From my own painfully personal experiences of being afflicted with acute Detroit Lion-fan-itis for over 50 years---although admittedly trivial---I guess that’s reason enough to look at the life through shattered glasses.
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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, January 29, 2009, issue.

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