CINEMA SEEN - "Oscarizing 2010"
By William Margold

    That I take the predicting of Oscar winners in the six major categories (Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Film) way too seriously should strongly suggest to you that my sanity is highly suspect. Nevertheless, my annual prognosticating of The Academy Awards (set for 5pm on Sunday afternoon March 7 on ABC), is a ritual long ago established (in fact, dating all the way back to the mid-1950’s), and despite momentary disappointments, when one of my picks is off-target---I have invariably gotten more many more right than wrong--- sometimes even surprising myself in the process.
    And so it is I that enter into this year’s fray, comfortable in the knowledge that after decades of analyzing movies, my choices are always a thoroughly thought out combination of insight, instinct and intuition that admittedly, every once in awhile, has been known to veer toward insanity...or something like that.
    
    BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS---Among the performing categories, this is the easiest one to predict. Neither Vera Farmiga or Anna Kendrick were particularly special in "Up in the Air"...and even if they were, they fall victim to the "balancing each other out" syndrome. Maggie Gyllenhaal appeared to be an undeveloped afterthought in "Crazy Heart." And Penelope Cruz was perky but not particularly powerful in "Nine." No matter...because MO’NIQUE was devastating as the personification of misery and frustration in the miserable viewing experience called "Precious."
    
    BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR---A much more difficult category to figure out because history may well get in the way of common sense. Quickly eliminating a not creepy enough Stanley Tucci ("The Lovely Bones") and a bland Matt Damon ("Invictus"), I was genuinely moved by Woody Harrelson’s tortured bearer of bad news in "The Messenger" and admired Christopher Plummer’s bravado and even felt some of his anguish as Tolstoy in "The Last Station." However Christoph Waltz’s engagingly evil Colonel Klinky Nazi antics throughout Quentin Tarantino’s tedious "Inglorious Basterds" is the obvious "best", if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t think that anyone has ever won an Oscar for playing a member of the Third Reich. So...I’m going to play the "being rewarded for many years of service/strong screen presence" game here (think James Coburn and Alan Arkin), and pick CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER.
    
    BEST ACTRESS---Helen Mirren ("The Last Station"), Carey Mulligan ("An Education" and Gabourney Sidibe ("Precious") are simply filler here. I found Sandra Bullock, in the remarkably unmoving "The Blind Side" to be an annoying, very pale carbon copy of Julia Roberts’ Erin Brockovich effort. Luminously overshadowing everyone in this category is MERYL STREEP who quite amusingly (and achingly) consumed the role of Julia Child ("Julie and Julia"), and then served her up delectably...scene after scene after scene. Or perhaps I should say..."dish after dish after dish."
    
    BEST ACTOR---The weakest category of all. Jeremy Renner was way too enigmatic in "The Hurt Locker." Morgan Freeman was way too noble in "Invictus" (which I wound up calling "Inflictus"). The immensely likeable George Clooney appeared to be playing the immensely likeable George Clooney quite adequately, but not particularly memorably throughout "Up in the Air." Colin Firth’s semi-fastidious suffering through "A Single Man" would be my pick, but for the sake of making my record look good...I must predict the way over due to be honored JEFF BRIDGES as the self-battered but not completely beaten country singing warrior in the emotionally tone deaf "Crazy Heart."
    
    BEST DIRECTOR---It’s called "dancing with the one who brought you" as Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker"), Quentin Tarantino ("Inglorious Basterds"), Lee Daniels ("Precious") and Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air") all pale (and/or pall) in comparison to what JAMES CAMERON wrought with his monumentally magical "Avatar." When Michelle Rodriquez (a feisty character in the film) says "You should see the look on your faces" to a couple of her co-stars as they discover the spectacular rainbow-colored world of Pandora for the first time, I felt like she was directing that line to me, because I could feel my face absolutely glowing in wonderment over what JAMES CAMERON (whose picture is incorporated into a shot from his movie) created.
    
    BEST FILM--- In this ridiculously bloated/over-expanded to ten titles category that I called "Pandora and the Nine Dwarfs" in last week’s column, no other film but AVATAR should be anointed. But to leave no turn un-stoned, I will acknowledge all the sacrificial lambs that AVATAR will slaughter in ascending (from worst upwards) order of the minimal indelibility they had on my mind: "An Education" "District 9" "The Blind Side" "Inglorious Basterds" "The Hurt Locker" "Precious" "A Serious Man" "Up" and "Up in the Air." And as mentioned last week, J.J. Abrams’ "Star Trek" (to be discussed next week) was my favorite film of the past decade. But I must admit to feeling a certain amount of relief that it wasn’t even nominated in the Best Film group, as I’m sure it would have saddened me greatly when it wound up losing to AVATAR.
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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, March 4, 2010, issue.

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CINEMA SEEN - "Pandora and the Nine Dwarves"
By William Margold

     Whenever I write a column worthy enough to be rolled over to my website (www.billmargold.com), Jay Bee...my greatly appreciated Guam-based web master...insists that I give it a headline/title. Therefore, since I’d like very much for this column to have a life after its current LAXPRESS run...it’s going to be called "Pandora and the Nine Dwarfs."
     In what appears to be a desperate attempt by those in charge of The Academy Awards to b-r-o-a-d-e-n the appeal of the Best Picture Oscar by expanding that category to 10 nominees--- almost everything went wrong to the extent that with the exception of James Cameron’s competition annihilating, awesomely "Pandorable" AVATAR, and perhaps two or three other titles---there really aren’t that many valid Best Picture contenders among the rest of the nine. And with the egregious exclusions of the magnificent STAR TREK, the joyful JULIE AND JULIA, and the enchanting (500) DAYS OF SUMMER from the grotesquely overstuffed list, plus the inane inclusion (since it was also nominated for Best Animated Feature) of the admittedly enjoyable UP, further accentuating the flatulent double-fisted folly, the whole damn thing strongly resembles "a cinematic cluster copulation."
     However, even though they were seemingly dumbly dealt, I’ve got to play the couple of mangled hands of mostly forgettable Best Film nominee cards out.
     Thankfully however, at least in the case of PRECIOUS, I am blessed with the following sentiments from Cinema Seen contributor Pam Jones. Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire, the raunchy, raw movie, starring Gabourey Sidibe as Clareece "Precious" Jones as an overweight illiterate black 16 year old in Harlem with one child (and close to giving birth to her second) and Mo’Nique as her mother will indeed capture your attention, and maybe even scar your brain tissue. I only wish that the movie didn’t look so cheap. But maybe it needed to be like that to put that extra edge on the film. As for my own thoughts about the dismal film, which makes a very strong for mandatory birth control, other than acknowledging Mo’Nique’s devastating performance, I don’t think that it’s any accident that the words "precious" and "hopeless" both have eight letters.
     I could spend the rest of this column burbling about the wonders of AVATAR, but I’ve still got eight other titles to discuss (four of which were handled in previous issues). UP was a nice little animated movie, although, as previously noted, it has absolutely no business taking "up" space here. DISTRICT 9 eventually became tedious in its attempt to be ironic. THE HURT LOCKER failed to detonate any emotional response from me...except yawning. And Quentin Tarantino’s ridiculous INGLORIOUS BASTERDS was simply a ponderously imitative travesty.
     Joining "District 9" as two other movies with virtually no reason whatsoever to be in the Best Film category are the emotionally vacant AN EDUCATION and the uncomfortably cloying THE BLIND SIDE. On one hand, I couldn’t help thinking about the trouble I’d get into if I were to frolic about with an underage girl, as the activities within "An Education" unraveled, and yet there was nary an iota of outrage evident by anyone in the film. And on the other hand, although based on fact, the simple witted fairytale nonsense of "The Blind Side" (poor black football player gets adopted by a well to do white family, and even winds up as a Baltimore Raven) caused me to have sardonic visions of such a storyline being recklessly played out many more times...with disastrous results.
     Of all the titles being discussed here ...only Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR, featuring a very ingratiating George Clooney as a boy/man with terminal wanderlust, is a production that most likely would have made the final cut...even if the Best Film category had stayed at five.
     And finally, the Coen Brothers’ delightfully quirky A SERIOUS MAN is noteworthy, if for no other reason than it "almost" made me feel guilty about failing Mr. Solomon’s Hebrew School classes at Vista Del Mar repeatedly, and therefore never having gone through the Bar Mitzvah experience. Note...I said "almost." And as exasperated as I always made the frantically gesticulating Mr. Solomon, by rendering Hebrew into a truly lost language, he never failed to provide me with a tiny blue box of glistening rock candy at the end of every class. Indeed...while some memories may well melt in the mouth...they will never melt in the mind.
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     NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, February 25, 2010, issue.

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