Ronald Reagan Centennial

It's a big day for USA history today. 100 years ago today in 1911 Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois. He lived there until his college graduation in the early 30s. By 1937, after a brief dip in Iowa, he was seeking movie stardom in Hollywood. Forty-four years later he became the 40th President of the United States.

Reagan in the late 20s or early 30s in Illinois

He remains the only US President who ever starred in motion pictures, though he isn't remotely the only entertainer who has been elected to public office. Even when movie stars don't express a desire to run for office, they often dive in in a big way. (Warren Beatty is a prime example. His political life has a supporting role in the book STAR. Today is the last day to enter the contest to win the book).

Jane Wyman & Reagan in 1940. She won "Best Actress" shortly after divorcing him.My own feelings on Reagan are mixed.

I loved the idea of a movie star president as a kid and because of my general proclivities towards arts & entertainment I'm still fascinated -- sometimes against my better judgement -- by stories in which politics and the arts are entangled such as the political leanings of various actors, Lincoln's assassination in a theater, political battles over arts funding, the assassination attempt on Reagan himself by a deranged fan of Jodie Foster and Taxi Driver, etcetera.

I wasn't politically aware in the 80s but as I mapped out my own political feelings later on, I became horrified. I think the play Angels in America  which takes place during the AIDS crisis when Reagan ruled America and was unforgivably silent on the matter helped me along the way to that. Imagine what immediate funding for research and prevention could have done early on; speeding us to a cure or saving millions and millions of lives.

Though Reagan himself was more liberal than today's right-wing (what past Republican isn't? Things have become... extreme.) the movements that he pushed forward like the deregulation of the economy have had disastrous long term effects: see Oscar's documentary frontrunner Inside Job next time you're in the mood for the scariest movie of the year.

Confession: Strangely, I have never seen a Ronald Reagan movie. Not even King's Row or Bedtime for Bonzo! Have you?

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Bridesmaids"

Serious Film's Michael C. here for this episode of Yes, No, Maybe So wherein we make a snap judgment on BRIDESMAIDS, Hollywood’s attempt to give female audiences a Hangover of their very own.

Women certainly have some balance coming to them. In road trip comedies they’re usually lucky to get the role of the humorless, castrating wife/girlfriend. If they’re not lucky they play the stripper, who in Vegas films stands a decent chance of ending up in a shallow grave in the desert. 

Bridesmaids also represents star/co-writer Kristen Wiig’s stab at big screen stardom because she can’t go on forever being SNL’s last line of defense against total un-watchability, and God knows MacGruber didn’t do it for her. Simply put Wiig is appointed Maid of Honor by Maya Rudolph making her responsible for sending her friend off in style, which in this case entails rounding up her colorful band of bridesmaids to go to Vegas for a bachelorette party. ROAD TRIP!!!

The main draw here is clearly the cast, which is one big bag of “Yes!” I can’t spot a weak link. In addition to Wiig there is Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, and The Office’s Ellie Kemper, who couldn’t be more adorable if she was manufactured by Hello Kitty. I’m especially pleased to see Reno 911’s stellar Wendi Mclendon Covey get such a high profile gig. Her reactions to Kemper’s “princess theme” and McCarthy’s “female fight club” ideas are the funniest part of the trailer. Another reason to be psyched: it is directed by Midas Touch TV director Paul Feig. His credits read like a roll call of the greatest shows of the last decade, Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, Mad Men, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock. I feel obligated to buy a ticket out of gratitude alone. 

I have long-standing rule of avoiding movies that have trailers in which curse words are replaced by sound effects so that’s strike one there. On a more substantive note, the movie looks like it leans pretty heavily on broadly drawn types – the jaded one, the ditz, the butch one. Also, is it too much too ask that women get one movie that doesn’t center on a wedding? Seriously, if you went by Hollywood comedies you would think single women do nothing with their evenings but tip back glasses of white wine in order to stave off thoughts of suicide because all their friends are getting married to orthodontists and cranking out horrible children. I’m offended on your behalf, ladies.

Of course, there is a good chance Wiig is as annoyed as I am with the culture's wedding obsession and is dragging the material out in order to give it the send up it richly deserves. It’s so hard to tell with trailers. That fact that this one is a few notches shy of uproarious could be a sign that it showed only the most trailer-friendly, punched-by-Mike-Tyson type jokes instead of funnier character beats. It could also be a sign that the better jokes simply aren’t there. I’m pretty on the fence about this one.

Oh, wait…Is that Jon Hamm there at the end? Okay, I’m in. What can I say? I think he is a comic genius trapped in a Rock Hudson body. Poor guy. What say you? You would think this collection of talent would have to do something worth checking out, but then that's what I said before I sat through Date Night.

Meanwhile in Regular Awardage...

Nicole Kidman arrives at SBIFF. [photo via Scott Feinberg]Busy night for gongs last night. Nicole Kidman accepted her Vanguard award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. [Photo left via Scott Feinberg.] I'm sure she'll cherish that one as much as her Film Experience Gold Medal ;)

The Annie Awards for animation also took place even. You can see the results here. It was a huge night for How To Train Your Dragon which is such a good film but the wins will undoubtedly be viewed as unimportant due to the Annies troubled relationship with Disney/Pixar. Pixar won only Best Short for Day and Night.

The ADG handed out their Art Direction honors [full info at Gold Derby] which went to The King's Speech (Period), Inception (fantasy) and Black Swan (contemporary). Swan wasn't nominated for Oscar but DePrez took the bronze medal here at the Film Experience. I'm sure that'll be great consolation.

Earlier that evening the WGA handed out their screenwriting honors.

Original Screenplay: Inception
Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network
(TSN also won the US Scripter yesterday)
Documentary Screenplay:  Inside Job
Drama Series: Mad Men
Comedy Series: Modern Family
Complete List of Winners Here

Note: The King's Speech was not eligible for the WGA which is how the path was cleared for Best Original Exposition to win the prize. Don't expect that to happen at the Oscars.

Best Actress. My Ballot and Time Capsule.

Time is a funny thing. It shifts our feelings, sorts them out. Awards are a product of time, a time capsule. They're equally funny. If you'd told me back in January 2010 when I first saw Blue Valentine that it would end the year as my 4th favorite picture and that Michelle Williams would be in my best actress list, I wouldn't have believed you. I liked her and the movie quite a lot back then but now come February 2011, I love them. The Williams/Gosling duet yields richer rewards each viewing, little intricacies thrown into sharper relief while other ideas you held about the characters get foggier with mystery.

It says a lot about the quality of this year's Best Actress field that Sally Hawkins in Made in Dagenham didn't even make the finalist list. She does expert work revealing how ordinary courage and moral outrage properly channeled, can transform even the meekest of people. It says a lot about the quality of this year's Actress field that Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone didn't even make the semi-finalist list. She does fine work embodying the cold small range of feeling that this life might allow for and she gives the hard film just the right amount of heart as a resilient eldest sibling acting as parent. In the end though, despite Lawrence's absence, my own ballot is the closest its come to Oscar's Actress list since...er... 1987. [Trivia: that's the only year from the past three decades that my own choices for Best Actress line up 5/5 with Oscar.]

Needless to say I was quite pleased with Oscar's nominations. It's my favorite Best Actress Oscar list in recent memory with the exception of 2006... maybe.

Needless to say part two: It was such a toss up for spots 4-8 that I'm sure I'll regret my choices tomorrow. If anyone in tier 2 had come out in 2009 or 2008 or 2007 or even 2006, they would've knocked someone out of the 5th spot. And if they'd ALL been released in 2005, my awards would have been radically different. Such is the arbitrary nature of awards, chained to calendars as they are.

Favorite Dozen Lead Actresses 2010 (in alpha order). If only I could nominate 12 people!

• Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
• Greta Gerwig, Greenberg
• Sally Hawkins, Made in Dagenham
• Kim Hye-Ja, Mother
• Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
• Lesley Manville, Another Year
• Natalie Portman, Black Swan
• Ruth Sheen, Another Year
• Paprika Steen, Applause
• Emma Stone, Easy A
• Tilda Swinton, I Am Love
• Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

My nominees with write-ups

This will undoubtedly feel anti-climactic as my own nominees are usually more off Oscar's path -- who knew they'd have such good taste this year ;) -- and I usually finish before Oscar nominations and here I am wrapping up the first half of the Film Bitch Awards (medals and all) a week late.

I think the year produced two true masterpieces I Am Love and The Social Network so I split on Picture/Director, Picture going to the one I've remained most possessed by but I think both will stand the test of time. And yes, Nicole Kidman finally gets her Gold Medal after many years of near-misses. She's just transcendent in Rabbit Hole nailing the insatiable hunger of grief for more and more of itself and doing so with the barest minimum of histrionics and more humor than you'd think was possible. She also brilliantly foreshadows Becca's escape route through her thicket of pain, a path cleared by her curiousity, compassion, and capacity for stillness on a park bench, feeling whatever it is she needs to feel.

Looking Beyond 'The Town' with Ben Affleck

Shooting the shooting in The TownKurt here from Your Movie Buddy.

Ben Affleck may have been just fine in The Company Men (a film that eluded me, seeing as it lives in that imaginary void between 2010 and 2011), but with the success of The Town, the focus has shifted almost entirely from Ben Affleck, the actor, to Ben Affleck, the filmmaker. That is, outside of the Academy, of course.

Like his 2007 debut, Gone Baby Gone, Affleck's sophomore effort garnered only a supporting acting nod from Oscar. The critical community, however, along with the moviegoing public, wrapped their loving arms around The Town, and now all eyes are on what this tabloid-target-turned-auteur will do next. Will he break out of Beantown? Direct a film starring old bestie Matt Damon? Try his hand at comedy?

While I'm all for creative flexibility, I'd personally love to see Affleck stick with his genre of choice. Turns out he's bloody good at helming crime films. Admittedly, I wasn't really on board with the acclaim for Gone Baby Gone (I'm not really keen on Mystic River retreads that are in fact two movies in one), but I was stunned by what he did with The Town. I kept waiting for that movie to disappoint, and it never came close. In fact, the superbly-choreographed urban action tricked me into thinking I was watching Michael Mann's latest, while the overall lack of tonal compromise put me right into a Martin Scorsese film. At many points, I had to step back for a mental pause: all this from Fred F***ing O'Bannion? From Daredevil? It still blows my mind.

And so, I'm happy to report what outlets like EW already have – that Affleck, apparently, will indeed keep playing to his strengths. The multi-hyphenate is now in talks to direct the George Clooney- and Grant Heslov-produced Argo, a political thriller about a CIA rescue mission in Tehran circa 1979. Not exactly gritty neighborhood violence, no, but in the same general ballpark, with bank heists upgraded to international espionage.

And on that note, word is that Argo features an elaborate, CIA-devised scheme involving disguises. Might we be seeing those creepy nun masks again? And, more importantly, might Oscar finally warm up to this other golden boy?

For the comments: Which project/genre would you like to see Affleck tackle?