Birdman Post-Mortem

BEST PICTURE | BEST DIRECTOR | BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY | BEST CINEMATOGRAPHYWe're nearly a week out from Birdman's big win and as we close out 2014 coverage (I'm hurrying backstage with our awards and the podcast Sunday night is our Oscar finale) I'm feeling more and more satisfied with the way everything panned out. Oh sure the Julianne Moore Coronation kept my mood up but there were other things to cherish.

Share the wealth years are usually more satisfying not to mention more representative of a film year and all the Best Pictures took a statue (or more) home. And with Boyhood winning so many prizes on the way to Oscar, well that labor of love got plentiful rewards too. I know those awards weren't the Oscar but what's the point of having all of these awards if they all go to the same things. We should celebrate the teensy tiny bit of diversity of wins when they happen.

My delight in Birdman's win is, of course, in direct opposition to what seems to be the majority of critics, which is odd since the film had strong reviews originally. The internet was downright furious when it took Best Picture but when isn't the internet furious, you know?

Depression, navel-gazing and recommended reads after the jump...

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Black History Month: Monster's Ball and Representation

We were just wrapping up Black History Month when I heard from longtime reader/commenter Philip Harville who wanted to discuss Monster's Ball (2001). I wasn't touching that one with a ten foot pole (!) but here's Philip with a guest column on this perpetual hot potato. -Editor

As we know, black films are hard to come by and good black films can be even harder to come by.  This raises the question of what exactly a black film is. Is it simply a film that focuses on black characters? Or do we need to also have a black crew telling the story? The conversations unraveling from that thought are endless, but watching a certain film recently got me thinking. Monster’s Ball’s Leticia (Halle Berry) really suffers from a white male perspective behind the camera. The film gained a wide audience crowning Halle Berry as the first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, but did it create the conversation it should have? Good black films aren’t exactly churned out with the frequency of superhero movies (or Tyler Perry movies), so a flawed complicated film is a gift in its own right.

The film isn’t set in a definitive year, though it seems to be in a time where lynching and protesting were out of style, and casual racism has become the norm. We see the generational divide on the issue between the three males in the central family. [More...]

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Your Daily Reminder

Julianne in 2013 getting her star

Remember that time when Julianne was winning TV prizes for her turn pretending to be Sarah Palin in Game Change and we thought "this is all we'll ever get to see her accepting prizes for -- but at least we get to see her accept something even if it's so not representative of her career!" 

Yeah, glad we were wrong.

Black History Month: Spike Lee's '4 Little Girls'

Our black history month coverage continues with Margaret on Spike Lee's 1997 nominee for Best Documentary Feature...

Spike Lee is famously an Oscar loser. With every passing year--25 of them now behind us--it makes less and less sense that Do the Right Thing lost its nomination for Best Original Screenplay, let alone that it failed to earn Oscar nominations in the Best Picture or Best Director categories. When one thinks of Spike Lee, what comes to mind is a distinct stylization, and a reputation for incendiary cultural commentary. His inflammatory style has often been implicated as the cause of his cool reception from the film establishment.

His less remembered brush with Oscar was a nomination for Best Documentary in 1997 for his film 4 Little Girls, and that loss is more mysterious. No less artfully crafted or emotionally gut-punching than the best of his filmography, the documentary is also more formally and stylistically straightforward: other than the title card up front identifying it as "A Spike Lee Joint" it's absent many of the colorful hallmarks of the Lee's work.

The historical events examined by 4 Little Girls should be familiar to anyone who caught the recent Best Picture contender Selma.  [Read more...]

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Link Overload: Busy Actors, Deleted Scenes, Movie Spoofs

AV Club there's finally a Whiplash spoof starring The Muppets' Animal. "Animalllll!"
Boy Culture remembering a great poem "Lana Turner Has Collapsed"
EW the DVD of Into the Woods will include the new Sondheim song sung by Meryl Streep cut from the movie - you can see a minute of it here. I like it. Could listen to Meryl sing all day
Pajiba all the crazy shit that's gone down at 50 Shades of Grey screenings
THR Lovely profile of Kyle Chandler's careful career moves. If you missed my review of the pilot of his new series Bloodline it's here. Love this actor. I'm totally curious about what he'll do in Carol with Cate Blanchett

Coming Soon first image and synopsis from Jem & The Holograms
Movie City News David Poland says very smart things about the Academy's lack of confidence in themselves as evidenced on Oscar night. I've often felt this and don't get why they don't embrace their power? They're always worrying about audiences they don't have and not concentrating on delivering for the huge audience they do have.
Variety Brit Joe Alwyn lands the lead in Ang Lee's next project Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk about a 19 year old US soldier home briefly between tours in Iraq. It's Alwyn's first motion picture though he's done stage work.
Amazon I haven't watched this yet but they're streaming the pilot to Sutton Foster's new show Younger for free
THR Blade Runner's sequel will be directed by the talented Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) though I still don't get why something that perfect in original form needs a sequel (sigh). You're just asking for trouble!
Variety Joan Allen doing a dramatic thriller pilot co-starring Zach Gilford from Friday Night Lights
HitFix Louis Virtel reminds us that The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) was actually hilarious.

Wait, there's still more links? 
i09 bringing comic book characters to life with a really unique take on makeup transformations 
Empire Rosamund Pike lining up lots of projects including The Deep Blue Good-By with Christian Bale which is meant to be a franchise
A Fistful of Films gives out 1939 prizes. I keep thinking of doing this with older film years but I'm such a completist and those big projects undo me! Still giving best actress to anyone but Vivien Leigh that year? I won't hear it!
Stage Buddy talking to The Last Five Years producer. Who came up with that Russell Crowe joke?
Uproxx Neill Blomkamp is refreshingly honest about how he failed Elysium

EXIT VIDEO
Julie Andrews goes Death Metal in this awesome Mary Poppins video