FYC Best Supporting Actor: Ulysses

I have seen the greatest performance by a supporting actor in 2013.  All hail "ULYSSES". Here he is in a key moment from his star-making role in the Coen Bros Inside Llewyn Davis.

What a face! But he doesn't coast on it. He acts with his whole body. If there's any justice in the world, a BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR campaign will rev right up.

Okay okay. I realize this is a silly argument and I know exactly what you're thinking...

You're thinking:

"But Nathaniel, a nomination for Ulysses will never happen. I mean, hello, Oscar Trivia! The Coen Bros filmography, which is chalk full of excellent supporting turns never produces nominations in the supporting category that aren't arguably leads (William H Macy in Fargo and Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men are both in the driver's seat of their film's narrative even if they aren't the protagonists). It's only happened once: Michael Lerner in Barton Fink. And complete unknowns rarely get traction... especially when the film they're in doesn't even feature them in the press notes"

To this I say "But you haven't seen this awesome performance yet and Ulysses DOES drive the plot along -- sometimes in soft footed silence and other times with a sprint. Plus, where's your faith? No supporting actor in a Coen Bros film has ever given a performance this pure of heart or this instinctual. I don't mean to be disrespectful to John Goodman, John Turturro, and the entire Coen repertory company but none of them have ever purred or kneaded their leading men on cue so maybe they just didn't deserve one. 

I consider it an indignity that Ulysses will be left out of the film's SAG ensemble nomination (if it gets one) since he goes uncredited. He has way more screen time than Garrett Hedlund and better close-ups than Justin Timberlake.

Don't hate on gingers. Root for Ulysses.

Mickey and the giant

Tim here. 2013 has proven to be a banner year for Mickey Mouse, the lovable corporate spokesman, marketing juggernaut, and justification for some of the most ruinous developments in copyright law history. I believe he has also, at some point, featured in cartoons.

To celebrate the 85^th anniversary of the character, the Walt Disney Company has promoted a new series of made-for-TV shorts bringing his troublemaking side back to the fore after generations of sanding have turned him into a perfectly respectable, deeply bland mascot (I’ll confess to not liking these shorts much at all, but I’m glad they exist). Later this fall, he’ll be starring in a brand-new, old-style cartoon, Get a Horse!, set to play in front of Disney’s winter tentpole Frozen.

With so much Mickey flying around, it was impossible not to pounce at the 75^th anniversary this week of one of my very favorite shorts starring the character, Brave Little Tailor.

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Burning Questions: Captain Phillips and Ugly Audiences

Michael C. here.  On the Boogie Nights DVD commentary track, Paul Thomas Anderson tells the story of how the audience cheered at the film’s first screening during the scene where William H. Macy’s Little Bill snaps and shoots his adulterous wife. PTA recalls sinking in his seat, wondering how he stepped so wrong that the moment he intended to be a nauseating gut punch was being received as a crowd pleaser. He was relieved moments later when, as he tells it:

William H Macy's gut punch as "Little Bill" in Boogie Nights

Bill Macy walked out and he shot himself in the face and they shut the fuck up real quick. And they weren’t laughing, and they weren’t cheering, and it was dead silence. And I thought, “Good.” I’ve done my job okay. It’s them that’s fucked up. It’s really the moment where you blame the audience and go, “No, you’re wrong.

The question Anderson asked himself in that theater back in ’97 is one that flares up every time a crowd has the “wrong” response to a movie:

How responsible is the filmmaker when a movie provokes an ugly response from the audience?

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These Tweets Touched Me In Places That Made Me Feel Uncomfortable

These two tweets were next to each other on Twitter as I scrolled through my feed....

unretouched from my twitter feed. no cropping!

I find this juxtaposition totally uncalled for and HIGHLY upsetting. I will never be able to look at Superman's crotch again without seeing Annabelle *shudder*. Can I sue Warner Blu-Ray for emotional distress? 

NYFF: Nobody's Daughter Haewon

TFE's coverage of the 51st New York Film Festival (Sep 27-Oct 14) is picking up pace. Here is Jose discussing Nobody's Daughter Haewon.

Hong Sang-soo seems intent in preserving the cinematic style the French specialized in during the early 1960’s. His movies often combine two of the topics most favored by New Wave filmmakers: the blurry line between fantasy and reality and the movies. In Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, the director delivers one of his most enjoyable films to date in telling the story of Haewon (Jeung Eun-chae), a bubbly young woman trying to succeed as an actress while having a tormentous affair with her married professor (Lee Sunkyun).

Hong captures his heroine in an assortment of intimate moments, mostly involving her hopelessly romantic takes on life. When she meets a visiting scholar who confesses he’s looking for a wife just like her, she immediately announces to her friends that she might be getting married soon and she assumes a guy is “the one”, because she ran into him more than once on the same day.

Even if the film never tries to dig deep into the characters, the director leaves enough clues for us to try and decipher why this woman turned out the way she is. One of the very first scenes shows her mother coldly say goodbye to her before moving to Canada, among her final pieces of advice is the suggestion that Haewon try to become Miss Korea since she can’t act. Through moments of quirk and “is it a dream?” confusion, we are led to believe that this woman is simply trying to stay away from real life as possible, she’s also developing a slight drinking problem which makes for some of the film’s funniest moments.

With endless mentions of pretending, setting up faux chance meetings, inner jokes that turn into insults, endless moments where a secret truth becomes public and an unexplainable Jane Birkin cameo that also references Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, resembles a farce written by Moliere himself, if he too had been obsessed with the children of Marx and Coca Cola.  

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon plays during the festival on 09/29 and 09/30. Go see it and come back here to help us figure out what Birkin was doing in the movie.