Yes, No, Maybe So: Contagion

In this edition of Let's Count the Oscar Winners, err, Yes, No, Maybe So, we take a look at Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. Details of this film had been kept quite secret until this trailer was released a few days ago. I'd seen snippets from the film at a distributors event a few months ago but they highlighted star wattage over plot. So now the trailer has arrived and in a move that has some condemning Soderbergh for spoiling his own film, he pulls off a Game of Thrones seconds into the trailer (at the bottom of the post)

YES - That cast!

All of them either have Oscars or have been nominated on multiple occasions but the best part is that they're not just "movie stars", they're all incredible actors. Is this like the "serious version" of Ocean's 11? Soderbergh gets bonus points for that The Talented Mr. Ripley reunion, but where is Cate when you need her?

NO - How can Steven Soderbergh deliver such a superb trailer and threaten us with early retirement? Also, considering he has developed a tradition of delivering one artsy film followed by a fun one, which one is this? His last movie was a documentary, so does it count or should we use The Informant as reference? The director has a tendency to work with genre and this looks like it could be his take on the psychological film or the disaster movie (I smell a fun double bill with Melancholia!)

Soderbergh is also one of the most ambitious directors in contemporary history. Most of the time he gets away with whatever he wants, but given the political references spotted in this trailer this could either be brilliant or end up turning into a bland piece of meh like Blindness.

MAYBE SO - With the revelation that Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies, we have to ask ourselves, how much will this affect the rest of the film? Some people have already called this a monstrous spoiler and are pissed at the director for letting this piece of information come out.

 PSA: Gwyneth Paltrow in The Perils of Gambling!

Killing one of your main stars isn't something completely new but it still sends waves of how-dare-they and where-are-we-going-now terror among audiences who want it the easy way. This revelation tells us that either her character was meaningless and there are bigger shocks to come or that Soderbergh is the kind of director you want to work with so badly that you don't care if he kills you before the movie is even released. 

I for one am beyond excited to see what he has up his sleeve this time. How about you? Are you as impressed by the cast? Should Soderbergh retire yet?

Unsung Heroes: The Think Tank of 'Minority Report'

Michael C here from Serious Film. With Spielberg poised to dominate the end of the year discussion with the one-two punch of Tin Tin and War Horse, I felt now was a perfect time to look back at his last film I enjoyed without reservation.

On screen, every historical era comes packaged with its own handy kit of movie clichés, most likely because a lot of lazy screenwriters did no more research than to watch other movies. The Old West has the bartender drying the glass with a rag and the draw down over someone a-cheatin’ at cards. Medieval periods come standard with a foppish lute player and a crowd of filth encrusted peasants. You know the drill.

This gets particularly egregious with movies set in the future. The majority of stories opt for either the Blade Runner urban hellscape treatment or the slick, sterile 2001 route. Each approach has its appeal but seldom do either have a real ring of truth. To my mind the most plausible vision of the future was done in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report. More than any film I’ve seen the 2054 of Report is recognizably a believable extension of the time we live in.

This was the result of a lot more than clever art direction. Spielberg was determined to have the most believable future world ever put to film. So where most directors would lock a bunch screenwriters in a room to brainstorm variations on the flying car, the man who directed E.T. convened a three-day think tank of the world’s brightest minds, including computer scientists, biomedical researchers, the architectural dean of MIT and various other luminaries, to brainstorm a bible of predictions for his production team to work from.

Let me quickly add that Mr. Spielberg should get points here for not letting all this technical info stymie his movie’s artistic mojo. It seems to have had the opposite effect, providing the film with a springboard for some unforgettably imaginative riffs, from the Fantastia-evoking conducting of the computer screen to the creepy metallic spiders that skitter about scanning retinas.

And now that it’s 2011 and the future world Minority Report envisioned is nine years away from fantasy and toward being a provable or disprovable collection of educated guesses, what do we find? Turns out so far Minority Report was scary accurate in ways too numerous to list here.

It may not be surprising to learn that the identity recognition advertisements are in the works or that the use of retina scan equipment is become increasingly prevalent, but would you be surprised to learn that that the US Military is developing work along the lines of Report’s insect robots? Or how about the fact that crime prediction software is being developed at the University of Pennsylvania attempting to predict future crimes based on past ones? True, it’s not exactly Samantha Morton floating in a tank of milky water, but it’s way too close for my taste.

Most future-set movies eventually inspire chuckles at its creators for assuming we would all be zipping around in jetpacks by the late 70’s or some similar naïveté. So far, Minority Report appears to be experiencing the opposite fate. One where we look back and admit we can’t say we weren’t warned.

First and Last, Window Washer

We'll do more "audio" episodes since you liked that soon, but here's another old school puzzle.

the first image from a motion picture after the credits

the last line (spoken)

Good Morning Mr President.

Can you guess the movie? Check your guess after the jump.

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My Magnificent 'Aliens' Obsession

Kurt here.

Some boys of a certain persuasion – which is to say young gay cinephiles – may have found themselves a kindred, tuneful spirit in Fanny Brice, or fed their fabulous longings with [insert stereotypical icon here]. More power to 'em. For me, though, it was always about Ellen Ripley, Lt. First Class. For my boundless Ripley love, I have to at least partially thank a cocktail of deep-seeded denial and flamboyance rejection, as I was much more prepared to accept an angry woman with a gun as my savior than a ballad-belting showboat. I didn't want Schwarzenegger, but I wasn't ready for Cher. And I certainly have no regrets.

Since I wasn't donning feather boas, I'm sure my parents didn't think much of it when I began strapping toy rifles together with all manner of black plastic tubes and electrical tape, so as to recreate that shell-firing, flame-throwing, grenade-launching monstrosity that Ripley uses to resurface the industrial spaces on LV-426 (if memory serves, a black snorkel was even used as an extra gun barrel). I doubt I tripped their gaydar when I put two four-legged ottomans flush against the living room chair, then proceeded to crawl on the floor, weapon in hand, through my improvised air shaft.

Was I in drag? No. But make no mistake – I was diva-channeling.

Aliens, far and away my favorite action movie of all time, was also a liberating gay outlet long before I knew I was gay. That inherent gay need to fall headfirst in love with glorious females of outsized character was more than fulfilled by this watershed movie of womanly badassness. And my obsession with it spread well beyond playacting with plastic rifles. I regularly whipped up drawings of Ripley and those H.R. Giger beasties (I dug up some of them for this post).

I was close with these twin brothers at one point, and our friendship was pretty much based on our mutual Aliens enthusiasm – that, and the fact that they had all the action figures, even the yellow power-loader thingie. The twins' backyard was home to many an Aliens reenactment, with each of us alternating the role of James Cameron (“Okay – you be Hudson, and you be Vasquez!”). The guys never knew I was actually getting my Barbie on.

Her highnessMy mother was pregnant with my sister when she went to see Alien with my dad in 1979 (needless to say, she henceforth had a nightmare-filled pregnancy). This story has never made much sense to me, as I'm certainly the one who seems to have been psychically willed into Alien Saga obsession from the womb, not my sister. My sister doesn't even like SigWeavie. “She's ugly,” she says. (Oh yes, she did.)

Of the many gifts I've received from this franchise, the most cherished is a lifelong interest in Sigourney (who is not ugly, Heather). You'll see in the doodles that I was particularly fond of her jawline, which, by my hand, is ridiculously pronounced. I like to pretend that this masculine feature had a hand in getting Siggy the job in the first place, and I don't even know where to begin in addressing the sexual themes I suddenly realize it might represent for me. That's a lot of implications for one little post...

All this, and I haven't said a lick about Aliens's greatness as a film. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, and it's a long movie to have watched so repeatedly. I can honestly say there's not a single part that bores me, not even the mess hall conversations or the Ripley-can't-sleep prelude. This is a film that gets up, gets going and keeps going. It is notable for so much more than its titular nemeses, yet I can't pick a better creature feature (for Best Shot, which I sadly didn't participate in, I choose the pan that reveals the enormity of the alien queen, in her lair, on her throne – it's absolutely jaw-dropping). I think the best way I've ever heard Aliens described is that it has a beating heart – a racing pulse that's palpable. I'd say that it's certainly close to my heart, but that might sound kinda gay.

Stray Emmy Observations (and Supporting Actress)

Raising Hope is Wacky. So is the definition of "GUEST ACTOR"Now that this morning's Emmy nominations have sunk in here's a few things we didn't cover earlier or didn't dig deep enough into in the earlier rundown, largely inspired by your comments.

Guest Actress in a Comedy Series
This is where we are reminded that the Emmys have too many categories and category fraud adjusts to include all of them. How on god's green earth is Cloris Leachman a "guest actress" on Raising Hope when she's a member of the main family and in every single episode? I see her winning with that unfortunate advantage given that the Glee nominees (Gwyneth Paltrow, Kristin Chenoweth, Dot Marie Jones as "Beiste") may cancel each other out and Tina Fey (as host of SNL) is already buried in Emmys. Since I am adamantly opposed to category fraud and since Gwynnie's follow up Glee visits paled in comparison to her first and since Cheno had virtually nothing to do this season, my vote would have to go to Elizabeth Banks for 30 Rock.

Guest Actor & Actress in Drama Series
These categories usually belong to the Law & Order franchise but this year we're blissfully absent of rapists, perverts and victims. Unless some of the characters I'm unfamiliar with qualify and who knows. Three Mad Men made the grade including Cara Buono's jilted businesswoman, Robert Morse ("Cooper" of Sterling Cooper) and everyone's favorite dead woman "Miss Blankenship" (Randee Heller). 

"'Who got an Emmy nod for mouthing off and getting Lafayette laid proper?' I DID, HOOKER"True Blood's Troubles
True Blood which we've been writing about generally gets 3-5 Emmy nominations but last year it added a surprise "Best Drama Series" to its tally. This year it was demoted again with only four nominations for its third season, the one about the V addicted werewolves and the King of Mississippi. The weirdest bit of awards trivia for True Blood though: It has never been nominated for any acting prizes with Emmy (it's won Globes) until now and the person who did it for them is Alfre Woodard who basically only cameo'd in Season 3 as Lafayette's crazy homophobic mama.

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