Podcast Nom Reactions Pt 1: Snubs, Squeals, Questions

A couple of days after the Oscar Nominations, I rang up Joe Reid, Katey Rich and Nick Davis to discuss the Academy's big reveal. In pt 1 of this hour long conversation we discuss:

1) The snubs that hurt us most.
2) The moments that made us squeal with delight.
3) Reader Questions. Thank you to the handful of people who were brave enough to ask them. 

Pt 1 is mostly focused on the "big eight": Picture (Amour & Beasts of the Southern Wild !), Director (Benh Zeitlin  - yes!, Ben Affleck -???), Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress (Amy Adams & Jacki Weaver mostly), Supporting Actor, and the Screenplays.

But high profile categories aside the masterful but snubbed Animated Short The Eagleman Stag gets a shout-out. And I promised I'd link up to it in this post, so here ya go. Watch it!

The Eagleman Stag. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately snubbed.

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the bottom of the post. 

Squeals, Snubs, and Sass from Oscar Nomination Morning

Boss Me Around With DVDs. What Must I Watch Next?

Last time y'all voted to make me watch Jeff Who Lives at Home which I have even though my post is running late. Soon it'll be time to seize my queue again. Which of these newish DVD releases must I watch and write about after Jeff?

• LOCKOUT in which Guy Pearce has a very big gun in outer space and presumably shoots people with it.
• SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN in which Ewan and Emily are presumably adorable whilst falling in lvoe
• FRIENDS WITH KIDS in which a fine cast presumably illustrates the comic differences between the childless and the childful in marriages.
• FOOTNOTE in which the great Lior Ashkenazi presumably argues with his daddy alot in an Oscar nominated foreign film about two Talmud professors
• THE DEEP BLUE SEA in which Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston couple it up in this presumably beautiful movie because that's the only kind of movie the non-prolific Terence Davies (House of Mirth) makes. 
• WANDERLUST in which Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston presuming get all frisky when they visit a.

Vote now or forever hold your piece... peace? Stop holding things and start clicking is what I mean. Make a stand for your choice in the comments to sway the voting.

poll by twiigs.com

Q&A: Working Girls, Two-Time Winners, Generational Comedy

It's time to answer reader questions again! Roughly once a week I'll throw up an "Ask Nathaniel" post and then select the questions that trigger something in me. There are often great questions I don't answer because they'd require a whole book. Or a top ten list and we save the listing mostly for other features. Let's go.

CARLOS: I recently came across Working Girl (1988) on TV by chance. I think Griffith and, especially, Weaver are great and the costumes (unintentionally) hilarious when seen today, but what's YOUR opinion on the movie and Griffith? Do you think she could have a comeback? What would it take?

Working Girl is a total time machine for the late 80s. But truth: the costumes were intentionally funny. Or at least those worn by Griffith and the adorable Joan Cusack who were meant to be absurdly dressed. Most readers won't be aware of this because there's no reason to talk about her now, but Melanie Griffith was, for me in the 90s, the equivalent of Swank and the Zeéeeee in the 00s (i.e. actresses who I just can't with). My friends in college used to hide pictures of her in my dorm room to torture me with when I discovered them. Once, a huge poster of Melanie was staring at me from the ceiling when I jumped in bed!

I like the movie well enough but at the time it was wildly overawarded -- one of those AMPAS Christmas crushes that plays so well in the moment but is hardly better than earlier releases that it temporarily shoves out of favor during the crucial nomination period.  When I look back at 1988 I'm always pissed that Bull Durham (a summer hit 1 nomination), Running on Empty (a September critical darling, 2 nominations) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (a June smash with 6 nominations and better than nearly every one of the Best Picture nominees) didn't get various big Oscar props that they deserved. I blame Working Girl because it's the easiest film to blame that year. And I especially blame Griffith because Susan Sarandon's "Annie Savoy", one of the greatest performances of the whole decade, was snubbed to include her!

JAMES: Many lament the onslaught of remakes/reboots/re-imaginings, but what film(s) would actually benefit from a remake? As an example, I ask you to consider Rosemary's Baby. While the acting stands up, much of the rest of the film is pretty creaky. What are your thoughts?

&

STEVE: What cinematic, television or literary character do you think should be revisited?

[Remakes, Chris Nolan, and Oscarables AFTER THE JUMP]

Click to read more ...

DVD. You Choose. I Watch. We Talk.

Last year or a bit further back (?) I tried to give you the choice of which DVDs I would review from the weekly crop released but we didn't get very far on account of Netflix's month-long delays with some studios and my policies of mandatory procrastination. So irritating! Given that the bulk of readers and, indeed, the bulk of everyone watches their movies at home now (sigh), let's try again! I'll figure it out on my end.  We'll skip the newish releases we've already discussed like 21 Jump Street (review) and Mirror Mirror (review) and the one's I have no interest in. 

Let's start simple with 2012 movies fairly fresh on DVD that I haven't seen. though perhaps I'll speak out if there's a great commentary. If there is I trust someone will let me know. 

• THE FLOWERS OF WAR Zhang Yimou's historical epic starring Christian Bale that was submitted for foreign film last year but didn't make it.
• THIS MEANS WAR Reese Witherspoon's terribly reviewed slutty* action comedy in which she can't choose between Chris Pine & Tom Hardy. Her friend suggests a sex off (*I'm guessing? hoping?)
• JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME An indie from the Duplass brothers co-starring the always welcome Judy Greer and Susan Sarandon.
• THE PERFECT FAMILY Kathleen Turner returns to the screen as the mother of a dysfunctional Catholic family. 

poll by twiigs.com

You choose for me and I'll cover it somehow next week.
Make your case in the comments if you'd like other people to vote your way.

Biutiful Interrupted

It's not my habit to skip an Oscar nominee. But things happen. So it was that I missed Javier Bardem's Oscar nominated Best Actor turn in Biutiful (2010). This seems to happen to me about once a decade, so I've already used my "get out of jail free" card for the 'teens.... or the ten's... what are we calling this new decade? (In the Aughts the only nominee I missed was Tommy Lee Jones in In The Valley of Elah.) As the movie began with its somber first notes and black screen the words "Alejandro González Iñárritu" struck dread in my heart. I quickly remembered why I hadn't wept when the film had given me the slip before the nominations in January. Iñárritu's insatiable appetite for Miserabilism has been killing my mood since Amores Perros way back in 2000. I will forever be grateful that he introduced me to Gael Garcia Bernal but beyond that he hasn't done me favors.

I was no great fan of Babel and I openly hated 21 Grams. In fact the only Iñárritu I've ever enjoyed was the short film "Powder Keg" which is very typical of his oeuvre despite being a BMW commercial so maybe I can only handle his aggressive Feel Bad omnipotence in short doses?

It's not my preference to balk at a Reader Request. But this happened: as I began to watch the film, I suspected very quickly that I wasn't going to be able to handle it. A shot of Bardem's smiling face framed by wintry whites and cool blues immediately upset me; the saddest smile I've seen onscreen in many a year. Bardem is such a fine actor but more than that he has almost the perfect movie face, it's hugely memorable without being limited by its specificity: Is he handsome? Is he ugly? How can he be so imposingly monolithic in profile yet so human and fleshy head on?

I've always loved Javier Bardem but by the time his "Uxbal" was in a doctor's office getting a prostate exam and being an asshole about the needle for a blood test (is Uxbal a drug addict?) my mood was crashing. The last two funerals I've been to were both cancer related and one of them, very very recently, was for a dear friend's father who happens to be the exact same age as my own father (thankfully still with us).

I wasn't expecting the follow up scene, wherein Uxbal visited a funeral home where three little dead boys lay, one of them (ostensibly) haunting him. Nor was I expecting Uxbal to prey on the boy's family for money (something about his ability to commune with the dead -- fake or real?). By the time his sad looking son (like father like...) was having a bedwetting episode and Uxbal was pissing blood the next morning, I had to turn the damn thing off.

Note to filmmakers: never ever show a closeup of the contents of a toilet bowl. There are some things we see every day in real life that we need never see onscreen.

I looked at the DVD clock and realized I was only 20 minutes in and I had a full 128 minutes to go and opted for self preservation. I have been struggling with a particularly strong stubbornly escalating bout of depression and I didn't want to welcome more of it in. I had heard from the film's naysayers that the movie is relentless about piling on -- to the point of Job-like cruelty. And if cancer, addiction, poverty, ghosts, blood, and preying on grieving parents were just Iñárritu's opening reel gambit, it was going to be beyond my coping abilities in my present state.

I am not one of those sad and limited moviegoers who yearns for all movies to be happy -- a boyfriend of a good friend once complained about the sad movies we were dragging him, too "do you like any happy movies?" he asked in exasperation. And it's true that I do quite love a good tragedy. But I know my limit-testing buttons and Biutiful pushed nearly half of them in its first 20 minutes, including a peculiar uncommon one... toilet bowl closeups. Were I convinced that the world revolved around me, I'd suspect that Iñárritu was created in a lab just to test me. For this test, I have laid down my pencil and admitted defeat.

Have you ever fully intended to watch a movie and bailed from mood crashing?

Previous Reader Requests:
The Other Woman, The Rescuers and Beauty & The Beast