• Pete Hammond can’t let go of this notion that “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” is a Best Picture contender. A bunch of number 10 slots aren’t going to cut it, Pete. [Notes on a Season]
• Adam B. Vary notes the curious absence of Gene Hackman from the silver screen since the 2004 bomb “Welcome to Mooseport.” [Pop Watch]
• Criminally underrated composer Clint Mansell spills a little on his plans for Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan.” [Little White Lies]
Rob Marshall’s hotly anticipated movie musical adaptation “Nine” played before a jam-packed SAG Nominating Committee crowd at the Pacific Design Center Wednesday night, and judging by the response, we’ve got a real player on our hands.
Of course, one can never tell with these things. Especially SAG Nom Comm, which tends to be a bit, shall we say, star-drunk when it comes to these seasonal screenings. The evening’s Q&A boasted most of the cast — Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard — so it was inevitable that standing ovations would occur.
But even still, given the mood of the crowd, I’d say they sincerely ate it up. One guy even said the film was better than “8 1/2” (make of that what you will) before asking a question about Fellini when the session was turned over to questions from the audience. And everyone was certainly in awe of the stars (or their careers, at the very least — gee, I’m cynical.) It seemed that nary an opportunity to applaud was missed.
It is with a notable silence that Yojiro Takita’s “Departures” – best known to many of you as that film that beat “Waltz With Bashir” to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar – slipped onto U.S. screens last week. Of course, there are various reasons for the lack of hoop-la surrounding its release.
The film itself is a decidedly unassuming, low-key effort. The critical reception has been, if hardly hostile, slightly soft. (Sure, Ebert gave it four stars, but what does that mean these days?) Meanwhile, more than three months after Oscar night, it’s likely most people barely remember the film’s victory at all. (Probably a good release strategy, given the dismay with which the win was greeted in many quarters.)
The less charitable explanation, of course, is that the film isn’t terribly good. Pleasant, certainly, and executed with commendable sincerity, but swaddled in the kind of safe, maudlin cinematic cotton-wool that never threatens any real danger, despite the potentially macabre directions the material could go in. It’s a cozy piece of work that doesn’t dare approach “Waltz With Bashir” for formal invention or “The Class” for storytelling verve.
As such, it’s a textbook illustration of the Academy’s voting tendencies in this category, which repeatedly favor the safe ahead of the searing: the movie you’d take home to meet Mom rather than the one you’d run away to Paris with. This decade alone, we’ve seen such competent, amiable and relentlessly middlebrow fare as “Nowhere in Africa,” “Tsotsi” and “The Counterfeiters” triumph over infinitely more innovative competition – -or, all too often, films that didn’t even make the nominee list. It’s a situation that inspires annual grumbling, on these pages and innumerable others.
But it’s not all bad. The running-joke status of the foreign-language award tends to obscure the fact that the Academy has rewarded a number of stone-cold classics in their time too –- never more so than in the earliest days of the award, when titans of film history like Kurosawa, De Sica and Fellini made it to the winners’ podium. And even these days, a gem like “The Lives of Others” can still manages to fight its way to the surface.
Today’s list seeks to at least partially rehabilitate the reputation of this beleaguered (albeit deservedly so) award, reflecting on the most adventurous –- or simply most resonant -– selections in the 62-year history (including the days when it was merely an honorary citation) of the Best Foreign Language Film award.