So this entire town is excited for the Academy Awards on Sunday. I'm pretty excited as well. After all, it's like the Stanley Cup Finals of cinema. (If I ever find myself actually winning an Oscar for anything, do note that I will lift the statuette over my head and kiss it like it was the said Stanley Cup. That's a promise.)
This is great year to actually watch the awards. It's the first award show to happen after the writer's strike, which means plenty of big stars and lame jokes for Jon Stewart to have to relay to the masses. But mostly, it's a big year because 2007 had some of the best films in almost a decade. For me, this is the first time I can remember where I'd seen all five nominated best picture films, and actually really enjoyed all of them! I think last year I saw The Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, but that was it.
I recall telling my high school film teacher one year how I never see the nominated films, I figured because I didn't watch good films. She told me the best films aren'tnecessarily nominated. I think that was the year Fargo was nominated (which I saw and loved) but lost to The English Patient. Lame. Will the Coen Brothers ever get their Oscar... Yes! Hopefully this year!
And there was the year I saw 4/5 - in 98, when I loved Good Will Hunting, figured Titanic would win, and really thought L.A. Confidential was sensational and should have won. Ten years later, I still think that movie should have won. Damn, I love L.A. Confidential...
I surprisingly enjoy watching this award show, which is odd, because I hate all other award shows. And yes it's long-winded, and yes it's self-gratifying with montage after montage, and I don't care about fashion, and (you get the idea) , but I like watching and like trying to predict what will win. So as a public service to you, my reader, I will look at the best picture category. (I could go through each category and tell you my opinion and what will probably win, but I don't want you to hold it against me in your puny Oscar pools. Okay, just one. Daniel-Day Lewis for best actor, because he drinksevery-one's milkshake.
That being said... you're nominees are : Michael Clayton, Juno, Atonement, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men.
And the winner should be: No Country for Old Men!
Huzzah.
The day I saw that movie (black Friday, right before I had to close at Borders) I knew it was the best of the year. The film is simply chilling. It makes you feel as nervous and as intense as the characters and scenes throughout the film. Easily, one of the most terrifying film characters of all time is part of the thrust of this film. It's scope is deep, and it's story grabs you by the throat and pulls you through.
There Will Be Blood could also win, as an upset. This film is intense, deep and has a scope that captures not only American capitalism fundamentals, but thanks to the performance by Daniel-Day Lewis, one of the most delectable anti-heroes in cinema history. And it's beautifully directed and as a distinct vision.
I love JUNO and I feel like I spend way too much time defending why it should be nominated for best picture. It needs to be. Some movies are mighty and huge like therewillbeblood and NC4oldMen. Some are sweeping epics like Atonement, and dramatic tour De forces like Michael Clayton, but Juno is about people, real people ---only way more like-able! June has a social consciousness. Yes, it's more of a cute story, and a cute movie, but under the myspace/facebook quot-abilities is a film that does something more important than giving us a hip soundtrack... it takes a story about a teenage girl who gets pregnant, and doesn't preach. It doesn't demonize teen-sex, it doesn't hide from the idea of a girl getting an abortion, it doesn't treat the pregnancy like a tragedy, it just deals with it like anyone would with a surprise pregnancy. The film lets it's charactersexperience's tell the tale and Ellen Page's performance is as real as it is smart. She may have what may seem like overly clever dialogue, but it cracks, just like her own emotions as she deals with life. Again, I really love this movie.
Michael Clayton - what a film. It is so focused on it's characters that the story moves with so much subtext. It's a lawyer film, but it's a film about a man, dealing with heavy turns in both his professional and personal life, but it never deviates from the story of the film. But you feel everything Clayton is dealing with. I was surprised how great this film was. I just bought it today! I really shouldn't be buying dvds. But damn it ,I want to watch it again and again!
Oh and Atonement. I saw this movie literally a few hours after I finished reading the novel, which I loved. This should have been the kiss-of-death for this film, especially because the novel was so much about story-telling - particularly writing - which was easy to create in novel form... so I was delighted to see what a splendid job they did adapting this to a film. It's billed as this sweeping -period-romance, but it's not how I read the book, and it's not how I see the film. To me, it's the power ofdeceit, the power of imagination and what the a writer's mind can do with his/her power. Plus it's beautiful to look at.
So there you have it. To make it even more intense I'm shooting my next film project Sunday morning, and like the Superbowl, I get to experience the west coast time slot for the show... it starts at 5:00pm! No cursing the show for running over and me having to be at work early the next morning. Maybe I'll drive into Hollywood after the show and see if I can't get rundown by some celebrities...
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Just Checkin' In...
Oh yeah, that's what I miss about NY.
Updates soon.
Oh, there is one. Someone may be spending part of Spring Break on Long Island...
Who could it be?
Monday, February 11, 2008
Remembering Chasing Amy
For those of you on the east coast, I 'd like to let you know the weather here has been in the mid 70's and sunny for the last few days. :-)
I was thinking about Kevin Smith movies today. Mostly, how important they were for me initially becoming interested in writing and really willing to look for different kinds of films then the regular Hollywood films I used to watch. Smith's early films were intoxicating in their rawness and their wit. Being 16 or so, they were revolutionary. Unfortunately, as time progressed, and I became a more feverish reader, film watcher, etc. Smith's films felt less and less like those originals (Clerks, Chasing Amy, and to a lesser extent, Mallrats). A couple of summers ago, Clerks 2 came out, and I felt Smith regained some of his form, or at least finally figured out how to return to those characters that became iconic, and give them a worthy follow-up. Say what you will about a lot of the gags in that film, the final scene in the jail makes that movie a success, mostly because in that scene Dante and Randall feel real, feel raw, like they did way back when.
I discovered Clerks, conveniently enough, while playing roller-hockey with some friends in a church parking lot. It was part of my routine. Get home from school, and head over to the parking lot and play until dusk. One of the kids was raving about this hilarious movie he saw called "Clerks." The next chance I had I went to Blockbuster and rented the strange looking indie-black-and-white movie. I remember popping in the VCR and laughingawkwardly at the main character falling out of the closet to answer his phone. I was intrigued by the raw look of the film, as I had yet to really start exploring cinema but it didn't take long for the ferociously dense and filthydialogue to take over my senses. I loved the movie. Soon, I was talking about it with everyone, and that's when I discovered that two of the characters make an appearance in Mallrats. So back to Blockbuster. I liked Mallrats, not as much as Clerks, it definitely felt a little too cartoony compared to the realness of Clerks. But it was the character of Brodie that made me love that film. I was a little envious of Brodie's life, his way of speaking and his attitude. I mean the line, "You fuckers think just because a guy reads comics he can't start some shit!?" was a call to arms! Quoting Brodie would become a part of my existence - How many times have I said, "Breakfasts come and go, Renee, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime."?
I think what hit me with these films was that they weren't so far off from my own world. True, I was still in high school, but the future of living in my parents' basement, working in stores, discussing pop-culture with scholarly emphasis, sitting in bed playing video game hockey, etc. was only a couple years away! I guess suburban New Jersey's world isn't so different from suburban Long Island.
When "Chasing Amy" came out, I was the only person I knew who wanted to make the trip to the local arts cinema to see it. Like most films shown there, it was gone in a week, so I had to wait until it arrived at Blockbuster. When it did, I found a film that did more than make me laugh and feel at home with the character's world, I actually felt challenged. At the time, I thought Chasing Amy was one of the most powerful relationship films I'd ever seen. It had complex characters with complex emotions, yet it was masked by this outrageous dialogue driven humor. Most of all, I wanted to learn how to write a script like Chasing Amy. It just seemed to have everything I wanted in a movie, and without a big MOVIE sensation to it. It felt honest.
As I started writing my own scripts, I quickly saw how I had to work at not imitating these films. My first script I wrote in college definitely had a huge mall sequence that seemed a little too much like Mallrats...
But I kept watching films.
I kept reading.
I kept pushing my own writing.
But I always re-watched those films and not only enjoyed them for what they are, but for the memory of who I was when I first saw them.
Before I came west, I remember my friend Mike making a great comment about Dogma. He said something like, when I saw that in high school I thought it was so smart. But not anymore. It's nothing against Smith, I think it's more of the whole idea of time and place. I wanted nothing more but to see films like those made over and over, but at the same time I didn't. There was a time and a place when those films were perfect for me.
I'm reading the script for Chasing Amy for my directing actors class, and I'm really enjoying, looking at it from a new view, a new light. 10 years later, it still makes me long for the connection between my world and the characters' world. It makes me remember who I was when I first saw them, and that's more powerful function than being just some funny movie.
Okay, back to reading. Just thought I'd share some thoughts.
I was thinking about Kevin Smith movies today. Mostly, how important they were for me initially becoming interested in writing and really willing to look for different kinds of films then the regular Hollywood films I used to watch. Smith's early films were intoxicating in their rawness and their wit. Being 16 or so, they were revolutionary. Unfortunately, as time progressed, and I became a more feverish reader, film watcher, etc. Smith's films felt less and less like those originals (Clerks, Chasing Amy, and to a lesser extent, Mallrats). A couple of summers ago, Clerks 2 came out, and I felt Smith regained some of his form, or at least finally figured out how to return to those characters that became iconic, and give them a worthy follow-up. Say what you will about a lot of the gags in that film, the final scene in the jail makes that movie a success, mostly because in that scene Dante and Randall feel real, feel raw, like they did way back when.
I discovered Clerks, conveniently enough, while playing roller-hockey with some friends in a church parking lot. It was part of my routine. Get home from school, and head over to the parking lot and play until dusk. One of the kids was raving about this hilarious movie he saw called "Clerks." The next chance I had I went to Blockbuster and rented the strange looking indie-black-and-white movie. I remember popping in the VCR and laughingawkwardly at the main character falling out of the closet to answer his phone. I was intrigued by the raw look of the film, as I had yet to really start exploring cinema but it didn't take long for the ferociously dense and filthydialogue to take over my senses. I loved the movie. Soon, I was talking about it with everyone, and that's when I discovered that two of the characters make an appearance in Mallrats. So back to Blockbuster. I liked Mallrats, not as much as Clerks, it definitely felt a little too cartoony compared to the realness of Clerks. But it was the character of Brodie that made me love that film. I was a little envious of Brodie's life, his way of speaking and his attitude. I mean the line, "You fuckers think just because a guy reads comics he can't start some shit!?" was a call to arms! Quoting Brodie would become a part of my existence - How many times have I said, "Breakfasts come and go, Renee, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime."?
I think what hit me with these films was that they weren't so far off from my own world. True, I was still in high school, but the future of living in my parents' basement, working in stores, discussing pop-culture with scholarly emphasis, sitting in bed playing video game hockey, etc. was only a couple years away! I guess suburban New Jersey's world isn't so different from suburban Long Island.
When "Chasing Amy" came out, I was the only person I knew who wanted to make the trip to the local arts cinema to see it. Like most films shown there, it was gone in a week, so I had to wait until it arrived at Blockbuster. When it did, I found a film that did more than make me laugh and feel at home with the character's world, I actually felt challenged. At the time, I thought Chasing Amy was one of the most powerful relationship films I'd ever seen. It had complex characters with complex emotions, yet it was masked by this outrageous dialogue driven humor. Most of all, I wanted to learn how to write a script like Chasing Amy. It just seemed to have everything I wanted in a movie, and without a big MOVIE sensation to it. It felt honest.
As I started writing my own scripts, I quickly saw how I had to work at not imitating these films. My first script I wrote in college definitely had a huge mall sequence that seemed a little too much like Mallrats...
But I kept watching films.
I kept reading.
I kept pushing my own writing.
But I always re-watched those films and not only enjoyed them for what they are, but for the memory of who I was when I first saw them.
Before I came west, I remember my friend Mike making a great comment about Dogma. He said something like, when I saw that in high school I thought it was so smart. But not anymore. It's nothing against Smith, I think it's more of the whole idea of time and place. I wanted nothing more but to see films like those made over and over, but at the same time I didn't. There was a time and a place when those films were perfect for me.
I'm reading the script for Chasing Amy for my directing actors class, and I'm really enjoying, looking at it from a new view, a new light. 10 years later, it still makes me long for the connection between my world and the characters' world. It makes me remember who I was when I first saw them, and that's more powerful function than being just some funny movie.
Okay, back to reading. Just thought I'd share some thoughts.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Turns out I do hate the traffic.
An Afternoon Super Bowl.
This year's Super Bowl was my first to be watched in the Pacific Time Zone. Usually I'd watch the game into the night, and go to sleep early, thanks to too many nachos and/or hot wings.
Not this year, I had a whole evening ahead of me to deal with nacho stomach pains.
But really, that was a hell of a game. I like the Giants, and I'm okay with football, I mean for a game played off-ice, it has its moments. But last night's game felt like one of those classic events, destined to be immortalized in NFL films. I wonder if this was what it was like to watch Namath pull off the miracle for the Jets back in SB III? Who knows, it was sensational, to have a NY team be an underdog, not be the evil machine, wasexhilarating . During their last drive, when Manning, somehow, escaped the pocket without being dragged down, and then threw a bullet that by all views looked like it was caught on thereceiver's head... wow! Good stuff.
Actually, I was blessed this weekend with the NHL Center Ice Free Preview! This meant tons of hockey games, all at wacky start times. Clearly, sports are meant to be watched in the East or Central.
Tomorrow marks (date-wise) my one month mark of being in L.A.
Here's some things I've learned:
The traffic certainly sucks. It just takes forever to get to places. (And without music in your car it's extra lame)
Parking is expensive. Everywhere.
The weather in January is confusing. It can be really warm in the day, but gets a little cold at night... I'm still waiting that real so. cal. weather.
Being back at school is strange. Like, shouldn't I be just working with the rest of the sheep by now? It feels like that sometimes.
I'll post something interesting soon.
Or not?
This year's Super Bowl was my first to be watched in the Pacific Time Zone. Usually I'd watch the game into the night, and go to sleep early, thanks to too many nachos and/or hot wings.
Not this year, I had a whole evening ahead of me to deal with nacho stomach pains.
But really, that was a hell of a game. I like the Giants, and I'm okay with football, I mean for a game played off-ice, it has its moments. But last night's game felt like one of those classic events, destined to be immortalized in NFL films. I wonder if this was what it was like to watch Namath pull off the miracle for the Jets back in SB III? Who knows, it was sensational, to have a NY team be an underdog, not be the evil machine, wasexhilarating . During their last drive, when Manning, somehow, escaped the pocket without being dragged down, and then threw a bullet that by all views looked like it was caught on thereceiver's head... wow! Good stuff.
Actually, I was blessed this weekend with the NHL Center Ice Free Preview! This meant tons of hockey games, all at wacky start times. Clearly, sports are meant to be watched in the East or Central.
Tomorrow marks (date-wise) my one month mark of being in L.A.
Here's some things I've learned:
The traffic certainly sucks. It just takes forever to get to places. (And without music in your car it's extra lame)
Parking is expensive. Everywhere.
The weather in January is confusing. It can be really warm in the day, but gets a little cold at night... I'm still waiting that real so. cal. weather.
Being back at school is strange. Like, shouldn't I be just working with the rest of the sheep by now? It feels like that sometimes.
I'll post something interesting soon.
Or not?
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