Upstream Color (2/5 Stars)

Imagine you are seated in a large lecture hall. There is a professor with his back to the classroom working on some great math problem on a large chalkboard. It may be physics, it may be calculus, or it may be something else entirely. You are not sure. You are not well versed in the symbols on the board. However, by the methodical and confident way the professor draws the images you cannot help but surmise that behind the incomprehensible language there is some sort of logic and that the professor is of some sort of intelligence. So intrigued by the possibility of understanding, you sit back in your seat and wait for the professor to turn around and start explaining his work. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait some more. And then at last the professor stops his incessant scribbling, he steps back to survey his work, and he leaves the room. And he never comes back. The End.

Let me explain what I was doing there. That was a metaphor for what it feels like to watch “Upstream Color,” a movie whose apparent technical expertise is rendered pointless by its confounding lack of storytelling. I bet you can find many reviews out there that purport to understand what is going on in this movie and what it all “means.” Take it from me, they are all guessing and if they have figured it out they probably know more about the movie than the director/writer/star Shane Carruthers. Excuse me, but I insist that the director be the smartest person in the room. This isn’t the MOMA where half-asssed incomplete artwork is set upon a pedestal by self-important critics who find it okay to do the artist’s work for them. And besides if it was the enjoyment of a movie should not require the reading of a half-dozen essays about what it all means. It should be able to stand-alone supported by the strength of its own merit. I paid for a movie not a homework assignment.

If you had to pick a genre for this movie it would probably be science fiction, in that it contains things that no present technology can accomplish. A suspension of disbelief is required for all science fiction but all good science fiction has at least one thing in common. The technologies invented for the story have rules and work logically. So even if it is implausible, its function is predictable and it serves the themes of the movie. Think of the process of extraction of ideas in “Inception,” or the brain portal in “Being John Malkovich,” or the process of time travel in “Source Code.” The technology in “Upstream Color” and how it works and why it is important to work the way it does is never explained. And if it were explained, the explanation would probably be completely arbitrary. A man grows lilacs. In the roots of these lilacs are worms. He collects these worms and sells them as drugs. The drug is a powerful narcotic that induces a very strong hypnotic state. The victim is kidnapped and instructed to read Walden, stack poker chips, drink water, make paper chains, and hand over all their money. The thief leaves and the bug grows to an extraordinary length inside the victim’s body. A man on a pig farm hundreds of miles away pumps from large speakers strong pulsating beats into the ground. The victim feels this and travels hundreds of miles to the farm. At the pig farm, the man performs a very painful extraction that pulls the now three or four foot long worm out of the victim’s ankle and deposits it into the heart of a pig. The victim wakes up in her car in the middle of the highway somewhere and does not remember anything from the past several weeks. The pig is named after the victim (Kris) and for the rest of the movie, even years after the fact, the victim will feel whatever the pig is feeling. If you would like an answer as to why this happens or how this is possible too bad. You may as well ask why the movie is titled “Upstream Color.” It has nothing to do with anything else unless you can count its arbitrariness itself as a concurrent theme in the movie, which I absolutely refuse to do.

Here is a good example of how little anything matters in connection to anything else. The thief steals several thousand dollars and it is shown that he has done this over and over again to many many people. He’s got quite a lot of pigs on the farm. Why is he doing this? Because it does not look like he is spending the money on anything. By the way if this ever happens to you, then pay attention, here is what you do to figure everything out. You immediately get rid of all evidence that you were robbed. You don’t call the police. You lie to your employers about why you missed two weeks of work. You will lose your job but don’t worry; it’s all part of the process. Never mind trying to get to the bottom of it. Just spend several years lost wondering what happened to your life. Now start methodically swimming laps at the local gym at night when nobody else is around. Go ahead and dump a bucket of rocks into the deep end. Pick them up two at a time from the bottom of the swimming pool while reciting passages from “Walden.” Do this about a thousand times until the magic lilac branch appears in the bottom of the pool. Give it a tug, like four or five times. It will sound like a gong. Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that. Anyway what were you expecting? A chime sound? Please, let’s not be silly. At last, now you have the exact coordinates of the pig farm. Go kill the bastard that did this to you.

Do not be fooled by the so-called technical expertise of this movie. It may seem like it has good cinematography, or good editing, or good music or whatever, but such a distinction fails to take into consideration the most important element of what makes such things “good.” Cinematography, editing, and music are merely tools used by the moviemaker in furtherance of telling a story. If they do not help to tell the story than they have failed at what was their main charge and by default should be considered bad. To praise it would be like critiquing a shoddily built chair and remarking that the table saw used to put together such a disgrace to furniture was a very good table saw.

I have no patience or sympathy for this type of movie. There is a difference between a movie that is complex and a movie that is actually impossible to follow and there is a difference between a movie that contains ambiguity and one that is actually arbitrary. The test is whether any amount of thinking will allow the viewer to understand what is going on. And I submit that no amount of thinking will allow you to comprehend “Upstream Color.” Those that do claim an understanding are imagining the emperor’s clothes. 

Spring Breakers (4/5 Stars)

Perhaps it would surprise you if I described this as a religious movie. I’m not saying you will find Jesus here, but a religious dichotomy pervades it. There is no room for some moral middle ground. A person can be either all good or all evil. 

Four young women (Rachel Korine, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez) faced with the prospect of what to do with their Spring Break can either stay in Kentucky and go to church meetings or they can go down to Florida and party on the beach. And oh what a party it is! Spring Break in Florida is not an idle vacation. The director Harmony Korine’s vision of it makes clear that hard drugs, harder alcohol, gratuitous nudity, fornication, and illegal public disturbances are all mandatory. What’s more, entrance to this MTV fever dream party requires a test of dishonor to prove the travelers have the requisite bad intentions to gain admission. The four women are extremely low on funds and will not have enough money to last the week. So they do what must be done. Two of the girls (Ashley and Vanessa) don hoodies and with hammers and realistic squirt guns hold up a restaurant. They rob the register and patrons while screaming that they will kill anyone who moves.

The first half of the movie is seen through the eyes of Selena Gomez. She is the most good of the four women. In Kentucky we see her attending the type of church groups that have a charismatic preacher and get everyone to sit in a circle and sing Alleluia. For anyone not initiated with this type of group think religious fervor it is not unlike being on drugs. It can be very inspiring and a lot of fun. It is on the opposite side of the spectrum from Spring Break, but the passionate experiences being chased are not dissimilar. One just happens to be all good and the other all evil. Selena’s experience is glimpsed darkly through director Harmony Korine deft use of voiceover poetry, multiple layers of editing, and neon cinematography. It’s a wild trip until all things go wrong and the four women land in jail for underage and illegal everything. The shock of the situation is too much for Selena and she takes the next bus back to Kentucky with tears in her eyes. And that’s when things get really wild. The moral anchor of the movie has been let loose and the three other women remain in Spring Break land to see how deep the hellhole goes.

Your friendly guide to the underworld is a drug dealer/rapper named “Alien.” As he likely to explain on numerous occasions, he is not of this planet. “Alien” is played by one of my favorite people (not actors, people) James Franco. Alien has many tattoos, lots of bling, dreadlocks, and a giant grill. Someone asks if he is rich? “Yeah I’m rich. Take a look at my mouth.” Oh boy do I love this character. There is a particularly great scene where he takes the three women on a tour of his house and just points out stuff saying, “Look at my shit! I got all this shit! Look at my shit!” I was immediately reminded of the chapter in “American Psycho,” where Patrick Bateman takes about ten pages to list all the stuff in his apartment. To make it all complete, Alien even has the 1983 version of “Scarface” starring Al Pacino on a 24/7 loop. Reader, if there is one way to tell you are dealing with a grade-A moron it is their overwhelming admiration for “Scarface.” Scarface is a conspicuous consumer who amasses material possessions without enjoying them, who becomes a paranoid coke addict, whose family deserts him, who murders his best friend, who dies a horrific death, who is the real life inspiring figure and role model for idiots everywhere. What I absolutely love is that James Franco is the complete opposite of “Alien.” He is after all the type of person who having already achieved fame and fortune decided to enroll at UCLA (BA), Columbia (MFA), Yale University (PHD), and now the Rhode Island School of Design to basically study for fun. His performance is a winking one but it is good enough to the point where it should still fool the fools. People who are inspired by Scarface should find “Alien” to be the real thing too. For the rest of us, there are lots of laughs including what is sure to be one of the best scenes of the year: James Franco at a white piano at sunset singing Britney Spear’s “Everytime” while the three women armed with semi-automatics cavort around with matching pink hoodies and swimsuits. I almost fell out of my seat. 

In essence, if you were ever curious as to what a cloistered nun with a tendency to see the devil everywhere Jesus isn’t may think what goes on during Spring Break than this is the movie to see. Real life is probably much more mundane. I’ve never been to Florida Spring Break but I have been to places where they have the same kind of dancing i.e. the type where people shift their weight from foot to foot, jump up and down, and wave their hands in the air ad infinitum. It is essential to employ various quick editing techniques and blare loud music to make this look like it is a fun thing to do. In real life it is a rather rote experience and one generally needs to be under the influence to enjoy it. At least that is what I have been told numerous times by numerous people after expressing my own confusion. Have you ever been to a big-tent religious festival where people dance around and speak in tongues? I would assume it would be better to be totally stoned for that experience too.  

p.s. It is my opinion that Scarface is a great movie. I do recognize that and like the movie. I just happen to think only an idiot would want to be like Scarface. 

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2/5 Stars)

Uninspired is probably the best word for this movie. It was directed by Don Scardino a name you probably do not recognize. This is his first movie although according to IMDB he has done quite a lot of work directing all sorts of Television series, 30 Rock most notably.  His style is barely noticeable and I won’t mention him anymore in this review. The movie has four writers. They include Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Chad Kultgen, Tyler Mitchell. I would not be surprised if there were even more writers than that as the movie has the feel of something put together by committee and by that it is overly broad story within a fill-in-the-blank structure and devoid of uniqueness or creativity. Here, I am going to describe the story very briefly: It is about the redemption of a once successful traditional Vegas magician, Steve Carell, who has fallen on hard times because of his egomania and the appearance of a new type of stuntman magician, a la David Blaine. The magician with the help of his beautiful assistant reconnects with his childhood inspiration and stages a comeback. There is a contest at the end where he out-magics the competition. The End.

Does that sound familiar to you? Well, it should. It is a marketing pitch for a movie you have already seen before, perhaps something starring Will Ferrell and concerning sports. I bet this movie was green-lit for production before it was even written.  The studio got a room of writers together, gave them that paragraph pitch, and ordered a PG-13 script written. The result is a movie that very much feels like it did not need to be made and in a way wasn’t made by anybody in particular. It’s nobody’s movie.

I think the telling clue here is the lack of any decent magic in the movie. None. The best tricks we see are some sleight of hand that barely conceal the fact that Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, his childhood inspiration and now ex-magician, did not even bother to learn sleight of hand in preparation for their roles. There are easy cuts that allow one to recognize it is not their hands much like the way one can tell people in movies hardly ever really play the piano. The movie has a cop out reason for this and that has to do with Burt Wonderstone, Carell, and his partner Anton Marvelton, played by Steve Buscemi, being worn out has been magicians that have not changed their act in ten years. Yeah, but even ten years ago they must have had a decent trick in order to get famous in the first place. You would think we would see something of interest at some point. It never happens.

Now consider the character of Burt Wonderstone himself. His main personality trait is being bored. He takes very little joy in his work, has lost all feelings of brotherhood for his long-time partner, and goes through the routine of seducing groupies as if it is something he feels his status requires even if he does not particularly enjoy it. Truly this is Steve Carell’s least inspired character so far. I would like to draw your attention to one particular failed joke. Burt Wonderstone has been fired from his big Vegas job because his act is terrible and has been informed by his agent that he has no money because he has made nothing but terrible choices. So he is now broke and living in a motel. His assistant, played by Olivia Wilde, comes over to check up on him out of the niceness of her heart. As they are talking, she mentions her own aspirations of becoming a magician in her own right. Burt thinks this notion is silly. Why she asks. “Because,” he states, “you are a woman.” Now true this is misogynistic, but it is also lazy and stupid and those qualities are what I really want to talk about. There is no particular reason for Burt Wonderstone to be misogynistic. I have never heard of a glass ceiling in the world of magic. This isn’t like Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman” where the story was about a news team boy’s club being invaded by a female news anchor. In this movie, it just seems to be there because this movie’s story structure is based off other casually misogynistic movies and so a casually misogynistic main character was just another box on the checklist. Nobody bothered to ask whether the character or plot required Burt Wonderstone to not respect women or put in any sort of effort to make the joke anything more than simply a demeaning comment about women in general. You can, I argue, make fun of a woman. I’m not saying you should not do that, but the joke should have some logical connection to the woman who is the object of ridicule. That brings us to another inexplicable problem.

This is a comedy and like so many other comedies has not hired a comedian for the main female role. The assistant is played by Olivia Wilde, who is not funny. At all. Does not even try. What is she doing in this movie? All she does is look like Olivia Wilde, sit there passively as Burt Wonderstone insults her, and make out with him at the end. Would it kill the makers to cast a comedian who could adlib a couple funny lines where the all male writers were limited in their imagination as to what a woman character could say? It would have been really easy. For instance they hired the very funny Gillian Jacobs from the TV show “Community” for a bit part in this movie. In that bit part she got more laughs than Wilde did in the entire movie. Let’s say 1 to 0. Why on earth couldn’t she be cast as the assistant? I mean she isn’t a supermodel like Olivia Wilde, but she sure isn’t ugly either. Did nobody think about this possibility?

To be fair, there is one thing that transcends the rote nature of this movie and that is the performance of Jim Carrey as the David Blaine-ish magician named Steve Gray. Steve Gray is not really a magician as much as he is a performer of ridiculous acts of self-immolation. In one particular trick he doesn’t go to the bathroom for a straight week. That was pretty funny. Jim Carrey, now 50 years old, and no longer a box office draw (i.e. without studios developing entire movies devoted to his unique brand of comedy) has done the smart thing and started showing up in digital shorts, hosting Saturday Night Live, and taking supporting roles that allow him to still put in superior work. I mean he could be doing the Eddie Murphy thing and keep insisting on being the lead role in inferior movies, each one worse than the one before. This movie isn’t that good but Jim does turn his fifteen minutes of screen time into consistent laughs. I think what we really need is a movie based on or just with the cast of “In Living Color.” That would be something else. 

Oz: The Great and Powerful (3/5 Stars)

Darth Vader, check. Wicked Witch of the West, check. All we need now is a movie that explores the past psychological trauma of Lord Sauron of Mordor.

James Franco stars as the titular Oz in Director Sam Raimi’s newest film, “Oz: The Great and Powerful” a prequel of sorts to “The Wizard of Oz” that focuses on how Oz got to Oz and became the Wizard of Oz. Like Dorothy he makes the trip via a black and white Kansas twister and lands in a country complete with color. This time though it’s a world of 3D digital construction and this leads to one of the more concurrent flaws in this type of movie. The characters don’t seem to be looking at what they are looking at. Someday I hope to see a character look upon a glorious digital landscape such as Oz and just be incredibly amazed by it. Like struck deaf and dumb for at least a moment or two. This doesn’t really happen to Oz, who acts more like he is a kind of bored James Franco walking around in a green screen room.

The “Wizard of Oz” is one of our odder modern fables. We know all the characters: the witches, good and wicked, the wizard, a charlatan all smoke and mirrors, the land inhabited by munchkins, yellow brick roads and emerald cities. But does anyone remember what all this is there for or why it exists at all? What’s the point of this magical land?

The most satisfying explanation I have heard is that the tale is meant to be not only a children’s story but also a work of political symbolism concerning the late 19^th century Populist movement. That would explain why Dorothy is from Kansas a bastion of populists and why the magical slippers are made of silver (not ruby red!) the free coinage of silver being a major platform of Populism. There are a multitude of other theoretical political symbols. The yellow brick road represents the gold standard. The scarecrow without a brain represents western farmers, the tin man with no heart represents the eastern factory worker, and the cowardly lion is none other than William Jennings Bryan three-time presidential candidate. Some symbols are kind of really obvious. The poppy fields that put all travelers under sleeping spells represent the scourge of opium and the inhabitants of the town of China are the actual Chinese. So when one of the wicked witches destroys the town of China (and this happens in this movie) it can and probably does represent the mistreatment of the Chinese immigrant labor force (at least in the book). And then there is perhaps the best wickedly satirical symbol of all, The Wizard. He represents the Gilded Age Presidents of the latter 19^th century, a series of forgettable not very influential or powerful men of seemingly great influence and power. Everybody thinks the president has power and can solve all their problems, but in reality it is all smoke and mirrors and the best he can do is hand out clever gifts like instead of a brain, a university degree.

It is a credit to the original author, L. Frank Baum, that adaptations can ignore the politics behind the book and still work on a basic though rather arbitrary level. But complete ignorance of the original politics, as the recent adaptations (Both Broadway “Wicked” and “Oz: The Great and Powerful”) illustrate, prevent these artworks from achieving greatness. This modern desire we have to humanize the Wicked Witch of the West is a huge mistake. The Witch in political symbolism is not human at all. It is a symbol of huge monopolistic corporations that terrorize the various constituents symbolically represented in the Land of Oz. The Populist movement put a lot of stock in the idea that the free coinage of silver (i.e. the magic silver slippers) would save them from these interests. More likely though, the end of a very long drought that swept the Midwest in the 1890s would actually be the key. There is a reason why water is the magical ingredient that melts the witch. But who cares about all this right? Who cares! Who cares! Okay I will get to my point. The Wicked Witch needs to be evil incarnate. Her character does not really work any other way. After all she will go on to enslave flying monkey minions and bomb the countryside with fireballs. To say the motivation for that type of behavior comes from a misunderstanding in a love triangle doesn’t quite fit. One recalls how Darth Vader decided to murder millions of people after Natalie Portman died. A tragedy for sure but I think it's fair to say that Darth overreacted. Some characters motivations are best left unexplained. After all, that is one of things that made Margaret Hamilton’s performance in the 1939 movie so memorable. The witch is absolutely wicked for no apparent reason at all other than that it is in her nature as a wicked witch.

I cannot imagine why someone thought Mila Kunis would be correct for this role. First of all, she does not look anything like the Wicked Witch. The Wicked Witch has an infamously angular profile. Mila’s face is way too round. Second, she fails to lend any acting bite to her performance. As a result she doesn’t sound or act evil in a convincing fashion. Weirdly, Rachel Weisz is capable of both of these qualities. Why didn’t anyone think to switch the roles around?

This movie needed to be more creative and ingenious than it is. I wasn’t too impressed with the Wizard who spends more time explaining to people that he doesn’t have powers than tricking them into thinking that he does. But hey it is probably the best movie out there right now so what else are you going to see. 

The Abysmal State of Movie Ratings

The first R Rated movie I ever saw was “Schindler’s List.” It wasn’t even my idea and I surely didn’t watch it alone. Not only was my immediate family there but also my extended family: aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was 1994. I was all of eight years old. Now I think that there is a very good discussion to be had as to whether I was mature enough to watch that particular film. After all, I don’t recall really understanding what was going on. I’m not sure I even really understood death at that point. I certainly had never heard of the Holocaust before watching the film. To say I wasn’t mature enough though can lead to circular reasoning. What would make me mature enough after all? Would knowing about the Holocaust, its horrors, and all its deep moral implications, make me mature enough to watch “Schindler’s List”? In that case, could I become mature enough to watch “Schindler’s List” simply by watching “Schindler’s List” a masterful movie that teaches its viewers about the Holocaust, its horrors, and all its deep moral implications. In any case, what I really took away from watching that movie in complete ignorance at the tender and innocent age of eight was boobs. It would take me almost another decade after watching “Schindler’s List” again in high school to fully appreciate the movie and all it means, but the boobs I was immediately interested in. I spent most of the time thinking about that movie thinking about the boobs. It was after all, the first time I ever saw them. Yes, the first boobs I ever saw were in “Schindler’s List.”

That probably wasn’t what my parents wanted to teach me when they sat me down to watch that movie. That doesn’t mean that they did anything wrong because that would imply that they should have known what exactly was right. Surely they were not the first parents to try to educate their kid about something and have their kid go away with a completely unpredictable impression. This brings up an enormously important and controversial question: How should we educate our kids? And it is a question the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) supposedly is trying to help parents with by rating movies G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17 under objective standards. It’s official statement is this:

Movie ratings provide parents with advance information about the content of films, so they can determine what movies are appropriate for their young children to see. Movie ratings do not determine whether a film is “good” or “bad.” They simply provide basic information to parents about the level of various elements in the film, such as sex, violence and language so that parents can decide what their children can and cannot see. By providing clear, concise information, movie ratings provide timely, relevant information to parents, and they help protect the freedom of expression of filmmakers and this dynamic American art form.

It is this author’s opinion that explicitly ignoring the question of whether a film is “good” or “bad” flings down and dances upon the whole point of the ratings system: to help parents determine whether the movie is appropriate for their children to see. An objective standard is both over-inclusive (it rates arguably good and healthy movies as PG-13 or R) and under-inclusive (it allows bad and unhealthy movies to be rated PG or PG-13).  I will demonstrate how it does this, but first back to Schindler’s List and the boobs.

In 1997 the movie went into TV syndication and Director Steven Spielberg insisted that it air unedited and uncensored. That meant among other things that we would all see boobs on TV. A Senator by the name of Tom Coburn from Oklahoma thought that this was just a terrible thing saying that NBC had brought television “to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity”, adding that the film was an insult to “decent-minded individuals everywhere.” He later would rewind his statement under the pressure from fellow Republicans to state that although he still did not want the movie aired, he would have preferred that it was shown later at night when not so many kids would be watching. Perhaps he was thinking of me. There was one edit in the TV version. A sex scene was cut down to remove all the “thrusting.” Two Things. One, what Coburn did was a good thing. He had an opinion about the showing of this movie to kids based on his system of morality and he took ownership of his opinion publicly. To his credit, that is a much more courageous and constructive action than what the anonymous and amoral MPAA does. People could have a debate and did have a debate with Coburn. The MPAA inexplicably does not engage the public in debates on what is appropriate for children to watch. Second, why is “Schindler’s List” rated R in the first place if the vast majority of society considers it to be a noble and honorable work of art, it has won numerous Academy Awards including Best Picture, and has been included on numerous list of the best movies ever made. My parents and high school surely were not in the minority in deciding it was worth showing to underage kids.

Violence and the MPAA

The answer is that the MPAA does not consider the context of the violence on the screen, something my parents and probably parents in general would consider the most important factor. Instead, the MPAA takes measurements on the amount of blood onscreen. A person gets shot. Do they bleed? Yes, an R rating. No, a PG-13 rating. The idiocy of this should be immediately apparent but I will give two examples that should drive home the point. 

A couple of years back a movie named “127 Hours” came out. It was directed by Danny Boyle and starred James Franco. It told the true story of a man who was hiking alone in a canyon when a boulder fell on his arm pinning him with no help of escape in a cavern. After 127 hours of doing everything he possibly could to escape and not being able to, he was faced with a harrowing decision: Cut off his arm and leave without it or stay there and die with it. So he cuts off his own arm. There is blood and it looks painful. Should this be Rated R? Of course, if all we were considering was the appearance of blood. But let’s consider the context for a moment. The scene is moral. No sins are committed as he is committing violence upon himself to save his life not end it. The scene is truthful. It happened just the way it did in real life. The scene is educational. If you were ever in the same situation, god forbid, you would be glad you saw this movie and could look to it for advice and dwell on it for strength.

Contrast this with your average PG-13 comic book blockbuster. There are countless of them but I will just go ahead and pick on Michael Bay, specifically any of the “Transformers” movies.  These movies generally contain intergalactic battles on and above very populated urban areas. Buildings are blown up and knocked over. Missiles, Bombs, machine guns, and rocket launchers, are only some of the fetishistic amount of violent machinery being bandied about. How many civilian casualties could you expect from the battle outside. Would the answer of zero surprise you? Because that is the number of people that get hurt during any Transformers movie. These movies are a marvel of camera angles and cutaways. We see people in office buildings and in the streets running away. Somehow they always seem to just make it to safety. Now we all know that if you knock down a skyscraper thousands of people will die and thousands of more will be hurt. It has happened before. So how is it okay to knock down skyscrapers in a PG-13 movie? Why is it okay if you simply don’t show all the dead and dying people? Why is it okay to show machine guns fire on large crowds if you simply don’t show all the necessarily dead and dying people? Why is it okay to show large explosions that don’t kill anyone but insist on putting an R rating on a Best Picture winner like “The Hurt Locker,” which has got to be the first movie ever made to insist on the reality of a bomb’s shockwave, not simply the flames, being able to kill a human being.

In essence, the MPAA is insisting that parents do not have to worry about showing their kids all kinds of violence if its effects are not portrayed realistically. When they are portrayed realistically for whatever reason, good or bad, parents should think twice about taking their kids to see the movie.

Here’s a good question to take with you: Should watching violence feel painful? If you were considering the impact of a movie on kids would you want them to enjoy the violence on the screen or would you rather have them cringe out of empathy for the characters that were hurting? Because enjoyment is all that would happen if they watched “Transformers” or any other G, PG, or PG-13 movie that contained violence. If the violence were painful to watch (i.e. people actually got hurt or bled) the movie would probably be Rated R.

But let’s lighten the mood now with a subject that is considerably more absurd thanks in no small part to the inclusion of comedians.

Language and the MPAA

Essentially the rules for language are such. It is confined to certain words. These words are confined only to the sound and spelling of the words themselves. What the words actually mean is not considered. For instance, the word Fuck and all its derivatives are bad even though that word has probably more meanings, surely not all of them immoral, than any other word in the English dictionary. 

In this way it is over-inclusive. Sometimes such a practice can be ignoble. For instance, if the movie takes place in an area of the country where certain curse words have slipped into the commonplace vernacular of everyday speak any movie that portrays how people who live there actually talk will always be a Rated R movie no matter how moral the movie. Great movies such as “Boyz N’ the Hood” and “The Big Lebowski” are good examples. These movies take place in certain parts of Los Angeles where people use the word ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ in almost every single sentence. I have been to Los Angeles. There are people that speak just like those characters do. What they are doing isn’t really cursing, at least not in the sense that what they are saying means what curse words ought to mean. Most of the time they just happen to be people who use these words to supplement a limited vocabulary (i.e. they happen to be poor people). To relegate all honest stories of such people to the R rating I would suggest is not a moral use of movie ratings.

Or what if there was a really good reason for a character to curse. In the 2010 Best Picture winner, “The King’s Speech,” the King of England, played by an Oscar Winning Colin Firth, is cursed with a stammer. He goes to a speech therapist to help him with his predicament. The speech therapist encourages the King to curse whenever he feels a stammer coming on because the exclamation of an epithet is one of the only things that does not trip up the royal tongue. So in this particular scene within private confines, towards nobody in particular, and under doctor’s orders the king curses: “Fuck, fuck, bugger, shit, shit!”  And this is what makes a true-life award-winning inspirational tale of courage and duty with absolutely no sex, violence, or other cursing, a Rated R movie. I think you would be hard pressed to find many people who have actually seen the movie who would not conclude it should be required viewing of any and every single child with a speaking disability.

At the same time a rule such as this, divorced from any consideration of morality or even the meaning of the word, is also way under-inclusive. For example if you used the Olde English phrase that the word Fuck originates from, “Fornication under Consent of the King,” it would not be a curse even though the word FUCK is literally an acronym of that phrase. Or you could say a word that almost sounds exactly like it. A good example of this is contained in the Ben Stiller movie, “Meet the Parents.” The main character’s name is Greg Focker. As the character is not very popular amongst his fiancé’s family, then take to calling him by his last name, Focker, and generally in a tone that sounds like they mean to curse at him. Coincidentally this movie had several sequels one of which came out within a week of “The King’s Speech.” That movie was titled “Little Fockers” and was rated PG-13. All of these movies were rated PG-13. It wouldn’t have been the first time a comedian very transparently changed the pronunciation or spelling of a curse word or more likely used a clever euphemism to convey the same meaning, gained a PG-13 rating, took all of the box office cash coming from a market that now included parents looking for movies they can take their kids to, and laughed all the way to the bank. I wonder how many parents looked at the ratings of these two movies and decided it was a better idea to show their kids “Little Fockers” instead of “The King’s Speech.” If only one parent did so, it shows how MPAA ratings can be, if taken seriously, less than helpful in pursuit of its stated purpose.

I’m going to include here a completely PG scene, according to MPAA standards that is, which is all about…well, see if you can’t figure it out.

That should put us in the mood for sex.

Obscenity and the MPAA

At least in this subject the MPAA has a guiding light to help it make its decisions on some sort of relevant basis: the Supreme Court of the United States. Upon the other subjects, the Supreme Court has generally given free reign to speech in artworks (as opposed to say inciting a riot on a city street) but there are limitations imposed on obscenity. Roth v. United States says this: Material utterly without socially redeeming value that deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interests.  Prurient material means material with a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. A good example of that is child pornography. No socially redeeming value? check. Prurient material? check. There is very little to debate there. But when you get into the realm of consenting adults everything gets a little hazy. A very enjoyable definition can be found in Jacobellis v. Ohio in which Justice Potter Stewart remarked:

““I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

What is Justice Stewart getting at? In essence, he is promoting the idea that whether the obscenity has socially redeeming value heavily depends on a consideration of the artwork as an entirety.  What a wise thing to say. Let’s speculate on how the MPAA could make rulings based on the wisdom of the US Supreme Court. They could watch a movie that contained nudity or sex. They could then take an honest vote as to whether any of them were aroused during the movie. If a majority raised their hands, then check, the movie has prurient material. Then they could have a frank discussion as to whether the context of the obscenity was socially redeeming or whether the movie taken as a whole was of such socially redeeming value that it outweighed the obscenity contained within. It might be an awkward conversation but that would be the honest sane way of going about it. I probably do not have to tell you that the MPAA does no such thing. Instead they take mathematical measurements of how much genitalia is shown and for how many seconds it is visible on the screen. Now surely the absolute tips of breasts on a large screen are not a magical boner maker and surely one does not need to see the absolute tips of breasts in order to get a boner. So in what is becoming a regular refrain in this article, the MPAA rules gives R and NC-17 ratings to movies that everybody should see and PG-13 ratings to movies with no socially redeeming value.

Here are a few examples of inexplicable R ratings given for obscenity. The 2002 movie Amelie is a romantic comedy about a painfully shy yet highly imaginative waitress in Paris. Inspired by a freak happenstance she starts going on covert missions of good will, helping unknowing people in the neighborhood. It is probably one of the most moral movies I have ever seen. It does however contain a character that works in a sex shop. And for about 30 seconds as he is talking to his boss about something totally innocent, you can see dildos in the frame. Or how about the movie Love, Actually, which like Amelie is about good people doing nice things and falling in love. One of the scenes shows bare breasts so it got an R rating even though it is considered the number one movie to watch with a new girlfriend/boyfriend as the pick shows good taste, a sense of humor, and a healthy and respectable attitude towards sex and relationships. I have heard more than a few people express about how these ratings are a shame and why couldn’t the movies simply cover those breasts in that one scene in order to get a PG-13 rating. Here’s a better idea: How about the MPAA does its goddamn job and starts helping parents? Because here is a scene their ratings system, in all its infinite wisdom, defines as PG-13. Oh Behave!

What should be done?

It is rather simple. The MPAA should do what Tom Coburn did. Take ownership of the opinion publicly and explain it. In an ideal world, they would write a reviews that are not anonymous much like a Supreme Court ruling authored by one particular judge that cites the reasons why they are ruling the way they rule. There can even be dissenting opinions if the entire MPAA board does not agree. I don’t particularly care what is their stance. As a private organization and not a government entity they have no authority to impose censorship upon artwork anyway. Everything they say is merely an opinion. But as it is a respected opinion, it does no help to anyone if it is not an opinion at all which I have argued an objective rating system cannot.

In essence, the MPAA is that parent which scorns a child, “You can’t watch that!” and when the child asks why, exclaims once again “Because I said so!” This behavior limits conversation on a subject that sorely needs it, why something is moral or immoral. When an authority acts in an unexplained and easily refutable manner it can put into the mind of an individual the sense that perhaps they do not know what they are talking about. And if that authority is discredited on one particular topic then why can’t they be discredited on all topics, especially if each and all topics have the same non-explanation. This would result in the exact opposite of purposes: the existence within the individual of no moral direction at all based on a distrust of an obviously hypocritical authority.  

I will end with a couple of quotes. One is from Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California. 

“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to aver the evil by education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

And here is another from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

            “Children will learn. The only question is where?” 

NETFLIX Presents....

The Future is Now. Welcome fellow viewers and voyeurs. On February 1, 2013, the online streaming website Netflix made available the first season of “House of Cards” directed by the acclaimed director David Fincher (Social Network, Fight Club) and starring two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects, American Beauty). The profundity of the moment has less to do with the fact that this is Netflix first stab at original content and more to do with how it was made available, all thirteen episodes on the same day for the express purpose of giving subscribers the ability to consume the product when, where, and how they wished. It is the next victory in that triumph of capitalism and democracy known as the Internet. The winners: The People (i.e. audiences and movie-makers). The losers: the Man (i.e. corporation and politicians etc.)

You think I am being overly dramatic perhaps. Let me explain. First, I pose this question to you: What is the difference between a movie and a television show? The obvious answers are length, content restrictions, and quality. Movies have always generally had more of all of these. But these are merely the symptoms of the main fundamental difference: who pays for the program. Movies are sold directly to an audience. Television however does not sell programs to audiences. Television sells audiences to advertisers. And these advertisers influence the programming. They interrupt with advertisements, they influence its availability, and they censor and influence the content. This is why the great subversive 1976 movie about television Network is a movie and not a television show. It is great entertainment but no advertiser in its right mind would pay for it.

There will always be movies shown at movie theaters. A movie theater focuses the viewer’s imagination and attention for drama. The size of the screen provides the opportunity for action spectacle. The crowd engagement via laughs or cheers makes the most out of comedy. But you can’t show long form narrative in a theater for the same reason you would not bring out a novel at a poetry reading. We like each other’s company but let’s not push it. We’ve all got shit to do.

Long form narrative has always been the domain of television but since it was the audience being sold and not the movie, it has always been done in an inferior manner. The most obvious is the need for networks to drag out a good show till the point where nobody wants to watch it anymore. As long as there is an audience to sell, it won’t be going anywhere. This is very much apparent in series that have romances introduced in the first episode that do not get resolved until the last minute of the finale of the actual series years later after the couple has split up and got back together for ratings reasons many times over. Think Ross and Rachel from Friends. And just when the hell is he finally going to meet the mother? It has been eight seasons already. This may not be a big deal as the seasons are progressing but who in their right mind would go back and watch all 11 seasons of MASH or 10 seasons of Cheers. I’m sure there were some good episodes in there but I’m not wallowing through the muck to get to them. Also TV episodes need to be in uniform lengths. In some cases this calls for some scenes or jokes to be cut (especially in syndication), but more likely it means that an episode with a half hour of plot is told in an hour format needlessly. Think of all those episodes of The Walking Dead where nothing happens until the last ten minutes and then it ends with a cliffhanger. Yeah I said it. That television show is crammed with filler, most of it annoying crying. In House of Cards, the length and number of episodes is set according to plot requirements not network schedules. The result is a series that is exceedingly and enjoyably dense. By dense I mean that every scene and episode matters whether it is to further the plot, to provide comic relief, or to exploit dramatic suspense. You are never waiting around for things to happen. It is invigorating. 

The second difference is the quality of content and I do not simply mean lack of ordinary censorship, although yes that is absent in House of Cards, which contains all sorts of swearing and some sex. I mean the entertainment value of the shows themselves. In television, the main product being the audience and not the show, it does not matter whether the show is any good as long as the ratings brought in bring in enough advertisers to make the show profitable. This can have a sort of race to the bottom effect. For if just enough people like watching cheap trash than there is no reason not to make it. Have you ever had the sensation while flipping through hundreds of channels that absolutely nothing is on? This helps to explain the proliferation of game shows and reality TV on networks and cable. Some of these shows have very good ratings yes, but that is not the only reason they are made. They also happen to be very cheap to make. You aren’t paying writers or directors or even actors. You only need one built set for a game show and depending on the program might not need any for reality TV. So why keep producing a great niche show like Arrested Development with its great cast, director, and writers, when you can put on American Idol as much as possible. Why produce a niche show at all when the purpose of television is not to entertain but to bring in the biggest possible audience? Arrested Development by the way is coming back for thirteen more episodes via Netflix this May. Why? Because the audience is paying to see it and main purpose for them is to be entertained not to be apart of the biggest possible crowd. 

No, audiences are not stupid and they enjoy and will pay for quality programming. This year saw six out of nine Best Picture nominees breaking the 100 million dollar box office mark. The democratization made possible by digital movie-making (see fantastic documentary Side by Side) is allowing more people to get more skin in the game, making it possible for movies to be made for, by, and about even the poorest amongst us. (Think Slumdog Millionaire and Beasts of the Southern Wild.) And the explosion of Internet streaming allows the rest of us to see these movies. The proliferation of blogs and websites and apps spreads the word about which movies and shows are worth watching. Brave New World.

And there is such a wealth of material waiting to be adapted into long-from narrative: all those comic-book serials and thousand page novels that were routinely savaged to fit into three hour movies. George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones, repeatedly turned down offers to adapt his books into movies. It would have destroyed the book. He felt only the long form narrative structure provided by HBO whose subscriber model allows it to be unrestricted by censorship and uninterrupted by advertisers could do the story justice. So far he has been proved completely right. 

Combine all of this with the fact that long-form is necessarily more expensive and intensive than the average summer tent-pole blockbuster and you have the perfect storm of elements. After all what is the easiest way to get viewers to pay to watch 13 hours of television (as I happily this past weekend with House of Cards): provide quality characters and story. You can’t bluff a huge opening weekend box office number of an inferior product with huge special effects and an expensive marketing campaign with streaming long form narrative because there is no opening weekend box office and the risks inherent in making such an expensive product with no concern for quality are unnecessarily large. In Conclusion: Quality entertainment on purpose not by happy accident as it has too often been during the course of cinematic history. You know, the way HBO, the first subscription based channel, has done it and thrived. 

This brings us to the next question: how do you critique long form narrative like House of Cards?

Not the way we usually critique television shows, in episode recaps. That ignores the most fundamental attraction of long form narrative: a series whose sum is greater than its parts. Let’s take the best example possible, The Wire. Here is a show that moves along very methodically. The creators, led by David Simon, were putting together their version of Baltimore very carefully with purposes in mind that were not completely clear until the last episode of the last season. At that moment the viewer could take a step back, survey the entire work, and be struck by its sheer perfection. If the show had been judged by episodically or made anywhere but HBO it would have never survived production. On the other side is the ABC show, Lost, which was totally worth watching while it was on TV, but once the final season reared its ugly head, an impending sense of disillusionment crept in as the bullshit piled up and kept piling. Having seen the entire thing I can’t recommend it to anyone and wish the whole thing could have been made available all at the same time like House of Cards so someone could have written a review telling me not to bother.

I won’t advise you to watch House of Cards right now. The first thirteen merely set up, dare I say a “House of Cards,” (nyuk) and it will be up to the second season to knock them or keep them up in a satisfying way. It might be a good idea to wait until it’s all over, read a review then, and make a decision whether it is worth 26 hours of your life at that time. From what I’ve seen, it probably is, but you will hear a definite answer when the second season shows up. You won’t be missing anything. Every single episode will still be at Netflix should you exercise you’re newly found TV show consumer’s right to choose exactly when and where to watch your shows at that time. How convenient! 

Oscars 2012

Once More! The best thing about being a movie critic is that you are never wrong. Movies are art. Art is subjective. Movie criticism is merely the objective view of what the movie critic thought of the subjective subject matter. So when I say so and so is the best of the year it is always and forever correct because the title of the award is  not "Best Picture of the Year" but "The Picture Max thought was Best." If you want to know what the Academy thought, go watch the Oscars. And if you don't like that either, write your own article. 

2012 was an incredible year for movies. One is always excited when new talent is found. This year director Behn Zeitlen (Beasts of the Southern Wild) entered the national consciousness. It is also very gratifying when those newly discovered talents mature into the competent and productive artists you hoped they would become, example such as Ben Affleck (Argo) and Rian Johnson (Looper) come to mind. And it is always nice to not be let down by already established artists that continue to expand their portfolio with movies that are on par with their previous work: Steven Soderbergh (Haywire, Magic Mike), Richard Linklater (Bernie), Ridley Scott (Prometheus), Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master), Andy and Larry Wachowski (Cloud Atlas), Tom Hooper (Les Miserables), Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty). But how many times have you seen a year in which directors who have already made their masterpieces, the movies by which they will be remembered for, come back and turn in what is arguably their best work yet, and it isn’t just one of them, it is several! This year we saw truly great works by Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom), David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook), Ang Lee (Life of Pi), Steven Spielberg (Lincoln), and finally Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained). And the mass-market blockbusters weren't that bad either (21 Jump Street, The Hunger Games, The Avengers, the Dark Knight Rises), case in point a James Bond installment that was arguably the best in the 50 year long franchise (Skyfall). Finally with special mention is the live action return of Robert Zemeckis (Flight) from a decade of lost wandering in the valley of the uncanny. I hope you saw most if not all or at least some of these movies this year. 

Awards Time! I always start with what I know least about so be informed that this gets better. Bold indicates a winner.

Foreign Language Film

I did not see a foreign language film this year. Isn't that ridiculous? I swear I generally don't shy away from those things.

Short Films

I only saw a couple of these. La Luna was by Pixar so I wouldn't be surprised if it actually was the best of the year.

La Luna
The Longest Daycare
The Paperman

Best Animated Feature

I never got around to seeing Wreck-It Ralph so I'm forced to give this to Brave, although it really isn't a great movie.




Best Sound Mixing/Best Sound Editing

I keep having to look up what this category actually judges. Apparently Sound Mixing is making up noises that aren't music and Sound Editing is all of the noises that aren't music being put together. I have a hard time ever noticing that sort of thing, except perhaps during Beasts of the Southern Wild, particularly in the beginning scenes when the kid is out in the woods putting animals up to her ear to hear their heartbeats.

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Flight
Life of Pi





Best Original Score

The movie Cloud Atlas contains six unique stories that with dissimilar genres, times, places, and characters. What unifies all of these stories is an incredible score, the Cloud Atlas. This is one of those very rare movies where the title refers actually refers to the music and not really the . And like Brazil the original score is worthy of it.  

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Cloud Atlas

The Master




Best Musical Number

The Best Song category is worst than useless. It not only nominates generally inferior songs but it completely ignores all the good ones. This is particularly obvious in a year that contains Les Miserables. That movie has great songs but none of them are nominated because they have been adapted from the original broadway play. So the Academy instead nominated a song named "Suddenly" which is one of the worst songs in the movie. Soooo I discard the originality rule when I pick Best Musical Number.

"I've Gotta Crow" from 21 Jump Street
"I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables
"One More Day" from Les Miserables
"Pony" from Magic Mike
"Ballroom Dance Medley" from Silver Linings Playbook





Best Production Design

Only in a Wes Anderson movie would the characters take the time to do an inventory of the things they are carrying. That is how much love and detail are put into all the sets and props. Very easy category to pick.

Dark Shadows
Les Miserables
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom
Prometheus





Best Makeup/Hairstyling

Generally, if you're dolling up Helena Bonham Carter (usually in a Tim Burton flick) you will get my pick for Best Makeup. I also liked Suzie's eyeliner in Moonrise Kingdom and the way Daniel Day Lewis was made to look tall in Lincoln. (He totally isn't!) Full disclosure: I know nothing about makeup.

Les Miserables
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom



Best Costume Design

I thought whatever Matthew McConaughey was wearing in any scene in “Magic Mike” was hilarious. Besides the costumes in that movie meant more to the plot than any other movie, right? Maybe? Jamie Foxx’s sunglasses in Django Unchained were badass too.

Django Unchained
Magic Mike
Snow White and the Huntsman





Best Visual Effects

Life of Pi was the first movie since I saw since Avatar where I felt the extra 3D surcharge was actually worth it. 3D and not a scam? Give that movie an Oscar! Cool tiger too, bro. And finally this is a pretty good spot to admit I did not see The Hobbit. I seriously don't know what happened. I really wanted to see it. I will be the first one in line for the DVD Director's Cut Abridged Version.

The Avengers
Life of Pi
Prometheus
Snow White and the Huntsman
Ted





Best Cinematography

If you were wondering why the last James Bond movie, Skyfall, looked so good, a glance at the cinematographer title should clear up the mystery quick. The man's name is Deakins, Roger Deakins, and ever since Scorsese finally won his Oscar in 2007 he has taken on the mantle of the Academy's most snubbed. Will this finally be the year? Skyfall sure loooked good, didn't it? Here is hoping that the 10th nomination will be the charm.

The Dark Knight Rises
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall





Best Film Editing

There were a lot of things I did not like about Argo, but it must be admitted that it was a very superior movie in terms of showing parallel action which is what great editing is all about. A fine example being the flawless interspersing of three speeches from Hollywood, Washington, and Iran.

Argo
Cloud Atlas
Flight
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty




Best Documentary

The amount of documentaries I have seen this year limited, but I am confident saying that The Queen of Versailles is well-qualified for best of the year. A rags-to-riches-to-rags tale centered around the half-finished biggest waste of money to come out of the real estate bubble.

The Invisible War
The Queen of Versailles





Best Supporting Actress

The Supporting Actress category is usually so weak and the Academy's imagination so limited that it is constantly filled with not-so-special performances from whatever is most likely to win Best Picture. I like to use the shallow number of good dramatic roles for women as an opportunity to pick some comedic highlights for a change. This year that spotlight belongs to Ellie Kemper and Michaela Watkins, two comedians that will hopefully no longer be supporting characters someday. Of course, I did see Les Miserables and it really is no contest. I could pretend to be macho and be like 'what a crybaby and all that' but there really is no use denying it. I was in a crowded theater and I sincerely wanted everyone else to leave during that song. It was so good it was embarrassing.

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables
Ellie Kemper, 21 Jump Street
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Charlize Theron, Snow White and the Huntsman
Michaela Watkins, Wanderlust





Best Supporting Actor

For the first time in perhaps ever, the Academy's race for Best Supporting Actor contain all Oscar winners. It is a shame. Because this year saw some genuinely great performances from some routinely type-casted and overlooked men. That would be Sam Rockwell and the trio of blockbuster stars Bruce Willis, Matthew McConaughey, and Samuel L. Jackson. I give Jackson the ultimate tip of the hat because whereas McConaughey and Willis are basically giving the same very good type performance just this time in a superior movie, Jackson is pulling off something completely original not only for himself (impressive given his work-a-holic career) but to movies in general.

Robert De Niro "Silver Linings Playbook"
Samuel L. Jackson "Django Unchained"
Matthew McConaughey "Magic Mike"
Sam Rockwell "Seven Psychopaths"
Bruce Willis "Moonrise Kingdom"





Best Actress

The premise of a little movie named "Safety Not Guaranteed" is absolutely preposterous and its source material is quite literally a big fat joke. This movie should be good for nothing other than a couple of laughs but somehow works as a genuine romance. The reason for that is some keen writing but mostly the performance of Aubrey Plaza, an actor with the ability to speak paragraphs of empathy in the smallest of glances. And she's funny and beautiful and smart too don't you know. Here, bee-tee-dubs, is a good place to mention that I saw "Zero Dark Thirty" but my experience of it was marred by a very present drunk heckler. So I really only half saw it. Sorry Chastain.

Jessica Chastain "Zero Dark Thirty"
Eva Green "Dark Shadows"
Aubrey Plaza "Safety Not Guaranteed"
Noomi Rapace "Prometheus"
Quvenshane Wallis "Beasts of the Southern Wild"





Best Actor

First, I want to say how funny it was that  Joaquin Phoenix was nominated after he publicly declared that the Oscars were complete bullshit and he didn't want anything to do with them. That's good sportsmanship on the Academy's part. Also I will say this, I do not buy Hoffman as a supporting actor in "The Master." After all, he is the title "Master." Still, the Oscar goes to Daniel Day Lewis. Killer work on the voice (and the height)!

Bradley Cooper "Silver Linings Playbook"
Daniel Day Lewis "Lincoln"
Philip Seymour Hoffman "The Master"
Hugh Jackman "Les Miserables"
Joaquin Phoenix "The Master"






Best Original Screenplay


"Django Unchained" is a three hour movie that feels short and contains a perfectly balanced amount of action and dialogue, a killer cast in classic roles, and a supremely cathartic long awaited much deserved cinematic comeuppance. It is funny, intelligent, historically accurate in all the right ways, historically inaccurate in all the fun ways, delightfully wicked, and so original it may be the start of a whole new genre of film: the "Southern" movie. In as such splendid company as it possibly can be in (this year was no slouch year for original writing) it stands supreme.

Paul Thomas Anderson "The Master"
Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola "Moonrise Kingdom"
Mark Boal "Zero Dark Thirty"
Rian Johnson "Looper"
Quentin Tarantino "Django Unchained"






Best Adapted Screenplay

The job set for the writer of "Lincoln" is to represent faithfully the many types of constituents that Abe has to appease in order to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. And boy are there a lot of them. Kushner gets everything explained in a way that is clear, concise, and creates suspense. There is even room left over for some domestic strife and a couple of jokes. Have you heard the one about Ethan Allan and the portrait of George Washington in an English outhouse.

Tony Kushner "Lincoln"
David Magee "Life of Pi"
David O. Russell "Silver Linings Playbook"
Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer "Cloud Atlas"
Behn Zeitlen and Lucy Alibar "Beasts of the Southern Wild"




Best Director

This is a tough one, but I'm going to go ahead and give it to David O. Russell because his unique style of direction complements his story better than any other directing style complements any other story this year. By that I mean the rather chaotic method by which Russell puts together his movies is exactly the best way to frame the off-kilter yet endearing people that make up the heart of "Silver Linings Playbook."

Wes Anderson "Moonrise Kingdom"
Rian Johnson "Looper"
David O. Russell "Silver Linings Playbook"
Steven Spielberg "Lincoln"
Quentin Tarantino "Django Unchained"

Best Picture of The Year

21 Jump Street

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Cloud Atlas

Django Unchained

Flight

Lincoln

Looper

Moonrise Kingdom

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

And the winner is...........DJANGO!!!

Dare I say that "Django Unchained," besides being a helluva good time at the movies, is a culturally important movie. At the very least it should stand as a cinematic antidote to all the virulently racist movies that Hollywood churned out in its early days: a prime example of that being the first blockbuster ever: 1915's Birth of a Nation. There is a scene in that movie where the idea for the Ku Klux Klan is started by a couple of white children accidentally scaring a couple black children by covering themselves with white bedsheets and yelling 'boo.' How innocent and quaint the whole thing was. Contrast that to the above scene in "Django Unchained" which shows the KKK being started by a bunch of dumb-asses on a ridge whose mission to murder an innocent black man is sidetracked because they can't see out of the incompetently made bags on their heads. "Django Unchained" isn't blaxploitation. It's racist slaveowner-exploitation in the same way that "The Producers," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and "Inglourious Basterds" exploits Nazis, not Jews. It's about time the movies started exploiting slaveowners and Tarantino deserves many accolades for taking an enthusiastic plunge into such uncharted territory. Here is to seeing many more movies in which slaveowners are ridiculed, stigmatized, and endure heaps of violence. They were huge fucking assholes and totally deserve it.