15 Great Actors (other than Leo) who have never won an Oscar

Everyone wants Leonardo DiCaprio to win an Oscar, but his lack of one may not even be the most outrageous.

Leonardo DiCaprio is turning 40 this year, and in that time he has four Oscar nominations for acting to his name, including one for this past year’s performance in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but he has never won.

This, in some circles of the web, is viewed as an inexplicable tragedy on par with freezing to death after a giant shipwreck and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

The argument in his defense goes, if any actor deserves a lifetime achievement award, it’s him, or alternatively, if you’re going to give him one of those “career Oscars,” better give him one now while he’s in his “prime.”

Not everyone can win an Oscar. For many, the time or the movie just wasn’t right, the rest of the field was too strong, and the Academy will rely on history to rectify their mistake.

If Leo loses again this year (and he very well may to first time nominee Matthew McConaughey), he will only be behind an elite group of six actors who have managed to lose more times than he has (including this year’s five time nominee Amy Adams) without winning. But even of those he is ahead of in the losing streak, his lack of an Oscar may not even be the most egregious.

Click through each photo to read a not exhaustive list of 15 other great actors who have never won an Oscar.

Continue reading “15 Great Actors (other than Leo) who have never won an Oscar”

The Wind Rises

“The Wind Rises” is Hayao Miyazaki delivering at the top of his game a film pitched differently than any he’s ever made.

 

There are directors who are acclaimed, and ones who are considered the greatest of all time, and then there’s Hayao Miyazaki.

The man is exalted. Anyone who has seen one of his movies knows him as a household name and knows him not just as a great artist but a “Master” of animation.

News that “The Wind Rises” would be his last film was more news than the film itself. To see a filmmaker retire when his reach has never been greater is near unprecedented, and any film he put out would in its own way be more of a personal statement than anything that came before.

“The Wind Rises” echoes the magical tones of all of his greats, and yet it is pitched at an entirely different tone than the surreal fantasies that invited American kids like myself into a culture of anime and world cinema. It’s both fantastical and bittersweet, coming across as the most grounded movie Miyazaki has ever made.

Telling the life story of famed Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Hirokoshi, it first helps to understand it is not a kids’ movie, but that hasn’t stopped Miyazaki from providing the whole experience a colorful, joyous, airy charm. It’s not pure whimsy, but the film opens with a lovely, wordless flight sequence that sets the complex tone.

A young Jiro scurries up a rooftop that undulates and floats, gets into a small aircraft and soars over the town while waving at girls down below. But his dream is rattled when an airship carrying monstrous bombs and baring German insignia materializes in the clouds.

These are the sort of emotions we’re dealing with, the torn rift between creating vehicles that allow flight in wondrous displays of beauty and elation, but are more specifically designed to be machines of war. Hirokoshi was brought up square in the middle of this conflict, and in his creation of the Zero Fighter, Miyazaki tears us between the sleek, manufacturing brilliance of his creation and the knowledge that these very planes killed thousands of both American and Japanese lives in kamikaze attacks.

Miyazaki was likely moved to make this film not because of the simple pleasures of flight or the moral implications his story suggests, but in the parallels Hirokoshi’s tough work decisions reflect on his relationship with his wife. As Miyazaki depicts it, Hirokoshi and his wife Nahoko were madly in love, but she remained deathly ill and required constant care in a sanitarium.

Their conflicting impulses to stay healthy or stay together resonate as strongly as does his choices in his work, giving up speed and lightweight elegance in order to accommodate guns and bombing payload.

“The Wind Rises” is a movie about failure and choices that can be destructive, and yet it encourages us to allow these turbulent sensations to carry us with a quote opening the film, “The Wind is Rising! We must try to live!” It’s a message that fits in snugly with the dark, surreal lessons of adolescence and environmental communion that dominate his other films.

And while “The Wind Rises” is in many ways standard biopic fare, Miyazaki utilizes animation in a way few directors, animators or otherwise, could dream. The 2-D cel shading allows Miyazaki to play with depth perception within the frame, with people appearing larger than life beside background fliers in the skyline. He draws the eyes in conflicting directions, echoing the moods of the film, by superimposing Jiro’s colorful suits and tranquil shots of green pastures alongside weary, gray train passengers or a charred Tokyo devastated by an earthquake. I wouldn’t trade Studio Ghibli’s animation style for the world, but one wonders what possibilities Miyazaki could envision if given the luxury of new 3-D technology.

And one wonders what other stories we might never see from this aging master if this truly is his last film. Ranking “The Wind Rises” among Miyazaki’s best might be a stretch, but this movie shows a man at the top of his maturity and craft as a filmmaker.

4 stars

2014 Oscar Winner Predictions

“12 Years a Slave” will win Best Picture, along with three other Oscars.

The Oscars are here, although maybe not soon enough. A report recently said that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture winners yet. That to me doesn’t add up for a movie like “Gravity” that made as much money as it did, but the point is that this awards season, while interesting, has just gone on too long. A New York Times article wondered if the average individual is generally apathetic to the whole institution of the Oscars.

I hope that isn’t true, but it’s starting to feel that way when the debate over “12 Years a Slave” versus “American Hustle” has long since past, when we’ve heard the story about Jonah Hill getting paid as little as SAG would allow to work for Martin Scorsese over and over again, and when even “Let it Go” parodies are getting old.

Anyway, here are my final predictions. You may find there’s more consensus and predictability than you’d think.

12 Years a Slave

Best Picture

Months ago I wrote an article bluntly titled “Gravity Will NOT Win Best Picture… Probably.” It was smart of me to add on that last word, because the good news is that “Gravity,” my favorite film of the year, is still here. It is still as much of a favorite to win now as it was back when it premiered at Toronto, despite all the things I said about it technically having come true.

But in the case of “Gravity,” the nitpickers have beaten the dollars, and a more “worthy” title, one that isn’t seen as just “a ride” or a movie with a “bad script” will have to take its place. That film will be “12 Years a Slave,” as many predicted long ago that it was invincible. It has now survived with wins at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes as the one to beat, and yet its tie in the Producers Guild Awards with “Gravity” confirms just how close this race is.

“American Hustle” may not be the last minute favorite after all, and it’s a shame for David O. Russell, who would now be 0-3 in a row on his current hot streak. The third time is not the charm, it seems, but I’m betting he’ll strike again, whereas Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen may never make another Oscar friendly movie. The reason I feel it can’t win, and why some are predicting it might not win anything, is, what exactly is the narrative behind this movie winning? It’s a throwback, but not quite. It’s a crowd pleaser, but not entirely. It’s madcap fun, brilliant and original, but some would argue even that’s not all true.

“Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” each have their supporters who would say otherwise about all of the above, and a win for them will mean something special.

Click Bait: Alec Baldwin, Oscars and Fraternities

Alec Baldwin’s departure essay grew a lot of ire this week, along with articles on a Duke Freshman and fraternities.

I read a lot of stuff, and not all of it makes it to my social media feed. “Click Bait” is my weekly roundup of links pertaining to movies, politics, culture and anything else I found generally interesting this week.

Alec Baldwin: “Good Bye, Public Life”

I’m quickly coming to realize that siding with Alec Baldwin is an unpopular opinion, but I found a lot of his essay smart and insightful about the way our media and our culture operate today. A few poor choices of words about him being a homophobe fail to paint the full picture of the man. The verbs thrown at him are the same once used against Michael Richards and Mel Gibson, to name a few, he seems to be fighting a losing battle with the press, and everything that’s being said reflects of this choice line from his piece: “In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day.” 

So no, I don’t think Alec Baldwin is a douche.

Apathy and the Oscars

The common fear this Oscar season is that people increasingly don’t care about awards shows, about the Oscars or about movies. I’ve written as much in suggesting that TV is the new medium of choice, while film is only passionately admired by those in an ever shrinking niche. This fear is explored interestingly in this NY Times piece, and it may be corroborated by a recent poll suggesting that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture nominees.

That puzzling stat though doesn’t seem to ask who all did pay for those tickets to see “Gravity,” i.e. the fifth highest grossing movie of the year. Continue reading “Click Bait: Alec Baldwin, Oscars and Fraternities”

Oscars 2014 – Best Documentary Overview

A rundown of reviews of all the documentaries nominated for this year’s Oscars and a prediction of the future winner.

People love to rail on the Best Documentary category at the Oscars, and while it’s mind boggling that something as innovative and fresh as “Stories We Tell” couldn’t make the cut, it’s quite often that the final crop is never so terrible.

This year the branch diversified their picks with some crowd pleasers, profiles, surreal experiments and important political statements. And what’s really fortunate is that four of the five nominees (“20 Feet From Stardom” excluded) are all streaming on Netflix.

Here’s a brief rundown of each of the nominees and my own prediction of who might take Oscar gold.

The Act of Killing – 4 stars

One of the early great scenes in “The Act of Killing” shows Anwar Congo, a former gangster and executioner in Indonesia who alone murdered 1000 individuals and lives to boast about his former glory, demonstrating how to strangle a man while minimizing the blood splatter. It’s absolutely harrowing how casually he performs it with a spring in his step, but when Director Joshua Oppenheimer shows Congo the footage, he feels nothing and isn’t phased in the slightest. “The Act of Killing” takes us deeper down the rabbit hole by allowing these evil men to stage recreations of their horrible crimes. People act with bravado in surreal scenarios, and the film crosses the border between movie making fiction and reality. It’s darkly funny and disturbingly beautiful at times, and it pulls the miraculous trick of actually making us sympathize with this wretched man, someone we smiling and even petting ducklings. To see him purge his horror at the film’s end is magnificent.

Continue reading “Oscars 2014 – Best Documentary Overview”

The LEGO Movie

“The Lego Movie” is wonderfully silly, colorful, irreverent, absurd and a brilliant embodiment of our shared cultural experience.

Legos aren’t just toys; for those kids (and adults) who build them, they’re tiny rectangles of color, irreverence and imagination. And it feels so fitting that as “The Lego Movie” presents them, they become a miniature metaphor for life itself. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s wonderfully outrageous story captures the joy and possibility contained within every brick.

“The Lego Movie” at times plays like the culmination of the entire Millennial generation’s media moments. The dialogue zips along with the speed once reserved for the Marx Brothers and Old Hollywood Screwball but is now a facet of the kids who have grown up with “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development.” The ironic absurdity to the entire story plays directly to a modern sensibility. And entire set pieces and spastic, GIF ready images feel like every Internet meme rolled into one (a character called Princess Uni-Kitty seems bound to become one).

It’s a brilliantly wild and even surreal experience that reaches for activity and laughs wherever it can find them. Some may find “The Lego Movie” unrelenting if not exhausting, but the exhilarating quickness is exactly why it feels so daring and inventive.

Even the story tests limits by treating every detail with a knowing wink. “The Lego Movie” follows the adventures of Emmet (Chris Pratt), an every day guy who smiles, likes what everyone else likes and is happy to just be a part of it all. When he meets Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), he’s told he is “The Special” with a prophecy that proclaims him to be “the most awesome, interesting person ever,” destined to save the world and find what makes him so unique.

Lord and Miller (“21 Jump Street“) recognize even the kids have heard that one in some shape or form before (“The Matrix,” for one), so it plays directly on those instruction manual tropes. The villain is named President Business (Will Ferrell), the theme song to the world is proudly called “Everything is AWESOME!!!” and it minces no words over story details that don’t add to the beautiful world they’re creating.

Beyond that, pop culture obscurity designed to go over the kids’ heads and land only with the parents don’t exist here. Lord and Miller have made a dynamic, bonkers comedy first and rely on the fact that kids will appreciate its broad strokes while the older crowd can admire the speed, absurdity and wittiness. For proof, look no further than the Batman song, with the lyrics, “DARKNESS. NO PARENTS. BLACK WINDOW SHADES.”

Although this is a movie that could be for everyone, it’s built with the Lego loving crowd in mind. Familiar Lego instruction manuals direct the film’s hero to brush his teeth and perform jumping jacks while blink and you’ll miss it visual gags and Easter Eggs like a poster for “A Popular Band” litter the scenery awaiting the Internet obsessive to find it all. In one sequence, the film flashes between many of Lego’s available sets and brands for purchase, providing a tasteful, hilarious and even plot driving way of doing the necessary toy-tie in.

The fun of playing with Legos however boils down to the act of seeing the world you can create, and “The Lego Movie” is a visually stunning example. The camera is completely liberated and mobile and the colors and details in every frame are endless, utilizing the best of modern CGI while staying true to the characteristic look and shape of Legos dating back to forever. One shot is a miraculously bleak image filled of destruction and chaos after a climactic battle. It looks worthy enough to belong in “Avatar,” but Lord and Miller smash cut to a pitiful looking cloud constructed of Legos, achieving the two-fold effect of an absurd visual gag while reminding us that beyond it all is a little kid dreaming this all up.

There’s beauty in that realization, and “The Lego Movie” really hits its stride in a fourth wall breaking final act that attains an emotional resonance on par with “Toy Story” and the best of Pixar. But “The Lego Movie” is entirely its own creation, constructed from the universal building blocks that define our cultural experience.

4 stars

Click Bait: Woody Allen, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nye

This week Philip Seymour Hoffman, Woody Allen and Bill Nye were all in the news along with Green Day, The Beatles and George Zimmerman.

I read a lot of stuff, and not all of it makes it to my social media feed. “Click Bait” is my weekly roundup of links pertaining to movies, politics, culture and anything else I found generally interesting this week.

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

The outpouring of love and sadness that followed Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death last Sunday is not rare for an actor, but it is rare for an actor such as he, an actor better known for villainous, repugnant character actor parts, for the mourning period to be so fervent for so long and for him to have gone in such a horrible way, not unlike another great actor’s career cut criminally too short in much the same way, Heath Ledger.

I likely first noticed Hoffman in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” in which he could not look less like his supposed brother Ethan Hawke, but was in control and was simply scary good. It wasn’t long before I started seeing his face in half of the great American movies of the last two decades, most memorably for me in “The Master” and in his fiery scene stealing moment in “Punch Drunk Love.”

There have been a lot of eulogies written, perhaps why I didn’t write one myself. Here are clips from some of the better tributes I read:

A.O. Scott:

“Pathetic, repellent, undeserving of sympathy. Mr. Hoffman rescued them from contempt precisely by refusing any easy route to redemption. He did not care if we liked any of these sad specimens. The point was to make us believe them and to recognize in them — in him.”

Scott Tobias and the rest of The Dissolve:

“He set off small detonations whenever he appeared, and instantly amplified the stakes. He was the most electric actor of his generation.”

Derek Thompson in The Atlantic:

“He could puff himself up and play larger than life, but his specialty was to find the quiet dignity in life-sized characters—losers, outcasts, and human marginalia.”

Aaron Sorkin writing in TIME:

“So it’s in that spirit that I’d like to say this: Phil Hoffman, this kind, decent, magnificent, thunderous actor, who was never outwardly “right” for any role but who completely dominated the real estate upon which every one of his characters walked, did not die from an overdose of heroin — he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.”

And this troubling report about Hoffman and his appearance in the remaining “Hunger Games” movies Continue reading “Click Bait: Woody Allen, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nye”

2013 Movie Catch Up

Catching up with 2013 gems like “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “The East,” “Short Term 12” and “To the Wonder”

I easily watch more new movies in December than any other month in the year. It’s a race to see what movies might end up on my year-end list and what movies I can start predicting for Oscar nominations.

Now both of those events have passed, and the urgency is gone. Still there are movies like “A Touch of Sin,” “The Past,” “Wadjda,” “At Berkeley,” “The Great Beauty,” “Bastards” and “The Wind Rises” that are beyond where I can easily access them (so maybe expect a part two to this post), but for those gaps that seemed most pressing, I finally amended them.

Rather than suffer through a full review for each long after the moment has passed, here are some capsule thoughts on recent 2013 movies I felt needed to be seen before they got lost in next year’s shuffle.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – 3 ½ stars

Though featuring shots that seem lifted from “Badlands” and a story that would appear to chronicle that film’s aftermath, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” isn’t quite Terence Malick-lite. David Lowery’s film details the end of jailbirds Bob and Ruth, but not their sordid beginning. Lowery instead explores the will of Bob to escape from prison and return to his wife and daughter he’s never met and Ruth’s determination to start anew. Bradford Young’s cinematography evokes the rustic earth tones present in Malick’s best and worst while Daniel Hart’s music channels Nick Cave with rhythmic pattering and trembling strings. But Lowery separates the spiritual poetry and narrated prose from the imagery, making this strictly a film about responsibility and parenting, establishing the close-knit tension from how seemingly close the characters are to accomplishing what they must. Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck only share a handful of scenes, but their chemistry is in the unspeakable ether. Affleck has a simple, matter of fact presentation of his jailbreak that categorizes the whole movie’s tender mystique and close to the bone authenticity. “Sir, I used to be the devil, and now, I’m just a man.” Continue reading “2013 Movie Catch Up”

Friday Night Channel Surfing

Switching between “Quadrophenia,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Superman” and “Lethal Weapon.”

I wouldn’t recommend the habit of channel surfing when it comes to selecting an evening’s movie. Jumping into the middle of even a great movie and catching a few seconds of dialogue out of context can look mighty odd. It’s something that doesn’t happen with TV, which is often designed for people to jump in at any moment. I liken the sensation to listening to a random 30 second clip of a song on Amazon and believing you’ve got a full sense of what that track sounds like or how it is they got to that weird, minor key transition.

Regardless, I did not have control of the remote Friday night, and it’s amazing what you can pick up when you’re dividing your attention between an iPad and the TV.

Our family was fortunate enough to turn on the TV right as the ’50s diner scene of “Pulp Fiction” was starting. I commented that Buddy Holly was actually Steve Buscemi, and the DVR confirmed it. John Travolta asked what a $5 milkshake tastes like, and although AMC dubbed it to a “freaking” good shake, it prompted our own ice cream run. Tarantino’s movie is one you can jump into at any moment, and we would’ve remained there were it not for the dubbed swears and commercial breaks.

The next stop was the original “Superman” on HBO. My sister commented that Christopher Reeve is not as attractive as Henry Cavill by a mile, but I noticed that even the cheesy effects as the Fortress of Solitude grew and erupted out of the North Pole looked cooler, prettier and more compelling than the ugly gray shades permeating every moment of “Man of Steel.” Then Marlon Brando showed up as Jor-El and I knew that I was watching a real classic. Will Zack Snyder’s film have the same watchability 30 years from now?

Starting at just about the same time was the original “Lethal Weapon,” and we watched that up until the point that Danny Glover unironically said “I’m getting too old for this shit.” It’s hard to believe there was a time when these cliches seemed less egregious. It was at least interesting to see Mel Gibson in his prime. Too often I’ve caught one of the “Lethal Weapon” sequels on TNT and rolled my eyes at Joe Pesci being irritating or Glover sitting on a toilet rigged to explode. Continue reading “Friday Night Channel Surfing”

Like Father, Like Son

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s family drama has an absolute perfect grace note of an ending.

In Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Like Father, Like Son,” two sets of parents have learned that their children were switched at birth. Now with the kids at age 6, the parents must consider “swapping.” It’s a scenario that seems not entirely plausible, and at worst seems to set up the audience for something tragic.

I can think of a dozen ways in which Kore-eda’s film could’ve ended that would’ve made me feel miserable. It avoids them all and feels more real as a result. “Like Father, Like Son” is one of the loveliest films of the year in the way it touches on these major choices and decisions in life with a feather touch.

The film opens delicately. The young boy Keita is attending a pre-school interview, which seems harsh in its stark wide-shot framing and tough questions for a 6-year-old, but Keita tells a little white lie to help his chances and everyone leaves smiling. It hints at the tone Kore-eda is playing with, one that is significant but also cheerful and never impossibly grim.

Keita is being put into this private school by his parents Ryota (Fukurama Masaharu) and Midori Nonomiya (Ono Machiko), a wealthy family with strict rules, high expectations for a gifted son and a truly loving household. Whereas another film might be more cynical about an imperfect child or playing up the father’s long work hours as a detriment, Kore-eda operates on these more picturesque, yet ordinary family dynamics.

Ryota and Midori soon learn that Keita was switched at birth in a clerical accident, and the hospital brokers a meeting between the Nonomiyas and the Saikis, a more middle class family with three children, the oldest of whom is Ryusei, the Nonomiyas’ biological son.

The two families get along well and the children do even better, and in addition to an option to sue the hospital, the two families tenuously discuss the possibility of swapping children before either starts school and gets too attached to their home life. Continue reading “Like Father, Like Son”