Tag: Argo

Off the Red Carpet – Week of 10/10 – 10/17

With “Argo” now in tow (my 3.5 star review), the Oscar race is starting to flesh out. Only a handful of films that will be major contenders for any awards have not yet been screened at festivals or to the press, those being “Les Miserables,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hobbit,” “Hitchcock” and “Promised Land.” The question will be if “Argo” has the legs to go all the way given its somewhat middling performance at the box office (it earned about $19 million and was #2 behind “Taken 2”). It’ll surely get a Best Picture nomination and likely more, but only time will tell.

Here then is an updated look at some of the news of the week and a slightly tweaked list of predictions.

 “Flight” premieres at NYFF closing night

Robert Zemeckis’s first live action film since “Cast Away” is already being celebrated as great, complex studio filmmaking. Its strong outing practically cements Denzel Washington as a serious contender for Lead Actor and also has put John Goodman in the supporting conversation thanks to his other appearance this week in “Argo.”

Documentary Shorts Category has shortlist revealed

Eight short films have been selected as the potential five Oscar nominees from a list of 31 eligible titles. The list is as follows: (via Indiewire)

“The Education of Mohammad Hussein,” Loki Films
“Inocente,” Shine Global, Inc.
“Kings Point,” Kings Point Documentary, Inc.
“Mondays at Racine,” Cynthia Wade Productions
“Open Heart,” Urban Landscapes Inc.
“ParaÍso,” The Strangebird Company
“The Perfect Fit,” SDI Productions Ltd.
“Redemption,” Downtown Docs

“The Dark Knight Rises” in the hunt

Warner Bros. announced their For Your Consideration campaign this week, with the big surprise being the campaign for Anne Hathaway and “The Dark Knight Rises.” Hathaway’s role as Catwoman is being sold as a lead performance, which means she could find a spot in a slim field and be poised to not compete with herself in the supporting ranks for “Les Miserables.” See the whole Warner Bros. campaign.

James Gandolfini has secret part in “Zero Dark Thirty”

I’ll just leave this here. (via Entertainment Weekly)

Michael Moore comments further on controversial documentary branch

Michael Moore, never one to usually be opinionated and vocal (cough, cough), made further criticisms/explanations about his expectations regarding the new rules for nominating films in the Best Documentary category of the Oscars. He was a proponent for the new rules that make the nominating process more inclusive, but he feels certain films have taken advantage of these possibilities, leaving for a crop of films, 160 roughly, that is just too big a mountain to conquer. At the same time, he hopes to expand the number of voting members in the documentary branch for next year’s awards season. (via Indiewire)

Week 2 Oscar Predictions

Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet – Week of 10/10 – 10/17”

Argo

“Argo’s” images of people rioting in Iranian streets look startlingly similar to the ones we see coming out of the Middle East today. The fact that this movie’s opening scene is an attack on an American embassy gives it an even more disturbing modern day resonance.

Ben Affleck’s film speaks to the power of images and the strength of Hollywood movies to impact the culture around the world.

Thankfully, “Argo” is exactly the arresting genre picture a movie about movie making (even fake movie making) deserves. It’s a multi-layered thriller laced in Hollywood bravura and whip smart cynicism, and it does this remarkably true story proud by letting its heroes and storytelling shine.

“Argo” is based on a recently declassified CIA mission from 1979 to 1980 in which six American diplomats hiding out in the Canadian embassy were snuck out of Iran during a several month long American hostage crisis. The plan to make their escape was organized by Tony Mendez (Affleck), who admits that this was the best bad idea they had. That’s because it does move into that ever-so-common movie territory of “too good to be true.”

We’ll set up alibis for the six Americans as a Canadian film crew making a science fiction movie named Argo. The script is a sprawling “Star Wars” ripoff set in an exotic location, and Iran just might be the perfect place to shoot. We’ll sell ad space in Variety, attach producers and make this fake movie a fake hit.

Well there’s your movie right there.

Affleck takes this farfetched story that would only be good enough for movie magic and makes it a true-to-life reality. It’s an accurate account of how Mendez enlisted help from an Oscar winning make up artist, John Chambers (John Goodman), got a curmudgeonly producer, Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and established an elaborate cover story.

What makes “Argo” such delicious catnip to movie lovers is its strong insider mentality. Every idea brainstormed is a hopelessly bad one, no one has any faith in the plan or even this movie that actual Hollywood execs think to be real, and yet the movie magic pluck that the good guys will make it in the end always seems to win out.

It does so in the last minute chases at the Iranian airport or the cynical sparring battle between Arkin and a producer over what project he’s going to finance next, and it happens when two Iranian border agents are struck silly by storyboards for even the idea of this fake movie.

And yet Affleck acknowledges that the movies only work because of their images, not their words. So much of his story is told through TV screens and archive footage, and the rest is captured in grippingly immersive suspense scenes often free of score or even much dialogue.

His subtle way of explaining how much images matter come when an American protester quotes “Network” in saying he’s mad as hell, or when the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber) says to Mendez, “I expected more of a G-Man look.”

These are moments and ideas that come from the movies, and in this way “Argo” is a powerful zeitgeist movie that is set in the early ‘80s but can resonate in our modern, media driven world.

3 ½ stars