Tag: Bernie

The 2nd Annual Anti-Oscars

Every year there are great performers and films that for whatever reason do not get the attention they deserve at the Oscars. Sometimes they’re underrated, sometimes they’re critical darlings and sometimes the field is just too vast.

I guess I should be proud that when I did this feature last year, none of the movies or performers I named got nominated. Is that a good thing? Anyway, here again I’ve picked some names that have nary a prayer when the Oscar nominations are announced next Thursday. If it feels like I’m missing a really good one, assume they actually have a shot.

Best Picture

  • Looper
  • The Kid With a Bike
  • The Turin Horse
  • Bernie
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower
  • Rust and Bone
  • The Impossible

I’ll maybe wish I included my four of my Top 10 movies of the year on this list when they don’t get nominated. Those are “The Master,” “Skyfall,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

But the movies I have selected are all just as wonderful and not Oscar bait at all. “Looper” is exactly what clever studio filmmaking should be. “The Kid With a Bike” is such a heartbreaking and darling film about a kid who loves too strong the things that don’t love him back, and it’s only being forgotten because it premiered two Cannes film festivals ago. “The Turin Horse” is so gigantic, epic and hard to watch, it may just be considered one of the best movies ever made years from now. “Rust and Bone” is a daring romance that the Academy simply hasn’t seen. “Bernie” treads the line between comedy, drama and documentary a little too closely for the Academy to care. “Perks” is destined to be a teen classic alongside “The Breakfast Club.” And “The Impossible” should have Oscar bait written all over it, but Academy voters have already booted it out of contention in fields such as Visual Effects and Makeup.

There’s no questioning that the movies that are being nominated for Best Picture are quality films, but some of my picks might hold up in the culture’s eye just a little better over time.

Snubs: “Chronicle,” “The Comedy,” “Oslo, August 31st” Continue reading “The 2nd Annual Anti-Oscars”

Off the Red Carpet: Weeks of 11/14 – 11/28

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday. I took off last week so I would too, but I still saw plenty of movies, including “Life of Pi,” “Lincoln,” “Magic Mike,” “Arbitrage,” “The Deep Blue Sea” and “This Must Be the Place.”

“Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Miserables” screened for Academy audiences

There were a few Oscar bloggers getting kind of antsy before Thanksgiving that this Oscar season was in a momentary lull. But fear not privileged pundits! These movies have now screened for you even though everyone else, myself included will have to wait until at least Christmas Day, if not 2013. Both “Les Mis” and “Zero Dark Thirty” now seem like very likely Best Picture contenders if not winners, and there were plenty of critics to fawn over each of them. Anne Hathaway, Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain have all entered the acting fray as well.

Indie Spirit Award Nominations Announced

“Silver Linings Playbook” and “Moonrise Kingdom” each lead the pack at the Indie Spirits with five nominations a piece, including for Best Feature. The remaining three films were “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Bernie” and the unbeknownst to me “Keep the Lights On,” which scored three nods. Scott Feinberg gives a very helpful analysis that they may not amount to anything in the grand scheme of things, but I like the Indie Spirits because they tend to recognize a handful of movies you’ve never heard of as well as the ones you have that won’t get the recognition they deserve at the Oscars. (Full nominations via Indiewire)

Gotham Awards honor “Moonrise Kingdom”

The Gotham Awards are the first awards show of the year, so that’s the reason above all why they matter, especially since they’re not televised. They’re known as New York’s answer to the Indie Spirits, and by honoring both “Moonrise Kingdom” and the documentary “How to Survive a Plague,” they’ve given serious pushes to both films and a push in the opposite direction to “The Master,” amongst others.

Photo Credit: The Hollywood Reporter

Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable

In my previous installment of Off the Red Carpet, I plugged THR’s Actor Roundtable but wondered what happened to the women. Well, they got their own discussion period (although they were interviewed by two men and placed on non-threatening couches with more muted, soothing, womanly colors) after all. This crop of seven includes Anne Hathaway, Rachel Weisz, Amy Adams, Marion Cotillard, Naomi Watts, Sally Field and Helen Hunt, all of whom have very good chances at an Oscar nomination this year, and three of whom I am absolutely in love with. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

The Atlantic continues beating of “Cinema is Dead” drum

A number of critics recently have been bemoaning the so-called decline of the movies in the pop culture zeitgeist, but this article by The Atlantic featuring some pretty shocking quotes from Martin Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker is probably the most depressing yet, acknowledging that film prints and the ability to produce a celluloid copy of an old movie are being completely fazed out by major studios. What’s more, she claims contemporary restoration people have no idea how some of these movies are supposed to look. This concerns the Oscars because the Academy themselves have had to sponsor events to celebrate movies shown on film. (via The Atlantic)

Also, Anthony Hopkins has some predictably bad words to say about awards season in an interesting interview with Huff Post, and Angelina Jolie is trying to get Ewan McGregor an Oscar based on how impressed she was with his work in “The Impossible.”

Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: Weeks of 11/14 – 11/28”

Bernie

Most of us have something of a bullshit detector when it comes to judging people. If they seem too good to be true, they probably are. “Bernie” is a film that always teeters on the edge of self-parody and cynicism, but it carefully tries to prove in its 98 minutes that its title character is as good and noble as he seems.

It tells the true story of a mortician (sorry, Funeral Director. Sorry again, Assistant Funeral Director) in Carthage, Texas who is one of the most loved people in town. Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) makes his work into an art, revealing his care, eloquence and theatrics in an opening scene where Bernie demonstrates to a classroom the procedure to preparing a body for casketing. Director Richard Linklater gets documentary style testimonials from Carthage townspeople, some character actors and some people who really knew Bernie, but you wouldn’t know the difference, to say just how wonderful he was.

“He had the ability to make the world feel good,” says one local. These people are essential to the portrayal of Bernie. One guy explains the difference between the regions of Texas, how you have the Dallas snobs, Austin liberals, San Antonio Tex Mex, West Texas hicks and finally the good hearted simple folk of the small town of Carthage. “In a small town, we always expect the worst, but also expect the best,” says another.

And Bernie was the best of them. The way they talk about him is so optimistically glossy, so disarming and so near ridiculous in Bernie’s humanitarian capabilities, including showing his love for the DLOL’s (Dear Little Old Ladies) and singing in church. For a while you think you’re watching a Christopher Guest movie about simpletons in the Deep South, and Linklater intentionally keeps you guessing.

Because before long, Bernie starts a relationship with Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), a bitter, wealthy widow who is hated in town and eventually makes Bernie her servant. “She’d rip you a brand new, three bed, two bath asshole,” says one townsperson, a line so good that if it didn’t actually come from a real townsperson you wish it was.

She proves so controlling of Bernie that he suffers an out-of-body moment and shoots and kills Marjorie with an air rifle. He takes her money and begins donating around the community, and no one seems to notice she’s gone because she’s so disliked. Eventually Bernie is caught, and a District Attorney, Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey), begins to raise all of our old questions about Bernie as soon as we start to see him as a loveable saint.

Is he gay? Is he evil? Is he putting on an act? Is he a serial killer? Is he driven crazy by his religion? Why doesn’t he have any greed, vices or flaws? Why would he hang out with Marjorie otherwise? Why does he dress and act the way he does, with a lilting voice, colorful polo shirts and a tidy haircut beneath a silly hat?

The beauty of Jack Black’s performance here is that he is disarming, innocent and likeable, and yet he’s never a caricature. This is a character ripe for satire, and the movie is always on that fine line, but Black delivers a very sincere performance.

Similarly, McConaughey has a field day with his role. His haircut and glasses belong to another decade, and here he’s even showing a touch of gray. He’s sincere in not mocking or judging Bernie either, but he makes clear he has his suspicions and his own morals to uphold. What’s one of the tipoffs in assuming Bernie’s sexuality? “And the kicker is, he always wore sandals.”

Linklater has told a really special story here by making it about character, not story at all. His blend of docu-realism and theatrical vitality in a few surprise song and dance numbers keeps us in tow, always wondering what we’re missing about Bernie but ultimately content in showing that this guy is as good as can be.

3 ½ stars

Off the Red Carpet: Week 3 (10/17 – 10/24)

Three weeks have passed since I started this column, we’re 18 weeks away, and I’ve seen yet another two major contenders thanks to the Chicago International Film Festival (I might’ve seen three if not for CIFF’s awful secret screening selection), “The Sessions” and “Silver Linings Playbook.”

“Silver Linings” is exactly the kind of film that could take Best Picture and sweep some of the acting awards if I didn’t think “The Master” could absolutely dominate in the acting branch, and that’s because it’s a crowd pleasing romantic comedy with a lot of depth and poignancy about disabilities. It’s more about disabilities than even “The Sessions,” which just uses its problem as a plot device. If it did, it would probably be the first straight rom-com to win since “Annie Hall.”

But this was a busy week elsewhere, so let’s get down to it.

Joaquin Phoenix calls Oscar season “bullshit,” heads explode amongst people who care about this stuff

Sometimes I’m really disappointed by the media. They have a habit of making a story out of nothing because when one person reports it, everyone else has to spread it around. Joaquin Phoenix said in a terrific interview with Elvis Mitchell for Interview magazine that he thought the whole act of campaigning and comparing people’s performances is “total, utter bullshit.” “It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot.”

That quote alone should give a sense of how batshit crazy and awesome the rest of the interview actually is, but pundits decided to pick out this quote and make a big deal about it, some claiming that he now doesn’t stand a chance at even a nomination.

Well, he’s too good in “The Master” for that. This wouldn’t be the first time someone has put down the Oscars and completely opted out of coming to the ceremony and still won (see: Woody Allen, for one). It’s clear that after two losses (“Gladiator,” “Walk the Line”) he’s tired of the posturing and is seeking a different kind of truth in his performances. So everyone can just calm down. (via Entertainment Weekly and Interview Magazine)

Gotham Award Nominations Announced

The Gotham Awards are significant because they’re the first batch of nominations in this long, long, long awards season. They recognize indie films that would otherwise need a boost amongst the studio fare, and this year they’ve helped put “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” back into the conversation. “Beasts” didn’t score a Best Feature nod, opting instead for the lesser known “The Loneliest Planet” and “Middle of Nowhere,” but director Benh Zeitlin scored a nomination and could make some surprise waves come Oscar time. Also in the fray is Richard Linklater’s “Bernie.” There is a small but vigorous campaign to get Jack Black nominated for an Oscar, and this is his first step in that direction. (via In Contention)

George Clooney could be first to be nominated in six Oscar categories

Guy Lodge of In Contention observed in a case of severe data overload that if “Argo” is nominated for Best Picture, producer George Clooney would be the first person to ever be nominated in six separate categories, Best Picture (“Argo”), Best Adapted Screenplay (“The Ides of March”), Best Director and Original Screenplay (“Good Night, and Good Luck”), Best Actor (“Michael Clayton, “Up in the Air,” “The Descendants”) and the category he won for, Best Supporting Actor (“Syriana”). Does Clooney sing? Maybe we can get him nominated for Best Original Song next year. (via In Contention)

“Holy Motors” and “After Lucia” take top prizes at CIFF

CIFF doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of the awards season, but I was there to enjoy it, and for “Holy Motors” to win its first major prize, along with an acting prize for Denis Lavant, says something. I’ve even heard people making a case for Best Original Song for Kylie Minogue’s cameo. I’ll remind you that I hated the film and appear to be the only person on the planet who thinks this way, but there’s no denying it’s not exactly up the Academy’s alley. “After Lucia” however is Mexico’s entry in the Foreign Film race, so any recognition is always a good thing. (via Hollywood Chicago)

Best Costume Design for “Django Unchained”?

Some pundits seem almost adamant in declaring that Quentin Tarantino’s latest film doesn’t really stand much of a chance this Oscar season, but I came across this interesting blog that says otherwise in one peculiar category: Best Costume Design. “Django’s” period clothing is done by Sharen Davis, nominated twice previously for “Ray” and “Dreamgirls.” The article also points out that Tarantino is responsible for some of the most iconic costumes in recent memory but has nothing to show for it. (via Clothes on Film) Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: Week 3 (10/17 – 10/24)”