Why I want Hugo to win Best Picture

Let's be real: The Artist is probably going to go all in on Sunday.  Which I'm not pleased about.  I haven't seen all of the Best Picture noms (I'm short War Horse, Midnight in Paris, The Descendants, and Extremely Inconvenient & Incredibly Annoying), but I did see The Artist and I did see Hugo and there's no question to me that Hugo is a superior film and a superior experience.

For one thing, Hugo IS an experience.  Watching The Artist, it felt like a lot of work on my part for not a lot of payoff; I didn't feel like the filmmakers had made the same kind of effort that they were requiring me to make.  Let me try to explain that better: Hugo is a film that I felt asked for effort on my part (mostly it demands an emotional investment) but was also clearly a labor of love and craft.  The Artist demands intellectual effort by virtue of its form, but seems lazy in how it was put together.  Down to the performances (I thought Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley both turned out more convincing jobs than Jean Dujardin, no matter how charming he might be) I was more involved, more enraptured, more rewarded by Hugo.

Other wins I want to see tomorrow: Viola Davis for Best Actress, Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress, Jonah Hill for Best Supporting Actor, Margin Call for Best Original Screenplay.  I want to see some slammin' dresses on the red carpet, and I want Billy Crystal to pull it out and be awesome as host.  We'll see how it goes!

Oscar Roundup: The Artist

The Artist.  So...that happened.  I'm going to say flat out that I don't understand why so many people are so excited about this movie.  I thought it was kind of interesting, and sort of a fun experiment, but overall?  I was honestly pretty bored.  It was saved a bit for me by the absolutely charming acting jobs by Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin, but when I left the theater I wasn't impressed.

This is short because I don't have a lot to say (SEE WHAT I DID THERE), but I'm pretty mystified by everyone going nuts over this movie.  (To say nothing of how baffled I am that this experiment in silent film earned a Best Original Screenplay nomination.)  I guess my big issue is that yes, it was kind of interesting to watch a silent film in this day and age, but I didn't get why it was done this way?  I don't feel that having The Artist be silent and in black and white added anything to my experience watching it.  Hugo, the other love letter to film that's collecting accolades this year, is also about the history of film - but it's dynamic, exciting, and beautiful.  Which are not adjectives I would have used to describe The Artist.

Oscar Roundup: The Help

It's that time of year that falls between the Oscar nominations being announced, and the telecast airing - that time of year when I frantically scramble to try and see the nominees I haven't had the chance to yet.  This year I have a lot of ground to cover, partially due to my own delinquency in seeing movies and partially due to the seemingly randomness of the nominations.  Of the nine best picture noms, I've already seen Moneyball and Hugo; yesterday, I watched The Help.

I read the book last month because I wanted to be part of the discussion.  I've heard a lot of the controversy and strong feelings surrounding this book (and subsequent movie), and I always like being included.  Having read it, I can say that I both enjoyed it and understand why people are complaining about it.  It's a very self-serving story, and sags a little under the weight of the author's guilt - but it's also a strong story about racial relationships (obviously) and the relationships women form between themselves...and how those get warped and break down when the women involved have very little power to affect their own lives. 

The movie is similar, but gets an extraordinary boost from the actresses.  Every performance is wonderful, from Emma Stone's squeaky wheel Skeeter straining against the claustrophobic confines of her home to Viola Davis' worn down, worn out, compassionate housemaid who continues to give even after she's got nothing left to offer.  The surprising note here was Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays the villain; her Hilly Holbrook is a contemptible character who schemes and back-stabs and plays with the tiny amount of power that society has given her...and ultimately makes you feel for even her, when she gets force-fed some badly needed truth for, you realize, probably the first time in her life.  Davis gives the best performance, but she's the star of the media at the moment so I won't repeat what everyone else is doing - suffice to say, she's as brilliant as people are saying. 

The strength of the performances means that even the bits of the story you want to side-eye (and while I enjoyed the movie, there are a lot of them) are full of emotional honesty and weight.  Getting the story in visual form also helps alleviate the problems the book has with voice.  That is, while I was reading it I was always aware that no matter which character was speaking, I was reading narration that had been written by a white person and thus was subject to white privilege and experience.  Watching it play out on screen means that I don't have that white person narrator between me and Aibileen or me and Minny - it's just their experience.  Clearly there's still the problem of the story's origins, I'm just saying that this mediates that a bit.

Oscar predictions: I haven't seen The Iron Lady, so I can't weigh in on Meryl Streep's performance, but if Viola Davis gets Best Actress she'll definitely have earned it.  And despite having two noms in the Best Supporting Actress category, I hope Jessica Chastain doesn't split the vote enough to take the award away from Octavia Spencer.  Her impeccable comedic timing and sass made for some of the best moments in the film.

I don't think this one has a real shot at Best Picture, and honestly, having seen Hugo I would pick the Scorsese love-letter to film over this one.  But I'm glad it was recognized.