u-out.net

Battleship

james.cooper — Thu, 17 May 2012 21:08:44 +0000

Taylor Kitsch battles an alien spaceship in "Battleship."

Battleship is a silly, awful film.

Directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg (Hancock, Friday Night Lights), the film adaptation of the Hasbro board game may not be Hollywood’s worst summer blockbuster ever but it is certainly one of its weirdest.

Here, the 1967 board game transforms into a $209 million cinematic spectacle, an incredibly dumb film designed to market the “Battleship” brand and, put simply, to sell some Hasbro toys and merchandise.

Since the basic concept of the Hasbro board game requires maybe two minutes to explain, Battleship‘s 131 minute running time feels like a cruel joke or some sort of horrible misunderstanding.

When the film begins, we learn that some scientists have sent a signal into outer space in an attempt to communicate with other intelligent lifeforms after they discover that another planet exists in the universe with an atmosphere similar to that of earth’s.

As is prone to happen, some aliens respond and head to earth to engage in a real-life game of “Battleship” with the United States Navy.

The alien ships make their way toward earth unbeknownst to young Naval officer Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch, John Carter), who faces some mighty big challenges of his own as he prepares to propose to his girlfriend, Sam (Brooklyn Decker). Of course, before he can pop the question, young Alex must first ask Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson) for permission to marry his daughter.

But, Alex is a hothead, a playful fuckup who lets his own stubbornness and laziness too often get the better of him. Thus, Alex has some growing up to do if he is to prove himself to Sam’s father.

True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård shows up as Alex’s older brother, Stone Hopper (and no, I didn’t make that name up). Here, he serves as the commander of the USS Sampson and as the inspiration for young Alex to get his life together.

And, if you’ve ever seen a movie ever, you can probably guess how the ensuing alien invasion plays out, testing our young protagonist in ways he thought he’d never be tested and allowing the young man to prove himself the hero we all know him to be.

Things explode well in Battleship though I’m not sure that justifies the film’s ludicrous production budget or Peter Berg’s rehashing of every action film plot ever.

When your most memorable line (“Mahalo, motherfucka!” screams hip hop phenomenon Rihanna as she fires a machine gun at alien invaders) recalls one of the worst moments in one of the worst films ever (rapper Busta Rhymes’ “Trick or Treat, motherfucka” from Halloween: Resurrection), your script is in desperate trouble.

At its best, Battleship feels perfunctory, its characters saying and doing things that characters have said or done before in other, better films.

At its worst, the film feels unnecessarily long, a touch racist, and insulting (see Battleship‘s ridiculously sentimental use of real life war amputees and Iraqi war veterans who, quite frankly, deserve better).

Mostly though, Hasbro and Hollywood have delivered what will surely be regarded as one of the most expensive propaganda films ever made, a $209 million military recruitment commercial wherein we watch the Navy destroy the hell out of some aliens.

Given Hasbro’s licensing deals with Rocawear (Jay-Z’s urban clothing line), gaming company Activision, publisher Random House and Universal’s national partnerships with the Navy, Subway, Coke Zero, and Kraft, Battleship looks and feels like nothing more than a massive marketing campaign, a spectacle passing as filmmaking.

D+

Bully

james.cooper — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:34:27 +0000

Alex Libby in the new documentary, "Bully."

Bully, director Lee Hirsch’s new documentary about American school kids facing the relentless taunts, teasing and physical abuse of their classmates, is an engaging, often provocative, and affecting film.

The documentary is, in its problematic earnestness, an activist’s call to arms, an attempt to bring attention to the violence that confronts kids with perceived “differences” in our nation’s schools.

Here, we see Hirsch’s camera follow 14-year-old Ja’Meya Jackson, an athletic, intelligent black student in Mississippi, as she endures the daily jeers of the kids on her school bus. We, soon, stare in horror as the young girl retaliates finally and brings her mother’s gun on the bus, frantically wielding and pointing the weapon to defend herself.

The bus’ security camera captures the entire terrifying moment.

For this act, Ja’Meya sits in a Mississippi juvenile detention center and it is here where we watch the local sheriff rattle off the seemingly endless list of charges against the young girl.

We watch as a young boy threatens to stab young Alex Libby on a school bus as the vehicle makes its way to Alex’s school. Once off the bus and on school grounds, Alex will soon face more bullying and a vice principal who seems strangely oblivious to it all.

We meet the family of Ty Smalley in Perkins, Oklahoma and we watch Ty’s father carry his son’s tiny coffin into a small church after the 11-year-old killed himself in attempt to end the persistent bullying he faced at school.

Once more, we return to Oklahoma, this time to the small town of Tuttle, where the film introduces us to Kelby Johnson and her family.

Sixteen year-old Kelby, we learn, has come out as a lesbian. Here, we listen to Kelby’s father explain how the town reacted and how, with the news of his daughter’s homosexuality, old family friends refused to return friendly waves.

On camera, Kelby recalls sitting through class in her small Tuttle high school and we hear her recount how teachers would divide her class into boys, girls, and “Kelby,” with no recourse to school officials.

The young girl recalls a minivan full of her classmates driving into her, propelling her body onto the vehicle’s windshield.

And so goes Bully, a film that uses its camera to document visually the tales of violence (physical or otherwise) done to these children by their classmates and ignored by school boards and school officials.

In one particularly dramatic moment in the documentary, Hirsch and his film crew decide to share with Alex’s family and the officials at the young boy’s school footage of the escalating violence that confronts him each school day.

This moment seemed to horrify the audience in attendance at my press screening as we watched collectively the vice principle at Alex’s school do almost everything in her cognitive abilities to ignore the problem, despite the clear video evidence of unrelenting abuse now staring her in the face.

In the Q&A with Alex, Kelby and their respective families immediately following this advance screening, in fact, the audience zeroed in on this specific scene, asking Alex’s mom how it was possible that Alex’s vice principle could disregard the video of bullies harassing the young boy simply for his looking different.

Mrs. Libby offered no explanation, no enlightenment (how could she, as a reasonable, rational human being?).

Instead, Alex’s mother asked the audience to get engaged, imploring those in attendance to ensure that others see Hirsch’s film.

In its way, then, this exchange highlights the problems with Bully, a documentary intent on and content with making Americans aware of a problem that the film never truly examines through the sociological, psychological, or political lens that the topic of violence surely deserves.

Context is strangely missing here, for better or worse.

Hirsch’s camera lingers like a fly on the wall and it watches the action unfold as if it were an innocent bystander, giving viewers a sense of what it is like to live life as a bullied school kid.

In this respect, Bully is smart, inviting its viewers into a world that many of us fail to see for whatever our reasons.

However, without any contextualization, without any recourse to the myriad scholarship on violence, Hirsch’s documentary feels as helpless as the bullied victims feel initially in the film.

Certainly, Bully is film about violence, a film about how human beings relate to others and what happens when, psychologically, we never learn how to interact with others.

In this regard, Bully is nowhere near as brave as its subjects, the kids who seem determined not to let these bullies destroy their sense of self. These kids’ journey is not just one of bravery but one of self-discovery (i.e.—differences, good). Theirs is an attempt to not let their bullies define them, an attempt to turn away from suicidal thoughts and depression.

Perhaps it is too much a task to ask the 94-minute Bully to explore such a complex topic as violence and the reasons for violence.

Bully, then, despite its faults, might very well become the clarion call that its filmmakers clearly wish the film to be, sparking a national dialogue about a national concern.

In this respect, I applaud Hirsch and his film.

Let us hope that this dialogue comes complete with the source material lacking here.

B+

*Recently, Bully received a PG-13 rating after months of battles with the MPAA over language in the film. This rating ensures that schools across the country will be able to show the documentary, thus reaching its intended audience—i.e. kids in school. Apropo, films with PG-13 ratings that schools can also show students include The Hunger Games, Mission Impossible II, The Dark Knight Rises, and Drag Me To Hell.

Oklahoma film critics group names “The Artist” Best Film of 2011

james.cooper — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:21:19 +0000

"The Artist"

The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, the statewide group of professional film critics, has announced its sixth annual list of awards for achievement in cinema, giving top honors to the “The Artist,” a black-and-white, silent film that speaks volumes about movies and the people who make and watch them.

It also earned two additional wins for Michel Hazanavicius in the categories of Best Director and Best Screenplay, Original.

Set in the early days of Hollywood’s motion picture industry, “The Artist” celebrates the wonders of film as it explores the hazards of celebrity in the structure of a charming love story. Like another of the group’s Top 10 films of the year, Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” it pays tribute to the creative force behind filmmaking while also focusing on the impact the business has on the creative process and product.

“This was a close year in our voting,” OFCC President Rod Lott said. “’Drive,’ a film that in many ways is the polar opposite of ‘The Artist,’ came in a close second for best film of 2011. We had to have a tie-breaker vote, our first, for two categories: Best Screenplay, Adaptation and Best Supporting Actress.”

Rounding out the Oklahoma critics’ list of 10 best films of 2011 list are “Drive,” “The Descendants,” “Hugo,” “Shame,” “Moneyball,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Melancholia,” “The Tree of Life” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Best Actor honors went to George Clooney in “The Descendants.” His subtle portrayal of a man struggling with core issues of being a good father, husband and steward of a large area of pristine wilderness in Hawaii is funny and moving.

Best Actress honors went to Michelle Williams for her stunning portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in “My Week with Marilyn.”

Octavia Spencer earned the Best Supporting Actress for her role as a maid who finds a new kind of freedom in telling the truth about her life in “The Help,” while Albert Brooks, in a role far different from his usual comedic persona, won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a gangster in “Drive.”

“These performances surprised and impressed,” Lott said. ”While the Clooney, Spencer and Brooks films were major studio releases, Williams won for her big role in a small film. One of our goals is to call attention to those films without large distribution patterns or budgets.”

While 2011 was a year of intelligent and surprising films in all genres, it also was a year of some failures. OFCC members selected “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” as their Obviously Worst Film of the Year. Their nod to the sequel “The Hangover Part II” as the Not-So-Obviously Worst Film of the Year suggests that, sometimes, once is enough.

“As professional moviegoers, we see many more unsuccessful films than successful ones,” Lott said. “The Not-So-Obviously Worst Film category contains films that may have great talent behind them, but somehow add up to less than the sum of their parts.”

A new category was added this year, Best Guilty Pleasure, which was won by the “Fright Night” remake.

OFCC members are Oklahoma-based movie critics who write for print, broadcast and online outlets that publish or post reviews of current film releases. Among the media outlets represented are Oklahoma Gazette, The Oklahoman, Tulsa World, Edmond Life & Leisure, This Land Press and Urban Tulsa. Also represented are television station KOKH FOX 25; radio station KJYO/Clear Channel; and the websites 411mania.com, ionOKmag.com, crosswalk.com,u-out.net and shadowcabaret.com.

Film buffs can find the complete list of awards on the OFCC website, ofccircle.org, as well as frequent postings on film-related items and links to individual reviews.

Not all the films named as award winners opened in Oklahoma before voting took place; studios arranged press screenings and provided DVDs of many of their films so OFCC members could assess and consider them for year-end awards.

“We honor achievements in motion pictures each year both to celebrate film and to continue to draw attention to Oklahoma as a place with a sophisticated audience of people who appreciate movies that challenge and entertain,” Lott said.

OFCC promotes film in Oklahoma and strives to increase the visibility of the state’s film-viewing and filmmaking communities.

Complete List of OFCC 2011 Film Awards

Top 10 Films

1. “The Artist”

2. “Drive”

3. “The Descendants”

4. “Hugo”

5. “Shame”

6. “Moneyball”

7. “Midnight in Paris”

8. “Melancholia”

9. “Tree of Life”

10.“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”

Best Film

“The Artist”

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”

Best First Feature

Sean Durkin, “Martha Marcy May Marlene”

Best Actress

Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”

Best Actor

George Clooney, “The Descendants”

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer, “The Help”

Best Supporting Actor

Albert Brooks, “Drive”

Best Screenplay, Adaptation

“Moneyball,” Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin

Best Screenplay, Original

“The Artist,” Michel Hazanavicius

Best Documentary Film

“Page One: Inside The New York Times”

Best Foreign Language Film

“The Skin I Live In”

Best Animated Film

“The Adventures of Tintin”

Obviously Worst Film

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

Not-So-Obviously-Worst Film

“The Hangover Part II”

Best Guilty Pleasure

“Fright Night”

Dear Oklahoma, It Gets Better

james.cooper — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:15:14 +0000

The Oklahoma State Flag



Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Honors Sterlin Harjo With Award for Achievement in Film
james.cooper — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:45:52 +0000

The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle has honored filmmaker Sterlin Harjo with the 2011 Tilghman Award celebrating achievement in cinema in the state.

The OFF will present Harjo with the Tilghman Award in a short ceremony Friday, Nov. 5, after a screening of his most recent works, a series of documentary shorts for Tulsa’s This Land Press. The screening, which begins at 5:30 p.m., will be at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art as part of the museum’s American Indian Cinema Showcase from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5.

Harjo, a 31-year-old member of the Seminole and Creek Nations, has earned international acclaim for films examining contemporary life of Native people. But his feature-length narratives – “Four Sheets to the Wind” in 2007 and “Barking Water” in 2009 – are emotionally rich motion pictures populated by complex characters.

“Sterlin’s films are invested with a humanity and depth of emotion that eludes many of his older, more experienced peers,” says OFCC President Rod Lott. “In a short period of time, Sterlin has really raised the bar for Oklahoma filmmakers. He more than deserves the Tilghman for his commitment to his art.”

OFCC’s 19 member critics choose as recipients of the award those individuals who have made significant contributions to film, advanced awareness of film in Oklahoma or highlighted Oklahoma as the home of talented and productive filmmakers, actors and others in the industry.

Raised in Holdenville and now living in Tulsa, Harjo began his filmmaking career while he was an art student at the University of Oklahoma. He credits a film class of Misha Nedeljkovich there with introducing him to the motion pictures of John Cassavetes and other independent-minded directors.

“It really opened my eyes to foreign films and independent films,” Harjo says. “He (Nedeljkovich) introduced me to all these different filmmakers and … the fact that you could make your own kind of film and it didn’t have to be like the stuff you see coming out of Hollywood.”

After launching into film, Harjo was selected to the Sundance Institute Filmmaker Lab. There he met producer Chad Burris, a Weatherford native, and the pair collaborated on a short film, “Goodnight Irene,” before tackling a larger project based on Harjo’s screenplay.

That resulting work, “Four Sheets to the Wind,” premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film tells the story of a young man named Cufe Smallhill (Cody Lightning) who goes to live with his troubled sister after the death of their father. The movie drew strong critical acclaim and earned a Sundance Special Jury Prize for Tamara Podemski, who portrayed Cufe’s sister. The actress later earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her performance.

In 2009, Harjo wrote and directed “Barking Water,” a haunting road film about a dying man and his ex-lover traveling across Oklahoma to visit the man’s estranged son. The movie also premiered at Sundance and has been screened around the world.

“I just don’t see myself making films about any other place,” Harjo says. “I mainly tell stories about contemporary Native people from specific tribes — usually Seminole and Creek — and the history of those tribes are that they were displaced from their homeland and put in Oklahoma. There’s a whole dynamic there that’s already created; it’s already complex, and it’s already going to influence my storytelling.”

Previous Tilghman Award recipients are documentary filmmaker Bradley Beeseley, Oklahoma City Museum of Art film curator Brian Hearn and Circle Cinema Foundation president Clark Wiens.

The Tilghman Award is named for William Matthew “Bill” Tilghman, widely credited with being the first individual to make a feature-length movie in what is now Oklahoma. He served as a deputy U.S. marshal and police chief in Oklahoma City, among other law-related positions. Tilghman also served as a state senator. In 1908, he made “A Bank Robbery,” which starred real-life bank robber Al Jennings recreating one of his crimes.

It was the first of several films Tilghman set in the state. In 1915, the lawman-turned-filmmaker made “Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws,” again starring actual criminals and the good guys who chased them. He is known for his attempts to deglamorize the outlaw villain and for striving to prove there are no outlaw heroes.



32
james.cooper — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:18:13 +0000

Oklahoma City in 2011
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a man of lots (and lots) of words.
Today, then, let me be brief in what I have to say.
For much too long now, I’ve listened to my friends, to my neighbors, to my classmates— to the people who call Oklahoma City their home— and I’ve heard their laments, their frustrations, and their cynicism regarding the state of the city and the politics that govern it.
For far too many years, I’ve listened to my friends, to my neighbors, and to my classmates as they dismiss the entire political process as something beyond their understanding, as something beyond their control, as something that simply does not concern them.
For too many nights, I’ve listened to my smartest friends, to my most caring neighbors, and to my most brilliant classmates as they share in the despair of the most downtrodden, convinced that Oklahoma City has little or nothing to offer them.
For way too many afternoons in restaurants and coffee shops, I’ve listened to the person sitting across the table from me explain in precise detail their planned escape route to greener, more urban pastures.
For too many phone conversations to recall, I’ve listened to visionaries young and old tell me their vision for an Oklahoma City that welcomes them and their different perspectives on life and love.
For far too many walks in parks, I’ve walked with my friends, with my neighbors, and with my classmates and I’ve listened to them wonder aloud how much longer the many wonderful neighborhoods that define Oklahoma City must remain separated from each other, how much longer we must pretend that the other simply does not exist.
My friends, must we continue to pretend that we don’t have a voice?  How much longer before we face ourselves and the damage done to our homes, to our communities?
How much longer must we forego the responsibility of citizenship in favor of distraction and spectacle?  Must we suffer the same fate as the generations before us?  Must we resign our city to voicelessness?
This Tuesday, the young people of this city—my friends, my neighbors, and my classmates—have an amazing opportunity to set aside their cynicism, to set aside their apathy.
This Tuesday, anyone who lives in the Paseo, in Jefferson or Edgemere Park, in the Asian District, near the gay strip on 39th Street, near Penn Square Mall, near Oklahoma City University has a chance to do just that—to have a voice in the direction of their city.
One month ago, only 32 voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the City Council election for Ward 2.  73 percent of voters were over 50 years old.  In other words, that 73 percent determined the election.
No one hears us when we refuse to say anything.
This Tuesday, must that be our fate?
Dear friend, please consider Dr. Ed Shadid in Tuesday’s election.  Please consider that, this time, we have a voice and a vote in how our communities and our neighborhoods take shape.
This Tuesday, don’t let distractions, spectacles, and an insane amount of money from big businesses determine your destiny or the future of our city.
Surely, it’s been too many years of lament.  Surely, it’s time to say something.
Surely, it’s time to make our voices heard.
Ward 2 Map (Click here to see if you live in Ward 2)
voteshadid.com
Where do I vote?!?!




2011 Oscar Predictions À gogo!
james.cooper — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:17:26 +0000
"The Social Network"
[update] 10:07a.m. the hangover wears off.  my oscar ballot predictions 13-24.  that’ll show me to ever bet against “the king’s speech” or movies with accents ever again.
[update] 10:40 holy rusted metal, batman!  this oscars feels like a really dumbed down version of the regular oscars (which is saying quite a bit considering the hugh jackman dance numbers last year…).
so, it looks like the oscars couldn’t help themselves but do what they always do:  go old school.  thus, the night ends with “the king’s speech” winning best picture (kudos to the marketing campaign efforts of harvey weinstein).  one day, the oscar voters will watch different movies…
[update] 10:36 best picture goes to “the king’s speech.”  or, as my friend, kim, so eloquently described the academy’s voting habits, “fucking old people.”
[update] 10:26 natalie portman and colin firth.  who knew…
[update] 10:05 tom hooper finds his next film and the best director award for “the king’s speech.”  listen to your mother, i guess.  (maybe they’re still mad at you for “the curious case of benjamin button,” mr. fincher…)
[update] 9:52  the nineties return.  celine dion takes to the oscar stage.  jerry springer, where art thou?
[update] 9:27 finally.  billion-time oscar former host billy crystals!
[update] 9:19 oscar just got all young twentysomething on us with its ‘autotunes the movies’ bit.  that ‘twilight’ riff was funny, though.  what a silly, silly film…
[update] 9:16 craft services and nyu film grad school shout out from the live action short winner!
[update] 9:07 original song performances.  mute.  play the suburbs’ new album, “arcade fire.”  commercial break.
[update] why would i ever bet against colleen atwood?  ever.  costume design fail.
[update] 8:57 horror goes to oscars.  the wolfman wins best makeup.
[update] 8:45 oscar winner, trent reznor.  was that a matt mcconaughey pot joke?  really?  one shot…
[update] 8:39 realize should have come up with drinking game for number of unnecessary hugh jackman references.  and why do i feel like i’m back in my undergrad days watching this film history 101 nonsense?  movies weren’t always silent, you know…
[update] 8:19 aaron sorkin wins; i can dig it.  ”the king’s speech” wins best original screenplay.  why not?  the acceptance speech seems charming enough.  le sigh for “the kids are all right.”
[update] 8:01 the first cussing of the night.  thanks, melissa.  and justin timberlake is banksy.  i like it.
[update] 7:47 barely two minutes later, wally pfister wins for best cinematography and makes my predictions 0-2 before the first commercial break.  whatevs.  pfister deserved it.
[update] 7:45 either way, helena bonham carter is a winner (even if i’m not on this category)
[update] 7: 38  not fair, james franco and anne hathaway.  i want to be in “back to the future part II”
******
All pretense aside, the actual program known as the Academy Awards has devolved over the decades into something of a cruel inside joke, an annual awards show that long ago abandoned consistent consideration of cinematic artistic achievement in favor of the internal politics of the Academy’s roughly 6,000 voting members who decide who wins what each year.
Year after year, we fans of cinema delude ourselves into thinking that these voting members a) watch most of the films eligible for consideration b) ever even glanced at that screener of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s spellbinding Biutiful or saw Javier Bardem’s equally spellbinding performance in the film or c) didn’t long ago check the box for The King’s Speech or whatever period film with the most fancy period costumes and the words “Oscar bait” written across it.
Still, for every Crash over Brokeback Mountain, Dances With Wolves over Goodfellas, or Denzel Washington winning Best Actor for Training Day instead of Glory or Malcom X, the Academy has a penchant for surprises, for occasionally considering these films and performances in them as works of art rather than the result of  persistent internal politicking and external marketing and campaigning.
Thus, Adrian Brody trumps favorites Jack Nicholson and Nicholas Cage, winning the Best Actor statue for The Piano, or Eminem wins Best Original Song for “Lose Yourself.”
So, it seems reasonable to make some Oscar predictions— to guess at what the Academy might do tonight, to huff and puff about what they should do, and to scream and shout about what they end up doing.
What follows, then, is just that.  Expect some live-blogging throughout the night.  And, for the one person paying attention to what I have to say, feel free to leave your own predictions, preferences, and rants in the comment space below.
Best Picture
will win:  The Social Network
should win:  The Social Network
winner:  The King’s Speech
***I know “The King’s Speech” is where all the buzz is tonight and that it is a rare day for a film to sweep the SGA, the DGA and the PGA and not win Best Picture at the Oscars but everyone loves a last-minute backlash.  Either way, “The Social Network” is the better film and the film we’ll likely be talking about years from now.  That, and “Black Swan” is better than “The King’s Speech.”  Bam!  I said it…
Best Director
will win:  David Fincher (The Social Network)
should win:  Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
winner:  Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)
David Fincher directed the better film.  Darren Aronofsky’s direction is the best direction this year but Aronofsky is quickly becoming the David Lynch in this category (i.e. “we love your work but we’re not sure we get it, so…”).  ”The King’s Speech” may sweep but, if it does, it changes little.
Best Actor
will win:  Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)
should win:  Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
winner:  Colin Firth (The King’s Speech)
Colin Firth was way better in director Tom Ford’s “A Single Man” last year.  Thus, the Academy will do what it does best:  award someone with an Oscar they deserved for earlier work (see Scorsese, Martin or Washington, Denzel).  Jesse deserves it.
Best Actress
will win:  Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
should win:  Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
winner:  Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Years from now, undergraduate film students will study Ms. Portman’s performance in Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” the way they once did Marlena Dietrich’s in Josef Von Sternberg’s 1932 film, “Blonde Venus.”  She is that good.  Annette Bening and Jennifer Lawrence surely deserve some runner-up accolades.
Best Supporting Actor
will win:  Christian Bale (The Fighter)
should win:  Christian Bale (The Fighter)
winner:  Christian Bale (The Fighter)
“The Fighter,” while predictable and predictably sentimental, is as good as it is because of Mr. Bale and Mark Wahlberg’s performances.  Bale deserves the award and we deserve whatever wacky speech he delivers in accepting it.
Best Supporting Actress
will win:  Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
should win:  Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
winner:  Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Everyone’s favorite toss-up category!  Ms. Leo and Ms. Adams deliver the best performances; Hailee Steinfeld or Helena Bonham Carter are likely spoilers.
Best Documentary
will win:  Inside Job winner
should win:  Banksy for “Exit through the Gift Shop.”  Sure, “Inside Job” is the better film but don’t we all want to see Banksy do his Banksy thing on stage?
Animated Feature Film:  Toy Story 3 winner
Art Direction:  The King’s Speech winner:  Alice in Wonderland
Sound Editing:  Inception winner
Sound Mixing:  Inception winner
Visual Effects:  Inception winner
Adapted Screenplay:  Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) winner
Original Screenplay:  Lisa Cholondenko (The Kids Are All Right) winner:  The King’s Speech
***will The King’s Speech roll to victory here?
Cinematography:  Roger Deakins (True Grit) winner Wally Pfister
***Though, to be honest, why not Inception’s Wally Pfister?  And, if The King’s Speech should win this category, all bets are off.
Costume Design:  The King’s Speech winner Alice in Wonderland
Documentary Short:  The Warriors of Quigang winner Strangers No More
Film Editing:  The Social Network winner
Foreign Language Film:  Biutiful winner In a Better World
Music (Original Score):  The Social Network winner
Music (Original Song):  Randy Newman (Toy Story 3) winner
Makeup:  Barney’s Song winner The Wolfman
Animated Short:  Day and Night winner The Lost Thing
Live-Action Short:  Na Wewe winner God of Love



So, I had this idea for a film blog…
james.cooper — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:50:56 +0000
robby j. harris, jr.|designer
In 1960, precisely in the heart of a downtown Oklahoma City, The Criterion Theater went to work on renovations.  Describing the historic downtown theater in their recent book, “OKC: Second Time Around,” Oklahoman journalists Steve Lackmeyer and Jack Money write, “The Criterion was a Main Street landmark, having been built in 1921 for a then astonishing $700,000.
The 1,900-seat theater dazzled moviegoers with a built-in organ, $25,000 art glass panels, crystal chandelier, velvet walls, French doors, and a tea room.  Gold décor surrounded the stage and screen.  Looking up at the ceiling, one could see sparkling stars.”
Still, for the better part of the previous four decades, fate hadn’t been particularly kind to downtown OKC, especially in the fifties and sixties as Oklahomans fled in droves to the suburbs and to newly created shopping centers such as Penn Square— and away from downtown.
By the end of 1973, the city demolished the Criterion Theater as part of its overly ambitious and disastrous attempt to modernize its once-thriving downtown. The historic building collapsed into rubble and dirt along with too many other great historic buildings that defined downtown and its residents.
Though I was born in Oklahoma City less than ten years later in 1982, it would be another 28 years before I’d learn the tale of The Criterion.  Buried a decade earlier in that rubble were tales from a past not so long ago, stories from a once-living history that shaped the very fabric of my hometown.
Of particular interest to me as I poured through the history of The Criterion was my discovery of the theater’s built-in organ.
Contrary to popular belief, silent film was never silent.  Though Oklahoma audiences sitting in attendance on any given night at The Criterion certainly wouldn’t hear sound emanate from the film playing on screen, those same viewers would’ve absolutely heard the music flowing from the orchestra pit next to the stage beside the large, extravagant movie screen in front of them.
How wonderful, then, to imagine the possibility that F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” made its way across the shore from Germany to Oklahoma City in 1922, with a full orchestra setting the tone for the creepy images unfolding on screen or to imagine Oklahomans watching one of Buster Keaton’s comedies accompanied by some “zany” score performed live by a full orchestra.
And, as images of famous actors and specific characters from the silent era films ran through my head, one particular early image stuck and refused to budge.
Working closely with Thomas Edison towards the invention of a cinema, American inventor William Dickson offered one of the earliest experimental sound films in 1894.  No longer than 20 seconds, two men dance together on screen, their hands at each other’s waists with Dickson on screen just to their side as he plays “Song of a Cabin Boy” on a violin into a recording cone for a wax cylinder off screen.  The moment passes quickly and whether or not Dickson meant for audiences to interpret the image of these two dancing men as gay men is rather besides the point.
More to the point, however, is that this brief image is one of first images to depict two men in such a moment.
Not unlike the moment when I first discovered the mostly forgotten history of The Criterion in downtown OKC, the first time I saw Dickson’s 20-second film sent shivers through me, calling attention to a history I thought I understood.  Buried within the frames of one of the world’s earliest experimental sound films were tales from a not so distant past, stories from a once-living history that helped shape the eventual trajectory of cinema as well as the larger culture.
What, then, was I to do with such an image?
The idea for a film blog came:  I’d plunder the depths of whatever it is that constitutes a “queer cinema,” from the days of Edison in the early moments of the new medium’s late nineteenth century inception to “Milk.”
I’d interrogate a history of representation film by film, not necessarily in any particular order nor in any attempts to arrive at any grand conclusions on the representation of “gay men dancing” in cinema but rather to consider the films that, for better or worse, define whatever it is that constitutes this thing called queer cinema on their own terms.
As Dickson’s early experimental sound film illustrates, the history of queer cinema is the history of cinema, an example of a particular within the universal.
Superficially, histories may collapse into the forgotten just as buildings collapse and fall into ruin.
That cannot be our history, however.  Ours is a living one and one constantly worthy of a healthy revisit.
As the Spanish philosopher and poet Geroge Santayna once wrote, “A country without memory is a country of madmen.”
Let such a fate never befall us.

**********

What queer film stands out to you?  Do you have a favorite “gay” film?  A worst?  What film, for better or worse, defines a “queer cinema” for you?  Share them with u-out readers by submitting a comment!  Be sure to check out u-out’s ‘while you were out’ section next week as my look at queer cinema begins…





An Invite & Free Passes:  ‘Howl’ arrives in OKC…
james.cooper — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:22:16 +0000
See details below for your chance to win passes to attend a free screening of "Howl" this weekend at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
This weekend, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art will host the Oklahoma City premiere of “Howl,” the new feature film from directors Rob Epstein (“The Times of Harvey Milk”) and Jeffery Friedman (“The Celluloid Closet,” “Paragraph 175″) about the life and times of fifties beat poet Allen Ginsberg (James Franco).
His seminal (and first) poem, Ginsberg’s “Howl” faced obscenity charges upon its initial release and, soon after, a public trial.
A passionate affront to conformity, consumerism, and sexual repression, “Howl” soon became the voice of a generation, a point illustrated by its famous opening lines:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn

looking for an angry fix…
And, this Friday, Jan. 7 at 8pm, u-out, deadCENTER, and the OKCMOA cordially invite you and a guest to see the movie The New York Times calls “an exemplary work of literary criticism on film.”
“Not quite a biopic, not really a documentary and only loosely an adaptation, “Howl” does something that sounds simple until you consider how rarely it occurs in films of any kind. It takes a familiar, celebrated piece of writing and makes it come alive.”
To win your free passes, simply be one of the first 30 people to answer the three trivia questions below and email your responses to james.cooper.f@gmail.com.  Include your first and last name along with the subject line “My HOWL responses.” U-out will announce the winners tomorrow at noon.
The winners will receive one “admit two” pass to attend Friday’s screening of “Howl.”  Remember, correct responses trump quick responses.
And now, the trivia…
1.  Which of the following prominent Beat writer(s) did Ginsberg befriend in New York?
a)  Jack Kerouac
b)  William S. Burroughs
2.  With which of these people was Ginsberg romantically involved?
a) Neal Cassady
b) William S. Burroughs
3.  Name the film at the top of u-out’s list of the top films of 2010.
a)  Black Swan
b)  The Social Network
c)  The Kids Are All Right
*Don’t know the trivia answers?  Use the interwebs, silly.  For your health…;-)
"Howl"



Top Ten Films of 2010
james.cooper — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:22:32 +0000
"Black Swan"
(To abandon all context, skip to the list below).
In the final days of the 21st century’s first decade, the New Queer Cinema has arrived.
To understand the provocation of such a statement (specifically, the suggestion that the best films of 2010 are uniquely queer despite the fact that only two of the films on this list feature openly gay or lesbian characters), we should provide brief historical context to the first time a queer film critic, B. Ruby Rich, uttered the phrase the New Queer Cinema in the early nineties.
In the late eighties and the early nineties, for many in the gay community, the term queer began to represent something much different than the derogatory word used by homophobes to describe gays and lesbians.
As film scholar Michele Aaron notes, “Queer represented the reappropriation of the power of the antagonistic, homophobic society, through reclaiming the term of abuse but also through a new approach to ‘gay’ politics: a taking on of the institution, rather than a fearful, assimilated, complicity.”
“Direct action, as practiced by Queer Nation, ACT UP, and Outrage, was the key strategy of queer politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with AIDS accelerating its urgency.”
Nearly thirty years earlier, in the years immediately following the Stonewall riots in June 1969 in Greenwich Village, gay liberationist groups formed across the United States.  These groups rejected the quiet assimilation into mainstream society that the previous generation sought.
And, their victories included, for instance, getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality as a mental disease from their diagnostic manual.
Yet, their approach and their resulting victories led in a brief move away from incrementalism in the gay community in the seventies only to give way to crushing defeats under the rise of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, the New Right, televangelism, and the onslaught of AIDS in the eighties.
In 1977, for example, evangelist singer and former orange juice spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission Anita Bryant led the Save Our Children organization in an effort to repeal a six-month old Dade County, Floria ordinance that made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
The initial response from the gay community to Bryant’s antigay crusade came in the form of the Dade County Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign.  Neither campaign directly addressed the issue of gay rights nor discrimination based specifically on sexual orientation, instead framing the debate in terms of a more general attack on human rights.
Anita Bryant and the New Right forces did not take a similar approach, focusing specifically on a campaign that compared homosexuals and antidiscrimination ordinances to “child molesting,” “gay recruiting,” “boy prostitution,” “threat to the family,” and a “national gay conspiracy.”
In contrast to the assimilationist efforts of the Dade County Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign, the queer practices of groups such as ACT UP and Queer Nation in the eighties, with AIDS as backdrop, rejected the politics of assimilation and incrementalism.  Instead, these activist organizations confronted the homophobia of the New Right, as well as the Reagan and Bush White Houses’ silence on AIDS with defiance and an increased visibility.
These queer activists focused their defiance, their anger, and their frustration directly at those political institutions and any forces that they viewed as complicit enablers of a homophobic society intent on silencing the voices of the gay community.  This new generation watched AIDS devastate their community, watched their government refuse to acknowledge their presence or this devastation, and decided to respond with a queer politics that acknowledged the dire urgency of the moment, or else run the risk of not existing.
Through cinema, the filmmakers of this moment responded accordingly.
****************
And so, film scholar B. Ruby Rich returns from the 1992 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.  And, in her highly influential essay, “New Queer Cinema,” Rich describes her experience at Sundance, her brief meeting in an elevator with opera singer Jessye Norman, a meeting made possible by filmmaker Laurie Lynd’s decision to use one of Norman’s arias in her film “R.S.V.P.”
Rich recalls her excitement watching eight queer filmmakers stand to the applause of an enthusiastic crowd, astonished in some ways just by the very presence of a queer panel.
“After all,” writes Rich, “none of this is taking place in a vacuum:  celebrated in the festivals, despised in the streets.  Review the statistics on gay bashing.  Glance at would-be-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s demonising of Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied.”
Later, in her description of Lynd’s “R.S.V.P.,” Rich explains, “R.S.V.P suggests that the tragedy of AIDS have led to a new kind of film and video practice, one which takes up the aesthetic strategies that directors have already learned and applies them to a greater need than art for its own sake.
“This time it’s art for our sake, and it’s powerful.”
Thus, Rich declares the arrival of new films such as Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho,” Jennie Livingston’s “Paris is Burning,” Gregg Araki’s “The Living End” on the independent film festival circuit as a New Queer Cinema, as art uniquely wrapped up in the anxiety and frustration of an era.
In the opening moments of her essay, in fact, Rich makes a decidedly political move in her decision to label these new independent gay and lesbian films as queer.
Still, Rich is quick to note that films of the so-called New Queer Cinema do not, “share a single aesthetic vocabulary or strategy or concern.  Yet they are nonetheless united by a common style.
“Call it ‘Homo Pomo:  there are traces in all of them of appropriation and pastiche, irony, as well a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind.”
Appropriation, as it turns out, might not be a useful word in describing what the individual films of the New Queer Cinema aim for in their aesthetics, their attempts to describe a moment in time that felt previously indescribable.
To that end, rather than thinking of these films as part of a coherent film movement, it helps to think of each individual films as acts of redescription, as films retooling the language of earlier films in order to say something new and different.  In fact, to borrow from American philosopher Richard Rorty his notion of redescription, it helps to think of these filmmakers, and filmmakers more broadly, as poets, as “one who makes things new” or says things like “try thinking of it this way.”
As Rorty would suggest, the individual filmmakers of the New Queer Cinema get at something that no one else has and “expresses something which had long been yearning for expression.”
In other words, these filmmakers become poets, redescribing and rearticulating the experience of life in America in the gay community in the early nineties.
What follows, then, is my list of the ten best films of 2010.  These films do not share in a single aesthetic vocabulary nor do any but two of them feature openly gay and lesbian characters.
Nevertheless, these films are quite queer, radical in their departure from the mainstream (and even independent) cinema in their approach to their respective narratives. Taken individually, each film offers and plays with familiar themes and structures but a sense of “the new” haunts these films.
We should, then, take a moment to abandon the traditional conversations on these films (who the fuck cares, for instance, if that spinning top topples over at the ending of “Inception?”  It feels like that’s precisely the wrong discussion that movie wants to have, no matter how many of your friends insist on having it).
At the very least, that’s what this list intends to do, to shift the conversation, to shift the way in which we’re thinking about cinema nearly a century after its inception.
And now, with the Great Recession and the 21st century as backdrop, the best films of 2010, the New Queer Cinema…
****************
10.  Winter’s Bone
Think of “Winter’s Bone” as this mythologized “Real America” we keep hearing so much about these days.  Here, however, as Jennifer Lawrence’s young Ree Dolly traverses the Ozark Mountains through rural Southwestern Missouri in search of her missing father (known locally for his impeccable methamphetamine cooking skills), she encounters a world removed from the law, one removed from the national political landscape, and even industry.  Charged with discovering her father’s whereabouts (and with the care of her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother, as well with preventing her family’s house from falling into foreclosure), Ree sets off through the looking glass and into the darkness, encountering archetypal figures from the rural that feel ripped from the tales of Greek mythology and the like.
“Winter’s Bone” is as harsh a reality check as it is a beautifully filmed story.  That it feels uniquely American should surprise no one, given its subject matter and setting (a rural American landscape devastated by meth production and addiction, the loss of employment opportunities otherwise).
Director Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” feels like the film the Coen brothers wanted to make with their recent “True Grit” remake this year, another film about a young woman venturing into the uncivilized seeking retribution and answers, only better.
"Winter's Bone"
9.  Inside Job
With his 2007 directorial debut, “No End in Sight,” documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson offered an unflinching assessment of the decisions and events that led to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.  There, he complied interviews with the who’s who of U.S. foreign policy makers, U.S. intelligence figures, and many of the key architects behind the decision to go to war.  Best of all, that documentary provided a coherent narrative of the events surrounding that war, pushing interviewees on specific points of contention where few others have dared and actually getting some uncomfortable answers to some difficult questions.
Ferguson’s new documentary “Inside Job” surely now puts the director in league with noted documentary filmmakers like Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line”).  Arresting, informative, and never boring, “Inside Job” is a devastating examination of the events leading up to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.  That Ferguson manages to wrangle the interviews that he does is a testament to his talents as a gifted filmmaker and an insightful polemic.  That he manages to cohere  into a narrative the insanity that brought America face to face with the abyss is quite the accomplishment and one certainly worth seeing.
"Inside Job"
8.  I Love You, Philip Morris
Read interviews with the imprisoned Steven Russell, the real-life conman currently serving a 144-year life sentence in the Michael Unit correctional facility of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and take notes.  One particular interview in The Guardian with Russell, who spends 23 hours of his day locked in solitary confinement, is especially revealing and helpful in understanding the nuance of comedian Jim Carrey’s lovely performance as Russell in “I Love You, Philip Morris.”
Having passed himself off as a lawyer, a judge, a dying AIDS patient, an FBI agent, a doctor, a bar student, Russell explains in the interview, “Most of the time I make it up, it’s just bullshit.
“It’s kind of like acting.”
And, acting is kind of what Jim Carrey does in “I Love You, Philip Morris,” a fantastic and playful film based on the life and times of Mr. Russell (particularly the many times he escaped from jail and his mad, mad, mad love affair with fellow inmate, Philip Morris (a delightful Ewan McGregor).
The first ten minutes of the film offers insight into just how Steven Russell was able to fool so many people so many different times.  Here, his performance as a straight, God-fearing, happily married man surely sets the stage for the subsequent roles he’ll assume (“kind of like acting”).  In his best role since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Mr. Carrey seems to really understand this about the role and his real-life counterpart.
Equal parts love story and tragic irony, “I Love You, Philip Morris” surely deserves further consideration.
"I Love You, Philip Morris"
7.  Let Me In
To debate the particulars of whether “Cloverfield” director Matt Reeves’ American remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film “Let the Right One In” is “better or not” is to miss in the film all the subtlety of Mr. Reeves’ exquisite directing, to ignore the lushness and fullness of his images, to forget about the wonderful performances from the film’s two young lead actors (Kodi Smit-Mcphee and Chloë Grace Moretz).  Stark, honest, and weirdly beautiful, “Let Me In” dances around in American mythology and notions of evil (early in the film, President Reagan sets the tone when he appears on a television screen, caustic in his ruminations on the concept of “evil” and America’s role in the matter).
Easily the best horror film of the year, “Let Me In” suggests quite a bit about evil and monstrosity but it suggests even more about the exciting career ahead of young Mr. Reeves.
"Let Me In"
6.  Toy Story 3
You’d be forgiven if thoughts of “The Land Before Time III:  The Time of the Great Giving” or “Aladdin and the King of Thieves” (or heck, even “Return of the Jedi”) have led you to believe that great things do not, in fact, come in threes, particularly when it comes to animated fare or big budget extravaganzas.
As I mentioned in my review of the film, if for no other reason than citing past precedent, “Toy Story 3” and Pixar deserve a special scratch-and-sniff sticker for pulling off what few film franchises rarely accomplish: delivering a third film worthy of its predecessors.  Better still, “Toy Story 3″ comes across as a playful yet awfully contemplative meditation on modern life, childhood, and the self (yeah, that’s right, “Toy Story 3″ wraps itself and its characters in existential dilemma).
Oh, and it’s wicked funny and lovely to stare at, even through watery eyes.
"Toy Story 3"
5.  Inception
A terrific and thoroughly satisfying summer blockbuster, director Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is about a lot of things.  But, at its core, “Inception” is about watching films, about the constructing of a world on a screen in front of us when we sit down to take in a movie, about the symbiotic relationship between the architect of those images and the culture immersing and losing itself in those very images.
Like the best avant-garde filmmaking, “Inception” plays at the level of allegory and, just as its characters must differentiate between what is real and what is not, what is dream and what is not, what are their subconscious projections and what isn’t, so, too, must viewers.  ”Inception,” while not quite the masterpiece Internet bloggers and people in parking lots claim it to be, it is an utterly mesmerizing experience and not to be forgotten.
"Inception"
4.  Blue Valentine
A protege of avant-garde legends Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, director Derek Cianfrance has delivered not only one of the year’s best films, but a fascinating (and, of course, devastating) tale of falling in love, falling out of love, of passionate lovemaking, and of dreams abandoned and lost.  Beautifully directed and wonderfully acted (Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are impossible to forget here), “Blue Valentine” recalls the best of director John Cassevettes (“A Woman Under the Influence”) and certainly the work of Brakhage and Solomon.  I can think of fewer higher compliments…
"Blue Valentine"
3.  The Kids Are All Right
As it turns out, Annette Bening’s sole task now is to show up once at the end of a decade to offer thoughtful and biting commentary on the state of the American family.
That Nic (Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians is rather besides the point in “The Kids Are All Right.”  Their struggles feel universal even if the particulars of them might not.  That’s an important point to make about a film as intelligent as this one.  That Nic and Jules are lesbians should not be set aside; the film does not do this and nor should critics.  The film never panders to any audience and is smart enough not to condescend to its characters.
Yet, director Lisa Cholodenko’s film and writer Stuart Blumberg’s script seem more concerned with the particulars of the modern American family, the ins and outs, the nitty gritty as it were. Either way, Cholodenko’s delivered one of the best written and best directed examinations on the current state of the American family.
We’ll see you in another ten years, Ms. Bening…
"The Kids Are All Right"
2.  Black Swan
With “Black Swan,” Darren Aronofsky gives us the year’s best directed film.  The relationship here between Mr. Aronofsky and Natalie Portman recalls Hitchock’s work with Janet Leigh in “Psycho” or Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” or even director Josef Von Sternberg’s work with Marlene Dietrich in 1932′s “Blonde Venus.”  The film crescendos, building and building to its final moments, something only made possible by the collaboration between Ms. Portman’s performance, Mr. Aronosky’s borderline Grand Guignol/operatic directing, Clint Mansell’s mesmerizing score, Andrew Weisblum’s editing, and Matthew Libatique’s cinematography.
A bizarre and gorgeous ode to ballet (from film with love, I suppose), “Black Swan” is, to steal the words of its leading actress in the film’s final moments, damn near “perfect.”
"Black Swan"
1.  The Social Network
Aaron Sorkin’s script here is relentless.  From frame one, words spoken matter, all at the service of contextualizing arrival of the 21st century’s social network, the Facebook.
As I noted in my review of the film earlier this year, the gothic haunts David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” a strange yet appropriate aesthetic for a film dealing with a postmodern society mediated by images and the story of the man responsible for the creation of yet another one of its spectacles.  And, make no mistake, “The Social Network” is absolutely playing at that level.  The film washes over you as few films do and it is only late into the film that you’re watching as close to a masterpiece as this decade has yet to offer.
"The Social Network"