Author Archives: lovepirate77

Analysis: Argo and Filmmakers’ Responsibility

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Even before Argo won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Hollywood’s top honor, it was already being plagued by controversy.  (Nevermind the fact that every other nominee was controversial in some way: Lincoln got easy facts wrong, Silver Linings Playbook mishandled mental illness, Beasts of the Southern Wild romanticized poverty, Zero Dark Thirty lied about torture’s effectiveness, Django Unchained was racist and used the n-word too much, Russell Crowe’s singing was horrible in Les Miserables, Life of Pi misrepresented Indians and religion, and Amour advocates assisted suicide and wasn’t even in English!)  It’s nothing unusual for films to encounter controversy, or even to court it, but the debates this year about facts and politics in film have raised questions (none of them new) about the responsibility of filmmakers to the audience.
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2013 Oscars Recap

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Another Academy Awards ceremony has come and gone, and overall it was an enjoyable evening.  There were few surprises among the award winners, though I only correctly predicted 16/24 winners correctly (equaling my score from last year, at least I’m consistent).  In addition to there being no real surprises there are also no winners that I feel were not deserving to win; even if I disagree with the outcomes, the awards went to quality films/performances which makes it hard to complain too loudly.  The show itself was enjoyable, if not spectacular, with some wonderful moments and some bits that fell flat, and I was surprised with how much I enjoyed Seth MacFarlane.  Read on to see my thoughts in a bit more detail.
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Review: Life of Pi

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“He said you had a story that would make me believe in God.”  This is both the essence and the greatest fault of Life of Pi.  It tells the beautiful and exciting story of the young Indian man, Pi, and his adventure adrift on a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.  It’s a gorgeous film, with amazing effects, and based on a book that most people thought to be unfilmable.  It has some impressive acting, is filled with many interesting and stimulating ideas and is in many ways a remarkable achievement, but throughout the movie that quote kept ringing through my head.
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Review: Silver Linings Playbook

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Pat (Bradley Cooper), a high school teacher in Philadelphia, is finally being released from a mental hospital after eight months.  He was sent there as part of a plea bargain after he discovered his wife with another man and almost beat him to death, a product of the bipolar disorder he was diagnosed with at the hospital.  He’s spent these last eight months working hard to improve himself, losing weight and dealing with his condition, in order to impress and reconnect with his wife, Nikki, if only he could get her to drop the restraining order.
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Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

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Beasts of the Southern Wild is the sort of film that defies classification or description, by nature of its inherent simplicity and the complexity of interpretation.  It’s nominally the story of a girl whose community is devastated by a hurricane, but that’s merely the surface.  Beasts of the Southern Wild is one part environmental fable, one part coming of age story (maybe), one part morality tale about the links of the universe, and possibly many more things, all wrapped around one truly remarkable and unique performance.

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85th Academy Awards

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Once again, it’s time for Oscar predictions.  I did pretty well last year, getting 16 correct, and almost all of the major categories (curse you Meryl!).  This year is going to be an extremely tough one, given all of the drama involving Ben Affleck’s snub in the directing category.

Best Short Film, Live Action:
Prediction: Curfew
My Pick: N/A

Best Short Film, Animated:
Prediction: Paperman
My Pick: Paperman
Everyone loved Paperman, which played before Wreck-it Ralph.  It’s a perfectly sweet and heartfelt hand drawn/CG combination, and seems like a certainty. Continue reading →

Review: Les Miserables

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Adapting a stage musical into a film has proven to been a dicey proposition in the years since Chicago burst onto the scene in 2002.  Unlike original musicals (such as Moulin Rouge!, Enchanted, or even The Muppets), adaptations bring with them a lot of baggage and expectations.  The especially long-running and popular shows have legions of devoted fans, who need to be pleased in order to help spread the word, however their expectations must be balanced with making the film appeal to the general populace (which, unfortunately, now seems to take pleasure in disliking musicals by default).  It’s possible for a film to be too faithful (The Producers) and alienate Broadway purists, or go so far the other way as to lose all sense of their source (Rock of Ages).  Equally important to the faithfulness of the adaptation is how well the film captures the spirit of the source; a film can be incredibly faithful but still miss the mark (The Phantom of the Opera) or can play things loose with the source and still manage to capture the spark (the brilliant, Mamma Mia!).  Then there’s the issue of running time and the filmmakers who assume that audiences no longer have the patience to sit through 3 hours of singing, so the entire film feels rushed (Hairspray).  And even if you do everything right, or at least as right as possible, there’s still no guarantee that your film will find an audience (Rent). Continue reading →

Review: Django Unchained

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Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, Django Unchained, has been billed and advertised as a Western, but that’s not entirely accurate.  It has horses and gunfights and a Sam Peckinpah mixed with Sergio Leone style, but it’s not really a Western.  For one thing, it takes place in the South, from Texas to Mississippi to Tennessee.  For another, it’s really a slavery revenge story.  And though it was generally enjoyable, it made me wish that Tarantino had chosen to make a true Western, if only to show what he could really do by sticking to the genre. Continue reading →

Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

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            “The Hobbit” was my favorite book when I was in elementary school.  I read it many times, equally enjoying the adventure story and the british humor and style of the book.  I didn’t read “The Lord of the Rings” until high school, once I had heard they were turning them into movies.  At the time I was surprised they weren’t starting with “The Hobbit”, but after seeing Fellowship of the Ring I was completely sold on their method.  “The Lord of the Rings” is more epic and adult than “The Hobbit” and the success of those films clearly shows that they made the right choice.

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Review: Lincoln

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             It’s winter, 1864.  Abraham Lincoln sits in the rain as a couple of black union soldiers recite back to him the Gettysburg Address, delivered about a year before.  It’s been almost two years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War is drawing to a close.  So begins Steven Spielberg’s long awaited masterpiece, Lincoln.  It tells Lincoln’s story in a somewhat unconventional way, by focusing on one event during his complex and fascinating lifetime: the fight for the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery.Lincoln has recently been reelected, and is opposed by a stubborn lame-duck Congress.  He knows that the war will end soon, and he knows that the Emancipation Proclamation, a wartime executive order that freed only some of the slaves, will not stand up to legal scrutiny once peace is declared.  He has tried to sell the idea that an amendment abolishing slavery will bring an end to the war, but he knows that if rumors of peace talks spread that they will effectively kill any hope of passing such an amendment.