8 Short Docs & 63 Foreign Films Advance Toward Oscar

Ethan McCord's request to see a mental health professional after a terrible scene of carnage from which he rescued two children, was ridiculed by his superior officer. "Incident in New Baghdad"AMPAS has announced the documentary short finalists, eight of them to be precise which will then be whittled down to five, four or three lucky nominees, so as to make either three, four, or five of these finalists feel like absolute shite on Tuesday January 24th.

THE FINALISTS (links go to official sites if we could find)

• The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement 
  (civil rights doc about a barber and barbershop which was a civil rights hub)
• God Is the Bigger Elvis
  (37 minutes)
• In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution
  (38 minutes)
• Incident in New Baghdad
  (Iraq War and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
• Pipe Dreams
  (Environmental doc about a tar pipeline set to cross the largest fresh water resource) 
• Saving Face
  (About a plastic surgeon helping acid attack victims in Pakistan. Strangely the company's site has not been updated since March despite this big Oscar news!?!) 
• The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom
  (Described as "a stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan's most beloved flower") 
• Witness

It is my humble opinion that "finalist" lists should always be at least double the amount of actual nominees, so that misery can love its company and not feel like the only girl in the room not invited to the dance.

Who can convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to change their unstable cruel ways? Categories should be set in stone: five nominees or three. Finalist lists, when necessary, ought to be double that. Five or Three should be the only Two options for shortlists for the great good of spreadsheets, statistical percentages, charts and the mental health of pundits everywhere or at least this pundit right here.

Nevertheless AMPAS continues with their "we might do this / we might do that" keep-you-on-your-toes ways. 

In much bigger news Oscar has also finally released the Official List of Best Foreign Language Film contenders. It's sixty-three wide this year. If you or anyone you know cares about this category, you'll want to check out The Film Experience's Beautiful Foreign Film Oscar Charts and please do share them with your friends. You can peruse the entire category visually instead of just reading this boring list of as-yet-meaningless names.

But we'll include the list here as well for SEO purposes. If the titles are in bold they're rather high profile as these things go, but keep in mind that high profile doesn't always equate with "future nominee" status.

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Albert Nobbs"

It's our tradition here at the Film Experience to manage our expectations for new movies by forcing ourselves into yes, no, maybe so breakdowns of trailers. Since we're obviously a yes on Albert Nobbs  --"Glenn Close is not going to be ignored, Fan"-- for reasons of genesis, Oscar, LGBT loyalty, and its Glennderful nature and since we've talked about the movie enough without yet seeing it, let's do things differently. This Trailer begs for a different sort of compartmentalization. It's almost like a trailer in four acts. Is it purposefully channelling its own internal identity crisis?

They had personal trainers in 19th century? Aaron Johnson is comfortable naked...

It starts out like a frothy period comedy 0:01-0:41 (oh haha!. Remember how much you love Downton Abbey and Gosford Park?!)

Glenn isn't nearly as willing to take her clothes off!

...moves into identity crisis drama 0:42-1:12 (Mr. Albert Nobbs is actually a woman named 5 time Oscar nominee Glenn Close and Mr. Hubert Page is actually a woman named Oscar nominee Janet McTeer!)

Jane Eyre clearly thinks Rochester's a better kisser than Nobbs.

...and then tips over the edge into total chaos 1:13-2:09 like it's an uncomfortable mashup between a dreamy sentimental An American Tail style musical immigrant drama (Sinead O'Connor lullaby!) and Yentl style dramedy of convenient marriages turned totally inconvenient (!) 

... before settling into its rightful place as a For Your Consideration Oscar Ad 2:10-2:30 intended to win Glenn Close that Oscar she deserved back in 1982 (The World According to Garp), 1987 (Fatal Attraction) or 1988 (Dangerous Liaisons) or all three times depending on your point of view.

the full trailer...

How would you describe your desire to see it now?

poll by twiigs.com

How about its Oscar chances in multiple categories? 
I'm currently thinking...  

Yes - Actress (Close), Supporting Actress (McTeer)
Maybe So - a fighting longshot chance at  "Original Song", Costumes, Adapted Screenplay (this would be another way to honor Glenn Close if they're really feeling it since she co-wrote), and Art Direction.
No - Everything else. 

Naked Gold Man: The "Breakthrough" Business

This week, let's talk beginnings and breakthroughs.

The annual Hollywood Awards, which announced their awards and nominees on Friday (previously noted), aren't typically considered part of the Oscar race. Unofficially-officially the National Board of Review's early December announcement is still the kick-off though the Gotham Awards (late November) have been rising as an alternative "first stop" in power. Still, the Hollywood Awards are glance at in order to see which publicity teams are working overtime to gather kindling for awards fire. Of particular interest, I think, is the plethora of "breakthrough" awards that they hand out. Breakthrough Awards are nearly always more PR driven than other categories by their very nature regardless of worthiness of whoever is honored. That's not a judgement but a neutral statement.

If breakthrough awards didn't exist, it would be much harder for young talents to be competitive in an awards race. They don't come into any contest with the advantages of pre-sold media interest, critical reputation, or habitual preferencing. The only advantage newbies have each year is nascent; people of all shapes, sizes, and ages (including Oscar voters) like receiving shiny new toys to play with at Christmas. Make of this what you will but this lone advantage is quite potent for actresses and often inconsequential for actors.  

But you made me feel...
Yeah you made me feel shiny and new
Like a virgin 

If you stop to think about it from a publicity perspective, Breakthrough Awards are very much like those old Vanity Fair Hollywood covers. Yes, there were probably teams of editors or creative directors selecting the 9 to 13 cover beauties, but those same beauties were essentially culled from whichever young "up and coming" stars had management teams that were able to bend Conde Nast's ears in the first place.

Vanity Fair's 2010 "Dolls". Five of them are in awards-hopeful films this year: Carey Mulligan (SHAME), Mia Wasikowska (ALBERT NOBBS & JANE EYRE), Emma Stone (THE HELP), Anna Kendrick (50/50) and Evan Rachel Wood (THE IDES OF MARCH)

The Hollywood Awards are but the first organization of many to come to name their favorite shiny new toys of 2011. They offer up not one, not two, not three, not four but FIVE (whew) for us to play with. CONSIDER...

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Scenes: I Stood Where Carey Mulligan Sang

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending a private party for Fox Searchlight's Shame after its New York Film Festival premiere held at the Top of the Standard. That's the bar atop the glassy luxury hotel that hovers in the sky over the immensely popular High Line (an elevated walkway over the meatpacking district). You read that the Top of the Standard (also known as the Boom Boom Room) is impossible to get into if you're not among the über famous or wealthy. I just walked up and said "Michael Fassbender's Party" and the doors parted. Amazing what a name can do.

Not mine, his! Don't misunderstand. I always feel as if there's been some mistake when I enter these moneyed settings as I'm just a poor boy from Detroit who loves the movies too much. Not that I don't welcome such beautiful mistakes. I know virtually no one so am happy to run into a friend from Movie|Line while I'm there and we catch up a bit.

Mostly I'm there to soak up the buzzy atmosphere since the film, despite the very typical backlash which followed the early Venice "Masterpiece!" shouting, has been well received. That's particularly true of Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan's performances, which snap electrically back and forth between frighteningly numb fleshiness and raw exposed nerves. I spot Fassy almost immediately several people away talking to executive types. He's all slim and handsome in a gray (?) suit but he looks substantially more human in person, almost civilian like, were it not for that sleek beanpole refinement. Another partygoer echoes my thoughts "Before you got here he was just standing outside smoking... like he was anybody else!"  

At one point John Cameron Mitchell is standing right behind me and though he's surrounded by friends and I have no idea what they're talking about I immediately presume (by which I mean pretend) that they're all discussing Shortbus (2006) since it's the last sexually explicit serious-minded English language movie I can think of before Shame. Elsewhere I see faces I can't quite place though I recognize them (character actors? industry players?) and one that I do, Brady Corbet. He's had such a steady career playing suspicious, damaged or dangerous types for everyone from von Trier to Araki through Michael Haneke and now Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene -reviewed) that at first I am wary of his total friendliness. Nevertheless I have to take advantage and we chat for awhile. How soon did he know Martha would be special? He indicates immediately but when pressed for something more definitive about life on a film set -- how soon do you get a sense for what the finished film will be? -- he hesitates before settling on "two weeks." 

Nicole Beharie, on the other hand, who plays Fassy's would be girlfriend (and co-worker) in Shame didn't know what to expect at all. She had just seen her film for the first time that night. Turns out that she and Fassbender improvised a lot and since all three of her major scenes are actually single continuous shots (yay!), she had no idea which takes were chosen. I make a mental note to thank Steve McQueen for this as it is such an strangely rare treat to be able to watch two fine actors acting together rather than in their own disjointed closeups.

Carey Mulligan is absent.  "She's in Australia filming Gatsby" I'm told by the vivacious publicist who makes my night when she points out that we are mere feet away from the spot where Carey Mulligan sang in the movie. 

If u can make it there, u'll make it anywhere. come on come thru New York, New York ♫ 

If you haven't been following reviews, there's a key scene early in the movie where the Oscar-buzzing actress, playing Sissy the cabaret singer, does a rendition of "New York New York" that is both hauntingly real (her voice isn't perfect but emotive) and vaguely unreal (it's in the molasses phrasing and intense close-ups that aren't preferenced elsewhere in the film). The whole sequence might justifiably be read as a dream sequence, a psychic conversation, between sister Sissy and brother Brandon. The sequence has only two edits and thus three acts if you will, as it stares at Sissy then Brandon then Sissy again for wrap up.

Looking around I realize that The Standard is practically Shame Central... (though it'd surely be odd to advertise as such!) Two of its sex scenes were also quite obviously filmed there. It's the glass windows and the wrap around view that are dead giveaways.

Before leaving I chat briefly with Steve McQueen and narrowly resist the urge to bow down after years of worshipping his debut film Hunger though I can't help but praise him for his resistance to the boring unimaginative camera work that plagues even "master" directors when two characters converse. Rather than gushing any further, I thank him for not taking a million years off between film #1 and film #2 (a typically unfortunate habit of newbie directors). He's already working on film #3 he tells me called Twelve Years a Slave starring Chiwetel Ejiofor -- though what little he says about it he asks me not to print. Shame (no pun intended). His current pace is troubling him, he adds, because he also has his art career and his wife and kids who need more of his time.

I suppose we can allow him a break after film number three. As long as he keeps working...

NYFF: "Hugo" A Work in Progress

The surprise screening of The New York Film Festival tonight was Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a 3D adaptation of the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret (a much better title for about a hundred reasons) which is about an orphan boy who inadvertently uncovers rich cinematic history while trying to repair a broken automatron that is his only cherished reminder of his father. Martin Scorsese introduced the film himself and seemed a bit embarrassed by the standing ovation before the screening. Perhaps he was thinking Calm down. What if you don't like it?!? 

Father and Son and Automatron in "Hugo"

Though you'll undoubtedly see several full reviews online tonight, we were given a finger wagging public reminder pre-screening that we weren't to do so. Scorsese warned us that the color correction was not finished, the score was a temporary rendition of the completed score which Howard Shore is currently recording, and some of the effects and the 3D still needed touching up. This was especially true of the opening pre-title segment which had a lot of computer graphics in lieu of actual people and objects. So absent an actual review, let it suffice to say that I was too caught up in it to take ANY notes (the only thing written on my pad is "still needs color cor..." yep, that's it!) and was very pleasantly surprised.  

Ben Kingsley as the mysterious Papa GeorgeI had found the trailer so manic and gimmicky that I assumed the film would be a noisy disaster but the completed -- excuse me, nearly completed -- movie is actually fairly gentle and lovely despite flirting with manic slapstick on a few occassions. Production designer and certain Oscar nominee (again) Dante Ferretti's clock motif on steroids should read garish since Hugo lives inside a train station which seems to house ten thousand of them, all of which he hand winds daily. Instead the sets feel like intricate beauties with tiny hand-crafted parts. The film is still settling in my mind and I heard everything from raves to loud but minor quibbling while briefly chatting with other moviegoers outside. But if you've ever loved France, Books, Fiddling With How Gadgets Work, or The History of Cinema, it's a love letter you'll most definitely want to read when it opens next month.