My Oscar Picks

While the Oscars were a week ago, here are my picks for a few of the categories.  These were not predictions, but my opinions.  My only rule is that I have to have seen the film to pick it.  The films that I have seen this year are:

• Argo
• Lincoln
• Looper
• Skyfall
• Ted
• Zero Dark Thirty

Best Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones was fantastic in Lincoln despite the awkward hair.  He was perfect for the role as a crotchety old Thaddeus Stevens who bites his tongue to pass the 13th Amendment.  He allowed Tony Kushner to show his disappointment in our current stalled political climate.  Alan Arkin and John Goodman are also good candidates in Argo.  In my opinion, they equally contributed to make the Hollywood scenes the best in the film.

Best Supporting Actress: Sally Field

Sally Field plays well opposite the greatness of Daniel Day-Lewis.  Their interactions were just as I pictured them as I read Team of Rivals.  She plays a woman distraught over the loss of a child, who has a complicated relationship with her husband.  Emily Blunt in Looper was a pleasant surprise.  She shed her uptight British image and appeared as a blonde haired farmer who deeply cares and is worried about her son.  Judi Dench also gave a typically strong performance as an embattled M struggling to retain relevance and moral reasoning in an increasingly changing world.

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis

This was a clear choice for anyone who has seen Lincoln.  Think of the challenge it is to play a figure as iconic as Lincoln whose words are among the most famous, but never having any audio of his to know his voice.  Daniel Day-Lewis not only meets that challenge but greatly exceeds it.  Day-Lewis is lost in this character and gives the defining portrayal of the President from Springfield, IL.  His  voice and disposition are what we will picture when we hear a Lincoln story.  A performance that now belongs to the ages.
   

Best Actress: Jessica Chastain

Jessica Chastain almost wins by default here because of the movies I saw, none of them really had a strong female lead except Zero Dark Thirty.  That being said, Chastain is deserving. Her intensity and relentlessness bleeds off the screen and shows not only in her words but her body language.
   

Best Screenplay: Tony Kushner - Lincoln

For me this was an easy choice.  Lincoln had as much action as a play, but it was captivating enough to follow.  The brilliant writing is what made the difference a number of different scenes, from using Lincoln's habit of storytelling to make a broader point in the Euclid story; to Thaddeus Stevens response during the debate of 13th Amendment; to Lincoln describing the shaky legal grounds his actions during the Civil War stood on.  This scene particularly stood out in my mind.  Kushner was able to effortlessly have Lincoln breakdown the complicated legal issues regarding Lincoln's Civil War actions.  I sat there shocked at how quickly and succinctly it happened.  That being said he had some pretty good source material.

Best Visuals: Skyfall

Because I am a layman, in this category I pick the movie that was the most visually stunning.  To me it was Skyfall by far.  To me the film stood out particularly in two sequences, the spectacular use of glass and light in the China tower fight scene and the fantastic use of light and shadow in the final battle scenes in the grey Skyfall manor. Besides all of this, the film had a wonderfully classic Bond look and beautifully displayed its many sets around the world inTurkey, Great Britain, the London Underground, Macao, and an abandoned Chinese island.  

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow

While it is surprising that Ben Affleck could win best director for the DGA and Golden Globe and not be nominated for the Oscar, I'm picking Kathryn Bigelow and Zero Dark Thirty who also wasn't nominated.  In Zero Dark Thirty I learned to appreciate what I missed in the Hurt Locker; Kathryn Bigelow makes intense unorthodox action films.  This movie was riveting and tense without using spectacular action or CG moving cameras, but instead focused on storytelling and drama.  Zero Dark Thirty and the Hurt Locker hit me like a bomb in the Hurt Locker, it isn't the bang and flash that gets me, its the shock wave which hits you right in the gut.  I would love to see Bigelow take on a full out action movie to see what she does with it.  I think tenseness would cause me to grip the arms right off the chair I was sitting in. 

Best Picture: Lincoln

Argo was a fun, feel good film and Zero Dark Thirty was an intensely dramatic film, but Lincoln was an instant classic.  After I saw the film, I thought it was timeless.  This is a film I expect to see on TCM.  This is why I thought Lincoln was the best film.  Lincoln could have been made in an era of Hollywood and still stood up as one of the greats.  It had iconic scenes, fluid writing, and incredible acting.  Although I enjoyed Argo, this is a film that should have won the Oscar.   

Zero Dark Thirty

The last three movies I've seen; Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Argo are all nominated for best picture and based on American historical events.  However, each approaches the story in a different way.  Argo is mix of comedy, action, and drama.  It is part action caper and part Hollywood satire.  Lincoln is resembles a play brought to life on the screen, relying not on action, but on the brillance of its dialogue and personality of its characters.  Zero Dark Thirty in some respects is the exact opposite.

First, the film is extremely story driven and doesn't dig deep into characters, with the exception of Jessica Chastain's character, Maya.  Character are dropped in and out of the storyline as they interact with Maya.  The two primary soldiers in the climactic raid on Bin Laden's compound aren't introduced until near the end of the film.

Second, the film narrows it's focus on story and does not overtly seem to make a larger point or pass judgment on the actions of the characters.  It seems the filmmakers have committed to telling us a story and letting us make the judgments.  This makes Zero Dark Thirty more interpretive than Argo and Lincoln, which both are pretty clear on their perspective.  For example, as I have stated earlier the movie gives us very little on the background of the characters including Maya in terms of dialogue, so we are forced to interpret from Chastain's actions and body language her mentality and disposition.  Similarly, when new characters are shown, we are forced to interpret who they are based on their actions and interactions with the other characters.

One impression I took away from this moviegoing experience was how tense I felt.  I literally found myself on the edge of my seat at some points throughout the film. I felt the same way in Argo as the embassy employees tried to make their way through the crowded streets of Tehran.  I was impressed I could feel this way about Zero Dark Thirty, because of the challenge all three movies have; they are historical so we know the ending.  For Zero Dark Thirty this is increasingly challenging because its events have occurred so recently.  

Instead of the traditional drama of not knowing the conclusion, the drama that the film produces is based on our knowledge of the ending, which is almost counter intuitive.  It reminded me of watching the end of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.  At the end of the film, Anakin and Obi-Wan and the Emperor and Yoda are seemingly locked in battles to the death.  The only problem is we know that all four of them survive.  As I was watching that film, I kept thinking about how they were going resolve  play it out so that Anakin becomes Vader and Yoda goes into exile.  It was fascinating to watch.  Its the thrill of the journey rather than the destination.  I felt Zero Dark Thirty takes the same drama and amplifies the tension by naming the location of events.  When the film shows London and a double-decker bus, I was cringing because I knew it was going to be about the London attacks.  The most excruciating scenes were when you realize Maya's colleague and friend, Jessica, is (spoiler alert: if that is possible in a historical film) going to be killed when an Al-Qaeda informant turns out to be a suicide bomber and detonates his bomb inside a US military base in Afghanistan.  Its almost hard to watch, because Jessica is so exciting at the prospect of a turncoat within Al-Qaeda she bakes him a cake.  All the meanwhile, we know from our knowledge of recent events that this will turn out in tragedy.

While Zero Dark Thirty is not about the characters, it ironically is about the people that made this happen.  We view them all through the lens of their interactions with Maya who is obsessed with her potential lead to catch Bin Laden.  We see the CIA officers, the intelligence gatherers, the locals who looked for this mysterious white SUV, the intelligence analysts, and the soldiers who went on the raid.  These were real people.  In a large bureaucracy it is sometimes hard to imagine the actual people behind the actual data gathering, analysis, and execution in any operation.  I think the scene that showed this the best was a scene in which all the CIA analysts are nervously sitting around a table when a guy clearly in charge walks in and starts yelling something like, "Did you think there was some other team working on Al-Qaeda?  There's not there is only the people in this room and we are failing."  You suddenly get the sense that these people, who we've become somewhat familiar with, are in charge of one of the most important tasks in the country and are the only thing separating us from another horrifying attack.

The part of this film which leaves me the most conflicted is the very limited approach of the film in terms of its storytelling.  There doesn't seem to be any metaphor or underlying ideology.  On one hand I admire it because it allows us to provide the judgment on the actions of the characters and what they mean in a larger context.  On the other hand, I almost want the filmmaker to give us an overarching theme or metaphor to get some perspective on the events she is portraying.

The best example of this is the most divisive issue in this film, the use of torture in the film as a means for justifying CIA black sites and enhanced interrogation techniques.  For the most part, I think the film shows its use and the opinions of the officers in charge of torturing without judgment.  On one hand, they do not suffer any moral consequences.  On the other hand, I thought the movie showed, in graphic detail, the realities of this type of torture.  It reminded me of a scene in John Adams where there is a loyalist who gets tarred and feathered.  It was not a pretty scene and showed the human graphic realities of the term tar and feather.  Similarly, this film didn't glamorize or celebrate the torture but showed it for what it was.  However, there was one scene where I thought the movie let slip its bias towards torture when they characters lament its demise due to Obama and Congressional hearings.

My final impression of this film was the reaction of the audience I saw it with.  Usually, after a movie, there is a noticeable buzz as people get up to leave and others quietly discuss with their friends.  After this film, there was a noticeable silence as everybody sat still for a few moments.  I don't really know why this happened, but maybe it shows the emotion this country still holds as a result of 9-11.  But I think the silence also shows why Zero Dark Thirty is a good film.  A movie about the killing of Bin Laden could have the biggest American high-five pat yourself on the back film, but Zero Dark Thirty avoids celebration, and instead at the end of the film we get a silent, solitary tear.  This is ultimately a much more powerful image and left my theater speechless.          

Bulls v. Celtics

I was lucky enough to go to the Bulls/Celtics game in the Garden here in Boston.  It was my second time at the Garden, which is actually a pretty nice place to watch a game.  I was in the balcony in the corner opposite of the Bulls bench.  It's not the greatest view because at times your perspective can be distorted, but it was closer and better than I had anticipated.  Below are some random game thoughts.

Congrats to Celtics Fans

No, I'm definitely not becoming a Celtics fan, but I have to give the Celtics fans credit.  The Garden seemed to be rocking even through it seems the fans have little to cheer for.  Although the Celtics were recently on a 7 or 8 game win streak,  they've lost their best player, Rondo, for the season and  Pierce and Garnett are soon to be retired.  The team seems like it will be in rebuilding mode in the near future.

Additionally, this game was a slogfest.  I think there was a combined 20 points scored in the 3rd quarter.  There were plenty of badly missed shots throughout the game by both teams.  Nonetheless, the Boston fans seemed to keep the energy alive and rose to the occasion when the Celtics crept back in the game after the Bulls had opened some distance from them in the 3rd quarter and were really loud at the end of the game as the Bulls had a chance to take the victory in the closing seconds.    

Cold Start

Not sure if both teams didn't get enough warm up in or if this is the game before the All-Star break syndrome, but both teams started the game off cold, missing the first three or four shots by a fairly large margin.  There seemed to be a lack of execution on both sides of the ball as well.

Robinson vs. Bradley

One interest subplot was the interaction between Nate Robinson and Avery Bradley.  Both players were going at each other throughout the game.  Bradley is known as a player that will routinely pick up the opposing point guard at half court and relentlessly pursue him.  You could tell early on that the pressure was taking its toll on Nate.  Nate started complaining to the refs.  Robinson was pulled in favor of Teague midway through the 1st quarter and didn't come back until the 2nd half.  In the second half, it was Robinson that got the best of Bradley.  After initial harassment, Nate went after Bradley just as hard on defense and forced him into an offensive foul and a defensive foul and sent him to the bench with some satisfaction.  

Garnett elbowed Deng

Garnett got away with a cheap shot in the backcourt in the second half as Luol was on the ground.  Garnett gave him a cheap shot as he passed by.  The refs didn't see it because they were already down the court.  Just another reason to dislike KG.

Deng not right

Deng took a charge, in the first half and didn't seem right after it.  He got up slowly and looked to be grabbing his back during timeouts.  I didn't look serious, but it seemed to hurt him throughout the game.

Nothing on offense easy

The Bulls never got into a rhythm and on most possessions couldn't get into their offense until there was about 10 left on the shot clock.  Ball handlers Robinson, Bellineli, and Teague seemed to dance beyond the three point line and then try to create something at the last second.  I'll give credit to the Celtics, but the Bulls were equally as devastating on defense.

Missed opportunities

I felt that the Bulls should have run the offense through Carlos Boozer more throughout the game.  I felt that he might be able to create either his own shot or at least find a cutter, but as I mentioned about too much of the game was wasted with ball handlers running through fruitless screens near the three point line, only to jack something up near the 24 second limit.

I thought that Celtics should have gone to Garnett more in the fourth.  I get nervous when KG starts to knock down that outside shot, because once he starts knocking that down it complete disrupts the Bulls defense.  In the fourth, he hit a couple shots in a row, but then the Celtics went away from him for a few possessions.  If I were them I would keep exploiting that advantage until the Bulls stopped it, but luckily they went away from it.

Review: Argo

I had high expectations for Argo and everyone I have talked to recommended Argo.  This usually spells disaster for any movie.  The last hyped movie I saw, Looper (along with the last movie I saw Skyfall that makes three one word films in a row oddly enough), fell victim to this.  Going into Argo I had heard incredible things.  So I was careful not to believe too much into the good reviews I had heard.  That being said, I liked this film, but wasn't blown away by it.  Argo is a good use of a few hours, but I won't be thinking about it too much longer after the movie.  I did have to look up to see which details where correct and which were dramatized.

Argo reminded me of another film set in the seventies, Munich.  They both begin with the frenetic and chaotic reenactments of famous events; Munich Olympics and the Iran Hostage Crisis.  These serve as launching points for a lesser known, but true story.  Both movies are also draped in 70s style, as shown below.  That being said, each movie's purpose and tenor are very dissimilar.       

Munich was about the utility of an endless cycle of violence and reprisals and price it has on people's lives. Argo is more of a caper as the main objective is how to get these people out.  The film is also an example of Hollywood poking fun at its own industry.  The funniest and best parts of the movie are with Alan Arkin as a Hollywood producer and John Goodman as a make up artist who work to put together a fake movie to pull the whole plan off.  Arkin and Goodman are perfectly cast for these outlandish, comedic roles.     

Argo is about a group of Americans who escape the embassy in Iran as it is getting overrun.  In Argo, Ben Affleck's character, Tony Mendez comes up with a plan to get them out of Iran, pose as a Canadian film crew scouting a location for a movie.  Part of the reason he believes this will work is everyone's perceived notion about Hollywood's bravado.  Of course they can film a movie in a country in the middle of a revolution.  It's cheap and has exotic locations.  Of course there are other jokes too:

John Chambers (Goodman):  So you want to come to Hollywood, act like a big shot... 
Tony Mendez (Affleck): Yeah. 
John Chambers: ...without actually doing anything? 
Tony Mendez: Yeah. 
John Chambers: [smiles] You'll fit right in!

Lester Siegel (Arkin): You're worried about the Ayatollah? Try the WGA. 

Humor aside, Argo does a great job of framing the drama and giving it context to the larger problem of the Americans still held hostage in the embassy.  Argo also show the peril these six escapees face as they exit out of their Canadian safe house into the resulting Iranian revolution taking place.  Argo also  shows the conundrum the US was in diplomatically and strategically.  I really liked the small moments of drama and the small touches in the film in the Washington scenes and the Tehran scenes.  The escape scene at the end; however, to me was a little over the top.  I kept thinking, "Okay well this had to have been altered."  But in a way, I felt the film hints at this the whole time.  Of course a film poking fun at Hollywood's over the top nature will end a "based on a true story" movie with an over the top not quite true ending.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie and would recommended it as a good thriller.  

I also recommend reading the true story here written by Tony Mendez, Affleck's character.  While not as riveting as the movie, it is interesting to read about the actual operation and the challenges they faced.  Spoiler note: there was no pulse pounding airport adventure, but they did fly out of the airport.