Pop Culture Odds and Ends, Part Two

These bits were originally posted to the now-closed Castle Co-op between December of Twenty-and-Eleven and March of Twenty-and-Twelve. I'm reposting because why not and shut up.

Best Robbed Picture

(or; Best film to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award but not win.)

The history of the Academy Awards is replete with Best Picture Winner travesties, so it’s been, as I’m sure it has been for others, difficult to single out the most frustratingly cheated nominee of all time.

1994 is a particular cornerstone of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ ability to get it so very, very wrong. The winner that year was Forrest Gump, against clearly superior films Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption and Quiz Show. (One suspects that the trio of more-deserving films split the vote and allowed Gump to triumph.)

But for me, the single greatest Best Picture nominee to have been so horridly deprived of its rightful crowning is Citizen Kane. Perhaps the most glaring mistake ever made by the members of the Academy was the loss of Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece to, of all things, How Green Was My Valley!

An intense investigation into the life and legacy of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane – based upon real-life newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst – Citizen Kane is often cited as the greatest American film ever made. Kane was a wonder of innovations in cinematography, film scoring and film narrative. It changed the way filmmakers told their stories. It began a new period in filmmaking history.

They went with How Green Was My Valley.

Best Picture To Rule Them All

(or; Best film to have won the Best Picture Academy Award.)

Rifling through all of the Best Picture winners, it becomes apparent the list of truly fantastic movies to win the Holy Grail of film awards is suspiciously thin, considering the number of truly fantastic movies to have existed.

You’d think that having a small pool to work from would make this decision easier, but it really doesn’t. Although angling towards the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men, I couldn’t escape the notion that it’s youth meant it hadn’t yet proven its status as a classic. But then, is such a status a prerequisite to winning or being considered the best of the winners? (Definitely not the latter, I know.)

I have therefore selected as Best Picture to Rule Them All, Francis Ford Coppola’s undeniable classic, commercial and artistic success, and sequel-of-all-sequels -- if we’re not talking about The Dark Knight -- The Godfather Part II, telling the story of two generations of Corleone men.

I’ll never forget how it made me feel on the first watching, the silhouette of Fredo sitting in apparent safely in the fishing boat, rod in hands, saying a Hail Mary to aid his efforts. Michael watches stoically from the house. We know what’s coming.

This was a culmination of two fantastic and engrossing movies, and represented, parallel with his father Vito’s journey, a great and decisive change in Michael’s character.

And, in my opinion, the best of what the Academy got right.

Most Anticipated Film of 2012

So many films to look forward to this year, but like a great white elephant with glow-sticks raving in the corner of the room, and with apologies to Messrs. Whedon, Anderson – both, actually – and Cuarón, my most-anticipated film of 2012 just has to be The Dark Knight Rises.

Christopher Nolan has proven himself a master storyteller with each of his films, but with The Dark Knight he successfully melded genre with enriched, tense and masterful film-making, and now, he believes he can unleash a worthy sequel upon us.

Gotham City, after eight years without the Batman, has seemingly eradicated its organised crime problem. In the film’s trailer, the city’s elite is self-congratulatory and thoroughly unprepared for the inevitable fall. You think this can last. There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. ‘Cause when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us, warns Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle.

If the IMAX prologue is anything to go by, Tom Hardy’s Bane, the film’s primary antagonist, with his voice and physicality, will be the stuff of nightmares.

Am I nervous? Hell yes. The plot is mostly still under tight wraps, and there is a lot of anticipation and high expectation. But I’ll be there, day one, ready to be as enthralled as I was with The Dark Knight, and I can’t doubt it being my most anticipated film of 2012.

Pop Culture Odds and Ends, Part One

These bits were originally posted to the now-closed Castle Co-op between December of Twenty-and-Eleven and March of Twenty-and-Twelve. I'm reposting because why not, shut up, and in once instance to embarrass myself.

End-of-Year 2011: Favourite Film

'Drive'
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Screenplay by Hossein Amini
Bold Films, Odd Lot Entertainment, Marc Platt Productions, Seed Productions

Ryan Gosling’s The Driver, for all his kindness and capacity for love, is a man affected by violence. Although heroic in many ways, at some point in his mysterious past, he was forever changed by violence and became something almost monstrous. Not unlike David Fincher’s Seven, Refn’s wonderfully ethereal – yet sparingly and shockingly violent – film with its brilliant thumping electro-pop score eschews (stylistic) genre conventions to make a truly original and artistic film from a plot that abides by its genre’s conventions. Sure, it’s an appealing neo-noir crime-thiller kind-of, but it truly is the study of Gosling’s fascinating character that makes the film equally so.

End-of-Year 2011: Favourite Album

'Bon Iver'
Bon Iver
Jagjaguwar/4AD

I’m sure there were a great many listeners who were initially taken aback by Justin Vernon’s follow-up to his wildly popular debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. When many had fallen in love with For Emma for its captivating and sorrowful account of a heart-broken man alone in a cabin in the woods without any lavish production equipment or techniques, there was bound to be some resistance to Bon Iver’s luscious soundscapes, obscure vocals, and sometimes big climactic moments. Despite my love for For Emma, Bon Iver fulfills the promise of the former, being both the greater album and the logical extension and expansion of Vernon’s wonderful music. But enough of that comparison, because Bon Iver in its own rights is my favourite album of the year, and dare I say even the best of the year. Vernon has crafted with his band a magnificent forty minutes of careful and affecting indie-folk-prog, again with Vernon’s melodic talent and poetic and learned lyrics. Look no further than the album’s closer, ‘Beth/rest’, which by all reason should be a whole mess of cheese, but after repeated listens reveals itself to be so much greater than its 80’s saxophone-ballad leanings.

End-of-Year 2011: Favourite Television Show

'Breaking Bad'
Created/Executive Produced by Vince Gilligan
AMC

A lot of people have jumped on board after some initial hesitation, and I do understand that to a certain extent. Breaking Bad is a slow burn that spends however much time it needs to earn every one of its bigger moments. Each season is a lesson in tension-building. Each season is a lesson in fine writing for television. This past season was Breaking Bad’s finest yet, once again building upon the foundation laid in previous years, offering more than a few oh-my-holy-good-god moments, and delivering one of the greatest payoffs surely in television history. Bryan Cranston is amazing as Walter White, with a fantastic ensemble surrounding him, most notably this year Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo Fring. Even its photography is second-to-none at the moment. I’ll never forget the extreme wide shot of Gus and Walt in the desert from ‘Crawl Space’, no movement but for the ominous rolling clouds. There’s really not much more to say about it. It’s a fine, fine show in every respect.

Film Guilty Pleasure

Okay, I got one. Brace yourselves. I’ve probably watched Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace more times than any other Star Wars film.

Yep.

I say “probably,” but it’s a certainty. I have. I’ve watched The Phantom Menace more than any other Star Wars film.

God, how I hate this movie. I hate this movie so much, but I’m utterly fascinated by it.

Time has certainly allowed my watchings of this... “film” to abate, although I did recently give it a stab in order to listen to Red Letter Media’s Mr. Plinket commentary. It’s pacing, dialogue, it’s logic, almost everything about it is mind-bogglingly nonsensical or just plain hack. (Except, of course, the visual effects.)

But oh, how I loved to watch it over and over! I came to starting to fix it in my mind. To cut certain lines of dialogue, to lengthen or shorten different shots. I essentially re-edited it in my mind during every watching.

Let’s face it, though. It’s beyond saving. And now so am I.