BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA is a great film by Steven Soderbergh about the legendary entertainer Liberace. The film airs May 27th on HBO.

The film is not without problems; the first act has some clunky dialog exposition, and the last hour overstays its welcome by at least ten minutes, but for a low budget biopic, it is pretty extraordinary. I find it fascinating that after BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN won a mountain of awards, EVERY studio rejected this film as a theatrical release as being "too gay," even with multiple Oscar winners attached, including Soderbergh directing, Michael Douglas as Liberace (in a fantastic performance) and Matt Damon as his young lover (in an ever better performance). This has Emmy written all over it. Also outstanding is Debbie Reynolds, who is unrecognizable as Liberace's Polish mother. Rob Lowe is also very good as their plastic surgeon.

The art direction, sets, makeup and wardrobe are all amazing. The film is a period feast for the eyes. And Marvin Hamlisch's score is perfect for the film.

It is a bit surprising how graphic the sex in the film is. There are numerous open-mouth kisses between the two leads (I did not expect this from big stars) and a few other explicit scenes (Damon mounting Douglas from behind must have made for an uncomfortable shooting day for both of them). Douglas is also pretty courageous to show his aging body on screen for a good amount of time.

I highly recommend the film.

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE: A Cautionary Tale

As I sit and watch the events in Boston, I cannot help but think about THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE, the Ken Burns documentary that played last week on PBS (and is available for free viewing online). The film was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award as well as the International Documentary Association's Award. And I think it was a better film that the one that won the Oscar this year.

In 1989, the New York police announced, and national media broadcast, the fact that they had captured a gang of young men who had raped a woman in Central Park. It's odd; if the police say it, and the media broadcast it, people assume it to be true, even though none of the facts in the case made any sense, including the fact that none of their DNA matched the DNA recovered.

Why were they convicted? They confessed. Why would someone confess to a crime they did not do? Because they were teenagers, they didn't know any better. Because their parents told them do whatever it takes for the police to let you go. Because they were tortured. The film does not use the word torture, but that's essentially what happened. These kids were picked up late at night, already exhausted, and questioned for 24-30 continuous hours, given no food, no water, no bathroom breaks, no opportunity to move around. After that much physical exhaustion, hunger and dehydration, anyone will say anything. (Their false confessions point out how useless torture is.)

This week we watched the media repeatedly release false information about the bombers. This only makes me question whether they finally have the correct people. They might, and hopefully they do, but police have been known to make mistakes, and they might have the wrong person (although extremely unlikely after the lengthy pursuit). It's a shame that this doubt will always linger, but one only has to look at the NY Post and CNN this week for how much false information floats around, and how people will believe anything they see on TV. I honestly got more credible reports from my Facebook feed than I did from the national media.

In any case, the film is worth viewing. These kids spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit, and if they had been adults, they would have gotten the death penalty.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, and BEST PICTURE

There are a few movies I still haven't reviewed, including two Best Picture nominees that I loved, so I will try to get this done before the show starts!

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is one of the best films of the year. Extremely well written, acted and directed, and deserves all the nominations it got. It's nice to see a film with unique, believable complex characters interacting in unpredictable ways. I loved Jennifer Lawrence in WINTER'S BONE and was thrilled to see her performance here. I was very surprised to learn her acting technique, although I had suspected parts were improvised as they seemed so "in the moment."

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is a low-budget indy that was fantastic. I love to see stories told about people I would never have met otherwise. Documentaries and foreign films tend to do this, and America it seems to be only the independents who will take chances on stories that are different. This film had its own challenges, but the acting is so wonderful that you can ignore the rough edges. Quvenzhané Wallis will probably not win, but it's hard to imagine acting at her age, and even harder when the script is this demanding, and the shooting process so awkwardly low budget.

If I had to pick, LIFE OF PI (reviewed here) is my runaway favorite film of the year, and probably many years, as it is such a unique accomplishment. AMOUR (reviewed here) is also excellent, but too dark for the Oscar.

ARGO (reviewed here) will probably win, it has the momentum, and with Ben Affleck strangely missing from the directing nominees, it seems like voters will chose the film instead. Also, it's a film about a film saving the country from war, an excuse for the academy to feel good about itself. As much as I enjoyed it as a good popcorn movie, all four of the aforementioned films were far better.

I was not overwhelmed by DJANGO (reviewed here).  LINCOLN (reviewed here) was solid old-fashioned moviemaking, but not worth a BP Oscar (although it may win some tech awards).

I hated LES MIZ (reviewed here) and ZERO DARK THIRTY (reviewed here). I know I'm in the minority on the last one, but it is really crappy moviemaking, regardless of the political context.

I won't hold my breath, but I would love to see PI win, or even SILVER LININGS or BEASTS, but I think it will be ARGO.

Visual Effects

I did not yet review several of the films nominated for Visual Effects.

I did review THE HOBBIT here.

And my choice for winner, LIFE OF PI, here.

AVENGERS is yet another stupid superhero movie that has one of the most extended actions sequences ever committed to film. It's still a stupid movie. I enjoyed the first IRON MAN film (but not the sequel, reviewed here), but both HULK movies sucked (reviewed here), and I skipped THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA because they both looked unwatchable. Apparently you needed to see them to understand this mess of a movie because I had no idea what was going on most of the time.

In terms of effects, the film sounded great (nominated for a Golden Reel), and looked great most of the time, but there were enough goofy, unrealistic moments to make it more cartoonish than it probably meant to be.

PROMETHEUS had an awful lot of problems, a lot of them generated by director Ridley Scott's silly interaction with the media when the film was in early stages. He flirted with the fact that the end of the film may make some vague reference to being a prequel to ALIEN.

Unfortunately the film is much more than a prequel, it is a virtual remake of ALIEN, except with less logic, less interesting characters, and, for the most part, forgettable acting. There are some nice moments in the film, but none of them are resolved, it is clear he had hoped this film would set up different offshoot of sequels, but the movie tanked, so that won't happen. The film did look and sound great (nominated for the Golden Reel), though.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN was one of the worst films of the year. The script is abysmal and lacks structure. The whole film seems like a trailer for a miniseries that I would not want to watch. And the acting is truly horrible, most especially Charlize Theron, who has given Oscar-caliber performances elsewhere, but here seems to be channeling the cartoonish performance of Cruella deVille. The visual effects ranged from stunning to laughable, so I'm not sure how it got a nomination.

Without question the Visual Effects award belongs to LIFE OF PI, which puts a live action boy on a boat with digital animals, who are completely realistic through almost all of the film. Only a handful of shots use real animals. And even fewer shots look digital. It's an absolutely stunning achievement. And it sounded great too. The film won two Golden Reel Awards, and Ang Lee was very gracious in accepting his Filmmaker Award at the Golden Reels this year. It couldn't have gone to a nicer guy for a better body of work.

A Few More Docs

I forgot to mention a few other documentaries earlier.

LAST CALL AT THE OASIS won the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Award in the documentary category, and was supervised by my former student Peter Brown (who won two more Golden Reels for GAME OF THRONES). The film is directed by Jessica Yu, who won the Oscar for Doc Short in 1996, and is voiced by Erin Brockovich. (As my father would say proudly, SHE'S A POLLACK!!!)

The film is about an incredibly important subject, and one that I frequently bring up, only for people to dismiss me.

We are running out of clean water.

Right here in the USA.

The Colorado River is now a trickle compared to what it was only a few decades ago. If you want to know what the US will be like in a few decades, look at India.

This is a very good film, although the filmmaking style borders on propaganda, there is a lot of science to back it up. It's on Amazon Instant, and I believe on Youtube.

EDIT: From today's NY TIMES.

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI (also nominated for the Golden Reel) is a fantastic film about a sushi chef in Japan who is at the height of the art form.

DO NOT SEE THE FILM ON AN EMPTY STOMACH!!!

Eat sushi beforehand. The filmmaking is very good, and the subject is a very interesting character. Highly recommended, and it's on Netflix.

Finally, MARLEY, also nominated for the Golden Reel (and a BAFTA), covers the late life of the musician. I was quite let down by this film. I really like the subject, but the film had the bizarre combination of running way too long yet still only scratching the surface of his life. I never felt like I got to know him (like I did Jiro in the above film). It's too bad. But if you are a fan, it is probably worth watching anyway. It's also on Netflix.

Foreign Film Roundup

Billy Wilder once told his cinematographer "Be sure to get a few shots out of focus; I want to win the Oscar for best Foreign Film." The reference is a little dated, but I do think the Academy still has a stereotype of what a great Foreign film is. It must be really depressing. (Same with documentary, the only uplifting film was SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, reviewed here.) 

I have only seen two of the films nominated for the Oscar for Foreign Film this year, though, WAR WITCH and AMOUR. 

WAR WITCH is what I referred to as a "hybrid" foreign film last year. It is a Canadian film, in French, shot in the Congo by a Canadian director (whose parents emigrated from Vietnam) and taking place in a fictional country in central Africa. The film has been nominated for the Oscar and the Spirit award. 

The film is not without flaws. The first half of the film takes itself as seriously as a heart attack without taking much time to explain what is going on or why we should care about specific characters. It definitely has the feel of a "war is bad" film. The film covers two years in the life of a young girl who is forced into war at age 12. It picks up significantly halfway through when she falls in love and gets married. And the final act of the film is quite moving. 

But the real story in this film is the young actress Rachel Mwanza, now 16, who grew up on the streets of Kinshasa, Congo, having been abandoned by her parents. Director Kim Nguyen saw her in a documentary and cast her in the film, even though she was illiterate. Much like the young star of BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (which I still need to review), this film is really carried by her amazing performance, and it is worth watching for that. 

Although AMOUR is in French, takes place in France, and uses a predominantly French cast and crew, the film was the Austrian submission for the Oscar (presumably because writer/director Michael Haneke is Austrian), making it another hybrid nominee. Today it won the Spirit Award for International film. 

This is without a doubt one of the most depressing films I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot. The title of "Love" refers to the bond between an aging and ailing couple, but the film deals more with the difficulties of aging and the decisions that must be made. The film is beautifully shot, and very European in style, using virtually no music (and all of it is source music) and extremely simple sound design. It is an extremely moving film but this film is not for everyone. 

In addition to the Oscar nomination for Foreign Language Film, the film has several other nominations, including Best Picture (very unlikely it will win), Best Director, Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for Emmanuelle Riva, who is outstanding (although lead actor Jean-Louis Trintignant is equally good). Of these two films, this one is far superior. 

I did see France's submission for the Oscar, which was not nominated, THE INTOUCHABLES, a comic drama based on the true story of a wealthy paraplegic and the young ruffian he hires to take care of him. The film has some nice moments, but it was a little saccharine for my taste. 

I also saw RUST AND BONE, another French hybrid (with Belgium) which was nominated for the Spirit award. A nice cast, including Marion Cotillard and good direction made it an enjoyable but ultimately forgettable film. It did win the Motion Picture Sound Editors GOLDEN REEL. (INTOUCHABLES was also nominated,  along with AMOUR). 

I do find more and more as I age that I enjoy the foreign films and documentaries more than the American fiction films. 

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE and FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS

In an attempt to catch up on some last minute viewing before the Spirit awards today and the Oscars tomorrow, last night I watched these two documentaries on Nextflix. I have always loved documentaries, and spent my undergraduate years making them with Ricky Leacock at MIT. There was a bumper crop this year.

HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE was nominated for the Oscar and the Spirit award, and came highly recommended to me, but I was very letdown by the filmmaking. The film is about the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. The opening ten minutes was actually so bad I stopped watching and switched to the other film, then went back to it. The whole first 30 minutes is very uneven. I'm not sure who the audience for the film is, gay, straight, young, or old, but to me the opening did not inform me of anything I didn't already know from numerous other films, and from having lived through the 80s. The tone was actually very angry, which does not work in the long run.

However, the film gets much better. But the film is still too long, mostly because of a lot of redundancy, and worse, most of the great scenes are news clips that I have seen before. There is not a ton of new material in the film. I would love to have seen contemporary interviews with some of the people involved.

FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS was also nominated for the Oscar. Again, I was let down. The monotonous voice-over by the director made it very hard to watch. I hate it when filmmakers make themselves the star of their own documentary, and in this case, he should have recast himself. Certainly the American version of the film would have been much better if his narration had been translated and performed by an actor instead of having to hear him while reading subtitles. And it probably would get the film out to a broader audience. About the only good thing about the film is that we see what it is like to live as a Palestinian  which is missing from most Western films.

I previously reviewed SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN here, and  INVISIBLE WAR here. (I did not see THE GATEKEEPERS, the remaining Oscar nominee.) Nor have I yet seen CENTRAL PARK FIVE, which was nominated for the Spirit award, and the IDA Doc award. To me, INVISIBLE was by far the best of the ones I have seen.

Congratulations to INVISIBLE WAR, which won the Spirit today, and the IDA award in December  and good luck at the Oscars tomorrow!

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN is a great documentary. The less you know about it going in, the better the viewing experience will probably be for you. So stop reading here and rent the movie at Redbox. The film is about a musician from the 60s whose music had unintended consequences on Apartheid.



To discuss the film I have to give away a few things.

The surprise in the film was not that much of a surprise for me. They talk about looking for this musician. Well, if they don't find him, there's no movie, so I was not at all surprised that he was still around. Also, just based on the early comments about him in the film, I fully expected that when we found him, he would be mentally ill.

The biggest weakness in the film is that I still feel like I am searching for him. It's a very interesting story, but I really learned almost nothing about him as a human being. I think whatever his mental illness is, it made it impossible for the filmmakers to get close enough to him for the audience to learn about what happened to his career. It's a shame, as I feel like I only got about 1% of the real story.

Nonetheless, that 1% is very interesting and worth watching.

SKYFALL

I have been so overwhelmed with watching movies for the past few weeks that I have not had time to review them. I'm going to try to catch up over the next few days.

SKYFALL is the best Bond movie in ages. It has a smart script, great direction, and outstanding technical work from everyone involved. It is definitely the best-sounding Bond movie, period. Nice work by Per Hallberg, Karen Baker, Scott Millan and Greg Russell. The score by Thomas Newman was great too.

The best part for me was the fact that the movie went where the previous ones avoided; Bond's personal past before he was in the service. It is not explained in detail, but we get enough of a peek that we are interested in seeing where the future films will go. The script was a lot more complex than most action films for this reason.

Nice work.

Byron "Bob" Foucht, RIP

I am very sorry to report that I heard the bad news that Byron "Bob" Foucht passed away. After my father, who passed away in 2002 (a few musings about him here and here), and jazz legend Herb Pomeroy, who passed away in 2007 (a few musings about him here), Mr. Foucht was probably the most important male role model in my life. He started giving me trumpet lessons when I was ten years old, and continued as band and jazz band conductor through high school. He gave me my first opportunity to conduct when he was on medical leave and he allowed me to rehearse the jazz band for a few weeks. He also gave me my first opportunity to arrange, when I wrote some brief adaptations for the marching and jazz bands. He also motivated me to organize my first small group jazz band for a local event. He was always very supportive of my love of music. He had a great sense of humor and was a truly good human being, and I will miss him terribly. 

Mr. Foucht was the high school marching band director, so he had a close relationship with my father, who was the football coach in the town for many years. They worked together on and off the field. At the height of the team's success, the games were a well-oiled machine. My father really felt that everyone involved with the game was important. In addition to the cheerleaders, we also had a drill team the performed at each game, and the band. (My father was the coach, one sister was a cheerleader, one was on the drill team, and I was in the band, so we had all the bases covered.) Mr. Foucht was very good to do as much as possible with the very small resources that the team had in such a small town. I believe there was one year where we had less than 20 people total in the marching band. Rather than being an embarrassment to the town, we were still an important addition to the Saturday spectacle of the football games. 

He kept in touch when I was in college, and he was kind enough to show up last September when the alley next to the football field was named after my father. I had no idea that would be the last time I would see him, as he seemed in fine form and very youthful in demeanor. I did not realize he was 75 years old at the time. I am very happy that we were able to reconnect on Facebook, but I am very sorry that I will not be able to see the latest animal videos that he liked to share with his friends.

He will be missed.

DJANGO

DJANGO UNCHAINED is typical Tarantino. A movie which might have been great, but instead falters throughout and is only entertaining instead of thoughtful. I really try to like his films, but he gives me way too many reasons to stop caring about his characters. Shooting the head off a horse in the opening scene doesn't help.

Technically the film is quite brilliant. The cinematography, editing and sound work are all amazing. And much of the plot is original. The acting is top-notch, until, at the most important point in the film, Tarantino injects his own horrible acting into the film, as though Jar Jar Binks had suddenly wandered onto the set and had a pivotal role.

The ending is far too violent for my taste. The more I see violence glorified in film, the more ashamed I am to work in this industry. I understand it was a difficult time in American history, but I really never liked Peckinpah's use of ultra-violence as cinematic ballet either. I hope this is the last of Tarantino's violence. He clearly is a talented filmmaker, who could do a lot more with his characters and a lot less with squibs.

FLIGHT Crashes and Burns

FLIGHT never really takes off after the crash sequence in the first act of the film. In fact, the opening sequence pretty much sums up how incompetent a movie this is. Zemeckis's idea of an adult scene is to make the woman naked, and frame it so her head is cut off in most of the scene. This is not some throwaway character, she winds up being a turning point in the denouement, and this is as complicated as her character gets.

Denzel is a fine actor but is wasted on this maudlin one-dimensional script. He plays a functional drunk passably, but the real gold standard for movie drunks will always be Jack Lemon in THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES. LEAVING LAS VEGAS is also very good, but the book is much better, and is really an autobiography of a suicidal alcoholic. This movie clearly does not understand the disease as well. But a much bigger issue is the lack of depth in the writing. Everyone is one-dimensional; the religious co-pilot, the recovering girlfriend who appears and disappears for no apparent reason in the screenplay, the uncaring lawyer. These are all cliches. And why bring up religion at all unless you are really going to discuss it, as LIFE OF PI (review here)  did?

The crash sequence is done very well, and the sound design is excellent. But otherwise, this is a made-for-tv quality film.

Frankenweenie and the Animated Features

This has been a banner year for animation. Just consider the five Oscar nominees:

Brave (review here) 
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman (review here)
Pirates: Band of Misfits
Wreck-it Ralph (review here)

And these two films which did not even make the cut:
Rise of the Guardians (review here)
A Cat in Paris

Here are a few brief reviews to fill in the gaps on the others I have seen:

If you are an animal lover, be prepared to cry... twice... in FRANKENWEENIE. Perhaps Tim Burton's best movie in many years. The character are great,and the visual style is perfectly appropriate for the subject matter, with lots of hidden in-jokes for adults and move lovers. I really loved this film, and it really shows the soft side of Burton. Most years this would be a sure thing for an Oscar. But against PARANORMAN and WRECK-IT RALPH (which won the Annie award last night), it will be a tough field.

PIRATES is a tough film to review because the standards set by Aardman are so high that every feature they have made has been a letdown compared to their early shorts (Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comfort). It's a shame, the shorts really show a sign of adult intelligence, whereas PIRATES is strictly for the kids. I think Rise of the Guardians should have been nominated in its place.

A CAT IN PARIS is a beautiful, traditionally animated French film with a nice story that is clearly for kids. The only think I did not like was some of the voice casting in the American translation, some of them seemed to go for a cartoon sound when it was unnecessary. Also, the film is short, barely an hour, although it would have been tough to stretch out the plot much more.

At least three of the five nominees are great films, deserving of the award.

Bolero

Karen Gomyo

The Colorado Symphony had an interesting concert this evening which began with the challenging Harmonielehre by John Adams. Challenging for the orchestra; it truly is a showpiece, but it is even more challenging for the audience. There were numerous parts worth recognizing, but the most amazing to me was the trumpet part, a long series of long tones in the high register, played pianissimo and muted. I have no idea how Justin Bartels found space to breathe without passing out.

The orchestra had bad news this week when the president resigned under mysterious circumstances, presumably because tickets sales were much lower than projected for the first half of the season. Unfortunately, at times like this, playing contemporary music only hurts the orchestra, and therefore the music as well. The house was not good for this concert. It's a shame, as this piece was interesting but complex, and the second half of the program was truly crowd-pleasing.

After a very long intermission, conductor Peter Oundjian brought out guest Karen Gomyo for the Symphonie Espagnol of Lalo. She played beautifully and deserved the standing ovation that the audience gave her. Even more amazingly, the orchestra was fantastic on the other orchestral showpiece of the evening, Ravel's Bolero. I don't believe I have heard this piece live before, and it was interesting to see the melody passed from instrument to instrument. For some reason I had always thought it was an alto sax, but it is a tenor and soprano.

If there is any criticism for the evening, it is that the final chorus was not as climactic as I have heard it before on recordings. In fact the trombone glissandi were barely audible. But that's one tiny criticism of an otherwise fantastic night. I sincerely hope that there are not any more financial issues troubling this world-class orchestra!

The Miserable

I'm catching up on writing some reviews of movies I've watched over the last few weeks, and I had deliberately been putting off reviewing LES MISERABLES as long as possible. I'm really the wrong person to be reviewing this. Although I'm a musician and I sing in a chorus, I am really not a fan of most musicals. So right off the bat this is a tough sell for me. But an article in today's USA Today (I'm travelling and that's the paper the hotel gets) has made me feel better about writing honestly about it. I had already read the blog review by Matt Walsh referenced in the article and had assumed that to be a minority opinion, but it seems we are not in the minority. (I do not agree with all of his criticisms.) The Miserable, in this case, are the audience.

The novel that this musical is based on is 1800 pages long. At some point I read a what must have been a children's condensed version of it (although I did not know that at the time) and I remember the story vividly as being about one central relationship: Jean Valjean and Jauvert. The rest of the characters are all ancillary, at least in my memory of the version I read.

This brings us to the problem with this musical. Not the movie, but the structure of the musical upon which it is based. Much of the musical is about the soggy, sagging, stodgy, stale, sappy pre-pubescent romance between two of these ancillary characters. This fits fine into a TWILIGHT film but really bogs down this musical.

And then there is the matter of the music itself. "I Dreamed a Dream" has to be one of the most putrid songs ever written. Most of the rest of the music is paint-by-the-numbers composition. Perhaps the only halfway decent song is "Master of the House," again using ancillary characters.

Then we get to the film adaptation of this musical that I already didn't like. I figured the casting of Hugh Jackman might be good enough to make up for the casting of Russell Crowe. I was wrong, Wolverine was just as bad of an actor as Gladiator. Jackman's singing isn't that good either. Crowe's singing is abysmal. And so is his acting in this film. It's as though both of them forgot that when you are singing you still have to act.

The younger parts have gone to pretty boys, who don't really add much to the film in any way. My absolute favorite parts of the film were with Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter; the only two who understood just how badly this movie needed comic relief. (The rest of the film is as serious as seven heart attacks.) Unfortunately they are so different from anything else, they don't belong in this movie at all, but whatever movie they do belong in, that's the one I wish I had seen.

Then there's the matter of how the film was shot. Director Tom Hopper decided to break tradition and shot the songs with the actors singing live instead of to playback. Contrary to what we are usually told, the reason we usually shoot to playback is not really technical. Musicals are difficult no matter how you shoot them.

The real reason is that singing is really hard. Professionals singing in musicals perform each song once a night. When you are shooting a film, you can's ask a singer for dozens of takes in a row and expect that they will give a full performance. That's why it's easier to record the music separately from the picture. I do applaud the effort of doing it live. It must have been extremely difficult.

And I do think that this method is why Anne Hathaway will win an Oscar for her performance in this film. Her soliloquy is shot in one long closeup and her singing is real.. and therefore, so is her acting. In fact even the duets between the minor characters are much more emotional because they were shot this way. It has an immediacy that playback could not possibly have.

However, it's clear to me as a music editor that the big production numbers, including the one that opened the film, were not shot this way. And the mix-and-match approach is very distracting, when some characters sound great, and others sound like Russell Crowe.

If you took the time to read this review, thank you. You are one of only a few.

LINCOLN

I don't want this to come off the wrong way; I think LINCOLN will probably sweep many of the Oscars, and I did enjoy the film. It is very well made, but I think this film version did not create a Lincoln that was a three-dimensional human being (and even more so his wife Mary Todd).

Even as a kid, I was obsessed with Lincoln. I'm not exactly an expert on him, but I know enough to judge that this film was more sanctified hero worship than reality. The cinematography, makeup, set design, and sound design were all outstanding and created a great mood for the film, but I would much rather have seen Lincoln as a fully complex character.

Normally I love John Williams' work, but I think the score had a lot to do with this. Lincoln always seemed the most real of the presidents to me, someone I could have a beer with in front of the fireplace. This Lincoln would make me afraid of getting dirt on the carpet. I know people are raving about the performances, but every time Daniel Day-Lewis spoke, all I could think about is the Hall of Presidents from Disney World and how the audience gasped when the robotic Lincoln actually took a step forward. People are more amazed that he looks like Lincoln than they are impressed with his acting, in my opinion.

But I still enjoyed the film. I just wish there were more to it. There are plenty of great documentaries about Lincoln and the Civil War if you want to learn more about him.

THE LORAX'S THORAX

I never read THE LORAX. But the movie makes little sense. It seems that the Seuss estate has decided to make feature films out of the scant books that barely support a 30-minute cartoon, so the writers have to fill in a lot of missing material. I honestly don't have a problem with that, when it's done well. The problem is that the screenwriters were incapable of coming up with a structure and characters to support this film.

The story is non-linear, with some kid I don't know or care about trying to find out where trees went. Then we get an incredibly long backstory with a different through-character. I'm not sure why they didn't just start with that story and then follow his character forward. Perhaps that's the structure in the book? In either case, neither character is really strong or interesting enough to justify a film. The Lorax character is, especially with the  strong casting of Danny DeVito, but that's not where the story is. (Also well cast is Betty White, whose presence is wasted.)

It's weird watching such interesting animation only to have it on such a mundane story. And of course the film is a ecological cautionary tale, so if it had been told well, it could have been a much more important movie. Too bad.

DARK KNIGHT RISES

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES continues my increasing dissatisfaction with our culture's obsession with comic book characters. Although parts of the film are quite good, the fact that people want to sit through a very long movie that takes itself way too seriously about a superhero says a lot more about the audience than it does about the filmmakers. There are so many intelligent movies that could be seen, yet audiences want this forgettable and predictable drivel.

I had put off seeing this movie as long as I could; living only a few miles from the scene of the Aurora shooting puts a pall over trying to enjoy a film with much violence in it as visceral entertainment.

There are a ton of problems with the script, the most obvious being that Batman has no real reason to trust Catwoman other than his Bat-boner and a need to create an act two for the script. (Imagine if he were smart and did not involve her? The movie would be over in 40 minutes, and probably would be a better film.) It's real hard to care about a Batman who is this stupid.

For me there will always be only one Batman: Adam West. I've been watching that series in reruns lately and I can't believe how much they got right half a century ago that they still get wrong today. It was a fun and deliberately campy show that worked on several more levels than these movies do.

I don't get the appeal of Anne Hathaway. To me she looks the sister you are nice to, only so you can get closer to her more attractive sibling. She's an excellent actress, but I honestly thought she looked more attractive in the Get Smart movie than here. And don't even think about comparing her to the 1960s Catwomen, Julie Newman or Eartha Kitt.

And then there's Bane, a character who whose face we never see but his voice is so loud it's painful. Why do I care about this guy? If I have to read a comic book as research before seeing the movie, your screenplay stinks. Start over.

SLICE OF LIFE OF PI

LIFE OF PI is one of those rare films that makes me excited about cinema all over again, as though I were watching THE WIZARD OF OZ again for the first time as a kid. I knew nothing about the film going in, and I think that's the way it should be, so I'm not going to attempt to summarize it, except to say that is one of the most gorgeously visual films I have seen. DO NOT WAIT to see this on video, see it on the big screen.

I am not a fan of 3D, and I did feel that much of the film was needlessly muddy with the glasses on, and that for the most part 3D did not add much past the title sequence. However I have not seen it in 2D to make a comparison.

The visual effects are truly astounding. For much of the film I thought the animals were real until it became clear that there was no possible way that these animals could have been trained to do much of what was in the film. There are only few brief shots in the film where the animals do not appear real. To warn animal lovers, there are scenes of animals in distress, but they are inherently tied to the nature of the story, and the animals are digital, not real.

It is also very rare to see a film which discusses theology and uses multinational and multicultural references in such a straightforward manner. This film is so much smarter than everything else in cinemas right now, it's a shame it is not being seen by more people. I was the only one on the theater at my screening. In many ways, this film is what CLOUD ATLAS (review here) aspired to be, but failed to bring to the screen.

Although to be fair, PI does not live up to one element of the hype: the movie does not prove or explain the existence of god. Of course, no movie (or book) could do that, unless you believe that god consists of the creative spirit of man. In that case, I have seen god this evening. And he is in fine form.

BRAVE

Who would have thought that Disney would make the best Pixar film this year (Wreck-It Ralph, reviewed here), and Pixar would make a lame Disney film like BRAVE. Just about everything is off in this film. The opening 8 minutes of the film are almost unwatchable, and include extraneous explanatory voiceover (that never returns) and a friggin' music montage. This starts the film off with horrible pacing. The cast is weak too, as a decision was made to make them Scottish for no apparent reason (it's a fantasy, why do they need accents?).

The film finally takes off about 40 minutes in but it is far too late. There is a cute Disney bear character that seems completely out of place in the film, and the lead girl never really gets to show off much authority, making her not that much more developed than Ariel or the other Disney princesses.

It's a shame, as it could have been a very good film.

CES Wrap-up

Hello Kitty Display at CES

I believe this is the 25th Anniversary of the first CES that I attended, give or take a year, and having missed a few along the way. It is getting increasingly difficult to make gigantic new technologies as exciting as they had been in the past, especially in this economy. It was however the largest show in history with over 150,000 attendees.

For the last two years, the big push was 3D TV, which has failed pretty miserably. This year the big push is Ultra HD, or as professionals call it, 4k, which has much higher resolution that HD. Again they may be jumping the gun on a technology, as HD still has not taken hold in the home, and a large number of people with HD sets are still watching SD signals. The price point for the UHD 4k is likely to be well over $10k, and will not matter much on screens smaller than 70", so I don't think we will see market penetration any time soon.

A bigger problem is content. There isn't any. And there are no providers for it. Since most viewing is now done through streaming, we are not likely to see UHD happen any time soon.