Elgar and Prokofiev

Paul Watkins plays Elgar with the CSO

Tonight's Colorado Symphony concert included three firsts. The evening opened with a new arrangement of selections from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. This is an expanded version of what is usually played as an orchestral suite, arranged by conductor Andrew Litton. It was a nice set, played very well. The Colorado Ballet had performed the piece in 2012 (click to see my review), but it is nice to see it performed as concert music.

The second first of the night was Paul Watkins performing the Elgar Cello Concerto for the first time in the US. It's nice to hear something else played on the cello other than the Dvorak. Unfortunately the Elgar is not quite as melodic a piece. Watkins played well, although he seemed to have a little trouble on his high string. Not only did it sound a little flat but the tone quality did not project well.

The highlight of the evening was the Colorado premiere of a piece that originally dates back to the 20s; Prokofiev's Symphony #4. Parts of it were extracted from a ballet that he wrote in 1929 and were expanded into a symphony for the Boston Symphony. Years later, the composer revisited it and write an expanded version, which is what was performed tonight. I have to say I liked it quite a bit, even though it did remind me of several other works by the composer, including Peter and the Wolf. Also, earlier this year we saw an excellent production of his Cinderella with the Colorado Ballet, and parts of it reminded me of that.

Conductor Andrew Litton made a point of asking the audience not to leave at intermission, which I thought was odd, they must have had an exodus last night, but it appeared that most people stayed. However, a handful of people walked out between the third and fourth movements, an odd choice to make it so close to the end and then leave early. Also the piece is mostly Romantic, it's not that weird or dissonant that I would have expected it to drive people out of the hall.

Classical music is in a strange place. I'm sick of hearing the same pieces performed over and over again, yet there is a lot of new music that is crap (in my opinion). They really need to figure out how to get audiences involved in orchestral music again.

Sound and Music Awards - MPSE, CAS and OSCARS

GRAVITY (click film titles for my reviews) won the CAS Award for Sound Mixing, and the MPSE Golden Reel Award for Sound Effects and Foley editing, and it's tough to think any other film will win the Oscar in either the Sound Editing or Mixing category. The use of Dolby Atmos in the film (mixed by Skip Lievsay, CAS, Niv Adiri and Christopher Benstead and sound editing supervised by Benstead), was groundbreaking and extremely well done.

Also nominated in Sound Editing were ALL IS LOST, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, THE HOBBIT and LONE SURVIVOR. They all sounded excellent. (CAPTAIN PHILLIPS won the MPSE Award for Dialog/ADR Editing).

Somehow I skipped reviews on two of them, so here are thumbnails.

I liked both HOBBIT movies more than I expected. This one definitely gets off to a very slow start, but at about the half-hour mark the action picks up, and Peter Jackson may be our best action director at this point in time. The sound design was very good although I suspect several of the other films were much more challenging, since they take place in the real world. I did not see this in Atmos, so I don't know how well that aspect was used.

I liked LONE SURVIVOR as well, although I have mixed feelings about the glorification of the violent subject matter. This movie was one of the most violent films I have ever seen, and although that is probably an accurate depiction of war, the manner in which it is presented does at times seem to glorify it as a visceral event for the viewers rather than making it just seem repulsive. I also do not like the fact that they monkeyed around quite a bit with the actual events, it seemed unnecessary. One thing that was exceptional was the sound mix. It really did make me feel like I was on the battlefield, which is difficult to do without just making the movie seem painfully loud all the time.

IRON MAN 3 was also nominated for the CAS award. I liked this film a lot more than the second in the series, and the sound design was excellent for a very busy film. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS was also nominated.

FROZEN won the CAS Award for Sound Mixing in an animated film. It beat THE CROODS, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY and DESPICABLE ME 2. CROODS was a bit crude of a film for my taste and MONSTER U did not live up to the Pixar standards IMHO, but I enjoyed DESPICABLE 2 as much as I did the first film. They all sounded great. I did not see WALKING WITH DINOSAURS.

FROZEN also won the MPSE Award for Music Editing in a Musical Feature. Also nominated were two excellent concert documentaries, JUSTIN BIEBER'S BELIEVE and METALLICA THROUGH THE NEVER. The doc footage in the Justin Beiber film was actually quite good and made the movie watchable.

THE GREAT GATSBY won the MPSE Award for Music Editing in a Feature Film. I was surprised to enjoy this film quite a bit. I had expected that the anachronistic music would kill the film for me. Baz Luhrmann's over-the-top style seemed to match the life of excess that Gatsby lived, and the cast was excellent. Leonardo DiCaprio was great in the lead and Tobey Maguire was good casting as the everyman Nick Carraway.

Also nominated in that category were a couple of other films that had good use of music. MANDELA is nominated for the Oscar for Best Song (I think FROZEN will win, although I also liked the song from DESPICABLE ME 2. The song from HER was forgettable, and the song from MANDELA was not a large contributor to the success of the film or its music IMHO.). As much as I love Idris Elba, he was not well cast as Nelson Mandela. We know he was a quiet man of small stature, and to me, Elba was never shot to look small and never resembled Mandela. WORLD WAR Z was a surprisingly good film. I generally don't like straight-forward zombie films, but this was well-paced, until the ending. I did feel that there were too many leaps in logic in the last third of the film for me to buy everything. But I did like the score.

I cannot make a judgement about the Oscar for Music because I did not see enough of the films.

THE GRANDMASTER won the MPSE Award for Sound Editing in a Foreign-Language film. The film was beautifully shot and sounded great, but not nearly as good as some of Wong Kar-wai's other films. This film tried to bite off too much by trying to tell an entire life story against a backdrop of change in history, politics and war. I would have been happier with a much smaller film. I cannot make an Oscar judgement in this category. There are two nominees that I have screeners for but have not seen yet. Shame on me for falling so far behind this year.

Best Picture

We finally watched DALLAS BUYERS CLUB on Amazon streaming. It is indeed one of the best films of the year, with fantastic performances all around. Yesterday Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto won Spirit Awards for their performances in this film, both richly deserved. It is a very well made film (brilliantly edited). Jennifer Garner is also very good in a smaller role. There are some rough edges in the production design (anachronisms) that were probably due to the very low budget of the film, but otherwise this is a worthy contender for best picture.

I have seen all of the other films nominated except WOLF OF WALL STREET. They did not send screeners to the sound guilds. I had hoped to catch a screening while I was in LA, but at three hours in length, I just could not fit it into any of my trips.

Click for my reviews of GRAVITY and PHILOMENA here, HER here, NEBRASKA here, and AMERICAN HUSTLE and 12 YEARS A SLAVE here.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, due mostly to the documentary-style direction of Paul Greengrass. It also had outstanding editing and sound work, as well as excellent performances by many first-time film actors. However I do not believe it is in serious contention.

At this point it seems like a two-horse race between GRAVITY and 12 YEARS A SLAVE.  I think GRAVITY is likely to get director for Alfonso Cuarón, as the film pushes limits in a way no other film ever has (including its use of Dolby Atmos for the sound mix). I suspect that means a lot of voters choose 12 YEARS as best picture. It's hard to argue with that choice. It is definitely one of the, if not the, best film of the year.

More Docs

I finally watched the two remaining nominees for the Documentary Feature Oscar. Previously I reviewed 20 FEET FROM STARDOM (click to see the reviews), which won the Film Independent Spirit award yesterday, as well as THE SQUARE (which won the IDA Documentary Award) and THE ACT OF KILLING.

CUTIE AND THE BOXER is a fantastic documentary about a married couple who are elderly Japanese artists living in New York City. It's a wonderful character study, and it is extremely well directed. There are several sequences in the film that could be removed in their entirety and play as a short documentary or as a short art film. It is beautifully photographed and brilliantly edited. I'm surprised this was not nominated for more of the other major documentary awards (although it did won a directing award at Sundance and was nominated for DGA award). I highly recommend the film, which is available on Netflix streaming. In fact, four of the five nominees are on Netflix. The fifth, 20 Feet from Stardom, is on Amazon streaming.

The final film is DIRTY WARS. I'm not really going to discuss the political content of the film, which is completely worthwhile of the intensive scrutiny that a feature-length documentary could offer. Instead, I'm going to say that this is one of the worst-made films I have seen all year and I have no idea how this piece of crap got nominated for an Oscar. I am always wary when someone puts himself in front of the camera to be the star of the movie, especially when the movie is not about them. This film comes off like poorly made propaganda, and not a documentary, even if its heart is in the right place.

The film is based on a book, which to me says that much of the footage is probably comprise of staged recreations of what he had written about earlier. (I'd love to know if that is not the case.) The writer not only put himself in front of the camera, he also reads the voiceover, which is a huge mistake. The text of the film is hurt by his flat, somnambulistic reading. I kept imagining how much better the film would have been with another voiceover artist, even the guy from FRONTLINE would have injected more interest into the subject matter. Also, the film could easily have at least a half hour cut out of it and would have been far more effective.

So clearly it's not my choice or prediction for the Oscar. Of the other films, I have to say (as mentioned in my other reviews) that this was a fantastic year for documentaries and I find it hard to pick a favorite. I will be rooting for my friends who worked on 20 FEET, but I would not be upset if three of the other films won. Congratulations to them all!