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Your Wednesday Links: Oscar Reax

NYTimes: Oscars 2012 Ballot - Get yours printed and ready for the office pool. Remember Making the Movie's Oscar Tips.

Grantland Oscarmetrics: The 'Yes,' The 'Huh,' And the 'What The Hell?!' of Nominations Day

Vulture: Patton Oswalt’s Wonderful Oscar Snub Response

Kickstarter: A $60 Fifty Dollar Follow Focus

Chris Jones Blog: Avid or Final Cut Pro X? Tips for setting up your first feature film cutting room. - Interestingly, he lists some none-of-the-above options, like Lightworks.

A photo gallery of old movie houses - from John Ott on Google+

Deadline: How Did Last Year’s Festival Films Fare At The Domestic Box Office?

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

Movie Review: Coriolanus

Screenwriter John Logan was just lauded with an Oscar nomination for his adaptation of the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret into the Scorsese-directed film Hugo. But he tops himself with yet another kind of adaptation entirely: obscure Shakespeare.

Though great swaths of Shakespeare's play Coriolanus have been cut out of the new film version, starring-and-directed-by Ralph Fiennes, no violence has been done to the text. It breathes with cinematic life and startling immediacy.

Part of that is accomplished by transporting Shakespeare's Rome to a modern, Balkan setting. Only a few elements seem out of place -- such as the custom of begging the people for a consulship nomination, and the laying down of guns to have a knife fight in the middle of a battle.

That fight is between Aufidius (Gerard Butler) and Caius Martius (Fiennes), a Roman general better known by his war-name Coriolanus. Coriolanus and Aufidius are mortal enemies, but when the people of Rome, stirred up by some scheming politicians, banish Coriolanus, he joins forces with Aufidius to seek revenge upon the entire city, his family included.

Like all of Shakespeare's classic plays, there are layers upon layers. You may know Shakespeare as a great poet of joy, friendship and love; after this play, you will be convinced he had equal talent in portraying pride, righteousness and rage. Coriolanus will bow to no man; but his unyielding mother Volumnia, played with hypnotic conviction by Vanessa Redgrave, has her fingers fast around his heart, moreso than even his best friend Menenius (a superb Brian Cox) or his fragile wife (Jessica Chastain).

If you're the type of person who already knows they don't like Shakespeare, then why are you reading this? If you love Shakespeare on film, as I do, then rejoice! Not since Kenneth Branagh's debut with Henry V has an actor/director given delivered such a one-two punch of a film. Fiennes is masterful in his portrayal of Coriolanus, and confident behind the camera, filling the movie with moments, small and large, that amplify the themes of the text.

Martial law, famine, war, political ambition, the meaning of loyalty to country, loyalty to one's fellow soldiers -- and loyalty to family -- the play and now film explores each in turn. To Shakespeare, Rome was not a quaint and noble old civilization, but a land of savage violence. (Witness Titus Andronicus.) It was also a reflection of the Elizabethan society in which he lived, a way to disguise political comment in the form of historical curiosity.

When Coriolanus was performed circa 1607/08, the execution of former hero general Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex, in 1601, would still have been in popular memory. There had been famines, and popular insurrections. And the English had fought for their lives to turn back a Spanish Armada. All of which I bring up only to muse on what people will be getting out of our great films today. What has made Shakespeare transcend time and place so effortlessly? I have some ideas, but I'd rather you go see Coriolanus (if you live in one of the three cities in which it is screening) and share your own reactions.

In this time of wars and occupiers and political infighting, does Coriolanus still draw blood?

Movie Reviews: Carnage and Rampart

Carnage

Carnage does not pretend it isn't based on a play, unlike Ides of March. There are two -- at least, perhaps more -- times where the characters decide, under the flimsiest of motivations, to stay in the same room yelling at each other.

If you're willing to overlook that, and the rather uninspired directing by the usually confident Roman Polanski, you'll be treated to three excellent performances and a very good one. Jodie Foster is a bit out-matched by Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christophe Waltz, even though her character, Penelope Longstreet, a pious liberal with a quiet desperation, is the most developed of the quartet.

John C. Reilly plays her husband, Michael, an affable cookery salesman who can acquiesce to his wife's liberal instincts for only so long. Their son has suffered from a schoolyard attack by the son of the Cowans (Winslet and Waltz), but which boy was the true victim is the subject of much debate. Waltz, as a lawyer who advises pharmaceutical companies on how to deny culpability, is perfectly cast in terms of his sly, slimy persona. His accent, however, is never explained in the text, which makes his character's hyper-sensitivity to the use of English words less-than believable. Kate Winslet has already proven her facility with an American accent many times, and has no such believability problems. Her portrayal of the buttoned-up Nancy's descent into candor is the highlight of the film.

The play is a translation of a French original by playwright Yasmina Reza, Le dieu du carnage (The God of Carnage). I saw her celebrated play Art in London in the late 90's, and that was also a very funny and very vicious examination of upper-middle-class mores. This play/movie doesn't quite have the same climactic finish as Art. The energy ramps up, but there seems to me to be a great deal further to go when the figurative curtain drops. The ending felt more like an intermission break -- the veneer of society peeled back only halfway.

The screenplay for Carnage is credited to Polanski and Reza. Christopher Hampton translated it for the London stage, and I bet I'd have preferred his version. Still, as a royal rumble between great actors, you can do worse than to give them a proven stage property and set them at each others throats. Reza's tale seems to endorse the idea that civilization is really a fragile construction, but also a self-healing one. For all they tear each other down, these couples are simpatico in many ways. I could see friendships forming out of this encounter that last longer than the marriages.

Rampart

Rampart is the second collaboration between writer/director Oren Moverman and actor Woody Harrelson, the first being 2009's The Messenger, which I watched last week on Netflix streaming, and which blew me away. Once again, they have created an unforgettable character. Harrelson's Officer Dave "Daterape" Brown is the kind of hard-ass, manly cop you would expect to be terse and plainspoken. Instead, he relishes florid language and quoting esoteric legal opinions. His tragic flaw is his own moral certainty, which blinds him to the shades of grey all around him.

Rampart takes place in the middle of the scandal surrounding the Rampart division of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1999. In this climate, "Daterape" Brown's brutal tactics that once made him a hero, now make him a pariah. Moverman, along with his co-screenwriter, the crime novelist James Ellroy, has chosen an elliptical, expressionistic style for this story and it works like gangbusters.

As Dave's paranoia and self-destructiveness metastasize, editor Jay Rabinowitz skillfully whipsaws us through his encounters with his family, the top brass and a string of women. The gritty, high-contrast cinematography by d.p. Bobby Bukowski is phenomenal. The only stylistic flourish that felt too strained was a deposition scene where the conversation literally went in circles.

Like The Messenger, this film is a difficult sell in traditional commercial terms. Is Dave a victim of weak-spined politicians, or a symbol of police corruption? What are we to make of the characters played by Ned Beatty and Robin Wright who may or may not be double-dealing against him? Can any movie which foregrounds character so much over the plot be sold to mass audiences? Then again, Drive has done okay. I hope Rampart will be able to find the same smart genre audience.

Your Wednesday Links: Hey, Have You Heard of SOPA/PIPA?

Confessions of a Hollywood Professional: Why I Can't Support the Stop Online Piracy Act - A working Hollywood editor looks at both sides of the argument before determining the flaws of the bills.

Free PDF screenplay downloads from this year's Sony films, including Moneyball

Tips for Using Audio Engineering Mistakes Creatively - warning: geeky

NYTimes: A new theory of what makes films satisfying

The documentary A Personal Journey Through American Films with Martin Scorsese is now available free online

Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films of 2011

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to get them as they come, throw us a follow.

Movie Review: Haywire

Haywire is the action movie equivalent of a hungry tiger. The plot, from ace writer Lem Dobbs (The Limey, Dark City), is so tightly-coiled that I wondered if it would explode and fall apart at some point. I'm happy to report it never does. Like the central character, Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), it keeps pushing forward with relentless fury.

Carano is an MMA fighter by profession, and it shows. The audience I saw this with literally applauded the fight sequences. She may have room to grow as an actress, but as an action star, she is born fully-formed. The fights here feel more dirty and real than standard movie fights, even though you know they are still heightened in subtle ways. The aesthetic is the opposite of the school of elegant wire-fu. In Haywire the actors do amazing things, but never have to defy physics or gravity to do them.

The cool fights would be for naught if the story wasn't interesting. At first it seems like it might be a "female Bourne" movie. But it's rather the opposite in several ways. Sure, Mallory has been double-crossed and she's looking for revenge, but she remembers everything. She behaves like a real mercenary might in her situation. She doesn't have an unlimited supply of cool weaponry or a lot of well-placed friends who can assist her. All she has is what she can improvise with in the situation. She knows when to set a trap and wait and she knows when to come charging in with the element of surprise.

Read more (spoilers)...

Your Wednesday Links: Infiltrating the Rose Parade

Infiltrating the Rose Parade - Think #occupy is the first to do it? Mack Sennett and his Keystone comedians did it first, in 1913!

Kevin Kelly on Tin Tin and the Uncanny Valley

Ted Hope's Really Good Things In Indie Film Biz 2011

The Lion King Rises: Dark Knight Trailer Mashup - via @jvartus

NYTimes: Inside the Production Design of ‘Hugo’

"Americans love the movies as much as ever. It's the theaters that are losing their charm." - Roger Ebert on slumping movie biz

New facebook group for low budget filmmakers, films, & fans

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to get them as they come, throw us a follow.

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
Filmmaking Tax Credits by State

DVD Review: The Inbetweeners Movie (Region 2)

The Movie

The Inbetweeners Movie is billed as Britain's #1 Comedy of 2011, so of course I would be interested in seeing it even if I wasn't already a fan of the television series, which has run for three hilarious seasons on E4 in the UK. Being a fan, I can't really speak to how this film would play to a viewer who isn't already familiar with the gang of four awkward, horny teen boys: Will, Jay, Neil and Simon.

What I can say is that it fits in well with the show, finding all the fellas back in fine form for a Lad's Vacation in Greece. The trademark social awkwardness and snappy banter is on full display, and I laughed many times while watching.

Writers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley are so good at capturing the inner workings of the teen male mind, I was disappointed that they did not put more effort into creating equally awesome female characters. In this film, each of the boys get a distaff foil, and they are all played by very winning actresses who do what they can with the weak material they are given.

In the end, the film is all about the boys -- well, and maybe Greg Davies as Mr. Gilbert, whose speech to the graduating students is worth quoting at length:

This isn't The Dead Poets Society and I am not that bloke on BBC2 who keeps getting kids to sing in choirs. I especially don't want to hear how well you are settling down at uni or how much growing up you have done in the past twelve months. At best, I am ambivalent towards most of you, but some of you I actively dislike, for no other reason than your poor personal hygiene or your irritating personalities. I hope I have made myself clear on this point -- and in case any of you think I am joking, I am not. I assure you, once my legal obligation to look after your best interests is removed, I can be one truly nasty f*cker. Good luck with the rest of your lives and try not to kill anyone. It reflects very badly on all of us here.

American audiences might compare this film to American Pie as a raunchy teen comedy. I don't think the plotting of The Inbetweeners Movie is quite at that level, but it is assuredly better in terms of witty rejoinders and sentimental moments punctured by colossal acts of stupidity.

Sound & Picture

Just fine. It looks and sounds better than the T.V. show, which was at a normal professional standard. The production value is higher thanks partly to the change in location - Malia, Greece, doubled with various beach cities in Europe.

Bonus Features

There is an entire second disc filled with bonus features, the main one being a very, very in-depth Making Of documentary. This will be of interest to filmmakers who want to see as much behind-the-scenes as they can, although it is oriented towards fans of the actors and is very heavy on them. There is some good info from the production people on some of the shooting challenges -- on boats in rough weather, finding locations, keeping paparazzi from shooting Joe Thomas' junk.

I skipped over "Joe Thomas: Dangerman" which seemed like it would be repeating info from the documentary; I made it through most of "Things We Did Instead of Rehearsing" which just an amusing reel of the actors horsing around in the rehearsal room. The "Deleted Scenes" were interesting as far as those things go. It's rare you ever come across a deleted scene that you thought shouldn't have been deleted, and this is no exception, although there are some funny moments in these, such as Jay urinating on the floor of a club bathroom. The "Bloopers" were dull. I didn't bother checking out the rest of the bonus features. Unless I'm mistaken, there was no commentary track -- a glaring omission that you'd never see on a big American comedy release.

Overall

A fitting send-off for a great series but not destined to become a comedy classic. Still, there are enough funny quotes and moments I can see myself re-watching it.

Movie Reviews: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I saw the new Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie on the same night I saw the new Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible movie. The former sags in the middle, but has a satisfying conclusion. The latter has a tremendous second act (more on that below) but fell flat for me at the end.

Here's what Holmes II gets wrong: Noomi Rapace's character seems like she's going to be interesting, and isn't. Many of the action scenes in the film lack clear stakes and a sense of purpose. They also defy physics or Holmes relies on luck rather than clever deduction. We care little about the characters who die, so their deaths are dramatically meaningless.

Here's what the movie gets right: a lot of the action that seemed inexplicable ends up having a great explanation. Like The Sixth Sense, the entire film (nearly) gets reinterpreted in flashbacks, and we are given the iconic moment of Holmes and his nemesis Moriarty (Jared Harris) going over Richenbacher Falls in a deathgrip.

So while fans of the traditional Holmes stories may prefer the excellent BBC series Sherlock as more in the Conan Doyle tradition of mystery-solving rather than action-heroism, I'm willing to accept the Guy Ritchie-directed franchise for what it is. It still treats the audience as intelligent observers who are one step behind a crime-solving genius who has little regard for social norms. Downey, Jr. and Jude Law (as Watson) have great snappy banter and this movie adds in the droll Stephen Fry as a bonus Holmes, Sherlock's brother Mycroft.

Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I'm not the only one who found Ghost Protocol just okay. I've seen every film in the series, and I remember liking the last one, co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams, a little better. This one is a fitting sequel, and I like the idea of playing with the expectations the audience has about the backstory of Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), even I didn't go for the payoff.

The action scenes are all aces. First, we have Sawyer from LOST (John Holloway) playing an Ethan-Hunt-like agent stealing some state secret. Next, a comical escape from a Russian prison. Then, there's the breaking into the Kremlin. But the best is when the characters move to Dubai, for an extended sequence that involves scaling the tallest building in the world with special gloves, a sting operation and a foot-and-car chase inside a sandstorm.

I think director Brad Bird can add "accomplished action director" to "accomplished animation director" on his resume. My issues are with the some elements of the story, credited to Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec (t.v. showrunners of October Road and Happytown). Jeremy Renner's character's behavior makes little sense once you know his secret and the big action scene at the end can't even come close to topping the Dubai sequence. The villain is under-developed and the coda at the end felt un-earned.

This could, of course, be because parts of the script were cut by Bird and the producers. In any case, the box office numbers and Rotten Tomatoes score for the film would seem to validate the filmmakers' instincts. They have certainly succeeded in delivering a Mission Impossible franchise film -- I'm not disputing that. I was just hoping they might elevate it above the other films in the series.

For all its dull middle and story issues, I still preferred Game of Shadows to Ghost Protocol because it had a satisfying ending. My own personal preference, but there it is.

John’s Top 10 Movies of 2011

Hey, just what you wanted! Another year-end list of films which is completely subjective and arbitrary. Well, I won't pretend this isn't entirely based on what I did and didn't see this year and, given different viewing patterns, it wouldn't be completely different.

The reason I'm sharing it is because -- whether these are truly the ten best films of the year -- I think all them deserve a wider audience. So hopefully there are one or two here you missed and this will help encourage you to find them. Happy viewing! --JO

Attack the Block

Writer/director Joe Cornish brings us an instant classic about an alien invasion in the London projects. With effortless argot and action, a teen gang and various adult characters spend a crazy night battling pitch-black wolf-beasts with glow-in-the-dark shark-toothed maws. It's funny, frightening and epic (on a less-than-epic budget). Listen to the Top Five Film podcast I guested on where we talked Block vs. Super 8.

The Skin I Live In

Never was a more surreal time to be had in cinemas than with this shocking, outrageous film. Writer/director Pedro Almodóvar had not lost his edge -- to keep such a preposterous plate spinning, he pulls out every trick in the book and then some. My recommendation: just relax into the turns so you don't get plot-twist-whiplash. Read the review.

Bad Teacher

While Bridesmaids was the breakout comedy of the year, I laughed more at this little Cameron Diaz-vehicle. Should it have been re-written so her character didn't play like she was just out of college? Yeah, sure. But that's more than made up for by supporting performances like that of Lucy Punch, as the high-strung teacher across the hall, Amy Squirrel. (A new talent to me, but not to fans of the British t.v. show Doc Martin.) I downloaded this as a plane movie -- wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. You have to admire the cojones on a mainstream movie where the central character is allowed to be unrepentantly selfish and repeatedly cruel to children.

Hugo

Master director Martin Scorsese's first and perhaps last children's film is an enchanting story about a Paris orphan, a mechanical man and the greatest magician that cinema has ever known. The use of 3D is perfectly integrated with the storytelling.

Submarine

Lead kid actor Craig Roberts is pitch perfect in this New Wave-y coming-of-age story set in 1980's Wales. Funny, touching, with flashy-but-never-showy directorial flourishes from actor-cum-helmer Richard Ayoade, Submarine combines the best of Wes Anderson, Francois Truffaut, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby and probably a few more of my favorite filmmakers into an unforgettable gumbo. Or maybe I was just in a perfect mood when I saw it. Either way, this is the one movie I saw this year that I'm most looking forward to seeing again. Read the review.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D

The quality of the video is often poor. The storytelling is scattered and even sometimes off-topic entirely (albino alligators). And yet, this is, considering the restrictions on entering the caves in Lascaux, France, the best way to see the cave art created at the dawn of our transition from animal to human. The 3D and Werner's constantly shifting lights let you appreciate how the ancient artists used the shape of the rock to give dimension and movement to their herds of prehistoric wildlife. Read the review.

The Artist

A strange, experimental piece of cinema that has somehow managed to make a mainstream splash. I chalk it up to the film's limitless ocean of charm. Sure, the story is derivative and light-as-a-feather, but the grin this film gives you is long-lasting. I'll take an ephemeral film with this many small wonderful moments and playful uses of cinematic limits over any cynical sturm-und-drang crapstorm blockbuster Hollywood can throw at it. Read the review.

Moneyball

Sharply-written and performed with a light touch by the Brad Pitt-led cast, this story of a revolution in the business of baseball is smart, funny and insightful. It shouldn't be unusual for a film to be this smart, funny and insightful -- but it is. I guess the movie business needs a character like Billy Beane to come along and revolutionize how it operates. Read the review.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

What if you made a biopic, but populated it with fictional figments of the main character's imagination? The answer is the brilliant first act of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. While the rest of the film succumbs to the tendency of biographies to jump around and dissipate into dozens of unrelated episodes, it is still fascinating thanks to a hypnotic performance by Eric Elmosnino as the adult version of the famous French musician and ladies man. Strange, elegant and full of great music, the movie is fitting foil for its subject. Read the review.

The Myth of the American Sleepover

Thanks to @schofizzy's recommendation, I got my butt over to the Nuart for a screening of this indie gem. Shot with a RED camera and a lot of love in 28 days in Michigan, this story of a crazy summer night exists outside of time and location, except for exactly capturing American adolescence circa 1950-2000. No one grows into an adult overnight, but add up the experiences of the many young characters in this film and you get as full a portrait as anything ever shown on screen. Read the review.

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