78th Academy Awards blather

The 78th Academy Awards will unroll Sunday March 5. Jon Stewart will be the host. I am not making fun when I say that this year’s Oscar telecast will be the lowest rated Oscar telecast in years. After all is said and done, no matter how many awareness commercials ABC runs on ESPN, no matter how many sponsors buy a half-minute commercial at $1.6–million, the Oscars will be seen by less people than any other Oscar ceremony in modern time.
The telecast will still draw between 40 and 45 million viewers, and that is considered sinking. If Fox wanted to outdraw the Oscars they could show an episode of American Idol, but instead they are showing the Michael Bay directed Bad Boys 2. See, there is honor among thieves.
Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, Munich, Brokeback Mountain, and Capote - are all worthy films. But don’t you also wonder why The History of Violence, The Upside of Anger, The Constant Gardener, Grizzly Man, The New World, The World’s Faster Indian or Match Point were virtually shut out? The point being the Academy Awards can never be all things to all people. And the films chosen are the tip of the iceberg of total films made.
In one year’s time we could be sitting here discussing BABEL, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, V FOR VENDETTA, THE DEPARTED, ZODIAC, or maybe THE GOOD SHEPHERD, or even a film that was pushed back from last Christmas, ALL THE KING’S MEN.
2006 will see two films from studios that depict 9/11. Universal has Flight 93 in May, a retelling of the doomed flight hat crashed in Pennsylvania shot in real time, and from Paramount Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center starring Nicolas Cage.
The summer of 2006 will be a weekly battle of mega-movies with budgets north of $100-million and titles like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3; X-MEN 3; THE POSIDEON ADVENTURE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST, SUPERMAN RETURNS, or THE DA VINCI CODE.
In sharp contrast to the hundreds of millions Hollywood throws at tent pole pictures, the movie Crash had a budget just over $6-million. Industry reports put the amount Lionsgate has spent promoting Crash’s Oscar possibilities at $4-million. Usually a studio will send out at the very most 15,000 maybe 20,000 screeners of a film for an Oscar campaign. Part of Lionsgate’s cost included the 130,000 DVD screeners of Crash that were sent to, well, everyone but the people here in this room.
Hollywood likes to shine a light on its artistic contributions and if you ban a film they will surely come to its defense. You have to imagine that most of the Academy members vote with their artistic passion – for what the really feel is the best contender. Then you have your first standard deviation of people who will cast their ballot according to what their friends vote for. Do you really think that what a critic’s group or Golden Globe member rallies behind has that much credibility with the various Actors, Directors, Producers, Executives, Art Directors, Cinematographers, Editors, Writers, Sound and Visual Effects artisans and Members-At-Large of the Academy?
One must also consider what I call the Cold Mountain effect of certain films. While Cold Mountain was nominated for 7 Academy Awards it only won one (Best Supporting Actress) and was not favored by the Hollywood community from the point of view of runaway production. Cold Mountain was shot in Eastern Europe and many of the voters are people who live and work in California. Another film that is nominated this year in the foreign film category, Paradise Now, is the subject of slanderous email and verbal campaigns by people objecting to its nation of origin – the film is listed as both from Palestine and the Palestine Authority on two different Academy web sites.
Memoirs of a Geisha, despite mainlining at the box office, has more than a good chance at picking up a couple of technical and craft awards this year. It was mostly shot on a recreation Japanese village constructed just outside L.A.
There are always the annual Oscar parties and brouhahas, but is anybody really watching? The last time I checked films like Brown Bunny and now, Manderlay, will not play theatrically in Houston because it’s the last stop on the train schedule. The Landmark Theatres affiliate Magnolia Pictures’ touring show of Oscar short films will not be playing in Houston because we’re not hip enough, although the program has bookings in over a dozen (smaller) U.S. cities.
If you’ve seen the Best Picture choices you see more films than the average bear. Most people have not seen Brokeback Mountain (USA Today put the number at 12-million in North America) but perceive it as a gay cowboy movie. That is incorrect. If you want to see a film about gay men as portrayed by straight actors see The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce, and Hugo Weaving.
Truman Capote will be the subject of a film coming out later this year from director Doug McGrath and the cast includes Sandra Bullock as Lee Harper and Daniel Craig as Perry Smith. The actor playing Capote previously supplied the voice of Dobby the Elf in the Harry Potter films.
My choice is Good Night, and Good Luck but my choice never wins. Kind of like the Presidential elections.
On a side note, movie theaters are only hurting themselves by refusing to innovate. Sooner, rather than later, major studios will release DVDs on the same day and date as the theatrical release. And they will do that because it will bring in more money than the current economic model. Movie theaters by contrast will continue to lose audiences until they re-define the movie going experience as something more than stadium seating and bottled water. Consider soundproof plexi-glass booths with the sound piped in for people who want to watch movies and talk on their cell phones at the same time. Again, my choices never win.
Let’s take it category by category. With the exception of short subjects, documentaries and foreign films, for which members must sign-in and view in-person, the various branches on the Academy determine their respective nominees from a list of eligible films, and those final nominations are voted on by the entire Academy body. While my methods for choosing the Oscar winners are far from foolproof, I always accurately pick better than 50-percent. I’m soooo much smoother than Matthew McConaughey in that crap movie Two For the Money.
NOTE: I won't bore you with my choices but I did get 17 out of 24 ... I missed Best Picture and Best Actress ...

sxsw 2006

Cruising into Austin I knew there was no way I could see more than a dozen films and assorted shorts before notching another South By Southwest Film Festival on my celluloid belt. Thirteen features and five short subjects later my eyes are blurry but I’m well hydrated as one sponsor, Aqufina, offered free bottled water inside and out. (Lose the artificially fruit-flavored swill, it tastes like cough medicine.)
To put the amount of films I saw in perspective consider that SXSW 2006 programmed 118 feature films in categories including retrospectives, special events, premieres, narrative and documentary competition, midnight screenings, and emerging visions. Everywhere I walk, since most of the events are all within shouting distance of one another, I meet filmmakers most of whom are Austin residents, the rest attendees. The filmmakers literally outnumber regular audience members at some events. While publicists from Gotham might generalize Austin as a music festival town, the locals know that Austin has the biggest filmmaking scene of any Texas town, and in fact that week’s cover of the Austin Chronicle celebrates a total of five films that were locally produced and playing in the festival.
SXSW always plays great documentaries and the music themed documentaries in particular benefit from the Capital City’s special relation with sound. The BBC docu The Passing Show – The Life and Times of Ronnie Lane encapsulated his entire career from the Small Faces, The Faces, solo and otherwise. Fans of Lane know he spent time in Houston and Austin before his death in 1997. Funny how Rod Stewart, original lead singer for The Faces, is absent but rock legends Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton can’t praise Lane’s influence on rock enough.
Quite another story with loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies. Sometimes you don’t want to know too much about rockers you adore because loudQUIETloud was somnolent. This is not a concert film but rather a behind the scenes look at the Pixies on a reunion tour. Imagine a reality show about people who don’t do drugs anymore. The filmmakers show us Frank Black a.k.a. Black Francis in three different scenes chest naked. But Kim Deal - clothes on in every scene. I feel ripped.
My personal favorite film was the music docu Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. This film may not see theatrical but you can get it on DVD in late May. Not personally being a fan of metal other than a song here or there I was fascinated by how director/producer Sam Dunn approached the subject in an anthropological manner befitting his own training in behavioral science and his love for heavy metal.
The film covers Richard Wagner, Metallica, Black Sabbath, worldwide banned LP covers, Dee Snyder testifying before Congress and Tipper Gore in the mid-80s, who was the first to use the fore-finger and little-finger devil-horn sign (other than UT alumni), and Norwegian Death Metal just for starters. Dunn never stays too long on one subject and the result provides a rocking ride through two generations of rock culture. Plus Dunn makes for a gracious host; his asides are illuminating, he talks to all the right people and he never deigns to his audience. A pedigree of heavy metal graphic chart comprehensively allows us to follow what for many will be an unknown road.
Also look for these above average documentaries to appear somewhere before the end of the year: This Film Is Not Yet Rated takes on the ratings board for motion pictures, going so far as to hire private detectives to identify who the actual members are; Maxed Out!, an eye-opening report on many misunderstood facets of credit card debt; and Shadow Company takes viewers into the outsourced military industry. Mercenaries are people too this film says.
Less interesting was Fired! (the title says it all), although the shock of recognition factor is high on this one. And Nobelity, where the filmmaker interviews Nobel Prize winners, is well meaning but meandering. The docu The Last Western, about a town time has forgotten on the edge of the desert, will itself be forgotten very soon.
Don’t fret, your humble scribe merely uses the docus as a diving board for the more cerebral fictional features. Oddly the one that stuck when the others had faded was Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Behind the Mask is a horror spoof that’s smart enough to cast Robert Englund in the kind of role that would be played by Donald Pleasence twenty years ago. But Englund’s just a guest star. Leslie Vernon (Invasion’s Nathan Baesel) wants to be the next famous mass murderer and a television reality crew films him stalking potential victims. Everyone thinks it’s a big joke, natch, until Leslie turns the tables on everyone.
Other highlights included The Cassidy Kids, a mobius strip of a plot that involves the cast of a hit 80s TV Saturday morning show who reveal grim secrets when they meet in the present day to record the show’s DVD commentary. Not to be outdone in the next voice you hear department, Forgiving the Franklins shows what happens when a family loses its guilt and religious inhibitions after they meet the real Jesus while in a group coma following a car accident. Watching this film it seems logical that the phrase “What the fuck,” is the perfect way to start a prayer.

Tsotsi's Gavin Hood

Tsotsi director Gavin Hood spoke to the audience at the Angelika Film Center in downtown Houston the Monday preceding the Academy Awards. His Q&A was filled with both technical details and the more human story behind the making of the movie. When Tsotsi won the AA for Best Foreign Film the following weekend viewers saw Hood’s charismatic speaking style give grace and humor to his speech.
As Hood ordered the ceremony cameras to switch from him to the row with the actors from Tsotsi, he interspersed his acknowledgements with the cues from the teleprompter indicated the ticking clock. His commanding oratory skills aside it’s no surprise to learn that Hood has a law degree from his native country of South Africa and subsequently came to UCLA to study film. A producer approached Hood to helm Tsotsi based on Athol Fugard’s novel. Moving the story from the 50s to post-apartheid South Africa was one of Hood’s concerns.
Tsotsi, the title character, brutally shots a woman as he carjacks her luxury car. In the back seat is an infant. Discovering the baby in the car that he has since wrecked, Tsotsi decides to care for the child. A wide range of characters reflecting many of South Africa’s 11 official languages balances the film’s gritty realism as seen through street gangs and poverty.
“At the crucial point of the movie, the man who has been speaking high-Tswana starts talking to Tsotsi in street-Tswana,” Hood noted to the audience. Some of the other languages heard in Tsotsi include Afrikaans, English, Zulu and Dutch
Hood then demonstrated, walking back and forth in front of the screen, how he used stationary set-ups that kept “the eyeline tight to the lens.” Using his hands to draw imaginary borders on the screen Hood demonstrated how he cropped the image for any subsequent television projection while in the digital intermediate stage of post-production.
Admittedly the best way to see a film is with the director explaining his movie commentary-style. A film like Tsotsi is loaded with so many fascinating peripheral aspects and they only become apparent when you’re familiar with the culture in which it takes place.