Best Picture 1998: Shakespeare in Love

I think at this time it would be appropriate to have a slight discussion of Miramax and in particular, its Oscar dynasty in the period encompassing the 1990s. Miramax, if you don't know, was founded by two brothers, Bob and Harvey Weinstein. Their intent was to distribute films other studios wouldn't because it wouldn't be financially feasible. Basically, The English Patient. Yeah, I'm talking to you. They were known for auteur works like Pulp Fiction, Clerks, Trainspotting, a lot of Woody Allen junk and oh, yeah, The English Patient. In 1993, Disney bought Miramax and this may not be where the trouble began, it ended somewhere around Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the brothers leaving the company. Then Disney sold Miramax in 2010. So, let's call it a brief spectacular history.



So, 1998, Shakespeare in Love. First, some fun facts. Julia Roberts was originally to play Viola, but she wouldn't do it unless Daniel Day Lewis played Shakespeare. Luckily, Daniel Day Lewis had the good sense to stay the hell away from Shakespeare in Love starring Julia Roberts. That was back in 1991, so it was another seven years before the film was completed.

We meet Shakespeare in the middle of a case of writer's block as he works on his new play, Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter. He falls in love with Viola played by Gwyneth Paltrow, a rich girl betrothed to Lord Wessex, played by Colin Firth. I just want to say I find this trend of female protagonists in the 1990s not wanting to marry or be married to Colin Firth really disturbing. Long story short, Viola inspires Shakespeare to write one of his his greatest plays. I could go through a turn by turn summary, but frankly, we would get bogged down in minutiae and just listing the cast presents a problem because everybody in the film is good. Ben Affleck puts on a good performance in this movie without resorting to his Boston townie accent which still would have been amusing. The story is predictable, but not devoid of interest at all. In fact, one of the charms of the film is that it is so familiar to the audience with its Shakespeare references and inside jokes. It's not as if you have to be a Shakespearean scholar in order to get it, either, you basically need two to three years of high school, which is what I had when I first saw it. For example, Rupert Everett plays Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's rival and openly regarded in the film as the greatest playwright around. Queen Elizabeth I, played by Judi Dench, hides in the audience of the play as a commoner. Shakespeare's parting with Viola leads him to write Twelfth Night.

So, let us move on to the pressing issue. Was Shakespeare in Love really the best film that came out in 1998? Let's look at the nominees. Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful, The Thin Red Line and a little film called Saving Private Ryan. I think we can safely count out Life Is Beautiful because that film is schmaltzy crap. I didn't used to think so, I cried when I first watched it and then I visited about five concentration camps and now Roberto Benigni pisses me off. The Thin Red Line is about three hours of Terrence Malick doing Terrence Malick things and I have no idea what the point was. If you know, please tell me. Elizabeth was good and Saving Private Ryan is you know, generally regarded as the greatest of the modern war epics. I think it's all down to a matter of taste. Is Shakespeare in Love good? Yes. Is Saving Private Ryan good? Yes. They're just different and only one could win.

This is not really useful to deciding which film should have won in 1998, but I like it. So, here's what happens when Blackadder meets Shakespeare:



Okay, now because I can, here is an entirely different take on the Shakespeare question featuring two actors from this film, Rupert Everett and Colin Firth, written by Rupert Everett, whose Colin Firth crush may be more serious than mine. I'm pretty sure he decided to rip off a movie he was actually in. From St. Trinian's Part 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold. If you don't know what that is, I think you have to be a British teenage girl.

Best Picture Nominee 2010: Black Swan

Black Swan. What can I say about Black Swan?

Well, let me start with this: I work a really odd shift that usually runs from early morning to early afternoon, leaving my afternoon open to go to the movies since the rest of the world is still at work. Usually, I find myself in a theater full of old people with a smattering of college students, then I imagine that someday when I am old I will have every afternoon to go to the movies without the inconvenience of going to work before. I went to see The King's Speech twice and both times, I found a theater full of old people and college aged girls who I assume were there for Colin Firth. When I went to see Black Swan on a decidedly deserted afternoon at Santikos Palladium, I was in the theater with one old couple, one middle-aged couple and three women who did not stop talking or picking up THE DAMN PHONE!!! Bitches, you paid the money, you climbed all the way to the top row so you could walk in front of me every ten minutes in the almost empty theater and you're talking. Not even about the movie that much! What I was trying to say before I got sidetracked there was that it's not exactly commercial fare. I'm not saying that because of the weird semi-Lesbian thing or even Darren Aronofsky's somewhat gratuitous fixation on Natalie Portman's crotch. It is because it's actually weird. And not in a bad way.



Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina obsessed with perfection. She seems to be living out her mother's failed ambitions as a ballerina and everything about her says that she's a child still. The auteur master of the ballet company, Thomas, played by Vincent Cassel is putting on a new Swan Lake and is looking for a Swan Queen. Her main competition is a new dancer to the company, Lily, played by Mila Kunis. Lily is everything Nina isn't, confident in the role of the Black Swan, which Nina struggles with. In order to be the Swan Queen, she has to let go of her need to feel perfect. We follow Nina as she finds the way to transform into the Black Swan.

Okay, I won't spoil this one. I will say that Aronofsky's direction is pretty damn near perfect. What struck me first was the camera work, the way it's so dizzying and you feel everything Nina feels. Natalie Portman gives a brilliant performance, the anxiety and desperation that Nina feels is so taut. Cassel is great, the role of somewhat womanizing ballet company master could easily come off as piggish, but he avoids it. We don't hate him so much that we don't recognize everything he's saying about Nina is correct. Barbara Hershey as Nina's mom is great, making the audience guess if she's good or bad. Mila Kunis has her first grown up role and it makes me want to forgive her for being on Family Guy.

What really impresses me is the way that we get sucked into the ballet world. A lot of films made by lesser filmmakers would have bored us with ballet details and boring exposition. Black Swan avoids this and even when ballet stuff gets put in there it doesn't feel contrived and we don't feel as if the story has stopped. What I couldn't believe was happening was in several scenes was that when Portman dances and is inadequate and I could tell she was unlike so many velvet curtain dramas where the audience has to be told, due no doubt to Aronofsky's direction and the actors' performances. I would link a clip to demonstrate this, but somebody at YouTube decided to disable embedding, so just head over there and search for Black Swan clip. This is definitely a trip inside Nina's head, replete with spectacular visual effects to complement rather than detract from the performances. We get to know Nina so well that by the time the film reaches its conclusion, it's foregone.

Best Picture? I don't know. I still kind of think The King's Speech has it. It is excellent, but it's like the 1998 Oscar race where Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan, the choice is between totally different animals. One being a swan. I still have to see the other nominees, but Natalie Portman gives such an intense performance, I don't know how it could be topped. Any opinions out there on that?

Best Picture 1996: The English Patient

1996 was hailed by most media and critics as "the year of the independent film." Just look at the nominees for Best Picture: The English Patient, Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets & Lies and Shine. Movies that just about no one had heard of until they got nominated with the obvious exception of Jerry Maguire. It was back before Tom Cruise jumped on couches. I still haven't seen Shine. Apparently, Geoffrey Rush is a crazy guy who plays piano. Don't take that the wrong way, it could be good, I just don't know.

So, The English Patient is the story of Count Almasy played by Ralph Fiennes and his affair with Katharine played by Kristin Scott Thomas. If you're me, you just had to go look that up because all I could remember was that Kristin Scott Thomas is married to Colin Firth in the film and thus, she's cheating on Colin Firth and that just doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. The interesting thing is that structurally the story takes place in two time periods: the affair happens on the eve of World War II and the part in which the Count tells his nurse his story takes place in its final days.

So, if you couldn't tell the love story is lost on me. The Count seems like a possessive jerk and just stands around spouting a lot of romantic puffery with an accent and somehow gets an Oscar for this when frankly I found Maid in Manhattan so much more compelling. I guess that's because he's so consumed by love or whatever, which I'll admit he was less consumed by love in Maid in Manhattan. Katharine is you know, cheating on Colin Firth, so she must be crazy, right? But in the interests of fairness, here's some scenes that I find gross.




And don't forget the supposedly hot scene where Count and Katharine have sex while Colin Firth is playing Santa Claus. I do not joke. Anyway, the war comes, they have to stop their exploration which is okay because no one actually cared about that anyway if they cared about this movie at all. Because I know I didn't. Colin Firth has also gotten wise and in what some characterize as an insane act of revenge, I call trying to do us all a giant favor. He flies a plane into the Count's desert camp with himself and Katharine on it. I couldn't find a clip of that so here's Colin Firth dancing earlier.



So, Colin Firth dies (the character was called Geoffrey Clifton, I just don't care) and I lose all interest. Kristin Scott Thomas is badly injured and the Count takes her to the cave to protect her from the desert. He makes the journey back to Cairo to try to get help, gets thrown in jail, escapes and comes back to find out Katharine is dead.

So, I could go on about the stuff towards the end of the war with Juliette Binoche which is let's face it, more interesting, but I don't care. There's some stuff with Willem Dafoe seeking revenge, but ultimately this film just didn't hold my interest. So if you feel robbed by me, here's some Rotten Tomatoes reviews.


Meanwhile, the best part of this is the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine feels pretty much like I do about The English Patient and faces ostracism because of it, so here's how that ends up.

Classic Or Not? Best Picture 1997: Titanic

So, as part of my continuing Oscar coverage, I've decided to discuss the current nominees and some of the past winners for Best Picture and particularly their merits, whether or not they deserved Best Picture and do they hold up to the brutal test of time? Which brings us to Titanic, the Best Picture of 1997.

I will now confess something. In 1997, I was 15. Specifically, I was a 15 year old girl. This may not have been of interest except of course that in 1997, Titanic came out. Now, I can at least have the dignity of saying that I wasn't there waiting at the theater with bated breath and frankly, I've never found Leonardo di Caprio attractive. see, Titanic came out on December 18, 1997 and I remember that day because it was the day that the latest James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, came out and I had to see that. I saw it twice, actually. At some point, I did get around to seeing Titanic and I saw that in the theater four times. The only other movie that I have seen four times in the theater is Die Another Day and that's because I am still not over the scene with James and Moneypenny.



So, I've seen Tomorrow Never Dies every Thanksgiving since (my family celebrates the holiday by watching every James Bond movie usually excepting Never Say Never Again) and I must say as films go, it holds up pretty well. Sure, the technology is dated as the characters don't seem to know what GPS is and the internet still seems new and people read newspapers, but I'm always good for the ride. I'm drawn in by the characters and the adventure and except for a few Desperate Housewives jokes about Teri Hatcher, it's back to 1997.

Titanic has not held up as well and somehow it was the Best Picture of 1997. I think this can possibly be explained by considering the competition that year. The other nominess were:

As Good As It Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential

Now, these were all good movies and with the exception of L.A. Confidential, they are not exactly what might typically be considered Oscar movies. Grumpy Jack Nicholson? Check. (By the way, does it annoy anybody else that Helen Hunt got an Oscar for that? Please tell me in the comments if it does.)Quirky British film? Check. Film written by two guys we've never heard of from Boston? Check. Now, if I consider it, I think the reason L.A. Confidential didn't win is that compared to Titanic it feels somewhat insular and also, it may just have been too hard to follow. Also, the end was pretty depressing.

So, for those of you who don't freaking know already, Titanic is about a big ship that's going to crash into an iceberg, but first Kate Winslet gets on board in the part of Rose, a rich girl set to marry Billy Zane who plays Cal, who I just had to look up. Cal is rich and Rose's family is depending on the match to solve their financial problems. Basically, Rose is on a prison ship to a life sentence. Also getting on board is Leonardo di Caprio, who just won his ticket, barely got on board (which is admittedly contrived after a few viewings) and he's a poor Irish artist who's got joie de vivre and so forth. Also, Kathy Bates comes aboard playing Molly Brown and she may be the only part of the film I can still stand.

So, not too long after Jack gets on this scene happens and it may be the primary reason that this movie dated very quickly.



See? Anyway, not too long after this, Rose tries to kill herself and Jack saves her. Rose's mom forbids her to see him and she does anyway because they're in love or something. There's the famous nude sketch scene which relates back to a part with Bill Paxton and Old Rose that I haven't bothered to tell you about because no one cares and it's just sort of a lame excuse for starting the story because they didn't think that it was strong enough to stand on its own. I'm just guessing. Here's a love scene that seems really interesting the first four times you see it and then loses its lustre. I don't know that, I'm just guessing that's probably what happened. Or James Cameron wanted some weak excuse to use the leftover diving equipment from The Abyss.



See what I mean? So, into every life some rain must fall and every time somebody says something can't be sunk, you know that sucker's going down. So, Rose leaves her family, there's some arguing about lifeboats and by now, if you've gone to this film with someone with a Y chromosome, they want that frigging ship to sink. And so it does, Jack saves Rose, eventually becoming a big popsicle and it goes something like this if you happen to be interested:



Does Jack's knowledge of physics strike anyone else as odd and not inherent to the character? Anyway, Jack dies, Rose never lets go, she goes on and lives a great adventure of life, then is the old lady and we wrap up to an ending that goes like this.



Okay, that's the scene that can still evoke a tear in me. I'm all verklempt now, so I'm thinking that ending must be what guilted the Academy into voting for that. You also have to consider the scale of the thing which was huge and that everyone thought it would be the biggest disaster and it turned out to not entirely suck. Oh, and let's not forget THE SONG. Because this was the nineties and every half decent film needed a song by a pop diva. And a music video to go with it.



Now, possibly why this merger of song and cinema seems to have fallen out of favor is that everyone gets sick of the song and then you're sick of the movie. Do I still know the words to this? You bet. Did this film deserve Best Picture? If it did, just barely and probably due to lack of competition. Just be glad that Avatar came out in a year with much more serious competition or James Cameron would have another Oscar. Be glad.

Future Classic: The King's Speech - 2010

I have decided to temporarily forego the formality of waiting forty or fifty years for a movie to officially become a classic and report on them in time for this year's Oscars. Today, I am going to discuss The King's Speech, my favorite movie of the year. If I could get through Toy Story 3 without crying, maybe. I'll try to keep it spoiler lite but seriously, you should know how World War II ended by now. Onwards...

If you can't tell by now, I'm a little bit of an Anglophile. I always gravitate towards anything with the royal family and so, Colin Firth as the king, I am there. Let us henceforth refer to King George VI as Bertie, because I like that it reminds me of Jeeves and Wooster. Bertie is the Duke of York, the second oldest son of King George V, which by all accounts means that he's not going to be king, which really works out because Bertie has a stammer. Or a stutter. The opening sequence of the film is one of the best I've ever seen: setting up the stakes, creating tension and creating a great deal of empathy for Bertie very quickly. We see him fumble through a speech of Wembley Stadium in front of a huge crowd and worse on the radio. His wife, Elizabeth, (because I guess they didn't think THAT would get confusing) played by Helena Bonham Carter is desperate to help him and seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist in order to help him. Bertie goes to meet with Lionel and is convinced that no one can help him. So, we follow Bertie back to Christmas with his dad where we start to get the idea that Bertie's real problem is his decidedly screwed up family. Realizing that Lionel can help him, Bertie returns and starts working at curing his stammer.



In a brilliant montage, Bertie works on the stammering and this is interrupted by the coinciding crises of his father's death and his brother, Edward VIII, taking up with an American divorcee which is bad. It quickly becomes apparent that Edward is not up to the task of being king at all.



So, in the style of the bromance, Lionel tries to explain to Bertie that he can be king just as good as his brother, that he doesn't need to be afraid. Bertie doesn't want to hear it because he doesn't want to be king AT ALL and who the hell would? Even when you get to do whatever you want like on The Tudors, you're still miserable and beheading wives left and right. They break up for a while until Bertie is about to be crowned and Bertie is finally ready to understand what Lionel tried to tell him.

We follow them through the coronation and to the opening of the Second World War and everything ties together brilliantly. I really loved this movie and the elegance of the storytelling and the way director Tom Hooper was able to set the mood. Colin Firth gives an inspired performance, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter are also quite good in their roles. Rush manages to make the role of an Australian in the King's Court somehow not comical and is compelling as a man who slowly begins to realize he's playing a role in history. Bonham Carter is quite good as the slightly offbeat future Queen Mother and you really believe the chemistry between her and Firth. (You might be thinking, how hard is it to have chemistry with Colin Firth? Watch Uma Thurman fail at it in The Accidental Husband. And Helen Hunt.) Also, Guy Pearce as Edward is really great at playing a jackass. In conclusion, it is an intimate story that changes the course of global events. Some deride it as being too feel good, but I think it's struck a chord in people, wanting to believe that we can be more than we think we are. So, screw you, negative people who don't want to feel good.


In the part that's not important, I failed to notice that Jennifer Ehle played Lionel Logue's wife. Probably because they made her look really old and it would have gone like, "Mr. Darcy!" "Miss Bennet, you've aged horribly." Try to imagine some mashup of these two.






So, I'll keep you updated with some other commentary on Best Picture nominees and also some opinion on past winners.

On a completely superficial note, how much do I love this poster?