TheAssassinationOfJesseJamesByTheCowardRobertFord Tagged Articles at Cinematical

If you still haven't seen all the Oscar-nominated films, you're not alone. I still haven't seen a number of them, and I have less excuse than most people. After all, I live in a city in which pretty much every nominee has played. Some major contenders I haven't gotten around to -- with little reason for not -- include Atonement, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Into the Wild, all of which are still in theaters and are probably best to see on the big screen.

Apparently, at least according to Variety, a lot of people are seeing the Oscar nominees on the big screen compared to in previous (recent) years, as cumulatively the five Best Picture contenders have seen a significant bump at the box office since the nominations were announced. I would be extremely excited if I didn't believe the truth is that Juno's tremendous success has elevated the Best Picture box office average. The comedy is showing on far more screens, is much more accessible to a wide audience and has so far earned twice as much money domestically as the next highest-grossing Best Picture nominee. Variety also this week had published a story about how Juno is the one movie that may save the Oscar telecast's ratings, since it's the one movie people have actually been able to or bothered to see. One thing I will note, though, is that Best Picture nominee Michael Clayton came out on DVD this past Tuesday and yet there was still a significant number of people seeing it in theaters through the week. Additionally, I would be interested to know how many people took advantage of yesterday's AMC Theatres-hosted Best Picture marathon.

Ah, there's nothing like the relief of having to choose between a number of decent possibilities, rather than grasping at straws...

The Jane Austen Book Club
Like any dramatic comedy that focuses on romance -- especially one that does so under the mighty pen of Jane Austen -- this film is sentimental and romantic, but it's also got a heck of a cast giving great performances and characters that aren't the normal flighty heroines. The Jane Austen Book Club follows five women and one man who come together to discuss Jane's classic works and discover that the old texts speak to each of their lives, whether they're hetero or straight, male or female. Sure, it could easily slip into saccharine, but as James Rocchi says: "The Jane Austen Book Club's light, slight and clever entertainment is occasionally too-clever, but the cast's performances and Swicord's sense of tone give it just enough charm to work." Anyway, too-clever is chic these days -- look at Diablo Cody.

As far as the disc goes, there's a decent number of featurettes, and not all of them are your typical fare. You get: deleted scenes, commentary with cast and crew, a peek behind the scenes, "The Life of Jane Austen," "The Book Club: Deconstructed," and for you red carpet fans out there -- the Los Angeles premiere.

Read James' Review | Buy the DVD


The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
On the more somber side of things, there's the uberly, superly, completely, totally long-awaited The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. After such a long wait, and flipping long title, the film seemed destined for the trash bin or dusty shelf. However, it ended up not only living up to expectation, but also impressing audiences as well. Sure, I have a soft spot for the movie since I used to know a girl who nabbed a role in it, but it's nice when friendly support is not only nice, but totally worth the effort. If you need more reasons, there's Brad Pitt and the increasingly impressive Casey Affleck.

Not surprisingly, this DVD is far from a special feature feast. In fact, there's nothing if you don't count the basic sound/scene perks and a few previews. Luckily, the film makes up for it.

Read James' Review | Buy the DVD

Other New DVD Releases (February 5)

Across the Universe
Elizabeth -- The Golden Age
The Aristocats (Special Edition)
The Brave One
Snow Buddies

As my wife said, it's just not the Oscars if there's nothing to complain about. However, I was impressed that two of the year's toughest films, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (389 screens) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men took the most nominations. Typically, the Academy is attracted to much less challenging and easy-to-categorize films (like Atonement). Both films are fairly bleak in their vision, but I suspect There Will Be Blood will sneak out ahead for two reasons: it's an epic, and epics almost always win. And, to quote a character from Sunset Boulevard, it "says a little something" about the current sociopolitical climate.

One of the biggest controversies cropped up over the foreign film category, which came up with five nominations that no one has ever heard of. (The Counterfeiters opens sometime next month and Mongol opens in June.) Not to mention that they ignored top contenders like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (opening this week) and Persepolis (30 screens). Thankfully the outrage has begun discussions on changing the stupid, ancient rules for the category. Currently these rules require each country to submit one film, and multi-national films, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (107 screens), to be disqualified. A small group of "specialists," rather than the Academy as a whole, votes on the small list of films. The documentary category was less obscure, and although I saw 19 documentaries in 2007, I only managed to see two of the five nominees, No End in Sight and Sicko. I have an Academy screener for Operation Homecoming that I hope to catch soon, and Taxi to the Dark Side (1 screen) is screening for Bay Area press next week.

Most people have a favorite place to sit when going to the movies. Some people like the back row; some people like the centermost spot (middle seat, middle row); some people like to sit near the front so that they can stare up at the screen and let the picture fill the limits of their peripheral vision.

I figure that last preference made more sense fifty years ago, when Cinerama and CinemaScope presented vast, expansively shot epics and westerns that were made to surround our senses and engulf our whole eye-span. Nowadays, most movies are too fast-cut and often the camerawork is too shaky to really work for close viewing. Have you ever been forced to sit in the first few rows when a movie is sold out? Wasn't it hard to tell what was going on most of the time?

Personally, I like watching movies close up, when it's appropriate. Unfortunately, it rarely is. But movie theaters can't just start removing those front rows because they aren't good for the moviegoer's eyes. No, that would mean a lot fewer tickets sold, a lot fewer popcorns sold, and a lot less money going to both the theater owners and the movie distributors. So, moviemakers should go back to making movies that are more accommodating to the theatrical audience, right? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees:

Casey Affleck -- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Javier Bardem -- No Country for Old Men

Philip Seymour Hoffman -- Charlie Wilson's War

John Travolta -- Hairspray

Tom Wilkinson -- Michael Clayton

Predicted Winner: Javier Bardem

Once in awhile there comes to cinema a character, and a performance that goes with it, that goes on to haunt us for years. Such a timeless villain is played in No Country for Old Men by Javier Bardem. It's the actor's third Golden Globe nomination and will be his first win. How do I know? Here at Cinematical headquarters we were going to toss a coin to find out if Bardem would get the statue. But then we realized that this award isn't about chance (plus we were afraid of getting an air blast to the skull if it came up that he'd lose). Bardem will win because he deserves the award, because his is the most well-developed and most memorable performance of the bunch.

Now it's your turn to vote ...

Yahoo reports that the National Society of Film Critics (made up of 61 film critics across the country) has chosen Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood as the Best Picture of the Year, beating The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and No Country for Old Men. Anderson also won Best Director, over Julian Schnabel and the Coen Brothers. Daniel Day-Lewis was named Best Actor for Blood, and Robert Elswit received an award for its cinematography. The critics are clearly crazy for Blood, but I don't think it'll take the Best Picture Oscar. It's too cold a film for Oscar voters to fully embrace, and though I know I'm practically alone in this assessment, it's too flawed.

Julie Christie was named Best Actress for her understated performance in Away from Her. Casey Affleck was named Best Supporting Actor for his excellent work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. And Cate Blanchett was selected as Best Supporting Actress for a performance that, for me, didn't amount to much more than a pretty good Bob Dylan impression. No End in Sight, a straightforward account of the bad decisions made by the Bush administration after the invasion of Iraq, won Best Documentary. Tamara Jenkins' script for The Savages was named Best Screenplay. I really loved the first half of The Savages but felt the second got distracted with side stories that thinned out the story's impact. Only 41 of the Society's 61 members cast ballots this year (?), and their choices frequently differ from Oscar voters. We'll find out just how much they differ when the Academy Award nominations are announced on January 22nd.

If I had to think of one moment that summed 2007 up for me as a critic and moviegoer, then that moment came before an early-morning press screening at Cannes. Two film writers were speaking about a film from the day before -- excited, animated, engaged. One of them said "Le Scaphandre et le Papillion?" She then made a hand gesture worth a thousand words, and then exclaimed "Cinema!" And I felt the same way about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as she did -- that it was a work of pure cinema, using every possible element of film to make a powerful piece of art, one that was engaged with the real world we live in while also existing as a strong, expressive creative work in and of itself. That's worth looking for, at the movies -- and, this year, it was easier than you might think to find it. These, then, are the films that made me exclaim 'Cinema!" in 2007, in no particular order after #1.

1. No Country for Old Men

The best film of the year -- wildly engaging, supremely confident, completely thrilling. Lesser filmmakers would have turned Cormac McCarthy's book into a tedious shoot-'em-up; thanks to Joel and Ethan Coen, we get a pulse-pounding, thought-provoking existential action flick -- a Greek tragedy with shotguns, a story of the American West whose true themes and concerns are eternal. I've seen No Country for Old Men five times now, and I get something new out of it every time -- it's a rich and dense work that also has sugar-rush surface-level pleasures. With three of the best male performances of the year (Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem) and a tone that somehow both fulfills and thwarts what we expect from the movies, No Country for Old Men may be the Coen's masterpiece.

After all the comments in reviews about The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford being Terrence Malick-ish, it appears that Brad Pitt wants the real deal. According to Variety, Pitt is in talks to star alongside Sean Penn in Malick's next film, Tree of Life. Already the film has seen cast replacements; first attached were Mel Gibson and Colin Farrell, then Penn and Heath Ledger. Now it's Ledger who is out (perhaps because Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is expected to go long?) with Pitt set to replace him. As Variety points out, Pitt's consideration of the role is interesting after bailing from State of Play, for which he would have made a whole lot more money. The trade also clears up that Penn's part will be fairly minor in comparison to Pitt's.

As I said in my previous post on the film, the plot of Tree of Life is unknown, but it may have something to do with a Minotaur (like in Gilliam's Time Bandits? no probably not like that). And it may be shot in India. Apparently the film has roots in a project Malick began thirty years ago called Q, which originally focused on World War I and eventually became an eon-spanning story. All that is known is that production begins in the Spring. Maybe, just maybe, it can hold on to this cast until then. These actor swaps are making my head spin. Unfortunately, neither Pitt nor Penn are locked into the film yet, so it's very possible we could see more casting coverage of Tree of Life before the cameras are in place.

The San Francisco Film Critics Awards have been announced, and they're especially exciting for us here at Cinematical. Why? Because three of our writers are in the SFFC! Our very own James Rocchi, Jeffrey M. Anderson, and Richard Von Busack are all part of the San Francisco critic "scene." San Fran made some interesting picks, several outside of the expected Oscar nominees. So what were their choices? For Best Foreign Film, they selected Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which I am watching when I finish this post). For Best Documentary, they selected No End in Sight (which didn't blow me away, but was certainly well done). Best Adapted Screenplay went to Sarah Polley for Away From Her (great script, one of the most kick-in-the-stomach depressing movies I've seen lately). And Best Original Screenplay went to Tamara Jenkins for The Savages.

Amy Ryan was named Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant portrayal of a highly difficult character in Gone Baby Gone. Ryan's co-star in that film, Casey Affleck, was named Best Supporting Actor for his outstanding work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Actress was Julie Christie for Away From Her and Best Actor was George Clooney in Michael Clayton -- two choices I approve of though I disagree with them. Joel and Ethan Coen took Best Director(s) honors for their latest masterpiece, No Country for Old Men. And -- drumroll please -- the Best Picture Award went to Jesse James. A surprising pick perhaps, but it was an absolutely fantastic film, and hopefully the award encourages more people to see it. The SFFC gave a special citation to an indie called Colma: The Musical, "a homegrown song-and-dance extravaganza about the paradoxical drudgery and surreality of life in a city where the dead outnumber the living one thousand to one." That old story again? See the list for yourself here -- it's a San Francisco treat!