Updated Oscar related things and thoughts!

I said I would do this so here it is. Now that I've seen most of the movies nominated for most things, here are some final thoughts about what I would like to see happen tomorrow on the TV screen which is oh so important.

Best Picture: Still Tree of Life, duh. But I can see The Artist taking everything for nothing more than nostalgic purposes. I didn't dislike The Artist and wish it no ill will, but it was simply "good."

Lead Actor: George Clooney will probably win and I now think he should. He was marvelous. I always think Clooney is overrated but I quite liked his performance here.

Lead Actress: Hopin' for Michelle Williams, who channeled the simple charm of Marilyn Monroe. The movie wasn't as good as I had hoped but the acting was great, particularly Ms. Williams. (Prediction is Glenn Close, just seeing the trailer I could tell that that's the type of role that wins Oscars)

Supporting Actor: Kenneth Branagh was also brilliant in My Week With Marilyn. So go him. I don't know who to predict so I decided Max Von Sydow despite the movie being (presumably) terrible. Mostly as a way to finally recognize his brilliance.

Supporting Actress: No interest in The Help but I can see someone from that movie winning. I half-heartedly endorse Bérénice Bejo from The Artist for her charm level, but none of these nominees particularly impressed me this year. Where's Carey Mulligan or Charlotte Gainsbourg?

Animated Feature: I saw none of these. I will blindly hope for A Cat In Paris because I imagine it is a lot of fun, and I will blindly predict Rango. What are we to do without a Pixar nominee?

Cinematography: I was surprised Moneyball wasn't nominated although Wally Pfister got recognized for his work in Inception. But that was probably my second favorite cinematography after Tree of Life. Predict The Artist because it's gonna take home a lot. Even though the lighting had lots of the faults of 40s (and earlier) black and white cinema with multiple shadows always on display. But maybe that was purposeful?

Directing: See above. Predict The Artist but Tree of Life really should take this one.

Editing: Hugo should win, again expecting The Artist...

Song: Go Bret McKenzie!

Adapted Screenplay: I believe The Descendants will and should win. Wonderful story, wonderful dialog, just well told. Moneyball's a distant second.

Original Screenplay: Predicting Midnight in Paris. I didn't see A Separation, but I'm going to hope for that one anyway. None of the nominees I saw impressed me all that much this year.

I sadly didn't see any documentaries, shorts, or the nominated foreign films this year. Other than seeing Time Freak randomly at a film festival. I can hope for Time Freak, but that's not really a fair way to judge it.


I will try to make my final entry about the oscars less list-y and more paragraphy. See you after that!


Oh, one final note. Alfred Hitchcock never won an oscar. Stanley Kubrick only won once for visual effects. The best movies are often not even nominated. Even with 10 nominations. So see Shame, Melancholia, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Drive, The Skin I Live In, King of Devil's Island, and many more. fyi.

of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks

I guess it's time to throw in my 15 cents about this new of Montreal album, eh?

Last year sometime I was reading an interview with Kevin Barnes that had a fairly surprising amount of time praising the Sufjan Stevens album The Age of Adz. It was about how the album was so under-appreciated and in retrospect people would see it as one of the great works of our time. I was happy to see someone defending it so fiercely because I happened to agree strongly with his assessment. Adz was such a massive personal statement into which Stevens threw his whole being, a radical departure from all of his past "mainstream" releases.

It appears that Mr. Barnes was quite influenced by this great work. He seems to have decided to make his own personal version. So what we get here isn't as quite as radical a departure as the one Sufjan Stevens made, but that's only because of Montreal has never shied away from the outrageous/layered/layered/layered/A.D.D.-esque sounds that can be found on this album. But something has changed.

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? was my favorite album of 2007, a year that included oh so many great albums (Battles, LCD Soundsystem, Okkervil River, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Jay-Z, M.I.A., and many others absolutely killed it that year). I had to venture into the world of Myspace to find this, but here is what I wrote about Hissing Fauna in my 2007 summary:

of montreal - hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?/icons, abstract thee
not only my favorite album of the year, but quite possibly my favorite album of the last FEW years. such happy, uplifting music about depressing subject matter. WE JUST WANT TO EMOTE 'TIL WE'RE DEAD. such a perfect opening line to the greatest album i have heard in a really long time. it makes me dance, shed a tear, think, scratch my head, laugh, all while singing along. and i never ever wanted to write this song...

The way that album combined dizzying highs and depressing lyrics moved me in ways I still find troubling. Since then, of Montreal's music has been disappointing me to a degree. The last couple albums just found Barnes reveling in his Georgie Fruit alter-ego, creating a strange fusion of of Montreal and Prince, getting all sorts of funky. Nothing wrong with any of that, it just didn't seem as personal a work, and it was near impossible to relate to it on a personal level.

This new one is different though. He has finally moved on. The lyrics hit the same levels of depression as Fauna, but the music now has a darkness to match. The way they are sung retains what Destroyer did, and once you've spun this a few times, if you're like me you will find yourself singing along with just as much emotion as on Hissing. It's just instead of singing about wanting to "shave your head, have a drink, and be left alone (is that too much to ask?)" it's more about how "somehow I lost the thread of being human, wrapped in all this bitterness."

It's a trip into the depths of Barnes' psyche, it's his most personal work since at least Hissing Fauna, and it's easily the darkest record they have put out. If you can take it, and if you can give it the time and attention it requires, I highly recommend it.

Le Beau Serge

Latecomer: Le Beau Serge

This one hasn't been on my shelf too long. I think I got it last time Barnes & Noble did their whole 50% off all Criterion dealie.

I think this may be the first Chabrol movie I have seen. Fitting, I say, as it was his first film. Maybe I should visit his filmography entirely chronologically. Or maybe that would be too daunting. But with the level of skill and intuition on display in Le Beau Serge, I imagine his films were all very impressive.

Camera movement. That's the main thing I noticed in this film. Lots of long takes. Lots of scenes that took place in just one take. There was a lot going on but it was very easy to follow. This is certainly the work of a filmmaker who has spent a lot of time studying film. Perhaps he was a film critic who decided he would pick up a camera? He was? Cahiers du what now?

But anyway. I don't know what else to say here. It was inventive but not to the degree that other New Wave directors would take things. But he beat them to the punch, so maybe he continued to push and innovate as the 60s went on. I certainly can't wait to find out. If nothing else, I could watch lots of his movies just for the fact that the camera work is certain to be impressive and probably a big influence on later directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese.

Highly recommended, although maybe not as highly as the early work of Truffaut or Godard. But that's just this one movie.