Still Misfitting

For the first time in history, I saw all ten nominees for “Best Picture” before the Oscar awards were telecast. Prior to my year of movies (I’ve seen over 200 movies this year), the most nominees for best picture I had seen was in 2007 when I saw “There Will Be Blood”, “No Country For Old Men” and “Atonement” on the big screen. I later watched “Michael Clayton” and “Juno” in hotel rooms; of the five nominees, the best was “Atonement”- it had everything: a heartbreaking story, period authenticity, great acting, and a surprise twist. Maybe I’m just a sucker for European WWII movies (as my 2009 pick will reflect), but it was the most memorable and beautiful.

This year’s nominee list expanded from five to ten; why? Probably to attract a wider audience, particularly younger viewers; although the lackluster telecast lost them early on, and hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were cardboard cutouts with the exception of their spoof on “Paranormal Activity” – that was pretty funny.

Of the ten nominees, only five really deserved to be there: Avatar, Inglorious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, Precious, and District 9. The following are my mini-reviews of the nominees and which movie I think should have won and why:

Avatar – First, let’s remember this is the guy who brought us “Titanic.” The “wow” factor was commercially successful, but lush animation, fakery, and sophisticated technology cannot cover unsophisticated, rehashed banality and forgettable acting.

The Blind Side – based on a true story, this was a good, albeit predictable movie. Bullock is very convincing and it was her best role to date. I laughed, I cried, I recommend it.

District 9 – this movie is a satire, but it tends to be too dark for much laughter. It was such a unique take on issues of apartheid, bigotry, the politics of fear, xenophobia, and disenfranchisement that it’s well worth some of the more bizarre parts.

An Education – the acting and art direction of this movie save it from making you uneasy (as a woman); and the lovely Carey Mulligan is charming and entirely credible. Fans of the Narcissist’s Handbook of Romance will appreciate the ending.

The Hurt Locker – I avoided this movie for months, but my curiosity in light of all the hoopla overcame my aversion. I’m glad I saw it. This movie manages to overcome the distasteful subject matter and total lack of star-power to create a riveting, unvarnished drama without sugarcoating the message or the messengers.

Inglorious Basterds – this is a movie for film buffs, although history buffs and Tarantino fans won’t be disappointed, either. Tarantino will have a hard act to follow. The trailer is perhaps deliberately misleading, because you will be surprised, amazed, shocked, horrified, comically relieved and gratified in the next two-plus hours. It was worth every minute and more. Basterds should have won Best Picture and Best Screenplay.

Precious – this was such a hard movie to watch, but it was well done and deserved all the praise it received. Not recommended for the faint of heart, tea baggers, evangelicals, or children under age 16.

A Serious Man – I don’t understand the Coen brothers these days. I try, honestly, I try. I am utterly stumped at what makes these guys tick. Basically, “A Serious Man” is a parody of The Book of Job. There are a number of spoofs on Judaism and the tired theme of self-loathing; what is most impressive about this movie is the period flavor: it’s flawless reconstruction of 1970s suburbia. I have seen almost every movie the Coens have made, and after “Intolerable Cruelty” I haven’t been able to enjoy their work. My favorite Coen movies remain “Blood Simple” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There”. Go watch one of those, instead.

Up – why was a cartoon nominated for best film? Seriously? It’s a pleasant movie with the usual exciting animation, visuals, cute kid voice, talking animals, grumpy old men, ridiculous suspension of disbelief throughout, happy ending. But, it’s not Oscar-worthy.

Up in the Air – While I always enjoy George Clooney and will watch even a mediocre movie if he’s in it, I believe Up in the Air was highly overrated. I was so disappointed. There are some interesting visuals, symbolism, clever hat tips to classic business literature and lots of delicious irony, but the movie fails on a pathos level when we aren’t allowed to care about anyone. I was repelled by almost every character in the film. Wait – maybe that was the point!

My Picks:

Best Movie – Inglorious Basterds
Best Screenplay – Inglorious Basterds
Best Actress – Meryl Streep in “Julie and Julia”
Best Actor – I guess I’ll give it to Jeff Bridges
Best Dress of the Night – costume design winner, Sandy Powell. Did you see her dress? Gorgeous!

My internet pal, Cocktailhag, has a movie review up regarding 2012. Hag enjoyed the movie precisely because it was so ridiculous, predictable, and amusing in a likely unintended way.

Since I have been watching about a movie a day since May (on average, sometimes more), I felt inspired to list a few movies that are similar to Hag’s take on 2012 – movies I enjoyed despite (or perhaps because of) the ridiculous and unrealistic suspension of disbelief required by the audience to sell the premise; or, awful, eye-rolling dialogue that sounds as if it were written by a 29-year old kid who only recently moved out of his parent’s house (and probably was), or because the movie was supposed to be maudlin, sad, tragic, and serious and I, instead, irreverently laughed.

Category 1: Beyond Disbelief

“Unbreakable” with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson: had me going along with it to some extent until the end when I said, “Oh, for crying out loud!” More loose ends than a cat-shredded afghan.

“Children of Men” with Clive Owen – an interesting premise (although too many unbelievably dodged bullets) but like a bad Stephen King novel, undeveloped rationale and pretty ridiculous outcome.

“Fracture” with Anthony Hopkins playing a brilliant murderer (typecast?) and Ryan Gosling an ambitious district attorney prosecuting the nearly perfect crime. The movie is clever and satisfying until the end when Hopkins’ character does something so stupid, you throw a Beannie Baby at the screen in disgust. If I were in the room with the writers, I would have insisted, “He wouldn’t do that!”

Category 2: Screenwriter(s) should be Flogged

“Lucky You” with Robert Duvall and Eric Bana: such potential, such an exciting and attractive subject (high-stakes poker), such a dog of a screenplay!

“Star Trek 2009″ where’s Gene Roddenberry when we need him?

“City of Angels” with Meg Ryan and Nick Cage – the script sounds like it was plagiarized from random  Hallmark Greeting Cards.

Category 3: Are You Serious?

“Valkyrie” – great story, terrible movie.

“Angels and Demons” – it’s another laughably absurd fantasy based on unreadable Dan Brown with Tom Hanks who should know better.

“The September Issue” – this is not billed as a comedy, but it’s very funny, perhaps by accident.

It had been fifteen years since I saw a Woody Allen movie, having been put off by his relationship with his adopted daughter and bored with his predictable, self-deprecating, neurotic characters. However, I saw a DVD called “Match Point” at the library, was attracted to the tennis theme, and thought I’d give him another chance. “Match Point”, despite its title, is not a movie about tennis; it’s a movie about luck and murder – Allen’s new obsessions, as I discovered when viewing four more of his recent movies. There are a few tennis scenes at the beginning, when Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a retired tennis pro who gets a job teaching tennis at an affluent British club and meets a brother and sister of an aristocratic family. And while Scarlett Johansson displayed some credible tennis chops in the movie “Good Company” (with Dennis Quaid), she doesn’t get to swing a racquet in “Match Point.” Johansson plays the fiancé of the aristocratic brother and Meyers’ mistress. This movie reminded me a little of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” in that a seemingly innocuous, right-minded character becomes sinister and malevolent. Meyers plays this role well, and I found myself rooting for him against my better nature; which was likely Allen’s intention all along. Johansson’s character is unfortunately the stereotypical clingy, demanding “other woman” who becomes a threat to Meyers’ lifestyle and social standing. While some of the plot is predictable and disappointing, there are enough good scenes and surprises to make the film worth seeing.

In his next film, “Scoop”, Allen casts Johansson again, this time as a college journalist living in London who, by chance, is visited by the ghost of a recently departed, famous British reporter who gives her a “scoop” about the identity of a serial killer that is preying on bobbed brunette prostitutes. Of course, the suspect is another aristocrat (played with ineffable charm by the adorable Hugh Jackman), and we, along with Johansson, begin to doubt his guilt. This movie would have been much better had Allen stayed behind the camera instead of casting himself as the Jewish magician from Brooklyn who poses as Johansson’s father in order to assist her in the investigation. Numerous ridiculous scenes and tiresome dialogue intersperse with some wonderful shots of English gardens, beautiful houses, art and Hugh Jackman. But if you want to see Jackman and Johansson in a much better movie about magic, I highly recommend “The Prestige” instead.

Allen’s next movie is a complete departure from his usual lighthearted themes: in “Cassandra’s Dream” Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell (who steals every scene he’s in) play brothers who are both desperate for some fast money; McGregor because he has fallen in love with an actress (Hayley Atwell) and has been posing as a rich, upcoming entrepreneur, and Farrell because of gambling debts. When the brothers’ uncle proposes paying them a large sum of money for a “hit” on a threatening ex-employee who is ready to testify about the uncle’s unsavory business activities, the brothers agree to the plan, assuming it will solve everyone’s problems. Allen does a good job with the plot twists and in revealing the contrast between the brothers’ motivations and reactions to guilt. But aside from a few light moments and banter, this is a dark and unnerving film.

On an unrelated but “six degrees of separation” note, Johansson and McGregor appear together in an interesting futuristic movie, “The Island”, that, while a tad too violent for my taste, is nevertheless compelling and visually brilliant. And, along those lines, McGregor and Jackman play friends turned enemies in another thriller, “The List”, which contains far too many coincidences to be credible but gives McGregor his meatiest role yet.

Allen returns to his tried and true genre, comedy-farce, in his next movie, “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona”about two young women (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, reunited from “The Prestige” mentioned above) who spend a summer discovering the cultural assets (and asses) in Barcelona. The leading man, Javier Bardem of creepy-killer Cohen movie “No Country for Old Men” fame, gets to show a completely different side of himself as the romantic, irresistibly charming Spanish painter who seduces both girls and maintains a love-hate relationship with his ex-wife, played by Penelope Cruz. The relationship between Bardem and Cruz seems like a satiric rip-off of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, but theirs is the most interesting and amusing dynamic. Unfortunately for Johansson, her character (Cristina) is the least developed and could have been much deeper and solid had Allen an iota of real insight regarding contemporary American girls.

In “Whatever Works”, Allen casts Larry David, a taller, more handsome, droller lead to play the cynical, elitist, self-loathing character that is a trademark of Allen films. I think he should use David from now on. He’s much easier to look at, he’s funnier than Allen, and he’s credible as an older love interest. By “luck” or “fate”, David encounters young Evan Rachel Wood (of “Running with Scissors” and “The Wrestler”), a Southern ingénue who has recently arrived in New York City to seek her fortune as an actress. “Whatever Works” has some wonderful lines, it’s a pretty funny script, and there are no murders. Allen uses Patricia Clarkson again (she played in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”) in a similar role as a middle-aged woman who defies convention and morality to discover adventure and romance. The point of both movies is essentially “Life is short, love is ephemeral, enjoy it while you can.” Trite, perhaps, but true.

Lately I’ve been avoiding reading any in-depth reporting of political news, especially on cable channels. I glance at the headlines on sites like Huff-post or The Atlantic; I look for short videos on Crooks & Liars and Plumline; I still read Glenn Greenwald religiously – you’ll find the list of usual suspects on my blogroll. However, where once I used to spend a few hours a day reading, I find myself incapable of doing so anymore. I feel as if our country, or at least those with influence (media, politicians) are living in a parallel universe. If I were reading this as a script to a movie, I’d tell the writer to spare the audience the ludicrous suspension of disbelief. This scenario would not stand.

How silly of me.

With no small irony, lately I have been watching many movies, most I missed those years between 2002 – 2007 when I was blogging full time, working full time, and mothering full time. Who had time for movies? Now, with the advent of iTunes and Hulu and various free sites where one can watch movies (even YouTube, in 10-minute segments), I have enjoyed an array of interesting scenarios where the suspension of disbelief is not merely expected but obligatory. So few movies reflect real world dialogue, behavior or history. Hollywood has obviously joined the rest of mainstream media by eschewing any semblence of reality from its offerings. We sort of expect that from Hollywood, after all, we may want our art to be escapist, we may prefer fantasy to reality in the cinema, however banal and insulting; but we shouldn’t accept that from our news media.

Why do we?

When I was was about twelve years old, I read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Not to date myself too much, but the book had only been out (translated to English from German) for 20 years at that time, and World War II was a mere 30 years past. Frank’s diary was one of the few nonfiction books I read that had a profound impact on my world view.

Later, when I was in high school, I recall seeing “Night and Fog” (Nacht und Nebel), a choppy, blurry concentration camp documentary with images that were seared into my memory and inspired me to wonder what I still wonder today: what makes humans commit such atrocities upon one another? My study of evil began in earnest when I lived in North Carolina with a lot of time on my hands, and I began to read everything in the Buncombe County library history and fiction stacks that dealt with Nazi Germany, World War II, and the Holocaust, which eventually led to many years’ exploration of all things Russian.

A few years later, I branched out to read books about infamous Nazis who escaped to South America, riveting crime stories that involved finding the world’s most wanted war criminals. Many years later, I sat through Steven Spielberg’s “Shindler’s List” twice, a stunning and heartbreaking six hour and ten minute horror fest.

Thus, my “Holocaust” credentials, if you will, are relatively substantial.

It was deeply disturbing, therefore, to discover the deception and fraud in a book released last winter called The Fifth Diamond by Auschwitz survivor, Irene Zisblatt, who was interviewed by Charlie Rose, featured in a Steven Spielberg documentary, and hawked by Florida newspapers:

Zisblatt’s entire family was killed in the gas chambers, and those four diamonds were the last mementoes of them. The only way Irene could keep the diamonds hidden was to swallow and retrieve them over and over again. She did this for 15 months.

Zisblatt told the audience how, as a young prisoner in the camps, she was a favorite of Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed experiments and surgeries on her and other prisoners without anesthesia. A girl named Sabka was another of Mengele’s regular victims. Though they weren’t allowed to speak, they formed a friendship and Zisblatt drew strength from their bond.

Mrs. Zisblatt is making the rounds speaking to school assemblies about her ordeal in Auschwitz, repeating the story about swallowing small, sharp objects and fishing them out of a filthy public latrine (and if you have seen “Shindler’s List”, it’s hard to imagine such a thing happening once, much less 450 times), and other improbable events. She describes horrific torture at the hands of Dr. Mengele, chemical poisoning, sterilization, and befriending a nurse in the hospital who was an underground resistance fighter.

The Fifth Diamond scans more as though the author cribbed together all the cliché Holocaust legends and contrived a Grimm’s Fairy tale plot about a brave little girl in a concentration camp who outwits brilliant Nazis and survives repeated assaults on her life. Similar to my impressions of James Frey’s notorious book, A Million Little Pieces about drug addiction and recovery (that was proven completely fictitious), Zisblatt’s book immediately smacks of ludicrous implausibility within the first few pages. Besides the physiological, biological, and psychological improbabilities with this story are the repeated historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

As an avid student of history and psychology (especially of the nature of individual and mass evil), I am appalled at this absurd caricature that both demeans the true stories of actual survivors and diminishes the horror of the war with its bizarre and insane exaggerations. I have read countless books about this era, including textbooks, fiction and non-fiction (even some of those exposed as frauds but were nevertheless good stories), and maintain that The Fifth Diamond qualifies as neither good storytelling nor anything resembling the truth. This nonsense would have been more tasteful as a Vaudeville act.

It’s hard to decide if I’m more stunned by this book’s actual existence, its rumored nomination for a Pulitzer, or by Steven Spielberg’s support. That this book after only a few months was rendered to the discount and out-of-print bins is some solace. To exploit the kind of evil that Zisblatt has for self-aggrandizement and profit is truly abhorrent.