Oscar Picks!!

Every year I take on the challenge of predicting the Oscars and every year I face the same conundrum. I have separate categories -- one for who I think will win, and who I think should win. I'll do my best this year to make accurate predictions and we'll see how I do. I've chosen, for the sake of time, to only list my predictions for the top 5 categories. I'll post my full list of results after the show!

Best Picture

First up, we have our Best Picture nominated movies. Every year I struggle with how I would vote for this movie. What makes a best picture? Is it the overall acting? Direction? Writing? Ultimately, I believe that for a film to win Best Picture it has to have a cohesive and smooth synergy of all filmmaking aspects, and in addition, there should be a grounding in cultural relevance. A film which wins the best picture has to have a message of sorts for the audience. Many of this years' films had messages and that's one reason why not only is it a hard race for the nominees, but also why I won't be disappointed if any of the nominated films walk away with the statue. I saw all of the nominated films this year except for 127 Hours, I just couldn't bring myself to see it -- the trailers alone made me anxious and woozy as it was, I didn't think going to see the movie would be a wise decision. They were all strong films, but one has stood out in my mind the most and one which I believe should take home Oscar tomorrow night.

If you listen to the clamor this year, it seems as though everyone thinks the race is between The King's Speech or The Social Network. I personally thought Black Swan was a more interesting film. Academy voters take a lot into consideration when deciding which film gets their vote. While no one's giving me an official ballot (yet!), I tend to gravitate towards the films that stay with me the longest. Film as an art form has the power to take a story and tell it in a way that is visually interesting and this film plays with the audience's sense of narrative structure and toys with any notion of what they might expect a film to be able to do. However, based on that approach, maybe Inception would also have a fighting chance. I did love Inception and was really taken by the complete distruction of any sense of linear narration. But, that being said, while visually spectacular, the film was not conveying a concrete message. But more importantly, it's not a so-called Oscar film. Blockbuster movies have not traditionally had a lot of luck at the Academy Awards, and those which have tended to be the last in a series (think: Lord of the Rings) and The Academy is congratulating the filmmakers on a series well done. Not to mention Christopher Nolan was not nominated for a directing award. I often find it odd to nominate a film as being the best of the year but not the person who put it all together, (and now with the 10 nominated films and 5 nominated directors there are bound be key directors left off the list, but that's a discussion for another day). Another movie which I would be happy to see walk away with the statue is The Kids are Alright. The acting, direction, writing and overall story and is spot on and I believe it was an important message to tell the world, especially in our current heated political climate when it comes to (most things, but especially) issues of Gay Rights, especially Gay Marriage. The Social Network has a decent chance of winning, but as a film in its entirety doesn't hold up as much as some of the others. The acting's ok, the writing was excellent and the editing was interesting, but on a whole I wasn't overly wowed, and, personally, was a little turned off by its assertion as the film that defines a generation. Maybe that's the fault of the marketers, but it turned me off of the film because of it.

Do I, though, think that either of my two top pics will actually take home the statue? Nope. I think that it will ultimately go to The King's Speech. Voters love British period films, and this is one about beloved leaders to boot. Another Oscar fave that this film embodies is triumph over adversity. Who cares that it's about a royal who has all the money in the world? He had to overcome a real personal struggle and had to rely on his family and friends to do so. Not to mention the film on a whole was excellent from the acting to the direction to the costuming. So that's my prediction of who should win (Black Swan) and who will win (The King's Speech).

Best Actor

My vote for both who should and who will win goes to Colin Firth. Jeff Bridges got his award last year more, my guess, for his long and illustrious career than his performance in Crazy Heart. He was good in True Grit, but nothing spectacular and not a performance that is unlike anything ever seen in a Western. Jesse Eisenberg is another actor who is getting a lot of attention this year for The Social Network, but if you've seen him off screen being interviewed, he seems like he was just playing himself. Firth created a character that at times could be dispicable yet sympathetic, noble yet humble and strong yet vulnerable. And he did all this while putting on a very believable stutter. My vote is for Firth to take home Oscar.

Best Actress

I'm going to go with Natalie Portman on this one again, for both metrics, in Black Swan. She has swept most major awards (her biggest competition being Annette Benning) and deservingly so. Until this film I had never been overly impressed with her. When I was watching Black Swan I spent the first half of the movie just thinking, ok here we go again with another performance of Portman being Portman. It wasn't until her character's descent into madness that I realized the depth of this actress' ability to transform herself into her character. Nina Sayers had to be uninteresting at the beginning of the movie for the role to work and for ultimate demise there had to be a clear break in the character's personality. Portman played both sides of this character with ease and it wasn't until the end of the film did this become clear. My second choice for Best Actress would be Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine. In this heartbreaking film Williams plays a woman stuck in a marriage that probably shouldn't have happened in the first place and now she finds herself out of love with her husband and struggling to find her place in a world she wishes she wasn't in. Her raw and honest performance was painful to watch, but definitely deserving of this award. However, it's unlikely that she'll get it as the film did not garner the type of attention Oscar films hope to. Benning, as mentioned, is one of the biggest threats to Portman's awards domination. And while I loved The Kids are Alright, I didn't think she was the strongest or most interesting thing about it. I would have chosen Julianne Moore over Benning, for the nomination. As for Nicole Kidman in Rabbit Hole, I must just say that I find it ironic that she has chosen a career that is all about expression yet has pumped her face so full of poisonous botox and pulled it so far back that her affect is completely nonexistent. She claims to have given it up, so hopefully we can see her act in the next film and not just recite words from the script. Jennifer Lawrence is the newcomer on the scene and was good in Winter's Bone, but given the strong competition probably doesn't have much of a chance.

Best Supporting Actor

This one has got to go to Christian Bale for his part in The Fighter. One of the most prolific and daring actors in our generation, and it seems almost criminal that this is only his first acting nomination. He was great in The Fighter, and even perfectly grasped the Boston accent, which is award-worthy alone! He's definitely got my vote. Geoffrey Rush is also very deserving of this award for his performance in The King's Speech. As speech therapist to the King he was both lovable and driven. He's an accomplished actor with one Oscar already at home and while very deserving of this second one, my money's still on Bale. Jeremy Renner also turned in strong performances for The Town and his nomination is interesting as the film was not met with much other adulation (but I'll admit to being biased towards any film set in Boston). Mark Ruffalo was lukewarm in The Kids are Alright, but I'm generally not taken by his acting. John Hawkes was nominated in the category for his role as Tear Drop in Winter's Bone. I did not love this film, nor did I think this performance was anything special. Aside from the fact that he was hard to understand for most of the film, I found this role to be cliche and didn't bring anything special to the landscape.


Best Supporting Actress

This is a tough category for me as I thought all of the performances were excellent (although I cannot comment on Animal Kingdom as I haven't seen it...) I think the real fight is between Amy Adams and Melissa Leo, both for The Fighter. Their two characters were in direct opposition for much of the movie so it makes sense that they'd duke it out for the award too. Leo as the tough stage mom for her boxer sons and Adams for the tough but supportive girlfriend to boxer Micky Ward. Both women embodied their characters so fully and turned in such honest performances both would be deserving of the award. Leo will probably get it as she has been racking up the awards so far, but I wouldn't be surprised if Hailee Steinfeld pulled it in for the upset. Her performance in True Grit was impressive and as not only a newcomer, but the only major female role in the film she handled herself well in the company of such established and prominent actors. Helena Bonham Carter was also excellent in her role as the Queen Mum in The King's Speech. Her turn as the sympathetic yet strong queen-to-be who supported her husband and pushed him to be the great king she knew he could be was such a departure from her normal eccentric roles that it was surprising to see her so subdued. My pick, however, in this category will be Melissa Leo for the win she is both deserving and the likely winner.

Best Director

For this category I think Darren Aronofsky should take home the statue for Best Director for Black Swan. The way he seemingly effortlessly weaved together this story of heartbreak and madness into a coherent and cohesive story while evoking strong performances from his actors, I believe he is most deserving of this award. The win, however, will likely go to Tom Hooper for The King's Speech. Hooper is also deserving of this award for telling a story which is both heart-wrenching and heart-warming at the same time. Joel and Ethan Coen tend to be award show darlings, and True Grit was a good movie, but I thought this movie's strength was in the performances and the writing. These auteurs often bring a certain "Coen" stamp to their films and I felt that was lacking in this one. David Fincher also has a strong chance of winning this award for The Social Network as the direction was interesting, but the writing has overshadowed this movie on a whole (and almost anything Aaron Sorkin touches does) and the direction isn't what people, academy voters in particular, have been focusing on.

So there you have it, my pics for the top six categories for the Academy Awards. Can't wait to see how it all turns out!

The King's Speech

A Voice for the Great
2/26/11

It was recently reported that Queen Elizabeth has come out in favor of awards darling, The King's Speech. Initially I was surprised that the usually fiercely private Queen made any statement at all, let alone publicly announce that a film which depicts such a personal and painful part of her parents' life. Further, as it turns out, the screenwriter, David Seidler, had asked the Queen Mum permission to turn this story into a film. Her response was, "Not in my lifetime." So after her passing in 2002, in accordance with her wishes, Seidler began putting together the screenplay. So while she might have not been completely in opposition to the story being told, she had no interest in seeing it on the screen herself.

Directed by Tom Hooper, The King's Speech is about King George VI, played by Colin Firth, who struggled with and eventually overcame a terrible stammering problem and how he reluctantly became King of England and led his country through the perils of WWII. On the outside, that is what the film is about. However, on a deeper level the film is really about both the friendship of two men coming to terms with their lots in life and a wife taking it upon herself to help her husband when he won't help himself. I particularly found The Queen Mum's character to be particularly interesting. Played by Helena Bonham Carter, she depicts a wife and mother fiercely supportive of her family, stopping at nothing until she gets what she wants. After seeing her husband struggle with this speech in particular at public speaking engagements she decided something must be done. She seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a well respected speech therapist and stops at nothing for both parties to agree to treatment. Both reluctant at first, Logue for having a patient so reluctant of his unorthodox methods of treatment and of such high status and entitlement and "Bertie" (as was his nickname) who knew since he wasn't in line for the throne did not see the need for such embarrassment in the face of his disability.

Bertie was not anticipating rising to the throne, as the second son to King George V and Queen Mary, it would be his brother who would become King. Furthermore, his father never showed much interest or support of his younger son. Bertie was happy to allow his other brother to become King, and when faced with the reality of his brother's abdication of the throne when he chose to marry a woman twice divorced, he was terrified at the prospect of becoming king.

Firth, of course, is at the center of this film. It is his performance which is getting the most attention, and probably rightly so as he painfully accurately depicts someone with a nearly debilitating stuttering problem. He portrays the reluctant King as honest and noble even when vulnerable. However, I was mostly moved by the two supporting characters: Logue and Queen Elizabeth. The eventual Queen Mum emerges from this film as a woman on a mission, a true embodiment of the phrase, "behind every great man is a great woman." It is she who pushes her husband to get the treatment he needs and it is she who is supportive of him in his times of need. Her sympathy and love for her husband is never wavering and she is the one who encourages him to step out of his comfort zone and assures him that he can in fact lead the country when he does not think he can.

I was also taken by the relationship Logue and Bertie forged. Both men dealing with a shortcoming in their lives and rather than letting it keep them down they found ways to channel it. Bertie, as mention was pushed in that direction by his wife. Logue was a failed actor who found a way to channel his exuberance into a meaningful way. As an actor he wished to bring characters to life on stage, but as a speech therapist he could bring people to life on their own stages. His support and love for his client and eventual friend is profound. His refusal to be give up on Bertie even when Bertie pushes him away and insults him Logue stands strong and encourages him to find the voice he knows he has. Despite their reluctancies, the pair form a tight friendship and Logue ultimately gives Bertie the confidence he needed to lead the country through one of Britain's most trying periods in modern history.

To me, this film was less about a King who overcame a stuttering problem and more about a man who found out the importance of having a support system around him. It's about the heights someone can reach if he has people around him who love and support him. It's also about stepping out of your comfort zone to achieve greatness, even when you don't think it's attainable because of something you perceive as a shortcoming. When thinking about the film through this lens it occurred to me that it's no wonder why the current Queen Elizabeth would have liked this film. It brings a sense of nobility back to a family dynasty which has been lacking just that in the public eye lately.

35 Movies in 2 Minutes

I came across this video and it has been distracting me ever since. It's a animated video that simplifies 35 movies into short images. The challenge is identifying all 35. I have somewhere around 20 of them -- would love to see what you can come up with!

35mm from Pascal Monaco on Vimeo.

Tangled

A Fairy Tale for the Jaded
2/14/11

A few weeks ago I went to see Disney’s latest installment of the Princess movie franchise, Tangled. I wasn’t particularly dying to go see it, but definitely had an interest in it and since I was always such a sucker for this genre as a kid, I was happy to tag along. Furthermore, as an adult I’m still waiting for my prince to come, so why not watch a movie where that catharsis is guaranteed?

The movie was cute enough, but from the eyes of this admittedly somewhat jaded movie go-er, it didn’t provide anything new to the Disney landscape. As previously mentioned, I’m a total sucker for the Disney princess musicals. I grew up watching The Little Mermaid at least twice a week (literally wearing away my VHS copy of it), dreaming of being Jasmine with those big batting eyes, wishing I could sing and dance in a spacious ballroom in a flowing golden dress, imagining one day I too would fall head over heels in love with any of the princes that my idol princesses did. Tangled seeks to hearken back to the day of those movies, providing just the right combination of rebellious and independent princess, love story, song, and cute little anthropomorphized animal side-kick. Yet, despite its best efforts, it doesn’t quite live up to its hopes. There was something lacking in it, and it could be that I've personally seen it all before on the screen, or as an adult I know things just don’t work out that way. I’m tending to lean towards it being my own prejudices that left the moving falling flat because the throngs of 7- and 8-year-olds in the theater seemed to be thoroughly enjoying it.

Tangled tells the somewhat reimagined story of Rapunzel, a princess kidnapped from her parents and locked away from the world in a tower by a woman posing as her mother. In this version, Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) has magical hair which not only brings youth but healing to whoever is in contact with it when she sings. It is to protect this magic that “The Mother” (Donna Murphy) keeps Rapunzel isolated from any human contact. One day resident thief and ladies man, Flynn Ryder (voiced by Chuck's Zachary Levi) appears in her tower hiding out from the lawmen (and horses) who are trying to capture him. Never before face to face with another human other than her “Mother,” Rapunzel is scared and unsure as to how to deal with the situation. Ultimately she decides to use him for her benefit. Itching to get out of her (literal) ivory tower and explore the outside world desperate to see, she blackmails him to bring her out on a journey to see the fire lanterns which are sent out on her birthday each year. What Rapunzel doesn’t know is that these lanterns are dispersed by her birth parents in memory of their daughter and what they hope will lead her back to them.

All of the stock characters you would expect to see in a Disney movie are present, from the rake leading man, fiercely independent but ultimately “helpless without her guy” princess, creature sidekick, and absent/dead parents, and evil step-mother. The lush landscapes, vague time period and song and dance numbers are also clear indicators that this is a Disney Princess flick. (Come to think of it, is it weird that another stock scene is a drunken bar song and dance number?) It’s for those reasons that I both enjoyed and was a tad bored by this film. I could enjoy it because I knew what to expect, it fit the mold that I’d come to know and love. However, I was slightly frustrated that there was really nothing positively nuanced about it that would set itself apart from its predecessors.

I say “positively” nuanced because I would have hoped that decades since the first princess iteration we could have evolved ourselves into idealizing a stronger female main character. Rapunzel is even needier than some who came before her, helplessly relying on her step-mother until Flynn comes along and she proves to need him to care for her. While she acts independent, ultimately she cannot save herself unless she has the support of Flynn coming to her rescue. Her most liberating moment comes at the end of the film, and without giving anything away, is not merely superficial, but also ultimately an unnecessary act. Additionally, something interesting about this film is that while Disney Mothers have always gotten a bad rap, this one is particularly haunting. The Mother is unflinchingly evil, having not even kidnapped Rapunzel due to her need for a child or for love. She kidnapped her for purely selfish reasons and needs her to stay safe for her own gain. Is that where Disney thinks women are today: either helpless victims who need men to save them, or horrible matrons who procreate for their own selfish gain?

While pondering this concept and looking around at the young girls in the theater I wondered to myself if they were reading into the film as I was and if this message was subliminally penetrating their young minds. Were they really thinking that these were their only two options? Personally, I don’t think I can point to The Little Mermaid or Aladdin as solely being responsible for formulating my wish for happily ever after. Moreover, I consider myself a strong woman despite having looked up to Ariel and Jasmine. There’s a lot of worrying about the “Disney effect” on young women and society, and the messages those films are sending. However, thinking about my past experiences growing up on these films and coming to understand the messaging as an adult I don’t know if I agree with the idea that the subliminal messages seep into the subconscious of young girls and they come to emulate their on screen heroines. If anything, it’s Hollywood on a whole that creates the idea of Happily Ever After and perpetuates the image of helpless-without-her-man female characters.

I've already said that Tangled didn’t particularly “WOW” me, but I don’t think it had to. It was meant to impress the kids in the audience. They were there to take away from it messages and themes important to them. I’m sure they got a thrill out of the 3-D (whereas I just grumbled about the higher ticket price and lack of eye-popping imagery). Too often adults judge kids’ movies based on how they see them, not by how the children their meant for see them. So what if I wasn’t enlightened by the film or found its stock characters and plot devises to be repetitive. The kids were eating it up, and for me, watching them being drawn in and awed by what was on the screen was enough for me because ultimately, that’s what reminded me of what it’s like to be a kid. As an adult who can so easily talk about how there’s nothing new in the movies anymore, to look and see how they were lapping up and being impressed by “the movies” reminded me how sometimes, especially when it comes to movies made for kids, they don’t have to be particularly nuanced, they just have to be fun and adventurous and allow kids to enjoy themselves and be, well, kids.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Still Creepy After All These Years
2/14/11

Earlier this month TCM embarked on its annual “31 Days of Oscar” schedule where they play a month’s worth of Oscar nominated films. And I, in turn, embarked on my annual, “fill up the DVR month with olde timey movies.” The first of the films which I sat down to watch was Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Surprisingly, after 6 years of formal film education and over 25 years of personal movie-going I have never seen this particular film. I’m the first to admit that even as a film buff and scholar there is a whole cannon of films that not only have I never seen, but have no interest in seeing. This, for a long time, was one of them. You see, scary movies are not my thing at all. Some people enjoy being frightened and find scary movies to be somewhat cathartic. Again, I do not. Scary movies stay with me and penetrate my subconscious and result in nightmares and even the inability to walk down dark hallways without my back to a wall.

Despite my reservations, I thought it was time to watch this classic film with two legends of Hollywood, so I took my chances. Plus, I thought it’s a black and white film from the early 1960s, I’m probably desensitized by modern filmmaking technology and if I can handle Psycho, I can handle this.

For those of you not familiar with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane it’s a film about two washed up Hollywood actresses Jane (Bette Davis) and Blanche Hudson (Joan Crawford, both in probably semi-ironic roles as this was one of the last major film roles for both actresses). Jane was a well known child star jealous of her older sister Blanche who’s career took off later in life after her own had cooled off. Blanche is now confined to a wheel chair and left to be cared for by Jane who has been carrying the guilt thinking it was her who injured her sister so severely. But the years of guilt and drinking lead to a descent into madness and to ease the torment Jane grows to resent her sister and ultimately abuse her.

So does this movie, called “campy” by Robert Osborne when he introduced the film on TCM, hold up? Absolutely. The themes of jealousy, betrayal, family allegiance, nostalgia for a bygone era all hold up 50 years after the film’s release. I found myself having visceral reactions to the same things that the original audiences were meant to react. Bette Davis’ psychoanalytical depiction of a washed up child star clinging onto the vestiges of her former life, dressing, speaking, and singing as she did as a child and introducing herself as “Baby Jane” to people who clearly are too young to have any clue who she might be are painfully sad. She wishes for a time where she was the object of everyone’s affection and center of attention and is unable to come to terms with the fact that her glory days are behind her. Today we can recognize our own culture as celebrity obsessed, and how that celebrity can destroy the lives of those at the center of attention. It’s interesting that while we might think that in our world where the proliferation of media and celebrity culture permeates our daily lives in unprecedented ways, we’re not all that much different from those that came before us.

Furthermore, her relationship with Blanche is a catalyst for the descent. Blanche is a beloved former actress who still receives mail from adoring fans and who, despite her sister’s abuse, still treats her with respect. It’s only when Blanche realizes that Jane is keeping her visitors at bay, stealing her money, and ultimately turning violent does she futilely fight back.

At different and distinct moments in this film I found myself cringing and turning away from the actions on screen. For instance, to torment her sister, for whom she makes lunch each day, she serves her dead pets and vermin found in the basement on the fancy silver serving-ware. I mistakenly watching this movie alone at night and had to turn it off before bed and watch a light sitcom before falling asleep, and yet woke up still feeling creeped out by it. “The Movies” have yet proven, once again, that certain images and themes of human nature are timeless and cannot be rendered obsolete by decades of newer films. I can proudly say I made it through the entire movie (the same cannot be said about all scary movies I’ve embarked on), but despite its age, Baby Jane is not dated and still holds up and is eerily accurate and left me feeling the same as a number modern day movies which are supposedly more timely.

Winter's Bone

Who's the Man?
2/10/11

Winter’s Bone was nominated for 4 Oscars this year, and they’re the big ones: 2 for acting, one for writing, and Best Picture. I’ll give it the acting noms, but I can’t say I’m in agreement with the Best Picture or Best Writing nods. I didn’t really go into this film with any great expectations, having never read the book and not really even knowing what it was about. But given the buzz that has surrounded it and its young ingénue, I was expecting to be wowed and left feeling rather under whelmed by it on a whole. It was decent, and Jennifer Lawrence in the leading role was impressive, but other than that I felt nothing particularly nuanced about this movie. Much if it is a reiteration of themes done over and over before, “country folk” are uneducated, violent, incestuous and uphold patriarchal values.

Winter’s Bone is about Ree Dolly (Lawrence) and her struggle to keep her family together in their home in the face of her father’s abandonment. 17-year-old Ree is left to care for her young siblings after her father, a well known meth addict, has gone on the lam and her mother rendered incompetent by a mental illness. When the county sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) has informed her that should her dad not appear for his court date, scheduled in a few days, Ree and her family will lose their house as he put it up as part of his bond. Facing this reality, she sets off on what turns out to be a dangerous journey to bring her father home.

It was at that point that the movie lost me. Winter’s Bone painted a vivid picture of a young girl trying to keep it together and care for her young siblings and dementia-inflicted mother. Yet, was unable to educate the viewer as to why this endeavor of tracking down her father was so dangerous and why the locals in her town, all of whom she seemed to be related to, warned her against it. Ree spends the entire film painstakingly tracking down her dad, and risks her own life to do so. The people and family members she seeks out to help her, more often than not, end up beating and threatening her. She learns to fend for herself with nearly no allies.

A reoccurring theme throughout the movie is that of family. Nearly everyone with whom Ree interacted is a cousin of sorts. Now, this might have been a comment of incest in her community, but it was often tied to issues of loyalty and protection. Initially she seeks out help from her father’s younger brother, Teardrop (played by Oscar nominated John Hawkes) who initially refuses to help her and even threatens her with violence should she continue of her search. Eventually, he decides to come to her aid and saves her from those inflicting actual harm upon her. Having her uncle on her side is going to be a good thing for Ree as people fear her uncle and know he’s not to be messed with. Unfortunately, the film is unable to articulate why he ultimately has a change of heart and the audience is just expected to sort of go with it. Furthermore, other than a few brooding moments and angry outbursts, it’s hard to understand just why this slight man with a few ominous tattoos (and a nickname which reminded me of Johnny Depp in Cry Baby) is so feared.

Tied into the family theme is that of the role of patriarchy and what that means to the family unit. This message is probably the most interesting thing about the film. Ree, this 17-year-old child who should be in school has been acting as both mother and father to her siblings: she feeds, bathes and cares for them in all ways possible. She even teaches them how to hunt and skin animals so they could one day provide for themselves. In the early scenes of the film Ree walks into her high school and observes a Home-ec class learning how to care for babies. This is almost a joke to someone who has been doing this all her life. Yet, despite her competency, she nevertheless needs to find her father to keep the house and her family in tact. In her quest to find her dad she comes across many women who claim to want to help her out, but don’t do so out of fear of their husbands’ reactions. When Ree breaks that hierarchy and tries to go to the men anyway it’s the women who turn out to inflict the most violence and who uphold this old time value almost more than their husbands.

This to me is the most powerful statement the film was making – the role of women in this staunchly patriarchal society. No matter how the men behave or how intimidating they are, or how self sustained the women seem to be, they will always protect their men. The ultimate redemption in the film only comes when some of the women who initially inflicted the most pain and upheld this order to the fullest, put that aside to bring Ree what she finally needed to survive.

Black Swan

Ugly Duckling or Swan Queen?
12/13/10

Warning: Contains Spoilers!

“The Return of the Repressed” is a phrase first introduced by Sigmund Freud and is now often thrown around in the discourse surrounding Horror Films. Freud’s theory, earliest applied to Hitchcock’s’ films, is the notion that anything a society or an individual represses will return as the monster and torment the subject. In Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, The Black Swan, the monster appears in a number of manifestations as what the main character, Nina Sayers (played by an impeccable Natalie Portman), has repressed.

In this film, Nina is the Prima Ballerina at the New York City Ballet. She has been crowned Swan Queen in the company’s season opening production of Swan Lake. In this new risqué version of the show, she will not only be playing the virginal White Swan, but also the more tempestuous Black Swan. Throughout the film, her artistic director pushes her to let herself and her self imposed restraints go in order to embody the characteristics of the Black Swan, as she inherently excels in the role of White Swan. Throughout her life Nina was constantly tormented by an obsession for perfection. She therefore disallows herself any physical pleasure or emotional displays which might take away from her quest for perfection. Be it sexual pleasure, or even something as simple as enjoying a piece of cake, she lives a controlled life unable to enjoy anything around her, even her success. Her mother, with whom she lives, cares for her as she has since childhood, reinforcing the restraint Nina puts on herself. Each night she undresses Nina, takes out her hearings for her and tucks her into bed before leaving her music box ballerina playing her to sleep. Any sense of adulthood or independence has been completely repressed and her mother is the external force driving that repression, as if Nina needed any more encouragement to be controlled.

From the instance that she is awarded the lead role, Nina’s descent from simple OCD ballerina to complete madness is made clear. She feels as though she must prove herself worthy of this position, and not only that, but she must keep any would-be lead ballerinas at bay. Everyone is competition. The introduction of a new ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), catalyzes her madness as Nina does not know if she should trust her as a friend or suspect her as someone who is vying to replace her. Lily ultimately becomes the focal point of Nina’s paranoia as she considers her to be the one who will be the biggest threat of dethroning her from her position. Even as the film comes to a close, the audience is left wondering, how much should we believe about Lily’s behaviors? Nina has positioned Lily to be hypercompetitive and a real threat, but is that actually true?

Nina’s madness manifests itself in a number of ways, most obviously in her almost constant paranoia of those around her. Aronofsky skillfully plays with the audience’s sense of reality by a constant focalization on Nina (she is in every scene). As Nina is the clear center of the film, and is in every single scene, there’s an almost naïve sense of trust we place on her as our narrator. Harkening back to films such as Fight Club and Memento, Black Swan leaves the audience questioning what they can trust and what existed within the diagesis of the film. As the film comes to its end, there are events left ambiguous and we are left questioning which scenes we should trust and which were just Nina’s psychosis rearing its ugly head.

Further, through the use of camera tricks and other means of visual deception, he creates a world in which what the audience sees ultimately proves to be untrustworthy, something jarring for a movie viewer who has been trained by cinema to trust what he sees on screen. Nina often imagines people who end up not really being there and often thinks she sees herself on others’ bodies. The real question turns out to be though, when does she see other people acting out certain behaviors that turn out to be her? A crucial scene between Nina and Lily turns out to be the one which alerts Nina to this possibility as she both the audience and the character herself begin to distrust what is being seen.

Moreover, the prevalent use of mirrors throughout the film offers a visual display of how Nina wishes she could reflect her self image towards others. Moreover, overlapping and broken mirrors offer a visual sense of the fragmented personality Nina devolves into, constantly wishing to be able to keep her life together but being unable to do so.

As mentioned, Nina spends a great deal of time repressing some of her deepest desires. One repression which is made quite clear is her sexuality. Her artistic director, Tomas (Nicholas Cassel) continually pushes her to let herself go and embrace her sexuality, even suggesting at one point that she go home and touch herself. While he does push some boundaries between teacher and student, he also recognizes that the role of the Black Swan requires a sense of sexual freedom. Nina has a hard time allowing herself to give into any of the urges which she has fought so hard to repress to let herself reach her ultimate goal of perfection. In the world she has created for herself (and her mother has encouraged) giving into desires and growing into a free thinking adult is a sign of imperfection and weakness. Even in the rare instances which she does give in to her desires, they result in utter humiliation, further pushing her into a continuance of the repression.

Nina's psychological repression physically manifested itself with Nina's scratching habit. Over the course of the film the audience comes to learn that she has had a chronic struggle with scratching at her back, often resulting in rashes and bleeds. Despite her mother best efforts at stopping this habit, buying expensive cover ups or tying socks on her hands while she slept, Nina persisted. Her scratching ultimately came to represent her desire to let her repressed traits come out. Ironically, it was those repressed traits which led to her success as the Black Swan. This literally becomes the case when she begins to imagine her skin crawling with barbs and other maladies that she must pull out. Nina succumbs to the scratching and allows herself to give in to that one desire. What results is an unexpected transformation. The Black Swan Queen is the embodiment of sexual freedom and it was only once she let herself go and gave into her desires for which so long she saw as imperfection was Nina able to literally embody her character and perform the Black Queen perfectly.

On a separate, but related note, the idea of beauty and what makes something beautiful was constantly in my mind as I watched this film. Ballet is supposed to be an embodiment of one of the most beautiful acts the human body can create. However, this film shows the dark underbelly of ballet and how so much of this goal of external beautiful perfection is born from such an ugly place of private and individual pain and suffering.

Like any student of Freud or film knows, however, that the harder one represses something, the more forcefully it will return. This is especially true with Nina. In her quest for ultimate perfection she mistrusts anyone around her and sees them as a monster who needs to be defeated. This idea culminates in the last few scenes of the film. In the climactic final scenes Nina sets out to destroy the one person who can and will take her place as lead ballerina. A dramatic and bloody fight ensues with Nina feeling satisfied that she has been left invulnerable from defeat and that she has achieved her goal of perfection, with little concern for the long term consequences.

The Social Network

Socially Inept?
10/08/10

Marketers and critics are lauding The Social Network as a movie which defines a generation. As a member of its purported generation, I have what to say about this assessment.

I think that this statement has good intentions, although a little overreaching. Namely, I do not think it’s accurate to declare that it’s the film which defines a generation. If anything it should refer to the website upon which the film is based. This film tells the story of how Mark Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) founded Facebook back in his dorm room at Harvard University. It’s unclear how much of the film is true to reality as all parties involved signed non-disclosure agreements as part of their settlements with Zuckerberg, but the filmmakers insist they have stuck to the truth to tell an honest story (and to, of course, avoid libel lawsuits).

To say that the film defines a generation is a bit of an overstatement. It might be more accurate to say that the film is about a website that has had a lot of influence over a generation. I know, not nearly as catchy, but what would it mean that this film defines a generation? Is it the backstabbing or the selfishness of the main character which defines my generation? Or perhaps the people Zuckerberg left in the dust in the generation being defined. Are we a generation that has been betrayed by others? I’m not quite sure what it means to say that this film defines me and my peers.

The Social Network, or The Facebook Movie as it is colloquially being called, is based on Ben Mezrich’s book, The Accidental Billionaires. With the real Saverin acting as consultant, the story is clearly one sided and frames Zuckerberg in the most negative of lights. According to this film, Zuckerberg is an antisocial and amoral social climber who only cares about getting in with the cool crowd and has no regard for the hurt he causes along the way. He creates facebook as a way to get back at his ex-girlfriend, and alienates his best friend in the process.

Sorkin’s screenplay is nothing short of poetry and the acting is stellar. The cast recites Sorkin’s words with ease as they fully embody their characters. The narrative structure of the film is particularly interesting to note. Interwoven within the storyline are two separate lawsuits. One is between Zuckerberg and twins, Cameron and Tyler Winkelvos (both played by Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), the group from who he supposedly stole Facebook from. The other is between Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), his only and best friend at the time who he pushed out of the company as it was about to hit its stride. What I can only imagine was one of the more daunting editing tasks, the film pieces together accounts of what happened between these three parties as the website started and began to grow. It also expands to include how Sean Parker, Napster founder (played by Justin Timberlake) encouraged Zuckerberg to implement some significant changes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this film since seeing it. Mostly, about what the world thinks about my generation if it thinks that this film defines us. The title assumes people are networking socially. Zuckerberg has changed the word friend from a noun with a distinct definition and specific traits to a verb with a scattered definition and amorphous meaning. Friends are no longer those with whom you connect with on a personal level, share interests and traits with or even know directly. In our age of “social networking,” Facebook defines a friend as anyone who you want to have a digital dotted line to. It has gotten to the point where if someone isn’t, God forbid, on Facebook, they must be some sort of outsider or social deviant. I am an anomaly as someone who only accepts or sends out “friend requests” to people I actually know. Once “friends” with someone you are free to block people, limit their access to your profile or even unfriend them at your will. If this was actual reality there would be some consequence to that behavior. At the very least the other person would know! Today, rarely is that even the case. What kind of friendships are those? The film portrays Zuckerberg as borderline Aspergers with no sense of remorse or notion of consequences nor is he capable of making and retaining friendships. Has he created a culture where everyone is mimicking him? Is that what we should be socially aspiring to? Is that how our generation is seen by others? Are we a considered to be a demographic devoid of social responsibility and unable for connecting on personal levels? While these questions are probably impossible to definitively answer, the questions themselves are important even to be considering.

Moreover, according to the film, Zuckerberg was intent on maintaining a certain level of exclusivity on the site to keep people thinking it was “cool.” As someone who himself was excluded from Harvard’s elite final clubs, college sports teams and often felt alienated from social gatherings, this was his way to get back at the world. He created a place where he got to choose who was able to join or not. At its inception this held true, limited to Harvard and a few elite colleges, Zuckerberg could hold control over his definition of what makes cool. However, as he saw the monetary potential the site could have and his greed for putting his digital fingerprint across the planet he seems to have lost sight of his original intentions (well, maybe his secondary intentions after he got back at his exgirlfriend). Initially, he didn’t even want ads on his website, lest people not consider it “cool.” However, almost making a 180 degree turn from what the movie claims he said about the site, today Facebook is overrun by corporations and other organizations trying to make their own mark on the Facebook network. These companies believe that tapping into a preexisting and preorganized community in “social media” it will help them build their own brands. To me at least, this is the antitheses of what socializing means. Since when is capitalizing on social connections for monetary gain socially acceptable? I guess the answer to that is since Zuckerberg did just that to his own real life social network he has set the standard.

Personally, I think to say that this movie, or even the website, defines a generation is minimizing all the other things that young people today are doing these days. Yes, we keep up with people we once knew in previous lives through the computer screen by never having to actually talk to them. Instead of connecting directly with a long lost high school friend you can now just click a link and be connected with them. You learn what town they now live in, where they work, who they married and see their kids. All from the privacy of your apartment (or, lets be real, cubicle). Facebook fulfills a voyeuristic need in all of us, but this is not new; it’s something Hitchcock knew half a century ago when he put voyeurism at the center of many of his narratives.

However, despite this growing trend I do not believe that our generation is defined by a change in the way we interact with people from our past. Maybe the word “friend” now has a broader interpretation, but real true friends are still the people we want to hang out with, share intimate details with in person, and keep them up to date with what’s going on in our worlds. Furthermore, there are far more important things than a social media website which has defined my generation. What about the job crisis and how many of us are professionally stunted because of the economic meltdown? What about the thousands of soldiers from my generation who have given their lives and limbs for this country? Those are just two major happenings in our adult lives which have greatly effected us and I believe will have a far more lasting effect than how we define the word, “friend.” We are a generation raised as multitaskers who, for all our lives, have been trained to take on as many projects and activities as we possible can, and to reduce us to a single idea is insulting. I do agree that Facebook has probably changed the way my generation interacts with the world, but to reduce is to being defined by it is a little overreaching.
The S

Can You Ever Come Home Again?

The Town
10/4/10

Every few years or so a seemingly seminal, and always grave, film about Boston comes out. Be it directed by Gus Van Sant, Clint Eastwood, Ben Affleck or even the traditional New York-ophile, Martin Scorsese, they always seem to be both a partial love story to the city and a warning of sorts. They have depicted some of the seediest, nastiest neighborhoods inhabited by some of the most sordid of folks. Further, whether an original screenplay or an adaptation, there’s almost always a murder, double crossing and deception. Boston as a city in Hollywood’s recent cinema seems to have become a stand in for the worst of what America has to offer.

Take Ben Affleck’s recent vehicle, The Town, for instance. This film is yet another example of how Boston is depicted as less than savory locale with opportunistic and dangerous inhabitants. The strange thing about this representation is that Affleck has declared his love for his home state numerous times and in numerous ways. As documented by the Papparazzi, he proudly dons his Red Sox baseball hat around LA, attends his team’s games with frequency and even owns a home back east for his family to inhabit for part of the year. He also frequently shows off his native accent upon request (for instance, on Jimmy Kimmel Live). Yet, his two directorial efforts about his hometown seem to be anything but an unconditional love story. In The Town, Affleck plays a leader of a Charlestown bank-robbing gang. They are mixed up with uzi-wielding mobsters who commission them for one dangerous heist after another.

Despite the bank-robbing and guns, the movie pretty much plays like a romantic comedy. Boy meets girl (ok, so it was while he was holding her hostage) and falls in love with her but has to keep his true identity a secret lest she find out what he did. Given that premise I’m sure you know what happens eventually, so I won’t spell it out for you and risk spoiling it for the one person who has never seen a movie with this formula before. Not knowing that Doug (Ben Affleck) was the one who put a gun to her back, Claire (played by Rebecca Hall) falls for the bait and is taken with her mysterious suitor. He would like to make a change and go straight, but things begin to get complicated as he is expected to conduct more escalated robberies and eventually things are no longer in his control. To make matters more complicated he has to hide his burgeoning relationship from his best friend and fellow bank robber, Jimmy (Jeremy Renner) who risks exposing Doug to Claire for who he really is.

While most of the native Charlestown-ians are unabashedly evil people, there is a moral code to which they all abide. Throughout the film, a clear and present theme in the narrative is the sense that Charlestown is a place where people take care of their own. Loyalty to family and those like family is paramount as they trust each other with their lives on a seemingly hourly basis. Furthermore, being born and raised in Charlestown, for the locals, is a sort of badge of honor. Doug and his buddies display their heritage with pride. Be it with tattoos depicting the fighting Irish, four leaf clovers, or even the Charlestown Zip Code emblazoned in a tattoo across the outline of Massachusetts adorned with the Irish flag. They almost exclusively wear Red Sox and Bruins apparel and use their distinct accent as almost to mark their territory, getting stronger when holding their ground about something. To be a native Bostonian is something they are proud of and impostors beware. Not only do the locals claim to be proud of their upbringing, they put down the yuppie transplants who are gentrifying the neighborhood and refer to them as “Toonies.” These “Toonies” are outsiders who will never truly understand what it means to be a local.

If you were born and bred in Charlestown you hold some legitimacy with your peers and you can be trusted. However, deflectors will not be tolerated one iota. There’s one heated exchange with Doug and Dino Ciampa, an FBI agent (played by Titus Welliver) who crossed over from local to Fed and is now considered a traitor. Loyalty is the number one most important characteristic anyone can have in Charlestown, and if you betray that, you’ve betrayed your people.

Yet, despite all this, it seems that so often a strict adherence to this way of life is going to cause problems. (Sorry for the spoiler, but if you’ve ever seen a movie, ever, you know that a gang of bank robbers from a blue collar town is not going to have a happy ending for all parties.) While so many decry their loyalty to Charlestown and the way they grew up, there are still those who seek a better life. The only way to achieve this better life is to strive to get the hell out of there, not even to a suburb, but across the whole country.

I’m not quite sure why Boston has been deemed a city of despair, but it is interesting that while lamenting so many of its downfalls and having main characters want nothing more than to get out of the only city they’ve ever known, filmmakers keep coming back. They keep exploring how this city could be considered both “The Spirit of America” and yet have so many people fleeing.

Maybe that right there is the new “Spirit of America.” In our current society, so fractured by social and political issues, where the mention of The Tea Party no longer elicits unequivocal pride in our nation’s ability to stand up for itself against tyranny and injustice, but, rather conflicting messages of extremism and passivism for its opposers. Where national pride is debated across the cable news spectrum and where if you don’t agree, you can find your own outlet. Boston, therefore, in these films, stands as a microcosm of how we might see ourselves as Americans today. For the characters in The Town and in other Boston-based films (Good Will Hunting for example), one’s home town is a place that has nurtured and taken care of its inhabitants in the past, but it can not offer everything they need. These films seem to be saying that perhaps the way of life we once knew isn’t actually it’s all cracked up to be and we need to seriously rethink the direction we’re going.

So then, what are the options that these films offer? Do we deflect and become the traitorous Fed who is trying to solve things from the inside out? Are we willing to risk getting killed while clinging to some last hope for keeping to what we know? Or, do we just make it our goal to leave our shattered pasts behind us and start over somewhere new? Is one option nobler than the other? Is that the ultimate lesson though of these films -- to leave our pasts behind us and start over in hopes of finding something better?

In any event, The Town asks us to take a deep look into what we hold dear and implores the viewers to make a decision about which direction they want their lives to take. The Town is not simply saying that the goal for the characters is to escape a town which glorifies violence. Rather, this is a story about grappling with the desire to stay true and loyal to ones past and acknowledging that where someone comes from is important while also admitting that our futures are important as well. We can neither forget where we come from nor who took care and nurtured us when we needed it most. But it also asks us to also take a more objective stance and reassess our goals in life and make decision based on the now rather than the past. In other words, don’t let your past impede the greatness that can be your future.

Goodbye As the World Turns

This Friday something that has been integral in my life since literally the day I was born will come to an end. I have no control over it, it’s simply an inevitability that it will cease to exist. What am I talking about you’d like to know? Before I reveal it I would like you try to not roll your eyes or scoff and dismiss what I have to say without reading this all the way through.

So, you ask, to what am I referring? I am talking about the cancellation of the 54 year old soap opera, As The World Turns. I should consider myself lucky that I’ve had so much time with the characters and stories, and that while the actual cast members and production team had to say goodbye in June I’ve got to enjoy the show through to the middle of September. But I honestly don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to the Hughes and Snyder families and the rest of the host of characters who inhabit Oakdale, IL.

For my 18th birthday before I went off to college my parents got me a VCR. It was exactly what I wanted and they knew the number one reason why I wanted it. They knew I wouldn’t be able to give up my favorite show nor would I always be able to schedule my classes around the 2-3 pm time slot so I could rush back to my room. When I studied abroad in Australia for a semester my mom would give me weekly recaps. When my mom’s work schedule got to hectic for her to watch every day she would call me after Friday’s episode so I could give her the full recap of the week and tell her who the new characters were. In turn, when an old character returned after years of absence I would call my mom and ask for his or her back-story.

Mostly, it has been the relationships between characters and the fantasy that kept me tuning in every day. First of all, no matter what drama was going on in my own life, those characters had it worse. No one in my life was sleeping with her sister’s ex husband (who also happens to be their step cousin). I didn’t know anyone who came back to life 12 times to torment him son and ex wife to ultimately reveal that his ex wife’s new husband is his son from a first marriage. Yes, I’ll admit often stories were crazy and at times I rolled my eyes at some of the drama that people created for themselves. But ultimately sticking with something and going through their ups and downs is what connects you with them and even if its through a television screen a bond begins to grow as they become a part of your daily routine.

The other unique thing about soap operas, especially one like As The World Turns with such a rich history as the first daytime drama, is that viewer are really given the time to get to know characters. Every day there is an opportunity to flesh out some personality traits, understand some more back ground, and learn a little bit about their psyche. Unlike a primetime drama or sitcom where you get 30 minutes or an hour once a week for 23 episodes a year, a soap opera gives you day by day updates all year round. I often spent more time with those characters more often than most family and friends because every single day I got to learn something new about them and watch their stories unfold.

At the 50th anniversary event at The Paley Center I got to meet many of the actors in person and ask them about their characters and roles on the show. Upon speaking to Jon Hensley, who has portrayed Holden Snyder since he was a teenager, I told him how I’ve been watching the show since I was a little kid and responded by saying, “Wow, you’ve watched me grow up.” I know it’s just a show and I know that often times the story lines are ridiculous and outlandish. But there is something to be said about having followed the same characters (and often the same actors) for years. Over that amount of time you see them develop and regress, you watch them fall in and out of love and maybe even die and come back to life. I also had the chance, everyday to escape into a fantasy land where the laws of nature don’t exist. Time can stand still or zoom ahead at the writers’ whim. Characters who had long been dead can return to life with a simple explanation and new characters can pop up suddenly as though they’ve got a rich history.

Personally, not to sound trite or overly melodramatic, but this show was something that was something that bound 3 generations of women in my family. My mother grew up watching it from when she was a little girl. She watched every day with her mother. As I grew up I watched it with her. I remember sitting down with my mom after dinner to catch up on the show she had taped during the day. It was our time to sit together and share something. I am lucky to have a strong relationship with my mom outside of As the World Turns, and this by no means was the only commonality we share, but it was always something we could catch up on and chat about.

The cancellation of ATWT just proves once again, that unfortunately soap operas continue to be considered the bastard child of the television industry. Network executives want high ratings for low cost. The Soap Opera started as a way to sell soap to housewives. It was daily programming for women who were home all day who would be hooked on the drama. Lately, as more women are working during the day they have been slipping in the ratings. Show-runners have been doing everything in their power to cut costs and attract new viewers, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be working. The sad state of affairs is that this television staple and piece of history will be replaced by a banal game show which appeals to the lowest common denominator of viewer, one which can come in and out as he or she pleases. The Soap Opera, while maybe not the highest art form does deserve a certain amount of regard and respect that I think is being forgotten in the quest for high ratings.

It’s fitting that I will be home the day the show goes off the air. My mother and I will take a break from cooking for the Jewish holidays and we will sit down together to watch the final episode. The personalities of As the World Turns are not merely one dimensional and fleeting TV characters, they have been a real part of my life for 28 years and I’m not yet sure how I’ll say goodbye. What I do know is that my mom and I will have to have a box of tissues handy.

Whats "good" and what's "bad:" A Jacob/MIB Theory

A major mythology of the show is in regards to the Manichean allegory – black vs. white, good vs. bad. Is someone destined to be good? Is it a feature you have or you don’t and is it something that can coexist inside of you? Is goodness and badness something with which the individual is constantly struggling with or is it decided upon at an early age? Finally, what does it mean to be good or bad? The characters are all constantly struggling with that. Something that’s come up on the recent episode, Ab Aeterno, is more of the relationship between the Man in Black and Jacob. A few more details have been given, yet it’s still difficult to determine which is the bad guy, and which is the good guy. But I think that’s the entire point.

Jacob declares to Richard in this episode that he brings people to the island to give them the opportunity to be good. But they seem to be failing as he also said that all the people he’s brought up until that point were dead. The nature of good versus evil is yet again brought to the forefront. What is also interesting about these two characters is that no one seems to be able to see them unless specifically invited to do so. Jacob declares that no one is allowed into his cave unless invited, and other than Richard, no one knows what the “original” form of MIB looks like (“original” is in quotes because we cannot even be sure that this form we see isn’t the inhabited body of another, similar to the way he took over Locke’s body). This observation has lead me to, what I think, is an interesting theory.

So much of the show deals with not only human nature but how people deal with their own nature. The survivors of oceanic flight 815 were all struggling with something that was essentially self-inflicted. “They're all carrying around a shitload of guilt—for various reasons—and no matter how much they repent to others, they'll never truly be free until they forgive themselves. They're the causes of their own suffering, and their guilt is their cross to bear (http://jezebel.com/5501254/lost-recap-la-vida-loca-de-guyliner).” They’ve all struggled with their desires to be good or bad -- Sawyer had his demons over tracking down and killing the man who he thought was the cause of his parents’ deaths (even though he turned out to be wrong). Kate was running from the law after killing her stepfather, an issue itself that was not clearly good or bad. Jack was dealing with the death of his own father and feeling that it was his fault and blaming his own inadequacy for his father’s death. The list goes on and on, but ultimately all the survivors are dealing with something very personal and they are all fighting their own demons both internal and external.

That being said, since no one seems to be able to see MIB and/or Jacob, AND since we never get a name for MIB, my theory is that they are one in the same. They represent the two sides of the same person. MIB IS Jacob. One is Id and one is Superego: the id (possibly MIB) tries to lead people down the paths of their own desires and follow their impulses while the superego (presumably Jacob) tries to guide people to do good and believes that goodness is attainable. The island acts as the ego, the mediating force between these two impulses that brings them together and allows people’s two opposing sides to be mediated. Everyone has “good” and “bad” impulses in them, and life is all about how one control’s those desires. Similarly, these two forces on the island are trying to sway people one way or another and it will ultimately be up to them to decide how they want to behave and who they want to become.

The island is the perfect place for all these people to put their struggles to the test. They can face their insecurities and their shortcomings and put them to the test. Jack, the ultimate control freak and perfectionist has to learn that he cannot infact control everything. Sawyer, the consummate conman and loner must learn to live with people, and not only does he do that but he also becomes the head of Dharma security at one point. Even Sayid comes to terms with his violent and abusive past and sees proverbial light and regrets his former ways. Claire, a confused teenager who wanted nothing to do with the life growing inside her had a chance to become the mother she thought she didn’t want to be. The island acts as the mediating ego and creates a space where people can have a second chance to make good on what was a once failing and flailing life. Furthermore, all these people who were once pretty much loners (not just Sawyer) have come together and have found a place where they all belong and have a role of sorts to learn to live as a community, whatever that might mean.

Getting Lost

So I recently took on the task of catching up on all 5+ seasons of ABC’s mega-hit Lost. Why you ask? Well, to begin I should preface this by saying over the past 5 years I have been adamantly against watching this show. I had seen an episode back in its inaugural season and hated it. I was bored, confused and unimpressed. But over the years with all its great press, buzz and my friends going on and on about it, I’ll admit to a little bit of Lost FOMO. So when I stumbled upon the entire series on Hulu.com, I figured I’d give it a shot. My friend Elana and I decided to take on this task together so we’d be able to bounce conspiracy theories off each other and try to navigate our way through the series. It was going to be great, we’d watch a few episodes on our own or get together a few times a week and watch a couple of episodes here or there with the hope that we’d be done in time for the series finale.

I watched the first episode on February 3rd and was intrigued. The narrative structure of the show is arranged in such a way that the viewer is actively engaged in the story line. The characters were interesting, covering a litany of personalities and character types. The show is a pure televisual experience, utilizing all facets of the medium, stimulating in sight, sound and story. I instantly recognized that this was not a show during which I could multitask; it would require my full attention. When I get home at night and begin to go through my DVR, rarely do the shows get my full attention. They have to share the time with cooking dinner, blowdrying my hair, talking on the phone, doing homework and cleaning my room. However, when I tried to do this with Lost, I was utterly confused and had to rewind. I also realized that I would not be able to only watch one or two episodes at a time.

After 2 days I found myself on episode 7 of season one and I was entirely hooked. When I checked in with Elana to see how she was doing, she had barely finished the first episode, and I realized that I was on my own. Survival of the fittest, if she can’t handle the intense Lost-watching schedule I had already decided I was about to undertake then she was left behind. Sorry honey, live together, die alone! Another friend, Dov, had been a fan since the beginning so he became my sounding board for all my ideas and questions.

I must say, I don’t know if I could have done it without his help. Every episode introduced a slew of new questions and he helped me sort through those which were going to be important trends (like what’s the deal with those numbers?! What is that smoke monster thing? Why can’t anyone find them? Who keeps stealing people? And on and on…) and then there were the not so important ones which he helped me get out of my head (Why does it rain all the time?) Most of our communications took place over gchat, and sometimes when I needed him the most (I can’t believe he just killed them! is she really dead, like forever? Who are those people in the village?! Or I KNEW we’ve seen Desmond before) and he wasn’t there I would just send him the messages anyway so when he signed online he’d be barraged with a million “while you were offline” messages. Thankfully he was happy to oblige in my craziness and he answered all my questions, always making sure never to give away crucial plot points. He also filled me in along the way with what I missed from the Lost blogosphere and the fanboy culture that grew around it. He also filled me in on Lost trivia. Thanks Dov, now I can’t get my receipt from the cab without PTSD of Smokey attacks.

All was going well with my schedule and I was averaging a season per week. At this point I had hopes of catching up well before season 6 was in full swing and maybe I’d even start reading all those blogs, in REAL TIME! When, suddenly, in the middle of season 2 when suddenly what all internet viewers dread the most occurred…Buffering. Hulu stalled buffered for seconds, even minutes on end! What was a girl to do! Thankfully, Dovie was there once again with his DVD collection. Seasons 1-4…what more could I ask for? I went over on Saturday night and got seasons 2 and 3 from him. That weekend happened to be President’s Day weekend and I had a full schedule of things that needed to get done, schoolwork, apartment stuff, etc all had to get done. Too bad I spent the majority of the time watching Lost. Lying in bed with remote in hand I kept saying to myself after episode after episode ended that its ok, just one more and then I’ll go to bed. Suddenly it was 4 am and the birds were chirping and I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer to find out what would happen with Ben’s surgery or with Sawyer’s pacemaker, so I went to sleep. The next morning I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer, so another 3 or 4 episodes ensued before I got that “too much TV” crankiness and headache and realized I should probably get some fresh air before nightfall. And plus, I knew I had a whole other day to watch, and that my schoolwork and trip to the library would just have to wait.

I finished season 3 by the time Tuesday rolled around. My friends who were all keeping up with my progress were impressed and little shocked by the speed in which I was getting through the episodes. At one point after hearing “last week on Lost” blast from the DVD, my roommate, Mira, said from behind her closed door, Judith, you’re a machine. I couldn’t get enough. By this time I had my own theory on the metaphors for the show. Probably based on my upbringing, I began to see the show as an allegory for the Arab/Israeli conflict. The show is about the survivors of a crash who are now on this land without any way to get back and they are being tormented and tortured by those who claim they were there before them. These so called “others” had made the island their home and saw it as theirs. However, they neglect to acknowledge that neither were they the native inhabitants of the land and that Ben actually had killed off those who came before him in favor for the other “others,” a group still not understood. However, as the seasons progressed we learn that the crash survivors were actually brought to the island for a reason; they were meant to be there to protect and serve the land, much like the way the Zionists felt in regard to when they came to Israel. They were there to cultivate the land that now belongs to them after years of being in exile. While not a perfect analogy and I won’t be able to fully work it out until the series has ended, it does fit quite nicely. There’s even a temple which seems to have healing powers surrounded by a protective wall, a clear allegory to the Jewish temple. Hopefully I will have more worked out as the season comes to a close. We shall see.

About a week later, I was all caught up. Done by March 3 and ready to join the rest of the Lost world in progress. I had begun DVRing in preparation for this momentous day. My first episode in real time was Lighthouse, where Hurley and Jack learn more about the island and possibly why they are there. It was definitely a strange feeling watching it along with the rest of the world. Among the oddities was not being able to IM Dov and ask him what the heck was going on! He didn’t know either and this was really strange, no one knew anything and people were asking all the same questions I was with no possible answer. I was used to having the answers at my fingertips if I wanted them. Lostpedia.com had become an off-limits zone so I wouldn’t come across any unwanted spoilers. Now I found myself researching all I could to have as much of a grasp on everything so I wouldn’t be overly confused.

FAIL! I was overly confused. This was partly due to plot becoming so muddled and complicated. Another factor was due to my Lost binge and I was having a hard time retaining some of the details. Someone compared it to cramming before a test: you spend a short amount of time getting all the details into your brain during this massive binge right before you purge that information out onto a test. However, there was no single test to purge the information, so it just sorta seeped out. I now find myself more confused than I would had I had a real opportunity to watch each episode, let a week or even a season go by so it could sink in. So now I find myself going back and watching clips of old episodes and barely remembering those episodes even happened. But, it’s all ok because I still have Dov and now Doc Jensen to lead me through to salvation, if those Lost producers ever give it to me.

Oh, and I think Elana is still on season one. Only the strong survive!

Hurray for Hollywood!

From as long as I can remember I have been affected by the visual image projected on screen. When I was seven I wanted to be Ariel and one day find a Prince Eric of my own. Later that year I learned the lines between good and bad aren’t always so clear when my parents showed me West Side Story. To this day when I enter a theater, and sit there as the lights dim and the screen fills with images which come together to form a cohesive story I get the same excitement I did all those years ago. What am I going to come away with this time? Will I learn that there’s truly no place like home and does a spoonful of sugar really make the medicine go down? Will I fall in love with a performance that touches me and so deeply affects me like the first time I saw James Dean in Rebel without a Cause, or just the performer (ahem, yes I’m talking about Leo DiCaprio from his Titanic days)? To this day when I see a movie and I get lost in the narrative and I feel like a child again. For me, when I watch a movie I believe that anything is possible and dreams can and do come true. Maybe it’s a bit naïve, but over the years it’s become who I am.

Although many are credited for saying it, it’s unclear who actually came up with the phrase, “trust the art, not the artist.” Despite its murky origins I think this phrase is what has guided my love of the movies even before I had heard it actually articulated just a few years ago. That phrase is all about the essence of the movies. While volumes have been written about theory, aesthetic, thematics and history of film, dissecting scenes frame by frame, applying to the era from which it came, I think the spirit of film and what makes them so popular is ultimately its ability to relate to their viewers, and it might not have even been the intention of the filmmaker. When someone walks out of a movie-going experience and is able to take something, anything, away and relate it to their own personal experiences and is what makes a film a success. I recently walked out of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland inspired to follow my heart and dreams rather than what might be someone else’s. I felt encouraged to be courageous and do what’s right to me in my heart even if it’s not the safest or even popular decision. Had I not been entrenched in a life guiding career decision, I might have walked away with a completely different lesson from the film.

Oscar night, for this reason, is one of my favorite nights of the year. I sit down with my ballot all set out in front of me. One highlighter reserved for who I want to win, another who my prediction is for who will actually win and then finally, the actual winner. I laugh, I cry and I cheer as names are rattled off. Tears stream down my face during the “In Memoriam” portion of the evening as the industry, so often concerned in the here and now honors those who’ve paved their ways and innovated films and built the empire on which they stand and rely. This year two memorable names stood out to me. I got particularly choked up as Carl Malden and Bud Schulberg’s names and faces graced the screen. Respectively they were an honest and graceful actor and trailblazing screenwriter who helped shaped the place of films in the cultural zeitgeist. Furthermore, every year in addition to the excited anticipation, I hear the same complaints from friends and critics alike that the speeches are boring, the show drones on forever, and who cares about the random technical awards. For me it is just the opposite. Of course the “big” awards are important to me, but the so-called smaller awards are just as central to the Oscar night experience.

It’s generally the sound mixer or editor who goes unnoticed during all the glitz and glam of Hollywood. They aren’t known for their good looks, who they are dating or who they are wearing. Rather, it is these unsung heroes who are making the images we see pop on screen both visually and audibly and come together seamlessly. They are also those who often have some of the most inspiring stories of them all. Personally, as someone trying to navigate her way through a career in entertainment, desperately trying to find my way in such a volatile industry, I love hearing those speeches. Tonight, one of my favorites came from Michael Giacchino who won the Oscar for Best Score for Disney/Pixar’s Up. In his speech he told children, but also people in general, to never let others tell them that what they’re doing is a waste of time and not useful. He spent his childhood experimenting with cameras and being creative and he was lucky to always have people around him encouraging that creative spirit. What a wonderful message to send people today – that what you do matters. In an era of twitter and constant facebook status updates and people looking for that instant gratification that what they are thinking at any given moment is important, what really matters is the positive enhancements you bring to this world, the creative energy you bring to the table and to believe in yourself.

Another theme of the night, which is piggybacked on this one, is one that was reinforced time and again. It’s that you should always follow your dreams. Trust your gut and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Take Katherine Bigelow, tonight’s winner for Best Director and the first female to take home the prize. She’s been working in an industry which tends to be male-focused and male-centric and she even made a “male” movie but she did it her way and she had been honored with the industry’s top awards for doing so. All the other winners from The Hurt Locker praised Bigelow and spoke to her unwavering integrity to her work and her vision. And this is something important to take away from how to live life and guide one’s career. Now, again, these are all themes which I took away from the show and the power of cinema because those are themes I am dealing with directly in my life and career right now and it’s something perhaps I needed to hear.

As anyone who knows me knows, I am pretty much unreachable during the Oscars. Phone is on silent, computer shut down and door locked, just like the movies which I have come to love and admire, so too the show which honors their achievement is a site for my inspiration. I get lost in the show just like I get lost in the movies and the power of film reaches me today the same as when I was just an impressionable child. I guess not all that much has changed.

Quirky Coraline

Coraline (2009)
On DVD July 21, 2009


Just like so many people today seeking out an alternative to what they consider a tedious existence, Coraline Jones saw a way out and jumped on (or to be more accurate, crawled through) the opportunity. She wishes she could escape her dank sepia-toned life and follows a tunnel to what seems to promise a better and more colorful life. She is surprised when one night her dream seemingly becomes a reality.

Told through dazzling stop-motion animation and 3D, Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) is an adventurous and spunky preteen who has just moved to a new neighborhood with her parents. Her new house is old and creeky, as are her new neighbors. The strange boy who lives next door offers little friendship, and his constant chatter makes her wish he would just keep his mouth shut. Her parents are too preoccupied with their own needs to tend to hers. Her mother (Teri Hatcher) has little patience for her insistent questions and constant requests to play outside in the rain. Her father (John Hodgman), not much more patient than her mother, encourages her to count the windows in their house as a form of entertainment. They see her more as a nuisance than as their daughter. Meals consist of gloopy green and brown vegetable concoctions and shopping outings provide little more than grey school uniforms. Coraline cannot rely on those around her to provide any sort of entertainment or thrill to life so she must create it on her own. She follows her father’s window-counting suggestion, but adds her own creative and imaginative flair to it. One of her discoveries while counting the windows in her new home is a small door in the living room which has been locked up and covered up by wallpaper. She thinks it odd, but when trying to open it proves futile, she moves on to her next self-made adventure.

One night she is awakened by an odd noise and follows the clammor downstairs only to find the mystery door wide open. Following her childlike instincts, she ventures through the door. Through the door (which might as well be Alice’s Rabbit Hole or Dorothy’s venture into Oz) is everything Coraline dreams of. In this new world, everything exists like it does on the other side, only better; she even has new parents. This “Other Mother and Other Father” are the polar opposites of her real parents – they are attentive and care for her and offer her all the things that were forbidden in her real home. Her newfound house is full of bright colors and smiling parents. Her Other Mother serves up full delicious meals where she can even choose her own milkshake flavor. Her neighbors are whimsical and offer her hours of entertainment. Even the noisy boy next door has his mouth sewn shut, a dream come true for Coraline!

All is seemingly perfect except for one odd difference – in place of eyes everyone she encounters in this alternate universe has buttons for eyes. Her Other Mother even offers her a permanent place in this new reality. Initially excited, Coraline soon realizes there’s one major catch. She can only stay if she replaces her eyes with buttons, just like everyone else in this Other World. Furthermore, the Other Mother turns out to be a cruel witch who has a history of kidnapping unsuspecting children and keeping them trapped in her Other World. Coraline soon comes to realize that the grass is not always greener on the other side and chooses her old life over the newfound one. She also comes to realize that things might not have been so bad with her real parents, they just need to learn more about each other.

One of the most interesting pieces of the film lies in the examination of the mother figure. Coraline seeks out this Other Mother when her real mom is not paying attention to her. She needs that motherly affection that is so basically human and she thinks she has found it in this new incarnation of her mother. While she is no angel herself, Coraline is not deserving of such neglect from her mother. Motherdom throughout the history of film is a source of much anxiety (thank you Norman Bates), and this film comments that not only can a mother do great harm to her children, but there is also a fine line between good and bad parenting. Coraline’s mother is demonized for not giving her anything she wanted, yet her Other Mother, the one who gave her whatever her heart desired, was literally a witch.

It’s also no coincidence that the Others on the other side of the door have no eyes. Not only that, the witch who took the shape of Coraline’s mother has a history of stealing the eyes of other unsuspecting children. Eyes are commonly thought to be the window to the soul, and without eyes the soul is lost or hidden. What does it mean that a mother, a supposed nurturer and caretaker is the one stealing eyes? In fact, in both realities, the mother is the character stealing or squashing souls. Coraline’s real mother has no tolerance for her ’tween’s ambitious nature and seeks to put the kibosh on her explorations while her Other Mother wants to trap her in the alternate universe and take what is so uniquely hers, her eyes, the way in which not only does the world see her, but the way in which she sees the world, the way she puts her own unique stamp on the universe. Mothers continue to get a bad reputation in American cinema, the difference here is that Coraline and her mom eventually work out their differences and come to respect one another’s needs.

The marvel of this film, in addition to the great story telling and vibrant characters, is the animation. Similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline is filmed stop-motion animation, but with a twist. This time, director Henry Selick decided to add another dimension to this film – literally. Shot in 3D, the images leap off the screen in animated glory which makes the story come alive and the true contrast between Coraline’s old and new worlds come into deeper focus.

Coraline, like The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, explores the issue of leaving home for a better life, albeit an unknown one. Like her predecessors, she comes to realize that no matter how exciting it seems over the rainbow or down the rabbit hole, there is no place like home.

Wonderful Wall-E

Wall-E
7/7/08


Disney for a long time has had the market cornered on sad. Snow White had to run away from her father’s house and was nearly killed by her stepmother, Bambi witnessed the murder of his mother, Simba his father, and the list goes on. With Wall-E Disney/Pixar moves from sad to purely depressing. This is also probably the first Pixar movie which really is for adults more than children. The first half hour or so depicts a garbage-riddled planet earth that can no longer sustain life. Humans live on a space-ship where they are tended for by state of the art robots. But from the depths of this depression, the film leaves audiences with some hope that that our fate is not locked. Furthermore, in what can be considered a cinematic masterpiece, Pixar has also managed to improve upon themselves once again, not only with the CGI animation, but with the story and script as well.

Wall-E tells the story of what will happen in 700 years from now if humans (namely Americans) continue to live the lives of excess consumption and frivolity with the earth’s resources. At this future date humans have been living on a cruise ship-like space ship for nearly a millennia because the earth has become so overrun by trash it can no longer sustain life. The fictional mega-story Buy-N-Large has become the corporate monster which seems to be at root of all the troubles that plagues the planet. It was the CEO that came up with the idea to send away all humans until earth once again became livable. Unfortunately this optimistic outcome has yet to come about. Wall-E is an old school, boxy and mechanical robot whose job it is to clean up earth’s garbage, and he’s the last one of his kind having outlasted all his counterparts. It’s not until Eva, a super-sleek robot from the human ship sent over to find proof that life can be sustained on earth once again, that an understanding of the movie’s plot comes about. Wall-E and Eve’s courtship is not unlike more traditional romantic comedies. But in this version the unlikely couple communicate through a series of beeps, barely able to say each other’s names and, as only Pixar can do, their emotions are so vividly

Eva doesn’t appear until about a half hour into the movie and up until that point the audience is treated to Wall-E’s exploration of the remnants of human life. In a throwback to the silent-era’s masters, Wall-E takes its time, establishing characters and setting without rushing itself too much like so many movies do today.

Furthermore, this film seems to be paying tribute to the stories and genres which have paved the way for its existence. After collecting his goods, Wall-E brings them back to his hollowed out truck to put them on display. While obviously not knowing what the items are he organizes and utilizes them – very similar to the scene from Disney’s The Little Mermaid when Ariel plays with her treasures in her cave of wonders. What’s old is new again. Also through the use of music and other visual and thematic clues Wall-E builds upon the foundation its predecessors laid before it, which is an extension of its theme of recycling and renewal. In the world of Wall-E, recycling is a lost art; a society of excess and disposable goods has created a physical environment where an ozone layer has been replaced by a trash layer.

While the initial impression of the film is a rather depressing one, a bleak world overrun by trash no longer able to host human life, the truly depressing aspect was the prediction of the future of humankind. Apparently if we stay the course we are currently plotting, our fate (according to Disney) is to be grossly overweight consumers devoid of any human interaction who rely on pureed food and hover-chairs. However, ultimately, like any good Disney pic, the lasting message is that of hope and opportunity. That our fate is not locked in, it’s not too late to change the course of our destiny.

Across the Universe

Universal Appeal
10/23/07

From the first time I saw a trailer for Across the Universe I knew that it was a movie I wanted to see. When I walked out of the theater last night I was not disappointed. Julie Taymor's (Frida and Broadway's The Lion King) latest vehicle is a feast for the eyes and the ears. Combining a sense of new postmodern visual artistry with familiar sound she has breathed new life into music that was already so timeless.


Across the Universe is a period piece, taking another stab at exploring the socio-polical culture of the 1960s (and potentially it's significance today). It is about a young man, Jude (Jim Sturgess), who journeys across the pond to find the GI father he never met. During his journey he meets Max (Joe Anderson) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a brother and sister pair who are itching to break free of their stuffy New England mold. The trio travels to New York to find their freedom among the musicians, student radicals and druggies who are all looking for the same thing.

But it isn't the story that keeps you sucked into this movie. The plot isn't anything new; the story of alienated youth has been told a million times. The crux of this movie hinges on the music. Throughout the 2 hours 11 minutes of Universe, 31 Beatles songs are woven throughout the narrative. Some fit quite nicely, others just seem to have been thrown in because Taymor really liked the song - there are 2 songs in particular which stood out as not having anything to do with the plot. I Want to Hold your Hand is sung by a high school girl named Prudence (T.V. Carpio) as she lusts after one of her fellow Cheerleaders. Later in the story when Prudence is sad because another crush isn't paying attention to her the cast sings, you guessed it, Dear Prudence, to make her feel better. Perhaps the director was making a statement of the idea of free love that reigned in the 1960s and the lack of tolerance homosexual relationships garnered before the sexual revolution, but that would be a stretch...

However, for the most part the songs did fit quite nicely into the narrative and it further proved that the Beatles tunes are truly timeless. The songs about love is one thing; I don't think anyone would argue that themes of love and loss are universal across time and space, but it also makes the psychedelic songs and the anti-war revolutionary ballads relatable. Not to mention that all of the actors have exceptional voices. Wood and Sturgess stand out as the main roles and they bring all the heart and emotion one would want to a Beatles song, I mean, if you're going to cover the Beatles you better make sure you do it well! The rest of the supporting cast brings their own flair to the songs as well. Dana Fuchs plays Sadie, a Janis Joplin-esque superstar singer wannabe who tours with her lover, JoJo (Martin Luther McCoy) a dead ringer (and guitarist) for Jimi Hendrix. The blending of these musical influences bring another level to the songs as it furthers the transcendence of the music - saying that it works in any time and in any voice, or genre, of music.

The war in Iraq is more present in this movie-awards season than it has been in any previous year, and it has generally been approached with a straightforward, no nonsense mentality. Other than being set in the 1960, Universe has been able to truly capture the spirit of the 60s where music united the peace-movement. Music was a rally tool for protesters and this movie attempts to capture that and perhaps renew that spirit to rebel against a seemingly unjust and amoral war. It is when this happens, when the songs actively bridge the gap between today and yesterday, is when the movie soars. When Jude barges into Lucy's protest headquarters singing Revolution, begging her to know "it will be alright," it's almost as though he is pleading with the audience that no matter how bad it seems now with the quagmire that is the Iraq war, we should know that eventually it will be alright.

All in all it is the music that makes this movie so enjoyable. The plot is rather thin, but if you are a Beatles fan you are more than likely going to see past that and enjoy the sounds emanating from the screen.