(cross-posted from Pajamas Media so you can all have at me… it’s a tradition)
This week let’s get straight to my most recent viewing of Academy screeners. So far I have been restricting myself to films about which there is Oscar buzz. I will get to others later, because I understand there are some surprises.
Narnia
We are in a period in cinema history when “family films” seem more creative and enduring than adult movies. Who has been more consistently interesting in recent years than Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)? And of course there is the long line of Harry Potter films, Shreks, etc., all of which show considerable originality and richness of storytelling seemingly abandoned in grownup filmmaking. I’m not sure what this tells us, but the latest triumph in the family area is Narnia, clearly one of the best movies of 2005 and I would say, of the ones I have seen so far, the film most likely to last.
Disney has struck long-term gold once again with this excellent adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. On every level, co-writer/director Andrew Adamson (of the aforementioned Shrek series) has delivered a handsome, well-crafted production that is clearly faithful to its highly regarded source material – or faithful enough. Especially good are the performances he has gleaned from his child actors, notably Georgie Henley as little Lucy. She’s too adorable for words. James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus, the Faun, and Tilda Swinton (as always) as the White Witch also do superb jobs. “Tech creds all fine,” as the say in Variety.
What the Academy will think: Not sure. This is excellent work but the Academy membership skews (seriously) geriatric and this will be perceived as a kids’ movie. Such films are usually relegated to the animation category where, obviously, Narnia doesn’t fit. Still, I predict nominations, but not as many as deserved.
Good Night, and Good Luck
George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck is more an act of self-congratulation than it is a movie. Bracketed by an awards ceremony that seems like an afterthought added to emphasize the importance of what we will be seeing, this film purports to tell the story of broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s 1950s crusade against Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. But in their zeal, Clooney and his collaborators forgot to write a fleshed-out screenplay with any real conflict or development, nor have they given us much historical context. The result is a dull enterprise oddly resembling a Nineteenth Century melodrama in which we are supposed to applaud the hero – the hard-charging, hard-smoking Murrow – and hiss the villain – the perpetually unshaven ‘Tailgunner’ Joe. But we don’t care much about either of them. In violation of Screenwriting 101, neither Murrow nor McCarthy has what is known in Hollywood as a “character arc” (e. g. some personal growth or change from the movie’s action), so they both remain largely stick figures, though David Strathairn as Murrow labors mightily in his imitation of the broadcaster. In fact, though Murrow is the dominant figure in the film (McCarthy hardly appears) we learn virtually nothing of his private life, who he is or where he gets his determination. It’s one static newsroom scene after the other punctuated by soporific interludes by a blues singer that give you plenty of time to go out for popcorn in a short 93-minute movie that feels padded.
Now I admit, having lately left the liberal “church,” my views of this film may be suspect. I did find peculiar, however, (though not surprising) the movie’s complete omission or ignorance of newly revealed details from that period, including the discovery of KGB files indicating Hiss, the Rosenbergs, etc., actually did spy for Stalin, passing atomic secrets to a regime that murdered tens of millions of its own people. Although this does not exonerate the repellent and opportunistic McCarthy, it makes for a more complex vision of those times and a much more interesting film.
How the Academy will regard: Though several members have told me in private they share my view, the “church”-going Academy will applaud this film and reward it with several Oscar nominations, probably including screenwriting. Go figure.
Crash
Initially, I found Paul Haggis’ dark vision of multi-cultural Los Angeles with every ethnic group at each other’s throat disturbing, even a little dishonest. Perhaps I am naive, but I don’t regard the city where I have lived for over thirty years to be as much of a hotbed of racism as he does. I have been many places far worse. Indeed, the extraordinary melting pot of Southern California can be seen more as a symbol of hope – and perhaps that is what Haggis is getting at in his way, because by the end of the movie he was winning me over. The story surprises you – Haggis is a fine writer, as he showed in last year’s Million Dollar Baby – with the ability to go deeper into his material. Tragedy occurs. Racists redeem themselves. Grace is achieved.
If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it, but don’t expect a “pleasant” experience. (Oh, and Haggis, a first timer, directs well. But then, as most of us know, pace the auteur theory, writing is more difficult.)
How the Academy will regard: Another well-deserved screenwriting nomination for Haggis.
(Pajamas Media co-founder Roger L. Simon is a member of the writers branch of the Academy.)
PJM Home
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
17 Comments
1. Rick Ballard:“a short 93-minute movie that feels padded.”
Man, now that’s skinnin’ ‘em while they’re still movin’.
I saw Narnia today and I agree wholeheartedly about Georgie Henley. She stole the show. The other kids were OK but Georgie was great. The movie is very good – tons of small kids in the theater and pin-drop quiet at two hours into the movie. My hat is off to Disney for getting one right.
Dec 18, 2005 - 5:44 pm 2. W.J.A:That scene in *Crash* with the adorable Latina tyke’s “magic cape” and her run-in with danger was so blatantly, shamelessly exploitative, and more key, bearing no relation *whatsoever* to the movie’s putative themes, a nomination for Haggis would be a goddamn travesty. (To pinpoint just one poor beat among many in that movie.)
Dec 18, 2005 - 8:46 pm 3. Charlie (Colorado):I’m curious of the Murrow movie ever mentions who McCarthy’s lawyers were. I’d bet real money ($1.28 US) that the name “Robert F Kennedy” is never mentioned.
Dec 18, 2005 - 9:50 pm 4. WichitaBoy:What?!? Hollywood has pulled Yet Another Republicans Are Evil movie out of its a**?!? Blow me over with a feather.
Dec 18, 2005 - 11:10 pm 5. Doug S.:Saw Narnia last night, and as a 42 year-old overgrown kid, I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it quite well done. I have to say, though, that there were a couple of moments that made me conscious of how WETA Workshop really set the gold standard for high-fantasy design and effects, because I found myself wishing that I would get sucked in in the same way that Lord of the Rings immersed one in Middle-Earth. There was, for instance, something about the White Witch’s prison that felt like a movie set, as compared to the interiors in LotR.
Speaking of Peter Jackson, Roger, will you be reviewing King Kong for us soon?
Dec 18, 2005 - 11:38 pm 6. Daniel Calto:The dark cinematic visions of racist cities where everyone hates each other’s guts usually are set in either New York or Los Angeles, the two paradigms and polestars for urban life that the movies have always relied upon.
The question that never gets answered or adequately addressed is the following: for dyed-in-the-woll racists, there are far more congenial climes that one could immediately depart for, froom Boise, Idaho to Detroit, Michigan, depending upon ones parameters about who the “good type” of people really are. The fact that so many stay in places like New York and L.A. undermine the lie that these are racially obsessed places. The reality is far more ambiguous and subtle–many of the least racist and most open-minded people in the world live in these cities. NYC, my hometown, has more interracial marriages that any other place in the world–indeed, these marriages hardly even register as unusual in any sense.
If our two major urban centers are such nasty places, why do so many who live there love them and remain committed to them despite the undeniable hassles and frustrations of living in the megalopolis? I did like the movie quite a bit despite all this, in particular, the magical/ horrible moment that anyone seeing it would find hard to forget.
Dec 19, 2005 - 7:12 am 7. Sun-Tzu:Would it be excessively cynical to suggest that the reason for the blues interludes in “Good Night, and Good Luck” was because every single other character was white?
By including the singer, you could introduce a non-white character, without having to then have that same character interact with any of the rest of the cast.
Rather convenient, actually.
But I have to agree, Roger. I thought it was a nice period piece, in the sense of the costumes, the incessant smoking (And what was up w/ the full smoking commercial left intact? Ruined what pacing there was in the movie….), the skinny ties. But Merchant-Ivory productions show the “character arc” you referred to, whereas this utterly lacked drama.
Dec 19, 2005 - 8:02 am 8. dyscox:Personally, I found Crash to be a howler, climaxing in Sandra Bullock’s fall down the stairs- don’t want to give away the punchline!
Dec 19, 2005 - 8:22 am 9. Pat Curley:The obsession with McCarthy shows that the Left in America has a good historical memory, even if it is highly selective. One of the funnier aspects of this is displayed in DC Comics, where Superman and Batman are published. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many of the other superhero comics published by DC folded; they began to bring back the other superheroes in the late 1950s, in updated versions. In an effort to explain why the older heroes stopped fighting crime, the official continuity these days is that they stopped being superheroes in protest of the excesses of McCarthy and HUAC.
Dec 19, 2005 - 1:27 pm 10. scott:“…skinnin”em while they’re still movin’.”
Lord,I’m still laughing.Thanks,Rick.
Maybe Cloony can remake “Mission To Moscow”.
Dec 19, 2005 - 3:55 pm 11. Patrick Tyson:A few thoughts on Good Night, and Good Luck.:
The audience I was part of skewed older and my impression is that they loved it. One of the gentlemen in front of me leaned over to his lady during the credits and asked if she’d spotted Bobby Kennedy. She had.
It does no great injustice to the history of that time by allowing the characters anymore foresight than they might have had back then.
It does no great injustice to the personalities involved by inflating and distorting their roles to make them look more heroic or more villainous than they were.
The musical interludes add atmosphere (and provide linkage to the disjointed narrative); the framing device allows the principal to provide his perspective.
Worth a look? Yes. Great. No. An improvement on another Clooney directed film about, among other things, television, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind? No. You didn’t expect me to say yes, did you? Confessions is a Charlie script after all.
It has done domestic box office of 22 million on a production budget of 7 million.
…
Speaking of box office, the domestic take for the fourth Harry Potter movie surpassed the domestic take for the third this past weekend so things are back on track there. Narnia box office remains a bit of a question mark though it’s hard to see how the investors won’t manage to make their money back. Whether they have a franchise or not is an open question. I hadn’t checked the box office on Howl’s Moving Castle until earlier today. It’s 12th worldwide and 147th domestically. Sad.
All of which brings me to King Kong. By the time I saw it yesterday, it was clear that a Titanic-like pattern was all that was going to save it from disappointing earnings (domestically anyway) no matter how much business it eventually does. As the third hour was winding down all I could think (Kong is putting up the good fight preceeding death) is that Kong is no Leonardo DiCaprio.
…
I’m one of those who found Crash annoying.
Dec 19, 2005 - 6:00 pm 12. exguru:While I haven’t seen the Clooney love-in with Edward R. Morrow, and never will, I keep wondering what people born in 1987 or 1989 will think when they see these movies. Sharp kids will say to themselves, “If that man was so loathsome and repulsive, why was this Army-McCarthy hearing a national event?” Won’t they wonder how a drunken slob like McCarthy became so important? And might they not just guess that there might actually have been a ring of Russian spies in America in the New Deal/Fair Deal years? And if they ever get that far, and give the subject a Google, might they not quickly run into the exhaustive work of the Hoover Institution, and discover the whole truth? I think they will, the sharp ones. And the flip side of that is that the attempted whitewash of Hiss and the Rosenbergs (and all the others) will backfire on its authors. It is rather fascinating, from Elizabeth Bentley to Whittiker Chambers, from Duncan Lee to the gay Englishmen, and Harry Dexter White, etc. Above all, though, the man who made Richard Nixon, caught for all time in that Yalta photo behind Roosevelt’s chair, the pride of Johns Hopkins, America’s founder of the United Nations, the late great Alger Hiss. These people kicked away our victory in World War II, and delivered America into a 45-year arms race with the USSR, while millions died on the gulag. They deserve to be remembered because their crimes were so awful.
Dec 19, 2005 - 8:46 pm 13. scott:Exguru,
Look,buddy,every thing I knew about communism in 1976,when I started college,was what I learned from the films “Julia” and “The Front”,i.e.,red is good.
George Cloony,if he wished,could adapt Whittiker Chambers’ “Witness” for the screen,but I doubt he will.
Dec 19, 2005 - 11:15 pm 14. vegetius:Scott: If you howled at “Mission to Moscow” you’ll gets some chuckles from “The North Star” and “Days of Glory”. Not quite as wretched as “Mission” but leftoid silly in their own special way.
Dec 20, 2005 - 8:19 am 15. scott:Didn’t Lillian Hellman(good Stalinette)write one of those(happy peasants,tractor love,etc.).I think Diana Trilling once said that every word LH wrote was a lie,including the prepositions.
Dec 21, 2005 - 6:31 am 16. vegetius:Scott:
“Didn’t Lillian Hellman(good Stalinette)write one of those(happy peasants,tractor love,etc.).I think Diana Trilling once said that every word LH wrote was a lie,including the prepositions.”
It was Mary Mccarthy..Google ‘Hellman McCarthy’ and you’ll get a good synopsis of the best literary cat fight of all time.
Dec 21, 2005 - 9:03 am 17. garytheyoung:Did Haggis manage to find any there there?
Dec 21, 2005 - 9:23 am