HOLIDAY MOVIES: GOING OUTSIDE THE BOX

                                       Instead of rewinding of "It's A Wonderful Life,"or "Miracle on 34th Street,"or
                                       giving-in to that yearly sexy-leg-lamp fix with "A Christmas Story," take up
                                       something different this holiday season and try some of these alternate 

                                       titles on DVD. They'll energize your season in curious and surprising ways, and
                                       best of all, do it without the wrappings and ribbons of squishy sentimentality.

THE CLASSIC

Of the bazillion versions of Scrooge populating our screens 

every year, pass'em by and seek out this restored print, two-disc 

DVD of the 1951 British  CHRISTMAS CAROL with Alistair 

Sim as Scrooge. It's the true original, topping all the others for pulling

you in with that Dickensian mood and ghostly atmosphere. You'll
never get tired of seeing it. Close second: 1993 TV-movie with
George C. Scott. 

NOTHING BRINGS FAMILIES (DYSFUNCTIONAL) TOGETHER LIKE THE HOLIDAYS

First saw THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a 75 minute British 

gem from 1952, about twenty years ago at a repertory 

theater -- and have never forgotten it.  A village clergyman gathers 

his family at Christmas in an attempt to help with the emotional 

scars left over from WWII, and each other. Perfectly acted by 

Ralph Richardson and Margaret Leighton, the script  

moves the characters forward, and back, as emotionally mature 

adults without any sappy nostalgia. But, and  it's a 

big but, the movie is not available on DVD in this country. 

C'mon Amazon and Blockbuster, I'm lobbying. There's a market 

here, a movie worthy of becoming a seasonal classic. 

C'mon Turner Classic Movies: schedule it in December.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

If you haven't noticed, Jodie Foster has been quietly and steadily building a career as a top-notch director. "Little Man Tate," was a poignant mother-son story, and, coming out in January is "The Beaver,"with Mel Gibson. But her impressive second feature, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1995), is hard to top. Here, she lifts that seasonal staple of a comic-dysfunctional family-coming-from-afar-to-get- together movie, to a precise mix of moving vulnerability and zaniness. HOME is actually a Thanksgiving movie. But movies in this genre so rarely capture that awkward sense of being around family, those people you love and know better than any other, yet can make you feel so lost, with such realness and authenticity, that HOME works just as well, even better, for Christmas. The great cast of Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, and Robert Downey Jr. make family neuroticism and narcissism not only funny, but understandable -- no straining to be hilarious here. And, as lead neurotic Claudia, Holly Hunter has never been more likable and appealing. Foster's rhythm and timing keep the jokes funny all the way through. But most of all, HOME holds up because it feels like your family and mine. As Claudia says: "We may not like each other, but we're family."

There's a wonderful scene in A CHRISTMAS TALE where a mother and her adult son are talking in the backyard. "Still don't love me?" he asks her. "Never did," she says directly. Yet we know,watching  their manner and faces, and the rest of their conversation, these two have deep affection for one another. French director Arnaud Desplechin's 2008 film is rich with the improvisations that bring on these sudden understandings. He turns the family-gathering-at-Christmas story into a thick egg nog of characters bursting with the complex flavors of dysfunction: at once funny and loving, selfish and obnoxious, perplexing and nonsensical. The magic in this two-and-one-half hour film is how you're always anticipating, never knowing what to expect, so it doesn't feel long. And holding it together as the matriarch, the grand dame of the family, is Catherine Deneuve, mixing imperial air with needy vulnerability as one who has been stricken with leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. She has never been better.  

CHILDREN'S MOVIE

PRANCER (1989)

Got to have at least one movie for the kids and what's better than a boozy, bearded Sam Elliot as a full-fledged Christmas killjoy single parenting his nine-year-old Jessica (Rebecca Harrell). When she imagines a limping reindeer in the woods to be the flying Prancer, her Dad threatens to shoot it. Jessica takes matters into her own hands, doing what she can to save not only Prancer, but Christmas. Formulaic? Yes. But the characters aren't stereotyped, acting true to their personalities, while the sugar plum plot line holds the sweetner to low-cal. Skip the TV showings and get the DVD so you don't have to sit through commercials. It's a great watch with the kids.  

BAH HUMBUG

BAD SANTA (2003)

All that jingle, jangle, jingle and goodness and light have you ready to gag, then BAD SANTA  answers as the perfect Christmas-sucks movie. A stylishly vulgar and tasteless comic classic, this story of a reprobate thief and department store Santa, Willie Stokes (Billie Bob Thornton), is a cynic's delight. He's "an eating, drinking, s***ting, f***ing Santa Claus" who hates kids, doesn't care if you're naughty or nice and lets the f-word fly every couple seconds. Then, along with pissing in his pants and puking in the alley, he's operating a theft ring. The movie delights in being disgusting and disgraceful. But director Terry Zwigoff isn't a one-trick pony here -- just being disgusting makes for a pretty dull movie. He sets the tone by letting us take in all the shenanigans in real time; not that revved-up gag upon gag pace that wears you out, so the narrative and the jokes are a surprise instead of predictable. And Thornton is so compulsively watchable -- can't imagine anyone else in the role. Good "I-hate-Christmas" movies are so rare and this one is so enjoyably cathartic, it's a  seasonal must. And get the BADDER SANTA DVD, the uncut version not shown in theaters. Not necessarily better than the original, but more of it. And when it comes to slapping the gooey sentiment of Christmas in the face -- more is better. 

BEST PICTURE WANNABES, SHOE-INS, AND LONG SHOTS

THE WAY BACK

TRUE GRIT

FOR  movie lovers this is the season. Studios go into full heat, pulling out the stops to jockey, schmooze, and outright beg for their films be one of the 10 nominees listed as "Best Picture of the Year," on February 27. And we get to watch all the nutty fun.

It's also the season when marketing machinations drive audiences crazy. Distributors cook up  indecipherable release dates with  "special" showings, or "limited releases." But the good news is many potential nominees are still in theaters and many are already on DVD. 

Here's an overview

RABBIT HOLE

LONG SHOTS

Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer winning play brought to the screen by John Cameron Mitchell ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch") boasts a remarkable screen performance by Nicole Kidman as an angry mother struggling with the accidental death of her young child.  Too stagy for my taste, as is The King's Speech, about King George VI overcoming a debilitating stammer. It's much,much better than it sounds, but will surely get Colin Firth his deserved Best Actor after losing out last year for The Single Man.

Lisa Cholodenko's affectionate and comic The Kids are All Right, about a lesbian couple calmly raising two children until the kids' biological father enters their life, lets the entire cast shine, particularly Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. And it has more depth than you'd first expect. From dinner table repartee to close personal interactions, her dialogue cuts to the heart of those hard won compromises we all struggle with in family life. And it's really funny.

I'm a big fan of Never Let Me Go, video director Mark Romanek's adaptation of  the much-praised Kazuo Ishiguro novel. The story of unwanted children raised to be part of medical experiments (won't say what), the movie is subtle and surreal, making us alert to the transient nature of our own lives -- the consciousness of mortality. I've seen people walk out on it -- now how powerful is that? Then there's Darren Aronofsky's The Black Swan, a movie I haven't seen, yet. Fumblingly described as a combination of "The Red Shoes" and "All About Eve," but only more, and different, and overwhelming those two put together, critics and bloggers I know and trust are freaking out in praise for this movie. Just the poster of Natalie Portman, well... words fail me.         

WANNABES

The Wannabes -- popular movies with that extra something to warrant a nomination, but little chance of winning. 

Made In Dagenham is a true story about a 1968 strike at a Ford motor plant in England. The wonderful Sally Hawkins leads the women workers to close the assembly line until they get equal pay. One sided and too rah, rah along the lines of "Norma Rae," Hawkins performance saves the movie from preachiness and stereotypes. And if you haven't  seen her in Happy-Go-Lucky, do so right away.

MADE IN DAGENHAM

THE FIGHTER

Another true story, Mark Wahlberg's personal film project The Fighter.  About a boxer's dysfunctional family and drug addicted brother who use him as their only source of personal financial support, it hasn't been screened near me, but those in the know tell me it's one tough drama. And has a stand-out, remarkable performance by Christian Bale as the brother. 

Our third true story comes from Danny Boyle of "Slumdog Millionaire." 127 Hours about a mountain hiker who is trapped under a boulder for days, and cuts off his arm to escape, is literally excruciating to watch -- at the the same time you dare not take your eyes away. Boyle has made a remarkably directed film, holding you fascinated even though you know what happens. That's my problem -- too much flair and flamboyance for this basic, simple story. 

And what more can said about Inception? I saw it twice and still didn't get it all. Who would have thought this dreamlike,curve- in-on-itself-access-to-the-subconscious movie could stimulate such rousing action set pieces. But as I felt, and many have told me, the visual grandeur leaves you grasping, somewhat distant, instead of fully embracing the dream.

THE SHOE-INS

FIVE MOVIES WITH THE BEST CHANCES OF WINNING

TOY STORY 3

WINTER'S BONE

Disney-Pixar is going full out, passionately marketing Toy Story 3 for Best Picture instead of Best Animated Feature. It's time animation ranks with the big boys -- a great movie is a great movie, animated or not. Given Pixar's ground-breaking cinema wonderfulness over the past decade, I agree.

I've been tauting Debra Granik's haunting, Ozark mountain, thriller-noir Winter's Bone since it came out last summer. The movie seems on a course to repeat the path of last year's Best Picture winner "The Hurt Locker" -- small audience response, great critical response, then picking up buzz and audience when it's nominated and comes out on DVD. Winter's Bone is on DVD now. A right-on, tough it out performance by teen-actress Jennifer Lawrence (soon to be seen in Jodie Foster's "The Beaver") is not to be missed.

The movie everyone is talking about but no one has seen, True Grit, has stimulated so much Oscar buzz simply because Joel and Ethan Coen are on a can't miss roll since "No Country for Old Men" and "A Serious Man." Can this remake of the John Wayne classic starring Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon possibly not get nominated? 

THE WAY BACK

Then, the movie no one is talking about is the harrowing adventure epic The Way Back. Peter Weir finally returns after his masterful "Master and Commander" in 2003 to helm this David Lean like panoramic, cinematic, and nomination-automatic true story of a brave group (Ed Harris and Colin Farrell and many Russian and Polish actors) who escaped Stalinist labor camps in 1940. Timid distributors set up basic qualifying screenings the last week of the year, then are gearing for just a limited release in January. But maybe, somehow, several nominations will change their plans.

DAVID FINCHER REFERENCES CITIZEN KANE IN THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The real question remains: Can any of these movies beat out The Social Network?

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VAGINA MOVIES:NICOLE HOLOFCENER SAVES US FROM A SUMMER OFCHICK-FLICK HELL

FRIENDS WITH MONEY

Summer's just about over fellow cinephiles and we're all looking forward to this fall's coming pack of award-hopefuls -- like Robert Redford's THE CONSPIRATOR, Clint Eastwood's HEREAFTER, and the cinematic adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's excellent novel NEVER LET ME GO. But after seeing the the self-absorbed, narcissistic, no-guy-will-ever-understand-me torture that is the horrible  EAT PRAY LOVE (oh, that conceit of no commas), the MLB decided to look back, to the past hot months when he did something he's never done before: see every chick flick that came to area theaters.

JUST WRIGHT

Romance movies, women's movies, the three-hankie weepie, rom-coms, whatever you call them, they're a relentlessly successful, timeless genre: a harmonious melding of love, beauty, happiness and charm. There's shopping and clothes, shoes and purses, travel and  exquisite decor all wrapped in a mating ritual of longing and heartbreak, loss and tears. When they work (as in Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER), they're touching fairy tales, opening our hearts to embrace those sweet and special pleasures of self-indulgent masochism. When they don't, well...

TWILIGHT SAGA:ECLIPSE

You get what I saw this summer. And that was? There's, ah well, there's the latest from the TWILIGHT SAGA (West Side Story in the woods) with teenage girls going weak-kneed over "newborns" werewolves and vampires. Then, as the audience demo jumps to twenty and thirty-somethings, there's the preening condescension of SEX AND THE CITY 2, and the barely tolerable blandness of JUST WRIGHT. The demo jumps a decade or two (or three) with geezer-love in LETTERS TO JULIET. Then, back in February, there was the nothing to love in VALENTINE'S DAY -- the movie that inspired Roger Ebert's wonderful guide to dating: "it's a first date movie; if your date likes it, do not date that person again ..."(the negative reviews of this movie reached such high levels of hilarious inspiration they're listed in the blog of "Valentine's Day Massacre" of Feb. 15). And I'll add on the hard-to-remember DEAR JOHN, not really a movie as much as THE NOTEBOOK retooled as a music video.                                                                                                

SEX AND THE CITY 2

What's a discerning moviegoer, male or female, to do?
I whole heartedly recommend you seek out the movies of Nicole Holofcener.

She makes "vagina movies"( as she calls them), a right-on description of her character and dialogue driven comedies that offer insights and awareness way beyond that stuff at the Cineplex. Think Eric Rohmer, not Nancy Myers or Nora Ephron.

PLEASE GIVE (2010)

They're independent films, low budget with nothing fancy as to wardrobe or set design. But, since she writes some of the finest screenplays of the past decade, she attracts a bevy of high-end actresses such as Jennifer Aniston, Anne Heche, France McDormand, Joan Cusack, Rebecca Hall, and Amanda Peet. And all her movies star Catherine Keener.

Before you dismiss her with an "indy-arty" label, Holofcener does have commercial chick flick credentials -- episodes of "Sex and the City" and "Gilmore Girls" are on her resume. But her movies take us into a whole other realm, where women struggle with work and money, family and friends -- and themselves -- while trying to behave ethically, and conduct themselves like adults doing the best they can. Falling in love and getting the guy become just a part of everything else that's going on. Her characters are real and everyday -- definitely de-glam is the rule here. Couples fight in that knowingly cruel way that only couples can; children are decidedly uncute; and the dialogue about sex is as funny and straightforward as anything from the heyday of Woody Allen. One of the best things: each movie contains at least one simple but telling scene, illustrating an insightful difference between the sexes.

WALKING AND TALKING (1996)
Holofcener's first feature is personal movie-making in the best sense. Neurotic Amelia (Catherine Keener) goes all angsty as her roommate and life long friend, Laura (Anne Heche), moves out to live with her fiance. Admittedly, not much of a plot, but then, like Rohmer, plot isn't what Holofcener is about. The funny dialogue gets into the struggle of how these characters handle life's changes. It's a movie that's more insightful than most of this genre, and so comes off as a refreshing change of pace. The telling scene: where Bill (Kevin Corrigan), the guy Amelia is dating, confronts her  about calling him the "Ugly Guy" behind his back. It's priceless.

LOVELY AND AMAZING (2001)
 A film as variations on a theme of female body image, this is where Holofcener's style is most like Rohmer. The telling scene comes early on: Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) tells her boyfriend Paul (James LeGros) "I know you think my arms are flabby." he stares -- pushed to that no-win hell guys know so well. His non-answer is taken as agreement -- so he's out. Later, when Elizabeth is with another guy, she boldly stands full-frontal before him, asking his assessment of her entire body. That we can watch this full-on confrontation without hiding our eyes, that its funny, rueful tone hooks us, is what distinguishes this filmmaker. Every character dislikes their body: Elizabeth's mother (Brenda Blethyn) hates her gut, so is getting liposuction (we get a close up) and has a crush on her doctor; while Michelle

(Catherine Keener), a former beauty queen now bored as a housewife and mother, has grown so insecure she self-destructively falls for an underage adolescent (Jake Gyllenhaal) simply because he tells her she's beautiful. There's no cliche situations or predictable characters here -- the dialogue readily expresses what's human in the rest of us. We can't help but laugh and keep watching.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY (2006)

The movie that proved Jennifer Aniston can act.  Along with an all-star cast of Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, and, of course, Catherine Keener, Aniston plays Olivia, a doobie-loving ex-teacher who works as a maid. She may not have near the income of her three life-long pals, but they still hang out. They live LA- normal, without the glam clothes, make-up and big-time shopping: one of the group, Jane (McDormand) is making some sort of statement by refusing to wash her hair -- a smell so bad it makes her husband turn away in bed.  As all but Olivia have husbands, the group keeps trying to hook her up even as they struggle their own relationships.  The telling scene: after a party, as each of the married couples are driving home, all the husbands tell their wives they were the best looking woman there. None of the wives says a word, not falling for such a line. But their expressions say something else -- how great it feels to hear it.

PLEASE GIVE (2010)

The opening sequence: a montage of bare breasts going through mammograms -- the old, the young, the flabby and firm, they fill the screen, non-erotic and de-sexualized. At first, it seems to be just a visual stunt. But its relevance and meaning come later in the film's telling scene: the shy and withdrawn Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), the medical technician doing the mammograms ("you're not a doctor," her sister keeps telling her) is on a date. When he says her job of dealing with breasts all day is a guy's dream, her response is the honest, straightforward, "Well I see them as tubes of trouble." The gender gap, Rebecca's character, the budding relationship with this couple is summed up in one line.

Keener plays Kate, a well-off New Yorker who's liberal guilt about making money (I won't reveal why) has her dolling out twenties to every panhandler she passes on the street, while her teenage daughter Abby (a really clever and amusing Sarah Steele), and husband, Alex (Oliver Platt, a subdued scene- stealer here) feel she cares more for the poor than about them. Then there's Rebecca's grandmother, a hilarious Ann Guilbert, as the smart and mean old lady in the next apartment. And Mary, Rebecca's sister played by Amanda Peet, in perfect vulnerable-bitch mode, has what can only be called a "robotic" affair with Alex.

No doubt about it though, Keener is the center, holding our focus through all the machinations. But this is a cast where everyone gets into their characters, creating people you know and recognize. As with all of Holofcener, her people aren't totally likeable, but you can see sides of yourself in them, so they connect, staying in your mind long after seeing the movie.
            

Blogsters Bonkers for Make Way For Tomorrow

                                                                                                                

The Criterion Collection just released a DVD of Leo McCarey's "Make Way For Tomorrow." It's about an elderly couple dealing with the physical and financial realities of aging and how their adult children strain to figure out what to do with them. Hardly blockbuster, high money stuff. But unexpectedly, Criterion roused a torrent. This rarely seen financial failure, which served as a model for "Tokyo Story," is ripping through the blogosphere, reducing cynical, hard edge critics, who think they've seen everything movies can offer, into a group of swooning school girls. 

TOKYO STORY  

                     

"A heartfelt, deeply affecting look at aging, " says DVD Verdict. "The 

tears that come are more than earned," adds Slant Magazine. "Masterwork,"writes the uncompromising Village Voice, while Dave Kehr blogged "... one of the great films from anytime, anywhere."Roger Ebert wrote, "It is remarkable that a film this true and unrelenting was made in Hollywood in 1937."        

The MLB joins the swoonsters. Though "Make Way For Tomorrow" is 73 years old, it couldn't be more timely. 

The US Census states clearly: 1 of every 8 individuals is over 65. That will double to 1 in 4 by 2030. The largest population group in the country is the baby-boomers -- those between 50 and 65. Never have so many older people made up such a large percentage of the population. Of course movies market to 35 and under, virtually ignoring anyone north of 50. When an effort is made, we get a syrupy "Cacoon," or "On Golden Pond," or the cranky implausibility of "Grumpy Old Men." (Exceptions that prove the rule: "The Mother," "Grand Torino.") And the recent "Julie and Julia," which set records among the AARP set, hardly represents how older people think, feel, and actually live. So MWFT, rising so far above those films, becomes the right film at the right time, filling a present day artistic and psychological need. 

But let's start with the movie shaped from the mold of "Make Way For Tomorrow" -- from Japan where they claim to know a thing or two about older folks -- Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story." 

TOKYO STORY (1953)

When an aging couple, Shukichi and Tomi, visit their adult children and grandchildren they find them so preoccupied with their busy lives, so self-centered, they feel not only out of touch, but in the way. They are not proud of their children. Traditionally, Japanese parents derive a sense of personal worth and well-being from their offspring. But this is post-war Japan and things, they are a changin.' Shukichi and Tomi  feel lost and bereft. It's a classic, forthright tale of changing times passing-by the older generation.  

Always placing among the best of the best in the best-film-of-all-time Grail, this Ozu masterpiece deals with his usual themes of family and home -- the stresses of working and living and how difficult it is for families to stay together: life moves on, things happen quickly, people change. 

Ozu chronicles the psychological cost. But it's his visuals that lift the film beyond a story beautifully told and into the realm of classic. Ozu is known for placing his camera on the floor, directly facing the characters so we sense the full effect of what they are feeling. And with the frequent use of right angle shots with family groups filling the frame (as in Make Way For Tomorrow) creating a portrait of conflict between individual emotions and family expectations.

This signature technique is never more effective than during the film's ending with the father alone in his home. I won't spoil it with description, except to say it becomes its own short story -- a moving, honest narrative of all our futures. 

MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)

Cinematic Chekov? Like the Master's short stories, the movie is quiet and subtle, while brimming with character and visual detail (the film rewards multiple viewings). The story is about an elderly couple, Lucy (Beulah Bondi) and Bark (Victor Moore), who, unable to afford their life-long home, attempt to find a place to spend their last years in dignity. Their adult children, attempting to help, end up humiliating them. Chekovian in its simple telling about real human beings -- they aren't political (1937 was the first year of Social Security) or artistic symbols. At times they can be unlikable, just like the rest of us. But they create a driving emotional force that comes out of their mundane and routine labors to live the best they can. And the story is all the more affecting because of it.

McCarey is not as pictorially vivid as Ozu; his camera is more straight-on, his cutting more linear. But oh, how he works with faces -- a story wonderfully told through facial expressions. Note the individual expressions among the group as Lucy and Bark tell their children they have no place to live. 

Or how Lucy responds to being confronted by her daughter-in-law (and at this point we're on the daughter-in-law's side, Lucy has been nothing but annoying) with sad recognition of the inevitable. Or the absolutely remarkable expression of hesitant desire from Lucy as she turns towards the audience while Bark tries to kiss her in public. Wish there was still from that sequence.

 

This movie shines with a hard truth about normal living. As it goes along and you realize it isn't caving in to a sappy, happy ending (producer Adolph Zucker and McCarey fought over the ending and when the film failed at the box office, Zucker fired him) you feel how skillfully you've been pulled along. Almost beyond your will you're giving in to this couple. 

And the ending? At the train station. Among the greatest. As Orson Welles said, "It'll make a stone cry."    

              The world dances on. Bye

                                                                                      

                                          

                                               

                                  

OSCAR'S SHORTS

                      Whoa? Pixar's "Partly Cloudy" Not Nominated? 

The short-film genre is thriving. In recent years these independent filmmakers have been flooding film festivals and pumped up their own brand of world-wide distribution through the internet. It's part of the business to get those big screen showings at festivals; they serve as calling cards and resumes. And all the shorts listed below have won top prizes in festivals such as IFTA, The Jimmy Stewart Crystal Heart Memorial Award, AFI Award, etc. (Except "The New Tenants," which hasn't won anything except an Academy Award). But it's on the net where they thrive. And why not? It gets them the most eyes.

I see hundreds of shorts every year and they're an exciting grab bag of energetic films unbound by Hollywood standards and expectations. By definition, they're less than 40 minutes, and most range from 6 to 20, so if one's not to your liking, well, you haven't wasted much time and can move on. Many of the shorts I see equal or even surpass those selected by the Academy. But no complaints; all ten of this year's nominees are worth seeing. So this week the MLB lists the 2 Award winners and 2 of the best nominees in each category.

WINNER: LIVE ACTION SHORT

THE NEW TENANTS (US, Joachim Back)

Dark, dark, dark and funny, funny, funny in ways that take hold, wrap around the short form and gives its all. The most talked about short at the screening I attended. Okay, the movie has talent most short filmmakers dare not dream of: Vincent D'Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan for starters; then there's Oscar nominated, Roman Polanski cinematographer Pawel Edelman. 

But the script is so good, the dialogue such a hoot, and director Back moves things along so seamlessly that we go right along with the comic mayhem. As one roommate talks to another via Tarantino irrelevant societal rants and the other tells him to shut up, it's so crisp and on the mark we laugh as if we're in the apartment with them. The jokes, and the bodies, pile up, and everything just naturally falls together.

WINNER: BEST ANIMATION SHORT
 LOGORAMA (France, Francois Aluax, Herve de Crecy, Ludovic Housplain)
A barefaced, all-out giddy attack on corporate control and consumer culture that reaches the heights of "Brave New World" satire. These three French animators create a world of non-stop, full throttle advertising, where every building, rooftop,moving vehicle,animal, and person is an ad or a logo. So of course it's set in Los Angeles, and the plot, if it matters, is about a thug-goon Ronald MacDonald taking hostages. Every frame fills the eye with dozens of ads and logos in colors so neon bright and in such high contrast you can't take it all in. My favorite: an earthquake ripping through the city and into the hills as collapsing mountains reveal hidden logos. Even space vehicles take the hit, sprouting logos as they soar through the vast emptiness of the solar system. 
Gotta make sure any possible Aliens buy Pioneer.

NOMINEES: BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
THE DOOR (Ireland, Juanita Wilson)

At first look we're in "The Road" territory: scattered people trying to survive among civilization's ruins after a cataclysmic event; bare, sparse colors on the cinematography palette, and a family barely surviving through the trauma (in"The Road" the mother drifts off to commit suicide). Wilson took the memoir of a Chernobyl survivor (Monologue About A Whole Life Written Down on Doors), shot it in Russian, and came up with this subtle and moving short about a young family being forced to evacuate a radioactive town.

MIRACLE FISH (Australia, Luke Doolan)
Won for best cinematography in a short, but what got me hooked was the subjective use of sound. As an 8 year-old boy who's being bullied in school tries to take refuge and be left alone, Doolan shifts styles from documentary-like, to horror fantasy (shades of
"The Shining") to a sudden, shocking ending. We hear only what the boy hears, not only intensifying our experience, but setting a tone that perfectly sets up the different visual styles. Watch closely, the fish predicts events to come.

NOMINEES FOR BEST ANIMATED SHORT
A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH (Great Britain, Nick Park)
It's not exactly fair to have the new Wallace and Gromit episode among the nominees -- like pitting Pixar against all other animation studios. Director Park has put together a parody-noir, if you can imagine such a thing, and makes it consistently funny through great claymation imagery and directing, not to mention a script that builds on one mystery-story cliche after another. Except here the femme fatale is, ahem, a bit too curvy -- and in a rage at all the bakers for making her that way.

A scene Park hilariously repeats is loyal pet Gromit constantly getting a view of her fleshy ankles. And, as he plays private detective, Gromit sneaks through the evil one's front door, up the stairs and into the bedroom. Shadows, spidery lattice work on the windows, a creaky staircase and a creepy, half-open bedroom door are all pulled out of "Psycho" and you laugh at yourself for giving in to the tension. The shenanigans include hot air balloons, crocodiles, and a giant fart joke. All of it terrific.

THE LADY AND THE REAPER (Spain, Javier Recio Gracia)
Antonio Banderas gets a producing credit in this frenetic gem about a lonely, elderly woman waiting to die so she she can join her deceased husband on the other side.                                                                                                                                                                .

A big chase ensues as a Gaston-like doctor (muscles, great hands, a huge ego, and the nurses swoon over him), keeps saving her from death as the Grim Reaper keeps grabbing her from the edge of life. Imagine Salvador Dali meets Looney Tunes. Fast, funny, and totally unpredictable.

The Best Foreign Language Film Oscar

Merry Christmas Trench War Style

I've caught three of the five nominees for the 2010 Best Foreign Language Film:
"White Ribbon," "A Prophet," and "Ajami." Though I prefer "White Ribbon," they're all good enough to be Oscar worthy. The other two, "The Secret in Their Eyes" and "The Milk of Sorrow," I hear from trusted sources, are just as good.
An exceptional year with so many superior films. Trouble is few American movie-goers bother to see the best from abroad in a theater. And the Academy sure doesn't help with a convoluted submission and nomination process that promotes "American Friendly" movies over the many superior films that pass through the festival circuit gaining critical raves.

So the MLB lists some of this category's lesser-known titles from the past decade. Maybe not Fellini or Bergman, but c'mon, they're on the MLB list so they're definitely worth your DVD time.

JOYEUX NOEL (2005 Nominee)

Watching Diane Kruger in "Inglourious Basterds" brought to mind her other war movie, "Joyeux Noel." True, the title suggests a schmaltzy Hallmark Christmas where photogenic blondes in red sweaters walk through beautiful snowscapes talking about their feelings. But this based-on-a-real-event film about an impulsive Christmas day truce created in the middle of 1914 trench warfare warranted its Best Picture nomination. The French and British in one trench, and the Germans, only 100 meters away, in another, are slaughtering each other in that surreal face-to-face horror possible only in WWI. Later when German Opera star Anna (Kruger) comes to the front to be with her lover, the famous tenor Sprink(Benno Furmann), they sing to their troops in the trenches on Christmas Eve.

The Allies hear the singing, join in, and a Christmas concert takes off in directions that become as natural and humane as they are unbelievable. The movie works and hold our attention because director Christian Carion maintains the tension between the soldiers' mutual distrust and fear based on politically institutionalized propaganda and how easily and quickly they connect with the enemy in the face of that propaganda. And though the ending movingly shows how these soldiers were shamed and punished for these humane actions, we're able to hold witness on to a remarkable historical moment. And moviewise, it's a refreshing antidote to "Inglourious Basterds."

DOWNFALL (2005 Nominee)

Based on the memoirs of Traudl Junge, a secretary working there at the time, "Downfall" is harrowing real look in to Hitler's Berlin bunker while the Third Reich crashes and burns. We see Hitler as those in the last days saw him: smiling at Hitler Youth (the only soldiers he has left), charming the secretaries, and going about his routine.
Bruno Ganz gives a magnetic,physical reality to Hitler. Pill popping, disease ridden, and possibly senile (he was 56), he's motivated only by the machinations of his own delusions. The movie is remarkable for how it pulls you into the bunker. Hitler seems to be seeing visions as he keeps strategizing amid the constant bombing. You hold your ears as his rage-filled hallucinations of victory scream through the corridors. This is one scary movie, for, as all is falling in around him, Hitler is willing to destroy Germany and sacrifice an entire population for the sake of his Reich.
Yet everyone believes and follows, and willingly commits terrible acts. The film, and Ganz, palpably put us in the middle of this group psychosis. You'll be riveted, unable to pull away. And, you'll want to run.

WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008 Nominee)

For American animated films the past decade has been the best in history. Dreamworks, Disney, and Pixar (mostly Pixar) have never had it better. But our foreign cousins long ago took risks, making financially and artistically successful animations in a genre those studios can't imagine -- the war film.
This Israeli film about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, deals with how the Israeli troops sat by as Christian militias massacred Palestinians living in refugee camps. Filmmaker Ari Folman was a soldier in that war, and he chose animation to tell his story because it's the best way to fully visualize the troubling memories, nightmares, and fantasies he and the other soldiers still suffer from today.

                                                                                                

Did they aid and abet the wholesale slaughter of innocent women and children? How can a cultured and civilized people allow such things to happen? This gripping journey of questioning and discovery ranks with "Grave of the Fireflies (1988) as the best in animated war films. Actually, the best in war films period. "Grave," about two children struggling to survive the firebombing of Japan near the end of WWII, is the saddest, most devastating film I've ever seen.  If, dear blogsters, you try watching these film together on a DVD double bill, buck-up and be prepared. These movies offer images that will haunt your psyche in ways you didn't think movies ever could.

Grave of the Fireflies

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (2004 Best Picture)

Met the Quebec director Denys Arcand at a screening of his "The Decline of the American Empire" in 1986. No directorial craftmanship, a meandering screenplay, a smug and condescending tone, the movie was unbearable. Couldn't believe it was nominated for an Oscar. Braved his next film,"Jesus of Montreal," which wasn't much better, and holy cow, it too received a Best Picture nomination. Skipped every one of his movies since. Then in 2003, those in the know said "Barbarians..."was a must and I stumbled into a funny,wise, and insightful dramedy about an academic intellectual, Remy, who is spending his last days reuniting with friends, lovers, an ex-wife. etc. as he is dying in a Montreal hospital. Remy is a likable, stubborn, and horny, old hound with Marxist philosophies that conflict with his estranged son, Sebastien, a big-money capitalist banker. One of the most interesting aspects of the movie is how Sebastien throws his money around to surmount the Canadian health care system: using bribes to get Remy a private room, more attentive care, and, in a great touch, searching up some heroin to make up for the inadequate pain relief of the morphine he's prescribed. Remy's(Remy Girard) natural appeal holds our attention through all this traffic and neither he nor Arcand let the doings gets mawkish or sentimental.

The intellectual honesty of the screenplay is refreshing; sex,drugs, and rock'n roll are discussed with smart sophistication instead of the usual gonad-laden sophomoric manner were used to from movies.
After that screening in 1986, Arcand spoke and did a Q&A. He was quick-witted and lively, a pleasure discussing movies; all those things "Decline..." wasn't. With this movie the director's true talents have come through.



Next Up: Oscar's Shorts