The Blog

Xaque Gruber: 25 Years After Anna, Sally Kirkland Reflects on the Oscar Race for Best Actress

2012-02-22T20:25:29Z

This year's Academy Awards reunites Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady) with Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs) for the third time in the Best Performance By An Actress in a Leading Role category. The first time they faced off for Oscar was 1988. The prize went to Cher in Moonstruck, but the Golden Globes earlier that year bypassed the superstars (Streep, Close, Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway) to honor a lesser known independent film veteran, Sally Kirkland, with Best Drama Actress for Anna. In Kirkland, a star was born -- in her forties. Kirkland's Anna, a faded Czech star stumbling into Manhattan striving for a new beginning, is just as stunning 25 years later.

Appropriately, she also collected one of the first Lead Actress Independent Spirit Awards for the role the L.A. Times called "one of the five best performances by an actress in the 1980s."

Without the machinery of big studio dollars, expensive publicists, or even tapes being sent out to voters (not allowed by the Academy at that time), Kirkland's award show glory was the result of her own tireless campaign launch. With very little capital, Kirkland and friends spread the word, grassroots-style, to garner attention for the little seen indie.

Sally Kirkland Career Film Clips:

Sally Kirkland Sizzle Video from Jill Jucarone on Vimeo.

XG: How did the Anna campaign begin?

SK: When I first read the script by Agnieszka Holland, I thought whoever plays this role has a shot at the Oscar. It was just intuition. In the earlier days when we didn't have any publicity, I called friends including Andy Warhol (Kirkland's first director in 1964's 13 Most Beautiful Women) who put me on his TV show. Joan Rivers did too. At Cannes, I ran into Rex Reed in an elevator and begged him to see it. e did, and he lent me this quote "Sally Kirkland devours Anna like a raw steak and emerges a major star." Then Norman Mailer gave me a quote. We had pooled enough money for a black and white ad trade campaign. Dale Olson, Shirley MacLaine's publicist, encouraged me to go for the L.A. Film Critics Awards. So I wrote them all letters, and said this is a tiny little film but I hope you'll see it, and I ended up tying with Holly Hunter (Broadcast News) for that. Then we screened it for the Hollywood Foreign Press and their response was extraordinary. At the Oscars, there were all these movie stars emerging from their limos, and then there was me. I felt like Cinderella. The greatest part was the feeling to be in the same Oscar category of these women that I was a huge fan of -- Meryl, Glenn, Holly Hunter and Cher, who I used to rollerskate with in the '70s.

ABC Commercial for the 1988 Oscars Best Actress race:

XG: How did actors' respond to your homemade Oscar campaign?

SK: Gena Rowlands said, "I voted for you, Sally, but I have to confess something, I never saw the film, but I wanted you to win so much because of that campaign."

XG: As an Academy voter, give me your thoughts on this year's Best Actress category. Let's start with Rooney Mara in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

SK: Her physical strength, scene after scene, getting beaten up, the nudity -- very courageous. Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady in a word -- magnificent. In the first five minutes, you see this old woman shopping for groceries. I whispered to the person next to me, "Who is that?" I'm pretty good at knowing actors, and I quite literally had no idea it was Meryl.

XG: Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn.

SK: It's not easy to take that on much less capture the essence of this icon. I couldn't believe it was Michelle Williams, this little tiny flower of a woman -- she was wonderful -- vulnerable. And Glenn Close was outstanding. She did Albert Nobbs so well on Broadway and it was a real tribute to her abilities becoming that gentle but strong, androgynous being. Very touching.

XG: Viola Davis in The Help.

SK: She moved me to tears. I had a black nurse growing up, Louise, who taught me about God, and everything. I was closer to her than anyone. To see Viola play this character that, to me, was Louise, was heart breaking. This is one of the strongest years ever for the Best Actress category.

XG: Do you think your 1987 grassroots Oscar campaign could happen in today's world?

SK: Yes, my friend Melissa Leo from Frozen River is a testament to that. If you're in independent films, and worked hard for years, and you don't happen to be part of the mega-billion dollar system, and you've got the chutzpah to stand up and say this is who I am, it takes all the humanity out of Hollywood not to appreciate that.

Sally Kirkland & Polina Porizkova in Anna:

Liz Kozak: A Mom's Oscar Cheat Sheet

2012-02-22T20:02:10Z

When I was pregnant, the single best, most specific piece of advice I received was this:

"Go to the movies a lot now, because once you have a baby, paying a babysitter when you can rent the same thing at home in a few months isn't worth it."

I wish I'd listened.

I wish I could call up every single person who told me, "Sleep while you can!" and inform them that their advice was terrible.

I wish I had used all that nap time to go to the movies, because I miss it a whole lot.

Now the Oscars are almost here, and if you also have a new baby, then you most likely haven't seen any or most of the nominated films, either. Allow me to do my best to break down the Best Picture contenders for you... to the best of my limited ability.

War Horse:
Steven Spielberg made it, right? It must be epic/heartwarming/tragic/expensive. I am wary of horse movies and of horse folk. I really hope that my daughter isn't one of those horse-riding gals like Lindsay on The Bachelor. Now THAT'S something I DO watch!

Hugo:
What kind of a person would leave their kid at home to go see a kids' movie?

The Artist:
The first movie I tell people I would absolutely go see if I could!!! Actually, that's a lie. I did go to the movies once since the baby was born, and I chose The Muppets. So I guess I answered my own question.

Midnight in Paris:
On-Demanded at the highest recommendation of my father-in-law. So charming! So quirky! Actually, all I remember was that Rachel McAdams rocked a lot of shirtdresses, and then I fell asleep. There are now four shirtdresses in my madewell.com shopping cart that I will never buy.

Moneyball:
We rented this one too, and it lost me in the first 10 minutes. There was way more math than in Angels in the Outfield. It does have Brad Pitt, but something happened between Kalifornia and last week. Have you realized he's almost 50? How old does that make you feel? Old enough to be someone's mother! And the kid from Superbad will now instead be referred to forever as "The Oscar nominated kid from Superbad."

Tree of Life:
I do know it also has Brad Pitt. Perhaps with a crew cut. I do not know what it's about. But I bet it would make me cry.

The Help:
Here we go! We're all familiar with this one! If you're reading this column, there is a 70 percent chance that you're in a book club, and if so, there is an 98 percent chance that The Help was one of the books you read. This one was actually designed in a science lab to punch vulnerable moms in the solar plexus. I'm going to search Etsy for a cross stitch that says, "You is smart. You is kind. You is important." to hang in the nursery.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close:
I don't personally know one single person who's seen this, which makes it my cinematic equivalent of Rizzoli & Isles.

The Descendants:
I heard it's funny, but it's super sad. I guess this movie should be called "The Full Length Mirror in My Hallway," because that's what I feel when I gaze upon myself these days. Who would want to put themselves through that for two sustained hours? Someone who wants to eat Milk Duds in the dark, that's who.

Happy Oscar Weekend!
What films are you rooting for?

Quora: What Do Directors Think When People Make a Torrent for Their Movie?

2012-02-22T18:27:00Z

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Heather Ferreira, film director, 90s H'wood combat vet

As someone directing a feature right now, but who has been forced at certain times to consider downloading music otherwise made distinctly unavailable by the startlingly small cabal of corporations who now own all media in the US, and who dislikes monopolies, I agree with Quora respondent Mr. Lipkowitz. But my feelings are not mixed.

Things are getting better, but I've never been rich. I understood for years what it feels like not to have enough cash in pocket to purchase a listen or a view. I also know what it feels like to contact media companies, beg them to make now-forgotten artist or soundtrack XYZ available for purchase so I and others could spend our money on it, and then be met with either bemused surprise "that we even owned that property" or a stonewalling, bewildering "f--k off." The MPAA and RIAA tell audiences large media companies invite purchases of the movies and songs both organizations claim they are "protecting", and that finding whatever audiences want to buy is easy for the audience. That's not true in all cases.

For instance, I chased a certain 1980s science-fiction movie soundtrack the right way for more than a decade, tracking down and phoning all who had rights to the recording, and begged them all to sell a copy to me. I offered hundreds of dollars for the recording. It originally retailed on vinyl for less than $15.99.

After being ignored for years, talked to rudely by record label and motion picture score licensing executives and their assistants, told "I didn't know we owned that recording..." and directed in circles leading absolutely nowhere, at the end I found a dedicated aficionado who blogs about rare movie soundtracks because they are the passion of his life, and who can tell you every Prokofiev composition John Williams has, er, homaged, because movie music is his life's passion, whose blog serves as a public resource to inform audiences of great movie soundtracks the large corporations are not making them aware of, and to make them available to those who want to learn about and love them -- and the gentleman sent me a copy of my desired soundtrack, which he had, free.

Is what I did wrong? Or is what he did?

After fruitless years of searching and begging the rights owners "the right way"?

Here's how it affects me, directing: If my next film fails to be mediocre enough to satisfy the taste of those delicate little former intern studio execs who sip lattes, name their babies "Brooklyn" and "Max," and take spinning classes at Crunch, and because it is violent it is not made available to mass audiences; and if those audiences however loved it at the tiny festival that ran it; and then can't find a DVD of it because I was too stupid or lazy to make it available -- and then, in frustration at me and the studios they find and download a torrent of it, and love it all over again, does that make those audiences "criminals"?

Come now, folks; come on.

We're all familiar with recent attempts by former Senator Chris Dodd, lobbyists for his Motion Picture Association of America and for the Recording Industry Association of America, and certain not at all well-meaning congressmen, to enact and get passed two terrible ideas, SOPA and PIPA. We've been told these two bills are harmless to the internet, and that their lamblike only intent is to stop piracy, because the movie and music industries are desperately losing blood, and only the MPAA and RIAA exist to heroically save them.

Here's my problem with that.

I am directing a movie. I've written a B movie that got made by an actual studio.
(Cue pimp voice.) "Chris Dodd, where my money at?"

The MPAA has six major studios, such as Warner, Disney and others, listed as "members" of it. But a little research reveals the MPAA started as the MPPDA, or the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. MGM and two other studios formed the group in 1922. They chose a former Presbyterian minister, Will Hays, as their chairman. Unlike Chris Dodd, who's no prize, Hays was a Republican: in fact for three years he was Republican National Committee chairman. This guy became the head of the MPAA with their blessing. (Indie producers at the time disliked him and the MPAA, and sued them, calling them a "trust" -- which now, like then, they still are.) Hays enacted what we call the Hays Code, which drafted draconian rules censoring what movie directors like me, and some of you out there reading this, could show or say in a movie.

One of the rules the MPAA gave us was we could never show homosexuality in a picture. They called it "the sex perversion." (Google and Wikipedia this for extra credit.)

Another thing our friends the MPAA told us we could not depict were interracial relationships. Their term for this was "miscegenation."

(Visit www.mpaa.org/about/history for a great belly laugh at how frantically today's MPAA tries to spin this era in their history.)

Thus what I see when I examine the MPAA is not a friendly guardian of feature film directors' rights, even at the studio level. Instead, I see a very large lobby that began as a Christian right-wing organization instituted to keep minorities off motion picture screens, promote racism and homophobia, and restrict creative freedom in America. That's how the MPAA began.

Now they are curiously interested in the internet.

This is the moment we would instruct the score composer beside us in the editing room to cue an ominous minor key double whole-note on the contrabasses and cellos.

The Motion Picture Association of America has never written me a paycheck for anything. They're not backing my picture. These are not nice guys. They are not in this business to help filmmakers at all.

They're censors waiting to pounce my film and yours with an NC-17 rating for violence or for showing two consenting adults laughing while enjoying sex (rape, however, is okay), while curiously no one censors the news media for showing my toddler second cousin Josh Powell's house burning down on daytime television with two toddlers just like her inside it, or informing me over breakfast that some Canadian guy sliced off a fellow Greyhound bus passenger's head and began to eat him while other passengers screamed, or showing eight-year-olds Paris Hilton's latest upskirt with very little pixelated out.

Isn't that pauseworthy? If there's no censors for the news, why for dramatic movies and television?

Anyway, I owe the MPAA nothing. They're not my or any other feature director's friends. They are a censoring organization not entirely dissimilar from The Parents Music Resource Center.

Cut, back to one.

Many musicians and singer-songwriters I know here in New York, and knew in Los Angeles, who never received a paycheck from the RIAA, feel the same. Where are the class action lawsuit award paychecks for these musicians from RIAA v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset? If either the MPAA or RIAA made actual financial support efforts towards filmmakers and musicians, e.g. the MPAA earmarking 10-30% of all anti-piracy legal victory awards towards funding independent filmmakers and their projects, or the RIAA making regular and substantial donations from their anti-piracy legal victories to musician-support foundations such as the JFA, or pointing portions of those awards towards funding music education in schools, then I might understand their philosophy. But the fact stands the MPAA and RIAA benefit nobody except their overhead and their attorneys.

There is profit in crusading. That's why there are so many charities. Do you really think Komen gave a real damn about saving women? As someone who has given to charities -- and I am sure you have too -- haven't you at times wondered why we still haven't found that cure, or gotten those children fed, after all this time and exhaustive money, really?

It might be because if these things ever did get truly done, the money to their charities would switch off. Think about it.

Crusading against others "fur die Kinder" has always been profitable. The MPAA and RIAA are using the same gimmick to line their pockets. "It's for the artists!" they claim. That's a very interesting claim.

Not one member of my industry I know has ever received dime one from them. They use us as hostages to strengthen their lobbies, as human shields to promote their fundraising campaigns (aka court cases), and alienate the audience against us with hysterical, hyperbolic legal jihads designed to make them and their professional paid lobbyists richer, but directors, musicians, songwriters, audiences, and American culture all the poorer.

And then they censor us.

What the MAFIAA fails to realize is p2p is not a black and white issue of "piracy is wrong; all of it; and if you didn't pay us, you're a criminal."

Lots of good people have been trying to pay to see lots of good films and hear lots of good music. But when those who moved aggressively to buy "ownership" of film and music are making aggressive efforts clearly designed to suppress public awareness of and access to quality entertainment and instead push, promote and force audiences to the mostly substandard media of this present era, and making few or no efforts to meet audience demand for the "good stuff," what is an audience to do?

If you want audiences to like your product, so make good, original new product, make it affordable in this economy, and turn the volume down on those movie trailers. Seems simple enough to me.

Mr. Lipkowitz is further correct when he says, "On the neutral side, unless the director has equity participation in the film, piracy does not directly impact their paycheck. Their fee is contractual." That's absolutely spot-on.

Piracy does not affect me at all, which is why, for example, Penelope Spheeris' stumble head-first into a hornet's-nest of online infamy and ridicule by openly criticizing something that does not affect her filmmaking future continues to confuse me and make me feel sorry for her. Spheeris apparently wanted notoriety, and believe me, she got it. I disagree with her and am fine with people downloading my films. People have downloaded mpegs of television material I've directed. They later came back and bought DVDs of it because they prefer DVD quality and that "hands to the touch" feeling of actual ownership. Most people do, and the MPAA pretends this isn't true and they don't understand this. If they like it well enough, they'll contact me for the real thing.

Lipkowitz continues, "On the negative side, piracy causes investors and distributors to reduce their revenue projections for future films. This will result in fewer films getting made and reduced budgets for those that do. Fewer films means fewer jobs for all creative and crew. Reduced budgets (among other things) can result in lower fees for key creative." I would amend his otherwise spot-on commentary so that the final sentence reads instead,

"Reduced budgets (among other things) can result in lower fees for key UNION creative."

For independent non-shop filmmakers and key crew, reduced budgets should not impact production quality or quality of life reflected in salaries. What reduced studio budgets adversely impact are studio features made that cost $150MM, the standard A-list movie budget today. One significant reason for these obscene prices is union pressure.

When a picture becomes shop (union), you should multiply your budget by at least three, because in the case of directors, which you asked about, a union director is DGA. All DGA pictures must be "maintenanced": this means only union crew members can work on it. This is when you begin seeing crew end credits such as "assistant standby," and your location fills with people who will not even be moving things or working, but instead standing joking and chewing gum and eating craft services while not actually doing anything, and your budget must pay them all union wages, health and pension. That's bad for the unions and bad for us. It's insulting to unions.

At its worst, the set then becomes an exclusive little "club" of 1 percenters who readily claim they are 99 percenters off set, with a knowing wink to each other, and erect 2-story rubber rats to terrorize films and companies who won't lie down for the beatdown as commanded.

Unions are ripping moviemakers and studios off: not as individuals, mind you, because true union men and women work hard at their craft; but there are many freeloaders who get union cards because of luck or connections, and won't do a damned thing on set, but get paid for it -- and owing to the power of numbers and the threat of what together those numbers can do -- called by one side terrorism and by the other solidarity -- you can't escape being maintenanced, and the moment your film is, its budget inflates to seven, eight or nine figures.

As the individual workers themselves, unions are just awesome and that is all. As collective organizations, they are as nuanced and corrupt as the studios they despise, and absolutely 100 percent as greedy, and possibly more.

Bear in mind also that most A-list celebrities are members of Screen Actors Guild. Their top actors are also members of the 1 percent and make more in 45 days than any teachers in America will make their entire lifetime, and more than the GNP of many small developed countries.

They make $25MM+ per picture because their union, the Screen Actors Guild, is well-financed and extremely corrupt, and what SAG wants, SAG gets. They have rigged the industry so you virtually cannot make an A-list picture without kissing the ring of the capodecina and depositing a third of your little laundromat's income to their Mafia. Lowered movie budgets automatically point a bright Maglite of purity upon this dark, swirling cesspool of corruption.

I welcome reduced budgets for motion pictures. Lower budgets increase the creativity on location. More camaraderie often develops. Stories get smarter; tighter; better. The fat gets trimmed and we're brought down to the lean, the true grit of the story. That's what filmmaking's for. If torrent piracy causes this by forcing budgets to come down and fewer films to be made, then so be it.

If in retrospect we find that piracy is what it took to do that, it was long overdue, the industry was bloated and ill and frankly needed it, and then maybe tough love was the answer and it was worth it to save the movie industry and force a return in it to ingenuity, hard work and creativity.

So this rather long answer, at least from this movie director, is that my response to those who download a torrent of my current film is meh, with an addendum of:

"Thanks. I hope you enjoyed it."
"Please make the effort to track down my studio and contact me. Give me notes on what you liked or didn't about the film, so I can do even better."
"If you really liked it, please consider buying the DVD of it in the future, when your finances permit that you can. I promise to include cool easter eggs and other goodies you couldn't download, and make it worth it."
"Then, because of your support, I can make more of it."

That's all, really. Any further commentary to them would be shrugworthy. They're a potential paying future audience member. The technology has changed. The playing field is different now. We need to adapt to it, not it to us. The above is my adaptation. Thanks for asking me this fascinating question!

More questions on movie-directing:

What are some movies about making/directing movies??

Why would an established writer/director spend energy on a short film instead of developing a feature?

What are some good movie pairings and why?

Nico Lang: One for the Controversy: What the Failure of Katherine Heigl's Career Says About Women in Hollywood

2012-02-22T16:09:28Z

Hollywood is not a nice place for actresses, something even a passing glimpse into the career trajectories of Thora Birch, Jessica Alba or Janeane Garofalo will indicate. If you're a woman in Tinseltown, the industry is not a space that's run by you or for you -- and any success you have is seen as ancillary, a tie-over to summer tentpole season. When a movie you're in does well, like Oscar nominees The Help or Bridesmaids, people won't stop talking about what a huge surprise it was, and if your movie tanks, studio heads will threaten not to cast women as leads anymore. Unless you are Meryl Streep, Judi Dench or Helen Mirren -- women known more for being "thespians" than "entertainers" -- this treatment intensifies as you get older. Even one time box-office darlings Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon can't open a movie these days; Witherspoon's new film, This Means War, counts her third disappointment in a row, and Roberts' highest-grossing recent film as a lead, Eat Pray Love, failed to come even close to the $100 million success mark -- starkly underperforming especially when considering its star power and mega best-selling source material.

However, some actresses and performers are their own worst enemies, women who use their fame and success to do almost everything in their power to derail their own careers. The best examples of this are Whitney Houston, Lindsay Lohan and Sean Young -- known more for their unreliability, tabloid dramas, drug problems and outlandish public appearances than their talent. Although many of their problems can be blamed on their fraught personal histories, Young and Lohan must, at the end of the day, blame themselves for the mess they made of their enormous potential. With Houston, little more can be said about the incredible tragedy that became her career, a woman who built her acting and singing careers on empowering women of all colors and became a harrowing cautionary tale on the perils of fame and fortune.

This brings us to Katherine Heigl, a woman who went from being the great white hope of women at the box office to not being able to outgross $50 million or even make back her budget. Much has been said, including by me, about how Heigl herself has created the fiasco that has become her career -- her alleged difficult behavior on set, her unpopular public statements about the projects she's involved in, her perceived irritability -- but this has more to do with media gender bias than Heigl herself. For instance, Daniel Craig and Matt Damon have recently taken to making increasingly brash public statements about projects they've worked on, their personal politics and views on modern society -- and no one has criticized them, questioned their box-office viability or used their gender to explain their remarks. Like Sean Penn, they're men in an industry dominated by men -- and unless they're saying something overtly racist, they can say just about whatever they like, and in the case of Charlie Sheen, they might even be applauded for it.

In fact, I would argue that the male-dominated public backlash about Katherine Heigl's statements on Knocked Up -- in which she called the film "a little sexist" -- proved her own point on the film's sexism. I like most of Judd Apatow's films, but I don't think even Apatow would call himself a writer who understands women -- as the women in films like Knocked Up are generally mothering figures or unsympathetic -- brittle, shallow or unstable. If women are seen as being "cool," it's because they're like "one of the guys." In Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Funny People, which were, respectively, produced and directed by Apatow, it's the laid-back, dude-like qualities of the female leads, Mila Kunis and Aubrey Plaza, that attract their male counterparts. When he does create sympathetic women, it's because he's leaving the writing of women up to women, as in the case of Bridesmaids, or because he's writing for a man -- but with boobs.

Although I think that Hollywood needs more tomboys in film -- more women who subvert the gender binary -- that doesn't make what Apatow is specifically doing much better, as his films don't exactly problematize traditional gender roles, nor does it make Heigl wrong for criticizing it.

However, the problem with Heigl herself is that she's good at talking the talk -- speaking out about the inherent sexism in the movie industry -- but terrible stepping out and doing anything about it, and she seems almost willfully against challenging the norms of gender in cinema that she criticizes. In an interview conducted shortly after Knocked Up made her a star, Heigl criticized the fact that every up-and-coming actress is touted to be the "next Julia Roberts" but mentioned, "There's not another woman I look at and think, 'That's it. That's whose career I want to have.'" Similar statements on the subject and her subsequent career choices show Heigl doesn't care about awards; she wants to be a rom-com queen, a genre not exactly known for empowering women. However, what Heigl doesn't get is that rom-com stars like Roberts got to their A-list positions by taking chances within those genres and pushing the boundaries of what women are allowed to be. Although Pretty Woman wasn't doing much for equality, Julia Roberts' best vehicles, My Best Friend's Wedding and Erin Brockovich, show the lead achieving happiness by not ending up with the guy. Roberts finds herself through her career, getting involved with her community, helping others and becoming a better friend to those around her. She does not need to find a man or become more male to be powerful, and in Erin Brockovich, her femininity is the source of her strength.

In the case of Heigl, it's her less-than-progressive scripts that present the problem -- ones that, as a producer, she has a strong hand in picking for herself. Her best post-Grey's Anatomy film, 27 Dresses, was penned by The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna and revels in the exact kind of light-hearted fun that Heigl should be having. 27 Dresses doesn't push boundaries, but it's a great role to showcase her talents, allowing her to be the magnetic mixture of sassy and sweet that made her Grey's character so likeable and relatable; however, vehicles like The Ugly Truth, Killers, New Years' Eve, and One for the Money don't portray her as spunky and fun; they make her, well, ugly.

All of these films have been some of the bigger critical and commercial flops of their respective years, movies that almost everyone stayed away from. Although each is each horrendous in its own special way, One for the Money and The Ugly Truth, in particular, share an interesting vision of a woman's place in the world and means of achieving happiness, an image that -- as someone who cares about sexism in cinema -- Heigl should be trying to subvert. In The Ugly Truth, Heigl's character is a TV morning show producer forced to work, against her will, with a cynical, narcissistic chauvinist, played by Gerard Butler, one that the script calls for her to fall in love with. He's a relationship counselor with unorthodox recommendations, advice that Heigl uses to help her court a man she's interested in. Throughout a makeover process that alters her into a hyper-sexualized fembot, Butler mostly insults and degrades her, telling her that her identity is not what a man wants in a woman and not what her date will desire, and during her date, Butler tells her what to do through a receiver implanted in her ear. Thus, she is not only transformed by the male gaze; she is controlled by it and, eventually, falls in love with it.

Interestingly, what this does is actually uphold the Apatowian view of the world, of women achieving happiness by embracing masculinity, and promotes the very sexism that Heigl made her image in speaking out against. Her newest film, One for the Money, shows her doing more of the exact same thing. Her character -- the luckless, loud-mouthed Stephanie Plum -- finds herself out of her lingerie store job and weasels her way into being a bounty hunter for a bail bond agency. Because her background is in work that is stereotypically female, Plum is initially pathologically unfit for the job; however, she improves in her work by letting her male co-workers show her the ropes, teach her to fire a gun and help her chase down bad guys. As the other women in the film are nagging housewives, airhead secretaries or uncouth prostitutes, the film shows that Plum's femininity is not what empowers her, as femininity is undesirable. Only by embracing hegemonic masculinity can she become whole, and at the end, she winds up with a near-carbon copy of the Gerard Butler's Ugly Truth character.

What's equally interesting about the movie is not how bad it is or how bad Heigl is in it, but how poorly it's doing in the theatres and why. At the end of it's run, One for the Money, based off the popularly beloved Janet Evanovich series and intended to be a franchise for Heigl, will finish with around $25 million in theatres, a sum not much more than the hefty $15 million she earned for the film, one far lower than any of her other major releases. Although the law of diminishing returns affects many name actresses in Hollywood, this one is a more pointed specific backlash against Heigl, her public persona and what her films say about women. As a producer on her own films, Heigl has a great deal of input about what films she makes and what they do for women in Hollywood. Heigl is a terrific actress, when given a role worthy of her and a director who knows how to use her talents. It would be a shame to see her become as "washed up" as industry analysts project her to be, used up and discarded in the way that far too many actresses are, because the ladies of Hollywood and America deserve better. Women, LGBT persons and people of color deserve representation that better speaks to the diversity of their identities, to enjoy a cinema that challenges the limiting ways in which women and minorities are constructed, and in Heigl's case, that change needs to start with her. As an executive, she has the ability to affect change; all she has to do is put her money where her mouth is.

Kevin Sessums: Happy Birthday, Sidney Poitier!

2012-02-22T15:54:40Z

Sidney Poitier turned 85 this past Monday. For those of you who have read my memoir Mississippi Sissy you know he becomes a kind of motif in it, his very name the incantation that our family's maid would say to herself whenever she heard the n-word in her presence, a word she even heard from me the morning after Poitier won the Oscar. He was the first African American to win the award for Best Actor and I asked Matty May, as she was making my bed the next morning before I went to second grade, if she could "believe a n----r won Best Actor." It was a pivotal moment in my life and it is a pivotal scene in the book -- as is my seeing Matty May a few years later as we both picked cotton on my uncle's farm and I overheard her quietly saying his name, "PoitierPoitierPoitier," over and over to calm herself with each boll that she reached for and belligerently wrenched forth to put into her sack.

Indeed, when Oprah Winfrey called me one Sunday to talk about Mississippi Sissy after having read it she told me that she was seeing Mr. Poitier that coming Thursday and was going to take the book with her and read to him the passages she had marked, especially the post-Oscar and cotton field ones. The thought of Oprah reading to Mr. Poitier my words moved me beyond measure -- not just for me, but for sweet dear brave proud Matty May, who changed my life by being a part of it.

I've linked to Mr. Poitier's 1963 Oscar win here in celebration of it as well as the upcoming Oscar ceremony this Sunday. I also recall an Oscar weekend a few years ago when I was out in LA to attend the Vanity Fair Oscar party and a friend's Friday night star-filled shindig at his home and the Saturday afternoon picnic that two other friends gave at their home that was the epitome of low-key easy glamour, many stars lolling about on rugs having been strewn about their Beverly Hills lawn and others sitting at picnic tables. I've seen Oprah a few times at those same parties in the past and at that picnic. When she told me she was going to read to Mr. Poitier from my book I told her about that one picnic afternoon when I spotted him sitting at one of the picnic tables. I gathered up my courage and went and knelt at his side and began to tell him about Matty May and my book and how much he had meant to her. In the middle of my telling him all this, Penny Marshall came up to say hello to him and I rose to leave them but he grabbed my hand and asked me to stay. Penny said her helloes and went to sit with some other friends at a neighboring table.

I continued to kneel by Mr. Poitier's side and he continued to hold my hand. "Please finish telling me all about Matty May," he said softly, her name now coming from him as his had so often come from hers. In that moment I not only felt Matty's presence in my life once more but I felt God's. It truly was a moment of grace to have arrived at that moment from that earlier moment back in Mississippi when as a little southern boy I had broken Matty May's heart with my use of the n-word to describe this dignified man who now held my hand and before whom I was kneeling.

I can still hear her old soft throaty voice now whispering to me even as I type this birthday wish to one of our country's greatest actors: "... PoitierPoitierPoitier... " And I can hear him, too, whisper her name: "... Matty May..."

Check out Kevin's book, Mississippi Sissy, over at Amazon.

Erika Christakis: What Do Women Want: The Cinematic Wasteland of Female Fantasy (Part Two)

2012-02-22T14:00:00Z

When we last saw Bella, in the Twilight series, her single-minded ambition was eternal life with Edward Cullen. Even for young readers, her fixation feels a bit... limiting. I could handle the teen marriage, but why couldn't she just go to Dartmouth, already, and have her hybrid vamp-baby later? Before leaping on the author's religion and her own early marriage as explanations for this low-ball career path, consider how fun it would be to fast-track all the usual stepping-stones to adulthood.

Forget about taking the SATs and going to college. Forget about car payments and health insurance. Forget about finding time for date night or an assisted living facility for your aging parents. You don't even have to plan your own Vogue photo-shoot wedding because your gorgeous vampire sister-in-law happens to be the world's most awesome party planner. Let others do the heavy lifting; in fantasy land, ambition sucks.

Bella's helplessness can be incredibly annoying -- Edward always cooks for her, even though she makes dinner every night for her dad and Edward doesn't even eat human food -- but it's only maddening when viewed in the context of real life. Who doesn't dream of shirking responsibilities and being indulged? In this age of anxiety and the "End of Men," I suspect many teenage girls are drawn to a character like Bella who marries up in such shrewd and spectacular fashion.

The most humorless and tone-deaf criticism of Twilight is the claim that Bella and Edward's relationship echoes patterns of real-life human domestic abuse. Edward is too controlling, Bella too submissive, so it goes. He carries her around a lot -- it just works faster that way. And sometimes he also scales the walls of her house to watch her sleep. I can attest with utter certainty that I'm not 'down' for a man rappelling into a bedroom window to gaze wondrously at my daughter while she sleeps. But the thing is, vampires don't sleep. So Edward is fascinated not only with Bella but with the notion of human sleep. Get it?

Personally, I think even a 12-year-old can grasp that it's okay to enjoy an elaborate kidnapping-cum-sleepover as fantasy even if you would be appalled to find the UPS driver or neighborhood perv sitting in your room in the middle of the night. Edward is just trying to protect Bella from bad vampires who want to kill her! And, anyway, he later apologizes for being a control freak -- unnecessarily, in my view. He was only being gallant, and there are a lot of dragons to slay out there.

Some of us get this. It pains me a bit to say this, but a certain segment of the heterosexual female population occasionally enjoys fantasizing about men who protect them. Sometimes women are even known occasionally to fantasize about men who are both protective and dangerous. A few of the same women who would be absolutely devastated and irreparably harmed by rape have even been known to have an occasional rape fantasy. Breaking news: Those women know the difference. Surely this is more comprehensible than the kind of men who don't know the difference and actually commit rape.

Critics also complain that Bella gives up too much to be with Edward. Her story arc -- protracted virginity, rough sex followed by demon pregnancy, and so on -- suggests the tired cliché that women, not men, suffer for their sexuality. But on the level of pure fantasy, this doesn't quite ring true for a number of reasons. For starters, Edward has to give up a lot to be with Bella, too.

He subsists on an unappetizing "vegetarian" diet of animal blood in order to maintain his tenuous perch on the human ladder. Over time, he manages to tamp down the voracious thirst for Bella's blood that he likens to heroin addiction -- but only after he has lost his love and believed her dead for a time. It's the unbearable pain of being without her that makes him able to manage his animal instincts.

Well, who wouldn't want to believe that love could be so ennobling? That a person would make a sacrifice -- giving up the possibility of, oh, multiple sexual partners, let's say -- in service of a greater love? It's an appealing fantasy, and I'd like to say it's a fantasy shared equally by men and women. But nothing in our culture suggests that is true. All things being equal, women still appear to value sexual fidelity more than men.

Critics are offended by the implied presumption that men are sexual predators, but a lot of teenage girls might argue differently. Sexual assault is committed overwhelmingly by men against young, fertile women (five percent of whom become pregnant from the rape, according to reliable estimates). Yes, it can happen to anyone; but it usually doesn't. Does that make men rapists at heart? Surely not. But you have only to wander the halls of a college dorm on a weekend night to see the ambivalence on young women's faces as they try to navigate the sexual politics of 21st-century hookup culture.

Divorce rates are way down among college-educated couples who delay marriage, and I doubt that more than a minority of 30-year-old women are planning to risk their significant emotional and financial investment in order to synch more than two calendars on Valentine's Day. Put another way: Women don't care for dog-like male behavior any more now than they ever did. There's still something about the baroque awfulness of men's cheating -- the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Woody Allens and Dominique Strauss-Kahns -- that really makes a girl blanch. It's no wonder that Edward's efforts at self-control are so appealing.

Yes, I know, I've read the news: monogamy is out, "monogamish" in; even '70s-style open marriage, rebranded as "polyamory," is having its moment. It's true that young women are having an awful lot of sex these days, with a lot fewer strings attached, and rates of infidelity are reaching gender parity. But I'd like to know who invented these rules. Let's see some polling numbers on teenage girls who dream in their canopy beds about sharing their prom date in a girl-girl-boy threesome.

In fact, one of the more refreshing aspects of the Twilight story is the complete absence of inter-girl competition for boys' attention. It's Bella's emotional and sexual desires that drive the narrative. For all her blandness, Bella is always the star attraction in this show, and it's fun to watch the guys having at each other to be with her. A lot of ink has been spilled on Bella's sexual innocence; however, like most teenage girls, she's obsessed with losing her virginity and finds time to toy with more than one guy.

The story revolves in part around her attraction to not one, but two, incredibly strong and handsome supernatural males (not to mention the swarm of wimpy human boys she swats away like flies). We are deep into the saga before Bella definitively ditches Jacob, the werewolf runner-up, for her One True Love. I don't think this conflict is meant to be taken terribly seriously, and we're informed, to drive the point home, that Edward would probably win a hypothetical werewolf-vampire showdown, if it came to a duel. But it's certainly exciting to see a fictional girl at the center of an unstable love triangle for a change.

Furthermore, Edward is just as sexually inexperienced as Bella and, frankly, more of a prude. His ideas of courtship are literally Edwardian and he's holding out physically because he wants a marriage license first. "Where I'm from," the 100-year-old vampire explains earnestly, "It's how one says 'I love you.'" "At my age," Bella retorts, "It's how one says, 'I just got knocked up.'"

But after a lot of nagging and tearful fumbling in the four-poster bed he's masochistically bought for her, Edward eventually backs down and tries, rather ineptly, to initiate sex at the very end of Book Three. This development is omitted in the movie version, but Stephenie Meyer throws us a bone, so to speak, lest all this male fussiness begin to veer toward the repellant. Respecting a girl is one thing, apparently; being an idiot is quite another. But by then Bella has safely drunk the abstinence Kool-aid herself and agreed to do things "in the right order."

This all sounds rather grim, but the love story is entirely believable, and nowhere is this more apparent than during the infamous vampire-human wedding night. Hackles were raised over the broken headboard and bruised flesh, but an even more subversive element may be the expression of joy we see in the young couple as they make love for the first time. Can you recall when you saw genuinely romantic laughter during a movie sex scene?

Bella awakens bruised (but unhurt), not because she's been beaten, but because the kinks in what she calls the "tricky" business of interspecies sex haven't quite been worked out. "I think we did amazing," an obviously sated Bella reassures her sheepish husband after he's laid waste to the bedroom in lieu of injuring his wife. In the more effective and tenderhearted film version, we see the headboard splinter as he braces himself mid-PG-13-thrust. We catch a glimpse not only of his impressive, CGI-enhanced, musculature but also of his embarrassed and hesitant face. It's an expression familiar to millions of over-eager young men who are enjoying sex for the first time.

In lesser hands, this scene would have been played for comedy or horror. But the skilled director, Bill Condon, plays it real instead, showing Bella's calm reaction shot as she reassures her new husband that everything is going to be just fine. The largely female audience smiles knowingly. By playing it straight, with wit but not irony, we can fully embrace the fantasy, rather than viewing it from a snarky distance.

This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one here and check back on Friday for part three.

Ellen DeGeneres: Right Here in Black and White

2012-02-22T13:40:21Z

The Oscars are this Sunday, and I have a feeling The Artist is going to do very well. It's nominated for 10 awards, and if I hadn't lost all my money on the Super Bowl, I'd be placing my bets.

It's so original, and that's hard to find in Hollywood these days. Now everything's either a sequel, or based on a book or inspired by actual events. And if it's not, it's probably a sexy vampire movie.

Who would've thought that a black and white movie with no dialogue would be so popular? It's simple and entertaining. We should've been doing this years ago.

I didn't think a silent movie could hold my attention, but it really did. I liked it so much, I started watching some of my favorite TV shows on mute.

One cast member who definitely deserved an award was Uggie. It's too bad he's not eligible for an Oscar because he's a dog. I can't believe how smart he is. He seemed to understand exactly what was going on in every scene. My dog thinks his tail is a squirrel.

Don't miss this movie. Yes, it's silent and in black and white, but it's entertaining, innovative and a great opportunity to practice lip reading. I knew everything the dog was saying.

Zorianna Kit: Movie Review: The Secret Life of Arrietty

2012-02-22T00:12:54Z

Just as there are those who look forward to every new Pixar animated film, there are also those who cannot wait for the new releases from Japan's Studio Ghibli. Like the Pixar pics, Studio Ghibli's film are also instant classics from My Neighbor Totoro to Spirited Away to Ponyo just to name a few.

Where Pixar is led by John Lassiter's genius, Ghibli has co-founder Hayao Miyazaki to spearhead its vision. One of the best animators of all time, Miyazaki directed the aforementioned films, won an Oscar for Spirited Away and continues to win awards and raves for his other films like Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke, among others.

Obviously good animators know good animation and it's no secret Lassiter and Miyazaki are friends who admire each others' work. Disney, which distributes Pixar films, also has the rights to all of Ghibli's films. As chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, Lassiter has been an executive producer of some of those Ghibli films' U.S. versions, overseeing their English language dubbing and being instrumental in exposing them to a larger audience. (Anyone notice the plush Totoro in Toy Story 3?)

Now comes another Studio Ghibli film released by Disney, and like the previous ones, it deserves your attention as well: The Secret World of Arrietty, based on Mary Norton's children's book series The Borrowers, is about a tiny family who are part of a secret world of four-inch people who live underneath the floorboards of homes, "borrowing" things they need from human "beans" that won't be missed.

The borrowers live carefully, so as to never be seen by humans, but when one particular family's daughter, Arrietty, befriends the new sick human boy who's just arrived to the house, the family feels their lives are now in danger and pack up to move. Unfortunately, the damage to their lives begins before they can leave.

As with all Ghibli films, whether it is tiny people in Arrietty, a goldfish princess in Ponyo, or forest spirits in Totoro, the fantastical living in tandem with normal humans never feels weird or questionable. And though you never know where it's going and how it's going to end up, the ride is always interesting because nothing ever feels contrived or predictable. Rather there is a quiet gentleness and a deep beauty that resonates no matter if you're a child or an adult. It speaks to all without needing to be labeled a particular genre -- other than animation.

And the animation is breathtaking. Not in that computer animated we-see-every-piece of hair-follicle-sway-in-the-wind, but more like a Matisse painting come to life. Miyazaki did not direct this one, but was instrumental in the planning and the writing of the screenplay. He hired first-time filmmaker Hirosama Yonebashi, officially the youngest director in the Ghibli fold, and the result is a stunning world that forces viewers to take the surroundings they often take for granted and see them from an awesomely, overwhelming perspective of a tiny borrower. Electrical outlets become passageways from one side of the wall to another, a teakettle is a boat, a human needle becomes Arrietty's sword and duct tape on the bottom of her father's shoes enables him to climb the side of cabinet.

When Arrietty was released in Japan, it became the country's highest grossing film at the box office that year with 12 million people turning out to see it.

Creating an English dub was challenging because Japanese sounds are longer than American ones and tend to end with an open vowel. That means the animated characters' mouths are usually open at the end of a sentence. Screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick (The Spiderwick Chronicles) had to write an English screenplay using words that not only fit the mouth movements set forth by the existing animation, but construct sentences to fit the length of the longer Japanese sentences. That must not have been easy, but the final product on screen makes it look like it was never even an issue.

The British version sees Arrietty voiced by Saorise Ronan (The Lovely Bones) with Mark Strong and Olivia Coleman as her parents. The U.S. version utilizes the Disney machine, populating the film with its roster of Disney Channel stars in the kids roles. There is Brigit Mendler (Good Luck Charlie) as Arrietty, David Henrie (The Wizards of Waverly Place) as the human boy she befriends and Moises Arias of Hanna Montana as a young borrower named Spiller. All are to be commended for their work.

Real-life husband and wife Amy Poehler and Will Arnett play Arrietty's parents with Arnett showing a restraint and gravitas not previously heard on screen. Carol Burnett as housekeeper Haru is hilarious in that same way that made her Miss Hannigan character in the 1982 Annie film so delightful and memorable.

The music in the film is sung by French singer/songwriter Cecile Corbel, whose voice is as lush and as beautiful as the scenery she's paired with. It's enough to make anyone rush out and buy the CD soundtrack.

Mark Cosgrove: Julius Caesar, Angelina Jolie and Me - A Week at the Berlinale

2012-02-22T00:00:00Z

If a week is a long time in politics then a week at a film festival is an eternity where you not only travel across time and space but into the minds of a female victim of war, a confused second generation British-Egyptian teenager and a reluctant revolutionary. Taking in five films a day can leave the imagination bewildered and becalmed, ravaged and enlightened. What follows are some of the highlights and observations from one of the world's most expansive and consequential film festivals.

In his introduction to the catalogue, festival director Dieter Kosslick drew attention to the fact that it was one year since the Arab Spring; something that was addressed by a number of films across the programme. He also observed the urgent need to ensure freedom of expression for artists - another theme close to the festival's heart. These two strands found outstanding manifestation in two documentaries: The Reluctant Revolutionary and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. This year it felt like truth was much stranger and more emotionally engaging than fiction: documentaries were getting to the heart of the matter more directly than drama.

Sean McAllister's The Reluctant Revolutionary follows Kais, a tourist guide in Yemen, as the revolution unfolds. His work is already perilous and drying up because of the Taliban and when a protest camp sets up in 'Change Square' in Yemen's capital Sana'a, Kais is non-committal partly feeling this is bad for tourism. Over time he begins to get involved and engaged. Film-maker McAllister is either a fool or brave or possibly both because he is obviously the only foreigner around, wondering in a volatile environment with secret police mingling amongst the crowds of protesters. What he captures is extraordinary with access conventional media flinch from. When the state troops shoot into the crowds the camera follows Kais into the makeshift hospitals. The scenes are devastating. But the mood of change and resilience is evident as it is in the charming reluctant revolutionary Kais.

The art of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is inextricable from his politics and for a Chinese artist, that can be life - or at least liberty - threatening. Ai Weiwei's work is not confrontation for the sake of it but draws attention to the state's wilful dismissal of its own people. This is most apparent in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake where the state never issued the names or numbers of fatalities, many of whom were children because of ill-built schools. Ai Weiwei and colleagues documented and published the names of nearly 5500. Later he would make an installation in the front of an art gallery with 5500 school bags. In this documentary, you get a real sense of the cat and mouse confrontation between artist and state until finally, he is arrested. Released after 81 days, he is fined $2.5m, banned from meeting people and using the internet. It is moving to see ordinary Chinese people leave money at Ai Weiwei's door - the power of the artist evident.

The artist himself could not be at the screening having restricted movements imposed on him, however he managed to arrange for fortune cookies to be handed out to each audience member, which contained a unique message from Ai Weiwei to share. Mine read "You can delete the words but you cannot delete the facts" and was immediately sent into the Twittersphere.

Where fiction really did matter, was somewhat surprisingly in the hands of the glamorous Hollywood star Angelina Jolie. The red carpet razzmatazz was very much in evidence when the "Brangelina" road show hit town to the extent of preventing me from getting into Angelina's own film as she had the paparazzi captivated. However she does not pull her punches in her film In the Land of Blood and Honey, which attempts to depict the horrors, inflicted on women in the 1990s Bosnian war. Whilst it dramatically slides towards melodrama at the end, the first half of the film brings us face to face with the horrific abuses of Muslim women in the conflict.

Similarly, Philippines director Brillante Mendoza's Captive started off with a bang, throwing Isabelle Huppert as well as the audience into the hands of terrorists in a dramatisation of the 2001 incident when Muslim terrorist group Abu Sayyaf took a number people hostage from a Filipino island resort. The first hour is compelling, disorientating filmmaking giving a glimpse into the ordeal. However, the film flags in the second half. I later discovered that the director had intended the film to be three hours. Longer would have actually been better, allowing the film to more fully explore the relationship between captors and captives, the tedium and terror of over a year in captivity.

Documentary and fiction were satisfyingly brought together in the Taviani Brothers' Caesar Must Die, a compelling testament to the transformative power of art that went on to win the top prize at this year's festival. Prisoners in an Italian jail perform Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and through the process realise and understand more about their own condition. One prisoner observes: "ever since I discovered art this cell has truly become a prison." The 80-year-old veterans Taviani Brothers effortlessly merge drama, fiction, documentary and real life. Through immersion in the drama of Shakespeare, the prisoners discover more about themselves and their world. Similarly we, Berlinale festivalgoers, immerse ourselves in films and discover more about our world and ourselves.

Jon Chattman: Predicting the Oscars: 'Crystal' Clear Winners?

2012-02-21T23:01:44Z

There are some givens for this Sunday's 84th Annual Academy Awards telecast: Billy Crystal will likely slay it with his usual humorous monologue and "safe" appeal; Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close star Max von Sydow will continue his silent streak by not winning Best Supporting Actor, and Miss Piggy and Kermit will make for the evening's best presenters. Aside from that, the telecast should offer more surprises than usual. Sure there are slam dunks like Rango taking home Best Animated Feature, and The Artist will probably win big in most major categories, but I suspect a bunch of upsets in the acting categories.

Here are my predictions for how the night will play out in every category. On a related note, I'm hoping Melissa McCarthy wins Best Supporting Actress for Bridesmaids. I think Octavia Spencer has this in the bag, and she deserves it, but McCarthy's win could help land more comedic performances Oscar nods in the future. Yes, I'm still reeling for little golden love for Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man? Slappin' the bass.

Best Picture
The Artist should and will win this and become just the second silent film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. A dark horse here, however, is The Descendants which earned a Golden Globe win for Best Drama. It's not likely. It'd be fitting if the "dark horse" was War Horse but that film has no legs. Get it? Hugo has a chance here, but it's a kids movie for adults and kiddie flicks get no Oscar love -- Ever. Had The Help had a bigger showing nominations-wise, I'd say that would be the best chance to unseat The Artist. But it didn't, and it won't.

Best Actor
This category could be the biggest shock of the night. It's essentially down to George Clooney for The Descendants and Jean Dujardin for The Artist. Months ago, I thought Brad Pitt would finally win for his career-best turn in Moneyball. If Clooney and Dujardin split the vote, look for that to happen and I'd be delighted. But it won't. My gut says Clooney will win this for his brilliant turn, but if Dujardin wins it would come as a surprise to only the people who bought tickets to The Artist not expecting it was a silent film.

Best Actress:
Extremely Loud, and Glenn Close? Sorry no. This is a battle between Iron Lady Meryl Streep and The Help's Viola Davis. One day Streep is going to win her third Oscar, but my gut tells me it won't be this year. Actually, my gut can't speak because it's an organ. But, Davis should have this in the bag and deserves it. This will be viewed as an upset.

Best Supporting Actor:
Please, Christopher Plummer has had this won since the summer for his subtly moving performance in Beginners. The only possible upset is for fellow 82-year-old Max von Sydow to win, but I doubt it. If it were up to me, Nolte would take this home.

Best Supporting Actress:
Remember when Kate Hudson was a lock for Almost Famous and lost to Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock? Well, I do. This category sometimes serves up the most surprises (ugh, Tilda Swinton over Amy Ryan -- really?) and I expect it to happen again. I'm going to say McCarthy or Jessica Chastain pull an upset here. I may be wrong and probably will be. I'd personally vote for Chastain, but the Academy can make history this Sunday if Davis and Spencer win since two women of color have never won in acting categories on the same night. That's just nuts by the way that it's taken this long.

Best Director:
I can't pronounce his name nor will anyone presenting him the Oscar, but The Artist'sMichel Hazanavicius will take the honor. Martin Scorsese could surprise here, but I can't see him being honored so soon after The Departed. I don't know about you, I'd rather have Marty win again for a movie with bloodshed.

-- And the rest...
Adapted Screenplay: It's beyond me how The Help was left off. Because it was it's a three-way battle between Hugo, The Descendants, and Moneyball. I know Aaron Sorkin just won last year for The Social Network, but he deserves it again this year. That said, Descendants is so winning this category. Maybe Alexander Payne will make more movies if he keeps winning Oscars every time he makes a movie?
Original Screenplay: Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. It's about time, but Woody's finally going to get another gold statue.
Animated Feature: Rango hands down.
Art Direction:: Hugo, which had the most nominations with 11, will clean up on technical categories like this one. It deserves to.
Cinematography: I think The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Jeff Cronenweth deserves it, but look for The Tree of Life to win this one. It'll be the Academy's way of honoring a truly great or truly "WTF" movie depending who you talk to.
Costume Design: Look for The Artist to take this one home.
Editing: Moneyball has a shot here and deserves it, but I suspect The Artist will prevail here.
Foreign Language Film:Iran's A Separation should have this -- easy.
Makeup:I know they made Glenn Close become a man, and Margaret Thatcher look like Meryl Streep or I probably mean that the other way around, but I think the Academy will give some props to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 as sort of a lifetime achievement thing for the series.
Original Score: John Williams is nominated twice here for scores that, in my opinion, didn't live up to his standards. Howard Shore, who earned a gold guy for Lord of the Rings had the best score in my book, but look for Ludovic Bource's work on The Artist to win.
Original Song: What a disgrace this category has become. Oh well, at least Bret McKenzie will win for "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets.
Sound Editing: I'd love to see Drive win here. Actually, I'd love to go back in time and somehow get that amazing film more Oscar nominations. I mean, really? Seriously Oscar voters? One nomination? Anyway, Hugo's got this one.
Sound Mixing: Hugowill win this, but personally, I'd vote for Moneyball here.
Visual Effects: Again, I'm saying Hugo will win this although it wouldn't surprise me if Rise of the Planet of the Apes nabbed it.
Animated ShortLa Luna should make Pixar smile in a smile-less Oscar year.
Live Action Short : I think it'll be The Shore, a wonderful bio-pic of Dinah Shore. OK, I made that up but it should win and that's cool because Terry George would be one of the winners. He should've gotten love for 2004's Hotel Rwanda.
Documentary Feature: I'll say Undefeated because it would be terribly ironic if it lost.
Documentary Short: Something tells me the timely The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom will win it.

Wrestling legend Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka predicts The Descendants.

Quora: Why Is The Artist So Favored in the Oscars This Year? What Makes the Movie So Special?

2012-02-21T21:51:06Z

This question originally appeared on Quora.

Mark Hughes, Screenwriter, Forbes Blogger

There are the general, more obvious reasons, and then there are secondary reasons.

The general and obvious reasons are that it's really a wonderful story, with great acting and directing that demonstrate how even a silent, black and white film can so clearly express emotion and character. Technically, the film is a great achievement because it so successfully captures the look and style of old films (apart from some musical choices, which didn't bother me personally but which I do think probably detract from the "illusion" for some).

In addition, it's a very daring choice to make this kind of film during a modern age when 3D and special effects, etc., are so dominant. To make this movie and tell this story, and to do it so successfully, is truly a testament to the faith the filmmaker had in the power of cinema -- he believed that yes, even without color or sound, movies have a hold over us and transport us and capture our imaginations. The film works, audiences love it, and that speaks to just how great the film and story are, that modern audiences so jaded by effects and modern filmmaking can be taken in by this throwback to classic storytelling.

Now, besides those general and obvious reasons, there are the secondary reasons. This is a film that honors filmmaking, and so it appeals to the Oscars in a self-referential way. It is loving toward the past, but ultimately embraces the future and the movement toward ever-newer and more sophisticated technological achievements. It is cool and artsy, and appeals to the desire of Hollywood to feel at once relevant and mainstream but also unique and enlightened. Perhaps there's also a degree of subconscious identification going on, to a limited extent, since the AA is slowly seeing an influx of younger, newer members and so the older, long-time members might feel a sense of nostalgia and identification with the broader themes in the film.

Which raises a final point. At a time of so much technological advancement in filmmaking, when the industry is moving from celluloid to digital and when 3D is becoming a permanent fixture while CGI has taken over effects and design in even simple dramatic films, The Artist comes and reminds us of a simpler time when storytelling had far less extra tools at its disposal, and so had to make the utmost of the very few tools it did have. The film speaks to some part of us that, while enjoying and utilizing all of the technology and fast-paced changes in our world, perhaps still appreciates and longs for something that feels simpler and more pure. It's like a moment of calm reflection, watching the leaves blowing in the wind, during an afternoon respite on an otherwise hectic day. The rest of the day might be awesome and filled with Internet, iPods, new cars, and fast-paced living, but that quieter moment in the afternoon can fill a need inside us that we might usually not even realize is still there somewhere deep down.

Oscar is inherently about Hollywood rewarding Hollywood; it's the industry gathering together to pat one another on the back and point to favorites and stand-outs every year. It's only natural that a film meeting the requirements of high quality, daring production, and both critical and box office success while also being a love letter to Hollywood would attract the attention of Oscar.

Notice that the other top contender for the Best Picture award is Hugo -- another brilliantly realized film about filmmaking and the history of movies as transformative and magical. (I'm personally guessing that the Oscar for Best Picture will come down to a fight between The Artist, Hugo, and The Descendants.)

More questions on the 2012 Academy Awards:

Is The Artist supposed to be a French movie? What does that mean in the Oscars? Why is it up for Best Picture rather than Best Foreign Language Film?

What are the biggest surprises of the 2012 Oscar nominations?

What should I do if I want to see everything that is likely to get nominated?

Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin: Making Undefeated

2012-02-21T19:56:22Z

Co-authored by Rich Middlemas

"North Memphis looks like New Orleans after the flood; we just never had a flood." That's how the neighborhood where Manassas High School is located was described to us by a teacher and, unfortunately, it's a chillingly accurate description. The closing of the Firestone plant in the 1970's started an economic downturn that the community has yet to recover from. An all too familiar story for many communities around this country.

It was against this backdrop we found the story of the Manassas Tigers; a high school football program which, like North Memphis, had similarly fallen on hard times. With timeworn equipment, seventeen players, and a patch of dirt masquerading as a practice field, the team was on life support. In fact, the only way the school could afford to keep the football program alive was to farm out games to more powerful county schools that would pay the Tigers to be their "homecoming queen" on Friday night.

This all changed in 2003 when Bill Courtney, a former coach turned lumberman, began volunteering his time coaching at the school. Over the course of five years Bill and other volunteers were able to turn around the fortunes of the team. It is this transformation and the effect it has on several of the players that is the focus of our film Undefeated, which is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.

Football was never meant to be the sole focus of this film. We saw it as an opportunity to tell an intimate coming of age story through the lives of three players and their inspirational coach. To do this, we moved from Los Angeles to Memphis for nine months and embedded ourselves with the team. We wanted to be present for every moment of failure, perseverance and triumph. For us it was about capturing a moment in time. We saw this as a chance to celebrate the potential in a community that is far too often demonized by sensational media coverage of its crime and violence. We focused on telling a human interest story without ever dismissing the socio-economic challenges that have come to define the North Memphis area. The deteriorating backdrop of this undeserved community is a constant reminder of the obstacles these kids face everyday.

How we solve the problems that communities like North Memphis face was never a question we sought to answer. In all honesty, we probably aren't even smart enough to begin to find the solution. Instead, our hope in making Undefeated was that the personal stories of three high school football players and their volunteer coach, would at least start a conversation that may lead to answers.

UndefeatedMovie.com

Facebook.com/undefeatedmovie

Twitter.com/weinsteinfilms

David Wallechinsky: Academy Awards 2012: Foreign Language Films

2012-02-21T17:43:40Z

I saw 50 of the 63 films entered in the Best Foreign Language Film category and I am happy to report that this was an exceptionally good year. If there was no single masterpiece that stood out, there were a couple dozen good films that I would recommend for film fans of various tastes. My two favorite entries did not make it to the list of nominees, but I'm not upset because the five that did qualify are all worthy choices. Here are my comments on the five nominees, as well a handful of non-nominees that stood out for me.

Monsieur Lazhar (Canada)
It's sixth-grader Simon's day to deliver milk cartons at school before classes start. But when he arrives, he makes an awful discovery... his teacher has hanged herself inside the classroom. When school officials realize what has happened, they keep the other children away, but Simon's best friend, Alice, slips through and sees the body hanging. To say that they are traumatized is an understatement, particularly because, as we later learn, they share a dark secret about the teacher. Enter Monsieur Lazhar, an Algerian immigrant who volunteers for the unenviable task of taking over as the teacher of the stricken class.

Enter, too, a plot flaw. The school principal hires Bachir Lazhar without checking his references. Okay, she knows it will be hard to find a teacher who is willing to step into such an unpleasant situation, but isn't that exactly why she would take more care? I pointed this out to a couple of other film attendees and each said a variation of the same thing: "It's a movie; so what."

Lazhar's story of having been a teacher back in Algeria for nineteen years is a lie, but because of his own sad history and his natural sensitivity to children, he turns out to be right person for the job after all. Mohamed Fellag is excellent in the role of Bachir Lazhar, and all in all this is a touching and satisfying film.

A Separation (Iran)
A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) has swept awards around the world, including at the Berlin Film Festival and the Golden Globes, so it is the favorite to win the Oscar. At a time when neo-conservatives and weapons manufacturers are drumming up support for the United States or its surrogate, Israel, to attack Iran, it may seem politically controversial for the Academy to honor an Iranian film. The fact is, however, that A Separation is popular because it is a drama about two families in crisis with only a mere dash of politics. The women in Iran may dress differently from those in the U.S., and the Iranian justice system may be different, but at heart couples are couples.

Simin and Nader are a middle-class married couple with a bright 11-year-old daughter, Termeh. They have finally been granted an exit visa and Simin is ready to leave the country, but Nader balks because he feels obligated to care for his father, who has Alzheimer's disease. Exasperated, Simin moves out of their apartment and goes to live with her mother. Nader is forced to hire a pregnant caregiver, Razieh, who keeps the job secret from her husband, Hodjat, a man whose temper prevents him from holding down a job of his own. One day Nader returns home from work and discovers Razieh gone and his father tied to the bed. When Razieh returns, Nader fires her and pushes her out the door. She falls down the stairs and loses her unborn baby. In Iran a fetus is considered a living being, so Nader is charged with murder.

This is an intense crime investigation drama that also shows the culture clash between an educated family and a poorer, uneducated one.

Like Monsieur Lazhar, A Separation has a plot flaw that I found disruptive. But when I mentioned it to others, I got the same reaction (i.e. so what?) so I'm not even going to go into it. A Separation is gripping throughout and deserves the widespread praise it has received.

Footnote (Israel)
You just don't get that many family dramas about Talmudic scholars, but Footnote (Hearat Shulayim) does a great job of filling the gap. Although it deals with a serious conflict between a father and son, it is heavily laced with humorous portrayals. Eliezer Shkolnik is a grumpy, misanthropic scholar who devoted 30 years of meticulous research to deducing the existence of a lost medieval version of the Talmud that would change the entire understanding of Jewish religious history. But just one month before he was finally about to publish the fruit of his life's work, his rival, Yehuda Grossman, announced that he had discovered the actual lost manuscript. So although it turns out that Eliezer was right all along, his 30 years' worth of research is now useless. All he has to show for his labors is a footnote in the work of his late mentor. What Eliezer really wants is to be awarded the ultra-prestigious Israel Prize. Unfortunately, the chairman of the committee that chooses each year's winner is none other than Yehuda Grossman.

Meanwhile, Eliezer's middle-aged son, Uriel, has become a noted scholar himself. But unlike his father, Uriel is amiable, well-liked by his students and his colleagues, and recognized in academia for his treatises on popular subjects. Then, one day, out of the blue, Eliezer receives a call from the Ministry of Education informing him that he has finally been awarded the Israel Prize. Life is good... until the selection committee calls Uriel in for a private meeting and explains that a mistake has been made and that it was he, not his father, who was supposed to receive the call.

At this point, Footnote takes a major change in tone. There are no more laughs and instead we see Eliezer, unaware of the mistake, act like the selfish jerk he has always been.

Director Joseph Cedar was previously nominated for the Academy Award four years ago for Beaufort.

Bullhead (Belgium)
Although it takes place in the murky and ugly world of beef cattle raised with illegal growth hormones, Bullhead (Rundskop) is really a tale of two men of about 30 who are thrown back together many years after a gruesome childhood incident that scarred them both. Actor Matthias Schoenaerts portrays Jacky Vanmarsenille, a brooding bully who can't stop shooting himself up with testosterone. Eventually we learn that there's a good reason why he does so.

Rural Belgium may not seem like a proper setting for a story about organized crime, but where there's money to be made, there are shady people to make it. If cattle can be brought to slaughter size in eight weeks instead of ten, enter the hormone mafia. Jacky is a cattle farmer whose veterinarian partner introduces him to a meat deal that Jacky correctly perceives is bad business. One of the lower principals on the other side turns out to be Diederik, his best friend from childhood, who was there when an insane older boy literally crushed Jacky's future manhood.

As the movie progresses, the criminal story fades into the background and the plot concentrates instead on Jacky's attempt to come to terms not just with Diederik, but with the bully from his past and the demons his childhood trauma activated.

I am not normally a fan of stories with violent anti-heroes and no one to root for, but Bullhead is simply a well-made film.

In Darkness (Poland)
Leopold "Poldek" Socha is a sewer worker in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Poland, who takes advantage of the unsettled times to burgle homes and stash the loot in the sewers. He and his young sidekick, Szczepek, stumble across a group of Jews who are in hiding and hoping to use the sewers to escape. Not one to miss an income opportunity, Poldek agrees to provide the Jews with food and other help as long as they can afford to pay him. But by the time the Jews' money runs out, Poldek has seen the viciousness of the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators, and he has begun to perceive the Jews not just as marks, but as human beings deserving of compassion. His determination to continue aiding them puts Poldek and those around him in increasing danger.

In Darkness is yet another entry in the now established sub-genre of films about gentiles who helped Jews during World War II. Indeed, Leopold Socha was a real person who, along with his wife Magdalena, was later recognized by Israelis as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. There is nothing special about In Darkness, but it never hurts to be reminded that people do occasionally rise above apathy and selfishness to help others just because it's the right thing to do.

Back in 1992, director Agnieszka Holland was nominated for her film Europa, Europa.

There were so many good unnominated films this year, that I hesitant to mention just a few of them. Still, here are four of my favorites.

Le Havre (Finland)
When Aki Kaurismäki's film The Man Without a Pastwas nominated for an Academy Award in 2003, Kaurismäki refused to attend the Oscar festivities because he objected to the fact that George W. Bush was about to invade Iraq for no good reason. In 2006, Finnish cinema authorities submitted another of Kaurismäki's films, Lights in the Dusk, without asking his permission. He vetoed the submission and Finland went without an entry that year. Now, with U.S. combat troops out of Iraq, Kaurismäki has lifted his Oscar boycott, and Le Havre went forward as Finland's entry.

This was one of three European films entered this year that deal with everyday people who decide to help illegal immigrants. The others are Terrafirma from Italy and Morgen from Romania. The former is harsh and more confrontational; the latter is a bit amusing, but undistinguished.

In Le Havre, Kaurismäki regular André Wilms plays Marcel Marx, a former bohemian, now in his sixties, who scraps by shining shoes in an era when fewer and fewer people wear shinable shoes. One day, after his beloved wife has been taken to the hospital, Marx comes upon a pre-teen boy from Gabon who is trying to make his way to England to find his mother. Because all of the other immigrants with whom the boy, Idrissa, was traveling have been arrested, the local constabulary becomes obsessed with capturing him. Marx, emerging from his personal cocoon, makes it his mission to help the boy. Along the way he is aided by a neighborhood of characters reminiscent of the cast of the classic French trilogy from the 1930s, Marius, Fanny and César.

I have read other reviews of Le Havre that grumble about it being "sugar-coated" or a "fairy tale," but it worked for me and was, in fact, my favorite of the 50 foreign language entries I saw. Maybe I was just in the mood for a feel-good story in the midst of troubled times.

Belvedere (Bosnia)
Although the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 is off the radar for Americans (to put it mildly), it is the subject of three noteworthy films produced in the past year. In the Land of Blood and Honey, directed by Angelina Jolie, and As If I'm Not There, this year's entry from Ireland, both deal with the horrific exploitation of women by Bosnian Serb forces. I'm guessing that neither is going to earn significant box office in Serbia. Serbs have complained that In the Land of Blood and Honey is not "balanced" because it doesn't portray atrocities committed by Bosnian Muslims. Jolie has responded "The war was not balanced. I can't understand people who are looking for a balance that did not exist."

I am glad that In the Land of Blood and Honey and As If I'm Not There were made, but it's the third film on the subject, Belvedere, that made the greatest impression on me. I don't think it is so much because it was actually made by Bosnians, as that it takes place 15 years after the war ended and is an uncommon reminder that the traumas caused by war don't stop the day the shooting and bombing does.

In July 1995, Serbian forces under the command of General Ratko Mladić massacred 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Fifteen years later, Ruvejda, her brother and sister and other survivors of the war are still living in a refugee camp called Belvedere. Ruvejda accepts the fact that her father, her husband and her children are dead, but she wants to learn the truth about how they were killed, and she wants to find their remains so she can give them a proper burial. It is a bleak existence presented in stark black and white. It is so bleak that her young nephew, Adnan, has had enough and, taking advantage of his skills as an accordion player, he applies for a role in the Serbian version of the reality TV show "Big Brother." A schlumpish, harmless everyman, he is accepted as the token Bosnian.

In a reversal of the 1998 American film Pleasantville, the real world is shown in black and white, while the ridiculous fantasy world of reality TV is shown in color. Juxtaposing the worlds could have been manipulative and contrived, but director and screenwriter Ahmed Imamović makes his points in a dignified manner.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey)
If someone had suggested that I would like a slow 163-minute Turkish film two-thirds of which takes place outdoors at night, I would have been shocked. But to my surprise, I found Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir zamanlar Anadolu'd) perhaps not riveting, but at least mesmerizing.

The police know that a murder has been committed and they have the confessed murderer; all they need is the body. So, in the middle of the night, Commissar Naci, Prosecutor Nusret and Doctor Cemal venture out into the countryside with the suspect, his accomplice and a bunch of local officers, in search of the corpse which the suspect can't exactly remember where he buried. Piece by piece we learn about each character and the male human condition. When a female is finally shown, in the form of a beautiful young woman who serves the men during a stopover at the home of a local official, it sets off mostly painful emotions in the main characters, leading eventually to the revelation of the sadness in each of their lives.

As the only "civilian" in the official entourage, Doctor Cemal is the outsider and we tend to see the others from his perspective. Because the storyline deals with the search for evidence, we don't even begin to learn about the murderer and his motivations until quite late in the story.

Although other viewers may be relieved when the body is finally found and the convoy returns to the city -- and daylight -- I was disappointed because I had, without thinking about it, settled into this insular world. Clearly Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is not for everyone, but for those movie fans who are not addicted to action, it is worth the time spent watching.

A Simple Life (Hong Kong)
I admit that I was cynically worried that the Academy would give a nomination to the mediocre entry from China, The Flowers of War, just because it would attract a huge following of the Academy Awards in the growing Chinese market. Thankfully, my fears were unwarranted. However, China is actually allowed to enter two films because Hong Kong, although part of China, is considered a separate entity.

This year's Hong Kong contender, A Simple Life (Tao jie) is the poignant tale of Ah Tao, an elderly servant who has spent her entire life taking care of four generations of a single family. Now, in her declining years, she is responsible for bachelor film producer Roger Leung. When An Tao suffers a stroke, she chooses to retire to an old-age home. Roger, without the slightest resentment, reverses roles and takes responsibility for helping his former servant. But the story is really An Tao's. A curious person despite her limited experience in life, she becomes involved in the lives of the other residents of the home. This could have been a maudlin view of class differences and growing old, but the leads, played by Deannie Yip, who won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival, and big-time star Andy Lau, act like real people, and director Ann Hui scrupulously avoids excess sentimentality.

I can't leave the subject of this year's foreign language entries without mentioning two of the higher-profile non-nominees, Miss Bala from Mexico and Pina from Germany. I have read some whining online about what an outrage it is that Miss Bala was not nominated. Having seen most of the entries, I think this criticism is unfair. It may be better than In Darkness, but it is not as good as the four I mentioned above. However, it is an excellent exposé of the depth of corruption and tragedy caused by powerful drug cartels and I hope that more people get to see it.

Pina, directed by Wim Wenders, is a documentary about the late choreographer, Pina Bausch. Although it did not gain a foreign language nomination, it was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category. To put it as politely as I can, Wenders is not one of my favorite filmmakers. However, Pina is a beautiful presentation of Bausch's work and more power to Wenders for having made it. I saw the 3-D version of the film, but it is not necessary to do so to appreciate Bausch's artistry. This is Wenders' second documentary nomination, twelve years after he was given a nod for Buena Vista Social Club.

Michael Vazquez: Doomsday Cinema, Part 2: Oscar-Nom The Turin Horse, Final Week in New York (VIDEO)

2012-02-21T16:16:51Z

If the end of the world (or your final film?) is when you say what you really mean, perhaps with The Turin Horse, Béla Tarr is giving the last laugh to the Gypsies of his state-seized debut film (shot at age 16) and delivering a stone-cold classic.

I Ain't Gonna Work On Magyar's Farm No More

First of all, don't believe the hype. Béla Tarr did not unequivocally state that he would never make another film; if you read the statements he's made, he is instead being honest about estimating what he feels he can, or can't progress in good conscience as an artist, and as an individual. He will certainly be busy teaching, as well as working with Cine Foundation International. Tarr did unequivocally state that should he feel the need to make a film, he would, but only for the very best of reasons. Such prudence by a director of this caliber prompts this cinema fan to lovingly and respectfully muse on what might be the benefit of a few other legendary directors (of late prone to armchair travel films laden with cardboard literary references, or shockingly impotent biopics about history's famous minds) meditating a little longer themselves on what they opt to helm.

Tarr's present "retirement" doesn't mean that co-director Agnes Hranitzky will not continue to work, nor that his protégées aren't already impacting the world (see Kornél Mundruczó's Delta), even as his films continue to do so, and it certainly doesn't mean that he's not seeing everything in his cinematic mind's eye, which will -- if the law of averages prevails, perhaps even in an uncommon artist's soul -- compel him to create more cinema. One hopes that the Film Society of Lincoln Center (who just did a full one-week retro) will opt to re-screen his films after The Turin Horse launches, because from this film there is to be newly-born an audience. I consider it miraculous fortune to have seen The Turin Horse at this past New York Film Festival, as it remains a full-on, absolute Big-Bang moment.

Simply put, for this fan, The Turin Horse is not only my favorite film from Tarr, it is easily very high amongst my all-time favorite films. It's a movie that I and some others will see multiple times, like the way some folks watch Star Wars (I doubt there will be any confusing Turin Horse re-edits and remixes in the years to come, though a multi-artist, encyclopedically trans-genre remix project of Víg Mihály's Oscar-worthy score is an intriguing idea). And yes, sometimes girlfriends or boyfriends will be dragged along to this movie after much negotiation, and fights will be had, and there may even be break-ups after The Turn Horse,wherein two individuals will come to ken that, given how differently they see this film, they are just too incompatible, as they awkwardly ride the train (surrounded perhaps by those annoying BAM ads). Said alienation will occur not because The Turin Horse is actually controversial, but because, depending on the person, you will likely either feel: A) cinematically ravished or B) land-locked, eight seats in on either side, contemplating how you're gonna cash in on the guilt your mate should feel for dragging you to this.

This dynamic was perhaps in play with at least one couple that I noticed during the screening of Tarr's seven-hour flick Satantango I attended, where I also met a couple who'd traveled from Nashville for this series -- "Our own Superbowl weekend, here at Lincoln Center!" bragged a FSLC staffer to a nearly full house. Maybe those who saw all of his films should be given a T-shirt; in fact, someone should curate a "Marathon Cinema" series of films which are five hours or more, and I base this on my own recent, simply transformative experiences at screenings of Tarr's Satantango, Edward Yang'sA Brighter Summer, and even the TV-serial films like Olivier Assayas' Carlos (which is out in a worthwhile "director-approved" DVD from Criterion) and the German omnibus-triptych Drieleibein -- this kind of curation would be great to see more often.

And those of us who caught as many fiicks as we could at Lincoln Center's Béla Tarr retrospective were treated to all sorts of tricks of the light, the weather and even animals, via a camera which moves with knee-buckling grace, re-imbuing the mundane with a sense of the miraculous, each movement hence ever more so, leaving one nearly out of breath, probing a strangely compelling universe pocked with moments of transcendental cinematic arrest: the instant agitprop of two kids running amok, reaching a fevered state of hyperactive repetition as state anthems play, in Werkmeister Harmonies; the end-credits rolling over a
doomed young couple whose lives are already infused with anti-climax as they ride alongside their new washing machine on the back of a truck in Prefab People; the dive-bar waltz through a slice of humanity which opens Werkmeister Harmonies; the singular visual opening of The Man From London, (or the singular opening to any of his films); the depiction throughout several films of women's agonized, drunken epiphanies as they sit amidst a table full of grimly complacent, drunk men (The Outsider and Prefab People come to mind quickest); the even grimmer depiction of a human tendency to submit to subjugation (the rape and post-rape scenes in Almanac of a Fall and Family Nest, alongside countess other moments interwoven during near-exactly 24 hours of programming.

And then, friends, there's The Turin Horse. Perhaps those who seek to at times superimpose structure, plot, message, etc., upon this film (present company included) would do well to just view it as the final scene in the enduring dream which his films have induced; just pan from The Man From London, over to a dusty road, leading to a cottage...

Consider The Gypsy

VIEWER 1: "You know, it's such a terrific film. And it only has four characters.

VIEWER 2: [confused] "Four?"

VIEWER 1: [anticipatory] "Yeah, you're forgetting the horse."

VIEWER 2: "No, I mean, yeah, the horse; did you know they re-cast the male lead because the horse didn't work well with the first?

VIEWER 1: "Really."

VIEWER 2: "Yeah. Anyway, I meant it's more than four; you forgot [to count] the
gypsies; remember that dynamite scene? There were at least five right there."

VIEWER 1: [pensive] "Oh, yeah...I would say it's his most reductive film."

VIEWER 2: [jokingly defensive, half-joking, trying to hide defensiveness] Well, I'd say distilled to a potent essence, rather than merely reductive...

In the search for words, I find myself returning to "deliriously sober". This is to say, it uproots us from the ever-present forgetfulness of being and posits us into a state of meditation.

One could say that it is this forgetfulness-of-being for which Tarr regularly indicts his characters (whom he also loves unconditionally) delivering, for over three decades, the insouciance of humanity itself, played by a gallery of actors with whom he has maintained a Bergman-esque rapport. Erika Bók, who as a child, played a child-suicide in Satantango, (and who played Henriette in Man From London) appropriately closes out this, Tarr's declared-as-last film, by eventually becoming a ghost, daughter to Ohlsdorfer, played by Neptune-visaged Tarr stalwart Derzsi János, whose POV bears witness to the unknown, naked, innocent in Satantango, after he takes part in an attack on a hospital.

Fresh from screening all of Tarr's feature films, it seems to me that the winds in The Turin Horse have been gathering towards this final judgment since the government police-seizure of his very first film (a short about Gypsies, see below) which he shot at age sixteen. And so, now, after he's examined the no-wave anarcho-individualism of post-adolescence (The Ousider); the strains of love in a tight economy (every film); the group dynamic in the face of "newlyfound" freedom as a case-study of human nature, and the failure of The State itself (Stantango) alongside countless other topics and visual miracles (in a filmography which you can only really discover for yourself), his last film is a chronicle of a death foretold, in which an already diminished human existence in a world of fear and taken-for-granted hostility is distilled down to a cine-Cartesian meditation, elucidating too late for its protagonists, a vital connection and responsibility to their very own fates. Whatsoever its viewers make of it belongs to the many mysteries of cinema.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Actually, depending on what you're used to, it's not always that well-lit (making for terrific exercise of the left brain -- more on that later) and on paper the plot reads like a bad, unfunny spoof of a Bergman film published in National Lampoon. Suffice to say that during the six days in which the light itself fades, as it were, a farmer and his daughter undergo their daily rituals in a kind of Groundhog Day of The Apocalypse, each day's routine stoically carried out in quiet, growing desperation, amidst a gradual, total abandonment (betrayal?) by the four elements.

Trailers certainly never help a film like this; you simply gotta dig it to dig it.

In the body of Tarr's work, The Turin Horse is unique in that more than any other film, it emerges as living photoshoot, converting the screen into a filmset, and the cinema into a cosmic darkroom, with a correctly boundless visual appetite. The organic value of this camerawork cannot be gainsaid by an appraisal of Tarr as a wielder of a narcissistic viewfinder, as it were, fetishizing the camera's gaze to the point of creating reductive work. To this understandable application of such a critique to The Turin Horse, I would note instead that what we have arrived at with this film is a subject matter matching an aesthetic, that is to say, a highly contemplative, perpetually revelatory lens is being used commensurately in the service of depicting a stripped-down, primal existence -- and so, pace and measure are equal to subject and content, creating a bewitching vérité, of sorts.

Nietzsche's Lost It & I Don't Feel So Good Myself

Against a solid black background we hear the all-important story of Nietzsche's famous breakdown, as a voice worthy of a Parliament album intro or a Lucasvillain, narrates:

"In Turin on January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the door of number six Via Carlo Alberto, perhaps to take a stroll, perhaps to go by the post office to collect his mail. Not far from him, or indeed very removed from him, a cabman is having trouble with his stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the cabman...Giuseppe? Carlo? Ettore?...loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene of the cabman, who by his time is foaming with rage. The solidly built and full-mustached Nietzsche suddenly jumps up to the cab and throws his arms around the horse's neck sobbing. His neighbor takes him home, where he lies still and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words: "Mutter, ich bin dumm," and lives for another ten years, gentle and demented, in the care of his mother and sisters. Of the horse, we know nothing."

The Turin Horse subsequently opens with images that seem to exist in, or come from the very edges of cinema history itself, haloed like something from Eisenstein's Potemkin, disappearing in and out of the dust like a phantom carriage. We see the horse's sweaty body in a rich, tonal profile, her hair matted like a new-born's -- and to an extent she is, bearing in mind the gravitas of the off-camera prequel.

During this alternately grueling and graceful, draining and exhilarating camera capture, the ostensibly unnerved, just-beaten horse moves spasmodically, at times almost like a wired, taxidermal horse, exhausted and chafing against a too tight-harness.

Shot from below at a garish upward angle against a soft leaden sky, we see the actual eyes, wide in alarm, the horse running nearly sideways in a kind of sinister update to Muybridge, a study in motion into and out of which light flows like a mercurial life form. I re-played this sequence at 1/8 speed and was mesmerized. Seeing The Turin Horse on the big screen is -- and I hate to say it, as perhaps not everyone reading this can do so -- fully essential, but having said that, seeing this on DVD was like being able to examine it under a microscope, and it is my hope that cinemaphiles will get a chance to do both.

Tarr winds his camera around the entire carriage, and when he finishes where he began, there is a poetry to our experience, a kind of metaphysical 3-D for the soul, through a camera fully immersed in the mis-en-scene, viewing the screen as jumping-off point a for dive through the viscosity of light and shadow, instead of as a mere plane to fill. And while the wind may be faked, the living earnestness of the cameras posit us into a kind of cinema that makes this one of the most hearteningly vital films I have ever and will likely ever experience. If Godard only needed a gun and a girl to make a riveting film, Tarr only needs a wind machine, a horse and an off-camera legend. Rather than compromising suspension of disbelief, any contemplation of Tarr's camera only adds to the very myth of this image, making it dually an experience of pure cinema, and an experience of a cinematic feat. Yes, camerawork can make me cry.

The baroque nature of this grueling, heart-heavy final trudge home is made achingly complete by a twisted, dirgey, euro-waltz comprised of three long, sighing, cello strokes, in a slow, repeating cascade, echoed by three shorter notes, against which we hear the counter-rhythm of an upwardly winding barrel-organ, grinding out a simple, sinister, carouseling, six-note scale which emerges during climaxes, after which, as the sole remaining element, it also serves as punctuation, its six notes seemingly counting down the days of the film, serving as the metronome of Ohlsdorfer and daughter's existence, while the cello emerges as their sad, sleepy, life-rhythm, gradually turned lament; every now and then we also hear a two-stroke heartbeat, and a scutter across the strings evoking an alarmed whinney. Tarr wisely finishes this opening scene without music, mixing back in the diabolically mechanical sounds of harness, wheels and road, reminding us that silence will almost always do.

By way of my own sub-cultural reference points-slash-flashbacks, I (and likely only I) was reminded by this music of Einsturzende Neubauten and their freaky horse, which probably adorned as many T-shirts as it did albums, something not to their discredit, though unfortunately not contributory to their bottom line; Nick Cave's "The Carny", with its equally sinister dirge-waltz (and a tragic horse) bubbled up from memory, and The Wolfgang Press's "Journalists" (a song which contains a great opening line) also came to mind powerfully, as did their "Cut The Tree" video, which was certainly High Art to my 19 year-old self (you can watch it HERE).

Before The Apocalypse, Chop Wood, Carry Water. After The Apocalypse, Chop Wood, Carry Water

Costumes do perhaps make the character, and one could cheekily dub The Turin Horse a costume drama, but these players fill their wardrobes out with a transcendent naturalsm. There is no doubt that in the hands of another director, this would all seem laughable. Their gothic stillness reminds me of a skit on "The Young Ones", depicting an ancient couple shivering around a campfire, talking of how they laughed. In the theater, a blessed dust mite fell my way and I found myself musing on how the old man in The Turin Horse could be seen as a counterpoint to the old man in Le Quattro Volte, like Snoopy's desert-dwelling cousin, Spike.

If Tarr gets the Oscar for this film, he will be immeasurably indebted to a horse (whose tears come at an incredible time, albeit as result of a wind-machine) which he chose over his initial lead actor, when horse and man -- make that co-stars -- weren't working out. And while it's sad to hear The Turin Horse has a Pete Best, frankly, it's hard to imagine a better lead than Derzsi János, who, in playing such a simple character delivers a hypnotically fierce inner monologue, affixed in a resolutely calculating, cosmically confused, wholly confounded face-scrunch, the shifting of which renders him a part-time Cyclops (his eyes wide-open moments are perhaps telling). Nearly mute, János delivers an angry grunt worth more than a
few Oscar acceptance speeches. Erika Bók's acting for the camera is masterful (she should probably teach a class on acting for the camera after this film). Manifesting a newfound awareness later in the film, Bók transforms the daughter into one of Edvard Munch's lost femmes, as she see stares out of the window, her head floating behind the glass as if transmitted holographically, fading after a few beats, into an incredible big-screen after-image.

Tarr's camera captures these performances with such vitality that watching them eat their single, daily potato, I am reminded that Kafka on his deathbed delighted in watching others drink water, as it was an essential act which his condition denied, and the vicarious experience buoyed him. During one scene which opens day two, the wind is so strong that you feel the camera bracing itself as the actress navigates the wind, bending against it like a salmon upstream, her hair blowing wildly, then wrapping her head magnetically, violently like an octopus in battle. Like the carriage scene, it feels as if from cinema heaven, its unintended lost focus and camera head-butts imbuing it with a subversive, documentary feel.

And again, through the detailed depiction of extremely simple acts, the film slowly settles us into a new mode of awareness. In fact for such a stripped-down, slowed-down film, it all felt like Sensurround -- every time the theater door opened and wind blew through the cinema, I would wince with a chill, and I could feel people passing by my seat, sweeping through the darkness like X-rays. And it is this sharp contrast (in this case literal and figurative) to our workaday lives that catalyzes our own meditations on the proverbial, big questions. During the dark murky light of middle-night, we discern the cosmically solitary table with chairs on either side, just melting into the tonal grays where, according to Drawing From The Right Side of The Brain, "the left-brain has no use for shadows other than the information they provide about a namable three-dimensional object" Not so for Tarr, who re-invests our left-brain, simultaneously re-introducing us to the wonders of Metaphysics. Or as Orbital asked, with a terrific sample: "Are We here?". It seems a miracle the chairs and table don't just float away – gravity itself seems miraculous, and of course, is.

During the night following this transformative day, we record the first falling-away of a constant in their micro-universe. After a shot in which the back of daughter's head looks like a tangled clump of worms, we hear this exchange:

Ohlsdorfer: "Hey, You"

Daughter: "What is it?"

Ohlsdorfer: "Can't you hear them either?"

Daughter:"What?"

Ohlsdorfer:"The woodworms. They're not doing it...I've heard then for 58 years but I don't hear them now"

Daughter: "They really have stopped... What's it all about, papa?"

Ohlsdorfer:"I don't know. Let's sleep"

It's fun to note that the most common form of woodworm is the Deathwatch Beetle, which, per Wiki, "to attract mates, these woodborers create a tapping sound that can be heard in the rafters of old buildings on quiet summer nights." This also remind me of Franz Kafka -- not The Metamorphosis, but rather an anecdote from I Am A Memory Come Alive, wherein we learn that F.K., in resolution to rid his apartment of a mouse, set a trap and subsequently found himself kept awake the entire night by "the sound of death coming for the mouse". At this point in the film, the deathwatch has tellingly come to an end, as the beetles -- the largest order of animals on our planet, have stopped mating.

As the narrator describes them awake in bed, we are invited to imagine the father's worldview, which -- by way of staying on the Coleoptera theme -- may perhaps not be so different from Ringo Starr's line about what he sees when he turns out the lights, and is now being thrown a cosmic curve which he is perhaps not equipped to grapple with (and of course, who is?). And when Tarr brings up the light on that same murky space in the cabin on day two, it is terrifying, the contrast in the room evoking a not-yet dessicated, bleached bone with black blood stains in its cracks, or the garish gleam of a gutter-coin, its edges encrusted with a dark gunk.

As malaise sets in, they instinctively ground themselves in the only certitude their life offers, the routine of work: he chops wood, she washes clothes. He is also seen punching new holes in the leather strap, perhaps to make the harness less constricting for a beast of burden which has seemingly resigned its post; when she hangs a white shirt which covers the entire screen, it looks like a final, wrinkled dingy flag of surrender, their own ghostly shroud of Turin, as it were.

'Got me a movie, I want you to know...wanna grow up to be a DEBASER!

On this second day, in walks a neighbor, looking like lead-Pixie Frank Black in a boa, singing his own song of debasement, as the daughter fills his brandy jug. Delivering an alternately lucid and inchoate treatise on dominance and the onslaught of beauty, similar to protestations throughout history by Socrates, Nietzsche, Caulfield, et, al, he decries a universe of acquisition-as-original sin, from which acquisition and debasement have always been the informing dialectic, in a world where nothing is true and everything is permitted, there for the taking by those who would, while the side of good vanishes -- apparently, not like the "pious" who disappear in the Left Behind series, nor the Randian drop-outs by "elites" of Atlas Shrugged, nor the "Human Project" of Children of Men -- it is perhaps instead the abdication of responsibility, in a world where Mankind devours himself, and Nature abhors a vacuum.

Conjuring up a Nietzschean theme from The Will To Power about the potential for religion to reduce the natural to the contemptible, he quickly outlines a theodicy taking into account "Man's own judgment, his own judgment over his own self, which of course, God has a big hand in, or, dare I say, takes part in. And whatever he takes part in is the most ghastly creation that you can imagine." Ready for his close-up, he resumes his song of debasement-through-history, as it were: "Because you see the world has been debased. So it doesn't matter what I say because everything has been debased that they've acquired, and since they've acquired everything in a sneaky, underhanded fight, they've debased everything. Because whatever they touch (and here Ohlsdorfer puts his hand on the bottle) -- and they touch everything -- they've debased. This is the way it was until the final victory. Until the triumphant end. Acquire, debase, debase, acquire. Or I can put it differently if you'd like. To touch, debase and thereby acquire, or touch, acquire and thereby debase. Its been going on like this for centuries. On, on and on. This and only this, sometimes on the sly, sometimes rudely, sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, but it has been going on and on. Yet only in one way, like a rat attacks from the ambush. Because for this perfect victory, it was also essential that the other side, that is, everything that's excellent, great in some way and noble, should not engage in any kind of fight. There shouldn't be any kind of struggle, just the sudden disappearance of one side, meaning the disappearance of the excellent, the great, the noble. So that by now the winners who have won by attacking from the ambush rule the earth, and there isn't a single tiny nook where one can hide something from them, because everything they can lay their hands on is theirs. Even things we think they can't reach but they do reach, are also theirs...." After another 200 or so words, he concludes, and Ohlsdorfer gruffly admonishes him: "Come off it! That's rubbish!"

Audience laughter, I am silent. Clearing our throats after this scene, the sound is husky with inactivity; this is a silencing, hypnotic film, and we measure the intervals of time passing with dry, un-blinked eyes. What follows is one for the ages: declining to defend his points any further, with a benign shrug and a drop of coins onto the table, off he goes, back into the snow-globe of doom; seen from the window pausing and taking a swig before continuing headstrong into the punishing gale, he is a kind of tambourine-man of the apocalypse.

Another, final, visitation from the outside world begins via a simply classic, long shot of a carriage on a horizon marked by a lone barren tree, two white horses winding through the serpentine road at a thunderous pace. The daughter sizes the visitors up as gypsies, and her father, with a natural, casual presumption, dispatches her to dispose of them, and without delay. The gypsies, heard in detail but seen only from middle-distance as they carouse and drink from the well, taunting the daughter, are almost cartoonish. The father comes out of the house wielding an ax, offering a free appendectomy, and after inviting her to come with them to America, they give her a book as payment for the water, rear their white horses, and off they go in a swirl of wind and admonitions to the father:

"The land and the water are ours! You are weak! You are weak! Drop dead! Drop dead!'

They depart, leaving them literally in their dust, the daughter emerging like a torch-less lady liberty, aswirl in dead leaves, the Gypsies' "Drop dead!" chant heard for a few chilling seconds after they leave.

Immediately after, we see a close-up of potato scraps being cleared, after which we see the book and a mug of salt on the table, as we hear the sound of running water, slowly coming to a trickle, then a final drop. The daughter picks up the book, which reads like The Bible -- or Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- in its indictment of the self-proclaimed practitioners of God's word, and what they hath done with same, finding in their very deeds a kind of death (vanquishment?) of God as it were. As she slowly makes out the words, we are hanging on every syllable; even the hyphens in the subtitles are hypnotizing and dramatic during this climax of sorts, the girl reading, the sound of her hand on the pages, the narrator, the music, the storm outside. The next day the well is dry. Ohlsdorfer decides they have to leave.

In a departure which feels in many ways like the end of the film, father, daughter and horse (now unbridled, as the daughter pulls the cart) flee on the fourth day. Not long (relativism prevailing) after they gorgeously vanish over the horizon like three blades of grass, they re-emerge, newly-sprouted (rejected?) from the earth, apparently forced to abandon the road, newly aware of an ever-growing circumscription in their once completely knowable domain.

Putting away their artifacts (their cart appearing powerfully archaeologic), they already seem like ghosts, and the daughter's face, seen through a window, impends death. Manifesting a newfound awareness, Bók transforms into one of Edvard Munch's lost femmes, as she see stares from behind the glass, her head seeming to hover, as if transmitted holographically, fading after a few beats, into an incredible big-screen after-image.

Tarr does windows, 2012: from her to eternity...

Like accidental Cartesians, their awareness is now stripped down to a single flame, and as they try and re-light their lantern (evoking a magic lantern, and the thought that this could be Tarr's last film), we get a living breathing exposure, a swelling negative, once again turning the entire cinema into a darkroom, the disruption of which is unforgivable, but silently endured, as someone checks their cellfone. The lantern will not light, even though it is full. A moment later, the daughter notes that even the embers have gone out.

Daughter: Father what is all this?

Ohlsdorfer: "I don't know, but please throw a potato at the head of the inconsiderate schmuck who, expecting the end, turned on their cellfones during this scene."

Would that it were -- like Woody Allen wishing he could materialize Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall I find myself wishing I had an extra spud to lob, though I would never want to waste it.

Ohlsdorfer: "Tomorrow we'll try again"

In the last scene we see the father eating a raw potato, János again perfectly measuring out his character, delivering a subtle twinge as he, in his animal consciousness, realizes his station by what he is chewing. The daughter (perhaps in an end-of-days reversal of the myth of the forbidden fruit?) declines her father's instruction to eat, sitting mute, eyes fixed on a small point, ignoring the fact that their table now seems to extend into the very blackest corner of the cosmos.

"We've got to eat" he says. I contemplate the utterance of these words -- the very words which have preceded self-justified treacheries innumerable throughout time immemorial, and in fact, by characters in a few Tarr films -- by a doomed man, and also, how the word "got" itself etymologically stems from the earliest manifestations for the word "God", from the Norse, meaning that which is summoned, and this perhaps saying something about our priorities, and by extension our slow, gradual, collective fate.

To ask how such a minimal film can be so enveloping, is to answer one's own question. Suffice to say, we are sent back into our prior lives transformed by The Turin Horse, which -- as a doomsday film must -- gives one cinematic pause to reflect on existence itself. Call it I-Max for the soul, suspending the bombardment of our senses and re-channeling our hyperawareness to the grain between the grain during the moments between the moments, before the final moments.

The Cosmic Wirtschaft of Béla Tarr: A Mighty Wind

"Cosmic wirtschaft" ("wirtschaft" meaning economy) is the term used by the local party-spy doctor in Tarr's Satantango, as he contemptuously describes the relegation of personal responsibility to outside forces by a group of individuals. "This dull inertia leaves them at the mercy of what they fear most, a cosmic wirtschaft", he writes as he of course, sells them out in his official duties as communist-party stooge. And in Tarr's universe, it is the inactivity of individuals which renders them helpless or victim to the activities of others possessing the wiles to act; it is this inactivity which leads to consent-by-forfeit to the dominance of institutions which ramp-up our collective fear and further inactivity, and worse.

In fact, The Turin Horse reminded me very much of the -- aptly-titled, given the comparison -- animated anti-nukes feature When The Wind Blows, whose two seemingly-blameless protagonists simply wait for a death which, had they lived a far less passive life, they might have avoided.

I found myself troubled by the extent to which I, at first, readily accepted that, given the hard life of a subsistence farmer, Ohlsdorfer was somehow inherently noble. But after all, he (like most of us, sadly) is a man who, if you ramped up his actions to a nation-state, would leave very little hope for the planet: he is not a good steward of nature, he is steeped in patriarchy, and he would rather disembowel a stranger than give him water (the Gypsy scene brings to mind Christ's line about God not overlooking the sharing of even a cup of water to the least of his followers). When he calls bullshit on his neighbor's spiel, it finally occurs to me that perhaps he is part of the problem; perhaps even the fact that he can only use his left hand, which is viewed by many religions as the hand of sin, seems telling. (And by way of wacky, Wiki-wandering, the only remaining wild horses on the planet are the Dzungarian horse, "Dzungarian" meaning from the left side of Mongolia)

1900

If we, for a moment, conceive of The Turin Horse as an actual doomsday film, discovered by a subsequent civilization, we can imagine they might infer that too late does the man realize that woman is not his servant; too late does he realize the horse is not his property -- and they might guess, depending on their cynicism and their own flaws, that he probably never realizes Gypsies aren't his enemies, though perhaps he is contemplating this and many other things as he waits for the end.

Returning now to our times, although this film is a devastating micro-experience (with macro implications) of EOTW, it's imperative to note that according to the date of the events of this film, the Apocalypse never arrived -- the twentieth century did. Our survival through this past, wholly suicidal century is a genuine miracle, not to be squandered, nor counted on to repeat.

Tarr Wars: Revenge of The Gypsy

While Tarr's aesthetic -- his incredible staging and sense of bodies in motion in relation to each other and his unfailingly earnest eye are inevitably reflective of the fact that he and his parents are lifelong theater-folk, he is also partly a product of his times, or put in context, he was 22 in '77. His own familiarity with persecution (starting with his very first film, about Gypsies, shot at age 16) has enabled him to emerge as a unique spokesperson with Cine Foundation International.

In an interview with Fergus Daly appearing in the Facets.org DVD of Damnation, he speaks of State intervention in his own life, and art, and a dream (of being a philosopher) deferred, then recouped manifold, after officially being prohibited from philosophical inquiry: "They stopped me for a political reason, because we made an 8mm movie about a gypsy worker's group in Hungary who had sent a letter to the boss of the community party saying "Please, we would like relief from the country. We would like to go to Austria because we cannot live here anymore. We have no job, we have no food, we have nothing".

And while Tarr notes in this interview that he eventually found a way to work with a small film co-op, when asked, he claims he is not now, nor has he ever been, as it were, a philosopher in life, nor in cinema, having abandoned this aim after shooting another film about a family in a worker's squathouse and being arrested by "very brutal and aggressive" police.

In the service of outgrowing our passive, collective expectation of miracles, Béla Tarr himself is given the last word, herein -- to wit, his statement on the imprisonment of filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, their lawyers and many others:

"Cinematography is an integral part of universal human culture! An attack against cinematography is desecrating universal human culture! This cannot be justified by any notion, ideology or religious conviction! Our friend, brother and esteemed colleague Jafar Panahi is in prison today, based on conjured and fictional accusations! Jafar did not do anything else than what is the duty of all of us; to talk honestly, fairly about our own country and loved ones, to show everything that surrounds us with tender tolerance and harsh austerity! Jafar's real crime is that he did just that; gracefully, elegantly and with a roguish smile in his eyes! Jafar made us love his heroes, the people of Iran; he achieved that they have become members of our families! WE CANNOT LOSE HIM! This is our common responsibility, as despite all appearances we belong together."

The Turin Horse is currently playing in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center, CLICK HERE for info.

CLICK HERE for a list of theaters around the country where The Turin Horse is playing.

The Turin Horse will be playing for an additional week at Cinema Village, you can find out more HERE.

Random Notes

In recognition of so many high-quality performances by horses this year, the folks at the Oscars have decided to create a special category, "Best Performance By A Horse (Male or Female)". This year's nominees include the horses in Melancholia, War Horse, The Turin Horse, and a very special posthumous nomination for the horse in Spain's Oscar-entry, Black Bread. Competition is, as one might guess, neck-and-neck, and not without controversy, as apparently the horse in Melancholia said something about National Velvet which was misheard as "national socialism", while a grainy, 8mm blue version of Lady Godiva, featuring the horse from War Horse has surfaced, though his widow says "That it is not him in the film. And I should know". The horse appearing in The Turin Horse said that if he wins, he will still dedicate his Oscar to the horse from Black Bread, adding that he will be "too choked up to give a speech" if his film is called.

Extra-credit viewing:

CLICK HERE for my year-end round up of live music performances I filmed at festivals and around my beloved New York City, including Gil Scott-Heron, Prince Rama, Florence & The Machine at Bonnaroo, Beak, Moby and Inyang Bassey, Kings of Convenience, Eminem, Anna Calvi, The Strokes, Bootsy Collins, !!!, Beach House, Capybara...

David Macaray: 5 Ways to Improve the Oscars

2012-02-21T14:45:52Z

Even with the plethora of award presentations (SAG, WGA, DGA, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit, People's Choice, et al) occurring before the Oscars (February 26) -- and, unfortunately, diminishing much of the attendant surprise and drama -- the Academy Awards are still the best show in town. Hey, they're the Oscars. Not to disrespect the Golden Globes, but ask any actor, director or writer which prize they'd rather win -- a Globe or an Oscar -- and see what they tell you.

But as good as the Oscar presentation is, it's not perfect. There are ways to improve it. Some years ago I heard a comedian (alas, I've forgotten his or her name) suggest that in addition to the "death montage" (where we're somberly reminded of all the industry people who've died the preceding year), they should have a montage of people who are still living but whose careers have died. While that was said in mordant jest, there definitely are ways to jazz up the Academy Awards. Here are five of them.

1. Show screen tests. People love seeing behind-the-scenes, "insider" stuff. Open up those film libraries and show us some of the famous screen tests we've all heard about. Apparently, James Dean tested for Rebel Without a Cause, and Lucille Ball tested for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (would it be too optimistic to hope that Desi Arnaz read for Rhett Butler?) There have to be hundreds of screen tests just like these lying around somewhere. Dig them out of the vault and show them.

2. Squelch the jokes. Why do the Academy Awards have to be so unremittingly funny? There's not enough humor available to us already? With all the network and cable sitcoms, comedy specials, romantic comedies, buddy movies, gross-out movies, neighborhood comedy clubs, late night talk shows -- not to mention the hundreds of humorous blogs and funny animal pictures on the Internet -- we couldn't watch a relatively staid three-hour awards show without requiring joke after joke?

3. Show alternative scenes. Because we've all memorized our favorite scenes, we'd love to see outtake footage -- real outtake footage, not the mistakes and so-called "bloopers" we regularly see on TV (where actors get tongue-tied or forget their lines). Show us some actual scenes that were initially shot one way and then, for whatever reason, were discarded and replaced by another version. For example, instead of that famous "I'm the king of the world!" line from Titanic, how cool would it be to see an earlier version where a deliriously happy Leonardo DiCaprio is seen shouting, "I am buoyant with self-confidence!"

4. Give the writers a bigger role. Have a 4-5 minute bit where a writer recounts the evolution of his script -- where his or her idea came from, how it got expanded upon, modified, reversed, amplified, abandoned, retrieved, recalibrated, etc. Give the viewing audience an inside look at the creative process that goes into delivering a final script. Granted, they can't do justice to this endeavor in just a few minutes, but they can give us all a rough idea.

5. Invent new categories. Throw in a couple of eccentric and good-natured "new categories" Announce that a group of studio executives got together and chose such things as Scariest Movie of the Year, or Funniest Scene of the Year, or Most Romantic Scene, or Grossest Scene, or Best Explosion, or Best Ending, etc. You don't have to give an Oscar for these categories; simply mention the names of the people involved and the name of the movie, and move on. More than anything else, the Oscars are supposed to be a celebration of the movies. Right? So celebrate!

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author ("It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor"), was a former union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net