Five Academy Award Nominees in Five Days

[cinemabon]

Five Academy Award Nominees in Five Days

First of all, I have been writing on this website for more than a decade and in that time have written on the art of cinema many times. Those who know me, also know my history – admirer of film since the 1950’s, studied film at college in the 1970’s, worked in commercial film industry, acted, edited, and directed “filmed” commercials; went to Hollywood, met a lot of people in the film industry, managed a movie theater in LA, and have continued my love of the art form to this day. Therefore, I consider this post not just about one film, but about five important films released in the year 2012.

Monday, January 14, 2013 – Day one

“Django Unchained” – directed by Quentin Tarantino

Let me say right from the start that I like this movie – no, I love this movie – and anyone who admires filmmakers and who has studied the art of filmmaking the way Tarantino has will like the film as well, despite the “overt” violent images scattered around in certain scenes. I shall discuss those at the end of this critique.

This film is a love letter to Sergio Leone and John Ford, starting with the use of the floating “red” lettered credits. It was Kurosawa who once said that part of his preparation before he started a film project was to watch a few John Ford pictures, and there is a good reason why. Ford had perfected a distinct quality of looking at film in a way that expresses the near epitome of motion pictures as an art form. Ford loved the horizontal line and no one could film a wide “western” expanse the way he did, not even my personal hero in film, William Wyler (who probably picked up some of Ford’s technics to shoot his western epic, “A Big Country.”). Tarantino does and uses the technique liberally, a fitting tribute to a man who helped establish the art of the western.

Now to put everything into historical perspective, Sergio Leone was an admirer of Ford, and Tarantino loved/loves Leone’s westerns. Now to be fair, Leone wasn’t the only Italian director who admired and tried to emulate the American western for European audiences. The original “Django,” directed by Sergio Corbucci, was part of a series of films that Corbucci made that competed with Leone. Italian actor Franco Nero starred in the original film as Django and makes a cameo appearance here as a slave owner who loses in a fight (“Do you know how to spell it [your name]” he asks Jamie Fox. Fox spells it and adds, “The D is silent.” Franco does a beat and finishes, “I know,”) His appearance is largely thanks in part or probably mostly due to Tarantino’s tip-of-the-hat to both the actor who originated the part and the film’s director. In fact, the musical soundtrack is also an homage to Leone as Tarantino used variations of composer Ennio Morricone’s themes for the soundtrack cues and those were woven in at crucial moments, heightening the emotion of certain scenes. Even the opening song, “Django” is a takeoff on Tom Jones from the 1960’s, whose breathy booming ballads graced the opening of “Thunderball.” The other uses, such as Jim Croce’s “I got a name” are part of the many humorous touches Tarantino makes throughout the film and what endeared this movie to me.

Tarantino knows his craft and this film is beautifully filmed, staged, and laid out in linear fashion with just a few flashbacks briefly thrown in for background. Cinematography by Oscar winner Robert Richardson is both intimate and breathtaking in its grasp of the western horizon. The sudden use of zoom, as Leone often did for effect, is added by Tarantino as another nod to that style of filmmaking. “Django Unchained” isn’t just pretty pictures and lovely music. Instead, Tarantino relies on his Oscar-winning cast of actors to help drive the narrative, which turns out to be a classic German story – the pursuit of perfection and realization of that ideal in the form of eternal love. The story of Brünnhilde is, as the Christoph Waltz (pronounced Vaults) character, bounty-hunter Dr. Schultz, states over a campfire, one known to most German boys from the time they were small and the subject of numerous plays and one of the greatest operas ever written. Waltz is the perfect “side-kick” to the real star of the picture, Jamie Fox. Waltz is witty and fun, but Fox is both charismatic and intense, the kind of qualities you want in a hero – the ideal Sigurðr (Siegfried). Waltz tells him that even after Siegfried climbs the mountain (“What mountain?” Django asks. “Who knows?” Schultz says, “There is always a mountain!”), the hero must go through hell fire to reach the beautiful maiden. So the true plot of the story is revealed in the first few minutes of “Django Unchained” but the story is one that unfolds at Tarantino’s pace, as he must tell this “western” his way.

Like directors before him who have tackled this genre, Tarantino must put his own stamp on the story, so that we might say, this is how Tarantino made a western. With the same kind of grittiness that Leone brought and the same kind of violence Sam Peckinpah brought (it really isn’t so bad), Tarantino does not glorify what it was like to be a slave or how to die by the gun, rather through the use of humor and some brilliant camera work (along with editing), Tarantino belittles the idea of any difference between whites and blacks by making nearly every white man (or woman) in the film full of superficiality, lack of remorse, and completely uncaring for the human condition ( they do deserve what’s comin to them). They are but uneducated oafs compared to the compassionate Dr. Schultz, the only person besides Django with a shred of decency. “Django Unlimited” is truly a salute to past filmmakers and to the idea that a white director can make a great hero out of a black man without making him look silly (as Mel Brooks did in “Blazing Saddles”). Near the end (spoiler) when Django rides off to save his love, Tarantino goes for a close-up shot on a black prisoner. Slowly, the man’s expression changes from one of fear to one of admiration for liberator, as if he were saying that in expression – go get ‘em (a great job for a bit actor or a great director who pulled out that performance out)! This one shot lets us know that everything will be alright and we can almost breathe a sigh of relief at this point. The score is lopsided and only formality of the hero carrying out justice remains.

As to my earlier objection to the level of violence, I was wrong and I will be the first to admit it. Tarantino does have a big “shoot ‘em-up” near the end that uses quite a bit of stunt blood. However, he intermingles the scene with a hilarious (and it was funny) predicament of one character being repeatedly shot in the leg, in the same spot, crying out each time he is hit. Now this is funny and a mark of pure Tarantino. I loved it. While not recommended for anyone under the age of seventeen, and you can understand why, this film is a must for those who love the western and are admirers of Ford and Leone.

[Chris Knipp]

Let me say right from the start that I like this movie – no, I love this movie – and anyone who admires filmmakers and who have studied the art of filmmaking the way Tarantino has will like the film as well, despite the “overt” violent images scattered around in certain scenes. Hooray! I'm happy you went, and were converted. You have to see the film, to know how it is.

[cinemabon]

Monday, January 15, 2013, day two
“Argo” – produced, directed, and starring Ben Affleck

“Argo” is a recreation based on actual events that transpired during the 1979/1980 hostage crisis in Iran. The story entails a fictional account of “the Canadian Caper” and the involvement of CIA agent Tony Mendez in helping release six Americans who manage to escape the embassy just prior to its invasion by Iranian students. The screenplay, written by Chris Terrio, is loosely based on an article written by Joshuah Bearman that appeared in a 2007 issue of “Wired” which was based on documents declassified by President Clinton. That same year in 2007, actor George Clooney and others purchased the rights to the story and four years later set Ben Affleck to head the project. Affleck and writer Terrio took dramatic license with the historical facts and so added “loosely based on actual events” after the opening credits, probably to offset the outcry that followed the initial release of the movie. (The Canadians, the British, and New Zealand embassies that assisted with the American’s escape, were incensed over their diminished role)

In terms of production design, you have to recognize this design team with an incredible effort. Production designer Sharon Seymour took great pains to duplicate nearly every detail of life on the streets of Tehran and how the embassy appeared from photographs taken at the time. Affleck uses many hand held shots which gives us a sense of urgency during the storming of the embassy and in other scenes, such as the visit to the market place. The editing pace is quick and our eye does not linger on any image in the film longer than a second or two during nearly all of the action that takes place in Iran. Where the film tends to wander is when the setting changes to Hollywood (I was living in Hollywood right below the sign when it was fixed in 1978, one year before the hostage crisis) where Mendez takes his “phony film” idea to his friend, make-up artist John Chambers (John Goodman). Jolly Goodman, who makes me laugh just to look at him, brings aboard producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) and the two men concoct a film production company, as if they did this sort of thing every day. The scene I believe that sells Arkin’s nomination is during his negotiations with the Writer’s Guild, where his ruthlessness comes comically through his delivery. The line everyone will remember is when questioned by a reporter at its press release (“What does Argo mean?”), producer Siegel barks back, “Argo f**k yourself!” a joke that is repeated about five times after that to lessening effect.

As the film progressed, I kept hoping for something better. As far as I could tell, besides the incredible reproduction of the sets, the film lacked any performances that stood out. Arkin was good, but not nearly on the level of Robert DeNiro in “Silver Linings Playbook.” Even director/star Affleck, whose sympathetic Mendez seems more worried about his son than he does the hostages, is underplayed and subdued. The film’s tension almost comes across as forced, especially in the airport when the nervous, reluctant hostage suddenly grows a backbone and delivers the speech of his life, a little too convenient. For a man who has only directed three feature movies (and two shorts), I thought Affleck did a great job, but not of the caliber I found in the previous day’s work (Django) or even the polished work of Spielberg. While many are crying “foul!” at the Academy, I tend to agree. Affleck has given us a very entertaining film, but this movie is on par with many other director’s efforts this year and doesn’t really stand out as being that unique.

“Argo” is a film that elaborated on historical events and turned it into a Hollywood version of a story and made Mendez a hero in the process through the performance of Ben Affleck. However valiant and courageous Mendez was at the time, the film’s emphasis on the American role detracts from those who were the real heroes of this story, the Canadians. They risked their lives putting up the Americans (a minor role in the movie), they came up the passports (not the CIA), and they “snuck” the Americans out of Tehran with little fanfare (there was no incident at the airport, no shouting guards, no car chase, and no appearance in the bazaar the day before). While the “fake film” ruse worked as a cover, it turns out to be a minor part of this story, despite how the film made it seem the opposite.

I enjoyed “Argo,” found it entertaining with its building dramatic tension. But Best Picture of the Year? Not on my scoreboard.

[oscar jubis]

I enjoy reading these reviews (although I haven't seen the movies) so... thanks and keep 'em coming.

[cinemabon]

I appreciate the encouragement. Tomorrow's film (hint, hint) will not be about war. I'm saving that one for Thursday.

[Chris Knipp]

We agree on pretty much everything on ARGO, cinemabon, it seems. You hit all the bases, adding more about the production team's excellent work than I was properly appreciative of. And your points about the weakening toward the end, some lack of credibility surely in the manufactured suspense of the airport (which as I noted in the real Mendez's account was actually smooth sailing), finally the failure to acknowledge the collective, cooperative effort actually involved in getting the Americans out of Iran, notably the help of the Canadians. There is a sort of parallel with ZERO DARK THIRTY's odd implication that most of the finding of Osama Bin Laden was the work of one young woman with no CIA experience outside of this one case. My only other point about ARGO is that he has achieved a great deal more audience attention and notoriety by tackling something pleasing to the American sense of our overwhelming importance in the world and filled with well manufactured excitement and suspense, but he has lost the feeling of authenticity he had in his more Boston-centric previous directorial efforts. It's no use comparing him to Spielberg or Tarantino. Any effort on his part to become an auteur seems to have faltered here. That ARGO came off very successfully is nonetheless unquestionable, and he's gotten and is getting more than his share of awards as a director outside the Oscars..

[cinemabon]

Wednesday, January 16, 2013 – Day three
“Les Miserables” – directed by Tom Hooper

In the lexicon of the “gritty” musical, of those that have attempted a more down-to-earth, realistic approach to their presentation, two stand out: “Oliver,” and “Paint Your Wagon.” Both tried to bring audience awareness to actual life in the harsh conditions of reality – one through “dirty” sets and the other shot on location. This is a difficult way to film a musical because by its nature – having your characters break into song, no matter the setting – is strange, abnormal, and bizarre behavior, far from ordinary life no matter how dirty or tattered your character’s clothes are. I do not walk down the street singing out my feelings to anyone. Yet, this is the axiom by which all musicals work and we accept this as being a normal part of their genre. We have come to accept the gritty musical’s transformation from the pristine three-dimensional stage to a life-as- representativeness, converting a stage show into the realm of film’s realism – truth at twenty-four frames a second. Victor Hugo’s world and the reasons for the Paris uprising of 1832 are those that originate inside an impoverished nation pushed to the brink by a so-called uncaring aristocracy, or so we are led to believe by sympathetic writers bent on making the overthrow of the privileged the basis for heroism. The downfall of this reign had less to do with poverty and more to do with a French revulsion to a monarchy. Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” is a monumental work of gigantic proportion (nearly 1300 pages in length) that takes weeks to read and is considered by many to be one of the greatest literary works of all time next to “War and Peace” and other very long books we should all read. Adapted to the screen several times, I recall the 1935 Richard Boleslawski version the best in my mind. While whittled to the bone, it lays out the story as accurately as Hugo had it in his novel – an ex-convict is pursued relentlessly for years by an over-zealous prosecutor.

Bearing an open mind, I entered the cinematic world of a Broadway musical stage adaptation, completely unfamiliar with the show and its score except for the blaring song, “I dreamed a dream” whose refrains, like “Annie’s” song “Tomorrow” has been drummed into my brain by repeated versions from a variety of media outlets. Originally produced in France as a concept “album” in 1980 before being developed into a West End musical in London by producer Cameron Mackintosh and director Peter Farago, “Les Miserables” premiered in 1985 to harsh critical reviews by critics who decried the adaptation of Hugo’s novel. However, audiences loved the musical and it sold out during its initial three month run and successive openings ever since. (many, many spoilers follow) I noticed several elements of mass appeal in the show’s libretto, especially with its cheery ending of walking toward that great heavenly barrier in the sky filled with the dead now dressed in clean clothes singing with smiles on their faces patriots... and they lived happily ever after... but it all arrives much too late in my mind to redeem this musical/opera film (I think I counted six spoken lines, which would make it an operetta).

For three hours we are dragged through the mud, brown walls, tattered clothes, dirty faces, wet pavement, and perfectly white, straight teeth – all filmed in glorious television aperture with a steady cam so the director can move the camera in all kinds of places. Hooper loves faces and often takes the lens so close that they distort as if he was shooting with a fisheye lens. The main problem with crafting a film in this fashion is one of editing. Where do shots start and where do they end? The simple answer is you cut where can and when you can, making the whole production jump all over the place, like some editor’s nightmare. The only continuity that exists is when the screen flashes something like, “Nine years later” and similar flash-forwards in time. Otherwise, the film is a garbled mess of shots thrown together to form a linear flow of sort.

In addition to the depressing sets, costumes, and make-up, we are treated to really great actors (Oscar-worthy in other projects) who are being forced to screech out impossibly high notes, far out of their range and doing it live on the set. As any singer will tell you, it takes time to craft a song and give it polish. Expecting actors to deliver perfectly with each take is a ridiculous assumption and I fault the director for every sour note that fell on these poor battered ears; so many, that by the end of three hours I was ready to scream right back at the screen, my eyes full of tears, pulling my hair out, with blood shot eyes, and a red nose from crying into my popcorn (or was it bad makeup) – “No more! Please! I beg you! I’ve had enough!” But I bit my lip and said nothing until the smattering of white heads began to applaud around me. That’s when I stood up and said aloud, “Really?” My eighty-eight year old German grandmother who couldn’t sing a note could wield a bar song better than that. With all the British and American accents you’d wonder the film took place in France at all.

There was one bright note where Hooper and editor Chris Dickens managed to bring off a great moment in the film, during the quintet “One Day More” that reached a natural crescendo with full orchestra, pull back, reveal and climax. Musical filmmaking at its finest (which should have been followed by an intermission). Hooper obvious saw “West Side Story” as this scene duplicates the “Tonight” quintet in pacing and similar climax without the giant crane pull out at the end. But one song in the middle of a miserable movie does not forgive what took place before and after. The makeup, made to give everyone a ghastly appearance; the costumes, a little too much like rags, too filthy, too worn, and too monotonous; the sets – now there’s a depressing subject; and the lighting made the whole film one big downer from the very beginning. The only “bright” spot arrived with Sasha Cohen and Helena Carter as the owners of a disreputable establishment, who like Ron Moody’s Fagin (“You’ve got to pick a pocket or two”) scurried around their saloon picking everyone’s pocket who stopped by for a drink or bed. You’d think word would get around to stay away from the place. The song was light-hearted and humorous for me until they ground up everything and made something that resembled feces, feeding it to the guests. So much for my popcorn. That made me gag and took me right out of the scene.

If I try to stand back and look at “Les Miz” as a whole film, weighing the good with the poor (mostly technical problems), I found the acting well done, the singing atrocious, the songs forgettable (except “I dream...”), and the direction sloppy. I realize I am older and that younger people may find many elements of this movie enjoyable. I’m certain those same people find wrestling enjoyable, too. As a person who has spent his life listening to music, studying music, singing, playing an instrument, being in a band, being in madrigals, performing onstage in musicals, being the star of an off-Broadway musical, teaching music, having a minor in Music at college... this was not a happy experience for me. I’m sorry. Because it looked like Ann Hathaway, Russell Crowe, and Hugh Jackman went through hell for this director. If they get an Oscar, it should be for the strain of working on that set, but not because this is a great film. It’s not even a good movie musical. Now I wish I had seen the play.

[Chris Knipp]

cinemabon on "Les Miz" at last!

You have gone over it all very carefully. Your general stage history, more specific and complete than mine. The precedents, ditto-- Oliver and Paint Your Wagon; I understand that Oliver! was actually a specific, acknowledged inspiration for the French stage piece. Then the various categories: the acting, good you think, I say sometimes yes, sometimes no; the singing, "atrocious," check; the songs, "forgettable," check; the camera sometimes fisheye and up too close, check. There is nothing we disagree on. You just give more detail. I may have missed the "one bright note," the crescendo during "One Day More." " Depressing sets, costumes, and make-up," okay -- though not all the sets are depressing, most of them are wasted. The feces fed to the guests of the hellish hotel: indeed revolting.

You haven't missed anything, cinemabon.

Just one thing: I would not make allowances for a benevolent possibility that "younger people may find many elements of this movie enjoyable." If they do, the more fool they: but I protest: there are younger people who have taste and discernment too! Consider that it may not be that younger people see something you don't, but that it is simply popular, and therefore it is not just younger people but young and old love it; allow yourself the luxury of considering that none of the see something you don't. They're just less discerning than you are.

Thanks for relenting and seeing it. Now you know what I'm talking about. Is this an Oscar-worthy film? If they are going to choose ten Best Picture nominations, they need to be bold and digress -- when necessary -- from the obviously popular and mediocre to some things that are unusual and offbeat but truly fine to fill out their list. There may not always be ten mainstream popular good movies.

[cinemabon]

Chris, you hold the distinct advantage over me in that your access to films like "Amour" which WILL be shown locally next month making its screening too late for the Oscars or even consideration for end of year "best of" lists. In addition, many independent films and scores of movies from a variety of sources are not screened locally to my dismay and annual disappointment. Therefore, I must eliminate films like "Moonrise Kingdom" which you listed first, and "Beasts of the Southern Wild" as neither film was distributed locally yet. As our friend Oscar put so well recently, "there's a sudden buzz of activity on our site." Indeed. I'm in the mood to take in as many movies as I can. Let's dust off those pens and get to work! We have some opinions to polish and share with our fellow cinephiles.

[Chris Knipp]

I have the same feeling about movies I'd like to have seen before making 2012 lists up -- nobody can get to see everything and I'm very interested in what you're going to have to say about all that you see now.

[cinemabon]

Thursday, January 17, 2013 – Day four
“Zero Dark Thirty” – directed by Kathryn Bigelow

(Spoilers) I’m having a difficult time saying something critical in an objective way about this film, as it plays more like a documentary than it does a feature film with film-style rather than story driving its plot. In essence, the film is about a CIA analyst responsible for finding Osama Bin Laden and how, over a period of several years, she single-handedly came up with the key witness that narrowed the search for Bin Laden to one specific compound in Pakistan. While this might be plausible, it forces the audience to make a leap of faith that this person exists. Since director Bigelow and her screenwriter, Mark Boal, have made analyst Maya (Jessica Chastain) the central figure around which the plot twists, none of the other characters in the film – excluding Dan (Jason Clarke) the main torturer, who appears later in Washington – are onscreen long enough to develop into likable or even knowable characters. Even the woman who is Maya’s co-worker, Jessica (Jennifer Ehle of “Pride and Prejudice” fame) has very little screen time except for their brief luncheon together (ending in a bomb going off) and the tragic meeting scene where she meets her demise. Therefore, Bigelow has placed all of the storytelling on Maya’s shoulders via her numerous scenes in a variety of settings (one covert compound after another): at her desk, observing torture, driving through checkpoints, etc. However, none of this tells us anything about the plot other than Pakistan and Afghanistan are dangerous places. We know that from the news. But we learn nothing from these scenes except that there are lots of pictures on the wall and she is after “Akmed” the infamous courier of Bin Laden. Oddly, it isn’t torture that reveals the information but a conversation exchange that takes place during an interview she watches on video. After years of searching for this elusive character, presumed dead, an obscure office worker, who appears out of nowhere and then recedes just as quickly, shows up with a file that points the way, saving Maya’s butt in the process as she had exhausted all of her leads (Whew!). The explanation is that the file was overlooked. How convenient and strangely coincidental! Onto the film’s conclusion and the best part – the assault.

On the technical side, I found the direction fascinating. The placement of the camera is often behind something, a stack of books, a file cabinet, a chain-link fence, a dirty window and so on. It’s as if Bigelow wants us to be observers on the outside looking in on something important that is going on. The reason many people find the torture scenes at the beginning so stark is that within this claustrophobic enclosure, Bigelow moves the camera in so close we can count the hairs on the prisoner’s eyebrows. The make-up here is very realistic and it has to be if you’re going to move this close (unlike yesterday’s movie where the makeup looked silly). Cinematographer Greig Fraser uses just the right amount of light, especially in the torture scenes, to reveal what is essential to our understanding of the setting. Otherwise, the background is out of focus (very little POV used). The sets and costumes are nothing unique that might add to the film’s story as the locations often become a blur, one compound is about the same as the next except for a strange settee or a “Persian” rug. The score is virtually absent until we enter the last stretch of the film and accompany the Navy Seals in an even more tightly enclosed space. The film’s “driving” music adds to the dramatic tension and is superior in that regard, albeit brief. The feeling or sensation of being an eyewitness to actual events is a thrill that helps sell this film, if this is what happened and the way it happened. Unfortunately, we will never know. The reported account reinforces visually what we were told, but that does not mean it happened exactly this way. However, the technique Bigelow uses here, nearly all steady-cam (which she has used sparingly to this point) and via night-vision, enhances the realism. If a setting could be awarded as appearing genuine, then the recreation of Bin Laden’s compound was quite incredible and a feat that does deserve an award, as that was truly believable. Unlike some reviewers, I chose to ignore the “Seal-speak” simply because it made no sense to me. I tuned it out. Yet, like the night-vision and the compound’s realism, I felt it added to the realism and did not detract for me.

The conclusion of the film, rather than being a formality, came off as ambiguous and bizarre. I was puzzled in regards to the Bigelow/Boal ending. Out of the darkness, Maya boards a large cargo plane, empty except for some wooden chairs. When asked by the pilot, “You must be someone important. The plane is all yours. Where would you like to go?” Maya doesn’t answer. She stares ahead and cries. Throughout the film she has shown very little emotion except for one angry outburst in a hallway, which Chastain performed well. We’re uncertain why Maya is crying or for whom. If it is for her CIA co-worker, I find it difficult to believe. The two women never got along and never bonded. Perhaps it is a sense of relief or release. We never find out. The image fades to black. The other roles are so minor in comparison to Maya, we never learn what happens to them either and that is ok to a point. But surly we should know what happens to friendless, homeless Maya, whose mysterious background is only alluded to in a brief scene with then CIA Director Leon Panetta (James Gandolfini). “Of course you know I was chosen [for the service],” she replies when asked why she joined the CIA. “I’m not certain I can say,” she adds before he can answer. This not only makes Maya’s character obscure by implication, it practically makes her non-existent. That might be what Bigelow and Boal had purposely alluded to from the start – that Maya doesn’t exist but exemplifies or embodies all of the analysts who worked so hard to solve this case. Therefore in the end, it doesn’t matter what happened to her. Why is she crying? For all the victims of 9/11 and all the soldiers who gave their lives. Perhaps that is the point. I find it difficult to think of another.

[Chris Knipp]

Your readings of all these movies have been very interesting. This time your comments toward the end seem more speculative than conclusive. I can't exactly read this as a rave, not anyway in the range of the through-the-roof 95 Metacritic rating. You describe ZD30, convincingly, as revolving around a central character who is a cipher, and may not even exist. And yet the constant focus on Maya keeps any of the other characters from being likable or even knowable. Nor is the action very specific, as you tell it (and I won't argue with you), telling us only what we knew already from the news, that Pakistan and Afghanistan are dangerous places to wander around in. However you do like the finale, for its "realism," to which the Seal-talk contributes.

[An aside: as I noted Maya (somewhat strangely, given her 12 years of investigating Arab suspects) incorrectly pronounces the alleged courrier's name "Akmed," but that's not his name (there's no such name), just a mispronunciation of his name, Ahmed (or Ahmad). ]

I also somewhat question your saying "oddly" the key lead to the courier didn't come through torture. That's not so odd. There is widespread information and there have been recent statements by high up government sources that the US post-9/11 torture has yielded scant information. You don't take up the controversy over ZD30's alleged "advocacy" of torture. Maybe that theme has been overworked (though not her). My complaints with the movie's politics or the apparent lack of them aren't just about that anyway though.

You like the recreation of the Abbotobad compound Navy Seals invasion -- most people see to. I actually don't; I think it's a ridiculous overuse of "realism" that leaves us numb and tells us nothing. I think it's very anticlimactic.

Maybe that's why Maya is crying. Because her quest has come to its end and she feels nothing. And we don't feel anything either. Except maybe "gee, that was realistic!" If all it's got going for it is an illusion of realism, I'm not satisfied. Realism is very relative, especially when as you say, we don't really have any way of knowing thus far anyway, if this is how it "really" happened. I dislike the shooting of this whole sequence because it emerges as more chaotic and difficult to follow than the news reports I read at the time. It was a later decision to have us see virtually nothing of what Bin Laden (if it was he) actually did when confrontned. The actor who plays Bin Laded wrote an article in today's NYTimes, saying they had meant to show him moving around, but then decided not to, so his main appearance was as a partial profile in a body bag.

All the sequences up to this strike me as resembling stuff in previous post-9/11 movies such as SYRIANA or RENDITION, and others, such as GREEN ZONE, and the night-vision invasion sequence has been done before, just not at such length.

Boal and Bigelow (whose work I've liked before, especially POINT BREAK) seem overwhelmed with a sense of their own importance and of the significance of their material. And that corresponds pretty much at least with what Americans may believe, 9/11, certainly a tragedy, being seen here as the cardinal sin of all time, a crime against humanity. This overlooks the fact that the US has killed millions of people. What about the bombing of Japanese cities; the fire bombing of Dreden? But killing Bin Laden is seen by many Americans as a major coup. The only trouble with it is that it is at bottom only a revenge killing, and Al Qaeda seems stronger now than it was in 2001.

I would go further and say that originally I thought THE HURT LOCKER was much better than ZD30, but I'm beginning to feel that ZD30 makes me think if this is what they were doing in THE HURT LOCKER, maybe it's not as good as I thought, either!

I recommend taking a look at Armond White's review of ZD30, titled typically with a reference to classic French cinema, "Zero for Conduct. (http://cityarts.info/2012/12/28/zero-for-conduct/)" I think you may agree with some of White's analysis of the movie. However he takes more of a stand. You seem to be imitating Boal and Bigelow in not taking much of one, about the material. You maintain jut a bit too much neutrality: "On the technical side, I found the direction fascinating." We need more than that. Not that I don't agree, again, with many of your observations.

I feel that I could go through all the post-911 movies and would find parts that correspond to much of what's in ZD30. I tend to agree a bit with Rex Reed's comment that it's "not a movie," i.e. it's a documentary, though not with real footage. I guess the reason why I liked THE HURT LOCKER better is that its action is taught; too much of ZD30 is numbingly dull, enlivened only, as I commented, by periodic explosions of IUDs or suicide bombs etc.

[tabuno]

Unlike cinemabon, it is for the very fact that no particular performance stood out that Argo made for a very engrossing, captivating experience. What I believe makes this movie one of the best films of the year is that it avoids performance and instead portrays an intensively visceral and riveting sensory locking and inter-connecting episodes of real life importance that captivates the audience throughout without having the distinctive distraction of outstanding performance. Like figure skating, what makes for a great figure stake is making it look so easy that there isn't any thought or mental distractions...Argo's brilliance is in its seamless and continuous presentation of events that keep one stuck to the screen until the very end, a hallmark of great storytelling.

[tabuno]

Now that I'm feeling better, I am highly anticipating an opportunity to see Zero Dark Thirty so I can comment of Chris Knipp's opinion contrasting these two movies. Since ironically, it is for the very nature of the technical flaws in The Hurt Locker that I had major problems with the movie, I am very curious whether or not the similar flaws for which Zero Dark Thirty is being criticized for will also impact my opinion about this movie.

[cinemabon]

I think we tend to agree, Chris, on "Zero" more than disagree. I will elaborate that the ambiguity in "Zero" diminishes the value of the film to the point I, too, did not feel it one of the years best pictures. A simulated documentary does not translate into a quality story if it has no point.

Whereas, Tab, your analysis of "Argo" is flawed by its lack of realism. The whole film is a fake. The entire end a lie. In fact, for the sake of jingoism, Affleck not only inflated the American role, he threw in patriotism to help sell a weak film; much in the same way "Les Miz" uses sentimentality to help sway its lack of substance. That you give me no credit to me with "Zero" in my eval is blinded by your over indulgence on "Argo" being a great film. "Argo" is no more like an Olympic skater (an ideal) than "Les Miz" resembles a documentary on the uprising of 1832. Both target their audience with sentimental images and lack substance. Whereas, "Django" represents the work of a craftsman who has finally come into his own, making a film of expert -level quality with an array of talent to help him tell a story of sublime excellence. Of the four films I've watched this week, the one with the most overall superiority is definitely "Django Unchained" for all the reasons I stated in my review and then some. While the other films I've reviewed this week lack some vital aspect which render them inconsistant and unable to compete.

As I still have not submitted my final and fifth film in this series, as things stand right now, I would place these films as the top three contenders for Best Picture: "Django Unchained," "Lincoln" and "Silver Linings Playbook" with "Django" showing best direction, "Lincoln" showing strong screenplay, and "SLP" having the strongest cast.

[cinemabon]

I have to tell this background story, since this is my blog, so to speak...

When I lived in Los Angeles, I went to the LA run of "A Chorus Line" fresh from NY, sitting in about fifth row orchestra, middle. I was thrilled. I loved the show. I loved the story. I loved the songs. I briefly met Michael Bennett (the original director of the Broadway production). Afterward, Rick took me to the stage door. I met and got autographs from the entire cast on the huge fold-out program (which I still have). Did I mention I loved the show? I laughed, I cried, and when Bennett died from HIV, I cried again. I couldn't wait to see the movie. And I thought, "It's directed by the guy who just won Best Director Oscar for 'Gandhi,' Richard Attenborough (of "The Great Escape" fame). This is going to be great!"

When the movie came out, I went opening day. I wish I had a camera for a the before and after shot. You would have seen a smile wiped right from my face. Some stage plays do not translate well to movies. From what I've heard, many, many people loved "Les Miz" (the play) and went to see it again and again. But like "Phantom" the movie is not too good. The funny thing is, the fans really want it to be good and are afraid to say anything. But I know they must be supremely disappointed, which is a shame. The theater is a wonderful place. If you've never seen a play in New York, go... the sooner the better. And I will tell you from years of experience that very few musical plays translate well into films, very few.

[tabuno]

Regardless of what cinemabon might write about Argo, his opinion even though based on his film experience is disputed by reputable film critics who have had much more experience than I, even though the Academy of Arts and Science might prefer cinemabon's position which seems a rather odd turn of events here considering. I believe that cinemabon's argument is weak because it contains a strong bias between truth over art, that artistic license must be sacrificed for telling an authentic documented, by the letter narrative. For me the importance of a movie and in this a dramatic thriller is not so much truth but how a story is told and how in impacts me emotionally and intellectually not scientifically based on testable hyptheses in under laboratory conditions. If I wanted supposed truth, I'd watch documentaries, but I usually prefer theatrical films based on artistic merit instead. cinemabon's argument is more like those critics from the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA, not as a film critic.

[tabuno]

It's a miserable, disappointing experience to watch the movie version of Chorus Line, among my most favored Broadway Musical, limited though my Broadway experience is. I too was devastated by how awful the movie version was and it was a real wake up call for me. I had so looked forward to being able to just buy a copy of the DVD and watch in again and again at my leisure. Now I shutter and regret that the movie version failed me...and I miss the opportunity to see re-experience the ONE ever again in all its glory.

[cinemabon]

Well, Tab, when you start the movie "based on real events" then it should be close to the mark. To make things up for the sake of drama is fictionalizing events and that's a stretch when the purpose of your film is to recreate actual events. It would be as if I put Germans in the cockpit over Pearl Harbor because I thought it would make a better film. That's not what happened. There were no Germans in the cockpit. You can't excuse a filmmaker when they start to just make things up just because they want to spice up the ending and make it more dramatic. This isn't because I did a little digging. The British State Department (like our own) were upset over the way Afflect altered events. Even the Canadians voiced protests. But in addition to the fabrications, there are other weakenesses in the storyline, especially the appeal to patriotism which is like waving the American flag and saying anyone who doesn't salute is a traitor. I'm glad you like the film. But the Hollywood Foreign Press has been wrong about many films in the past. They are a small group of individuals and not filmmakers. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is made up of film professionals - the artists who actually make the movies - directors, producers, screenwriters, actors, cinematographers, editors, set designers, costume designers, makeup artists, etc. They know the work it takes to make a movie and they are pretty good at judging what constitutes a well-made film. While we can argue as to their choices (which sometimes are based more on sentiment than on accomplishment), overall, they do a damn good job of picking individuals who deserve recognition. Remember, it is an honor to be nominated and that in itself is a win in my book.

[tabuno]

When Ben has been nominated and winning film directorial awards:

Golden Globes winner
British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nomination
African American Film Critics Association winner
Broadcast Film Critics Association winner
Central Ohio Film Critics Association nomination
Chicago Film Critics Association nomination
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association nomination
Denver Film Critics Society winner
Detroit Film Critics Society nomination
Directors Guild (DGA) nomination (this nomination and Ben's absence of an Oscar nomination is particularly telling)
Florida Film Critics Circle winner
Houston Film Critics Society winner
International Press Academy nomination
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle winner
Online Film Critics Society nomination
Online Film Critics Society nomination
San Diego Film Critics Society winner
Southeastern Film Critics Association winner
St. Louis Film Critics winner
Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association nomination

[Chris Knipp]

I think you're right, cinemabon, on the ones you're considered that survive scrutiny. Not sure we hve to divide them up that way, LINCOLN best writing, SILVER LININGS best acting, etc.


You haven't dealt specifically with several, AMOUR, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, LIFE OF PI, which you may not have been able to get a look at. AMOUR is probably out of the running, because it's a French film by an Austrian director, but it has Haneke's severe greatness and more humanity, if feels like, than usual; he is a consummate craftsman and his two 80-something actors, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignat are impressive; they got the best actor awards at Cannes last year. I like PI, though it may be too oddball (and Indian) to be considered. I'm not sure about BEASTS, but Armond White is quite possibly right in his devastating criticism of its urban white boy view of southern black experience. (He's black; he gets to say that.)

I think you made that point before, tabuno, about Ben Affleck having been widely awarded in smaller critic venues -- and the Golden Globes and BAFTA aren't small.

And yes, cinemabon, I also found that without profound research one found many were unhappy with the way ARGO fudged events to make the Americans look better and jazz up the ending.

[tabuno]

Anybody ever read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick which was made into Bladerunner (1982). Movies based on, inspired by...the insistence on truth as opposed to logical inconsistency is like me having to enforce my interpretation of Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible (1996) being literally based on the television series which it really took huge liberties and at first I thus despised the movie until I watched it again and enjoyed it as a movie, not a documentary. This slippery slope argument can't be won because there will always be some requirement by the very nature of film to edit, make composite characters, slice and dice to make a movie interesting, compelling, representative, symbolic, figurative...poetic, interpretative, subjective...

A movie is better examined on its technical film merits and the emotional and intellectual experience as a movie not as a factual, literal depiction of real events. Having watched Fail Safe (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964) with their Department of Defense disclaimers incorporated into each movie that such movies could never actually occur in real life...well I guess they must be based on some truth, but ultimately fail the whole truth test and therefore must be bad movies.

[Chris Knipp]

When you're dealing with specific historical events it's not just a matter of truth vs. logical consistency. The same issue comes up with ZERO DARK THIRTY. Boal/Bigelow are making a hash of a complex process and a very recent historical event in the interests of a unifying protagonist and a feminist theme. Would you have had Tony Kushner and Stephen Spielberg muck around with the events in LINCOLN in this fashion? The irony is that ARGO is a crowd-pleasing actioner, and ZD30 is a drab semi-documentary, but both distort history.

[tabuno]

By its very nature, Les Miserable is about the masses attempting to revolt against the powerful, wealthy, educated elite and so to we have a movie that also is cast in the same light with its mainstream masses of the people watching this movie using non-professional singers as most of the audience is and who might also share the delight of singing in the shower. Thus this movie which represents Victor Hugo's focus on the masses, so to the movie itself is for the masses and thus embraces its values and beliefs in what constitutes a common but enlightened entertainment. Thus for a person more than half a century old, this movie fits perfectly with my common sense of music and thus resonates at the same frequency of understanding and empathic embrace of its presentation. As I've discussed elsewhere, the quality of the common movie has improved over the past decade and continues to do so...thus we the people of the dwindling middle class have the benefit of experiencing great movies suited to our less than film-educated senses. Unfortunately, such perhaps profit-driven movies for the masses has also degraded to some extent the higher principled standards of formal movie theory. But for the rest of us, we get the benefit of a substandard standard.

[Chris Knipp]

By its very nature, Les Miserable is about the masses attempting to revolt against the powerful, wealthy, educated elite and so to we have a movie that also is cast in the same light with its mainstream masses of the people watching this movie using non-professional singers as most of the audience is and who might also share the delight of singing in the shower.You're said this before also. I think it's an argument that could have absurd consequences. We can't sing so we should have a musical movie in which the characters are played by people who can't really sing? The idea that we would like to go to see movies in which all the singers are no better than people singing in the shower is ludicrous. We go to see professionals at work. All of the cast members in LES MIZ can sing. They are just in many cases more known as actors than as singers, and the live-action recording instead of post-synch soundtrack tends to produce singing performances more heartfelt than polished. Eddie Redmayne had to prove he could sing to get the role of Marius.


the quality of the common movie has improved over the past decade and continues to do so
\
Sorry, I missed that and can't imagine what it would mean. What is "the common movie"? I thought we were seeking movies that were uncommon. I see a lot of common movies. I don't like them and I don't see any sign they are getting better. How can they, if they're common? And how can you, tabuno, say you are not film-educated, when you know so many films and care passionately about them?

I just don't know what you're talking about here.

[cinemabon]

Friday, January 18, 2013 – Day five
“The Impossible” – directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

(Spoilers) Disaster movies have been part of film history since Moses parted the Red Sea. We are fascinated by tornados, hurricanes, dust storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis. The bigger the disaster, the more people want to see its impact on society. Since the advent of widescreen, color, and stereo sound the disaster is a cash cow for studios that have drummed out just about every variety from upside-down ocean liners to end of the world scenarios. The difference with “The Impossible” is that while the disaster is in the foreground, the story of one family’s struggle to rise above this calamity is at the core of the film. Separated when the giant wave strikes, the family faces the impossible journey of finding one another inside a wasteland that spreads across several thousand miles of shoreline.

There is no admission of alteration at the start, no “based on actual events” mia culpa. Instead, the director simply states, “A true story.” With that declaration, we should expect the story to stick to the facts. However, with the permission of the Belón family, Spanish director Juan Antonia Bayona made the decision to blur the main characters’ nationality in order to make the film more internationally commercial (the Belón family are Spanish; the film’s Bennet’s one presumes British). In fact, all of the actors are English/American origin. Unlike the treatment given other factual recreations this week, the Belón family actually participated in the film’s production, meeting with the actors to help hone their performances.

It’s hard to imagine these events took place eight years ago this past Christmas. People all over the world sat riveted to their televisions watching the aftermath of the worst natural disaster the world has ever witnessed. The scale of destruction is still difficult to grasp. The Bennet family, on vacation in Thailand, are staying in an ocean front resort not far from the epicenter. Without warning, (unlike some locations that could see it coming), the Bennet’s and others were completely caught by surprise by not just one but two huge tsunami waves that destroyed the shoreline and permanently altered its shape.

Director Bayona opens with a shot of a jet plane flying over a wide peaceful blue ocean, benign and harmless. When the family arrives at the resort, they are informed by the manager that the third floor rooms are sold out. He moves them to a ground floor suite. Although Maria Bennet protests at first, the manager opens the ocean front doors and we see a beautiful view of the shoreline, with angular palm trees dotting the space between the resort’s pool in the foreground and the beach. The world resembles of one of paradise. As the story continues, we find the hotel is full of European tourists who either play in the pool or romp near the ocean, snorkeling, playing ball on white pristine sands, or simply laying out in the sun. Christmas morning is documented by the family and the following day starts out just as peaceful as the last. When a gust of wind snatches Maria’s bookmark out of her hands, she walks over to a large glass wind barrier to retrieve it. The glass begins to vibrate. She looks up. A flock of birds takes flight. A roar fills the air. Everyone realizes something is wrong and turns toward the ocean. At several hundred miles an hour, foaming brown water full of debris bursts through the trees and engulfs everyone and everything. The screen goes black. What follows is a journey of terror, a tumbling, gasping for air, in a turbulent turgid pool that shows no mercy. Bodies are hurdled against immovable objects, or a variety of junk in the murk strikes people as the water rushes around them. Buildings, trees, everything in the water’s path succumbs to the power of the tsunami. With eyes, ears and mouths full of water, it is difficult to orient and swim let alone know where you are. Maria finally breaks the surface and locates her oldest son just as he spots her. For the next twenty minutes of film time the two try to keep each other in sight in hopes of escaping together. But nature continuously forces them apart and the first struggle in the aftermath of this disaster comes when Maria and Lucas finally survive the initial two blasts of water by sheer luck. Maria does not know if her husband has survived. Lucas (Thomas Holland), whose performance is so masterful that it largely carries crucial elements of the film’s story throughout its middle sections. The young actor should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar as his performance is pivotal and compelling.

Through all of the anguish, frustration and chaos around the Bennet’s, we know the end is inevitable as the story is being told by the family. In fact, the end of the film is the only joyous moment Bayona gives us. The rest of the images are filled with masses of dead bodies, miles of debris field, and the sadness of broken families. The only other bright spot comes when one of the children Maria and Lucas rescued in the beginning is reunited with his father. Otherwise, the carnage that remains is too terrible to fathom, piled up before us in shot after shot until we grow numb from its bombardment. The last shot of a jet flying back to Singapore over a wide calm blue sea now carries a subtle message, that Mother Nature can rise up and inflict terrible damage in the wink of an eye.

The film’s special effects and set decoration, the incredible hospital scenes and even the numerous crowd scenes which were so painstakingly recreated are praiseworthy. Naomi Watts performance is good, memorable, but not the best I’ve seen this season. She mostly moans under an oxygen mask on a variety of stretchers. Note to cameraman, “Lock down your camera when shooting Geraldine Chaplin!” I felt seasick from the wavy unsteady handheld shot that wasn’t necessary at night by the campfire. Overall in considering Oscar nominations for acting, as I haven’t seen Amour, I can only judge “The Impossible” against the other films I’ve seen. I’d still pick the cast of “Silver Linings Playbook” over any other in terms of acting performance with the exception of Daniel Day Lewis who was a very strong Lincoln. Still, Brad Cooper is no slouch either.

My Oscar pix are as follows:
Best Picture: Lincoln, Django Unchained, or Silver Linings Playbook
Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis or Brad Cooper
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence
Best Supporting Actor: Robert DeNiro (I would have picked Tom Holland)
Best Supporting Actress: Jackie Weaver
Best Director: David Russell for Silver Linings Playbook (Tarantino wasn’t nominated) or Spielberg for Lincoln if it’s picked Best Pix
Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson for Django Unchained (although he’s already won which might limit his chances but his WAS the best) or Claudio Miranda for Life of Pi
Costume Design: Anna Karenina
Film Editing: Michael Kahn (one of the best in the business)
Foreign Language: Amour
Make up: The Hobbit
Music score: Thomas Newman, Skyfall
Best Song: Skyfall by Adele
Production Design: Lincoln
Sound editing: Skyfall
Sound Mixing: Life of Pi
Visual Effects: Life of Pi
Best Screenplay Orig: Django Unchained
Best Screenplay Adapt: Beasts of the Southern Wild or Lincoln
Argo and Zero get shut out!

FYI - I did see Life of Pi and wrote a review on this site, Chris.

[Chris Knipp]

tabno, I thought this was cinemabon's thread (his "blog," as he said), ours only to comment on his osts about the five Oscar films he was going to report on. Your posts here are random and inappropriate, I'm afraid. I was addressing cinemabon when I said I thought he had not seen LIFE OF PI. I was referring to a post he made that I can't currently locate. There is a thread in the Forums for THE IMPOSSIBLE: http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3421-THE-IMPOSSIBLE-%28Juan-Antonio-Bayona-2012%29.

tabuno: why post your Oscar predictions here, and not on the Academy Awards nominations thread cinemabon started? http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3424-2013-Academy-Award-Nominations. I agree with you that Tom Holland gives a great performance. All this would have gone more appropriately on other threads, not this one.

[cinemabon]

I don't know whether to say thank you or I love you, but you inspire me, Chris/Oscar/Johann/Tabuno/Howard etc. I really can't be a critic unless I seek out all of the films up for consideration. So I am extending my viewing pleasure by adding TWO more Oscar contenders today. Granted, they are on video, but I hope to give you an update later that will help round out my list/predictions.

I love a good fight over principles. Don't ever think that by challenging what I say you upset me in any way/shape/form. I'm a big boy. I can defend my stance (although I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong, as with Django and Tarantino). But as with any person, words of encouragement are always appreciated.

See you in the dark... only in this case today, in front of a video screen.

[Chris Knipp]

Cinemabon,

You're contributing greatly to Filmleaf's Oscar/Best Movies of 2012 discussion by staging this personal mini film festival now. I also appreciate your integrity and flexibility in sticking close to observations and altering your pre-viewing assessment of DJANGO. You and I and Johann and a lot of other people now agree that it's a great movie. However silly or outrageous or fanboy-mad his movies are, he's a consummate filmmaker. I also was really glad that despite apparently having an aversion to seeing it, you watched LES MISERABLES too and did a detailed assessment. And for these further movies on home video, "bonne vision" as the French say.

[cinemabon]

I went to your website and read your analysis/review of "The Impossible" which was thorough and outstanding, Chris. I can't understand why you aren't picked up by a major publication. I guess you need a better agent than the one you have.

http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2275&sid=8f5d232c27a71591a7c71533b7187fc0

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, cinemabon, but they're laying off print critics, not hiring unknown ones, I'm afraid. I've heard about that at Lincoln Center events. There was a flurry of concern when Todd mcCarthy was let go as main critic for Variety -- a sign of where things were going. There were numerous shakeups at the Voice, once a lot of paid critics I believe, now few. I have to be content with appearing on Flickfeasst.uk, which is much more active than our site, and Robin published my Impossible (http://flickfeast.co.uk/feature/impossible-2012/) review there and other recent ones. I'm also on Cinescene, which is even less active than Filmleaf, lately much less so. I'm also a regular on a commercial website, IC Places, just because Steve, who runs it, is a nice guy and he asked me too. He should pay me money but he doesn't. I do it for the love of it. If you look at my website you see that I'm an artist and i was a full time artist for about 25 years, but recently have set aside the art projects in favor of movie reviewing.

[tabuno]

I believe that people's experiences filter their appreciation of movies. Those who have extensive experience in particular areas such as music or military ops will have a distinctively different standard by which to enjoy a movie. Thus those who have experienced quality musical productions and heard the best singers will have an ear that will filter less experienced singing. So with Le Miz, what I experienced interestingly was a heightened enjoyment of the songs in the movie because I was able to understand and feel most of the lyrics and music being sung as well as the close up visual non-verbal essence of the sung which from psychological standpoint is an much or even more important than then actual singing itself from a communication stand point. Thus when I talk about musicals and the common person, it's possible to approach a movie and experience it using a standard that's different from those in the profession. It's not about people singing badly because they aren't specialists, but about people singing decently who can be clearly understood sufficiently to get the essence of the emotion and thoughts against in a way that connects to the audience, such isn't the requirement of having the best singers singing these songs - in some cases it's about actors who can perform and get across important underlying themes using the form of music and singing, not about the music and singing itself.

[Chris Knipp]

I think you've expressed this whole thesis already, earlier. But I still don't see how one would want to go to anyone about how good a movie is but the person who is familiar with the arts involved. I don't think it's a good argument. The argument is that since the movie is not post-synched as musicals normally are, though the singing quality is less polished, they were able to inject more "acting" into the performances of the songs. And that's a valid point. But I still say a musical should be musical. This whole idea would never go over for classical opera. Or would one attend a recital by a pianist of limited skill because his performances of Beethoven had a lot of "feeling"? I don't think so....

[cinemabon]

A musical film is judged by different standards, just as an action movie is judged against other action movies or romance movies are discussed differently than a horror movie is. We call them genres and classify them thus. The musical is as old as sound movies. The very first sound movie was a musical – The Jazz Singer. Ever since that time, Hollywood has trotted out the old horse with a different coat of paint every year or so, hoping we won’t notice it’s still the same old horse. It used to be musicals were one of the standard films up for awards – films like Gigi, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Oliver, Funny Girl – all excellent examples of the genre. No longer. They’ve become relics. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s prediction in 1996 that with “Evita” he was going to single-handedly bring back the movie musical landed with a resounding thud. Many loved “Evita” but many found Madonna a poor choice. Accomplished director Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning, Midnight Express – both won him a nomination for Best Director) was not able to deliver the goods – and the score had more than one good memorable song! (Unlike “Les Miz” which really only has one). I’ve spent my life collecting soundtrack albums from Broadway versions and film versions of musicals. Sometime the soundtrack is better than the movie or the play! “Hair” was one such instance. I attended the premier in Hollywood with klieg lights and everything! Milos Forman (One flew over the cuckoo’s nest and Amadeus) was in attendance. You should have seen his face change from one full of smiles to one of panic when he heard groans in the theater. He left before the end to avoid questions. It bombed!

Modern musicals are like opening restaurants. Most fail. As I’ve said on this site many times. I can count on my fingers the number of truly successful musical films (and The Jazz Singer was one of them. Even The Wizard of Oz was a box office failure during its first release and lost money. We love it today because they played it on TV a thousand times. But back in 1939, audiences hated it. They thought it was silly. If you don’t believe me, read the reviews). Hooper tried an experiment. To achieve realism, he wanted the actors to sing on the set. In order to achieve this feat, he had to create special microphones that would pick up the actors voices but wouldn’t pick up the rustle of clothing, not an easy thing to do. Kubrick tried to shoot a movie in candlelight. He succeeded but the movie sucked. Too bad, because most people regard him as a genius – he wasted innovative technique on a bad script and bad actors. While director Hooper did use playback on the set of the orchestration (they use a pulse-sync on the playback that is matched later in post-production), the straining voices and over-dramatization of songs ruins the music. Many loved her performance, but I consider Anne Hathaway’s quivering lip on “I dreamed the dream” a distraction. All of this dramatic screeching and caterwauling tends to play down the music and play up the drama. Otherwise, why have singing at all? Just make it a drama and be done with it! You can’t say, well, we’ll have a little bit singing because it was based on the play, but it’s mostly drama. Really? Aye there’s the rub! Directors at the helm who love to meddle with a medium they don’t understand tend to scuttle the ship. You take a perfectly good musical like “South Pacific” and then cast an Italian star who cannot sing bass and a young male star who cannot sing baritone with two of the most recognized songs of their era. Really? The singing by Rossano Brazzi had to be dubbed by Giorgio Tozzi, a famous operatic bass. Even then the heavy Italian accent of Brazzi was a laugh, as the part of Emile was that of a Frenchman!

I will give it to Hugh Jackman. He has played in musical theater on Broadway and in Australia. He’s very good and accomplish, even singing a special opening for his hosting job at the Oscars, “I am Wolverine!” (which was a hoot). But even someone as trained as Jackman knows that in order to deliver a good rendition of a song, you need time to work with an orchestra and the arranger and the producer to make a song work. Otherwise, musicians could just play in any old place, strike up a tune, record it and there you are. You have to give the music community a little more credit, Tab. Some of us do know what we’re talking about when it comes to music and musicals. Now if we were discussing horror movies. I’d be mute. That is one genre about which I know very little.

[cinemabon]

Saturday, January 19, 2013

“Moonrise Kingdom” – directed by Wes Anderson

I’m reminded of a fair, not any particular fair, just the sidewalk variety kind where people have crafts for sale and perhaps the local high school or even community college has works of art on display. Some are efforts at art, but occasionally you come across a real talent with a flair for dimension, color, placement, form, and balance. These and other qualities go into creating art. While I have studied a little, what I know amounts to nothing compared to most. My drawing appears more like scratches and I have no eye for depth or shadow. Wes Anderson, on the other hand, has an incredible flair for creating art out of ordinary spaces. A room is not photographed at oblique angles. Rather, everything takes on symmetry, colors have significance, music isn’t simply a cue, it’s a statement of feeling harmonious with the picture and not supplemental. “Moonrise Kingdom” is a work of art by someone capable of making a “Lord of the Rings” but content to make his art on a smaller canvas – watercolors on paper as opposed to oil on canvas that stretches across thirty feet.

From the very start of the movie, I was immediately reminded of another movie about two thirteen-year-olds seeking youthful romantic fulfillment – “A Little Romance,” directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting). The parallels are similar. Two misunderstood adolescents flee their homes and set out together in search of romance. The setting here is established by narrator Bob Balaban (long film history that really started with his first major role in “Close Encounters”). From the opening shot, we understand this story will be framed by an act of nature that will be the worst in the history of the island. This creates a dramatic tension that Anderson uses throughout the film as we keep wondering when the hurricane will strike. As it turns out, the hurricane isn’t significant at all.

Here is a film that is largely dependent on the cast. Not only is the cast peppered with seasoned professionals – Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton – each actor bring his or her own brand of humor to these small parts that help make “Moonrise Kingdom” a sheer joy to watch from start to finish. Despite the banality of the plot and lack of background, I found the interplay between Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) completely believable. Their awkwardness expressed by hesitancy in their dialogue and stilted gestures added to the quality of their characters. With most of the screen time focused on them, I found their interplay relaxing and cordial. The rest of the cast made up of misfits – two small time lawyers, a scoutmaster, and the island’s only cop – interact with what I would call “polite confrontations.” It’s as if Anderson said, “Ok, I know these parts are small... make something out of them.” That they do. Murray and McDormand as the husband and wife also battle one another in all areas of their marriage as if it were one big litigation. Ed Norton plays against type as the timid but punctual, cigarette-smoking scoutmaster. Finally, Bruce Willis plays the timid frustrated island cop, who tries to be understanding but shows little patience with the eccentric islanders.

Then there is the artwork – the book covers, the tents, the uniforms, the houses – in fact, everything about the film is a work of art. Everything is original. I don’t believe I saw a trade name product anywhere. Even cars looked like something a shop would create and not Detroit. Nominated in a heavily weighted category of Best Original Screenplay, “Moonrise Kingdom” like its peaceful island setting, is a refreshing break from flying bullets and car chases.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, cinemabon, for your even more enlightening small essay on musicals and their screen adaptations, and your review of MOONRISE KINGDOM. The more you say the more your expertise on this subject of musicals becomes convincing, and helpful. It's a bit harsh to say BARRY LYNDON "sucks," maybe true though. Hugh Jackman is a good case in point. He's a musical pro, yet unimpressive because this format undermines his ability to deliver the songs. Then the question you overlook: why the Best Picture nomination and all the audience admiration? Evidently people are like tabuno moved and swept away, and many loved the musical and just accept this as being it, even if to a critical or knowledgeable eye, it ain't.

Thanks also for going back to MOONRISE KINGDOM, almost forgotten by the Oscars people it seems, and giving it its due. I chose to put Wes Anderson's masterful movie at the top of my Best American Movies list for the year (which admittedly includes a Canadian movie with a British star, COSMOPOLIS; but it's a letter-perfect faithful adaptation of an American novel, set in NYC).

BEST AMERICAN
Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)
Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell)
Looper (Rian Johnson)
Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
The Sessions (Ben Lewin)
Flight (Robert Zemeckis)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)

Of those top three you could put any one first. After that it gets dicier. Note that you don't see LES MIZ (obviusly!) -- or LINCOLN -- because LINCOLN just didn't do anything for me. It's not great filmmaking. Nothing Spielberg has done lately is.

MOONRISE KINGDOM not only has something fresh and pure and wholly original about it that even the masterful and impressive THE MASTER and the dazzling and amazing DJANGO UNCHAINED lack: importantly, it's an American auteur working absolutely in top form. He has never done anything better, which I could not say with certainty of THE MASTER or DJANGO, fine though they are.

Below this on my list I get doubtful. COSMOPOLIS and LIFE OF PI are not really exactly "American," for starters. I'm not sure SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a great movie, just that it really works and that it was very enjoyable. Oscar pointed out my remarks about LOOPER make its appearance in my Best List slightly surprising. Nobody has talked much about THE SESSIONS. I'll let it pass. I do think it's a fine film, and about a topic you expect to be schmaltzy. FLIGHT has problems, too long, a weird mixture, too preachy at the end. But I think the subject is interesting and that Denzel delivers some of his best work ever. I'm more in doubt about BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD since its Oscar Nomination. That's a nod to the Sundance film, to the little guy, but I think it may have been overrated and is not quite as original as it's been cracked up to be. Nonetheless it is a cool film and it's kind of cool that the new longer Best Picture nominations lists allow for inclusion of oddball items like this. I'm okay with LIFE OF PI, even if it's a Taiwanese film of a Canadian novel with an Indian star, it's somehow a glorious visual and imaginative experience, with a sense of wonder. However, I am much more sure about my Best Foreign list--more clearly studded with fine films. And one of those is AMOUR. This Best Picture nomination is a nod to Cannes, where it got the Golden Palme. I don't think Haneke has gotten a Best Picture nomination before? I would rate it and HOLY MOTORS way above anything on my Best American list below DJANGO.

But enough about my list. Again, my appreciation cinemabon of your contributions in this thread. But my question is: would you displace one of those choices on the Best Picture nominations list of nine, with MOONRISE? I would.

[tabuno]

Oh my...To insist on a rigid conformity to some genre standard would be to corral the art form of films into distinct categories which then by there very nature would have distinct different standards by which to judge them, like the Golden Globes as opposed to the more generalized field of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Even if one were to thus restrict Les Miserable to the criteria for musicals, one might instead insist that the movie be judged on a period drama epic standard instead. I don't consider Les Miserable a musical as it was filmed, but rather a period drama epic that uses music and lyrics and live recorded music to reflect a more authentic realism and to which to better express the message of human pain and suffering and the jovial joy of pick pockets.

In the end, the subjective nature of this discussion, like abortion will likely preclude the ability to discuss this movie with the same language or communication as the differences of the perception and how this movie is rated are so different.

[tabuno]

Evita happens to be on my must see list and I've been found of the movie since it came out. Madonna capture well her character and I assume she was just stereotyped by the general public. I took away from her performance a much greater respect for her as a singer and actress.

[tabuno]

Between Chris Knipp and cinemabon they combine to produce some of the most clear, compelling, and interesting reviews that strike directly home to the essence of movies. Here with Moonrise Kingdom, cinemabon has created his little own work of art in his commentary on this movie.

[tabuno]

To answer Chris Knipp's question about what movie one might replace Moonrise Kingdom as best picture of the Oscars, I would select Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln. Since I haven't seen Amour or Beasts of the Southern Wild, I would be more circumspect, but neither of their trailers caught much of my attention or interest. I also haven't see Django Unchained, but it's on my list of movie I will see, but I suspect I won't like it as much as some other people have.

[cinemabon]

Tab, I am often the lone wolf/voice in the wilderness. I am the only person on this site who hated the Steven Speilberg sci-fi drama - A.I. We (Oscar, Johann, Chris and others) went back and forth, arguing over this and that. I love a good debate. Stick to your guns. If you like a thing, then stand up for it. That 's what I tell my children. I've done it all my life and I admire people who do so (to a point - the quote about guns being figurative and not literal). You liked "Les Miz" and "Argo" and have valid points. I would never say that my opinion is better than anyone elses because I know this or that. In my mind, this is an open forum and we are all free to express our ideas. I must add, that this group, this intelligent, witty group of disparate but talented writers, unlike other blogs, have stuck together through good times and bad. It is secretly my dream some day that we all fly to New York or Miami or Toronto or Salt Lake City, meet, have a beer/glass of wine/ shot of cognac and talk about movies for two days until we've exhausted every aspect of the subject. That would be a meeting of the minds.

Some dream. Huh, kid.

[Chris Knipp]

Tabuno, no one is insisting on a rigid conformity to anything. We are insisting on excellence. But you are welcome to your opinion, and you are talking about movies that the Oscar people have singled out as outstanding.

[oscar jubis]

Just checking in to say how much I enjoy reading your posts, to make one clarification and one correction. Clarification: Although The Jazz Singer was the first sound film to include speech (only in two scenes), DON JUAN (starring John Barrymore) is considered the first "sound film". Correction: The Wizard of Oz made a small profit upon first release. It did not "lose money" or "was a box office failure" as noted above. Minor stuff. What's important is bon's assertion that a film must be judged against members of its own genre, or against the conventions of its genre, is quite right in my opinion.

[cinemabon]

Sunday, January 20, 2013
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – directed by John Madden

Seeing them all lined up at the airport, you are looking at the current “best of British Actors” group (or nearly so). It must have been a hoot on the set – the stories and all. With the age of the characters firmly established from the start as being the basis for the film’s humor, we can expect jokes about death, bowel movements, and missing sex – the usual. (Dirty Old Men, etc) Some of those jokes are used initially, along with nostalgia for one’s past. Looking back with regrets seems a common theme in movies about the elderly. But the script is more about living one’s life in the present as opposed to one’s past. In addition to the rich Indian setting and its colorful markets (chosen by director Madden specifically for that purpose) the film relies almost entirely on the performances of its core of “veteran” British “Old Vic” actors. What an ensemble Madden collected! Maggie Smith is a two time Oscar winner. Judi Dench also has an Academy Award. Tom Wilkinson has been nominated twice. The rest of the cast has appeared in numerous films over the past three decades or longer. Bill Nighy and Ronald Pickup started in British television back in the 1960’s.

The plot and situation are somewhat contrived. All seven happen to be retiring at the same time and find themselves with very limited funds on which to live. They all see an ad to live cheaply in India by staying at a retirement hotel called the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. An explanation for the name is never given by the manager, Sonny (Dev Patel of “Slumdog Millionaire” fame). When the group arrives, they discover no shuttle bus from the airport and must take public transportation (the first of many inconveniences). Sonny is painting as they arrive. The beds are unmade. The phones don’t work. Some rooms have no doors and air conditioning is non-existent. To say the place is a work in progress is to be kind. However, most of the hardy group takes this all in stride. Despite the hardship, they gradually adapt to the new life and begin to discover an aspect to their lives missing for a long time – an ability to feel needed. Each person begins to find their place in this Indian locale except for the wife of one guest, Jean (Penelope Winton). She doesn’t like India, is a nervous woman and frequently voices her complaints (an annoyance at best). Their marriage is falling apart. Rather than leaving her, the husband continues to support the wife until she finally sees the handwriting on the wall and simply walks away from their relationship. She returns to England, leaving her husband behind.

I purposely have left out most of the film’s story. I do not wish to spoil this film for anyone else so I won’t go further into the plot. Like “Moonrise Kingdom” this is a small independent film that has gained a reputation since its premiere last February in the UK. “Marigold Hotel” has become one of the highest grossing independent films of last year bringing in nearly $140 million US dollars worldwide, second only to “Moonrise Kingdom.” The film was nominated for two Golden Globes but did not make Oscar’s list this year. Since I could not view “Amour” on video (streaming) and “The Master” is also not available (unless I buy the DVD), I chose this film and tomorrow intend to see “Beasts of the Southern Wild” via streaming.

Post Script: My bad about info on "Wiz of Oz" as I was misinformed and the first sound film. Thanks, Oscar.

[Chris Knipp]

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/4365/filedonjuanposter2.jpg

I should think AMOUR is not legally available in "streaming" yet because it is still in theaters in the US. It opened in NYC 18 Dec. but in San Francisco only last week I think and in the East Bay this weekend. BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL I reviewed in my Paris Movie report last May, it being released in the original English with French subtitles under the simpler title INDIAN HOTEL (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3273-PARIS-MOVIE-REPORT-%28May-2012%29&p=27831#post27831); and it's a pleasant, lightweight film. It's not on a level with MOONRISE KINGDOM in any respect other than commercial. Is it some kind of Oscar contender? I'm glad it didn't make the Best Picture list. Are you drifting away from your project, cinemabon? THE MASTER will be good to watch on DVD or BluRay when it comes out 26 Feb. 2013 because these will include 20 minutes of deleted scenes, it's been reported. Too bad you have to wait to see THE MASTER and AMOUR till after the Oscars but they are not all about the Oscars, even if AMOUR made the Best Picture List.

I'll certainly be interested to read what you have to say about BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3310-BEASTS-OF-THE-SOUTHERN-WILD-%28Benh-Zeitlin-2012%29&highlight=beasts+southern+wild) though, and it definitely IS on the Best Picture list, and if you wanted to put your review on the thread I originally started for it when it came out in these parts in theaters 13 July 2013 you'd go here. (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3310-BEASTS-OF-THE-SOUTHERN-WILD-%28Benh-Zeitlin-2012%29&highlight=beasts+southern+wild)

From what I observed the public and the Academy are unlikely to overcome the contradictions and the mud and much to give this movie any big award, but the cuteness prize of the Oscars is sure to go to the youngest contender ever, seven-something Quvenzhané Wallis, who was five when she won the lead role of Hushpuppy, pretending to be six to qualify for an audition.


In 1925, Warner Bros., then a small Hollywood studio with big ambitions, began experimenting with sound-on-disc systems at New York's Vitagraph Studios, which it had recently purchased. The Warner Bros. technology, named Vitaphone, was publicly introduced on August 6, 1926, with the premiere of the nearly three-hour-long Don Juan; the first feature-length movie to employ a synchronized sound system of any type throughout, its soundtrack contained a musical score and sound effects, but no recorded dialogue—in other words, it had been staged and shot as a silent film.
--Wikipedia, "Sound Film." F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE was similar, and a little later. There were a lot of "first" sound films, but it seems that THE JAZZ SINGER is a significant one because it contains, though not a full sound track, more on-set live recorded singing and dialogue in parts than any film before it; hence its frequent mention as
'first talkie." So maybe there's not a single right answer on this. If I were teaching a film history class I'd either be very vague on this part or I'd have to go into more detail listing all the intermediate stages. And what was really the first full-length feature film with a live-recorded dialogue and music soundtrack throughout? It must have come after both DON JUAN and THE JAZZ SINGER.

Oscar is quite right about THE WIZARD OF OZ's finances: it wasn't a big success, but it didn't lose money either.


Although the film received largely positive reviews, it was not a huge box office success on its initial release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,000,000 budget.
--Wikipedia, "The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)." I assume this is more accurate than other online sources that give higher figures for both budget and box office. For 1939 this sounds like a lot of money.

[oscar jubis]

If I were teaching a film history class I'd either be very vague on this part or I'd have to go into more detail listing all the intermediate stages. And what was really the first full-length feature film with a live-recorded dialogue and music soundtrack throughout? It must have come after both DON JUAN and THE JAZZ SINGER.

Yes, it comes after those two landmark films: Lights of New York. It is interesting to note that all three were released by Warner Brothers and that all three used a Vitaphone sound-on-disc process that would quickly become obsolete.

I do get into a lot of detail when I teach the transition to sound. It's a most fascinating period in film history. BTW, a current debate among film historians concerns whether the need to enclose the noisy cameras in a booth and the unidirectionality of early microphones resulted in films with little or no camera movement. There is evidence of that, as well as evidence that filmmakers managed to make dynamic films anyway.

[Chris Knipp]

It's good to go into a lot of detail. It's also good not to deliver history lectures studded with simplistic milestones. As for recording and camera movment, well, you like Hou Hsieu-hsien and that Asian school of visual restraint, so you enjoy films that have very little camera movement. And so do I. I'd say we are in the throes of a period where there's way too much camera movement a lot of the time! But it depends on who's doing it, and why.

[oscar jubis]

I love Hou, our contemporary master of the long take. For me, Red Balloon feels like a side project, a small diversion, in the career of Hou. It's been 8 years since Three Times. And finally, news that he is shooting The Assassin, "a martial-arts art-film" that is his most expensive one to date. Can't wait.

[cinemabon]

It's steady cam! It's been the death of editors and the tripod! Directors can take a steady-cam to a remote location, do a quick set up and start shooting. The only problem is that when you blow up that image to more than a hundred feet across, the slightest movement makes you feel as if you were on a ship at sea and the whole room was rocking. I was extremely upset with Bayona who employed veteran actress Geraldine Chaplin (Dr. Zhivago and others) for a cameo and then shot the entire scene with steady-cam so that we never looked at her performance without the camera rocking back and forth, up and down... very disconcerting and a god-damn waste of a superior talent. I'd like to take every steady-cam and throw it on a big pile and burn every last one of them!

[Chris Knipp]

You could be absoutely right about the shooting of that Geraldine Chaplin scene. I'd have to re-watch it to give an opinion. But I am far, far more happy with the cinematography of THE IMPOSSIBLE than that of LES MIZ. I thought the technical side of THE IMPOSSIBLE was admirable, on the whole. I was pretty well swept away with the tsunami action. LES MIZ on the other hand is more full of distracting, unpleasant camera work than any recent film. A large number of the in print film critics have commented upon it. Most who've found fault with THE IMPOSSIBLE have focused on the limitations of its story line in relation to the context of major events.

[Chris Knipp]

You're probably right about the shooting of that Geraldine Chapline scene. I don't remember but I'll trust you on that and would like to see the shot again to notice that. But I am far, far more happy with the cinematography of THE IMPOSSIBLE than that of LES MIZ. I thought the technical side of THE IMPOSSIBLE was admirable, on the whole. I was pretty well swept away with the tsunami action. LES MIZ on the other hand is more full of distracting, unpleasant camera work than any recent film. A large number of the in print film critics have commented upon it. Most who've found fault with THE IMPOSSIBLE have focused on the limitations of its story line in relation to the context of major events.

[tabuno]

The photographic, camera technique used in Les Miz didn't brother me at all. Rather I was swept up in the entire epic and the movement and the sights and sounds. The camera movement for me added to the angst of the underlying theme of the movie. The feelings of anxiety, fear, unpredictable chaos only were enhanced by the shakiness but quite visually appealing and detail of the visual scenes that were not blurred or distorted like many action thrillers or sci fi/occult horror movies deliberate attempt to do.

[cinemabon]

Tab, I would agree with you to certain extent on the use of camera technique to create visual tension. However, in the case of this particular musical where you have a scene shot in tight quarters with a "wide" lens on a steady-cam, the effect when enlarged on a big screen is amplified by a factor of ten or more. This gives the scene that rolling motion, as if you were shooting on the deck of an oceanliner. Some shots require forethought and planning. While I like hand held scenes for dramatic tension in fights and car chases, when a woman is singing about her inner feelings, I don't like the idea that camera movement should draw attention to itself. That's a distraction and the reason so many critics and other people have complained about it.

[cinemabon]

As to "The Impossible" I would agree that techically the wide shots of the disaster and even the traveling shots inside the hospital were well planned and rehearsed in such a way ahead of time they did not draw attention to themselves. That's one instance of steady cam that turned out to support action and display an incredibly complex set filled with focused extras.

[Chris Knipp]

No, I would not agee with tabuno on this in any aspect. The cinematography on many of the solo song moments of LES MIZ is an absurdity and a total distraction and I could cite a dozen reviews that confirm the ridiculous use of wide angle and extreme closeup, with swoops between. I'll just recall Anthony Lane's review, which you read cinemabon, but tabuno may have eschewed:
The director is Tom Hooper, fresh from “The King’s Speech,” and you can’t help wondering if this shift into grandeur has confused his sense of scale. The camera soars on high, the orchestra bellows, and then, whenever somebody feels a song coming on, we are hustled in close, forsaking our bird’s-eye view for that of a consultant rhinologist.


I'm always dubious when somebody says something in a movie "didn't bother" her, or him. It just means they chose to ignore it, not that it is not a fault. I have a friend who watches a lot of bad movies with uncritical pleasure and then reports they "didn't bother" her. So what?

[oscar jubis]

Last post seems overly dismissive of individual differences in motion perception as well as experiential differences caused by screen size, viewer position relative to screen, etc.

[Chris Knipp]

About half the critics like LES MIZ and half don't at all. Those who don't, find fault with the camerawork. Motion perception, screen size, or where you sat in the theater have nothing to do with it. Here are some examples of reviewers' references to the camerawork. I could give more, but I got tired.

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. Twenty minutes into the retelling of fugitive Valjean, his monomaniacal pursuer Javert, the torch singers Fantine and Eponine and the rest, I wanted somebody to just nail the damn camera to the ground."

David Edelstein, New York Magazine:; "When an actor begins to sing, the camera rushes in and fastens on the performer’s face, positioning itself just below the head, somewhere between the navel and the Adam’s apple—and canted from 30 to 45 degrees, although the angle changes as the performer moves and the operator scampers to keep up. I imagined the cameraman to be small, fleet, and extremely high strung, like Gollum. The actors must have had to cultivate an inner stillness to keep from recoiling from him/it. A Zen forbearance would also have kept them from grimacing at all their missed notes."

Dana Stevens, Slate: "We're all familiar with the experience of seeing movies that cram ideas and themes down our throats. Les Misérables may represent the first movie to do so while also cramming us down the throats of its actors."

Jay Gabler, Twin Cities Daily Planet: "Hooper’s approach varies little. For the confessional numbers, he brings the camera in as he did with Hathaway and lets us watch the actors’ eyes redden for the first couple of verses, then as the song rises to its climax, he cuts to a medium shot at a 45 degree angle (dynamic!) and finally gives us an ascending helicopter shot so that we can see the computer-assisted recreation of 19th century Paris. . . Except we can’t actually see it very well. Much of the movie takes place at night. . ."

Kimberly Jones, Austin Chronicle: "Shot to shot, Hooper’s vision careens between lightly grotesque hyperrealism and tinny movie artifice, wherein unplucked brows and oozing open wounds share space, if not sensibility, with digital fakery and histrionic zooms. "

Lou Llimerick, The New York Post: "It’s worth seeing the movie for Hathaway alone. . .It’s the worst of times, though, when Hooper repeatedly traps his stars in tight close-ups during the musical numbers — practically shoving the camera down the singers’ tonsils."

Justin Chang, Variety: "As it shifts from one dynamically slanted camera angle to another via Melanie Ann Oliver and Chris Dickens' busy editing, the picture seems reluctant to slow down and let the viewer simply take in the performances. That hectic, cluttered quality becomes more pronounced as the story lurches ahead to the 1832 Paris student uprisings. . ."

Tasha Robinson, AV Club: "Content with steadier, soberer camera work in The Damned United and The King’s Speech (which won him a Best Director Oscar), he repeatedly chops Les Misérables’ setpieces into disorienting fragments seen from a crazed variety of angles."

Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte Observer: "Nor does Hooper know how to shoot musical numbers. He often locks onto actors’ heads for the length of a number, pointing the camera at open mouths, until we become more familiar with Jackman’s uvula than his otolaryngologist.

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post: "There’s little sense of dynamism or pacing, a fault both of the original score and Hooper’s unimaginative staging and camera work, which tend to underline, italicize and boldface every emotional beat."

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times: "The director Tom Hooper can be a maddening busybody behind the camera. . . .Mr. Hooper’s maximalist approach is evident the very moment the scene begins — the camera swooping, as waves and music crash — setting an overblown tone that rarely quiets. His work in this passage, from the roller-coaster moves of the cameras to the loud incidental noise that muffles the lyrics, undermines his actors and begins to push the musical from spectacle toward bloat. . . . .his inability to leave any lily ungilded — to direct a scene without tilting or hurtling or throwing the camera around — is bludgeoning and deadly. "

Eric Kohn, Indiewire: "Relying heavily on close-ups over the course of a two-and-a-half hour narrative with almost no spoken dialogue, Hooper's approach comes across as the equivalent of sitting in the front row of a stage play while the entire cast leans forward and blares each song into your eardrums."

Calum Marsh, Slant: "Fisheye lenses and poorly framed close-ups abound in Les Misérables, nearly every frame a revelation of one man's bad taste; the best that can be said of the style is that it's deliberate, which at least distinguishes it from Hooper's work to date."

Matt, Cinecritic: " Two of the the musical's biggest numbers, Lovely Ladies and Master of the House, which involve large parts of the cast, were the weakest moments of the film because of Hooper's decision to focus on single characters with a zooming camera."

[tabuno]

When I wrote that I "wasn't bothered" by Les Miz, I apparently under reported my experience to others. Instead the close ups and the less than stellar, perfect singing, held me "enthralled" for instead of the wide shot, on-stage spectacle, the film camera was able to bring into focus and clarity the richness of an intimate and intensely emotional personal experience. The ultimate in art form expression is to enable the viewer to directly connect to the message, thoughts, feelings of what is the most important sensory experience on the screen and this was accomplished directly and powerfully in how Les Miz was shot. When there was a need for wide angled, larger than life epic photography, Les Miz delivered, when there was a need for a deeply personal and singular focus on the humanity of a person Les Miz delivered spectacularly.

Too often the deep, secreted emotions and feeling are wrapped up in mystery and vagueness that damper the emotive and visceral stimulus available to be experienced on screen. Too often in real life, such deeply held thoughts and feelings are masked and in reality, the audience has been numbed and possess undeveloped perceptions of authentic communication with others, even their own family members and love ones. It is movies such as Les Miz that can bring this dull, vague sensations into rich and vibrant life by the use of music, lyrics, and close ups that penetrate the contemporary human filters and unused powers of observation. As a person who has experienced deep pain, loneliness, powerlessness, hurt, rejection...how Ann Hathaway captured Fantine was powerfully brought forth...Even Russell Crowe's less than stellar singing was all the more real and human, with its internal frailties even though supposedly masked by a strong exterior. Such is the delicate director that avoided perfection the actors in order to make the movie ironically more perfect in reality..

[cinemabon]

Tab, I don't mean to belittle your observations. However, there have been some great moments in film musical history that are very emotional and quite genuine. Take Shani Wallis singing "As long as he needs me," moments after her boyfriend nearly beats her to death for disobeying him. She could walk away and say, "Forget you!" But she loves the guy... no matter how badly he treats her. Now that's love... not a healthy love, but love nonetheless. The scene is shot through the broken dirty glass of abandon London wharehouses near the river Thames, a filthy place. But Carol Reed's camera work is both subtle and sublime, the colors muted, and Shani Wallis is quite emotional without us being thrust into her face. We feel with her but don't have to sit in her lap to understand how she feels. Carol Reed allows Wallis to tell us how she feels using her voice, that trained beautiful voice in one of the greatest solos in musical history. This is only one of many scenes down through the years when great directors have captured singers, and yes these actors are also great singers, in ways that convey the perfect emotion required for the scene without relying on techniques that tend to be "obvious" or "distracting" to a scene, rather than allow the actor to convey what is necessary in terms of human emotion. I can point others, many others in both cases where directors have used "techniques" that distract while other directors allow the actor/singer and the music to convey the meaning. The truth is that when a technique draws attention to itself and does become part of the story flow, then it becomes a distraction that undermines the integrity of the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzz-RmLM8Ic

[tabuno]

Like a primitive who has never been out of the United States, I've heard that baked goods in France are to die for. There are children who lived in the Capitol of Utah, Salt Lake City, when they had had the opportunity to visit a local mountain for the first time in their lives which happened to overlook their city, they were amazed that there were "stars" below them.

cinemabon's detailed and moving description of a scene from a musical (it is inferred) offers up a transferred emotional imagined scene in one's mind that reflects my limited memories of Les Miserable through tinted, warped glasses. Without such other memories and experiences, the ones from Les Miserable are the only touching and moving ones I have upon which to judge a movie, as limited as they are. I've mentioned it before long ago that I reflect those mass audience tendencies of which we respond to from the perspective what we moves us and captures our imagination that haven't had the opportunity or resources to experience the "stars" of the valley.

[cinemabon]

I have a French baker up the street from Lyon who's pretty damn good.

Your inexperience when it comes to musicals shows

[cinemabon]

Here's a true Oscar-winning torch song delivered by the best there ever was... (I should add that this film was directed by the director whose movies have garnered more Academy Award wins and nominations than the next four directors combined, the great William Wyler)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlz6QzyAVA

[cinemabon]

The first bearer of torch songs went to the great Lena Horne, who lasted 50 years in show business as the woman who never aged. She also broke the color barrier when it came top female stars. Here, from the 1943 musical, "Stormy Weather," she sings the title song that came to be her signature number. She was 26 at the time and passed in 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCG3kJtQBKo

[cinemabon]

Of course, Judy Garland, the little girl with the big sad eyes, probably set the standard for the "wistful" melody in "Over the Rainbow." But she sang many torch songs in her career. Here, she pines over the good looking young man next door... looking as wistful as ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUB4XcQYq9A

[cinemabon]

Cheryl Barnes, stuck on the streets of New York, homeless with a child, goes in search of his father who has abandon them. When she finds him, she discovers he wants nothing to do with her. Her heart-filled rendition fell on deaf ears that year, as she wasn't even nominated. From the musical "Hair," directed by two time Academy Award winning Milos Forman comes, "Easy to be hard."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCs1rkAXZ9o

[cinemabon]

One of the most original and creative talents of my generation, Madonna is a singular phenomenon who is unlike anyone before her or after. She made her mark on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Evita" that many felt fell flat, but did not blame her. Here she sings the best song from the show and gives one of the finest performances of her career; directed by Academy Award nominee Alan Parker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA1QHtFkH48

[cinemabon]

There is a consistancy to all of these examples - great directors, good camera work, great singers, and memorable performances. I'm not certain your "Les Miz" measures up the standard... and there is a standard to follow. It works. Woe to those who fail to listen...

[cinemabon]

In an ironic twist of fate, Mario Lanza, who argued with the director of "The Student Prince" was fired from the picture by new studio boss, Dore Schary who wouldn't tolerate disobedient actors. Unwilling to give up the incredible voice tracks, Schary ended up hiring the director Lanza wanted but put non-singer Edmond Purdom in the role as Prince Karl, lip-synching the part.

In this scene, the prince learns that the only man he called friend, his father, just died unexpectedly and Karl must assume the duties of being king, alone. Standing before his father's coffin, he tries to muster courage in this emotional rendition of "I'll walk with god." Directed by Richard Thorpe, the man who made Lanza famous, Mario was blackballed and never allowed to work in Hollywood again (with "Serenade" being the exception).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUyZE1BDqSc

[cinemabon]

Told she had won the part of Rose in "Gypsy," Rosalind Russell sent a cable to Ethel Merman (who made the part famous on Broadway) apologizing to her and begging her indulgence as she was an actress and not a singer. Merman supposedly cabled back, "Just belt it out like I do and you'll be fine." Russell studied voice for three months, pushing herself; winning the Golden Globe that year for Best Actress.

In this scene, her daughter, along with her entire vaudeville act, walks out on her, leaving her and her other daughter alone. Determined to make a success out of her life in show business, she pushes her remaining daughter onto the stage, eventually giving up all moral objects when she allows her daughter to perform a striptease. Of course, Rose's daughter would become the most famous stripper of all time, Gypsy Rose Lee. Based on Lee's memoirs and directed by Oscar winner Mervyn LeRoy (who produced "Wizard of Oz") here is, "Everything's coming up Roses."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYGMguS2dD8

[cinemabon]

Based on the tragic life of rock and roller Janis Joplin, Bette Midler performed the title role of a lifetime in her Oscar nominated role directed by Marc Rydell. This film marked the debut of a different type of musical that while unique and was repeated in style by Barbra Streisand in "A Star is Born" never caught on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR6okRuOLc8

[cinemabon]

FAIL

This is how you take a great Broadway show and destroy it; even with Oscar winning actors and directors! Let's hope for your sake, they aren't putting "Les Miz" in this catagory a few years from now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-yjj6_LBCs

[cinemabon]

FAIL

"Paint Your Wagon" was a small Broadway musical produced by writers Lerner and Lowe (My Fair Lady) back in the early 1950's. It's two biggest songs, "I talk to the trees" and "They call the wind Maria" were hits at the time. Segue 18 years later and Paramount Studios wants to produce a big name musical with two big stars Lee Marvin (who won for "Cat Ballou") and Clint Eastwood along with European sensation Jean Seberg. Directed by Joshua Logan, the same man who butchered "South Pacific" and you have a recipe for sure fire disaster. Here is non-singer Clint Eastwood destroying one of the musicals big numbers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn8YubD01sk

[cinemabon]

FAIL

This highly staged number dubbed with the original 1930's recording attempts to stylize the great Busby Berkley. But if you want Busby Berkley, then watch one of his movies. This Herbert Ross movie tears the audience in two directions at once, trying to show us the dark side of the Great Depression while throwing nonsensical music numbers in for good measure. This is the title number with Martin picking up an alley stray and ... the rest is too confusing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-lt16Zm_DI

[cinemabon]

FAIL

Julie Andrews got screwed by Jack Warner - figuratively, of course. She not only nailed Eliza Dolittle on Broadway and then took the Oscar away from Warner's film version, but she came back and continued to win hearts of musical lovers with three more great roles. Warner put non singer Vanessa Redgrave in this disaster of a stylized musical that is remember more for its silly costumes, bad hairdos and horrible sets than it is for its Lerner and Lowe score. Here is one of the worst examples of how to destroy a Broadway play...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wijIn4xQ8jw

[cinemabon]

FAIL

As much as Ros Russelll (who played Mame in the non-musical version, "Auntie Mame") was gracious about taking Ethel Merman's part from her; Lucille Ball had no qualms about starring as Mame Dennis and brushed her rivals aside. Angela Lansbury had made the musical famous and was responsible for making several of the songs hits, my favorite being "When he walked into my life." While Lucy is probably remembered as televisions great lady of laughs, she did not have the range or depth to play the woman who endeared little Patrick to her. Mame was charming, witty, and a grand socialite. Ball is a brassy redhaired buffoon and not the sophisticate Lansbury made famous. In this opening scene, we quickly find out why this movie bombed so badly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdpwpfUbXl8

[Chris Knipp]

This is an amazing compendium, cinemabon! I will comment further when I've watched them all. In the CHORUS LINE scene the timing seems off.

[cinemabon]

SUCCESS, BUT WAIT! IT'S NOT A MUSICAL?

In this great opening, one of the finest of any non-musical adventure movies, Steven Spielberg makes a brilliant tongue in cheek tribute to the great Busby Berkley with his soon to be wife Kate Capshaw in "Anything Goes" a precursor to what is to follow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1H9eKWPGRo

[cinemabon]

Animated film as musical

Starting in the 1930’s, Walt Disney pioneered the idea that you could combine music and animation. Although the Fleischer brothers offered Walt competition (Gulliver’s Travels), Disney shined with Silly Symphonies. His work culminated in the first full length feature film, “Snow White.” The title character not only sings but acts! However, animated characters are limited in their emotional responses reduced to caricatures of emotions and not performances. Walt followed this success with “Pinocchio.” Instead of the main character breaking into song, those around him do all the singing. But by the time Disney arrived at Bambi, he put the music aside and concentrated more on the story. (Although Dumbo and Cinderella are more musically oriented). Animated musicals remained rare birds until a young gay man arrived at Disney Studios who would not only breathe new life into the genre but nearly save New York City in the process. It was Jeffrey Katzenberg who employed Howard Ashman to write a script for an animated feature. Ashman pictured a singing mermaid based on the Hans Christian Andersen story and pitched it to Katzenberg. The rest is musical history. Starting in the late 1980’s with “The Little Mermaid,” Disney Studios practically resurrected the musical (by popularizing that style of presentation), revitalized Times Square (which had fallen into disrepair), and brought audiences back into theaters. Musicals bloomed and gave rise in popularity to nearly every title that followed – Beauty and the Beast (the only animated film ever nominated for Best Picture), Aladdin, Lion King, Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan – all musicals. Stage musicals flourished as well, including “Phantom of the Opera, Evita, Miss Saigon, and Les Miserables (among many others). All thanks to a little mermaid in the mind of a young gay man who longed for the glory days of musicals. We miss you, Howard.

[Chris Knipp]

A lot of clips to look at, but I'm looking at them all, and here are my responses. First of all let's not forget: all of these, good and not-so-good, are lipo-synched, not recorded live.

STRISAND. "My Man" is beautifully done, with grace and assurance. Lena Horne's "Stormy Weather" is from an era when movies were really glamorous. French film noir sometimes evoke those cool nightclubs. The dance sequence starting with the patchwork zoot suits in the rain is great, if incomplete.
JUDY GARLAND: 'THE BOY NEXT DOOR'. CLOSEUP: a bit of a bore to me, but beautifully done.
HAIR, CHERYL BARNES. She really belts it out. This song made me say, "Wow!" I never saw this before at all. I like that they shot it in the snow. You introduce this song well. She should have had recognition for this performance. I'd like to see this.
EVITA. How can you lose with Antonio Banderas in the audience? This is the most interesting visually of your excerpts so far, in the editing.
MIXED SUCCESSES?
THE STUDENT PRINCE AND MARIO LANZA. This also I did not know. Mario Lanza died at 38! He did have films that had great hits before the big battle with Dore Shary, and he did have a beautiful Italian operatic tenor voice. There are no singers in "Les Miz" within a mile of this voice! The dull actor lipsynching surely detracts from the emotion considerably.
ROSALIND RUSSELL. This is real campy musical grandeur. "This time I'm gonna make you a star, baby!" Not the greatest singiner.....bu there's Karl Malden.
BETTE MIDDLER. This is lovely. Very campy too. Let's not forget Bette Midler got her start performing in the gay baths. She achieves magic here.
"FAILS:"
CHORUS LINE. What is actually wrong with this movie, do you think? That the original itself is too stagey, too static? I was not that crazy about the original Boradway musical. I did see it. (There's something wrong with the formatting of this clip, by the way. It's badly compressed.)
CLINT EASTWOOD in PAINT YOUR WAGON. Wow. Yeah, nice voice, handsome man, stupid idea. Good example, maybe your best.
PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. We've already discusssed......I watched this after our discussion and also watched all the Dennis Potter original BBC version. Steve Martin is kind of creepy. It was meant to be Bob Hoskins. And it was meant to have the British class element. But it's still pretty weird and creepy; the Dennis Potter version has some even creepier stuff in it, but it fits better in the whole.
CAMELOT. I find this musical boring so who's in it hardly matters, besides the music doesn't seem to require a great singer, but if you say Julie Andrews should have gotten the role....I can't argue with you. But Vanessa Redgrave is elegant, and the feel is nice and light, and moves along, unlike the dreary, heavy, self-important "Les Miz."
LUCILLE BALL in AUNTIE MAME. Bad casting, I suppose. Also it seems that the rhythm is way off. It seems to me to drag.
KATE CAPSHAW doing "Anything Goes" in the TEMPLE OF DOOM opening. Yes, this is beautifully done. Is she singing it in Chinese? How did she doe that?!

[Chris Knipp]

When you're talking about animated "musicals," don't forget about Walt Disney's FANTASIA. That was groundbreaking, and I think wonderful, for bringing classical music to kids. It made Leopold Stokowski a star. With Mickey. Truly magical use of animation and music.

[tabuno]

Tab, I would agree with you to certain extent on the use of camera technique to create visual tension. However, in the case of this particular musical where you have a scene shot in tight quarters with a "wide" lens on a steady-cam, the effect when enlarged on a big screen is amplified by a factor of ten or more. This gives the scene that rolling motion, as if you were shooting on the deck of an oceanliner. Some shots require forethought and planning. While I like hand held scenes for dramatic tension in fights and car chases, when a woman is singing about her inner feelings, I don't like the idea that camera movement should draw attention to itself. That's a distraction and the reason so many critics and other people have complained about it.

This is a great observation for me that didn't occur and impact me when I saw Les Miz, but it really makes a lot of sense. I may have been so caught up in the scene and Ann Hathaway's performance that she was able to out perform the distraction for me. But that's a tribute to her performance, not the quality or lack of the cinematography itself. I will need to take more time and experience the movie again with this new insight before I can make any reasonable response. Opened my eyes here.

[tabuno]

Of course, Judy Garland, the little girl with the big sad eyes, probably set the standard for the "wistful" melody in "Over the Rainbow." But she sang many torch songs in her career. Here, she pines over the good looking young man next door... looking as wistful as ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUB4XcQYq9A

I've attempted to sing Judy's Over The Rainbow and have watched this scene numerous times. My singing however leaves much to be desired. When I compare this scene to Ann Hathaway's scene I was much more moved by Hathaway's performance though I don't know how the camera work might have contributed or detracted from her performance. The dramatic content of Hathaway's lyrics may have more to do with the emotive resonance than how it was sung or it just the biting lyrics that brought out such resonance from Hathaway than from Garland.

[tabuno]

One of the most original and creative talents of my generation, Madonna is a singular phenomenon who is unlike anyone before her or after. She made her mark on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, "Evita" that many felt fell flat, but did not blame her. Here she sings the best song from the show and gives one of the finest performances of her career; directed by Academy Award nominee Alan Parker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA1QHtFkH48

When I watched Madonna in "Evita" when it came out, up until then I didn't care for Madonna, a seemingly slutty girl. But her performance in "Evita" made an indelible mark on me and my respect for Madonna was never waivered since.

[tabuno]

I haven't had a lot of opportunities to experience professional quality musicals, but of all of the one's I've witnessed, Chorus was the most moving and memorable. When I went to see the movie version, my expectations were so high that I was devastated by how disconnected the movie was from the live performance.

I remember in 1975 when I took acting at the University of Utah, Sonny, my instructor recommended that I must sit within the first fifteen rows. So when I had a chance to go to Los Angeles and the Shurbert Theatre I made sure I was near the front. Apparently I was told that Chorus Line was created with the idea that the audience experienced the musical from the perspective of the director who likely sat near the front. This authentic, in the immersive sense was never translated well as a movie and the absence/or substitation of some of the most memorable songs also was a horrendous mistake in my mind. The best way to have made an adapted movie unlike Les Mis was to recreate an intimate theater-like atmosphere and maybe just maybe try to use a reality video cam documentary like cinematographic approach to the shots outside the theater as if the audience were just transplanted outside of the theater.

[cinemabon]

Had Richard Attenborough shot "A Chorus Line" the same way it was presented in the theater, the film would have made good theater but bad filmmaking (the show doesn't really lend itself to the film medium anyway). As you recall, we never see the director in the play, only hear his voice. In the film, Attenborough turns the camera around and we see every reaction on the director's face (Michael Douglas) to every actor's story. This has the effect of taking away our reaction, of robbing us the chance to experience our own feelings (which was the point of the play).

"Les Miz" is not so much the poor effort of great actors as it is more like "A Chorus Line" spoiled by the techniques used by an over-indulgent director who wanted to experiment. In this case, we differ. I feel he failed. You feel he succeeded. I feel his use of experimental techniques gets in the way of the storytelling, especially since the basis for the medium is that it is a musical, or was at one time. I do not, will not, and cannot take away the efforts of quality actors who gave it their all, singing on the set without the benefit of proper conditions (a set is not a sound studio that has different accoustic properties).

When I starred as Charlie in the off-Broadway production of "Where's Charlie?" I sang live before an audience. The acting level in a stage musical is not nearly as important as is the singing voice. However, unlike the film "Les Miz," I benefited from the presence of a full pit orchestra that included two harps, not the playback of some tape synched to cameras rolling. As an actor having to concentrate more on performance than song delivery, I feel my songs would have suffered. I would have found it even more difficult to deliver a good singing performance with a camera inches from my face (not that I couldn't deliver a performance, just that I couldn't hear myself singing). We could go back and forth on this day after day, week after week. In the end, you liked "Les Miz" and I didn't for different reasons that have nothing to do with my abilities as a critic, my age, or my preference. I don't believe the criteria add up. But you have repeatedly demonstrated your personal feelings in this regard and I respect them because you well educated, thoughtful, and have the right to express your opinion. That doesn't mean your argument is sound, just that it is preferential.

[tabuno]

cinemabon's perspective on perspective and Chorus Line (the Broadway stage and film) shines an important light on how we better experience these art forms. He has captured the dissonant problems with the movie version of Chorus Line (which I up until now struggled to understand) and which I hope film producers and directors will have by now incorporated into their essential list of must dos and must avoids.