The Clown Prince of Oscars

The most purely deserved award of the night. Tomorrow, I'll watch The Dark Knight on blu-ray and reflect on the awesomness that is the Nolanverse Joker, and how lucky we Batman fans are to have such a wonderful performance to savor forever. But tonight, I will dream of an alternate reality where Heath was up on stage accepting his award, thanking Christopher Nolan for guidance and Alan Moore for inspiration, and teasing us all with hints about his part in the next movie. Wish you were here, HL.

Notes From The AMC Best Picture Showcase

On Saturday, I watched all five Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars as part of the AMC Best Picture Showcase. The first film started at 10:30am, and the day wrapped up at fifteen to midnight.

The single most interesting thing I observed:

All five nominees feature at least one scene of rear male nudity. Milk and The Reader present this nudity in a sexual context, while Slumdog, Benjamin Button, and Frost/Nixon use it for comic effect. 2008 will be truly be remembered as the Year of Man Butts. This is perhaps the true reason Wall-e and The Dark Knight were not nominated.

More notes and observations on this year's crop of Best Picture noms, after the jump....

SPOILER WARNING: Plot points are discussed.

Male nudity aside, here are some other qualities the Best Picture noms share...

Each film is set in a notably troubled time. It's not just individual characters who are suffering, it's the society they live in at large.

• Milk: The American Gay Community vs intolerance.
• The Reader: Post-War Germany vs holocaust guilt.
• Benjamin Button: New Orleans vs Hurricane Katrina.
• Slumdog Millionaire: Impoverished youth of India vs Exploitation.
• Frost/Nixon: America vs The Corruption of Their Political Leaders.

Four films feature prominent references to opera. Frost/Nixon is the only one that doesn't.

Three films feature suicide, and two of those are by hanging.

Two films feature brothels. In Benjamin Button, it is presented cheerfully and positively. In Slumdog, not so much.

Only one film is set in the modern era - Slumdog Millionaire. It's also the only film to feature any cinematic storytelling techniques that have been invented since 1940.

None of of the films feature interesting parts for women. Even Kate Winslet's character in The Reader, which she'll probably get an Oscar for, gives her very few opportunities to express anything internal. She's an illiterate ex-nazi who has awesome sex with a fifteen year old boy, and really, there's not much more we learn about her other than that. We only see her as she relates to her young lover, who is the film's true focus. In Slumdog, Ben Button, and Frost/Nixon, the prominent female characters are the objects of desire for the protagonist, and that's it. There are no women in Milk, except for a lesbian with two lines. Not a great year for ladies in film, is all I'm saying.

Notes On The Experience

I slept through at least 1/3 of Benajmin Button, and missed the part where he gets young and sexy entirely (I woke up when he was a pimply teen). I do not feel I missed out on much.

Everyone who got a full-day pass got a refillable Watchmen popcorn bag. I expected to be dipping in and out of the concession stand all day, but as it turns out one large bag of popcorn is the maximum a human being can consume in a 24-hour period.

Just before the Reader's climactic scene, where Ralph Finnes goes to visit Kate Winslet in jail, the film caught fire and burned a hole in the middle of the frame! It looks EXACTLY like it does when it's done as a special effect - big red burn in the middle of the image that spreads outward until all that's left on screen is a big while hole framed by crinkley black ashes. It was AWESOME. The audience was very good natured about it, A. because it looked so cool, and B. to AMC's credit, they fixed it surprisingly quickly - the break lasted less than five minutes and the film picked up right where we left off. This is why I love AMC - if it had been a Regal Theater, they would have kept us waiting for two hours before they told us to go home. AMC FTW.

Headache set in at the end of Slumdog, but I had prepared by bringing a huge bottle of advil.

I tried to Twitter throughout the showcase using a tmobile daypass for internet access, but it didn't work. Even after calling tech support, nothing. I hate you tmobile. I hate you forever.

With all five films fresh in my mind, I can safey say that only Milk and Slumdog seem even remotely like Best Picture Material.

Frost/Nixon is entertaining, but less a like a great movie than the sort of slightly cheesey and heavily plot based movie that I'd enjoy watching every now and then on TNT while working at home.

Ben Button is boring and souless and does not even feature very impressive special effects. When he's in old-kid makeup, his proportions are always way off. I know this movie cost a billion dollars to make and is a drama, but surely those are not the ONLY qualifications to get a Best Picture nom ?

The Reader at first seems to be a really interesting metaphor for post-war German guilt; Kate Winslett IS the holocaust! The kid IS post-war Germany! But about half way through it turns out it's really just a movie about the dangers of illiteracy in middle class women.

I really liked Milk, and it definitely makes an effective mark as the first Major Hollywood Gay Civil Rights Movie. I'm also really happy to see the gay kid from High School Musical has managed to score a role in which his character can be openly gay. This is progress.

Slumdog is the most entertaining, exciting, and inventive film nominated. There are problems, it's not a masterpiece, but it's the best of the bunch. I'm glad it's going to win.

All that said, Dark Knight was robbed. If the Academy can nominate the boring piece of trash like Lord of the Rings 3 (seriously, what was going on?), they certainly could have nominated Dark Knight, a thoughtful, mesmerizing, and occasionally very artful action movie. Your day will come, Nolan. One day, we'll show them all.

Geekanerd To Undertake Last Minute Oscar Catch-Up/Endurance Challange

Not long ago, I said that last year's cinematic achievements could be summed up in one image. But as the gods of fate and Los Angeles would have it, neither one of Geekanerd's favorite films of 2008 ended up with Best Picture nominations. Shirts were torn and tears were shed.

But never one to judge before all the facts are in, I, your Geekanerd editor, will soon embark on a fourteen hour cinematic journey; a five-film, back-to-back screening of each nominee for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture. And remember, one of these films is like three and a half hours long, so this could get serious.

This Saturday, AMC/Lowes Theaters across the country will be holding their third annual Best Picture Showcase. $30 bucks get you a pass to watch all five noms in a row, plus free popcorn all day and a decorative lanyard to treasure forever. Doors open at 10am, and the final set of credits roll at midnight.

Click the graphic to if tix are available for your local show, but if you can't make it, feel free to live vicariously through Geekanerd. I'll be live-blogging throughout the day between films via the site, as well as mid-movie updates via Twitter (yes, we have a Twitter channel now). Expect psychosis to sink in about half way through Benjamin Button's eighth set piece.

Hell, I made it through the endless setlist one and a half times. I can take this.

Weekanerd NYC: Live Art, Classic Jack, and The Award Show That Almost Wasn't

Friday, February 22

• Art Battles
• 8pm @The Bleecker Street Theater, 45 Bleecker St, Manhattan

Not entirely unlike the Cut & Paste Design Tournament, an Art Battle is an exhibition of work that artists create right there in the gallery. It'll be like one of these cheesy speed-painting videos, but much slower and more artsy.



Movies movies movies after the jump...

Saturday, February 23

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
• @ The Museum of Modern Art (Titus Theater 1), 11 W. 53rd St, Manhattan

If you're still trying to get your Oscar betting picks together, this film might deliver some insight on what it has historically taken to win the big ones, having won Best Picture, Lead Actor, Lead Actress, Director, and Screenplay in 1975.

Sunday, February 24

• The 2008 Oscars
  
• 8pm @ Various Places

There are many Oscar parties around the city, but none I thought looked particularly interesting or geeky, and all of which are expensive. It's a living room sort of event anyway.

Weekanerd NYC: Propaganda Shorts, Oscar Shorts, and Shorts You (re)Made!

Friday, January 18

• Dawn Of Japanese Animation: Propaganda
  
• 7pm @ The Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, Manhattan

Animated war propaganda is as entertaining as it is unsettling, as anyone who's watched Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines will attest. As a sheltered American, I've rarely had the chance to see propaganda from other countries, and this sample of animated shorts from 1930-40s Japan promises a very different brand of ambiguity-free emotional manipulation. These films will be presented with recently created music and live narration, and the program includes titles such as Momotaro's Sky Adventure and Sankichi the Monkey: The Storm Troopers. $10, $4.50 for students.

This year's crop of Oscar Short Docs and Michel Gondry invites you to (re)make art, after the jump...

Saturday, February 16

• Be Kind Rewind Exhibition
  Noon to 6pm@ Deitch Gallery, 18 Wooster Street, Manhattan

Do you want to make a lo-fi recreation of your favorite movie, but you need the process to be within a carefully structured environment? You're in luck! As part of a new exhibit of Michel's Gondry's art/promotion for Be Kind Rewind, Gondry will be making over the Deitch gallery in the image of the video store from his film, complete with a backlot with ready-made sets and video equipment so attendees can (re)make their own movies. The videos will then be exhibited in the gallery, so this is your shot at fame, people. Commercial New York Art World Fame!

Sunday, February 17

• 2008 Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts
  
• 5pm@ The Museum of Modern Art (Titus Theater 1), 11 W. 53rd St, Manhattan

The bane of every Oscar Pool is the Documentary Shorts category. Usually an educated guess amounts to looking up the synopsizes and trying to pick something about the holocaust. But thanks to MOMA, you can now watch the four nominees yourself and either vote your heart or gauge for yourself what those squares in the academy will like. $10 or $6 for students.

Ratatouille Wants An Oscar - A REAL One!

I wasn't much of a fan of Ratatouille, but the film critics of America certainly "ate it up" (sorry). It's currently the best reviewed film of the year as scored by Metacritic, and unless Atonement, Sweeney Todd, or There Will Be Blood contain exactly zero elements that anyone might dislike, Brad Bird's portrait of an artist as a young rodent will by numerical critical consensus be the best film of 2007. However, Ratatouille is unlikely to get an Oscar nom for Best Picture because animated films have been ghettoized into their own category since the 2001 awards. It was then that the Best Animated Feature category was introduced, which has since been treated more like Least Bad Kiddie Movie, judging by some of the nominees. While the existence of the category doesn't actually bar animated films from Best Film competition, most don't bother to campaign, nullifying their chances. But according to this NY Times Article, the folks at Pixar are making a go of it, perhaps inspired by their own odds-overcoming cartoon rat.

As much as I'd like to see Pixar set a precedent for high-quality animated films competing on the level of other critically acclaimed films, I don't see it happening this time around. 2007 looks to be a pretty damn good year for American films, this being the year when the US's endless war anxiety finally rose to the surface in an eruption of downbeat, bloody movies, setting up a crowded playing field that I doubt Ratatouille will squeeze into.

What would it take, I wonder, for an animated movie to get nominated these days? The first and last cartoon to compete for Best Picture was Beauty and the Beast; has there been another animated film released in America since then that has had the same winning combination of production value, dignity, and traditional storytelling? The Triplets of Bellville was a bit hit with critics, but it was way too weird to play as an Oscar movie (although that year the extremely weird Return of the King won, which in addition to being a mess was one of the most boring movie I've ever seen, despite featuring a scene where a man on fire jumps off a mountain). Action-comedies are persona non-grata as far as the Oscars are concerned, so The Incredibles is out too. I think the only animated movie in the last seven years that could have had a shot was Spirited Away, which was also foreign and pretty bizarre, but was easy to watch and by a famous and celebrated filmmaker. But Spirited Away has come and gone, let's look to the future. If Ratatouille can't change Americans minds about animated film, perhaps Persepolis can. With an amazing looking trailer and extremely timely subject matter (a first person recollection of Iran's Islamic Revolution), Persepolis is poised to be one of the biggest adult-oriented animated features in U.S history, and will also likely determine commercial viability of animated films adapted from comics. Given those stakes, I hope Persepolis lives up to it's hype. But as far as awards go, it'll have a hard enough time wrenching that statue out of Ratatouille's hands in the Animated Feature category, especially if the Best Pic campaign fails. Or who knows, maybe Jerry Seinfeld will do his stand-up in every Academy voter's living room and Bee Movie will take the whole thing.

Related: My schizoid review of Ratatouille with a title that makes zero sense.
Geekanerd's look at Persepolis' acting talent, plus one of the early trailers.