Movie Box Review

While you weren't looking, the Oscar race began.

One could make the argument, of course, that it's been on for months--since, at least, Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS energized the indie/art-film audience and propelled him into mass consciousness for the first time in years.  (On the other hand, one could also argue that this year's Oscar race started roughly the moment the producers of THE KING'S SPEECH stopped saying "Thank you" last February 27.)

Certainly the Oscars have been in the air since the incredibly complicated new voting rules for Best Picture nominations were announced.  As a result of those rules, we won't know until the nominations are actually announced just how many Best Picture nominees there will be--the final number could be anywhere between 5 and 10, because (to simplify brutally) a minimum threshold has to be met for any given film beyond 5 to qualify for a nomination.

Here at SHOWBUZZDAILY we're embracing the concept of the Oscars as a horse-race.  The Academy Awards are enormous fun, but let's face it:  they have a relatively limited amount to do with quality, and a great deal to do with strategy, demographics and luck.  (Sure, in 20 years it will be clear that THE SOCIAL NETWORK should have won in 2010...  but in 20 years, it'll still be the picture that lost.)  So welcome to our coverage.  Over the next few days, we'll introduce the clear contenders, subdividing them as a racing form might.  Today:  the Chalk (those are the favorites, for the uninitiated).

The odds to win below come from actual bookmaking websites (which probably shouldn't be linked to); the odds to become one of the Best Picture nominees are ours.  (Note that there are some inconsistencies among the odds, due to biases among bookmaking patrons that include a preference for UK titles, and what some might consider undue regard for films that have already been released.)  Place your bets...

WAR HORSE (DreamWorks/Disney - Dec. 25)

Good Bet:  Steven Spielberg in his wheelhouse, a mix of sentimentality (A Boy and His Horse) and fierce,warfare (Boy Loses Horse to the trenches of WWI).  It also doesn't hurt that the film is based on the same novel as the Tony-Award winning play (although the two versions were adapted from the book independently of one another).

Bad Bet: Nobody's seen an inch of it yet... except for the trailer, which comes uncomfortably close to what a Spielberg parody mash-up might look like.  (Did John Williams compose the score in 1988?)

THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight - Nov. 18)

Good Bet:  Alexander Payne's first film since Sideways has been hailed at multiple film festivals, and features a sure-to-be-nominated lead performance from George Clooney.

Bad Bet:  It's a little bit lightweight.  Maybe too much of a comedy for the Academy's taste. 

THE HELP (DreamWorks/Disney) - Released Aug. 10)

Good Bet:  The little movie that could:  $163M in tickets sold, on a $25M budget.  A weighty subject, and an award-worthy ensemble cast.

Bad Bet:  Concerns about the film's protagonist being the Emma Stone character rather than the maids, plus a general feel among critics that it was a superficial look at an immensely complicated subject.  DreamWorks has War Horse to push--how much effort will they put into a movie that isn't directed by Spielberg and has already banked a ton of profit?

J.EDGAR (Warner Bros - Nov. 9)

Good Bet:  Mr. Eastwood.  Exactly the kind of huge, political biography the Academy loves.  DiCaprio aging with lots of prosthetic make-up and a funny voice.  Could this be his year?

Bad Bet: Nobody's seen it yet, and it opens in less than 4 weeks.  Flags of Our Fathers and Invictus suggest that historical pageants may not be Clint's thing.  The subject matter is tricky--is the movie really going to tiptoe away from the gay angle? 

THE ARTIST (Weinstein - Nov. 23)

Good Bet:  There's nothing else remotely like it:  a black-and-white, virtually silent film that has a heart to go along with its technical perfection.  Already a critical darling after its film festival screenings.  It's about movies.  And it's getting this year's main push from Mr. Harvey Weinstein.

Bad Bet:  It's unique, all right, but is it important or just odd?  Is there an audience for it beyond cineastes?  Warm-hearted slapstick comedy isn't usually the Academy's genre of choice.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Sony Classics - Released May 20)

Good Bet:  The Woodman's Biggest Hit Ever.  (If you don't adjust for inflation.)  A movie everybody likes, it manages to be classy and smart and yet not ostentatious.

Bad Bet:  But let's face it, not one of Woody's very best.  The boxoffice gross may be prize enough. 

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (Warner Bros - Dec. 25)

Good Bet:  There is no better definition of "Oscar Bait" than a movie about 9/11, from the director of Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader, based on a critically acclaimed bestseller, that stars Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock--not to mention Max Von Sydow, James Gandolfini, Viola Davis, and John Goodman. It could have been assembled from a How-To-Win-An-Oscar kit.

Bad Bet: Nobody's seen it.  Critics could very well resist the neatness of the package, and without critical acclaim, its chances would be incredibly far away.

COMING TOMORROW:  THE FIELD

COMING SUNDAY:  ALSO ELIGIBLE

Although Fox Searchlight didn't actually acquire Steve McQueen's film Shame until last Saturday, in a sense the marketing campaign for the film began when the producers made it clear that the film would not be edited for US release, and would be distributed with an NC-17 rating. This quickly became the most memorable fact about the film, and will lead to some disappointed audiences when it opens in December. Not because there's a lack of sex in Shame--there's plenty, although none of it is remotely hardcore--but because the film isn't at al interested in eroticism. Instead, it's a deadly serious account of a man drowning in his need for emotionless sex.

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is an executive at a blank-faced NY firm, and he's good at his job, but really all he cares about are those moments when he can lose himself in sex. Specifically, in anonymous sex, with hookers or one-night-stands. (When he can't actually have sex, he watches pornography.) He's not a man who has relationships and then cheats; he wants no part--and indeed cannot function--in any relationship that requires feeling for the other party. He's not a rapist or a serial killer--it's all completely consensual--but in the sheer inhumanity and compulsion of his act, and his mix of lust and self-disgust, he seems similarly disturbed

Apart from his obsession, Brandon keeps every other part of his life under strict control--if anything, he's obsessively tidy. His sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) is the reverse, a mess in every sense of the word. Sissy, a jazz singer, makes clutter wherever she goes: she's clingy where Brandon is aloof; she longs for emotional connection while he repels it. When she shows up in NY and insists on staying in his apartment, he can't stand it. (There's a suggestion of something unsavory in their shared past.)

The film comes to center on their relationship, or lack thereof, and McQueen is unsparing. He gets extraordinary performances from his two stars. McQueen and Fassbinder had worked together on McQueen's first film as a director, Hunger, and in a very different way, Fassbinder's work is just as remarkable here. Brandon the Sex Addict could easily have been a joke, but Fassbinder's combination of fury, charm and repressed revulsion is riveting. We've never seen Mulligan give a performance like this before--she's a roiling mix of emotions, teetering over an abyss. (She's so good she even survives McQueen putting her through a dirge-like performance of "New York, New York" that seems to go on longer than the original movie.)

McQueen began as a visual artist, and his compositions (photography by Sean Bobbitt) are remarkable. They're often played out at great length, as McQueen favors having the script he wrote with Abi Morgan (writer of TV's terrific The Hour), and then extemporized upon by the actors, performed in lengthy shots, with little editing. His use of music is also impeccable, and often makes use, Kubrick-like, of preexisting music.

Shame will be taken by many as a slow, cold, bleak walk on the wild side, and that NC-17 won't work for long at the boxoffice. For some, though, it will be one of the year's major films, and exciting proof that the director and his stars are among the most revelatory talents in film today.

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The Tony Awards aren't quite like any other televised awards show.  They're happily, unapologetically insular (and so are the ratings--thank god for CBS, where "young" audience is a relative term), and there's hardly ever anything like an upset; this year the closest was probably Mark Rylance winning Best Actor In a Play for Jerusalem over Joe Mantello for The Normal Heart, and do you see what I mean by insular?  Here, then, are 10 moments you'd probably only see on the Tonys:

10.  Brooke Shields:  First she was supposed to be a "spontaneous" audience participant in host Neil Patrick Harris' opening number about Broadway not just being for gay people anymore (itself an "Only the Tonys" moment, but a self-conscious one), except that she couldn't read her 3 lines off the teleprompter.  Then, trying to make amends later while presenting an award, all she managed to do was get herself thoroughly bleeped.

9.   Bono and The Edge:  When the two came out to introduce a song from the latest incarnation of Spider-Man The Musical, Bono paid respect to their Broadway infamy by noting that the reason they used to be famous was just because they were in U2.  (The power ballad they introduced didn't do the show's cause any favors.)

8.   Anything Goes:  Even in a cut-down version, the presentation of the Act I finale was a demonstration of what Broadway musicals are all about.  (The production deservedly won Best Musical Revival.)

7.   Best Play  The Tony show producers have never ever figured out how to showcase the nominees for Best Play.  One year they show out-of-context excerpts, the next they have the playwrights make awkward speeches, and this year, they had cast members try to sum up complex works in 60 seconds or less.  (War Horse, more a spectacle than a play, ended up winning, making the happiest Tony watcher in Hollywood Steven Spielberg, whose film version of the novel opens in December.)

6.   In Memorium:  Let the Oscars worry about which giant dead stars should get the opening and closing spots in the montage.  The Tonys led off with Arthur Laurents, book writer of West Side Story and Gypsy, and ended with Joseph Stein, who did the same for Fiddler On the Roof and She Loves Me.  (Elizabeth Taylor was stuck somewhere in the middle.)

5.   Dueling Hosts:  Neil Patrick Harris was again a sparkling, enthusiastic host, and never more so than when he and Hugh Jackman did a number made almost entirely of theatre in-jokes, both of them seemingly having a terrific time.  (OK, maybe Harris was even more so in his triumphant last couple of minutes, where he rapped/rhymed a closing credits bit summarizing the entire show that must have been written just seconds before he delivered it.)

4.   Frances McDormand:  Other award winners will say that they love what they do.  But winning Best Actress In a Play for Good People (in a slightly perplexing denim jacket over her gown), McDormand roared out the words so we'd know she goddamn well meant it.  I forgive her in advance for co-starring in the new Transformers movie.

3.   Chris Rock:  For sheer honesty.  By the time he presented Best Musical, The Book Of Mormon had (deservedly) won so many preliminary awards that Rock said going to the trouble of reading the other nominees made as much sense as taking a hooker out to dinner.  "Either way, you know you're gonna get laid," he explained.  He was right--about Best Musical, I mean.

2.  Mark Rylance:  He followed up his classic non sequitur accceptance speech for Best Actor In a Play in Boeing Boeing a couple of years ago by winning again for Jerusalem, and delivering an address about walking through doors.  He seems to see acceptance speeches as his chance to audition for David Lynch.

1.  Sutton Foster:  Winning Best Actress In a Musical for her thrilling performance in Anything Goes, she had the ultimate "Only the Tonys" moment when she managed to keep her composure while thanking the cast, the director, even the love of her life--and only broke into crazy tears when she got to her dresser, who's moving to Cape Cod to become the greatest artist in the world. 

Congratulations and good luck to Sutton Foster's (ex) dresser, and to all the other people who make up that special subspecies of the business called Broadway.