Academy Awards - Best Picture

As every year, I am in the process of watching all best picture nominees before the Academy Award show. At this point I have 5 down with 4 more to go, so I am well on my way.

Let me put them in order from best to worst (strictly my opinion):

Argo
Amour
Life of Pi / Django Unchained
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Silver Linings Playbook

I really, really, really liked Argo and I find it as disturbing as many others that Ben Affleck did not get a best director nod for it. This may or may not have been because of Michael Haneke, whose Amour is also very good (but probably not entertaining enough to warrant a win).

Life of Pi and Django Unchained I liked for very different reasons and I can't make up my mind about which one I like more.

I trust that all of the four films I have yet to see will be better than Silver Linings Playbook, and really, what are the odds of them being worse?

Django Unchained

This film is totally insane, very bloody and way over the top. It's a Quentin Tarantino film so this was to be expected.

Bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (played by the always awesome Christoph Waltz) frees slave Django from a chain gang - in the most hilarious manner - to help him find identify three brothers he intends to kill for money. They draw a lot of attention because Django is on horseback and that is a very unusual sight in a land where slavery is the norm. Schultz and Django arrange to work together as bounty hunters through the winter and then go and free Django's wife Broomhilda von Shaft (yes, that is her name) from the clutches of Monsieur Candie (the farm is called "Candie Land").

That is basically the story.

Everything else is vintage Tarantino - violence, fountains of blood, extended shoot-outs, hilarious dialogue and cameos galore (including original Django Franco Nero).

As for the acting - Waltz is brilliant, as is Jamie Foxx. DiCaprio is as good as he's ever going to be in any given film (read: ok). My very favorite of them all, however, is Samuel L. Jackson as house slave Steven, who has made himself a comfortable living sucking up to his white owners and pretending to be a limping, hard-of-hearing imbecile, when really he is a conniving SOB.

8/10

The Twilight Zone

This is happening.

I will re-watch all the episodes of the original Twilight Zone - in no particular order. Watch this space.

Amour (Love)

Michael Haneke's films are never easy to watch. Whether they are about of couple of youngsters senselessly murdering an entire family on their summer vacation, violence committed by a group of children in a small pre-WWI German town or about a couple being stalked, this is not entertainment. There is, however, some morbid fascination in watching them.

His latest, Amour, is about old age. Anne and Georges, a couple of former music teachers, enjoy a relatively active and happy retirement, until Anne has a minor stroke, that leaves her in need of constant help. Georges is trying is best to care of his wife, helping her in and out of her wheel chair or the toilet, cutting her food for her and seeing to her well being as best he can.

Anne's health keeps deteriorating and after suffering a second stroke, more assistance is required. Now she needs to be fed and cleaned and can barely speak anymore. She had already mentioned to Georges that she is not happy with this way of living when she was still somewhat independent and now the only way she can express her total unhappiness with this kind of life is by keeping her mouth tightly shut when her husband is trying to feed her or give her water out of a sippy cup. Eventually, Georges cannot watch her suffer anymore.

Emmanuelle Riva is simply magnificent as the ailing Anne.

A brilliant and devastating film.

9/10

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 3

The Killing is back to the form of season 1. There is simply more room for emotional attachment when a family is involved.

Little Emilie is kidnapped and Sarah Lund, teamed up with a new colleague (again) and an old love from Special Branche, take over the case. It appears to be connected to the death of a girl a few years back. The old case was filed as a suicide, but as the kidnapping investigation progresses, and the law enforcement team get led around their noses by the kidnapper, it turns out that the girl was murdered.

The kidnapper of Emilie, daughter of the CEO of the powerful Zeeland Cooperation that has close ties to the Prime Minister (yes, of course, politicians are involved in all this again), is the murdered girl's father. Lund and her troop are forced to investigate on both fronts now and get to the original killer before the kidnapper does.

Privately, Lund is still living by herself and her relationship with her son Mark is more strained than it has ever been. When she sees her son while she is supposed to deliver money to the kidnapper she realizes that he is about to become a father. This shocks her for a moment and she misses the train she was told to get on by the kidnapper. So, all is not well.

After she ends up in bed with her partner from Special Branche, she gets cornered by his wife, which doesn't improve the situation.

In the end, they save the little girl in the nick of time. When Lund realizes who the original killer of the kidnapper's daughter was, she also understands that she has no hard evidence against him and he is unlikely to ever be prosecuted for his crime, at which point she does the worst possible thing she can possibly do. She shoots him.

The season ends with Lund on a plane fleeing to - one assumes - Finland. One also assumes that this might be the end of the series.

7/10

Silver Linings Playbook

Every year, relatively early, the buzz for the sometimes long off award season starts about a small movie (or, small compared to the other contenders). It gets heaps of accolades and everyone agrees that it is so good and deserving of a best picture nomination at every award ceremony, including the Oscars. And then when I watch it, it turns out to be merely ok.

A year ago, that film was The Descendants, the year before it was The Kids Are All Right, before that it was Up in the Air. Ever since the academy descided to throw more films into the best picture circus, as a rule this  film would end up in it. 2012, that film is Silver Linings Playbook.

It is advertised as a comedy/drama/romance. Somehow I totally missed the comedy part. Nothing about it is in any way comedic. Ok, there is some drama and a really weird romance between the bi-polar Bradley Cooper and the widowed Jennifer Lawrence.

Ah yes, Jennifer Lawrence, every critic's new darling. I like her fine, but I have seen her in three films so far, and she has played the same role in every single one of them - hard shelled, mouthy young woman. This worked great in Winter's Bone and it is perfect for The Hunger Games. In Silver Linings Playbook her character is bordering on annoying.

Jackie Weaver is decent in this, Robert DeNiro is his usual great self, Bradley Cooper is surprisingly good (I'm usually not a fan).

This is not as good as they say.

1/10

Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 2

After stellar first season, Forbrydelsen would obviously have a hard time matching the high expectations (my high expectations, that is). So it is not as good as the first one. However, it is still much better than most other  crime shows on offer.

The milieu we are in this time around is military. Murders occur that turn out to be connected to a frequently referred to 'incident' in Afghanistan. The group of Danish soldiers involved in said incident, along with a lawyer representing them, are killed one by one. There is a story of a mysterious officer calling himself 'Perk' that was part of the issue. The claim is that civilians have been killed by the Danish soldiers. The group leader, Roben, insists that the culprit is this Perk, but his even being there (and his mere existence) has been denied by special forces. And once again, politicians are also involved in what starts to appear like a cover-up the longer the investigation lasts.

Sarah Lund, who has been recalled from her boring assignment in Sweden to assist with the investigation, goes again off into her own direction and more than once she is wrong in trusting her instincts, but through her irrational methods uncovers details that prove to be vital.

In season one, as the investigation moved along and new details about suspects emerged, we moved from one possible murderer to the next (and we did it with Lund-esque conviction). Back then it was always clear (to me, anyway) that it must have been someone we encountered early on (because that is how these shows work). The same applies for season two, only here - when the culprit took shape - I did not see it coming. Like, at all.

The show picked up speed around mid-season. At first, I had some difficulty staying with it because it lacked the grieving family that you could feel for enough and will the investigation to move forward. Most of the people in this are unsympathetic. The only one that had an air of likability was the newly installed justice minister. He, however, did through his principles overboard in the end to play at being politician for the sake of it.

Solid.

6/10

Life of Pi

If any of the films recently released (and recently nominated for a heap of Academy Awards) deserves the description beautiful, this is the one.

Life of Pi tells the story of young Pi Patel, who leaves Pondicherry, India, together with his family and an entire zoo for Vancouver, Canada. When the freighter sinks in the vastness of the Pacific, Pi finds himself on a lifeboat with an injured zebra, a hyena, an orang utan and Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger.

The situation is as bad as it sounds and the boy immediately has to start his fight for survival - not only surviving the sea, but also the two carnivorous animals on board. The zebra is the first to go. Easy target that it is, the hyena sets upon it almost immediately. Next is the orang utan. The most furious kill, however, is of the hyena itself. Richard Parker finally makes an appearance jumping out from below the tarp cover to end the hyena's reign of terror - and making everyone in the cinema jump out of their seats. The rest of the story is of Pi and Richard Parker having to find some sort of arrangement in order for both of them to survive - the tiger needing the boys help to get food and water, the boy kept alert at all times by the tiger's presence.

The ocean setting is a feast for the eyes, thanks to the magic of the cinematography department and the technicians bringing the tiger to life. I wasn't that taken with the visuals of a film since Hero.

I read a few reviews that complained about the ending (the tiger's departure, the second - less adventurous but more credible - story version) but having read the book, I didn't really have to bother with that. If anyone wants to take issue, they have to take it with the book and/or its writer, Yann Martel. It has been too long since I read it for me to say that this or that detail was different. Overall the story was as I remember from the original text.

I recommend both, book and film.

9/10

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Several of my friends told me that this particular Bond film is excellent. I don't agree. There are just two many things that bothered me.

First of all, George Lazenby. I understand that he was the most sought after male model for several years in the 1960s and has some martial arts skills. He certainly looks the part. My issue? I don't like his voice. Stupid, I know, but there you are.

Then, there are a few things about the setting, and some bits and pieces.

James Bond frequently speaks to himself - in the most arrogant and pompous manner imaginable. Also, we are led to believe that he is very much in love with Tracy (Diana Riggs, soon to be Queen of Thorns in Game of Thrones). Yet, he will sleep with every woman that crosses his path (see: Angels of Death).

The Angels of Death are a group of brainwashed beauties that über-culprit Blofeld experiments on to find a way to eliminate any species (plant, animal, whatever) if he so choses. This is what he intends to dangle over NATO's head, as he so conveniently explains in details to James Bond. Yes, and why do James Bond villains do that, explain their plans to the opponent?

But let's return to the Angels of Death for a minute. There is a scene with all of them - and an undercover James Bond - having dinner, each one only one type of food, all meat, all potatoes, all corn. So far, so weird. The Chinese woman in the group eats, yes, rice. The Indian eats naan. And the Jamaican eats...wait for it...bananas. WTF? You try putting that in a film nowadays.

Later, after an exciting escape from a hilltop, the inevitable car chase. Tracy and Bond get followed by a group of baddies. Both cars end up in the middle of a stock car competition (you know, like you do) and they go faster than all the other cars (like you do). The bad guys shoot out of the window at the Tracy/Bond vehicle - that is, the right window. Never mind that the car they are trying to hit is to their left.

When leaving the race, Bond says, "I told you that crowd will discourage them." What? How were they discouraged? They fucking shot at you with hundreds of people around!

Redeeming features?

Telly Savalas is my favorite Blofeld yet. And one of the Angels of Death is Joanna Lumley.

3/10



Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 1

This is an excellent, excellent show.

It starts with the discovery of some bloody bits and pieces in an open field. Sarah Lund, on her very last on the Copenhagen police force (she is about to move to Sweden with her fiance) gets the seemingly minor case. She has to work along with her successor, Jan Meyer.

Quickly, it becomes clear that the case involves the disappearance of Nanna Birk Larsen, a 19 year old college student. After the discovery of her body in a car dumped in some lake. The car is part of a fleet belonging to the campaign office of local politician Troels Harmann.

The investigation starts at Nanna's school, with her friends and former boyfriend acting suspiciously. When nothing much comes of investigating them, the focus turns to one of Nanna's teachers, who saw her the night she disappeared and has been seen to remove something that could have been a body into a friends car. The secret he hides, however, turns out to be something entirely different, but not before Nanna's father takes the law into his own hands and is stoped just in time before killing him.

All the while, circumstential evidence (the car, the party flat, surveillance tapes) mounts against Hartmann, who is running for mayor. He is in and out of police custody, his alibi crumbles, and the political vultures circle over his head. He does get cleared, eventually, but the focus stays at town hall. As a consequence, a civil servant is killed in a hit-and-run, presumably because he knew to much about a moderate politician, who had an affair with Nanna until half a year previously. After he gets shot by police, the evidence against him is deemed enough to shut the case.

Doubts about his guilt arise when similar cases get connected to Nanna's, that go back some 15 years. We are now looking for a serial killer. While Lund's life falls apart around her and she seems to be out of her depth, the investigation moves closer to home, and now men working for Nanna's father become suspects. Lund cuts a lot of corners, and one of her unauthorized investigations costs her partner his life.

Her persistence and instinct are what cracks the case eventually, but it is a costly victory.

The US version has nothing on the Danish original, least of all a lead actress that awesome.

7/10



Oscar Nominees

You know the feeling when one of your fellow country(wo)men achieves something astonishing and you regard it as an achievement by the entire population (the "we" feeling)? That is sort of what I feel right now about the Oscar nominations.

Coming from a small, ultimately insignificant, country (never mind that we were very much involved in kicking off two world wars) that feeling is normally limited to successes in winter sports. That's what 'we' are good at. (I am a flatlander myself and never cared much for skiing, but I totally cheer our boys and girls [but really, mostly the boys] on from my comfy chair.)

But today's Oscar nominations are - for a film aficionado from tiny Austria - something else entirely. Amour by Austrian director Michael Haneke (who was not actually born in Austria and the film is in French) was nominated for a total of five Academy Awards. Five! Four of them in the heavy weight categories.

Best Picture (!)
Best Director (!)
Best Actress (for Emanuelle Riva)
Best Original Screenplay
Best Foreign Language Film (we expected that one)

And to top it all off, 'our' Christoph Waltz was again nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained.

Now starts my yearly task of trying to watch all Best Picture nominees before the award ceremony. The only one of the nine I have already watched is Argo, which is great BTW. Next up for me will be Life of Pi with friends on Sunday. That leaves me with a few weeks to get in the rest of the bunch. *phew*

A Masterpiece You Might Not Want to See

I have not yet seen Michael Haneke's widely praised latest film Amour but I absolutely plan to. Whereas I don't claim to have liked all his films, I think that Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), Caché (Hidden) and Funny Games (the original, despite my favorite actor Tim Roth being in the remake) are excellent.

Here (on The New York Review of Books for some reason) is the best review I've read on Amour so far and increased my interest in watching it (and sooner rather than later).

Nineteen Eighty-Four

I have recently read - and loved - the book Nineteen Eighty-Four. With the book fresh in my mind it is always risky to watch the translation onto the screen. In the past, I have been bitterly disappointed many times, especially when not allowing some time to go by between book and film.

Thankfully, here the adaption of George Orwell's dark vision of the future is very close to the source material and wonderfully acted. The biggest burden of the film is on John Hurt's shoulders and he is nothing short of brilliant. Young Julia is played by one Suzanna Hamilton, who has remained obscure as an actress (before and after). The deceitful and turtoring O'Brien is portrayed by the great Richard Burton in his last film role. The film is dedicated to him.

I have already detailed the story in my book review and therefore will not do it again here, since I already mentioned the film's respect of the original text.

A bleak vision of a future, that has not quite arrived yet.

Brilliant.

10/10



Babycall (The Monitor)

Noomi Rapace as Anna, an overprotective mother gone off the rails. She has a restraining order against her ex-husband, who tried to throw their son Anders out the window. Or so she claims.

Anna and Anders live in a non-descript apartment complex in a non-descript town and the mother is in a state of constant panic. She only befriends Helge, who works in an electronics store where Anna purchases a baby monitor to always keep track of her 8-year-old son.

In the end, everything was totally different from what we thought - and from what Helge thought happened.

It's a strange one. Set up as a thriller/horror film, it is not really all that horrifying (for someone like me, who watches a lot of horror films). There is some element of tension, especially before we learn what was really going on.

Unfortunately, the idea is much better than the execution. Even with Noomi Rapace carrying the film.

3/10

Tángshān Dàdìzhèn (Aftershock)

The film Tángshān Dàdìzhèn tells the story of one family torn apart by what was the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century.

It starts with the Great Tangshan Earthquake of July 28, 1976. The twins Fang Deng (a girl) and Fang Da (a boy) are trapped underneath a large concrete slab, that is settled in such an unfortunate way that lifting one side to save one of the children will almost certainly kill the other. The mother, Yuan Ni, who has already lost her husband in the disaster, is pressured by the rescue team to make a decision on which child to save. When she refuses and the rescue team is about to move on to help someone else, she asks them to save the boy. She takes her injured son to a military base to get medical help, thinking her daughter dead. Fang Deng wakes up beside her father's body and in the chaos of the aftermath, gets placed in a childrens' home, from which she gets adopted by her foster parents.

The biggest part of the film follows the parallel story of mother and daughter. One refusing to leave the town and repeatedly telling her deceased husband and thought-dead daughter the directions to her new house in Tanshan, the other pretending not to remember anything about the earthquake and her family, when in reality she cannot forget (or forgive) hearing her mother chose her twin brother's life over hers.

What follows are the ups and downs of everyday life lived in different towns and different cicumstances. Over the course of the next 32 years, both twins have children - giving them the same name, Dian Dian. Fang Deng eventually marries a 'foreigner' and moves to Vancouver. She only returns in 2008 when another devastating earthquake hits China and she works on what is called the Tangshan Rescue Team, where she meets her long lost brother again. Mother and daughter get reunited and the film ends with the family visiting the (empty) graves of father and daughter.

A very sad film, dedicated to the survivers of the Great Earthquake. For all the devastation depicted, it carries itself with dignity and never gorges on the blood and bodies of the victims.

The only irritating thing is that the actor playing the Canadian husband is very bad and stands out among a cast delivering stellar performances.

8/10