awards season

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Up in the Air Dance Remix is Unsatisfying

January 18, 2010 | 7 comments

Normally, I look forward to screener season. Woohoo—free movies! At least once a year, for a few weeks, my SAG dues seem to deliver a tangible benefit.

Last night was my first viewing of any of the four screeners I have (thus far) received, and it was not an auspicious beginning. Up in the Air looks like it might be a pretty enjoyable movie. Might be, that is–I couldn’t say for sure, because the DVD I got is either a faulty reproduction or some kind of Special Jigsaw Puzzle/MadLibs/stoned Director’s Cut edition.

Minor plot spoilers hereunder
But if you read it anyway, you’ll know how I felt.

Up-in-the-air_collageMy DVD’s rendering began with a phone call scene between the George Clooney and Vera Farmiga characters, in which she reprimands him for having transgressed the boundaries of what apparently had been their rather casual relationship. Cut to George in the office of his boss Jason Bateman, who lets him know that someone named Natalie has quit. Cut to George receiving his 10-million-miler status card during a flight, complete with congratulatory announcement from the flight attendant and a special sit-down visit from the pilot (Sam Elliott). Cut to aforementioned Natalie character (Anna Kendrick) taking a picture of George holding a cardboard cutout of his sister and soon-to-be-brother-in-law in front of the St. Louis Airport terminal.

“Wow,” I thought, “they’re really going all-out with this whole non-linear narrative thing. But why are the edits so abrupt? Like, with some of them coming in mid-sentence?” Read the rest of this entry »

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Happy Non-Crap Time to You

February 2, 2006

Let me qualify the following by first stating that I loooove movies. I’m continually surprised by what a broad and flexible medium cinema is, encompassing expressions as diverse as the quiet contemplation of Persona, the farcical excess of Airplane! and the bold, sweeping provocation of JFK. I love the American film industry, long referred to (as I will hereinafter) by the geographic moniker “Hollywood.” In fact, I love Hollywood in the mature “warts-and-all” sense, i.e., enough for it to have the power to drive me absolutely nuts, which it often does.

Right now it’s Awards Season here in Tinseltown, which means that attention is focused on the better products (mostly, anyway) that Hollywood has turned out in recent months. Tuesday’s announcement of the Oscar nominees has prompted the studios to re-release or widen the release of films with prominent nominations, all of which means that I still have a brief window of opportunity to see movies like The Constant Gardener and Capote in the theatre.

I’m doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts… because once the statuettes have all been handed out, Roger Ebert has returned to his hotel to doff his once-yearly tux, and two large dark-suited men have assisted a drunkenly belligerent Russell Crowe into a limo as they collapse the tent on the Governor’s Ball, the multiplexes will be awash in third-rate crap until summer blockbuster time. Unless, that is, the summer blockbusters turn out to be third-rate crap as well, which is quite often the case. Come to think of it, with summer blockbusters my hope is usually that they are first-rate crap.

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