'Argo' triumphs again at 2013 Oscars

As soon as Argo won the Oscar for Film Editing, it seemed inevitable that the 1970s CIA thriller would also win Best Picture. Forget about the fact that Ben Affleck wasn't nominated for Best Director.  He had already won the DGA award that heralds a Best Picture award, and if there's any other Oscar night award that predicts Best Picture, it's the one for editing.

In a year with so many good films, it was nice to see that most of the nominees went home with Oscars. The biggest winner of the night was Life of Pi with four wins, but Argo and Les Miserables followed with three, and Lincoln and Django Unchained each grabbed two awards. Silver Linings
Playbook scored with one major award, Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress. Zero Dark Thirty was the only real loser of the bunch, with just one (a tie, even!) for Sound Editing. That movie deserved more--it was better than The Hurt Locker, which scooped up six Oscars, compared to ZDT's solo win. But in such a strong field of players, the awards were divided evenly, instead of the "sweeps" by one film that have dominated the Oscars in recent years.

There were a few surprises in the wins. Although I loved Christoph Waltz's performance in Django Unchained, the role was quite similar to the one that previously won him an Oscar, in Inglourious Basterds. I also think that his role was central enough that it barely skated into the "supporting" category.

In the Animated Feature category, it was Disney Pixar vs. Disney, and a bit surprising that Pixar's Brave won over Wreck-It Ralph, which had been favored to win. This was a weak year for the animated category. In years past, the top two animated films were better than all the nominees this year.

Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain both won "Best Actress" awards at the Golden Globes, but only one could win at the Oscars. Although I favored Chastain, both for the quality of the role she played, and the fact that she has a bit of seniority over Lawrence, Lawrence could not have been a
more---well, not graceful, but grateful winner. Her speeches, both in front of the mike and backstage, felt so natural and effusive and funny that it was hard not to root for the star. In contrast, Anne Hathaway's "It came true" speech fell flat among many Twitter couch pundits. She was in the difficult position of being heavily favored for the win and her speech came off sounding rehearsed and fake--all the more inexcusable because she was accepting the award for Best Supporting Actress. I think her team was looking for an "Oscar moment" that just didn't quite register.

Argo was a strong, crowd-pleasing choice for Best Picture, but I wonder if some of the other eight nominees may age better than that film. Argo's victorious look at U.S. history was certainly more palatable than Zero Dark Thirty's version, but it has its own flaws. How Argo got away with its inaccuracies and dramatizations while ZDT was slammed for them remains a mystery. If anything, it shows that Argo benefited from historical distance while ZDT hurt from covering a topic that still pushes many political and moral buttons.

Now that the onslaught of awards season has come to a close, movie lovers will face the long drought before the next crop of awards contenders is ready. But in the meantime, there's plenty of spring and summer tentpoles (and some hopeful indies) that go very well with a side of popcorn.

Documentaries lead the pack at Toronto Film Festival

By Sarah Sluis
FJI critic and correspondent Erica Abeel concludes her report from the Toronto International Film Festival, which wrapped this weekend.

Telling the truth can be hazardous to your professional health. But here goes anyway. Maybe I just made exceptionally poor choices, but this year�with a few notable exceptions�the Toronto International Film Festival included too many lame features. A shout-out, first, for the exceptions: French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve's magisterial Incendies and South African Life, Above All by Oliver Schmitz, both due to travel stateside, and on the higher-profile end, Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, with its wicked, twisty humor, and Black Swan, the thrilling, over-the-top ride by Darren Aronofsky, which should prove a hot ticket once it bows in theatres here.

Among the duds, count two features from directors with great track records. The reliably kinetic John Cameron Mitchell stumbles with Rabbit Hole, top-lined by Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart playing a couple whose toddler has been killed in an accident. But to follow them through the stages of mourning is about as electrifying as queuing up at Toronto's Lester Pearson Airport, where the embalmed indifference of the officials is a movie in itself. Adapting from the play by David Lindsay-Abaire, helmer John Cameron Mitchell has failed to open it up, and the only fun on hand is ogling Aaron Eckhart's ripped pecs. Amazingly, this dreary ride comes from the director of such hell-raisers as Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

At least Rabbit Hole offers the charisma of its principals. Little, though, can rescue It's Kind of a Funny Story from the wonderful team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. I loved their Half Nelson. But I wonder what prompted the pair to film the story of a depressive, suicidal teen checking himself into a mental ward. Nothing happens. The teen (Keir Gilchrist) learns the ropes of the ward, hangs with longtime resident Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) and meets a girlfriend. Hey, if Nerve.com doesn't work� The attitude toward the mentally ill, who are a sad lot�One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest this ain't�comes across as condescending.

Then there's the hipper-than-thou Kaboom by Gregg Araki, who made the terrific Mysterious Skin. No point in trying to walk you through a plot. So far as I could tell, it concerns a sex-crazed, bisexual college boy plunging into a supernatural world of demons, cults and Armageddon. The film, I'm told, is about "existing in a borderline psychotic, psychosexually hyperactive imaginary universe that feels absolutely real and true." I want whatever that critic was smokin'. Sample oral-sex joke from hero's girlfriend: "It's a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti." Most improbable line: "I have a huge paper due Friday." Uh, you do? I don't remember college being so much fun.

If there was any compensation for such bombs, it could be found in a trio of superb documentaries. Along with Charles Ferguson's Inside Job (a pick of the New York Film Festival), count the hugely entertaining doc Tabloid by Errol Morris. At the center of the story is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty pageant queen, who falls for a Mormon, pursues him�after his church forbids their union�to England, ends up kidnapping him�and it only gets weirder. In Joyce, Morris has nailed a true American original who may or may not be barking mad. He also grapples with the way tabloids massage the truth, so the real story lies forever buried. Innovative devices, such as amusing stills and weird cartoons of Mormon rituals, break up the talkiness. And Morris uses to great effect the Interrotron, a customized teleprompter that projects Morris' face in front of the camera so that his subjects must look simultaneously into his eyes and the lens.

A brilliant, essential documentary is Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer by Alex Gibney. Though he might have appended "and Rise." Hardly a broadside, the film is marked by a cool, objective tone, which should expand its demographic. A tough crusader against Wall Street, on course to become America's first Jewish president, Spitzer was famously derailed by the Justice Department's prosecution of the Emperors Club escort agency, which revealed that Client #9 was Spitzer. Though the New York Post and others had a ball, unanswered questions remain: Did politics play a role in the investigation?

Bringing fresh insight to Spitzer's story, Gibney and writer Peter Elkind reveal that the guv's main squeeze was not Ashley Dupre, but "Angelina," who (played by an actress) talked for the first time (and don't you love it that she's gone on to work on Wall Street?) Gibney also centers the film on statements from the charismatic, blue-eyed Spitzer, both politic and revealing. Though we never�and likely never will�get to the million-dollar question: Why the hell did he do it and what was he thinking? Politicians not being known for introspection, maybe Spitzer himself couldn't answer.

The film is plenty juicy. You can watch Spitzer admit that the escort agency caper was a form of hubris "which goes back to the Greeks," thanks for the attribution. You hear the agency's giggly madame reveal that Dupre has "a perfect cooch." You learn that these high-end hookers look like all-American coeds. Makes it less of a transgression? Or is it compensation for the horny freshmen with dandruff who couldn't get a date with a looker?

But after we get off on the prurience factor, let's face it: How does Spitzer's need to explore sex outside his marriage impact on my or anyone else's life? Hell, in France he would have been applauded for it! Testosterone, a real man, etc. Yeah, I know Spitzer did something illegal, but consider this: The Mann Act that he violated wasn't pursued in other cases.

Most crucially, Gibney's film reveals that the Wall Street titans he'd spent his career targeting were allied to choreograph Spitzer's downfall. And why wouldn't they be? He went after such a fellow as a certain Blodgett, who quipped that he once made what he called POS�i.e., piece of shit, or $12 million a year. He went after Goldman Sachs years before anyone else, and venture capitalist Ken Langone, the New York Stock Exchange board director who signed off on an outrageous pay package for its chairman and CEO, Richard Grasso. Gibney trots out convincing evidence that these men maneuvered behind the scenes to unseat Spitzer. With the notorious former guv about to assume a new role as talk-show host on CNN, and public interest in him high, Client 9 should find a substantial audience.

Top spot goes to 'The Other Guys'

By Sarah Sluis

The Other Guys led the weekend with $35.6 million, easily unseating Inception, which finished second with $18.6 million. The opening was 50% higher than last week's debut of the comedy Dinner for Schmucks. Younger males turned out in force, and their eagerness to see the movie opening weekend

helped drive up the first-week gross. The robust debut also affirms Will Ferrell's standing at the box office after last year's flop Land of the Lost. Ferrell will likely be lining up his next big-budget, starring role in the near future. Within the next 12 months, however, we'll see Ferrell wearing a smartly arranged set of hats designed to expand his star persona beyond that of a studio comedy headliner: he's starring in the indie movie Everything Must Go, which is debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, he's doing voicework in DreamWorks Animation's Megamind, and producing the low-budget teen sex comedy The Virginity Hit. That's what I'd call a diversified portfolio.

In third place, Step Up 3D brought in $15.5 million. 75% of the theatres were 3D, and they brought in 81% of the total revenue. Higher ticket prices should have brought the total from the 3D theatres at least

25% higher, since most 3D surcharges add that much to the ticket price, so this suggests that 3D theatres underperformed. Variety points out that there are currently four 3D movies out right now, however, and that smaller venues may have scheduled 3D showings of the movie at less opportune times. Since Step Up opened to $20.6 million and Step Up 2 The Streets opened to $18.9 million, this further dip in the opening weekend gross likely spells the end of the franchise.

The Kids Are All Right broke into the top ten, earning $2.6 million in its latest expansion into 147 more locations for a total of 994 theatres. Oddly enough, the movie did a million dollars more last weekend but only eked out a twelfth-place finish. The story of a lesbian-led household and their teens' quest to seek out their sperm donor father has earned $14 million to date, testament both to the movie's good reviews and the subject's appeal in the marketplace.

Rob Reiner's kid-oriented comedy Flipped debuted in 45 theatres with a $5,200 per-screen average, a decent opening figure. This movie is set for expansion in coming weeks so it will need strong

word-of-mouth from initial viewers to propel it forward. The glamorous-teens-gone-bad film Twelve couldn't find its viewers and played to nearly empty theatres, posting just a $460 per-screen average for a total of $107,000. Middle Men, which stars Luke Wilson, also had a disappointing opening weekend, with a light $1,200 per-screen average for a total of $305,000. With a reported budget of $20 million, it looks like Paramount just dumped this movie and hoped for the best.

Lebanon's two-screen debut averaged $8,300 per screen, slightly smaller than another Sony Pictures Classics release about the Lebanon War. Waltz with Bashir averaged $10,000 per screen during its debut weekend in the 2008 holiday season. The Wildest Dream averaged $5,300 per screen on a dozen screens, a respectable amount for the National Geographic release.

This Friday, uber-female picture Eat Pray Love will go up against uber-male action movie The Expendables. The teen-oriented, comic-inspired Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will round out the bunch.

81st Oscars get a lively makeover

By Sarah Sluis

This year the Academy promised to mix up the awards show, and the vibrancy and attempt to nix the

yawn-inducing moments was a success. Even their missteps made me laugh and supplied good Oscar party chatter, so in my opinion the Academy delivered. One of the biggest improvements was removing the clips that introduce each nominee in an acting category. The clips never really seemed to capture the performance, and the stars had to act humble and sheepish about their work when the camera would cut to them afterwards, which was incredibly boring. Replacing the clips with words of praise from a winner in that category (with five past award winners assigned to praise the five nominees) added to the sense that the winner would be joining a club, a legacy, and also focused on the compliment and honor of a nomination.

Oscar presentations are known for their cheesy, overlong musical numbers and montages, but, again, the ridiculous lyrics were at least entertaining. One of my favorite moments in the opening number was the bit on The Reader. Bowing to the fact that there is always at least one movie that no one has seen (and the box-office numbers support this fact), host Hugh Jackman merely intoned "The Reader...The Reader..." in a mechanical voice while the dancers did an abstract dance. Also, instead of longish clips from each of the Best Picture nominees, the producers showed montages/shorts surrounding a genre that included non-nominated films (and made you truly appreciate the fact that Hancock and Space Chimps did not receive nominations) The comedy bit (which Judd Apatow helped create) was strong, featuring the expected jokes about Milk and misplaced laughter at dramatic moments, but what stood out to me was the irreverence of laughing at film during an awards presentation that aims to elevate movies, which also happened earlier with the Reader bit. Curious.

This year had few tight races. Sean Penn's win for Best Actor over Mickey Rourke was one of the few surprising moments of the night, as many expected Rourke to win. The other upset, especially among those participating in Oscar pools, was the choice for Foreign Language Film. Japan's Departures won over the widely publicized Waltz with Bashir, which was considered a frontrunner, and The Class, another film that was more widely seen in the United States. For the smaller categories (also more difficult to predict in those Oscar pools) the Academy put effort into explaining the technical challenges of sound mixing, editing, and art direction. Adding award-specific props to the set enhanced the visual appeal of the telecast, which was also helped by the more intimate, rounded shape of the auditorium and the interplay between the audience and the stage (which I predicted). In the end, Slumdog Millionaire received eight awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. Most-nominated Benjamin Button came away with makeup, art direction, and visual effects, a sign that the film's technical achievements just weren't matched on a narrative level. A predictor of its impending win, Slumdog received a box office boost of 10% this weekend, and will surely cross the $100 million mark next weekend, adding to the film's success.

Golden Globes Recap: Brit takeover

By Sarah Sluis

The Hollywood Foreign Press gave out its Globes last night, and the winners were decidedly global. Brits in particular seemed to rule the night, with Kate Winslet winning both Lead Actress (Drama) and Supporting Actress categories, Sally Hawkins and Colin Farrell topping the Female and Male Lead Actor

(Comedy) categories, and late Australian actor Heath Ledger winning the Best Supporting Actor. Mickey Rourke was the only American of the bunch to win a motion picture award, taking home a statue in the Best Actor (Drama) category. Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Brit Danny Boyle and shot in India, won four awards: Best Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

Winslet's double win in the acting category, the first of its kind, came as the result of a bit of finagling by production company/distributor Weinstein Company. Kevin Lally wrote earlier about lead roles being recast as supporting ones twice this year (how, exactly, did The Priest in Doubt count as a supporting role?). Certainly if Winslet were nominated in both categories as "Lead," voters might have split their vote between her two performances, giving her a majority of the votes without winning enough to carry either of her performances, which also seems unfair. If the Globes miraculously magnified her presence by giving her two awards, could the Oscars move in the opposite direction, viewing her as "overexposed" and looking closely at the other top performances of the year?

While the Kate Winslet double coup seems unlikely to be repeated at the Oscars, Slumdog Millionaire's quad-win bodes well for its Oscar reception. The win most likely to be repeated is that of A.R. Rahman for Best Original Score. With over 109 credits to his name, calling him the Bollywood John Williams doesn't really do him justice. His prominent, easily applauded score in Slumdog (and collaboration with hip artist M.I.A.) made me wonder why I haven't heard him in more Hollywood films.

Director Danny Boyle's cross-genre filmmaking sets him apart from most other filmmakers. Whether he's

working in horror, romantic comedy, crime, fantasy, or drama, his films are packed with motion--"lots of running," a friend noted, one eyebrow raised. Like all great genre filmmakers, he makes a point to subvert our expectations. His characters achieve a goal (like getting on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", the compound in 28 Days Later, the Beach in The Beach, the bag of money in Millions) but find their needs still unfulfilled, their goals still out of reach.

I applaud Danny Boyle, and hope the Academy will second the Globes and give Boyle Oscar recognition. A true crowd-pleaser, Slumdog Millionaire, which I saw months ago, gave me a warm feeling that actually held up, without descending to maudlin sentimentality (the one critique I see levied against the film). Compare that to my initial shock-sadness of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which turned sour a few weeks out--EW calls it "Honey, I Gassed the Kid"

Academy members turn in their ballots today, if they haven't already (making a Globes influence, at least during this round, less probable)--to be tallied and announced January 22, 2009 at 5:30 a.m. PST--which, like every year, will lead to stories of nominees peeking out from under their sleeping mask to answer a phone call from an agent or publicist.