Your Next Oscar Host Will Be...

With Tina Fey having already taken herself out of the running for 2014 Oscar Host a scant three days after the 2013 ceremony by essentially (rightfully?) admitting it's a no-win situation, the Academy Awards hosting applicant field is looking a little grim. Allow Cinema Romantico to spice up the pot!

Who should be your 2014 Oscar Host? I'll tell you who should be your 2014 Oscar host.

Before Sunrise, True Love Lasts A Lifetime: 1,500th Post

---This is actually Post 1507. But the official 1500th post happened in the middle of Oscar week and I didn't want to interfere with my traditional countdown posts because, well, I'm weird that way. And because I specifically wanted THIS post to celebrate #1500. So we will celebrate it today. And hey, everyone, thanks for reading. Truly.---

Jerry: “And when she laughed, she’d reach out and touch my arm.”

George: “Love it when they touch the arm. Why is that?”

Jerry: “You know what? Let’s not even analyze it.”

I think it happened during the scene in the café in which Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are having make believe conversations on make believe phones with friends to explain why they are both in Vienna spending an entire night with someone they just met on the train. I thought, this scene, if you were to just draw it up on a cocktail napkin like a basketball play (“couple has make believe phone conversations, employing thumb and pinkie phone as telephone”), would emanate a certain saccharine ridiculousness. On screen, it does not. On screen, it is one part magical and one part poignant, effortlessly allowing Jesse and Celine to truly express the affectations of this encounter and to quietly set up the inevitable conversation we know has to come (“Are you gonna see him again?”).

I thought, why does this scene work so well? Oh, I suppose I could take my spelunking hat and burrow deep into the movie’s inner workings to understand why it and every other scene around it gracefully evokes a lifelike fairytale, but I hesitate.

My Mount Rushmore of Movies, as I have often stated, looks like this: “Last of the Mohicans”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “The Myth of Fingerprints”, “Before Sunrise.” Well, the first three I blather about all the time, much to my readers’ respective chagrins. The last one I blather about, too, but usually in the context of the second one or the forthcoming third one. I don’t particularly care to analyze the first one so much. I prefer simply to watch and let it draw me back in as it always does. Perhaps making such a confession discredits the critic. Is it not a film critic’s responsibility to critically evaluate the film he/she has seen? Indeed, it is, but in order to evaluate “Before Sunrise” we must evaluate the storyline that drives “Before Sunrise.”

To say it conventionally, “Before Sunrise” is about a Meet Cute on the eurorail and two people falling in love. But that does not do the film justice. No, it is about, to quote Celine from the film itself, about “the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something.” Even more specifically, it is about “just this little space in between.”

I dare say we have all experienced that little space in between, but only very rarely and probably in a way that is entirely ineffable. And you are in touch enough to realize it as it is happening – as Jesse and Celine are – it is probably something best left un-analyzed lest it be compromised or ruined. It seems as if a consensus has formed around “Before Sunrise” and its eventual 2004 follow-up “Before Sunset” and the consensus is that while both films were very good, the second was better.

“’Before Sunset’ is better,” wrote the esteemed Roger Ebert, “perhaps because the characters are older and wiser, perhaps because they have more to lose (or win).” David Denby of The New Yorker shared this sentiment, writing that “it goes deeper—it’s more emotional and direct, with intimations of sharp disappointment and unhappiness.” To their points, they are both correct, lives merely become more complicated with age and those complications lend the sequel a dramatic subtext its predecessor could not possess.

But, I propose that perhaps it is even more difficult to create a film where the stakes, as they call them, are not as high and less relevant, where the only complication is an airplane flight. Maybe “Before Sunset” is a better movie, but maybe “Before Sunrise” is still a greater achievement, and maybe “Before Sunrise” still means more to me because it captures something that no one’s words (except those of Jesse and Celine as they live it) can adequately express.

It is a film about “just this little space in between” and as anyone who has searched for that space (and found it, however fleetingly) knows, it is impervious to analysis.

Jennifer Lawrence Demonstrates Who's In Charge

Sunday night at the Academy Awards, post-Best Actress win, Jennifer Lawrence brilliantly evoked the oft-forgotten, rarely-mentioned, usually-denied ending to the famed "Cinderella" fairytale. You know the one I'm talking about - whereupon finding out the slipper fits and marrying the Prince, Cinderella seeks out her wedding crashing evil step-sisters at the royal palace reception, flips 'em the bird and declares: "Fuck yoooooooooooooou, bitches!"

Margaret Thatcher's out. Tiffany Maxwell's in. Ya best deal, suckas.

Logging the 85th Academy Awards

The Academy Awards are like life. ..... Woah, woah, woah! Where's everyone going?! Hear me out! Please! Trust me! I'll explain!

Generally all people do is complain about the Academy Awards but then generally all people do is complain about life. The master of ceremonies might have a big name and mean well but he/she has as many misses as hits. There is a lot of tedium and mild-to-extreme confusion (what was Kirk Douglas going on about?) that inevitably, perhaps when we least expect it, gives way to genuine meaning and beauty and sheer awesomeness. We sigh and we cry, we laugh and shake our heads. We champion things we like and get self-righteously pissed off about things we don’t. We wonder why the hell we care so much.

But Nick, you're saying, we don’t wear around crisp tuxedoes or glamorous dresses and we don't parade down red carpets and we don't hobnob with Brad & Angie and Ben & Jennifer and JLaw & JChas & JWeav & JPho. Well, no. We don't. But do you think the Academy Awards are just comprised of the people ABC lets you see? We're the people up in the nosebleeds with the ill-fitting rented tuxes. We're the people who drove our Hyundais to the show and had to park, like, 53 blocks away. We're the people asked to avoid the red carpet for fear we forgot to scrape the dog crap off our shoes. We're the second guy of the two guys who won for Best Sound Mixing who goes to say a few words after the first guy spoke only to hear the music rev up and find out the mic got cut and then get escorted off the stage. We're craft services, the set dressers, the boom operators, the people who take the Starbucks orders.

No, we are not movie stars, but we are the movie stars of our own lives and even the best nights of our lives had bad parts - we just choose to make like the late great Sally Menke and edit that all out. Oscar ain't perfect. But it's all right. Show a little faith. There's magic in the night.

The traditional Oscar Night Entire Bottle Of Wine. Thanks, Dad!

6:51: This year the part of the traditional Oscar Night Entire Bottle Of Wine will be played by a Lemelson Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley of Oregon gifted to me by my Dad as payment for our bet on last year's Nebraska/Iowa game. (Nebraska won 13-7. Did you remember that, Iowa friends? Just making sure. Because, you know, Nebraska has beat you now two years in a row in this thus far two year rivalry.) The first glass is poured.

7:00: Kristen Chenoweth is making stars on the red carpet guess what's inside a freaking box. As if these interviews couldn't be more awkward. My guess: Katie Holmes' old copy of "Battlefield Earth."

7:25: Kristen Chenoweth is absolutely out of control. And the rumor going around is that she's closing the show with host Seth MacFarlane in some sort of song & dance number. Isn't that like tagging a film with the onscreen death of a St. Bernard?

7:31: The show begins! Host Seth MacFarlane tells us the Oscars this year will have a "theme". I'm already worried.

7:38: Seth MacFarlane is now singing about boobs. Yeah. This is about what was I expecting.

7:42: I see what you're up to, Seth. His entire opening bit is akin to Meryl Streep winning Best Actress Oscar last year when she cut the whole world off at the pass by saying "I could hear half of America going 'Oh no.'" By doing this whole bit with William Shatner already telling him from the future what a terrible job he's done, he's attempting to cut our criticism off at the pass. Well played, MacFarlane.

7:48: Shailene Woodley up to present Best Supporting Actor - er, sorry. I meant, Octavia Spencer up to present Best Supporting Actor. (Not that I'm still bitter a whole year later.) Actual suspense. This is awesome.

7:51: During Christoph Waltz's warm & gracious acceptance speech for winning for "Django Unchained" they include a shot of Jack Nicholson in his trademark sunglasses. This seems appropriate. Apparently the Academy has as big a man crush on Christoph as they do on Jack.

"If you could kindly keep your caterwauling down to a minimum while I attempt to accept this Oscar."

7:52: Also, my Pick Six for "Silver Linings Playbook" in the six major categories? Crashed and burned on the first one. To quote Chris Parnell in "21 Jump Street": "You never won't know what you can't achieve until you don't achieve it." Remember that, kids.

8:00: MacFarlane makes a crack about George Clooney. We get no reaction shot. We're getting no reaction shots of the people he's banging on. Is it because the people he's banging on are so pissed the producers are scared? Or are the producers just idiots? Honestly, it's 50/50.

8:12: "Life of Pi" wins Best Visual Effects and then the producers try to play victor Bill Westenhofer off with the "Jaws" theme. Boldly, like Capt. Quint, he doesn't back down. They cut his mic. I believe Samuel L. Jackson would call that "some bullshit." But don't forget! We still have a Seth MacFarlane/Kristen Chenoweth song & dance number that needs those precious extra seconds!

8:43: Joaquin Phoenix's face is a tasty cocktail of disinterest and irritation. I wonder if perhaps he could host a future Academy Awards with James Franco? Would anyone else find this as funny as me? Yes? I'll assume yes.

8:46: "Searching For Sugar Man" wins Best Documentary. Love when producer Simon Chinn says Rodriguez (i.e. Sugar Man) did not attend the ceremony because "he didn't want to take any of the credit himself." One sentence perfectly encapsulates the character they portrayed. Then the "Jaws" theme fires up and Chinn more or less gets pulled away from the mic. Classy. But don't forget! We still have a Seth MacFarlane/Kristen Chenoweth song & dance number that needs those precious extra seconds!

8:49: "It's Sunday. Everybody's dressed up. This is like church. Except more people praying." Okay, MacFarlane. I'll give you that one.

8:51: "Amour" wins Best Foreign Language film.

8:54: An ode to the movie musical. God bless them, every one, but I'll be watching this instead.

9:06: My dear friends Nicolle & Andrea - whom I am tragically unable to watch the show with - text me that the best acceptance speech of the night was courtesy of (and I quote exactly) "The guy that looked like Thor from 'Adventures in Babysitting.'" Sigh. I miss those two.

Claudio Miranda, or Thor from Adventures in Babysitting, Best Cinematography for Life of Pi.

9:09: They had Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) & Uhura (Zoe Saldana) host the Scientific & Technical Awards? Seriously? That's boss. (Did I just say boss?)

9:14: Why.No.Reaction.Shots? I want to see what Joaquin Phoenix looks like when a freaking CGI teddy bear is blathering onstage!

9:15: An Oscar for "Zero Dark Thirty"! Paul N.J. Ottosson for Best Sound Editing! Suck it, McCain! (Note: It tied with "Skyfall.)

9:18: "We're all storytellers. We just tell our story through sound." - Karen Baker Landers, Best Sound Editing for "Skyfall"

9:23: Anne Hathaway wins Best Supporting Actress. Well, duh. Least suspense since Jules & "Erin B."

9:32: "Editors make so many of us look way better than we ever have the right to." - Sandra Bullock

9:36: Adele currently singing "Skyfall" theme. I fully expect that at this time in 365 days Lady Gaga will be singing the "Machete Kills" theme. Right?

9:43: Nicole Kidman. Straight class, baby.

Cinema Romantico's Best Dress of the Night goes to Nicole Kidman because this blog doesn't hide its biases. You go, girl.

9:48: Kristen Stewart & Daniel Radcliffe up to present Best Production Design. When Danny Boy throws it to KStew to list the nominees, Stewart is, like, bobbing to iPod earbuds that aren't in her ears - like only she can hear the Swedish House Mafia right now - and smiling like she just came from Woodstock. I honestly think that was my favorite moment of the night so far.

9:53: Honorary Oscars. I can't wait until the year (2022?) when the Academy finally just shuns the Honorary Oscar winners to the Long John Silvers next door.

10:12: Best Original Song. But what I want to discuss is how when watching "Silver Linings Playbook" earlier today for the 3rd time I realized that the brief montage featuring "Always Alright" by Alabama Shakes includes a quick shot of Bradley Cooper jogging past a train track at which point you hear a train whistle without seeing a train - as if to suggest Cooper's mind is moving like a freight train. I love, love, love how the best movies open up more and more and more on multiple viewings. Don't you? (Oh. Adele won. But, like, you know, obviously.)

10:24: Best Adapted Screenplay to Chris Terrio for "Argo." Dude gives a nice concise speech.

10:28: Best Original Screenplay to Quentin Tarantino, damn near 20 years since he last won for "Pulp Fiction." I was rooting hard for Mark Boal for "ZDR" but Q.T.'s Q.T. and I liked how he honored the competition - original and adapted. "This is the writers' year," he says. Baby, every year is the writers' year. It's just that everyone else doesn't know it.

10:35: Best Director. Uh...... Well, Ang Lee probably deserved it for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" 12 years ago, so..............................more wine, anyone?

10:42: Best Actress. Jennifer Lawrence. A glorious moment and then......she falls on the way up the stairs. I get the sense that all anyone will ever talk about when it comes to Lawrence's Best Actress win (until she wins her second Best Actress Oscar when she's - let's say - 38) is the fall. ("Oscar Is A Trip For Jennifer Lawrence" writes The Associated Press. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) But you know, that's us. You, me, any of us. If any of us somehow in some alternate universe won an Oscar, we would fall on our way up the steps. Jennifer Lawrence has risen so fast because in every role - indie or franchise - she has seemed real. And I'll be damned if she didn't make winning an Oscar seem real too.

Fall. No Fall. She's your 2012 Best Actress. She deserves it. That's all that matters.

10:45: Seth MacFarlane: "Our next presenter needs no introduction." He then walks offstage as Meryl Streep enters. Literally, MacFarlane's best moment of the night.

10:47: Meryl announces Joaquin Phoenix for "The Master." He is chewing gum and shakes his head, as if to say, "Naaaaaaah. I coulda done better." Seriously. Why weren't we getting reaction shots of him all night?

10:48: Meryl says "And the Oscar goes to Daniel Day Lewis" without even opening the envelope. (Okay, she probably opened it before but symbolically it was just right.) And Daniel's bit about playing Margaret Thatcher and Meryl playing Abraham Lincoln was the funniest part of the night (yes, including the host).

10:49: Okay. So. "Last of the Mohicans" is my all time favorite movie. I visited the places where it was filmed. The formation of my movie obsession and this blog essentially commenced when I saw it in the summer of 1993, twenty years ago. Every time I sit down to write on my laptop this is the view directly to my right. Winning the Oscar tonight for "Lincoln", which he richly deserved, makes him the first male ever to win three Best Actor Oscars. The only one who stands above him is Katharine Hepburn who won four Best Actress Oscars. Did you read that? Katharine.Hepburn. This is to say, Daniel Day Lewis has entered air so rarefied only Katharine Hepburn has breathed it. We are living and watching a true legend. We bitch and moan so much about nothing much......please, for the love of Christ, let's stop for just a second and appreciate that we are here for Daniel Day Lewis.

Daniel Day Lewis & Katharine Hepburn stand alone.

10:54: Only Michelle Obama could get Jack (Nicholson) to act appropriately.

11:00: "Argo" wins Best Picture. Good for Ben Affleck. He gives a nice speech and the words to his wife (Jennifer Garner) are just lovely. But, as sometimes happens, like with Natalie Portman a couple blessed years ago, I'm not paying much attention at this point.

I'll remember this as the night of Best Actress & Best Actor. Young/Old. Great/Greater. It's funny....when this year started I had every doubt in the world about "Lincoln" and it totally proved me a moron and I didn't know "Silver Linings Playbook" even existed and it wound up my favorite movie of the year. What did William Goldman say? Ah yes. "Nobody knows anything." I can't wait to see what hits me in 2013. All I know is that I know it won't be what I think it's going to be. That's the best part.

Countdown to the Oscars: Bowfinger, Opening Credits

A month ago my man Alex at And So It Begins broke down his favorite 15 Opening Credit Sequences. It inspired me. This is my favorite opening credit sequence.....

The screen is black. We receive the studio and producing and directing credits. An obviously soulful sorta song permeates the soundtrack. We fade in to small table with a lamp, a few pieces of filmmaking equipment and, most crucially, a framed photo advertising a production of "Once Upon A Mattress" by The Glendale Tent Players. "Tent Players"? Oy. That can't be good. The ad bears a beaming Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin), as if he has never been prouder of anything in his life.

The camera pans down and then slowly across as we receive the credits for the two featured actors, Martin and Eddie Murphy, and over a couch containing Bowfinger's trusty dog. On the soundtrack Johnny Adams is singing: "No matter what you've been through / As long as there's breath in you / There's always one more time." And that is when we receive the title credit.

The camera keeps panning. The phone rings. The answering machine picks up (this was 1999). "Bowfinger International Pictures." It is AT&T. Their bill is overdue and they no longer need access to the home to disconnect the phone.

The camera drifts through the house and locates Bobby Bowfinger himself a ways back, in his kitchen, hovering over a script on his table, feverishly flipping pages as he skims it, with just the light of a reading lamp. Johnny Adams is still singing: "Cause it's funny 'bout dreams / Just as strange as it seems / There is always one more time."

Bowfinger flips the last page. He looks up. He says: "Wow. Great script." (Pause.) "Great. Script."

His dog we have just seen on the sofa trots in. Bowfinger looks at her. "Betsy? It's now or never. We're gonna make a movie."

The phone rings. The machine picks up. "It's Carol." This is the voice of Christine Baranski. "How do I say this? I have an offer to go to Edmonton to do 'Cats.' It's a small role but I've got to take it. You keep promising me work but it's been eight months."

"No!" Bowfinger cries out, leaps from his chair, races to the machine, puts the phone on speaker.

Bowfinger: "Carol, don't take that job. We are gonna make a motion picture, I promise you that."
Carol: "But you've promised before."
Bowfinger: "I know. But just be here tomorrow at 10 AM. Please?"

She disagrees. He reiterates his plea. Then he hangs up, implicit in his faith, and dials another number. He calls up his friend, a backlot errand boy (cinematographer). He calls his accountant (screenwriter). He calls Slater, the layabout (leading man). He pleads for all of them to attend his meeting at 10 AM.

He leans back in his chair. He looks to his dog. "You believe in me, don't you, Besty?"

Betsy trots away. The credits end on Bowfinger sitting at his desk, all alone, as Johnny Adams tune pounds to its natural conclusion, one final declarative statement of "There is always one more time."

---------

If you listen to the director's commentary on the "Bowfinger" DVD it is revealed that originally the opening credits sequence the film was intended as an ambitious helicopter shot high above Hollywood, symbolically whirring from the hoity-toity, well-to-do portion of La La Land to the down-and-out, ramshackle side of the Movie Capital of the World which is where the home/office/movie studio of Bobby Bowfinger resides. But Frank Oz, director, and Steve Martin, writer, eventually decided this was the wrong intro.

Well, of course, it was the wrong intro. Bowfinger International Pictures is not about fancy-schmancy, million dollar helicopter shots. Bowfinger International Pictures is about hiding in the bushes outside a Hollywood mansion with a camera stolen right off the lot ("I have to have it back every night or it's a felony") to film the world's most famous action star for a movie he does not actually know he's in. Bowfinger is about those romantic, hopeful, naïve schlubs on the periphery of the place they want to be, but they want to be there so desperately that they do not/refuse to know any better.

Near the end, after realizing the film they have been working on for months was a fraud, that their "star", as mentioned, did not even know he was being filmed, and the entire project has crumbled, everyone sits around that same bungalow bemoaning their fate. They all turn to Carol, the lead actress, the wise elder, who has been sitting quietly, for her opinion. She smiles, disappointed but gracious, and says: "I think it was a beautiful lie."

It was a beautiful lie. The best kind of lie. And the opening credits are the best kind of lie, too. He says "It's now or never" but, of course, it's always now or never for a moviemaker. It does not matter that the phone he is calling his merry band of moviemakers on is about to be disconnected and it does not matter that no one - not even his dog - believes in him. Because this film.....this film will be the one.

And even if it's not, well, hey, there's always one more time.

Countdown to the Oscars: Silver & Gold

Charlie (Michael Douglas) and his daughter Miranda (Evan Rachel Wood) are in the midst of a pre-dawn break-in to attempt to dig up a 14th century cache of gold buried by a Spanish explorer beneath the cement floor of a Costco in California's Santa Clarita Valley. Their pal Pepper (Willis Burks II) stands watch outside. When police potentially close in, Pepper leads them on a turtle-like wild goose chase to draw them away from the ginormous retail store. Eventually his motorcycle runs out of gas, cops surround him, he lays in the road and awaits the inevitable arrest. But then something catches his eye – it is the moon, full as can be, “Moonstruck”-ish, in the glorious nighttime California sky. He smiles. He exclaims: “Damn.”

Even at Pepper's worst moment, about to be handcuffed and lugged off to jail, he still finds a silver (mooned) lining.

I have been thinking a lot about the under-seen, under-loved 2007 film “King of California” recently because of how much I loved 2012’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” This is primarily because both films employ the same jumping-off point – namely, mental illness. Both films open with their male protagonist – Douglas’s Charlie and Bradley Cooper’s Pat, respectively – being released, perhaps unwisely, from a mental facility. Both films involve a female – Charlie’s daughter, Wood’s Miranda and Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany, respectively – being re-drawn or drawn into the male’s orbit. Both films include glimpses of the dark past – Charlie’s suicide attempt, Pat nearly beating to death the man with whom his wife was having an affair – but make it their overall goal instead to - quoting Juno MacGuff's mom - "find a precious blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation."

“King of California” admittedly takes its blessing to a grandly absurd height, transforming its father and daughter duo into a couple of latter day conquistadors as they mortgage their home to scrape together the cash to parade about a chain restaurant and retail store dotted landscape on the hunt for buried treasure. “Silver Linings Playbook” contains more day-to-day realism, to be sure, but even so its ultimate resolution involves a dance competition that purposely strikes its character as Crazies In Arms (as opposed to its forebearer, “Babes In Arms”).

Can you really “Dance through all your fears”? Well, no. You can’t, just as X doesn’t mark the spot (especially if the X itself has been wiped away by the cleaning crew). But then neither film yearns to be a bi-polar docudrama. Consider, say, last year's masterful "Beginners", a film which opens with Ewan McGregor's cleaning out the home of his father (Christopher Plummer) who has just passed after being ravaged by cancer. But then "Beginners" is not meant as a sobering rendition of what that dreadful disease can do, even if there are occasional glimpses of its effects. Rather, it displays an elegant defiance, showing more of the good days than bad, demonstrating, as the title implies, that even with the end near a person can begin again and make of their last breaths what they will.

One of "Beginners" best bits is how Plummer's Hal tells friends his condition is improving ("we're turning the corner on this thing") when, in reality, he's getting worse. If he tells them he's getting worse then they will waste time fretting about what he can do to get better when, hey, everything that can be done to make him better is already being done. But people are so desperate for him to overcome the cancer, right? It's not unlike how people might watch "King of California" and "Silver Linings Playbook" and be desperate for Charlie and Pat and Tiffany to overcome their mental illness. And therein lies the problem.

"King of California" is not about Charlie overcoming his mental illness and never seeks to claim that he does (or is even trying to) overcome it. Instead the film, by exclusively focusing on its quirkily old-fashioned expedition, reveals itself as one of the most touching, though offbeat, demonstrations of father/daughter love at the movies in recent years. Douglas smartly plays Charlie as having accepted his abnormalities and Wood smartly plays Miranda as someone still trying to accept his abnormalities. In the end, he finally recognizes her self-sacrifice and he recognizes his - that is, improbably digging up the legendary treasure, leaving it to his daughter and then vanishing, with the authorities inevitably hot on his heels, back into the mystical underground river, as if he has made peace with his own state of mind and is finally content to be alone with it.

At the same time, "Silver Linings Playbook" never claims that Pat and Tiffany have conquered their problems. In fact, it never claims that any of this Philly crew have conquered their problems. Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes: "'Silver Linings Playbook' tells us that happily-ever-after may depend on finding people who coexist with our lunacy, not ones who can lead us out of it." The dance competition merely works to crystallize Covert's argument, and it is in this moment that Pat and Tiffany and the whole rest of the gang set aside their squabbling and reach some sort of untraditional level of acceptance.

Sometimes you find a silver lining in a moon in the sky like a big pizza pie, sometimes you find a silver lining in cuttin' a rug and sometimes you find the silver lining is golden hued.

Countdown to the Oscars: Maya, My Favorite 2012 Movie Character

Since the proper release of "Zero Dark Thirty" it seems that the criticism has thankfully shifted from the political arena (torture) to the cinematic arena, even if I personally think both arguments ring hollow. The dissatisfaction I have encountered regarding Kathryn Bigelow's rightful Oscar nominee for Best Picture involves the characterization of the main character, Maya. The oft-asked question: why do we care about her and/or why are we rooting for her?

Writing about the film in The New Yorker, Richard Brody, in a typically spectacular article (whether you agree or not) chock-full of talking points, boils it down to "deceptive emptiness." I think he gets one of those two words right. "Emptiness." He writes: "(T)here’s also no...personal context for the protagonist. Did Maya not have sex for ten years? Did she have no family with whom she communicates, no friends with whom she discusses her work, her obsession with catching bin Laden, her ideas about life in general? What did she put on hold in her pursuit for bin Laden?"

In my review I noted that "Throughout the film we never see Maya off location. She is always at the job, tucked away at some computer with some stack of files, questioning some detainee. She counts off the days since the compound’s discovery with no action by scribbling the number with a magic marker on her boss’s office window. So often 'possessed' characters in movies are given requisite home front scenes in which they are glimpsed ignoring spouses and forgetting children’s birthdays. Maya does not even have THAT."

The esteemed Roger Ebert has often lamented characters saddled with needless "context", writing, for example, of The Sports Movie Spouse, "This role, complete with the obligatory shots of the wife appearing in his study door as the husband burns the midnight oil, is so standard, so ritualistic, so boring, that I propose all future movies about workaholics just make them bachelors, to spare us the dead air." "Zero Dark Thirty" spares us the dead air!!!

Then again, movies typically have their reasons, however poorly executed, for showing the dead air. Sports Movies, for example, are always on a crusade to remind us that "it's just a game" - hence, the Suffering Spouse. She/He works to remind us (hammer home) that "it's just a game", symbolizing what the protagonist stands to lose by investing him/herself too deeply in the game.

By deliberately refraining from showing us the dead air, Bigelow lets us see how Maya stands to lose nothing personal as a result of her jihad against bin Laden. A colleague (Jennifer Ehle) offers a couple questions about a love life and Maya sluffs them off. A colleague offers to buy her dinner and Maya turns it down. In one blink-and-you-might-miss-it moment she returns to her makeshift residence dressed in traditional Islamic garb, turns on the TV and pops open a tall boy. This, we assume, must be her typical night. Clearly, she has a void. We know this because we never see her engaging in anything personal. She fills the void with the mission. Which is why when her boss threatens to shut the mission down she would rather blackmail him than face life without it. Her emptiness is not deceptive, it is refreshingly candid.

The movie ends, crucially, not with the infamous invasion of bin Laden's compound and his killing, but with Maya, all alone, on a military plane bound for a destination specifically not specified. "Where are we going?" the pilot asks her, and these are the film's final words. She has no idea where she's going. The concluding image is a close-up of Maya, a tear rolling down one cheek, and then another tear rolling down the other. Some have debated the intent behind these tears. To me, it is clear.

It is not until she is alone and forced to consider life without the pursuit just ended that she cries. The void is no longer filled. She has no Suffering Spouse to return to, no semblance of a life away from an interrogation room and military base and we understand this because the movie has consciously refrained from filling in those blanks. She has nothing, not a goddamn thing. So, where to? What now? She has no earthly idea.

I have said before that I adore films bold enough to wait until the final shot to reveal themselves in full, and this is precisely "Zero Dark Thirty's" ultimate intent. Oh, it could be argued that the tears she sheds are our tears too, that the symbolic weight on her shoulders was weight we all carried and that her realization of the hollowness of the ten year ordeal made foolish this need for closure that will never be had in the war on terror. But a character, first and foremost and above all else, is just that - a character, a person, one person and only one. And Maya's final moments are hers alone. The last shot reveals the film to be neither a bin Laden nor a 9/11 film. Instead, it is a Jessica Chastain film - or, more to the point, a Maya film.

Emptiness has never looked more soulful.

Countdown to the Oscars: Affleck Has Risen

Barbara La Marr was an infamous starlet in the early days of Hollywood when things on the screen were silent. She wrote screenplays (7 of them) and she starred in films (20 them) and all 27 came over a period of six years (1920 – 1926), which seems inconceivable, before she died at the age of 29 after having been married 5 times. (The official cause of death was tuberculosis but the inevitable rumors abound that this was brought on by drugs and alcohol.) 27 films and 5 marriages by the age of 29!

Movies in those early days of cinema were shot, of course, using hand cranked cameras which sped up the action on screen and made it seem as if everyone and everything was moving in fast-forward, a sensation which symbolizes La Marr and Hollywood in general. You can a live whole life a few times by age 29. Everything in Hollywood is in fast-forward.

If Ms. La Marr is sort of symbolic of Old Hollywood then perhaps Ben Affleck is symbolic of New Hollywood. Not that Affleck’s life has been as tragic as La Marr’s, mind you, not at all, though sometimes you might think it was considering the ill-begotten headlines during the Bennifer days and the way in which he is now being touted as The Comeback Kid.

The early days of Affleck involved “Dazed and Confused” and Kevin Smith movies when Kevin Smith still had an idea of what he wanted to write, but his Rise culminated when he and Matt Damon each won an Academy Award for writing “Good Will Hunting” in 1997. Never mind that Paul Thomas Anderson’s screenplay for “Boogie Nights” was superior, trickier and deeper, the story of the two longtime best friends from Boston who TOOK THEIR MOMS TO THE OSCARS is the sorta stuff the Academy lives for. And as the two of them stood on stage, percolating boyish enthusiasm, delivering a heartfelt speech, it was easy to picture a future with Matt & Ben running a movie studio at side by side desks in a glittery office. The world was their tallboy.

Less than 6 months later, Affleck was being chased around an oil rig by a shotgun-toting Bruce Willis in “Armageddon.” The world did not know it yet, but Affleck was already on his way out. He began accepting starry-eyed leading man roles – "Forces of Nature", "Bounce", "Reindeer Games". These choices were regrettable. Becoming the third Movie Jack Ryan in “The Sum of All Fears” seemed a good decision but he struck out. “Pearl Harbor” was a softly-lit monstrosity that earned Affleck his first (and second) Razzie nomination. He earned his third for his own stab at a superhero franchise in “Daredevil.”

It was also around this time that Ben began dating Jen – that is, J.Lo, Jennifer Lopez. Fair or not, this Bostonian/Fly Girl romance never stood a chance, and in some ways their trip to Fenway Park for a Red Sox/Yankees playoff game in mid-October famous for an onfield brawl underscored the entire relationship gossip-wise. The Fall of Affleck culminated in 2003 with his Lopez co-starring “Gigli.” In truth, “Gigli” is not quite as bad as the legend (read the esteemed Roger Ebert’s original review, for instance) but the legend overrode fact and “Gigli” came to be viewed as Bennifer’s “Heaven’s Gate.” It was the butt of innumerable jokes and the career of Affleck seemed bottomed out. He and Kevin Smith attempted a revival of sorts together with “Jersey Girl” but it passed by as momentously as that ceasar salad you had for lunch.

Bennifer I ended and Bennifer II began – this is to say, Ben & J.Lo broke up and Ben took up with Jennifer Garner, prim & proper Jennifer Garner, who you might remember as the prim & proper nurse in “Pearl Harbor.” This seems crucial. Garner is not targeted by tabloids to the same degree as Lopez and no doubt this aided Bennifer II in remaining more grounded. And then something curious happened – Ben Affleck took the role of George Reeves in “Hollywoodland.” I say curious because George Reeves was another member of the Hollywood clique who led a sped-up life, becoming an actor, going to war, getting divorced, and then culminating with the role of Superman in 1951. Tragically, though, his life would go downhill from there, financially and career-wise, and he died under controversial circumstances in 1959, chewed up and spit out by the place that made him. I dare say Affleck could identify with at least part of Reeves’ plight, the way in which a quick-to-judge community can live up to its reputation so precisely and turn its back so quickly.

His performance was well received, earning, amongst other plaudits, the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival. But rather than re-enter the spotlight in some sort of tailor-made starring role he took the opposite track, returning to screenwriting for the first time since his Oscar and stepping behind the camera for the first time ever.

He chose Denis Lehane’s novel “Gone Baby Gone” for his directorial debut and despite a too-talky ending and a few gratuitous clarifying flashbacks, he did not really step wrong, serving up a solid slice of raw atmosphere and coaxing several great performances from his impressive cast (most notably from Amy Ryan who was bawdy but never over the top). His follow up was “The Town”, a heist film that was not entirely successful but still impressive in its ambition. And that led to “Argo”, a based-on-a-true-story tale that Affleck creates with a spectacular sense of craftsmanship. It is the favorite to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. If it does, will that be the Resurrection of Affleck? Or has the Resurrection already happened? Perhaps it has, and to think he was Risen at 25, Fallen at 31 and Risen Again at 40 comes across as improbable until you remember it’s Hollywood. Everything is in fast-forward.

What fascinates me most about “Argo” is not the tension Affleck creates in that galloping third act but the way in which he chooses to play the film’s protagonist, C.I.A. operative Tony Mendez. Dana Stevens of Slate called him “an emotional cipher, and not in a mysterious way, just in a dull one.” Manohla Dargis, however, of the New York Times counters that “his control serves the material, partly because it would have been a mistake for him to try to upstage this story.” I think I prefer the latter. In my own review I noted how Affleck almost seems to be resisting the stereotypical heroism that a role of this kind could easily provide. Dour but determined his version of Tony Mendez believes less in his own individualism and more in the story he is pitching (“I think my little story is the only thing standing between you and a gun to your head”) and the support group surrounding it.

In other words, the leading man is really a director. Maybe, deep down, it’s what he always wanted to be.

Countdown to the Oscars: Oscar Best Song Re-imagined

Today Cinema Romantico re-imagines the slowly-becoming-irrelevant Oscar category of Best Song as if it was one combined category and the songs did not have to be "original" or fit some other antiquated piece of Academy criteria and I and I alone was judge and jury in regards to the five nominees.

5. Dance the Night Away by Van Halen in "Argo." As a CIA agent crafting a phony Hollywood movie in an effort to use it as a cover to get hostages out of Iran in 1979, Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), "the money" behind the "movie", arrives at the lush script reading party in the heart of Hollywood as "Dance the Night Away" perfectly colors in the moment. If you have ever daydreamed about making it in Hollywood, and if you read this blog then I reckon you have, it probably looked and felt a lot like this sequence.



4. Firework by Katy Perry in "Rust and Bone." I'm not even going to try and explain this one. Instead I'm going to let my man Alex of And So It Begins..., who named "Rust and Bone" his favorite film of the year, explain because he captures it perfectly. He writes: "I’m not a fan of Katy Perry’s music. She’s an artist that has reached success doing her own thing, and that’s fair enough. It’s just not for me. Now, there is a scene in this film in which Cotillard conducts hand movements that used to give her calm while Perry’s 'Firework' builds on the soundtrack. Given the context of the scene, I wept in a way no film has caused me to in several years. I’ve seen thousands upon thousands of movies, and I plan on dedicating my life to seeing thousands more, and never in all my years did I think that was possible." Watch the scene here.

3. (I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles by The Proclaimers in "Bachelorette." I know what you probably think of this song and you're probably right and you're especially probably right if you think it would be cheesy for it to turn up on a mixtape from the early 90's that sets the soundtrack for a romantic interlude. Except that you if you really DID grow up in the early 90's then you really WOULD have made mixtapes with this song on it which is WHY this song setting the soundtrack for a romantic interlude is PERFECT. Listen here.

2. Always Alright by Alabama Shakes in "Silver Linings Playbook." Early in the film, our bi-polar hero Pat Solitano Jr. (Bradley Cooper) goes for a jog in his neighborhood, garbage bag strapped on over his sweatsuit to speed up his rate of sweat, stopping to say hello to a teacher from the school where has not returned since his "incident", running into The Manic Depressive Dream Girl (Jennifer Lawrence). He's Rocky. Not the Rocky. Our Rocky. The Twenty-Tens Italian Stallion. He ain't gonna fly now, no, cuz he ain't that kinda hero - he just wants to feel good 'cause he feels like he's about to exploooooode.



1. St. Valentine's Day Massacre by The Twylight Zones in "Not Fade Away." This is the song played by the fictional Stones-ish band (and that, I should mention, was written by Steve Van Zandt, who is Bruce Springsteen's best friend and consigliere which probably explains why I dig it) at the forefront of David Chase's autobiographical film for their climactic audition in front of an agent. It is triumphant, and although that triumph is undercut when the agent refuses to sign the band and suggests they play more live dates to gel which leads to the band slowly drifting apart, well, in retrospect, that makes it even more triumphant. It is their last stand, the final blowout, The Beatles' rooftop concert. Perhaps it's a cliche, but then so often rock 'n' roll is about taking the cliche and making it true.

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Countdown to the Oscars: Totally Unreasonable, Completely Legitimate Oscar Predictions

The Pick Six bet in horse racing, in which the bettor aims to select the winner of six consecutive races, is perhaps both the most lucrative and the most certifiably insane bet in sports. I mean, really, select the winner of SIX CONSECUTIVE races? But in keeping with the spirit of one of the subplots (i.e. sports gambling) of my favorite film of the year, "Silver Linings Playbook", I would like to take this opening stanza to my annual Totally Unreasonable, Completely Legitimate Oscar Predictions to announce my intention to go for the Pick Six Academy Awards-style.

This is to say I am taking all six major categories and betting on "Silver Linings Playbook." That's right. You heard me. I pick it to win Best Picture, Best Director (David O. Russell), Best Actor (Bradley Cooper), Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (Robert DeNiro), and Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver).

Will this happen? Well, no. Of course, it won't happen. But it could happen. Theoretically, mathematically, it COULD happen, and, hey, not enough Oscar prognosticators have that Lewis & Clark spirit. So the hell with it. I'm layin' it all on the line. Pick Sixin' it up! Me & The Family Solitano, baby! I'll see you Oscar night, dressed in my best and prepared to go down with the ship.

Rest Of My Totally Unreasonable, Completely Legitimate Oscar Predictions:

Best Foreign Language Film: Kon-Tiki. No, I am not picking "Amour", even though I liked "Amour", because "Oslo August 31st" was the best foreign film I saw in 2012 and, thus, I am picking the Norwegian film that was nominated to represent the country that has absolutely been crushing it cinema-wise these last couple years. (Also, I really want to see "Kon-Tiki." So get your act together, Chicago, and bring it here.)

Best Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey, Anna Karenina. With all due respect to the esteemed Roger Deakins, the swooping, swirling theatricality and visual locaquiousness of McGarvey's cam-e-ra (pronunciation: Jenna Maroney) is just more my bag, baby.

Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty. For all the information it layers in, Boal's best and gutsiest decisions involve stripping away all the personal superfluousness of his protagonist that typically pervade so many screenplays and compromise the "emptiness" of the character. (More on this subject later in the week.)

Best Adapted Screenplay: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook. Because I'm biased (see: opening paragraphs).

Best Film Editing: Dylan Tichenor & William Goldenberg, Zero Dark Thirty. Because I'm assuming they picked through hundreds of shots of Jessica Chastain just sitting at a desk or in front of a computer screen emoting and they selected the PERFECT ones to best represent her various internal feelings.

Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood & Katie Spencer, Anna Karenina. Because the set decoration and production design work in perfect harmony with the cinematography.

Best Costume Design: Joanna Johnston, Lincoln. Because she and James Spader costumed his character, W.N. Bilbo, to reflect "a dandy in decay." As far as I know none of the other nominees designed a dandy in decay.  

Best Animated Feature Film: The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Because it doesn't seem to have a chance. And I like to bet on the ponies with the long odds.

Best Documentary Feature: Searching For Sugar Man. Because the sweetest kiss I ever got is the one I've never tasted.

Best Documentary Short: Inocente. Because it looks pretty darn good.

Best Live Action Short: Asad. Because I saw it and I dug it.

Best Animated Short: Paperman. Because it's, like, totally awesome.

Best Visual Effects: Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott, Life of Pi. Because that tiger was mad dope, yo.

Best Music Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Anna Karenina. Because the music works in perfect harmony with the set decoration and production design and cinematography.

Best Music Original Song: "Who Were We?" (Written by Leos Carax & Neil Hannon and Performed by Kylie Minogue), Holy Motors. Wait. What? That song wasn't nominated? That song wasn't even one of the seventy-five ELIGIBLE to be nominated? Does the Academy not realize Kylie Minogue would win a royal rumble with the five lameass nominees in, like, 2.3 seconds? (My real pick is J. Ralph's "Before My Time" from "Chasing Ice".)

Kylie Minogue's failure to land an Oscar nom for Best Original Song is considered by most Oscar historians to be the single greatest snub since 2001: A Space Odyssey failed to land a Best Picture nom.

Best Sound Design: Paul N.J. Ottosson, Zero Dark Thirty. Because in an interview Ottosson stated he managed to acquire an actual recording of a super stealth Black Hawk helicopter used in the raid on Abbottobad to employ on the soundtrack. I don't know how he did this but it could not have been easy. Respect.

Best Sound Mixing: Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom and Ronald Judkins for Lincoln. Because in an interview Rydstrom said "the driving sound of this movie is the sound of the actors' voices." That ain't as easy as it sounds and, as I've intimated before, the sounds of the voices in "Lincoln" were more thrilling to me than, say, any what-have-ya in "Skyfall" (also nominated) for hoo-ha in "Argo" (also nominated).

Best Makeup/Hairstyling: Howard Berger, Peter Montagna, Martin Samuel for Hitchcock. Because they turned Sienna Miller into Tippi Hedren. Reader: "Uh, Nick? That was 'The Girl.'" 'Hitchcock' turned Scarlett Johansson into Janet Leigh." Nick: "Oh. Well. Was Sienna Miller in either of the other nominated films?" Reader: "No. I'm afraid she wasn't." Nick: "Well, fine. I pick 'Hitchcock' anyway because, well, what do I know about makeup and hairstyling? So yeah, 'Hitchcock.'"

Put.That.Coffee.Down.

The entertainment world is all in an uproar over the announcement that Jason Reitman will be staging an all female version of David Mamet's real estate/curse word extravaganza "Glengarry Glen Ross" for the latest edition of his hot-ticket live read.

All roles have been cast, save for the role of Alec Baldwin's one-scene walk-off steak knife offerer "from downtown...on a mission of mercy." Granted, this role was not in Mamet's original play and crafted specifically for the silver screen but, really, not having Alec Baldwin's role in "Glengarry Glen Ross" going forward would be like watching that one episode of "Seinfeld" where Jerry Stiller wasn't Frank Costanza.

So......who should play this part for Reitman? Well, I considered concocting a Top 5 but that was, of course, unnecessary. The choice is clear. I expect it to be made soon (now).

Motifs in Cinema '12: Revenge & Justice

"Motifs in Cinema is a discourse across 22 film blogs, assessing the way in which various thematic elements have been used in the 2012 cinematic landscape. How does a common theme vary in use from a comedy to a drama? Are filmmakers working from a similar canvas when they assess the issue of death or the dynamics of revenge? Like most things, a film begins with an idea - Motifs in Cinema assesses how various themes emanating from a single idea change when utilised by varying artists." - Andrew K.

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Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a Goon. He would like to be considered a Hockey Player but for the fact he is an inept skater and fails to grasp the finer points of hockey strategy. Instead he idles on the bench until a violent incident arises at which point he is summoned to the ice specifically to seek out the opposing team's offender. He drops his gloves and he and the perp exchange punches until blood is drawn and bruises are inflicted.

But, is Glatt's mission to acquire justice or dole out revenge? Or has the line become utterly blurred between the two? And does no even care if it has?

The age-old notions of Revenge & Justice were prominent at the cinema in 2012. The Top 4 grossing movies in America - The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, Skyfall - all in their respective ways dealt with these ideas, some more explicitly than others. Of course, the idea of revenge has a driving plot point has been around on film for ages, whether it was John Wayne doing John Wayne things ("You're soft, you should have let 'em kill me, 'cause I'm gonna kill you") or Charlie Bronson doing Charlie Bronson things or poor Ken getting even for the death of his beloved Wanda. We like to see justice served by any means necessary.

Steven Soderbergh's supremely but subtly self-aware Haywire very purposely seems to offer no logical reason as to why anyone in the film would would want Gina Carano's super-duper secret agent Mallory Kane dead except that if no one wanted her dead, well, Haywire would cease to exist. Thus, everyone wants her dead, she spends the majority of the movie kicking ass and, thus, with a sly nod and a wink Soderbergh illustrates the extreme importance of revenge to the motion picture.

Lincoln, on the other hand, Steven Spielberg's handsome recitation of Abraham Lincoln's attempt to push through the 13th Amendment, is all about justice. Or is it? Make no mistake, I implicitly admire the work of Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role. But the character that has stayed with me just as much since the close of the credits is W.N. Bilbo (James Spader), the uncouth lobbyist who spends as much time eating and drinking as Brad Pitt does in the Ocean's movies even as he navigates his way around Capital Hill in an effort to strong-arm undecideds into backing Honest Abe. Perhaps the film's ultimate moment occurs when Bilbo, standing in the chamber balcony, ignores the obligatory John Williams stately score swelling on the soundtrack, steps forward to seek out Ohio congressman Clay Hawkins (Walton Goggins) whom he and Abe need to switch sides and points his index finger at him in the manner of a six-shooter before squeezing the "trigger". Translation: contribute to justice for all or else we will have our revenge.

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, meanwhile, thirsts for both revenge and justice. Looking into our nation's grotesque nooks and crannies, it purposely makes a mess of America's messy history and pits a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) against a vile slave master (Leonardo DiCaprio). Q.T.'s foremost aim is simply to craft a ripping good - if profane and blood-stained - yarn and, as he has established previously, he will stop at nothing, including re-writing history, to achieve it. And yet, he shows us the chains, the scars, the hot boxes. He does not shy away from the reality even as he simultaneously revises it for narrative purposes. He has taken blaxploitation - or, more to the point, he has taken slavesploitation and brought it to the mainstream, turning it into, of all things, a Christmas Day release. Without his prototypical talky vignettes, absurd humor and flighty indulgences, it might have come across too radical. Instead, he earned it an Oscar nomination. It leaves us feeling morally queasy - partly because its morals are queasy but maybe mostly because a certain percentage of its audience looks at this revenge being dished out and knows, make-believe or not, that it is deserved.

And that brings us right along to the elephant in the room - Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow's chronicling of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden in the name of vengeance. The brou-ha-ha pre-release centered around the film's depiction of torture and, regardless of whether or not it was truly central to the tracking efforts, what many viewers failed to realize was how the torture scenes, only presented in the earliest portions of the film, so accurately represented our national mood in the wake of the terrible tragedy that was 9/11. Less than a week after it happened I remember a friend calling me and initiating the conversation with: "So, are you ready to enlist?" Ready to enlist?! To go off to war - which we would in less than a month's time - to start the decade-long settling of this score.

In those exacerbated Freedom Fries days, when the temperature in the room was akin to a sauna, people's thoughts about what happened and what needed to be done could get frighteningly reactionary. Level heads eventually prevailed (to an extent) but that entire event exposed us for the revenge-minded, justice-seekers we can be at our core, when pushed to the furthest edge. A common reaction to Zero Dark Thirty is an appreciation for its craft but a questioning of "why?" we need to see this, re-live this, and what do I think of myself for being so drawn in to the telling of this story?

Zero Dark Thirty fearlessly re-opens an old wound that never properly healed. When revenge (justice) is as immediate as ZDR, we feel ourselves squirm, which is perhaps why we feel safer watching two Goons duke it out from a distance, clutching a plastic cup of beer, pantomiming one-two combinations, knowing we face none of the consequences, safely tucked away behind towering plates of glass.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Jezebel (1938)

For the first 5-10 minutes of “Jezebel” we find ourselves in the midst of an 1852 New Orleans soiree where essentially every reveler is talking about the one person who is not present. That person would be Julie Marsden (Bette Davis), the requisite unruly southern belle who is engaged to a man who wants to cart her away – egads! – to the persnickety north. Finally Julie arrives at the soiree after a day of riding her beloved mare and to helpfully demonstrate her immense streak of stubbornness she refuses to change out of her riding clothes to meet and greet the many guests. But that ain’t the half of it.

Julie’s fiancé, Preston “Pres” Dillard (Henry Fonda) is set to escort her to the Olympus Ball. She wants him to set aside his banking duties for but an afternoon to dress shop with her. He can’t break away. She hatches a scheme. She will wear a red dress. See, unmarried women are EXPECTED to wear white to the Olympus Ball. Not wearing white without the necessary finger bling is a fashion sin akin to white after labor day, Bjork’s swan dress and an American tourist in Paris rocking the fanny pack all mixed together and set off with a smoke bomb. Miss Julie (and that’s what everyone calls her – “Miss Julie” – thereby evoking the Strindberg character), however, is a rebel with a self-seeking cause. Damn these antebellum customs.

The Olympus Ball is marvelous illustration of old-fashioned cinema as Pres escorts Miss Julie, social pariah, to the dance floor and as they glide into a waltz, the floor clears, as if the couple is stricken with yellow fever (which we will discuss later). It’s one cinema used to be all about – working on a broad canvas but still cutting right through to intimate emotion. The majority of us have not worn unwed red to the Olympus Ball, but the majority of us have our own version of wearing unwed red to the Olympus Ball.

This flashed me back to a conversation I had with my friend and fellow cinephile Rory a few months ago over breakfast when I confessed I had not seen anywhere near enough foreign classics, primarily because when it comes to classic cinema I prefer…….”Gone With The Wind,” Rory said, finishing my thought. Yes. Exactly. Melodramas and costume epics and sweep……I like sweeping cinema. Cinema these days just doesn’t have enough sweep. This, I think, is because sweeping cinema tends to connote soap operas and when people think of soap operas they think of “The Bold and The Beautiful” as opposed to "The Bad and The Beautiful", not realizing there is a huge difference. And “Jezebel”, rest assured, has more on its mind than just the evening gown competition.

The mention of “Gone With the Wind” is crucial. The story of “Jezebel” bears many similarities to the landmark opus released but one year later. In fact, studio head Jack Warner’s specific intent was to get “Jezebel” into theaters before David O. Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind.” He succeeded, of course, and while it would be easy to therefore claim “Jezebel” was just an attempt to cash in on all the southern thunder “Gone With the Wind” was then generating, well, it must be noted that “Jezebel” was based on a play by Owen Davis, Sr. which debuted on Broadway (it was a flop) three years before Margaret Mitchell’s novel. Besides, while the characters of Miss Julie and Scarlett O’Hara share similarities, they also diverge in significant ways.

They were both ahead of their time (resembling the era in which the films were made more than the era in which the films were set, which is fine), willful, defiant. Miss Julie wearing red to the ball is, in fact, no different than Scarlett, when she's supposed to be in mourning, dancing with Rhett at the charity bazaar. They both embrace romantic myths even as their ultimate actions work to dispel them. But there is, no doubt, a rougher edge to this Miss Julie. Look at the poster – those eyes rolled back up into Bette’s head. It drips wickedness, but Davis’s performance maintains that classic southern hospitality even as she employs it like a weapon. Not for nothing is the film’s title Jezebel, the princess who was the power behind the throne of Ahab. (Scarlett, on the other hand, was named “Pansy” in Mitchell’s book until just before it went to print.)

She is a fierce manipulator and when Pres, who broke off their engagement after the Red Dress Scandal, returns home to help defend against a yellow fever epidemic with wife Amy (Margaret Lindsay), a progressive northerner whose accent is more London Times than Times Picayune, she deploys her vile charm to pit her southern suitor Buck Cantrell (George Raft) against Pres. This unleashes a subtle Civil War several years early as we realize Pres’s attitudes have changed up in the north “country” (and this is how they refer to the north and south, as separate countries) and so “Jezebel”, still functioning as a love quadrangle, pokes holes in the value system of The Old South.

Fonda’s stoicism is well-suited for the role. His character is consumed by pangs of regret in his heritage and a sadness that Miss Julie made him let her go. And that conveniently and immediately brings us right back to Bette Davis who took home her second Best Actress Oscar at the age of 29. She wields her power like a magnetic Jezebel until her power-wielding goes astray and worse comes to worst. She asks forgiveness by rolling up her sleeves and realizing the color of her dress matters not at all.

Romance By Any Budget

At my best friend's bachelor party in Brooklyn our posse of six ventured across the river to the Russian & Turkish baths in the East Village. We sat in a variey of steam rooms, sweated, sweated some more, hopped in an ice cold pool, sweated some more, and wound up for a spell sitting on their roof deck with a couple of congenial ladies laying out across the way, not that I was ogling them between sips of my crisp beer. It was idyllic. It was......New York.

No doubt a real New Yorker would scoff at me when I say that (more power to him/her) but that is because, like Woody Allen's '79 surrogate Isaac, I tend to "romanticize things all out of proportion" and sitting on a roof in the summer heat of Manhattan with a beer and buildings rising up all around me like no one lives in them because they are merely the backdrop in the expressive painting of my melodramatic life is how I think of New York. (I also think of New York in terms of Kate Beckinsale & John Cusack gallivanting in Midtown snow flurries. But that goes without saying.)

Then a gunshot sounded.

No. Really. A gunshot. In fact my best friend's one other New York friend in our posse confirmed for us without batting an eye: "Yeah. That was a gunshot." And I remember thinking: "Oh. Right. This is still the real world."

Of course, that's any city, but I feel as if the dichotomy is more immediate and more dramatic in New York. That's the ultimate symbolism of Central Park, no? It's an oversized sleepy village green smack dab in the middle of The City That Never Sleeps. It is forever and ever a fantasy and reality at once.

"Gimme the Loot" was a teeny-tiny film that generally passed unnoticed by the masses in 2012, mostly because it was limited to the festival circuit. Granted, it hit up some fairly significant festivals - Cannes, SXSW, SFIFF and CIFF (where I saw it). It is set for a limited release beginning on March 22 (in New York, expanding to L.A. and Chicago a week later and onward from there) which will be coming on the heels of its Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature (where it's up against, amongst others, the bigger pedigreed "Perks Of Being A Wallflower"). And because it's teeny-tiny and because its actors are non-professionals and because it employs handheld photography on authentic NYC streets and because it is about graffiti artists it would be easy to simply assume the film is all hard edged realism.

That is there, to be sure, but even more so, the film, despite a budget below $100,000, evokes an old-fashioned NYC too. Not so much in its appearance or in its verbiage (which is off-the-cuff and very profane) but in its spirit and in its air. It feels bygone even if it looks urban. It's the two New York's - romanticized and real - running right into each other.

The film's thrust is Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) trying to hustle up $500 to pay for the right to be snuck into Shea Stadium (Citi Field) to spray paint the Home Run Apple in centerfield. They swipe sneakers, a cellphone and a few bags of weed to sell for a profit. They run into and afoul of a few not-so-nice people. But this is not an ominous hip-hop song, it's a smiling, stomping jazz standard. It stays on the sunny side of the street. Because simmering just below the surface, conveyed in their bickering, in Sophia's agitation and in Malcolm's cool detachment, is a mutual attraction they both come to realize they are not willing or ready to admit.

But maybe, in the end, they do admit it. One of the film's final shots, Malcolm unostentatiously offering her a rose, seems so much of another time you can practically see Model-T's whizzing by and and a bowler atop Malcolm's head. It is so, to borrow a word repeated often throughout the film itself, fucking sweet that it will make you smile like you just saw your son pin the corsage to the dress of his prom date.

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are nowhere to be seen. This is Adam Leon, not Nora Ephron. It doesn't end at the Empire State Building but it's still an affair to remember.

It's the most romantic movie I saw in 2012.