The Executioner's Gongs!

Ah, it almost seems cruel to name the winners of the executioner's awards for film excellence in 2008 just days before the Oscars - kind of makes the golden guy irrelevant for most people! - but here we are. After much delay this year's recipients of the coveted Golden Axes are:

Best Picture: Waltz With Bashir.

Runner-up: WALL-E

Best Animated Film: Waltz With Bashir.
Runner-up: WALL-E

Best Foreign Language Film: Waltz With Bashir

Runner-up: I've Loved You So Long

Best Director: Ari Folman, Waltz With Bashir

Runner-up: Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married

Best Actor: Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Runner-up: Sean Penn, Milk

Best Actress: Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

Runner-up: Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long

(Special shout-out Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona - the heart of the film and the best Woody-stand-in character yet!)

Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Runner-up: Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road

(so many overlooked by Oscar: James Franco, Milk; David Kross, The Reader; Mark Strong, Body Of Lies; Sam Rockwell, Frost/Nixon; Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight)

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Runner-up: Amy Adams, Doubt

Best Visual Effects: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Runner-up: Iron Man

Best Sound Design: WALL-E

Runner-up: Iron Man

Best Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire

Runner-up: Rachel Getting Married

(special shout-out to WALL-E)

Best Costume Design: Revolutionary Road

Runner-up: Changeling

Best Production Design: The Dark Knight

Runner-up: Revolutionary Road

Best Documentary Feature: Man On Wire

Runner-up: Of Time And The City

(Special shout-outs to Taxi To The Dark Side and My Winnipeg)

Best Make-up: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

Runner-up: The Dark Knight

Best music: Revolutionary Road

Runner-up: The Dark Knight

Best Adapted Screenplay: Revolutionary Road

Runner-up: The Dark Knight

Best Original Screenplay: Rachel Getting Married

Runner-up: I've Loved You So Long

And so, there they are. Congratulations to all are winners and runners-up you are the chosen few. There were many great films, efforts and performances this year and i wish so many more could win but this wasn't possible.

Enjoy the second-most prestigious awards on Sunday night and come Monday let's look ahead to next year!

Story of the week! Wrestler's perfect casting

If you thought Mickey Rourke was perfect casting in The Wrestler (and you're not wrong) it would seem Darren Aronofsky was inspired all around!

Scott Siegel, who appeared briefly as the hulking drug dealer who supplies Randy 'The Ram' with pain-killers and offers steroids, class-A drugs, basically whatever his clients want has... wait for it... been arrested for drug dealing. But as if that wasn't enough he was specifically arrested for steroid distribution. It happened in New York State yesterday.

Brilliant Darren, just goes to show you know how to cast superbly. Makes you wonder, after seeing The Fountain, if Hugh Jackman can really float through space in a mind-bubble!

Winslet tells Time Magazine she's giving up film nudity

because she doesn't want to become known as the actress who always takes her clothes off!

Too late Kate, far far too late!

Latest screening: The Class (Entre Les Murs)

The Class, or Between the Walls to take the literal translation from the original French title is a wonderful "slice-of-life" film, almost documentary in feel, as the French do so well.

I saw Larent Cantet's Palme d'Or winner and Oscar-nominee this week and found it was a wonderfully nuanced and engaging film.

This film is certainly not for everybody. I have seen the criticism levelled at it that little happens of major consequence, that it doesn't have a defined structure of acts. Some people need that and that's fine, but i say why does something significant need to happen to have compelling cinema. A documentary like Of Time And The City can be beautiful, lyrical, engaging and enjoyable without ever presenting a sensationalist idea or event. European cinema, especially French and Italian I find, can frequently display truths in a compelling way and shame the easy spectacle of American and British cinema. Now I love US and UK films too, i embrace all cinema, but i don't see why a film need have a Plot (yes, with a capital P)

The Class may not be for everyone but there is a very definite place, i would say a need, for its type of cinema in the world and this example, much like Walter Salles' recent Linha De Passe or perhaps best of all Fernando Meirelles' masterpiece City Of God, is a deservedly acclaimed piece.

The film's portrayal of the harried relationship between a well-meaning but increasingly frustrated teacher and his teenage students of varying degrees of rebellion, both forced and natural (in and of themselves not the film) comes to a wonderful peak when the teacher loses his cool and inadvertently insults some female students. That the actor playing the role is the teacher who wrote the book on which his own screenplay is based allows him to so accurately portray the thoughts pinwheeling around his head without saying much in this scene. He was in a heated exchange and like anyone pushed to the limits of tolerance he mistakenly said something in frustration that he should not of said. Like we all do in such circumstances he then instantly regrets it, partly for offense he doesn't want to give - he really just wants to be liked by the students, which is why he is so pained by punishments etc that some of the other teachers, more happy to be the stereotype bastard teachers the kids see all authority figures as - and partly because he does not want to get in trouble for losing control of himself. He naturally then starts playing it down, feigning shock at their reaction; trying to talk it away by saying the insult means something else to him, etc. It doesn't of course and he is not surprised by their reactions, you can see all this in the performance, in his face and body-language.

I think this subtlety is the art of great acting. I never understand how consistently beuatiful, nuanced, realistic characters get overlooked contantly at the Oscars while bombastic Acting (yes, with a capital A) so frequently wins. It is why Sean Penn won for Mystic River and not for his sublime performance in Dead Man Walking - which he lost to the more showy and less subtle Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Penn's win beat the heartbreaking performance of Bill Murray. It is why Pacino laughingly won for his ludicrous part in Scent of a Woman but was overlooked in first two Godfathers and was not even on the radar with balanced stunning parts in films like Insomnia. Going back to Mystic River i always thought it so shameful Kevin Bacon was ignored. His pained performance was every bit the match of Penn's histrionics and Robbins sublime, but showier, role but his character was too real for people to see the genius. It is the same reason costume dramas always get into Costume Design categories and summer tentpoles always dominate SFX - the unsubtle and noticeable catches attention despite the fact it is the seemlessly complimentary which is arguably better.

For critics that say The Class doesn't go anywhere - I say, why need it? It is a slice of life, a snapshot of the frustrations and difficulties on both sides of the teacher/student dynamic. Could any adult watch the film's first half without marvelling at how such teachers constrain themselves when dealing with adolescents? And yet how many of those would then condemn the teacher for his latter actions out of hand and call for his resignation were they not seeing the full circumstances but were, say, reading only the portrayed student view in a newspaper. How many times have we all read of teachers doing something in a newspaper and thought the worst of them when we don't get the full picture, indeed, how often do we do this with all issues?

Ultimately The Class is an example of that type of life-peak cinema that the French do better than anyone, taking you into a world you don't know, no matter what your preconceptions. It still shouldn't beat Waltz With Bashir on Sunday for the Best Foreign Language award, which was the best film of the year in my opinion, but it is an excellent film worthy of attention.

QT hits rock bottom

QT has been going down hill since Jackie Brown, i mean post JB not from JB, which personally i think was his most mature film and is a film i love more every time i see it.

Yesterday the teaser trailer for his later ego-trip Inglourious Basterds came out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbX6XtyPaeY&fmt=18

Personally i think this is the worst looking crap i've seen in a while. What I find disappointing is that with his first three films i thought Tarantino was improving his craft and the marriage of the cool dialogue and great characters he displayed in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, combined with the maturity of Jackie Brown and the movie knowledge shown in all his films would lead to a fantastic filmmaker. Instead it has become clearer (Kill Bill) and clearer (Death Proof) that he is just an immature geek.

I read the screenplay for Inglourious Basterds last year and found it embarrassing. If the name Quentin Tarantino had not been on the front of it no script reader, let alone producer or studio exec, would have got past page 5 before laughing it out of the room. You know the scene in Tim Burton's excellent Ed Wood when the exec sits down to watch Glen Or Glenda and at first thinks it's terrible and then loves it because he thinks a practical joke has been played on him? Well that is how i felt reading this script - either Tarantino has irrevocably damaged himself in my eyes with an appallingly written, childish, ugly film or he has deliberately played the biggest practical joke on Universal by seeing just how bad a film he could make and still get people to pay for just because his name is on it.

Sadly i suspect from his delusional quotes about this being his masterpiece and his determination that is had to be ready to screen at Cannes in May this year that he sincerely believes this trash to be intelligent and witty. Harry Knowles on AICN claims, having come off a set visit and having been typically effusive about the poor footage above, that QT absolutely sees this as set in the real world. That it is his characters in a real world setting. Well, i'm sorry but the script doesn't have an ounce of the real world in it, it is totally absurd, tonally like From Dusk Till Dawn (which i love) and Death Proof (which i liked the shorter Grindhouse version of). If QT thinks this is real then it only goes to highlight that his assertion that working in a video shop was all the education he needed to be a filmmaker was as misguided and immature as this film looks. He has clearly no sense of WW2 and the real-world of 1940s Europe beyond what he has seen in movies.

It is a shame. There are good moments in the script. Flashes of the Tarantino that i hoped we'd get after Jackie Brown. In fact had he wanted this to be his masterpiece and a possible Palme d'Or expectant it could have been - he just needed to forget about the whole Basterds thing and make the haunting story of Shoshanna which is actually a quite beautifully written character and story-arch for much of the time before being thrown away. There is also one dynamite piece of classically QT dialogue. However generally i found the script offensive rubbish and hugely disappointing in that it destroyed any respect i had had for QT. I haven't been able to watch one of his films since - much in the way that i can't watch The Matrix anymore, as it is too tainted by the sequels. And i see nothing in this teaser to convince me i'm wrong. I never thought i'd get to the point of actively not wanting to see a new Tarantino film but i honestly can't see myself watching this unless enough people whose opinions i hold some truck by can convince me. otherwise.

Wow! You have to see to watch this Phoenix on Letterman

I don't know for certain if this is staged or real. Given that it is Letterman i would assume staged but Joaquin Phoenix is known for being one of those over-serious ass-holes and Letterman's frustrations toward the end sure seem pretty real. Phoenix announced he was giving up acting for music well back in last year so this could fit as real. Then again maybe he's just having fun with how people reacted to his revealing that. Either way, taken as deliberate joke or a classic self-obsessed actor ass-hole moment this is frankly hilarious viewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1xK6xz8d9Q

Mickey, In Bruges and the glory of Bafta (mostly)!

It was with trepidation, as always, that i watched the British Academy Film Awards on Sunday night. Would my votes count and those i voted for win? Would there be the usual unexpected blatent jingoism award? Would the never less than than massively irritating Jonathan Ross annoy be as much as ever? Would any of my favourites get completed screwed over? These feelings of dread weren't helped by an excruciating red-carpet preamble hosted by the ditzy talentless Claudia Winkelman who embarrassed herself, the BBC and the British in general at every turn with her simpering childishness. But never mind. Red carpets are made for the talentless amongst TV hosts to faun, so maybe she did a good job!

Anyway, awards wise i have to say i was generally pretty happy. The over-rated but still enjoyable Slumdog Millionaire was the unsurprising big winner. In years to come i'll never be able to recall what won this year, hell with the ceremony about to start chatting with a friend who was over i was talking about the best picture Oscar noms, got through 4 and blanked on the 5th, then realised it was Slumdog - i'm forgetting it already. But in a mediocre year it was the best of the 5 pictures nominated and deserved its wins from that perspective without doubt.

Highlights of the night were In Bruges winning best original screenplay - which i love and was the one thing that really surprised me. What a great choice. Love it!

I hadn't bothered to read who was getting the fellowship this year so loved that it was the brilliant Terry Gilliam. Okay, so the cynic in me says attention fell on the maverick genius because he has Heath Ledger's final film coming out this year but with great films like Holy Grail, Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits and his masterpiece Brazil on his track record this is hugely deserved, even if he didn't seem altogether sure of it.

I was beside myself that Man On Wire got best British film. I've never undertood this category. How is it that in a year when a British film (nominated in this category) wins best film, such as Slumdog this year or Atonement, it can lose Best British Film? Still Man On Wire is the one i would have voted for if i had a vote in this category so i'm pleased. Only goes to highlight once again though that BAFTA sorely needs a Best Documentary Category.

I was very pleased Penelope Cruz won for her hilarious and brilliantly unhinged turn in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I voted for her so maybe my vote counted. I also voted for Slumdog for best pictures and Ledger for supporting actor. The Kate Winslet i voted for lost to the other Kate Winslet, but i don't begrudge her the win. I think Kristin Scott Thomas does though, bow the venom in her stare when Winslet was on stage! Man, if looks could kill KST would be in custody right now!

Of course the biggest highlight of the night, in so many ways, was Mickey Rourke's win. I had feared stuffy older BAFTA members and women would not appreciate his astonishing turn in Darren Aronofsky's sublime The Wrestler, but praise be he won! Again, maybe my vote counted. I am a big fan of Rourke. I was during his Diner/Pope of Greenwich Village/Angel Heart 80s heyday and i refound him with Man On Fire and Sin City - in fact my won problem with The Wrestler rethoric is that everyone paints it as his comeback. No, Sin City was his comeback. In 2005 he was all anyone talked about regarding the performances in Sin City. Not the more famous Bruce Willis or Clive Owen, not even the scantily-clad Jessica Alba, Jaime King and Rosario Dawson. No, it was Mickey Rourke's fantastic portrayal as Marv that stood out and in 2005 everyone, critics and moviegoers said so. How come everyone had forgotten this in 3 short years. Anyway, Mickey is great and proved it once again with the best acceptance speech in the history of time. It said what it needed to say without being sentimental, no it was resolutely Mickey! The great thing about Mickey Rourke is he is who he is and he does hide that or try to curtail it to fit in with what people would like. He is politically incorrect and thank god for that. Finally a movie star you can believe not some bland, false idol. I just hope the Oscars don't screw him over.

Of course the night wasn't without a couple of disappointments. Waltz With Bashir losing out in both animation and foreign film categories was a massive shame. Don't get me wrong, i like both WALL-E and I've Loved You So Long, but neither is as good a film as Waltz With Bashir and shouldn't have beaten it. I've Loved You So Long only one because of Kristin Scott Thomas. She was amazing in it and being a British actress, this was of course one all voting members would have watched. I suspect were it possible to poll such things we'd find far more BAFTA members watched this than any of the other foreign language nominees, which is a shame. Waltz was robbed. I think that given KST's involvement this was the blatant jingoism award for this year - Slumdog doesn't count as it deserved its awards.

Anyway, onwards to the Academy Awards on Feb 22. Will they follow similar lines? I'm fairly sure where WALL-E, Slumdog Millionaore and Heath Ledger are concerned they will, as for the rest - hmmm, we'll see!