Film

Two sure-fire Oscar-bait pitches for 2011: A socially awkward King-to-be overcomes stammering by tapping into dreams of a lesbian couple’s ballet-dancing toys. To help a girl avenge her dad’s death, a boxer in the Ozarks cuts off his arm and pokes people on Facebook.

I watched The Hurt Locker last night. A deserving Best Picture. Bigelow is a great action director. You always have a sense of space, where all the action is taking place, and where all the known threats could come from. The pendulum of the film’s rhythm swings between tension and release, much, one supposes, like the work and life of the protagonists.

Once is a small, perfectly formed film about some very big themes. Most obviously, it is about the power of music to connect - after all, it is a film about an Irish busker meeting a Czech immigrant in Dublin, and them making (very beautiful) music together. But it is also about the possibility of a brief, intense connection reverberating throughout one’s life, something that is probably true for many people, but rarely depicted well in films - perhaps only the Before Sunrise / Before Sunset diptych do it properly.

Less a real review of Away From Her, more a rave: Julie Christie is brilliant in the film. Not just brilliant in her acting - which she is - but brilliant as in luminiscent. Full of the vitality and life that makes you understand why her husband (played by Gordon Pinsent) never wants to be away from her, and that makes her decline from Alzheimer’s all the more sad - and all the more puzzling. Sarah Polley directs with a spare touch that seems perfectly Canadian, and imperfectly wise beyond her years.

Watched The Departed over the weekend, and my thought was: now this is how you do an adaptation. Scorsese at his finest - no one mixes the sheer brutality and the lyricism of violence like he does. Top notch acting all around, and some beautiful cinematography - I thought the final scene was a marvel of composition, and then I watched parts again and noticed all the “X"s in the scene whenever someone died. And for anyone’s who spent any time in Boston, the clear echoes of Whitey Bulger are compelling.

I watched Will Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction a couple of nights ago, probably the first time I can remember Ferrell in a role other than “overgrown fratboy” - indeed, here he plays an IRS auditor, so he’s very much the epitome of the straight man here. It pleasantly surprised me that he held his own acting against Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who, incidentally, I’m convinced has one of the sexiest voices in Hollywood).

I’m a huge Simpsons junkie - smartest show on TV, even if it might never hit the seasons 4-8 peaks of consistency - and I’m really looking forward to the Simpsons movie, but with a bit of trepidation - what if it just becomes some extended shaggy-dog story (not that that couldn’t be funny) on the order of Saddlesore Galactica (Worst. Episode. Ever.)?

Dreamgirls is shot Bill Condon style - lots that reminded me of Chicago. Or is that just because there are so few movie musicals these days? In any case, for an avid, avowed Motown fan such as myself, Dreamgirls was a great exercise in spot-the-parallels (ooh, and just as I typed that, the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” came on): the Dreamgirls = the Supremes, Curtis Taylor Jr. = Berry Gordy etc. etc. (although obviously it isn’t a direct adaptation, and Paramount has been careful to make clear that it’s a fictionalised account).

Watched (and re-watched) Nicole Holofcener’s Friends With Money this week. It’s good. A film for grown-ups (as one friend told me), and that’s always good. Although I have to say Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, and Joan Cusack act rings around Jennifer Aniston. How good is Keener? I can’t think of a film I’ve disliked her in. Although I admit I didn’t watch S1m0ne.

Watched Half Nelson at the Picturehouse on Sunday. Ryan Gosling does a fine, fine job as Dan Dunne, teacher, budding writer, and basehead. Worthy of the Oscar nom, and certainly living up to the acting potential he showed in The Believer. I can see Ryan Gosling following in the footsteps of Edward Norton, going the Serious Actor With Good Looks route. Or is it just because The Believer and American History X naturally invite comparisons?