Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

flicks

Ladies of Oscar

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These actually happened to be the top two movies on our queue prior to the Oscars, and we got one on each side of the ceremony.

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Best Supporting Actress Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton – One of my favorite actors, but she barely notches enough screen time for her billing, let alone for an award. And that doesn’t even take into account her lackluster performance. Her accent slips in multiple places, she has no good dialog save for her big scene with Clooney, and there she barely holds her own.

(Meanwhile, Clooney chose not to get into character whatsoever, leaving the whole affair with the air of a double-feature episode of Law and Order. The in medias res fails utterly because nothing interesting happens between the tease and the fulfillment.)

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Best Actress Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose – One of the most notable performances I’ve seen this decade, and certainly in line with the strength of Helen Mirren’s win last year for The Queen. I know it’s easy to be impressive when you’re aping a real live person, but Cotillard goes beyond tricks of impersonation we’ve seen in other recent biopics to portray the actual heart of her character – without doing any of the singing.

(That she maintains that heart through an utterly bewildering series of narrative shifts in an overall average film is even more impressive. It would have been embarrassing if she didn’t win.)

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That all said, they gave two of my favorite acceptance speeches of all time. I’ll let you decide which film we saw prior and which we saw post.

My report on Oscar’s best men coming never, because I don’t have a hair on my body that wants to watch either of those movies, even if I like one out of their three directors.

(ps, In case you need to fine tune to understand our taste, the next movie we received was Ratatouille, which is surely one of the most disappointing movies I’ve ever seen, especially after watching The Incredibles two or three times in the last week.)

Razor’s Dull Edge

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E and I just got in from a sneak-preview of the new feature-length Battlestar Galactica episode, Razor, which doesn’t air for another two weeks.

We didn’t have to sign any confidentiality whatsits, so I suppose I’m free to divulge whatever plot points I see fit.

However, it’s hardly worth it – there’s nothing shocking or titillating present for any well-read BSG fan. The sole delights are Michelle Forbes portraying Admiral Caine’s descent into her ends justifying any means necessary, and an impressive turn from the slight Stephanie Jacobsen in the lead role – as newly introduced Kendra Shaw.

Past the leading ladies Razor is a empty husk of less-than-gripping retconned plot. The twin stories it portrays are both extraneous – the Pegasus history just as grim as you imagined it, and the Battlestar present (actually, occurring just after The Captain’s Hand) is an inexplicably unmentioned adventure in vintage Cylons, hybrid models, and nuclear warheads. The acting in the Pegasus half is up to BSG par, but the present is plagued by limp, frequently stilted performances the two Adamas, with Kara Thrace escaping with a few good scenes (especially with Kendra).

Also, keep an eye out for a too-long, horrifically lazy young-Adama flashback that would have been so much more effective as a patented, heavy on the gravitas Edward James Olmos speech intercut with a few illustrative frames. Nevermind how they plan to explain why he’s never mentioned it before or since.

Without a single true shock to its credit, Razor is drab filler that supposedly presages the major revelations of Season 4. I can’t say that it has inspired any additional fervor from this fervent fan. If anything, it just emphasizes why BSG’s lease on life is drawing to a close.

Small Details That Make Me Cry Every Time

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1. When Fleur tends to Bill at the end of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

2. Anya’s last scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

3. When Jessica Lange overturns the hospital cart near the end of Big Fish.

4. Madonna’s end-of-tour prayer in I’m Going to Tell You a Secret.

5. When Eowyn defeats the Witch King in Return of the King.

Surely you have noticed that all five moments involve strong or outspoken female characters. The interesting question is, how many of those moment make me cry because they are sad/touching, as opposed to the ones that make me cry because I am a feminist?

At first blush it would seem to be 4 to 1, but not all is what meets the eye.

The Descent

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I used to delight in being mean.

The focus of my anger didn’t really matter – a bag boy at the supermarket, a friend in conversation, a bus driver – as long as I vented my spleen at just the right moment. It was infamous and much-lamentedtrait of mine for many years; even Gina would roll her eyes when she saw that i was headed for a blowout.

Over the past few years my capacity for nastiness has been on a steady decline. Even when I summon up a decent fit of rage I usually swallow it, or at least soften the blow. And, not just for the benefit of my friends.

Over the summer I went to see The Descent, and in the fairly packed theatre I sat next to a friendly, cow-eyed middle-aged woman and her companion. She seemed like a decent enough neighbor, though during the previews she occasionally talked back to the screen. But, so do I.

As the movie progressed the talking-back morphed into a non-stop commentary track punctuated with pleas to her companion, like “I don’t know why you brought me to see this,” and “oh my god, you can’t leave me alone to go to the bathroom, I can’t take it. I just can’t take it.” I threw a few sideways glances her way, but she was oblivious in rapt, babbling horror.

Finally, during the first truly grisly scene in the movie her babbling transformed into incoherent gibbering screams, either at the characters on screen or just for her own benefit. Either way, she was significantly louder than the theatre’s surround sound, and I was not missing part of the movie just to get an usher.

Calm and collected, i turned to face the incoherent beast.

“Could you be quieter than the fucking characters in the movie?”

I immediately regreted venting at this creature of an obviously lower personal fortitude than my own. She turned to face me with her horrified, watery cow-eyes, mouth working open and closed like a guppy. She had no verbal reaction, just the “blurp, blurp, blurp” of her jowls working.

Over time my peers have developed an immunity to my scathing remarks, but clearly I had destroyed this creature’s will to live. I had to do something to bring her back from the brink.

“I’m sorry, you’re just really loud.”

She kept guppying at me, accompanying the guppying with her watery wide-eyed stare. I tried to go back to watching the (excellent) movie, but her stare kept nudging me in the side of the head.

I had become more horrifically transfixing than the golum-monsters on screen. I had ruined her movie experience with my meanness. She just wanted to go out to the movies and yammer like a mental patient because she has no coping mechanism to deal with horror but would be the oldest kid in the theatre for The Ant Bully. Who was I to impose society’s artificial standards about being quiet at the movies on her
As the on-screen violence continued I calmly, sweetly, turned back to my (still-staring) neighbor. One of my professors was a fan of a communications theory where other people would agree with you more strongly if you aligned your bodily reactions (like rates of breathing and blinking) with theirs. It was time for a field test.

I carefully matched her cow-stare and her guppy-breathing until I felt that we had reached a state of true simpatico. Gulping down some air and willing my eyes into giant, mooning saucers, I whispered, “I know, it’s really scary.”

Borderline cow-woman bit her lip and nodded at me. I bit my own lip and nodded along. I had established a connection. Slowly, still maintaining eye contact, still in-character as a cow/guppy with borderline personality disorder, I turned back towards the screen.

As if by magic, or a complex system of gears and pulleys, she also turned back towards the screen. I completed my turn in slow motion, finally breaking eye contact when it felt as if my pupil was going to slide back into my head.

She didn’t make another noise or even remotely glance at me for the remainder of the movie, or afterwards when we filed out. Yet, it was a pyrrhic victory, because I felt the need to temper a successful flare-up at a stranger who was screaming incoherently at a movie screen with an apology. You know, so her feelings wouldn’t be too hurt.

Old-school me would have pressed my attack until she ran sobbing from the theatre.

Of course, I wouldn’t have accumulated any good karma that way.

I like to think that present-day me strives to at least break even on karma, which means i only get to be unapolgetically nasty to someone who really deserves it. And, much to my chagrin, talkers at the movies, along with litterers and people who smoke next to you at the bus stop, are just innocent bystanders minding their own lives.

The Prestige

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To the magic of the The Prestige i merely say “eh.” It was thouroughly enjoyable to watch, and i’ll definitely see it again, but it ultimately was not very satisfying. At least, not in the way i wanted it to be.

Unlike Nolan’s Momento, which by its nature was mostly unfigureoutable the first time through, Prestige lays it all on the line at various early points and spends the rest of the movie just telling an engaging story while waiting for you to catch up. The ending might some tricky to some, but for those who caught up five minutes previous (or fifty (or a hundred) as the case might have been (or was)) the ending is an ultimate anti-climax – all confirmation, and no surprise.

I can think of three ways that the film could have gone that extra-interesting step; i’ll tuck each behind javascript so as not to spoil anything: 1, 2, 3

Go to this movie for the riveting story of intense jealousy and rivalry. Go for the tale of how no revenge is revenge enough. Go for outstanding performances by Caine, Jackman, and Bale, Scarlett doing what she can with a hobbled role, and marvellous turns from Serkis and Bowie.

If you go for the Nolan riddle wrapped in an enigma you’ll leave feeling as if you had been told a knock-knock joke.