Academy Awards 2012 Nom-Noms, Movies about Movies about Acting in Movies

You might have noticed I haven't been posting much here, mostly because my reviews of terrible movies have been picked up by JustPressPlay. But it's that time of year again to talk about the movies that are supposed to be not-terrible, but usually are. That's right, it's The Oscars: Not Accounting for Taste since 1929.



Last year's awards were a potpourri with the gentle scent of Mediocre Medley. This year seems to be no different.

Best Picture
The Descendants might be the only movie for adults on this list, in that it's concerned with taking apart illusions rather than building them up. Midnight in Paris was a cute ball of childish fluff, and I'm just not sure how it's any different from the last ten years of (roughly equivalent) Woody Allen films that it suddenly deserves an Oscar nod. (Match Point was the best thing he's done since the 90s, and that only got a writing nod.)

Speaking of pervy old men, look at Speilberg with War Horse and Scorsese with Hugo. Neither of them have made a truly great movie in forever. Is the Academy so desperate for role models that it needs to trot out a gray-haired American auteur or two for every ceremony? True, the red carpet wouldn't quite be the same without Scorsese's eyebrows bobbing somewhere along it, wafting up and down lazily and independently, like drinky birds.

Also note the absence of an Eastwood this year, both he and DiCaprio have been snubbed for J. Edgar. This might be the first awards in a while where we're spared having to watch Leo fail to win anything.



Best Actor
Gary Oldman is a bit of a surprise here, since Tinker, Tailor skated by theaters without too much notice like a cold war spy. On skates. But Oldman's nomination is curious since in Tinker, Tailor he basically plays Alec Guinness. Now look at Brad Pit playing Robert Redford in Moneyball, Dujardin playing any number of silent actors in The Artist, and George Clooney playing, well, George Clooney. All of these characters are throwbacks. Are movies becoming increasingly about movies? I predict that in a decade the only award-winning acting will be Marlon Brando impersonations.

A notable snub this year is Michael Fassbender, for his poignant and full-frontal portrayal of guilt and sex addiction in X-Men: First Class.

Of course, Pitt deserves an Oscar nod for trying his hardest not to be sexy (a great, ultimately futile effort). And Clooney deserves an Oscar nod for his salt-and-pepper hair. Or, rather, his hair deserves its own category. Best George Clooney hair in a George Clooney movie (Comedy or Musical).



Best Actress
Most of the buzz here is going to Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn for the much-covetted "Playing Someone Who Couldn't Act" award. Viola Davis needs a separate "Putting Up with White Folk" award. The statuette will be of Nichelle Nichols.



Supporting Actor/Actress
And the Oscar goes to: Jonah Hill! Did you just die a little inside right there?

Writing
Usually my favorite category, this year is basically a mess. "Original Screenplay" has two foreign films, two comedies, and one Sorkin-esque docudramady ("Best Fast Talking about Important Matters in a Non-Sorkin Film, Or, the In The Loop Award"). Adapted writing has one novel (The Descendants, one sort-of-novel (The Invention of Hugo Cabret), one play (The Ides of March), one non-fiction (Moneyball), and one movie/novel (Tinker, Tailor).

My Predictions:
are that it will be a five-hour waste of time but I'm going to watch it anyway. Also Billy Crystal will make one dirty joke too many and end up with more than he bargained for when Viola Davis takes him home.

As usual I'll be watching as many of these films again or for the first time over the next month. I'll be writing quick reviews here on the fly about how terrible they all are and how the apocalypse must surely be coming. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.

Midnight in Paris, Nostalgia, Didn't Owen Wilson Try to Kill Himself?

Midnight In Paris

You know when stepping into a basic Woody Allen film that you're entering a particular sort of universe. It'll be charming and whimsical, there will be a slew of colorful supporting characters played by the best actors in the business. The bad guys will be pretentious blowhards, the good guys will be confused overthinkers speed-talking their way through a crisis. And a few minutes before the credits, there will be a small epiphany. Not a world-shattering realization. Just a little one, merely there to assure you that the movie you just sat through wasn't just silly fun.

It's a solid formula for many of his movies (Match Point only slightly excepted), and Midnight In Paris seems the perfect vehicle. Owen Wilson plays Gil, a frustrated writer trying to turn from hack screen writing to real literature. He has an overbearing fiancée who is probably having an affair with the pretentious blowhard du jour (a very funny Michael Sheen, who gets all the pedantic cadences just right). They are on vacation in Paris, which leads Gil on a wave of Lost Generation nostalgia, which doesn't interest his girlfriend in the slightest. Oh, and if he sits on a particular corner at midnight, a taxi pulls up and takes him to 1924.

This is where Woody gets to be Woody: having his sad-sack protagonist wander through the streets and parties of 1920s Paris, rubbing elbows with many of the great artistic and literary figures of the time, listening first-hand to Cole Porter, giving advice to Louis Buñuel, doing the Charleston with Djuna Barnes. The fact that all of these fabulous figures are played by equally fabulous actors turns the movie into a sort of guessing game: "Who will show up next? T. S. Eliot? Adrien Brody... as... Dali?" And this is where the strength of the movie lies, in this nostalgic wish-fulfillment. If you went back to 1924, what would you say to F. Scott when he complains about Zelda? What would you say to Gertrude Stein's critique of your novel? 

The nostalgia scenes are the strength, certainly not the predictable and uninspired scenes in the present, which proceed like clockwork, every snag and relationship argument telegraphed from the beginning. And certainly not Owen Wilson's character, who, try as he might, is never much more than the shoulder we have to look over to see what we want to see. The Paris of the roaring '20s is too interesting to have the Paris of today be so boring, and so the movie sags whenever we are not in the presence of Hemingway et al.

So Midnight In Paris is a slight pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless (Adrien Brody as the bombastic Dali is almost worth the price of admission itself.) The epiphany moment, which concerns nostalgia, is particularly underwhelming, since it's not only obvious, but also in a way contrary to the spirit of the movie. We all know nostalgia is unproductive and illusory, but then again so are movies. And movies can fun and useful too. This one is more fun than useful, but fun nonetheless.