My grudging and pointless Oscar predictions

You may have noticed (but probably didn't, because why would you) my lack of award season coverage. My reasoning is simple - I very much dislike all of these award shows, except possibly...no. I was going to say the Golden Globes, because everybody gets drunk while there and that can be enjoyable to watch, but I can't pretend that a) I even watch them and b) I find them at all worthwhile. That's true about all of the different shows, from the egregiously self-congratulatory SAG Awards ("This award means so much more to me than the other ones, because this one comes from my peers!") to the inexplicable Producer's Guild Awards. 


The truth is, I don't think any real movie lover enjoys awards shows. Movies and actors aren't rewarded for their talent, but for their PR team's skills of aggression. Example: InStyle's December issue has a section on ballerina-influenced trends (I don't know if it's really a thing, besides our endless reliance on ballet slippers), and mentions "Natalie Portman's tour-de-force performance" in Black Swan. I found this to be incredible. What does a fashion catalogue/magazine have to do with movie commentary? And why would they use that phrase in particular? Suspiciously, I googled Natalie Portman tour de force, then Natalie Portman bravura. About 82,900 results for the former; 170,000 for the latter. (Yes, I know I'm adding this blog to those results. It's for a good cause.) Seriously, this is bullshit. The Portman PR Team is a terrifying force to be reckoned with, clearly inducing a monstrously effective groupthink that has resulted in a number of nominations and wins for the eternal ingenue. But what does that have to do with the performance itself? Or the film, which, as V pointed out, is a hot mess? 


Still, it is always fun to have my Oscar opinions and predictions out there, especially since I'm no good at March Madness and we already know who's going to the Superbowl. Right?


Best Picture
Probable Winner: The King's Speech
Pipe Dream: Inception
Ultimate Snub: The Town
The King's Speech is classic Oscar material - 20th century period piece, British, a Rocky-esque plot arc that comes pre-packaged and scored in the trailer, and completely inoffensive. And since Inception's superb director wasn't nominated, it's safe to say that it's not a serious contender. Still, it was one of my favourite movies of the year, and I really wish it'd get its due. 
Also? I know that The Town wasn't the best movie of the year. I know that. But a list that includes Black Swan and doesn't include The Town is a list for chumps.


Best Actor
Probable Winner: Colin Firth
Pipe Dream: Colin Firth
Ultimate Snub: ?
Colin Firth continues his slow, inexorable march into legitimacy, after a decade of fluffy romcom quarantine. And damnit, good for him. I'm glad someone besides college English majors and middle-aged housewives have something to appreciate in Mr. Firth. 
I can't think of any outstanding male performances from 2010, can you? Am I missing someone?


Best Actress
Probable Winner: Natalie Portman
Pipe Dream: Annette Bening
Ultimate Snub: Tilda Swinton
Like I said, Portman's PR team has wrapped this one up. I don't even like Annette Bening, but next to Natalie Portman I kind of do. And out of all the nominees, I think I like her the most. She was better at not playing a lesbian caricature than Julianne Moore, at the very least. 
Meanwhile, Tilda Swinton did everything right - was British, starred in a sensuous travelogue/love letter to Southern European food, did an excellent acting job as always - and came out with nothing to show for it. 

This picture should get an Oscar for best cinematography. Look at it!

Best Supporting Actor
Probable Winner: Christian Bale
Pipe Dream: Jeremy Renner
Ultimate Snub: Matt Damon
I don't even need to elaborate on this, do I? The Academy loves Christian Bale, mostly because of his batshit dedication to losing or gaining weight for a role, and also because look at his face. Plus, he's playing a white crackhead! 

Fucking unstoppable.

Jeremy Renner was one of my favourite parts of The Town, as that guy that no group of friends, least of all professional criminals, should have around but for some reason always do in movies. I kind of wanted his character to die just so I could calm down for two seconds. 
And Matt Damon was a total fucking delight in True Grit. His character ends up being a surprise, starting out as laughable and pompous but ending up noble, touching, and still a little pompous (after all, he is a Texas Ranger).


Best Supporting Actress
Probable Winner: Melissa Leo
Pipe Dream: Hailee Steinfeld
Ultimate Snub: Marion Cotillard
I haven't seen Melissa Leo's performance, except for the trailer, which told me just about everything I need to know. Still, the whole Supporting Actress category is remarkably strong this year, and it looks like almost any winner would be a justifiable one. I do wish that Marion Cotillard had received any recognition whatsoever for her performance in Inception, which is simply spell-binding, but she was barely in the trailer and I suspect half the Academy votes based on those, rather than the actual movies. 


Best Director
Probable Winner: David Fincher
Pipe Dream: Coen Bros
Ultimate Snub: Christopher Nolan
This category is almost a toss-up. David Fincher is kind of the favourite, but The King's Speech is beginning to steamroll every category available, going so far as to win a damn SAG award. So we'll see. I'm pretty sure the Coen Bros won't win, though, which is a shame - True Grit was the first western I can honestly say I enjoy, and not just appreciate. And Chris Nolan...I guess the Academy will never forgive you for Batman, despite the fact that you're intensely ambitious and therefore willing to take intensely interesting risks with your movie. Alas. It's all political. 

A history of the sassy black friend

A tried-and-true staple of romantic comedies - a genre which really seems to be closer to death with every new release - is the sassy black friend. This character, who can be either male or female, is often the plain-speakin' comic relief, and veers between comically sexualized (gay men) or completely asexual (straight women). For MLK Day, I decided to go through a quick history of this interminable and extremely restricting caricature. 


The first sassy black friend recorded in romantic comedy history was Mr Hollywood Montrose in Mannequin. 

Oh honeychild.

While I would hate to call this an embarrassment, it's mostly just an embarrassment - a crude stereotype of gay black men that we see persistently echoed through the years (As Good As It Gets, Center Stage, Sweet Home Alabama...). Witness straight white Andrew McCarthy try to negotiate a conversation with this flamboyant negro who just cannot stop crying about his cellulite. To this day, almost any black man in a romantic comedy has to be neutered and trivialized by being a screaming queen. There is no subtlety, and there is definitely no third or even second dimension to him - he's a pure joke, there to reinforce the hetero appeal of the lead.


There are some exceptions, but even those instances require some form of neutering. Dave Chappelle in You've Got Mail, for instance, has absolutely no existence beyond hanging out with Tom Hanks. They work together, walk on treadmills together, and scope out Tom Hanks's date together, but somewhere around the middle of the movie Dave just disappears and is never heard from again. In Two Weeks Notice, Hugh Grant has a sassy black friend with "sage" advice about women that involves something about how chess have rules but women don't; this guy isn't a friend, though, so much as he is a chauffeur who is obligated to talk to Hugh Grant. And Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Dwayne the bartender is obsessed with watching sea creatures fuck, making him bizarre and sexually non-threatening. 

Even Jason Segel is a credible romantic option, compared to this guy.

Then there's the barely-there sassy black friend, as seen in While You Were Sleeping and Never Been Kissed. These are characters who hardly even qualify as supporting, since the protagonist (and movie in general) would do just fine without them. You probably don't even remember the women I'm referring to in the two movies I just mentioned. Exactly. Slightly higher up the ladder is the sassy black friend who's there to keep her white lady friend honest. You'll find this character in movies like The Devil Wears Prada, Eat Pray Love, and Center Stage (I know Eva Rodriguez is Latina, but she fulfills all of the requirements I'm about to list). This woman has no sex life, usually being paired up with the gay supporting character. She seems completely devoted to helping her friend through her troubles - "I'm letting my success go to my head!" "I have too many boyfriends!" "I'm not a good enough dancer to even be in this academy!" - and rarely has any troubles of her own, except maybe an excess of sass. Her white lady friend rarely reciprocates the attention, instead choosing to make out with her romantic lead. 

I curate art museums. But no, you're right. Your assistant job is WAY more interesting.

The breakout sassy black friend award, in my opinion, just has to go to Gabrielle Union in 10 Things I Hate About You. Chastity (which, awesome name, girl) refuses to settle for being the supporting character in her own storyline. Instead of listening to Alex Mack talk about her painful choice between the popular jock and the dreamy adorable nerd Joseph Gordon-Levitt, she moves in on the popular jock all by herself. Maybe she is a bitch, like Alex Mack frequently calls her. But she's her own bitch, damnit, and she's got her own story. This almost makes up for Union's total non-character in She's All That, which came out in the same year. 


Movies notable for their complete lack of black characters, from 1990 to the present:


Pretty Woman
Sleepless In Seattle
Four Weddings and a Funeral
My Best Friend's Wedding
Runaway Bride
Bridget Jones's Diary
Legally Blonde
How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Wedding Crashers
The Break-Up
It's Complicated
Life As We Know It


Conclusion: Julia Roberts doesn't care about black people.

Special Guest Review: I come to bury Black Swan

After over a year of blog silence, V has returned with a vengeance. None shall be spared from her wrath! - M


So, basically, I went into Black Swan with reasonably low expectations, and they were, for the most part, confirmed. Not a particularly epic conclusion, I know -- but after all the melodrama this movie put me through, I’m just tired, you guys.

We'll begin with Natalie Portman, who plays Nina, your typical Dancer Focused On Perfect Technique  But Lacking In Passion, who apparently has been with the company for like a billion years but whose aforementioned Lack of Passion has held her back from a starring role. She soon has to contend with her rival and opposite, Mila Kunis, a Dancer With All The Passion In The World But Also A Bad(ass) Attitude. Nina has this pathologically overbearing stage mom, and she is mean to her in this way that a 14-year-old girl would be -- like her ego is really dependent on her mother's singular focus on her career, but she's so resentful of being suffocated that she can't bother to be more than totally contemptuous. Natalie Portman does a great job of portraying the character's conflicts, as well as the fact that she isn't sufficiently mature to move past rhem -- and, of course, one must give the obligatory nod to the fact that the woman did much of her own dancing. I've never been a Natalie Portman fan, but I think she's really good at this role -- she's capable of portraying the kind of arrested development you'd imagine would take place when a mother has been hijacking her daughter's entire life since well before puberty and at every moment thereafter. (Who plays said mother? BARBARA FUCKING HERSHEY. From BEACHES, y'all. This is so serious. It may be the case that I'm embarrassed about knowing that, but it may also be the case that I'm not.)

But there are some problems.
See, I've seen another movie that had a lot of gen-u-ine dancers doing some gen-u-ine dancing -- done by the actors, worked into the plot, all that jazz. It was called Center Stage, and you probably (hopefully!) saw it, too. 

I want you to really think about whether this Academy is the place for your mid-90s sweatband.

The plot of Center Stage is pretty thin. It’s about dancers, one of whom is Focused On Perfect Technique But Lacking In Passion, one of whom has All The Passion In The World But Also A Bad Attitude. Hmm. But no one really cared about the plot of the movie -- and, to be honest, I didn't care about the plot of Black Swan either. That might owe to the fact that the movie tells you the plot of Swan Lake maybe 10% of the way in and then spends the remaining 90% of the movie recapitulating said plot. And when I say "recapitulating" I do not mean "considering carefully," "elaborating on," or even "exploring in a remotely meaningful way." I mean that the film actually just spells out the plot of Swan Lake in thirty seconds at the very beginning of the movie, and then spends the rest of the movie acting out that plot. It was a plot about as simple, dare I say, as that of Center Stage.

So herein lies my problem with Black Swan -- and, frankly, with everything else I've ever seen by Darren Aronofsky. He does movies whose premises are reasonably simple, and every single element of the movie's direction serves exclusively to club you over the head with said premises. Take Requiem for a Dream. Has a woman's desire to have a perfect body been destroyed by the very diet pills she's been taking to try to achieve it? Have her careening through the streets of New York with her 'goal dress' hanging off of her emaciated frame. My tenth grade English class curriculum called, and it wants its nuance back.

Black Swan falls prey to the clubbing-you-over-the-head problem, too. Hardcore, actually. Have you ever heard of black being used to symbolize the dark side of one's personality, or white representing virginity and purity? If not, you might learn a lot from this movie. Nina wears white almost all of the time -- except, of course, when she's gone bad. By "going bad," I mean that she falls into an ecstasy-induced stupor, which finds her trying in a pretty serious way to mack on her rival character played by Kunis. Because Kunis represents the dark side/black swan/every other possible cliche representing sin, sensuality, or evil, she wears black all the time. Of course, her character is developed by a laundry list of facts: she smokes, enjoys ecstasy and hamburgers, and is an effortless, passionate dancer. Because as Aronofsky will tell you, there are only three or so facts about a supporting character that can reasonably coexist -- and making sure you know these facts is the only way he can help you to get to know this character.

Everything you need to know about these characters is summed up right here.

And you know what? He treats his main characters even worse. I know Marion isn't writing this entry but she said something really smart just now, which is that every main character in an Aronofsky movie has exactly two dimensions: the thing they're trying to achieve, and the way in which their pursuit of that thing prevents them from doing so and --how tragic!-- drives them crazy. In Requiem for a Dream, the characters are going for beauty, love, or acceptance; their use of drugs to try and obtain it finds them all in the gutter. In Pi, it's truth -- the pursuit of which apparently leads you to drilling a hole in your head so that you can spend the remainder of your days blissfully unaware of how to do basic math. And in Black Swan, it's perfection. The pursuit drives you insane, and if you achieve it you have to die.

Ugh. Now I'm all in a fervor about this. I think the thing that makes me the most annoyed is that everyone seems to love this dude and his movies so damn much. And I will say that he makes really good use of light, and that there are haunting images in all of his movies -- and I found a good many of them in this one. It managed to evoke an emotional response, mostly the kind that would be mitigated by a stiff drink, in me and everyone I've talked to who saw it. I’m sure that's what he was going for: making you see how it must feel to be Nina, completely unable to relax or be at ease. This was a cool film, aesthetically speaking, and I enjoyed that. All of Aronofsky's films, at least the ones I've seen, are aesthetically cool.

But everyone else seems to see in them a complexity of story, character, and theme that I don't. Aesthetic coolness does not negate shallowness -- nor does it seem to serve any purpose in this and Aronofsky's other movies than demanding you take the film seriously. And I don't need a film that demands I take it seriously. I'd rather just watch Center Stage.