Film Review: Gravity (2013)

Gravity, the latest film from director Alfonso Cuarón, opens with a bravura sequence in which the camera follows the actions of a trio of astronauts as they set about repairing the Hubble telescope. In an unbroken, twenty minute take we watch as the cocky yet assured veteran Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and the jittery newcomer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) float high above the Earth, talking to each other about their mission in-between banter with Mission Control. There's a loose, convivial feel to the scene, but it's also disquieting. As the camera looks on coolly, things start to go terribly, tragically wrong. Pieces of debris hurtling around the Earth start to pepper the shuttle and telescope, causing catastrophic damage and sending Stone tumbling into the emptiness of space. With limited oxygen and their transport destroyed, it falls to Kowalski and Stone to try to make it back to Earth alive before they suffocate or get hit by the debris again.

Ed's Oscars Round-Up

It's a few days later than I planned, for reasons that will be explained as we go along, here is my brief (in relation to the length of the ceremony) breakdown of the 2010 Academy Awards in terms of the ceremony, the winners, and my own personal experience of watching the whole bloody thing.

Despite being an avid follower of the awards season, I've never actually watched an entire Oscar ceremony. This is largely a factor of geography - I live in Britain, so watching a ceremony that is playing out 6000 miles away in real time is going to be a real commitment - but also because, in recent years, I've not actually had any physical means of watching them. Despite, or more likely because, the Oscars are the most important night in the film calendar, they are only shown in Britain on Sky Movies, a channel which I cannot get because I don't have the sort of disposable income that would make it a viable option.

However, technology being the wonderful thing that it is, there are now ways of viewing American television online via live streaming services, making it possible for anyone who cares to actually watch such a prestigious event. Add to that the fact that I wasn't working until 4 in the afternoon the day after the ceremony, and the stars aligned so that I could sit and watching the Oscars ceremony, live and uninterrupted (apart from the requisite breaks for tea). I have a very me-centric view of the Universe.

Things got off to a bad start with a musical performance by the otherwise fantastic Neil Patrick Harris, who I love just a little bit too much. He brought his usual enthusiasm to the opening number, but I couldn't help but think a) that he's done better at other awards shows, b) how strange it was that they brought him on to open and then did absolutely nothing else with him, and c) how much I wished he was the host, because if the producers were truly committed to shedding the Oscars' image as a stuffy, pompous circle jerk, then they could do worse than have someone host the show who has a real flair for showmanship and could add just the right dash of irreverence to proceedings. Instead, they had two old men host.

When it was announced that Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were going to co-host the Oscars, it seemed like an inspired choice. Separately, they can both be incredibly funny. Sure, Martin's best days as an actor seem sadly far behind him, but he's still a razor sharp wit and he had hosted before, so there was a sense in having him host. Baldwin meanwhile is still riding high on his career (re-)defining role as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, easily one of the funniest shows on television. How could this partnership fail?

Well, it could fail like this: As soon as the two descended from the heavens and started to engage in a little back-and-forth about the various nominees, things felt off-kilter in a very bad way. Having two people host an event like the Oscars makes tremendous sense if they are an established double act; they would have a confidence together and a knowledge of each other's comic rhythms and timing that would make the patter between them flow smoothly and ensure that they hit every note just right. Martin and Baldwin conversely, despite having worked together on It's Complicated, are for all intents and purposes strangers who have been thrust together to perform in front of millions of people. During the opening, they missed beats, stepped on each other's gags, and delivered lines that would have worked perfectly fine if delivered by one person, but felt terribly unnatural when delivered by two people.

To be fair to them, they were working with some pretty weak material; the opening, and the show in general, was filled with cringe-inducing references to popular, specifically internet-related, culture ("Spoiler Alert!"), gags about the films that didn't really make sense ("I love that Precious was nominated, because to me it's the one film that really lived up to its video game." What the fuck does that even mean?), and a need to make jokes about all the Best Picture nominees that resulted in the opening going on for an uncomfortable length of time. Not all the gags were duds; I laughed heartily at Alec Baldwin saying that Invictus was Steve Martin's favourite film because "it combines two of [Martin's] favorite passions: rugby and tensions between blacks and whites," and I loved Martin's joke about how he and Gabourey Sidibe were similar since in their first films they both played a poor black child. Sadly, most of the gags on the night fell flat. (And the least sad about Ben Stiller's appearance as a Na'vi the better. Okay, I'll say a bit: impressive make-up and some decent lines, but it draaaaaaagged so very badly.)

It seems the producers realised something was amiss, since Martin and Baldwin spent much of the rest of the show on their own, and they fared much better as separate entities than as banter buddies.

The rest of the awards ceremony unfolded with very few surprises, but it never really seemed to recover from that faltering overture. The pacing of the show was very sluggish, which was not helped by the need to talk about all 10 Best Picture nominees over the course of the night. Obviously, you need to tell people about the films, but it seemed very strange having someone describe the film, only to then have a clips package play. You'd think that at a ceremony to celebrate film-making that someone, somewhere, would have realised the possibilities of montage, and thought that it might have been a good idea to put voiceover over the clips. They could have cut quite literally 20 or 30 minutes from the ceremony doing that, and made room for some Best Original Song performances, which have been highlights for me in previous years, or for Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall to talk about their honorary Oscars.

The plodding gait of the ceremony made the decision to limit speeches to 75-seconds seem incredibly strange; if you can't tighten everything else up, and you really feel the need to include interpretive dance sequences, then forcing people to cut short what is probably the defining moment of their career (or, in the case of Sandy Powell, an irritating diversion) just seems cruel. Obviously, not everyone could give the kind of speeches that Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock gave, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't get the opportunity to say what they want.

Incidentally, Sandra Bullock's speech was probably the highlight for me. It was full of warmth, life, and humour, but it was also incredibly heartfelt, and you really felt that she was honoured and couldn't quite believe that it was actually happening. If only her films were as good as her speeches.

Montages provided the most touching and the most frustrating moments of the evening for me. The tribute to John Hughes, in which many of the actors who rose to stardom in his films stood on stage and told stories about a man few knew but whose work is beloved by so many, was moving and was a pitch-perfect tribute.

At the other end of the scale, you have the horror montage, which pissed me off royally. Firstly, it didn't actually have anything to do with the ceremony, and only served to make a bloated telecast even more corpulent, but it was preceded by one of the most ill-thought out statements of the evening. In introducing a serious of clips of iconic horror films, Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart said that it had been 36 years since the Academy had acknowledged horror films, alluding to The Exorcist being nominated for Best Picture in 1974 and the Academy's general genre bias.

Now, any film buff worth their salt at that moment would have instantly chimed in with, "But what of Silence of the Lambs! It won Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay in 1991, a feat only achieved by two other films (It Happened One Night and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), surely a horror film could not hope to be honoured more than that?" It could be argued that Silence of the Lambs is more of psychological thriller than a horror film. It's an argument which I will have no truck with in general, but in this context it was undone almost instantly since clips from Silence of the Lambs were included in the montage. It's a frustrating oversight that just got me angry for incredibly stupid and petty reasons.

As for the awards themselves, there were very few surprises - many of the people predicted to win did, in fact, win - but those that cropped up were fascinating in and of themselves. From a somewhat geeky point of view, Avatar winning Best Cinematography is actually more revolutionary a development than it might first appear. Sure, cinematography is about the look of a film, and in that regard its not surprising that a film with such gorgeous visuals would be honoured, but all those images were generated inside a computer, which explicitly links Avatar's cinematography to its special effects in a way that hasn't been done before. It's a weird little development that could suggest a general change in thinking in the industry about the implications and artistic merit of visual effects. Could we only be a few years away from someone being nominated or even winning an Oscar for a motion-capture performance?

About an hour in, when I was flagging a bit and had to have my third cup of tea of the evening, I got a sense that The Hurt Locker, having beaten Avatar in several of the categories that they were competing over, could win, but even so I was truly shocked and delighted when Tom Hanks (in a manner so abrupt that it could have seemed curt if anyone other than Tom Hanks was saying it) announced that The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. I was also delighted when Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director, but certainly not shocked since she absolutely deserved it for delivering a visceral action film that also examined the allure of exactly the kind of machismo that usually drives visceral action films.

This of course raises the issue of whether or not Kathryn Bigelow's win was political, rather than based on purely artistic merits. It's no secret that her victory marks the first time that a woman has won Best Director - it was probably the aspect of the film most strongly emphasised by The Hurt Locker's campaign team - and the big 'what if' question that arises is whether or not The Hurt Locker would have won if it had not been directed by a woman. Unless someone develops the technology from Sliders that would allow me to visit a dimension in which Kenneth Bigelow directed The Hurt Locker, then there is no way to objectively answer that, but I think that it probably would have won at least some awards, if not Best Picture and Best Director.

It's important to note, when talking about The Hurt Locker, that the key factor in its awards success was not gender but the unwavering support it received from critics. The film opened last summer to rave reviews but minimal box office - it's the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner ever - and that would usually be the kiss of death for an awards hopeful. The unofficial rules of awards season state that if a film wants to win big at the Oscars it has to be released between October and January, and it should take at least some money. But critics kept talking about it, kept the film's name out there, and as awards season started to kick into high gear The Hurt Locker was showered with plaudits from the major critics groups. This dedicated and constant acclaim kept The Hurt Locker at the centre of awards discussion, and without it I doubt that it would have won big on Sunday night, if at all.

As I blearily looked around my living room at 5:30am on Monday, 8th of March, I wondered if it had all been worth it. Considering it's taken me three days to get my head back into a space where I can actually write, I'd say that watching the Oscars live did take it's toll on me, but I fully intend to do it all next year.

Well, it's time to wrap this up before they start playing the music to shoo me off. In closing, I'll just say that, although it was probably one of the more boring ceremonies in recent years, I had a lot of fun watching largely thanks to Twitter and the running commentary of my friends who were also watching at home, so thanks to Rachel Grundy, Nicole Campos, Adrian Goodswen, and Nic Thompson for making the whole experience that little bit more bearable.

Oscar Predictions: The Major Awards

And we're back with the live telecast of Ed's Oscar Predictions. Hope the adverts weren't too loud and annoying.

Having looked through the Technical Awards with an occasionally surgical, but largely slapdash, precision, I will now be considering the Major categories as defined by me and, judging by the way in which the ceremony is conducted, by the Academy. I'm not saying the Technical Awards aren't important, just saying that if Best Editing was so important to the Academy it'd be the last award they hand out.

As with previous predictions, for each one I'll say who should win, who will win, and who the dark horse will be for each category, since that allows me to hedge my bets and come away from the whole thing claiming I was all clever and shit.


Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published
Nominees:

District 9 (2009): Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
An Education (2009): Nick Hornby
In the Loop (2009): Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Geoffrey Fletcher
Up in the Air (2009/I): Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

I must not have been the only one surprised and delighted by the nomination for In The Loop. Armando Iannucci, Oscar nominee just seems really strange to me. Pleasant surprise aside, I' can't quite bring myself to believe that it'll win, despite how bizarre and wonderful such an eventuality would be. It just seems too caustic and too British to win through. This category is actually quite interesting since, without a serious Best Picture contender behind any of them (Precious, maybe, but District 9? Can't see it happening) the field is wide open. If I had to choose (and I kind of have to, given the nature of this enterprise) I'm going to plump for Up In The Air. It's attracted plenty of attention throughout awards season and Jason Reitman is already an Academy fave.

What Should Win: In The Loop

What Will Win: Up In The Air

Dark Horse: District 9


Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Nominees:

The Hurt Locker (2008): Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds (2009): Quentin Tarantino
The Messenger (2009/I): Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman
A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Up (2009): Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Thomas McCarthy

This category is very tight this year, as four of the nominees are Best Pictures contenders and, since Avatar's cliched, cheesy and downright awful script was rightly ignored, there isn't the sweep factor that usually allows the Best Picture winner to take the screenplay prize along with it. First, the films that definitely won't win: The Coens', despite writing a brilliant film, won't win because A Serious Man is too odd and personal to appeal to a broad selection of voters; and The Messenger won't win because it's a film that almost no one had heard of or was discussing as an Oscar contender prior to the nominations. That leaves Up, Inglourious Basterds and The Hurt Locker. I'd love for Up to win it, if only so Thomas McCarthy could get an Oscar and use the clout to get more films like The Station Agent and The Visitor made, but Pixar have always been bridemaids, never brides when it comes to the Original Screenplay award (Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and WALL-E were all nominated for the same award in previous years) and I can't see that trend ending with Up. So, Inglourious Basterds, or The Hurt Locker? I think that Inglourious Basterds will just pip it for having the showier, more loquacious script at the expense of The Hurt Locker's gripping and realistic writing, giving Quentin Tarantino his second Original Screenplay Oscar, after his win in 1995 for Pulp Fiction.

What Should Win: The Hurt Locker or Up

What Will Win: Inglourious Basterds

Dark Horse: A Serious Man


Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominees:

Penélope Cruz for Nine (2009)
Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart (2009)
Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)

Even if Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendricks weren't splitting the Up In The Air vote, Mo'Nique's had this award sewn up for months now. Her performance as Mary, the abusive, hateful mother of Precious is truly astounding; she creates a compelling monster who completely dominates every scene she is in, but it's the final scene of the film, in which she breaks down and lays bare the years of abuse visited on her daughter and the reason why she let it happen, is spellbinding. Mo'Nique takes us into the mind of a truly horrible human being and shows us what twisted logic led her to think that letting her husband sexually abuse their daughter for years was not only acceptable, but that somehow it was all Precious' fault. It's a brilliant performance.

Who Should Win: Mo'Nique

Who Will Win: Mo'Nique

Dark Horse: At this point, the rest of the nominees.


Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Nominees:

Matt Damon for Invictus (2009)
Woody Harrelson for The Messenger (2009/I)
Christopher Plummer for The Last Station (2009)
Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones (2009)
Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009)

It's interesting that this year both Supporting Awards became foregone conclusions so early in the awards season, and that both will go to actors portraying villains. Unlike Mo'Nique, Christoph Waltz will be waltzing home with an Oscar for playing a villain who is, despite being a Jew-killing Nazi, actually quite charming. Hans Landa, the Jew Hunter, is a man who is very, very good at his job, and from the moment he enters a farm house and asks its owner for a glass of his delicious milk, the audience never takes their eyes from him. He completely dominates every scene he is in and maintains a delicate balancing act between being the embodiment of all that is evil in the world and being downright hilarious.

Who Should Win: Christoph Waltz

Who Will Win: Christoph Waltz

Dark Horse: Unless, during the ceremony, Brad Pitt takes Waltz out, I don't think anyone else is going to have a look in.


Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Nominees:

Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)

Up until a few months ago, if you had presented me with this list, I'd have said Carrey Mulligan without a moments hesitation. Whilst the rest of the nominees have either seniority on their side (Streep, Mirren, Bullock), or are in films that have real muscle behind them in other categories (Sidibe) none of them display the same insouciant charm and brittle fragility that Mulligan did as a schoolgirl seduced by an older man. That's what I would have said a few months ago, then The Blind Side made $244 million off the back of Sandra Bullock's performance, and suddenly things weren't so clear cut. Though I still think that Mulligan's is the better performance, Sandra Bullock is going to take home the statuette on the night. The Academy loves a comeback, and an Oscar would be the perfect cap to a year in which Bullock appeared in the two biggest hits of her career (The Proposal and The Blind Side) and gained some of her best notices, too. Though, when they talk about her success on the night, I think they'll skim over All About Steve. There's definitely a sense that it's Bullock's turn, whereas everyone else has either won Oscars in the past, or are young and talented enough to get a second crack a few years down the road.

Who Should Win: Carrey Mulligan

Who Will Win: Sandra Bullock

Dark Horse: Gabourey Sidibe


Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Nominees:

Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009)
George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

In any other year, Morgan Freeman's performance as Nelson Mandela, a role that he's always seemed just perfect for, or Colin Firth's subtle, achingly sad portrayal of a gay man brought to the brink of suicide by the death of his lover, would be a shoo-in, but there's been a real swell of support for Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart recently. It's not hard to see why, many people have compared his role to Mickey Rourke's role in The Wrestler last year, with his vulnerable, haggard old country star showcasing the sort of affable charm/hidden depths combination that Bridge's does so well. This is also the fifth time Bridges has been nominated, and there seems to be a sense that it's time he won to make up for the times he didn't. This is known as the Scorsese Factor. So, with all that in mind, I think it'll go to Jeff Bridges: Clooney and Freeman have already won in the past; Jeremy Renner, despite giving the best performance out of the lot, is still young and will have other chances; and they gave Sean Penn an Oscar for playing a gay man last year, so they don't have to acknowledge the existence of gay people for at least another decade. It's The Dude's turn.

Who Should Win: Jeremy Renner

Who Will Win: Jeff Bridges

Dark Horse: Colin Firth


Best Achievement in Directing
Nominees:

Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)
James Cameron for Avatar (2009)
Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Jason Reitman for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Now, some of you may have gleamed from the rest of this post that I strongly believe that Avatar will win Best Picture, and there's lots of reasons why it will win, some of which I'll list in a moment. Now, generally, Best Picture and Best Director are paired together; of the 80 films that have won Best Picture, 59 have also won Best Director. However, I don't think that this will be the case this year since, whilst Avatar will win Best Picture, Kathryn Bigelow will win Best Director. Given that Bigelow used to be married to James Cameron, director of Avatar, this could be seen as the highest profile divorce settlement of all time ("You take Best Director, I'll take Best Picture. You can have the china plates, I'll have the silverware."), but more importantly it just seems like the wheels of history have turned and brought us to a point where, finally, a woman will win Best Director. It's long overdue and I can't see the Academy missing out on this opportunity to right a wrong that has persisted for far, far too long.

Who Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow

Who Will Win: Kathyrn Bigelow

Dark Horse: Jason Reitman


Best Motion Picture of the Year
Nominees:

Avatar (2009): James Cameron, Jon Landau
The Blind Side (2009): Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson
District 9 (2009): Peter Jackson, Carolynne Cunningham
An Education (2009): Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
The Hurt Locker (2008): Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
Inglourious Basterds (2009): Lawrence Bender
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Up (2009): Jonas Rivera
Up in the Air (2009/I): Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman

The decision to expand the list of nominees to ten this year, rather than five - in response to very vocal criticism of the Academy over the exclusion of The Dark Knight last year -has certainly turned up some interesting candidates (who, last summer, could have foreseen that Peter Jackson wouldn't be nominated for Best Picture for The Lovely Bones but for that weird South African science fiction film about giant prawns?) but the award won't go to interesting candidates like the aforementioned District 9, A Serious Man, or Up (the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture since Beauty and the Beast in 1991, and only the second one ever) or Academy-pleasers like An Education, The Blind Side Up In The Air, but to Avatar.

The monumental success of Avatar makes it pretty much a certainty that it will win Best Picture because, frankly, the film industry needs it to win Best Picture. So much time, money and effort has been spent developing 3-D and telling audiences that 3-D is the future that Avatar seemed to hold the entire history of cinema on its shoulders prior to release. Now that it has been released and, to the shock of pretty much everyone, become the most successful film of all time - unadjusted for inflation, of course - it only seems fitting that they should reward it for, if not changing the course of cinema history, at least offering concrete proof that 3-D is viable. Whilst I maintain, as I have throughout these predictions and elsewhere on the blog, that Avatar is not the best film that was released last year (The Hurt Locker was, naturally) I can't help but feel that Avatar deserves it. Regardless of what I feel about the film, its success is staggering, and James Cameron has, in the face of all the pessimism and jeers of the world, made himself King of the World again. Or the king of his own, bioluminescent world.

What Should Win: The Hurt Locker

What Will Win: Avatar

Dark Horse: The rest of them, but Up In The Air probably has the best chance of causing an upset on the night.

Right, that's your lot. Take your gift bags and piss off.