In the wake of the recent Oscars nominations, I offer a handful of remarks concerning the past
2013 feature film season.
For me, it was a
wonderful year for movies. Not “to me”, for me. I say that
because,
it was as if, in 2013,
for the first time in…forever, they were
making movies
specifically for me.
To which I most
humbly and somewhat embarrassedly reply,
“Thank you.”
You did not have
to do that, and I appreciate it. I would
say, “Keep up the good
work”, but that might create the impression that I was
lobbying for more of the same, and that
might sound – no, it definitely would
sound – egotistical and ungracious. Who
am I to expect you to continue making movies specifically for me? I am delighted that you bothered to do it even
once.
What am I talking about when I label the majority of 2013’s
cinematic stalwarts “movies that seemed to have been made specifically for me”?
Consider these Oscar
nominated “Best Pictures”:
American Hustle
Nebraska
Philomena
The Wolf of Wall
Street
Her
And Oscar contenders
I believe may have just missed the cut:
Llewyn Davis
Blue Jasmine
Enough Said
Saving Mr. Banks
What do all of these worthy and watchable 2013 cinematic
offerings have in common?
No
Violence.
To which I say, once again,
Thank you.
Take note, other filmmakers.
It can be done.
Next.
Each of the above-mentioned movies clearly speaks in its own
(meaning the filmmaker’s own) unique and distinctive voice. Now you might argue that every movie speaks in the filmmaker’s own unique and distinctive
voice. But in these movies – especially
in Nebraska, Lllewyn Davis, Enough Said
and Her – they do it consistently, all
the way through.
Ironman 3 sprinkles
its script with wry, comedic witticisms and vague concerns for the “Future of
Mankind”, but mostly the characters just throw stuff at each other, and deafen
the audience. Still other movies seem to have no distinctive voice whatsoever, unless
it is the distinctive disembodied voice of the studios’ “Market Research
Department’s” computer that, without benefit
of human intervention, has mechanically cobbled together a screenplay, culled from
the various elements the coveted fourteen year-old-boy demographic seemed to
appreciate before.
“They liked it in the last
six sequels. Let’s give it to them again!”
The company of a “human voice” is a warm and comforting
“connector.” A contraption assembled by
a committee…? It feels like it.
Next.
Piggy-backing on the last part of the previous point, there
seem today – and it would appear to be deliberately – two distinct and different
movie businesses, working side-by-side, but rarely intersecting. I will delineate them in accordance with the
invariably separate venues in which these two dissimilar types of movie
offerings are presented.
We have in this town, by way of contrast, big-box AMC multi-plexes, and a “boutique”
theater chain called The Landmark. The last time I entered an AMC theater – and virtually the only
time in the past year – was to see the Disney
animated feature Frozen. (Which, for the part I remained awake
through, I really enjoyed.)
Of the nine movies I singled out above (if it is possible to
“single out” more than a single thing), Saving
Mr. Banks, we saw in Hawaii in I don’t know what kind of a theater – the “welcoming promo” called it a “Consolidated Theater – Entertaining Hawaii since 1917”; The Wolf Of Wall Street, I saw at the Santa Monica AMC 7.
Everything else I saw at The
Landmark.
This dichotomy reminded me of the line the late, great
comedy writer Jerry Belson once said, responding to the wildly disparate abilities
of his colleagues:
“There ought to be two
‘Writers Guilds’”, he explained, “a ‘Writers Guild’ and a ‘Good Writer’s Guild.’”
For 2013, at least, The
Landmark was the good movie
theater.
And as long as the studios continue to make movies, less for discerning moviegoers than for
the benefit of the shareholders of the corporate behemoths that own them, that
dichotomy will continue to exist.
The studios may crow about 2013 being their most profitable
year ever, but it’s easier to have a bigger box office when you keep raising
the ticket prices. If the “cost of entry”
were a hundred million dollars, they would only have to sell one ticket. And let us not even think of what they would charge for popcorn!
Next.
The Rise of Reliable, Committed and Deep-Pocketed
Independent Financing.
Yes, some of 2013’s best movies were put out by small,
specialized divisions of major studios, but do the research.
Isn’t the writer supposed to do the research?
Yes, but I’m old and I’m tired.
Check out how many of – and for how long – the most honored
and highly regarded films of this past year struggled to get made.
I’ll do one for you.
I have, of late, regularly noticed the credit, “Annapurna Pictures” on a
lot of movies I enjoyed – such as American
Hustle and Her – so I did a
little homework.
“Annapurna Pictures” is a new – only since 2012 – film production and distribution company founded by Megan Ellison (who I believe has a wealthy Dad) intended, according to its founder to “produce sophisticated high-quality films that might (Read: would) otherwise be deemed too risky by contemporary Hollywood studios.”
Okay, Megan. Thanks
for the money.
And the pictures
worth going to.
Oh yeah, this last one, I don’t know what to do with. Three movies – American Hustle, The Wolf of
Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club
– are about either scamming or working outside
“the system.” And Nebraska is about responding to a promotion put out by “the system” and, if you are gullible
enough, being taken in by it. I think these movies – and the proliferation thereof – are trying to tell us something:
People are not crazy about “the system.”
Anyway, I am not, as regular readers will affirm, a major
distributor of praise, especially when it comes to the entertainment
business. But, “Exceptional Movies of
2013” – and there were unquestionably a bunch of them –
I respectfully tip my hat to youse.
Of all the movies I didn’t write, I regret I didn’t write those
kinds of movies the most.
1 comment:
For the last some-odd years a friend and I have journeyed to Champaign-Urbana, IL, to take in Roger Ebert's Film Festival (we can't go this year, sadly; it will be the first for which Roger didn't hand-pick the movies). Particularly in the last few years, the festival has featured a number of movies made by tiny operations. Examples:
- SITA SINGS THE BLUES. Made (written, drawn, directed, edited) by Nina Paley, and offered for free distribution at www.sitasingstheblues.com (you can download it in a variety of resolutionsp; she now sells DVDs by popular request). The biggest expense was clearing the rights to the music.
- MY DOG TULIP, made by a husband-and-wife team, Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, in their garage, hand drawn, with voiceover from Christopher Plummer, based on a memoir by JR Ackerley about his quirky relationship with his dog.
- 45365, a documentary about their town made by two brothers, Turner and Bill Ross, who went around filming bits of their neighbors' lives. (The brothers feared they'd never be able to release the movie commercially because of the impossibility of clearing the rights to incidental music captured in these scenes.)
And so on. Ebert put a lot of effort into helping promote movies like these that he loved and that he saw in terrible danger of never finding an audience.
wg
None of those movies is violent. If you can find copies, enjoy!
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