Talking About the Golden Globes

I thought the GG Awards show was dreadful. I can take Host and MC Ricky Gervais being mean-spirited, and I can take Gervais being cruel while he thinks he’s being cool. what I can’t take is how smug he is about it.

If you want to be cutting edge while you are being callous, and on the wrong side of good taste – that’s fine; but Ricky acts as if it is his sacred rite to skewer all and sundry, and he’s so bloody proud about how well he thinks he does it.

Yes, most in the audience do take it in and are able to laugh about it. Hollywood has tons of experience in doing so – what with all the roasts, and a lifetime of having Mr. Warmth, Don Rickles on hand or in nearby Las Vegas, they all should be used to taking a verbal shot to the chin and rolling with the punches.

From another standpoint – a lot of it wasn’t all that funny.

The 2016 Golden Globes Awards Ceremony was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. Now I’ve nothing against Beverly Hills, and even less against that particular Hilton hotel. The event takes place in the Hilton’s International Ballroom which means the 1,300 guests both eat and drink throughout the evening. So without auditorium seating, the lucky folks who need to get to the stage have to negotiate a veritable obstacle laden maze to find access.

This naturally takes up valuable time, and in many, no, make that most cases, the award winners actually vanish from sight as they go behind some decorative panels to find a set of steps that takes them to the back stage area or what is likely called the off-stage wings.

Then when some one is particularly long-winded in their acceptance speech they are give the instructions to PLEASE WRAP. Heaven forbid they should speak too long. The sky would fall in. Kudos to Taraji P. Henson, the Golden Globe winner for Best Actress in a TV Drama. When she was cued to please wrap, she said, I’ve waited 20 years for this. Now you will just have to wait.

And she took her time.

Of course there was a lot of time wasted by that ridiculous faux bear-head skit by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. Or Ricky Gervais simply standing there and grinning. Never mind how much it costs to attend this event. By the way tickets are NOT available to the general public. What about the waste of our time.

Then there’s the censoring of the improper language by those on stage. This is 2016. This is an event that rewards the best of the best for their professional efforts in Film and TV. These are adult actors performing in adult roles. Many of the topics in these films and dramas involve sex, rape, imprisonment, murder, criminal activities of every stripe, and/or people living out their lives that likely have moments of super frustration and anxiety. We hear all sorts of words in what we watch and what is considered Golden Globe Material – yet we have to put up with censorship at the Awards Ceremony.

I don’t get it.

The Martian

Want to get away from it all?

Your dream destination is…

The Habitat – sleeps six, isolated, panoramic vistas, needs some work. Away from everything. Lengthy wait to book and arrange transportation. Comes with a vehicle called The Rover at destination. Limited services available, and no on-site support staff at all. Key words – Bring your own!

Doesn’t sound too promising does it? Astronaut/botanist Mark Watney was part of a team of six (The Ares Mission) that visited this place. A sudden and unexpected storm whipped up, and Mark was hit by some flying debris. Not only did his fellow adventurers lose sight of him, but he lost his communications power. Not quite like a cell phone needing a charge – more like he was knocked off the grid.

As the storm heightened, his mates had no choice. They had to saddle up and get out of ‘Dodge’ ultra quick. In about the same amount of time it took Han Solo to say – Take us to hyper-space Chewie, in a flash of powerful thrusters, they were gone.

So begins, Ridley Scott’s The Martian. The guy left behind, was thought to be dead. Only he wasn’t.

What he was – was stranded on the Planet Mars. Mark Watney is played by Matt Damon in a bravura performance. Speaking of bravura, let’s also toss a similar bouquet at Sir Ridley. This is easily his best effort in years.

Like most of you, I don’t get that many opportunities to explore our solar system. The furthest away from terra firma that I get is the cruising altitude of what ever commercial jet-liner I’ve chosen to book passage with. For me, I can go half way around the world in a day and then call it a day while retiring to a sweet hotel with room service, hot and cold running water, and maid service. Plus a concierge downstairs to help me if necessary.

For Mark Watney, his help is only 140,000,000 miles away.

So there’s your set up. Tom Hanks was the Castaway on a small island in the Pacific Ocean. There might be a passing steamship, fishing trawler, or even a super-tanker on the horizon, but they’d have no idea about him, and wouldn’t be looking for him anyway. Or there could be a flight high above that might spot his smoke signals or make shift driftwood signage that read HELP! from 39,000 feet above him. But Watney could not expect to be discovered in a similar fashion. To say he was off the beaten path would be a misstatement of epic proportions.

He was in a sense up shit’s creek without a paddle. But a paddle wouldn’t have helped him anyway. As there was no water. He’d have to make water. But instead of a paddle he had solar panels. Which could be used to generate power. So he’d be able to cook via his microwave. Only he had just a limited supply of the remaining food. After all, this always was a bring your own.

But he was a botanist which in theory meant they he’d have a better idea than most about growing some stuff. And he have to get on that right away. He did the inventory of food stuffs (which were not quite k-rations – but more like prepared food stuffs in packages. And there were just so many remaining packages. Applying math in the form of rationing out his supply he could stretch it so far but likely not far enough.

The Monuments Men

On the webpage for George Clooney’s movie The Monuments Men, under the tab for story, we find:

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action-thriller focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.

I’ve no problem with the above description aside from the obvious stretch to consider or label this film an action thriller.

The Monuments Men is film in which George Clooney is basically asking us to consider the question: Does Art Matter?

He’ll ask you to consider this multiple times as we hear this either as part of a dialogue or as narration. Of course Art matters. Clooney even takes the trouble to answer this question for us as well:

Just Back From Elysium

Well, it is summer and time for another dialogue/discussion with Didion of Feminéma. Our topic today is Elysium, and I have asked Didion to write the intro. So lets get to it.

In the future according to Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, LA looks like the favelas outside Rio — a vast, dusty, treeless series of shantytowns covering those coastal hills as far as the eye can see. It’s overwhelmingly Latino — everyone speaks Spanish, or Spanglish — and we learn that the rest of Earth is similarly dark-skinned and downtrodden. A title card tells us that the world is diseased, overpopulated, and broken,

and that the wealthiest have decamped from Earth altogether for a kind of space station

called Elysium that looks like Bel Air on steroids, where they sip champagne, swim in glamorous pools, and speak French.

It’s a great premise, fully in keeping with the brilliant work Blomkamp did with his earlier District 9 (2009) — a believable dystopia that reflects the worst tendencies of today’s world, the ways that the wealthy can hoard the best resources for themselves. In a brief flashback, a little boy called Max (who grows up to be Matt Damon) gets taught to read by a little girl called Frey (who grows up to be Alice Braga) as they pour over a book describing the wonders of Elysium. He gazes up at her with love, and promises to take her there someday.

We know he will. But how? and what will the consequences be? By the time we find the adult Max, he’s an ex-con on parole working in a factory making the robo-cops that terrorize the populace, and he and Frey have lost touch.

Add to this story a sharp-edged, power-hungry Elysium defense chief named Delacourt (Jodie Foster) with a sort of South African accent; Delacourt’s designated mercenary named Kruger, who solves problems for her with murderous glee (an unrecognizable Sharlto Copley, who played the hapless lead in District 9); and a crime kingpin on Earth named Spider (Wagner Moura), who sends shuttles full of illegal immigrants up to Elysium on the off-chance they’ll make it past Delacourt’s defenses. Those who don’t make it … well, what do the inhabitants of Elysium care?

Don’t worry: we’ll warn you in advance about spoilers.

Film blogger JustMeMike and I sat down to have an extended conversation about this film as we have many times — most recently about The Great Gatsby. So, JMM, let me start by asking: were you as intrigued as I was by the film’s premise?

JustMeMike: I hadn’t seen District 9, so I may not have the same entry point as many did. But who could resist Matt Damon as a Mad Max type wearing an exo-skeleton suit rather than leather. I was also eager to see Foster as a villain. I loved Moura from his two Brazilian cop movies that I’d seen. But those are just the actors.

As for the premise, sure, with a dystopian/utopian combo it seemed like a can’t miss. And with Blomkamp at the helm of a 100 million dollar production, it seemed that he has been anointed as the new boy-wonder of the film world. So yes, I was eager to see it. Show me a tasty premise and A-list actors? Where do I sign up?

Didion: I loved loved loved District 9. Really: a stunner. It might have made me a bit overly optimistic for Elysium. But I have to say, the opening scenes of this film, with those miserable favelas and all the Spanish (Matt Damon does some good language work here) — well, I can’t remember a more believable dystopia, nor a summer blockbuster with so much Spanish being spoken. I was all in for the film’s setup.

JMM: We can agree, that when you add the imagery to the intellectual side of the premise – then you have created an immediate hook for the viewers with or without the language medley of English and Spanish.

Which leads to a question – why the Francais up on Elysium – or was that just for that particular cocktail party?

Didion: I’m not sure we’re supposed to know, but I loved the contrast between the gritty, almost apocalyptic world of LA and the jolting scene of Jodie Foster, with her chiseled calves and perfect hair, schmoozing en francais with the hoi polloi. It was so jolting, in fact, that I wondered how much Blomkamp wanted his viewers to get angry about the impossible social divides that exist in our own world. District 9 was ultimately a story about race; perhaps Elysium is his commentary on class?

JMM: Of course it was. And that feeling is what has occurred to so many who have seen the film. I mean that he started with a premise of class issues (and the obvious divide created by money) – separated the two between Earth and Elysium, then switched away from that and made the film into an action/adventure yarn. I still enjoyed myself – but I wanted more thoughtful concepts than explosions.

Didion: I’m with you there. I found myself oddly ambivalent at the end of the film — feeling as if some other director had arrived mid-stream and transformed the film into something more safe by distracting us with explosions and bad bad guys, away from the class issues.

I’ll say this: of the summer blockbusters I’ve seen, this seems like the most original and substantial — that is, particularly compared to the superheroes and sequels — but I’m ultimately disappointed by Blomkamp’s ultimate privileging of action over ideas. Tell me, JMM, would you ultimately recommend this film — and why?

We Bought a Zoo

It is the end of the year and this is the time when Hollywood reasons it is the right time for them to trot out their expected big money makers. As for me, I needed a film that was light, heartfelt, and one with basically a ‘feel good’ kind of essence to it. We Bought a Zoo turned out to be very entertaining and more than filled the bill. One could call it the perfect family film for the holidays, only it doesn’t have even a hint of Christmas from first frame to last. Nor is it a perfect film.

So after The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I saw a couple of days ago, watching a film without any murders was quite comforting, and hearing Neil Young croon Cinnamon Girl on the ‘Zoo’ soundtrack was a nice surprise. Director Cameron Crowe is showing his age with the choice of that song. Then again so am I.

The story is rock solid simple. A guy in his early 40’s, Benjamin Mee, played by Matt Damon is grieving over his wife’s death. He’s got a 14-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter (Maggie Elizabeth Jones plays Rosie who steals every scene she’s in). While the daughter hums along nicely, we know that she’s going to miss her Mom.

Mee: Rosie, am I doin' anything right? / Rosie: Well you're handsome, and you got more hair than some of the other Dads - so that's good.

The son, Dylan Mee played by Colin Ford, on the other hand, is a mess. He’s a four-time loser at school (three suspensions followed by being expelled). So Benjamin quits his job as an adventure writer for a newspaper and decides that for the family to heal, he’ll need to get them out of the city (L.A.) because everywhere they go, they’re reminded of Mom.

They don’t like anything of what they’ve been shown in a new house in a new neighborhood, until their newbie real estate agent drives them so far out of the city that it is 9 miles from the nearest place to go food shopping. This is of course – THE ZOO!

Real Estate Agent: It's complicated / Mee: What's so complicated about this place?

Agent to Mee: It's a zoo !

Contagion

After seeing Contagion today, I thought long and hard about the peanuts sitting in a bowl on the bar next to my drink. This new film directed by Steven Soderbergh, and written by Scott Z. Burns is described as an action thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly virus and a team of doctors contracted by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to deal with the outbreak. If you think that this film might remind you of the 1995 film called Outbreak with Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Renee Russo, and  Morgan Freeman – you’d be correct.

I think the term action thriller is a little misleading. There’s not really a lot of action and it isn’t really a thrill ride either. What it really is a horror story that could become true tomorrow or at any other time in the future. Only in this horror story, the monsters aren’t visible.

In fact, there already have been plagues, and diseases that have spread rapidly. The horror is that it can come at any time, and in anyplace on the globe. That is what is so frightening.

The film tells us that an average person touches their own face 2 or 3 times a minute all day. That’s 2-3 thousand times a day. Every day. The film tells us that every day contacts with other people like shaking hands, picking up a glass, handling a door knob, or a pole on a subway train or a bus, or even handing someone a file, or money, or a credit card then receiving it back might result in the transmittal of a disease.

Gwyneth Paltro as Beth Emhoff calling a friend in Chicago. She's just got off the plane from HK.

The film opens at Day 2. Someone we know (the actress – not the character) has contracted the disease. She’s unaware – but we know. Part of the reason is that this film’s title is Contagion, and she looks and acts sick, and the other reason we know is that the blasted trailer told us as much. This is Beth Emhoff played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Within a few minutes of film time, she’s weakened, collapsed, rushed to a hospital, then dies.

The Adjustment Bureau

After a lengthy delay – the movie was captured on film in 2009, post-production took place in 2010’s front end, the original trailers came out last summer, and the original posters promised a September 2010 opening – The Adjustment Bureau has finally made it to your local cineplex. Directed by first time helmsman George Nolfi and starring the popular Matt Damon with the very appealing Emily Blunt, The Adjustment Bureau begins smoothly. Very smoothly.

Almost before you have settled in and found the most comfortable position to sit, you are hooked. Damon plays David Norris, a young and aspiring New York politician. He’s good-looking, he’s smart, and he’s charismatic. He’s running for one of the New York State Senatorial seats, and has a decent lead in the polls before the election.

But it isn’t to be. The New York Post publishes a scandalous bit of news from when Norris was a younger and less serious man, including some very unflattering pictures. So unflattering, that the voting public changes its mind and votes in the opposing candidate, and this leaves Norris with a crushing defeat. Before giving his concession speech, he’s going to meet a mysterious woman in an unexpected place.

True Grit (2010)

I’ve seen dozen of westerns – both the newer ones made in this century, as well as most of the classics. I’d even seen the 1969 True Grit starring The Duke, John Wayne. But in truth, I can’t call it one of my favorites. Wayne wasn’t playing Rooster Cogburn in that film. Instead he was playing John Wayne dressed up as Cogburn, a fat, one-eyed man. Wayne garnered his only Oscar for his performance in that film, but quite likely it was a ‘lifetime achievement award’ dressed up as Best Performance by an Actor

True Grit, the just released today version directed by the Coen Bros., according to the myriad of articles, commentaries, discussions, and interviews – is not a remake of the earlier film. The Coen’s say it is a new film version of the book.

Fine. Whatever. They made the film and can call it whatever they like, or they can describe the finished film however they like. I’m not going to compare the two films because a) I can’t, having not seen the earlier one in quite some time, and b) I won’t because that was then and this is now.

First, the story itself is a simple matter of western revenge/justice. 14 year old Mattie Ross, played spectacularly by newcomer Hailee Steinfield, is on a mission to bring back one Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), who murdered her father. She can’t do it herself, so she hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) because he is the meanest and deadliest US Marshall in these parts of the country (Texas, Arkansas, and Choctaw Nation, a part of the Indian Territories). Joining them on the chase is a Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf (Matt Damon).

Fill yer hands!

Green Zone

The film opens in April, 2003 in Baghdad, Iraq. Matt Damon as U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his men are on their second search for WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). The place or neighborhood is called Diwanyia. Another Army unit sustained some casualties so Miller’s unit could access the site. Their search is going to not turn up anything related to WMD, despite the fact that the ‘intel’ that Miller has been given, had come from a ‘reliable/trusted’ source, and had been vetted; so they said.  Soon, Miller will again come up without any results at a place called Al Mansour. And that’s when he begins to think about what is going on. When he questions the higher ups about the flawed intel, he’s told:  Button it up, the intel is fine – just do your job.

This is how the Paul Greengrass helmed Green Zone begins. Brian Helgeland has the screenplay credit and Rajiv Chandrasekaran is the author of the 2006 non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City which was the source or inspiration for the film.