Welcome to the First Annual Fuji Oscars!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Tomorrow night is the big night: Oscar night!

As I have said before, I don't really care much about the Oscars beyond an occasion to get together with friends and possibly get drunk...but if Hollywood feels the need to pat itself on the back in an overlong televised pageant for what it considers the best and brightest in cinema in 2009, to the general eye-rolling consternation of cinephiles everywhere—then I might as well take the opportunity to do my own personal back-patting.

Welcome, then, to the First Annual Fuji Oscars! Today, I will forgo all Oscar hype and bestow honors on my personal favorites in some of the award ceremony's major categories. All that was released theatrically last year is fair game—so no arcane rules disqualifying worthy candidates, and no undue emphasis on American films over foreign ones.

Winners will take home a miniature golden statue in the shape of me trying to pose like Buddha while standing up:

Which distinguished actor, actress, producer and/or director wouldn't want that in his/her trophy case, am I right?

Because I don't believing in blowing this award ceremony up to overly Brobdingnagian proportions, let's get right into it:

Best Performance By an Actress in a Supporting Role: 
Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Granted, she's probably more a leading actress than a supporting actress...but, if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hadn't overlooked her in the first place, I have a feeling she might have been lumped into the supporting-actress category. So I will follow suit. Either way, she's...well, dynamite; Quentin Tarantino fetishizes her accordingly (thank you, David Bowie!) while still respecting the deep anger and pain she evokes. In short, she provides a much-needed emotional center to the film's canticle of mayhem and movie love. Plus, her ominously laughing "face of Jewish vengeance" illuminates the movie image of the year, bar none.

Best Performance By an Actor in a Supporting Role:
Saul Rubinek, Julia

My apologies to Christoph Waltz, who really is quite great as the charismatically amoral Col. Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds, but Rubinek gets my vote for pretty much one reason: that heartbreaking monologue he delivers to a massively hung-over Tilda Swinton in which he recounts his own personal experience of how he endangered and drove his family away with his alcoholism. Frankly, he more movingly suggests the personal tragedy of alcoholism in about five minutes than an endlessly showy Swinton does in the film's 145. To me, that's nothing to sneeze at.

Best Achievement in Directing:
Claire Denis, 35 Shots of Rum

Time to do something Armond White has never done regarding his reversal on The Hurt Locker and confess a change of heart: in hindsight, Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum should probably have been my No. 1 of 2009 instead of Olivier Assayas's still pretty fantastic Summer Hours. If I'm going strictly by Roger Ebert's "elevation" criterion, then I probably felt a bit more of it in Denis's poetic and lyrical sensibility than in Assayas's relatively more prosaic style. Under her direction, so much is suggested simply through images and gestures that it occasionally boggles the mind. So yeah, she would get my vote in this category. Plus: "Night Shift." 

Best Performance By an Actress in a Leading Role:
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

You remember those famous lines Warren Beatty uttered in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971): "I got poetry in me"? Well, Gabourey Sidibe has got poetry in her, and she shows that remarkable soulfulness amidst Lee Daniels's miserablist freakshow, elevating exploitative trash into something occasionally quite moving in spite of itself. I'm genuinely curious to see what she does next as an actress.

Best Performance By an Actor in a Leading Role:
Tom Hardy, Bronson

Certainly the most thrillingly ferocious performance of last year, Tom Hardy imbues his portrayal of notorious British prisoner Michael Peterson, also known as "Charles Bronson," with a brute theatrical force that very nearly gives real substance to Nicolas Winding Refn's otherwise shallow conception of the character. This is a man who courts public attention with a rip-roaring sense of entitlement; Hardy, with charisma and imagination, makes you feel that in your bones without ever condescending to the character.

Best Motion Picture of the Year:
(tie) A Serious Man & Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds was probably the most fun I had in a movie theater last year (though I still maintain that the film cuts much deeper than its entertaining surface might indicate). But the Coen Brothers' latest speaks deeply to the way I tend to view the world. I guess I value A Serious Man more—but really, I can't choose between the two. So I'll choose both and call it a day.


A few other awards:

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published:
Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach, Fantastic Mr. Fox

Because I'm a bit less enthused than many others by some of the creative-obscenities-passing-for-wit in the otherwise slashing In the Loop (yeah, it's cool that a character uses Love Actually as a way to shut someone up, but so what?), I'll give Anderson & Baumbach's adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's book a nod here—if nothing else, because Anderson transforms Dahl's book into something, well, distinctly Andersonian.

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen:
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

Tarantino has always been acclaimed for his dialogue, sure, but his effervescent way with words is put to perhaps his most focused and purposeful use yet. Also, a film critic as British soldier? My mind boggles at the audacity.   

Best Documentary, Feature:
24 City

Jia Zhang-ke's film is actually a blend of documentary and fiction, not a straight-up documentary, featuring as it does professional actors like Joan Chen and Zhao Tao alongside real-life factory workers. But it's a fascinating, provocative blend, one that fulfills some of the expectations of the documentary form while subverting and questioning it. Not totally a documentary, you say? Hey, I told you I was playing by my own rules here! 

Best Foreign Language Film:  
35 Shots of Rum (France)

See above, in the "Best Director" category.

Best Animated Feature Film:
Up

What can I say? For all its lapses into cutesy pandering, Up touched me deeply. I'll let my end-of-year blurb on the film do the talking.


'Til next year...

Going Gaga for Anita Mui

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—I didn't watch much of Sunday night's Grammy Awards telecast; sure, I've heard of a lot of the nominated artists, and I've even heard some of the nominated songs, but my interest in today's American pop music is passing at best. (These days, I'm plowing through a complete set of period-instrument Mozart performances—which, I think, gives you a bit of an idea where my musical interests lie.)

But I heard from some of my friends on Twitter that the opening performance, a typically no-holds-barred Lady Gaga medley that eventually segued into a duet with Elton John, was one of the highlights of the night. I was a big Elton John fan back in the day, and still enjoy hearing his stuff; as for Lady Gaga—well, I initially simply heard hit tunes like "Just Dance," "Poker Face" and "Paparazzi" as standard overproduced electronic pop fluff until I read this essay at The House Next Door about her music videos and realized that people were indeed taking her whole package seriously as some kind of Warholian work of art. An astoundingly successful popular artist somehow using her fame and fortune to stage a mass meta-commentary on said fame and fortune? Call me shallow, but that sounded rather interesting to me...and day by day, I find my curiosity about her rising.

Well, I finally checked out that Lady Gaga/Elton John duet (the video of which is above), and it may have provided the final push to finally wade deeper into her music. Why? Because, simply put, the performance gave me honest-to-God chills...the kind of goosebumps that greeted my initial exposure to this artist:

 

That, my friends, is Anita Mui (1963-2003), the late, great Hong Kong pop star from the 1980s and '90s who was quite the obsession for me a year or two ago. Cinephiles, of course, will recognize Mui from such films as Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987), Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III (1989), a handful of Jackie Chan flicks (Miracles, The Legend of the Drunken Master, Rumble in the Bronx), Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio (1993), and others. But she was also the Cantopop sensation of the '80s, earning comparisons with Madonna for her flamboyant style and ever-changing public image—much the same way Lady Gaga is garnering serious criticism with her music and public persona now.

For all the flaunting of her sexuality and her extravagant stage manner, though, Anita Mui was, first and foremost, a wondrous singer, with a deep alto tone that could startle you and an emotional range that could knock you down flat. I remember the first video I ever saw of her, a live performance of a 1989 hit of hers entitled "夕陽之歌" (roughly translating to "Sunset Song"):

Under Mui's glorious voice, what could have come off as a bland love ballad felt instead like a searing emotional five-minute drama. As someone who barely knows Cantonese as it is, I didn't understand the words she was singing—but, on an intuitive level, I could grasp the deep, wistful emotions roiling underneath.

Here's Anita Mui tackling a more uptempo number (skip to 3:25 to hear the tune):



The song, by the way, is named "壞女孩," or "Bad Girl" in English. Looking at the way she moves onstage during that performance—yeah, bad indeed.

Why did Anita Mui cross my mind when watching Lady Gaga at the Grammys? Only one reason, really: Ah Mui could sing stunningly well live, even while doing all sorts of elaborate choreography and costume changes...and so, it seems, can Lady Gaga. I mean, I knew she had a fine voice based on hearing many of her hits, but that singing voice was often deliberately technologically manipulated for effect. Shorn of any technological safety nets, however? If anything, she sounded even better singing "Poker Face" live (it certainly didn't sound lip-synced to me). And—I didn't know this before seeing the Grammy video above—she can play the piano! And she did so with Elton John!

Anyone that can pull all of that off in six minutes of near-blissful stage pop spectacle automatically garners a certain level of respect from me. (Listen to Taylor Swift's off-key live Grammy performances by comparison—though, sure, being a mediocre live performer doesn't automatically make her an inferior artist or anything.) This new pop icon Lady Gaga, it seems, is also simply an immensely talented musician. Even if her current self-aware stage persona grows old—and inevitably it will—she at least has the technical chops to be able to do what Anita Mui (and, oh yeah, Madonna) did throughout her Hong Kong pop stardom in the '80s: become something of a chameleon, trying on different public images and stage personas, keeping her act fresh. Being a spectacular singer, like Anita Mui was, is certainly a good leg to stand.

Just for fun, here's a photo of a wax statue of Ah Mui that resides at Hong Kong's Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, which I took during my Hong Kong venture last year:

***

And, oh yeah...weren't Oscar nominations announced yesterday? Yes, they were...and again, I find myself at a loss to say anything of interest about them, feeling neither particularly enthusiastic about deserved nods nor outraged about perceived snubs. AMPAS's taste, at least based on their awards choices over 82 years, has almost always been generally safe and middlebrow, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. No use getting all emotional over it; just enjoy the drinks that will inevitably flow come Oscar night!

Of course, that is not to say this will be my last word on the subject. Last year, during a brief stint with the general-interest Web site suite101.com, I came up with a list of alternate Best Picture Oscar nominees for that year. Maybe I'll do so again this year. Maybe not. We'll see.

Actually, since I'm here, I might as well offer one personal observation: Remember those days in the early stages of awards season when Carey Mulligan was the front-runner in the Best Actress category for her "star-making" (according to many critics) performance in An Education? Funny how things change in a matter of weeks...and no, I still haven't seen Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. Didn't seem all that appealing to me when it came out. Guess I'll finally have to, now that it also scored a nomination in this year's pointlessly overstuffed Best Picture category. I may not take the Oscar seriously as an indicator of any sort of artistic quality...but I do like to keep up with the conversation. I suppose that's the journalist in me talking.

(Golden) Global Affairs

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Looking back on the first entry I wrote to kick off this tear of blogging I've done here at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second in the past month, I notice that I had initially planned on posting merely once a week, as I have tried to do in the past. It's gratifying, then, to see that it's become much more than a weekly thing. I hope all of you who read this are enjoying this barrage, because for once, I'm enjoying throwing this barrage at you all.

First things first, then: I find myself with nothing to say, really, about the Golden Globe nominations announced yesterday; there aren't many noteworthy surprises among the crop that I can see. And it's futile to complain about the Hollywood Foreign Press's legion of snubs (Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker, Tilda Swinton for Julia, the provocative Romanian film Police, Adjective—the list could go on and on), because most likely they're just nominating based on existing trends anyway. So no surprise Up in the Air—which is still on my to-watch list—is getting a lot of love this year; many critics groups have already crowned it as the movie of the year; same for The Hurt Locker (though yeah, I think it's a great film as well). It's all about glamour, artificial drama and horse races, not the art of cinema; in other words, it's showbiz, not art. But I'm sure many of you already knew that. 

Once I see most or all of the nominated films/performances, perhaps I'll have more to say, mostly regarding personal preferences. Also, I don't watch a whole lot of primetime television anymore, so I definitely have next-to-nothing to say about the TV nominations (I still haven't jumped on the "Mad Men" bandwagon yet, for one thing).

In the meantime, a few words on a couple more films, one of them a Golden Globe hopeful.

Invictus (2009; Dir.: Clint Eastwood)

I'm not sure I have much to really say about this one either. Clint Eastwood's latest work is well-intentioned and has a couple of excellent lead performances from Morgan Freeman, as Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon, as a South African rugby-team leader—but it's also just kind of boring and plodding in spots. It feels less like august contemplation from this 79-year-old American director, and more like merely a lack of urgency. Nevertheless, it doesn't screw up the inspiring true story—a South African rugby team's climb from national ill repute to World Cup contenders in 1995 during Nelson Mandela's presidency—at its heart, and it has at least one intelligent thematic curve to its otherwise predictably told story worth engaging with.

Structurally speaking, Invictus hews fastidiously to the standard underdog-sports-movie formula—no sucker-punch curves in its third act a la Million Dollar Baby—but it turns out not to be so much about whether this particular sports underdog becomes World Cup champions in 1995; if you know the history of the event the film covers, you already know that they succeed. Instead, Invictus—at least, in its more intriguing first half—directly takes on the idea of this rugby team's climb to victory as a consciously manipulative social symbol. Mandela, in his zeal to find a way to close the divide between blacks and whites in post-apartheid South Africa, latches onto the Springboks—a team that has become a denigrated symbol of South Africa's apartheid past—as a symbolic way to unite the nation and bridge that racial divide. What is admittedly refreshing about Invictus is that it doesn't merely accept Mandela's political calculation at face value; it genuinely explores the implications of this move, even questioning, at least a little bit, whether Mandela was perhaps being more politically manipulative than noble.

Once the sports-movie formula starts to really kick in during its last hour or so, Invictus becomes considerably less engaging, as the team's path to World Cup victory merely plays itself out via rather unimaginatively filmed rugby sequences (Eastwood's idea of turning up the suspense during the climactic final match is to turn a whole stretch of it into uniform slow-motion). Nevertheless, Damon's character's burgeoning political awareness, thanks to Mandela's calculation, is sometimes quite affecting; there's one rather beautiful scene in which he stands in the prison Mandela was held in for 27 years and literally imagines his turmoil. And if you consider the whole story in terms of Mandela's strategy of focusing on symbols as a source of national inspiration, then even the by-the-numbers rugby sequences take on a deeper retroactive resonance: It's not so much whether the Springboks win or not, but how their run toward the big prize unites and inspires a nation, at least for the moment—which makes the fact that they do achieve victory perhaps even more inspiring than it might have been otherwise.

Invictus may not necessarily breathe fresh air into this played-out genre, but Eastwood handles things with his usual no-nonsense simplicity—even if, in this particular case, "no-nonsense" means something occasionally didactic and dull.


Loot (2008; Dir.: Darius Marder)

Darius Marder's debut feature—which is currently playing at the IFC Center in New York—follows Lance Larson, an amateur treasure hunter looking for treasure stashed during World War II by a couple of veterans, one in Austria, the other in the Philippines. But his journeys takes him into many unexpected, psychologically fraught areas, one that ultimately becomes less about finding treasure, and more about how the two veterans themselves find ways to deal with their sometimes horrifying memories of war. Lance himself becomes rattled by the personal parallels he finds among these two vets (the vets had 19-year-old sons that were done in by drug overdoses; Lance's 19-year-old son is currently fighting his own addiction). As their journeys draw to their respective conclusions, whether or not the two vets find the closure they seek, Lance seems to have his own worldview and priorities expanded right before our very eyes. In a year in which a lot of excellent films (A Serious Man, You, the Living, Fantastic Mr. Fox—any others you readers can think of along those same lines?) have been, in some ways, about grasping and possibly understanding forces beyond ourselves, Loot is a modest, unexpectedly moving addition to such distinguished company.