OSCARS: Oscar Nominations - Snubs and Surprises

by Chris Luckett

Well, the Oscar nominations are out. As there are in any year, there were a number of surprises and a few unexpected snubs. To begin...

9 Best Picture Nominees

After all the questioning and brouhaha when the voting rules were tweaked (in an effort to lessen the nominees from an arguably bloated 10), nothing much changed in the end. All the talk of whether there would be 7 or 8 or even merely 5 ended up being rather moot.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Up for Best Picture

If there was one shock that had the biggest impact, it was Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close being included in race for the night’s biggest prize. There is a laundry list of movies that have been nominated for myriad Best Picture trophies at other awards shows over the last two months, but EL&IC has only been up for two of them (only one of which was even a national organization). Nobody expected a movie that has a 46% aggregate score on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and that didn’t receive a single four-star review, to end vying for Best Picture. The Academy knew people would react that way, too, because it was notably left last of the names read.

Steven Spielberg Snubbed

Since prognosticators began predicting the nominees back in December, it’s been taken as given that Michel Hazanavicius, Alexander Payne, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg were all locks for Best Director nominations. All the talk has been revolving around who would occupy the fifth slot. The two strongest contenders were Terrence Malick and Woody Allen, but most people were giving Malick the edge. Few people expected both Malick and Allen would get recognition, at the expense of one of the “locks.” Spielberg, especially, seemed a sure thing, having been nominated for Best Director six times so far (and having won twice).

War Horse has been losing momentum since December, though. While a month ago, the three top contenders for Best Picture were The Artist, The Descendants, and War Horse, that’s no longer the case. In the weeks since the film’s wide release, affection for the movie has rapidly cooled. Hugo is now the third Top-3 contender for Picture, and without the love behind the movie itself, the support for Spielberg just wasn’t there, come voting time.

Demian Bichir Sneaks Into the Best Actor Race

Just like with the Director race, people had been presuming the Best Actor race had four locks, in the form of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jean Dujardin, and Michael Fassbender for his brave performance in Shame. While everyone was busy wondering whether the fifth slot would go to Leonardo DiCaprio (for his turn in J. Edgar) or Gary Oldman, Bichir rode a quiet wave of support for his strong performance in the little-seen drama. The casualty was Fassbender, who had an amazingly impressive year – starring Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, A Dangerous Method, and Haywire within a 12-month period – but walked away without so much as a nomination to show for it.

Tintin Snubbed for Best Animated Picture

There has been much debate recently about whether The Adventures of Tintin counts as animation or not. In theory, it’s the exact same process that was used for The Polar Express, which most would argue is, indeed, animated. Much has changed since 2004, however, especially computer technology. Ever since James Cameron practically perfected photorealistic motion-capture CGI with Avatar, the days of the “uncanny valley” are pretty much gone. Look no further for proof than the chimps in last summer’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which many people didn’t even realize were entirely portrayed by actors in motion-capture suits.

There’s no doubt Rise of the Planet of the Apes is live-action, though, because even though it utilized motion capture for some of the characters, the rest of the actors and movie were shown as filmed. As well, the motion-capture animation was used to photorealistic effect in every way. The Adventures of Tintin, however, was entirely motion-capture, without any filmed parts visible to the audience. In addition, while all the background characters were flawlessly photorealistic, the central 5 or 6 characters all looked artistically different from the exact proportions of human faces and bodies. (Think of the character design of the people in The Incredibles and you’ll understand what I mean.)

Because of those factors, there’s a massive divide between those who feel the movie is animated and those who don’t. The Academy, apparently, does not. This is why, despite it winning Best Animated Picture just last week at the Golden Globes, it didn’t even receive a nomination at the Oscars. It’s not alone, though...

Pixar Snubbed for First Time Ever

Ever since the Best Animated Picture category was introduced in 2001, every Pixar movie has been up for the award. Some of their movies didn’t win, but they were at least always nominated. Cars 2 is the first Pixar movie of the last decade to not even be in the running. While no one expected it to win, after being the first Pixar movie to bomb with both critics and audiences (over the age of 10, at least), no one expected it to be ignored completely, especially when it was announced a month or so ago that there would be five nominees in the category this year.

A Few Other Surprises

While they weren’t shocks, there were a few other moments of note in the nominations. Margin Call got great reviews and lots of raves for its screenplay, but its Best Original Screenplay nomination was unexpected, particularly in such a competitive year. Also unexpected was the moment when everyone realized there were only two nominees in the Best Song category. Lastly, in one of the more interesting all-around developments, Hugo walked away from the nominations standing tallest. While The Artist has been the critical and awards-show darling of the season, Hugo received the most nominations, at 11. (The Artist received 10.)

All the groundswell behind Hugo has now vaulted that movie to being one of the three major contenders this year, effectively usurping War Horse’s spot. It’s unlikely there’s enough time for Hugo to overtake The Artist or The Descendants before the Academy voters’ ballots are due, but it’s interesting to see the highest all-around nominations total go to a moving ode to silent cinema other than The Artist.

OSCARS: The Most Unpredictable Oscar Nominations Yet?

by Chris Luckett

There’s less than 48 hours until the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces their nominations for the 84th Academy Awards. Normally, I’d have a definitive list of nominee predictions ready, to match up against the names being read this coming Tuesday morning. Not this year, though. This year, I’m finding it incredibly difficult to nail down my definitive guesses. And bizarrely, it’s all The Dark Knight’s fault.

In 2008, The Dark Knight was the behemoth of cinema. No movie since Titanic had crossed half a million dollars at the box office, until Christopher Nolan’s second Batman entry managed to pull in an impressive $533 million domestically, making it the second-highest grossing movie ever (at the time).

Because Titanic had become the #1 movie of all-time at the box office in 1997, and then subsequently went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, a lot of the general public also expected The Dark Knight to be up for Best Picture. When it wasn’t – whether it deserves to have been or not is an argument for another day – many people (read: TV viewers) were outraged and used the subject as fuel in the ongoing tirade against movie snobs and film critics.

The people behind the Academy Awards decided to shake things up. They announced soon after the year Batman was ignored that the Oscars would have 10 Best Picture nominees, going forward. The AMPAS used the precedent that there originally had always been 10 nominees in the top category, until it was shrunk down to 5 in 1944. The producers proudly boasted of a callback to a classic time, of recapturing the magic that era’s great movies.

Less naïve people argued the Oscars were just expanding to 10 to appeal to broader audiences. Only one of the five Best Picture nominees from 2008 had even grossed over $21 million dollars. Many argued that with the most high-profile movie nominated being The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the average TV viewer didn’t really care about who won or lost.

Many believed the AMPAS’ move of expanding to ten was simply a way of ensuring that in the years forward, there would be room to nominate more popular movies – even if they’d stand no chance of winning the award. Lo and behold, when the 2009 Oscar noms came out, The Blind Side and Up (two of the year’s biggest earners, coincidentally) were in contention for the big prize.

For two years, the Oscars went back to having 10 nominees. Unfortunately, the ratings didn’t sharply increase. As well, it led to movies like The Blind Side and The Kids are All Right being nominated for the biggest award of the year. (I’m not disputing they’re good movies, but I wouldn’t say each were one of the ten best of their respective years, either.) Many argued that in a given year, there just aren’t always ten truly great movies. This got the AMPAS thinking again.

Last summer, they announced they were changing the rules for Best Picture yet again. After vacillating between 5 and 10 nominees over the last 83 years, they completely broke the mould by saying each Oscar ceremony now could have anywhere between 5 and 10 nominated movies for Best Picture. Huh?

As a way of ensuring that the category wouldn’t get watered down unnecessarily (but to still ensure nominating more than a strict number of five movies), the Academy created a new rule: for a movie to be nominated for Best Picture, it needs a minimum of 5% of people’s #1 votes.

Every year, each member of the Academy writes out a ranked list of what they consider the best movies. These lists have always been averaged out, with various calculations, to determine the nominees. Of course, that has meant that polarizing movies have gotten the #1 or #2 spots on many people’s lists and no placements on many others’, so sometimes haven’t been nominated. Conversely, movies that every voting member generally liked (but that none may have particularly loved) have been able to make the cut simply by being on enough people’s lists, even if they were near the bottom.

What this new stipulation means for the Best Picture race has yet to be seen, but it could mean that jack-of-all-trades nominees like The Blind Side won’t likely make the cut anymore. It may actually benefit more polarizing movies, like The Tree of Life or Melancholia. What it means for right now, though, is that no one knows what to predict for Tuesday morning’s announcement, because nobody even knows how many movies will be nominated.

Really, it’s just one more prediction, though. In addition to guessing what movies will have their names read in two days, one also gets to predict how many will. Myself, I’m going with 7. We’ll find out on Tuesday. For now, here’s what I’m predicting:

PICTURE

The Artist

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

War Horse

(NB: If there are 8, which I think is the second-most likely scenario, I’m expecting the eighth movie will be The Tree of Life.)

DIRECTOR

Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)

Alexander Payne (The Descendants)

Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life)

Martin Scorsese (Hugo)

Steven Spielberg (War Horse)

ACTOR

George Clooney (The Descendants)

Jean Dujardin (The Artist)

Michael Fassbender (Shame)

Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)

Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

ACTRESS

Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)

Viola Davis (The Help)

Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)

Charlize Theron (Young Adult)

Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)

Albert Brooks (Drive)

Jonah Hill (Moneyball)

Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Max von Sydow (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Bérénice Bejo (The Artist)

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)

Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)

Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Shailene Woodley (The Descendants)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

50/50

The Artist

Bridesmaids

Midnight in Paris

A Separation

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Descendants

The Help

Hugo

The Ides of March

Moneyball

(Don’t assume these are necessarily the movies I think should be nominated. These are just what I expect will be. My own Best of 2011 list will be coming in the weeks ahead.)

REVIEW: Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol

by Chris Luckett

5 stars out of 5

            I can’t recall another film franchise in recent history that has as noticeable an increase in quality as the Mission: Impossible series. Sometimes, a movie franchise either starts crappy and remains so, or starts brilliantly and maintains its brilliance throughout. Most common in film series is for them to start fantastically, but then drop in quality when sequels are made. The Mission: Impossible series is an anomaly.

            There have been film franchises that have managed to improve on their origins, but even when that does occur, there is most often a solid foundation. The Bourne Identity, for example, may have been the weakest of the three movies, but it was still pretty good. To have a series begin at the very low end of the quality spectrum and rise to the opposite extreme is practically unheard of. Yet that is what it would seem happened with the M:I movies.

            The first Mission: Impossible was not good. The film has its fans, to be sure, but I found that when it wasn’t going laughably over-the-top with its action scenes, it was piling plot twist upon plot twist, resulting in a bombastic and labyrinthine mess. Mission: Impossible 2 was even worse, managing to make outrageous stunts seem dull and fashioning one of the most forgettable plots of an action movie this side of The Living Daylights.

            Yet something fascinating happened with Mission: Impossible III. Somehow, against all odds and expectations, it wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was absolutely fantastic. A lot less people watched the third M:I movie, both because some people were so disappointed by the first two entries (or just the second) and because it was Tom Cruise’s first starring vehicle since his notorious appearances on Oprah and The Today Show.

I didn’t race to see the M:I III when it was released. I really didn’t care about the fact Cruise as a person seemed a little... off – I’ve always been one to judge an actor by his work not by his personal values – but having been so disappointed by the first two M:Is, I had no real interest in the third one, until I kept hearing how great is actually was.

            And it really was. Somehow, despite having a bad first entry and a horrible second, the Mission: Impossible series delivered arguably the best action movie of the 2000s with Mission: Impossible III. So as I waited for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol to start, I didn’t know what to expect. Was Mission: Impossible III a sign of the late beginning of a great franchise or a glorious fluke in an otherwise disappointing series? I’m pleased to say it was the former.

            The plot is as irrelevant as those of the first three entries. The M:I movies aren’t fueled by plots; they’re fueled by catalysts. The players are the same. Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt, is the American James Bond, going on seemingly impossible missions with fellow agents in his secret government division IMF (the bluntly named Impossible Mission Force).

In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Cruise and the entire IMF department are disavowed after a failed mission results in a devastating explosion within the Kremlin, interpreted by Russia to be an American act of war. Intent on clearing their name, finding the culprit of the explosion, and preventing Russian retaliation, Cruise and two other now-rogue agents (new-to-the-series Paula Patton and the impishly-amusing Simon Pegg) have to make do with just one transport van of supplies and an intelligence analyst begrudgingly dragged along (a much-better than called-for Jeremy Renner, holding his own against Cruise in every scene).

Something interesting occurred to me watching Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Since 2006, I’ve felt the need to justify liking the third M:I, based partly on the fact the first two were stinkers that left a stigma with the series’ brand. I’ve often said it would have performed better had it not even used the “Mission: Impossible” label. I was also doing so because I viewed the series as a sequential order of movies, a continuing tale of the same character in separate chapters. Watching the fourth entry with the “Mission: Impossible” label on it, however, I’m seeing things differently. I’m finally able to step back far enough to see the experiment Paramount Pictures is conducting with these movies.

Imagine you went into a Kindergarten class of 25 kids, handed each child an identical set of K’Nex or what-have-you, and told them to each build a ferris wheel. All the children would build ferris wheels and use the same basic set of parts, but each one would end up looking and functioning slightly differently. Some would look really cool, but perhaps the wheel wouldn’t turn smoothly. Some might not dazzle with style but function perfectly. Others still would fall over right away or break right after the crank began to turn.

Paramount has done just such an experiment with this series. Even though there are the occasional moments in each script where earlier characters are briefly alluded to or brought back for a cameo just to provide a basic semblance of continuity, each movie really exists separately and outside the order in which it was made, much like the James Bond series.

Most fascinatingly, though, each Mission: Impossible movie has been helmed by a different action director. Each one has had the skills to make a great action movie, and the challenge has been what they can each do with the same kit of parts.

Brian De Palma, known for his over-the-top scenes of excess and plot twists in movies like Scarface and The Untouchables, was given the reigns first, which is why Mission: Impossible turned out the way it did. John Woo, master of slo-mo action interpreted as dance and random shots of flying birds, gave Mission: Impossible 2 its style and also the flaws therein. J.J. Abrams, the action and mind-screw expert who created “Alias” and “Lost,” refined the parts into a slick machine with Mission: Impossible III. With the new M:I movie, Brad Bird (director of The Iron Giant and The Incredibles) was given the ingredients and let loose in the kitchen.

Bird’s background in animation has served his jump to live-action films perfectly with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Because animation is such a visual medium, Bird brings a style to the film that is almost impossible to nail down or define. To say it’s like watching a live-action cartoon wouldn’t be entirely correct, as the movie always stays just a few steps shy of being completely unbelievable. It always feels exaggerated in just the right amount, like Speed or GoldenEye.

There is one sequence in particular that is one of the best-executed action scenes in recent memory. It’s the one from the trailers and commercials that involves Cruise scaling the outside of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I found myself so invested and wrapped up in the insane tension of it (masterfully ratcheted by Bird) that I kept squirming in my seat, occasionally unable to even look. I even found myself chuckling at just how much the movie was playing me, as also did every other audience member in the theatre.

I had one problem with the movie, but I will leave it to you to decide how small or large a flaw it will be for you. You know how the best action movies, like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Terminator 2: Judgment Day, alternate intense scenes of thrills with short moments of quiet or conversation? Those scenes have the basic function in a script of bridging one scene with another, but for the audience, they serve to let us quickly recuperate after one action sequence and prepare ourselves for the next adrenaline rush.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol has virtually none of those moments. Even the slowest scenes have tension or anticipation boiling just under the surface. Some may find it doesn’t bother them. Others may find they are tense for so long without any break that their muscles end up sore. While it wasn’t enough of an issue for me that I walked out of the theatre weak from gripping the armrests, it did have the psychological effect of dulling the scenes in the third act for me, as I was just too overwhelmed to properly appreciate the final sequences fully. Without taking a second or two in between bites of food, it’s hard to savour the taste.

In the end, blaming an action movie for having too much action is a minor quibble. The fourth Mission: Impossible is a fantastically good action movie. It falls just shy of being the best in the series (if only because Mission: Impossible III had those bridge moments to let the audience breathe in between the tension), but judged purely as an action movie, it is one of the best action movies of 2011.

Paramount decided this entry should ditch the numerical pattern the series had established with its titles and instead added the subtitle “Ghost Protocol.” While it certainly is a typographical nightmare writing the full title of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, it does serve to accentuate the movie as its own entity rather than as part of a series. I honestly hope the pattern continues, with a new subtitle each time instead of any more numbers. Now that I realize it doesn’t matter the order the movies are watched in – or even whether you watch all of them – I can appreciate how the series functions within and without itself, much like the separate-but-whole 007 series. I hope Paramount embraces that, going forward.

Craziest of all my revelations caused by Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is that the M:I series is not just similar to the Bond series in non-sequential nature, it’s become an alternate James Bond franchise. The tone of the Bond series was abandoned for a completely atypical one with 2005’s Casino Royale; Paramount Pictures has picked up the torch and continued the feel of the Brosnan 007 movies, first with M:I III in 2006 and now with M:I–GP. Both of them have the same feel as GoldenEye, if perhaps with just a more American sense of humour. The first two M:I movies may have stunk, but hey, The World is Not Enough wasn’t Pierce Brosnan’s finest moment, either.

In the end, the upcoming 007 entry Skyfall has its work cut out for it. Not only does Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol prove the third M:I wasn’t a fluke, but it throws down the gauntlet. The Mission: Impossible series is now doing James Bond movies better than Bond himself.

OPINION: Ricky Gervais was Doomed Before He Began

by Chris Luckett

            Last year, Gervais hosted the Golden Globes and shocked the celebrity world by – heaven forbid! – mocking movie stars. What would have seemed tame on a Celebrity Roast was deemed savage and insulting simply because it was said at an awards show.

            Even Gervais himself was shocked at the harsh reaction his jokes caused. Pundits and actors said he had ruined any chance of coming back and hosting again. Of course, when people were still talking about Gervais’ hosting a month later, it became obvious that despite the offense taken by the jokes’ subjects and despite the staunch stance of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that Gervais would not be invited back, we all knew he was going to be. The question was whether he would accept.

            When I first began getting interested in film award shows, one incident (or series of incidents) really stuck with me. In early 1999, when Jim Carrey was the talk of awards season for his work in The Truman Show (including winning Best Actor in a Drama at the Golden Globes), the Academy did not even include Carrey in their nominations. Despite this, when the Academy invited Carrey to present at the Oscars a few weeks later, he graciously went and even poked fun at his lack of a nomination before presenting the award, in what ended up as one of the most memorable moments of the night.

            Twelve months later, Carrey was back in the same position. He was one of the major award-winners that season for his work in Man on the Moon (including winning Best Actor in a Comedy at the Golden Globes). Again, the Academy did not recognize Carrey’s performance. And again, they still invited Carrey to the Oscar ceremony to present. The second time, Carrey politely declined the invitation. I always interpreted that action as his way of basically saying, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

That has always stuck with me. It taught me a lot about character, a lot about pride, and mostly a lot about politics, especially when it comes to awards shows.

Winning a Golden Globe or an Oscar these days means a little less than it did in the ‘30s and ‘40s, if for no other reason than the importance now of television audiences. While one can argue that the Globes and the Oscars haven’t ever truly been just about the best performances, the nominations did become less pure after awards ceremonies began being televised. The most important thing about the ceremonies (in producers’ eyes) shifted from the awards themselves to television ratings. They began pandering to what TV audiences wanted. TV audiences preferred seeing people they recognized on TV. They preferred popular movies getting showcased. They liked recyclable jokes and fluffy banter between likeable presenters. And, as people always do, they liked seeing anything scandalous.

Over the last 50 years, there have been many watercooler moments on both the Golden Globes and the Oscars telecasts, from streakers to F-bombs to David Letterman. One thing that such moments do for producers of awards shows is shine a light on what the public currently wishes there were more of in awards shows, be that spontaneity, vulgarity, poignancy, etc. The producers of the Golden Globes knew well enough that the only way they could achieve the same TV audience numbers this year that they did last year would be to bring Ricky Gervais back, despite all their earlier outrages.

For the HFPA, bringing Ricky Gervais back was a complete win. They were virtually guaranteed good ratings, as Gervais’ hosting last year was one of the biggest news stories of the year involving the entertainment industry, and more people were aware of last year’s show now than had watched it live in 2011. Plus, it showed the HFPA had a sense of humour about themselves, as well as demonstrating that they weren’t too proud to admit they had harshly judged Gervais last year. For the Golden Globes, they had nothing to lose by having Ricky Gervais come back and host. For Gervais, though, it was a fool’s errand.

There was no way for Gervais to avoid criticism this time. Last year, what got him into such hot water was not really the harshness of his jokes but the unexpectedness of that harshness. Honestly, mocking the quality of a movie like The Tourist or the less-than-stellar career of Tim Allen when compared to Tom Hanks should not exactly cut to the bone. What rankled so many feathers was that people like Robert Downey, Jr. or Angelina Jolie (nor most movie stars, I’d wager) don’t go to awards shows expecting to be insulted or mocked. TV audiences didn’t expect it either, which is why it was so jarring/refreshing.

This year, everyone knew what Ricky Gervais was capable of as an awards show host. Moreover, as much as people loved the change he brought last year, they all seemed to want him to do the same thing this time. Gervais’ biggest mistake was trying to give it to them.

There were three ways he could have hosted. He could have toned it down and not done the same thing as last year. This probably would have been his best bet, because it would show that he’d prefer to not even do comedy he was adept at than do it just because hypocrites wanted it from him. It would almost be rebelling against the rebels, since the most unexpected thing he could do this year would be to not deliver what people wanted. (It worked last year, right?) The trouble is, while he’d be able to sleep easy at night, he’d get torn apart for going too easy on the celebrities and would be accused of toning things down as atonement for the fallout last year.

            He could have gone even farther with his jokes, but multiple problems would come from that. He would look like a puppet, dancing to the tune of what the mass public wants from him now. He would surely alienate more movie stars and Hollywood elite, which wouldn’t necessarily bother Gervais, but would likely not help his movie career, either. Worst of all, it would begin cementing Gervais in the eyes of the average Joe as nothing more than a roast comedian, as this generation’s Don Rickles.

            You would think, then, that his best chance of emerging from this year’s hosting duties unscathed would be to walk the same precarious tightrope he did last year. And that’s exactly what he did. He even managed to succeed. Yet if you’ve talked to anyone about last night’s Golden Globes ceremony, you probably know the consensus is that Gervais didn’t “pull it off” like he did last year. So where is the disconnect?

            In the end, trying to achieve the same tone he did last year was an impossible task because it was no longer unexpected. People are already criticizing his jokes last night, saying they weren’t as cutting or edgy as they were last year, but people have short memories, and revisionist ones, at that. Side by side, Gervais’ jokes this year were just as pointed as his jokes in 2011, and last year’s really weren’t as stinging as people remember them being. In our heads, though, we’ve built last year’s jokes/jibes up, if just by talking about them so much at the time. By doing so, we raised out expectations of Gervais to something that no one could conceivably deliver.

            We would have been disappointed if he played it safe. We would have been disappointed if he insulted people even harsher than before just because he was expected to. As it was, by doing the exact same thing as last year (which, let’s be fair to Gervais, he’s been saying for weeks is what he would do), he ended up with the worst of both worlds, looking simultaneously stale and inoffensive (for the most part). He would have been best off leaving his hosting total at two, instead of rolling the dice a third time.

            Gervais will be fine after this. He’s incredibly intelligent and has a flair for brilliant comedy. (Even if Gervais had retired from the entertainment industry after creating/writing/starring in The Office, his place in the Hall of Fame of comedy would still be guaranteed.) Gervais will eventually re-emerge, relatively unscathed and maybe even a little wiser. For now, though, he’s rolled the dice one time too many. The HFPA got all the benefits from him hosting, while he got stuck with the bill. My advice to Ricky Gervais, when the HFPA comes calling again next year: take a cue from Jim Carrey.

REVIEW: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

by Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

            Is it possible to review 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo without comparing it to the novel or the previous film of the same title? Is it possible to judge this adaptation solely on its own merits, if one has managed to avoid hearing the plot already, reading the book, or seeing the original movie? I’m sure it is. One thing I was less sure about, waiting for the lights in the theatre to dim, was whether I could do so, after falling in love with Stieg Larsson’s book in 2009 and falling even deeper with 2010’s movie adaptation.

            If you are have managed to avoid learning the bulk of the plot by now, I won’t be the one to spoil it all. Put simply, the setup is an ingenious modernization of Agatha Christie’s “locked room” murder-mystery concept. 40 years or so ago, a family reunion was being held on an island in Sweden, accessible by a lone bridge. A car accident that day blocked the bridge after most family members had arrived. Some time during this same afternoon, the niece of the patriarch went missing. Her body was never found. No boats had left the island; the water’s currents were blowing inshore; the road was blocked by the accident; nobody saw her leave; no body was ever found.

            Flash-forward to the story’s present, and the patriarch is still haunted (in more ways than one) by the mysterious and unsolved disappearance of his niece four decades earlier. He recruits a recently scandalized investigative journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, to solve the mystery and give the old man peace of mind before his imminent death. Blomkvist recruits a hacker with a photographic memory, Lisbeth Salander, to help him. Lisbeth is the titular girl with the dragon tattoo.

            The clever conceit of structuring the modern detective story around an old-fashioned mystery premise sent Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s novel to a still-increasing 131 weeks on The New York Times’ Best Sellers list. Even more fascinating than the story, however, was the character of Lisbeth Salander, an introverted young woman with myriad psychological issues. Salander was a cypher, with details behind her story only slowly being teased out by the author. The book’s two sequels, “The Girl who Played with Fire” and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” revealed the rest of her story, and the glory was that the character remained fascinating even after we all knew the mysteries behind her past. All in all, the first book had large pacing flaws, but was still a wonderful read.

            In 2010, a movie adaptation was released in North America starring Michael Nyqvist (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) and Noomi Rapace (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows). It managed a feat exceedingly rare in cinema: it was better than the book. The screenplay was a perfect adaptation, trimming excess fat you couldn’t have imagined the story succeeding without and giving the story a stark grandeur that the source material failed to quite define. Additionally, Rapace gave quite possibly the greatest performance by a female actor since Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning turn in Monster. Just as the film was released in North American theatres two years ago, it was announced that David Fincher would direct his own version. Over the weeks and months that followed, Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara were cast as Blomkvist and Salander.

            So how is this version? Well, in a word, good. In two, pretty good. But as your opinion of it will likely be even more subjective than mine, the crux of your enjoyment will surely hinge on whether you’ve read the book and/or seen the first movie. As such, two reviews are almost required here.

            For the most part, I will assume those reading this will be discovering the mystery of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for the first time. As such, one caveat for those who don’t know some of the subject matter the story deals with: this is not your grandfather’s murder mystery. There is nudity. There is blood. There is torture. There is sexual assault. There is rape. The original title of Larsson’s book, before the sequels created the need for titular similarities, was “Men who Hate Women.” Based on content, it’s easy to see why it was called that.

            The movie’s biggest flaw remains a problem whether this is your third, second, or first exposure to the tale of Salander and Blomkvist. The screenplay by Steve Zaillian has very inconsistent pacing. The scenes that crackle the most and the real heart of the story are between Craig’s Blomkvist and Mara’s Salander, but it takes the movie over an hour before the two characters even meet. As well, there are 20 or 25 minutes of wrap-up, when 5 or 10 would suffice. The biggest problem that comes from all of this padding is that in a movie with a running time of two and a half hours, the main act of the story only gets about 40% of the movie’s screen time.

To those who read the book, you may already understand where this problem came from. Larsson’s novel, for all its cleverness, had the same faults. The first half of the book was all setup of either characters or plot (which is why many readers couldn’t get into it) and had an overly long denouement. Watching this version, it feels like Zaillian, aware of the global popularity of the book, was afraid to change much at all. As such, the flaws of the book became the flaws of the movie.

For most who already know the course of the story’s twists and turns, the question is likely how Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara did in their roles, and how well David Fincher’s dark sensibilities and leanings served this adaptation. On the latter front, Fincher does a superb job. Aside from an oddly chosen opening credits sequence of ink, leather, and melting rubber that feel like something out of a James Bond nightmare, Fincher utilizes the same skills he used so well in Se7en, Fight Club, The Game, Panic Room, and Zodiac to give The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo real style.

As excellent as last year’s film version was, one area it could’ve used improvement was looking interesting. Fincher has a true filmmaker’s eye, however, and it is used to brilliant effect here. The Social Network, his last film, was brilliant, but it didn’t feel like a David Fincher movie. With The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Fincher has the flair and comfort of a mechanic who’s been out of the garage for a few years and is thrilled to be able to use his favourite tools again.

As for Craig and Mara, they do quite admirable jobs. I suspect most people’s feelings toward how well they did will depend on whether they’ve read the book or watched the original film. I found the problem was not in their acting but in their casting. If you only know Daniel Craig from his action-star roles, it may surprise you to see him using more subtlety and nuance in this performance, like he was more prone to pre-007. He does well in the role, but still brings too much fitness and speed to the character. Reading the book, I always pictured the aging and out-of-shape journalist as being played by someone unassuming like Stellan Skarsgård (Matt Damon’s recruiting professor in Good Will Hunting); amusingly for me, Skarsgård himself is in the film, but as one of the supporting characters.

Most people were unfamiliar with Rooney Mara before this movie. She was in the recent remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, but her most high-profile appearance was as Mark Zuckerberg’s (ex-)girlfriend in The Social Network. Judging her performance in this, she does a fantastic job. The biggest compliment I can give her is she does the best possible work she can as a character she just is not right for. Every fault I have with her as Salander (which, I’ll admit, I likely wouldn’t have if I hadn’t read/seen the book/first movie) are largely beyond her control (too young, too extroverted, too talkative, too attractive). With the handicaps of the screenplay’s inadequate depiction of her character and Mara not being right for the role, she does better than I could possibly have expected. She is not the Lisbeth readers will recognize and doesn’t reach the heights achieved by Noomi Rapace’s searing interpretation of the character, but Mara’s performance holds the movie and is the key component to the film succeeding as well as it does.

All of my criticisms may make it sound like I didn’t think the movie was anything spectacular. On the contrary, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is quite a good movie. The two issues are whether the movie works on its own merits (assuming you haven’t read the book or seen the first movie) and whether it works as an adaptation of the story (assuming you have).

On its own, it works, but barely. Most people I’ve spoken with who had no foreknowledge of the characters and story before seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo found themselves confused by unexplained plot developments and anxious during the first hour, waiting for a cohesive plot to emerge. The acting seems to stand out more to those unfamiliar with the characters.

As an adaptation, it succeeds on a few fronts that it doesn’t when standing on its own, simply because audience members know the crucial information left out of this screenplay and so understand motivations of characters and unexplained moments that newcomers will not. The casting is more of an issue if you’ve seen Nyqvist and Rapace as the characters or if you know the characters as they were in the books. I can think of no reader of Larsson’s trilogy that would say, “Daniel Craig is exactly who I pictured as Mikael Blomkvist.”

Because the sloppy screenplay trips the movie up for those unfamiliar with the complicated plot (as well as dragging unnecessarily for large chunks of time), it is not ideal for those new to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Because the roles have been cast in a way that shortchanges the characters, it is not ideal for fans, either. In the end, while the movie works, and even works well, it is an example of a perfectly good but unnecessary remake. It really adds nothing new to the story, and doesn’t succeed with its characters as well as the book did or with its pacing as well as the first movie did. It is the least powerful and least effective telling of a story now thrice told. It does succeed on its own merits, but unless you’ve already read the book and seen the original movie, and are interesting in a new interpretation of the story, there’s really no reason to watch it. The best reason for the uninitiated to see David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is to spark interest in reading the book or seeing the superior 2010 version.

OPINION: That Magic Moment of Movies

by Chris Luckett

            In Martin Scorsese’s recent movie Hugo, characters bandy about that old phrase “the magic of movies.” The titular hero talks repeatedly about the power of films, about their ability to create dreams and magic. We witness another character in Hugo watching a movie for the very first time. The look of sheer wonder on her face is a thing of true beauty.

            A century ago or so, every person who had seen a motion picture could describe the first time they witnessed the magic of movies. Even up until the mid-20th century, children knew the exact “first time” when they saw moving pictures. With the spread of television, though, everything changed. The first movie a child eventually saw didn’t often have the same impact such an occasion once did, because most children had already seen the wonder of moving pictures on their television sets before ever setting foot in a movie theatre.

            The true magic moments of cinema still exist, however. These days, it usually comes not necessarily with the first experience one has with movies, but the first experience one has with a great movie; with a movie that opens a child’s eyes not merely to the technological capabilities of movies, but to the creative potential, as well.

            The Apple Box is going to be a blog of movie reviews and movie-related columns. I’ll refrain from classifying it any more just yet, largely because, to borrow a quote from The Social Network, I don’t even know what it is yet. Most of the writing will be done by myself, though there will also be a guest columnist or two. For now, rather than futilely try and explain what this blog will be when I don’t truly know yet myself, let me instead inform you a little into what made me the movie critic I am. Let me share my magic moment with you.

            Growing up in the 1980s, I didn’t watch most of the live-action fare of the decade. I recall that the first movie I saw in a theatre was The Land Before Time in 1988. Other than a VHS copy of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial that I owned but never much appreciated at that young age, I didn’t start watching live-action movies until 1990, the year that gave my demographic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kindergarten Cop, and Home Alone. I started watching more live-action as the years continued (including my best friend and I stealing his dad’s copy of Total Recall and secretly watching the R-rated movie during a sleepover), though I still preferred animation for the simple reason that it could accomplish anything. Live-action movies, in my 10-year-old mind, would always be inferior because they were always bound to reality.

            All that changed for me on June 11, 1993. As an early 11th birthday present, my parents took me to see the opening evening show of Jurassic Park. That night marked the divide between my childhood and my youth.

            A year earlier, my father had lent me a paperback of Michael Crichton’s novel “Jurassic Park.” I’ve read it numerous times since, but despite my father’s assurance that I would love it, I never actually gave it a chance. I flipped through it, saw all the scientific words, and decided to play Super Nintendo instead. I ashamedly told my father I had read it, though, and, wanting to be able to bond with him over something he clearly liked, told him I loved it. I’ve always regretted lying to my father about that. But I’ve also always been glad that I did, because it led to his decision to take me to see the movie adaptation for my birthday.

            I didn’t know what to expect from it other than the involvement of dinosaurs – which, to my father’s credit, I had always been obsessed with. I’d had the story explained to me, but to a 10-year-old, genetic engineering and DNA recombination are as foreign concepts as disco. For some reason, I interpreted all the terms to mean “robotic dinosaurs.” Needless to say, I was bound to be surprised by the movie no matter what I thought of it.

            Still, I wasn’t prepared for the wonder I experienced. To me, at that ripe age, Jurassic Park was perfection. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me scared. It made be angry. It elicited pure joy in me.

            Specific scenes or moments are not really important, as the movie itself didn’t specifically have to be Jurassic Park. For me, it happened to be. For you, it likely was another movie entirely. Whatever film it was, though, the odds are that you know exactly the effect I mean. Everybody has that one movie that serves as a stark divider between the naïve innocence of youth and the wondrous opened eyes of seeing a dream made real.

            On that day in 1993, I sat in the theatre, flanked by my parents on either side. I always sat between my parents, because I was a child. I still was, as the movie began. By the time the credits rolled and the house lights came up, I may still have been a child, but I was forever changed. I began the movie mentally relating to the child characters (like I always had up until then) but found myself aligned with the adult leads by the end of the film. I’ve mentally related to the adult characters in movies ever since. I left that theatre in 1993 still a boy a few days shy of turning 11, but I had gained the power of perspective in those two hours of cinema.

Almost 19 years later, that theatre has been demolished. The movie ticket stub that granted me access into that wondrous world has long since turned to compost. Even that old paperback copy of “Jurassic Park” my father gave me, which I still proudly have, has aged with the years. But the effect of that movie, on that night, has shaped who I am today, as I’m sure that one very special film of yours did for you. The exact movie is almost irrelevant; the experience itself is a universal one. That is the true magic of movies.