In Contention

Tag: Manhattan

  • The Oscar show you didn’t see

    Lauren Bacall accepting her Oscar at the 2008 Governors' AwardsFor those of us not important/famous/rich enough to have attended last night’s honorary Oscars presentation, the Governors’ Awards — tickets began at $350, apparently — Steve Pond has a comprehensive report of the proceedings, complete with pictures and some gossipy details.

    I’ve complained before about the Academy denying us Joe Public movie fans the chance to see industry titans Lauren Bacall, Gordon Willis, Roger Corman and John Calley finally take a trip to the Oscar podium, but what’s done is done. And to go by Pond’s account, the upshot for them (if not for us) is that they got to bask in the spotlight for longer than the main ceremony would have allowed — though Calley was, unfortunately, too ill to attend.

    Indeed, despite featuring only four award presentations, the night ran for three-and-a-half hours, the length of most Oscarcasts. Still, despite some organizational hiccups, a good, relaxed time seems to have been had by all.

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  • Cheer up, Meryl — you have your masterpiece

    Meryl StreepYou may well have spotted this very funny (and frequently accurate) Onion piece doing the web rounds today, in which a writer claiming to be Meryl Streep shoots down her career with all the withering disdain of Miranda Priestly.

    The gist of the argument is that, as fine an actor as Streep is, she has — whether through bad luck or bad choices — never made a truly great film.

    I can see the temptation to agree. Certainly the latter stretch of Streep’s filmography is spotty: even if you remove the outright embarrassments, (“Prime,” “Mamma Mia!”) or even the respectable-but-still-throwaway entertainments (“Julie & Julia,” “The Devil Wears Prada”), you’re left with a lot of worthily middlebrow titles engineered more as performance showcases than as vital, durable cinema.

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  • ‘Revolutionary Road’ — snubbed today, sure to be remembered forever

    Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary RoadOne of the biggest surprises of the awards season for me is the fact that “Revolutionary Road” is being all but forgotten by many critics groups and has certainly slipped off the Oscar radar as a result. Is the film deserving?  Absolutley.  I think it is one of the best films of the year and among the finest I have seen this decade, but for whatever reason — and who can explain these things — it has not gotten a great deal of press.

    This is a major accomplishment, a work of art superbly directed by Sam Mendes who in eight years has become one of the most exciting directors in modern cinema. Though I count myself among those who though his breakthrough film “American Beauty” was very good but also radically over-praised, his follow-up, “Road to Perdition,” was superb and should have been among the nominees for Best Picture and Best Director in 2002, vastly superior to “Chicago.”

    His third film, “Jarhead,”  was darkly beautiful to look at but didn’t quite work with audiences who are still not interested in films about Afghanistan or Iraq (whichever installment).  Mendes possesses a gift with actors, one of those directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and more recently, Paul Thomas Anderson.  He’s able to bring out their best work.  It seems no surprise he married an actress.

    He is also patient with a narrative, allowing it to unfold with the knowledge the audience connects with the actors.  With “Revolutionary Road,” he has cranked out a crowning achievement in a career just getting started, and yet like so many other masterworks, it may slip through the cracks, barely noticed.

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