Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 439-441: A Load of Bullock's

Throughout the last couple of decades Sandra Bullock was mainly seen as an actress who'd fronted a number of successful romantic comedies. That perception slightly changed when she featured in the Best Picture winning Crash and was finally altered for good when she won her only Best Actress Award to date at the 2010 ceremony.

Bullock won her award for The Blind Side, a film which saw her play the kindly but abrupt interior designer Leigh Ann Tuohy. I personally feel though that Bullock isn't the star of the film as this isn't really Leigh Ann's story but rather that of Michael Oher. We first meet 'Big Mike' when his size impresses the coach at the prestigious Wingate Christian School enough to grant him a scholarship. The problem is that Michael can't play for the school football team until his grades improve which is a shame as he doesn't seem to comprehend anything that is being taught to him. At the same time Michael finds himself out on the streets and is rescued by Leigh Ann and her family. The relationship between Leigh Ann and Michael is probably why the film struck a chord with the Academy and why Bullock ultimately received her Oscar. But at the same time I felt this part of the film was rather saccharine as getting to know Michael helped Leigh Ann to grow as a person. Instead I enjoyed watching Michael try attempt to find his place in the world and struggle with the fact that the Tuohy's intentions may not have been all they seemed. Judging from the poster alone, The Blind Side is seemingly about football but there is very little of the sport included in the film. There is only one extended football game in the movie and if you've ever seen a sporting film before you know exactly what to expect. Indeed, The Blind Side isn't very big on surprises but instead is one of those sort of films that Oscar loves to honour that being a 'feel good story'.

Whilst Bullock received all of the praised for The Blind Side I'd instead like to complement Quinton Aaron on his performance as Michael. I felt that he perfectly captured the essence of the gentle giant with Michael having the body of a giant but the mind of a child. I don't think Aaron ever made Michael into a patronising character and instead made him feel incredibly three-dimensional. That's more can be said for Bullock's Academy Award-winning turn in which she seemingly drew inspiration from previous Best Actress performances. Bullock's performance particularly evoked memories of Sally Field in Norma Rae and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich both of whom won the Oscar for their roles. But while those two characters stood up for something they believed in, all Tuohy did was act as a Good Samaritan for a boy in need. I think my main problem with the role, and the film as a whole, is that there's not much story progression one Michael moves in with the Tuohys. Leigh Ann is definitely a one-note character meaning that Bullock was hard pushed to actually deliver a spot on performance. I believe that Bullock's win was primarily due to the fact that the Academy believed that it was her time to win one. Never mind that there were better performances from less established stars as Bullock was going to win the Oscar regardless of how good she was. The Blind Side's other Oscar-shaped surprise was the fact that it was nominated for Best Picture at all. As I've already mentioned, the 2010 ceremony saw the reintroduction of ten nominees meaning that some mediocre pictures had to be given nods. The Blind Side was one of those films which I believed was simply filling a gap and was one of the reasons that, two years later, the Academy decided to honour between five and ten films rather than a set number.

However, even this new system of picking nominees didn't stop the occasional bad movie turning up and that's just what happened when Bullock's next nominated film turned up. I still remember distinct whooping coming from the audience when Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close's Best Picture nomination was announced to the assembled crowd of press and PR people. This to me signals that one of its main intentions was to garner as many Oscar nominations as possible which is reinforced by the fact it had a limited release during the final week of 2011. The film also includes a ton of familiar faces including Bullock, Tom Hanks, Max Von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman and Jeffrey Jones. Unfortunately for this talented bunch they're simply supporting players with the lead role being taken by Thomas Horn, a young man who had no prior acting experience before being cast in the film's lead role. This to me was one of the key problems with Extremely Loud as the character of Oskar Schell is a tricky one to pull off due to the fact that he suffers from some form of autism. I do feel that even a talented child actor would struggle to make Oskar seem sympathetic so in my opinion Horn was fighting a losing battle. It got to the point that occasionally during the film I just wanted to slap Oskar as Horn wasn't able to convey the fact that his character sometimes spoke out of turn without realising it. As well as including the Academy favourite of a character with a learning difficulty, Extremely Loud's other ace in the hole was that it concentrated on the events of 9/11. Oskar's father Thomas Schell, played by Hanks, was the only person who really understood him and so his son was devastated when he was killed at the World Trade Center. The film centres on Oskar's search to find the lock that fits the key that his father left for him and that had the name Black on it. Although the quest for the mysterious Black is an interesting one, I felt that director Stephen Daldry didn't do enough to make us care about Oskar's end goal.

I personally felt there were only two enjoyable parts of the film the first of which is when Max Von Sydow enters the story as a character simply known as 'The Renter'. The mystery man is renting a house with Oskar's grandmother and cannot speak leading to some interesting odd couple scenes between the pair. It's quite clear that The Renter is Oskar's grandfather as our protagonist starts to notice similarities in the mannerisms between he and his late father. Von Sydow rightfully received Extremely Loud's only nomination although he ultimately lost the Best Supporting Actor fight to Christopher Plummer. I then had to wait until the film's conclusion for something else to grab me namely Sandra Bullock's time to shine as Oskar's mother Linda. Throughout the film Linda had been somewhat of an afterthought but Bullock proved why she'd been cast in the movie during the revelation that her character had been ahead of her son the entire time. The story of Linda's meeting of all of the Blacks was more engaging than anything that Oskar had done during the entire film and it made me wish that we'd have had more of her on screen during the film. Aside from Bullock and Von Sydow everything else about Extremely Loud was felt cloying from the overblown score to the focus on subjects that the producers knew that the Academy loved. I do feel I've been spoilt a bit after watching Hugo, a film with two fine child actors, but I think that if Oskar had been cast more successfully then I would've enjoyed Extremely Loud a little more. Horn had in fact been cast after producer Scott Rudin saw him on a game show and I bet that he regretted his decision after seeing the finished product. Thankfully Horn has now returned to his studies and is putting acting on the back-burner for the time being and let's just hope that his skills have vastly improved if he ever decides to darken the big screen again.

After one film in which I felt she was over-rated and one film in which she wasn't given the chance to shine, I'm glad that Sandra Bullock's talents were finally on display during Gravity. The film is another rare example of the Academy honouring a sci-fi movie, something that still rarely happens despite the increased number of Best Picture nominees. Gravity saw Bullock nominated for her second Best Actress award for playing Mission Specialist Ryan Stone, a biomedical engineer who is currently on her first NASA Mission. The film concentrates on Ryan's predicament after her shuttle is hit with debris from a Russian satellite killing everyone but her and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski. From there the plot of the film sees Ryan and Matt's mission to get to the International Space Station with a limited supply of oxygen between them. Gravity is very simplistic in nature with Alfonso Cuaron's script, which was co-written with his son Jonas, feeling very basic in nature. Ryan is a character who has gone into space after essentially losing everything as her daughter was killed aged just six years old. Meanwhile Matt is the classic veteran who is on his last NASA mission and is eager to return to Earth. I felt it was quite clear what was going to happen to each character but the ride to the finish line was still expertly plotted. Cuaron's Oscar winning direction was one of the main draws of Gravity due to the fact that he made every moment count. At just ninety minutes, Gravity is one of the shortest Best Picture nominees but its running time is one of its strengths as it adds to the intensity of the situation. Eventually separating herself from Matt, Ryan's endeavours continue as she's forced to go it alone and endures several life-threatening situations. The first time I watched Gravity I was literally biting my nails during the final sequence as I waited to see if Ryan would make it to Earth in one piece.

The fact that Gravity had such an emotional impact on me is a credit to all of the team involved in the film. The Academy agreed with that statement awarding Gravity with seven of the ten Oscars it was nominated for that night. Gravity became one of a number of films that won multiple awards without getting the Best Picture nod only beating Cabaret which won eight but lost out to The Godfather. Gravity's wins included two successes in the sound category which to me was one of the movie's key aspects with the silent nature of the space playing a big part throughout. I personally felt the use of sound added to the dramatic effect of the film with Ryan's voice coming slowly into the film as it began. Steven Price's Oscar-winning score was similarly moving as it echoed Ryan's struggles perfectly and added even more tension to the film's final scenes. Whilst she didn't win an award for the film, a lot of praise has to go for Sandra Bullock for being extremely captivating in a film in which she was on screen for every frame. Bullock's facial expressions were perfectly judged as she made the audience sympathise with a woman who still grieving for the daughter she'd lost. Aside from Bullock, the only other cast member with a sizeable role in Gravity was George Clooney who to me seemed to be channelling Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear. Clooney's charisma was fully exploited in the role of Matt although he came good when he had to act as a mentor to Bullock's rookie astronaut. There was a lot of confusion when Gravity took home the award for Best British Film at that year's BAFTAs especially as it's a film with two big American stars and is directed by a Mexican. However the award-winning Production Design and Visual Effects were all done in several English studios. I do believe that Gravity perfectly exemplifies the skill of the British  Film Industry who worked tirelessly to recreate the zero-gravity atmosphere of the movie. I would go as far as to say that Gravity probably deserved to win the Best Picture award over that year's victor as it's an example of great film-making that contains a compelling if basic story and perfectly utilises modern day cinematic techniques.

Next time we focus on the most recent foreign language film to receive a Best Picture nomination.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 425-426: Days of Future Past World Tour

As we've seen throughout the course of this journey very few foreign films are actually nominated for the main Best Picture prize. In fact to this day only nine films not made in the English language have been in contention for Best Picture and none of these have been successful. That's partly why foreign films have their own category at the Oscars which often features better films than those in the Best Picture race. In this post I return to the late 1960s and early 1970s to look at two films from the small group of nine to have found themselves among the five Best Picture nominees.

The first of the two films in this post feels extremely relevant and if I didn't know it already I would've been surprised that it was forty-five years old. Costa-Gavras' Z is an incredibly intense film about the assassination of a communist speaker by the hands of the far right government. Cinematographer Raul Coultard employs an incredibly realistic tone to his camera work meaning that at times you feel like you're watching a documentary. The bulk of the film focuses on Jean-Louis Trintigant's investigating magistrate who attempts to get to the bottom of conflicting statements given by both the assailants and the witnesses. Along the way he discovers false statements, witness intimidation and persecution of anyone who tries to argue with the right-wing establishment. Having previously watched Costa-Gavras' only other Best Picture nominated film Missing I know that his style is very much that of a fly-on-the-wall film-maker. Additionally both films were about political injustice and as a result I found myself getting more and more invested in Z as it went on. Particularly powerful was the final scene in which it was revealed that the majority of the generals who were charged with conspiracy ultimately went free whilst most of the witnesses were killed. Z won that year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar with Françoise Bonnot also being rewarded for his excellent editing of the movie. Another notable element of Z was the fantastic score by Mikis Theodorakis which was at times incredibly jarring but added to the overall feel of the film. Z is an example of a movie that I feel deserved to win Best Picture and I think if it had been released in the English language then it would have done just that. Ultimately I think Z is an outstanding piece of cinema and was more than deserving of winning the Best Picture prize as well as the title of Best Foreign Language film.

The other film in this post, Jan Troell's The Emigrants, also featured in both categories but oddly in different years. This occurred due to the fact that, at the 1972 ceremony, it had only been screened in its native Sweden rather for the larger Academy audience. After attaining a proper screening the following year it was nominated for Best Picture as well as a further three Oscars. The film looks at a group of people, all from the same small province in Sweden, who decide to emigrate to America. This group includes proud farmer Karl-Oscar, his idealistic brother Robert, his wife Kristina, their children and an oddball preacher. My main issue with The Emigrants was the fact that the group didn't get on the boat to America until 90 minutes into this three hour epic. I feel that Troell could've easily have skimmed 45 minutes of the running time had everything happened a little quicker. That being said the second half of the film more than made up for the first with Troell drawing the audience in to the claustrophobic settings of the boat journey from Sweden to the USA. It was in this second half that I became engrossed in the characters' fates partly due to the fact that the performances were fantastic. Liv Ullman, who was nominated for Best Actress, was brilliant as the young mother who was worried that she'd never set foot in America meanwhile Max Van Sydow gave a powerful turn as her strong-willed husband.  The film built up to a great ending which also set up for a sequel, The New Land, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature the same year that The Emigrants featured in the Best Picture category. It's fair to say that The Emigrants is definitely a film of two halves and I definitely struggled to make it through the first part of the feature. Despite the pay-off being rewarding I think the subject of foreign travellers coming to the USA has been dealt with better elsewhere most notably by 1960s nominee America, America. Ultimately The Emigrants was a realistic film with some fine performances but one that suffered from some bad pacing and an inflated running time.

And with that we're back to the present day as I sprint to the finish line next with the final fifty or so Best Picture nominees.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 262: Sibling Rivalry

Continuing our look at stars of the 1970s progression into the new decade, we come to the man who won Best Director at the 1978 ceremony. Nine years later he was nominated in the same category again whilst winning Best Original Screenplay as well as a further two awards going to his fellow cast members. The man in question is Woody Allen and the film is Hannah and her Sisters, which starred his then wife Mia Farrow in the titular role and Allen as her ex-husband. When the film begins, Hannah is seemingly in a happy marriage to second husband Elliot but he is secretly harbouring feelings for her younger sister Lee. The film plots the course of their lives over two years in which Elliot and Lee begin an affair before ending it when he can't seem to end his marriage. Hannah's other sister Holly is the most flighty of the trio; a former drug addict she can't seem to hold down any type of career. At times an actress, caterer and finally a writer, Holly's story is one of failed relationships and doomed business ventures. Allen's Mickey also has his own story in which he fears he may have a brain tumour after losing hearing in one hear. Mickey feels that he should have religion in his life but struggles to make sense of anything. Eventually he relents and tries to enjoy life, or as much as any character that Allen plays can. Oddly, for a Woody Allen film, everybody has a fairly happy ending with all three sisters finding love and marriage in some way or another. 

Whilst Annie Hall was definitely Woody Allen's most-respected work I think that Hannah and Her Sisters is a lot more disciplined. I did find Annie Hall to work like a sketch show at times as it was a number of disjointed scenes thrown together with a loose narrative. Hannah and Her Sisters is much more solid and the stories involving the three sisters were incredibly compelling. The love triangle between Hannah, Elliot and Lee was very well-written and all of the twists and turns along the way made sense. Similarly, Holly's struggles to find something to occupy her time and her difficulty to find a man provided a different sort of story to the romantic complications of the main plot. The scenes between the three sisters, in particular one in which they all set down to dine at a restaurant, rang the most true for me as their feelings for each other finally came out. In fact the only part of the plot that I wasn't a fan of was the story involving Mickey, which for the most part acted completely outside of what was happening to Holly, Hannah and Lee. I did seem that Mickey's troubles were just an excuse for Allen to work in some of his material about religion and existence and it wasn't until the last twenty minutes that the character really became part of the plot. In fact, up to this point, I didn't feel the film particularly needed Mickey and would've worked a lot better without him. 

The tradition of the academy awarding actors for starring in Woody Allen films is a long-standing tradition that still exists today, as we saw with Cate Blanchett's win at the weekend. In terms of Hannah and Her Sisters, Dianne Wiest won Best Supporting Actress for her dazzling turn as the ditzy and unhappy Holly. Similarly impressive was fellow Oscar winner Michael Caine as the depressed Elliot who realised that the grass wasn't greener on the other side. Mia Farrow and Barbara Hershey, as Hannah and Lee, added their own energy to proceedings and the chemistry between the three sisters was perfectly realised. Although I didn't think much of his performance, Allen's script for Hannah and Her Sisters was well-constructed and well-paced. I particularly enjoyed the fact that we heard the inner thoughts of the main players and this narrative structure meant that we learnt more about them than we would have done had their thoughts solely been expressed through dialogue. Allen's win for Best Screenplay would be his last for twenty-five years and Hannah and Her Sisters would be his last appearance in the Best Picture category for the same amount of time. But performers in his films would be more successful even though Allen himself often refused to appear at the ceremony preferring instead to play jazz music at a local bar. 

Changing pace, the next two posts will focus on a newcomer who appeared in no less than five Best Picture nominees over the 1980s and garnered three Best Actor nods during that time. 

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 245: Little Devils

As I've previously discussed in other posts, comedy was a genre that was being sparsely represented at the Oscars in the 1970s. One genre that has rarely had a look in during any of the decades is that of horror which has hardly featured in the last 85 years. In fact it took over forty years for a horror film to garner a nod at the Academy Awards but the film that was given the nomination certainly deserved it.

That film in question was The Exorcist, William Friedkin's version of William Peter Blatty's story. The Exorcist is one of those films that I don't really want to write a plot summary for as I feel a lot of people already know it. But the main bulk of the film is based around actress Chris MacNeill who gets increasingly worried about the behaviour of her twelve year old daughter Reagan. She believes that Reagan's mood swings and uncharacteristic behaviour is due to psychological problems. But in fact her daughter has become possessed by an evil spirit which found its way into their house. Although Reagan's possession and the famous exorcism scenes are what made the film well-known, I feel that this The Exorcist is more about the journey of young priest Damien Karras. The priest and psychiatrist struggles with his faith throughout the course of the film and this story comes to a head following the death of his mother. It's his idea to go through with the exorcism and he ultimately becomes the hero of the tale. Perhaps the film's more memorable priest is Lankester Merrin, who is the exorcist of the title, but he only appears briefly at the start and finish of the movie.

Indeed one of the great things about The Exorcist is the way in which the tension and horror are built up so all of the pivotal characters are involved in the final exorcism scene. Friedkin brilliantly builds up the tension throughout the film, making you question for ages what the problem with Reagan actually is. The interconnecting stories featuring the MacNeils and Damien then come to a head in possibly one of the most famous horror sequences of all time. From the lighting to Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' sequence every part of the film process is used to full effect and I'm personally still freaked out by certain scenes every time I watch The Exorcist. The four central cast members are all fantastic most notably Jason Miller and Max Von Sydow as Karras and Merrin. Doing my research for this post it turned out that the original casting plans could have seen Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando take on the roles. I do feel this would have been a mistake and The Exorcist actually benefited from having a lack of familiar faces. Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair meanwhile are fantastic as the down-to-earth family who are inflicted by an evil demon. Blair in particular should be praised for her Oscar-nominated performance and I do feel she should have won the award. Though The Exorcist was nominated for ten awards, it only won for Sound Editing and its excellent screenplay. However, I do feel that a Best Picture award could have possibly been warranted if only for all the good work that The Exorcist did in promoting the horror genre as a whole.