Two Best Picture Possibilities: Boyhood and Selma

The Golden Globes show, and movie award season, is just hours away. I've been able to catch up with the list of nominated movies available in Reno. It's not quite as much as much as the selection I used to enjoy in Sacramento. Otherwise, I would have seen Whiplash and Foxcatcher by now. It seems those movies won't be in Reno until they reach Redbox. American Sniper, though, will likely be in theaters sooner or later.

Anyway, this weekend, I got to see two likely Best Picture nominees when the Academy makes its choices on Thursday. Thanks to Redbox, I saw Boyhood, a movie that was literally 12 years in the making, Writer and director Richard Linklater decided to make a movie about a boy's life from six to 18 in real time. That means the main character Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, was filmed all that time. That also goes for his sister Samantha, played by Lorilei Linklater (yep, his daughter), and the parents played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette. The movie shows Mason's milestones, and how his family evolves with him. It's been getting attention because Linklater did this coming-of-age story in real time. The main actors actually had to set aside time to make the movie, no matter what they were doing.

While the movie centers on Mason's boyhood days, it also shows how the parents evolve, too. Arquette starts as a single mom set to move to Houston and go back to school, She marries her professor, but that does not work. There's a scene at the dinner table that is very difficult to see.
Hawke, as Mason Sr., starts as a dad who seems a bit irresponsible, but he also changes his life. Samantha's relationship with her mom is also interesting. There's some really good acting by the main characters. Usually a coming of age movie covering 12 years involves having more than one actor for the son or daughter. Not here.

The movie has been the near-unanimous choice for Best Picture by lots of movie critics competitions from L-A to New York. Still, if there's any flaw in the movie, it doesn't have much of a plot. It's just the story of a boy, and the many milestones in his life. It's also very long, at 2:45, which may have put off some Oscar voters. Still, the acting and directing in this movie are still first-rate. It'll probably do very well in the Spirit Awards, but I don't think it's an absolute lock for Best Picture in any of the upcoming awards. There's already been some backlash, but the real test will start tonight.

Then I went to see Selma, which has been under historic scrutiny lately. While I did read up on it, I just looked at the movie as the story of how injustice was fought by Martin Luther King and his supporters. People are especially upset that it makes President Johnson look like someone who didn't care Blacks were being killed in the South just because they want to vote. I think he cared, but he was obsessed with other things, poverty and Vietnam especially. Maybe he thought if he solved those problems, he could do everything after that without much opposition. He does figure out King was right, and it's done in an interesting way.

I was also impressed by Ana DuVernay's direction. Early in the movie, we see four girls in a church talking about things, then an explosion suddenly happens. We see it's that church that was blown up in Birmingham, AL in the fall of 1963. It makes a big impression of what someone people will do to prevent Blacks from exercising a right the Constitution gave them nearly a hundred years before.
There's also a scene where Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo) is hearing a tape supposedly delivered by the FBI (which historians say never happened, but a similar note was sent) that also supposedly gives proof King cheated on his wife. Seeing both of them dealing with that tape, whether it's true or not, speaks volumes of how much they are devoted to each other. The scenes of the march at the Pettis Bridge, including the violent response from the Alabama state troopers, was also very impressive.

David Oyelowo is just incredible as King, especially when he makes his speeches calling for the President to do something. Ejogo is also good as Mrs. King. Tom Wilkinson is also very good as LBJ, but Tim Roth was even better as Governor George Wallace. It is amazing what he does to preserve his state's way of life, while claiming his hands are tied when it comes to county offivials and sheriffs doing what they can to keep Blacks from registering. Oyelowo could conceivably win for Best Actor, and DuVernay could give Alejandro Gonzalez Inrarritu a run for his money in the Best Director race, too.

However, it is too bad the producers took too long to get screeners to SAG and BAFTA voters, which is why the movie won't be part of those award shows. That also means the last word on who is the best in movies this year will come on Oscar night. The Globes and the Critics Choice Awards will be this year's version of the "New Hampshire Primary" of the award season, while the SAGs won't be "Super Tuesday". No matter what, the real race starts Thursday.

For the record, Birdman should be Best Picture. It may also have a gimmick, just like Boyhood, but its story of an actor trying to escape the one role he's been identified with, and how that story is told,
makes it the Best Movie this year.

How We Choose A President of Movies (Updated)

This weekend is an interesting one. While most people are looking forward to the AFC and NFC championships, there are others who feel a bit lost.

For movie buffs who may also be disgruntled Packers and Broncos fans,  it's the weekend in between the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. They may wonder whether they should see Silver Linings Playbook again, or why Amour, a Best Picture nominee and the favorite for Best Foreign Language Film, is shown in only 15 theaters...in this country! More people should have the chance to know how good this movie may be. Hopefully, that will change after the SAGs.

The point is, the Oscar race is becoming more like a presidential campaign. Washington has PACs, the Oscars have Harvey Weinstein. The election has political parties, Hollywood has studios. Candidates lobby for votes in caucuses and primaries, actors lobby for votes from every critics society from Los Angeles to New York. Until this year, I never knew there were movie awards given out in St. Louis and San Diego.
This point was proven beyond all doubt when people heard about problems with the Oscar online voting system when nominees were chosen. There were complaints about not getting to the site or casting a vote, or not being able to get a paper ballot instead. Some people must have gotten flashbacks to Florida in 2000, and hanging chads. This is the real reason Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow aren't in the Best Director race.

There's also the lobbying from the press. Some reporters complained Zero Dark 30 allegedly argued that torture led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, although others may argue the movie shows that the real key was a detail most people didn't notice. There were also comments that Lincoln, Argo and ZD 30 weren't historically accurate. That's not too different from political pundits nitpicking on candidates they don't like. Why else did we hear such comments on  Fox News and MSNBC?

So if electing a "president of movies" is just like choosing our president, what does that make the awards fans see on TV every January?
Never mind the People's Choice Awards. That's just a poll with trophies. The Critics Choice Awards would be the Iowa caucuses. The Golden Globes are the New Hampshire primary. The Screen Actors Guild Awards are just like Super Tuesday, since actors make up the biggest voting block within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In recent years, whoever wins in the Golden Globes often pick up the rest of the major awards right up to the Oscars. I can't remember three different people winning for one category, making the Oscar race truly wide open. It's just like what happened in last year's presidential race. We basically know who's going to be the major nominees a year before the election. It's been the same story for the most part in the major movie awards.
Who wouldn't want to be a competitive race right up to the Oscars? I was excited about whether Viola Davis could beat Meryl Streep for Best Actress last year. I would like to see a similar battle between Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence. If Lawrence wins in the SAGs, we may get that. However, Chastain may get the edge from voters who will support her as a way of supporting Kathryn Bigelow.
A similar situation could emerge in the Supporting Actor race. While Christoph Waltz earned his Golden Globe, I suspect others may support Philip Seymour Hoffman or Tommy Lee Jones instead because Django Unchained may have been too violent for them. If Hoffman or Jones wins next week, we have a race, and more interest.

While choosing the Best Movie, Actor or even Best Song in the major award shows every year may be just like how we choose a president, there's one fact that seems to prove they're not similar: we never find out how many votes each Oscar nominee received.

That may be true, but a campaign is a campaign. All that's missing is a negative ad campaign against nominees.
Then again, remember when Selma Hayek hosted Saturday Night Live? She seemed to invent negative ads so she could win in Frieda. It was a joke, of course, until it happens for real.

Update: Jennifer Lawrence did win Best Actress at the Screen Actors Guild awards last night. So we have a race come Oscar time, as we had between Viola Davis (who won in the SAGs last year) and eventual Oscar winner Meryl Streep. I still say Chastain wins at the Oscars thanks to the Best Director votes Kathryn Bigelow would have gotten. According to some, Ben Affleck also being snubbed may lead to more Best Picture votes for Argo.  For Supporting Actor, Tommy Lee Jones won, which means he may get the edge at the Oscars because Django may be too violent for some voters. The voting starts in a few days, and we'll find out who wins, and if Seth MacFarland can host a major awards show, in four weeks.

How I Was At Golden Globes...Sort of

As I said before, I had hoped to get close to the red carpet to the Golden Globes at the Beverly Hilton. Thing is, they did a good job keeping people away. It's easier to be across the street from the Kodak Theater the week before the Oscars, which I did a few years back. At least there, you have the chance to hold an Oscar.
So I had to settle for people starting the preparations two days before where once would see this:



and the famous E! shrine



However, the Globes did give a few hundred people a chance to be in the same room as Angelina Jolie and Pedro Almodovar, for starters. It took place at the Egyptian, thanks to American Cinematique. They had a discussion of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. Here's Jolie with Asghar Fahardi, who made the movie that will probably win awards by the ton, A Separation.



and Jolie by herself....

.

I was also there for Almodovar, who made The Skin I Live In, which I HAVE to see after I missed my chance before. I think his translation, who he didn't really need, looks like someone from one of his movies....



It was a pretty good discussion of the people behind the movies. Jolie admits she's not a filmmaker, but she certainly learned a lot about bringing Land of Blood and Honey, a very important story, to the screen. Some of the cast was in the audience, and she certainly praised them. The movie is about love in the time of the civil war in Yugoslavia back in the 80s. She points out the couple in the story was born in the same hospital back in Yugoslavia, but the war forced them to be on opposite sides. Jolie was also able to make basically two versions, English and native language. We're getting the latter version, and hopefully it will head to Sacramento soon.

Almodovar also talked about how he had to learn the filming process from using Super 8 films (hello, JJ Abrams) and even doing all the jobs himself. That's why he admitted he'd have a tough time trying to make a movie in the U-S in the usual way we make movies. He'd drown in the permits alone.

There was also the Dardennes brothers, who make The Kid With A Bike, about a young boy deserted by his father but taken care of by a hairdresser. They said it was based on the story of a Japanese orphan who wound up killing someone. In this movie, we have an orphan who finds another way to deal with his situation.

I was really happy that Fahardi was there. He's the guy behind A Separation, which will likely get Oscar gold next month (and then the next day some radio pundit will claim that Oscar will be the final piece Iran needs to build a bomb to kill us all). Well, he admits the movie doesn't represent all of Iran. It shows a middle class family dealing with the mom (Simin) and dad (Nader) separating because she wants to leave and he has to take care of his dad with Alzheimer's. Caught in the crossfire is their daughter Termeh (played by Farhadi's daughter). Nader hires a maid who has a young daughter, and she takes care of his dad. Things get difficult when Nader fires the maid after she ties his dad to his bed to keep him from wandering off, and is also accused of stealing. He pushes the maid out of the house, and suddenly he hears the maid's in the hospital due to a miscarriage. There's even more twists to the story about how one couple's decision can affect many more people. It's a situation that fits any nation and any faith. Fahardi calls this movie a detective story, in a way. He also talked about how we are all the same although politics, here and in Iran, tend to emphasize the differences.
Fahardi spoke mainly Farsi at the panel, although he spoke good English when he won the Golden Globes the next night. I am sure he felt more comfortable in his native language. By the way, here's where it played in L-A, the Royal. It may not look like much on the outside. Inside, though, it's one VERY nice place to see a film.



Sadly, the director of The Flowers of War with Christian Bale, couldn't make it. Otherwise, they would have talked about that movie. They should have tried.

Maybe I could have tried to get as close to the red carpet the next night, but this is more complicated than a movie premiere. Just as well. Besides, at least it convinced me to go to that flea market at Fairfax High School and find some very rare stuff for a song.