OSCARS 2012 LIVE BLOG

Wuttup everybody. It is 7:06, this British woman is talking to Jonah Hill. Crowds are cheering, Jessica Chastain is looking amazing, Tim Gunn is talking to Maya Rudolph. We are off to the races y'all.

Oscars 2012 - Final Predictions

Tonight is the night, folks. The 84th Annual Academy Awards. I may or may not be liveblogging the event, it remains to be seen, but at the very least, here are my final predictions for this year's main event. As always, these predictions are not based necessarily on what I think DESERVES to win, but what has the most realistic chance of winning. Hence I have distinguished between "Should Win, Could Win, Will Win." As anyone knows, you can predict the outcome of the Oscars without having seen a single nominated film. This is more about who knows who and politics than anything else. But rather than cast a cynical shade on the proceedings, let's just get to the nominees:


ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Descendants
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Will Win: Moneyball
Could Win: The Descendants
Should Win: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy


ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Artist
Bridesmaids
Margin Call
Midnight in Paris
A Separation

Will Win: The Artist
Could Win: Midnight in Paris
Should Win: Bridesmaids


CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Artist
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Hugo
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Will Win: The Artist
Could Win: War Horse
Should Win: The Tree of Life


SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Berenice Bejo, 'The Artist'
Jessica Chastain, 'The Help'
Melissa McCarthy, 'Bridesmaids'
Janet McTeer, 'Albert Nobbs'
Octavia Spencer, 'The Help'

Will Win: Octavia Spencer
Could Win: Berenice Bejo
Should Win: Melissa McCarthy


SUPPORTING ACTOR

Kenneth Branagh, 'My Week With Marilyn'
Jonah Hill, 'Moneyball'
Nick Nolte, 'Warrior'
Christopher Plummer, 'Beginners'
Max von Sydow, 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close'

Will Win: Christopher Plummer
Could Win: Nick Nolte
Should Win: Christopher Plummer


BEST ACTRESS

Glenn Close, 'Albert Nobbs'
Viola Davis, 'The Help'
Rooney Mara, 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo'
Meryl Streep, 'The Iron Lady'
Michelle Williams, 'My Week With Marilyn'

Will Win: Viola Davis
Could Win: Meryl Streep
Should Win: Michelle Williams


BEST ACTOR

Demian Bichir, 'A Better Life'
George Clooney, 'The Descendants'
Jean Dujardin, 'The Artist'
Gary Oldman, 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'
Brad Pitt, 'Moneyball'

Will Win: Jean Dujardin
Could Win: George Clooney
Should Win: Jean Dujardin


BEST PICTURE

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

Will Win: The Artist
Could Win: The Help
Should Win: The Artist

We've All Got Our Junk.

(Poster design by Philip Romano)

Vocal Miscellany’s production of Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s Spring Awakening is in many ways an homage to the original Broadway production, but far from mere imitation. With a show so beloved by the current student generation, director Dr. Melanie Blood and her cast have put together a performance that pays respect to what we loved about the original show while maintaining a distinct sense of individuality.

Based on the 1890 play by Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening is a rock musical which tells the story of a group of teenagers in late 19th Century Germany struggling to reconcile their growing sexual urges with the repressive nature of their society.

We are first introduced to Wendla, a curious 14-year-old girl, played by junior Alexandra Mendes. With a role often burdened by the shadow of Lea Michele’s original interpretation, Mendes succeeds at making Wendla entirely her own, carrying her sexual ignorance with weary bitterness. This is not the wide-eyed innocent who believes in the stork, this is a young woman who knows she is being lied to and is tired of it.

Her answer arrives in Melchior Gabor, a rebellious classmate who is far more worldly than most kids their age. Sophomore Luke Martin plays Melchior not just as a young man eager to explore the world, but even more so, one who is overwhelmingly saddened that his friends refuse to embrace enlightenment. This choice lends a level of disillusionment to the character that matches Mendes’ Wendla well. Together they are a pair searching in each other for some semblance of hope which cannot be found.

The voice of this hopeless youth is embodied in junior Josh Horowitz’s sensitive portrayal of Moritz Stiefel, Melchior’s best friend, who feels the pressures to succeed more than any other character, ultimately buckling underneath them. Horowitz gives Moritz a tender vulnerability, making his suicide in Act II all the more heartbreaking as the victim of society’s unrealistic expectations.

Also of note are junior Julia Masotti and sophomore Elyssa Ramirez as Martha and Ilse (respectively), two of Wendla’s close friends who are physically and sexually abused by their fathers. In “The Dark I Know Well,” the two young women wail in release of their pent-up anger, letting the audience understand every inch of the pain they have suffered in silence.

Seniors Lauren Scheibly and Brandon DeFilipis achieve the formidable task of portraying all the adult characters, distinguishing their multiple identities while adapting to rapidly changing emotional contexts. In one moment they are grieving parents, the next they are hilarious caricatures of a smarmy headmaster and headmistress.

Overall, SUNY Geneseo has made its mark as one of the first colleges to perform this musical since the close of its Broadway and touring runs. While it certainly has its nods to the original production, it does, without question, make a unique and individual statement thanks to its enormously talented ensemble of actors and designers.

Script Review: Is America Ready for 'Django Unchained'?

Tarantino's hand-written title page of his 'Django Unchained' script.



Quentin Tarantino has described in recent interviews his goal to create companion films that take ugly moments of history and turn them in the style of spaghetti westerns. The first was of course the hugely successful Inglorious Basterds, which rewrote the history of WWII into a revenge film straight out of the wild west. Americans were happy to sit back and watch the good US of A beat the hell out of those Nazi bastards. Something tells me, however, that the general American public will not take so kindly to his follow-up, Django Unchained.

In a nutshell, Unchained tells the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who is freed and mentored by a German bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) in order to rescue Django’s wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the ruthless slave owner, Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). In true spaghetti style, this is an ultimate tale of revenge. Django escalates to the level of mythic hero by the end, and one can hear the sweeping music even from merely reading scene descriptions. Such is Tarantino’s unparalleled eye for genre convention.

However, Tarantino has made it abundantly clear, both from interviews and the unapologetic brutality of the writing, that he wishes to portray this era in American history as the horror story it so undoubtedly was. To give a better picture of what exactly I mean by this, on any given page of the script, hardly two lines go by without someone using the “N” word. What allows him to get away with the offensive language is of course his unrelenting determination to immerse us in the period. The characters talk like this because…well, that’s how these kinds of people talked (whether we like it or not).

Every member of the cast has their work cut out for them. There is no role in the entire film that will not present risks to the careers of even the most famous of the cast. Indeed, probably the most daring individual involved has to be Leonardo DiCaprio, whose success has always seemed bullet-proof. It will be interesting to see how, or possibly if, he will survive the role of Calvin Candie, who is without a doubt one of the most disgusting villains in film, not just by Tarantino standards.

That said, if anyone is up to the challenge it is without a doubt someone with as much clout as DiCaprio, and it is certainly his performance I anticipate the most. Not to overstate, but I feel confident in saying this will be the greatest departure anyone is likely to see from him in his entire body of work. Not many a man would have the guts to go after a villain like Candie, who represents so much more than himself, indeed, he represents the darkest side of America’s national personality.

Kerry Washington also has a hugely formidable task before her. Apparently, Tarantino wrote the role of Broomhilda with her in mind, but was skeptical that she would accept it due to the amount of nudity called for by the role. Indeed, Broomhilda is rarely clothed at any given point in the script, and contrary to Tarantino’s usual trademark of strong women, Broomhilda is repeatedly made a victim. However, I attribute this complete and utter damsel in distress character to Tarantino’s mission to stay true to the conventions of the spaghetti western. The structure is simple: the hero seeks to rescue his love from the clutches of an evildoer. The complexity lies in the setting he has chosen to place this structure, and the clear desired effect it will have on its audience.

Judging from the script, this is probably going to be Tarantino’s most controversial film to date. He has no desire to appeal to “joe popcorn.” This is a niche genre film disguised by a Hollywood A-list cast, which will inevitably broaden its market. However, any audience member will be able to tell almost immediately who among them knew what they are getting themselves into and those who did not. Almost more than I am for the film itself, I am excited to see the reactions of the nation as we are confronted with our darkest period of history laid out before us in 35mm.

"She's different...in every way."

Pictured: Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig

Many people have been presenting David Fincher’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” under the misnomer of “remake.” Of course, the best-selling Steig Larsson series was adapted in 2009 into three Swedish-language films, but the two variations are almost incomparable beyond the fact that they are based on the same source material.

Obviously, the most stand-out point of departure that has indeed been the focus of virtually all attention paid to this film, is the performance of Rooney Mara as the iconic character Lisbeth Salander. Mara handles herself well, but at times reveals a bit too much of her own intimidation of the character. Her Lisbeth is steady and calculating but with a level of insecurity and vulnerability that Noomi Rapace for the most part lacked. Mara’s Salander was much more devoted to a sense of personal justice rather than justice for all. When she goes back for revenge on the man that violated her, it is more to make things right for herself rather than to act as crusader to the universal victim.

The black and white perception of morality that so defines the character is there, but not to the universal degree that it was with Rapace, which was, in my own opinion, the greatest strength of her interpretation of the role. Mara’s strength is her ability to connect with the emotional life of the character, honing in on the few things she genuinely does care deeply about. With a role that can so easily descend into “badass female” cliché, Mara’s frailty combats her appearance into a very complicated, if not quite as remorseless sense of the character. This is not to say one is better than the other, but each actress gave what the other lacked. Combine the two performances into one, then we would have the true Lisbeth Salander of Larsson’s novels.

In what does become a rather convoluted plotline (all those Vangers!) Fincher characteristically keeps the story fast, but evenly paced, while still presenting a surprisingly comprehensive adaptation of the novel. What changes were made were excusable and necessary to maintaining the atmosphere of Fincher’s vision of the story, which seems to be to create the effect of retreating ice as one by one the events unfold.

Daniel Craig, as disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist, the man hired to investigate the 40-year-old crime that makes up the plot, successfully de-Bond’s himself into a curious but self-conscious makeshift detective. His chemistry with Mara is spot-on as a kind of platonic if not paternal figure, but they still remain completely believable as not only business, but romantic partners. Fincher has repeatedly stated in interviews that for him, the heart of the story lies in the relationship between Blomkvist and Salander as a new breed of good-cop bad-cop, and it is clear that this was his chief conceptual focus. I would certainly not be the first to say it was extremely successful. Mara and Craig, Mara in particular, turn an extremely plot-driven thriller into an intimate portrait of two lost souls, and indeed that seems to be exactly what Fincher, and quite probably Larsson himself, had in mind.

She's Just a Picture

Pictured: Elizabeth Olsen and John Hawkes



Aside from its difficulty to say in a conversation, the title of Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene in fact gives you all the information you really need in summing up this mysterious and unsettling piece. For even in its final frames, the film bravely refuses to answer its most burning question: who is this girl?

MMMM gives us Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) a young woman who has spent two years living in upstate New York as a member of a small, subsistence-oriented cult, centered around a man named Patrick (John Hawkes). It is here that she gains her three extraneous names. We first meet Martha as she escapes from them, finding refuge with her somewhat-estranged sister Lucy (Sara Paulson) and Lucy’s husband Ted (Hugh Dancy), an affluent early-30s couple who live in a Connecticut lake house, where they invite Martha to stay with them. It quickly becomes apparent that their lack of understanding of what Martha has been through is not only damaging to Martha’s recovery, but to their own sanity as sister, wife, and husband.

Mr. Durkin allows his audience to know what is happening now and what has happened immediately prior. No more, no less. This leads to some frustrating holes in understanding the character of Martha, but is clearly a crucial element in the way Mr. Durkin has chosen to tell his story, as her anonymity is part of what makes the film so chilling. There is an eeriness to the blunt immediacy of this kind of storytelling, and given its subject matter (the seduction of cult lifestyle and the rejection thereof) such an undefined heroine allows us to project ourselves onto her vulnerability and ask that terrifying question of “Could this happen to me?”

With so little to take from the script as far as character history and relationships, Elizabeth Olsen’s performance can be considered nothing short of extraordinary. The camera focuses so often on her young, wide-eyed face that by the end one can interpret that one flinch of an eyelid speaks to the world of confusion and frustrated hurt beneath its surface.

The back-and-forth between the two worlds of past and present gives the story not only its structural complexity, but moral as well. Though no audience member could ever approve of the cult’s practices (one of which requires all newly inducted women – girls, rather - to be drugged and forced into sex with their leader, Patrick), its “acceptance of all” values and the soft warmth and charm of John Hawkes as Patrick make us realize that maybe Martha’s choice to leave the group was not so simple as we would feel comfortable believing. After all, she meant something there, her life had purpose, even if it was only to be the favorite of the man who controlled her.

That said, we are never led to believe she regrets her decision to escape. No, what we are left with at the end is a young woman who cannot reconcile the life she led, the life she was promised, and the life that awaits her in a world much bigger than the one she has come to know living on a farm in Upstate New York. She has abandoned one vision of right and wrong for another, one that allows her to own her body and her choices vs. one where she is scolded for swimming nude. When Lucy finally begs of Martha, “What happened to you?” and Martha, overwhelmed, collapses her head in her hands and sobs, “I don’t know!” we have no doubt this is the truth.

A second Earth, a second chance

There is a moment in Another Earth in which one of the many voice-over commentators suggests that we are always striving to step outside of ourselves. To see ourselves objectively and converse as if our mind were a separate person entirely. Screenwriters Mike Cahill and Brit Marling (the director and the film’s star, respectively) take this thought to its most literal extreme: What if there was in fact an alternate earth that held an alternate you with perhaps even an alternate life?

Another Earth tells the story of Rhoda Williams, a young woman who, on the night it is discovered we may not be so alone, causes a fateful car accident that claims the lives of a pregnant mother and her young son, leaving the father in a coma. This exposition, as well as the initial introduction to the sci-fi conceit, sends the film off to a rocky start in terms of pacing, but finds its footing once we catch up to Rhoda four years later upon her release from prison.

The film seems to be frustrated by its need to explain the semantics of the concept surrounding “Earth 2” as well as the sequence of events that leads Rhoda to scoring a ticket aboard the maiden voyage, and it is in these moments where the greatest disconnect occurs. Details and plot devices are either carelessly tossed into dialogue, making it at times groaningly heavy-handed, not to mention the preposterous essay contest Rhoda enters to try and win a ticket, which she of course does.

The heart of the film lies in its human story, and Cahill is wise to pay most of his attention there. Rhoda, unable to live with what she has done, seeks out the sole survivor of the accident: John Burroughs (William Mapother), who has emerged from his coma to become a depressive recluse. She knocks on his door with the intention of apologizing, but when nerves get the best of her she fabricates a story about a cleaning service that leads her much farther into his life than she had expected, or perhaps wanted to go.

Once the film enters its second act, in which Rhoda and John become perhaps dangerously close, the two plotlines converge into the film’s true purpose: exploring the preoccupation with “what ifs” inherent in us all. Surely someone who has been through what Rhoda and John have would spend every moment of their days with such analysis. The idea of “Earth 2” allows them the rare chance to take these maddening questions seriously, on the promise that perhaps somewhere out there they really had made a different series of choices and none of this tragedy had ever occurred.

By the conclusion of the film, one is left with several unexpectedly existentialist questions, the biggest of all coming in the final image. With delicate (if at times uneven) performances from its leads, superb direction and editing from Cahill (the repeated image of Rhoda walking beside the looming Earth 2 on the horizon is breathtaking every time) Another Earth succeeds in its goal as a meditation on regret, forgiveness, and the infinite complexities of life which none of us can control. If nothing else, this is a unique film that deserves to be commended for its originality and spirit.



Pictured: Brit Marling and William Mapother