The Golden Compass (2007)

The Golden Compass may well be one of the most controversial family films of all time. Based on the novel “Northern Lights”, the first of author Philip Pullmans “His Dark Materials Trilogy”, it is a children’ fantasy of the Lewis/ Tolken variety, save that instead of a vaugley defined Christianity, the philosophical underpinnings of both the author and the story are atheistic. In fact author Pullman would hate the comparisons to Lewis, in an interview with Newsweek magazine some months ago he denounced the venerated Christian author and apologist, and accused his beloved Narina books of being vile and unfit for children. These accusations will surely cause a degree of recoil from Lewis’s fan, but that is not to say that Pullman isn’t worth listing to.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars and called it "a darker, deeper fantasy epic than the Rings trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia or the Potter films," saying that it "creates villains that are more complex and poses more intriguing questions. As a visual experience, it is superb. As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging [...] I think [it] is a wonderfully good-looking movie, with exciting passages and a captivating heroine." (Wikipedia)

Indeed Golden Compass excels as pure fantasy escapist fun. I found myself enthralled by the film, it has all the right elements for the iconic children’s parable, charismatic lead, likable ensemble cast, beautiful vista’s, fantastic special effects, epic battles and a youthful sense of wonder and possibility. When you see young Lyra bouncing about the arctic waists on a talking polar bear king, well that’s just awesome, makes one feel like a child and how can you not love that.

I suppose however that is the problem so many have with the film, and by extension the book series from which it was derived (much as with the Potter series). It’s quite compelling and geared to children and hence has great potential to have an influence on their thinking. I will side step the arguments about the books themselves however and focus on the movie itself. Regardless of how much criticism the film has gotten from conservative Christians on account of its source material, its gotten even more from the atheist and secularist community for toning down from that same source material.

To succeed as a family film in America you can’t be overtly anti-religious. Thusly if you didn’t know to look for the controversy in this movie, you might not even see it. In Pullmans book the evil organization that rules over Lyria’s parallel Earth is called the Magisterium, and it is a stand in for the Roman Catholic Church, though in more of a Fascist/medieval forum then the current institution. In the movie the term Magisterium stays but its exact nature is more amorphius. You can recognize a Pope figure, the dogmatism, and oddly named managerial bodies, but the name of God is never evoked, and in the movie the Magisterium mostly just occupies the same role ‘The Empire’ would in a Star Wars film.

If the movie teaches children anything directly its not to trust everything adults tell them. This is true, and children should learn this, I’d say the only real point of discussion on the matter should be how far you take that, and in that area Compass offers as many examples of good and honest adults as it does bad and secretive ones. Frankly if you let your young children see Happy Feet, I can’t see philosophically why you wouldn’t let slightly older ones see this movie (though that evil polar bear getting his jaw torn off is kind of shocking). I liked it, it’s as good of a liberal children fantasy film as your ever likely to see.

Once (2007)

Irish indie is a little treasure of a movie made for less then $150,000. Though the story is about the forming of a relationship and the recording of an album, it is neither re-canned Hollywood or a niche music scene film. The characters and stories all feel very real, more like a portion of some peoples lives then a traditional movie narrative. In fact the movie makers take a fair number of risks, including long takes and not montaging or otherwise editing the music sequences, at least during each songs first appearance. It’s a Once in a great while film that is likely to surprise you with its rich pure simplicity.

Big Love: Season 2 (2007)

To me the most significant episode of the second season of HBO’s Big Love is episode number 11 "Take Me As I Am". Now this may not be the most interesting of the episodes in terms of its portrail of fundamentalists Mormons, or even in the dramatic or story arc sense, but I think it says the most about mainline Mormons we’ve seen this season.

In this episode Barb Henrickson attempts the delicate dance of a reconciliation with her mother, played by Ellen Burstyn in an Emmy worthy performance. Burstyn’s Nancy captures so much of a certain generation of Mormon women, I was nearly floored to see this type so fully realized on television. Mormons may say what they like about this program but the writers know us, they know who we are as a people and what we go through.

Nancy was of course deviated when she learned that her daughter Barbra was leaving the mainline LDS faithful to follow her husband Bill into polygamy. As if the prospect of her daughters apostasy for an ill-esteemed martial arrangement was not enough of a blow, it was brought about by Bill, the one time lost boy of polygamous parentage, whom Nancy and her late first husband had taken into there home as a teenager. Nancy simply could not coupe, a common enough reaction among any Mormon mother whose child leaves the fold, whether for polygamy, atheism, or some other religious affiliation. She cut of contact with her daughter because it just reminded her of her pain.

When Nancy got engaged to an old family friend Barb read about it in the newspaper and started a renewed effort to re-establish contact. She missed her mom and loved her, she felt betrayed that she would have to learn about as important an event as remarriage from the news. Barb also had other reasons for this reconciliation, she wanted her children to be exposed to more mainstream Mormon influences as she had always been torn, and never fully accepted, the change that fundamentalist Mormonism had brought to her family, and the effects it was having on her children, particularly her son who was becoming quite enamored of “The Principle”.
Eventually arrangements are made for Barb to bring her children to the wedding reception and for Ben (the son) to accompany the older couple on a honeymoon trip to Sun Valley. But Barb stays and tries to be a part of the gathering, which becomes all the more complicated with Bills later arrival at the reception.

It is during the reception scenes that we view this beautiful dance of two pained souls longing for reunion. Nancy is so hurt, and the quality of her voice just speaks volumes. We learn about her personal, potentially quiatoic quest to both obey and change the church to which she belongs. How here tolerance, though perhaps limited from outside perspectives, allowed her to invite an ill favored lesbian aunt to Thanksgiving dinners. How she turgid through more then forty years worth of a bad marriage because she believed in marriage, believed in family and believed in the Church. We see in Nancy the mainstream embodiment of what we see in the Hendrickson’s, that a demanding faith that can cost so much, can still be so central and so beloved, that a Mormon can not leave it. It is the cause of so many of there problems, yet also there balm of Gilded. This is an encapsulation of what I love about Big Love, it captures the beautiful and painful paradoxes of Mormonism, and is oddly the best and most honest depiction of the faith I have ever seen on television.

My Oscar Picks for the 80th Annual Academy Awards

So its time again for me to put down my Oscar picks, bearing in mind I give myself until before the broadcast on Sunday night to change any of these. I usally average about 14 of the 24 competative catagories correct, but I am operting out of an Oscar season where my ability to access the predictions of others has been less reliabel then in previous years. Well here it goes.

Actor in a Leading Role:

No Question this will be won by Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood. This is as inevatible as Helen Mirrian last year for The Queen.

Actor in a Supporitng Role:

Probably the most competative catagory this year. My heart wants to give it to Hal Holbrook for Into the Wild (my real pick for the best picture of 2007, though it is not nominated in that catagory), though I think it will go to a deserving Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men. Though Tom Wilkinson could upset for Micheal Clayton.

Actress in a Leading Role:

Julie Christie in Away From Her. Though Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose could upset.

Supporting Actress in a Leading Role:

No idea, so I'm going for Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone.

Best Original Screenplay:

Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Sorry Juno this was better written.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Christopher Hampton, Atonement

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:

Katyn, Poland (Random guess, I don't really do Foreign films well.)

ANIMATED FEATURE:

It's going to be Ratatouille. I'd like to see Persepolis win.

ORIGINAL SCORE:

Dario Marianelli, Atonement. It's a shame There Will Be Blood was not nominated in this catagory.

ORIGINAL SONG:

"That's How You Know", Enchanted

ART DIRECTION

Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer, Atonement

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood

COSTUME DESIGN

Jacqueline Durran, Atonement

MAKEUP

Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald, La Vie en Rose (Much deserved)

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Sicko It may not win, but it's the best thing Micheal Moore ever did so I'm voting for it.

SOUND MIXING

Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter Kurland, No Country for Old Men

SOUND EDITING

Christopher Scarabosio and Matthew Wood, There Will Be Blood Awsome sound editing, you don't usally notice, but you notice in this its so powerfull.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Michael Fink, Bill Westenhofer, Ben Morris and Trevor Wood, The Golden Compass

FILM EDITING

Roderick Jaynes, No Country for Old Men

========================================
Random Grab-Bag Voting Catagories I Never Get Right:

SHORT FILM - ANIMATED

"Madame Tutli-Putli"

SHORT FILM - LIVE ACTION

"At Night"

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

"La Corona (The Crown)"

================================

DIRECTOR

Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood

BEST PICTURE

Atonement

Tone in to find out the true results when the Oscars air this Sunday night on ABC.

Divide and Conquer (1943); The Battle of Britain (1943)

Two entry’s from Frank Capra’s ‘Why We Fight’ series. The first covers the German advance from the conquest of Denmark to the fall of France, the second the German’s frustrated efforts to demoralize and conquer the British. While propaganda these films are marvelously done and almost astoundingly fair. The failures of the Allies and victors of the Axis receive there due attention, and it seems the goal is to be so honest as to prove Allied moral superiority, if not complete (at that time) military superiority. There are of course digs at the Germans, who are generalisticly characterized as a regimented people who don’t understand democracy, but given the nature of the Nazi state this seems to have been largely the case. This is an always stimulating film series worthy of the attention of any World War Two afficionado.

This is Spinal Tap (1982)

The first of the of the Guest/Shearer school of mockumentary’s seems the most subtle, you can buy Spinal Tap as a rock n’ roll band in a way you can’t buy The Folksman as folk musicians. Numerous cameo’s abound and the arc of the American tour seems, again, comicly plausible when compared to other rockumentary’s. Everything subsequent in the genera was really derived from this.

Scarlet Street (1945)

Director Fritz Lang re-teamed the leads from his 1945 hit ‘Women in the Window’ for this superior noir. Lang pushes the envelop much further in this film, giving us an ending that’s as far away from the previous movies arguable cop-out resolution as possible. The characters here are less redeemable too, with Joan Bennet playing the consument spoiled femme fatal “lazy legs”, and Edward G. Robinson a pathetic failure of a man, undone by lack of courage. Provocative for its time it can more then hold a modern audience. I’ve got to netflix me more Lang.

The In-Laws (1979)

I actually liked the 2003 remake, but my parents told me that the original was funnier, and I suppose it is because it’s the original, though the two are quite similar. How can you go wrong with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, I’d like to see those two paired up again in a ‘Grumpy Old Men’ type of format. The guy who played the pleasantly crazy Latin American dictator did a good job.

Cloverfied (2008)

Godzila meets Blair Witch movie is actully pretty awsome. A Great big screen experince, enjoyabley intense. 9/11 overtones and sympathetic young cast of unknowns allow film to transcand corny 'monster movie' statues.

Roy Scheider: 1932-2008 (He was so good in All That Jazz).

Hairspray (1988)

Original Jon Waters film is as fun as musical remake. Camp as high art works surprisingly well, and I’m pretty sure that was a young Jon Stewart as one of the dancers.

Juno (2007)

Indie of such exquisite construction so as to pass as mainstream film. I’d been fascinated by actress Ellen Page’s face since her small role in X-Men 3, and she proves to be quite compelling in her unique characterization as Juno. The music and supper sharp dialogue bespeak a certain amount of posing, but the uniformly good ensemble cast anchors things to an empathetic core. Still I wasn’t quite as moved by this as some others, though I confess it did stay with me for a while.

Michael Clayton (2007)

Michael Clayton is a skilled lawyer and gambling addict with a failed marriage, disappointed son, floundering side business, and a good case of the self hate’s. He’s seventeen years at a prestigious Manhattan law firm but he hasn’t made partner, that’s because instead he’s the firms fixer, capable of subsuming all humanity to get the job done. Only we can’t fully subsume our humanity, or if we can were arguably dangerous enough to be locked up. There are avenues to Michael’s humanity, plenty of them, only he’s largely given up on himself. However his old mentor (Tom Wilkinson) thinks he’s destined to help him fulfill a divine mission, and circumstances beyond his control might just get the depressed man to a place where he can do just that.

Michael Clayton is about Rot, rot at the heart of law, and argo-business, and human relationships. It all reminds me of one of those plunging Paddy Chayefsky screenplays from the 70's (especially the Tom Wilkinson part, he’s a character straight out of Chayefsky), only its not quite so overtly satirical. It works better then ‘A Civil Action’ or ‘Runaway Jury’ or any of a similar lot of “message” law films, largely because its less about the message and more about the humanity. An excellent movie, it’s now my favorite of George Clooney’s works.

The Valet (2006)

French comedy in which a billionaire must pass off a parking valet as the boyfriend of his supermodel mistress, in order to save his marriage to the women who owns 60% of his company. Gad Elmaleh brings the right touch to his role as the working class valet who wants nothing more then to marry his childhood sweetheart. Alice Taglioni is beautiful and sympathetic as the model. I couldn't help thinking about the Sarkosy afair throughout the whole movie. Simple light comedy.

Miracle (2004)

Disney’s straight forward telling of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey teams unexpected road to Gold, and defeat of the imposing Soviet team. Good but not great, strictly formula but one that generally works. Helped by my intrinsic desire to see communists embarrassed.

My Reputation (1946)

The lonely young widow of an executive (Barbara Stanwyck) finds love with a confirmed bachelor and career army officer (George Brent), only to have her happiness threatened by gossipy old bittie’s (complete with furs and feathers). Well realized melodrama gives you a strong sense of the characters as real people, complete with quarks, complex histories and interrelationships. Stanwyck in full sympathetic mode in what she herself listed as one of her favorite roles, also Brent has some great dialog as the playboy major. Based on the novel “Instruct my Sorrows”by Clare Jaynes. A little find of a movie.