Oscar Nominees:
Ingrid Bergman ... Autumn Sonata
Ellen Burstyn ... Same Time, Next Year
Jill Clayburgh ... An Unmarried Woman
Jane Fonda ... Coming Home
Geraldine Page ... Interiors
Mazur Nominees:
Ingrid Bergman & Liv Ullmann ... Autumn Sonata
Granted, it didn’t have a lot going for it at the time. That cinematic Antichrist himself, Shawn Date Night at the Museum for the Pink Panther Levy was set to direct, and while pleasant to look at, Hugh Jackman appeared to be spinning his superstar wheels in yet another grinding action effort. Then the teaser trailer arrived, and suddenly, Real Steel looked like it might actually be pretty good. The premise - a future world where robots fought to the mechanical death for the amusement of a jaded population - had promise (it was based on a short story by genre ace Richard Matheson and was actually made into a memorable episode of the old Twilight Zone) and with today’s ever polished CG, the F/X should/would blow us away. Without more of the plot, Real Steel felt like Stuart Gordon’s underappreciated Robot Jox, except with a splash of improved eye candy.
Then the latest preview hit the Web yesterday, and all genre goodwill just…died. To see what Levy had done to the idea, to see how the entire movie switched gears from a action packed punch-out to a warmed over Kazam was crushing. Who knew that this high tech tentpole for the Fall of 2011 was an interactive video game adaptation of The Champ, complete with a washed up pugilist (Jackman) looking for redemption, an equally out to pasture automaton that everyone pegs as an underdog, and a precious whiny weepy little brat (Dakota Boyo) making sure that everything that happens is a directly result of his desire to have the entire future shock world revolve around his pug nosed snottiness. Oh course, he’s also the son of a distant and disaffected Jackman.
It’s called “suspension of disbelief.” It’s that desirable commodity that genre filmmakers hope will lead audiences to follow their sometimes specious flights of fancy wherever they go. From a brave new world fashioned out of the shape of things to come to monsters making meals out of hordes of hedonistic teens, if you don’t buy the premise - or in the end, the payoff - you can’t get lost in the narrative, and without said ability to figuratively disappear, nothing works. For the first 45 minutes or so of the unique Uruguayan spook show, La Casa Muda (aka The Silent House), we settle in for a suspense-filled night of dread. But by the hour mark, our terror tolerances are waning, and when the twist ending comes…well, let’s just say that one’s cinematic skepticism it tested to the very limits.
Supposedly based on a true story (from the 1940s) and fashioned in a single take - again, that’s questionable - director Gustavo Hernández tells the story of Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso). They have come to an abandoned home owned by their friend Nestor (Abel Tripaldi) with hopes of fixing it up quickly and putting it on the market. While father and daughter settle in for the next few days, their association goes out for some food. Almost immediately, Laura starts to hear noises upstairs. Having been warned not to venture up there, Wilson decides to defy such a suggestion and investigate. Soon, he goes missing. Laura then hears more strange sounds. Then Wilson turns up bound, gagged and bloody. As she tries to figure out what is happening, our heroine is convinced that someone…or something else is in the house with her. Before long, the truth of said terror becomes all too clear.
Oscar Nominees:
Penelope Cruz ... Volver
Judi Dench ... Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren ... The Queen
Meryl Streep ... The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet ... Little Children
Mazur Nominees:
Maggie Cheung ... Clean
When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on 27 December 2007, her family was horrified but not altogether shocked. Indeed, they believed she was never quite safe in her homeland, Pakistan. According to Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara’s documentary, premiering 10 May on PBS, hers was a life of tumult and tragedy: for all her commitment to public service—elected twice to be Pakistan’s Prime Minister—she also felt compelled by a kind of destiny. In addition, Educated at Harvard and Oxford, a woman of great intellect and expectations, she was picked by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to succeed him as political heir (this being a departure from Muslim tradition, to hand down legacies to sons). Bhutto agreed to an arranged marriage as a means to navigate her career, only to have her husband Asif Ali Zardari, spend 11 of their 17 years as man and wife in prison. Indeed, she also spent many years in detention, as Pakistani military leaders sought ways to contain her. Sorting through Pakistan’s remarkably complex history, replete with strife, violence, and corruption, the movie posits Bhutto as a devoted mother as well as an embodiment of democracy—and so, hope and freedom. Her energy and persistence are revealed in archival interviews, adoring crowd scenes, and haunting images of her white scarf blowing in the wind. These conventional visuals are punctuated by lively music soundtrack choices (including Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam) as well as animated maps and other graphics, insisting on Bhutto’s unusual ability to cross borders, between past and present, east and west, personal and political.