As of this week, Pragmatism Refreshed has been on blogspot for three years.
We're just basking in the anniversary glow here at PR headquarters.
Now let's begin our fourth year together with a big cheer for the movie "The Hurt Locker," and its Oscar wins. I wasn't all that impressed when I saw the movie, frankly, but it is very likely there is much I missed and that would impress me better on a second viewing, which I am willing to give it some time soon.
Who among my readers saw The Hurt Locker? What were your impressions? I'd love to read them here.
Reportedly Kathryn Bigelow, who won the Best Director Award for helming this movie, will next be working on something called "Triple Frontier," for Paramount. It's an action-adventure thing set in the area where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil all meet, by screenwriter Mark Boal.
Showing posts with label Academy Awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academy Awards. Show all posts
11 March 2010
27 February 2009
Last Sunday's Oscar presentations
Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona.
Five different films honored in the five focal awards. I was just about to write, "that does not usually happen.'
But then I checked into it. (Checking one's presumptions before declaring them as fact. What a concept.)
Actually, this five-way even split among the top awards doesn't seem all that unusual. Last year's winner for Best Picture won only one of the other major awards. The Best Pic was "No Country for Old Men," and Javier Bardem won for supporting actor there.
But the other three biggies last year were split among three very different movies. The best lead actor last year came from "There will be blood." The best lead actress came from La Mome, a biopic on Edith Piaf. And the 2007 Best Supporting Actress ... Tilda Swinton, from "Michael Clayton."
If we go back another year, to the 2006 awards (in February 2007) we get another situation in which the five biggies involve five different movies.
So it isn't all that unusual, though some years some major cultural phenomenon does seem to sweep all before it. Like "Million Dollar Baby," when it won three of the top five of 2005.
Anyway, last Sunday, Slumdog came away as THE winner of the evening. In addition to Best Pic, it won for best song, best original score, best film editing, best sound mixing, best cinematography, and best adapted screenplay.
Everybody seems to be happy about this, and certainly noone could be unhappy with the young boy and girl from Mumbai. They looked thrilled and not-quite overwhelmed. And soooo cute.
Okay, I'm a sentimental fool.
Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Best Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Christina Barcelona.
Five different films honored in the five focal awards. I was just about to write, "that does not usually happen.'
But then I checked into it. (Checking one's presumptions before declaring them as fact. What a concept.)
Actually, this five-way even split among the top awards doesn't seem all that unusual. Last year's winner for Best Picture won only one of the other major awards. The Best Pic was "No Country for Old Men," and Javier Bardem won for supporting actor there.
But the other three biggies last year were split among three very different movies. The best lead actor last year came from "There will be blood." The best lead actress came from La Mome, a biopic on Edith Piaf. And the 2007 Best Supporting Actress ... Tilda Swinton, from "Michael Clayton."
If we go back another year, to the 2006 awards (in February 2007) we get another situation in which the five biggies involve five different movies.
So it isn't all that unusual, though some years some major cultural phenomenon does seem to sweep all before it. Like "Million Dollar Baby," when it won three of the top five of 2005.
Anyway, last Sunday, Slumdog came away as THE winner of the evening. In addition to Best Pic, it won for best song, best original score, best film editing, best sound mixing, best cinematography, and best adapted screenplay.
Everybody seems to be happy about this, and certainly noone could be unhappy with the young boy and girl from Mumbai. They looked thrilled and not-quite overwhelmed. And soooo cute.
Okay, I'm a sentimental fool.
10 November 2007
Documentary Movies
I saw a documentary movie yesterday, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" -- 2005. For those of you who'd like to know more about it, go here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016268/
It got me to thinking about the documentary as a genre. An ancient critical precept holds that the goal of any art, in any medium, is dual: the please and to teach (to "delight and to instruct," in older translations). If we're not pleased by watching it, we won't. If we're only pleased, if we don't feel that we gain anything from those two hours other than a fleeting uptick in hedonic points, there will come a point pretty quickly when it, too, isn't worthy of our time.
Perhaps the difference between documentaries and other movies is simply that in the former the "teach" part of the old formula is more in-your-face.
Not long ago, I saw an old 1930s movie about Marco Polo. Nobody would confuse it with a documentary. The Italian and Chinese characters both spoke English (which was convenient) and everybody looked Caucasian. But even that movie had some instructive value. Marco Polo discovers pasta and firecrackers, he is on hand when the Khan tries to conquer Japan, etc.
Still, genre boundaries aren't quite that loose. What is the definition of a documentary film, for the purposes say of awarded an Oscar?
There are rules that have to do with the movies' continuing competition with the small screen, television. One of Michael Moore's movies was once ruled inelible for consideration by the academy because he allowed it to be shown on TV in the same year as its theatrical release. Another highly regarded documentary, Grizzly Man, was I understand excluded because the producers relied too much on archival footage. (So what? Film editing is less valuable for a documentarian than the actual photography?)
Upon further consideration, I don't think the Academy is of much help in this matter.
And I'm not really going anywhere with this line of thought so I might as well allow it to peter out right around ....
It got me to thinking about the documentary as a genre. An ancient critical precept holds that the goal of any art, in any medium, is dual: the please and to teach (to "delight and to instruct," in older translations). If we're not pleased by watching it, we won't. If we're only pleased, if we don't feel that we gain anything from those two hours other than a fleeting uptick in hedonic points, there will come a point pretty quickly when it, too, isn't worthy of our time.
Perhaps the difference between documentaries and other movies is simply that in the former the "teach" part of the old formula is more in-your-face.
Not long ago, I saw an old 1930s movie about Marco Polo. Nobody would confuse it with a documentary. The Italian and Chinese characters both spoke English (which was convenient) and everybody looked Caucasian. But even that movie had some instructive value. Marco Polo discovers pasta and firecrackers, he is on hand when the Khan tries to conquer Japan, etc.
Still, genre boundaries aren't quite that loose. What is the definition of a documentary film, for the purposes say of awarded an Oscar?
There are rules that have to do with the movies' continuing competition with the small screen, television. One of Michael Moore's movies was once ruled inelible for consideration by the academy because he allowed it to be shown on TV in the same year as its theatrical release. Another highly regarded documentary, Grizzly Man, was I understand excluded because the producers relied too much on archival footage. (So what? Film editing is less valuable for a documentarian than the actual photography?)
Upon further consideration, I don't think the Academy is of much help in this matter.
And I'm not really going anywhere with this line of thought so I might as well allow it to peter out right around ....
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