Third Reel: And the Feel-Good Goes to...
"And there's the beautiful Sandra Bullock. Who doesn't love Sandra Bullock!"
"Well, tonight we may find out."
- Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, The 82nd Annual Academy Awards (Hamish Hamilton, Pete Docter, Anne Fletcher, Richard A. Preuss, Henry Selick, 2010)
Yep, you know exactly where this is going. Tonight was the night where I took some time out of my non-television life to watch an overrated yet highly prestigious awards ceremony for a good three hours to make myself feel like I know a lot more about the nominees than I really do. Don't get me wrong, the Oscars are a charming piece of cinematic history, and I spend a great deal of time looking at all of the advances made over the past eight decades along with some of the most memorable honorary moments (wishing Chaplin, Hitchcock and Stewart all the best in their afterlives), but there's also a lot of bias and snobbiness that seems to arise from the event, and it's become more and more clear over the past twenty years that the overall event is essentially a popularity contest. Even the order each category is listed reflects this - "Pft, Animated Features as important as Best Pictures? Oh no, it's merely Sound Mixing territory." Also, am I the only one who thinks it's a tad bit sexist to have Best Supporting Actress waaaay sooner in the program than Best Supporting Actor? But one could say I'm also a bit biased, not to mention in no position to be making such critical decisions - I rarely see ANY of the films that come out in a year. Why? 'Cause most of them aren't ones I want to pay money to go to, 'cause I'm spending the majority of my time watching much older, probably superior films to 80% of the options, 'cause of the previous statement of most newer stuff not being near as good, and because I'm poor. ... Mostly the first and last reasons, but still.
Anyway, the ceremony has now come and gone and I feel inspired as well as disappointed and a little, well... I don't know. The ceremony seemed to have a nostalgic overtone to it, far more than even the 80th ceremony had (for they had a lot of flashbacks in memory of the eighty years of the Oscars' existence)... probably because of Kirk Douglas, the presentation of Bob Hope, the display of Gone with the Wind, etc., seeing Wallach, Brownlow and Coppola (Godard won an honorary award, too, but he wasn't around, naturally), and the performance of "Smile" and "Over the Rainbow", just... whenever I see the older Hollywood moments, it makes me feel much happier like everything's returning to better, more golden ages of film. But by no means was the thing perfect. It was awesome to watch because I was accompanied by Ry, but Anne Hathaway and James Franco really did not cut it for hosting. Their humour didn't seem very witty at all and fell flat most of the time, and a lot of their comments seemed, dare I say shallow? Also is it common for hosts to change their outfits so damn much? Did they feel they needed to catch the audience's attention 'cause their jokes weren't good enough? Either way, it's just... I really wish I got to see Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - I missed the Oscars last year 'cause my residence lacked a TV at the time - just because I KNOW those two are hilarious together... even the quote I got above proves that! It's witty, it's clever, it WORKS! Not enough of that was in this ceremony; I didn't really like Hugh Jackman back in 2008 either, but he was still a helluvalot funnier than Hathaway and Franco. Blah to that.
The picks themselves... like I said, I only saw three of the nominees (How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, though I'm sure some of you will be saying the latter doesn't count), so my opinion can't really be genuine, but from what I saw of Colin Firth's performance in the nominees' presentations, I certainly think he deserved that Oscar. It helps that I like Colin Firth to begin with, but he does crying really, really well. Also it was a pleasant surprise to see The King's Speech win, 'cause the more I watched the ceremony, it looked a lot more interesting and quality-saturated than The Social Network... plus there's something curiously depressing about having a Facebook movie be placed alongside Schindler's List and Gandhi... but again, I don't know fully enough about it. I'm disappointed, though, that HTTYD didn't win Original Score, 'cause goddammit I LOVE its score! It's to this day one of the most uplifting things I've ever heard, one of the most exhilarating things I've ever heard. To think, though, that Trent Reznor - freaking Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor - won the Oscar instead. Seriously, last I heard of him was Year Zero... how the hell was he suddenly scoring for an Oscar-nominated film? Who the hell listens to NIN and thinks, "Why yes, this is cinematic material!" I'm not meaning to degrade the man or anything, I love it when film scores cut the orchestra a little and have talented rock or indie musicians compose the aura instead, but that doesn't mean I would've seen that coming any better. Freaking Trent Reznor... dude, how did I not hear about that? Um, what else? Natalie Portman winning Best Actress made me happy. S'about bloody time. And Best Original Song... Randy Newman's song was alright, but it wasn't my favourite out of the four nominees. I personally really liked the one from 127 Hours and was hoping it would win, and maybe a little for "I See the Light", though as I've mentioned to others before, Disney's musical age doesn't serve as well anymore... people claim their Renaissance has returned but haha, no it hasn't. They're going through another Silver Age, that's what has returned. Disney needs to understand that while their musical movement was all swell twenty years ago, a new generation has come and it's one that wants things a little different. I'm not saying cut the songs entirely, but the musical format isn't cutting it anymore... try something new.
Okay, I'm done rambling about the Oscars. Now let's talk about Reading Week.
No academic screenings, oh no! But I wasn't lacking any movie watching. I got Fantasia early in the week, both on BluRay AND VHS (thankfully the former came with DVDs as well - I only got BluRay for Destino, in all honesty), so I've watched both versions this week for comparison. ... I like them both for different reasons. The VHS is in almost perfect condition minus possible sound distortion that may or may not be just the TV speakers, and the random flickering in the middle of the Ave Maria sequence - not flickering as in blackscreen-picture-blackscreen-picture, but flickering as in the light flickering that would remind someone of an old movie... in other words, it's awesome :D - but in a way, too, the DVD version is more historical. Sort of. They both are and yet aren't. The VHS has Deems Taylor's narrative voice which the DVD version dubbed over (seriously, Disney, just rip the audio off a spare VHS, it'll be the cost equivalent of one toilet paper sheet for you!), but the DVD version has longer introductions for each segment and you actually SEE Deems Taylor introducing as opposed to the VHS version where you just get the orchestra tuning randomly (maybe so it was less obvious that the intros were cut? Who knows), plus some of the things said in the longer intros (though the length can sometimes be annoying, for both spoiling the sequence and making you impatient for the sequence to start), very much reflect the times, and as I think I've already mentioned, a piece of history caught in a film is beautiful in my eye.
Two examples I can think of... Taylor (or Corey Burton, technically) says that "nobody performs [The Nutcracker Ballet] anymore", which is obviously not the case nowadays, seeing as it's performed in virtually every major city in every country every year usually XD The other's when introducing the Rite of Spring sequence where Taylor/Burton says that dinosaurs "weren't very bright. Even the largest ones had only brains the size of a pigeon's." Obviously this was before the velociraptor debates XP
Also I'm getting quite pissed off at Disney - they're promoting their BluRays to the point that... well, like I already said, Destino was only available on the BluRay. Could it really hurt them to privilege the DVDs with the exact same bonus features as the BluRay? I hate that I had to pay $30 extra just for one short. Not to mention that, even though the BluRay menu is AWESOME (each option makes a note! HEEEE), the DVD menu not only lacks some of the BluRay's awesomeness, but it also automatically plays the film if you don't touch the menu for five minutes (which I NEVER like my DVDs doing), and they force you to watch all the Sneak Peeks together, skipping through the ones you don't want to see (and not letting you skip back if you accidentally passed the one you wanted, giving you no choice but to return to the menu and start all over again), and then immediately playing the film once all the Sneak Peeks have finished. Um, what? They are purposely making their DVDs annoying to deal with solely so I will buy their BluRays more, yeah, well, that's not how you treat your customers, Disney. If you have a new format for your films, fine, but leave the option to the viewers, okay? Pissing them off in the older format is NOT going to make them like your newer format more. It's going to make them RELUCTANT to deal with you. Which means less sales for you in the long run. Mind you, you're a big enough monopoly to be able to take care of yourselves anyway, but don't you think it's better to be nice to your customers rather than make a small fraction of them hate you and never buy your products again? Consider yourselves lucky anyway that I'm essentially satisfied with my Disney collection and don't intend on buying any more of your products in the near future. Which means more money for me and less you thinking that I enjoy your advertising scheme. Not like I did anyway, but I'm rambling again now.
Speaking of advertising schemes, I never thought I'd see the day where Disney - one of the companies that puts so much attention and care into their marketing section - would make an advertising fail. No, I'm not talking about the BluRay vs. DVD thing... this was on their BluRay cover. You know how movies usually have a quote or two from a renowned film critic or filmmaker or whathaveyou on the cover so as to show how awesome the movie is and how much you should stopeverythingandbuyitrightnow? Fantasia had that, of course; you get this luffly quote on the bottom centre of the cover saying, "Fantasia is timeless." A beautiful and undoubtedly true statement. But here's the fail: do you know who said this? WALT DISNEY. I'm not saying Disney isn't high-cultured enough or anything to promote a movie, but he was DIRECTLY INVOLVED with this. That's like if I were to slap a sticker on one of my random shorts that says, "Anonymous is the greatest bloody thing you'll ever see with your own two eyeballs if my name isn't LilbunUWiz!" Of course Fantasia is "timeless", but a naïve film viewer needs a more reliable source for such information, Mr. Great-Corporation-in-the-Sky.
Also saw Sound of Music again this week. Nothing new to relate there, considering how many tens of times I've seen it, except it reminded me of how little I keep quiet during movies I know by heart, and how I just start commenting on the most random, redundant, littlest of details, and start thinking about the movie as a movie rather than as a story and start imagining everybody acting instead of being and so on and so forth and wow this became a long sentence. I think I need to get to sleep before I lack any more hours of rest.
Yeah, now that Reading Week is over, I have European Cinema again tomorrow. Yay, I have screenings again! I missed them the last academic week. But I'm already way behind my sleep schedule for that. Also finished my Michael Haneke essay over Reading Week, and I'm pretty sure it's proud-worthy. Definitely more worthy than my Frank Capra essay anyway; this one had a lot more time for itself.
So fare thee well for now, everyone, hope to get a hold of you in the near future through another of these. Are you sick of the length? XD
(P.S. That last Thursday screening, by the way, was an immense disappointment. Fernando Solanas wasn't, of course - it was fascinating seeing him - but the screening consisted of student films... whichhaveabadtendencytodepressme.)
"Well, tonight we may find out."
- Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, The 82nd Annual Academy Awards (Hamish Hamilton, Pete Docter, Anne Fletcher, Richard A. Preuss, Henry Selick, 2010)
Yep, you know exactly where this is going. Tonight was the night where I took some time out of my non-television life to watch an overrated yet highly prestigious awards ceremony for a good three hours to make myself feel like I know a lot more about the nominees than I really do. Don't get me wrong, the Oscars are a charming piece of cinematic history, and I spend a great deal of time looking at all of the advances made over the past eight decades along with some of the most memorable honorary moments (wishing Chaplin, Hitchcock and Stewart all the best in their afterlives), but there's also a lot of bias and snobbiness that seems to arise from the event, and it's become more and more clear over the past twenty years that the overall event is essentially a popularity contest. Even the order each category is listed reflects this - "Pft, Animated Features as important as Best Pictures? Oh no, it's merely Sound Mixing territory." Also, am I the only one who thinks it's a tad bit sexist to have Best Supporting Actress waaaay sooner in the program than Best Supporting Actor? But one could say I'm also a bit biased, not to mention in no position to be making such critical decisions - I rarely see ANY of the films that come out in a year. Why? 'Cause most of them aren't ones I want to pay money to go to, 'cause I'm spending the majority of my time watching much older, probably superior films to 80% of the options, 'cause of the previous statement of most newer stuff not being near as good, and because I'm poor. ... Mostly the first and last reasons, but still.
Anyway, the ceremony has now come and gone and I feel inspired as well as disappointed and a little, well... I don't know. The ceremony seemed to have a nostalgic overtone to it, far more than even the 80th ceremony had (for they had a lot of flashbacks in memory of the eighty years of the Oscars' existence)... probably because of Kirk Douglas, the presentation of Bob Hope, the display of Gone with the Wind, etc., seeing Wallach, Brownlow and Coppola (Godard won an honorary award, too, but he wasn't around, naturally), and the performance of "Smile" and "Over the Rainbow", just... whenever I see the older Hollywood moments, it makes me feel much happier like everything's returning to better, more golden ages of film. But by no means was the thing perfect. It was awesome to watch because I was accompanied by Ry, but Anne Hathaway and James Franco really did not cut it for hosting. Their humour didn't seem very witty at all and fell flat most of the time, and a lot of their comments seemed, dare I say shallow? Also is it common for hosts to change their outfits so damn much? Did they feel they needed to catch the audience's attention 'cause their jokes weren't good enough? Either way, it's just... I really wish I got to see Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - I missed the Oscars last year 'cause my residence lacked a TV at the time - just because I KNOW those two are hilarious together... even the quote I got above proves that! It's witty, it's clever, it WORKS! Not enough of that was in this ceremony; I didn't really like Hugh Jackman back in 2008 either, but he was still a helluvalot funnier than Hathaway and Franco. Blah to that.
The picks themselves... like I said, I only saw three of the nominees (How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, though I'm sure some of you will be saying the latter doesn't count), so my opinion can't really be genuine, but from what I saw of Colin Firth's performance in the nominees' presentations, I certainly think he deserved that Oscar. It helps that I like Colin Firth to begin with, but he does crying really, really well. Also it was a pleasant surprise to see The King's Speech win, 'cause the more I watched the ceremony, it looked a lot more interesting and quality-saturated than The Social Network... plus there's something curiously depressing about having a Facebook movie be placed alongside Schindler's List and Gandhi... but again, I don't know fully enough about it. I'm disappointed, though, that HTTYD didn't win Original Score, 'cause goddammit I LOVE its score! It's to this day one of the most uplifting things I've ever heard, one of the most exhilarating things I've ever heard. To think, though, that Trent Reznor - freaking Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor - won the Oscar instead. Seriously, last I heard of him was Year Zero... how the hell was he suddenly scoring for an Oscar-nominated film? Who the hell listens to NIN and thinks, "Why yes, this is cinematic material!" I'm not meaning to degrade the man or anything, I love it when film scores cut the orchestra a little and have talented rock or indie musicians compose the aura instead, but that doesn't mean I would've seen that coming any better. Freaking Trent Reznor... dude, how did I not hear about that? Um, what else? Natalie Portman winning Best Actress made me happy. S'about bloody time. And Best Original Song... Randy Newman's song was alright, but it wasn't my favourite out of the four nominees. I personally really liked the one from 127 Hours and was hoping it would win, and maybe a little for "I See the Light", though as I've mentioned to others before, Disney's musical age doesn't serve as well anymore... people claim their Renaissance has returned but haha, no it hasn't. They're going through another Silver Age, that's what has returned. Disney needs to understand that while their musical movement was all swell twenty years ago, a new generation has come and it's one that wants things a little different. I'm not saying cut the songs entirely, but the musical format isn't cutting it anymore... try something new.
Okay, I'm done rambling about the Oscars. Now let's talk about Reading Week.
No academic screenings, oh no! But I wasn't lacking any movie watching. I got Fantasia early in the week, both on BluRay AND VHS (thankfully the former came with DVDs as well - I only got BluRay for Destino, in all honesty), so I've watched both versions this week for comparison. ... I like them both for different reasons. The VHS is in almost perfect condition minus possible sound distortion that may or may not be just the TV speakers, and the random flickering in the middle of the Ave Maria sequence - not flickering as in blackscreen-picture-blackscreen-picture, but flickering as in the light flickering that would remind someone of an old movie... in other words, it's awesome :D - but in a way, too, the DVD version is more historical. Sort of. They both are and yet aren't. The VHS has Deems Taylor's narrative voice which the DVD version dubbed over (seriously, Disney, just rip the audio off a spare VHS, it'll be the cost equivalent of one toilet paper sheet for you!), but the DVD version has longer introductions for each segment and you actually SEE Deems Taylor introducing as opposed to the VHS version where you just get the orchestra tuning randomly (maybe so it was less obvious that the intros were cut? Who knows), plus some of the things said in the longer intros (though the length can sometimes be annoying, for both spoiling the sequence and making you impatient for the sequence to start), very much reflect the times, and as I think I've already mentioned, a piece of history caught in a film is beautiful in my eye.
Two examples I can think of... Taylor (or Corey Burton, technically) says that "nobody performs [The Nutcracker Ballet] anymore", which is obviously not the case nowadays, seeing as it's performed in virtually every major city in every country every year usually XD The other's when introducing the Rite of Spring sequence where Taylor/Burton says that dinosaurs "weren't very bright. Even the largest ones had only brains the size of a pigeon's." Obviously this was before the velociraptor debates XP
Also I'm getting quite pissed off at Disney - they're promoting their BluRays to the point that... well, like I already said, Destino was only available on the BluRay. Could it really hurt them to privilege the DVDs with the exact same bonus features as the BluRay? I hate that I had to pay $30 extra just for one short. Not to mention that, even though the BluRay menu is AWESOME (each option makes a note! HEEEE), the DVD menu not only lacks some of the BluRay's awesomeness, but it also automatically plays the film if you don't touch the menu for five minutes (which I NEVER like my DVDs doing), and they force you to watch all the Sneak Peeks together, skipping through the ones you don't want to see (and not letting you skip back if you accidentally passed the one you wanted, giving you no choice but to return to the menu and start all over again), and then immediately playing the film once all the Sneak Peeks have finished. Um, what? They are purposely making their DVDs annoying to deal with solely so I will buy their BluRays more, yeah, well, that's not how you treat your customers, Disney. If you have a new format for your films, fine, but leave the option to the viewers, okay? Pissing them off in the older format is NOT going to make them like your newer format more. It's going to make them RELUCTANT to deal with you. Which means less sales for you in the long run. Mind you, you're a big enough monopoly to be able to take care of yourselves anyway, but don't you think it's better to be nice to your customers rather than make a small fraction of them hate you and never buy your products again? Consider yourselves lucky anyway that I'm essentially satisfied with my Disney collection and don't intend on buying any more of your products in the near future. Which means more money for me and less you thinking that I enjoy your advertising scheme. Not like I did anyway, but I'm rambling again now.
Speaking of advertising schemes, I never thought I'd see the day where Disney - one of the companies that puts so much attention and care into their marketing section - would make an advertising fail. No, I'm not talking about the BluRay vs. DVD thing... this was on their BluRay cover. You know how movies usually have a quote or two from a renowned film critic or filmmaker or whathaveyou on the cover so as to show how awesome the movie is and how much you should stopeverythingandbuyitrightnow? Fantasia had that, of course; you get this luffly quote on the bottom centre of the cover saying, "Fantasia is timeless." A beautiful and undoubtedly true statement. But here's the fail: do you know who said this? WALT DISNEY. I'm not saying Disney isn't high-cultured enough or anything to promote a movie, but he was DIRECTLY INVOLVED with this. That's like if I were to slap a sticker on one of my random shorts that says, "Anonymous is the greatest bloody thing you'll ever see with your own two eyeballs if my name isn't LilbunUWiz!" Of course Fantasia is "timeless", but a naïve film viewer needs a more reliable source for such information, Mr. Great-Corporation-in-the-Sky.
Also saw Sound of Music again this week. Nothing new to relate there, considering how many tens of times I've seen it, except it reminded me of how little I keep quiet during movies I know by heart, and how I just start commenting on the most random, redundant, littlest of details, and start thinking about the movie as a movie rather than as a story and start imagining everybody acting instead of being and so on and so forth and wow this became a long sentence. I think I need to get to sleep before I lack any more hours of rest.
Yeah, now that Reading Week is over, I have European Cinema again tomorrow. Yay, I have screenings again! I missed them the last academic week. But I'm already way behind my sleep schedule for that. Also finished my Michael Haneke essay over Reading Week, and I'm pretty sure it's proud-worthy. Definitely more worthy than my Frank Capra essay anyway; this one had a lot more time for itself.
So fare thee well for now, everyone, hope to get a hold of you in the near future through another of these. Are you sick of the length? XD
(P.S. That last Thursday screening, by the way, was an immense disappointment. Fernando Solanas wasn't, of course - it was fascinating seeing him - but the screening consisted of student films... whichhaveabadtendencytodepressme.)