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EVALUATING THE BEST PICTURE CANDIDATES

THE ARTIST

You ever have that feeling when you were young, and you had to do your homework? And the night was going by, and you quickly realized you weren’t going to do it? And eventually, you tried to please yourself with a moral compromise. So you’d have to write a paper on World War II, never picked up a pen, but saw that The History Channel was showing a special on fighter planes? And you said to yourself, I’m not going to get credit in this class, but I should get credit for going out of my way to experience something vaguely similar?

Behold, “The Artist,” the silent film for people who don’t like silent films!

About forty five minutes in, pretty much anyone who isn’t a simpleton gets “The Artist.” George Valentin is stubborn, and won’t let go of his old ways. Peppy Miller is the face, and voice, of the future, the brave world of the talkies. So it’s “Singin’ In The Rain” without singin’! Or precipitation! Except “The Artist” has nothing to say about silent films, nor does it have anything to say about film sound.

It seems to feed on Valentin’s loneliness and paranoia, but who is he? The movie is called “The Artist.” Is he the artist of the title? His movies don’t seem that great. When he makes his late film opus TEARS OF LOVE, we see so little of it, but it generally looks like just another one of his typical cheapies. When he starts throwing his career shit fit, the audience’s attitude is generally GOOD. You squandered your money, fired your awesome butler, and cheated on your wife. Oh, but I forgot. You own a fucking DOG. All is forgiven. I swear, the amount of love a fucking animal gets your movie…

Spoiler alert but who gives a shit. The movie ends with Valentin surrendering to the charms of Miller’s talkies and breaking the silent barrier, doing a little tapdance routine on the set of their new movie. Except this is the third or fourth time Jean Dujardin has hoofed in this movie, and as a dancer, he’s purely functional. This ending has such little reverence for the actual advent of the talkies - guys like Valentin drank themselves to death frequently, and none were very interesting when asked to vocalize their performances anyway.

It also fails to address the reality that SOUND IN MOVIES IS AWESOME. It’s a cute novelty to make a silent movie in 2011, but there’s a reason they don’t do this anymore. I suppose it makes sense as a reactionary measure against crap ideas like 3D and CGI, but why handicap your movie if it’s to serve no purpose? If you’re not going to explain why sound is or is not awesome in films? And not only that, but they cheat and use the gimmick of employing sound a couple of times and christ, you guys can’t even follow the rules of your own assignment? Fucking Guy Maddin’s been doing this for awhile. Maybe you should chat with him. Oh, and does anyone remember the silent movie from last year based on a Jacques Tati script? “The Illusionist”? It’s pretty much the same movie, only a billion times better. But oh, it was animated. You fuckers think cartoons are for kids.

Replace it with: If you guys were really seduced by cute dogs, you could have gone with “Beginners,” which has a dog that speaks in subtitles.

EVALUATING THE BEST PICTURE CANDIDATES

WAR HORSE

First of all, I’m going to put aside the fact that I am not an animal person. I guess I am a dog person, because I enjoy their company. But generally, animals are stupid lesser creatures. A horse can be beautiful, but that’s it. Most of the time, it’s running around thinking, WHERE’S THE CARROT I LIKE CARROTS.

Of course, Spielberg seems to know this. He’s no idiot. Which is why he tries to stack the deck with the horse in this movie. Since 25% of the film are horse close-ups (such soulful eyes!), he’s trying to manufacture some equine drama. But he also makes the gamble of surrounding his horsey with a bunch of one-dimensional ciphers.

Who is Joey? Joey lives on a farm. He loves horses. He REALLY loves this horse. He’s AW SHUCKS and JIMINY WHILLIKERS. And… what else? A reaction shot, I guess. I spent the movie thinking, “Oh. I guess he really loves that horse.” It killed me to see the early scenes of this film feature Peter Mullan and David Thewlis in such thankless roles as “drunken stupor dad” and “mustache-twirling bastard.” Mullan was so good, so recently, in the tough British film “Tyrannosaur,” while Thewlis was a riot stealing the otherwise low-key drug drama “Mr. Nice.”

And then what else happened? I remember the horse pretty much running his way blindly through the war much like “Forrest Gump” (he even gets a black best friend!). I remember some wartime hijinks with a bunch of indistinguishable soldiers, including that one cookie-sounding motherfucker Kennedish Bumberdash or something from that BBC show.

But otherwise, nothing. I mentioned a quarter of the film was horse closeups. Another quarter had to be sunset vistas. And the rest? I saw this with a really good-looking girl, and while we were both paying attention and watching the movie, and she was wonderfully pleasant company, she was the only way I could confirm I actually saw this movie. I was awake and everything, I swear. I do vaguely recall a typical Spielberg ending, which was five minutes of material stretched out to twenty. Beyond that, this was some square-ass forgettable shit.

Replace it with: “Tyrannosaur.” It’s sort of got an animal in the title. And the aforementioned Peter Mullan is terrifying in it, getting superb support from a kindly, mesmerizing Olivia Colman, and a ferocious, spittle-flinging turn from “War Horse” co-star (so says IMDb; I don’t remember) Eddie Marsan.

Archer and Mad Men, together at last.

A superb blog.

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