Star Crossed Musing

That sounded way more exciting than it is. It's the weekend. My kids are around, and they're watching screens, as kids do when they're not being forced to do something else. The something else is coming, so they get some screen time this morning without me making a fuss. Choose your battles, etc. Also, it's hot out today and I don't feel I can, in good conscience, make them go outside until it cools off a bit this evening. Went to see Ant Man Friday night, and I really enjoyed it -- far more than I thought I would. Paul Rudd was very good, mostly playing a straight man for Michael Douglas (who completely rocked, btw) and Evangeline Lilly (who also completely rocked). The plot was a bit disjointed at times -- no movie involving significant shape change "science" is going to be wholly on point -- but we got as much backstory as we needed, and a lot of focus on the personal relationships and stuff to keep the plot rolling. I'm looking forward to seein...

Movie: Selma Nominations: Best Picture, Best Original Song ("Glory") Okay, so if you have't seen Selma ? Go see it. Go see it now. It is a shameful thing that the only nomination it got was Best Picture -- it deserved more, many more. Ava DuVernay should have gotten a directing nomination -- her work was incredible. David Oyelowo should have gotten a Best Actor nomination. Paul Webb should have gotten a screenplay nod. It deserved all of these things, as its nomination for Best Picture shows, but it got none of them. I am still and will continue to be incensed over this. It was not right. It is my vote for Best Picture even though I am afraid it will be ignored. Tom Wilkinson and Tim Roth were brilliant as LBJ and George Wallace, respectively, but even more brilliant is the choice to relegate them both to the sidelines of the movie. It's not their story; it's the story of the people, and of MLK as one of the leaders of those people. (Also also, Nigel T...

Movie: Whiplash Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Supporting Actor (J.K. Simmons), Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Adapted Screenplay So, this film is intense. A kid who's really driven and not terribly socially adept gets into one of the best music schools out there because he wants to be a jazz drummer, and meets up with the hard-ass, brilliant, auteur prof (J.K. Simmons) who really just wants to make the next jazz great by pushing someone good until they excel (or break). Is that so much to ask? Whiplash is a hell of a ride. It's the director's first film (he wrote and directed it) -- he couldn't get funding for it (and it was shot on a shoestring, basically) and so he made it into a short film and took it to Sundance, where it did very well and then he got the funding for the feature length version. This film is basically every indie filmmaker's dream process come true. J.K. Simmons is ferocious -- he is a musical predator that you never know whether he...

Movie: The Grand Budapest Hotel Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music, Production Design, Original Screenplay Sorry I've fallen behind on these posts -- it's been a busy week. That said, let's get back to it, shall we? The Grand Budapest Hotel is a Wes Anderson film -- arguably his crowning achievement in film, frankly, as seen by the nominations listed above. I don't mean to short any of the actors -- Ralph Fiennes as Mr. Gustave was frankly wonderful, and everyone did their caricatured, scene-stealing best. That said, Anderson's preferences for expressionless faces and scenes like still life paintings (because they're too improbable to be photographs) forcibly pulls the attention away from the performances and into the film as a whole. In this case that works, because the story and the setting and everything else are really captivating. I am not a huge Wes Anderson fan...

Movie: The Imitation Game Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Kiera Knightly), Directing, Editing, Original Score, Production Design, and Best Adapted Screenplay The Imitation Game is a movie about Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), largely during the war years when he was trying to build a machine to crack Enigma, but also going back to his childhood and forward to his eventual branding as a criminal (due to his homosexuality) and associated suicide at the age of 41. The worst thing about Benedict Cumberbatch is how overused he's becoming in geek properties. The best thing is just how damn good an actor he is, as evidenced in this film. This is not to say that the rest of the cast weren't good -- they were, and I enjoyed Kiera Knightly as his primary foil and idea generator -- but honestly this was his vehicle and he plays it wonderfully. Well directed, well acted, well written... I really enjoyed it. It didn...

Movie: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film Disclaimer: I saw the Japanese language version with subtitles, not the dubbed version for American audiences.  Princess Kaguya is set during the Heian period of Japan. Kaguya is discovered by a woodcutter as a perfect tiny person in a bamboo stalk, whom he brings home, where she transforms into an infant. He and his wife, being older and having no children, adopt her and raise her as their own -- except that she grows super fast, is very precocious, and he keeps finding things in the bamboo stalks like gold and rich robes for her. Eventually he decides that he is supposed to take her to the capital and ensure that she is raised like a noble princess, and from there her life takes a downturn. She is changed from the carefree child to a beautiful proper Heian lady who is always sad. When suitors come calling, however, that is when the story becomes complicated and the truth of the l...

Movie: Into the Woods Oscar Nominations: Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Costumes, Best Production Design Okay, so it's worthwhile to start by saying that I'm a fan of the original play. I have never seen it done in person, but I've seen the wonderful recording of it on Broadway, with Bernadette Peters playing the Witch, and I've listened to the soundtrack for ages. Resultingly, I feel like Rob Marshall did a surprisingly good job at bringing it to the screen, but that it's very much DISNEY's Into the Woods, and the entire second half of the movie reflects that. Gone are the darker elements of Sondheim and Lapine's musical -- Rapunzel doesn't die, and the Prince doesn't actually sleep with the Baker's Wife, for example. We don't get the reprise of the songs, and things are shifted around -- "No More," one of my favorite songs, is completely absent for example, and the Narrator part is written out entirely. The end resul...

Movie: Big Hero 6 Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film Unlike most of the listed Oscar films, I saw this one earlier this year -- twice, in fact. I narrowly avoided seeing it a third time, not because I didn't like it, but because I don't get to see that many movies and I had qualifying exams to study for, people. So yeah.  Big Hero 6 is based on a Marvel property; I never read the comic book, so I can't say much about whether or not it's true to the source material. The story revolves around 14-yr-old supergenius Hiro Hamada and his search for his big brother Tadashi's killer, helped by Baymax, a medical assistant robot Tadashi built, and Tadashi's fellow engineering students at "nerd school," or San Fransokyo Tech, in the robotics department.  So, barring weather and scenery, SFT is effectively Case Western Reserve University. That means there's a lot of familiar stuff for me in this show -- they handle the academic ...

Movie: Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director So. Birdman.  I admit, I was not looking forward to this movie, though many of my friends were. I think the chance to see a serious film that seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole comic-movie phenomenon was greatly appealing for a goodly number of people. I'll bet not one of them was expecting what they got. We went in during the previews and sat down, and the opening credits begin to roll, and at the end of them, there's a quote from Raymond Carver: “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” ― Raymond Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall That sets the tone for the central struggle for Riggan Thompson, the central character (p...

Movie: How to Train Your Dragon 2 Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Feature Film Okay, so let's just say that I'm not happy about a lot of things with the Oscars this year. The blatant race and gender issues, the make up of the Academy membership, the whole American Sniper issues... and let's not forget that for animated films, both The Lego Movie and The Book of Life were left out of the final nominees, which is pretty much ludicrous on all fronts, given that The Boxtrolls got in there. But that's neither here nor there in the end, except to say that, as in many years, I take issue with some facets of how the particularly white Academy sausage was made this year. But, all the issues in the world won't get an Oscars dinner on the table, and I enjoy that tradition too much to abandon it altogether. To the movie, then! How to Train Your Dragon 2 is one I saw earlier in the year and watched again the other night with my stepkids. I am wholly in the thrall of ...

Okay, so my husband and I (really, it started with him and I bought into it) enjoy the Oscars. Yes, it's problematic on a number of levels. No, the Academy's choices don't reflect quality for a year as a whole, or the filmgoing public at large -- they're old, rich, white, film guys, basically, and that's oh-so-notably reflected in their choices. That being said... well, it's still a fun party. So here's how this goes. We try to watch all the Oscar nominated films, generally giving a miss to at least some of the foreign films (really hard to come by in Cleveland), the shorts, and the documentaries. Yes, Cedar Lee does its best to get them, but between limitations of time and money, generally something has to give. That leaves us with the acting, writing, directing, and technical awards, pretty much. We watch these movies until the awards show rolls around, and then we have a dinner party in which we cook one dish for each Best Picture nomination. We all...

So, I am not a big comic book goob, unless you're talking about the 90s run of Vertigo, and even then not nearly so much as some. I knew vaguely of the Guardians, but much in the same way I knew of the Inhumans, which is to say names and not much more. I went into this movie neither knowing nor caring about it, for the most part -- but it looked fun and my friends and husband were excited, so here we go. This movie is awesome. Now, I'm a big adherent to the maxim of "It's okay to like problematic things" because, being a geeky woman who specializes in Gothic and 18th-century British Literature, from a 21st-century and personal perspective, nearly everything is problematic. It's not a question of "if," but "how much" and whether whatever it is exceeds its problematic content by enough for me to put it aside. There were some problematic issues in GotG, I can't lie. Every now and then, I'd be going along and totally into it, and th...

Movie: Philomena (Stephen Frears, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Dame Judi Dench), Original Score, Adapted Screenplay So, Philomena . An Irish girl named Philomena Lee (Judi Dench) gets pregnant as a teenager and her parents take her to one of the Magdalen laundries, where she has her baby and works off her indentured servitude. The nuns then adopt her little boy out without telling her. It's not until she's grown old and married and her children are grown that she ever reveals anything about the birth of her son, and starts her search for him in earnest, backed by Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a reporter in search of a story to redeem his career. That the laundries were awful is really not in doubt. The Irish government came out in 2001 and finally admitted that they were a cultural abuse perpetrated on the women of Ireland by the Catholic Church and the government, who turned a blind eye to anything that happened there. That's not in the m...

Movie: Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Original Score, Original Song ("The Moon Song"), Production Design, Original Screenplay (5 nominations total) Her is a really intriguing film by Spike Jonze, who has done a number of intriguing films. The plot summary is that there's a guy who writes "handwritten" letters as part of a service for people he's never met. He has broken up with his wife (or rather, she broke up with him) and has been putting off signing his divorce papers. He's lonely and all the spark has gone out of his life -- he misses his wife, or at least he misses someone, and he can't seem to find anything on his own worth living for. About this time, an "intelligent" operating system is released. He upgrades his computer accordingly, and thus Samantha enters his life -- the name the AI gives herself. Oddly, the two fall in love with one another, with Theodore (played by Joaquin Phoenix) realizing tha...

It should be noted that, for reasons I could speculate have to do with my existence as a high functioning person with ASD but for which I have no proof, I have to work really hard at not getting overwhelmed with my emotional responses. I am either on, in which case I'm overly plugged into everything going on, or I'm off, in which case I'm uncomfortably objective but able to handle stuff. This means I don't have an emotional buffer in movies. When all my sensory input is coming at me from the screen, I can very easily lose control of my emotional reaction, having feelings all out of proportion to what's going on -- or at least out of proportion to the reactions of those around me. I'm also super sensitive to low-frequency sounds, which can effectively induce panic attacks and headaches in me if I have prolonged exposure*. I effectively can't communicate under those circumstances, other than to get up and leave, which I do if necessary. I can't stim enou...

Movie: The Croods (Kirk DeMicco, Chris Sanders, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Film (1 nomination total) So there's a teen neanderthal girl named Eep who chafes under her father's restrictive rules (that, which unnecessarily harsh, likely do keep them alive as all their neighbors have been killed off). One day, she meets a teenage boy named Guy (who looks a bit more homo sapiens) who tells her the end of the world is coming and leaves her a shell to call him with -- oh, and he knows how to make fire. Sure enough, there's an earthquake and their cave is destroyed and thus begins the merry adventure to try to find a place that isn't going to be all blown to bits and eaten by lava. Along the way we get some personal growth, family togetherness, a large parrot-cat-like creature, a sloth with dramatic tendencies, some last-minute sacrifice, and a happy ending. Sorry if that spoiled it for you. To be honest, I wasn't terribly a fan of this movie. Eep's...

Movie: August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Supporting Actress (Julia Roberts) (2 nominations total) August: Osage County (and that's pronounced "O-sāj," second syllable like the herb) is based on the play by Tracy Letts, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The synopsis of the plot is that a man dies and his children and widow come together in the family home in rural Oklahoma and confront some of the family demons. This movie was filmed at least in part in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. I have never been to Pawhuska, but I've been to the area. There is nothing around there. The closest town that might be easily accessible is Vinita, which is right off I-40. It boasts two ATMs, only one of which was working on my last trip through. The turnpike gate for Vinita only accepts cash. There is a Braums which has a surprising variety of gluten free options in its mini grocery, but I purchased neither food nor ice...

Movie: Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Bruce Dern), Best Supporting Actress (June Squibb), Cinematography, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (6 nominations total) Alexander Payne, who previously brought us About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), and The Descendants (2011), is back on Academy radar with Nebraska, a story about an old man who wants desperately for one good thing to happen to him so he feels like he's got a purpose again, and the trials this unreasoning request puts his family through, his youngest son in particular. Bruce Dern does a really convincing turn as an alcoholic old man from Billings, Woody Grant, who gets one of those magazine contest announcements in the mail declaring that he might have won a million dollars, and he's determined to go to Nebraska (where he was from) to collect. Against the wishes of his wife and oldest son (and mostly just to stop his attempts to escape and walk there by hi...

Movie: Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin, 2013) Oscar Nominations: Best Animated Feature So, if you've seen the first Despicable Me movie, you know it's an oddly charming film about a villain who ends up changing his ways due to three little orphan girls. They get a bizarre but well-meaning father, he gets a family that isn't a side effect of trying to steal bigger and better things, and everyone lives happily ever after, more or less. Also, there are small yellow pill-shaped minions with whom he has a surprisingly healthy employer/benevolent dictator relationship. He knows them all by name, gives them reasonable work benefits, and if they're all a bit silly -- well, Gru is too. The minions are an inspired creation, by the way, and while Steve Carell's voicework and the story itself is sweet and cute and smart enough to be worthwhile, the minions and the small touches they add are really the best and most memorable parts of the film. Despicable Me 2 picks up n...

Okay, so Matt and I and friends are into Oscars. We watch all the nominated movies we can squeeze in between the announcement and the show, we plan a big dinner with one dish inspired by each of the Best Picture nominations -- it's a thing. As a means of writing something on a semi-constant basis, I'm gonna review the Oscar nominated movies I see. The first one, for today, is American Hustle . Film: American Hustle (David O. Russell, 2013) Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Christian Bale), Best Supporting Actor (Bradley Cooper), Best Actress (Amy Adams), Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Director (David O. Russell), Film Editing, Production Design, and Original Screenplay. 9 nominations total. American Hustle is an amazing ensemble film, as evidenced by the list above. It's a hell of a costume piece, with the music, production, editing, and acting really coming together to tell a love story of broken people who somehow make each other a ...