Monthly Archives: December 2012
“She, over a decade, kind of went down the rabbit hole, getting lost in her work, until finally at the end of the movie, [the pilot] says ‘Where do you want to go?’ She has no idea where she goes now. Who is she now? She’s trained to be unemotional and analytically precise. I’m trying to be the exact opposite. I’m trained to be emotional and kind of a hot mess,...
In alphabetical order, these are the moments in film in 2012 that moved me greatly. Here are a few words about them. There are SPOILERS — fair warning. Amour I can’t really remember a more powerful or memorable moment in a film than Jean-Louis Trintignant finding a pigeon in his apartment. With his beloved, dying wife all but gone, the pigeon signifies letting...
Steve Pond talked exclusively to Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow about the issue of whether Zero Dark Thirty advocates torture, as in, torture was used and torture worked. But in so doing, he kind of denies that the film makes a very clear line from torture to name of courier, courier to Bin Laden: “The movie has been, and probably will continue to be, put in political...
For the first time in probably their entire history, the DGA will announce their five nominees after the Oscar ballots have been turned in. That means that they can’t be counted to on as a “true north” this time. Some people don’t think they ever were but I have a feeling they lend legitimacy to an otherwise fringe contender. I could be wrong,...
The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, if you’ve ever had any dealings with them, are a well oiled machine. I have never, in fact, dealt with a more cleanly run, professionally managed company. Never, in my life. When I attended the Oscars as a press person every tiny detail was covered, top to bottom, A to Z. So I read with great interest the “sky...
“I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.” – Flannery O’Connor Emotion,...
