Every so often during the awards race you stumble onto something that maybe makes you feel like you are rising above the usual game of campaigning, advocating, reporting on the campaigning, predicting how the awards will go. No one on the Oscar beat mistakes these events, interviews, photo ops, junkets and travel perks for anything other than what they really are: a...
Guest essay by Michael in Florida Right after the first dreadful Hugo trailer premiered in July, I conjectured that Hugo was Martin Scorsese’s Schindler’s List, i.e., a film outside the director’s comfort zone. After seeing the film several times now, I can safely say that prediction turned out to be prescient, but for a different reason. While both...
In their mostly frustrating, occasionally interesting discussion of movies Manohla Dargis disses the Artist (a “cute gimmick”) and both critics go nuts for the Spielberg film – though they can’t agree on Hugo: DARGIS I can’t imagine, for instance, watching “War Horse” on a television, much less an iPhone: this is a self-consciously old-fashioned...
The WAFCA (Washing DC area film critics) has announced their winners — and The Artist continues its run as winner – meanwhile, Martin Scorsese picks up Best Director. The Artist and Hugo are kind of companion pieces, I think. And something tells me watching Martin Scorsese and Michel Hanazavicius for a Q&A on movies would be something spectacular. They...