The Cove

I watched the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove this evening.

The Cove follows an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers as they embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Taiji, Japan, shining a light on a dark and deadly secret. Utilizing state-of-the-art techniques, including hidden microphones and cameras in fake rocks, the team uncovers how this small seaside village serves as a horrifying microcosm of massive ecological crimes happening worldwide. The result is a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and arresting imagery, adding up to an unforgettable story that has inspired audiences worldwide to action.

The film makes you marvel, makes you cry, makes you angry, makes you frightened — not for the dolphins — for us. We are indeed a soulless species.

If you haven’t seen the film, you should. It’s good enough to win an Oscar and it’s important.

If you have seen it, what are we going to do about this tragedy?

Precious

The DVD of Precious came out Tuesday and I received it from Netflix yesterday. We watched it this evening and I have just one question?

Why did they even bother to nominate those other four actresses for best supporting actress?

Mo’Nique was extraordinary in a difficult role. I’m shaking my head as I type just thinking about it.

Gabourey Sidibe gave a stunning performance as well in the title role. I have seen three of the five best actress performances now. I thought Meryl Streep was wonderful, but would have voted for Sanda Bullock before tonight. Now I’m not so sure.

If you haven’t already seen Precious, find the time.

Even more impressive than Meryl Streep

Randy Newman has 18 Oscar nominations.

And just one win (for “If I Didn’t Have You”).

(Streep is two for 16.)

Perhaps even better line from Pierce

“Yes, Avatar was a great technological achievement.

“So was Teflon.”

Charles Pierce

Best line about the Oscars show, so far (II)

“[I]t wasn’t until I listened to Jeff Bridges’s acceptance speech that I realized how precisely autobiographical The Big Lebowski really was.”

Charles Pierce

Film buff

Yesterday I saw my sixth of the ten films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar — District 9. Seeing it didn’t change any of my predictions. I’m off to see Avatar later this morning — in 3D of course. I’ve already predicted it will win.

Yesterday, in addition to District 9, I also watched The Hangover, Raising Arizona and The Milagro Beanfield War.

I’m not entirely certain that getting an HDTV with a wireless internet connection (Netflix!) was a good thing.

Tom Hanks on winning and losing on Oscar night

Watch his facial expressions.

Movies

In anticipation of Sunday’s Oscar presentations, Jill has now seen all ten films nominated for Best Picture.

I’m a slacker, only five, though I expect to see at least two more before Sunday night. I have seen a couple of the other films with nominations — Crazy Heart, Julie & Julia and Star Trek.

The 10 Best Picture nominees:

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Want to predict the Oscars?

There’s an app for that.

Crazy Heart

Donna and I saw Crazy Heart last evening. Jeff Bridges will certainly clutch the best actor Oscar two weeks from tonight. He was excellent as the down-and-out country singer “Bad” Blake. (And does his own singing.) Maggie Gyllenhaal was quite good too, as the reporter who falls for him. She’s been nominated for the supporting actress Oscar.

The acting carries the movie, which itself is a fairly trite redemption story. Perhaps I’m especially jaded because I saw The Wrestler a few nights ago, and Tender Mercies again just last month, but the outline of Crazy Heart is predictable. I never can see what these lovely 30-something women see in the ugly, 50-something drunks. At least Mac Sledge has stayed sober — Robert Duvall (who won an Oscar for that performance) appears in this movie to help Bad change his ways. Colin Farrell is the rising country music star.

But it’s all about Bridges and that alone makes it worth seeing. Well, that and the music which made even this clutz want to get up and try a two-step.

And the New Mexico scenery. The film was shot around Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Even a supposed casino in Phoenix is really the Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque. The road from Phoenix to Santa Fe crisscrosses Albuquerque’s West Mesa forever. And the mall bar in Houston — it’s really a restaurant in downtown Albuquerque. It was like watching people we knew.

Update: The New York Times Magazine has an interesting slide show of Bridges.

The best film of the decade

“Synecdoche, New York” is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.

The mind is a concern in all his screenplays, but in “Synecdoche” (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He’s like a

novelist who wants to get it all into the first book in case he never publishes another. Those who felt the film was disorganized or incoherent might benefit from seeing it again. It isn’t about a narrative, although it pretends to be. It’s about a method, the method by which we organize our lives and define our realities.

Roger Ebert’s Journal (December 30, 2009)

The History of Cinema Aspect Ratios

The original aspect ratio utilized by the motion picture industry was 4:3 and according to historical accounts, was decided in the late 19th century by Thomas Edison while he was working with one of his chief assistants, William L.K. Dickson. As the story goes, Dickson was working with a new 70MM celluloid-based film stock supplied by photographic entrepreneur George Eastman. Because the 70MM format was considered unnecessarily wasteful by Edison, he asked Dickson to cut it down into smaller strips. When Dickson asked Edison what shape he wanted imaged on these strips, Edison replied, “about like this” and held his fingers apart in the shape of a rectangle with approximately a 4:3 aspect ratio. Over the years there has been quite a bit of conjecture about what Edison had in mind when he dictated this shape. Theories vary from from Euclid’s famous Greek “Golden Section”, a shape of approximately 1.6 to 1, to a shape that simply saved money by cutting the existing 70MM Eastman film stock in half. Whatever the true story may be, Edison’s 4:3 aspect ratio was officially adopted in 1917 by the Society Of Motion Picture Engineers as their first engineering standard, and the film industry used it almost exclusively for the next 35 years.

From CinemaSource, “Understanding Aspect Ratios”

4:3, which the motion picture industry called 1.33:1, was adopted by television beginning in the 1930s.

To compete with TV, movies began experimenting with widescreen aspects in the 1950s — 1.67, 1.85, 2.20, 2.39 (1.85 and 2.39 are the ratios currently used in theaters).

Today’s TVs and computer monitors however, are none of these. HDTV and newer monitors are 1.77 (16:9). A rectangle with that aspect ratio nicely accommodates any of the various motion picture formats (old and new), subject to some letter boxing.

Best movie review line of the day

“That said, The Hurt Locker is the year’s best film. Should Avatar snatch that Oscar away, it will be because it grossed zillions of millions, not because it’s better.”

Roger Ebert

2009’s Most Disturbing Film Is A Documentary

You might have already heard about The Cove. Described by one critic as “Flipper meets the Bourne Identity,” it’s a compelling marriage of edge-of-your-seat infiltration/espionage and more traditional documentary storytelling, all in the service of exposing the bloody secret of one small town in Japan, where every year in a secluded cove tens of thousands of dolphins are rounded up in nets and harpooned to death, their meat repackaged as other kinds of seafood and sold in supermarkets across Japan. I saw the film a few weeks ago and it quite honestly gave me nightmares.

mental_floss Blog

Meanwhile —

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

Times Online

Dude Studies

“The Big Lebowski” has spawned its own shaggy, fervid world: drinking games, Halloween costumes, bumper stickers (“This aggression will not stand, man”) and a drunken annual festival that took root in Louisville, Ky., and has spread to other cities. The movie is also the subject of an expanding shelf of books, including “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers” and the forthcoming “The Tao of the Dude.”

‘The Big Lebowski’ and Its Dude Get the Academic Treatment

The Dude abides. I don’t know about you but I take comfort in that.

The best films of 2009

Roger Ebert picks the top films.

The lists are divided into Mainstream Films and Independent Films. This neatly sidesteps two frequent complaints: (1) “You name all those little films most people have never heard of,” and (2) “You pick all blockbusters and ignore the indie pictures.” Which is is my official Top Ten? They both are equal, and every film here is entitled to name itself “One of the Year’s 10 Best!”

Oh, and Ebert says, “a probable Oscar-winning performance by Jeff Bridges.”

Redux post of the day

First posted here last year.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

A fascinating look at It’s a Wonderful Life.

The Dude Abides

Jeff Bridges gonna get an Oscar.

Best Movie of the Oughts

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the critics’ choice so far.

Slate has an interactive guide to the best movies of the decade. It tracks the critics’ lists and assigns points. Sort of like the BCS rankings, and just as useful.

[I use Ought in the title to amuse myself. I see the term from time-to-time in these decade wrap-ups, but I scarcely saw it used during the actual decade. Which brings to mind another question, is 2010 part of the "Teens"?]

The Morgan Freeman Chain of Command

Morgan Freeman fans — and aren’t we all — will be amused.

Walt Disney

… died of lung cancer on this date in 1966. He was 65.

The Walt Disney Family Museum formerly provided in-depth background.

Was Walt frozen?

No researcher has discovered where this myth began, but it certainly is widespread. Quite the opposite, Walt’s daughter Diane recalls that her father spoke frequently about his desire to be cremated — and in fact he was. When Disney archivist Robert Tieman researched the issue, he discovered that the first attempts at freezing a person weren’t even discussed until after Walt’s death. In any case, the people who knew Walt and loved him never heard him utter a word about trying it out himself. What’s more, his family lingered around him for some time after his death. No white-smocked physicians rushed his body off to some kind of freezing chamber as would undoubtedly have been the case if he was being preserved.

Orson Welles

A fascinating discussion with Orson Welles in 1960. (Welles would have been 45 at the time.)

Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges gonna get an Oscar.

The Meadows

Keith Phipps visits Las Vegas — Las Vegas, New Mexico — as he retraces the Easy Rider road trip.

This is the fourth post in the series. The third was from Taos.

Las Vegas, NM, is a very cool place to visit. Great fun to stay at the Plaza Hotel, where Javier Bardem met up with Josh Brolin.

Top 10 Bad Messages from Good Movies

Some interesting thoughts on kid’s movies from GeekDad at Wired.com.