4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
4 Shots From 4 Films
The Red Shoes (1948, dir by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, DP: Jack Cardiff)
Saturday Night Fever (1977, dir by John Badham, DP: Ralf D. Bode)
Flashdance (1983, dir by Adrian Lyne, DP: Donald Peterman)
Chicago (2002, dir by Rob Marshall, DP: Dion Beebe)
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, I’m using this feature to take a look at the history of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Decade by decade, I’m going to highlight my picks for best of the winning films. To start with, here are 4 shots from 4 Films that won Best Picture during the 2000s! Here are….
4 Shots From 4 Best Picture Winners: The 2000s
Chicago (2002, dir by Rob Marshall, DP: Dion Beebe)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, dir by Peter Jackson, DP: Andrew Lesnie)
The Departed (2006, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Michael Ballhaus)
No Country For Old Men (2007, dir by Joel and Ethan Coen, DP: Roger Deakins)
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
With the Oscars approaching, it seems appropriate to pay tribute to stardom with 4 shots from 4 films!
4 Shots From 4 Films About Being A Star
Mulholland Drive (2001, dir by David Lynch, DP: Peter Deming)
Chicago (2002, dir by Rob Marshall, DP: Dion Beebe)
Maps to the Stars (2014, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Peter Suschitzky)
The Neon Demon (2016, dir by Nicolas Winding Refn, DP: Natasha Braier)
(If you’re looking for the usual music video of the day, fear not! Val is currently having some internet issues but, as soon as their resolved, both she and the music videos should be back! Until then, I’m filling with some of my favorite cinematic musical sequences!)
For today’s musical sequence of the day, we have “Agony” from the 2014 film, Into The Woods.
Into the Woods got some notably mixed reviews when it was first released. At the time it was released, I wrote that, while I liked it “I never loved Into the Woods like I thought I would.” In retrospect, I think the film may have been the victim of a combination of my own high expectations and my tendency to be a snob when it comes to cinematic adaptations of Broadway musicals. I recently rewatched Into The Woods and it actually holds up remarkably well.
Definitely one of the highlights of the film was Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen’s duet on “Agony.” Both Pine and Magnussen were perfectly cast as fairy tale princes and “Agony” is a beautiful satire of melodramatic excess. When I first saw the film at the Alamo Drafthouse, “Agony” was the one number that inspired people in the audience to applaud.
For your pleasure, here is “Agony!”
Enjoy!
It’s strange to refer to a best picture winner as being underrated but that’s exactly the perfect description for the 2002 film Chicago.
When Chicago was named the best picture of 2002, it was the first musical to take the top prize since The Sound of Music won in 1965. Until the box office success and Oscar triumph of Chicago, it was assumed by many that a musical had to be animated in order to be successful. After Chicago won, the conventional wisdom was changed. Dreamgirls, Nine, Rock of Ages, Hairspray, Jersey Boys, Into the Woods, Les Miserables, none of these films would have been produced if not for the success of Chicago. It’s also due to Chicago that television networks are willing to take chances on shows like Glee and Smash. And while I think a very valid argument could be made that we would all be better off without Glee, Smash, and Rock of Ages, you still can not deny that Chicago both challenged and changed the conventional wisdom.
https://twitter.com/Delanynder/status/606251356136042496
And yet, despite its success and its continuing influence, Chicago is one of those best picture winners that often seems to get dismissed online. Some of that’s because, by winning best picture, Chicago defeated not only The Two Towers (which is arguably the best installment in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy) but also Roman Polanski’s searing masterpiece, The Pianist. Critics often point out that The Pianist won for best adapted screenplay, best actor, and best director but Chicago somehow managed to win best picture. They suggest that the Academy was either worried about the implications of giving best picture to a film directed by Roman Polanski or else they were blinded by Chicago‘s razzle dazzle. They argue that Chicago was merely an adaptation of an iconic stage production, whereas The Pianist and The Two Towers were both the result of visionary directors.
Well, to be honest, I think those critics do have a point. The Pianist is one of the most emotionally devastating films that I have ever seen. The Two Towers is the perfect mix of spectacle and emotion. And yet, with all that in mind, I still love Chicago.
And it’s not just because of scenes like this:
Or this:
Or even this scene of Richard Gere tap dancing:
If you’ve been reading this site for a while then you know my bias. You know that I grew up dancing. You know that I love to dance. And you know that I automatically love any film that features a dance number. And, since you know my bias, you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, of course Lisa likes this….” And you’re right.
But you know what? Even if nobody danced a step in this film, I would still enjoy it. (Though it would be odd to see a musical with absolutely no dancing.) Chicago is not just about spectacle. Instead, it tells a very interesting story, one that is probably even more relevant today than when the film was first released.
Set in 1924, Chicago tells the story of Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger). Married to the decent but boring Amos (John C. Reilly), Roxie wants to be a star. She has an affair with slrazy Fred Casely (Dominic West), believing that he has showbiz connections. When Fred finally admits to her that he lied in order to sleep with her, Roxie reacts by murdering him. Because Roxie is pretty and blonde and claims to have been corrupted by the big, bad, decadent city, she becomes a celebrity even while she sits in jail and awaits trial.
Also in the jail is Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a nightclub singer who killed her husband and sister. Roxie idolizes Velma but, after Velma snubs her, a rivalry forms between the two. Roxie hires Velma’s lawyer, the slick Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). During the trial, Roxie becomes even more popular, Velma grows jealous, and the only innocent women on death row — a Hungarian who can’t speak English — is ignored and executed because she doesn’t make for a good news story.
Chicago is a cynical and acerbic look at both the mad pursuit of celebrity and the pitfalls of the American justice system. In its way, it’s the film that predicted the Kardashians. (If Roxie had been born several decades later, it’s not difficult to imagine that she’d build her career off of a sex tape as opposed to murder.) Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones are both sociopathic marvels in their respective roles. Even Richard Gere, who, in other films, can come across as being oddly empty, is perfectly cast and surprisingly witty in the role of Billy.
Director Rob Marshall does a great job of making this stage adaptation feel truly cinematic. At no point does Chicago feel stagey. Perhaps Marshall’s smartest decision was to tell the entire film through Roxie’s eyes. Every musical lives and dies based on whether it can convince the audience that it would perfectly natural for everyone onscreen to suddenly break out into song. Chicago is convincing because, of course, Roxie would view her life as being a musical.
And did I mention that the film features a lot of great dancing?
Because it so seriously does….
So, yes, it can be argued that Chicago beat out some worthier films for the title of best picture of the year. But, regardless, it’s still a good and memorable film.
I had such a mixed reaction to Into the Woods, the latest Rob Marshall-directed musical adaptation, that it’s hard to really know how to start my review, let alone how to conclude it.
So, I’ll start by answering the most important question that you probably have about this film. I think sometimes that film snobs like me tend to forget that, for most people, it’s just a question of whether or not the film is worth the time, effort, and money that it will take to sit through it. In other words, having seen Into the Woods, do I recommend it?
Yes, I do. Well, kind of anyway. As I said before, it’s complicated. But, for the most part, I enjoyed Into the Woods. The audience that I saw it with (and the theater was absolutely packed) seemed to really love the film and there was even a smattering of applause at the end of it. Into the Woods is a crowd-pleaser. It’s a well-made film. It’s perfectly cast. It’s full of funny moments. The costumes are absolutely to die for. (I’m totally in love with the gown that Anna Kendrick gets to wear to the ball.) Meryl Streep will probably get an Oscar nomination. Chris Pine deserves to be given a lot more awards consideration than he’s received. It’s such a good film and yet…
And yet, I never loved Into the Woods like I thought I would. I watched it and I kept thinking about how much I, of all people, should have loved this film. I love musicals. I love spectacle. I love fairy tales. I love revisionism. I love satire. I love handsome, charming men, like the one played by Chris Pine. In a perfect world, Anna Kendrick would be my best friend and we’d spend all of our time going to wine tastings and watching Lifetime movies. Into the Woods was full of everything that I should have loved and the final song actually brought tears to my mismatched eyes but I never quite came to love the film. Something was just off.
Before I go any further, I should admit that my reaction may have been influenced by outside factors. On the one hand, all of the Bowman girls are together right now for the holidays and I loved the fact that, as I watched Into the Woods, I was watching it with my sisters and all four of us were sharing in the experience. Really, that’s the ideal way to watch something like Into The Woods. This is the type of movie that was specifically made to be watched and appreciated by large groups, preferably made up of people who understand and appreciate the conventions of musical theater.
On the other hand, we had the most obnoxious woman ever sitting directly behind us. She laughed through the entire film, regardless of whether anything funny was happening on screen or not. (The film features a lot of comedy but it grows progressively darker with each passing minute.) It wasn’t just that she wouldn’t stop laughing as much as it was that her laugh was so insincere. You could tell that she was laughing because she wanted everyone to be impressed with the fact that she “got” the film. But ultimately, all she did was get on everyone’s nerves with her inability to understand that we weren’t there to listen to her dry heave of a laugh. We were there because we wanted to see Into the Woods. The experience was not meant to be about her. It was about the movie.
As for what the film is about, it’s an adaptation of the famous Stephen Sondheim musical in which the Baker (James Corben) and the Baker’s Wife (Emily Blunt) attempt to break the spell of a not-quite-evil-but-definitely-bad-tempered witch (Meryl Streep). By bringing the witch several things (the majority of which can be found in the woods that sit right outside their village), they can lift the curse that has made it impossible for the Baker’s Wife to get pregnant. Along the way, they run into everyone from the witch’s daughter, Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy) to Jack the Giant Slayer (Daniel Huttlestone) to Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) to the Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Deep, playing up the sexual subtext of the story of Little Red Riding Hood) to not one but two charming princes (played by Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen)! Into the Woods starts by poking gentle fun at the fairy tales of old and then gets darker and darker until, by the end of the film, only a few characters are left alive.
It’s a great idea and it’s gorgeously executed but yet the film itself never quite makes the transition from being good to being great. Towards the end of the musical, the surviving characters sing about missing their loved ones and it brought tears to my eyes but that was one of the few moments when the film itself actually made an emotional connection. Otherwise, I spent a lot of time feeling curiously detached from what was happening on screen.
Thinking about Into The Woods, it’s hard not to compare it to 2012’s version of Les Miserables. In Les Miserables, all of the songs were recorded live on set. And, for all the unfair criticism that Russell Crowe received for his singing, this brought a definite raw power and immediacy to the entire production. What some of the actors may have lacked in conventional singing ability, they made up for with the sheer power of their performances. In Into The Woods, the majority of the songs were pre-recorded. Everyone sounds almost too perfect. There’s none of the vitality or danger that came with Les Miserables or even Rob Marshall’s previous musical, Nine.
(As far as casting, direction, and almost everything else is concerned, Into The Woods is a hundred times better than Nine but it still never manages to produce a moment as vibrantly silly and memorable as Kate Hudson’s performance of Cinema Italiano.)
Into the Woods does have a uniformly excellent cast. Everyone — even the much-criticized Johnny Depp — does a wonderful job with their role. Meryl Streep has been getting all of the awards-consideration, largely because she’s Meryl Streep and, if she could get a nomination for giving that performance in August: Osage County, then she can probably get a nomination for anything. (And don’t get me wrong — Meryl’s great and all but there’s still a part of me that would have loved to have seen what a less self-enamored performer — like Marion Cotillard or Helen Mirren — could have done with the role of the Witch.) But, to me, the film’s best two performances really came from Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine. Whether pausing to strike a heroic pose or casually trying to seduce a woman who he meets in the woods or explaining that he’s been raised to be charming and not sincere, Chris Pine is never less than outstanding.
So, to get back to the only question that really matters, did I like Into The Woods? I did but I did not love it, which is unfortunate because I really wanted to love it.
However, overall, I recommend Into The Woods.
Just don’t watch it alone.
Or with anyone who has an annoying laugh.
Watching the first trailer for the upcoming musical film adaptation of Into The Woods, I’m struck by the fact the first half of the trailer looks intriguing and wonderful while the second half of the trailer, which features an almost stereotypically epic score and Chris Pine looking like a model-turned-prince, is far less interesting. A lot of online Oscar watchers have been predicting that Into The Woods, Meryl Streep, and Johnny Depp are all going to be award-contenders. Then again, a lot of those people also thought that Rob Marshall’s previous film, Nine, would be a contender as well.
Myself, I have a feeling that Meryl might get a nomination, largely because she’s Meryl and she always gets a nomination. As for the rest of the film, it’s too early to say. The trailer below gives reason to be both optimistic and pessimistic.
So, in other words, I have no idea.
Whiplash
Of course, it’s way too early for me or anyone else to try to predict who and what will be nominated for an Academy Award in 2015. However, that’s not stopping me from trying to do so on a monthly basis!
Below are my updated predictions for May.
You can read my predictions for April here and my March predictions here.
Best Picture
Birdman
Boyhood
Foxcatcher
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Unbroken
Whiplash
Wild
I’ve dropped Get On Up from my list of best picture nominees, mostly because the film’s trailer is just too bland. As for some of the other films that some of my fellow bloggers are predicting will be contenders: The Grand Budapest Hotel may very well deserve a nomination but it may have come out too early in the year. Gone Girl may be too much of a genre piece while Inherent Vice may not be enough of one. Big Eyes would theoretically benefit from the fact that both Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams would appear to be perfectly cast but, after his last few live action films, I don’t have much faith in Tim Burton. As for Into The Woods, my instinct says that Rob Marshall’s latest musical film adaptation is going to have more in common with Nine than with Chicago.
Best Director
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Birdman
Angelina Jolie for Unbroken
Richard Linklater for Boyhood
Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game
Jean-Marc Vallee for Wild
No changes here. I nearly dropped Angelina Jolie from the list, just because she’s being so aggressively hyped and early hype always seems to lead to later disappointment. If I had dropped her, I would have replaced her with Christopher Nolan for Interstellar.
Best Actor
Steve Carell in Foxcatcher
Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton in Birdman
Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice
Christoph Waltz in Big Eyes
I dropped Chadwick Boseman from my list of predictions, again based on the blandness of the trailer for Get On Up. I also moved Ralph Fiennes down to best supporting actor. In their place: Joaquin Phoenix and Christoph Waltz.
Best Actress
Amy Adams in Big Eyes
Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl
Emma Stone in Magic in the Moonlight
Reese Whitherspoon in Wild
Michelle Williams in Suite francaise
I dropped Jessica Chastain from the list and replaced her with Michelle Williams. Why? There’s really no big reason, beyond the fact that I know more about the role Williams is playing in Suite francaise than I do about the role Chastain is playing in A Most Violent Year. If The Fault In Our Stars was being released in October (as opposed to next month), I would have probably found room for Shailene Woodley on this list.
Best Supporting Actor
Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ethan Hawke in Boyhood
Mark Ruffalo in Foxcatcher
Martin Sheen in Trash
J.K. Simmons in Whiplash
I dropped both Robert Duvall and Channing Tatum from this list, largely because I don’t know enough about Duvall’s character in The Judge and because I have a feeling that, when it comes to Foxcatcher, the Academy will either nominate Ruffalo or Tatum but not both of them. My first replacement is Martin Sheen for Trash, largely because Sheen has never been nominated for an Oscar and the role of an activist priest seems to be perfect for him. My second replacement is Ralph Fiennes for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Originally, I was predicting Fiennes would get a best actor nod but — as is explained in this article over at AwardsWatch — a pretty good case can be made for Fiennes getting a supporting nod instead.
Literally minutes before clicking publish on this post, I also decided to remove Christopher Walken and replace him with Ethan Hawke. With three nominations already — one for acting and two for writing — Hawke seems to be popular with Academy voters and he always seems to do his best work for Richard Linklater.
Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Viola Davis in Get On Up
Marcia Gay Harden in Magic In The Moonlight
Kristen Scott Thomas in Suite francaise
Meryl Streep in Into The Woods
Two changes: I dropped Amy Ryan and replaced her with Kristen Scott Thomas. Again, it’s mostly just because I know more about the role Scott Thomas is playing than I do about Ryan’s role. I also, shortly before posting this, decided to remove Kiera Knightley and replace her with Patricia Arquette for Boyhood.
So, those are my predictions for this month! Agree? Disagree? Please feel free to let me know in the comments section below.
Boyhood
This post is going to end with some spoilers, which will have warnings behind it. Just so you know.
Confession: I fell asleep during Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides. It was only for a few minutes during the jungle sequences, but nothing special was happening, so I figured I could get away with it. I can see, though why Gore Verbinski saddled up with Rango instead of this one. As Lisa Marie mentioned via Twitter, she zoned out about 10 minutes in and really only followed it for the awesomeness that is Johnny Depp. He, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane are the only real reasons to see this, but know that the film is muddled with a bit of lazy writing covered in explosions and chases. This is one Jack Sparrow story you can really wait for on DVD. It’s literally the Pirates of the Caribbean Edition of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
Every writer goes though a bad time now and then. Even though Paul Haggis won an Oscar for Crash, he was also responsible for Quantum of Solace, which could have been a tighter story than what it was. I have to remind myself that even though Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot gave us a cool character in Captain Jack Sparrow (which was made more concrete through Johnny Depp’s performance), they were also responsible for Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla some years back. It happens. Of course, they could both write me under the table while blindfolded, this I get, and they have my respect.
That said, I didn’t outright hate Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It was a fun popcorn ride in some areas, with as much flair as the Disney / Bruckheimer collaborations can offer, but it also felt like it was a production just made for the money, like The Wolfman. The only ones who seemed to really enjoy themselves here were Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane, and to both their credits they carried the film for me. Johnny Depp was great as always (he has moment where he clearly shines), but I get the feeling like he’s almost tired of the character. Again, that’s just my viewpoint here.
What about the Kids?
Well, being a film under the Disney banner, the easiest rule of thumb to use here is this: If you’ve taken your kids to any of the other Pirates movies, this is pretty much more of the same. Granted, people die and there may be a nearly naked mermaid, but it’s done well. It should be okay for teens and pre-teens, but that’s up to families to decide.
Previously on Pirates, we found Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, great as always) in the possession of the map from At World’s End, who is in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth. Jack finds that there is someone impersonating him who also happens to be looking for the same thing, and seeks out the imposter. This eventually leads him to the dreaded pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) who also seeks the Fountain to block a prophecy that will lead to his death. So, it’s something of a race to see who will get there first. Even his old friend/enemy Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is part of the adventure, but doesn’t quite have the same presence here as he did the other films.
Depp on his own does justice to Sparrow and he still manages to bring some fun to the character. That’s really not a surprise, but after 3 of these films, I had the feeling that part of his performance was just repetition of what he did before. I imagine him wishing for Verbinski or sighing after every take. Well, every take that didn’t involve Penelope Cruz, I guess.
I felt Penelope’s Angelica really matched well against Depp’s Sparrow, and it opened up a lot of doors for characterization between the two. Depp and Cruz’s scenes together really worked for me and were definitely a highlight as their chemistry is amazing. Between she and McShane – who quite frankly hasn’t had a bad role since Deadwood – really help to carry the movie. Blackbeard’s ruthlessness is clearly conveyed through McShane’s acting and if there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s to play the villain well. There are also some notable cameos near the start of the film, which was nice to see.
One other major plus is the music. Even though Hans Zimmer uses some of the themes from the other films, he’s had some great help in guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela. If you’ve never heard these two before, open up another tab on your browser and look them up online. This post will be waiting for you when you get back.
Done? Good. Didn’t I say they were cool? The duo adds a lot of flavor to the music of the movie, which really does help things (as much as they can).
Rob Marshall’s direction of the film isn’t terrible as some might say. It actually feels a lot like Gore Verbinski’s (to me, anyway), and if you weren’t told who was making the film, there’s a slight possibility you wouldn’t recognize it wasn’t Verbinski. He does capture the action scenes well and truthfully, there was something cool with the lighting in the Sparrow sword fights that occurs early on. I’m under the impression that this is due to the Bruckheimer touch on things.
The writing on this film felt lazy. Here’s what I mean, and the following might be spoilers:
*** Here lie Spoilers, Ladies and Gents, be warned! ***
*** Here lie Spoilers, Ladies and Gents, be warned! ***
*** Here lie Spoilers, Ladies and Gents, be warned! ***
There is a part in the film where Barbossa explains his stake in the chase for the Fountain of Youth. In a few lines, Geoffrey Rush nails it like an old man telling stories by a campfire. The only problem is that you’ve been told what happened in a visual medium. One of the first rules of writing is to show, and not tell. With a budget of over $400 million, I find it shocking that they couldn’t have just taken a few minutes to visually give us that explanation. It’s possible that Rossio and Elliot wanted to avoid reusing some of the same Pirates elements from the earlier films, but sometimes Pirate life does have a few struggles on the water. Why not show how he lost the Black Pearl?
Another example of the writing problem is the quasi-love story between the ship’s cleric (who’s name I can’t even recall) and the mermaid they encounter. It felt forced to me, and I’m convinced that when the Cleric finally tells the Mermaid he wants her to save his life, she pulled him down into deep waters only to feed upon him like those other poor pirate souls. And you know why? Because Marshall and the writers never bothered to show the audience a hint of what became of them. I doubt they cared about them any more than the audience could have. I even stayed after the credits, figuring that the final shot would maybe show me something of their fate, but no. Nothing of the sort.
*** Spoilers are done, you can keep reading now. ***
*** Spoilers are done, you can keep reading now. ***
*** Spoilers are done, you can keep reading now. ***
Oh, and there’s nothing to read after this, because I’m writing like Rossio and Elliot. Feel that sense of emptiness? That gap, like there should be something here? That’s what this Pirates may do to you.
The more I read about and see stuff on this fourth film on the Disney action-adventure franchise the more I’m really looking forward to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
This Super Bowl tv spot shows some new scenes that wasn’t in the official trailer released a little over a month ago. One thing I am glad to see is more Ian McShane as Blackbeard. I’m also glad that there’s still no Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley to be seen in this film. Yes, I know that they declined to be in it (that or Bruckheimer finally got the hint that it was these two who bogged down the first two sequels).
In the end, this third sequel will live or die on the performance of Depp returning as Capt. Jack Sparrow. I’d bet on Captain Jack returning to his roguish self and making this fourth film a fun ride the way the first two sequels weren’t.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is set for a May 20, 2011 release.
Through the Shattered Lens 