Golden Globe Nominations 2010

The Golden Globe nominations are in and have proven what a strange year it has been for Hollywood. While two nods for Meryl Streep is usually an annual affair, two for Sandra Bullock is just about unheard-of; Matt Damon makes the third actor with two nominations. In the non-acting categories, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino received two nominations for directing and writing. As usual, the nominations were all over the board, giving recognition to films most people would would argue don't deserve it (Nine, Avatar, Tobey Maguire... at least if early word is accurate). But the two best moves the Hollywood Foreign Press made were ignoring both Lee Daniels and Rob Marshall in the directing category. I've discussed Daniels previously, but Marshall is quite possibly one of the worst directors in Hollywood. Chicago worked (for the most part) as a result of its source material and Catherine Zeta-Jones, but pay attention to any of the non-musical scenes, and you'll see that the guy can't direct for shit.

So who was missing, in terms of expectations? Invictus for picture, even though ol' Clint got a directing nod; Jeremy Renner; A Single Man in any non-acting category; Samantha Morton and Ben Foster; In the Loop, period; the Coens and A Serious Man in the Musical/Comedy category; and of course Tilda Swinton, though Julia came out so early this year, all the award folk have forgotten. Oh, and also, Mariah Carey. Full nominees, including the television categories and film music ones (Karen O. is now a GG nominee), via the press release.

Best Picture - Drama

- Avatar, d. James Cameron
- The Hurt Locker, d. Kathryn Bigelow
- Inglourious Basterds, d. Quentin Tarantino
- Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, d. Lee Daniels
- Up in the Air, d. Jason Reitman

Best Picture - Musical/Comedy

- (500) Days of Summer, d. Marc Webb
- The Hangover, d. Todd Phillips
- It's Complicated, d. Nancy Meyers
- Julie & Julia, d. Nora Ephron
- Nine, d. Rob Marshall

Best Director

- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
- James Cameron, Avatar
- Clint Eastwood, Invictus
- Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
- Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actor - Drama

- Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
- George Clooney, Up in the Air
- Colin Firth, A Single Man
- Morgan Freeman, Invictus
- Tobey Maguire, Brothers

Best Actress - Drama

- Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
- Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
- Helen Mirren, The Last Station
- Carey Mulligan, An Education
- Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Best Actor - M/C

- Matt Damon, The Informant!
- Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine
- Robert Downey, Jr., Sherlock Holmes
- Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Summer
- Michael Stuhlbarg, A Serious Man

Best Actress - M/C

- Sandra Bullock, The Proposition
- Marion Cotillard, Nine
- Julia Roberts, Duplicity
- Meryl Streep, It's Complicated
- Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Best Supporting Actor

- Matt Damon, Invictus
- Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
- Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
- Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
- Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress

- Penélope Cruz, Nine
- Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
- Anna Kenrick, Up in the Air
- Mo'Nique - Precious
- Julianne Moore, A Single Man

Best Screenplay

- Neill Blomkamp, District 9
- Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker
- Nancy Meyers, It's Complicated
- Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
- Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

Foreign-Language Film

- Baarìa, d. Giuseppe Tornatore, Italy
- Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos], d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
- The Maid [La nana], d. Sebastián Silva, Chile
- A Prophet [Un prophète], d. Jacques Audiard, France
- The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band], d. Michael Haneke, Austria/Germany/France/Italy

Animated Feature

- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, d. Phil Lord, Chris Miller
- Coraline, d. Henry Selick
- Fantastic Mr. Fox, d. Wes Anderson
- The Princess and the Frog, d. Ron Clements, John Musker
- Up, d. Peter Docter, Bob Peterson

The Decade List: Innocence (2004)

Innocence – dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Profoundly peculiar and picaresque, Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s feature debut Innocence ranks among the most startling, magical cinematic portraits of adolescence in recent memory. Set at a mysterious all-girls boarding school where new recruits arrive in caskets marked with a giant star on top, the film tracks three of the near-forty girls who find themselves at this school, hidden away from the world by nature and a giant wall along its perimeter. Iris (Zoé Auclair) is the youngest of her house, wide-eyed and confused, missing her little brother and clinging to the eldest of the house, Bianca (Bérangère Haubruge), who’s in her final year and slowly approaching sexual maturity. In the middle of them, age-wise, is Alice (Lea Bridarolli), an awkward-looking young girl who dreams of leaving the community by impressing the directrice (Corinne Marchand) with her dancing skills.

There seems to be something overly schematic about Innocence, like an unbreakable code surrounding physical attributes of the young girls, based on the specifically colored ribbons that adorn their hair, which signify the age, or grade, the girls are in. A not-so-small detail that is hard to ignore is that the young girl who disappears early in the film is the only one of her peers to tie her hair in a straight ponytail as opposed to side pigtails. It’s not a coincidence surely, but Hadzihalilovic never makes breaking this code simple, if even possible, an act that keeps the narrative’s focus from feeling as clean as it appears.

Instead, Innocence comes across like a dream-like fable of pre-menstrual female adolescence (the girls are sent away from the school around the time they have their first period). Gorgeously rendered by cinematographer Benoît Debie, who shot Hadzihalilovic’s husband Gaspar Noé’s two most recent films Irrèversible and Enter the Void, Innocence never drops its visual spell, making the girls’ journeys formed out of a balance of obedience and childlike curiosity. It’s hard to know what to make of the two adult teachers, played by Marion Cotillard and Hélène de Fougerolles, who are both sympathetic to the girls’ maturation and working toward a strange archetype of feminine elegance. Innocence is a haunting parable, one that’s neither easy to decipher nor quick to leave one’s mind.

With: Bérangère Haubruge, Zoé Auclair, Marion Cotillard, Hélène de Fougerolles, Lea Bridarolli, Alisson Lalieux, Astrid Homme, Ana Palomo-Diaz, Olga Peytavi-Müller, Corinne Marchand, Sonia Petrovna
Screenplay: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, based on the novella Mine-Haha or the Corporeal Education of Girls by Frank Wedekind
Cinematography: Benoît Debie
Music: Richard Cooke
Country of Origin: Belgium/France/UK
US Distributor: Leisure Time Features/Home Vision

Premiere: 10 September 2004 (Toronto International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 16 March 2005 (Rendez-vous with French Cinema)

Awards: Best New Director (San Sebastián International Film Festival); Bronze Horse, Best Cinematography (Stockholm Film Festival); FIPRESCI Prize – International Competition (Istanbul International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Mary (2005)

Mary - dir. Abel Ferrara

[Edited from an earlier post]

I've often joked that Abel Ferrara, like Sam Fuller before him, isn't so much "an American filmmaker" as he is the French's idea of "an American filmmaker." He's pulpy and seedy, particularly when addressing issues of philosophy, spirituality and religion. It's recently dawned on me that more than just that, he's the French's idea of an American Ingmar Bergman. As peculiar as that seems, Ferrara's torrid relationship with Christianity appears to have eluded my thoughts until he tackled the issue head-on in Mary. In Mary, Ferrara places Forest Whitaker in the Harvey Keitel role, a total cod whose bad behavior karmicly releases the ultimate test of faith as he's haunted by the performance of Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche) as Mary Magdalene in yet another Jesus flick. Now, Ted Younger (Whitaker) is no stranger to Jesus and faith; he hosts a popular television program examining the origins of the Christian messiah. However, when his job becomes more important than his relationship with his pregnant wife (Heather Graham) and suspicion is raised about his extramarital affair with actress Gretchen (Marion Cotillard), he seeks understanding from the elusive Marie in his path of redemption.

Like most of Ferrara's work, Mary is deeply flawed. It's a filthy orgy of controversial ideas, none of which come to a simultaneous climax, or even a coherent one. In researching other people's thoughts of Mary, I discovered that the film's crossover appeal (as in an appeal to anyone outside of Ferrara's small fanbase) is pretty much null, almost entirely attributed to the film's shaky stance on faith in chaos. However, to the Ferrara admirer, Mary works beautifully into his oeuvre, a fascinating mess of frustration and admiration.

Where Ferrara succeeds in Mary is in his character placement. Marie, played phenomenally by Binoche, is undoubtedly the most captivating figure in the film and most of her fascination comes from the realization that Ferrara doesn't understand her at all. After taking on the role of Mary Magdalene, Marie spirals into a moral and spirital abyss, unable to shake her own performance, which (according to Whitaker) is shattering. Part of the blame can be placed upon the film's writer/director/star Matthew Modine, a deplorable megalomaniac whose delusions run much deeper than simply casting himself as Jesus. According to Cotillard, it's Modine's self-importance and incompetence as a director which keeps Binoche from leaving Jerusalem. Binoche's personal crisis shrouds the entire film without becoming its central focus. Outside of Lili Taylor's Kathleen in The Addiction (and Drea DeMatteo's nameless character in 'R Xmas, which I hadn't seen at the time), she's the only Ferrara woman I can think of that doesn't fit into his dual idea of women, the simple Madonna/whore complex seen in its fullest between Béatrice Dalle and Claudia Schiffer in The Blackout. It's perhaps in Binoche's obsession with Mary Magdalene, a whore according to certain gospels, Jesus' number one disciple according to others, that her Marie breaks the mold of a typical Ferrara woman in becoming something entirely separate, something he clearly doesn't "get." In keeping Marie in the background while still placing her as the driving force of Mary, Ferrara turns her into a haunting figure as enigmatic and impenetrable as the mysteries of Jesus himself.

There's a chilling relevance to Binoche's Marie, escalated by the death of Heath Ledger, which happened around the time I first saw Mary. As far as most reports go, his death may have been caused by the inability to shake his last role, that of the Joker in Batman. To those unfamiliar with the method of acting, both Marie's conversion and Ledger's death haunt to the bone, a possession of which those outside of the field could never fully grasp. I understand it even less than Ferrara seems to, and it's in this ignorance, or more specificially the impossibility of empathy, that Binoche's performance, reminiscent of Liv Ullmann's Elisabet in Persona, becomes so breathtaking... and scary. There comes a point where Whitaker's tribulations reek of familiarity in the context of Ferrara, but it's Binoche's looming presence that holds the film to where it needs to be. Like Ullmann's disastrous effect on Bibi Andersson, Binoche drives Mary into its frenzy.

With: Forest Whitaker, Matthew Modine, Juliette Binoche, Heather Graham, Marion Cotillard, Stefania Rocca, Marco Leonardi, Luca Lionello, Mario Opinato, Elio Germano, Emanuela Iovannitti
Screenplay: Abel Ferrara, Mario Isabella, Simone Lageoles, Scott Pardo
Cinematography: Stefano Falivene
Music: Francis Kuipers
Country of Origin: Italy/France/USA
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 6 September 2005 (Venice Film Festival)

Awards: Grand Special Jury Prize (Venice Film Festival)