Were you at “Kill Bill” last weekend? Those four packed showings were a testament to the communal movie watching experience. There’s something to be said for audience applause in the middle of the movie. I was at the 7:30 show on Saturday, and after The Bride’s fight with Gogo Yubari, the teenage bodyguard who wields a swinging spiked-metal ball on a chain (an homage to 70s Hong-Kong cult classic “Master of the Flying Guillotine”), the audience burst into applause. Now maybe this was just an example of group mentality, but you just don’t burst into applause when you’re watching a movie alone. This applause seemed to psych everyone up even more for the remainder of the amazing “Battle At The House Of Blue Leaves” chapter. Maybe you love Tarantino’s collage aesthetic, maybe you hate it; but this weekend, it was great to see a lot of people out having fun at a movie that is nothing if not an entertaining time. And on a personal note, any movie that has an anime sequence set to Luis Baclav composed music from a spaghetti western, and a split-screen giallo film sequence set to music by Bernard Herrmann, is automatically placed at the top of my list.
The Oscars are on Sunday and I am a total hypocrite. I say I totally hate them and that they don’t matter at all, but of course I watch them and of course I get upset when bad stuff wins, which invariably happens. And of course I make the biggest deal out of them, like they mean so much when, in actuality, the Best Picture is awarded to the film that the majority of the Academy Members (around 6,000 people) like best. So like, yeah, so 3,001 people liked “Chicago” last year. Does it even matter? Well, of course it does. It’s fun and totally alien. I just wish that the telecast were more about honoring good work than selling advertising time. Of course Gil Cates, producer of the Oscars will cut off a winning Art Director mid-speech in order to cut to a precious commercial for the new Ray Romano movie, but you’d better believe he’s not going to cut Johnny Depp off mid-speech. This celebrity double standard is ridiculous, as exemplified a couple years ago when Mike Myers cracked that nobody-watching-really cares-about –the-unknown-nominees-in-the-Sound-category. Well sure, we all want to watch you Mike, overpaid for making the same lame jokes in every movie! If the underpaid, overworked sound technicians aren’t really that important, then your next film should be silent. Then maybe you’d shut up for once.
Anyway, rather than predicting who’s going to win, I’m going to say what some of my favorite stuff from this last year was. How can you compare two pieces of art and say “Oh, this one is better than that one.” What does that mean, anyway?
Best Picture: “Bad Santa,” “Cabin Fever,” “Dracula: Pages From A Virgin’s Diary,” “Kill Bill Vol. I,” “Lost In Translation,” “The Secret Lives of Dentists”
Best Actor: Paul Giamatti “American Splendor,” Bill Murray “Lost In Translation,” Campbell Scott “The Secret Lives of Dentists,” Billy Bob Thornton “Bad Santa”
Best Actress: Hope Davis “American Splendor” and “The Secret Lives of Dentists,” Samantha Morton “In America,” Charolotte Rampling “Swimming Pool,” Uma Thurman “Kill Bill”
Best Foreign Film: “City of God,” “Irreversible,” “Lilya 4-Ever,” “Together”
All in all, kind of a lame year.
Playing this weekend in the Cinema is “Thirteen,” which came out last year, winning a number of awards at international film festivals including Sundance, Locarno and Deauville, and garnering a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for Holly Hunter. The director is Catherine Harwicke, who has been a production designer since the ’80s on a lot of interesting movies including “Tombstone,” “subUrbia,” “Three Kings,” “Laurel Canyon,” and “Freaked” (an amazingly weird mutant comedy directed by and starring Alex Winter of “Bill and Ted” fame). Hardwicke co-wrote the script with thirteen-year-old Nikki Reed, who co-stars in the film (Did they really co-write it? Is Reed really only thirteen?). It follows a teenage girl’s descent into a hell of promiscuity and drug-use when she befriends the most popular girl in school. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, and Holly Hunter plays the suffering mother. Because I haven’t seen it, don’t take my word for it, take the words of these critics! Laura Sinagra, of the Village Voice says “Less a damsel- in-distress fetish flick than a bird-flipping plunge into coded girl-cult communication.” Phil Villarreal, of the Arizona Daily Star says, “A relentless assault of a movie, flooding the screen with horror and empathy.” Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune says, “The film moves you, angers you and tears apart your preconceptions.” And the great Andrew Sarris of the New York Observer says, “It’s a pretentious piece of Valley Girl vileness masquerading as social commentary.” See it and decide for yourself!
“Thirteen,” plays Friday and Saturday, February 27 & 28 in the CFA Cinema, 7:30 and 10pm, $3.
For Free in the Science Center:
Friday night is Martin Scorsese’s mind-blowingly amazing “Raging Bull.” The boxing scenes in this film raised the cinematic bar in a major way with their raw, grainy, black and white brutality. And Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are amazing. For some reason, lots of people I know who like Scorsese have not seen this, easily one of his finest achievements. So here’s you’re chance to do just that. And if you don’t see it, you coulda been a contender. Friday in the Science Center at 7:30 and 10.
Saturday night is René Clair’s film “Le Million,” an early sound- era French comedy. The plot is simple: a man must find his lost winning lottery ticket. Oh yes, and there are musical numbers. And hi-jinx. Saturday in the Science Center at 7:30 and 10.
Next Week:
Wednesday in the Cinema at 8: Guy Maddin’s “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary.” THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF THE YEAR. IT IS COMPLETELY BRILLIANT, COMPLETELY BEAUTIFUL, AND IT’S CANADIAN. IF YOU LIKE VAMPIRES AND/OR DANCING, THIS ONE IS RIGHT UP YER ALLEY. YOU WILL NOT GET ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO SEE THIS IN A THEATER IN YOUR LIFETIME.
Thursday in the Science Center at 8: Jean Renoir’s humanist classic “Grand Illusion,” as seen in FILM 304, as taught by The Great Scott Higgins.
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