Ecstasy for Gold – The Cutthroat Campaigns of Awards Season

OscarStatue

Awards season is once again upon us and as always, there is a lot of debate over which film is deserving of the industry’s highest honors.  What is interesting about this year, however, is how up in the air it is.  For the first time in a long while, there are no clear favorites in this year’s Oscar race.  In years past, a clear picture would form by now of who was leading the pack after the Golden Globes and all the industry guilds have made there choices.  But so far, every one of the top honors this year has been varied, leaving no clear front runner for Best Picture at the Oscars; made all the more confusing after the Producers Guild Awards ended in a tie for the first time in it’s history, awarding both 12 Years a Slave and Gravity for Best Film.  Sure, any accolades for these movies are well deserved and appreciated by their recipients, but it’s the Academy Awards that solidifies the award season, and it’s what everyone in the industry strives for in the end.  That strong desire to win the top award has become such a dominant force in the industry, that it has started this troubling trend of negative campaigning in Hollywood. In recent years, we’ve seen Oscar campaigns become so overblown and vicious that it would make even Washington insiders queasy.  And the sad result is that in the pursuit of the industry’s top honors, the movies themselves will get lost in the shuffle.
This isn’t something new either, but it has developed over time into something bigger.  Oddly enough, when the Academy Awards first started in 1927, the awards themselves were considered an afterthought.  Instead, it marked the conclusion of a banquet dinner held by the Hollywood elite to celebrate the end of the year.  Many of the winners in this first ceremony either discarded their Oscars or pawned them off in later years, not foreseeing the significance that those statues would have in the years to come.  It wasn’t until about 4-5 years later when the ceremony gained significance, around the time when they started announcing the winners on the radio, allowing audiences to be informed about Hollywood’s awards recipients.  Once the ceremonies began to be televised in the 50’s, the awards season had now become a full blown cultural event and a focal point for the industry ever since.  Of course, with the whole world now interested in who was winning, it soon led to some of the studios making behind the scenes deals in order to get their movies to the top.  One of the earliest examples of questionable campaigning for an award came in the 1940 Oscar race, when producer David O. Selznick, hot off his Awards success for Gone With the Wind (1939), pressured a lot of entertainment press agents to campaign for his next film, the Hitchcock-directed Rebecca (1940).  The aggressive campaigning helped the film win Best Picture, but it failed to win any other major award, which led many people to question whether or not it deserved it in the first place; especially considering that it beat out the more beloved The Grapes of Wrath (1940) that same year.
This illustrates the major problem with an overly aggressive awards campaign that I’ve observed; the doubt that it raises over whether or not the movie deserves what it got.  We’ve seen the Academy Awards honor films that have certainly withstood the test of time (Casablanca (1943), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and The Godfather (1972), just to name a few), but there are also choices made in other years that have left us wondering what the Academy was thinking.  But it’s not the final choices that make the Oscar campaigning problematic.  We all differ when it comes to choosing our picks for the awards, because everyone’s tastes are different.  What I find to be the problem is the increasingly nasty ways that movie companies try to get their movies an award by attacking their competition.  In recent years, I’ve noticed that this has gone beyond the usual “For Your Consideration” campaigning that we commonly get from the studios, and it has now devolved into fully-fledged mudslinging.  Truth be told, I don’t even think political campaigns get this cutthroat, but then again, I’m not much of a political observer.  This year in particular, we’ve seen complaints leveled at films for inaccuracies in their historical reenactments and for mis-characterizations of their subjects.  While some accusations have merit, there becomes the question of whether or not it matters. There are some voters out there who are persuaded by the chatter and would rather let the outside forces persuade them towards making a choice than judging a film on its own strengths, which becomes problematic when that chatter is ill-informed.
The most troubling thing about the recent trend of negative campaigning in the awards season is the inclusion of outside forces brought in to give weight to the criticisms behind a film.  This goes beyond just the negative reviews from critics.  What we’ve seen happen recently is the involvement of the media and press more and more in Oscar campaigns.  This has included articles written by scholars and experts that call into question the authenticity of the facts in the film as a way of slamming a movie’s credibility.  Famed astrophysicist Neill DeGrasse Tyson made the news weeks back when he published an article that pointed out the scientific information that the movie Gravity got wrong, which many people in the industry jumped upon to undermine Gravity’s chances for some of the top awards.  Mr. Tyson later on said that he did the article just for fun and continued to say that he still enjoyed the film immensely, but this seemed to get lost in the controversy that his first article stirred up.  It could be argued that film companies utilize negative campaigning just because it’s easier and more effective, which is probably true, but what it ends up doing is to distract people away from what the awards season should really be about which honoring the best work done by people in the industry that year.
The most dangerous kinds of negative campaigning that I’ve seen have been the ones that have no bearing in actual fact.  One of my first articles on this blog was an editorial addressing the smear campaign leveled against Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.  At the time of the film’s release, African-American director Spike Lee openly criticized the movie because of it’s pervasive use of the “N-word,” and he denounced the film as “racist” and an insult to the history of slavery; despite the fact that he hadn’t seen the film yet.  Spike Lee’s comments however were used as ammo against the movie during last years Oscar race, which fortunately had little effect as the film walked away with two awards; for Screenplay and for Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz.  The same cannot be said for Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, however.
Released around the same time as Django, Zero Dark Thirty had a lot of hype built up around it, seeing as how it was documenting the search and capture of Osama Bin Laden.  The film’s hype was a case where Hollywood’s connections with political insiders became both a blessing and a curse.  Some left-wing studio heads even wanted to fast track the film’s release, so it would premiere before the 2012 election in the hopes that it would boost President Obama’s chances for reelection.  When the film premiered, however, the film’s reception was not what people expected.  Bigelow’s very frank depiction of torture used by the CIA to help find Bin Laden angered many people, and criticism of the film shifted from it being called left-wing propaganda to right-wing propaganda.  The film’s producers rightly argued that politics had nothing to do with the movie’s overall depiction, but the damage had already been done.  The one time Oscar front-runner was dealt a significant blow.  Kathryn Bigelow was shut out of the Best Director category and the film only ended up winning one award for Best Sound Editing, which it had to share in a tie with Skyfall (2012).  You could say that Zero Dark Thirty became a victim of it’s own pre-release hype, but I think the negative campaigning against the film rose to an almost unethical level when political leaders got involved.  Just weeks before the Oscar’s ceremony, Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, along with fellow Democrat Carl Levin and Republican John McCain, called for an investigation into the film’s development, examining how Bigelow and writer Mark Boal got their information.  When the Oscars were over, almost on cue, the investigation was dropped.  We may never know if there was some backroom deal involved, but I saw this as an example of Awards campaign interference gone too far.
It’s troubling to think that some people are so easily persuaded by hype and negative press in the film industry, but it’s a result of how valuable these awards have become.  It is true that winning an Oscar will increase a film’s overall box-office numbers, which may be good for business, but it’s bad for the film’s legacy.  What is there to gain from a short-term boost in grosses when you’re hurting the film’s chances of having a long shelf life?  There are many examples of movies gaining a negative stigma if they win the top award over more deserving films.  The most controversial example would be 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, which many people say stole the Best Picture award away from Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan; so much so, that new campaign rules were drafted up by the Academy when it was revealed how much money Miramax execs Bob and Harvey Weinstein put into the film’s Oscar campaign.  Shakespeare did see a boost at the box office in the weeks before and after the awards, but the controversy behind it has unfortunately overshadowed the film itself over the years, which has in turn destroyed its staying power.  Time is the best judge of great movies, but the Oscars have only the year long window for perspective, so usually their picks have little foresight in the end.  1999’s winner, American Beauty, has almost faded into obscurity over time, as other films from that same year, like The Iron Giant, Fight Club, and The Matrix have become beloved classics up to today.
Is it right in the end to criticize a film over it’s content, or it’s adherence to the facts?  My argument is that a movie should be judged solely on it’s own strength as a movie.  The truth is that there is no absolute truth in film; it’s all make-believe after all.  If a film needs to take some historical liberties in order to tell a more fulfilling story-line, then so be it.  What I hate is when controversies come up around a film when it really doesn’t matter in the end.  Some controversies this year have erupted over films like Saving Mr. Banks and Captain Phillips, because of their white-washed approach to the depictions of their main characters, and the negative campaigns against them robbed actors like Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson out of recognition for awards that their outstanding performances would’ve otherwise deserved.  So what if aspects of these people’s lives are left out of the film; in the end they have nothing to do with the story’s that the filmmakers wanted to focus on in the first place.  The Wolf of Wall Street has had it’s own set of controversies, some of which the movie purposely provoked, and yet it didn’t effect it’s chances at the Oscars, so it shows that there is a selective bias in the negative campaigning behind against these films; all depending on who has something to gain from knocking out the competition.
When the winners of the Oscars are announced this year, my hope is that the voters use their best judgement when they cast their ballots.  For the most part, the Academy Awards will never please everybody.  Most often, whenever people say they were upset by the Awards, it’s more because there are few surprises and the whole thing ends up being boring in the end.  That’s why I am excited about this year’s open race, because anybody could win.  Unfortunately, the closer the race, the more negative the attacks against each film will be.  I think that hype can be a dangerous tool for a film if it is misused, and will ultimately end up clouding the merits of the movie itself.  In the end, Oscar gold does not always mean certification of excellence.  Great films stand the test of time, while the Oscars are more or less a time capsule of public tastes from that specific year.  Sometimes they pick the right Best Picture or performance, sometimes they don’t.  But what is certain is that negative campaigning is getting uglier and more prevalent in the award season.  What I hate is the fact that it’s become less about honoring great works in cinema and more about competition, seeing who’ll take home the most awards at the end of the night.  What seems to be lost in the shuffle is whether or not people like the actual films; that the movies are becoming increasingly seen as an afterthought in the awards season, with hype and name recognition mattering more in the media’s eye.  But, in the end, what matters is the entertainment value of it all, and no doubt we’ll still continue to be on the edge of our seats each time those envelopes open.

Focus on a Franchise – Back to the Future

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We all believe that we can predict which movies will be a hit and which ones are destined to fail, usually when we get our first glimpse of the trailer or poster, but every now and then, there will be a film that not only blows away our expectations, but will also change our outlook on the movies overall.  One such movie that had this kind of impact was the 1985 classic Back to the Future.  Directed by Robert Zemekis and produced by Bob Gale, Back to the Future quickly became a benchmark film for the 80’s, and redefined what kind of movies could become blockbusters.  Released at a time when Star Wars and Indiana Jones dominated the cinemas, this modestly budgeted film stuck out oddly due to it’s success.  On it’s own merits, the movie is really just a high concept comedy that plays more on the nostalgia of the 1950’s than it does on it’s special effects, of which there are actually very little.  And yet, we mention this movie in the same breathe as these other bigger hit films, and that’s mainly due to the fact that Back to the Future hit it’s bulls-eye with largely the same audience as these movies and continues to hold up nearly 30 years later.  It’s very clear to see why.
For many people (myself included), Back to the Future is the kind of movie that inspires us towards visual storytelling.  It’s a film that has ambition and confidence well beyond the limits of it’s budget.  In essence, it shows us that any story can feel epic in scale when given the right vision behind it.  This movie was a turning point for director Zemekis, whose career up to this point was defined more by comedies like Used Cars (1980) and Romancing the Stone (1983).  Back to the Future opened the door for him to make more ambitious films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump (1994), though each one of them does feature the same sense of humor that Zemekis perfected in Future.  But, despite Zemekis’ desire to branch out, he was also grounded by the same success from Future, which inevitably led to Universal Studios demanding sequels.  This led to the creation of a Back to the Future trilogy, with the second and third movies being made back to back and released a year apart.  This was both good and bad, because while the two sequels are alright on their own, they are clearly inferior to the first movie, and as a trilogy, the whole thing doesn’t hold up.  I think that may have been partly because of Zemekis interests were elsewhere, or the fact that nothing lined up right for the trilogy to work.  Either way, looking over each film, I find that the Back to the Future franchise is one of the more puzzling in movie history.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)
The one that started it all.  In the nearly 30 years since this films release, it has become an almost universally beloved classic.  It’s iconic in every way; the script, the performances, the production design.  Hell, even the flaws in this movie have become iconic moments for some people.  The premise for the film is highly imaginative, and yet simple enough for anyone to understand.  We follow the adventures of Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) as he travels back in time from 1985 to 1955 in a time machine invented by Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd).  While in the past, he runs into his father George (Crispin Glover) and mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson), who in this time period are still in high school.  And due to interference by his presence in the past, Marty has disrupted the timeline of his parents falling in love, which means he could be wiped from existence if he doesn’t get them back together.  With the help of the younger Doc Brown, Marty tries to find a way to get his parents back together and get back home to his real time, which becomes even more complicated when the high school bully, Biff Tannen (Thomas Wilson) has his eyes on Lorraine as well.
There’s so much that works well in this movie, and it’s largely due to the confidence behind the filmmaking and the performances.  For one thing, the screenplay is rock solid, and probably one of the best that has ever been written.  Zemekis and Bob Gale both co-wrote the script over a long period of time, and had to cut and rewrite it constantly, but the end result proved to be worth it.  What essentially makes the script work is in how it fully exploits it’s concept, particularly through it’s sense of humor.  It’s an interesting idea that they touch upon, that being the experience of seeing your parents when they were your own age.  And of course, this is played up perfectly in the film when Marty learns that his father was a nerdy peeping tom and his mother was a little slutty and a cheater in school.  The time travel concepts are laid out very effectively in the movie without being too overwhelmingly detailed.  Doc Brown is able to make every scientific notion seem plausible, even when it’s bogus (I highly doubt that 1.21 jigawatts is an actual scientific measurement, for example).  It’s both the humor that make the movie work so well, and the script is endlessly quotable with lines likes “Lorraine, you are my density” or “You built a time machine, out of a Delorean,” and of course, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” just to name a few.
The film is also benefited by some phenomenal performances.  Michael J. Fox seems so perfectly suited for the role of Marty McFly, which makes it all the more unusual that he was not the first person cast in the part.  Originally, actor Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty, but Zemekis felt that he wasn’t fitting right in the film after having shot a number of scenes.  So, they waited until Fox was on hiatus from his role on the hit TV series Family Ties and finished the film with him in the movie.  Since then, it has become an iconic part in the actor’s career, and he plays it to perfection in the movie.  Christopeher Lloyd is also perfectly cast in the role of Doc Brown, making him delightfully eccentric, without pushing him in too cartoonish a direction.  In many ways, Doc Brown is the character that we remember most from the movie, and that’s not a bad thing either.  Lea Thompson and Thomas Wilson also provide memorable performance as Lorraine and Biff, respectively.  But my favorite performance has to be Crispin Glover as George McFly, just because it’s such an out there performance in what is otherwise a straightforward movie.  It’s befitting for the avant garde actor like him, and it is impressive when he plays Marty’s father, despite Crispin being 3 years younger than Michael J. Fox in real life.  Just watch his hilarious mannerisms in the movie, and see how he takes a simple line like “Stories!” and puts a whole different spin on it.  It’s things like this which helps to make Back to the Future the masterpiece that it is today.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989)
Because the first film was such an overwhelming success, and because the ending hinted at continuing the adventures of Marty and Doc, it was probably inevitable that a sequel would be made one day.  After completing Who Framed Roger Rabbit over at Disney, Robert Zemekis and Bob Gale began work on the follow-up to their huge hit.  The surprising development to come out of their writing process was the idea to not just make one sequel, but two back to back.  This was the first time that a studio had ever attempted a project like this, and it showed that Back to the Future Parts 2 and 3 were going to be much more ambitious than the film before them.  Unfortunately, success is a hard thing to replicate, and these sequels are clear examples of this.  The story picks up right where the first one left off, with Marty and Doc headed to the future; the far distant year of 2015.  While there, the time machine is stolen by an elderly Biff Tannen, who uses time travel for his own ends and disrupts the time lines in catastrophic ways.  In order to fix everything, Marty and Doc have to return to the past of 1955 and set things right, even while the events of the first film are taking place in the background.
While there is still a lot to like with this movie, it feels like a letdown when compared to the first film.  Part 2‘s biggest problem is that it’s unfocused, and also restrained by the limitations put on it by the first movie.  Zemekis had a lot to live up to with this one, and after watching this movie and the ones he made around the same time, you can see that his heart really wasn’t in it this time.  He doesn’t do a horrible job directing by any means, but it’s clear that this project was more of an obligation than a story he really wanted to tell.  Also complicating things is the fact that some elements from the first movie had to be dropped, because not everyone was on board.  Crispin Glover refused to do the movie, so George McFly’s role was significantly diminished.  Also, the movie looses steam when it takes the story back into the past.  Some people thought the idea of having a new subplot happen in the events of the old film was a clever idea, but for me, it just makes me think of scenes from a better movie, and how much less I care about what’s going on in this new story.  I was much more interested in the stuff we’ve never seen before, like the future setting and the alternate 1985, both of which exploited the time travel aspects of the movie much better.
There is still a lot that I like in the movie though.  Thomas Wilson really picks up the slack and makes Biff Tannen a memorable and effective villain; even more so than he did in the first movie.  What’s really impressive about his performance is how many different versions of the character he plays in the movie, spanning 4 different time periods, and one alternate reality.  He also plays the part way over the top in a way that works to the films advantage.  I also like the fact that we are now in 2014 as I’m writing this, and we’re no where near matching Zemekis’ vision of 2015.  No flying cars, or hover boards, or self-lacing Nike Shoes; which is kind of sad.  Though while a lot of the predictions never panned out, there are some future inventions that the movie actually predicted correctly, like 16:9 flat screen TVs, video conferencing, and facial tracking on cameras.  Also, while the story has many flaws, it does feature one of the best cliffhangers in movie history.  Marty gets stranded in 1955 at the end of the film after an electrical storm sends the time machine away without him, taking Doc Brown with it.  Within a moment, a car drives up behind Marty and he is soon approached by a Western Union messenger (played by SCTV’s Joe Flaherty) who has a letter for Marty from Doc dated from 1885.  It’s a brilliant bit of writing that really sells the idea of playing around with relative time.  What was just an instant for Marty was an eternity for that one letter, and it’s the one moment in the movie that actually lives up to the promise of the first film.  Of course, with a heavy cliffhanger like that, you’d hope there’d be a good follow-up.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III (1990)
The conclusion of the Back to the Future trilogy is a mixed bag like it’s predecessor, but still an interesting movie in it’s own right.  Continuing from the first movie, we find Marty recouping with 1955’s Doc Brown as they try to figure out how to get 1985’s Doc back from the past and return them both to their right time and place.  The two of them soon learn that the future Doc is killed by a ruthless cowboy named Mad Dog Tannen (played by Thomas Wilson), and they realize that they have to do more than rescue him.  Marty manages to make it back to 1885 in a Delorean Doc had hidden in an abandoned mine and he discovers that it’ll take some coaxing to remove Doc from this time period that he’s become accustomed to.  As Marty and Doc devise a plan to return home, they encounter a lonely school teacher named Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen), who Doc grows an attraction to.  Eventually, everything leads to the usual race against time and the usual showdown with the villainous Tannen.  And this is mainly where the movie falters.  It’s just retreading familiar territory once again, showing that the filmmakers didn’t have the same confidence in their concept that they should’ve had after the first movie.  By the third film, the premise had been stretched out thin and it was clear that the series had exhausted all it’s potential.
That’s not to say that the movie is bad at all.  I actually enjoy watching this movie, even more so than Part 2.  For one thing, it’s actually a competently done Western, even with all the sci-fi stuff included.  Back in the 80’s and 90’s, Westerns were out of vogue, so this film was very appreciated by anyone who was a fan of the genre at the time.  This film also feels a bit more focused than Part 2, having the story play out in one setting rather than hopping back and forth through different time periods.  The actors also look like they’re having more fun this time around, especially Christopher Lloyd, whose Doc Brown is focused on more in this movie.  The love story between Doc and Clara is a contentious point for people who are critical of this movie, and while I do recognize how out of place it does feel, I still find it charming, and Mary Steenburgen is very likable in the film.  I think the movie actually works better as a love letter to Westerns than it does as a sequel to Back to the Future.  That clearly seemed to be how Zemekis approached it, with the beautiful Monument Valley being featured prominently in certain scenes, as well as cameo appearances by famed Western character actors like Harry Carey Jr. and Pat Buttram.  As a capper to a film trilogy, it’s fairly anti-climatic, but as a standalone film, it’s still worthwhile entertainment.
So, the thing I take away from the trilogy as a whole is that it’s hard to make a series work together as one narrative when it was never planned that way.  The first film is a classic in every sense of the word, and probably could have retained that distinction even without the sequels.  Part 2 and 3 have some nice elements to them, but ultimately disappoint as follow-ups.  In the end, did this series really need to be a trilogy?  I can understand the idea of doing a sequel, considering how the first film ended, but what ultimately happened was that the filmmakers chose to play it safe, rather than go all out with the concept.  Word is that Zemekis and Gale wanted to actually take Marty and Doc on an epic tour through history in the sequels, but they were unfortunately tied up by the ending of the first movie where Doc says that they need to go to the future to fix Marty’s “kids,” which left them with a plot thread that they were obligated to finish.  Not only that, but they also had to take along Marty’s girlfriend in the DeLorean, which became problematic when they had to recast the role between films (Elizabeth Shue played the character in Parts 2 and 3).  It shows that even success has a downside, because it almost never gets repeated, at least not in the same way.
But, even with the problems in the trilogy, Back to the Future has become one of Hollywood’s most popular franchises.  The first film is still rightfully considered a masterpiece and has become one of the most iconic films of the 80’s.  One of the film’s many fans, as it turned out, was then current President Ronald Reagan, who loved the film so much that he even quoted from it in one of his State of the Union speeches.  No matter what your politics, to have the President of the United States honor your film like that is praise of the highest order.  The Courthouse Square, a set piece which features prominently in each film, is still found on the Universal Studios back-lot today, and is considered sacred ground to both fans and filmmakers alike who visit there.  Even the sequels have left an impact in the years since, and are still enjoyed by many.  The Nike corporation even made special limited edition shoes recently, based off the futuristic ones in Part 2 to put up for auction to raise money for Michael J. Fox’s charity to fight Parkinson’s disease.  It just shows that even with it’s complicated structure and history, the Back to the Future franchise has a dedicated fan-base that it rightly deserves.  All in all, it’s a series made up of one genuine masterpiece and two disappointing but still very entertaining sequels.  It’s not perfect, but few other franchises are.

Hollywood Royalty – The Ups and Downs of a Film Acting Career

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A lot of work goes into making movies from many different departments, but what usually ends up defining the finished product more than anything is the quality of the actors performing in it.  Whether we like it or not, the actors and actresses are what the audiences respond to the most; more than the script and the direction itself.  Sure, writers and filmmakers can leave an impression and can build a reputation of their own, but their work is meant to be unseen and part of the illusion of reality.  It is the actors who must be in front of the camera the whole time and be able to make you forget that you are watching something that was constructed for your entertainment.  And this is mainly why we hold the acting profession in such high regard.  Sure, anybody can get in front of the camera and act, but it does take real skill to make it feel authentic and true to life.  Hollywood actors are an interesting lot because of the whole aura of celebrity that surrounds them.  They are simultaneously the most beloved and most reviled people in the world, and this usually is a result of the work that they do.  What I find fascinating is the way that a film actor’s career evolves over time, and how this affects the way we view them in the different roles they take.  Some people come into fame unexpectedly and then there are others who work their way up.  There are many ways to look at an actors career and it offers up many lessons on how someone can actually make an impact in the business depending on what they do as an actor.
The way we cast movies has certainly changed over the years.  When the studio system was at it’s height in the 30’s and 40’s, actors were mandated to be under contract, meaning that they had to work for that studio exclusively.  This became problematic whenever an actor or actress coveted a role that was being produced at a competing studio, excluding them from consideration.  Actors also had little choice in what kinds of movies they made, mainly due to the studio bosses who would make those decisions for them.  Many of these actors would end up being typecast in roles that the studios believed were the most profitable for them.  It wasn’t until the establishment of the Screen Actors Guild that actors finally had the ability to dictate the parameters of their contract, and also to have more say in the direction of their careers.  Even still, the pressure to be a successful matinee idol was a difficult thing to manage in Hollywood.  In many ways, it was often better to be a character actor in these early years than a headliner.  A character actor at this time may not have gotten the name recognition or the bigger paydays, but they would’ve gotten more diverse roles and a steadier flow of work of screen credits.  Actors from this time like Peter Lorre, Walter Brennan, and Thelma Ritter enjoyed long lasting careers mainly because they made the most of their supporting roles and had more leeway in the directions of their careers.
It’s the status of a matinee idol that really makes or breaks an actor.  Over the many years since the inception of cinema, we’ve seen actors rise and fall, and in some cases rise again.  Making a career out of film acting is a difficult nut to crack, and seeing how the industry is sometimes very cruel to outdated actors, it’s any wonder why there are so many people who want to do it.  I believe that it’s the allure of fame that drives many young up and comers to want to be actors, but following a dream does not an actor make.  It takes hard work, just like any other field in entertainment.  If I can give any advice to someone pursuing an acting career, it’s that you should never get into it just because you have the looks of a movie star.  Do it because you like performing and being a part of the film-making process.  Of course, it’s probably not my place to give advice to an actor, seeing as how I have not been on a stage since the eighth grade, and that I am looking at this from a writer’s point of view.  But, from what I’ve observed in the film community, it is that the best actors out there are the ones who are really engaged in the process, and not the ones who are in it just to build up their image.  The tricky part, however, is figuring out how to maintain this over time.
Becoming a successful actor in Hollywood has a downside that can be either a minor thing or a major negative thing depending on the person it happens to, and that’s the stigma of celebrity.  Whether an actor seeks it out or not, by being out in front of the camera, they have exposed themselves to a public life.  This isn’t a problem if the actor or actress manages their public and private lives well, but if they don’t, it’ll end up defining their careers more than the actual work that they do.  Case in point, actor/director Mel Gibson. Mel’s career has been negatively impacted by his off-screen troubles, including a nasty break-up with his Russian girlfriend and an Anti-Semitic fueled rant during a drunk driving arrest.  What’s most problematic for Mr. Gibson out of all this is the fact that no matter what he does now, no matter how good, it will always be overshadowed by his own bad behavior.  And it is a shame because, in my opinion, he’s still a very solid actor.  I still love Braveheart (1995) to death, and I think a lot of people are missing out if they haven’t seen his work in The Beaver (2011) yet.  Or for that matter, his excellent direction in Apocalypto (2006). Unfortunately, all his hard work is for not as he continues to alienate more of his audience because of his off-screen behavior.  This is the downside of celebrity that we see, and whether an actor is deserving of the scorn or not, it will always be a part of the business.
Actors and actresses can also find themselves in a rut simply because they are unable to adapt to the changing course of the industry.  This is certainly the case with people who have created their own signature style of acting.  Comedic actors in particular fall into this trap.  I’ve noticed that some actors who breakthrough in comedies in certain decades will almost always loose their audience by the next.  Shtick is a deceptive tool in the actor’s arsenal, because it helps people achieve stardom right away, but also anchors them down and keeps them stuck in place.  We’ve seen this happen to many comedic stars, like Eddie Murphy and Mike Meyers and Jim Carrey; and it’s starting to become apparent in Sacha Baron Cohen’s post-Borat career.  The only comedic actors who seem to make long lasting careers are the one’s who choose a dramatic role once in a while, like Bill Murray or Robin Williams.  Age also plays a factor in the downfall of people’s careers.  It usually happens with child actors who can’t shake off their youthful image, and unfortunately diminish and disappear once they become adults.  Making that transition from child actor to adult actor is tough, and it’s what usually separates the Elijah Woods from the Macaulay Culkins.  It’s less difficult nowadays for elderly actors to loose their careers than it was many years ago, mainly because movies like Nebraska (2013) give older actors much better roles.  But, in the past, the industry was incredibly cruel to older actors; something highlighted brilliantly in Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Boulevard (1950).
What usually ends up making an actor or actresses’ career survive is their ability to grow as a performer.  There’s something to the old adage of there being “no role too small.”  Actors should relish the opportunity to diversify their choices of roles.  And usually the ones who have the longest lasting careers are the people who can play just about anything.  Meryl Streep is considered the greatest actress of her generation, and she didn’t do it by playing the same kind of character over and over again.  She has done comedies, dramas, cartoons; she has played Austrians, Australians, teachers, mothers, daughters, grandmothers, you name it.  No one would ever consider her lazy.  She has made a living challenging herself as an actor, and while not every role of her’s works (Mama Mia, for example) she nevertheless commands respect for her efforts.  What I respect the most is the ability of an actor or actress to move effortlessly from genre to genre and still act like it’s a role worthy of their talents.  That’s why I admire actors like Christian Bale, who can go from dark and twisted roles like The Machinist (2004) to playing Batman, or Amy Adams who can appear in movies as diverse as Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master (2012) and The Muppets (2011) and give each film her best effort.  It’s always refreshing to see actors who commit themselves to any role they get, which in turn helps to endear them to us as an audience.  An invested actor will almost always make a film better.
Usually nowadays a bad performance is not measured by how misplaced an actor is or by how out of their league they may be.  The worst kinds of performances come from actors who are just lazy.  At the point where an actor just works for the paycheck and nothing more is usually where their careers begin to decline.  We’ve seen this with many actors who just get too comfortable doing the same role over and over again, or with people who take a job just for the pay and act like the part is beneath them.  When this happens, it’s usually driven by ego, which is another negative by-product of celebrity.  When an actor begins to dictate the terms of their comfort level in the production, rather than try to challenge themselves as a performer, it will usually mean that they’ll put in a lackluster performance, which leads them towards becoming a one-note performer.  This sometimes happens to people who hit it big and then become afraid of alienating this new audience they’ve built.  Johnny Depp is an actor that I think has reached this point, having built a wide fan-base from his Pirates of the Caribbean films.  The once ground-breaking actor has now fallen victim to his own shtick and that has negatively impacted his recent slate of films like The Lone Ranger (2013), which shows what happens when you try to play things too safe.
It is remarkable when you see these changes in a film actor’s career, because they usually happen unexpectedly.  Overall, the actor is the one responsible for their own career path, but the market itself can be a wild card factor in the lives of these people.  I for one value the efforts of a strong actor who’ll continue to try hard, even when the roles stop being what they are used to.  It’s something of a miracle to see actors who continue to stay relevant year after year, like Tom Hanks or Sandra Bullock.  They’ve locked into a career path that seems to have worked for them and have managed to maintain they’re faithful audiences even when they take on more challenging roles. What is also interesting is how Hollywood values a redemption story when it comes to an actor’s career.  A Hollywood comeback always manages to be a positive thing in the industry, especially when it happens to the least expected people; like with Robert Downey Jr. bouncing back from his drug addiction to play Iron Man, or Mickey Rourke pulling himself out of B-movie hell when he made The Wrestler (2008).  Film acting careers are probably the least predictable in the industry and it takes someone with a lot of personal resilience to make it work.  If there is anything an up and coming film actor should learn is that hard work pays off.  Don’t fall victim to concerning yourself over the changing trends or acting out of your comfort zone.  In the end, the best thing you can do is to commit to the role, no matter what it is.  Like the great George Burns once said, “Acting is all about sincerity.  And if you can fake that, then you’ve got it made.”

Top Ten Movies of 2013

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We have reached the beginning of a new year, and that inevitably gives us all a chance to look back at the year that was 2013.  This was for the most part a tumultuous year for Hollywood.  While a few films performed very well, there were many others that crashed and burned, and in larger numbers.  This year we saw a great deal of $200 million budgeted films bomb, which has led many people in the industry to reconsider what films they should be making.  For me as a viewer, I do agree that 2013 was a mixed bag.  This summer in particular featured a lot of underwhelming films, apart from a few bright spots.  Thankfully the end of the year proved to be strong, with all of the Oscar contenders coming out in the Fall; many of which are very deserving of their accolades.  Thanks to the fall season’s strong showing, I was able to have enough good choices to fill out my list of the ten best films of the year, and given the overall quantity of movies that I watched in 2013, I was also able to choose five picks for my worst movies list.
Before I begin, I want to list the films that didn’t make my top 10, but were still ones that I liked and are worthy of an honorary mention: 42, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Blue Jasmine, Captain Phillips, The Croods, Inside Llewyn Davis, Monsters University, Prisoners, Rush, Star Trek Into Darkness, Thor: The Dark World, This is the End, The Wolverine and World War Z (probably the biggest surprise of the year).  Now keep in mind, I haven’t seen movies like Her or August: Osage County yet, so you won’t find them here, and they wouldn’t count anyway because I’m only counting films I saw in the calendar year.  With all that said, let me start the countdown of the BEST FILMS OF 2013.
10.
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THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee
This was a stellar year for Matthew McConaughey, moving away from the “surfer dude” persona he held onto for many years to where he is now taking chances as an actor with some very challenging and gritty roles.  McConaughey left a mark with his critically lauded indie film Mud early this year, and he also turned in a memorable cameo in Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, but this is the film that really left a mark on me and made me respect McConaughey even more as an actor.  In the movie, he plays a real-life character named Ron Woodroof, a bigoted rodeo cowboy who gets infected with AIDS and the film chronicles his transformation into a crusader for reform in the American health system.  The reason why I liked the movie so much is because it challenges us, mainly through McConaughey’s stellar performance, to follow the character arc of a very flawed human being and rewards us with a narrative that touches the heart without pandering to it.  McConaughey lost a staggering amount of weight for the role and looks unrecognizable as the AIDS stricken Woodroof.  It’s a performance that proved to be a breakthrough and helped to make this one of the best movie experiences of the year for me.
9.
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THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG
Directed by Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s classic novel has left a lot of people mixed, debating whether or not the book should have been split over three films.  And while these Hobbit movies still don’t quite meet that high standard left by The Lord of the Rings films, they nevertheless are still a lot of fun to watch.  Like the first Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug managed to just squeeze into my top 10.  In some ways, I think it may actually be better than the first movie.  It’s better paced, larger in scale, and it features one of the most spectacular giant monsters ever put on the big screen.  The titular dragon is definitely the film’s greatest triumph, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was everyone else’s favorite part of the movie as well, even among the films many critics.  But, the reason why I loved this film, and all the other Tolkein movies that came before it, is in the way that it reveals the world of Middle Earth to us.  Peter Jackson utilizes his native New Zealand beautifully as the locations in this movie, and every new location revealed helps to fill out the map of this spectacular world that the books and movies have shared with us.  My hope is that the Hobbit series ends in a spectacular way with There and Back Again this next December and lives up to the foundation left by these first two films.
8.
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NEBRASKA
Directed by Alexander Payne
Alexander Payne is one of the most unassuming filmmakers working in the business, and he continually surprises me with his simple and yet thoroughly enjoyable films.  In 2002, I picked his About Schmidt as my favorite film from that year and Nebraska thankfully falls into the same kind of vein that that film did.  Nebraska, at it’s heart, is a tale about family bonds, and about how all the struggles and quirkiness in our daily family life defines our relationships to one another.  Alexander Payne does this kind of film better than anyone and he’s mastered this kind of Capra-esque portrayal of small town American life in his movies; highlighting all the foibles of society while at the same time showing the humanity as well.  Having come from a large, strongly bonded family in a rural state myself, I connected a lot with this movie.  Given that Payne himself is from the titular state, I’m sure that this film has a special connection to him too.  The performances, from Bruce Dern and SNL-alum Will Forte, are perfectly subdued, and actress June Squibb is a knockout delight as the no holds barred mother.  Also, the movie is one of the most beautifully shot black and white films that I’ve seen in a long while.  It is definitely worth seeing Alexander Payne’s love letter to Mid-Western Americana, and I’m sure no one will come away from this film in a bad mood.
7.
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SAVING MR. BANKS
Directed by John Lee Hancock
There has been a recent trend by the Academy Awards to reward films that make Hollywood look good or heroic; for good and for bad.  But no matter how the Academy votes, people should understand this; Saving Mr. Banks, while following that same pattern, is an excellent film regardless.  I had my doubts about this film, but thankfully the film surprised in many rewarding ways.  The movie shows author P.L. Travers early and tragic childhood in some unforgettably emotional flashbacks, and this is juxtaposed with her fights with filmmaker Walt Disney over the film rights to the Mary Poppins stories, which Travers refused to have altered.  What I loved about this movie is that, more than any other film I’ve seen, it is about the pre-production process of film-making.  We never see any actually filming of Mary Poppins (1964); instead we see what went into the planning of the movie, particularly from a writing standpoint, which makes this film especially intriguing for writers like me.  It’s shows film-making as a process of compromise and learning to let go of something dear for the good of the production.  In addition, the film has a well-rounded cast, led by Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks as Travers and Disney respectively.  I’m happy that the Disney company shared this little page of their own history for us, and better yet, didn’t try to water it down too much.
6.
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THE WORLD’S END
Directed by Edgar Wright
One of the big movie trends of 2013 that I’m sure most people recognized was a string of films focused on the apocalyptic end of the world.  The best of these films, however, was this hilarious British import from the team behind Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).  The World’s End caps what director Edgar Wright has dubbed the Cornetto trilogy, named after an ice cream treat that appears in each of the three films, and The World’s End is a worthy addition to this series.  Without a doubt the most consistently funny film of the year, World’s End follows a group of middle-aged friends, with Simon Pegg as the dysfunctional leader, as they try to complete a bar crawl that they failed to finish when they were young, only to find out that everyone else in town have been replaced by androids intent on world domination.  Along with Pegg’s frequent co-star Nick Frost and a great ensemble cast, including The Hobbit‘s Martin Freeman and former 007 Pierce Brosnan, World’s End is one inspired comedic bit after another.  Connected in the Cornetto trilogy or not, I would have still loved every moment of this movie.  At a time where you find few original comedies that are actually fearless and take chances, The World’s End is like a breath of fresh air.
5.
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AMERICAN HUSTLE
Directed by David O. Russell
Director David O. Russell has been on a roll lately with The Fighter (2010) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012) performing very well at the box office and at the Oscars.  American Hustle continues that trend and may be in fact Russell’s strongest film to date.  This movie has a lot going for it; strong performances from pretty much everyone in the cast, an intriguing plot at it’s center, and a visual aesthetic that perfectly fits within the time period it is depicting.  Not only that, but it’s also a lot of fun to watch.  The film is also kind of subversive in an entertaining way; where the main characters are taking down crooked politicians through the Abscam sting operation run by the FBI, and yet the politicians come off as more sympathetic.  In many ways, Russell is trying to do his own take on a Scorsese movie, and he pretty much accomplishes this task perfectly.  The period detail is astounding, completely drenching the audience in 1970’s sleaze.  The performances are uniformly excellent.  Russell seemed to have put together a super cast made up of the headliners of his last two films, with Fighter star Christian Bale at it’s center.  Amy Adams delivers probably her sexiest role to date and nearly steals the movie.  Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence also do great work here, as does an actor in a surprising cameo that I won’t spoil for you.  All in all, this movie deserves all the praise it’s gotten and features probably the best overall cast of the year.
4.
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12 YEARS A SLAVE
Directed by Steve McQueen
Probably this years most challenging film, 12 Years a Slave depicts the horrors of slavery in the most visceral way yet that I’ve seen.  Adapted from the memoirs of Solomon Northup, which surprisingly hasn’t been adapted into a movie until now, this film chronicles the story of an African-American musician who was born and raised a free man, but was kidnapped, taken away from his family and sold into slavery, which he suffered through for the titular 12 years before he finally was set free.  Director Steve McQueen is known for his very artsy style in films like Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011), and he utilizes it again to good effect here as well.  In many ways, the stylistic flourishes of the movie actually makes the shocking moments feel even harsher, because they contrast so much with the beauty put into the production design.  It’s a brutal movie, but one that I believe to very rewarding, much like how Schindler’s List (1993) would push it’s audience to the brink but in the end would leave them with a better understanding of the subject matter.  Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is unforgettable as Solomon Northup, and he commands every moment he’s on screen.  He’s also given solid support from the remaining cast including Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Giamatti, and Michael Fassbinder as probably the most frighteningly sadistic plantation owner ever depicted.  It’s an enriching historical epic that I’m sure will stick with everyone.
3.
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PACIFIC RIM
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
In a summer full of depressing, bland wannabe blockbusters, Pacific Rim was like a godsend and still ranks as one of the best experiences that I had at the movies this year.  Brought to us from the fertile mind of Guillermo del Toro, Pacific Rim does what any big-budget blockbuster should always do and that is to entertain, which it does right from it’s opening shot to the end credits; and even further if some of you caught the mid-credit extra scene.  What I love most about this movie is how assured it is.  It doesn’t try to make the plot too complicated or needlessly heavy in tone.  It’s also not winking at it’s audience, showing you how self-aware it is.  It revels in it’s silliness, and that in turn lets us the audience feel comfortable in enjoying the ride it takes us on.  The look of the film helps with the appeal.  It’s colorful and imaginative, especially when it comes to the designs of the monsters and the giant robots.  The actors in the movie likewise fit the tone of the film.  Their characters are generic archetypes, but done in the right way, helping to guide us along with the plot without showing off.  It’s pleasing when a prestigious director like Del Toro decides to just make something that’s fun and not pretentious.  He clearly knows the kinds of movies that he has fun watching, and thankfully he has shared that with us all as well with this film.  This movie should stand as a textbook example of how to do a tent-pole blockbuster right.
2.
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THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
Directed by Martin Scorsese
I mentioned before that American Hustle represents another director’s successful attempt at making a Scorsese style film.  But one thing’s for sure, you can never top the master himself.  The Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese’s most ambitious and stylistically alive film in many years.  A spiritual successor to movies like Goodfellas and Casino, this film has also proven to be one of his most controversial as well.  With it’s three hour run-time and unwavering depiction of sex, drugs and excesses in wealthy American society, it stands to reason why this film has been met with a lot of criticism.  I for one still loved the movie, and my appreciation for it continues to grow every time I think about it more.  Scorsese has never shied away from tough subject matters, and it impresses me a lot that he’s still capable of making a film this outrageous and fearless at his age.  I think over time people will understand more what Scorsese’s original intent was with this movie, and hopefully it will be considered one of his best works when all is said and done.  The film was certainly one of the best experiences I had watching a movie this year, even at three hours long.  I also think this may be the best performance I have seen yet from Leonardo DiCaprio, which is saying a lot.  He has managed to be in 3 of my number one picks for film of the year over the last decade: 2006’s The Departed, 2010’s Inception, and 2012’s Django Unchained.  And while he and Mr. Scorsese came close to the top again this year, they’ll have to settle for second, because….
1.
GRAVITY
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
This was the best overall movie that I saw in 2013.  While many of the other best films were unforgettable and entertaining in their own rights, this was the movie that I believed pushed the medium of film-making further, and created a truly unique experience.  It probably helped that I saw it on an IMAX screen, but even if I hadn’t, I would have still been impressed with this movie.  Director Cuaron has proven himself as a great visual artist through every movie he has made so far, but here he takes all of his tricks and utilizes them in ways we didn’t know were possible on film before.  The movie is like a checklist of every film-making technique done to perfection; with the use of first-person POV, unbroken single shots, and hand-held photography taken to the very extremes and executed flawlessly.  The story at it’s center is simple, and it doesn’t need to be anymore complicated than it is.  I like the fact that Cuaron just focused on the situation at hand and didn’t try to fill the movie with needless exposition.  At the same time, I don’t believe there has ever been a movie that was set entirely in outer space like this before.  Even Kubrick’s 2001 gave us more Earth-bound moments.  This movie was a conceptual and visual triumph, delivering on all of it’s potential.  For a movie to make the top of my list, it has to raise the bar for quality film-making better than any other film in the year and no movie did that better than Gravity.
So, these are my choices for the best films of 2013, but given that I saw quite a few movies this year, I’d also like to share with you 5 movies that I considered to be the worst of 2013.  Keep in mind, I tend to ignore movies that I know are going to be bad, instead choosing to see films that I am more interested in and hoping are good.  That’s why you won’t see Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 or M. Night Shaymalan’s After Earth on this list.  Instead, these are films that were not only bad, but disappointing to me in the end.
5.
IRON MAN 3 – What could have been an entertaining sequel to some really fun movies is undermined by a horrible twist in the second act that derails the entire film.  Not to mention that it also ruins a famous character from the comics and spits in the eye of anyone who wanted to see this character fully realized in this movie.  Not even Robert Downey Jr. could save this enormous disappointment
4.
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD – The sad mediocre end of a once proud franchise.  This one especially hurt me as a fan of the original Die Hard and it’s lesser but still enjoyable follow-ups.  It’s probably time to retire John McClane as a character, but this is hardly the sendoff he deserves.
3.
WHITE HOUSE DOWN – The lesser of the “Attacking the White House” movies this year.  Olympus Has Fallen had some cheesy fun to it, but White House Down was just maddeningly dull and stupid.  It also represents a new low for director Roland Emmerich, who’s track record is already not too good.
2.
JACK THE GIANT SLAYER – Of all the big box office bombs that came out this year, this was the most insufferable to sit through.  Clumsily acted by a cast that should have been better, and lazily directed by Bryan Singer, who I know can do better, this was a baffling mess of a movie.
And the worst film of 2013 is…
1.
ELYSIUM – I already ripped this film apart plenty in my review, but this makes the top of my worst list simply because it angered me more than any other movie.  Pretentious, horribly acted, ugly to look at, childishly simplistic in it’s morals, and just overall infuriating to sit through.  This doesn’t encourage me at all about the trajectory that director Neill Blomkamp’s career is taking, especially considering how much I liked District 9.  This film is the very definition of a sophomore slump.  Where Pacific Rim was an example of a “summer” film done right, Elysium is a perfect example of the opposite.  A colossal failure on every level and one that I hope Blomkamp never repeats again.
So, these were the films that defined the year of 2013 in my opinion.  This was a significant year for me considering that I began writing this blog during this time.  Hopefully 2014 will be a better year for movies.  Some of the films that I’m looking forward to are the third and final Hobbit movie, There and Back Again, as well as a couple biblical epics from Ridley Scott (Exodus) and Darren Aronofsky (Noah), as well as a hopefully strong return to form for Bryan Singer with X-Men: Days of Future Past.  And let’s hope that 2014’s summer season will be a better one than last years.  I promise to continue writing this blog and covering my thoughts of the year in cinema just like I have over the course of 2013, and hopefully it will be a thought provoking discussion for both myself and all of my readers as well.