I guess I should have gotten the hint from the title. Back when Turning Red was released, there was a lot of controversy about its representation of puberty and its use of metaphor to refer to menstruation. I wasn't paying attention then, and watching it almost a year later, I patted myself on the back for coming up with this unique take on the film, at which point my wife pointed out that this was a major topic of discussion at the time. So I wasn't being original, I was just late to the party.
To be honest, if I was going to watch a movie that used menstruation as a plot device for getting to larger issues, I'd go for Ginger Snaps, the wonderful Canadian werewolf movie. Mostly, I'm disappointed that people took offense at Turning Red. Guess what, not every animated movie is aimed straight at 6-year-olds. I found the more mature perspective of Turning Red to be its best feature. Overall, I found the movie so-so, but that's my taste preferences popping up. I usually hate cartoons-as-musicals, but the songs here are well integrated (part of the plot revolves a young band, 4*Town), and while I didn't really notice until the credits, it's nice to see that Billie Eilish and Finneas were involved in the music. As Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature, but it seems unlikely to win. (Don't place bets on my opinions, though ... I really have no idea how the Oscars will turn out).
Dave Van Ronk died on this date in 2002, at the age of 65. I had only started this blog about a month earlier, and I posted this the day after Van Ronk died:
On January 23, I wrote:
"Yesterday, I got a card in the mail that I think is from Dave Van Ronk. Dave (he's the kind of artist who inspires first-name-basis relationships even when you've never met the guy) has been sick lately, and I sent him a check in thanks for all the music of his I've enjoyed over the years. The card came in the mail with no name on the outside, so I'm not sure it's from him, but I suspect so."
Dave Van Ronk died yesterday.
Van Ronk was a huge influence on Bob Dylan when Dylan came to New York in the early-1960s. Dylan once wrote, "He'd towered over the street like a mountain but would never break into the big time. It just wasn't where he pictured himself." The Coens' Inside Llewyn Davis draws heavily on the life of Dave Van Ronk.
Joni Mitchell has said that Van Ronk's version of "Both Sides Now" is her favorite. I'm not much of a fan of his rendition, but here it is:
That comes from the only Dave Van Ronk album I owned back in the day, Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters. Not sure why I had it ... there's a version of "Cocaine Blues" on there, maybe that was it. The album concluded with Peter Stampfel's "Romping Through the Swamp" ... about this track, Van Ronk said, "Peter once told me that my version of this had a bit more dignity than his, and, God help us, I think he's right."
Here is a song I heard on FM radio a thousand times in the 1960s, the one that may have prompted me to buy that Hudson Dusters album, and Van Ronk's first recorded version:
Among the Oscar nominees for Best Actress this year is Michelle Williams. About her performance, I wrote, "Michelle Williams, one of our finest actors, is not quite believable as a Jewish mother with artistic tendencies. Williams can be a straightforward actor ... she can also transform herself believably, as when she made herself into Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn. But, especially when Spielberg offers so many traditional (some would say stereotypical) Jewish characters, Williams stands out in the wrong kind of way."
Among the missing in the list of Best Actress nominees this year is Danielle Deadwyler, who plays Emmett's mother Mamie in Till. Deadwyler is what makes Till more than another biopic. She is outstanding in every scene, and displays the full ranges of her character's emotions. If ever there was an Oscar-nominated performance, it's Deadwyler in this movie.
As for the movie as a whole, director/co-writer Chinonye Chukwu sticks to her vision, which foregrounds the story of Mamie amidst the larger picture of the death of her son and the social ramifications of the case. Deadwyler is up to the challenge. But in the early part of the movie, as Mamie prepares to let her son vacation in Mississippi, we in the audience are aware of the foreshadowing ... we know what will happen to Emmett in the south. Yet there is a feeling that Mamie herself is with us in that foreshadowing. It's not just that she is worried for her son ... she should be. But that worry bubbles over, as if Mamie is more than worried, that she is certain what will happen. We know she wouldn't send Emmett on his vacation if she had that certainty ... clearly she wants her son to have some teenage freedom, she allows him to go on the trip. But as written, that hint of foreshadowing makes us wonder why she didn't stop him.
The film is scrupulous about getting the facts right, and I have no reason to doubt what we see. And once Emmett is lynched, foreshadowing is no longer a driving force, for the audience or for Mamie. The built-in drama moves the film forward, with Deadwyler at the center of it all. Part of me wonders why Emmett's mother is the center, here, but Deadwyler is so convincing, I was won over. If the film might have more accurately been titled "Mamie", in the end, the facts are there, and Deadwyler is memorable.
I'd only seen one other movie from the Yugoslav Black Wave, Dušan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism (not that I knew anything about the Black Wave back in the day). That movie was a startling mélange of sex and politics ... it's been 50 years since I've seen it, but I still remember the guy modeling for one of the Plaster Casters. Makavejev was considered a leader of the Black Wave ... WR was banned and he left the country for almost two decades, which I think gives a sense of how a movie like Man Is Not a Bird is critical of Yugoslav society and its socialism, enough so that film makers like Makavejev were unwelcome by the government.
Man Is Not a Bird is certainly interesting. Makavejev, like Godard, seems to be acknowledging cinema traditions while simultaneously tearing them apart. And, like Godard with Anna Karina, Makavejev is quite taken with the screen presence of Milena Dravić (who also appeared in WR). Her blonde hair always stands out against the dreary mining town setting. The film has two main storylines that have no clear connection, although the movie is never too confusing.
The Batman is nominated for three Oscars, but I don't know how many people are going to think of this movie three years from now. I mean, it's an OK Batman movie, a little different, there will be a The Batman 2 in a couple of years. All three nominations are for technical categories ... beware movies where the writers and directors and actors are not nominated but the technical categories look good. I don't think it will win any of them, either, since it's up against monsters like All Quiet on the Western Front and Avatar and Wakanda Forever.
But I don't mean to damn The Batman with faint praise. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on ... writer/director Matt Reeves has a clear vision and sticks to it, there's not a lot of hope here, and it looks and feels like it could deserve the already used title "Dark Knight". In brief, The Batman is no fun, and why should it be? The question (and I have no answer) is why we keep going back to the Batman well. What is it about this character that inspires people to keep making movies about him? (One obvious reason is that $770 million worldwide gross ... it's not just film makers who want more Batman.) Robert Pattinson's Batman is morose even by the standards of the character, and The Riddler is never ha-ha funny. The look of the film is impressively dark, in tone as well as in lighting. The Batman doesn't seem to buy into the fascistic, necessary hero of some portrayals of Batman, and that's good to see. Finally, Colin Farrell's makeup as The Penguin is hilarious.
On the other hand, this is a one-note batman and a one-note film, so even when I admired it, I took little pleasure in what I was seeing. I liked Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, but the connection between Batman and Catwoman, which I think was supposed to be hot, was nothing. Catwoman at least seemed mildly interested in Batman, but it was hard to know why.
The Batman is far from a failure, but at 3 hours, I don't expect to be watching it again any time soon. Here's a nice use of Nirvana:
Just to get it out of the way: yes, everyone is right, Cate Blanchett is amazing in the title role. She is a great actress. I've admired her work for a long time, but my love of Michelle Yeoh is such that I resented Blanchett even before I saw Tár, because she might beat out Yeoh for the Oscar. As I wrote to a friend, my opinion of this year's Oscars will be simple: Michelle Yeoh wins, good Oscar, Michelle Yeoh loses, bad Oscar. I still think that, but Cate Blanchett doesn't deserve my pigheadedness.
She is the best thing about Tár, and yes, I know, duh. The film is nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture and Director and Original Screenplay, yet I wouldn't be surprised of Blanchett is the movie's only Oscar winner. Blanchett brings to mind Meryl Streep. I've always respected Streep's great ability as an actor, but I rarely connect with her ... I feel like I can always tell when she is acting. For Tár, Cate Blanchett does a lot of Streep-like things: as the IMDB tells us, "Cate Blanchett had to re-learn the piano, learned how to speak German, and learned how to conduct an orchestra for the film." Not to mention her American accent, which I found flawless (she is Australian). But all of these parlor tricks were put to the use of creating a living, breathing human being. When I say Blanchett is the best thing about Tár, this is what I mean: she makes a larger-than-life fictional character so real, many people (myself included) thought the movie was based on the life of a real person. (Writer/director Todd Field gets a lot of credit here, of course.)
The rest of the movie? I was impressed, but I didn't love it. The character arc for Lydia Tár was not as real for me as was Blanchett's work. I'm sure if I re-watched the film, I'd see the way Field establishes the basics that make Lydia Tár's downfall believable, and my wife felt he had done just that on her first viewing. But for me, the early parts of the movie told the story of an intense, workaholic artist, cranky and self-absorbed, but I wasn't sure she cared enough about most other people to let them become a part of her life. Yes, she forces the issue ... she uses her position of power for her own needs, destroying many in the process. I believed that, when we finally realized what was happening. But I didn't believe it until we reached that realization, so there was a gap between the Lydia we meet and the Lydia who ... well, she doesn't become the Lydia of the end of the movie, she is already that Lydia, and that's where I was missing something.
It's probably a case of Your Mileage May Vary, and it's a very good movie in any event. I've seen 8 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, and Tár is far from the worst, but it's no match for Women Talking or Everything Everywhere All at Once. Best Director, Best Screenplay, and yes, Best Actress ... all deserving nominations, but I wouldn't vote for it in any of those categories. (I did love seeing Noémie Merlant from Portrait of a Lady on Fire.)
