The Mad Prophets 2009

It's come to my attention that there were some awards being given out to certain films this weekend. I noticed that, yeah. Seeing as how I gave negligible coverage to the Oscars last year, I decided the beginning of February this year should lend the blog a little more prestige. I couldn't afford a tux, so I donned a jaunty bow-tie and decided to create the inaugural Mad Prophet film awards. This isn't a compilation of my favourite films of 2009, but a more subjective recognition of what I thought were the best in each field last year.

So here's my little awards thing for the period starting March 1st 2009 and ending on February 28th 2010, which is about the same period the Oscars are supposed to cover. Supposed being the operative word, if today's nominations are anything to go by. Also going by UK release dates, a-like so...

BEST DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow- The Hurt Locker
Neill Blomkamp- District 9
Terry Gilliam- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Duncan Jones- Moon
Quentin Tarantino- Inglourious Basterds

If this had been going for February 2008 to February 2009, Danny Boyle would have been the winner by far and away for Slumdog Millionaire, and that should tell you something of my appreciation for directors that have overcome incredible working conditions to deliver an excellent final product. That's naturally why Bigelow, who filmed in a war zone, and Gilliam, who lost his lead actor during filming and still made a cohesive final cut, made the list without a second thought.

Tarantino is naturally on there because as much as he pays homage to the things he loves in his films, they still feel fresh and Basterds is infinitely rewatchable. Blomkamp and Jones are both recognised for bringing back intelligent and enjoyable sci-fi in precisely the way James Cameron didn't last year. However, the win has to go to Kathryn Bigelow, and that's one of the things the Oscars got absolutely right. There just wasn't a film that does what it does better than The Hurt Locker last year, and it's probably one of the best action thrillers ever.

WINNER- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Tom Felton- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Christian McKay- Me And Orson Welles
Alfred Molina- An Education
Stanley Tucci- The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz- Inglourious Basterds

In contrast to the female counterpart, Supporting Actor is always a category that's bursting at the seams, because it constitutes a great deal of more subtle performances as well as most villains, and everyone loves a good villain. Tom Felton gets special mention for really giving a remarkable performance as the troubled and weary Draco Malfoy after five films making not much of an impression, to be frank. Elsewhere, Christoph Waltz won the Oscar and many more accolades for his unforgettable performance as Hans "the Jew Hunter" Landa. He's like a Nazi Batman in that film- the world's greatest detective and creepy as all hell to boot.

Off-centre for reasons of Zac Efron, Christian McKay's turn in Me and Orson Welles qualifies here too. His villainy is less obvious as he's more of a rival to the protagonist, but he completely embodies Welles, with all his charisma and talent. On the other hand, Alfred Molina is compelling and wonderful in An Education, but he's hardly the violent type- instead, his performance is excellent for the sense of impotence he brings to his patriarchal character. Unforgettable as Waltz and McKay are, I have to hand it to Stanley Tucci, who's tremendously brave in taking on the role of Mr. Harvey, consummately discomforting the audience with his repressed deviance throughout The Lovely Bones.

WINNER- Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Anne-Marie Duff- Is Anybody There?
Anna Kendrick- Up in the Air
Lorna Raver- Drag Me to Hell
Ok-bin Kim- Thirst
Sigourney Weaver- Avatar

Actresses are often heard to complain that there just aren't enough good female roles out there, and whenever you come to tot up the best female performances of the year, it's never hard to argue with that claim. Nevertheless, it certainly hasn't been a terrible year for supporting actresses. Kendrick made her mark as someone to watch in the future with Up in the Air, while Weaver was one of the best things about Avatar, although I'll be mentioning the film in another acting category too.

Both Kim and Raver gave terrific horror performances- horror isn't a genre I've ever been enormously bothered about, and yet both made for brilliant villains in their respective films. The winner has to be Anne-Marie Duff though, in an understated role struggling to keep her business afloat. You really feel for her not just because her melancholy about the family business and about her husband's mid-life crisis, but because she genuinely sells the character to you with her performance.

WINNER- Anne-Marie Duff, Is Anybody There?

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

District 9
An Education
In The Loop
The Lovely Bones
Watchmen

Both The Lovely Bones and Watchmen were screenplays that came across remarkably well from source material that should by all accounts have been unadaptable- a sprawling murder mystery about a child's perspective on the afterlife and an incredibly complex graphic novel respectively. An Education was urbane and witty while District 9 proved a rollicking graduation to the big screen for Neill Blomkamp's original short film. The award would have to go to In The Loop though- it's gloriously profane and laugh-out-loud funny, and a fine companion to the original series, The Thick of It. And if there were any justice, it would've won the Oscar too, cos Precious was way overrated.

WINNER- In The Loop

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

(500) Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Up

The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds both took a side-on approach the war genre. Of the two, Inglourious Basterds is probably the more memorable, for Tarantino's trademark dialogue and for its sheer audacity, but hey, the Academy disagreed and went for The Hurt Locker. This was a very strong category for the last year though. All five of these scripts were excellent, from the pure originality of Up's premise to the incredibly well constructed tragi-comedy of A Serious Man. But, the winner has to be (500) Days of Summer- it's the most original romantic comedy in years, by equal turns endearing and insightful, and I think this should have followed Little Miss Sunshine and Juno for some recognition of well-written and original screenplays. Something is rotten in the state of Hollywood.

WINNER- (500) Days of Summer

BEST ACTRESS

Zooey Deschanel- (500) Days of Summer
Lina Leandersson- Let The Right One In
Carey Mulligan- An Education
Saoirse Ronan- The Lovely Bones
Zoe Saldana- Avatar

Now, hear me out. Andy Serkis was unofficially the Best Supporting Actor in 2002 and 2003 for playing Gollum, a performance that wasn't recognised just because it was computer-generated. Similarly, Zoe Saldana gave a terrific performance as Neytiri, however immersed in pixels she may have been. She's really a more worthy candidate than Meryl Streep, who's seemingly reclined into making films for the same target audience as Loose Women nowadays. That's fine, but stop nominating her for awards anyway! Especially as elsewhere, Lina Leandersson and Saoirse Ronan both performed well-rounded young characters in extraordinary and other-worldly scenarios.

Similarly, Zooey Deschanel put a new turn on that usual starry-eyed persona for (500) Days of Summer, possibly to do with the fact that the excellent screenplay gave her some new material. On the other hand, the very same screenplay didn't really expand upon her character so much as Joseph Gordon Levitt's. Carey Mulligan began as a favourite for this award at the Oscars, but eventually lost out to Sandra Bullock, who won a Golden Raspberry for All About Steve the night before. Swings and roundabouts, but Mulligan lost out. So she gets this one, for what it's worth- in recognition of a performance that rings true and utterly compels throughout. And for not blinking.

WINNER- Carey Mulligan, An Education

BEST ACTOR

Michael Caine- Is Anybody There?
Sharlto Copley- District 9
Jeremy Renner- The Hurt Locker
Sam Rockwell- Moon
Michael Stuhlbarg- A Serious Man

Really, properly, this was the hardest one to nail down. Usually it's the Supporting Actor category, but once I figured the best five performances of the year, it was really difficult to decide on one. Every one of these performances was not only believable but really outstanding. At the Oscars, it was bound to be Jeff Bridges, because he's a tremendous actor who was long overdue a nod. The Dude abides, but there should've been more love for Copley's largely improvised turn in District 9, Renner being dangerous and damaged in The Hurt Locker and Stuhlbarg being utterly helpless to avert various impending catastrophes in A Serious Man.

My favourite performance of the year was Michael Caine's in Is Anybody There? and as much as I love that role, and how much you empathise with Clarence as soon as he wanders on-screen, this is based on the best, not my favourite. This is worsened because so few people will recognise this film, being a low-budget, limited release film. The more criminal oversight of the Oscars though was ignoring Sam Rockwell in Moon. I'm maintaining the self-imposed spoiler embargo on that film, but if you haven't seen it yet, go and watch it now. It's a career-best for Rockwell- the role where he finally got to show off all he could do after years in supporting turns.

WINNER- Sam Rockwell, Moon

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
The Princess and the Frog
Up

I've always taken issue with the Academy separating off films into this category, and this year especially, because there just haven't been enough really good animated films for me to mention. Segregating animated films like this is especially ridiculous when you consider that Shit Chipmunk Film 2 qualified in the longlist as an animated film because of animated rodents, whereas Avatar with its CG landscapes and characters for more than 50% of the running time, is live-action. Presumably because it made more money, but it's an incredibly snooty distinction, especially when you consider that Up is approximately a million times better than Avatar.

So yeah, Up wins it in this category and every other similar category, but the only other reason I included this segregation was to praise the other three. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was the biggest surprise of last year for me, combining a genuinely funny script with some talented and worthy voice actors to make a really entertaining family film. Any other year, I think The Princess and the Frog would've won, because it's so vibrant and memorable. And Coraline also stood out from the sequels and the rest of the 3D gubbins to provide an enjoyably creepy film with real visual flair. But Up is pretty damn close to perfection, so...

WINNER- Up

BEST FILM

An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The Lovely Bones
Moon

Best, not favourites. And yeah, I know I'm allowed ten, technically, but look at the good that idea's done in its inaugural year.

While I think The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds did have one or two problems, they're both very technically good, and Basterds has the distinction of being really entertaining to boot. Again, The Hurt Locker won overall, and in those nominations, it was probably second only to Up, which, as mentioned, was segregated somewhat. An Education was picking up the slack from 2009's surfeit of unrealistic and vacuous teen romances on film by subverting all audience expectations when we hear "a minor and an older man" and boasting some of the best performances of the year. And The Lovely Bones is a beautiful film that could and should have gotten more recognition, but I feel was killed by its poor critical response. Bloody critics.

And it's with some awkwardness that I avoid justifying my choice of Moon as the first Mad Prophet winner for Best Film, on account of that spoiler embargo. Go and watch it! You'll enjoy a consummate and personal film that re-establishes sci-fi cinema as a serious dramatic device and gets a tremendous and personal performance from Sam Rockwell. This was the most criminal oversight by the Academy this year.

WINNER- Moon

Join us next year for the 2nd Annual Mad Prophet Awards, to see Robert Pattinson NOT win Best Actor and to enjoy Michael Bay's head getting tap-danced on by Neil Patrick Harris for the opening number.

Welcome to Camp Victory- 2010 Oscars Postmortem

Ladies and gents, it's always nice to be wrong twice. Because when you have two choices, you can pass it off as "I was right all along!" The Academy Award winners now validate the original sentiment from my Avatar review that...

"It's probably not going to win an Oscar for Best Picture..."

... and we can utterly ignore my more recent assertion that...

"...Avatar will win Best Picture on March 7th. Not because it's the best film nominated, but because that's what the Academy's like."

It's really a good thing I didn't put any money on anything. It was a sweep for The Hurt Locker, which picked up Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow. In the end Avatar picked up three awards, all in technical categories. Arguably as it should be, really.

The acting categories were all fairly predictable, with Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique both being recognised for critically lauded turns and Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock receiving recognition for their hard work in their respective careers thus far. Yes, that Sandra Bullock, who is the only actor ever to win a Razzie (for All About Steve) and an Oscar (for The Blind Side) in the same year, and fair play to her too. She's immensely likable in even the most awful shit, and I daresay she deserves it more than Mo'Nique deserved hers.

I was also pleased to see Up make a strong showing, winning Best Animated Picture and Best Original Score, both very well deserved nods. And Up is the only nominee that might have deserved Best Picture more than The Hurt Locker. I was also gleeful that the make-up work on Star Trek was recognised too, along with a laugh-out-loud presentation from Ben Stiller in full Na'vi make-up.

However, I always have my bugbears with the Oscars, and this year, being the first where I've pulled an all-nighter and watched it live, is no exception. So after four hours of caffeine and speeches, here are the top 5 most annoying, silly and downright bizarre things about last night's ceremony.


5. The acting profiles
While nothing trumped the oddly erotic sound of Sir Ben Kingsley saying "Randy the Ram" last year, this year's ceremony saw an irksome return for the back-slapping profiles on the acting nominees before they got to who'd actually won the buggers. They were seemingly picked for the most tenuous of connections in a couple of cases, i.e. Forrest Whittaker reminding us that he directed Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats, which boded worse for her chances of winning than we actually should have anticipated. With that link, I'm surprised they didn't dredge Chris O'Donnell up to say "George was a fantastic Batman, and I feel another sequel would've really shown that..."

4. The Best Original Score dances
Sure to be the most lampooned aspect of the whole affair, a group of break-dancers took to the stage before the award for Best Original Score was presented. What followed was an interpretative dance routine to each of the nominees. While the tribal dances of Avatar were fairly appropriate, and I think actually imitated the final scene of the film itself, the others were just bizarre. I mean, you can imagine without me telling you how surreal a Hurt Locker dance was. And I don't know why the Married Life refrain from Up warranted a re-enactment of the clockwork musical number from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or why Sherlock Holmes just screams "the worm" to interpretative dancers.

3. The rude orchestra
The formidable Get Off The Stage song is feared by all, and maybe it was only because I've never seen it in use before, but I found the orchestra playing off speeches to be incredibly rude at certain points this year. Most unforgivably, Juan José Campanella was cut off in the midst of a rather marvellous speech after the surprise win by The Secret in their Eyes for Best Foreign Language Film. The guy seemed incredibly endearing and deserved his say as much as Mo'Nique. I for one wanna hear more of Juan José Campanella! Fuck off, you trombone-wielding cads!

2. Lack of love for Moon
And assorted other films that were sadly overlooked. OK, so it would have been more than just a minor upset if Moon had won an award despite not having been nominated for anything, but it should have got something, dammit. And so should The Lovely Bones and Me and Orson Welles, and even some of the films that were nominated but overlooked, like In The Loop or Up in the Air. But I'm always going to disagree with the choices on some level, so I'll be content to post my own picks in certain categories later in the week.

1. The Sky panel
Courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, the UK coverage of the event was chaperoned by a panel moderated by Claudia Winkleman. Said panel comprised David Baddiel, Ronni Ancona and Balls of Steel's Mark Dolan. Way to round up whoever was around the studio, Sky. Those lot obviously know nothing about film and yet minutely explained everything after each ad break. The absolute nadir of the show was a "bawdy" review of the In Memoriam sequence, in which potential Bizarro-Me (Dolan) said that dying was a great career move to get in that montage. At various points, I was moved to paraphrase Avatar. "The Sky Panel have sent us a message... that they will not shut the fuck up. We will send them a message... AND MUTE THE FUCKS!"


So it's over for another year, and it's been a particularly long night for me having watched the whole ceremony. As co-host Steve Martin said, the ceremony lasted so long that Avatar now takes place in the past. If you want to chart my all-nighter on Twitter, through all the suspense, ("I'd happily be declared a turkey fucker if the underdog here won...") from the dizzying highs, ("Oh my God, the Married Life song") to the crushing lows ("Michael Sheen's killed my video stream with awesomeness") then by all means, do so. I tweeted up a storm as a document to my struggle.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, support your troops over the Smurfs.

Blue Will Get Gold- 2010 Oscar Predictions

The nominations for the 82nd Academy Awards have been announced.

Not very many surprises in there, but here goes with my thoughts.


Avatar is a good blockbuster. It was the most enjoyable blockbuster of last year in my estimation, but is it an Oscar calibre film? No! I suspect the Academy disagrees, nominating it as they have for nine awards. It's tied only with The Hurt Locker for the most nominated film at this year's ceremony. The thing is, with its $2bn box office receipts and the massive hype surrounding it pre-release, people are determined to be polarised on the matter.

Internet message boards are full of fanboys who declare it to be the best film ever, and if you don't agree with that to the letter, you must hate it, and thus be blind in some way or other. And vice versa- if you don't despise the film, that makes you its biggest fan in certain quarters. It's an OK film, everyone! And it's OK that it's OK! Story-wise, it's certainly not perfect, and it does suffer from Cameron's seeming inability to cut the flab from the running time of his films. Hell, you can find my original review here. Most of what I said still holds true for me, except for one sentence in the last paragraph.

"It's probably not going to win an Oscar for Best Picture"

Sorry, past Mark, but you were wrong. That was a key case of me underestimating James Cameron's ability to dress Dances with Wolves up as a Direhorse and convince everyone that it the best film of the year. So sadly, with the voters blinded by the 3D-abetted box-office receipts instead of remembering they gave Best Picture to this very film 20 years ago, I predict that Avatar will win Best Picture on March 7th. Not because it's the best film nominated, but because that's what the Academy's like.


The only two films I haven't seen out of the other nine nominees are The Blind Side and Precious, both of which are yet to be released in the UK. Five of my top ten favourite films of last year made the shortlist, but I was most pleased to see A Serious Man, Up and District 9 in there. However, I can't see any of those films beating the sheer hype juggernaut of that blue-cat-people film. Let's just hope Kathryn Bigelow beats her ex-husband to Best Director for her excellent work on The Hurt Locker, which Kevin Smith says would be "a victory for ex-wives everywhere".

To the acting categories, I can't say an awful lot, because I haven't seen The Blind Side, Precious, The Last Station, Crazy Heart, A Single Man, Invictus, The Lovely Bones or The Messenger yet. The momentum seems to be in favour of Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, Carey Mulligan for An Education, Mo'Nique for Precious and Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds, in their respective categories. A further Avatar related annoyance is in the fact that they didn't nominate the film in one of the categories they actually should have- Zoe Saldana for Best Actress, seemingly opting for old favourite Meryl Streep holding her nose and gurning through Julie & Julia.


As an aspiring writer, I was very interested in the screenplay categories, and was delighted to see In The Loop and A Serious Man get noticed. Up in the Air and Inglourious Basterds are both awards darlings this year, but both will likely be overshadowed in the other major categories by the Battle of the Exes. Expect them to win their respective screenplay categories, though I'd personally have said In The Loop for Best Adapted and A Serious Man for Best Original. But then I don't get to pick- there's probably a good reason for that.

To wrap up then- some of the overlooked films...


(500) Days of Summer
Should have been nominated: For Best Original Screenplay
Why for? It's the most original entry to its genre in years. Besides which, in amongst the bluster (blue-ster?) of Avatar, there wasn't another film this year like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine. Up in the Air was seemingly a de facto entry to that role, but I preferred this film. Good screenplay, well acted- shamefully overlooked.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Should have been nominated: For Best Animated Picture
Why for? Because Fantastic Mr. Fox was rubbish! I know it probably appeals massively to middle-aged voters, but it also excluded Roald Dahl's target audience completely. Also, Cloudy should be up there because it's a lot better than you'd think- a genuinely funny script with some great voice acting and no pretension about itself. It's a film by "a lot of people", not a vanity project for Wes Anderson.

Moon
Should have been nominated: For Best Actor (Sam Rockwell), Best Visual Effects and Best Picture
Why for? Sam Rockwell is amazing in Moon and this really should have been the role that got his consistently great work in supporting roles some kudos from the industry. It also used visual effects to less showy effect than Avatar and on a smaller budget. The Best Picture thing is probably a stretch, but in an enlarged category, it's a real shame this didn't make it into the top ten, in a year where the stigma against sci-fi has been dulled by the likes of District 9.

Me and Orson Welles
Should have been nominated: For Best Supporting Actor (Christian McKay) and Best Cinematography
Why for? Christian McKay is Welles in that film. Maybe they satisfied their real life figure quotient with Matt Damon in Invictus, but I think McKay brought to the screen all of what made Welles the imposing and legendary figure he is. More than that, this is one of the few films that makes you feel like you're in the theatre for reasons that aren't to do with poor pacing- it's down to the excellent cinematography.

A Serious Man
Should have been nominated: For Best Actor (Michael Stuhlbarg)
Why for? OK, so two nominations, one of those for Best Picture, is hardly a snub. On the other hand, Stuhlbarg hasn't been getting the love he very richly deserves for his breakout role as Larry Gopnik. The Coen brothers have enough gold on their mantle and won't lose too much sleep over losing to the prestige pictures. Stuhlbarg will hopefully go on to do more great things, but I'd really have liked to see him get nominated here.

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With that dirty business over for another year, the next bit of Oscars coverage will probably be on March 8th, the day after the ceremony. Maybe I'll don a tux and do my own bloggy awards. As far as reviews go, the next post will probably cover The Princess and the Frog and/or Youth in Revolt.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't give an Oscar to an anti-corporate film if it makes more money than Jesus feasibly could.

A World of Hurt

Once again I find myself playing catch-up with these reviews. I'm having frequent computer problems lately, as well as having to do things in the real world as I prepare to start university. Freshers week at Teesside University starts at the end of September, and I'm yet to work out whether or not my studies will curb my somewhat excessive film viewing. So, with seven films to review in some manner or another in the next few days, I'll give you a bumper post with three lots of rambling to enjoy/tut at- Final Destination 4, (500) Days of Summer, and The Hurt Locker, the somewhat tenuous connection being pain, with which I could've linked Dance Flick were I prepared to waste time and precious vitriol seeing that arse-end of a film.



And no, I'm not mistaken by the way. As part of my irritating pre-possession that I'm almost always right, I'm downright refusing to call Final Destination 4 by the detached title that New Line is advertising it as. It's the fourth film in the Final Destination series, and I'll call it just that. To give it the phoney "official" title makes me feel like the film is a wayward middle-aged man who goes out and buys a sports car to impress upon all who behold him that he's still fresh and cool. Petty as this may seem on my part, you will similarly find me refusing to use this title for Shit Chipmunk Film 2 later in the year. My main bugbear with the film at hand however is that it suffers the same problem as the previous instalment, in that it's not fresh and cool- it's a rehash of the first film.

While Final Destination 2 advanced the concept of Death's plan being unstoppable with new plot twists and character developments, rather than just expecting the audience to enjoy death porn, the two films that followed both just expect the audience to enjoy death porn. And with the disposable teenage casts of each film, we get a new set of cardboard stereotypes at the beginning of every film, this time having narrowly escaped being burnt, splattered and turned into worm-food by a collapsing stadium when one of their number has a premonition of just that. The deaths are not so much imaginative as more contrived than ever before, and it takes a frustrating amount of time for the characters to catch up with the audience in realising that Death is pissed off. In fact, the only marked difference between this instalment and the one before is that this one is in 3D, a dubious distinction that I'm saving up all my rant juice about until James Cameron's Avatar is released.

It's important for me to extol the fact that this is rubbish first, because I have to admit, it was still entertaining. Watching idiotic stereotypes die with lashings of poetic justice will always have currency for me, but the reason why this fails is because it's a Final Destination film. The first two had interesting characters in amongst the more disposable douchebags, and the film has lost all sense of horror when you're not scared for the characters' lives, but just want them to end in the most splattery and head-fucking way possible. So that's Final Destination 4- the acting is poor, the concept is nothing you haven't seen done before (and done better), and all in all, the trendy de-numbered title does nothing to hide the liver spots and sagging belly of a franchise that should've ended around number 2. But if you like watching idiots die, you'll still enjoy yourself a little.



On the opposite end of the scale to the brash, audience-drawing gubbins of that film though, we have (500) Days of Summer, a slightly unconventional romantic comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Like the horror genre, my close friends seem to be under the impression that I hate this genre. As with both genres, I only hate how boring and lazy most romcom output actually is these days- an entire subset of film in which you can tell what the ending is from the trailer. Hugh Grant and Renee Zelleweger will usually star, and some prestige actor like Michael Douglas will utterly debase themselves for a paycheck and a prominent credit in the trailer. And of course there'll be a mad dash to the airport. On the contrary, (500) Days of Summer is a refreshing yet curious mix-up that reminded me of High Fidelity (the best romcom of the last ten years, bar none), and Memento, combining those films' attitude to relationships and non-linear continuity, respectively.

I'm obviously bound to find something to criticise in a film that holds up a mirror on my own slightly-stilted private life in the ways that this film did, so here's my attempts to have a go at (500) Days of Summer. It's of the caste of films that have become popular since Juno and Brick that sort of seems to have "... you know what I mean?" tacked on the end of every line of dialogue. Director Marc Webb gives off a sense that the film is so indie that its very core is possessed of some universal truth that your tiny rigid minds are as yet unable to comprehend. There's also a level of kook is becoming dangerously familiar for Zooey Deschanel, a terrific actress who I'm still really hoping doesn't get shoehorned into that typeset for the whole of her career. Similarly, rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt reprises the endearing romantic archetype that we've seen him play before, but still manages to make a very good turn as the more central of the two leads, and plays off against Deschanel very well indeed.

A paragraph that started with cynicism turns to praise, and that just about sums up my own viewing experience. The trailers and early buzz were promising, but I always sit down to romcoms with the feeling that they have to win me over. This one was just charming enough to manage that, from a hilariously candid "author's note" from the screenwriters before the film starts through one-liner after one-liner, all set to rather good music- but then I like the Smiths just as much as the film's characters do. We're warned early on that while this is a story about romance, it's not a love story, and the film's realistic views on love and relationships never become pessimistic or uneven. As mentioned, it's a very honest film, and rather inventive on the whole. Like High Fidelity, the standard against which I hold all romantic comedies, it's a film that can be enjoyed just as much on a date or in solitude. The lack of focus on Deschanel's character is one respect in which the film is left wanting, but if you can stomach the ever-so-slightly patronising hint of indie and kook being the be-all and end-all, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't enjoy (500) Days of Summer.



Going again to the opposite end of the scale, the quality has improved slightly. There may not be any explosions in (500) Days of Summer like the one pictured above, but the nice explosive type of pain is given a much more cerebral outing in The Hurt Locker. It's being lauded by all and sundry as the best of the films thus far about the current war in Iraq, but I respectfully disagree- this is a film about character. Jeremy Renner plays Sgt. William James, a bomb disposal expert drafted in to replace the recent head-sploded leader of a small team of American soldiers, and that's what the film is about. The film could as easily have been about any war, but seeing as how Iraq is the current big warzone, that's where this character study is set. To my recollection, George W. Bush and 9/11 are not mentioned even once in the whole film, because director Kathryn Bigelow is making a film about the soldiers, not the politics.

Bigelow's casting of Jeremy Renner is also a masterstroke. Not only because of his terrific performance, which definitely deserves some award or other, but because I'd lay odds that few of you reading this can place Jeremy Renner. Even after a look on IMDB. In fact, the big recognisable stars in this film are all barely in it. Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and Evangeline Lily all make appearances, but not one of them features for more than five minutes. Even David Morse, an actor you probably can't place without looking at IMDB but you'll go "oh, him" when you see him in the film, appears for about three minutes overall. In making this film, Bigelow was not about casting Shia LeBeouf as a bomb-disposal nut to sell more tickets and put more posters on billboards. It's all about getting you close to the characters, and it's this approach that makes the whole thing a lot more immersive, not to mention that it puts the film lightyears ahead of any preachy, political or jingoistic film about the Iraq war to date.

Don't get me wrong, by the way- I'm certainly not trying to downplay the explosive element of The Hurt Locker, because I did pick that picture for a reason. In an industry with so few female directors, Bigelow stands out as the best (and possibly the only) female action director, because this film alone is so unbelievably tense. The best sequence of the film involves Sgt. James and his colleagues lying on their stomachs in the scorching sun for a whole day, watching their enemies from afar through a sniper scope, just waiting to retaliate if necessary. The silence is tense, but the bravado the men try to muster as they wait is worse- it's where the audience is shown what makes these men tick. Why do people who go to Iraq, go to Iraq? As a whole, The Hurt Locker is just outstanding- it's the only film I've ever seen to which I can honestly attribute the phrase "The windscreen wiper made me shit myself"- Kathryn Bigelow capably builds the tension throughout, exhausting you at the end of the film. As you come up for air though, you'll still be left with one of the best cinema experiences of the year so far.

I'm literally typing as quick as I can to finish this because I'm supposed to get ready to see Dorian Gray about... now. So naturally, that'll be reviewed in the next of the planned three posts for this week. Alongside that, District 9, before the third and final post covers two of this year's excellent films that are just coming to DVD. I do occasionally miss films when they first come out- the perils of multiplex culture- but I'm making up the slack as best I can.

To conclude, see The Hurt Locker and (500) Days of Summer, but don't bother with The Final Destination unless the 3D gimmick is enough to pique your interest. As ever, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the films I've reviewed, so leave comments if you've seen any of them.

I'm Mark, mad prophet of the airwaves, and until next time, make sure you don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.