Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Nominated for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design   The original animated feature was my favorite Disney movie as a child and I was very skeptical when the powers that be announced a live-action remake.  I didn't hate on it existing, like I know a lot of people did, because I'm not necessarily opposed to updating or remaking classics.  I just didn't think it would be very good.  Pleasantly, I was wrong.

Belle (Emma Watson) and her inventor father, Maurice (Kevin Kline), have moved to a small town in the French countryside.  Belle finds it stiflingly boring and her only joy is borrowing books from the local clergyman (Ray Fearon) while avoiding the amorous intent of local war hero Gaston (Luke Evans).  When her father leaves to sell his wares, Belle asks only for a single rose.  Unfortunately, Maurice gets lost on the way home and accidentally wanders into a cursed castle.  He takes a rose from the grounds but is immediately captured by the Beast (Dan Stevens), who locks him in the tower.  Concerned, Belle retraces her father's journey and offers to trade places.  The Beast agrees mostly out of spite.  His loyal servants are elated, thinking that Belle could be the one to cause their master's hard heart to soften and break the curse that keeps them household objects.

The animation has certainly gotten better.  This movie is visually stunning.  And the costumes are gorgeous, so it's in a good place as far as its two nominations.  The cast is incredible, as befits a Disney movie.  Overall, it's a solid film but I have some minor issues.

Emma Watson is no Paige O'Hara but her singing is good enough, considering how much star power she brings.  Luke Evans is amazing as Gaston.  Of all the cast, he looks like he's having the most fun. Dan Stevens is under so much CGI, including changing his voice, he could have been anyone as the Beast but it's worth it for the few scenes he has as a real human.  However, I hated Ewan McGregor as Lumiére.  It just did not work for me.  I think it's his worst role since Jack the Giant Slayer.  Stanley Tucci would have been so much better, but instead he's wasted as the harpsichord, Cadenza.

I thought the attempts to be more diverse with the casting were admirable if heavy-handed.  I liked that the Beast finally got his own song, "Evermore," and I thought "Days in the Sun" was a better number than "Human Again," which was cut from the original animated film.  But Audra McDonald is a goddamn Broadway legend and she was criminally wasted here.

More pluses than minuses but as always your mileage may vary.

Without a Clue (1988)

  Did you know there was a movie starring Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley as Sherlock and Watson?  You do now!

Dr. John Watson (Ben Kingsley) is a genius detective and bestselling novelist with the character Sherlock Holmes.  But after so many people clamored to meet Holmes, Watson hired a washed-up actor, Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine), to portray him.  Kincaid looked the part and parroted back all the lines Watson fed him and it seemed like it was a great idea.  Then Kincaid started to grow a little more enamored with the fame of playing such a famous character and became insufferable.  Having decided that he no longer wants to put up with Kincaid's crap, Watson fires him just before the Councillor to the Exchequer (Nigel Davenport) arrives with a huge case that only "Sherlock Holmes" can solve.  What can poor Watson do but go track down his errant character and convince Kincaid to come back and pretend to solve the disappearance of a Royal Mint worker and the currency plates for the 5-pound note before the whole empire is plunged into financial ruin.

This is one of those forgotten gems, I think.  I've never heard anyone mention it, never seen it on TV or in stores, and only found it on Wikipedia, I think.  It's been languishing in my Saved queue on Netflix forever because they've heard of it, they just don't have a copy.  I finally found it on Kodi, which has become my go-to for all things non-Netflix-able.

It is worth tracking down.  This movie is hilarious.  Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine are titans of the British film industry and I always forget how funny they both can be.  Jeffrey Jones is also in it as Inspector Lestrade, with a horrible British accent that somehow adds to the overall fun.  Definitely worth a watch.

Divine Trash (1998)

  This is the last film from my LGBT Cinema class.  For Spring, I'm taking Cinema of Exploration so get ready for some travelogues and adventure films.

This is a really entertaining documentary.  Steve Yeager explores the impact and the influences of John Waters' early works, focusing especially on Pink Flamingoes, a cult classic considered the most important queer film ever made.  John Waters is a fascinating individual and he has a genius for seeing the sublime in the grotesque.  His principal actors are no less interesting and their insights behind some of the shooting conditions are hilarious.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in John Waters' films, and especially to people interested in filmmaking.  You can learn a lot about how to film on a shoestring budget from Waters' early works.

My only criticism is that I wish there had been more footage and interviews of Divine (Glen Milstead) but he had died a decade before this film was released.  Divine was clearly a powerful muse for Waters as well as a trailblazer for drag queens and really anyone who never felt like they fit in.

90th Annual Acadamy Award Nominations (2018)

This has been a crazy busy day at work and my Spring (and final) semester starts tomorrow so I'm stressed out about that too.  I've literally not even had a chance to look at the nominations list before now.

Best Picture
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet - Call Me by Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis - Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya - Get Out
Gary Oldman - Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington - Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Best Actress
Sally Hawkins - The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie - I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan - Lady Bird
Meryl Streep - The Post

Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe - The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Richard Jenkins - The Shape of Water
Christopher Plummer - All the Money in the World
Sam Rockwell - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Supporting Actress
Mary J. Blige - Mudbound
Allison Janney - I, Tonya
Lesley Manville - Phantom Thread
Laurie Metcalf - Lady Bird
Octavia Spencer - The Shape of Water

Best Director
Christopher Nolan - Dunkirk
Jordan Peele - Get Out
Greta Gerwig - Lady Bird
Paul Thomas Anderson - Phantom Thread
Guillermo Del Toro - The Shape of Water

Best Animated Feature
The Boss Baby
The Breadwinner
Coco
Ferdinand
Loving Vincent

Best Animated Short
Dear Basketball
Garden Party
Lou
Negative Space
Revolting Rhymes

Best Adapted Screenplay
Call Me by Your Name
The Disaster Artist
Logan
Molly's Game
Mudbound

Best Original Screenplay
The Big Sick
Get Out
Lady Bird
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Cinematography
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Mudbound
The Shape of Water

Best Documentary Feature
Abacus:  Small Enough to Jail
Faces Places
Icarus
Last Men in Aleppo
Strong Island

Best Documentary Short
Edith+Eddie
Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405
Heroin(e)
Knife Skills
Traffic Stop

Best Live Action Short
DeKalb Elementary
The Eleven O'Clock
My Nephew Emmett
The Silent Child
Watu Wote/All of Us

Best Foreign Language Film
A Fantastic Woman (Chile)
The Insult (Lebanon)
Loveless (Russia)
On Body and Soul (Hungary)
The Square (Sweden)

Best Film Editing
Baby Driver
Dunkirk
I, Tonya
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Sound Editing
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars:  The Last Jedi

Best Sound Mixing
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars:  The Last Jedi

Best Production Design
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water

Best Original Score
Dunkirk
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Star Wars:  The Last Jedi
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Original Song
"Mighty River" from Mudbound
"Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name
"Remember Me" from Coco
"Stand Up for Something" from Marshall
"This is Me" from The Greatest Showman

Best Hair and Makeup
Darkest Hour
Victoria and Abdul
Wonder

Best Costume Design
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water
Victoria and Abdul

Best Visual Effects
Blade Runner 2049
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2
Kong:  Skull Island
Star Wars:  The Last Jedi
War for the Planet of the Apes

Not a lot of surprises.  Spielberg didn't score a directing nomination for The Post and Tom Hanks didn't get a nom for Best Actor.  Get Out was better represented than I thought it would be, based on the Golden Globes but maybe that's why.  In the Fade got snubbed for Best Foreign Film.  Otherwise, I'm seeing most of the frontrunners from the Globes firmly represented in their categories.  "This is Me" got nominated so maybe we'll get to see Keala Settle belt it out sans beard at the ceremony.

As usual, I will do my level best to watch as many as I can before March 4.  Stay tuned.

By Hook or by Crook (2001)

  So my LGBT cinema class is over, or it will be officially when I turn in my final paper.  I won't have a lot of time before Spring semester starts (two days) and the Oscar nominations are coming out on Tuesday, so be on the lookout for a special post then.

Shy (Silas Howard) was raised by his dad after his mom left them.  When his dad dies and the bank repossesses the house, Shy takes all his belongings on a search for adventure.  He has vague plans of starting a life of crime, but his first real action is to try and help a motormouth getting the shit beat out of him by some random asshole.  This turns out to be a guy named Valentine (Harry Dodge), one of those perpetually innocent souls who immediately befriends Shy and welcomes him into his life with no reserves.

This movie was a total surprise to me.  I had never heard of it but it turned out to be probably my favorite film of the entire class.  It's so sweet without being saccharine and a lot of that credit goes to Harry Dodge's portrayal.  Valentine is fucked up, possibly crazy, but Benny & Joon crazy, not Manson crazy.  A total cinnamon roll.  Shy immediately feels responsible for keeping Val safe, and so do the viewers.  It's impossible not to want only the best things for Val.

Both Dodge and Howard are trans* and the film is a true representation of non-binary gender dynamics without being solely defined as a "trans" film.  It's important that these characters just are without having to provide any justification for being who they are.

Proud Mary (2018)

  I was looking forward to this movie, despite the utter lack of marketing and the January release date.  I love hitman movies and Taraji P. Henson.  Sadly, this is not a very good film.

Mary (Taraji P. Henson) is an enforcer for a crime family but is tired of the unrelenting violence.  She takes a young delivery boy named Danny (Jahi Di'Allo Winston) in after he is hurt by his drug dealer boss (Xander Berkeley) but a rash act of vengeance on her part puts her squarely into the crosshairs of her own people.

This had a talented cast and was very stylish in some ways, but it seemed really unsure of what kind of movie it wanted to be.  The trailers and poster made it seem like it was reaching back to Jackie Brown or real blaxploitation films from the 70s but then it seemed to veer into generic story tropes about awkwardly raising a kid and the two rival gang vying for territory.  I was hoping for Man on Fire and I got Romeo Must Die instead.  Walking out of the theater, I was left with two questions:  how fucking dumb is that kid to immediately trust a strange woman who essentially just kidnapped him off the street?

This is Billy Brown.  Does he not look just like a young Danny Glover?!  I couldn't get over it.

Anyway, this was my first new movie of 2018 and I confess to being pretty disappointed by it.  I think I was hoping for it to be kind of a continuation of the badass assassin Henson played in Smokin' Aces and it wasn't.

Tongues Untied (1989)

  Happy Martin Luther King Day!  For once, I have a totally related movie.

I don't actually know if I've mentioned it but I'm taking an LGBT cinema class for winter.  I haven't had a lot of exposure to queer cinema but I'm trying to expand my knowledge base.

This is more like a visual poem/documentary more than a narrative film.  Poet Marlon Riggs and essayist Essex Hemphill use dancers, animators, actors, and friends to bring to life their selected monologues and poems about the gulf of racism that existed within the gay community.  This film is extremely candid and raw about these men's feelings of ostracization and not being wanted by the black community for being gay and not being taking seriously by the gay community for being black.   Their anger is visceral, as is their hurt.

In some ways, this was a much harder film to watch than usual.  It doesn't follow a narrative arc in that stories and poems are only connected thematically.  I don't watch a lot of indie or experimental films so that was jarring.  It is worth watching but I advise you to take some time to see it in.  Pause in between segments so you can really experience the depth of emotion.

In class, we paired this with Moonlight and I would also make that same recommendation if you're looking for a double feature.

Keeping Mum (2005)

  I don't understand how, but the British made murder adorable.

Gloria Goodfellow (Kristin Scott Thomas) is trying to be a good wife to the vicar (Rowan Atkinson), but she is bored and tempted by the flashy golf pro, Lance (Patrick Swayze).  Fortunately, their new housekeeper, Grace (Maggie Smith), has a surefire remedy for all life's little setbacks:  murder.  Like a psychotic Mary Poppins, Grace begins improving the lives of all the Goodfellows by removing obstacles to their happiness.

Seriously, this is super cute and it really shouldn't be.  Grace kills a bunch of people.  And somehow it's just quaint and sweet.  I was watching this and all I could think was that I'd totally let Dame Maggie Smith kill me.  I guess you could still call this dark humor, but it's the kind of movie you could put on, sit under a comfy blanket, and drink hot cocoa while watching.  Just, you know, make your own cocoa so you know it hasn't been poisoned.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

  This was a really shitty movie and I can't even blame it on Christy.  I did this to myself.  I blame my obsessive need to complete series.  Even if I know it is going to suck, somehow I convince myself that it won't be that bad.

This was THAT bad.

Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is really enjoying his life.  His relationship with Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) is going great, thanks to some amnesia he has his buddy Harry Osbourne (James Franco) back, and he even received the key to the city from a pretty blonde named Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard).  Except nothing is exactly how it seems.  Mary Jane is frustrated about how Peter manages to turn every conversation into his experiences as Spider-Man, the man he thought killed his Uncle Ben in the first movie turned out to be just the partner of the guy who actually did it (Thomas Haden Church) and there's a new photographer named Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) out to make a name for himself by defaming Spider-Man.  Luckily, Peter has a helpful alien symbiote to guide him through this hard emotional time by making him wear black and convincing him he can dance.

Oh my God, this movie was such a travesty.  I didn't like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy much anyway but this is just a shit sandwich.  Tobey Maguire's emo hair and perpetual whine combine with James Franco's Franco-ness and the waste of a perfectly good villain in Venom in a perfect storm of Awful.  Kirsten Dunst is supposed to be in her early 20s but she looks tired enough to be 45 while Bryce Dallas Howard is trying to be young and perky enough for a whole busload of ingenues.  I can't believe I wasted a spot in my queue for this.

75th Annual Golden Globe Awards recap

This was a big milestone for the Golden Globes.  Seventy-five years.  It kind of got lost by the wayside, however, as every single attendee was focused on the protest against sexual harassment.  Nearly everyone wore black and many also wore pins for Time's Up, an organization pushing for wage parity and victim advocacy for women, among other goals.  Every time the camera panned over the audience all I could think was that this looked like the most fun funeral ever.  Like, when I die, I want Oprah and Meryl Streep drinking champagne at my service.

Seth Meyers hosted for the first time and it had to have been a rough gig, despite the fact that Meyers was one of the most inoffensive hosts I've ever seen.  He tried to lighten the mood and toss in a couple of zingers but most of the material felt too soft to make any sort of impact.  Still, it could have been much worse.  Let's get to the awards.

Best Actress in a TV Series, Limited Series, or Made for TV Movie:  Nicole Kidman for Big Little Lies

I haven't watched the show but I do know that Kidman took way too long to give her speech and set the whole show off chasing the clock.  Everybody wants their say and I get that.  What they are saying is important and needs to be said.  Agreed.  But say it on Twitter or Instagram.  Your award speech is to thank your co-workers and family and then get the hell off the stage.

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture:  Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a TV Show Musical or Comedy:  Rachel Brosnahan for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Best Actress in a TV Show Drama:  Elizabeth Moss for The Handmaid's Tale

Best Actor in a TV Series Drama:  Sterling K. Brown for This is Us

Best TV Series Drama:  The Handmaid's Tale

Best Supporting Actor in a TV Series, Limited Series, or Made for TV Movie:  Alexander Skarsgaard for Big Little Lies

Best Original Score:  Alexandre Desplat for The Shape of Water

Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was a trifle bitchy for Desplat to toss of that little comment about how the faceplate for the award was a different color than last year's trophy.  Like he has so many he was already wondering how he was going to be able to tell them apart.

Best Original Song:  "This is Me" from The Greatest Showman

Yaaaassss.  Though I'm sad that Keala Settle wasn't on hand to actually perform it.  With the beard, of course.

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy:  James Franco for The Disaster Artist

Ugh.  Franco.  I will freely admit that I have avoided any promos for this movie because of my irrational hatred of James Franco.  I was not prepared for the accent he adopted in playing Tommy Wiseau for the film, mostly because I have also never seen and have never been interested in seeing The Room.  I did think it was hilarious that the real Wiseau tried to Kanye Franco's acceptance speech and was denied.

Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Limited Series, or Made for TV Movie:  Laura Dern for Big Little Lies

Best Animated Feature:  Coco

Because Pixar.  I'm so sad I didn't get to see it in theaters.

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy:  Allison Janney for I, Tonya

I love Allison Janney and she looked fucking amazing.  I also thought it was nice, if a little bizarre, that she had such warm words for Tonya Harding.  I remember the Kerrigan/Harding drama from when I was a little girl so maybe I'm just biased.  I play to see the movie, which clearly has a different take on the events.

Best Screenplay:  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Foreign Language Film:  In the Fade

I don't know what was happening here.  Fatih Akin made no fucking sense in his acceptance speech and poor Diane Kruger looked like she was just as confused when he dragged her onstage with him.

Best Actor in a TV Series, Limited Series, or Made for TV Movie:  Ewan McGregor for Fargo

Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy:  The Marvelous Mrs.  Maisel

Best Actor in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy:  Aziz Ansari for Master of None

Ansari gave a really nice speech, even if he did get censored.

Oprah Winfrey is the first African American woman to be presented with the Cecil B. Demille Award.  There was a really nice video package of the extent of her contributions to the entertainment industry and her humanitarian efforts in general.  

Now I understand that Oprah is basically a demigod and you don't fuck with demigods, but Jesus Christ, she gave a long ass speech.  It was a good speech, very powerful, very affirming, and it completely lifted the crowd, but it was really long in a show that was already pressed for time.

Best Director:  Guillermo Del Toro for The Shape of Water

Guillermo Del Toro absolutely refused to be rushed off after Oprah's speech cut into his time allowance.  He also had the best line of the night when he cracked that being a director is the worst demonic bargain because you trade three years of your life for one credit on IMDb.    

Best Limited Series, or Made for TV Movie:  Big Little Lies

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy:  Saoirse Ronan for Lady Bird

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama:  Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour

I thought it was really nice how Oldman spent the majority of his speech thanking his makeup team.  From the marketing stills, they deserved it.

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama:  Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I don't know if Aziz Ansari made the censor guy nervous or if s/he was warned ahead of time about McDormand but there were several false starts where the censor bleeped her for no reason.  Which is pretty funny.

Best Motion Picture, Drama:  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Paris is Burning (1990)

  I have to write a paper on this movie later today so this might come off as a bit of a ramble while I organize my thoughts.

This documentary explores the drag ball culture of late 1980s Harlem in New York City.  Most of the participants are young, black, and either disowned or runaways.  They flock to the drag balls as a way of finding new, more accepting communities, joining Houses under a drag mother and adopting their last name.  The film also highlights participants' struggle with survival in a society that would rather they be dead than different.

It's easy to forget how really new LGBT rights are.  When this was filmed, the word "transgender" didn't exist and "transsexuals" generally had to travel to another country to have reassignment surgery, consigning their previous life to ashes and adopting a new identity completely.  They faced a daily threat of death, even as they were fetishized by "straight" men as the ultimate taboo.  Being able to pass as a "real" man or "real" woman became a necessary deception.  People rag on Caitlyn Jenner but as I saw the bone-deep fear of some of these girls, I began to understand just how monumental a decision to be so public really was.

When I compare the experience of Venus Xtravaganza, murdered and left to rot under a sleazy motel bed, who would have been consigned to a pauper's grave because her family wouldn't claim her if her drag mother hadn't come forward to identify and claim the body in 1989, with Cecilia, a young trans woman from my American Sci-fi class who openly talked about her experiences and being with her partner in 2017, it gives me such hope for our progress as a society, as a people, in tolerance and understanding.

This is an incredibly important documentary, not because it is meticulously constructed (because it feels very shoestring) but because of the historical record it provides.  This film immortalizes its participants, validating their humanity, which is really all they ever wanted.

Roadie (1980)

  Well this is a snapshot of the 80s and no mistake.  It's also probably the only way I would ever have seen some of these music acts.

Travis W. Redfish (Meat Loaf) is a young man from West Texas with a natural gift for fixing electronics.  While on his way to deliver beer for his day job, Travis is sidetracked by a broken down van containing Hank Williams, Jr.'s music equipment for a show that night and a wannabe groupie named Lola (Kaki Hunter).  Lola is desperate to get to New York City and meet Alice Cooper and Travis is desperate to get with Lola.  It's a match made in movie heaven.  So Travis becomes a roadie, working for acts as diverse as Roy Orbison to Blondie, making a name for himself before finally making the jump to NYC and Alice Cooper himself.

This has not aged well but I could see it being a cult classic.  For one, the number of legit musicians in it is outstanding.  It actually reminded me a lot of the Cannonball Run films for the sheer number of cameos.  Alice Cooper is surprisingly natural and I'm a little sad now that he didn't pursue more acting.  He has done more cameos that I expected, however.

OMG  I just found out that Alice Cooper is going to play King Herod in the live Jesus Christ Superstar coming out later this year on NBC!  That is going to be AMAZING.  I wasn't going to watch it but now I just might.

Anyway, back to Roadie.  The humor is really dated and the major plot point about a twenty-something guy desperately pursuing a sixteen-year-old is super creepy and gross now, but the movie remains a pretty fun watch if you don't think about it too hard.

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)

  Happy New Year!  Here's a movie from Christmas.

Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) has been doing pretty well as Santa Clause.  He and Mrs. Clause (Elizabeth Mitchell) are expecting their own bundle of joy and both are freaking out just slightly that the baby might arrive while Scott is delivering gifts.  To ease her mind, Scott brings her parents (Ann-Margaret and Alan Alda) to the North Pole to be with her, because adding in-laws to any mix is bound to settle it down and render it peaceful.  Meanwhile, Jack Frost (Martin Short), tired of being the opening act but never the star, decides to sabotage the Christmas preparations in an attempt to get Scott to relinquish the position.

This isn't the worst Christmas movie I've ever seen but it is a total hot mess.  So much time is devoted to Frost's antics that the actual It's a Wonderful Life riff on what would happen if Scott had never put on Santa's coat lasts about five minutes.  Ann-Margaret and Alan Alda are completely extraneous here, despite the prominence of their names, in favor of child actress Liliana Mumy as Scott's niece Lucy, who is instrumental in helping him defeat Frost.

The pacing is terrible, the plot is recycled, and the performances are either Christmas ham or totally phoned in.  You can do better.