| LOGUE: Pegging winners tough this year |
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By: GINA LOGUE, glogue@murfreesboropost.com
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Posted: Thursday, February 2, 2012 12:00 am
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It’s difficult to weigh in on movie awards season rationally and fairly, unless you’ve seen every film and performance nominated.
However, I’ll throw out a few tidbits on the ones I’ve watched.
It’s easier on the pocketbook if you have a friend who’s an actor. She gets DVDs in the mail so that she can view them before casting her ballot.
If you don’t mind watching DVDs with constant subtitles reminding you that if you copy the disc you will be tied to a cactus and forced to watch “Porky’s” movies for the rest of your life, you’ll enjoy the experience.
“The Descendants” follows a Hawaiian family grappling with two overwhelming issues: The mother is in a permanent coma and the father has to decide what to do with a tract of land that has been in the family for generations.
George Clooney didn’t need to prove he’s more than just a pretty face. He did that long ago. But, he proves it in this movie in a whole new way. He holds this movie together.
His character has been selfish and ambitious, but if he’s so one-dimensional that you hate him, the movie falls apart. Thanks to Clooney, that doesn’t happen. His multidimensional performance is Oscar-worthy.
The problem is that Jean Dujardin’s performance in “The Artist” is equally Oscar-worthy. The French comedian, who portrays a silent-movie actor in decline due to the advent of talkies, has already won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild awards for Best Actor in a Motion Picture.
Dujardin makes you feel for his character, even as he arrogantly bankrolls a silent film, ignoring the audience’s desires. He oozes charm on-screen and off, and it takes talent to play a silent film star in a silent movie without letting the performance devolve into caricature.
“The Artist” is a delightfully whimsical homage to the silent screen, and director Michel Hazanavicius deserves the Director’s Guild Award he won. He took a hell of a gamble, but his artistry made it pay off.
Look for Uggie the dog, the biggest scene-stealing canine since Asta in “The Thin Man” movies. He won an award at the Cannes Film Festival last year. (No, I’m not kidding.)
The Golden Globes and the SAG Awards are not necessarily accurate predictors of Oscar outcomes, especially because Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse” and Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” are among the nominees. But, it would be great to see the momentum Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer have amassed for their terrific performances in “The Help” carry over to the entire film at Oscar time.
The movie about how a young, white journalist and two African-American maids who pull off a mini-social revolution in the segregated South captured the SAG Award for ensemble acting.
It also deserves kudos for weaving the subplots of racism, sexism and classism in and out of each other while showing how people’s attachment to those evils breaks all our hearts and stains all our lives.
“The Help” also teaches Hollywood executives that women can carry a film – if Hollywood executives are teachable. |
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