And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to ... Iran

In a piece in The New Republic, "How Iran Produced the Best Film of 2011 — and What Americans Can Learn From It," the always worthwhile David Thomson persuasively asserts that the Iranian film A Separation, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi...

...seems to me the best film of 2011. It is one of the Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Picture, but by any sense of justice in any nation (let alone the self-assessed greatest in the world) it would have been nominated for Best Picture before anything else.

Says Thomson:

The ways in which the characters in A Separation struggle for truth and honor, while yielding sometimes to compromise and falsehood, is not foreign to us. Few other films made last year give such a striking sense of, "Look—isn't this life? Isn't this our life, too?" In a complete world of film-going, we should no longer tolerate the label "foreign film," especially since it seems likely that a film from France in which the French language remains tactfully silent is going to stroll away with Best Picture. The Artist is a pleasant soufflé, over which older Academy voters can wax nostalgic. But A Separation is what the cinema was invented for.

Roger Ebert, praising the film, spoke with its director, Asghar Farhadi, who's also Oscar nominated for his original screenplay. Farhadi noted the often fraught state of world-audience filmmaking in his home country:

Mostly people have liked the movie. It has had a large audience and fortunately has evoked a lot of discussion, which is exactly what I hoped would happen. Seeing people gather in little groups after each screening to discuss the film: That's exactly what I wanted, and gives me a nice feeling. It was also well received by the critics in Iran. But the official reaction was mixed. Being cautious towards commenting on the film was the common thing in all their reactions. Officials are used to judge the film and the film-maker together. And they know that we don't agree on a lot of subjects. Well, let's just say that they can't make any comment without reservation. We have a proverb in Iran: 'a hit on the nail, a hit on the horseshoe'.

Citing a piece in The Guardian about that "official reaction" backlash in Iran following the film's success in the West, Anthony Kaufman at Indiewire suggests that the success of A Separation puts a critical finger not only on the movie, but also on "Iran's often complex relationship with its artists" and the regime's "highly nervous" reaction to how the country is represented to the world:

At a time when relations between Iran and the West couldn't be more contentious, you'd think a good work of art could help break down some walls between them. But no government--not in the U.S. either, I should add--likes to let someone else come along and make bridges without their approval. It takes away their power. And I think that's one of the reasons why the film isn't being universally accepted at home. Success spoils the government's ability to censor and control. 

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

Just ring a doorbell and say "Pizza" — Newsweek magazine's 2012 Oscar roundtable

I love listening to professional actors talk about their working experiences, the training and processes they develop to do their job, the work and structure behind their performances. 

Newsweek magazine's 2012 Oscar roundtable delivers a gathering of actors whose heads I want to crawl inside of.

Via The Daily Beast:

Newsweek's annual Oscar roundtable always feels like a cozy A-list dinner party. Since 1998, we've hosted the actors who gave some of the best performances of the year for a raw discussion about their craft. And this year, the conversation was at its best: fast, funny—and sexually charged. We should have known that it would be, given our lineup of George Clooney (The Descendants), Viola Davis (The Help), Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Michael Fassbender (Shame), Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Christopher Plummer (Beginners). (See our essay about the day in this week’s Newsweek).

David Ansen's feature write-up on the roundtable is here.

I should have known that the talk would quickly turn to sex. Although my fellow moderator, Ramin Setoodeh, and I had decided we’d open the discussion with a generic question—“Was there a movie or performance you’d seen as a child that inspired you to be an actor?”—Swinton is quick to remind me that she and I had just been discussing our first erotic memories in the cinema. She’d recently shown her 14-year-old twins Vertigo, the most sexually obsessive of Hitchcock movies. So our opening question is revised, by popular demand, to everyone’s first cinematic sexual revelation.

Ten clips from the roundtable are here. Points of interest include: 

• George Clooney recalling his "worst job," which involved rubbing powder on the corns of women's feet (some of which had a toe removed).
• Tilda Swinton on why she gave away her 2008 Oscar.
• Viola Davis on Hollywood's condescension regarding race. Allison Samuels has some words on Theron's well-intentioned but "thoroughly misguided" contribution to that discussion. Andrew Sullivan provides some reader pushback toward Viola Davis, and then some pushback against the pushback.
• Michael Fassbender on onscreen pissing.
• Clooney: "I was in Batman 4." Theron: “What up, Nipples!" 
• the whole bunch on What Actors' Production Trailers Mean to Me.
• Charlize Theron on wanting to be Kristen Wiig.
• Christopher Plummer on his exasperation with Terence Malick.
• Clooney on "selling out" — "You know what, fuck you."
• Davis and Fassbender on their process as actors to find their characters, even a character such as Magneto in X-Men.

Speaking of Edgar Allan...

Well, here's a timely arrival: The first trailer for James McTeigue's The Raven is now online.  The story takes place in 1840s Baltimore, where a series of grisly murders appears inspired by the works of local author Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack). Poe and a detective (Luke Evans) must team up to find the killer before he takes out the woman Poe loves.

There's an intriguing "I wish I'd thought of that" premise. I like John Cusack. The trailer suggests that the movie may splash the screen with a bit too much V for Vendetta or From Hell stylistics for my taste, and the story will almost certainly be conventionally three-act-thriller predictable beat by beat. And of course if I can't let go of my mental image of the real-life man and his history ("the woman Poe loves" was his 13-year-old cousin, fer Chrissakes), then I'll end up grinding my teeth to chalk before the big chase scene on script page 85. (As a film fictionalizing an historical writer, The Raven is at least guaranteed to be less irksome than Young Goethe In Love.) Nonetheless, the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes (which this film feels "inspired" by) pleasantly surprised me, and The Raven's trailer now has me curious. I'll look forward to this one with some cautious hope.

The Raven opens March 9, 2012. Apple has the trailer in HD.



Here’s the official synopsis:

In this gritty thriller, Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack, Being John Malkovich) joins forces with a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans, Immortals) to hunt down a mad serial killer who’s using Poe’s own works as the basis in a string of brutal murders.

Directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin), the film also stars Alice Eve (Sex and the City 2), Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Faster).

When a mother and daughter are found brutally murdered in 19th century Baltimore, Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) makes a startling discovery: the crime resembles a fictional murder described in gory detail in the local newspaper—part of a collection of stories penned by struggling writer and social pariah Edgar Allan Poe. But even as Poe is questioned by police, another grisly murder occurs, also inspired by a popular Poe story.

Realizing a serial killer is on the loose using Poe's writings as the backdrop for his bloody rampage, Fields enlists the author’s help in stopping the attacks. But when it appears someone close to Poe may become the murderer’s next victim, the stakes become even higher and the inventor of the detective story calls on his own powers of deduction to try to solve the case before it's too late.

The movie's current IMDb listing adds that it's set in "the last day's of Edgar Allan Poe's life." If so, expect the peculiar circumstances of his death to a big part of Act 3.

Hat tip: Collider