Entertainment Weekly predicts BABEL Best Picture win.- Page 2

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:11am

Yes, Michael Bennett, youa e the on,ly one who didn't like Pan's. As far as under-developed ideas...which ideas felt under-developed to you?

Volver would've been welcome for me about ten years ago, but I'm sort of tiring of the family drama story. It is certainly a well-crafted and acted film, but the themes aren't particularly profound and the film feels more a good summer film rather than a real oscar contender.

[lildogs]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:17am

First, I'm sticking with LMS, Marty, O'Toole and Arkin...

I agree with touchme on VOLER, but not for the same reason. I didn't see it as a family story at all, but rather Pedro's version of a 1940s woman's picture (esp MILDRED PIERCE)shot through a 70s lens. His signature reds started to meld into purples and finally into blues. Alot of the familiar elements were there--drugs, incest, the supernatural and morbid, but they seem stretched thin--I think it works better as art than entertainment.

He's gotten into this elegaic pace that I don't care for, and while Cruz is good, she's better in LIVE FLESH and ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER.

That being said, VOLVER is still leagues better than 85% of the films out there.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:23am

PAN to me felt like a muriad of fascinating ideas - but to me it would have been more powerful if more of the fantasy world was psychologically connected to the girl's real life. Some things work well - the root/baby - but other parts of her tasks just felt like escapism. I guess I wanted the stakes to be higher for her - for her to feel she really could escape her real world. For a fairy-tale heroine, the girl felt strangely passive to me.

Perhaps my opinion would change on a second viewing (as it did with BABEL) but I felt a lot of PAN to be unfulfilling. I just wanted the entire film to be filled with the creativity and magic of some of those fantasy sequences.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:24am

I'm still baffled by Arkin's nominations. Can anyone explain how he was nominated over pretty much everyone else in the film? I just don't get it.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:27am

Because he's a well liked old Hollywood pro and he's very funny in his brief role in the film. I'm okay with his nomination.

[blueroses]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:35am

I thought he was great, but am pretty surprised Carrell is being overlooked.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:41am

To me, Arkin's performance was the least memorable in the film. Good, but not great.

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:45am

The problem with connecting the fantasy world to the girl's life in Pan's is twofold:

1) She would be seen as projecting rather than exploring
2) The theme of redemption would be muddled

I don't think the intent is for her fairy tale world to be an escape. In fact, I think the fairy tale nature of the film insists that it is 100% real. She sees what others cannot see (thus, the power of the redemption is inescapable).

See the film again. I bet you have another Babel-like experience.

Would Pan's have even been on your best of 2006 list?

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:49am

His character (Arkin) died...so he got a nomination.

Only an older actress going full monty is more of a guarantee.

I too preferred Carrell's perf.

Updated On: 1/29/07 at 11:49 AM

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:53am

I wasn't especially moved by Carrell in LMS. He was fine but I didn't think he had the best material to work with. Really, I thought if anyone should have gotten a nod out of that movie it should have been Kinnear. He's able to be so far out there but doesn't turn into a cartoon.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 11:55am

As of now, Touch it probably would be, because I did love the fantasy aspect of it - but probably towards the lower end of a top ten.

My top five in no real order would probably be LITTLE CHILDREN, VOLVER, BABEL, CHILDREN OF MEN and LETTERS

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 12:02pm

I still say Iwo Jima will take the prize.

[VIETgrlTerifa]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 12:03pm

I actually loved the way the fantasy world really mirrored the real world. Though it was a fantasy, it was incredibly dark and gritty and the faun was incredibly shady.

I don't think she really wanted to escape into an alternate world but that she wanted the reality she was living in to be better. I came out of the film thinking that it was the challenge of the viewer to believe if the fantasy was real or not. In the scene with the mother where she tells her the world is a cruel place and how she'll learn that when she gets older is very telling because it's really asking us how far removed we are and how affected we are by the harshness of our reality by accepting the fantasy aspect of the story or if it was just all in her imagination...her escapism.

[Ciaron McCarthy]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 12:10pm

The problem with connecting the fantasy world to the girl's life in Pan's is twofold:

It would also negate the whole point of the film. It is a fantasty realism film and a damn good one. It is one of, if not the, hardest type of film to make. del Toro's masterful direction of the two worlds is part of what makes the film so wonderful.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 12:47pm

Michael Bennett, I'm a big advocate for second viewings when hype ruins something for me. I didn't enjoy Sideways the first time I saw it and loved it the second time. I'm willing to see LMS and Babel again and maybe my reaction will change.

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 1:11pm

Besty,
Thanks for clearing up my doubts about write-ins. I did remember hearing that someone had won or was close to winning an Oscar from a write-in (for some reason I had connected it to Bette Davis, don't know why), so thanks for explaining that to me.

I agree that Steve Carrell deserved a nomination for his work in Little Miss Sunshine. However, I am okay with Arkin's nod. I am surprised though that Djimon Hounsou has zero buzz, I thought his performance in Blood Diamond overshadowed Leonardo DiCaprio's (who was great himself) and I liked him better than Eddie Murphy and Arkin.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 1:38pm

There was a write in campaign when the academy didnt nominate Davis for Of Human Bondage...it didn't work as she still lost.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 1:53pm

Knowing Bette's reputation she probably started the write in campaign herself.

I don't have a problem with Arkin's nom, either. He is an old vet who has a nice role in a popular and well made little film. Not the best, but certainly more worthy than say, Jack Palance.
You could use the same argument for Scorsese's nom.

[PJ]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:04pm

I agree with Michael Bennett that Babel only looked better upon a second viewing. The first time, my friend and I couldn't wait to leave that theatre. And it seemed everyone around us shared that exact feeling. But I saw it again after the Globe win, and I liked it a lot more.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:06pm

I don't know, I loved it the first time I saw it. I was never bored, and quite frankly, I have no idea if those around me were - I was paying attention to the film.

It didn't really strike me as pretentious in the way that CRASH did, but just more solid all around. I don't think it tries to be any more or less complicated than it is.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:10pm

PJ, I applaud you returning to see Babel again. I can't say I would ever sit through a film that had me wanting to walk out the first time through.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:28pm

I'm with Plum on this one. To me, BABEL was yet another in a long line of pretentious, portentous, pompously self-important, manipulative, melodramatic ruminations on the ironies of global interconnectedness (or the lack thereof) that Hollywood loves to pat itself on the back by rewarding for its well-meaning good intentions and ambitious epic sweep. OF COURSE, it's going to win -- it's EXACTLY the kind of film that Oscar LOVES to honor, even though it's not nearly as "smart" and illuminating as it thinks it is -- but to me (in spite of some fine performances and lovely cinematography) it was a smug, utterly predictable, bombastic, overblown, emotionally shallow, self-congratulatory piece of folderol that ultimately added up to far, far less than the sum of its meandering parts. Frankly, any of the other four nominees made for a far more cohesive, fully-realized, satisying filmgoing experience -- which knowing my history with such things means that BABEL has got the Best Picture Oscar in the bag.

So go ahead, flame away, but that's my opinion............

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:36pm

Margo - Thank you so much for the use of the word "folderol".

[broadway86]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:40pm

It didn't really strike me as pretentious in the way that CRASH did, but just more solid all around. I don't think it tries to be any more or less complicated than it is.

I agree. My problem with Crash, among other things, was that the characters were constantly interacting with each other. Are these the only people in Los Angeles?

As for Babel... It confuses me that people are complaining that the connection between the stories (the gun) isn't very believable. Why? Isn't possible that such a chain reaction has happened somewhere in the world?

I wasn't especially moved by Carrell in LMS. He was fine but I didn't think he had the best material to work with. Really, I thought if anyone should have gotten a nod out of that movie it should have been Kinnear. He's able to be so far out there but doesn't turn into a cartoon.

Totally agree. Kinnear was underrated in this movie. Updated On: 1/29/07 at 02:40 PM

[lildogs]

Posted: 1/29/07 at 2:43pm

Sueleen, I thought you said: You could use the same argument for Scorsese's MOM.

I was like, when did SHE got nominated?!

I think you're right Margo, but I also think alot more people have seen LMS than BABEL. I'm putting my chips behind that little yellow van. I hope it benefits from IMPORTANT FILM fatigue.

There HAVE been little films that won you know: The Informer, Casablanca, Marty, The Apartment, Annie Hall, Chariots of Fire...maybe LMS is the one for this decade.