Visual FX through the ages, or How OMFG!

Wow. Some are still awe-inspiring (Jurassic Park, T2) and put so many FX oriented tentpoles to shame (Wolverine I'm talking to you!) while others just showcase what happens when good story meets appropriate effects (Mary Poppins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Curious Case of Benjamin Button):

Found @ AwardsDaily from Cinematical.

Best Lead Actor, or How 'Man' is the Word

A Blog Next Door's Oscar coverage 2009: for the lit theory junkie in me and the Oscar watcher in you.

Best Lead Actor: 'Masculinity Crisis'

A Nominated Leading Man is a Nominated Leading Man is a Nominated Leading Man. Bored yet? Well, that's what Leading Men tend to be for me. Maybe it is because 'Men' are so boring but lumping them into one theoretical framework is much easier than with the ladies: how else to describe the Leading Men but to explore the lineup as a continuum of masculinity? Or better yet, as experiments in different models of (albeit, American) masculinity?

Nixon, Randy, Harvey, Benjamin and Walter are all models of contemporary masculinity. Oscar seems to be asking: which one are you?

Frank Langella - "Richard Nixon" in Frost/Nixon

I am a political man.

Where else to start? Here is a man's man - only not a fighting debonair one, but a political bureaucrat (he doesn't even dare try and wear loafers - in Kevin Bacon's words, they're very effeminate). Nonetheless he sees most things as a duel - as a fight. Add to that the fact that Mr Nixon cannot distance himself from his political image (as a strong anti-Communist man, all the time brushing a chip off his shoulder in being compared to the 1960s political beau: Kennedy) and that he is put in a position of always needing to prove himself and it is hard to see Langella's Nixon as anything other than a man in crisis.

Mickey Rourke - "Randy the Ram" in The Wrestler

I am a fighting man.

Randy is a man's man: he fights, he fucks. Here is the brass, American masculine ideal taken to the ultimate degree (and subsequently mauled and aged accordingly). What to say of a man who we seldom meet outside of a strip bar or a fighting ring, who is utterly uncomfortable playing the subdued, 'domestic' role of a grocery store aid and whose last moments are a gasping for air and bravery to seemingly face his death in what can only be described as a coming together of hubris and catharsis - though ultimately engineered by notions of 'masculine' roles? Exactly.

Brad Pitt - "Benjamin Button" in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I am a passively young-ing man.

But probably the most controversial of the models presented by this lineup is Ben Button. He is the epitome of passivity - indifference would be too strong a word, but appropriate nonetheless. Benjamin is an observer of life, love and even sex (at least he finds a tutoress in Ms Swinton) who seems to have no agency: he inherits, he travels, he sails; but never do we experience that Benjamin is capable of any action. This is the model of a man whose life is a series of events that pass him by and willingly submit to them. Indeed, the film seems to exult this to the degree that the film itself is so captivating and visually lush that it suggests Fincher, Miranda and Roth have concocted a vibrant world for Benjamin only to have him inhabit it without ever doing anything with it.

Sean Penn - "Harvey Milk" in Milk

I am a gay man.

How captivating that if we were to pick out the most wholly practical and praise-worthy masculine model we go to the 'gay man': Harvey is a late bloomer who finds his footing well into his life and when seeing imperfection in the world around him all he can think to do is act. If Benjamin is a model of passive agency (so seldom revered in masculine figures), Harvey is a man who can't stand still when faced with the world around him. He's like an action hero; or like an activist hero.

Richard Jenkins - "Walter Vale" in The Visitor

I am a frustrated man.

Throughout our cinematic encounter with Walter, we find that he is living an unfulfilling life - his book is nowhere near completion, he's seemingly detached from his work. In a way we could Walter as an academic version of Randy; here is what every want would want (a job, economic stability) but we have none of the satisfaction.

See? Even the write up bristles with dull and boring language and little or no deep analysis; these boys just don't do it for me...

Next up: Desire and the Supporting Ladies

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or How if I see Brad gape one more time...!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Dir. David Fincher

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson & Tilda Swinton.

The premise is a good one (courtesy of Mr Fitzgerald): a man (the eponymous Ben) ages backwards. The short story is an exercise in absurdist fiction, more akin to magical realism than to the meditation on life and death that Fincher and Roth offer in this epic- American film. But for all the beautiful cinematography, sumptuous art direction and dazzling visual effects, Ben Button proved irritatingly confounding to me: why were we being offered such a passive, do-nothing protagonist (not unlike Roth's other famous protagonist, Forrest Gump), being told his story with the aid of the oldest framing device of them all (person at deathbed recollects and adorning his story with snippets of historical events and an array of semi-believable secondary characters?

But what really got to me was the lack of tension; the lack of conflict. Benjamin is such a distant, tabula rasa type character that his motivations seem perplexing and altogether a matter of circumstance than anything indicative of any character arc at all. He just goes hither and thither; becomes a sailor, a lover, a button empire heir out of no will of his own - only the Daisy episode towards the end seems to be more structured around any agon and this is quickly forsaken for what seems like a rushed and foolhardy ending. But for most of the film, Benjamin is just drifting through easily recognizable historical moments and fable-like snippets of 'lessons on Life' which might suggest a great backdrop for this (hi)story but felt empty and too didactic for my taste (that 'backwards clock' framing tale irritated me for its clear "I'm a metaphor!" eagerness).

And I'm not even going into the fact that all the female characters seem underwritten (and so male-centered!): why else borrow an age-old female triumvirate (matron, crone and maiden) and give us the least fleshed out characters of the film? Or the fact that Brad's performance is so bland and uninspiring (he really doesn't have much to do other than gape throughout) he doesn't sell me as a compelling character not even as a constructive plot device. Or even the logical impossibility of the 'Benjamin dies as a baby' image: wouldn't he have been an old man with a baby face if he was born as a baby with an old man face? 

Flawless filmmaking, yes, but a good film needs to be more than an exercise in craft and have some heart, conflict; heck even an interesting lead would have been just fine. /rant over. C+