The Dark Knight Rises: critics, fanboys and trolls

In case you missed it, the last few days have been full of drama for fans anticipating the latest Batman movie by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises. And the movie hasn't even come out yet.

Eminent critic Roger Ebert complained that reviews for the film were embargoed until Sunday at midnight when press screenings were not even going to take place until Tuesday morning. He discovered that critics in Los Angeles and New York received early screenings, while others accepted being flown in to a press junket. Based in Chicago, he was not pleased.

Late Saturday night, a troll named Adrian Chen who apparently writes for Gawker and edits for The New Inquiry tweeted a supposed major spoiler. He followed it up with a disguised tweet claiming to be a picture of something else but in fact was a picture of the spoiler written as text. He followed this up with retweets of angry responses and repeats of the picture. More likely than not, he didn't see the film and was just being a dick. He delighted in the aggravation he caused, tweeting "lololol I think I reached peak troll with that. It was a good day."

Why "Auteur Theory" is nonsense

Earlier today, we received the sad news that the distinguished film critic Andrew Sarris passed away due to an infection he acquired after a fall. Immediately, expressions of grief, tributes and remembrances poured out on news and social media outlets. He was praised for his passion, vast knowledge and influence on subsequent generations of critics. He is most remembered, though, for introducing to Americans the "Auteur Theory" of the Cahiers du Cinema writers such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol who later formed La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave).

He famously feuded with fellow film critic legend Pauline Kael about the concept, a feud which became bitterly personal. Both were redoubtable opinion-makers and both could be quite wrong. On this issue, Sarris could be declared the winner, since Auteur Theory has taken hold and people now take it as a given that the director is the author of a film.

Yet Sarris was completely wrong.

My 2012 Oscar predictions

Tonight, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the 84th Annual Academy Awards. For what it's worth, here are my predictions.

Complete nominations for the 84th Academy Awards

[UPDATE: I got 18 of the 24 categories right which is respectable. I was very pleased to be wrong about Best Actress (won by Meryl Streep) and Foreign Language Film (won by A Separation) as I went with my head and not my heart on those predictions.]

Best Picture
Will win: The Artist
Should win: The Artist
In spite of all the griping, The Artist will win easily and will be a very worthy winner. It's an extremely accomplished work that approaches perfection. It could hardly be improved – certainly not by its noisiest detractors who didn't get it and casually dismissed it as light. In spite of people saying it was a weak year, many of the nominees were on my personal top ten list or runners-up. I didn't even hate Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close although I get why some (especially New Yorkers) despise it. The only one I think doesn't belong is The Help but even then I understand why some people admire it.

In defence of the Oscars: why the haters are wasting their breath

Last month, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the list of nominees for the 84th Annual Academy Awards, the media and social networks broke out into a firestorm of griping and outrage. Of course, everyone predictably got their predictions wrong, but many seemed to take it personally that the final list of nominations didn't match up with their own personal favourites.

The carping has continued unabated since. Article after article has appeared on how the Academy is the one that always get it wrong, how they're irrelevant and how their choices are predictable and ridiculous, all this before the actual ceremony takes place. But you know who else had a nominees or "best of" list that was just as bad if not worse?

Everyone.

The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as a "best" in the movies or any art. The most one can really say is that this or that is a personal favourite. Even if there was some type of statistical scorecard for films like they keep for sports – say, an "emotions per hour" average, "memorable lines" index, or "walkouts per public screening score" – you still wouldn't have 100% agreement. Even with statistics, people will interpret them: "he hit x number of home runs but that was in a smaller home field"; "his lower goals-against-average came behind a strong defensive team"; and so on.

2012 Movieguide Faith & Values Awards - winners

Movieguide held its 20th Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala Friday night at the Universal Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. As with the Movieguide website, awards were given based on adherence to American conservative "Christian" principles. It's one of the more absurd and irrelevant awards presentations, led by Movieguide editor Ted Baehr who authored a 76-page report that together with gala tickets cost $1,000.

Movieguide rates films highly according to supposed Christian values like patriotism and capitalism, and negatively for portrayals not only of swearing and nudity, but environmentalism, feminism, homosexuality, evolution, socialism or any other "liberal" viewpoints. Without any hint of irony, Baehr and Movieguide conflate Christianity with capitalism and American conservatism, ignoring Christ's own teachings in that regard ("You cannot serve both God and money." – Luke 16:13; "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." – Matthew 19:21; "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24; "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." – Mark 12:17 (ie. pay your taxes); "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it 'a den of robbers.'" – Matthew 21:12; etc.)

Why the Academy's changes make complete sense [UPDATE]

Last night, social media were up in arms over news of rule changes for documentaries with the Academy Awards. This is becoming an annoyingly familiar occurrence. Every change, no matter how good always has a loud chorus of detractors.

So it was when the Academy announced months ago that they would no longer be a predetermined number of Best Picture nominees as in previous years but that they would have a flexible number between 5 and 10 depending on how many nominees received first-place votes. Many objected, yet this is a good change that adds some mystery and drama to the process and makes clear the importance of the first-place vote. Many voters and observers are under the mistaken impression that everyone nominates multiple films or filmmakers in each category. However, that is not the case.  The Academy's nomination ballot is preferential, meaning that only one vote per category counts. If a favourite(s) gets eliminated, they can move on to subsequent pick(s) so that the ballot still has a voice but still only ever counting one vote at any given time.

When members received their ballots which only had five slots for the Best Picture nominees, again people were confused. But again that was a wise decision that makes it clear that they are not nominating ten films. They are nominating one film with some backups in order of preference.

Confusion and outrage reigned again with this latest brouhaha about the changes to the documentary section. The storm was created by a misleading New York Times article "Oscar Rule Will Cull Non-Fiction Contenders" which made it seem like the the Academy was trying to drastically limit the number of documentaries in a way that would favour larger, more expensive documentaries.

Spoilers DO spoil, contrary to what reports say

You can't believe everything you read.

Last week UC San Diego reported a study done by Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt on how much knowing the ending of a story in advance could affect someone's enjoyment. A few dozen students were given 12 short stories to read in different categories. Some had the story spoiled for them and knew the ending in advance, others didn't. Contrary to expectation, they found that readers who were given spoilers generally enjoyed the story more, not less.

Fine. The study showed that a small number of students got more enjoyment out of short stories when they were given spoilers. But then in reporting the findings, everyone extrapolated completely unfounded conclusions based on this single study. Wired posted an article entitled Spoilers Don't Spoil Anything. They included a graphic (above) with a joking spoiler "Dumbledore does on page 596 (I just saved you 4 hours and $30).

Others followed suit. Headlines popped up such as "Spoilers don't ruin stories or films: study"; "Story 'Spoilers' May Boost Enjoyment"; "Stories Are Not Spoiled by 'Spoilers'"; "Reading Spoilers About Book, Film Or TV Series May Enhance Your Viewing" and "Spoilers don't ruin movies after all."

Roger Ebert vs. the World on Ryan Dunn's death [UPDATED]

The internet mob mentality can be an ugly thing.

We saw this in the response to the Vancouver hockey riots last week. After a real-life mob let loose on the city, ironically a virtual mob formed to shame, harass and threaten the individuals who were photographed participating in the riots. Roger Ebert expressed astonishment at the vitriol and was then himself attacked as a defender of the rioters like Nathan Kotylak. Yesterday, he clarified himself on Twitter:

O Canada! I wasn't defending Nathan. I was recoiling from some of the venomous remarks on the Facebook page.

While that was exchange was winding down yesterday, he became embroiled in an even bigger online spat. Ryan Dunn of the Jackass movies was killed overnight in a fiery car crash. Many people posted information on this on Twitter in the morning including Ebert who tweeted,

"Jackass" star Ryan Dunn, RIP. His Porsche flew through 40 yards of trees. http://bit.ly/jn2qWV

178 people invited to join the Academy

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has invited 178 film industry professionals to join their ranks in the Academy. They generally keep the numbers under 6000. Oscar nominees who aren't already members receive automatic consideration but do not necessarily receive an automatic invitation.

“These individuals are among the best filmmakers working in the industry today,” said Academy President Tom Sherak.  “Their talent and creativity have entertained moviegoers around the world, and I welcome each of them to our ranks.”

Or so he'd like us to believe. There are many distinguished names on the list such as Lesley Manville, Terence Blanchard, Therese DePrez, David Seidler, Aaron Sorkin and Charles Ferguson. But there are also many head-scratchers. The invited actors for example has a few nominees such as Ellen Page and John Hawkes. But the majority are non-nominees and most are not likely to ever become a nominee. Russell Brand? Bradley Cooper? David Duchovny? John Corbett?

This brings us to another point: the list is still populated overwhelmingly by old white men. They are obviously trying to correct that but it seems they're putting more emphasis on age than gender and almost none on ethnic or international representation.

Rule changes for Oscar include flexible number of Best Picture nominees

You've got to give the Academy credit for trying.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) regularly tinkers with their Academy Awards procedures to make them as fair and equitable as possible, as well as trying to make them entertaining. It doesn't always work, but at least they try.

To some degree, it's a doomed exercise because no matter what they do, people will always complain. People within the industry don't always agree with each other, let alone with critics or audiences.

The main change that they've made is that the number of Best Picture nominees will now vary between 5 to 10. The exact number will be revealed when the nominees are announced. By introducing a requirement that a must have at least 5% of first place votes on the preferential nomination ballot to be a nominee for Best Picture, they found that the number of nominees in the nine years before expansion would have been anywhere from 5 to 9.

Hitler is not amused by Von Trier's ban from Cannes

Well, it had to happen.

With the latest scandal involving Lars von Trier and his mention of Nazis and Hitler, appropriately enough someone has created a new version of the infamous re-subtitled Hitler meme from Der Untergang (Downfall) by Oliver Hirschbiegel.

Of course, I think this whole affair smacks of silliness and hypocrisy. Lars von Trier is really guilty of nothing more than just telling bad jokes -- badly.

Still, this video is quite amusing as many of them are. This has an added "meta" quality since it has the character Hitler complaining about a controversy in which he played a part. But be warned, the humour is raunchy. Enjoy!

In defence of Lars von Trier, persona non grata at Cannes

Most people with an interest in film will have heard by now that Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier got into hot water at the 64th Festival de Cannes by making comments about being a Nazi and understanding Hitler. As a result, he has now been declared persona non grata by the festival's board of directors. Whatever you may think about his films or him as a person, this has to be the most ridiculous overreaction to a bad joke in recent memory.

Let me be clear, so that I don't provoke the same overreaction. I think what he said was in poor taste and obviously regrettable. He would agree himself, since he issued an apology very quickly, and gave a stronger ones again later. But to no avail, since so many have been so quick to crucify him.

The first thing to keep in mind, is that almost all reports of the incident have been overblown if not downright wrong. They've mostly omitted any context, too. And they're gone out of their way to sensationalize the incident as much as possible.

So the place to start is with the press conference itself, and not just the two-minute clips either. You can watch the entire 39-minute conference here:

The Critics Are All Wrong, pt. 2: critics vs. audiences vs. filmmakers

Today, the Best Picture Academy Award winner The King's Speech comes out on DVD and Blu-ray. It was a very deserving winner of course, but looking back at the outrage two months ago you wouldn't have known it. Many critics and bloggers strongly preferred The Social Network and it won an overwhelming number of Critics' Awards including the Golden Globe Awards. Then The King's Speech started winning the industry awards which culminated in their victory at the Oscars.

As a critic/blogger myself, but one who much preferred The King's Speech to The Social Network, I watched the awards season unfold with bemused astonishment. I chronicled the unfolding events in the articles The rise of The King’s Speech and defriending of The Social Network and The Critics Are All Wrong: Oscar, The Social Network & The King's Speech. Many critics simply went out of their skulls with the results and smeared the Oscars as outdated and irrelevant. They said that history would judge their decision harshly and that The Social Network would prove to be the greater movie.

But how can they be sure? Do critics really have greater insight than people who make films themselves?

It's usually the general public that is on the outside looking in. The public doesn't generally see as many movies and so they tend to look for easy entertainment. Casual viewers often consider critics and filmmakers themselves to be too highbrow or fussy with their thinking and have no problem going to a big, dumb blockbuster no matter how badly reviewed. Critics and filmmakers are usually united in preferring weightier films to dumb blockbusters.

Credit where credit is due - Natalie Portman and the stunt double controversy [UPDATED]

Just as the acclaimed film Black Swan is released today on DVD and Blu-ray, it's been hit by another controversy.

Previously, it was embroiled in a minor scandal over costume design. The Mulleavy sisters of the Rodarte fashion house claimed that they were screwed out of a Costume Designer credit because they were responsible for some of the key ballet costumes. The film's actual Costume Designer Amy Westcott was asked to keep quiet because the producers didn't want any friction leading up to the Oscar nominations. But once the nominations came out and Westcott was left off the ballot (likely because people bought into the Mulleavy hype) she finally spoke out and made it clear that she was the department head, the Mulleavy sisters answered to both her and Darren Aronofsky, and that the sisters were properly credited.

Now along comes another claiming she was screwed out of a bigger credit. Soon after Natalie Portman won the Best Actress Academy Award for her bravura performance as Nina, we started to hear some grumbing from her stunt double in the film, Sarah Lane. This was a surprise, since earlier interviews with her made her seem quite gracious.

The Critics Are All Wrong: Oscar, The Social Network & The King's Speech

As I had predicted, the critics' widespread whining that The Social Network was a better, more deserving winner than The King's Speech that we've been hearing for the last month has continued well after the Oscars gave The King's Speech the big prizes.

Even if you don't believe as I do that the guilds and the Academy got it right, it's still childish, petty and frankly unprofessional to heap scorn on another movie just because it defeated your favourite. But it turns out that many critics aren't all that different from fanboys and fangirls after all. When their choice doesn't come out ahead, they sulk like children. Sadly, I cannot help but lose respect for them as a result of their lack of objectivity and perspective.

Some blamed the poor ratings of the Oscar telecast on The King's Speech (Were low Oscar ratings the fault of Anne Hathaway and James Franco or 'The King's Speech'?) which is absurd because the ratings started out the same as last year before dropping steadily. If The Social Network were so popular and The King's Speech so hated, then the ratings should have risen for the first 2 hours and 40 minutes when The Social Network led with 3 awards to 1. The King's Speech had the bigger box office though ($114 million and counting vs. $96 million, despite a later release), so if anything the decline as The Social Network accumulated more early awards would reflect dissatisfaction with that result.

Many suggested that the Academy were suckers for British period pieces about royalty. None of them bothered to notice that none of the Best Picture winners from the last decade were set in England (the last one was Shakespeare in Love twelve years ago). They were also contradicted by one of their own -- The Hollywood Reporter which lobbied shamelessly for The Social Network had portrayed The King's Speech as doomed by pointing out that no film with a British royal in the lead has ever won a Best Picture Oscar.

Backstage at the 83rd Oscars: quotes from the winners

After all the Oscar winners received their awards on Sunday night, they were ushered backstage where they took questions from the press.

The questions were mostly about the films, their work and the occasion. The Wrap reported that there was a brief moment of controversy as someone tried to ask Natalie Portman about the scandal around John Galliano's alleged anti-Semitic rants and why she as a Dior spokesperson was not wearing a Dior dress. But an Academy official stopped her before she could respond and told everyone, "We're just going to move on."

That was probably for the best. It was inappropriate for the occasion and would have added nothing while creating a potential minefield. Portman has since issued a statement condemning Galliano, saying “I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today. In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way. I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful.”

Anyhow, here is a selection of the best backstage quotes by Oscar winners on Sunday night.

The Oscars' Speech: acceptances from the 83rd Academy Awards

It's finally over with. The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony last night was actually shorter than usual, yet had everyone complaining that it felt long. James Franco is back to school and people are wondering why he seemed so lifeless and detached. Kirk Douglas was either delightful or dreadful, as was Melissa Leo who managed to slip in the Academy Awards' first "fuck" on camera. Christian Bale either forgot his wife's name or was overcome by emotion.

Overall, there weren't too many surprises, though the wins by Tom Hooper and Wally Pfister caught some off guard. The King's Speech won the big prizes for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Original Screenplay but didn't get quite as many as I expected, thanks to some undeserved wins by Alice In Wonderland and the score for The Social Network. (As a musician, that one bugged me. I love Nine Inch Nails, but those guys admitted that they just wrote a bunch of assorted cues for the film and just let the editors spot them, and were surprised how the music was used).

To add insult to injury, Alice in Wonderland Costume Designer Colleen Atwood read in a monotone a long list of people to thank. But not all of the speeches were a bore. Some were quite memorable.

Aaron Sorkin was articulate as always though sure enough he got very wordy and was played off by the orchestra. David Seidler was concise and quite funny. Just as winning producer Scott Rudin did three years ago when he won for No Country For Old Men, producer Iain Canning gave a shout out to his boyfriend when accepting the Best Picture Award at the end of the night.

My Oscar predictions: the 2011 Academy Awards

I've given my preferred ranking for the 10 Best Picture nominees, but I'm getting my prediction for the Oscars themselves in under the wire. I predict that The King's Speech will win 6-8 awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Colin Firth), Best Screenplay (David Seidler) and yes, even Best Director (Tom Hooper). That will be a close race of course.

Many people believe that David Fincher's win at the BAFTA Awards meant that the momentum had swung his way. I don't believe that at all. There was no momentum swing. Rather, it's a very close race that was a coin-toss and still is. But I think that Tom Hooper's accomplishment is greater and the Academy will recognize that. It's hypocritical for critics to complain that the Academy doesn't always reward the best, yet they feel that Fincher is "owed" an Oscar for something even he doesn't consider to be his greatest work.

I see Inception taking three technical categories, and The Social Network taking Adapted Screenplay and Editing.

True Grit may get shut out entirely, but it should capture at least Cinematography and maybe Best Supporting Actress.

The rise of The King’s Speech and defriending of The Social Network

It’s been a month since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominees for the 83rd Academy Awards at the end of January. In that time we’ve seen some interesting developments, the usual dirty campaign tricks, some shoddy journalism and just plain silliness.

The story of the 2011 Oscars goes back even further to the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival when The King's Speech won the Audience Award and immediately became the Oscar frontrunner.

But then The Social Network was released to rave reviews. Then it started winning all the critics' awards starting with the National Board of Review. That was soon followed with victories with the critics in Washington, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago, and on it went all the way up to the Golden Globe Awards. Critics everywhere were virtually unanimous in their coronation of The Social Network as the best film of 2010.

Around the same time that this avalanche started, Scott Feinberg reported on December 5, 2010 that an anonymous "Academy member" emailed him and told him that many presumably Jewish AMPAS members wouldn’t vote for The King’s Speech because its subject King George VI had Nazi sympathies and was anti-Semitic - not true, as screenwriter David Seidler (whose grandparents were killed in the Holocaust) pointed out. This seemed like the kind of dirty negative campaigning for which Harvey Weinstein usually gets all the blame. But The King's Speech was his film, so it most certainly was not from his camp.

My top ten films of 2010

Okay, I know. I'm very late getting to this. Nonetheless, it gave me the opportunity to see everything I could and to reflect on some that have been getting a lot of buzz. For this list, I've excluded films  that I have seen but weren't yet released in 2010. And I've left off films that were released this year, but that I had included on my list from last year (such as A Prophet and White Ribbon).

I think the idea of ranking films is somewhat absurd, since they are all so different and quality in one doesn't negate the quality in another. Lists generally say more about the person making them than the works being ranked. Also, the way one feels about certain works of art can change according to mood and over time. So this is just a snapshot of how I feel at the moment.

For me, the best film of the year had to be the French-Canadian film Incendies. Currently nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, it was a masterful film in which everything came together beautifully. It was both smart and moving. It started slowly and deliberately, but rewarded viewers' patience with a powerful emotional wallop. Although it wasn't released in English Canada until this January, I've included it because it was released in Quebec in the fall of 2010.