Oscar detachment

[calimac]

So the Oscar nominations have come out, and I find myself quite detached from it all.

I think this is a new record: I have only seen two and a fraction films on the entire nominating list. One is The Queen, nominated for major awards, which I rather liked. The second is The Prestige, nominated only for cinematography and art direction, which list is a code for "looks better than it plays." That's about right: this was an impressive-looking film that irritated the heck out of me. The fraction is Black Dahlia, for cinematography only, which I picked up on the video rack out of curiosity and turned off out of boredom before even the big murder happened.

Also-rans in the race for my viewing pleasure: The Devil Wears Prada, which I almost saw when stuck in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for an evening with nothing else to do, but decided the showing let out too late. It's on my "maybe rent it some time" list. So is Little Miss Sunshine, of which I've heard good things but know nothing. The Last King of Scotland interests me, but its reviews made it sound too uncomfortable to watch in the theatre. I definitely want to rent that one and watch it at home, where I can turn it off in the middle and do something else for a while. I do that with a lot of movies. Sometimes I don't come back; see Black Dahlia. Or, rather, don't bother seeing it.

I keep standing by the video rack looking at United 93. This is a film I want to see, but I suspect that it's a film I will not want to have seen, if you follow me.

Notes on a Scandal sounds like great acting in the service of a stupid story. I've been there before; no thanks. I've seen one Pirates of the Caribbean film already, and that was more than enough. Of the three Best Picture nominees I haven't mentioned, I have no desire for Letters from Iwo Jima, I am barely sure I remember from title alone what film Babel is, and the title The Departed rings no bells at all. Yeah, I'll look them up later.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I found United 93 a lot less harrowing than I would have expected, and almost as uplifting in terms of the heroism, so it shouldn't haunt you in a bad way. At least, I assume that's what you mean here.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Bloody Sunday from the same director? I found that pretty harrowing, and I don't have the emotional gut reaction to Bloody Sunday as I do to 9/11.

The reason was that Bloody Sunday is the only non-documentary film I've ever seen that, had I seen it under the impression that it was a documentary, I would have believed it. (The only flaw was that I recognized a couple of the actors.) And I read that United 93 was filmed in the same style. That you could not mistake it for a documentary is only a circumstantial matter of asking, How would there be cameras there? How would the film be preserved? And I don't think that would make any difference.

So if you've seen Bloody Sunday, a triangulation against your reaction to that would be helpful.