I watched the announcement of the Oscar nominations....

... and you can too:



Did any of you watch that? I'm sure you can easily find the list of nominees somewhere. Feel free to comment about the specifics and try to resist simply saying you don't care about Oscars or you don't like Hollywood generally. I know!

I'll just say:

1. I've only seen 2 of the movies under discussion — "The Isle of Dogs" (nominated for best animated movie) and "RBG" (nominated for best documentary and for some song that I don't remember). The only one I saw in the theater was "RBG," and that's also the only one I saw in its entirety.  I'm still only 2/3 of the way through "The Isle of Dogs" on Amazon Prime, and weeks have past since I paused it and realized I didn't much care exactly how the dogs completed their mission, and now I forget what the mission was. Anyway — dogs on an island in Japan, having a hard time but being feisty, as visualized by the ever-quirky Wes Anderson.

2. Viggo Mortenson got a best actor nomination! I think that was unexpected. I'll have to look up who was "snubbed" to give him recognition. I haven't seen his movie "Green Book," and I doubt I'll go to the movie theater to see it when I'm just a few weeks from getting cataract surgery and am no good at seeing anything right now, but I just happen to love Viggo Mortenson because I loved him in "Captain Fantastic." I'm better with TV — and frankly, better with things I've already seen before (or with new episodes of the old TV series "Friends" because it's easy to recognize the 6 recurring characters and to get the hang of what they're up to) — so maybe I'll just watch "Captain Fantastic" again.

What did Viggo Mortenson say?

I'm trying to understand the Variety article "Will Viggo Mortensen’s Racial Slur Doom His Oscar Chances?"

The controversy over Viggo Mortensen’s use of the N-word during a recent Q&A for his movie “Green Book” appears to be over, but can he and the film recover enough to emerge as a genuine awards contender?

Use? Do they mean mention*?

“I was attempting to make the point that the extreme, dehumanizing ugliness that this word conjures, the hateful attitude behind it, has not disappeared just because white people generally no longer use it as a racist insult,” he wrote in a statement released after shocked tweets from the screening surfaced online.

It sounds as though, while talking about the way other people have used the word, he actually vocalized the syllables. That's inadvisable these days, but nothing like actually hurling the epithet. I think the article ought to quote what he said and not force me to look it up.

Using racially charged language and particularly that slur has become a definitive line that, once crossed, is nearly impossible to come back from. Two top executives, Jonathan Friedland from Netflix and Amy Powell of Paramount Pictures, have been fired in the past five months for reportedly using the slur in the same manner as Mortensen — demonstratively, while discussing hate speech in the presence of people of color.

What a scary, repressive place Hollywood is! Such weak, craven people. Who cares what they choose to give awards to?

“The people that work with Viggo actually like him a lot, but he knows better. He’s been around long enough. He was obviously trying to make a statement in a conversation and it’s hard in this charged atmosphere to say what is forgivable and what is not,” one veteran film executive who is also an Oscar voter told Variety...

“I wouldn’t say at this point his chances [of winning the best actor Oscar] are hurt, because of how fast this went away, but don’t forget that the demographic within the Academy has changed, and is changing,” the executive said, referring to the record-breaking diversity among the 928 people invited to join the film academy this year....

Hollywood strains to deal with its longterm racial problems, and one of its remedies, enlarging the Academy, requires new efforts to imagine what might please those new members.

[T]he core lessons of the film ["Green Book"] are failing to resonate with some critics, who believe the film is tone deaf about the racial prejudices it seeks to illuminate and treats the historical mistreatment of black Americans with a glibness that’s inappropriate, finding humor where there is none.

Finding humor where there is none.... In the Era of That's Not Funny, not only is your humor not funny, no humor could be funny. You didn't just fail to find humor. There is no humor to find. But I think it's funny that Hollywood is trying so hard to make movies on racial themes and simultaneously making it harder to do it just the right way and submitting its erstwhile art form to the judgment of people who are presumed to be predisposed to say that they are not doing it right.

Let me look up what Mortenson said. In a question and answer session after the screening of the movie, on the subject of racial progress, he said "For instance, no one says [the word] anymore."

Please don't write out the word in the comments. Humor me.

In the Era of That's Not Funny, that's the only humor we have — humoring people.

______________________

* The "use-mention distinction."

"Surprise! The Toronto Film Festival audiences have voted for their favorite film. It was not Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in 'A Star is Born'..."

"... or Ryan Gosling in 'First Man' or Michael Moore’s anti Trump doc 'Fahrenheit 11-9.' The winner of the Audience Award was Peter Farrelly’s 'Green Book,' a kind of 'Driving Miss Daisy' for the new generation. Viggo Mortensen stars as an Italian bouncer in the South, circa the early 60s, who has to drive around a famous musician, played by Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. They use the 'Green Book' which is a guide to restaurants and motels were blacks were allowed... Farrelly is usually not associated with award winning films... His credits include 'Dumb and Dumber,' 'There’s Something About Mary,' and 'Shallow Hal.'"

Writes Roger Friedman at Showbiz 411.

I like the idea of rising to prestige through comedy, so good for Farrelly.

Mahershala Ali won an Oscar for "Moonlight," which I didn't see, because I hardly see anything anymore, but he was in at least one movie I've seen, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which dates back to the days when I saw almost all the movies that got excellent reviews.

Viggo Mortensen, on the other hand. I love him based on "Captain Fantastic."

Here's the trailer:



So it's a racial flip where the white character is low class and the black character is rich and polished. But as with "Driving Miss Daisy," the black character elevates the white character. What's unusual in the broad scheme of Hollywood history is that the rich character elevates the poor character.

Anyway, it looks good, even though I was disappointed to see Viggo Mortensen's sexiness submerged into a brutish character... and yet, that worked like mad for Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire." But I like my Viggo in Captain Fantastic form. Here he is talking to Conan O'Brien about my favorite movement in "Captain Fantastic," when he's completely naked and casually sipping coffee in a public campground and — to someone who stares — says "It's just a penis. Every man has one. We're all animals of the earth."

"What kind of a crazy person celebrates Noam Chomsky's birthday like it's some kind of official holiday?"

Just one of the many great scenes in "Captain Fantastic," which Meade and I watched on streaming video last night. I give it the Althouse seal of approval. You can stream it here. And let's talk about it!

I enjoyed listening to Tom & Lorenzo talk about that movie in this podcast. Tom was outraged at the Viggo Mortenson character, calling his treatment of his children "child abuse" and said that because the man was inculcating left-wing politics in his children, viewers were not going to be able to detect the badness of his fathering.

That resonates with something I said to Meade immediately after watching the movie (and before listening to Tom & Lorenzo): This movie would be experienced very differently by someone with left-wing politics, someone who actually thought Noam Chomsky was great. Things we found hilarious — and also painful — would read entirely differently. I think this was Tom's problem, but it forced Tom to see that there's something abusive about inculcating children with politics (he just thought the common people needed clearer instruction, which would have been there if the father's politics were right-wing or Christian fundamentalist).

The movie is complicated, hilarious and dramatic. A father is sort of leading his band of 6 children against the world. He's both good and bad. And the grandfather who disapproves — played by Frank Langella — is also good and bad, even though he's in the position that would normally be The Villain. (He's trying to take the children away.) There's a great dinner-table scene where the 6 children try to relate to their cousins, and it's complex to think about. There's some of the feeling Meade and I remember from many movies circa 1970 where the people who reject American society are morally and intellectually better, but that's also challenged as one of the boys yells at his father for making them into "freaks."

And I just want to say: Viggo Mortenson is 58 years old. He looks great. And we got a comprehensive look at him at one point.

The Guardian The Observer obsesses about naked male wrestling in the movies.

Apparently, there's lots of it.

Well, we all remember "Borat," and I can remember Oliver Reed and Alan Bates naked-wrestling in front of the fire in Ken Russell's version of the D.H. Lawrence film "Women in Love." ("According to Russell, Bates and Reed were fairly evenly equipped, although Oliver 'kept nipping behind the curtains between takes to give nature a helping hand'.") But what else is there? There's at least the new David Cronenberg movie. ("Having won hearts as hunky hero Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo really shows what he's made of in Eastern Promises, grappling his male assailants with nothing more than a patchwork of tattoos to cover his rippling body.") And: "If you type 'Jason Statham' and 'oil wrestling' into Google (as I have often done) you will be directed to several sites featuring a scene from The Transporter in which the geezery star, stripped to the waist, smothers himself with lubricant before going mano-a-mano with his slippery opponents in a sticky slick."

Should I be reading The Guardian more? I love the subject matter but the prose is making me a little ill.

UPDATE: I'm told this piece is actually in The Observer, a separate paper. Sorry, I'm not reading the paper. I'm reading a website. And the big red "Guardian" logo makes me think I'm reading something called The Guardian. This mistaken perception has been going on for years.

"A History of Violence."

I just saw the David Cronenberg movie, "A History of Violence." Now, I don't purport to do movie reviews here, and that's a particularly good thing in this case, because I don't have a coherent opinion about this movie. I don't even have an opinion as to whether it's a good movie. I'm just giving some bloggish impressions, numbered to give some semblance of order.

There are no spoilers here.

1. Nice that it's only about 90 minutes long. I always get antsy at the movies. 90 minutes is a typical length for a comedy, not a drama. So my question is: Was this a movie of atypical length? Was it a comedy? I was laughing anyway and so were some other people. The violent outbursts felt like very serious, stunning violence, but overall, it was comic, the way "Pulp Fiction" is comic. Yet there were no obvious laugh lines. It was a really interesting feeling of being appropriately affected by the danger and violence, but still finding it funny.

2. It has a dreamlike quality -- and begins with a child's nightmare (at least that's where I came in). No, there are no monsters. Light chases the monsters away. So the child is told. Yet the movie is quite underlit -- what diner has mood lighting? -- perhaps to signify that the tale to be told follows the logic of a dream: threatening characters show up in your ordinary life and you need to escape from them, in one scene after another, where very strange things happen, dragging you out of your normal life; troubling questions arise about your identity and the identity of others around you, as you try different ways to get back home, as you lose your grip on what your home is.

3. It was a low budget movie, I'm assuming. That may explain a lot of the low lighting. The point where I realized they really made this go without the money they needed: Two men enter what is supposed to be a very rich man's mansion and, when each of them steps on what is made to look like a solid marble threshold, it caves way down like a flimsy board.

4. Viggo Mortenson makes a great leading man. Much of the movie is watching his face. I enjoyed that.

5. Maria Bello is not a good actress. She's interesting to look at, but she can't do what is needed in a film like this. Cronenberg tried to cover for her inadequacies by having her do things like run out of the room and throw up off camera or bury her face in Mortenson's shoulder and cry. We'd watch more of him then, instead of her. And by the way, if there's one thing I would like to ban in movies, it's having a character express emotion by vomiting.

6. That was William Hurt? Wow, he got... less attractive.

I haven't read any reviews of this movie. I just saw Mortenson on Letterman and liked him and his clip, and I saw that the film got an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I guarantee that all six points above were written without reading a single review. Now, I'll read some reviews.

Here's a line from one of the less good reviews, by Stephen Witty:

"Violence" -- hailed in some quarters as [Cronenberg's] most "accessible" film -- is, sadly, his least interesting, settling for some genre setpieces and a pair of eccentric performances by villains Ed Harris and William Hurt. As a history of Cronenberg, it's a good introductory lecture, detailing his careful composition, mastery of unease and complicated thematic interests. As a Cronenberg film though, it's figuratively bloodless, without any real body to it at all.

Fair enough.

From Kevin Turan:

It's a measure of Cronenberg's confidence in his material, his cast and his own skill that he purposely opens this ultimately compelling film with a glacially paced sequence of a pair of drifters checking out of a motel at a velocity that only Jim Jarmusch in full "Broken Flowers" mode could love.

Hey, I missed a glacially paced sequence that opened the film. Was I really that late?

Matching her costar's level of commitment, Bello gives her most involving performance, supplying a level of emotional belief that is the film's secret weapon, holding it together no matter where it goes.

Too many male reviewers forgive too much when they love the actress's looks. I give Turan a demerit.

The WaPo's Desmond Thomson:

"A History of Violence" forces us to confront our Pavlovian conditioning to violence, whether we are watching real military campaigns with living room detachment or whooping and hollering for fictional ones. It's not about popcorn heroism or the importance of protecting an increasingly troubled world against hostile invaders. It's just about why we're cheering.

Generic, trite observation. How about a review of, you know, this movie?

Over at Entertainment Weekly, there's praise for the score, which reminds me to say I hated the score, and there's a discussion forum, where I read that audiences hated this movie. Hmm... I wonder why? Was it marketed as a mainstream film, but it's an art film. I don't know. As an art film, it's actually awfully B-movie-ish.