Oscar Breakdown

Justin: So, what did you think?

Zoe: Eh… What did you think?

Justin: Yeah I think “Eh” sums it up fairly well. Not that there weren’t highlights to the night.

Zoe: Well of course. I enjoyed watching the Red Carpet on E! and seeing all the stars looking their best. I especially enjoyed Natalie Portman, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johanson, and Justin Timerlake had a sweet Tom For Suite tailored by Tom Ford himself. I also thought it was nice to see the Oscars trying to appeal to a younger crowd. The Inception-inspired opening was great.

Justin: I enjoyed the opening as well. Although I felt like the banter went down considerably afterwards. It was like they were trying not to stir up a controversy like what happened to Ricky Gervais. It was like they said, “try to be funny and charming without really being funny.” I did enjoy the “musical” montage they did with Harry Potter and a couple of other movies. The whole show was enjoyable but didn’t push the edge or really make me go “WOW.”

Zoe: I agree, I thought that James Franco and Anne Hathaway made a lovely couple hosting the Oscars, but James Franco was kind of too low key and poor Anne was left to keep the pep level up.  She did admirably though.  Some of the presenters’ banter was hokey, but you know I loved Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law’s.  I know you loved Helen Mirren and Russell Brand’s faux translation bit.

Justin: There were also no real surprises. In what the lower categories (for the technical aspects of film), it was pretty much taken over by Inception which makes sense. Then when it came to awards like director, actor/actresses and film of the year, there were still no real surprise. It seemed like you predicted pretty well about who might win what. I think the only real surprise this year was the fact they only ran over by about 11 minutes.

Zoe: Exactly, and this is my problem with award shows these days.  I like festivals that award a prize that amounts to honorable mentions, and shows like the BAFTAs (the British Oscars) that have an award for “Outstanding British Contribution to  Cinema, “Outstanding Debut,” and “Orange Wednesdays Rising Star Award.”  I think it would be better to just announce the top five performances by a male in a leading role and be done.  No ranking, no winner and losers, et cetera.  I think it’s enough for the Academy, and other voting bodies that give out awards, to present us with who was the best.  Then they can just bring them up on stage and say their name, show a clip, let them say literally “Thank you,” and then everyone can clap.  We all already know which are the most successful films, fiscally speaking.

Justin: Right! The Oscars are like the last big film show of the season. However, before the Oscars, shows like the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes take place. These shows sort of spoil the whole Oscars experience because really they are a good indicator of who is going to win during the Oscars. This year it was no surprise to me that The King’s Speech and The Social Network did well, because that is all that I’ve heard about for the last few months. It is great that The King’s Speech won because it was a wonderful movie but there was no excitement in hearing it announced. Everyone was pretty much predicting that it was going to win along with Colin Firth and Natalie Portman for best actor/actress.

Zoe: Yeah, I agree.  But that doesn’t mean that the performers don’t deserve recognition.  But it does mean that it’s like this self-defeating cycle.  They hype the performances, the awards, and then the nominees and for the most part the winners are a foregone conclusion when the awards air.  So then the whole thing is totally about the looks on the Red Carpet and who does something nutty in their acceptance speech.  Like Melissa Leo dropping the F bomb last night.

Justin: Speaking of flubs. I loved when Anne Hathaway screwed up her lines toward the end and then told the viewers at home to drink (aka take a shot.) To me that just shows how great she did. She didn’t care if she “messed up.” She rolled with the punches and made a joke. It wasn’t like there was no one in the whole of the US playing a drinking game to the Oscars. Hell if we were in the same state I am sure we would have.

Zoe: That is so true.  I think it’s a good angle not to take themselves so seriously over there.

Justin: Moving on to disappointments of the night. I am going to say that my biggest ones were in the music categories. One of the main reasons I tune in each year to the Oscars is to see who is up for the best score and best original song. That is just the kind of nerd I am. It never surprises me to see some of the bigger names nominated for best score such as John Williams or this year’s Hans Zimmer. However, I do like to see those artists that I haven’t heard before and I love to see them win. This year though was a huge mistake in my opinion. First off, out of every score they played, The Social Network’s was my least favorite and of course it won. Then I come to find out, thanks to you Zoe, that the guy who wrote the score was the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails. Ummm no. This should not happen.

Zoe: Jeez, Justin!  Musicians can transition into other fields.  Look at Marky Mark Wahlberg out there!

Justin: I agree. Mark Wahlberg is a fabulous actor. The score that I heard last night did not compare to the score from Inception, The King’s Speech or 127 Hours. Heck even How To Train Your Dragon was better in my opinion. I guess I will have to hear more of The Social Network’s score to understand what was so great about it. Now, the category of best original song was a complete bomb and I think you’d agree with me. I am sure that Randy Newman had some great songs when he was first starting out. But I swear everything since then has sounded the same and last night’s was no different. It sounded the same as the song in the first Toy Story movie. The only reason I can see the Academy giving him that award is out of pity. He is an older gentleman, who has been in the business awhile, he has had 20 nominations and only one win. It was like they said, “Ok let’s just give it to him this year.” I must say I really enjoyed the sound of the song from 127 hours. Even the Country Strong song was great. Although it is weird think of Gwyneth Paltrow as a country singer, but there is a good example of transitioning into other fields. She has a nice voice.

Zoe: It’s like the weirdness of letting Toy Story 3 be nominated for best animated feature and best film.  It doesn’t make sense that that would even be allowed.  Shouldn’t it be one or the other?

Justin: I guess that was the Academy’s attempt to put a comedy in the best picture category.

Zoe: I mean, it had some comedic moments, of course, like Buzz being reset to Spanish.  But it was really sad overall; I totally cried.  Comedies just get shafted, and so do all the great comedic actors… unless they go dramatic, like Jim Carrey.  For all the Academy tried to go younger with the hosts and The Social Network, they’re still just really outdated in my mind. An American in Paris was a comedy and it won for best picture.  What happened??

Justin: Exactly. It is like well comedies are there to make us happy and laugh, but they aren’t “real” films. To be a real film you must make it as sad as you can or as drama filled as possible. That funny stuff, we don’t want that near our “works of art.” It doesn’t make sense. It takes a lot of effort for a comedian to make a good movie. It can’t be too over the top or to boring. There has to be that perfect balance and it takes a lot of work. To do drama, all you do is put on a sad face and hope that it rains a lot. I know this isn’t true, I am a fan of dramas, but you see my point. Making a movie is hard work no matter what the genre.

Zoe: There are a lot of movies in recent years that were really dark comedies, basically, like American Beauty and Shakespeare in Love and nominees like Little Miss Sunshine. I don’t think there’s an actor that would disagree with you on how hard comedy is.  I watch a lot of Inside the Actors Studio and a lot of them say that comedy is something they want to do more of, and that it’s much harder for them than drama in a lot of ways.  If actors respect it, then why shouldn’t the Academy?  I think more normal people, not artsy film lovers, love comedies, and the more subversive they are, the more they deal with series issues in a funny way, the more people love them.  Look at Superbad and Knocked Up.  On the one hand, they are juvenile comedies about man-children, but on a deeper level, they’re about friendship, growing up and figuring out who you are and getting some self-confidence in that.  Do you think the message of The King’s Speech was really that different?  I sure don’t.

Justin: I couldn’t agree more and I would love to see more comedies being given at least a seat at the table. They might not win for a few years but let’s show actors that it is okay to do a comedy and that if you do so and it is good, it can still be nominated. I have one last complaint about the Oscars, speaking of best pictures. Why the hell in the last two years has the list of nominees gone up? It use to be you pick four or five films from everything put out. Now it is like well let’s just keep adding on. Like you said Toy Story 3 really had no business being in that category if it was already in Best Animated Film. It can’t be that hard to whittle it down. I have not seen all the nominations yet but I am sure that there were five in there that were better than the other five.

Zoe: I don’t remember what their official reason was.  Probably to try to appease people for some reason or another, but whatever, it was a stupid plan.  That is just too many movies and it makes them look weak.  They know what the five best out of those ten are, come on.  If you’re going to rank things, do it.  If you’re going to wimp out, we’re all going to know it and say every year that the broadcast sucked, there were no surprises and that we swear we won’t watch the next year.

Justin: It is like in Little League when you make sure everyone has hit the ball or in soccer where it must touch everyone’s feet before a goal can be shot. I am sorry if there are better players they should play. The weaker player should be given the chance but not to the extent as to praise them for nothing. It teaches us nothing. If you say a film is nominated for the best film of the year and it really wasn’t that great, the crew is just going to go back and make the same kind of film thinking it was good. No improvement. There are other strengths you have. Strive to be the best if that is really what you want. Five more nominees in the best picture category is like everyone getting consolation cake.

Zoe: To be fair, the ten nominees were great films, but obviously they can’t all be the best.  But it’s just silly.  The Academy is all over the place.  I wish we had played a drinking game to it now!

Justin: There will always be years to come. Speaking of things to come, any idea as to what is in store for our readers with your post this week?

Zoe: I wish I could say it’s top secret, but I honestly haven’t picked a topic yet.  Why, is there some opinion of mine you don’t know yet that you want do discover?

Justin: Always, but in this case was just curious as to things that may come. That and I thought it would be a good way to end this post.

Zoe: I’ll try to come up with something awesome.  Wouldn’t want you to be let down twice in one week.

Justin: You could never let me down especially after your rants on Disney and Body Image. Classics. Look forward to this week’s as well. Until then. See you next week everyone.

Zoe: Ciao, bellas!

It Ties The Room Together.

Zoe: Hey Justin, how’s it going?

Justin: The white death has descended upon me.

Zoe: Umm I take it, it snowed?

Justin: That is what I said.

Zoe: I guess, in a very morbid, roundabout way…

Justin: Snow is pretty as long as you don’t have to be out in it. Driving home from work yesterday and then cleaning off my car today was not my idea of fun.

Zoe: And this is why you should move somewhere warmer like San Francisco. In the winter it’s pretty mild, decently warm and sometimes sunny, but the nights are beautiful.

Justin: Yeah yeah, rub it in. So what are we going to talk about today?

Zoe: Well I was thinking we could talk about television and movie scores/soundtracks/theme songs.

Justin: Excellent idea! This comes at a great time. I have been recently listening to the new soundtrack for Tron: Legacy. The whole score was written by Daft Punk which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. If you are familiar with their work such as “One More Time” and “Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger” (yes, they did it way before Kanye) you can understand why they were picked to write the score for this movie. They have a very digital sound to them and that goes along great with what Tron: Legacy is about. I am very excited for it to open this Friday. What soundtracks have you been listening to lately?

Zoe: I’ve been playing a few lately from start to finish.  The first is the soundtrack to Black Snake Moan and the second is Cadillac Records.  They’re both mainly straight-up blues and I’ve been into that lately (on the non-soundtrack side, Matt and I have been seriously digging The Black Keys, who sound like they should be the Allman Brothers’… brothers…)  On the score side of things, I don’t usually just listen to them all the way through, or listen to them that often, really, but we just got Sherlock Holmes and that’s been great to get to know.

Justin: For someone who isn’t that big into scores you at least have remarkable taste in composers. Hans Zimmer is great and probably my second favorite movie composer. He also did movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight and one of my personal favorite scores, Hannibal. As you know I was in band from 5th grade all the way through high school and even played a couple years in Miami’s Marching Band. So, when it comes to instrumental scores I love them. My all-time favorite composer is John Williams (Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Star Wars). This is mostly because I was a French Horn player and he wrote some awesome pieces for the horn. I also like Danny Elfman (Nightmare Before Christmas) and Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings).

Zoe: I know how much you love your scores.  But sometimes all I can think of is Jason Segel’s character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall his lame job scoring a TV show a la “CSI.”  In a scene that would call for foreboding music, he starts playing typical random atonal (thanks for the right phrase, Matt) notes like, “Bam.  That’s all it needs.”  I think scores are really interesting, but I usually listen to music for longer stretches while I’m reading or writing or working, and soundtracks can be hypnotizing, and so not that conducive to my work.  I know lots of people who are the other way around–that way makes tons more sense to me, but what you need to work is what you need to work, right?

Justin: Right, I am in the second category there. The lyrics distract me when I am trying to read or do something, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good soundtrack when I am driving in the car jamming out. One of my favorite and it pains me to say this, is the Twilight soundtrack. In fact all of the movie soundtracks have been pretty good, however, the first is by far the best. You can say all you want about the Twilight series but it actually did produce something good. It had a mixture of Muse, Paramore, Mutemath and so many other decent band. The actor Robert Pattinson even contributed to it. The bands I believe were some that the author, Stephenie Meyer, listened to when writing the books. Which is pretty cool because the story and this music were paired together. It is interesting when writers do that.

Zoe: That’s one of the reasons I love The Big Chill’s soundtrack.  It takes place in the ‘80s, but it’s about people reminiscing (partly) about their college heyday, so the soundtrack lineup is killer.  The movie has a bunch of excellent songs not on the soundtrack, too.  (And if you’ve never seen it, you definitely should: Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Meg Tilly.)  Maybe I’m just a sucker for reminiscing and nostalgia, because now that I think about it, the rest of my favorite soundtracks take place in other eras, and most of them are musicals: Hairspray, Across the Universe, Cold Mountain (uh, not a musical, but my favorite Natalie Portman performance), Dreamgirls, Moulin Rouge, 10 Things I Hate About You (shut up, it’s from 1999, that’s more than 10 years ago), Gladiator and Prince of Persia.

Justin: Cold Mountain is an excellent movie and a wonderful soundtrack and 10 Things I Hate About You is also great. The one thing I like about some soundtracks is your ability to find new artists that you like. Soundtracks like the first Spiderman movie and to be honest a lot of superhero movies have lead me to some new bands. Garden State and a lot of other indie type movies are also great for this as well. They don’t have the budget to pay some of the bigger bands to play on them, so they get a little unknown band who at times are absolutely fantastic.

Zoe: I love innovation, yeah.  I really enjoyed Juno and Scott Pilgrim vs the World’s soundtracks for exactly that reason.  The whole time, I kept thinking, Wow, what great songs, and they’re new to me.  Okay, well, Beck in Scott Pilgrim wasn’t new as a voice, but the songs were new.  Can I switch over to TV scores/soundtracks for a moment here?

Justin: Sure, you are probably better in this department than me anyway. Nice mention of Juno and Scott Pilgrim by the way. Two excellent soundtracks.

Zoe: Well, a lot of TV shows have great theme songs (“Veronica Mars,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Bones”), but I just want to point out that tons of shows have used music, or “live bands” within the show to great effect.  Point in case: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” had its own club that often had real bands, and so did “The O.C.”–not the greatest example of a quality TV show, but it did make several bands really popular.  Plus, “The West Wing” episode “Noel,” one of the saddest/best episodes in my opinion, had Yo-Yo Ma and he’s just… extraordinary, and without him playing, that episode might not have been so affecting.

Justin: Yo Yo Ma playing Bach’s Suite in G Major is breathtaking. It was also featured in the movie Master and Commander. Then again it is piece that is used fairly often for some reason. It is a beautiful piece but both Bach and Yo Yo Ma have other songs out there, time to find a new one to use.

Zoe: I bet you had to look that one up.

Justin: What did I have to look up?

Zoe: The piece Yo-Yo Ma played on “The West Wing.”  I thought you probably couldn’t just remember that off the top of your head, not when I brought it up.

Justin: I did in fact figure it was the Bach piece considering it is one of the most used. Although I did have to look up to remember which episode it was played in and you are correct the piece adds so much to the tone of that episode. That is one of the reasons I love music so much. A well-placed song can really drive a point home and the opposite can also happen. If you just randomly stick a song in somewhere that doesn’t match the tone or atmosphere, it can really detour the movie.

Zoe: I’m trying to think of a great example of a totally obnoxious soundtrack, in terms of disrupting the movie’s flow or taking away from the film, versus not liking the song choices.  But I don’t think I can think of one.  Sometimes the sound isn’t equalized well and swallows the dialogue, but that’s another problem altogether.  Justin, can you think of any horrendous soundtracks?  Distracting ones?

Justin: You know, I know that I have heard them and I know they exist but I for the life of me can’t think of any off the top of my head. This could be because if the music is really bad I try to block it out.

Zoe: I know there have been moments where the songs intrude, but none comes to mind either.  I do want to mention that I love a film or TV show that pulls off having little/no soundtrack/score to it at all, when the movie or show relies on its own dialogue and its cinematographer to carry the emotional weight.  Closer is a good example–there’s only one song, “The Blower’s Daughter” by Damien Rice–in the entire movie, noticeably; but that could be because it was a play originally.  Also the series “Deadwood” didn’t use a soundtrack and that’s one of my favorite quality series; music would have annoyed me, now that I’m thinking about it.

Justin: I think another great movie that does this is The Birds (thanks Zoe for the reminder). In fact if I remember correctly Hitchcock was one of those masters of cinema that didn’t have to rely on a soundtrack in many of his movies. The atmosphere that he creates came from the actors and the well placed shots. The end of The Birds just wouldn’t have been the same if there had been some score playing over it. Music is the last thing you want as you are trying to sneak out of a house surrounded by hundreds of sleeping birds. But he also used sounds to his advantage, such as in the Psycho shower scene. Everyone is very familiar with the string hits that added so much to that well known scene.

Zoe: I think you really hit on the whole purpose of sound/lack of sound: to help create atmosphere.  Production design and things like lighting and whether the actors are shot close-up or wide lens, etc., contribute to creating the atmosphere, but I think sound ties it all together, like Lebowski’s rug.  There’s evil guy themes, swelling triumphant themes, sneaking themes, danger-is-coming themes, crashing music to surprise you, heart-pumping music for chase scenes, and hopefully great (non-intrusive) romantic music.  They’re all just as symbolic as actors’ expressions and the style the director uses, don’t you think?

Justin: Exactly and nice use of The Big Lebowski by the way. Anyway, it has been a great writing this for the blog for the last few months and we hope to continue on for many more.

Zoe: With the holidays coming up and life being a little hectic around this time of year, Justin and I have decided to take a little hiatus until after the first of the year.

Justin: During this time we hope to refill our energy tanks and watch some great movies to talk about when we get back.

Zoe: Right! This week we will finish strong with a couple of solo posts before signing off for the year.

Justin: We hope that you will join us next year for even more Idle Banter & Escapades.