Kate Winslet finally won her Oscar and her performance in The Reader is the best thing about the film. Adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel by playwright David Hare and directed by Stephen Daldry, the film has all the hallmarks for Oscar-bait: literary source, “serious” theme, a credentialed cast (Ralph Fiennes co-stars) and a director who values words over cinematic expression.

A little light reading in the bathtub

Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a German woman, Hanna, who takes teenage boy Michael (David Kross) as a lover in late-fifties West Berlin. After a brief affair, she’s gone, only to reappear in a war crimes trial that law student Michael is attending, where she’s held accountable for her actions as a concentration camp guard directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of Jewish prisoners. Winslet plays the part as a hard, closed-in woman careful to shield her emotions even during the affair, but is so guileless as to recount her inhuman actions as a concentration camp guard with a blank, almost childlike matter-of-factness, as if unable to fathom any moral responsibility to “just following orders.” But while the performance is brave in its nakedness (both literally and emotionally), the film is less ambiguous in its attempt to explore cultural and personal guilt and complicity in the Holocaust. Director Stephen Daldry’s compassion for Hannah isn’t so much misplaced as unbalanced, so concerned with her personal shame that it too easily overlooks her human responsibility.

I reviewed the film for Parallax View here and review the DVD for MSN here.

Frank Miller’s big screen incarnation of Will Eisner’s landmark comic superhero series The Spirit was not a hit in theaters and the visually dynamic but narratively sketchy comic book movie isn’t any better on DVD. The character is an icon among comic book aficionados but not well known to the general public, which may have hurt the film, but the problem lays more squarely with comic book artist/writer-turned-director Miller, whom makes his solo directing debut with this film.
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Hearst made the announcement, much anticipated for weeks, this morning: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the oldest continuous publishing newspaper in the Pacific Northwest, will put out its final print edition on Tuesday, March 17. For the immediate future, the P-I will be transformed into an Internet-only newspaper with some original material and links to other news sources.

For more information, read the following articles in the The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired Magazine and by the AP Wire Service.

I recently conducted a phone interview with Matt Groening for an upcoming MSN  feature. He was a pretty cool guy and I lived for a time in his home town of Springfield, Oregon (though long after he had left), so we reminisced about the town and talked movies and DVDs and TV and such. And then, as we talked blogs and newspapers and such, he asked about my blog, and then realized that he’d found it. Here’s the excerpt of the original interview where, in the midst of drifting off into all sorts of detours, Matt Groening gave me my first celebrity endorsement!

Thursday, February 19, 2009, phone interview.

I lived in Eugene, OR, for years and worked in Eugene even when I lived in Springfield, and I read “Life in Hell” in the local art weekly. I moved to Seattle 14 years ago and none of the papers – neither the two dailies nor either of the two alternative weekly papers – carry “Life in Hell.”

Matt Groening (image from his Wikipedia page)

Yeah, I got kicked out of whatever paper I was in up there. I think Seattle Weekly was a little too yuppy for my stuff. I’ll tell you something, the alternative newsweekly community is a real heartbreaker if you’re a cartoonist because times are tough for newspapers and alternative newsweeklies in particular. They’re running out of money and it’s really sad. In fact, next week is my final week in my local paper, the LA Weekly. They’re dropping all the cartoonists, they can’t afford them. And who knows, maybe they’ll bounce back, but I don’t know.

I’m a freelance critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and it will likely be shut down in a month.

Oh, my God. Is the Seattle Times still around?

Yes. They are, however, deeply in debt.

God, it’s so crazy.

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You could say it came as a complete surprise when, on Thursday evening, local TV station KING-TV announced that, according to unnamed sources, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be put up for sale. The P-I staff had no news of it and the Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I, would not comment. It could have been a rumor, a hoax or just an incorrect story. At least that’s what many of us hoped. It wasn’t until Friday afternoon that news was confirmed and the news made public.

But if the announcement was a surprise, the closing of a Seattle newspaper was hardly unanticipated. Traditional print newspapers have been on life support for years and Seattle was the last city of its size to still have two competing daily newspapers. Both the Seattle Time and the P-I have both been losing money. The two papers appeared to be attempting to outlast the other and be the last paper standing. While the locally-owned Times has a significantly larger circulation (198,741 to the P-I’s 117,572 as of September, 2008, according to a P-I report), it is also deeply in debt and its sale of a number of newspapers in Maine (which are being sold at a significant loss) is running into problems. Many thought that the more financially robust Hearst would be able to hold out longer in the face of losses.

The Hearst Corporation says that if the paper is not sold within 60 days, it will either be shut down or turned into a web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff. A sale in this climate seems unlikely, as the economic downturn has reduced advertising dollars even farther.

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If you haven’t heard yet, David Hudson has moved on from GreenCine Daily, the essential blog for finding out what’s new and interesting in terms of film writing on the web, and starts fresh with The Daily @ IFC.com. I expect we’ll be seeing the same combination of obsesssive thoroughness, thoughtful discrimination and short, sharp editorial commentary.

Meanwhile, Aaron Hillis takes over at GreenCine Daily. You can find his answer to a “Declaration of Principles” in his first post here.

I know I’ll be a regular visitor to both sites. Have at it, boys.

Budd Boetticher, one of the most neglected of American auteurs, gets some much overdue respect with the marvelous box set The Films of Budd Boetticher, a collection of five features starring Randolph Scott and produced by Scott’s production company. The films are not exactly B-movies but they are lean productions, shot on 18-days schedules and small budgets, and not a one of them breaks 80 minutes. In a few of the most urban theaters they might have played bottom of a double bill, but most everywhere else these films were sold on the strength of star Randolph Scott and his track record as a reliable western star. Boetticher took the “limitations” of his stiff, craggy star and turned them into essential elements of his characters, a hard, inexpressive man at home on a horse and in the wilderness, a survivor with few words and no wasted actions. When he moved, it meant something.

The earliest film in the set, The Tall T (1957) is also one of the best and a genuine western classic, with a tiny central cast and vivid characters carved out of the rogues gallery, especially Richard Boone as the charming but ruthless gangleader. Burt Kennedy, who first worked with Budd Boetticher on Seven Men From Now, writes the perfectly tuned, beautifully austere script and Boetticher matches it with a style stripped of all flourish and focused in on the tensions and dynamics that play out in the hostage situation.

The set includes the offbeat black comedy Buchanan Rides Alone and the grim Decision at Sundown (all mastered to fit the 16×9 frame) along with his widescreen classics Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station, both scripted by Kennedy and set in the almost abstract nowhereland of the desert. The latter films, like The Tall T, are lean stories about men on the dangerous, inhospitable frontier, and they stand next to the greatest works of Anthony Mann and John Ford.

Read my DVD review on MSN here.

Also new this week is the cult sci-fi show The Starlost, famously created by Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova, who took their name of the project when they saw what the budget-starved Canadian project turned into. Or at least Ellison did, turning to the pseudonym “Cordwainer Bird” for creator and script credits. Bova’s name stuck as science adviser, much to his chagrin in a show that pointedly ignored all his science advice. Keir Dullea (of 2001 fame) stars as a kind of flower child peacenik who rebels against his repressive agrarian culture (a cross between an Amish village and a religious cult) and the dictatorial leader (guest star sterling Hayden) and discovers his enclosed society is really a sealed pod on a giant crewless space ark that has drifted off course. It’s sort of like Star Trek, except all the new life and new civilizations are discovered in the many sealed pods on this ship, which Dullea and his companions (Gay Rowan and Robin Ward) explore on a scavenger hunt to find the lost secrets of the science and engineering needed to put the ship back on course. The Canadian series was shot on videotape and filled with primitive video blue-screen effects, which are more endearing than convincing, and was shown in the U.S. on NBC in 1973 until it was cancelled. The four disc set features all 16 episodes, most of which have not been seen in syndication for decades. the DVD review is featured in the DVD column’s TV section.
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Forget Mamma Mia! The musical to see this weekend is a low-budget production created for and available solely on the Internet by Joss Whedon. He wrote, produced and directed the Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog during the writer’s strike. It’s up now, free for a limited time and then via iTunes.

Neil Patrick Harris stars as aspiring supervillain Dr. Horrible, a nice guy with a rather misplaced sense of ambition who is in love with cute girl-next-door (Felicia Day, from the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Nathan Fillion is his arrogant nemesis, a jerk of a musclebound superhero.

Act I went live on July 15, Act II on July 17, and Act II will be posted on July 19. All are free until July 20. Visit now. It’s fun, it’s funny, and Whedon writes better songs than you’ll hear in most new Broadway shows.

The episodes, along with other news and information, can be found here.

SIFF is over and life begins again (I’m still trying to finish unpacking those last boxes shoved into the corners after the rushed move in the middle of the festival) but here’s one last memory of the festival. Lynn Shelton (director of My Effortless Brilliance) sent me this snap from the closing night party.

Yes, I was very happy that it was finally over.

Brian Mark Blue, formerly Brian Henke, died on Saturday, March 8, after a long battle with cancer. He was 37 and is survived by his young daughter, Isabella, and his sisters, Heather Wildin and Hillary Brestar, among his many loved ones. (For a full accounting, please visit Brian’s obituary is here.)

On Friday, March 14, I attended his memorial service, arranged by Hillary and Heather.

Brian was one of the most enthusiastic people I have had the pleasure to know. He was one of the first people I met when I moved to Seattle in 1995 and started working at Scarecrow Video. I was down on the floor putting out new additions to the inventory when my defining moment came. I was merely an observer – I didn’t even catch the conversation that led up to it, it was some testosterone movie or bizarre cult film that Brian was trumpeting with all the enthusiasm and excitement he brought to any discussion of a film that captured his heart – but I remember the response vividly. Ariana, his good friend and co-worker, simply eyed him with a look of appreciative amusement and said, “Brian, you are such a boy!” He simply beamed with his cat-that-caught-the-canary grin. The key there is that she said “boy” and not simply “guy.” While the word carries with it a hint of adolescence and immaturity, I think it captures something pure and youthful and fresh in Brian. As those who knew him would surely agree, Brian’s unrestrained enthusiasm and excitement made him seem younger than his years, someone who still responded to the jaded world with eyes wide open, ready and willing to be surprised and enchanted whenever he was.

I worked with Brian for three years at Scarecrow. I saw countless films with him. I was at his wedding to Holly Blue (Brian took his wife’s name, explaining: “How could I ask a woman I love to take the name Holly Henke?”). And when I left the store in 1998, I trained him to take my position. At the time, Scarecrow was teetering on bankruptcy and leadership was in a state of chaos and denial. The stress was making me miserable and, with mixed feelings and a great deal of anxiety, I gave my notice. The owner, George Latsios, treated my departure like some kind of betrayal and barely acknowledged me as I said my goodbyes on my last day. I was feeling all but abandoned when Brian and Holly invited me to spend the evening with them and gave me a tremendous amount of support. They probably had no idea how important that was to me, but it meant the world to me.

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Kon Ichikawa died on February 13, of pneumonia, at the age of 92.

He directed over 80 films in a career that spanned more than 70 years. He entered the Japanese film industry in 1933 as an animator, directed by first feature (Musume Dojoji, aka A Girl at the Dojo Temple) in 1946 and (according to the Internet Movie Database) his most recent feature (The Inugamis) in 2006. Yet, apart from a few key features, his filmography is less well known and certainly less available stateside than the films of many of his colleagues.

The Kon Ichikawa never secured the international reputation of fellow studio professionals Akira Kurisawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Yasijiro Ozu, but the versatile director made an indelible mark with two of the most powerful anti-war dramas made in or out of Japan. The lyrical and introspective The Burmese Harp (1956) follows the odyssey of a Japanese soldier in Burma during the waning months of World War II who steals the robes of a Buddhist monk to make his way back to his platoon and undergoes a spiritual transformation as he witnesses the destruction and wholesale death left in the wake of battle. After a career of studio assignments, largely satirical comedies and melodramas, this passion project from Ichikawa made an impression on critics in Japan and became his first film to be seen outside the country, picking up a prize at the Venice Film Festival and securing distribution in the U.S. and Europe.

Fires on the Plain made three years later, stands in stark contrast, stark being the operative word. Based on the novel by Shohei Ooka (who drew from his personal experiences as a soldier and POW) and scripted by Ichikawa’s wife and collaborator, Natto Wada, it too takes the form of soldier’s journey through the battlefields of World War II, this time an island in the Philippines in 1945 as the Americans drive the Japanese out. The striking photography and imagery is the unmistakable work of the same creative artist, but otherwise Ichikawa takes a very different path. Where the serenity amidst death of The Burmese Harp is about the healing of wounds caused by the war, Fires on the Plain is a grim and gruesome and at times macabre autopsy of its (selectively Japanese) victims. Read more »

The Senses of Cinema 2007 World Poll is up and I’ve once again been invited to participate. The contributors are spread over three pages (A-E, G-M, and M-W), and my list is pretty much the Final Top Ten I published here last month, with a few minor differences and one significant change: for Senses of Cinema, I put Into the Wild into the number one spot. I stand by No Country For Old Men as my final pick for 2007’s best film, but the emotional power and complexity that Penn communicates in Into the Wild, in his often raw imagery and headlong direction, moves me on a personal level in a very different way than the more than the exquisite and subtle work by the Coens. That I get both of these films in the same year is my idea of a gift from the cinema heavens

It’s an open question whether the red carpet, the stargazing, the invariably overlong ceremony with its record of misjudged entertainment set pieces, and the obligatory afterparties will be present, but to paraphrase one of this year’s big nominees: There will be Oscars.

My annual Oscar report card is up at MSN. There are a lot of good nominees. I list a few choices that I think would have been better. Everyone’s a critic…

For the most part, it’s a classy bunch, but there’s always room for complaining. There is no shortage of deserving artists who didn’t make Oscar’s cut and we’re not shy about sharing our opinions on where the academy went wrong. So here is our report card on Oscar’s slights and oversights. Call it: They shoulda been a contender.

Best Picture

The five Best Picture nominees are a worthy — if fairly dark — class this year, lightened only by the inclusion of the indie-ish comedy “Juno.” I adore the film, I confess, and find it far more interesting and alive than last year’s token quasi-indie “Little Miss Sunshine.” But I’d prefer to see Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild” — the glaring omission of the category — in its place. This sprawling, ragged human epic throws the audience headlong into the romance of an odyssey across America, living in the moment and in the buzzing thrill of the quest for something that may not exist. Carved out of primal imagery, raw emotion and pure passion, Penn’s ambition may exceed his grasp but only by degrees.

Read the rest here.