State Fair (1933)

The 1933 version of State Fair is the first of three movie versions of the novel by Philip Strong about an Iowa family’s journey to the titular annual event. I prefer the 1945 musical version myself because it includes some amazing songs (“It Might as Well Be Spring,” “It’s a Grand Night for Singing”) and good performances by Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, and Dick Haymes, among others. The 1962 film features Ann-Margaret and Pat Boone and switches the action to Texas rather than Iowa. However, the earliest version is the only one to have garnered a Best Picture nomination, and without the success of this first film, the others would never likely never have been made.

State Fair (to be clear, I’m talking about the one from 1933) is ostensibly a comedy with some romantic and dramatic elements included for good measure. A frame story shows the Frake family’s preparations for the Iowa State Fair and their reactions after returning home. It’s the middle part of the film that depicts the fair itself, and it’s the most significant part of the narrative in terms of the plot complications. As such, the fair provides a brief escape, a sort of vacation, from the drudgery of the real world. Anything might be possible at the fair, and you don’t have to live by the usual “rules” of society when you’re there and far away from your home.

Initially, each member of the family has a reason to be excited about the upcoming fair. The father, Abel (played with cornpone charm by Will Rogers), has been raising a Hampshire boar that he hopes will be named Grand Champion. The mother, Melissa (Louise Dresser, nicely understated), has various pickles and mincemeat recipes that she hopes will garner her some ribbons for her cooking prowess. The brother, Wayne (Norman Foster, grating with his exaggerated accent and hick-like behavior), has been practicing tossing hoops for a year in order to get back at the carnival barker who tricked him at the previous year’s fair. Finally, the daughter, Margy (Janet Gaynor, a true movie star and a fine actress), just wants to have some adventure in her life before she possibly settles for marrying a local dairy farmer.

Abel makes a $5 bet (no doubt, a lot of money in 1933) with the local store owner that everyone in the Frake family will have a great time at the fair and everyone will reach the goals each has established for going to the fair. The film seems to ask if it is possible for everything to turn out the way you want it to, if you can always achieve what you set out to do, and the answer, apparently, is that it depends. Raising such a question means, of course, that there must be complications for each of the four main characters. For example, a significant portion of the plot—perhaps too much of the plot—is taken up with Blue Boy, Abel’s prize-worthy pig, who seems lethargic when at the fair. Abel even sleeps in the pen with the pig to make certain that it’s okay. It’s only when another pig, Esmerelda, appears that Blue Boy springs back to life. Can pigs fall in love? State Fair seems to suggest that they can; it certainly suggests that they can talk to each other. There are at least two lengthy passages involving these two pigs grunting, certainly some of the oddest “romantic” dialog to appear on film.

Rogers, one of the most famous personalities from the first half of the 20^th Century, is rather too “aw shucks, ma” in his performance. He’s not a particularly good actor, to be honest, often stumbling over his lines, but he does seem to be enjoying himself being around the fairgrounds, and there’s some cute interplay between him and Dresser in the second half of the film. Dresser’s storyline as Melissa Frake is rather simple, but she makes the most of the clichéd part of homemaker who wants recognition for her skills. Melissa faces some stiff competition from another woman who is apparently famous in Iowa for her pickles and mincemeat too. However, all it takes is some blue ribbons and a plaque for Melissa to state, without apparent irony, “I’ve got the most that any woman can get in life. There’s nothing left to come to the fair again for.” That suggests the kinds of limitations placed on women during the time period of the film. Little wonder then that her daughter might consider wanting more in life than a bit of blue ribbon and a statewide reputation for prize-winning pickles.

The most compelling thread in the plot involves Gaynor’s Margy. Her life seems out of her control; everyone expects her to marry Harry, but she doesn’t love him. Harry has always loved her, and he certainly seems devoted to her, but he represents a safe choice, a mundane future, a continuation of the existence she’s always known. You can tell from Gaynor’s facial expressions that Margy is a dreamer, someone who wants to have some excitement in her life. When she looks at the sky during the truck ride to the fair, it’s easy for the audience to comprehend just how more she wants out of life, more than perhaps even one week at the fair can provide. Margy meets a newspaperman played by Lew Ayres on a roller coaster, and they decide to have fun enjoying the fair together. No strings, no expectations—they just plan to see what the fair has to offer visitors. She admits that she has a boyfriend back home, and he confesses to having had several lovers in the past. You know that won’t prevent them from falling in love with each other, but one of the true joys of the film is watching a relationship develop between their young characters. Both Gaynor and Ayres (in one of his earlier film roles) are quite charming.

Meanwhile, the most shocking plotline involves Wayne. He won a cheap “pearl-handled” revolver the year before, and he takes full advantage of the opportunity to humiliate the carny running the hoop toss game. He’s gotten quite good at a rather useless skill, but the scene is really just designed to set up a burgeoning romance between Wayne and a trapeze artist. They have quite the sexual relationship throughout the duration of the fair, and the film, being made prior to the adoption of the Production Code, is rather daring in its depiction of what’s going on between Wayne and Emily. It’s quite a contrast between their relationship and the far more chaste one involving Margy and Ayres’ Pat. Margy and Pat, for example, seemingly only share kisses, nothing more. Wayne and Emily go much, much farther than that.

The existing print, at least the one shown periodically on Turner Classic Movies, is in pretty bad shape. There are numerous cuts and jumps that eliminate some dialog and some images. It makes for some rocky watching at times. The use of soft-focus cinematography in the farm scenes is also noteworthy. The edges are slightly out of focus in these scenes. Perhaps it’s an attempt to idealize the agrarian existence depicted in the film. The scenes at the fair so seem sharper or flatter.

The fair itself is an intriguing artifact here. We get to see the carnies putting up the tents, setting up the shows and games. These scenes are one of the few places that African-Americans appear in the film—well, and some blackface performers at the fair. There are also some melancholy shots of the empty fair after it has closed. Much of this atmospheric footage came from the 1932 Iowa State Fair, and these sequences serve as a realistic backdrop for the action involving the four main characters. For example, one of the best examples of how footage from the state fair is integrated into the film involves Pat and Margy attending the horse races. This is an exciting sequence with lots of energy, reminiscent in some ways of the chariot races in Ben-Hur.

Even though the film was nominated for a screenplay Oscar, some of the dialog is truly cringe-inducing. For example, on the way to the fair, Mrs. Frake encourages Margy to spread a blanket on the floor of the back of the truck, which she and her brother are sharing with Blue Boy (thankfully, caged). Margy, naturally, balks, only to have her father respond with “It ain’t everybody gets a chance to sleep alongside of a hog like that.” Probably not, but it depends upon whether you mean a literal “hog” or not, I suppose. The funniest dialog centers around Wayne’s claim that he’s seeing one of his male friends from the previous year’s fair when he’s really seeing Emily, the trapeze artist. This leads to some rather intriguing statements from his mother, several of which sound faintly homoerotic. For instance, when Margy gets upset that Wayne hasn’t accompanied her to the fair, Mrs. Frake says, “You know a boy has to go around and meet other fellows.” Indeed, some boys do just that at a fair. My favorite line, though, occurs when Wayne says he’s going to spend the night with this male friend on the final evening of the fair. Mrs. Frake’s assertion that “I bet you boys just fool around and don’t get a wink of sleep” is surprisingly on target for what’s been going on with Wayne and Emily, but can you imagine the implications of a mother saying that to a grown young man nowadays and not being the subject of some quizzical looks? Still, it’s this kind of dialog that makes even modern-day audiences laugh, just perhaps not in the way that audiences originally did in 1933.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Writing (Adaptation)

Best Animated Short Film of 2013

Feral is really quite an ugly film. I thought it was poorly drawn and poorly animated, almost amateurish in its execution. I suppose some would call it experimental, but to me, the experiment failed. The film tells the story of a boy raised by wolves who is “adopted” and brought to civilization, only to have his adoptive father discover that the animal he has been raised to be still resides within him. I suppose it’s a meditation on our true natures and a bit of a rehash of the nature-versus-nurture debate. I just couldn’t find it all that interesting, and I even started to pay way too much attention to the child’s teeth, which he bares much too frequently. The murky nature of the wordless movie isn’t helped by the somewhat clichéd storyline, and the limited color palette (mostly just dark greys and blacks) makes for an unpleasant viewing experience.

Get a Horse! is a fun, lovely tribute to the history of animation, from flip books to 3-D technology. Mickey Mouse and Minnie and friends are enjoying an old-fashioned hay ride when they are attacked by Peg Leg Pete. This Disney short features such a fascinating mix of different styles from different eras, ranging from the black-and-white early versions of these characters and others in the Disney fold to the bright, glossy, brilliant colors used today. The clever way that the film incorporates the past and the present into its plot, especially during one particularly raucous session involving jumping in and out of the movie screen, makes this short perhaps the most fun to watch. It’s an absolutely charming film that tells a great story and uses our long-standing love of cartoons to captivate us.

Mr. Hublot might be an homage to the French character of Mr. Hulot, but this short is really a tightly focused examination of how seemingly innocent small actions can have a profound influence on our day-to-day existence. Mr. Hublot lives alone in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse building. Actually, all of the buildings in this film appear to be abandoned warehouses, but I digress. The film is set during some sort of mechanized future, and Mr. Hublot, who appears to be at least partially mechanical himself, suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder or anal retentiveness, which means that he has a very specific routine that he follows each day. Only when he adopts an abandoned robot dog does the rigid pattern of his life become more broken and actually happier. As the dog keeps growing bigger and bigger, Mr. Hublot has to keep finding ways to adjust, and the film keeps trying to make a sweet statement about making room for new experiences in our lives.

Possessions begins with a samurai trapped in a rainstorm seeking shelter in an apparently abandoned home. It’s a small structure, but one with a lot of life still inside it. All of the objects in the house are seemingly possessed—hence the title. There’s a series of umbrellas that the samurai repairs, covering up the eyes that peek through the rips and tears in the fabric. He’s attacked by yards of fabric and must sew the pieces together to fashion a beautiful robe. He’s also forced to confront a dragon made of junk that keeps emitting foul odors. Once I learned that this film was sort of a prototype for a videogame, I understood why I found it hard to stay awake while watching it. Despite being rather beautiful at times, it’s actually pretty slow moving, but I’m assuming the game console will help to speed things along.

Room on the Broom is another film from the makers of The Gruffalo, a short that was nominated in this same category in 2010. Gillian Anderson voices a witch who is traveling with her cat and encounters a series of animals who all want to join her on the broom. Eventually, the witch and the cat wind up with a dog, a green bird, and very fastidious frog riding along with them, and that makes for some difficulties taking off and landing and with keeping items on the broom itself. There’s also a dragon who chases them and causes a lot of havoc. Anderson doesn’t get to speak very much, and it’s the cat who steals the movie with its expressive face, particularly its marvelous sense of exasperation at having to share the broom with the other characters. This is a charming film, but it’s a bit repetitive and is obviously aimed at smaller children.

Oscar Winner: Mr. Hublot. This choice continues a trend in recent years of choosing dystopian kinds of shorts to honor. I found it to be an interesting film overall, but it doesn’t engage one’s heart so much as one’s mind. It’s mostly an intellectual exercise with, admittedly, a few delights.

My Choice: Get a Horse! is a loving tribute to the growth and development of animation since its beginnings in the 1920s. It’s a technologically advanced film which nevertheless seeks to set a nostalgic tone. This is a perfectly delightful little movie and the most fully realized vision of any of the nominees. I particularly loved that the black-and-white image that begins the film is displayed by plush red curtains of the kind you might have seen in a very upscale theater at the start of moviegoing.

Best Live Action Short Films of 2013

Even though Aguel No Era Yo (That Wasn't Me) is a Spanish film, most of its action takes place in Africa and much of its dialogue is in English, making it perhaps the most international of the five nominees. Two doctors/medical aid workers and their guide are taken prisoner in an unnamed African country by a group of boy soldiers and their leader, the General. Most of the boys are in the General's "army" because they have apparently been orphaned in ongoing civil violence against the government, and they have fallen under the spell of a man who has taken over the role of stern father figure who pumps them up with claims of future glory and reward. The sequence of events involving and following the kidnapping is quite harrowing to watch. Part of the film is set years after the kidnapping, as one of the boy soldiers, "Corporal" Kaney, recounts for a school assembly what his experiences were like and how he had to disassociate himself psychologically to do some of the brutal actions that he did. This is a very intriguing film about an issue that deserves great attention, and it could easily be expanded into a full length film.

The longest short—yes, I realize how oxymoronic that sounds—Is the French film Avant Que de Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything). It concerns the attempt by Miriam, a department store clerk, to escape with her two children from an abusive relationship. That they are on the run is not apparent until about ten minutes into this thirty-minute gem of a movie. We can sense that something stressful is happening as Miriam picks up her son Julien, who is skipping school, and her daughter Josephine, who is distraught over having to leave her boyfriend. After she arrives at the store and tries to get some of her salary in order to have money to leave, Miriam and her daughter and son face a series of tension-building moments. One of the most intriguing aspects of this short is its ability to delineate sharply the different personalities of Miriam's co-workers. It's a masterful film, full of strong performances and depth of characterization.

Helium is a touching film about the friendship between Enzo, a hospital janitor, and Alfred, a terminally ill little boy whose room Enzo cleans. After sensing Alfred's fear of death, Enzo begins telling the boy about a place called Helium, an obvious allegory for Heaven but one which uses the boy's love of airships and hot air balloons to comfort him. This Danish film depicts the make-believe world of Helium in enchanting detail; it reminded me at times of a sunnier, sparklier version of those islands in the air of Avatar. Enzo enlists the help of one of Alfred's nurses so that he can tell Alfred the entire story that he's made up, and the final shot is quite touching.

Pitaako Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?) clocks in at just about seven minutes long, but it manages to pack in a lot of action in that brief period. This Finnish film shows the frantic preparations a family makes to get to a wedding on time. Almost everything goes wrong from the moment that they fail to wait up when the alarm clock rings. My favorite moment occurs when the two daughters, after their mother has told them to put on the kinds of clothes people wear to parties (because the nice dresses they were going to wear the wedding are still in the washing machine), emerge dressed as a witch and as Pippi Longstocking. It's a cute but rather insubstantial film.

The Voorman Problem is the only one of the films with international star power. Martin Freeman, taking a break from his Hobbit duties, portrays a psychiatrist called to a prison to examine the title character played by Tom Hollander. Voorman claims that he is a god or the God, and Freeman's Dr. Williams must determine whether or not to have the prisoner declared insane before he causes a riot among the inmates who have started to accept Voorman's claims. A lot of this short is just Freeman and Hollander (usually confined by a straitjacket) talking across a table, but there are a couple of moments that flesh out Dr. Williams' life outside the prison walls, and there are several contemporary references that date the events being depicted. It's a clever enough film, I suppose, but it coasts primarily on the charm of its two lead actors, and the twist at the end is not as surprising as the filmmakers might have expected it to be.

Oscar Winner: Helium. This is a heartfelt film that displays a great deal of tenderness toward the boy and his fears of dying. Handling such delicate subject matter requires a difficult balancing act, and this short film is always honest in its depictions of what the boy and the janitor are experiencing. 

My Choice: Either Aguel No Era Yo and Avant Que de Tout Perdre. Both are fully developed, fully realized stories that are gripping and intense. I'd have a tough time choosing between them, given that they are both quite polished work and deal with important subject matter (maybe that should be Important Subject Matter) in such an emotional yet sincere way. I'd probably give a slight edge to the French film because the characters are so well written and realistic in their actions. 

Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan is a psychological thriller set in the world of ballet, a fact that was readily evident from the film’s trailer. It involves a ballerina chosen to perform the lead in a production of Swan Lake and the emotional difficulties she has adjusting to her new fame and the pressure that comes with it. I am not that familiar with the Tchaikovsky ballet, to be honest, but apparently the female lead must portray two roles, the White Swan and the Black Swan. The White Swan is good, as you might suspect, and the Black Swan is evil and/or bad. Having your differing sides color-coded always makes things easier for viewers. The film certainly seems to favor the Black Swan as we watch the young woman chosen for this star-making role gradually take on more and more of the traits associated with the darker half of the role.

Natalie Portman plays Nina, the young ballerina plucked from the corps to play the Swan Queen in both her white and black incarnations. Portman has always struck me as a particularly fragile presence on screen, and that personality type is used to good advantage in this film. She's both excited and intimidated by the prospect of her shot at stardom. It's a dream she's always had or, at least, one that her mother has always had, and she's determined to be, in her words, "perfect" in the role. Unfortunately for Nina, her idea of perfection is technical in nature, not emotional, and her inability to understand how to mine the depths of her personality becomes an increasingly larger problem. Portman's performance becomes increasingly edgy throughout the film as Nina becomes more emotionally unhinged. It's a risky job of acting, one that she carries out with distinction.

The ballet company's artistic director, played by Vincent Cassel, originally tells Nina that he would have chosen her had the part only been the White Swan. Nina's technique in that role is flawless, and she has the innocence and naivete for the part. It's the Black Swan, the more sensual, passionate half of the role that she has difficulties with. He initially taunts her by telling her he's given the part to another dancer, only to have Nina become aggressive when he makes advances. It turns him on a bit, so he decides to give her a chance at the role. How very French of him. I know that sounds like a bit of a dig, but the movie itself loves to use our preconceived ideas of the French, of ballet dancers, of domineering mothers, of almost every group depicted, actually, as shortcuts to plot development. Cassel's Thomas is a Frenchman and a straight man in the world of ballet, so he's going to bed as many different women as possible. Don't act surprised when you see it on the screen.

Naturally, there is a rival for the part, a dancer named Lily, played with aggressive sunniness and looseness by Mila Kunis, formerly one of the stars of TV's That 70s Show. Kunis received a lot of praise for her performance, and she is certainly good in the part, but save for the extended sequence where she takes Portman's Nina out for a night of fun in order to loosen the newly minted star up a bit, she doesn't really get a lot to do in the film except to keep trying to befriend Nina. I like Kunis as an actress, but I think she is perhaps best suited to comedic roles. She does inject a liveliness to her role here, and you can certainly see why Thomas would be intrigued by her for the role of the Black Swan. After all, it's a film about the ballet and there must be a rival, and she must be almost the polar opposite of the star. Lily is certainly no innocent.

Since it's a film about the ballet, there must also be jealousy on the part of the other members of the corps who wonder how Nina managed to get a part when they are *sniff* obviously more talented. And there must be an aging ballet star who has stayed around just a bit too long and is scheduled to perform for the final time. In this film, it's Winona Ryder in the part of Beth. Beth is unsurprisingly upset that a new and younger girl will be taking on a part that she would feel is "rightly" hers. You should have already guessed that Beth and Thomas have a past, and you ought to suspect that Nina is going to have idolized Beth until she replaces her (in so many, many different aspects of life). I was shocked to see Ryder in this film, not because the thought of her as a ballerina is too foreign, though. She's just such a shrill presence. When you look back on her earlier film career, it's a surprise to see her as a drunken harpy in the few moments she's allowed on the screen.

I could spend some time talking about Barbara Hershey's domineering mother, but frankly, the whole domineering mother theme is appalling. Why must every mother who tries to see her daughter succeed be portrayed as some sort of brutalizing monster? It isn't that Hershey isn't good in the part. She's always been a remarkable actress capable of conveying the most subtle of emotions to an audience. Here, though, she's reduced to the kind of woman who overreacts to everything her daughter says and does and who brings out the scissors (her weapon of choice to trim sharp nails) every time she sees her daughter has scratched herself. The scenes involving those scissors got to be a bit too much after a while. I kept expecting them to be used as a murder weapon or something.

The plot begins to reveal moments that may have happened or may only be figments of Nina's unbalanced psyche. It's not easy to tell exactly when you begin to realize that things seem to be getting weird but that they may have only been the imaginings of Nina's fevered brain. It’s possible, as some have posited, that the entire movie may have all been a part of Nina's imagination. That might be going a bit too far, given that so many details are grounded in what passes for reality in movies these days. Viewers gradually start to notice that they can no longer "trust" everything shown on the screen as being "real." When that occurs is probably an indication of just how long you think Nina has been falling apart.

Visually, the film is a stunner. It has a shimmering quality that is particularly appealing. The sequences that feature moments from rehearsals or from the ballet itself are depicted beautifully and are quite impressive. It is always difficult to render another art form on film, such as painting or musical composition, but ballet seems to be a lovely fit for film. Watching a moment like the one where Nina prepares a new set of ballet slippers is intriguing, and this movie has lots of little touches like that to make the world of these dancers seem more fully realized on screen.

There's much to praise about this film, honestly, but it doesn't strike me as one of the most outstanding cinematic achievements of 2010. The performances are good, certainly, and the overall look of the film has received careful attention. Yet there's nothing really new about the links between creativity and madness. Even Plato discussed that thousands of years ago. We have seen numerous films over the years about the lengths to which a performer will go to achieve what he or she considers to be perfection. Black Swan offers us nothing particularly new in that respect either. I suppose you could make a case for this being one of the first wide-release films to address the issue of lesbianism rather than gay male sexuality in the ballet, but even that is problematic given what occurs after that scene between Nina and Lily. No, overall, this film doesn't really seem to advance the art of cinema. It does provide a couple of hours of intriguing, at times melodramatic entertainment, and that's frequently sufficient for Academy voters, with their penchant for finding what appeals to middlebrow intellects.

Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Natalie Portman)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Achievement in Cinematography, and Best Achievement in Film Editing

Best Animated Short Film of 2009

French Roast portrays the dilemma faced by a middle-to-upper class man sitting in a cafe who discovers that he has forgotten his wallet and cannot pay for his coffee. He's already been accosted by a homeless man begging for change—actually, he's accosted several times throughout the movie by this same man—when he finds himself without any cash to pay the bill. So he keeps ordering coffee, and a strange cast of characters comes and goes around him throughout a very long, odd day. It's a cute movie, a French import, with very little dialogue, so the characters have to convey the emotions they are feeling without getting to say much. The central character is particularly expressive, and there's a little old nun who's quite hilarious.

The title character of Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty is a very loud old woman who's retelling of the fairy tale quickly devolves into an obvious rehashing of her own grievances against those who are younger and have better "muscle tone." She's allegedly telling her granddaughter the story in order to help the young girl fall asleep, but the grandmother figure is so incredibly obnoxious and frightening, it would be tough to rest around her. And her Irish brogue is almost impenetrable at times, making the plot itself somewhat tough to follow. The film's creators have certainly done a consistent job with her characterization here, but I don't think I'd want to see an entire feature with her at its center.

The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) is a Spanish tale about the struggle between the Grim Reaper and a "doctor" for the soul of an elderly woman. The doctor's task is, apparently, to rescue people as they are being taken away by Death; if he manages to revive the person, then Death has to wait for another chance at the body. The Reaper is, naturally, reluctant to lose out to the doctor. The funniest sequence in this film, to me, is a series of deaths and revivals as the body of the old woman is yanked back and forth between the two men, and there are chase scenes that rival those of the old Tom & Jerry cartoons. This film, like French Roast, relies on very little dialogue, but unlike that other film, The Lady and the Reaper is much more action-oriented.

Logorama has a very clever idea as its premise. The logos for various companies are the characters or places. It's a world of nothing but brand names and images, and part of the fun of watching the film is seeing how many of them you can recognize. The Michelin Man is, for example, a police officer. Actually, there are several Michelin Men here, all of them cops and all of them rather foul-mouthed. Ronald McDonald is a criminal trying to escape capture who takes Big Boy hostage outside a restaurant frequented by the Pringles faces. Visually, this film is quite stunning to watch. The plot, however, is rather flat and disjointed. I enjoyed seeing such icons as the AOL man walking or running around the city created by the use of large logos, but aside from the visual delights here, I don't think the film holds up very well.

A Matter of Loaf and Death is the latest adventure of Nick Park's famous duo of Wallace and Gromit. They're working as bakers, with Gromit (as usual) doing the bulk of the work and keeping Wallace out of trouble (or rescuing him when he does get into trouble). Wallace falls in love with Piella, a former Bake O Lite girl. It's up to Gromit to prove—in his silent, long-suffering way—to prove that Piella is the person responsible for the deaths of twelve bakers and is now looking to have Wallace complete her "baker's dozen." As with the other Wallace and Gromit films, A Matter of Loaf and Death has wonderful sight gags, such as the method Gromit has to use to wake up Wallace in the mornings. And the puns are delightful. A personal favorite of mine is the poster for Citizen Canine on Gromit's wall. This is the only one of the nominated films to use stop-motion animation, and it's as much of a gem as the other Wallace and Gromit films I've seen over the years.

Oscar Winner: Logorama had to have been a surprise choice in this category. It is certainly inventive in its use of different corporate logos, but its plot was merely a rehash of any typical cop show of the past thirty or more years.

My Choice: A Matter of Loaf and Death is such a charming, delightful fun. There's so much to admire here visually, and the storyline is just dark enough to keep an older viewer interested. However, if you also like tender romantic moments, you can't do much better than the gentleness with which Park handles the scenes between Gromit and Fluffles, Piella's very sensitive poodle. (Fluffles has some of the longest and most expressive eyelashes you'll ever see, by the way.) Gromit is one of my favorite animated characters of all time. No one does a slow burn better than he does.

Up in the Air (2009)

Up in the Air, one of ten nominees for Best Picture of 2009, is a melancholy little masterpiece of a film. It's a remarkably skilled movie about the economic conditions of our times, yet it also is an engrossing study of the consequences of choosing to be isolated from your fellow human beings. I found it to be a brilliant, insightful examination of how one man attempts to find a sense of meaning in a world that seemingly has little to offer him other than a chance to escape the mundane details of the day-to-day existence that most of us have to endure.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who has the unenviable job of being one of the most successful members of a corporation whose job it is to fire people in large numbers. Bingham flies from city to city--we are always told on the screen which city he's in at the moment--dispensing bad news. He's actually, in an odd way, very successful and talented at his work. He manages to defuse some very difficult situations with employees who are, unsurprisingly, upset at learning that they will be unemployed. Bingham always seems to know just how to let people know what they need to be feeling or doing at particularly tense times.

He's also managed to rid himself of almost any sense of a personal existence. He has a tiny room that he rents, but he never sleeps there if he can avoid it. He's always in a hotel or on a plane or in some company's headquarters because of his job. And he loves it that way. He's managed to amass a huge number of frequent flyer miles, and he has set as a goal for himself the attainment of a magical number: ten million. If he reaches that goal, he will only be the seventh person in American Airlines history to do so, and he will receive some remarkable perks, including having his name on the side of an airplane.

You can't really be good at this type of job or manage to spend so much time away from home unless you've severed almost all personal connections, and Ryan has been especially good at that as well. He rarely talks to or sees members of his family. His younger sister is getting married, and he's reluctant to join in this little game she and her fiance have devised of having people taking pictures of a cardboard cutout of the two of them in "exotic" places throughout the country. Instead, he's busy giving motivational speeches about what we all pack into our backpacks. You see, he's trying to convince other people that we should travel through life much lighter than we do. We are, he seems to suggest, too bogged down by all of our commitments, particularly those links (it seems) to other people.

Into his life steps Alex (played by the enchanting Vera Farmigia). They meet at a bar, and it isn't long before they are comparing all of the cards for which they receive travel benefits. They have sex that night and even schedule their next encounter based upon where they will be traveling. They make for a charming couple together, and they seem to share many of the same ideas about life. She describes herself as a female version of him--well, those aren't her exact words, but it's the gist of what she says. He even invites her to join him for his sister's wedding, and they have a lot of fun walking around his old school.

Of course, while this budding romance is underway, Ryan's company decides that it is going to shift to a new form of business. Thanks to an idea by a young woman named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), the company plans to begin firing people over the Internet, making a dehumanizing process even more remote and distant. Ryan successfully lobbies his boss (Jason Bateman) to have one last chance to prove that his methods are more successful than what Natalie has proposed, but his boss surprises him by having Natalie tag along as Ryan goes to several different companies to fire workers. Needless to say, Natalie is unprepared for what she encounters on the road, and the film clearly suggests that technology cannot replace the human element in an unpleasant business like the one these two are engaged in.

I like Kendrick as an actress. She was one of the best things about the charming little movie Camp a few years ago; I'll never listen to Stephen Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" the same way after her performance in that film. However, as good as she is, her character here is too narrowly written. When the most sophisticated way you have to show her adapting to a new situation is allowing her to take her hair out of its permanent ponytail, then you know you've got some work to do to flesh out the character more. Still, I can appreciate how hard Kendrick works to make a seemingly unsympathetic character into someone we actually want to see succeed.

Farmigia has played supporting parts in big movies for years, and she seems to be just on the cusp of breakout stardom. I thought she was terribly underused in The Departed a couple of years ago, but she has much more of an opportunity in Up in the Air to make an impression. She's warm and funny here, especially in the discussion she has with Natalie about how women's priorities have changed over the years. It's a knowing discussion between a more experienced and knowledgeable woman and a more naive, if intelligent young woman, and Farmigia makes it work. You can instantly see why Ryan would be so attracted to her that he would consider giving up his life on the road for someone like Alex.

Clooney has never been better than he is in this film. He allows us to see just how isolated Ryan has become and how much he seems to enjoy that sense of isolation. He makes all of the surface moves of being a part of society, but you get the feeling that he'd really rather be alone. He admits to avoiding emotional attachments, and even his phone calls and conversations with his sister reveal that he cannot make himself confront the pain that human connections sometimes bring. It's a gutsy move for someone as charming and handsome as Clooney to take on a part like this. It would be very easy to dislike Ryan Bingham because he seems like such a narcissist, yet when he takes the first steps to let Alex into his life, you also sense that he really does have the capacity to love someone else. He's just never felt comfortable about doing so.

I would like to mention how seamlessly the film's creators have incorporated actual people who have been fired from their jobs into the narrative. Yes, there are actors like the great J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis who have more extended roles as workers being laid off, but the most emotional ones (for me, at least) are played by non-professionals. They bring a true sense of just how devastating such a change in one's life can be. You empathize with them because they are so open and honest about how much they've come to love or enjoy their jobs, and they just have no sense of how to carry on with their lives. More than even a television news report or newspaper article could do, Up in the Air captures in those moments that sense of loss so many people in this country are feeling now.

Much has and will be made of the ending and its ambiguity. And much will probably be made about the treatment of the female characters in the film, especially since there is a discussion about the different generations of feminists and feminism. However, at its heart, Up in the Air isn't about happy endings or the lack of them, and it certainly isn't about--not really--relationships between men and women. It's about a type of individual who has chosen for most of his life to concentrate upon his work and not his personal relationships, to spend much of his time away from close human contact so that he can avoid being hurt the way that he has to hurt other people thanks to his job. It's unsettling to watch parts of this film, but it's one of the most brilliant character analyses I've seen in years.

Avatar (2009)

Having worn glasses since I was 13 years old, I am not always comfortable going to see movies in 3-D. Putting the 3-D glasses over my own glasses makes for a difficult viewing experience most of the time. However, when I went to see Avatar, a nominee for Best Picture of 2009, I decided to check out the 3-D version because most of my friends told me it was the best way to see the film. After the film enters the world of the Na'vi, I forgot that I was wearing two pairs of glasses and became completely entranced by the world created by director James Cameron and his crew. If the future of film making is truly represented by what they have achieved in Avatar with motion-capture technology and other forms of animation and special effects, I am ready for the future. Avatar is likely to be the pinnacle in the use of this kind of technology, at least for a while, but it bodes well for the movie-going experience.

The story involves a disabled Marine, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), taking his dead twin's place in a scientific experiment on the planet of Pandora. A huge team of people from Earth are there, but they have different purposes in mind for this strange world. The military is there to assist in the corporate efforts to mine for something called--unironically, it seems--unobtainium. The soldiers, essentially, try to keep the native people and animals away from the people trying to locate this precious mineral. A group of scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine, are trying to learn as much about life on Pandora as possible before the military destroys the ecosystem, and she and her team are particularly interested in the unusual link that the native people have with the natural world. Several of the film's key moments are about the inevitable conflicts that must come when scientific interests are at odds with those of the private sector and the military.

Yet the most intriguing part of the film, to me, is not the overarching story about whether science or business will win this struggle. It's about the process of learning about the native people called the Na'vi that Jake and Grace and another scientist, Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), undergo. Really, though, it's Jake we follow for much of the film. He's ideal for the project, which involves having a link to an artificially created Na'vi-human hybrid. Through his link to this avatar, Jake is able to walk again, and the joy he feels in being out in the world and having adventures is really the key to we as viewers having the same sense of amazement at this strange place and its inhabitants.

On his second day as an avatar, Jake is separated from Grace and Norm, thanks to an attack by a hideous looking beast. He spends the night in the jungle fending off creatures, and he has to be saved by a Na'vi woman named Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana) when a group of dog-like creatures surround him. She despises him for interfering with the natural order; she calls him a "baby," suggesting his level of naivete about Pandora and its environment. Nevertheless, thanks to an intervention by Eywa, the deity for the Na'vi, she decides to take him to her tribe. There, her father and mother (voiced, respectively, by Wes Study and CCH Pounder) tell her that she must teach Jake the ways of the Na'vi. What follows are a series of spectacular adventures and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a growing affection between Jake and Neytiri.

The film is very eco-focused. There are many scenes where Neytiri tries to explain to Jake the connection between the Na'vi and their surroundings. The Hometree, for example, serves as a base for almost all activity, and the Na'vi seem to have almost a biochemical relationship with it and the other plants. It's this link that Grace is attempting to discern. However, the Na'vi are also capable of creating a connection between themselves and other animals, such as the horse-like creatures many of them ride. The long ponytails of the Na'vi somehow intertwine with appendages on these animals' heads, and suddenly Na'vi and creature are psychically linked. It's pretty intriguing stuff to watch, especially when Jake takes a few tries to perfect his talents at making the connection.

I suppose in a science fiction or fantasy film like this one, you don't expect the acting to be spectacular, but I was delighted to see Weaver in this film, reunited with her Aliens director after all these years. Even when she's in her avatar form, she retains a sense of the spunk that her character needs in order to confront the military and corporate types when they threaten the extinction of the Na'vi people's world. Giovanni Ribisi is a bit over-the-top as the executive in charge of the project; he seems so single-minded about getting the unobtainium that no reasonable explanation can penetrate into his consciousness. He's fun to watch, but the real scenery chewer, and the one you can't help but find fascinating, is Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch. He's there to play the gung-ho military officer who'd rather use firepower than negotiations to get what he wants. Everything about his character, from his speeches to the scars on his head, is designed to make him seem almost like a cartoon villain, which, in a way, he is.

Worthington is a relative newcomer to American film, and he is the focus of a great deal of the movie, both as Sully the Marine and as an avatar. We have to believe that he is capable of tremendous growth as he learns more about the Na'vi, that he isn't just another disillusioned Marine who's here to serve his commanders in order to "get his legs back." Worthington keeps a mostly blank expression when he is among the humans, but his avatar gets numerous chances to express joy at the life he's allowed to live. Perhaps it's the stark contrast between a world that sees him only as a guy in a wheelchair versus a world where he can still prove himself, where he can still be what he considers himself: "a warrior." I tend to prefer the avatar version myself, but Worthington acquits himself well here in both worlds.

If I have any complaint with the film, it's the dialogue. I wasn't at all surprised that the script was not included among the screenplay nominees. The overall story itself is certainly an interesting one, and we get to behave almost like anthropologists as we follow Jake's learning about the ways of Na'vi. But when Michelle Rodriguez's Trudy has to say, "I didn't sign up for this shit" in the middle of a battle between the humans and the Na'vi, you know you're going to be subjected to several more cliches. I thought the dialogue for Titanic was its weakest component, too, so it's obviously a consistent problem with a Cameron film. He even gets to recycle one of the more annoying lines from that earlier film--"What's happening?"--in a scene where it should be quite obvious to the speaker what's happening. It's a shame that the dialogue isn't up to the same level as the visuals for Avatar.

The planet, of course, is named Pandora as an homage to the mythical woman who opened a box filled with woes and problems for the world. I suppose we're supposed to make the parallel to having people from Earth try to overtake another planet; we'll just create more problems for ourselves, perhaps, in doing so. And the name of the precious metal, unobtainium, is a bit too literal when you think of all of the agony that the humans go through in order to locate more of it. Maybe that, too, is meant to suggest that we should leave alone that which seems unobtainable. If so, that's a bit like hitting someone in the face with a 2x4 in order to get their attention. And you really didn't need to have this much firepower involved to know that the military sometimes can get out of hand in its attempts to reach its goals. Likewise, you probably won't be too surprised to learn that most of the humans treat the Na'vi as if they are merely savages, little more than another set of animals standing in the way of getting the unobtainium. The ethnocentrism, if that's the right word for this, is pretty blatant.

Still, I don't think those kinds of small details detract too much from the overall experience of watching this movie. I won't soon forget the sequence where Jake meets and tames his iklan, a sort of flying dragon. He and Neytiri have some remarkable flights side by side, and they exchange glances that suggest how much excitement they feel in being able to share these moments. There's tremendous beauty in some of the night sequences, when the plants themselves light up, or when the Tree of Sorrow is shimmering above Jake and Neyriti on the night that they make love for the first time--yeah, we get to watch some animated creature sex. I also won't forget the sight of those floating mountains, suspected far above the ground and linked only by a series of vines. It's a remarkable world that Cameron and his collaborators have fashioned, and that makes Avatar a worthy nominee for Best Picture.

Oscar Wins: Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing