NY Times’ Oscar Spread

Thanks to Daveylow for the heads up – the New York Times has a whole section on the Oscars, it turns out. Manohla Dargis wrote up The Hurt Locker (below), AO Scott takes on Where the Wild Things Are, Stephen Holden takes on The Messenger, and Terrence Rafferty on George Clooney. To be fair, let’s go through them one by one.

First, Holden on The Messenger:

Although there is more concentrated grief in “The Messenger” than in any film I can remember, instead of the uneasy sense that you’re being manipulated, you feel only empathy.

“The Messenger,” the directorial debut of Mr. Moverman, from a screenplay he wrote with Alessandro Camon, is one of the decade’s most beautifully acted films. Mr. Harrelson’s Tony may be a variation on his typical wild-man characters, but here he has added layers of humanity; in one scene he actually weeps. Mr. Foster’s performance is a career breakthrough for an actor who, like Heath Ledger, displays the eerie gift of immersing himself in a character so that he seems to become someone else entirely.

AO Scott on Wild Things:

He’s a regular kid, in other words, and our first encounter with him does not seem to suggest anything more. Max himself could sum up the first minutes of his movie more succinctly than any critic or pair of screenwriters. “I built this awesome igloo, and then some bigger kids came along and wrecked it.” We’ve all been there. But we may have forgotten what it felt like — how we were immune to the cold until suddenly we were freezing; how we were happy and angry, bored and entranced, all in the space of a few minutes; how we felt like kings and then our kingdoms were destroyed.

All of this will happen again, on the other side of the water. Just as Max’s sister has moved onto new friendships, leaving behind the brother who loves her best (and just as his mother seems to him to prefer the company of her boyfriend), so will K W abandon Carol for a couple of owls named Bob and Terry. The smashing of the igloo foretells both Max and Carol’s joyful demolition of the wild things’ houses and Carol’s climactic, out-of-control smashing of the grand edifice he and Max have planned and built. The snowballs come back as clods of dirt, which hurt when they hit their targets even though they are so much fun to hurl.

As for the wild things, though they are large in size and grown-up in voice and manner, they seem not to have outgrown the emotional drama Max thought he was fleeing. On the contrary, their moody, manipulative, anxious ways mark them as creatures of civilization, not instinct. They are less emanations of his unconscious, as a Freudian or orthodox Sendakian interpretation might suggest, than specters of his future. Alone with our thoughts and our toys, close to home and its comforts, we are tame even when we feel otherwise. It’s only later, when we’re set free among the other monsters, that things really start to get wild.

And Terrence Rafferty on George Clooney:

Being a movie star has its creative pitfalls, chief among them narcissism and laziness. If all you have to do is play your own wonderful self, you needn’t expend much time or energy trying to bring a character to screen life — a unique human being with specific, maybe interesting, quirks and problems. You fall for your own self-created illusion. But if an actor can avoid that trap, there are serious benefits to movie stardom too, and Mr. Clooney seems to know how to exploit the advantage his good looks and charm have given him. The unfair fact is that his kind of appeal can be a fast track to character, like one of those express lines frequent fliers enjoy.

Movie stars don’t have to work for the audience’s attention; they’ve got it as soon as they appear on screen, and once they have it, they can, if they have the inclination and the chops, go about their proper business of exploring behavior in its minutest, most unpredictable particulars. That’s what George Clooney does in “Up in the Air,” while seeming only to be himself.

Oscar season is a difficult time for publicists, particularly right now – with ballots still outstanding and minds being made up. It’s probably true that the bigger the star, the easier the publicity; but it’s also true that what is in your face right now is what you remember. Although, if your mind is made up already about your favorite film or your favorite performance, these kinds of stories can help to fill extra slots. So, why not?

The Messenger feels like it’s in good stead for Woody Harrelson, and a screenplay nod. The long shot is Ben Foster, but it’s not impossible. Best Actor is so utterly crowded, though. How do you make a spot for Foster?

George Clooney
Morgan Freeman
Jeff Bridges
Jeremy Renner
Colin Firth

Those five seem locked right now. Pushing through the edges would be Viggo Mortensen, Matt Damon, Ben Foster — it has always been crowded, but it feels even more so this year.

Where the Wild Things Are is a tough film to sell. Those who love it, really really love it. Those who don’t, want nothing whatsoever to do with it. Definitely in its favor is the fact that both AO Scott and Michael Phillips of At the Movies both paid the film serious attention and kept promoting it on their show. That will definitely play into Oscar nominations somewhere – be it adapted screenplay, costumes, art direction.