Oscars, Indies, Movies for Every Taste

It’s an incredibly busy time for area movie and theatre enthusiasts at the moment. Besides my own movie “Dangers from Within” playing at a local multiplex, there are some interesting new Hollywood releases, Film students just handed in mid-term papers and are trying to get their movie projects into production, the 80th annual Academy Awards were held last Sunday, the Fargo Film Festival starts next Tuesday, and the week after that is the annual Cinefest classic film festival I attend each year. And that’s not counting all the local theatre productions going on in February and March.

As usual, the Academy Awards had a lot of predictable results and several surprises. My preshow predictions came out slightly below my typical 10-12 correct guesses out of the 24 categories. I got only eight right, although six were in the nine major categories.

I had thought the Academy might get into the indie spirit and let the Minnesota-made surprise hit “Juno” sweep at least three of its four nominations, but it won only the “Original Screenplay” award for Diablo Cody. Former Minnesotans Joel and Ethan Coen picked up the “Adapted Screenplay” and “Best Director” Oscars, as I predicted, but also took away the “Best Picture” award I thought might go to “Juno.” Their “No Country for Old Men” also won Javier Bardem an Oscar for “Supporting Actor,” another I did predict correctly, winning a total of four out of its eight nominations. I also guessed correctly that favorite “Ratatouille” would win Best Animated Feature.

The only other major categories I missed were Best Actor and Actress. The Actor contenders seemed to be all at pretty even odds. I’d guessed George Clooney’s powerful turn in “Michael Clayton,” but the Academy chose Daniel Day-Lewis’ mannered scene-chewing in “There Will Be Blood,” perhaps because he sounded a lot like the late actor-director John Huston throughout his performance. For Best Actress, I again went with “Juno” and Ellen Page, half-expecting the sentimental favorite Julie Christie to win or for Cate Blanchett to pull a Meryl Streep and get another award. Instead, this category was a complete surprise, with Marion Cotillard winning for playing singer Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.”

The Oscar ceremony was relatively bland this year, and actually finished in less than three and a half hours. Host Jon Stewart had a few good lines, but is still a distant second to Billy Crystal in the Academy Awards emcee category. If that was actually the show the Academy was hoping for after the settlement of the writers’ strike, I think I’d prefer to have seen their backup program with more of the film clip retrospectives for their 80th anniversary ceremony. Even the supposedly tongue-in-cheek tributes to “films with binoculars” and the like livened up the program more than Stewart, the presenters, or the winners.

There were a few nice touches, however, such as Stewart bringing back Marketa Irglova, one of the composers who won the “Best Song” Oscar, after she’d been cut off by the orchestra without a chance to say anything. In fact, that song’s win ("Falling Slowly” from the movie “Once") was another of the big surprises of the awards. The low-budget movie shot on digital video received just one nomination and the award stunned its winners. Their heartfelt acceptance speeches fueled hope that anyone with a dream, a vision, and persistence might someday stand on stage holding an Oscar statuette.

Closer to home, the 8th annual Fargo Film Festival begins next Tuesday at the Fargo Theatre, running all week through Saturday night, when the “Best of Fest” movies will be shown and awards presented. Luckily the festival is during UND’s Spring Break this year, so when I’m not grading papers I can try to make it down for more screenings than just the weekend, for a change.

One of the movies on the schedule I actually saw last fall and can strongly recommend. “The Call of Cthulhu” is adapted from the horror story by H. P. Lovecraft. Although shot on virtually no budget using mini DV, it was made in a style that lovingly recreates the look and mood of classic silent cinema from the 1920s. It also has a North Dakota connection, as one of the three composers of its wonderfully lush and evocative music score is from this state.