And the Nominees Are 2024: Round 3

The first awards show of the year is this weekend! And yes, the Golden Globes are trash, but they are making PR attempts to be slightly less trash, and I will be happy to give them a chance (especially because I’ll be on a flight during the Critic’s Choice this year and I don’t want have to wait until February for my first telecast!) I did manage to catch up with some of the Globes comedies that I missed (aka avoided) earlier in the year, here are my thoughts:

Nyad

This is a good Sunday afternoon on TNT movie. (It’s on Netflix, but you know what I mean.) A genre of sports biopic I enjoy, but wish could exist outside of awards conversations. (Bring back the mid-budget studio movie!)

Not that Annette Bening and Jodie Foster aren’t good – they’re great! They’re Annette Bening and Jodie Foster! And I really enjoyed their chemistry, and appreciated a film about female friendship that wasn’t about Female Friendship. It’s genuinely bold to make a movie about an unlikeable woman who is still inspirational.

Worth a lazy Sunday watch.

No Hard Feelings

“Raunchy” isn’t my favorite descriptor for a comedy, so even when this started getting good reviews I was pretty sure it wasn’t gonna be for me. But, it (mostly) surprised me. Both Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman bring more charm and heart to this than the premise deserves and laughed out loud every time Natalie Morales and Scott MacArthur were onscreen. Tropey and predictable, but more fun than I was expecting.

Wonka

I did not expect to be seeing this when I first saw the picture of Timothée Chalamet looking like Gonzo from The Muppet Christmas Carol, but then I heard it was written and directed by Paul King who made my beloved Paddington 2 and I was in. This doesn’t rise to that level (few films do) and for a musical the songs are pretty forgettable (probably because they had to match the range of a decidedly not-a-singer Chalamet) but overall I enjoyed myself and was charmed by the razzle-dazzle.

Does this movie need to exist? No. But, it was a nice way to spend a Friday afternoon, even if only to think about how miserable Hugh Grant must have been making it.

Poor Things

The trailers for this made me nervous. Yorgos Lanthimos sometimes veers too close to horror for my comfort and I couldn’t tell how much of a Frankenstein story this was. And, it wasn’t scary, but I’m not as rapturous as a lot of film Twitter (or Threads) is about it either.

Lanthimos’s wavelength of self-conscious strangeness is hard for me to click into, and this in many ways feels peak-him. Emma Stone embodies this artificiality wonderfully, but that kind of artifice keeps me personally at an arms length from any emotional core of the story.

I know, I know, this is a “fable.” The artifice is part of the point, but the story being told – essentially what it would be like to discover patriarchy without socialization into it, is super interesting, and I would have liked to have felt closer. (Writing that out I’m realizing, that’s also basically the plot of Barbie, which I found much more fun.)

My main disconnect comes from the fact that the first half of this movie equates the act of sex with liberation in a way I found frankly kind of boring. Once Stone’s Bella discovers philosophy the whole thing got much more interesting. Although, I didn’t like the animal hybrid body horror stuff (personal ick), I did appreciate the steampunk production design.

The Color Purple

I’ve read this book, seen the 1985 film and the Broadway revival of the musical. So, I’ve obviously long found this story compelling and worthy of interpretation, but I’m not sure I needed this film version. There’s great performances, especially Danielle Brooks (who I saw on stage in the same role) and Taraji P. Henson (who should be cast in many more musicals). The choreography is really fun, and I like when a film musical leans into its theatricality like this.

But there was a strange glowiness of the tone which, considering the weight of the subject matter, felt oddly trite. Also, and I don’t know if this was a glitch at my particular screening, but the sound mixing was atrocious, the vocals were too quiet compared to the music, especially the percussion, and this score is built to showcase women belting! I felt robbed.

Bottoms

Let me start by saying, I’m glad this movie exists, and I think we should make more true comedies (and I loved the old-school touch of having bloopers in the credits). But, this was pretty not-for-me. Every member of the cast was charming and some moments made me laugh out loud. (Put Marshawn Lynch in more comedies! That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write, but I stand by.) But, something about the tone missed me. (See above thoughts on “raunch.”) And the shole fight club angle meant there was more blood and punching than I care to see played for laughs. Wholly aware this is a me issue.

Ayo Edebiri should still be cast in anything she wants to be forever.

The Shakespeare Project: King John

A quick search of the word “Shakespeare” on this blog, shows me that I apparently get around to reading the next play on my list in July every two years or so. Maybe not the best strategy for ever getting to the end of the list, but, there are so many other books to read, and as much as I do truly love the language, the history plays really do nothing more than solidify for me that monarchy (the kind with real, war-making power) is never going to make sense.

I don’t want to claim William Shakespeare as any kind of proto-democrat (please see all of the bad, false-prophet following commoners in this play and elsewhere), but he also seems to have trouble making any kind of argument for what makes a good king other than, “won a war.” The central conflict of this play, that the titular John is clearly not the rightful descendant to the crown left vacant by his brother King Richard the Lionheart, could be quickly resolved if anyone was content to listen to the wishes of the young boy, aptly named Arthur, who it should belong to. He doesn’t want to be king, but unfortunately he has an ambitious mother and this is a Shakespearean history so – a woman is going to rant and rave her country into a war.

There are actually two ranting women in this one! And they both die off stage in an Act break and then are never mentioned again! Who would want to hear their reactions to the chaos they have wrought? There are Catholic priests to blame for things! And French princes to make look dumb!

OK, I’m being too harsh. In all honesty, I didn’t hate this, but I can see why it doesn’t get produced very often. King John isn’t remembered for much (in my American mind anyway) beyond the Magna Carta, which doesn’t get a mention here. And the most beautiful sections of the whole piece center around the violent death of a child. Not exactly great for a “pull up your picnic blankets in the park” summer production. Those scenes with Arthur really were heart wrenching though.

In the end, I come away with my usual reaction to the histories, which is the system of genetically inherited power obviously makes no sense, and with each generation it was/is given a new opportunity to prove this. But Shakespeare, a product of a time where saying something like that would be dangerous if not literally unthinkable, does an admirable job of crafting characters realistically grappling with trying to live in a nonsensical system. But at the end of the day, just let Arthur live in France with his “hysterical” mom, and give your lords some land rights, then maybe a monk won’t try to poison your dinner.

Best Picture Baking Project: Shakespeare in Love

I know that this win was/is controversial, because it’s the Oscar year when Miramax really started the era of the active Oscar campaign (which obviously has darker connotations now that we know the extent of Harvey’s misdeeds) but I honestly was glad to have this one on the list, because it didn’t feel like I had to emotionally prepare myself to view it. Dessert wise, I think I googled “Shakespeare dessert” and found rum cake. It turned out well I think!

Had I seen this one before?

Yep. My guess was approximately 19 times. As a theater obsessed high schooler into the Oscars, this was pretty aggressively for me. It had been a while though.

Top 3 observations on this viewing?

1. I love how this is basically just fanfiction about Shakespeare, or an exercise where Tom Stoppard tried to see how many tropes he could fit into one plot. I realize this sounds snarky, but I am being 100% sincere, I genuinely love this.
2. Obviously, the fact that Judi Dench got an Oscar for 12 minutes of screen time is much discussed, and she’s great! But, the whole ensemble, a murder’s row of “Hey That Guys” of British film, is delightful when given their moments, and allowed to shine by the script. I am particularly consistently charmed by how good Ben Affleck is in this as the arrogant leading player, he has to juggle comic relief with occasional gravitas and he totally pulls it off.

I feel like this picture captures the delightful goofiness of this whole project very well.

3. The production and costume design is all so great. It’s period, but stylized rather than aggressively accurate. It feels theatrical without veering fully into camp. Full of fun little details – I’m currently obsessed with Colin Firth’s villainous pearl drop earring:

What did it beat? Did it deserve to win?

Elizabeth – I remember even as a 9 year old thinking that it was funny that Elizabeth I was in multiple Best Picture nominees in a year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this, love Cate Blanchett though

Life Is Beautiful – Never saw it. Cringe at the premise the way it sometimes described, but kind of love that the image of Roberto Benigni climbing over the chairs will be in every Oscars history montage ever

Saving Private Ryan – A great film. Hard to watch. Spielberg in the mode that had worked so well for him before. I saw it once for a paper I wrote in high school about movies about WWII made at the turn of the millennium (look, I’ve always been this person OK?), but I don’t think I could myself through the opening sequence again.

The Thin Red Line – Watched this for the same paper, but kind of want to revisit it now that I have a greater appreciation for Terrance Malik’s whole deal.

Look, I know I’m supposed to say that Private Ryan was robbed, and maybe it was. I’m definitely swayed by a nostalgic attachment to Shakespeare and Shakespeare, and rewatchability and comfort should not be the metric that ultimately determines a Best Picture winner, but there really isn’t another movie like Shakespeare in Love on this list that I’ve encountered so far. And they gave Spielberg his second Best Director statue that night, and rightfully so in my opinion. So, fuck Harvey Weinstein, but I love this movie, and I love the fact that it won.

Bechdel test pass?

Yep, because of discussions of the power of poetry and the theatre.

Have I mentioned yet, that I love this stupid movie. Because, it is kind of a stupid movie, in the way that Shakespeare’s plays (I promise I’ll get to that project one day too) are really stupid if you think about the plots for even 5 minutes, but they are eternal for a reason, and I don’t think art has to be about death and destruction to matter, and maybe I am just trying to justify liking a frivolous thing more than the agreed upon Serious Classic, but I genuinely think a well crafted frivolous thing can have as much value and this one does.

OK, off my pop culture soap box and back to baking, this Orange Rum cake is probably not period appropriate for Elizabethan England, because it requires three pieces of fresh citrus, but it is wonderfully fluffy (and a bit boozy!)

Orange Rum Cake

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 oranges
• 1 lemon
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons rum

Directions

1. Grate the oranges and lemon peels
2. Juice the oranges and lemon (It’s fine to combine the juices you will use them both at the same time)
3. Preheat oven to 350F
4. Line a bread pan with parchment paper, greased
5. Cream butter until light and fluffy
6. Gradually add 1 cup of the sugar
7. Continue beating until light and fluffy
8. Add the orange and lemon zest
9. Add each egg, one at a time, beating well after each
10. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
11. Add 1/3 of flour mixture to butter mixture, and 1/3 of the buttermilk
12. Mix until smooth, then repeat until no more flour or buttermilk remain
13. Pour into prepared pan
14. Bake for 1 hour, or until tester comes out clean
15. While it’s baking strain the citrus juice into a saucepan
16. Add remaining 1 cup of sugar
17. Add the rum
18. Bring mixture to a boil and then remove from heat
19. When cake is done, transfer it to a platter or deep dish
20. Pour rum mixture over the cake
21. Let sit for a bit (Note: original recipe said to let it sit for a day, but I missed that, and just waited like 10 minutes and it was delicious)

And The Nominees Are 2022: Round 5

There’s finally an awards show tonight! I was going to wait to post my latest update until I had forced myself to watch Power of the Dog, which I was absolutely going to watch before the shows started…and then…I just didn’t. I know I’m probably actually psyching myself out too much about that one, and I promise I will watch it soon. But I did see some other big buzzy ones, a couple of which I loved just so so much.

Parallel Mothers

Every time I see a Pedro Almodóvar movie I leave it thinking I really need to watch more of them and this was absolutely no exception, a deft mix of the personal and the political (are they ever really separate?) and his signature mix of heightened but achingly human. I don’t want to spoil the plot, because it made me literally gasp at a couple of points. So instead I will gush about he wonderful Penélope Cruz who has entire novels to convey with her silent face at multiple points in this movie and convinced me every time. My only quibble is that the ending felt a bit rushed, but maybe I just wanted to spend more time with these characters, even though they were making me cry.

Drive My Car

Look, I know that a 3 hour movie about grief and multi-lingual theater that uses Uncle Vanya as a framing/mirror narrative throughout is a tough sell, but this is a truly fantastic movie and I hope that at least some of you will give it a chance. Lead actor Hidetoshi Nishijima has a face compelling enough to stare at for three hours, and the cast surrounding him is all note perfect. I particularly loved Park Yu-rim as a mute actress performing Sonya in Korean sign language. (She’s just one of the cast that should have at least been in the nomination conversation.

Director and co-writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi crafts his story, which is obsessed with language and text equally indelible visually. He makes a ton of great design and shot choices. (Cigarettes being held out of a sunroof never struck me as beautiful before, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget that image now.) This is the kind of great movie I don’t want to describe too much, because I’ll just be listing random things for pages, when the easiest thing to say is…this is a great film. It’s slow at points, and very thoughtful rather than dynamic, but it’s perfect in a lot of ways, and I love it very much.

Also great if you, like my fiancé, like driving videos, lots of great shots of tunnels and sea and landscape. (This is not sarcasm.)

The Worst Person In The World

I wanted to love this so much, the trailer, and the buzz, and the fact that a sequence in it (and the ending of Licorice Pizza) inspired a “women be running” think piece, all felt like it would be up my alley, but something about it just didn’t click.

Renate Reinsve is very charming as the (ironically) titular role, and there are sequences in this that will probably stick in my head for a while (that running one is actually pretty compelling), but a lot of the wit and cleverness felt a bit forced. I kept thinking of other recent romantic comedies/explorations of millennial connection I had liked more. I highly recommend: Straight Up, Palm Springs, & Together Together (which deserved the buzz that this one got.)

The mushrooms montage was also good

King Richard

I love a sports movie. Even one about a sport I have little real world interest in (i.e. tennis), and there parts of this that hit the inspirational spot…but I’m not sure it ever became more than the sum of its parts for me.

The two nominated performances feel almost like they are from two different movies. I much prefer the more understated turn from Aunjanue Ellis as Venus & Serena’s mother, who has a couple of moments where she totally shines to whatever it is that Will Smith is doing. I didn’t really know much about Richard Williams going into this (see earlier comment re my interest in tennis) so I can’t speak to accuracy of portrayal, but there’s an accent that Smith is doing here that I hope is based on real footage, because it is otherwise kind of off putting. But the best performances in the movie are from the group of child actresses who play the sisters with effervescent energy.

And The Nominees Are 2022: Round 4

It’s so weird to have all of our nominees now, but not yet had an awards show (since Critics Choice got moved due to omicron concerns), but we do! And maybe because of that delay, or each respective awards body’s attempts to diversify their membership, there is not as much overlap in the final nominations than there usually is.

I really enjoyed how surprising this made Oscar nomination morning yesterday! I don’t really love the narrative around “snubs” because I think that ascribes a personal vendetta to someone missing out on the top slate that I don’t really think you can claim mathematically unless you have access to the vote tallies…I think different groups of people just have different preferences. Which in the end means that my list of things to see is still super long! I admit that I haven’t been doing a great job of motivating myself to catch up until this past week (I think this may also be a result of the lack of ceremonies so far…but that will soon change!) I still haven’t seen Power of the Dog, because Jane Campion has a history of ruining me emotionally and I’m scared…but I will see it soon I promise. In the mean time, here’s what I’ve watched since the last update:

Don’t Look Up

Despite this having an excellent cast, I put off watching it for a long while, because Adam McKay‘s political movies tend to make me want to throw something at the screen. (OK – mostly just VICE, but I really, really hate that movie.)

This, while still far from subtle, was not infuriating to me personally. (Though I still think McKay’s imagined audience and his actual audience are very different, and that mismatch can lead to his work feeling condescending…a longer treatise for a different time.)

The redeeming features:

• Jennifer Lawrence‘s comic timing (particularly loved the recurring bit about snacks)
• Timmy Chalamet as a loveable, exvangelical dirtbag
• Leo playing awkward and affable Dad, a completely different energy than I’ve ever seen from him, and I was charmed.
• Melanie Lynskey, because I just lover her and I’m too much of a wimp to watch “Yellowjackets”

The Tender Bar

Look, I admit it, I still really love Ben Affleck. I’m rooting for him and JLo and I think he’s really good in this. It’s not a movie that will be winning any originality prizes, but it’s a lovely coming of age tale with smart writing (except for the random college-girlfriend story line that gets both women and Connecticut wrong) and good period costumes. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon viewing. Tye Sheridan is very charming as our lead. Lily Rabe could have been given more to do, but does what she’s given to do characteristically well. Christopher Lloyd is a weird, lovely presence, but this movie is Affleck’s and he carries it well.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

As a certified Frances McDormand fangirl with an ongoing Shakespeare obsession this felt like it was made specifically for me. Macbeth isn’t my favorite tragedy (and the tragedies don’t tend to be my favorite Shakespeares – they just make me want to yell JUST THINK THINGS ALL THE WAY THROUGH a bit too much.) But, I thought this version was a great blend of arch-stylization and performances that managed to feel human. Not that I expect less from Denzel & Frances. They are two of our finest actors and I’m so glad we got them to do this on film.

Felt very clearly like a call back to Olivier’s Hamlet, which I think rightfully places Denzel in the pantheon.

Ascension

This is a very odd film. I appreciated the choice to rely mostly on visuals and forgo talking any heads to create a portrait of what work looks like in China today, but after a while my attention began to wane. I think if I hadn’t seen American Factory or read Peter Hessler’s articles about life in China, this would have felt more revelatory, but instead, it mostly just made me feel tired and sad.

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

This is a beautiful document, curated from archival footage of the somehow long forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, which had a genuinely stacked lineup.

Personal highlights include The 5th Dimension, Sly & The Family Stone, and obviously – Mavis and Mahalia:

It does a great job of situating the festival in its, often fraught historical context without ever losing sight of the true gold in the performances. This is one of those times I could wax poetic for a long time here, but instead will just tell you all to please go watch this as soon as you can. (It’s on Hulu.)

The Shakespeare Project: Julius Caesar

I’m not even going to apologize anymore for how long the gaps are in between my posts for this project, but if you even remembered that reading all of Shakespeare’s plays is a thing I’m doing, thank you! I sometimes forget.

Technically, Julius Caesar is my first non-history play after a long string of King Henrys, but, obviously, this tragedy (as it is officially categorized) has historical origins. It’s also a great example of Shakespeare’s great mind for what we would call marketing because Caesar, obviously the most well known historical figure depicted here, dies in the first scene of the third act (and he’s not on stage a ton before that), an excellent bait and switch used to great affect centuries later by Alfred Hitchcock and Wes Craven in Psycho and Scream respectively (sorry for spoilers to decades old movies.) This is really a play about Brutus, an honorable man asked to do a dishonorable thing to preserve the idea of Rome which he has staked his identity on, even as his fellow countrymen seem to prefer to abandon that idea in favor of a cult of personality we would likely refer to as fascist were it to arise today.

So, reading it in 2021 America wasn’t relevant at all….

Just kidding, the political speeches and depictions of common people being manipulated by stirring rhetoric made my skin crawl, but also were oddly comforting. It is so easy to believe we are the first people to make a mess of things, that, to paraphrase, our faults are in ourselves alone, and maybe they are (I don’t believe they are in our stars at least), but at least they aren’t faults unique somehow to us. Cold comfort maybe, but it helps me.

I came away from this reading (which was my first, though I had seen this onstage at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre years ago), with real empathy for Brutus and a supreme dislike for Mark Antony. (Is he this awful in Antony & Cleopatra? That was one of my first plays in this project – 10 years a different blog ago! – and I don’t remember hating him…but damn, he’s evil in this. And then I’m just supposed to forgive him because he gives a speech over Brutus’s dead body about how great a Roman he was…whatever Mark…flee to Egypt already…)

Overall, this has a lot of the problems I often have with the tragedies, a lot of the deaths could have been prevented if people just waited 30 seconds before stabbing themselves, but it (clearly) gave me a lot to think about.

Quick side question: Why is the line “Et tu Brutae?” written in Latin when they speak English throughout otherwise? Wouldn’t they be speaking Latin the whole time?

Best Picture Baking Project: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

Had to squeeze this one in before the end of the month! Hard to motivate myself to watch it honestly (not that I didn’t think it would be great, but I knew it would be bleak!) I had never heard of Bird’s Nest Pie before (turns out it’s kind of a cobbler made in a pie dish), but it was an obvious choice for the pairing.

But first, the movie!

Had I seen this one before?

Surprisingly, no. I had seen a (really excellent) student production of the play in college. (It was done site specific in the building that felt the most like a public high school. Immersive theater can be very stressful for me, but obviously for this story that anxiety added to the experience.) And obviously, knew the ending.

Top 3 observations on this viewing?

1. I’ll start positive – every actor in this movie is perfectly cast, and has a face that you cannot look away from. I found myself making up backstories for all the characters in the background, and genuinely cared about them all by the end, even though many of them have like 2 lines.

2. I had a very complicated emotional response to this that I wasn’t really expecting. I had absorbed so much cultural shorthand that I thought I knew exactly what I was pressing play on, but I kept thinking there was way more nuance actually present than I expected. Nurse Ratched is obviously awful and detrimental to the mental health of her patients, but I think I expected her to be like a literal horror movie villain creeping around the ward at night or something, but instead I could understand where her actions were coming from. They were based on absolutely false premises about what the mentally ill need, but I don’t think until the very end, when she has lost control of the ward and had clearly broken, she is actively trying to hurt people in the way she’s always described. (I have not will not watch the Ryan Murphy “backstory” series about her, because isn’t the fact that she’s a cipher kind of the whole point of her?)

In contrast, I found it hard to think about Jack Nicholson’s R.P. McMurphy as the solely tragic-hero figure that I had imagined going in. Tragic? Yes, unreservedly. Heroic? Um…I guess? For Billy, yes. For Chief, obviously. But what about for Candy? What about for the 15 year old girl that “looked so grown up?” Also, again, the treatment these men were being subjected to was inhumane and the release McMurphy represented was valuable, but a lot of them were genuinely profoundly ill and I don’t know if screaming “choose different” at their faces helps them any more than Nurse Ratched quietly humiliating them in front of each other.

I don’t know, I’m probably overthinking a movie that was 15 years old when I was born, but it left me with so many questions.

3. I would fully have watched an entire movie that was just about Chief. He’s the hero for me. Apparently, the filmmakers discovered Will Sampson in a gas station (thank you Tim for that anecdote!) and what a wonderful piece of Hollywood serendipity. He’s brilliant in every frame.

What did it beat? Did it deserve to win?

Barry Lyndon – I’ve never seen this. I don’t like Kubrick as a rule, but I do like the costuming/hair choices made on Ryan O’Neal in the clips of this I have seen

Dog Day Afternoon – Watched this for a class in college, it’s rightfully a classic, and not really an experience I wish to have again

Jaws – Swimming is very important to my mental health, so I have never subjected myself to this film

Nashville – Ah, the 1970s, the Oscar decade populated with classic films that are rightfully acclaimed but also highly upsetting to me personally. But, this one has Lily Tomlin, so that’s something.

Wow…quite a year! I think Cuckoo’s Nest was probably the right call. (Though obviously I can’t fully judge.) Would’ve been a fun curveball if they had given it to Altman though.

Bechdel test pass?

Nope. And again, McMurphy’s crime and general attitude towards women felt really icky to watch, because I don’t think people ever bring that up about this movie? Like, he was in prison for raping a 15 year old girl! That’s not great!

Obviously, Nurse Ratched is hateful, but I think a part of why he decides to lead his big rebellion is that he doesn’t like that there is a woman who has power over him who he can’t “break.” Not that a movie about misogynists is in itself misogynist, and I don’t think this one is, but I do think the women in it are underexplored. Again, I do not mean this to be a tacit endorsement of Ratched, just food for thought if this movie ever comes up in conversation for you.

Anyway, Bird’s Nest Pie, it’s one of those old time-y recipes where every post about it mentions a grandma that used to make it. Well, neither of grandmas did, but it was pleasant enough. A little bland. If I were to make it again I would spice the apples as well as the dough.

Bird’s Nest Pie

Ingredients

• 2 medium apples
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

1. Grease a 9in pie plate
2. Peel, core, and slice apples, placing slices in bottom of pie dish (there will be layers of apple slices)
3. Preheat oven to 350F
4. In a large mixing bowl whisk together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar
5. Add buttermilk and egg, stirring until a loose dough forms
6. Pour over apples (I had to smush it around with my fingers a bit)
7. Bake for 25-30 min until a tester through the dough comes out clean
8. While pie is baking mix remaining sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a small bowl
9. Remove pie from oven, pour spiced sugar mix over top
10. Bake for 3-5 more minutes
11. Let cool (but not completely), serve with whipped or iced cream

And The Nominees Are 2021: Final Round!

Happy Oscars Sunday everyone! I did not come near to completing my full nominee list once again, but I did at least (as of yesterday) see all of the Best Picture nominees for tonight! Here are the movies I caught up on these past few weeks:

Pieces of a Woman

Vanessa Kirby is astoundingly good in this, portraying the agonizing pain of a woman grieving her baby who dies shortly after birth. I wanted to say that up front since that’s what getting awards attention and it is merited. Kirby never lost me, even while I was watching her labor in what felt like real time.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the film itself, a melodrama that clearly wants to be taken more seriously than that label implies, it felt like writer Kata Weber and director Kornél Mundruczó couldn’t quite decide what film they wanted to make. There’s a lot of nods towards symbolism that feel muddy and the climactic courthouse scene strains credulity despite Kirby’s best efforts.

Note: This movie stars Shia LaBeouf, an artist I have praised in the past, about whom very disturbing and credible accusations of abuse have come forward recently. I stand by FKA Twigs and his other victims, and have made a donation to Urban Resource Institute, a local to me non-profit, that supports survivors of domestic violence as an act of Filmanthropy.

News of the World

If I hadn’t known going in that Paul Greengrass directed this I never would have guessed that the king of shaky-cam-docu-drama was responsible for a period-Western/portrait of grief. It’s beautifully shot though and with the exception of a couple of brief, tense interludes, it is much easier to watch than Bloody Sunday or United 93 (which are both good in their own way to, just stressful to watch.)

You can definitely tell this was based on a novel, but it doesn’t get too weighed down by plot. Tom Hanks is as good here, weathered and gray, as he always is.

Time

This is heavy, and beautiful, and important. A documentary about the broken, exploitative American incarceration system, that is crafted as a collage of home video footage of the wife (Sybil Fox Richardson) and children left behind when a man is sentenced to 60 years in prison. It’s nuanced and heartbreaking, and resists cliché. Should be required viewing.

French Exit

What a weird, wonderful movie. (Let me reiterate the emphasis on weird.) A tale of a widow (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has run out of money and decides to relocate to Paris with her son (the perfectly cast, blank faced Lucas Hedges) and her cat (who is at one point voiced by Tracy Letts). The plot has twists, but they aren’t the point. The tone feels reminiscent of Wes Anderson and (sorry) Wood Allen, in it’s off-centerness. There are sequences that should feel like farce, but there’s no zaniness. Frances (Pfeiffer) is far to elegant for that.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sound of Metal

The acting in this movie is absurdly good. Riz Ahmed cycles through a million emotions a second as a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing and then has to fight to keep his sobriety. Olivia Cooke is heartbreaking as his personal and creative partner at a loss as to how to help. But the standout for me is Paul Raci, a virtually unknown Chicago character actor (and Vietnam vet born to deaf parents) who the casting gods plucked out of obscurity and placed in the perfect role. As the leader of a deaf sober living facility, his earnestness never becomes cloying, and I missed him when he wasn’t onscreen.

Overall, the movie is a moving look into a culture many hearing people would never known about, which I appreciated more than loved. But you should watch it for Raci alone.

The Father

My last best picture nominee of the year, I put off watching this until literally the last day, because I knew it was going to be rough on me emotionally. And I was right, but it was also beautiful. I’ve (obviously) seen movies about aging and dementia before, but never one that centered the perspective of the person losing their memory quite in this way. The confusion and claustrophobia and heartbreak is hard to experience, but it does what movies at their best can, it builds empathy.

Anthony Hopkins is wrenchingly good and his vulnerability was truly beautiful to watch. Olivia Colman is also really excellent. This manages to feel like a mystery and realist drama at the same time, which is a tricky balance.

Best Picture Baking Project: Oliver!

As an Oscars obsessive, this movie always loomed large as “the last musical to win Best Picture” until Chicago broke the streak in 2003. I know I wrote just last week about not feeling drawn to Dickens adaptations, but I did enjoy this “Dickens Dinner Party” site and the dessert, a “Sherry Trifle” seemed appropriately old-time-y and British (plus booze!).

But first, the movie:

Had I seen this one before?

Yes, at least the first half many times when I was a kid.

My mom and I used to sing “Consider Yourself” on walks while swingout our arms exaggeratedly to motivate through tiredness. (This story feels like a good answer to that “tell me a story from your childhood that was very on brand” Twitter meme, but my actual answer is even more so:

In 98 my babysitter asked what movie had won Best Picture at the Oscars & I spent 20 minutes reciting all the nominees in all of the categories that Titanic won and then announcing that Titanic had in fact won it as if she would be surprised. I was underwhelmed by her enthusiasm. https://t.co/J8aSCVPmqR

— Kathryn Dennett-Dulle (@kathryndennett) February 22, 2019

Top 3 observations on this viewing?

1. This movie really holds up as spectacle, the choreography (by Onna White) is great and cinematic (not just a rough translation of the stage). From the first sequence of all of the workhouse boys walking in unison down the stairs it’s clear that White and director Carol Reed had a real vision for the film and it never peters out. I mean come on, this is just undeniably great:

2. Despite his less than powerful vocal performance, Mark Lester is exceptionally cast for his puppy dog eyes (and how small he was). This story only works if you want to protect Oliver, and I did.

3. I had filed the Nancy (Shani Wallis, who looks distractingly like Jane Fonda at points)-Bill Sikes (Oliver Reed) storyline in my head in the Carousel “sometimes when he hits you it feels like a kiss from a star” domestic violence apologist hall of shame, but it was actually a more nuanced depiction of a woman trapped in an abusive situation than I remembered. It still sucks that the woman has to be the tragedy of the piece, but she felt like a real woman struggling and I appreciated that. (The lyrics of her first song, obviously not withstanding.)

What did it beat? Did it deserve to win?

Funny Girl – Another large scale musical extravaganza, a great vehicle for Barbra

Rachel, Rachel – Never seen it, but it was Joanne directed by Paul, so I assume it’s brilliant

Romeo and Juliet – A classic version of course. We definitely watched this in high school English class and all had to pretend we weren’t seeing the nudity together. It’s not my favorite adaptation though (that’s obviously the unhinged Baz Luhrman)

The Lion in Winter – Sorry Kate, I haven’t seen it

I think this a year most film nerds would give Best Picture to a non-nominee, 2001: A Space Odyssey, but, I don’t like that movie (sorry.) So, I’m going to say that I’m not mad about Oliver! winning. It’s a more visually interesting film than it gets credit for I think.

Bechdel Test pass?

Nope. Though, like I said, Nancy is a more nuanced character than I remembered and her friend Bet (Sheila White) is a good bit player, but they only ever talk about Bill. They do get to do this though:

Now trifle!

Sherry Trifle

Ingredients

• 1 precooked pound cake
• 4 tablespoons cream sherry
• 1 pint strawberries
• 1 box of strawberry gelatin
• 3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 cups milk or cream
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• Canned whipped cream

Directions

1. Break or cut the pound cake into 1 in pieces
2. Quarter the strawberries
3. Lightly toss cake squares and berries together and line the bottom of a your trifle disk (I used my largest tupperware but a glass bowl works too)
4. Prepare gelatin according to instructions on box
5. Drizzle the sherry over the cake and berries
6. Pour gelatin over the mixture, place in fridge
7. To make the custard, whisk the egg yolks and corn starch together in a medium sauce pan
8. Add the vanilla, sugar, and cream or milk, mix well
9. Place over medium heat, stirring continually until tick (approx. 5-7 min)
10. Removed from heat and continue stirring for 1 more minute
11. Let cool then pour over gelatin
12. Place back in fridge for at least an hour
13. Place whipping cream and powdered sugar in the bowl of your mixer
14. Beat until thick whipped cream has formed
15. Spread over cooled custard
16. Use canned whip cream (or pastry bag and your whipped cream if you’re fancy) to create textured top cream layer
17. Optional but fun: serve with a small glass of sherry!

And the Nominees Are 2021: Round 4

For all my anxiety about how long the movie list is last week, I watched a bunch of really good (and weird) stuff this week! (It also helps that we are in the lull between nominations and the shows starts – BAFTA and Oscar nods always come after the prelim shows have started…)

The Personal History of David Copperfield

Despite having a long established love of costume drama, Dickens (outside of A Christmas Carrol) has never really ranked high in my excitement, but Dev Patel will get me to watch a lot of things. And I’m glad I watched this! The whole cast is delightfully bonkers and director Armando Iannucci adapted the brick of a novel into a quick, engaging story about self-creation and the power of narrative.

But the real draw here is Patel, he is so charming and manages to carry off 8 tones in the course of one scene. We really need to start casting him in more things.

The Mole Agent

Whatever great force brought together director Maite Alberdi and the subject of this documentary, Sergio Chamy, we should be giving thanks to it. This movie unfolds so perfectly, and is shot so beautifully, that I genuinely didn’t believe it could be non-fiction for the first half.

Sergio is hired by a private investigator to go undercover at a retirement home to investigate to possible mistreatment of a patient. Quickly, the spy-movie conceit drops away because “the mole agent” turns out to be an extraordinarily, lovely and compassionate person who begins “investigating” the lives of the residence instead. (AKA he actually listens to them when they talk about their lives.) Within days all the women are in love with him and it’s not hard to see why.

I’m pretty sensitive to the ways we often treat the elderly as either tragedies or jokes, if we don’t ignore them completely, so I was a little apprehensive about this, but its exactly the opposite of the exploitative story I feared. It’s on Hulu if you want to watch, truly heartwarming, but never saccharine.

The Prom

Is this essentially an overlong episode of “Glee” with inexplicable lighting? Yes.

Is it worth it just to see Meryl Streep do a full Patti LuPone impression and fall in love with Keegan-Michael Key? Almost.

Look, it’s too long and the score is only fine, but as a way to spend a weekend afternoon, it was fun.

Dick Johnson Is Dead

This is a hard one to describe, a documentary made by a daughter (Kirsten Johnson) about her father (the titular Dick Johnson) who is developing dementia. She’s terrified at losing him so she enlists him in a project of making a series of short films staging various ways that could die. (Which also includes a very funny montage of them trying to cast stunt men to step in for him.) It could be morbid (and at times it is), but both subject and director seem possessed of an exceptional amount of goodwill, and Dick’s sense of fun and spirit and Kristen’s love for him really come across in every frame. It’s a heartbreaker (obviously), but it’s also (maybe paradoxically), a joy.

Straight Up

An argument for including the Indie Spirits in my list again this year, this charming little alternative rom-com, was never going to get attention for the Academy, but I’m glad I watched it, even if it was kind of baffling. A blend of rapid fire dialogue and frank discussions of sexuality and OCD, it raises some really interesting questions about love and attraction and where the lines are (and aren’t) between them. It could have been tedious chemistry between James Sweeney and Katie Findlay was genuine and compelling. This is Sweeney (who also wrote and directed)’s first feature, and I’m definitely intrigued to see where he goes from here.