Congratulations to MELISSA LOFTMAN of Wanderlust fame. She wins a selection of Fox titles after correctly answering the following question:

Who performed the score to Louis Malle’s Lift To The Scaffold?

The answer was of course….Miles Davis.

Congrats Melissa, your DVDs and a weekend of excellent film watching will be coming to you soon!

While there are winners, there are also losers and this is a bit of a random post in that I will be griping about some issues in film that have arisen over the last couple of weeks.

The first moan is about my review of BIRDMAN. Now I’m not sure about how other film critics, aspiring film writers or just people who like film work when reviewing, but I’ve always found that I like to leave a little time between having watched a film and then writing about it. I like the space in between where I have extricated myself from the influences of a cinema audience (how the rest of the audience reacts to a film can in my book make a huge difference to how an individual relates to what’s on screen) work out out how I feel about it and articulate my thoughts onto paper so to speak. The results are that I very rarely change my mind about what I’ve written. That is until my Birdman review.

Birdman was one of a rare occurrence whereby I wrote a review almost immediately after seeing it and a consequence realised that I have changed my mind about the film. I’m taking a moment to reveal to you all…I don’t really like Birdman as much as I thought I did, in fact, I don’t really like it at all. I know, I know, it all sounds so fickle and unnecessarily difficult, and while I stand my the things I like about it, the things that I didn’t like become more and more apparent the more I think and discuss this film with others.

I don’t want anyone to think that maybe my change of heart was influenced by discussing the film with people who flat out hated it. Because, while they things they couldn’t stand about the film (Michael Keaton’s unconvincing as a leading man, the manipulating marketing ploy that this is his career-resurging role), I too didn’t like as I articulated in my original review but didn’t bother me as much. What has increased my distaste in the film are the uncomfortable viewpoints in the film that I was unable to articulate for whatever reason in my original review that have been perfectly articulated by others. No more so than this little snippet from Genevieve Yue of Reverse Shot:

Most Overlooked Scene of Sexual Assault: Birdman
In Birdman, the behind-the-scenes lives of actors are embarrassing, farcical failures. Their only hope of redemption, or so the film would have us believe, is offered by the theater, which unlike film, is fraught with the tension of sustaining a live performance. On the stage, meaning is achieved through an actor’s “authenticity,” which for Alejandro González Iñárritu, translates to blunt actions with real, physical consequences. Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) shoots off his nose with a loaded gun to earn the praise of a critic; he suffers, but is delivered into an ambiguous realm of the sublime for it. No such luck for Lesley (Naomi Watts). When her boyfriend Mike (Edward Norton) sexually assaults her—she repeatedly says “no” and struggles under his grip—as part of a method acting exercise, she responds not by treating it as the criminal act it is, but by complaining that Mike can’t get it up at home.The film treats rape as a cheap misogynist prank; it’s what this sex-starved shrew deserves. Her female costar, played by Andrea Riseborough, affirms this point of view when she describes Mike’s stunt as “kinda hot!” And like any gag, it has no lasting significance for the rest of the film, which would rather have us titter at a crude boner joke than take seriously the violence that has occurred. It’s shameful and irresponsible. And if it’s a matter of ignorance, there’s certainly no virtue in it. —GY

While I didn’t ‘titter’ at Riseborough’s response to Naomi Watts obvious distress, I was deeply disturbed by it, but I initially brushed it off as another unlikeable characteristic of Mike, the assailant. My dislike and apathy grew for this character to the point where, despite Ed Norton’s impeccable acting,  his attempts at vulnerability and truth just flat out bothered me.

Upon reflection the way in which this character is handled is astutely observed by Genevieve as not only is his act of violence against Watt’s character a throwaway gag but also explains his behaviour away as a troubled man just going through the usual midlife crisis. By an admission of ‘vulnerability’ he is rewarded with the nubile body of much younger Emma Stone.
This is poor writing and when combined with Keaton’s dismissive attitude to Andrea Riseborough gives Birdman an ugly undercurrent of misogyny that places the blame firmly on writer’s attitudes rather than the ugliness of the characters. If the male character’s misogyny had been explored even a tenth as much as other themes such as ‘class’ divide between theatre and film and artistic sacrifice etc, I just might have more sympathy. But with the flippant dismissiveness with which the female characters are treated, Birdman is really more of a grotesque piece of snide artificially directed at its main character and speaking volumes about the prevailing attitudes of its filmmakers towards even but.

The Oscars

If you’re a regular reader of this blog it’s well known that in spite of the vapid spectacle that is the Academy Awards and how much it usually gets it wrong, I do love getting involved in all the speculating, in-depth analysis and inevitable disappointments. However, Oscars 2015 has set a precedent. The announcement of this year’s nominations are so woefully disappointing (with the exception of WHIPLASH, Mark Ruffalo and JK Simmons) that I’m going to pretend that the Oscars have instead been postponed to 2016 (or indefinitely, if they can’t get their shit together).

This year’s nominations has had a huge amount of backlash, mostly to do with the lack of diversity in the acting categories and most noticeably the omission of a nomination for Ava Duvarney who would have been the first female black nominated for Best Director if the Academy had done it’s job. But I see all of this as an ongoing issue that nobody should be surprised about. The Academy voters are notoriously homogenous with a high percentage being white men over the age of 62. It makes sense that they’re going to watch and in turn vote for films that appeal to their narrow sensibilities. It’s nothing new and to be quite frankly what I’ve come to expect. There are not going to be any change in that area until the criteria for being a voter has a huge shakeup.

No my biggest beef with Oscars 2015 are the omissions that I thought would appeal to or at least be on the radar of the Academy. I mean LEGO MOVIE wasn’t even nominated for Best Animated Feature despite blowing all of its other competitors out of the water. While the Director Phil Lord’s response to the snub was simply magical and much more noble than would have been my response:

At the end of the day, the snub makes absolutely no sense.

What makes even less sense was the omission of the simply wonderful LIFE ITSELF, which I watched just yesterday, from best Documentary Feature. Roger Ebert was a giant in film criticism and popularising film as an art form. He was an advocate of film and this is a film that celebrates that. It has everything the Academy usually falls over itself to embrace – it’s American in the truest sense, it’s about a man’s love of the movies, it’s about a WHITE MAN. And most importantly (for me anyway but not so much for the Academy), it’s a bloody good film. Ticks all the boxes and yet it’s like it never existed.

There are plenty of other omissions (THE BABADOOK is a horror I know but the whole world seem’s to be gushing over director Jennifer Kent and leading lady Essie Davis. A little love wouldn’t go amiss. Also shine a light on Channing Tatum’s fantastic turn for the incredibly tedious FOXCATCHER ) and some blatantly incorrect inclusions (Keira Knightley. Is it a requirement to be drunk while voting?). All in all the Oscars 2015 look to be a bit of a bust. For that reason, I am forgoing my usual speculation post. I might comment on the winners if it’s anything to do with Whiplash, LEVIATHAN or Mark Ruffalo. Outside of that, I’m staying mum. Although, as I previously posited on Facebook, if anyone needs me to hand out a special Oscar to the Academy – The Most Irrelevant Thing In Film Right Now – you know who to call. 

Next time on The Station Agent Speaks: I hopefully won’t be this grumpy and I’ll be back to my usual film gushy self.