Oscar 2012: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair

I like—not just snarkily notice from on high but genuinely like—how everyone hates the Oscars in their own ways. Nobody can agree on what the good choices were, but we all know they were few. Me, I'm only rooting for The Tree of Life and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I got enough out of Hugo and Midnight in Paris to half-heartedly care about their fortunes, and I’m okay with The Descendants if hardly a fan. But Margin Call? Moneyball? Falderal, at least to me, but there are plenty of smart cinephiles for whom those are the bright spots.

The American Way: The Middle & Product Placement

Someday I’d like to understand why product placement is such a dealbreaker for so many television viewers. Are they just so worried about the artistic integrity of a medium supported by commercials that any appearance of brand-names—you know, like the ones we throw around in real life—automatically sullies what could be a good, pure auteurist vision? I doubt it, so let’s move to the terra firma of Linda Holmes’ take on "Hecking it Up," this week’s episode of The Middle for NPR’s Monkey See blog.

The Lion King Vertigoed

As rape scenes go, I find this one pretty easy to watch. For Press Play's contest to place Bernard Herrmann's "Scene D'Amour" from the Vertigo score over other film scenes a la The Artist, the first thing that came to mind was the opening of The Lion King. So I started the film and the song at the same time and could't believe the structural resonances. Thankfully, it's not a perfect overlap, but the video emphasizes certain parts of the score and vice versa in a playful give-and-take. The opening watercolors take on a concerned tone, the sun reflection and the rack focus become eerie omens, and the whole ritual on Pride Rock recalls Marie Antoinette, weighted with national burden, more than carefree baby Simba. I tried it again timing the big climax of the track with the end of the clip so that they fade out together, but it wasn't nearly as convincing.

My Desert Island Movies

I started this because I thought it would be fun, and it was, before it got existential. Am I alone for the rest of my life here? What am I going to want on a desert island? Pure escapist pleasure or challenging stuff to keep my mind sharp? Would tragedy have any use? Would I want to remember romance or would it be too painful? Wouldn’t nostalgia be that much worse alone forever? Should I find the ten films with the most survival potential? Or the ten longest films to provide the most distraction? Maybe the ten that would inspire me most to achieve whatever I could achieve on this island? So I guess that’s my state of mind, right now, but it can be partly blamed on a cold, partly blamed on cold medicine, and the rest chalked up to midnight.