Entries associated with the tag "Atonement":

Hey, glad you could make it! Let me take your coat. What are you drinking? Guinness? Well, how about Old Style? This is a free paper, you know.

Yeah, we realize the Oscars are hopelessly corrupt, but we needed an excuse for a party. We've all filled out ballots, and here's what we'd like to see win:

PAT GRAHAM  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages ("choice with a figurative gun to my head, though Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding's more to my liking"). Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises. Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There ("easiest of all the procrustean decisions here, with fewest reservations—though oddly enough I did have a couple on first viewing"). Best Animated Feature: Persepolis ("unfortunately"). Best Cinemathography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood ("though how much actually has to do with Elswit, since most of the important logistical choices—re where to position the camera and how scenes ought to reveal themselves through evolutionary long takes rather than editing-room montage—belong to the director rather than the cinematographer [or at least ought to], and seem open to debate"). Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum (really brilliant, in a frenetic, hyperactive way that, unfortunately, makes for a movie badly in need of an anchor"). Best Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, Across the Universe ("just to get the movie in there somewhere...what do I know about costumes?").

ANDREA GRONVALL  Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Foreign Language Film: Beaufort. Best Documentary Feature: Sicko. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum. Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti/Francesco Lo Sciavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

J.R. JONES  Best Picture: Atonement. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Atonement. Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her. Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton. Best Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Juliette Welfling, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer, Atonement. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

JOSHUA KATZMAN  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Brad Bird, Ratatouille. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Julie Christie: Away From Her. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Jay Cassidy, Into the Wild. Best Art Direction: Jack Fisk/Jim Erickson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Score: Marco Beltrami, 3:10 to Yuma.

REECE PENDLETON  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul "I Drink Your Milkshake" Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: "Sorry, but I just can't get past the fact that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood wasn't eligible."

Films of writers ... [w]hen they hand in their screenplay, the film is finished. The director, in their eyes, is the gentleman who puts frames around that screenplay. —Francois Truffaut, "A Certain Tendency of French Cinema" (1954)

Knowledgeable framing, complicated lighting, polished photography, now all the perennials of "the tradition of quality" ... —Truffaut again from same manifesto

So here we are more than half a century on, and that very invidious "tradition" Truffaut considered inimical to "authentic" film expression is pretty well our default condition—at least in terms of what year-end "best" movies, those Oscar-worthy candidates, are expected to dish up. As proof look no further than this award season's prime example of literary posh and attitude—Joe Wright's Atonement, as adapted by Andre Cayatte ... I mean, Christopher Hampton, from Ian McEwan's best-selling novel. All the conventional T of Q attributes are there, as well as the standard allotment of flared British nostrils, creamy, dreamy complexions, and impossibly lush estates (shot with cross-screen filters to emphasize the glow), all meant to impress on the viewer, through familiar status signals, the film's National Trust bona fides. Because "quality" necessarily has to look the part—always a Keira Knightley, never a Chloe Webb—and above all it is a look, only the finest of consumables, in choice of performers, in superluxe decor, etc. Like images from a "precious moments" appointment calendar, less actively cinematic than pictorially frozen in time, everything reduced to a formaldehyde sheen, to photographic posturing that whispers "eternity" in your ear. Does anyone really buy into this rubbing shoulders with the toffs, where quality equates to iconography of class and upper lips stiffened at critical dramatic points? Well yeah, I guess, since Atonement's on more 2007 best lists—including our new senior critic's at the Reader (it's OK, J.R., I've my own pack of poodles to defend)—than I'd ever plow through myself  ... though fortunately I won't have to, since somebody else already has for me.

But, but, I can hear the protests mounting, what about that Steadicam extravagance along the Dunkirk beach—isn't that cinematically ambitious enough for you? If only it connected to something else in the movie—just an arbitrary insertion now, apparently to placate the mise-en-scene curmudgeons in the audience (e.g., yours truly), more calculated than visionary in what it sets out to achieve. And it's been done before—and done better, specifically in Children of Men, where the tremulous, ambulating camera offers an actual way of looking rather than simply another muscular display of imperial technique. But yes, it's waaay impressive, that single malingering shot—I'll have to grant you that ...

So finally I've unloaded, though obviously I'm still ticked that 50-plus years of auteurist complaining have made so little a dent. Doomed to repeat ourselves endlessly, I guess, since we've gone over the same ground many times before. Something about Santayana and history comes to mind—guy would've made one helluva film critic ...