My Ballot: Best Original or Song Score

It's that time of the year, when some of the best films of the year make it to my neck of the woods. Better late than never, I figured I'd resurrect In Widescreen in order to share what I think are some of the best films of 2009. I'll kick off my ballot with a nod to the composers (and other music gurus) who stirred the soul with the perfect aural accompaniment.

Nathan Johnson for The Brothers Bloom

The Brothers Johnson like to keep it in the family, but it works. Nathan's variations on a simple melody -- sometimes jovial and sometimes melancholy -- match perfectly with Rian's bittersweet odyssey of a film.

Marco Beltrami, Buck Sanders and John Bissell for The Hurt Locker

For once, the Academy got it right. It's easy to lose track of the musical soundscape underneath the human drama and intense visuals, but it plays an integral part of the film's suspense.

Marvin Hamlisch for The Informant!

Hamlisch's retro-tinged score serves as the glue that holds this uneven film together. Had Soderbergh been able to commit to the semi-ironic tone set by its music, the film might've been a more effective satire. Samples from this score seem to be impossible to find online.

Clint Mansell for Moon

The always-fantastic Mansell captures the emptiness of space, as well as the loneliness and paranoia of the film's protagonist. The score threatened to overwhelm the film at times, but it accurately portrays the mounting urgency of Sam Bell's situation.

Michael Giacchino for Up

Giacchino's work is always a thing of wonder. Not only does he hit all the right notes in this high-flying adventure, but he also reflects the time-burnished melancholy of Carl Fredricksen in the film's central theme, "Married Life."

Under the Parthenon

Add this to the list of reasons to vacation in Greece, right next to nude beaches, free-flowing booze, birthplace of democracy, and so on:

A new museum of glass and concrete opened today at the base of the Acropolis, under the gaze of the limestone and marble Parthenon. It contains 226,000 square feet of antiquities: the statues and sculptures and papyrus that constitute the legacy left by the Greek civilization.

Conspicuously absent are the Elgin Marbles that were spirited away by a pompous aristocrat/wannabe archaeologist to the British Museum. There they have remained, since the British have claimed Greece is too politically unstable and too economically ill-equipped to maintain the looted freezes and statues. The museum's curators hope the new $200 million facility will shoot holes in that argument for once and for all. Here's hoping the British Museum is willing to part with at least some of its pilfered treasures.

In the meantime, check out some beautiful photos of the new museum.

Reach into your pockets...

Although his guerrilla tactics make him the antithesis of a competent, objective journalist, Michael Moore tends to get a pass from liberals because he's a mouthpiece for the "right" side of most arguments. Sure, he harasses aging, sickly movie stars. And, yes, he picks some of the most ridiculous examples to illustrate his points. But, the War in Iraq was wrong. And guns do kill. And so on.

I can't say I'm eagerly awaiting this New Film by Michael Moore, the teaser for which just showed up on Yahoo Movies, but there's something to be said for his blunt force rhetoric. After dealing with the absurdity of having PR spokesmen deliver prepared comments full of ill-conceived talking points (on behalf of so-and-so senator and such-and-such company), I can understand and almost admire his firebrand approach to reporting.

Images from a Day of Reckoning

Here are just a few of the most affecting photos posted of the Iranian protests posted today by a photographer named mousavi1388 on Flickr. They display visually what a million words could not convey.

I've always thought that if a people want something enough, they will put everything on the line for it and the Iranian people clearly have. I don't know what the solution should or will be, but my heart and mind is with the people of Iran. Hopefully, they will receive the kind of government they demand. Hopefully, they will not have to shed any more blood for that. Hopefully, their sacrifice won't be ignored and their will won't be beaten down (as it has been in Burma/Myanmar).

Review: Angels & Demons

It's an angel! It's a demon! It's the camerlengo flying a CG helicopter!

Like the trite Dan Brown novel it was based upon, Angels & Demons has a lot of important-sounding things to say but very little in the way of real insight. It wants to sound profound. It wants to bridge the gap between science and religion. It wants to show that belief and logic are just two sides of the same coin. Most of all, it wants the audience to think that it wants all these things. The only thing Brown and director Ron Howard want are the up-front salaries and back-end deals.

Despite giving Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon a more conservative haircut and making the female lead—at least superficially—more intelligent and headstrong, Angels & Demons is actually more ridiculous than it's cinematic predecessor, The Da Vinci Code.

The CG visual effects, the true barometer of a good summer popcorn flick, are terrible. It seems the closer we come to virtual perfection, the more unreal it all seems. Call it the uncanny valley of digital imaging. St. Peter's Square looks good enough, populated with a mix of real human extras and digital fascimiles, but it doesn't have the gravity of the real thing. It looks a little distant, a little warped, like a meticulously constructed 1/16 scale model. The same can be said for all of the familiar landmarks that Tom Hanks didn't have permission to dash through, but does so anyway with a little movie magic.

Thematically, the film is a mess. And not a good, moral-ambiguity-explored-artfully mess. Early on, it presents a character who espouses the virtues of both science and religion. It is time, he says, for the two warring philosophies to unite. And then, after his breathless proselytizing, he calls science the "younger brother" of religion. Another priest is steadfastly against science while quietly campaigning for his chance to become the new pope. Which one is the ideal man of faith and which one is the villain who's scheming to bring down the Vatican? The answer isn't all that surprising.

The acting, on all fronts, is actually an improvement on The Da Vinci Code, where the performances were either wooden or overwrought with little middle ground. Ewan McGregor gets a lot of mileage out of the Camerlengo McKenna; right up until a last-minute plot twist robs his character of any realistically human motivation. Armin Mueller-Stahl succeeds as a cardinal whose self-interest is thoroughly realistic. I get the feeling that there's a lot of depth yet to be mined in Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer (Eric Bana's wife in Munich). The screenplay asks only that she say stupid things ("Isn't it cold in here?") smartly, but she brings more emotion to her scenes than are dictated by the vapid dialogue she's forced to recite. Tom Hanks is...Tom Hanks, and you can't really argue against that.

The Vatican was right to ignore this thoroughly unincendiary film. The audience will leave the multiplex with nothing more or less than what they came in with. Well, except 138 minutes they can never retrieve.

Rating: 3 / 10

Review: The Hangover

Although I spent the weekend away from the web (with limited wireless access, I didn't even try), I did catch three recent popcorn flicks at the movieplex—an admitted rarity for me. Here's some thoughts on the first of the three... Spoilers follow.

The Hangover is what it is. If you've seen the trailer, you know precisely what you're in for. Two frat guys and an oddball brother-in-law take their friend on a bachelor party in Sin City. Bad shit happens. None of the survivors of the bender can remember what they did when they wake up the next morning to a chicken, a tiger and no sign of the would-be groom. It's a story told at backyard barbecues and reenacted on sitcoms that you suspect has never actually happened.

The jokes come so fast and loose that the duds don't really factor. Ed Helms' Stu is a variation on Andy Bernard: cuckolded by his fiancee and repressed by his middle-class life. Bradley Cooper is a little too convincing as douchebag Phil. Zach Galifianakis (from the short-lived Comedy Central show "Dog Bites Man") is particularly well-suited to the role of an infantile pedophile, Alan, who doesn't know the difference between Ecstasy and Rufinol. Despite some truly disturbing "quirks," Galifianakis manages to make Alan seem harmless. He just wants to be one of the guys, after all.

There's never any real suspense in The Hangover. In a different film—not necessarily better, but more serious-minded—Alan's desperation for acceptance, his naivete and his hinted-at pedophilia would lead to something worse than short-term amnesia. Going in, the audience knows nothing truly dire will happen to these guys. Tiger maulings, run-ins with sociopathic drug dealers and heat stroke won't be fatal events here.

In that sense, The Hangover falls neatly into the fantasy Las Vegas of the ad campaigns. Bad things may happen to you there but, as a tourist, you can expect to leave relatively unscathed and with a really awesome story to tell your friends. The Hangover's conclusion falls right in line with the endings of Indecent Proposal, Vegas Vacation or last year's 21. As refreshing as it would be to see this familiar story get a perverse twist—imagine if the groom died after 2 days of exposure to the wild temperature fluctuations of the desert city—the film was never meant to be anything other than a funny retread of a familiar story.

On it's own relatively modest terms, The Hangover works. It's the funniest straight comedy I've seen in a long time. Watch it with a few of your bros and make sure to stay for the credits.

Rating: 7 / 10

Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying

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