Rejecting Ziad Doueiri’s The Attack

News of Lebanon’s refusal to submit Ziad Doueiri’s The Attack, a movie I had originally told you about here, to the Oscars is making the rounds. You can check all the details here (link).

If the movie had been banned from being shown in theaters here, the discussion would be different entirely. But is the movie really representative enough of Lebanon to be our submission for the Oscars? And is this refusal enough for us to call the committee responsible for such dealings ignorant and with a backward mentality?

I think not.

The movie features the following:

A story by an Algerian author.
No Lebanese crew.
Israeli and Palestinian actors.
Location of shooting is Israel.
Lebanese director with an American passport.

Would I want to see the movie? Definitely. Do I want it to represent Lebanon at the Academy Awards? Let’s just say I’m on the fence regarding this.

This isn’t exactly West Beirut for us to cry wolf for it not being submitted. If Ziad Doueiri truly wanted his movie to be Lebanon’s official submission to the 85th Academy Awards (my predictions – to lighten the mood), he could have at least made an effort to make the movie more Lebanese by maybe shooting it over here and not in Israel and having a Lebanese actor or actress play a role in it, despite both elements not being a criteria required for Academy Award approval.

As it stands, the only thing Lebanese about The Attack is the director who wouldn’t have been able to make this movie if he had actually employed his Lebanese aspect from a bureaucratic point of view. The director says his choices regarding the movie’s components are logical.

Well, I say the committee’s decision is entirely logical as well. Not everything is supposed to be turned into a national matter of censorship.

2013 Oscar Predictions

The 85th Academy Awards are held tonight so I figured I’d throw in my predictions as to who will win and who should win some major categories. It’s not Oscar night without a few predictions to go wrong, am I right?

I’m glad this year’s Oscars fall on the unpredictable side – there’s no absolute frontrunner in most of the categories so the night should be interesting to say the least.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

Who Will Win: Argo
Who Should Win: Amour

Amour (review) is, hands-down, the best movie of the year. It won’t win because of the way the Oscars are run. So we are left with the movie that has been picking up best picture awards here and there: Argo (review). I don’t get it really. There are two other movies on that list that I believe are more deserving (Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook) but you cannot underestimate momentum.

Who Will Win: Steven Spielberg
Who Should Win: Michael Haneke

Out of all the nominated directors in this category, Haneke managed to turn a simple story of old age into a spellbinding movie that captured everyone’s heart and mind. With little special effects, a Parisian apartment, his camera and two great leads, Haneke created Amour. But seeing as his nomination was a surprise by itself, expecting him to win what he deserves is far-fetched. So Academy Award-darling Spielberg with what is arguably his best movie in years will take it.

Who Will Win: Daniel Day Lewis
Who Should Win: Daniel Day Lewis

I don’t believe this needs any explanation. What a brilliant performance.

Who Will Win: Emmanuelle Riva
Who Should Win: Emmanuelle Riva

Next to the Best Picture race, this will be the night’s most interesting. What started out as a two-horse race with Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence battling it out for coveted awards soon turned into a three-way race as veteran actress Emmanuelle Riva took the BAFTA and later on the French César. At an age of 85, many voters will probably go for Riva because it’s now or never for her. Chastain and Lawrence will get their shot one day. The mere fact that Emmanuelle Riva is present on that list means there are enough Academy members who want her. It’s also her birthday today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMANUELLE!

Who Will Win: Tommy Lee Jones
Who Should Win: Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones gave what is, in my opinion, the best performance out of the bunch. Pre-Oscar awards have been spread around this bunch of nominees in a balanced way so no clear frontrunner has emerged but I think Lincoln‘s (review) momentum will help Jones take another Oscar. Every single nominee in this list has won before.

Who Will Win: Anne Hathaway
Who Should Win: Anne Hathaway

There’s no denying Hathaway deserves this. She owned the entire Les Misérables (review) with her chilling performance of “I Dreamed A Dream.” The movie starts dying when her character dies. No one else in this category is as deserving and she has basically won every single pre-Oscar award there is.

Who Will Win: Quentin Tarantino
Who Should Win: Michael Haneke

There’s something understated about turning a simple story into a work of art, which is what Haneke did with his story in Amour. But unfortunately, that’s not the kind that usually triumphs. I expect Tarantino to come out triumphant for Django Unchained (review).

Who Will Win: Argo
Who Should Win: Silver Linings Playbook

Argo has the momentum. Silver Linings Playbook (review) has the superior quality and the charm. Momentum wins.

Who Will Win: Frankenweenie

Who Should Win: Wreck-It Ralph

I found Wreck-It Ralph to be one of the most charming – and best – movies of the year. It is what I expect from an animated movie to be. Frankenweenie, on the other hand, is what plays on the Academy’s strings: homage to classics, daring technique, etc. It’s obvious who’d win in such a match-up.

Who Will Win: Adele
Who Should Win: Adele

I can’t wait to hear her acceptance speech.

Who Will Win: Amour
Who Should Win: Amour

The fact that it’s nominated for best picture, best actress, best director and best original screenplay is hint enough.

Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections) [2013] – Movie Review

Never since Nadine Labaki’s first movie Caramel have we had a decent Lebanese movie that doesn’t dwell on the Lebanese Civil War and Lebanon’s religious diversity. Some moviemakers tried to branch out and portray other aspects of society but their handling of the issue was either too shallow, too pretentious or downright silly. Until this came along.

Ossit Sawani – its English title being Blind Intersection – is not a movie about religion or the civil war. Thank God for that. It is the cross examination of the lives of three main people in Beirut as they go about key moments of their lives. Nour is an engineering student who is about to graduate when she loses both her parents in a car accident. She is left to take care of her elderly grandma with no financial means to do so. Karim is a young schoolboy who is the victim of maternal abuse and repeated child molestation as his body is sold for the next door grocer. India is a well-off western-mentality woman trying to conceive while attempting to give back to her community by teaching needy students at one of Lebanon’s government-run schools.

The movie is the story of how the lives of these characters intersect without them realizing – how the actions of one affect the other and shape their lives indefinitely. It is not a plot device that you haven’t seen before but it is the first time it’s used in a Lebanese movie. The scenes are jumbled and do not fall in chronological order. In a way, each character’s story has its own timeframe and you need to situate yourself accordingly in order to understand what’s happening.

Some of the scenes were a little dragged out or unnecessary. Other scenes felt out of the place but once you get into the mindset of what the movie is trying to say, it flows rather smoothly despite a few hiccups after an admittedly strong opening sequence with Nour going to the hospital where she finds out both her parents had passed away.

In a way, Ossit Sawani may not feel like a Lebanese movie at all because of what we have come to associate Lebanese movies with. But it is one. The city is Beirut. The dialect is Lebanese (I still don’t get why they feel like they need to give us English subtitles). The people are relatable. From a child trying to block out the sound of his mother having sex in the next room to shower sex scenes to subtle portrayal of the act of child molestation, Ossit Sawani is quite daring for what we have come to assume Lebanese movies are limited for. The extent that this movie goes to with regards to sex is proof enough that other movies such as Beirut Hotel were not banned because of nudity but because of their underlying political message.

Ossit Sawani is enjoyable enough for it to be worth the admission price but it eventually falls off very flat as the stories never seem to find a way to be resolved, open-endedness being another plot device employed. While that worked in Nadine Labaki’s Caramel as you felt the story arcs had sufficient material to feel substantial enough, the three stories in Ossit Sawani never feel complete or resolved, leaving you feeling let down as the credits start rolling.

Is it the Lebanese movie to bring the masses to the cinema? I doubt. At the end of the day, it attempts to be a gut-wrenching portrayal of modern Lebanese society woes but comes short. It tries to infuse a little humor here and there with some characters but the story is too grim to have that work as well. Ossit Sawani could have been much more than it turned out to be. However, it is a good sign that some Lebanese filmmakers have decided to branch out from the mold and actually do a decent job at it. Give Ossit Sawani a chance – you might be positively surprised.

3/5

Beautiful Creatures [2013] – Movie Review

You know things are odd when you’ve read the book upon which a movie is based and the movie still manages to surprise you. I don’t mean this in a good way.

Having nothing better to do a few weeks back, and knowing this would be released, I decided to read the novel Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the first in the Caster series. I thought the book was decent enough but figured the movie would be much better as the content is made to be translated to the big screen.

To say I was mistaken would be an understatement and I’m not sure if it’s only because the movie has absolutely nothing to do with the book, except for about 20 minutes which are spread out here and there over a two hour running time.

Lena Duchannes is a newcomer to the town of Gatlin, in the deep American South. She lives in Ravenwood manor, a place that the townspeople don’t look favorably upon nor upon its inhabitant, a man they hadn’t seen in years. When you’re that deep in the Bible Belt, the only thing people accept is Jesus and Republicans. If you deviate from that, then you’re the devil. Trying to fit in high school is some tough business for Lena who finds comfort in Ethan Wate, a boy whom she intrigues. He discovers that Lena is a caster (a fancy word for witch) and that female casters in her family are claimed to either the dark of the light when they turn 16 – and Lena doesn’t have much time left until her birthday.

The movie features an interesting cast that comprises of Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson and Viola Davis. Frankly, I have no idea what they were thinking in signing up to this. Not only is Beautiful Creatures not entertaining, it is an atrocity of monstrous proportions. Nothing in the movie works. The three aforementioned actors come off as amateurs who had never done a movie before. The special effects are cheap. The few moments of snarky dialogue at the beginning are nowhere near enough to make you look favorably at the hours that followed.

If you have read and liked the book, steer clear from this. If you have nothing to do during two hours of your life, steer clear from this. My guess is Beautiful Creatures did such a bad job at turning the book upon which it’s based into a movie that the upcoming parts in the series will never see the light of the day. Good.

1/10

Warm Bodies [2013] – Movie Review

Vampires had their movies. Witches had their movies. Warm Bodies is the attempt to get zombies not to feel left out. It is a post apocalyptic world, as usual, and most of the Earth’s population of humans has died and risen again as zombies. The exact mechanism of this is never fully illustrated but you get the picture: pale faced, veined people roam around, searching for their next victim with a beating heart to eat.

R (Nicholas Hoult) is one of those zombies – but with a twist. He calls himself weird. And compared to his fellow undead, he might as well be. He likes to collect items that humans find of value. He often wonders about his days pre-transformation and is absolutely smitten by Julie (Theresa Palmer), a human whom he encounters on one of his feeding trips. R takes Julie back to his zombie camp and takes care of her – his relationship with Julie gets his heart to beat again and commences a transformation that could prove pivotal to changing the course of things.

You’re not watching Warm Bodies for the acting. You’re not watching it for the story, which is comical at times. You’re watching it because it is a movie that entertains you for about 90 minutes and that’s pretty much it. There’s nothing badass about this. The zombies are nowhere near scary – even the bad kind which eventually become the movie’s main villains. The sense of threat that the humans are supposedly always faced with is never communicated. The movie’s main point is to get the love story between its zombie and human main characters across and the two lead’s chemistry definitely helps with this.

Warm Bodies‘ main forte is that it is a refreshing take on the genre it plays in. It has a sufficient dose of charm to keep you going through the short running time and enough funny moments to make it memorable. I am not entirely sure how fans of the book upon which this is based will react but if you have nothing better to do and decide to grab a movie at your local theatre, odds are you won’t find something much better currently playing.

6/10

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Tag Archives: movies

Rejecting Ziad Doueiri’s The Attack

2013 Oscar Predictions

Ossit Sawani (Blind Intersections) [2013] – Movie Review

Beautiful Creatures [2013] – Movie Review

Warm Bodies [2013] – Movie Review

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: