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I really packed in my evening last night, first bussing from work to the library to pick up a DVD copy of the 1997 film
Wag the Dog, which Laney and I have been talking about watching since before the last time she
left for travels over the winter. This was easily the third time I've had it on hold at the library, the previous times running past the deadline for me to pick it up because Laney was not around. Now, though, at her request on Saturday, I even have the Braeburn theater reserved for watching it on Sunday, February 3. Laney said she wanted to get back into regular movie-watches, not just at my place, but back down in the theater again.
We've even made plans for to-be-dated double features, the first of which being for two Scarlett Johansson films from the same year (2013):
Under the Skin and
Her. Another double feature idea is two of my favorite movies from 2002,
The Hours and
Far from Heaven. I also decided she needs to see the 2014 Jake Gyllenhaal movie
Nightcrawler; I should start brainstorming on what might make a good double feature with that.
Anyway, the bus seemed to really take its time getting to the library, even though I was on a Rapid Ride D bus. I then had to wait a few minutes to catch a #2 up the hill, which also seemed to take a while. It must have been at least 5:20 before I actually got home.
Shobhit had a very tasty mix of fried onions, bell peppers, and paneer ready to eat with baked frozen parathas, so I sat and ate that with him, before heading to the bedroom to finish up my annual
Oscar nominations analysys.
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That took me roughly two hours to finish—thanks in large part to my having gotten the lists themselves written up earlier in the day, leaving me only the work of finding the review links, and adding html formatting, and of course the added comments themselves.
It's too bad I didn't wait to write it until tonight instead. The German film
All Quiet on the Western Front may have been the most-nominated film ever that I had not seen by the time nominations came out; it tied for second-most nominations, at 9. Granted, none of them were for major awards, with the exception of Best Picture, but still, nine nominations is a lot. At least I was still able to acknowledge in my post that this film is the frontrunner in the Cinematography category, and after seeing it, I think I might agree it deserves the award. The film is gorgeously shot, even if it's a long string of war horrors that it depicts. There's a sequence with approaching tanks that is particularly stunning.
Which is to say: the next thing I did last night, in spite of it being two and a half hours long and starting at 8:00, was watch
All Quiet on the Western Front on Netflix. It's often difficult to predict what Shobhit will be into and what he won't be, but in retrospect I guess it's registering to me literally as I write this that he has a tendency to lock in with war epics. I'm remembering now when we watched
Lawrence of Arabia some years ago, and he was rapt the entire time.
All Quiet on the Western Front, though, is bleak—and pointedly so, maybe the most truly effective "anti-war movie" out there. The same was regarded of both the 1930 film (which won Best Picture and Best Director) as well as the 1929 German novel on which it was based. I actually saw the 1930 film once, in high school; I have only the vaguest recollection of it. What I really like about this current adaptation is that, unlike previous adaptations (both the 1930 motion picture and a 1979 CBS TV movie), this one is actually a German production, making it a much more personal project.
Anyway, Shobhit fully locked in with this movie from start to finish as well, often mentioning relevant facts about certain dates and events of World War I (I had forgotten that the end of World War I, Armistice Day, November 11, is how we got Veterans Day in the United States). Also, more than once, he drew parallels between this film and what Russia is currently doing in Ukraine: forcing their people to fight a protracted battle it has long since been clear they have no hope of winning. In the scene when the tanks appear, they are something the German troops have never seen before, and Shobhit noted they were resources provided to the French by the UK and the US: the Germans were outnumbered and out-resourced, much the same way Ukraine is being supplied with resources right now. Shobhit noted that, "except for nuclear bombs," Russia is really running out of options to win their war with Ukraine. Of course, there were no nuclear warheads in World War I, which makes the situation in Ukraine a lot more unsettling for the rest of the world.
There was a brief moment when Shobhit commented on this film being from the point of view of the Germans, making the French and British "evil." I clarified that this movie isn't making anyone evil, really: it's quite pointedly anti-war, period, that clearly being a big reason the original novel was later among the books burned by the Nazis.
What truly surprised me, though, was Shobhit's declaration that if he were voting in the Academy, he'd vote for this movie for Best Picture. Now, it should be noted that among the ten Best Picture nominees, Shobhit has yet only seen six of them—although to be fair, I can already tell you that among the other four, he'd never choose any of those as Best Picture either (although I would:
Tár). He even posited more than once that
All Quiet on the Western Front might actually
win Best Picture, but there's really
no chance in hell of that happening. Of course, we’ve all been very wrong about that before, and the 11 nominations for
Everything Everywhere All at Once notwithstanding, these nine nominations for
All Quiet on the Western Front kind of came out of nowhere, indicating a previously unknown, broad love for the film. And hell,
CODA actually won Best Picture last year, so who the fuck knows? I still think
Everything Everywhere All at Once is going to get it.
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[posted 12:27 pm]
