Best Picture – The Hurt Locker Best Director of a Motion Picture – Kathryn Bigelow Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – George Clooney Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Carey Mulligan Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Christoph Watlz Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role – Anna Kendrick Best Screenplay – Up In the Air Best Animated Film – Up Best Cinematography – The Hurt Locker, Barry Ackroyd Best Documentary Feature – The Cvve Best Foreign Language Film – Sin Nombre Best Original Score – Michael Giacchino, Up Best Original Song – "Petey's Song" from Fantastic Mr. Fox
It's certainly a sound plot device to make a biopic of a famous or historical personage in their prime, so to speak, and of course cast an impossibly good looking actor in their prime. Emily Blunt makes a ripe young Queen Victoria but I'll tell you right here and now that even as a lass the real royal was far more homely than Blunt could hope to approximate. The Young Victoria places itself in the midst of history and royal intrigue. Much is made of Victoria being surrounded by uneasy allies and political vultures, with the best performances coming from Miranda Richardson as the Duchess of Kent, Victoria's estranged mother, and Paul Bettany as Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's most trusted advisor but also fighting to keep his political control of Parliament. Of course there's other recognizable actors like Jim Broadbent and Rupert Friend just getting by on their looks. I'm no expert historian and there were assassination attempts on her life but in no way did Prince Albert ever block a bullet. That being said it works in the dramatic context of the film. If you go in for costume dramas with tony production values The Young Victoria does that trick. But as far as providing exceedingly moving cinema it's no Bright Star.
This newest version of the classic English detective gets many things right. Sherlock Holmes may be the most repeated book to screen adaptation in film history. The Basil Rathbone Holmes aside there are more than a handful of actors known for playing the master of deduction. "Once you've eliminated the impossible ..." was a signature line from the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle just like "Elementary my dear Watson" was a phrase taken fom a subsequent play (not written by Doyle) and popularized in the movies. There are so many versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles that you could take all day watching marathon style. The newest version, opening wide on Christmas Day, sumptuously adds to the movie canon whether through the dark hues lensed by Philippe Rousselot or the action beats handled so well by director Guy Richie, actually toned down a few notches from previous films. Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law as the titular consulting detective and Dr. Watson nail the physicality of the characters as originally conceived by Doyle. The plot adds moments from the second Homes story written, The Sign of Four, in the matter of some dialogue involving a watch as well as Watson getting engaged to Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). Other characters from the Conan canon include Irene Adler (an effective if underutilized Rachel McAdams), Inspector Lestrade (a proper Eddie Mastan) and only very briefly seen Dr. Moriarity. Who plays Moriarity in the inevitable sequel is up for grabs since we see his hands and cloak but not his face. The villain of the current Sherlock Holmes though is the non-Doyle Lord Blackwood (chilling perf by Mark Strong) as a madman lord who uses occult tricks and science to wow and confuse the public at large. This Sherlock Holmes ratchets the overall action and uses CGI to enhance a view of Victorian England complete with an under construction London Bridge. Script (there's four writers) constantly offers clever turns that reveal facets of Holmes and Watson even while advancing the story. More than once we observe Holmes thinking aloud about how he's going to achieve an objective. We see him visualize this in slowed and varied motion. Then we see the actual deed in real time. Not the least ironic is the advertising slogan "Holmes for the Holidays," which itself is a play on a Jodie Foster directed film (Home For the Holidays) that starred Downey as a prodigal son visiting his dysfunctional family.
Retro Interview: David Koepp and the cast of The Trigger Effect
A taunt electrical extension cord is pulled to its limits in a crowded city mall. One person leaps over it near the food court before another youth trips over it sending coffee onto the white clothes of the Trendy German Guy. So starts The Trigger Effect, in the midst of crowded urban sprawl, with the camera working its way up the escalator along the human food chain and into a movie theater. Everywhere there’s tension, simmering racial hatred, and even people talking during the film. Shortly the focus will shift from the multi-points-of-view to an intimate dramatic thriller that pits an everyday white-collar couple (Kyle MacLachlan and Elisabeth Shue as Matt and Annie) and their blue-collar friend (Dermot Mulroney as Joe) against a society in melt down. The Trigger Effect traces a weekend where all power and telephones go dead and the trio decides to head for safety in the mountains rather than remain in the rapidly escalating danger of suburban anarchy. “We take for granted our technology. We expect that it’ll always be there like air. While the fabric of society would not rip in half,” writer David Koepp notes of his directorial debut, “It would fray at the edges. The Trigger Effect is about one of those edges where the threads are coming lose.” Koepp has made a name writing for such films as Jurassic Park, The Paper and The Shadow. Early scripts included Apartment Zero and Bad Influence. Successive work on Toy Soldiers, Death Becomes Her, and Carlito’s Way paved the way for Koepp’s work with Brian De Palma on Mission: Impossible. Koepp acknowledges that the top copy scene was developed by De Palma and him over a matter of a couple of months of bouncing ideas of one anther, although on that script Koepp shares a co-credit for story and script. “The best stuff comes from the fewest number of people in the room,” Koepp passes on. The Trigger Effect was produced by Amblin for around $8-million, a high amount for an indie film and a low sum for a studio film. Koepp feels that Spielberg, for whom he just finished an adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Lost World, is one of the few filmmakers able to plan out a film without having to give in consensus. The Trigger Effect, which Koepp honed in 12 drafts, weaves themes involving racism in today’s society and what happens when a family feels they need to protect themselves with a gun. Each thematic part of the film paves way for the other. When one of the group is shot it leads to an encounter at an desolate farmhouse that mirrors a near confrontation in a movie theater from the film’s beginning. Koepp presents the case for why a person buys a gun and then shows the dangers of an armed society. “We live on top, on side, under each other, and we get on each other’s nerves. There’s a ripple effect that we have on everyone around us,” reminds Koepp to a group of journalists. Accompanying Koepp on the junket are the film’s leads. MacLachlan says that the film’s pacing is thriller-like in that “you don’t really know from moment to moment whether the guy’s going to be able to do what he needs to do.” Koepp observes about MacLachlan: “There’s a wonderful all-American guy thing on the outside, but you’re suspect of him, there appears to be something swirling underneath.” Starting with Trigger Effect, and then in the upcoming One Night Stand from Mike Figgis, MacLachlan plays characters that he sums up as “emotional men who have a chance to experience and get fucked with by real life. Here’s a character that can start from a place of some naiveté, some innocence. You get to a place where you make the audience believe that you have been tested,” MacLachlan adds. When the power failure has not been resolved, nor phones restored, Joe reports rumors of looting and murder. Inspired to get a gun, despite Annie’s protest, Matt and Joe barter Matt’s $600 wristwatch for a $95 pump shotgun. Joe feel the desire to have what Matt has. Polaroid pictures of Matt and Annie on a cabinet door end up in his wallet. At one point Joe can be heard aping the line from a Talking Heads song, “This is not my beautiful wife.” Dermot Mulroney notes, “Levels of education, or personal achievement, mistrust between black and white that’s inexplicable, but very realistic,” are issues he feels delicately addressed by The Trigger Effect. Even though Matt buys the gun, he has Joe buy it for him explaining that it comes more natural for Joe since he works closer to that strata of society. This leads to deeper resentment between the two men. At one point, new-gun owner Matt points the shotgun at Joe and squeezes the trigger. “We had an interesting debate on that on the set,” says Koepp about the decision to shoot the scene where Matt aims at Joe.. “Two for, two against; it’s the kind of passive aggressive thing his character would do. A lot or resentment, envy of Joe’s natural man life style.” Annie drifts back and forth in feelings for the two as if trying to reclaim her invented dangerous past. “A woman who has a baby, who lives in suburbia, is married; is just as complex, and has just as many desires, needs and pain, as somebody who lives on the street,” says Shue. The film graphically gets bare, going from crowded suburbia to flat, lonely highway with a nuclear power plant in the distant landscape. (Production used the inactive Rancho Seco nuke plant near Sacramento.) Koepp grinds out tension by having the character’s deal with every pin drop like it’s an unknown entity and focusing on their repressed resentments towards each other. In this way The Trigger Effect feels like a 90-minute Twilight Zone, with at least one ref to The Monsters are Due on Maple Street. In the manner in which that televised episode examined The Red Scare, Trigger Effect does a take on technological dependence. Koepp maintains that the writer-director relation he’s shared with Spielberg and De Palma as a for hire writer is lost to a more idiosyncratic vision for the writer/helmer. “There’s less imput, coming from one brain,” says Koepp. “Making all those decisions by yourself can be a drag, you end up having long shouting matches with yourself.
