Exit Through the Gift Shop

For most, the name Banksy stirs up images of whimsical rebellion.  For those unfamiliar with his work, he is a street artist, bringing provocative images into the public eye like no other.  In 2010, the famous and unidentified Banksy became a rather ingenious filmmaker, turning this strange little documentary on its head that shows us what the art world has become.  

First, we have to meet Theirry.  He is a Frenchman living in Los Angeles who lives with a video camera in his hand.  He constantly films everything around him, from playing with his kids at home, walking down the street, even flushing a toilet.  It seems he has a compulsive need to record the world around him with no real focus.  

Until he happens upon a street artist.  He finds Space Invader preparing his work one night and begins following him, recording as he assists in helping him put up his art in the middle of the night.  Theirry meets more street artists and becomes wrapped up in their world, out many nights, recording and helping them put their work up.  Eventually, Theirry meets Banksy and helps him pull off a stunt in Disneyland.  Thanks to Theirry, who hid the evidence and lied to the Disney-police, Banksy gets away and fully trusts Theirry.

***Spoiler Alert***  From here on, I strongly suggest you see the film before reading on.  

So when Theirry decides to become an artist himself, Banksy and other street artists Theirry has befriended are nothing but supportive.  However, Theirry’s new persona, Mister Brainwash, just seems to be a rip-off of everything he has seen and learned from other artist.  Most of his work takes an iconic piece of art from another era and changes one element.  Like turning Warhol’s Campbell’s soup into a spray paint can, or throwing American Gothic through a photoshop filter where it is only vertical lines.  His work is a mess, with no direction and seems to lean on the genius of other, more worthy artists.   With all the hype that went into opening his gallery, the quality of his work makes no difference and he makes over a million dollars.  

What does this say about today’s art world?  Is there more integrity in anonymously spraying your unique mark across the world or only making things like everyone else for money?  I think Bansky describes the dilemma best saying, “Most artists take years to develop their style, Thierry seemed to miss out on all those bits.”  And it’s those bits that create an artist, not just a man mimicking others.

What makes this film a great documentary is the narrative flow and the inside look we get at the world of a street artist.  Some of the most intriguing moments in the film are watching Invader, Fairey, Borf and others trying to discretely display their art.  Sometimes they are on dangerous rooftops in the dead of night, or in the middle of day just trying not to attract attention.  Watching Fairey get some of his work printed at Kinkos made me wonder if the employees there knew exactly who he was and what he was doing.  

In the end, the whole film becomes a wonderful look at the stories and work behind street art and one big joke on Theirry.  When it first came out, many thought the film was a hoax.  I feel that it is genuine, genius and a perfectly smart-ass way for Banksy to lift a big middle finger to his Frankenstein monster, Mister Brainwash.

“Warhol repeated iconic images until they became meaningless, but there was still something iconic about them.  Thierry really makes them meaningless.”

A Cat in Paris

A Cat in Paris (or Une Vie de Chat in its original French) is a hand-drawn gem of modern animation.  Created by the French animation studio, Folimage, the film keeps to beautiful 2D animation and tells a rich story in a very short amount of time.  It was nominated for best animated feature in 2011 and creates a just enough danger and mystery without making the film too scary for children.

The film has a very lean plot that may not grab the youngest viewers.  In Paris, Zoe has a cat who wanders off every night.  She and her mother don’t know that he helps a thief, Nico, a man who recently has been stealing art and jewels.  At home, Zoe is mostly taken care of by the housekeeper, while her mother works hard as a detective.  Recently, Zoe’s father was killed by a gangster, Victor Costa, and her mother desperately wants to bring justice to him.  When Zoe decides to follow her cat on his nightly journey, she stumbles into Costa’s latest plot and needs to be rescued by her cat and his new friend.

In just over an hour, the film wastes no time packing all this action and creating memorable scenes, characters and very beautiful animation.  Just like in Zoe’s life, there isn’t much needless fluff.  Conversations with her mother are short and to the point.  Costa and his men don’t play around, if they did they might not have seemed so dangerous.  And there is no time for songs like in many animated films, here it would detract from the beautiful simplicity of the film.

While it’s animation can seem rather simplistic, it also has a highly artistic feel and brings unexpected beauty, especially in the climax.  With a film set in Paris, it’s impossible not to think of artists to compare this style of animation to.  The credits especially reminded me of Saul Bass’ work in film and the clean, geometric style reminds me of many modern artists with a dash of Picasso.  And when the action takes us to the rooftops of Paris and Notre Dame, the animation keeps up wonderfully, breathing new life into the familiar scenes.

Though A Cat in Paris may not become a quick favorite for most children, it’s worth a watch and suitable for the whole family (and in English on Netflix Instant).  Who knows, with the artistic style, the slightly noir story and Hitchcock influences, the film could bring some be a new and wonderful influence in a child’s film vocabulary.  This didn’t beat Cars 2 out of the best animated film Oscar nomination for nothing.

“It’s the daughter, she heard everything!”

Oscar Predictions

We are now entering the final hours of Oscar season and I haven’t made an official post spelling out my predictions for tomorrow that we come to expect from every film blogger across the world.  Oh me, oh my!  I’ve been writing about the Oscars all year.  I eat, sleep, breathe and roll around in this shit every day.  Therefore, I can claim being an official expert at the amateur level.  The Academy is going to do exactly what I say here.  Just wait for that last minute envelope switch for Best Picture.  They’re reading, I can feel their judging eyes.  Anyway, in case you’re wondering, here are my predictions in some main categories:

Best Actor:
While I haven’t seen Biutiful and have a great respect for Javier Bardem’s work, I have to pick Colin Firth.  His performance was more than a stuttering, it was bringing human flaw to a king with beauty.

Best Actress:
Ain’t no one got nothin’ on Natalie Portman.  She has been picking up awards for this role all season, made ballet a beautiful nightmare and has a baby on the way because of this film.  There will be no end to my ranting if she doesn’t win.

Supporting Actor:
Hands down Christian Bale.  I now want to see him go straight from Batman voice into Dicky on crack.  It’s night and day, that range is powerful.

Supporting Actress:
Here’s where it gets tricky.  I want to say Hailee Steinfeld, but realize that the Oscars like to award the one thing she lacks: age.  Helena Bonham Carter makes a wonderful queen and it’s so nice to see her out of a Burton film.  But if I were betting, I’d go with Melissa Leo.  There’s a lot of heart and guts she puts into that role and it shows.

Best Director:
While David Fincher may be well overdue, The Social Network is not the best I’ve seen from him, nothing beats Fight Club.  I would love to see Darren Aronofsky awarded for his beautiful direction of Black Swan, but I feel the political strings pulling already.  Tom Hooper is going to win for The King’s Speech.

Original Screenplay:
I’m going to just say it, Inception was plotted out perfectly.  You take something that sounds confusing when anyone else talks about it and it makes perfect sense on film, that’s a winner.

Adapted Screenplay:
I want to say 127 Hours, because really, let’s see you make five days stuck in one spot interesting for two hours.  But I feel True Grit sneaking ahead here.  I think that proper dialogue will go far.

Cinematography:
Please let this one go to Black Swan!  The way the camera moves with the dancers, the way it spins and that club scene visually blows The Social Networks club scene away.  I know this isn’t the Academy’s usual taste, they’re more likely to go for True Grit’s western landscapes and rocks, but come on.  Please?

Art Direction:
Forgive me, but I want to say Alice in Wonderland, but I know the Academy doesn’t care for Tim Burton’s creepy time anymore.  Somehow, I feel those oddly speckled walls in The King’s Speech holding their merit.

Sound Mixing:
Inception rattled my fish tank.  I want to see an Oscar awarded for that.

Sound Editing:
Honestly, between 127 Hours, Black Swan and The Fighter, who had the best broken body parts sound effects?  When that arm broke 127 Hours, I nearly pissed my pants.  Award that.

Original Score:
Everytime I hear that awards music for The Social Network I feel sleepy, but there was something about The King’s Speech’s music that I just loved.

Animated Feature:
Uh, duh, who is also competing for Best Picture here?  Toy Story 3.  Sadly, I see it as their only award for the night.

And…I made you scroll all the way to the bottom because you know there is only one award that defines Oscar night. Best Picture:

Honestly…I don’t know.  From what I’ve been learning through this extensive blog is that this category is so unpredictable and what wins isn’t necessarily what we will all love and remember thirty years from now.  I feel like the front runners are The King’s Speech, The Social Network and Black Swan.  The Academy has awarded both inspiring films and films that show the times in recent years.  My honest guess: you’ll find The King’s Speech crowned Best Picture tomorrow night.

To view all my reviews of the current Best Picture nominees, click under the 2010 category.  And have a happy Oscar night.

 

Black Swan

Back in January, I was that twenty-something woman seeing Black Swan alone.  I never carry a purse, that day I had on a superhero t-shirt and my grey converse shoes.  The eight other people in the theater, all women, may have made some assumptions, especially if they knew some of the gory details of the plot already.  Two rows ahead of me were four women approaching their golden years.  Two of them giggled to each other at Nina’s first attempt to…follow her director’s advice.  Later, during Nina’s more intense bedroom experience, those four silhouettes didn’t dare move a muscle.  After the credits had cut off and the lights had turned on, one of them seemed startled, noticing me as I was putting on my jacket.  I guess I can be a movie theater ninja.  Politely acknowledging, we asked each other’s opinions on the film.  All five of us agreed that it was daring, creepy, beautiful and that Natalie Portman was going to win an Oscar.

Nina (Portman) is a young, talented ballerina in a New York dance company who has just been selected for the lead in Swan Lake.  It’s the role of a lifetime and with the honor comes the pressure to embody both innocence and sensuality.

Her director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), knows the Black Swan half of the ballet will be a challenge for Nina, she is already a perfect fit for the White Swan.  From his unprofessional advances he senses a dark side deep within that Nina must channel to effectively dance the Black Swan. Nina’s mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), is an ex ballerina who treats her grown daughter like a child.  There is a pressure in her home life for Nina to preserve her innocent, childlike self.  Her room (with no lock) looks like it was decorated by a nanny for an eight year old.  We can sense that Nina fears her mother and hates the rule she poses over her life, yet she remains powerless.

When Nina believes that a new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), is trying to steal her role, the pressure starts to drive Nina mad.  Her mind manifests disturbing images and we are not always sure what is real and what is only in Nina’s mind.  The rivalry turns into a twisted friendship that transforms Nina and helps her find her inner Black Swan.

Natalie Portman gives one of the best performances we have seen from any actor in years.  First off, there’s the physical stress of ballet, which she does with natural poise and beautiful grace.  Then there’s the meek and shy side of Nina that is being pulled between seeking her mother’s approval and being a perfect ballet dancer.  Portman portrays these characteristics of Nina masterfully.  Those weak smiles, the shy eyes, the way she looks so fragile says more than cheap dialogue ever could.  Finally there is the transformation, the dark side that Nina lets free.  To bring such a great contrast of character within the same character is not easily done, but Portman makes it feel like a natural unleashing without losing anything distinctly Nina within the performance.

When recommending Black Swan to others, I realize that some more conservative viewers have a comfort threshold about sexuality that this film ventures far beyond.  Thing is, while these scenes are quite daring, they are also essential fuel in making this film a startling, creepy psychological thriller.  This is not your typical Hollywood fantasy for teenage boys, but a much darker idea deeply rooted in feminism and the pressures young women can face.  The issues here are not too far fetched, our society loves to build young women up, give them the unreasonable expectation to be both pure and passionate, then watch them crash and burn the under pressure.

I could gush for hours about Black Swan.  The movie full of ballet, beauty, blood, madness all rolled into strong feminist ideas was amazing.  It’s the only film in my adult life that made me instinctively cover my eyes at a few moments.  It gave me that extremely creepy feeling of paranoia that I only get after watching Psycho alone in the dark.  I checked the trunk of my car before I left the theater parking lot, came home and poured myself a strong drink.  I love it when a movie does these things to me.

“I just want to be perfect.”

If The Academy is looking to award the most daring and artful film, the Oscar for Best Picture will go to Black Swan.

True Grit

When Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) loses her father to a senseless gunfight, she steps up to take care of the arrangements for his body and to take vengeance on his murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin).  This girl is only fourteen, but with her father gone, she assumes the role as man of the house, and with damn true grit.  She can handle herself, sleeping in the same room as the corpses at the undertaker, and she can handle the men who underestimate her, bargaining like a pro until she gets what she deserves.  To track down Chaney, Mattie hires one-eyed Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), who is reputed to be the toughest U.S. Marshall around.  With his drinking and unruly behavior, Rooster wants to do the job alone, but stubborn Mattie insists on going with him out to the wild Indian territory.  Along the way, Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) joins the hunt for Chaney and the three are tested to the edge of their grit.

Something I really noticed was the use of proper dialogue throughout the film.  It can be jarring at first, but feels like a Coen trademark.  Many times they have different dialects or speech patterns in their films (the strong Minnesota accent in Fargo, southern dialects in Oh Brother Where Art Thou?).  As I sat in the theater, I contemplated this idea of speech patterns, but realized that this proper speech was just making me listen more intently to the dialogue.  Perhaps that’s the purpose behind the types of speech, to perk our ears up.  That is so clever and simple.

I have yet to see the original True Grit, but according to my husband’s grandfather, this 2.0 version is much better.  He left the theater just beaming about the film, saying it was the best movie he had seen all year.  I’ve also heard from him and other sources that Bridges’ Rooster and Steinfeld’s Mattie are not taken at all from John Wayne or Kim Darby, but made their own darker characters closer to the book.  I seriously doubt Bridges would be competing for Best Actor right now if he had let a Wayne impression slip in occasionally.

The western has felt like a by-gone genera that was made for us to watch as little kids with our grandparents, but this seems to be the first great western for the twenty-first century.  The Coen brothers have resurrected the western from its old cowboys and Indians days into a darker, meatier film that can stand among today’s topics.  With some Coen deadpan laughs, classic western cinematography, a little blood and make little Mattie the toughest of the grit trio, you have got an amazing film.  Besides, who would have imagined sticking bad-ass Rooster Cogburn next to geeky Zuckerberg?

“If you would like to sleep in a coffin, it would be all right.”

If The Academy is looking to award the best resurrection of a by-gone genera, the Oscar for Best Picture will go to True Grit.

Inception

Dreams within dreams always scare me and leave me making sure I really am awake.  Just last month, after an eventful night of dreams where I thought I had just woken up only to wake up to a new dream, I tweeted this:  Too many dreams where I thought I was awake only to wake up and fall back to sleep. This tweet proves to me that I am awake. Twitter became my totem, not as classy as Leo’s spinning top, but it worked for me.  Whenever I wake up from a dream I can usually only remember two things, if anything: an idea or details of the setting.  In Christopher Nolan’s Inception, the plot is still concrete, but the ideas and settings are what stay in my mind.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a thief who uses technology that can let multiple people enter one person’s mind through dreams to steal secrets.  He has been on the run and given the chance to return to his family if he can do a job that’s never been done, inception, or planting an idea into someones mind.  To pull this off will require a lot of planning, recruiting a new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page), a very long sedated plane ride and plunging into three dream levels.  That’s a dream, within a dream, within a dream and in each level time seems much longer than in the last level.  But Cobb has been doing these artificial dreams so long that his subconscious can run wild, creating projections of his wife within each level.  And she always seems to ruin his plans.

Inception is a film full of ideas and concepts that can absolutely boggle the mind.  The trick is to get the audience on board, give them the tools and background information needed to understand the components of being in a dream, what the job of the architect is, how the subconscious can react and the dangers involved.  Everything leading up to the the big dream with Fischer (Cillian Murphy), is just practice, just class time.  But if you’ve paid attention, it all pays off and you are completely on board through the final dream mission.  If you are afraid you’ll miss a few things or will just be confused, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  The whole film is in chronological order, except for some background information Cobb gives later.  The film masterfully gives you everything you need to know at the appropriate times.

What I really noticed and appreciated in my second viewing of the film is all the details put into every scene.  The first dream takes place in an oriental style building, with hundreds of lanterns hanging from the ceiling.  Later, in the Mombasa scenes, Yusuf’s shop with all the yellow glass bottles and the narrow corridors between buildings seem like the oddly specific details I’d remember from a dream.  Yet, that is supposed to be real life.  Keep on your toes about what is a dream and what is not.  Nearly every scene can be distinguished by it’s setting in details and basic atmosphere.  And always remember to ask yourself, How did they get there?

Not many of the cool summer films make it to the Best Picture category, but Christopher Nolan knows how to consistently make great films that are full of pulsing action, eye popping effects and mind bending plots.  Part of my theory about why there are now ten Best Picture nominees is because of the outrage that Nolan’s The Dark Knight was counted out in 2008.  I was excited that Inception made it to this years top ten, but alas, Nolan was not nominated for Best Director.  And I feel like that’s just a damn shame.

“What is the most resilient parasite?  Bacteria?  A virus?  An intestinal worm?  An idea.”

If the Academy is looking to award Nolan for his consistently excellent film making or just loves wrapping their mind around dreams, Inception will win Best Picture.

The Kids Are All Right

We cannot ignore the fact that modern families are becoming more prevalent in our society.  It wasn’t too long ago that that term referred to a single parent or only the mother working, but now we’re into an era that accepts homosexual couples raising children.  The Kids Are All Right serves to show that a lesbian couple has the same sort of marriage issues as heterosexual couples do and as the title suggests, they can raise kids that turn out all right.

In case you haven’t heard the storyline or are still confused on the process of this couple having children, Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) used one sperm donor to conceive and give birth to one child each, making their children biological half-siblings.  Nic gave birth to the oldest child, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) who’s just turned eighteen and about to spend her last summer at home before leaving for college on a scholarship.  Jules gave birth to Laser (Josh Hutcherson), a laid back fifteen year old skater boy who seems to hang around with the wrong type of crowd.  It’s Laser who asks Joni to contact their sperm donor, since she is of age and he is not.  It makes sense, he’s a young boy in a house full of women and looking for a male presence in his life.

So Joni contacts Paul (Mark Ruffalo), she and Laser go to meet him.  Paul seems like an easy going hippie who runs an organic restaurant, and he seems proud of the children his sample produced.  But when the moms hear that their kids have met Paul, whom they never met further than pictures and descriptions in the donor catalogue, they decide to have Paul over for dinner as a family before allowing the kids any further contact with him.  And cue the family turned upside down.

The film shows that a lesbian marriage is no different than straight marriages.  If you want to break the couple into traditional roles, Nic seems to be the breadwinner and the more authoritative figure over the kids.  Jules seems to be the flaky emotional half who stayed at home with the kids when they were younger, and therefore the more understanding one with the children.  As all marriages do, Nic and Jules have their struggles.  After nearly twenty years and raising two kids, that happens to every marriage.  Nic can be critical of Jules and can forget to appreciate her, which makes Jules vulnerable and seeking approval elsewhere.  Let’s be honest, it’s not just men who find themselves in a midlife crisis.

This film excels where lesser films would have plummeted.  These characters are not stereotypes or simple cookie-cutter images of what we assume a lesbian family to be.  They are rounded, detailed, smart and believable with all their imperfections.  The dialogue they are given is fresh, it’s what real people would say in the moment, not flat movie characters.  And if you’re expecting some cop out film full of lesbian jokes, this isn’t it.  This film isn’t the place for cheap tasteless laughs, instead they’re cultivated naturally with witty dialogue and a few awkward situations.  The feel-good comedy vibe is generated by the way the family connects, rather than actual laughs.

In the end, we’re simply reminded that no family is perfect and they don’t need to consist of a traditional mom and dad.  Whether it’s two moms, two dads or one of each, the main elements that kids need from their parents is love and support.  Nic and Jules have done a wonderful job with their children, and I hope the rest of the world can see that and accept other loving families, no matter what their structure.

“It’s hard enough to open your heart in this world.  Don’t make it harder.”

If The Academy is looking to award a film that puts today’s hot topic of gay marriage in a positive, family oriented light, The Kids Are All Right will win Best Picture.

The King’s Speech

The day after I saw The King’s Speech, I realized that I had not told my readers that I did a podcast last month, but what a pompous way to bring a personal touch to such a wonderful film.  King George VI was royalty pushed to be a world leader who had to courageously work through his debilitating stammer.  I’m an out of work twenty-something who places her restless fingers on a keyboard to feel a sense of purpose.  When that somehow attracted the attention of the good people at Film School Rejects, I was honestly taken aback when they wanted me to be a guest on their weekly podcast.  A big part of me wanted to turn them down, I’m much more comfortable being precisely manicured text rather than a revealing voice, with my tongue rushing ahead of my mind, being sent straight to ears all over the world.  But I knew I would only regret letting the opportunity go.  I hardly slept the night before and as I tried to calm a few nerves with a beer before going live on the air, I only felt sick.  Somehow, I made it through and didn’t make too much of an ass out of myself.  Thing is, I don’t have a stammer, the world wasn’t hanging on my every word and I’m no one of much importance.  But both King George VI and I had that crippling sense of self doubt and a fear of revealing our voices.  His story is inspiring enough for me to come out and reveal mine, have a go at it if you’d like.

In the past, it seems that all monarchs had to do for their subjects was look royal, but with modern era inventions, such as radio and television, they’re suddenly called up on to do more.  To speak in public, to address the entire nation and to let the coronation become a filmed public spectacle.  The monarchs are expected to be more than images that represent all of England, but a voice.  That would be perfectly fine if one were good at public speaking, but unfortunately ‘Bertie’ (Colin Firth), the future King George VI, has a terrible stammer.  And with Hitler’s powerful speeches spreading his influence, the King will need to speak well enough to rally his country in a time of crisis.

He has seen every speech therapist knighted under the crown, but his wife, the future Queen Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), has found one last unorthodox hope.  Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) guarantees that he can help with breathing techniques, loosening up body and mind, gaining some confidence and in turn gaining a friend.

But Bertie is one tough monarch to crack.  Firth portrays him as so much more than a stutterer, but a man who is under tremendous pressure and it’s his birthright job to not show it.  It doesn’t help that he compensates for this his vulnerlbility by being stubborn, having a temper and being pretty bleak about his condition.  A future king is not the type who can easily open up about his insecurities, but it’s amazing and heartfelt to watch Firth move his character forward to face his condition.  It’s not the perfectly executed stammer that sets Firth’s performance apart from the rest, but everything he uses to make King George VI a flesh and blood man.  If two weeks from now, Colin Firth is not holding an Oscar, I will be speechless.

One of my favorite scenes was when Lionel has the King and Queen at his house one night.  He has not told his family that he is treating the King and has arranged the lesson around a time when they would have the house to themselves, but suddenly his wife comes home to find Her Majesty sitting at the table drinking tea.  Hilariously, Lionel panics, presses himself against the wall in the other room to hide, afraid of how to explain this to his wife and it’s Bertie who has to push him out.  It’s wonderful to see the roles reversed between Lionel and Bertie, even for a funny and trivial moment, and it really shows the extension of their friendship.

In the end, The King’s Speech is about more than a stammering monarch, but a testament to that personal type of bravery and support that helps us all stay strong in crucial moments.  If The Academy is looking to award a film that mixes history, friendship and inspiring courage, The King’s Speech will surely win Best Picture.

“-How do you feel?
–Full of hot air.
-Isn’t that what public speaking is all about?”

Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone takes place in the rugged terrain of the Ozark Mountains and the people are just as rough.  Everyone drives trucks, little sedans would not fare well on those dirt roads.  The most important classes at the high school seem to be ROTC drills and teen parenting 101.  The story is in present day, yet there are no cell phones, iPods or laptops floating around.  It looks like they’ve all  been traded in for hound dogs, banjos and an ax.  Ree and her family live in a small log cabin, chop and burn wood for warmth and can’t afford to buy hardly any food, so they hunt squirrels.  In the summer, this setting would be gorgeous, and there could be hope for a garden, or at least the occasional rabbit.  But in winter it’s just barren, harsh and cold.

Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is only seventeen, but she takes care of her two younger siblings and mother, who seems to be little more than a walking vegetable after a severe mental breakdown.  Her deadbeat father is a drug dealer with a court date coming up and he has put the house up as collateral for his bail.  If he doesn’t show up for court in one week the house will be gone and Ree will have no way to take care of her family.  She starts searching the area, asking everyone if they know anything about where her father might be.  The people are very harsh and private, only telling Ree to stay away and keep out of their business.  They may be hiding something.  Her uncle, known as Teardrop (John Hawkes), says that her father is probably dead, but even if that is the case she needs proof in order to keep the house.  Ree keeps pushing further against all the warnings for the sake of truth and for her family but when she goes too far there will be repercussions.

Lawrence’s Oscar nominated performance as Ree is as smart and controlled as Ree has learned to be.  At seventeen we don’t expect any girl to be so tough or unflinching.  She is the product of rising to the circumstances around her.  With her father gone and her mother withdrawn Ree is just doing what she has to do.  And towards the end, what she has to do is absolutely bone chilling.

One of my favorite traits about Ree is how she is constantly trying to teach her siblings.  From a spelling quiz on the walk to school or a lesson on guns, Ree is always pointing them in the right direction.  She knows their parents are no help anymore and she’s putting herself in more danger the deeper she searches for their father.  If anything were to happen to her, she does not want to leave them completely helpless.  This makes Ree one of the most honorable young characters I’ve seen in recent film.

“I’d be lost without the weight of you two on my back. I ain’t going anywhere.”

If The Academy chooses a gritty story of determined youth in a harsh climate Winter’s Bone will win Best Picture.

Toy Story 3

Once again, Pixar is the animation monster that can break barriers and land in the prestigious Best Picture category two consecutive years.  I dare to say that if the category had been extended to it’s present ten nominees in years past, Finding Nemo and WALL-E could have also been nominated Best Picture contenders.  But alas, history is already written.

Thanks to Pixar, and other major animation studios, the art of animation is finally getting the credit it deserves as a serious form of film making.  The category of Best Animated Feature is a relatively new award at the Oscars.  Created in 2002, Pixar’s Monsters Inc. lost out to Dreamwork’s Shrek.  But overall, it’s Pixar films that run the Animated Feature category and break into Best Picture.

Which brings us to Toy Story 3, giving us another look into the lives we never imagined our childhood toys had until the original Toy Story in 1995.  We’ve seen the stress and fear of being replaced toys can have when the new glow-in-the-dark guy with lasers arrives.  And we’ve seen how being loved and played with is more important than being a preserved collector’s item.  Now it’s onto phase three, where Andy has grown up and just doesn’t play with his toys anymore.  Before he leaves for college he’s given the choice to either donate his toys to the local daycare or keep them stored in the attic.  He’s a sweet kid, nostalgic about his imaginary games with Woody and the gang, so he chooses to keep them in storage, but through a mix-up, they are sent to Sunny Side Daycare.  There they meet Lotso, a pink teddy bear with a limp, who lets them think they’ll have a great time at Sunnyside.  What he forgot to mention was that they will be in the toddler’s area, full of destruction and drool.  So they decide to break out and find their way back to Andy before he leaves for college.

Along the way, we meet some fun new characters.  There’s Trixi the Triceratops who seems like the perfect match for Rex.  With her are the adorable Pees-In-A-Pod and Buttercup the unicorn.  But best of all is Ken for Molly’s sadly discarded Barbie.  He’s got a closet full of hilarious dress-up time and becomes an important character within Lotso’s evil gang who rules Sunnyside.

My main grief in this otherwise wonderful film is in the pivotal scene at the dump.  First, how did Slinky escape from the magnet?  I try not to let such a logistical detail get to me in a cartoon, but I wasn’t the only one who could not let it go.  And as the toys are heading toward the incinerator, holding hands and awaiting a slow melted-plastic death, this feeling of impending doom goes on for just a little too long.  I mean, this film is aimed towards kids, right?  That connection between death, the fiery pits of hell and the warning to cherish your toys goes just a little far here.  I could hear Woody’s warning to Sid in the original, “From now on you must take good care of your toys.”

Between impending doom and long playtime goodbyes, this film can be a real tear-jerker.  When my husband and I took my family to see this over Father’s Day weekend, nearly everyone cried.  My little brother could even admit it.  He’s part of that generation that has grown up with the Toy Story trilogy, and now at seventeen he can connect with this present day Andy even further.  The time will come for him as well, what will he do with his favorite toys?

If The Academy is looking to award Pixar for its outstanding years of service to making animation a serious form of film making to be reckoned with, Toy Story 3 will win Best Picture.