I can’t tell you what I thought of “Nine,” I haven’t gotten to screenings of “Invictus” and “The Lovely Bones” yet (and couldn’t tell you what I thought if I had), and “Avatar” is still under wraps. But other Oscar hopefuls have been showing up in theaters and screening rooms lately, so here’s the latest installment of my takes on the players in this game.
“A Single Man”
Verdict: The 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood is by all reports virtually unfilmable, but fashion-designer-turned-director Tom Ford has turned it into an elegant, stylish tone poem about despair. Colin Firth, as a gay schoolteacher in the early ‘60s, mourns his recently-deceased partner of 16 years, half-heartedly confides in his longtime pal Julianne Moore, avoids the neighbors and engages in mild flirtation with a couple of younger men, all the while luxuriating (or is it marinating?) in his sense of loss.
The film moves to a languid, deliberate pace; it’s beautifully composed and shot, gorgeously designed down to the last detail, very sad, and very gay, regardless of what the Weinstein Company’s re-edited trailer would have you believe. An enormously impressive debut for Ford, the film may be a bit too austere to connect emotionally with a broad audience … not that it’s meant to. I also found it odd that people kept telling Firth how terrible he looks – in Tom Ford’s universe, as far as I could tell, none of the men look terrible. (At his worst, First is a little drawn and gray, but no worse than most of us on a Monday morning.) Julianne Moore, on the other hand, is a delightful Technicolor illustration of blowsy.
Oscar chances: I don’t think that the problem faced by ”Brokeback Mountain” – that some more conservative Academy members may have simply refused to see it because of its gay theme – will affect this film. But since it’s unlikely to become the kind of phenomenon that “Brokeback” was, it’ll be easier for reluctant voters to avoid it without having to make any conscious decision to do so. Firth will almost certainly get a nomination, and likely Moore as well; nods for art direction and other craft categories could easily follow. Best picture is trickier – although with 10 slots, it’s certainly conceivable.
“The Princess and the Frog”
Verdict: Exactly as advertised: an old-fashioned, 2-D, classic Disney animated film in the vein of “The Little Mermaid.” The setting, New Orleans, is rich and evocative; the music, by Randy Newman, hits upon jazz and R&B and gospel and Cajun and all the other strains that came down the Mississippi or across the Caribbean to the Crescent City; the villain is appropriately creepy; and the talking animals, of course, are cute.
The problem is that what seemed fresh in 1989 seems awfully dated in 2009, and “old-fashioned” just doesn’t feel like a compliment in the face of much fresher animated fare like “Up” or “Mary and Max.”
