Remembering the year 2007

THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano and Dillon Freasier


I did not choose this movie to commemorate 2007 because I associate it with some distinctive element of that year. No, the reason is much more simple than that. I chose THERE WILL BE BLOOD simply because it was released too late for me to review it at the time. As it ended up being one of my favorite films of not just that year but of all-time, I figure it warrants the accolades now. Without anything but the reputation of the director, Paul Thomas Anderson (BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA) and the lead actor, Daniel Day-Lewis to base this on, I somehow knew beforehand that this would be an instant classic, that it would somehow change the game without anyone knowing they were playing one to begin with. The moment it started, everything I suspected was confirmed. The unsettling hum of Jonny Greenwood’s score rises gradually as the scribe-written title makes way for the vast hillside where the story begins. And then we meet Day-Lewis, as Daniel Plainview. For the next ten minutes, he chips away at a wall in a well with a pick. He is completely silent, intensely focused and all of it is pure brilliance. If you aren’t mesmerized after this one scene, you should just shut it off.


Plainview, thanks to Day-Lewis’s uncanny embodiment of this character, is now a film icon. This is a man so complex, so devious and so conflicted that he is unlike anything ever captured on film before. He comes from humble beginnings and pursues the American dream diligently as an oil man. His dedication pays off and an unfortunate twist of fate brings a child into his life. For a time, it seems as though all is well, as though Plainview will rule the world he has created for himself. Naturally, life is not so kind. The pursuit of financial wealth, when pursued so vehemently, makes it difficult to see that life is still happening. Before long, Plainview is at odds with the local preacher (Paul Dano, who shows incredible potential and holds his own with Day-Lewis), who is himself at odds with God himself as he falsely claims to be a prophet. The clash pits religion against capitalism and exposes the thin line between them when they are corrupted. When an accident strains communication between Plainview and his son, his one human connection is severed and his hope for salvation is practically over. Day-Lewis’s subsequent descent into the madness of his mind is beguiling.


As much as the success of this film rests on the powerhouse performance of its star, praise must be gushed on its helmer, P.T. Anderson. Anderson’s previous films have attracted a certain type of filmgoer. In BOOGIE NIGHTS, he was provocative and playful with 1970’s porn but lost the plot before it could conclude. In MAGNOLIA, he entered a dramatic hurricane, which he weathered just fine mostly but that overtook him at times as well. With PUNCHDRUNK LOVE, he was poignant but the subject matter was too off the wall for even some of his fans to appreciate. With THERE WILL BE BLOOD though, he took on a topic unlike anything he has tackled in his past, one that is so inherently rich and deep, that he was forced to step up his game. Not only did he do this but the challenge itself transformed him into a master filmmaker. It is always so fulfilling to see a director step so far away from what he knows already to become the incredible director he always promised to be.


THERE WILL BE BLOOD is a chilling prophecy of where we are now. It is a promise that at one point in time, there will in fact be some blood. The film makes good on its promise just as it has happened in life over the same subject – oil. Revisiting the dawn of the oil industry in America gives insight into the birth of the maddening greed that seems intrinsically linked to it. Mindful not to be so simple though, Anderson paints Plainview as far more complex than a simple glutton. His issues run far deeper than that and the actions he takes act as a drill that eventually reaches his core and catapults a substance as putrid as oil from his soul. By the time this epic concludes, we too are covered in a black substance that isn’t easily shaken.



BLACK SHEEP'S 2007 TOP 10
(in alphabetical order, click on any title for review)

ATONEMENT, Joe Wright, director
I'M NOT THERE, Todd Haynes
JUNO, Jason Reitman
MICHAEL CLAYTON, Tony Gilroy
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel and Ethan Coen
ONCE, John Carney
PERSEPOLIS, Vincent Parronaud, Marjane Satrapi
RATATOUILLE, Brad Bird
LE SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON, Julian Schnabel
THERE WILL BE BLOOD, Paul Thomas Anderson

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2006

Written by Michael Arndt
Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Starring Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin


So far, as Black Sheep has been remembering the last decade in film, I have reviewed a film from each year that I had not already reviewed. For 2006, I’m doing it a little differently. I did review LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE when it was released and, as I am man enough to admit when I’m wrong, I can say that I was unfairly harsh on this indie darling. Sometimes I can be a little bit stubborn and the way this film was being market fed to the public irked me to say the least. It was being positioned as the little quirky movie that would instead of one that could and I just wasn’t happy that Hollywood had made up America’s mind for it before they had the chance to do it themselves. The truth of it is, that they probably would have anyway as LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is like the film equivalent of getting some much-needed sun.


From the moment Mychael Danna’s plucky, jubilant score begins and the wide-eyed, crystal blue eyes of Abigail Breslin as Little Miss Sunshine hopeful, Olive, stare into the camera, husband and wife directing team, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris suck us into the vacuous life of the Hoover family. Reflected back in Olive’s big thick glasses is not just a newly crowned Miss America but rather the setup of the winners and losers dichotomy that drives this film toward its inevitable end. We are then introduced to the remaining members of the Hoover family, one by one. Each of them is done so by showing us the true core of who they are each day. The father, Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a failed motivational speaker who is having a harder time keeping his own hope alive. The brother, Dwayne (Paul Dano) is working out and crossing off dozens of days on his calendar to show his determination to as yet undisclosed goal. The grandfather, an Oscar winning performance by Alan Arkin, pretty much doesn’t care anymore as he snorts heroine in the bathroom. The mother, Sheryl (Toni Collette), smokes secretly in her car as she tries to keep it all together. And there is a new addition this evening, Uncle Frank (Steve Carrell), fresh from his failed suicide attempt. Although you wouldn’t think it, this family is pretty easy to relate to and a lot of fun to spend time with.


In the opening scene at the dinner table, you quickly learn everything you need to know about how this family works and how close it is to coming completely undone. It is another bucket of chicken for dinner being served on paper plates. They’re barely even trying anymore but yet somewhere underneath the pressure that threatens to consume them all, a little girl wants to be a beauty queen. It doesn’t matter that, to look at her, you would never think to push her in that direction. What does matter is that she wants to win. That is enough to get this dysfunction family into an even less functional yellow Volkswagen bus for a road trip that promises to be transformative for each of them. Of course, they don’t know that when they get into the car and neither do we. Dayton and Faris do a very good job of making it feel as though we too are along for this ride and they do not shy away from letting us in on both the high’s and the low’s. It can make for a very uncomfortable, claustrophobic experience at times but the six actors in this car are each so talented that they bring so many levels to what could have been a very flat journey. Instead, tiny revelations about who they are and who we are grow out of the awkward spaces.


Michael Arndt’s Oscar winning screenplay owns its originality by simply honouring what makes each of its characters human, from their flaws and their fears to the moments where their strengths surprise even them. In the hands of Dayton and Farris, novice feature filmmakers though you would never know it, you can feel the care for the words being said on screen. The choices made to make the points punch, like having two characters discuss where their lives are going when they get to the end of a pier, are so subtle and crafty that you can forgive the few moments that feel somewhat iffy. Like any family though, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE isn’t perfect. It is however a sign of hope for American families finding their American dreams not working out no matter how hard they keep at it. By the time Olive makes it to her pageant, we’ve all remembered that winning isn’t everything and that trying is all that matters.

On that note, I will try to be a lot less stubborn in the future.


BLACK SHEEP'S 2006 TOP 10

BABEL, Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu
BORAT, Larry Charles
THE DEPARTED, Martin Scorcese
DREAMGIRLS, Bill Condon
HALF NELSON, Ryan Fleck
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, Clint Eastwood
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
THE QUEEN, Stephen Frears
UNITED 93, Paul Greengrass

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2005

CRASH
Written by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco
Directed by Paul Haggis

NOTE: This article has spoilers aplenty and should not be read by anyone who has not seen the movie.


I can still remember the feeling of my stomach dropping when Jack Nicholson announced that the 2005 Best Picture Oscar was being awarded to Paul Haggis’s CRASH, and not the frontrunner, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I wasn’t the only one either who was floored; you could here the jarred pause in Nicholson’s voice when he announced it. The signs were pointing in that direction throughout the evening. First, CRASH took Best Editing, the only award it won that I genuinely feel it warranted, keeping all those simultaneously told stories in check and well balanced. Then it came along and took Best Original Screenplay. I say took but I really mean robbed considering there were three better screenplays that should have won (Woody Allen’s MATCH POINT, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK and Josh Olsen's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE). After those two wins combined with the previous win for Best Ensemble Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, taking it all became a serious possibility. After it happened, the guests at my Oscar party could seriously see I was disappointed, distraught even. I popped Gustavo Santaolalla’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN score and began picking up after the mess.



It’s not that I don’t care for CRASH. I was just as mortified when Matt Dillon had his hands up Thandie Newton’s dress and just as gripped when he had to rescue her from her burning vehicle the next day. I was just as devastated when that adorable little girl was shot and just as exalted to witness the man-made miracle that allowed for her to survive. CRASH is not without its merits. Incredibly powerful scenes made all the more poignant by often surprising turns by Dillon, Newton, Terrence Howard and Michael Pena. To call it Best Picture though meant ignoring its condescending and manipulative storytelling techniques in favor of the ignorance it so aggressively draws to the surface. Of course race, prejudice and hatred are just as relevant now as they always have been despite the advances made, but Haggis, and I doubt he did it intentionally, preys on his viewer by using the inherent ignorance in each of us to make the film seem superior and revelatory.


CRASH takes place in a rough 24-hour period. In that period, a handful of Los Angeles inhabitants from all walks of life experience so much suffering that you would think the end of the world had arrived. Now, all that transpires is certainly possible but too darn convenient for me to swallow. Newton and Howard are seriously abused by a racist police officer (Dillon) one night and the next day, she ends up in a massive car accident and he ends up in a carjacking that turns into a run-in with the law. I bet the “Honey, how was your day?” conversation between those two had to be impressive after that. And imagine when Newton reveals that Dillon had to save her from the car and Howard is flabbergasted because Dillon’s partner (Ryan Phillippe) from the night before ended up saving his ass earlier that day. The scene between Newton and Dillon in the car cannot work as effectively if the previous scene they share doesn’t happen first but the odds are too overwhelming for me to accept. If this storyline stood on its own then perhaps it would be easier but taken with everything else, it all just feels as though Haggis is moving the pieces on the board one at a time to make the game play out as he needs instead of how it might.


The other writing technique that infuriates me more and more with further viewings of CRASH is the way Haggis delights in playing with his viewer’s ignorance. Larenz Tate and Ludacris walk down a trendy L.A. street at night and debate racial complacency and prevalence in modern society. They look like thugs but everything they’re saying about contemporary attitudes toward race make so much sense to me and must naturally appeal to my white liberal sensibility. It is so obvious that Haggis wants us to sympathize with these poor black guys who can’t get a break. Consequently, we are also supposed to feel disdain for Sandra Bullock and Brandan Fraser as they walk past in their fancy outfits toward their expensive car. Not because their combined acting performances cannot amount to anything more than embarrassment (which might explain why they are the least featured characters in the ensemble) but rather because they judged these fine, young gentlemen by the colour of their skin as they walked past them. They assumed that they look like thugs and therefore must be. Imagine the audience’s shock and disgust with themselves when the thugs actually are thugs and they steal the white people’s cars. Haggis spends all this time exposing the audience’s ignorance in hopes of opening their eyes to it but he finishes by simply reinforcing the stereotypes and insulting my intelligence.



I am aware that I am gay and I am siding with the gay-themed film but BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN had won nearly every major award leading up to the Oscars and was considered a near-lock. The win for CRASH only shows me that the mainstream Academy was not ready to bestow accolades so publicly on a gay-themed film. Not to mention, that as a gay man, I am still a minority, just an invisible one. This can get pretty ugly sometimes when people don’t censor themselves because they don’t realize that we are among them. I suffer prejudice; I am still fighting for some basic human rights because I am still seen as less than human. It is exactly this kind of hatred that makes it impossible for the characters in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN to experience the love they are so obviously meant to. It is also the exact kind of hatred that CRASH tries so hard to bring to light but yet shines no light on the plight of the gays because theirs is not a racial issue. It still sure feels that way sometimes. As for the love that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN fights so hard to foster, troubled or not, the characters in CRASH still get to have that and don’t even see for a second how fortunate they are for that opportunity. Despite this, they choose to live in their misery and all any of them can seem to do is blame everything bad in their lives on race.



Black Sheep’s 2005 Top 10

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, Directed by Ang Lee
CAPOTE, Bennett Miller
THE CONSTANT GARDENER, Fernando Meirelles
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, Grant Heslov
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, David Cronenberg
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, Luc Jacquet
MATCH POINT, Woody Allen
MUNICH, Steven Spielberg
MYSTERIOUS SKIN, Gregg Araki
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, Noah Baumbach
WALK THE LINE, James Mangold

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2004

I’m a sensitive guy but I don’t cry very often. Usually, the only time I find myself crying is at the movies. For me, crying is a beautiful release and when I’m watching a movie and it comes over me, I always let it out. I figure if the hard parts of my life don’t bring me to tears, then I’d better let them out whenever the opportunity presents itself, even if I’m not completely sure what it is about the image on the screen that is moving me so deeply. When I first saw FINDING NEVERLAND, it was a matinee showing. There weren’t too many people in the theatre and that suited me just fine. This way, I got to sob profusely while still maintaining some sense of privacy. When the film was released to own, I brought it home and, to my surprise, cried just as much as I did the first time I saw it. When I watched it again recently to prepare for this piece, I was concerned, at first, that it wasn’t as good as I remembered it in my mind. But then, before I could get across the room to get my box of tissues, I was weeping once again.

Based on Allan Knee’s play, “The Man Who Was Peter Pan”, FINDING NEVERLAND is something of a tear-jerker that seems deliberately designed for boys. This is Peter Pan after all and what man cannot identify with the age old tale about not wanting to ever grow up? Certainly not this one anyway. That said, I don’t think this is what gets me crying each time; that would be too simple an explanation. No, it is something inherent in the story itself that speaks directly to this boy’s heart. FINDING NEVERLAND is a story about feeling inspiration and fostering your imagination. Without either of these, Neverland could never be found. James Barrie (Johnny Depp) is the author of “Peter Pan” and the film gives us the chance to see the very real components that would become one of the most timeless children’s classics in history. As a writer, especially one who struggles to find the words from time to time, seeing that they can come from everything transpiring right in front of me was truly freeing.


Historically, Barrie met the Llewelyn Davies family in London’s Kensington Gardens in 1897. In the film, it unfolds exactly the same way, only the man of the family, Arthur, has already passed away and, of the family’s five young boys, only four make the film for fear of overcrowding. The mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet), is simply enjoying her time in the park with her boys when Barrie suddenly becomes a central figure in the boys’ game. From that moment on, he never stops playing with them. It isn’t quite so joyous for all the boys though, what with their father recently passed. No, young Peter (played by Freddie Highmore in the role that turned him into a child star) finds himself facing adult realities that are far too harsh for him to process, let alone preserve his innocence. Barrie steps in as a father figure but the healing does not begin so easily. Barrie must remind the boys that their imaginations can take them anywhere they want to go, any time they want to go there. As he unleashes the power of his imagination in hopes of rekindling theirs, he finds something completely unexpected – Peter Pan.


Director, Marc Forster, whom I have a love/hate relationship with (basically, I love this film and hate most of his other work), does his best to do to his audience that which Barrie is determined to do for his lost boys. FINDING NEVERLAND flows back and forth between scenes of hardship (loveless marriages, financial woes and terminal illness) and magical escapes, from pirate ships in the backyard to children bouncing from their beds and taking flight. “Neverland” is a place where one never has to grow up and it is always just on the other side of our conscious minds waiting for us to visit whenever we need to or just plain feel like it. All any of us has to do to find it is believe that it is there. At no time does it feel like FINDING NEVERLAND is encouraging us to ignore our responsibilities so that we can play whenever we want. It is quite the contrary really. Forster and friends are just trying to help us find it in ourselves so that it can help us get through all the tears.



Black Sheep's 2004 Top 10
(in alphabetical order)

BAD EDUCATION, directed by Pedro Almodovar
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, Michel Gondry
FINDING NEVERLAND, Marc Forster
GARDEN STATE, Zach Braff
THE INCREDIBLES, Brad Bird
KILL BILL VOLUME 2, Quentin Tarantino
MARIA FULL OF GRACE, Joshua Marston
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, Walter Salles
TARNATION, Jonathan Caouette
VERA DRAKE, Mike Leigh

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2003

KILL BILL VOLUME ONE
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino


2003 was a big year for me. I shot my very first short film – also coincidentally my only short film – and I got involved in theatre production. It was also a big year for one of my favorite filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino. After his third film, JACKIE BROWN (1997), the follow-up to his contemporary masterpiece, PULP FICTION (1994), underwelmed both critics and audiences alike, Tarantino returned to theatres in 2003 with an epic so momentous that it needed to be split into two films. Clocking in originally at over four hours, Tarantino’s fourth film, as it is billed when the title appears on screen, KILL BILL, was both highly anticipated after a six-year hiatus on the part of the infamous filmmaker and highly criticized for being split into two parts (the second was released in the spring of 2004). Regular Tarantino distributor, Miramax, felt the film was just too long to be released as a whole; the industry meanwhile saw the decision as nothing more than a way to sell two tickets to one movie. Audiences did not care one way or the other; KILL BILL VOLUME ONE went on to earn over $180 million internationally and put Tarantino back on track to becoming the best of the contemporary film auteurs.


KILL BILL VOLUME ONE opens with a Klingon proverb … Revenge is a dish best served cold. Only Tarantino can open a film with a quote from a Star Trek character and transcend geekiness into authenticity. Besides, the quote fits as revenge gets served in the coldest of fashions in the two hours that follow. And with good reason, I might add. In a role that was written specifically for her (to the point that production was pushed back after she became pregnant), Uma Thurman plays The Bride and when we first meet her, she is lying on the floor, beaten and bloodied. A gun is pointed at her beautifully battered face and she tells the man standing above her, whose name, Bill, is all we know for now, that she is carrying his baby. Regardless, he shoots her anyway. Believing her and her entire wedding party to be dead, he leaves her to rot but The Bride is a character that will not be held down. Miraculously, she survives and devises a plan to obliterate the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (the group responsible for her wedding day massacre) one by one, including their leader, Bill (the recently deceased David Carradine). I’m a big supporter of turning the other cheek but this is one scenario where I can hardly blame her for exacting her revenge. In fact, I delighted in every second of it.


I was not the only one delighting in this blood-soaked revenge tale (nearly 100 people die in the film). Clearly, Tarantino was having so much fun too. Just as he did with PULP FICTION, he takes the story, based heavily on the 1973 Japanese film, LADY SNOWBLOOD, and breaks it up so that the timeline plays out non-sequentially. The through line is simply a death list that The Bride attacks one at a time. There are plenty of trademark Tarantino touches, from a bright, yellow truck called the Pussy Wagon to punchy dialogue like “My name is Buck and I like to fuck.” There is even a knowing nod to himself at one point when Thurman draws an imaginary square in the air, just like she did in PULP FICTION at the Jack Rabbit Slim restaurant on her date with John Travolta. Tarantino’s films are never fully out of the reach of his sometimes gigantic ego but he earns every indulgence in this film. Considering how playful his tone is, his care for the visual style is stupendous and the choreography of the all out brawl at the film’s climax is mesmerizing. All you can do is sit back and enjoy the bloodbath. And as much as Tarantino deserves all this praise for this picture, he could not have done it without Thurman. Her turn as The Bride is immensely demanding of her talents, both physically and emotionally, and she makes every moment on screen that much more urgent.


It seems that little is said about KILL BILL and what a strong picture it is for women working in the action genre. The rest of the cast is made up of Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox and Daryl Hannah and all of these ladies are not to be messed with. There is no denying their strength or the skills and Tarantino has far too much respect for both his characters and his actresses to ever allow them to be taken advantage of or exploited as girls gone wild. They are simply women who kick some serious ass paving the way for KILL BILL VOLUME ONE and Mr. Tarantino himself to do the same.



2003 Top 10
(in alphabetical order)

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS, Andrew Jarecki (Director)
CITY OF GOD, Fernando Meirelles
ELEPHANT, Gus Van Sant
FINDING NEMO, Andrew Stanton
IN AMERICA, Jim Sheridan
KILL BILL VOLUME ONE, Quentin Tarantino
LOST IN TRANSLATION, Sofia Coppola
MONSTER, Patty Jenkins
RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, Peter Sollett
LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE, Sylvain Chomet

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2002

2002 is not a year that I often like to recall. I was 25 years old and there was so much going on in my life at the time that it all ended up falling down on top of me. I had just graduated from university but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life so I just went on going to work day after day at my pointless retail job. As if that weren’t daunting enough, my relationship of three years was coming to a particularly dramatic end. We would fight about everything. It got so bad at one point that one night, after coming home from having seen THE HOURS and CHICAGO back to back, we argued extensively over which was better as if that actually mattered. I was in THE HOURS camp. The manner in which Stephen Daldry brought depression to the forefront was shockingly palpable. Paul was adamantly pro-CHICAGO. I suppose escaping harsh reality for musical exuberance was where his head was at. With a little perspective and a heck of a lot of healing, I think I can finally admit that he may have been right after all … maybe … at least about that anyway.


I should clarify; I always loved CHICAGO. I felt that Bill Condon, the screenwriter who would go on much later to direct DREAMGIRLS, had found the most seamless way to adapt a stage musical to the screen. He borrowed the concept from the stage production itself but he brought it to such new heights that it made CHICAGO into a triumphant return for a genre that had long been suffering. The musical numbers that would ordinarily disrupt the story were all worked in as a means of escape in the mind of the star, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger). Having just been arrested for the capital murder of her lover, Roxie desperately needed a way to cope with her new reality. First time feature filmmaker and veteran theatre director, Rob Marshall, took Condon’s sharp script and made sure that every nuance was not only handled delicately but honoured so that CHICAGO could do more than just be an excellent film experience. Marshall infused an energy to a show that is so stark on stage by keeping the pacing fast and the lighting always theatrical and richly colorful. Suddenly, you had a musical that didn’t have numbers that stopped the story but rather commented on it at all times and made it that much more exhilarating. After winning the Oscar for Best Picture that year and taking in roughly $170 million at the box office, it was clear that Marshall’s CHICAGO had saved the musical itself from certain death.


I should also clarify that I was depressed when I first saw THE HOURS. Perhaps, as I am now not depressed, I can look back on the two works and have an easier time delighting in the musical while feeling a degree of hesitation going back to darker times. At the time though, I distinctly remember feeling that the isolation of depression was captured not only so succinctly but in a fashion that was intricately complex and beautifully executed. THE HOURS is all about the actresses. A trio of incredible women, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, play variations on the same woman throughout the eras to show the timeliness of depression and how it is seen and dealt with differently depending on the period and the surroundings. It does run the risk of being seen as a distinctly female experience but clearly that isn’t so. One day around the time of the film’s release, a woman came in to the record store I was working at and asked for the brilliant score by Philip Glass. I immediately began talking to her about how profoundly the film had affected me, even going so far as to cite specific scenes in detail. She had just come from the film and you could see she had been crying. This woman was bewildered that I was able to connect with this film coming from a male perspective. I simply told her straight up, as she left the store with the score in hand, that depression has no gender, that it is universal.

The truth is that neither Paul now I was right. Film appreciation, as I’ve said time and time again, is inherently subjective. The way we see film, the manner in which it moves or excites us, is directly affected by what we bring to the screen as viewers – whether that be because we are in the middle of a painful breakup or because we woke up with a musical bounce in our step. What matters more is that these films worked their way into our hearts and not at all how they got there in the first place. Of course, we weren’t actually arguing about the movies; we were arguing about much harder, much more complicated issues. Our passion for the films allowed us to use them as our swords and shields. The films themselves helped us each move on.

Regardless, both films get ...


2002 Top 10

ADAPTATION, Directed by Spike Jonze
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, Michael Moore
CHICAGO, Rob Marshall
FAR FROM HEAVEN, Todd Haynes
FRIDA, Julie Taymor
THE HOURS, Stephen Daldry
THE PIANIST, Roman Polanski
PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, Paul Thomas Anderson
SECRETARY, Steven Shainberg
Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, Alfonso Cuaron

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2001

HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
Written and Directed by John Cameron Mitchell



Editorial Note: Leading up to Black Sheep's upcoming feature highlighting the best films of the last decade, we take another look back at the decade behind us, year by year, each day leading up to it ...

I can still remember how I felt after seeing HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for the first time. It was raining but the only reason I noticed that was because I was wet when I got home. I didn’t feel a thing while I walked outside; I was far too stunned. What had I just seen? I certainly couldn’t say that I had ever seen a rock opera about a transsexual singer/songwriter from East Berlin who had a botched sex change operation and who had immigrated to America only to have all of her music ripped off by a pretty little white boy. The only reassuring thing about this state was that I was fairly certain no one else could say they had seen that before either.


Well, plenty of people had seen the Off-Broadway hit but that is still a pretty paltry faction of people. Yes, HEDWIG got its humble beginnings in New York City. It was written by John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask and the title character was performed by Mitchell himself. After the show concluded its run, Mitchell had bigger plans and bigger wigs in mind for both Hedwig and himself. He had never directed a film before but must have felt comfortable enough with this material to take that risk. The risk most certainly paid off and to watch Hedwig, you would never know he had never directed before. Mitchell took a play that was grand in scope but limited in size and eradicated any notion that it had to be contained on a stage. His direction of Hedwig goes from town to town following the former lover who stole all his songs while simultaneously moving back and forth between time and space to tell Hedwig’s incredible story. His performance of Hedwig earned him a Golden Globe nomination and to watch it, you cannot imagine anyone else filling those gigantic platforms.


Sure, it’s all a little jarring at first but then at ten minutes in, a song starts. An animation takes over the screen and tells the story of how love began. The song is called, “The Origin of Love” and the drawings are nothing more than stick figures shaking almost elegantly on parchment but it doesn’t matter. They capture exactly what the complex song is saying so simply. The song details how all of us were once connected with another. There were boys attached to other boys, girls with girls and even girls attached to other boys, if you can believe that. Until one day, the gods decided that too much fun was being had and split all of these perfect unions into halves that would then have to scour the world to find their counterparts. Before this moment, there was no need for love, to search for it, to crave it because it simply didn’t exist. Hedwig is not a man or a woman and certainly not whole. Her search is bold, empowered and unfailing … and will likely never be over.


I think its fair to say that there are still too few people who have seen anything like HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and I think its fair to say, too few people ever will. Thanks to John Cameron Mitchell though, a select group of fortunate people can now fell a little more open minded and hopefully a little more whole.



Black Sheep's 2001 Top 10
(in alphabetical order)

DONNIE DARKO, directed by Richard Kelly
LE FABULEUX DESTIN D’AMELIE POULIN (Amelie), Jean-Pierre Jeunet
GOSFORD PARK, Robert Altman
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, John Cameron Mitchell
IN THE BEDROOM, Todd Fields
L.I.E., Michael Cuesta
MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan
MOULIN ROUGE!, Baz Luhrmann
MULHOLLAND DRIVE, David Lynch
PRESQUE RIEN (Come Undone), Sebastien Lifshitz

Best of Black Sheep: Remembering the year 2000

Editorial Note: Leading up to Black Sheep's upcoming feature highlighting the best films of the last decade, we take another look back at the decade behind us, year by year, each day leading up to it ...

When asked to look back at the year 2000, or more specifically, the year 2000 in film, I remember distinctly being torn between not just two films that year but rather being torn over what constituted the true value of a film worthy of the title, “Best Picture of the Year”. The first of the two films in question captured my mind. It is a distinctly cerebral experience in its carefully plotted design and intricate balance of several different stories told simultaneously and the serious nature of its subject matter. The other film captured my heart. It is achingly romantic in tone and theme but it never crosses over into the saccharine. Instead, it honours the emotion itself as the governing force of life. What holds more value when it comes to film appreciation? An interaction with your emotional core or the provocation of thought? An appeal to one’s intellect or a plea to the soul? Which film is better? Steven Soderbergh’s TRAFFIC or Ang Lee’s CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON?


The moment Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) appear on screen in the same space in, the attraction between them is undeniable. Yet, the same can be said for their restraint. And so CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON establishes its largest question; if love is the greatest gift that can bestowed upon man, so great that warriors such as these two fight in its name, why then deny this gift for yourself in favor of respect for social obligation? Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien cannot be together because she was once promised to his greatest warrior brother. The two bonded after his death but have never acted upon their feelings as not to disrespect his memory. In many ways, Li’s fallen brother brought he and Yu together but in just as many ways, he made it impossible for them to be together. Now, Li is debating leaving his battles behind him and pursuing that which his heart has longed for for so long but duty almost seems bent on stopping this from happening as no sooner does he hang up his sword, it is stolen, forcing him to confront his oldest nemesis. It would seem that love and honour go hand in hand but honouring love in this case makes it impossible to experience it.


The romantic core of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON is certainly honoured by Ang Lee, who infuses the picture with fluidity and intensity, establishing a tone that can only be described as magical. (I suppose it could also be described as mystical, majestic or mesmerizing as well but you get my point.) The sword robbery prompts a sequence of battles that combine seamless excellence in cinematography, score, choreography and of course, performance (including breakout, Zhang Ziyi). Running on air across shingled rooftops or through towering treetops is visually stunning but also heightens the passion of an already fiery experience. When on the ground and engaged in combat or sword play, the actual fighting is so perfectly timed and executed against Tan Dun’s drum heavy score that it is often impossible to distinguish between what is fighting and what it dance. As usual, Lee’s gentle directorial hand allows for a vast canvas that takes on an enlightened stance all its own. In a film where all who have honour are bound by decorum and tradition, flying is possible and seems boundless but they are ultimately grounded by the same properties that make flight possible.


TRAFFIC is no less a technical feat. Based on the British mini-series, “Traffik”, writer, Stephen Gaghan, scaled down over 300 minutes of story to a scant 147. In it, he explores the war on drugs, from sales to distribution to border crossing to addiction and treatment. The severity of the situation is not glazed over in TRAFFIC and Soderbergh makes directing this enormous undertaking all look so easy. Considering the title, it is ironic that the film travels so easily back and forth between Mexico, San Diego, Washington and Ohio. The different locales and stories are all differentiated by color schemes – a yellow tinged Mexico stimulates our nervous systems while demonstrating a fragile city controlled by drug cartels and corruption and a blue Ohio allows us to dive deeper into the lows of addiction with a sedated effect. San Diego rather is painted in much more naturalistic hues, perhaps highlighting the normalcy of the drug sales in America. The action taking place in all these locations makes for its own contradictions as well, thanks to Gaghan’s delicate and precise screenplay. How else could one explain a film that is essentially anti-drug that exposes some of its more insightful musings during drug-addled hazes?


What is traffic after all but being stalled and surrounded by an endless see of obstacles ahead of you, stopping you from getting to where you’re going? It never feels as though it will ever let up or you will ever find a way to get through it all. While TRAFFIC is not entirely pessimistic, it is decidedly realistic. It never insinuates that the war on drugs is one that cannot be won but that perhaps the idea of winning needs to be modified. It seems almost naïve to think that drug usage will ever be irradiated from the human experience but with all the extreme violence that the trade creates, clearly the consumption needs to be scaled down significantly. Soderbergh is also careful not to suggest that he has all the answers. To him, it is clear that the Mexican drug cartels must be taken down; that the flow of drugs and firearms across the Mexico/US border needs to be cracked down on; and that we must no longer be afraid to look inside out own houses, at our own family members and friends to help bring them back to a place where they can truly see the world as it is. As Brian Eno’s “Ascension” plays over the film’s final frames, the idea of progress seems at the very least, possible.

Both films were released in December of 2000; both went on to earn roughly around $125 million at the box office; and both went on to win four Oscars each. It would appear that I am not the only one split on the two films. And as neither actually went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, perhaps the debate will never be settled as to which film truly deserves the crown. Of course, it is fair to say that neither film actually needs to be regarded as better than the other. I can love them both equally for different reasons as I’ve got plenty of love to go around. After all, I spend so much time trying to get my mind and my heart on the same page, why would not apply that same logic to these two beautiful pictures? And as GLADIATOR actually went on to win the title that year, perhaps brawn is more appealing than brains and beauty combined anyway.

Both films ...


Black Sheep’s Top 10 Films of 2000
(in alphabetical order)

Best in Show
Billy Elliott
Chicken Run
Chuck & Buck
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
In the Mood for Love
Requiem for a Dream
Traffic
The Virgin Suicides
Wonder Boys

Black Sheep @ The Box Office: 2009 Recap

2009 closed at the box office with the strongest money maker since THE DARK KNIGHT, clinching a third week atop the chart. AVATAR has now made over $1 billion internationally and is in position to become the biggest film of all time. If it doesn't make it, it may have to settle for second place but seeing as how it will be settling in behind director, James Cameron's other behemoth film, TITANIC, I'd say the one-two punch is not bad at all. Overall, the North American box office took in $10.6 billion this year, an 8% increase over 2008. Of course the higher price of 3D tickets has some influence on that but with a 4% increase in attendance as well, things are looking bright. Let's take a look at some of this year's box office winners and losers one last time before we welcome a whole other onslaught in 2010.


The biggest hit of the year belongs to TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN. The Michael Bay directed sequel pulled in $402 million domestically, about $80 million more than the original film. And to think Bay was complaining that there wasn't enough promotion being given his summer tentpole before it came out. You need not have worried Mr. Bay. Of course, AVATAR will go on to easily out do the big metal machines by the time it closes its run but for now it will have to settle for second place with $352 million in just three weeks.


The year started out with a bang. A handful of unexpected titles did much better than expected business to get the year started out right. UK export, TAKEN, with unlikely action star, Liam Neeson wowed North American audiences after a successful run abroad the year before (19th place, $145 million). Kevin James proved himself a bankable star with PAUL BLART: MALL COP (18th place, $146 million). Universal was even able to revive a dying franchise with FAST & FURIOUS reuniting the original cast and taking in $155 million for a 16th place finish.


Summer was hot this year, kicking off with X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE in the first weekend of May. The film would go on to earn $179 million and finish the year in 11th place despite a rough version being leaked online just weeks before its release. STAR TREK followed and with a $257 million take, J.J. Abrams has successfully relaunched a long dead franchise. The year's biggest comedy was the unlikely hit, THE HANGOVER. With no big names to pull people into the theatres, they had to rely on laughs alone and they kept people laughing all the way to a final haul of $277 million. Being delayed from the fall before was a great move for everyone's favorite wizard as HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE would go on to earn $301 million for a third place finish for the year. That total is the second highest for the series, just behind the first installment. The later part of summer also saw solid returns for DISTRICT 9 ($115 million, 27th place), G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA ($150 million, 17th place) and Quentin Tarantino's biggest hit of his career, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS ($120 million, 25th place).


With the animated film genre forging ahead into 3D, filmgoers followed along happily and there was plenty of love to go around. Pixar would see its first 3D feature, UP! become its biggest hit since FINDING NEMO. Dreamworks got in the game with the spring hit, MONSTERS VS. ALIENS, the studio's second biggest hit of the year. Mid-summer entry, ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS may have done better overseas but still took in $196 million at home - not bad for an aging franchise. Sony saw modest but impressive returns for CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS (24th place overall, $122 million). Even Focus Features found some love for the dark but gorgeous CORALINE (41st place, $75 million).


This year's most unexpected box office success story has to be Sandra Bullock. Sure, ALL ABOUT STEVE tanked but Bullock saw the biggest hit of her career as a lead actress hit theatres in the summer. THE PROPOSAL, co-starring Ryan Reynolds, took in $163 million for a 13th place finish. You'd think that would be enough to lift her spirits but she would then go on to surpass even that with THE BLIND SIDE. The feel-good hit is still tracking but has already pulled in $209 million and has got the industry abuzz with Bullock Oscar talk for the first time. You can't help but feel good for her. I can't anyway.


The indie film scene, at least the Hollywood equivalent of it, was alive and well this year. The unlikely success, PRECIOUS: BASED ON THE NOVEL "PUSH" BY SAPPHIRE took in over $43 million without ever playing on more than 1000 screens. Filmgoers everywhere fell in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in (500) DAYS OF SUMMER, taking in over $32 million. Oscar favorite, UP IN THE AIR, continues to impress week on week as the adult comedy has grossed over $45 million this last month. There is no bigger indie success story this year than PARANORMAL ACTIVITY though. Any film that costs under $15K to make and goes on to make over $107 million in North America alone (29th place) is something quite frightening for Hollywood indeed.


Another scene that is undead and well is the TWILIGHT series. NEW MOON surpassed all expectations to open to $142 million in November. Despite the film being practically unwatchable (yeah, I said it.), it would go on to secure the number five slot for the year with a take of $287 million. It is still tracking too so likely to finish in third place overall.


There are disappointments and then there are duds. In my eyes, the following films are disappointments, if only because I expected that they would do better or they may have started strong and dropped off fast. TERMINATOR SALVATION seemed like it could be one of the most solid summer tentpoles but you cannot call yourself that when you only manage a final take of $125 million (23rd place). Just ahead in 22nd place is ANGELS AND DEMONS, a film that, with a take of $133 million, would earn less than $80 million that its predecessor, THE DA VINCI CODE, earned. Disney's return to 2D animation, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, has been struggling to find an audience during the holidays, a time when it should have been no question. After five weeks, the film has earned just $85 million. If Spike Jonze's WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE had not been blasted for being too dark and sombre for kids, perhaps the quiet masterpiece could have made more than $75 million. And this last one was expected to set the box office ablaze this past spring but WATCHMEN suffered from overexposure before even being released and would go on to earn just $107 million (30th place).


As for the duds, I'm talking about the kind of box office impact that seriously casts doubt on the future of an actor or a series. There are two films that come to mind right away. The first is BRUNO. Twitter, the new word of mouth, killed this film before it even hit the Saturday of its opening weekend. Star, Sasha Baron Cohen will have a hard time convincing Hollywood that he can command BORAT numbers again after a final $60 million take, compared to BORAT's $128 million. And the SAW franchise is in serious danger of being killed off after the sixth installment crumbled under the excitement for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. The film managed a final take of $27 million, which is less than what the films usually earn in their opening weekend.

It was an exciting year at the box office and 2010 will certainly be no different. Thanks for taking the time to look back with me at the year that was at the box office.

Source: BOX OFFICE MOJO