Unofficial Academy Awards Discussion Board

ITALIANO wrote:

rolotomasi99 wrote:
Agreed. I not only want to hear what you think about the film, but what all our international contributors think. I would particularly love to hear what folks from the countries the film takes place in (and have been affected by the U.S. "war against terror") think about it. Do we have anyone who writes on this board from those areas?

Doesn't the movie take place in Pakistan, at least partly?

More than partly, unfortunately. Although the scenes were all shot in India.

rolotomasi99 wrote:
Agreed. I not only want to hear what you think about the film, but what all our international contributors think. I would particularly love to hear what folks from the countries the film takes place in (and have been affected by the U.S. "war against terror") think about it. Do we have anyone who writes on this board from those areas?

Doesn't the movie take place in Pakistan, at least partly?

Reza wrote:

ITALIANO wrote:If I hate it, yes. Most here wouldn't understand my point of view anyway.

Not a matter of understanding. Mostly it's accepting your point of view. You should give it though if you don't like the film.

Agreed. I not only want to hear what you think about the film, but what all our international contributors think. I would particularly love to hear what folks from the countries the film takes place in (and have been affected by the U.S. "war against terror") think about it. Do we have anyone who writes on this board from those areas?

Reza wrote:
Not a matter of understanding. Mostly it's accepting your point of view. You should give it though if you don't like the film.

On these issues, understanding means accepting. They really think that what I say belongs to a different universe. So why should I insist?

Reza wrote:

ITALIANO wrote:

criddic3 wrote:
Should we seriously hold you to that promise?

If I hate it, yes. Most here wouldn't understand my point of view anyway.

Not a matter of understanding. Mostly it's accepting your point of view. You should give it though if you don't like the film.

I agree. Even if we all disagree with your viewpoint, there's no reason to hold back your opinion.

ITALIANO wrote:

criddic3 wrote:

ITALIANO wrote: I promise that if I hate it, I just won't comment on it - sometimes silence is the best, and most eloquent, reaction.

Should we seriously hold you to that promise?

If I hate it, yes. Most here wouldn't understand my point of view anyway.

Not a matter of understanding. Mostly it's accepting your point of view. You should give it though if you don't like the film.

criddic3 wrote:

ITALIANO wrote: I promise that if I hate it, I just won't comment on it - sometimes silence is the best, and most eloquent, reaction.

Should we seriously hold you to that promise?

If I hate it, yes. Most here wouldn't understand my point of view anyway.

ITALIANO wrote: I promise that if I hate it, I just won't comment on it - sometimes silence is the best, and most eloquent, reaction.

Should we seriously hold you to that promise?

The internet is not an eloquent place.

rolotomasi99 wrote:

Sabin wrote:Zero Dark Thirty does not make you feel proud to be an American at all.

Italiano should consider this a ringing endorsement of the film.

Kind of, yes

I know that this movie isn't a Rambo, of course. I'm not afraid of what it says, in fact. I'm afraid of what it could possibly imply. But we will see. I promise that if I hate it, I just won't comment on it - sometimes silence is the best, and most eloquent, reaction.

Sabin wrote:I'm a little surprised it even got nominated for Best Picture. This has a Dragon Tattoo coldness to it that makes me surprised Academy voters even went for it enough to get it past Moonrise Kingdom or The Master.

It seems no more cold than say ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

ZERO DARK THIRTY reminded me quite a bit of ZODIAC (both are my favorite film of their respective years). These films were about the search for notorious killers, and focused on the individual who becomes obsessed with finding this person long after everyone else has moved on. Obviously ZERO DARK THIRTY had a more clear cut resolution than ZODIAC, but I appreciate both films for their quiet nature and thoughtful style of storytelling. Both of them could have been far more sensationalistic and (as a consequence) far more simplistic.

If ZERO DARK THIRTY had been written and directed by any other Hollywood action team, it would have been more of an "America! Fuck yeah!" type of film.

I think Mark Boal's background as a journalist influences him to write films which have the feel of an in-depth article you might read in Rolling Stone, rather than a Tom Clancy novel. Bigelow's more quiet approach to action suits this type of screenplay. I know you think Bigelow uses too many edits, but I thought the final raid on the Bin Laden compound had the slow and tense editing of a thriller rather than the whiplash-inducing cutting you find in most Hollywood action movies. Its use of moody music on the way to the raid and no music during the raid was much better than the cacophony other action directors would have treated us to in order to pump up the audience.

As for what Boal and Bigelow were trying to say with this film, I think they wanted to show how it was not the billion dollar army or the massive wars which finally brought an end to Bin Laden. It was the hard work of the staff at the CIA and other intelligence entities who found him and planned the best way to kill him. The film was letting us know sometimes a scalpel is a better tool for destroying our enemies than a machete. The moral question about whether we should be executing people in this manner is left ambiguous, but the final image of Maya crying in the plane was certainly a better ending than finishing with the back-slapping celebration of the Marines who were clearly proud of what they had just done. That is how any other writer/director in Hollywood would have closed the movie.

Sabin wrote:Jessica Chastain is not good.

I am surprised you hated Chastain. I thought she gave a riveting performance. As an actress she was able to command the screen any time she went up against her male costars; which perfectly mirrored the battle her character had to wage against all the powerful men who had given up on finding Bin Laden. Maya forced them through shear willpower to act on her hard work and trust her instincts. We know from interviews with Boal that Maya is a real individual, not just a composite. Obviously Boal, Bigelow, and Chastain had to shape her into what they thought she was like since her identity is a secret, but it really was one woman up against all these men who thought she was crazy.

I have not jumped on the Chastain = Meryl bandwagon, but I loved her in TAKE SHELTER and I loved her even more in this. She completely sold the line, "I'm the motherfucker who found this place, sir!" The audience I saw it with erupted into cheers at that moment. I would love that to be her Oscar clip, but obviously they could never show it on TV.

Sabin wrote:Zero Dark Thirty does not make you feel proud to be an American at all.

Italiano should consider this a ringing endorsement of the film.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Director Kathryn Bigelow defends torture scenes in her Oscar-nominated film "Zero Dark Thirty," saying torture was an undeniable part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The film opens by declaring it's based on firsthand accounts of actual events.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and other lawmakers criticized the film as misleading for suggesting torture led to the location of bin Laden. Lawmakers asked Sony Pictures to attach a disclaimer that the film is fictional.

"Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue," Bigelow wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

The comments were Bigelow's most explicit reaction to the controversy so far.

"As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work," she continued. "Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn't mean it was the key to finding bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn't ignore."

"War, obviously, isn't pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences," she added.

Bigelow wrote that torture was part of the story and the backlash may be misdirected.

"I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen," she wrote.

Last week, Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal responded forcefully to a "Zero Dark Thirty" anti-Oscar campaign waged by Ed Asner and other Hollywood actors, saying "to punish an artist's right of expression is abhorrent."

Bigelow and "Zero Dark Thirty" screenwriter Mark Boal had said previously that they "depicted a variety of controversial practices and intelligence methods that were used in the name of finding bin Laden.

"The film shows that no single method was necessarily responsible for solving the manhunt, nor can any single scene taken in isolation fairly capture the totality of efforts the film dramatizes," they said.

Sabin wrote:. . . because they appear to have a public love-fest between them. . .

I was unaware of that. That's why I didn't get the joke.

I was making a joke. I don't think I phrased it well.
(at work)

Because they're a man and a woman that have collaborated very closely on two movies, because they appear to have a public love-fest between them, because Kathryn BIgelow is obsessed with the subject matter that Mark Boal has dealt with first hand. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Brando and Kazan did have a thing.

Sabin wrote:No, Greg, and you know why it's different.

Honestly, I don't know.