Oscars 2014

First of all, the winners:

Best Supporting Actor: Jared *hell yes!!* Leto (Dallas Buyers Club), who gave a wonderful speech in which he dedicated his award to all the people who died of or are still suffering from Aids. And who looks hot even with that silly Jesus haircut. ;-)

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o for her incredible performance in 12 Years A Slave. 

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club - woo hoo!! 

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine. So glad. Sorry for Amy Adams and Sandra Bullock though. 

Best Movie: 12 Years A Slave. Oh well.... of course the slavery drama had to win. Enough said... 

About the ceremony itself... everyone likes Ellen, but ordering pizza is not enough to make a good show. I was a little disappointed. At least she wore quite an adorable fairy outfit for 2 minutes... ;-) 

The musical highlights were U2's unplugged performance of their song Ordinary Love - which, to my complete disbelief, did not win Best Film Song... oh well -,  and  either Karen O's performance of Moon Song, or Pink's interpretation of Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Great job, all of you.

Big loser is American Hustle with ten nominations and not a single award *thank god*. Big winner is Gravity *also, thank god* with ten nominations and seven awards. 

Two general notes that hold true for every single Oscar ceremony: 

1. WAY. TOO. MANY. COMMERCIALS!! JEEZ!

2. It is a pity that the people who organize etc the whole thing face a big dilemma. Many people (including me) only watch the Oscars for the five really important categories which are mentioned above. I am also interested in Best Animated Movie, Best Soundtrack/Song and the usual star gossip, but that's it. It's really a shame that there is so much time between the five categories (this time, 1 1/2 hours between Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress!). Then again, I guess 80% of the people who watch the Oscars would shut off the TV too soon if the five categories were presented first. I would. Plus, I could get a good night's sleep. ;-) 

Oscars are coming!!

Dear movie lovers,

these are my predictions (and wishes) for the Oscars this Sunday night. (I am only focusing on the really important categories.)


Best Movie
12 Years A Slave
Gravity, Dallas Buyers Club

Best Actor
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey, Leo diCaprio (someone finally give him an Oscar, dammit!)

Best Actress
Cate Blanchett
Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Amy Adams 

Best Supporting Actor
Jared Leto, Michael Fassbender 
Jared Leto (I can't remember the last time I wanted so badly for a supporting actor to win an Oscar! I think his performance was the best one of the whole year, go Jared!) 

Best Supporting Actress
Lupita Nyong'o
Sally Hawkins

Philip Seymour Hoffman - an obituary

                                                    Philip Seymour Hoffman, (1967-2014)


I was shocked to read that actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died last Sunday at the age of only 46 with a great career to look back on and probably a lot of great acting moments still ahead of him.
I was also shocked to read it was apparently due to a heroine overdose and that he had  been addicted for a long time. Once more we see that a person can be very successful and praised, idolized even, in their job and remain a sad, desperate character behind the curtain.

Philip Seymour Hoffman was not only one of the best actors Hollywood has ever known. He was also likely among the best five actors of his generation - I am thinking of people like Russel Crowe or Johnny Depp.
It is sad that he was mostly cast for supporting roles such as the villian in Mission Impossble 3, Brandt in The Big Lebowski, or Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr Ripley, and is therefore not as famous as he clearly should have been.

as Freddie Miles in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

     
After a long long time of playing the less important characters, 2006 finally became his breakthrough. He was given the oscar for best actor for his unbelievable performance of bestselling author Truman Capote. Actually, I should say: he won it for becoming Truman Capote. The Time Magazine wrote that Hoffman "crowns ten years of brilliant work" with this role, and his transformation to the openly gay author with the exhaustingly exaggerated accent and manners is absolutely amazing.

as Truman Capote in Capote (2006)

When you saw Philip Seymour Hoffman in interviews, you often could not help but thinking "what a sweetheart!" and "oh, what a poor boy!" at the same time. There was always a tiny hint of sadness in his eyes, a little tinch of loneliness. Now that more and more details about his death and addiction to heroine are revealed, it becomes clear what a tragic figure he was - he might even have been able to play Capote so well because the author (according to the film) was a broken person inside, just like Hoffman himself probably was.
It is especially sad to see that the old story of the labile, sensitive genius that Hollywood has told so many times (Good Will Hunting, Inception, Magnolia) has once again found its way into real life.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, you were a wonderful actor, and I am sure you will be missed.

Misery (1990)

I am a sensitive person when it comes to horror movies. I try to make myself see as few as possible, but sometimes I am just too curious, and, well, curiosity killed the cat. At least I have made a deal with myself to never catch up on the list of Stephen King adaptations I haven't seen yet. Misery is only half as scary as The Shining which is a movie I swore I will never ever see again.

The movie Misery is not as brutal as the book. It is another Stephen King adaptation which the author wasn't happy with, and if you only know the book and thus expect a die-hard splatter movie with chopped off limbs then I must tell you: NO. You are not going to see that.
Bestseller author Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan) has a car accident and is rescued and taken care of by nurse Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates) who turns out to be an absolutely devoted fan of his books, especially the Misery series. When she finds out that her beloved character dies in the latest volume, Annie is determined to make Paul change the ending - under any circumstances...

The horror in Misery is mostly silent (think Silence Of the Lambs rather than Saw) and yet omnipresent due to the incredible performance of Kathy Bates. (For those of you who are not sure who Kathy Bates is: the other nice rich woman besides Rose in Titanic. Hilary Swank's mother in P.S. I Love You. The hippie woman sharing the hot tub with Jack Nickolson  in About Schmidt.) You gotta love that woman. One minute she has an absolutely contagious smile, and the next minute she seems to be a demon straight from hell. Few actresses can pull that off so easily, and giving Bates the Oscar was one of the most appropriate decisions Hollywood has ever made. If you want to see great acting in a horror movie which is suitable for the more sensitive movie addict (;-) ), you should give Misery a try.


RATING: 4/5

Pina (Pina - Tanzt, tanzt, sonst sind wir verloren; 2011)

I knew who Pina Bausch was before I saw this movie. But I didn't have much of an idea of what exactly she had been famous for.
After seeing it, I realized what it was she did. And I understood why she became such a legend.

Pina Bausch (1940-2009) was a dance performer, choreographer, and dancing/ballet teacher and she was undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. She even influenced David Bowie. Do I need to say more? ;-)
This movie now is Wim Wender's monument to her art, a documentary showing extracts from four of her pieces. Some of her dancers  tell their story of how they became part of Bausch's ensemble, the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Pina is clearly not a movie for people whose preferred movie genre is only horror, or only action. You gotta be able to sit down, relax - maybe with a glass of wine, maybe even by yourself - and allow yourself to really sink into the wonders of Pina Bausch's art and the beauty of epxressing yourself through art in ways that at least I had never even thought were possible.

Kimberly Jones of The Austin Chronicle described the movie as an "utterly transfixing, exhilarating spectacle", and she couldn't have found better words. The fantastic score underlines perfectly what Pina was aiming at: creating a medium for expressing yourself and connecting with others through dancing. Wim Wenders made a movie that is overwhelming and incredibly fragile and tender at the same time. If you thought you knew what dancing meant, watch this movie and think again.

RATING: 5/5

Blue Is The Warmest Colour (Blau ist eine warme Farbe; La vie d'Adèle; 2013)

This is a movie that I had huge expectations in, almost as much as in Hunger Games pt.2 (which is a great movie and even better than pt. 1, go see it if you haven't yet!). It was hard to go into the movie theater without being prejudiced before and having some ideas (and hopes) about what the film would be like because of all the stuff I had heard in advance (very graphic sex scenes, one of the best movies of the year).
I won't give away too much of the story, just so much: I am disappointed.

The whole movie is three (!) hours long. The first hour shows mostly the daily routine of 17-year-old Adèle (played by Adèle (surprise!) Exarchopoulos) at school.... *sarcasm on* yes, how very interesting! *sarcasm off* By the time she finally gets together with beautiful, mysterious Emma (played by Lea Seydoux, the female villain from Mission Impossible 4) who is a total cliché of the flamboyant art student, you are very likely to have yawned a few times or shifted in your seat wondering when the movie was finally going to develop a plot.

Coming to talk about the oh-so-graphic sex scenes. Journalists have not exaggerated when they described those scenes as hot, BUT.... author Julie Maroh  - the woman who whote the comic on which the movie is based - described those scenes best when she compared them to porn, saying that "the gay and queer people laughed because it's not convincing, and found it ridiculous" while guys will probably be "feasting their eyes on an incarnation of their fantasies". EXACTLY. There is not much more to say about it. Many times I was thinking I was watching internet porn or something. It is very clear where director Abdellatif Kechiche got his "inspiration" from. I am not saying porn is bad or evil. I am saying, however, if you want to make art, you should aim higher. It's actually what you owe the lesbian audience whose love life you are trying to picture.

Apart from those three things (length, boringness and ridiculous sex scenes), the movie is better than many other lesbian movies. It avoids the typical shallowness and uptightness, and the actresses do a very good job. The (straight) people I saw the movie with liked it much better than me, so maybe the movie is more enjoyable for a straight audience.


RATING: 3/5

Blue Jasmine (2013)

This is my first post on a movie that is still in theaters - and my first post on a Woody Allen movie, whose Blue Jasmine is his best movie in a long time.
The movie has been compared to A Streetcar Named Desire... I would compare the leading role to Jane in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane in terms of totally not caring about your appearance anymore, having hallucinations, drinking... What I am trying to say is that Blue Jasmine is especially worth seeing for the incredible performance of leading actress Cate Blanchett who is going to win the Oscar in february 2014... my prediction. ;-)

Woody Allen has made great movies such as Midnight In Paris, or - of course - Annie Hall (Der Stadtneurotiker), but also movies that leave you wondering what the point in seeing the movie actually was (e.g. Whatever Works). David Denby wrote in The New Yorker that Blue Jasmine is "the strongest, most resonant movie Woody Allen has made in years". This is true.
With the help of flashbacks, Jasmine Francis remembers the life she lived in New York as the wife of wealthy businessman Hal (played by Alec Baldwin) until she lost all her properties and had to move to San Francisco to live with her much poorer sister Ginger (played by Sally Hawkins). One could thus say that there are two plot lines. During the movie we see Jasmine struggle with having to find a job and being too ashamed about her situation to be honest with potential boyfriends - and we also learn how crippled the relationship between the two sisters is. The end culminates in a fight between the two sisters in which Ginger reveals her true feelings for Jasmine.

Woody Allen has made a movie that looks behind the facade of rich people and leaves us feeling sorry for them. Jasmine lives in a marriage full of lies and self-humiliation (especially on her part). She desperately tries to hold on to that life, and is unable to ask for help. In the end we can only pity her and come to the conclusion that Ginger, who works as a cashier in a small grocery store, is much happier in her life than Jasmine has ever been.

Blue Jasmine is a very exhausting movie to see - but in a positive way.

RATING: 4/5

OLDIE OR GOLDIE? >>> Citizen Kane (1941)

What you need to know:   

- Citizen Kane is a black&white drama directed by Orson Welles who also plays the main character Charles  Foster Kane, an extremely wealthy media mogul.
- The story starts with Kane's death. Just before he dies, he whispers the word "Rosebud". The rest of the plot describes journalist Jerry Thompson's research to find out the meaning behind that last word.
-  in 1998 AND 2007, Citizen Kane was voted Best American Movie Of All Times by the American Film Instititute (movies after 1996 were not considered).


What you also need to know:

- Citizen Kane is the most boring movie I have ever seen. Really. I always refer to it as "114 minutes of my life I will never get back". XD  It just didn't seem to end. Oh boy.


Gold information you can use to annoy stuck up teachers and filmfreaks who think that "Citizen Kane is such a deep, fascinating movie, holy cow!":

- When Kane utters his last word, there is nobody in the room besides him. Which means that nobody even had the chance to hear him say "rosebud". Which means that there is absolutely no logical reason why  someone should want to find out what the word means. Which means that the whole story is bullshit.
Here's to you, American Film Institute! ;-)


RATING: OOOOOOOOLDIE.

Precious (Precious - Das Leben ist kostbar; 2009)

I finished the movie Precious a few minutes ago. I knew it already, since I saw it in the theatre 3 years ago, and still I am experiencing the dire need to give someone hell because this world can be a sick place sometimes. It is needless to say that Precious is a very upsetting movie that some people will find unbearable to watch.

Clarice “Precious” Jones (played by Gabourey Sidibe) is an illiterate, heavily overweight, African-American teenage girl who lives with her mother in the ghetto of Harlem, New York. She is pregnant with her second child. The father of both children is her mother’s ex-boyfriend – Precious’s own dad. Her mother (played by comedian Mo’Nique who won the Oscar for this role) is unemployed and abuses Precious physically and emotionally mostly because her ex-boyfriend was less interested in having sex with her than in raping her daughter (yes, seriously).

When her principal finds out about Precious’s second pregnancy, she takes her out of school and wants her to attend an alternative school project. This project finally opens a window and Precious slowly begins to learn that there are actually people who care for her.

Precious has been compared to The Color Purple, and yes, there are a few parallels. Both movies are Cinderella stories set in an African-American background.  I would say that Precious is just as cruel – but surprisingly less of a tearjerker – and appears to have a more realistic ending. It is one of the few movies which are hard to describe as “great!” because it is just so depressing and sickening. Why should you watch it then? Well, because it is wrong to close your eyes at other people’s suffering. And because this is one of the movies with a perfect cast and impressive acting performances.

That’s why.

RATING: 5/5

Disney's Fantasia (1940) / Fantasia 2000 (1999)

I am a die-hard Walt Disney fan. The first movie I ever saw was The Jungle Book - I must have been around 4 years old - and my parents did a wonderful job of introducing my sister and me to the wonders of Disney's art. However, I had never even heard of Fantasia until 2009.

Fantasia is number three (!) in the row of Disney movies and surprisingly long (120 min). It consists of nine  animated sequences set to pieces of classical music such as Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, or Rite Of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. The adaptation of Modest Mussorgsky's Night On A Bald Mountain might be a little scary for children.

It would be shameful to give away the content of each episode. What I can give away, however, is that you are going to see something so beautiful that it will make you gasp and think, how on earth can human beings create art like this?

When you look up Fantasia on wiki, you will see that not all of the reviews were positive. The movie has been described as "an overwhelmingly ambitious orgy of color, sound, and imagination", but also as "grotesquely kitschy". While I would agree that one or two sequences are at least bordering on being cheesy,  I think that the others are simply an ode to the magic you can create with pen and paper. As a Disney lover, Fantasia is a dream come true.

RATING: 5/5

Fantasia 2000

Fantasia 2000 is the sequel to the movie I just talked about.

This time, each sequence is introduced by celebrities such as Bette Midler or Quincy Jones. The highlights are the adaptation of George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and the adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Apart from these two, I would not consider this movie a must-see when comparing it to its older brother. Describing it as only mediocre would be wrong, though.

Fantasia 2000 is less cheesy than its predecessor, but at the same time lacks a great deal of the original's magic and charm. Fans of Fantasia should probably see this movie so they can say they know them both. As for people who only know the new movie, I would highly suggest they watch the first one.

RATING: 4/5

A Beautiful Mind (A Beautiful Mind - Genie und Wahnsinn; 2001)

Sometimes Hollywood makes unbelievably WRONG decisions. One of those was not giving Russel Crowe the Oscar for his performance in this movie (no, really, he did not win it). While many people might refer to gladiator Maximus as the role of his life, I think that he was even more brilliant  when he played the mathematician John Forbes Nash.

Not only is this movie full of great actors who do amazing jobs (besides Crowe, we find Ed Harris, Paul Bettany, Christopher Plummer, and, of course, the wonderful Jennifer Connelly). It also manages to interweave several types of movie (romantic comedy, drama, horror movie) with an absolutely captivating result where everything fits together.
It's not just the (true!) story of Nash who is trying to make the breakthrough as a scientist and develops a schizophrenic psychosis, or the part about how he meets his first girlfiriend Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly) and how he tries to win her heart despite being very socially awkward. (I especially love this part: Russel Crowe is so adorable as the nerd who would do anything to make Alicia return his feelings.)
The soundtrack is just as brilliant - sometimes threatening and sinister, other times so sweet that it always makes me teary (opening scene!) -, and tops off what I consider one of my favorite movies of all time.

Some of you might have seen A Beautiful Mind already. If so, you know how beautiful it is. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. Prepare yourself with a box of tissues and a cushion to hold on to during the scary parts. You won't regret it.

RATING: 5/5

Secretary (Secretary - womit kann ich dienen?; 2002)

Forget 50 Shades Of Grey. Forget everything you have read about 50 Shades Of Grey. Also, forget the book’s thesis that people who enjoy getting spanked or using whips and chains in their sex life are brutal maniacs who don't give a f*** about the RACK principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RACK). It is sad that E. L. James seems to be mentally stuck in a time long before the 21^st century. (It is also sad that her book could easily be considered a rip-off which was “inspired” by this movie.)

Luckily, some people know it is possible to tell a story about a BDSM relationship without suggesting that everyone who is not (or not exclusively) into vanilla sex is in dire need of psychoanalysis and therapy. Secretary is very moving and impressive, and Maggie Gyllenhaal will knock your socks off. Director Steven Shainberg never makes fun of the characters and tries to simply tell the story of two people who fall in love.

The young woman Lee Holloway (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) comes home after spending a few months in a psychiatric hospital for attempting suicide. Lee insists that her being institutionalized was a misunderstanding because she never intended to kill herself (even though she has a tendency of cutting herself). She is portrayed as socially awkward, sensitive, and creative. After learning to type, she begins to work for the attorney E. Edward Grey (!!!; played by James Spader) who hires her despite her unprofessional appearance. Lee also starts to date Peter, an acquaintance from high school.

At first, Grey is very irritated by Lee’s grammar mistakes. But soon he finds himself aroused by her submissive behaviour. He openly confronts her with the problem of cutting herself and demands her not to do that again. They start a BDSM relationship in which Lee experiences a sexual and personal awakening. She stops cutting herself and falls in love with Grey. Grey, however, is concerned and ashamed about his feelings for her and eventually fires her.

Peter proposes to Lee and she reluctantly agrees to marry him. While she is trying on her wedding dress, she leaves and runs to Grey’s office to declare her love for him. 

Will the two get together?

RATING: 4.5/5

Requiem For A Dream (2000)

There are movies whose soundtrack is just as famous as the movie itself. Good examples are the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Psycho, or Jaws (Der weiße Hai). Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna is portentous, and scary, and at the same time incredibly catchy. Listening to it will likely make every single hair on your body stand on end and you might feel goosebumps even on your face. At least I did.

Once you have listened to it, chances are that it will linger somewhere in your memory for as long as you live because it is so very dark and poignant. It builds like a tidal wave and then crashes over you leaving you raw and shocked and vulnerable. It might make you cry your heart out. It is therefore likely that you won’t be able to stand listening to the whole piece. (here it is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKLpJtvzlEI )

These things also hold true for the movie that Lux Aeterna was composed for: Darren Aronofsky’s disturbing masterpiece Requiem For A Dream.

The main character is Sara Goldfarb (played by Ellen Burstyn) who suffers from her life as a lonely widow in her mid-fifties. She spends her time sitting outside the house gossiping with a group of other women, and watching a tv show in which the protagonist constantly claims that not eating meat, sugar, or having orgasms, changed her life. Her son Harry (played by Jared Leto) is a drug addict. He has his own apartment but comes home now and then to steal Sara’s TV and take it to the pawnbroker so he can buy new drugs. His friend Tyrone (played by Marlon Wayans), who helps him with drug dealing, and his girlfriend Marion (played by Jennifer Connelly) are addicts, too.

All four protagonists pursue the famous American Dream in the sense of trying to become rich and/or change their current lives into something better. Sara owns a red dress which is way too small for her by now and which reminds her of the “good old times”. Her husband loved for her to wear it, and she also wore it when Harry graduated from high school. When one day she receives a phone call which announces she will be invited to participate in a game show, she starts to become obsessed with losing enough weight to fit into the red dress again. Harry wants to become a rich business man so he can help Marion open a fashion store for her designs. Marion hopes to escape from her psychologist and her parents’ authority. Tyrone, as a child, promised his mother he would not spend his whole life on the streets.

As the movie proceeds, the protagonists’ lives fall victim to their dreams and we are pulled into a tornado of psychoses and prostitution and misery. This movie comes close to a very realistic nightmare and leaves us shocked and numb. It is absolutely worth seeing – not just for the fantastic performances of each actor (esp. Ellen Burstyn) but also for its plot and music – but you might not want to watch it by yourself. 

Considering that Darren Aronofsky also directed The Wrestler and Black Swan, we can see that he obviously has a thing for the dark side in human beings. He tells the story of four people who destroy their lives because they desperately hang on to an unrealizable dream – or is it really the dream which destroys their lives? 

RATING: 4.5/5

Love Me If You Dare (Liebe mich wenn du dich traust; 2003)

Close friends of mine might know how much I adore Marion Cotillard. I was never big on French actresses until I watched her incredible performance of Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. At that time I wasn't too big on French movies, either, until I watched this movie: Love Me If You Dare. Voilá, my heart was drenched in wine (thanks for that one, Norah)...

French movies about love often come with little twists which makes them different from the usually predictable Hollywood stuff where everyone knows that the main actor is going to get together with the main actress at the end. Seriously, guys, people who go to the movies want to be entertained, not bored.
This wonderful movie now is full of surprising twists, and one could refer to it as "'Harry and Sally' gone amok". (Yes, it is romantic. I promise.)

Before turning into a matter of life and death, everything starts with the friendship between a little boy named Julien and a little girl named Sophie - and with a pretty tin box given to Julien by his fatally ill mother. Since Sophie is being bullied at school, Julien gives the box to her to cheer her up under the condition that she lends him the box from time to time. Sophie demands proof of how important it is to him. This is the beginning of a game in which the box changes its owner after a completed dare.
As they grow older, Julien (now played by Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (now played by Marion Cotillard) slowly begin to fall in love with each other but neither wants to admit it. Too afraid of being rejected, their dares become more extreme and the two continue their perverted game well into their thirties until...

The (of course, French) philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal said the famous words "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know" (in German usually translated as "das Herz hat Gründe, die der Verstand nicht kennt"). Love Me If You Dare shows just how true Pascal's statement is, and you will find yourself thinking about it for quite a while. Watching the two protagonists deliberately hurt each other so that neither has to confess their love can only be described as an emotional roller coaster from which we can't seem to escape. Yes, it is stupid. Yes, the two are their own worst enemies.
But isn't that what people in love do: silly things?

RATING: 5/5

Howl (Howl - Das Geheul; 2010)

The movie Howl (2010) is a monument to an artist and his most famous work of literature. 

James Franco brilliantly portrays the poet Allen Ginsberg as a fragile man who suffers under the circumstances he lives in and believes in his art as the only way of being true to himself as well as honest to the world. Not only does he resemble Ginsberg (who explains his working process and his reasons for writing Howl in taped interviews which make up a third of the movie). He also manages to convey the atmosphere of the poem and makes us feel its intensity in a scene where he reads it out to an audience at the Six Gallery in October 1955– an audience who hang onto his lips because both the poem and its writer seem to be what they had been looking for: Someone who shares their thoughts and inner conflicts. Someone who understands.

However, the main character can actually be considered the poem itself which is read by a man whose identity we do not know unless we fast forward to the credits at the end of the movie. His dark threatening voice coheres with animated sequences which underline the poem and enhance its meaning to the point where he might be saying a prayer instead of what might be the most controversial poem of the 20^th century. 

This brings us to the actual plot: the 1957 obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Bookstore and the first person to publish the poem in “Howl and other poems”. David Strathairn plays the attorney Ralph McIntosh who represents the bigotry and prudery of the 1950s. His opponent Jake Ehrlich, played by John Hamm, believes in freedom of speech and artistic license. During the process where a few literary experts are asked to give their opinion of the poem, Ehrlich manages to reveal their double standards and poses the question if a piece of writing can only be considered art if it lives up to the reader’s expectations and society’s idea of what should be uttered in public. The result of the process, as groundbreaking as it might have been at that time, could have been portrayed in a much more spectacular way. People who were not familiar with the case before seeing the movie, like me, might be a little disappointed. 

However, the real Allen Ginsberg makes it clear that he never cared much about the public opinion. It is therefore only logical that the directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman put most emphasis on the poem itself in a way that makes us want to read it at once. Howl shows what a movie on a poem can and should do.

RATING: 4.5/5

Oscar Nominees 2013....SO excited!

who I think is going to win:

Best Movie: Argo
Best Actress: Jessica Chastain
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz

who I want to win (or would also be satisfied with, but not as much ;-) ):

Best Movie: Les Miserables (probably just coz I haven't seen Argo yet) / (Zero Dark Thirty)
Best Actress: Jessica Chastain / (Naomi Watts / Jennifer Lawrence)
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway
Best Actor: Hugh Jackman / (Joaquin Phoenix / Daniel Day-Lewis)
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz