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MattCanada here with another week of gay cinema. This week’s film is My Best Friend’s Wedding, one of the most criminally underrated films of all time and, in my opinion, the best comedy of the nineties.

From afar the film’s gay credentials seem to amount to just another example of the romantic comedy’s stereotypical use of the gay best friend character. However, George (Rupert Everett in a career best performance) is the film’s voice-of reason, moral centre, and ultimately the film’s unconventional leading man.

The friendship between George and Julianne (Julia Roberts) highlights the special and unique relationship gay men and women can have. In gay film critic (and personal hero) Robin Wood’s words

George’s maturity, considerateness, and tact are intimately connected to the gayness that sets him apart from social norms, permitting him a wise distance from the practices and conventions in which those around him are entangled

Throughout the film Julianne has two defining men in her life, the mostly absent Michael (Dermot Mulroney) who is her past and George “her best friend these days” who is her present and her future. The final sequence has George surprising Julianne at the titular wedding. She has given up Michael, said goodbye to him for good.

The ending, however, is not sad, very much the opposite. As Julianne and the camera search out George in the crowd of people, the tone shifts from one of melancholy to happiness. The crowd parts, and there is George, as debonair as any leading man, and Julianne every bit the beautiful and independent leading lady. Julianne and George’s dance reunion is constructed like any classic happy ending, the only difference being the Happy Couple is not the heterosexual couple but best friends, one gay and one straight.

George’s final line…

Maybe there won’t be marriage.
Maybe there won’t be sex…
But by god there will be dancing.

…is transgressive in its acceptance and extollation of a non-normative union (for mainstream Hollywood, at least). The couple dance off happily, as the singer sings “forever and ever”. Here the gay man is not relegated to homosexual pet status, he is the leading man, the moral centre of the film, and ultimately its hero. The relationship between Julianne and George is one of equals, and the film celebrates that at its conclusion.

The relationship between George and Julianne is only one of the many loveable aspects of My Best Friend’s Wedding. Julia, Rupert, Dermot and Cameron Diaz all give performances that could be considered either their best work or on par with it. The script is hilarious and its set pieces are endlessly re-watchable. The Karaoke Scene where Julianne forces a reticent and stage shy Kimberly (Diaz) onstage to humiliate her, only to have it backfire and endear her to Michael and the whole room is poetic justice at its finest. Another exemplary comedic sequence is the cat fight in the washroom where Kimberly finally lets Julianne have it. Though indisputably the best moment is the now iconic “I Say A Little Prayer for You” wedding party sing-a-long led by George and the two slutty Southern cousins (this song also accompanies Julianne and George’s dance at film’s end). Movie moments which deliver pure and perfect pleasure are few and far between, and this is one of them. From the harmonizing, to Julianne’s embarrassment, and the ensemble acting work, everything comes together flawlessly for a few minutes of cinematic joy.

Finally, isn’t it amazing that a romantic comedy has at its center a character who is flawed and who makes mistakes but is not defined by them? Julianne is complex and Julia Robert confidently makes her both likable and enraging. If it was up to me the film, screenplay, Julia, Cameron, and Rupert all would have been nominated for Oscars that year.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Blink this Friday and you’ll miss Russell Crowe’s new film Tenderness. Actually, even if you don’t blink, odds are good you’ll miss it — it’s not playing anywhere but New York, on exactly one screen downtown for a week. So what exactly will you be missing anyway, at least until it trickles onto DVD sometime early next year?

Popularity: unranked [?]

Last year the DC Film Critics Association gave Slumdog millions (of prizes). This year they express their desire to fly George Clooney’s friendly skies. I’m not here to judge (well not in this particular sentence) as I’m totally in love with Up in the Air, too. But then I just saw it and am still fanning myself from the heat coming off of Clooney & Farmiga. I need a little distance and a cold shower before I commit to any “best!” notions. Thankfully I allow myself that. Most organizations do not. Hence the hasty decision making.

I didn’t share their nominees with you yesterday because I found them vaguely embarrassing, like the assembled journos all just came in late and frazzled having left their notes on the Metrorail. Instead of thinking it through they scribbled the names of Oscar buzz du jour types and called it a day. My point is this: I am scared of these people that think The Blind Side is better written than [insert name of a dozen films of high and low profiles here]. The only thing that’s making that movie glow is Sandra Bullock’s charisma, which even when surprisingly and purposefully buttoned down, is pretty damn shiny. The writers didn’t write that. Bullock brings that with her when she reports to work.

Film Up in the Air
Director Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Actress Carey Mulligan, An Education
Actor George Clooney, Up in the Air
Supporting Actress Mo’Nique, Precious
Supporting Actor Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Adapted Screenplay Up in the Air
Original Screenplay Inglourious Basterds
Breakthrough Performance Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Animated Film Up
Foreign Film Sin Nombre
Documentary Food, Inc
Art Direction Nine

These awards mostly seem like Oscar winner predictions and as such they’re pretty very good… I could see all of that happening or nearly. But you know my feeling about using your awards to predict: Two different things! Two different things that should never be mixed!

Why is this beautiful: set, lighting, or Day-Lewis silhouette? You decide.

And on that note I have to both give and takeaway: I think John Myhre’s work on Nine is gorgeous BUT (there’s always a but with me. I’m so difficult!) one does have to wonder how many Oscars and other prizes John Myhre can collect simply dressing up theatrical stages (Dreamgirls, Chicago, Nine). I do think his work on Nine trumps his other features including the ones that don’t take place on a stage (Elizabeth, Memoirs of a Geisha) [tangent] or aren’t supposed to. I definitely think Geisha looks like it takes place on a stage and it shouldn’t… I thought it was the least deserving of the nominees that year so of course it won. Here’s who shoulda been nominated in 2005 [/tangent] …but this many prizes for dressing up stages? It seems to me like the cinematographer is the one doing the work when the movie takes place on stage. Am I right or am I missing something? Either is possible.
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Popularity: unranked [?]

Jose here with the Monday Monologue.

Swinton enters the scene in a conspicuous outfit made out of a trench coat, a hat and dark glasses. She looks around everywhere before she sits with the hitman. She seems to read through him and makes up in her mind as to what kind of man he is. “Are you interested in films by any chance?” she asks.

She doesn’t wait for an answer before she continues

I like really old films. You can really see what the world looked like; thirty, fifty, a hundred years ago. You know the clothes, the telephones, the trains, the way people smoke cigarettes, the little details of life.

Jarmusch fills his movie with cinematic references of every kind and uses Swinton as a conductor who spoils the films he got inspiration from to make this one. She continues and in less than a minute manages to make to references to both Tarkovsky and Marilyn Monroe

The best films are like dreams you’re never sure you’ve really had. I have this image in my head of a room full of sand and a bird flies towards me and dips its wing into the sand. And I honestly have no idea whether this image came from a dream or a film.

Sometimes I like it in films when people just sit there, not saying anything. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend…

Then, in a compelling self conscious move she details her own creation

Have you seen The Lady From Shanghai? Orson Welles.
That one makes no sense. Rita Hayworth is a blond, I think it’s the only film she was ever blond in. It’s like a game: deception, glamor, a shootout with shattered mirrors.

She dies in the end.

It’s obvious that Tilda’s character more than the others is extracted out of pulpy, smokey film noir. When she tells of her fascination with Hayworth, she’s describing herself. From the fact that Jarmusch gave Tilda a very blond wig, to her mysterious attitude, she’s the lovechild of Raymond Chandler and David Lynch.

After this random monologue she leaves the table and we don’t see her again until this…

The hitman walks down a street and notices a movie poster with a character that looks just like Swinton’s. The title of the film being advertised is Un Lugar Solitario which translated into English almost reads In a Lonely Place. The hitman notices something is going on just feet away from there. This very woman is being abducted by a group of men who throw her into a car.

Then and there it becomes clear to him that she was never real, she came from that world of intrigue and dreams in the black and white that she loved so much. Even if we too know this, we still can’t help but wish the whole movie had been about her.
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Popularity: unranked [?]

Over the next few weeks, about a million tiny critics organizations will shout “Best!” The British Independent Film Awards have announced, following the Gothams and NBR across the pond. It’s well underway. It shan’t stop any time soon.

British Independent Film Moon
Director Andrea Arnold, Fish Tank
Debut Director Duncan Jones, Moon
Screenplay In the Loop
British Short Love You More
Best Foreign Film Let the Right One In

• Big night for Duncan Jones’s Moon. David Bowie’s son sure built up a lot of goodwill with this first feature. That follow up is going to be tricky, though. How to live up to those expectations?

Actress Carey Mulligan, An Education
Actor Tom Hardy, Bronson
<— Supporting Actress Anne-Marie Duff, Nowhere Boy
Supporting Actor John Henshaw, Looking for Eric
Most Promising Newcomer Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank

• Only one of these is going on to Oscar citations for various reasons — sometimes as simple as no distribution in the States — but it seems like quite a strong list. And quite a young list, too. Mulligan is 24, Jarvis is only 18 and Hardy and Duff (Mrs. James McAvoy) are in their 30s. A lot of younger actors and actresses made great strides this year, didn’t they?

Achievement in Production Bunny and the Bull
Raindance Award Down Terrace
Technical Achievement Bright Star’s cinematography Greig Fraser
Documentary Mugabe and the White African
British Short Love You More
Best Foreign Film Let the Right One In

• I’d love to think that Greig Fraser has a clear shot at an Oscar nomination. His contribution to Jane Campion’s poetic romance went a long way in making the film the rich and delicate beauty it is. But I’ve learned never to assume that newbies are locks with Oscar’s below-the-line branches. Those branches can be stingy with new talents and protective of the establishment players. Or at least that’s sometimes how it feels from the outside. On a more obscure note I have to say “hurrah” for the win for Love You More (pictured). That’s the short that I fought for in jury deliberations at the Nashville Film Festival. It’s an expertly tight story of a budding sexual relationship revolving around the purchase and play of a vinyl single by the Buzzcocks. Great great short and it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the artist/director Sam Taylor-Wood is already on to feature film acclaim. She followed Love You More with Nowhere Boy, which was also honored by BIFA. Good night for her. No word on when that picture is opening in the States update: The film has the instant global hook of Beatles mania (the film is about John Lennon’s adolescence) and will be released by the Weinstein Company next year.

Finally, since critics organizations usually hand out a couple of honorary type awards, I assume to get stars at their end of year dinner parties, actors Daniel Day-Lewis and Sir Michael Caine (both of them entirely bereft of past honors, poor things) and journalist Baz Bamigboye were also lauded.
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Popularity: unranked [?]