deepakahlu

I went in to watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood thinking it was going to be Tarantino's ode to the movie about movies. After all, he's a past master at paying homage to the gangster film, the western, the martial arts flick, the nazi film, et al.

But after watching it, I'm pretty much convinced it's his ode to 1969! Simply brilliant how he captures the era...the LA boulevards, the signboards, the Vietnam war, the hippies, acid tipped cigarettes, spaghetti westerns, Bruce Lee, the Manson cult, radio commercials, and yeah the music. Definitely the music.

Finally got around to watching Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman, the film which won the best foreign film Oscar last month. It's well trodden Farhadi territory — contemporary middle class Teheran, with apartments and streets that look and feel so familiar, and the oh so subtly captured human relationships. The world we've seen before in A Separation and Fireworks Wednesday. This time around the focus is on the shifting dynamics between a couple after the wife is assaulted by an unknown intruder. My take: very competently done with the usual Farhadi refinement. But somewhere along the way I thought the plot sagged just that wee bit. Not among his best, but still very good

But hey, the guy won his second Oscar for it, after the one for A Separation in 2011. And that don't happen too often in the Best Foreign Film category. Far as I can see, the only others to have been there before are Vittorio Di Sica, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman. And that, folks, is a very rarefied club indeed.

Many people, judging by media reports, still seem to be a bit shell shocked that Spotlight hopped over The Revenant to win the Best Picture Oscar yesterday. The bookies as we know had Revenant ahead. But so did lots of other commentators.

I was glad Spotlight won. Always thought it was a better overall film. At first hearing it may not seem much like a movie that would be of wide interest. A bunch of investigative journalists uncovering a story of widespread child molestation by the clergy in Boston. Yup, sounds interesting conceptually but perhaps too serious a subject matter for an afternoon's entertainment?

Actually, try it out. The team of journalists at the Boston Globe, all have fleshed out characters, look vibrant and engaged in what they are doing, and act well as an ensemble. No one big dominating hero here. It's the team in focus.

Remember All the Presidents Men? That 1976 Redford, Hoffman movie about the uncovering of the Watergate scandal by The Washington Post? Well, Spotlight is in that genre of films. You will not be bored