It's puzzling that this is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar when its other five nominations don't include any acting, directing, or writing. So see this story of a boy and his pet horse fighting in World War I for the cinematography, music, and animal handling (the latter is not a category). Sitting in the theatre I groused, "I hate war! And I hate war movies!" The mass horror of watching soldiers run to their slaughter disturbs me on a level far greater than individual dramas of murder or molestation. But I do like to see the cinematography nominees on the big screen. And Steven Spielberg's usual cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's (won Oscars for the Spielberg-directed war movies Schindler's List (1993--I dragged myself to it and thought it was good) and Saving Private Ryan (1998--I skipped it), also nominated for Amistad (1997--I missed it) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007--I loved it), he also shot Jerry Maguire (1996), Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Terminal (2004), War of the Worlds (2005--not a real war movie), Munich (2005), and many more) images are spectacular. I haven't covered Spielberg yet in these pages, so here are my favorites chronologically: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Color Purple (1985), Jurassic Park (1993), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and The Terminal (2004).
The real star of the movie is the horse Joey, played by 14 different equine actors (no horses were harmed, blah blah), including Finder, who played the titular Seabiscuit (2003). The second mammal most on screen is now-21-year-old Jeremy Irvine, who was in a British TV series, and that's all, before being cast as Albert Narracott. Irvine was ebullient on a Letterman appearance recently, and, before the clip was shown, said that the horse was funny. No one in the audience laughed, but I got it--the horse rubbed people with his head like a cat. Supporting cast includes Peter Mullan (I always think of him as Joe from My Name is Joe (1998)) and Emily Watson (I missed her Oscar-nominated performances in Breaking the Waves (1996) and Hilary and Jackie (1998), but I did like Angela's Ashes (1999), Trixie (2000), Gosford Park (2001), Wah-Wah (2005), Miss Potter (2006), and Cold Souls) as Albert's parents, David Thewlis (last mentioned in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) as their landlord, Tom Hiddleston (in Midnight in Paris as Scott Fitzgerald) and Benedict Cumberbatch (I'll write soon about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) as the soldiers who first take Joey to war, and Niels Arestrup (the scary guy in A Prophet) as the loving French grandfather.
We saw the Tony-award-winning play (adapted from a children's book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo, whose cameo at the auction, standing next to Thewlis, we missed) at Lincoln Center in September. The staging, with life-size puppets, was fabulous (here's a video to give you an idea). Jack, Don, and I thought the story was corny (Lisal loved all of it). And this is the same story. So I can't really recommend it one way or another. Yes, the photography is gorgeous. The music, also Oscar-nominated, is pretty corny, too (listen here and, with a few hitches to reload the pages, the tracks will advance if you click back onto the page if you're doing something else). I'd be very surprised if it wins Best Picture in February.
Submitted by Rosalind Mercier, as I can't get it to take my name otherwise! I disagree with one point and that is that I loved the music. Otherwise, this film was so trite only an 11-year-old could stay amused. This was no E.T. Thought the war was greatly downplayed. My father was an officer in the Cavalry and the nightmares of the atrocities to man & beast haunted him all his life. That was a multi-million-pound cottage the "poor" family lived in, and the only enjoyable parts were with the horse(s). But even their script wasn't believable - no horse would "volunteer" to take its buddy's place pulling the canon! And nearly all the real animals died horrific deaths. However, I did fall in love with the beautifully spoken officer who dragged poor Joey off to war, and got wasted immediately, as they all did, poor wonderful upper-class men, like my 2 uncles. Please Google "Brooke Hospital for Animals" a much-needed UK charity that runs clinics in the Middle East for the descendents of real requisitioned war horses, and whose president is The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, for whom I just did a painting of a suffering little work donkey (and got a thank you note from her for it).
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