Most Relevant Animated Film: Zootopia.

How long has it been since Russovoir's last animated film review? Four years? Ah yes, Rise Of The Guardians (2012). This is because he normally doesn't write reviews for an animated film. I think it's unfair that we have to hear (or read) what the adults have to say on a material made for children. The last scene of The Polar Express (2004) actually influenced this opinion. When the kids shook the ornament bell, no one in the room could hear it. Except them.

Children have a take in life that we, adults, have shed. They are going to go through changes that are reflected on films for their benefit: friendship, obedience, imagination, e.g. We adults sort of learned this already, so the themes unfolding before us are repetitive. Otherwise, if you're an adult and haven't been acquainted with such themes, your childhood was terribly misguided.

Mistake admitted that Russovoir had not written anything for the 2015 Academy Award winner Big Hero 6, especially interesting by merging San Francisco and Tokyo, San Fransokyo. This is obviously a reference to United States and Japan's relationship, encompassing all themes in the film, technology, medicine, teamwork, and intellectual property theft - but that's another story. We got a little carried away there. Russovoir doesn't blame you, Big Hero 6 is packed with subtext! 

Zootopia is going to be a contender at the 2017 Academy Awards, Russovoir guarantees it. Just like Big Hero 6, Disney has yet broached on what is currently relevant, not with pitchforks and torches, Beyonce music videos, or Chris Rock monologues. Zootopia is like South Park but with tact, like X-Men but without Jennifer Lawrence - ha! - but with animals. Zootopia digs out from the rabbit hole of difursity.

Zootopia Cityscape

Let's begin where we always begin. The title. Zootopia is a portmanteau - obviously, for adults - of 'zoo' and 'utopia', wherein utopia means an imagined, perfect place, and zoo, well -

Right off the first scene, a young bunny, Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), stars in her own play where anyone can be anybody - a lion can be an astronaut, for instance. It sounds so far-fetched, but if you look closely, that's everything we're taught growing up. To be whoever we want to be. The theme just doesn't end there no sir. This film isn't banal. We're introduced to the prey and predator hierarchy.

What comes into mind when you think (or see) a predator? Threatening, aggressive, deceitful - a bully, in this context, to helpless preys. Isn't the personification familiar to our society? Throughout history what manipulatively comes to mind of a particular race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, is engraved in our heads like it's the natural order of things, that predator always catches prey, and prey always lives in fear. This is why we cannot blame the parents of Judy when she's been told not to dream too big, and instead tend the farm with them, alongside her centiplet siblings. Persistent as a bunny, Judy eventually becomes what she wants to be, a policewoman.     
 
Well, isn't that convenient? How relevant is this with what's going on with America? Bear that in mind as we go along. So, Judy Hopps is long away from home to the flora and fauna of Zootopia. Imagination hits animation like a bus! The utopic society of animals, big and small, is zoned into their natural habitats, accessible by public transport, despite maximum one-time establishing shot by a train Judy was in.

In Zootopia, the bestial tension of prey and predator is not felt, and somehow each animal knows their place in the society. This pleases Judy because finally that little school play she wrote came to life. This strongly resonates to Russovoir's younger self back in the Philippines and the (pipe) dream to be in America, coursing to the current with foreign films. Now that he's here, at whatever situation he had been in, alone and in a seedy apartment, Russovoir is happy.

Life, of course, with Judy Hopps as with Russovoir, is unfair. Poor Judy assumes life, let alone her career, will be handed on a silver platter. She is a long way to 'serve and protect', and starts out as a meter maid; the zootopia sociographic slowly and cleverly unfold.

Sloths in DMV. How accurate.

"We may be evolved, but we're still animals."

There's so much to tell, but Russovoir wants to jump right in to the most relevant subtext. Judy and her partner in crime Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a fox, a predator, two polar opposites set to one goal - classic trope - are on a missing person case. They go out investigating, meet interesting animals who provide a lead - one of Russovoir's favorites is the mafia capo mole rat (Francis Coppola's Godfather homage) and her equally New Jerseyan bride-to-be daughter, ultimately discovering a government conspiracy of the night howlers.

This is the motherload. The reveal (laughs).
What do you call a baby cow?

Zootopia has given us a tangible agent to address an issue in our society.  The media. The night howler is partly a McGuffin*, even though it's the object of conflict. To be frank about what we're trying to imply, and we've had enough of what's subtle and start being blunt about it, the media is the night howler that makes certain people of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation 'savage'. That we cannot control them because it's what's in their DNA, so we stigmatize, ostracize, and eventually incarcerate them.

A prey mother and child uncomfortable next to a predator.

Hands down to this film. Going back to Judy as a policewoman, United States is in hot water with their police department. People, especially the black community, think they're incredibly racist to not think twice of shooting a black person than a white. Or is it, again, what the media wants us to think? The manifestation of a police academy in Zootopia is no accident. Disney is trying to send a message that this power tripping coverage is manipulated to generate fear. Fear against each other. Prey against predator. White against Black.

"90% of the population, united against one common enemy."

Brilliant, isn't it? Zootopia is the most relevant film of the year. While the kids can enjoy and follow along the underdog - underbunny in this context (laughs) - solving the crime and saving the day (with the blackmailed help of the fox), us adults can - must draw what's really kicking and screaming under the scratches on the surface.

*a device that is deliberately placed to catch the viewer's attention, but serves no purpose. It has little to no narrative explanation.

88th Academy Awards: The Leonardo DiCaprio Blog.

Here we are again, and no one is excited than Russovoir. Leonardo DiCaprio deserves the Oscar for his performance in Alejandro-Gonzales Iñárritu's The Revenant. Let us begin with an article. This article was on Variety (Holy Bible of the film industry). It explained why Dicaprio didn't win the Oscar for the role of Jordon Belfort in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. Russovoir read it, and has read it again so he may able to lay it on to you in the best of his abilities*

The article begins with a line that's, almost, comforting. Cool guys don't win Oscars. Comforting in a sense that performance acting is not a walk in the park career choice. It can be, undoubtedly. Russovoir is not an actor, so he can't back this up, but he has been watching films since 15, and back when he got his own plasma flat screen in his room, he's aware of the glitz and glamour of the high life. Performance acting is actual hard work of getting into character, days of line reading, months of research - but years of value. Performance acting is method acting; there's a method to this madness.

"While there's life, there's hope."

The actor that comes to millennial mind is Eddie Redmayne (picture above) as Stephen Hawking in the 6-time Academy Award nominated film The Theory of Everything (2014). A gay man would say this film is everything. Or winding back the clock, Russell Crowe in 2002 Academy Award Best Picture A Beautiful Mind. The article has brought to our attention 2000 Academy Award Best Actor Tom Hanks of Cast Away. Then, it gets interesting. James Murphy, the writer, introduces a polarity.

Brad Pitt-Tom Hanks Continuum: The Definition of Movie Cool

Pitt (0 Oscar, on the left side) - Mysterious,  Remote
Hanks (2 Oscars, on the right side) - Uninhibited, Immersive

This polarity Murphy that by now you have plotted in your head is interestingly effective. On the Pitt side, an actor who has had slim chances of winning because the character he has played is, as he put it, is 'leave you wondering what it would be like to be them, without imagining that you could'. Classic Pitt roles like Fight Club (1999) - we don't talk about it, and Inglourious Basterds (2009). On the right corner, Hanks is regarded as a likable character. The roles he play, the complete opposite, inviting, communicative, and on an emotional level, sympathetic. Furthermore, saving the best for last on the first half of Murphy's article, think of the Oscar as the jealous type. It wants to shine all its goldness, the attention to it; no one shares with it. Cool guys don't win Oscars. Historically, the Oscar always goes to the disabled, mentally ill, gay, oppressed, and ugly.

2003 Oscar Best Actor Adrien Brody as a Jew in The Pianist.

On the top of your head, what is/are DiCaprio's sympathetic (Hanksian, as Murphy coins it) character(s)? Can we all agree What's Eating Gilbert Grape (2003)? Russovoir hears Titanic (1997) from the back. That's right too. The Basketball Diaries (1995)? Sure, let's pencil that in. Murphy thought these films we mentioned had placed DiCaprio in a sweet spot early on his career (he was only in his 20's!), and later were frustratingly snubbed for reasons surely justified. He was in good hanks, as Russovoir would say (laughs). However, since then, films he has made throughout his successful career, as Murphy points out, were stellar performances - Blood Diamond (2006) as a personal favorite - yet not the kinds deserving an Oscar. Cool guys don't win Oscars. It has now been evident that the polarity chart is a helpful tool to determine who will win. Now everyone's a critic! Fun.

(bathroom break)

Let's look at The Revenant as a whole first, before we close in on Caprio. Because as they say in the filmmaking business, the real winners are those behind the camera. The film is a tremendous group effort; it's still amazing how all that hard work is jammed in a disc that no hand on which it reflects can mirror the callous and cuts each department had to endure to achieve master frames (not just million dollar budget films of course. Especially independent films).

Until hell freezes over, one would say to an unthinkable accusation. Well, been there, done that, as hell was frozen for five (5) months throughout the filming of The Revenant. -40 degrees. That's like Chicago in polar vortex two years ago. Probably worst. All the while reports have documented boiling points from the crew against the director had picked up steam (Skotchdople VS Iñárritu). Crewmembers eventually understandably quit, resignation signed with a frostbitten hand or coming down with - not a cold, silly - hypothermia!

That, and then some (case in point where he went overbudget, yikes!), came down like an avalanche to the visionary Mexican auteur. In an interview, that felt like fresh patch of snow, he came clean. "I have nothing to hide. There were problems but none of them made me ashamed. As a director, if a violin is out of tune, I have to take out from the orchestra." (Did you hear that in his sexy Mexican accent too?)

Iñárritu, 3 Oscars, 51 years old.

(South Park break)

Now it's all coming down to this. Leonardo DiCaprio, and why he must win. Not because the internet wants him to, and forever silence the protests. The wolf doesn't listen to the opinion of the sheep. Harsh, but yeah, no, Johnny Depp, until he cleans up his act, while his performance in Black Mass (2015) felt like Ashton Kutcher in Jobs (2013) and focus on performance acting, there's no Oscar for him - while he is an indelible cultural icon, full credit given.

DiCaprio portrayed American hunter and explorer Hugh Glass. If there's one thing you must know about him, and obvious in the epic, is that he literally lived to tell the tale. Straight up, was he a cool guy? Well, let's break the story down first. What's fact and fiction in the film. It's a fact that Hugh Glass, during an ambulatory expedition, was mauled by a foraging grizzly bear. There, he was butchered, skin off the bones, for which was fed to her grizzly cubs.

Hugh Glass monument, Lemmon, South Dakota.

  

It's also historically accurate his fellow explorers left him for dead, after taking his equipment for their own use, and dug an open grave. In between contracting fever, and yes out of survival, Glass ate a raw bison liver** and fish, he was still in one piece. And it's fact he had wanted John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger dead, two of his companions who agreed to his vivisepulture. The true motive of Glass' excruciating journey, according the 1939 novel The Oregon Trail, was vengeance served ice-cold for his maltreatment. Wouldn't you?

**DiCaprio reportedly also ate raw bison liver (and vomitted).

Glass didn't have a son. That part is fiction. It was then a conscious directorial choice for Iñárritu to incorporate a Pawnee son, more so interracial marriages, while at that period of time the real story of Thanksgiving was in writing. The Revenant wins in cultural references.

To answer our question where he is in the Pitt-Hanks Continuum, ask yourself: Did DiCaprio's character invite you, the audience, to the experience, or were you outside looking in? Were the emotions shared? Anger, sorrow, vengeance, did you vicariously feel? Finally, was Glass a cool guy? Was he in a suit, like most of DiCaprio's roles? No. He was at his worst in every size, shape, and form. If anything, this is Tom Hanks' Cast Away, but at a historically racial hotbed approach. This is good. Dicaprio becomes, possibly even long before, a catalyst of reform - did you not watch his Golden Globes acceptance speech?

He's a beautiful soul. The Oscar always goes to a beautiful soul.





*Otherwise, help yourself and click here.

King of Summer: Nicholas John Robinson.

There are only ninety-three (93) days until Summer 2016. Tank tops, counterfeit wayfarers, and tan lines - sons of beaches, all that jizz. But most of all, summers since the Chicago summer of September 24, 2013 (thank you Facebook timeline) to the next, Russovoir will have to dotingly think back to one of the best summer movies of all time, The Kings of Summer (2013). Russovoir still remembers - okay, vaguely - the post-excitement he was feeling; it was on RedBox so he had had the luxury to pause the best moments, reaction shots, reversal of fortune (that's climax, fancier), and establishing wide shots (ha, when you're in film school) of the beautiful greenery of Cleveland, Ohio.

The story is original: three boys who have had enough of their mundane, pacified lives, and have decided to knock on wood, lay the bricks on their newfound independence into their self-built summer house made of, well, anything they could find in the woods.

The Summer House

As an aspiring screenwriter, this film resonates Russovoir. Fresh coming-of-age storytelling, which he believes is his working progress suit, and secondly, fresh faces with solid performances.

Robinson alongside Simpkins and Pratt.

While a blockbuster exposure is never a bad idea, particularly also, to his opinion, Jurassic World isn't what Transformers (2007) is to Shia LaBeouf, Robinson will always be the alpha dog Joe Toy of The Kings of Summer, like Alden Ehrenreich as Ethan Wate in one of Russovoir's personal favorite films, Beautiful Creatures (2013). Or, faithful to the reference, our childhood favorite loony Louis Stevens.

From Ehrenreich to Tye Sheridan, Anton Yelchin, Dane DeHaan, Nat Wolff, Grant Gustin, Shiloh Fernandez, Dylan O'Brien, Tyler Posey, and the list goes on, one fades and another is born really, they (should) each have, first, a unique -  forgive the euphemism -  personality. And that personality, if you're lucky, is explicitly defined in one critically-acclaimed film that allocates succeeding roles. Molly Ringwald, for example, and her every single John Hughes classic. But of course, a typecast can always be severed. But right now, how he's doing in the saturated film business, Robinson is the Devon Sawa-center-parted blonde hair boy-next-door of our generation.

Not long after The Host (2013) meets Edge of Tomorrow (2014) in The 5th Wave does this whole silver-spooned, soft-spoken captain of the football team will work out for the 20-year old. It's about time we break the stereotype of a jock. Hmm, but we did have Jonathan Bennett in Mean Girls (2004). So, shall we say, the comeback. The Channing Tatum, Robert Hoffman, Travis Van Winkle, and Alexander Ludwig will have their ball back in their court, but right now, the fantasy has turned down a notch. A foul to unrealistic expectations of a football player (ha, took that one out from a feminist).

Ex. Nat Wolff in Ashby (2015).

The 5th Wave is a sci-fi alien invasion chick flick. It has its own charm. Kind of like your Gyllenhaal-Rossum quiet storm in The Day After Tomorrow (2004). The world is ending, everyone dead or dying, no electricity nor running water - yet Moretz is not a day sleep deprived, but amid the row and mess, there's romance. And it only gets interesting! Robinson, particularly, a significant role shift, while Russovoir is still processing to the idea, when he's in military uniform, through combat training, let alone holding a gun - yet still the alpha dog in his unit. It was a personal moment; he's not carefree like he was in The Kings of Summer anymore. While Russovoir is fully aware this is what an actor does, Wildcats jersey to shirtless, allow him to occasionally bask in the sweet summer warm welcome of a king.