Salon.com > Kathryn Bigelow http://www.salon.com Mon, 28 May 2012 15:05:50 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Pick of the week: The greatest war film ever made? http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/ http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2011/04/14/armadillo Have things improved in Iraq and Afghanistan since we decided to gung-ho the hell over there and blow stuff up? Let's just say that expert opinion is divided on that question, but the movies have been amazing. You could curate a dynamite film festival out of post-9/11 war movies, both documentaries and narrative features, starting with Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's prescient "Gunner Palace" -- made in 2004, just as the Iraq conflict was going seriously south -- and moving forward through "The Situation" and "Iraq in Fragments" and  "Battle for Haditha" and, of course, "The Hurt Locker" and last year's Oscar-nominated, you-are-there documentary "Restrepo."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/04/15/armadillo/feed/ 52 Oscars: Hollywood’s war against itself (continued) http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:09:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap I'm grateful to have been thoroughly and completely wrong about the best-picture race -- as were a great many other supposedly knowledgeable stooges -- for a whole bunch of reasons. First and foremost, Kathryn Bigelow's historic sweep was a genuinely moving and surprising capper to one of the most tedious Oscar broadcasts in recent memory. All that industry hand-wringing, a much-touted new production team, and what do we get? Interpretive dance numbers set to fragments of the nominated scores. Seriously? If they'd hired the Sparkle Motion dance team out of "Donnie Darko," it couldn't have been any lamer. (Actually, that would been a lot more fun to watch.)

Although I have mixed feelings about "The Hurt Locker" itself, and about the cultural-psychological reasons for its ascendancy, Bigelow herself is a genuine and strange cinematic genius who has paid her dues several times over and richly deserves her moment of triumph. (Is "Hurt Locker" her best film? Probably not. Her second-best? Not even sure about that.) I wish producer-screenwriter Mark Boal hadn't complicated Bigelow's big moment on the stage of the Kodak Theatre by persistently tugging on her elbow, like a kid in a department store who needed to use the john. That was odd.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_wrap_2/feed/ 18 Kathryn Bigelow is not a dude http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:52:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude "The time has come," said Barbra Streisand late Sunday night. And with that, Kathryn Bigelow, whose low-budget "The Hurt Locker" edged out the most successful movie of all time, became the first female in Academy history to win an Oscar for best director. (Moments later, she'd make a twofer by winning best picture as well.)

But like every historic first, Bigelow's dual victory was both a stunning personal achievement and resonant metaphor. And not everybody's been thrilled.

Just a few weeks ago critic Martha P. Nochimson wrote an essay here that lambasted Bigelow as "the Transvestite of Directors … masquerading as the baddest boy on the block." And after last night's ceremony, journalist Farai Chideya promptly tweeted, "Among Bigelow's best-known films are three male ensemble casts: 'Hurt Locker,' 'Point Break,' 'K-19 the Widowmaker'. … kudos to cast and to filmmaker and to topic. Gender matrix not so much." So before we bust the pink champagne, perhaps we should ask: Does Bigelow's victory still count for the ladies?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/kathryn_bigelow_is_not_a_dude/feed/ 39 Best Oscar night ever? http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/ http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/heather_havrilesky/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness How did they do it? As crazy as it sounds, this year's Oscar festivities were dynamic, funny and moved along at a good clip. Hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were hilarious, there were great jokes by everyone from Tina Fey to Ben Stiller, and the speeches were less long and dull than they've been in years. For once, no one rambled on forever and agents were rarely thanked. Not only that, but the usual endless tributes that serve no purpose whatsoever were gone, cut down to a great John Hughes segment and an entertaining horror-movie montage. Best of all, the best original songs were not performed, which means we weren't forced to sit through two more blandly upbeat tunes with those old familiar Randy Newman melodies you've heard on every Oscar night for decades now. And I think we can all agree that an Oscar night without a Disney ballad performed or a long, rambling Lifetime Achievement acceptance speech is a winner in anyone's book.

Here are a few of the highs and lows of the night:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/03/08/oscar_night_madness/feed/ 91 Kathryn Bigelow: Feminist pioneer or tough guy in drag? http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/24/bigelow In "The Hurt Locker," Sgt. 1st Class Will James (Jeremy Renner) is the second coming of John Wayne. Just not as cuddly.

What's the point of this metaphor? It's that I'm still coming to grips with how a woman could possibly have dreamed up this spartan American soldier in Iraq, who, while obsessively romancing death as a bomb-squad ace, outdoes the most extreme images of machismo ever produced by mainstream America. While Wayne set the testosterone standard in playing characters who lived to fight, his guys also found time to love women -- Ethan's Martha (Dorothy Jordan) in "The Searchers" and the Ringo Kid's Dallas (Claire Trevor) in "Stagecoach," to name two.

When they bonded with young, earnest boys, Wayne's men became meaningful mentors -- Gillom Rogers (Ron Howard) in "The Shootist" couldn't have grown up without the wit and wisdom of Wayne's John Bernard Books. But Will, with his Wayne-ian steely gaze, his laconic ease at the portals of death, and his patented hero saunter, loves "just one thing," as he tells his baby boy before leaving him, maybe forever, to return to the killing fields of Iraq. And it isn't women or kids.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/24/bigelow_3/feed/ 137 Kathryn Bigelow’s big BAFTA win http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet//feature/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big Continuing her hot streak, "Hurt Locker" director Kathryn Bigelow added few more accolades to her resume Sunday night. At the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, the tense Iraqi war drama won six awards, including best screenplay, best picture -- and best director.

Bigelow, who is set next to direct a pilot for HBO, bested ex-husband James Cameron and "Avatar" to become the first female to win a BAFTA for directing. Last month she became the first female honored with the DGA award. (She lost to Cameron at January's Golden Globes). Speaking to reporters backstage after her win, Bigelow said, "With Jim, we’re very good friends. I think we’re proud of each other and I think that’s there for a long time.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/22/bigelow_wins_big/feed/ 3 The Oscar nominations: Trying to please everyone http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:03:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/02/02/oscar_noms So what was the inflated Academy Awards best-picture category, expanded this year from five to 10 nominees, going to bring us? More populism or more existentialism? Was it going to open the door to animated films, to fantasy and science fiction, to foreign flicks and low-budget indies -- or just to middle-of-the-road Hollywood sentimentality, calibrated to draw in heartland viewers who've increasingly tuned out the whole Oscar spectacle?

Given the Academy's catholic desire to please all its contradictory and overlapping constituencies, it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the answer was all of the above. And yet, somehow, it did. I think of the five extra nomination slots as the "Dark Knight" apology awards, but this year offered no exact TDK-cognate, i.e., no commercial-critical behemoth likely to be snubbed by the Academy members' peculiar blend of middlebrow snobbery. (Just to be clear: I didn't like "The Dark Knight" much, personally. But that's irrelevant when it comes to the Oscars. Given its alleged seriousness, cultural impact and box-office firepower, a best-picture nom should have been automatic.)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/02/oscar_noms/feed/ 37 Box office report: “Avatar” hits $2 billion http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/box_office_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/box_office_3/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:32:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/01/31/box_office any movie not by James Cameron]]> "Avatar" won the box office derby for the seventh straight weekend, taking the record for the biggest seventh weekend gross ($30 million) from "Titanic" ($25 million). Dropping just 14 percent, the unstoppable monster has now grossed $594 million, meaning it will cross "Titanic's" $600 million gross in the next two or three days, perhaps on Tuesday, when the Oscar nominations are announced. Early last week, James Cameron's amazing hit surpassed "Titanic's" worldwide box office gross to become the world's highest-grossing movie. This weekend it crossed the seemingly unfathomable $2 billion mark worldwide. You can babble all you want about inflation, 3D and IMAX ticket prices, and what have you, but check out this little statistic: When "Avatar" reaches $2.239 billion, which it will in the next two or three weeks, it will have doubled the worldwide take of every other movie ever made except "Titanic." It will also soon have a $1 billion lead over any movie not directed by James Cameron. There's not much more to say at this point than "wow" and "don't make a sequel," so let's move on.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/02/01/box_office_3/feed/ 8 “The Hurt Locker” and Bogart’s 1943 “Sahara” http://www.salon.com/2010/01/12/double_bill/ http://www.salon.com/2010/01/12/double_bill/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:12:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/01/12/double_bill The best double bill I ever witnessed was an inadvertent one. Between the hours of 2 AM and 5 AM, somewhere in the late 1970s, on San Jose, Calif.'s late, unlamented Channel 36 ("the Perfect 36," as legendary stripper Carol Doda would leer in on-air promos), I saw Busby Berkeley's 1943 surrealist masterpiece "The Gang's All Here" in an unholy coupling with Ingmar Bergman's equally surreal "The Seventh Seal."

Simply.

Wow.

Life, death, chess and giant bananas, in one mesmerizing, miscegenationist vision. The whole became oh so much more than the parts.

Of course, that kind of lightning does not strike twice in one's lifetime. And the near death of the local repertory cinema at the hands of home video has reduced the odds of celebrating the classic double bill. Might I suggest a way to keep this glorious tradition alive in the privacy of our own homes?

I propose to conduct a semi-regular conversation between two films, one recent and just out on DVD, and the other a less visible offering, also available on DVD (or easy, legal download) that in some strange way complements the "A" part of our bill.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/01/12/double_bill/feed/ 27 Early odds on the Oscar derby http://www.salon.com/2009/09/23/oscar_kickoff/ http://www.salon.com/2009/09/23/oscar_kickoff/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:23:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/beyond_the_multiplex//feature/2009/09/23/oscar_kickoff

 

A still from "Up"

It's an autumnal phenomenon, as predictable in its own way as the first signs of red and gold in the treetops: As dozens of new movies flood the fall marketplace, most of them without a hope in hell of reaching a paying audience, people in the industry begin to protest that the film economy is finally and permanently broken. This year the alarm has been sounded by indieWire blogger Anne Thompson, long among the most levelheaded and reality-based of Hollywood reporters, and that fact has momentarily transfixed the attention-impaired elite of movieland.

"The old independent market is over," wrote Thompson last week, summing up the aftermath of the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival, which saw only a handful of modestly scaled distribution deals. "A new one will take its place. But we are smack in the middle between the end of one paradigm and the start of another, and it's a scary place indeed." Added Thompson, "I saw one movie after another [at Toronto] that was unreleasable in the current climate," predicting that most of the 145 films for sale at Canada's huge film marketplace "will wind up streamed, downloaded and viewed on a small TV or computer or mobile screen."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/09/23/oscar_kickoff/feed/ 17 “The Hurt Locker” http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/hurt_locker/ http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/hurt_locker/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:26:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/review/2009/06/26/hurt_locker What's most striking about Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" isn't its action sequences -- which are low-key to begin with -- but its tense quietness: This is a war movie that rarely goes "boom," a salient choice considering that its central character is an explosives expert. Then again, perhaps the true subject of Bigelow's movie isn't war but human stress: After a particularly tough day the movie's three central characters, bomb-squad specialists, go back to base and commence drinking and roughhousing and wrestling, seeing who can take the hardest punch. This is how they shake off the day's anxieties, pushing themselves past the point of exhaustion, and consciousness, so they can finally rest. They handle the emotional strain of their work not by breaking down but by getting tougher, a strategy that can only carry them so long. Yet "The Hurt Locker" isn't about reaching the breaking point. It's about the long, slow buildup to that potential breaking point, the reality that when you've experienced war firsthand, one of the things that comes home with you is the possibility of madness. Maybe that's what makes the movie's quietness so unsettling.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/hurt_locker/feed/ 10 Defusing bombs at 115 degrees http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/bigelow/ http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/bigelow/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:26:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/beyond_the_multiplex//feature/2009/06/26/bigelow

Courtesy Summit Entertainment

Listen to the interview with Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal

If she wanted to play the role, Kathryn Bigelow could easily present herself as Exhibit A of the enduring sexism of Hollywood. Beginning with her vampire cult-fave "Near Dark" in 1987 and then the 1991 surf-heist classic "Point Break," Bigelow has directed some of the most visually inventive and exciting films in recent action-cinema history. (Yes, I am willing and even eager to defend "Strange Days" and "K-19: The Widowmaker." Let's leave that for another time.) She has virtually no interest in the kinds of talky, intimate dramas the world expects female filmmakers to crank out (and her one, only partially successful attempt to move in that direction, "The Weight of Water" in 2000, suggests she shouldn't bother).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/06/26/bigelow/feed/ 10 “The Weight of Water” http://www.salon.com/2002/11/08/weight_water/ http://www.salon.com/2002/11/08/weight_water/#comments Fri, 08 Nov 2002 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/review/2002/11/08/weight_water Movies that have been sitting on the shelf for several years always have a whiff of disaster about them. But particularly in this moviemaking climate -- one in which good work can slip through the cracks unnoticed and lousy work can make billions of dollars worldwide for the studios -- who ever knows what keeps a movie on the shelf? If you ask someone who's allegedly in the know about a particular hung-up movie, you're likely to get the extraordinarily unhelpful and authoritative answer, "I hear it's not very good."

Do we believe gossip, or do we believe our own eyes? Kathryn Bigelow's "The Weight of Water" is just now being released; despite the fact that it stars Sean Penn, it's been hanging around for some two years now, languishing after its initial distribution deal fell through. You can like it or not: "The Weight of Water" does have its share of problems -- at times, particularly (and crucially) near the end, it suffers from a lack of clarity, and some of the characters aren't drawn distinctly enough. Still, it's an intelligently made (and beautifully edited) picture that at the very least has a spark of life to it -- more than you can say for plenty of movies that flow through the Hollywood pipeline without a hitch.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2002/11/08/weight_water/feed/ 0 “K-19: The Widowmaker” http://www.salon.com/2002/07/19/k19/ http://www.salon.com/2002/07/19/k19/#comments Fri, 19 Jul 2002 20:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/review/2002/07/19/k19 When you go see "K-19: The Widowmaker," Kathryn Bigelow's gripping account of the 1961 nuclear accident aboard a Soviet submarine that nearly launched World War III, bring a sweater. First of all, it's midsummer and the proprietor of your local multiplex probably has the air conditioning cranked up too high. Second of all, you're about to spend two and a half hours in a steel tube beneath the freezing Arctic seas, trapped between a leaking nuclear reactor, an autocratic captain and the paranoid Communist Party bureaucracy, convinced you'll never see the Motherland again.

OK, you won't really. It's an illusion. But it's one hell of an illusion. "K-19: The Widowmaker" may be a bit too grim and claustrophobic to become a certifiable summer blockbuster, but it's a pulse-pounding thriller that brings one of the Cold War's darkest and deadliest episodes to the big screen. In place of the overblown histrionics of most summer movies, "K-19" offers a vivid, highly realistic yarn of real-life heroism, the story of a small group of isolated and terrified men who risked death to save the world from apocalypse.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2002/07/19/k19/feed/ 0 Where the boys are http://www.salon.com/2000/03/22/directors/ http://www.salon.com/2000/03/22/directors/#comments Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/03/22/directors It's no great revelation that the film industry has always worshipped -- and objectified -- women. Female sexuality in particular, refracted through the lens of a male-dominated medium, has undergone several curious transformations.

There have been goddesses like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks, who embodied sexual power through regal haughtiness and disdain; wisecracking tomboy princesses like Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn, who were luminous women with soft hair and strong chins and mouths that spit out a barrage of sharp-tongued witticisms; and kittens like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who filled out the hard edges with voluptuous curves and exchanged wit for bewilderment. There have been long-limbed, silken-haired 1960s sexual adventurers, delicately sensitive '70s waifs, '80s power bitches and quirky but vulnerable '90s girls (portrayed almost exclusively by Winona Ryder).

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