debor009

After starting off the year with the usual over-the-top CGI Superhero flicks designed to attract the easily amused, this has become a phenomenal year for small, funky, creative, inspiring films. My husband and I would rather eat popcorn in a movie theatre than dinner in a French restaurant, but over the summer there were weeks when we stayed home. Now there are so many choices! The 2014 Oscars are shaping up to be a real horserace, although if Michael Keaton doesn't win the Best Actor Oscar for Birdman I'd like to see the performance that does! (More on Birdman in a separate post below.) Check out Naomi Watts both in Birdman and St. Vincent , where she does a brilliant comic turn as a pregnant Russian prostitute. Has Filmdom discovered that a fine small film can turn a tidy profit with much less financial risk?

What a year for great movies! And what a feast for actors to watch and learn. Saw #Birdman with my husband yesterday. Wow. That…was…different. Wow. My husband (he's the literary one) pointed out that it draws on the School of Magic (or Magical) Realism that was popular in Latin American literature in the 1940s and 1950s. Think Jorge Luis Borges or Gabriel Garcia Marquez .  Events occur as normal, then people begin to fly. Yes, it's that different. Birdman defines "tour de force" on so many levels, right down to the titles. I can't even imagine what it took to light those tracking shots. And Michael Keaton , Edward Norton , Naomi Watts (This after her turn in St. Vincent . Fabulous!) The Brits have dominated acting for decades. Now the Americans are showing them how it's done.