Press Play Video Blog

VIDEO: HUGO and the First Movie Magicians

The 84th Annual Academy Awards will be announced this Sunday, with Martin Scorsese’s Hugo leading the pack with 11 Oscar nominations. Along with the 10 nominations for fellow front-runner The Artist, silent cinema will occupy center stage at the ceremony in a way it hasn’t since the dawn of the sound era. To commemorate the occasion, this video links Hugo to several films by the early pioneers of cinema.

Originally published on Fandor. Visit Fandor to read the transcript and watch some of these great silent films.

SIMON SAYS: The Weird World of Unseen Marvel Comics Movies

When Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was released this past Friday, I couldn’t help but think this of Nicolas Cage: “Wasn’t this guy supposed to play Superman?”

Follow my train of logic, please: as a fan of the Ghost Rider comic book character, the poor reviews for Spirit of Vengeance, a title that seemed like a shoe-in for Crank boys Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, were truly, er, dispiriting. I mean, if the guys that made Jason Statham a living cartoon character can’t do much with a film where Nicolas Cage plays an antihero with a flaming skull head, who can? I haven’t seen Spirit of Vengeance but I still want to enjoy it, and I hope that I’ll take away something from it other than abject despondence, which was what I got from the 2007 Ghost Rider.

And yet, the kind of died-on-the-vine disappointment that both professionally critical friends and lay-nerds alike have experienced after watching Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance led me to wonder about the comic book films that never were – dream projects like Tim Burton’s aborted version of Superman, whose prospective costumes look psychedelically campy in the best way imaginable.

Hold on, before you call me a troll or a contrarian, let me back up a moment: the reason I fantasize about a Tim Burton-directed, Nicolas Cage-starring Superman movie isn’t because I think it’d be a huge success. In fact, I think it’d be crazy and dysfunctional but possibly exciting and frequently dazzling. It’d be different, is what I’m trying to say, and different is what I want from comic book movies. I am, after all, writing in an age of drab Marvel comic book adaptations like Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and Christopher Nolan’s frequently exciting but pointedly anti-flamboyant Batman movies.

Ahem. I dream of superhero movies where guys that wear four-colored outfits are allowed to be simultaneously human and ridiculous. This is admittedly a reactive stance after having only really been impressed by Iron Man 2, a character-driven mess that is mostly pretty entertaining but is also very much a film made by fans that felt like they could cut loose and just tell a story that they really wanted to tell after doing their due diligence in the first Iron Man. I want a comic book film that doesn’t pander to first-time audiences and also doesn’t deny the fact that these characters live in worlds where death rays and super-powers are commonplace. Is that so much to ask?

I guess so. In my recent search for comic book movies that are out there and exciting and yes, maybe consistently engaging enough to be worth seeking out, I focused primarily on the Marvel Comics movies that time forgot, by which I mean that I sought out made-for-TV projects that have been buried by Marvel and have yet to surface on DVD or Blu-ray. This didn’t require much skullduggery: many of these titles are available via YouTube and will likely continue to circulate on another medium after a Marvel rep reads this article and tries to pull down the titles listed below. I wish I had more time to watch more of these weird objects of cult worship, because you can say what you want about how “good” these made-for-TV films and episodes are, but hot damn, they look downright outré when compared to fairly recent Marvel movies. These older adaptations suck, but they’re a different kind of suck.

With that in mind, if you’re willing and interested, take a little trip with me down memory lane and remember comic book films that never were – released, that is. These are all Marvel properties, folks, so you won’t see me tackling equally tempting stuff like the 1997 Justice League pilot (though it is, uh, available). And you won’t see me talking about The Man-Thing or Dolph Lundgren’s Punisher. You can either Netflix those last two titles or buy them off of Amazon. Think more along the lines of the Roger Corman-produced Fantastic Four and bam, we’re on the same page.

Bear in mind: these are movies that aren’t necessarily superior to contemporary Marvel movies. In fact, if you’re still with me, you’ll soon find that these films are actually often worse. But they’re different and they at least attempt things that today’s Marvel titles don’t, and I find that’s almost always worth getting excited about. So face front, True Believers, we’re heading into the wonderful world of made-for-TV live-action comic book adaptations! Excelsior!

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977): This 90-minute pilot for the short-lived live-action TV show by the same name is pretty strange. It’s almost as if its creators thought that because Peter Parker (Nicholas Hammond) is a hard-luck hero with a cloud permanently affixed over his head, he must also be a sub-intelligent creep and a pest, too. As his human alter ego, Parker spends a lot of time bothering poor Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (David White) for work (Jameson just can’t use any of the photos Parker gives him, suggesting that this universe’s Parker is actually just a talentless hack that got lucky). Hammond’s Parker is Christopher-Reeve-as-Clark-Kent-levels of nebbish and annoying, but minus all the well-meaning aw-shucks stuff. He’s bashful but has a million questions to ask everyone and a weird inability to take a hint and leave well enough alone.

Worse still, once he’s suited up, Spider-Man spends a lot of time climbing up green-screened walls, skulking atop rooftops and backing away slowly from boring-looking villains. (Spidey fights a bunch of brainwashed thugs with wooden swords in this movie; meh.) He doesn’t talk much, mostly because he looks like he’s going to poop in his tights after backing up onto a banana peel.

But hey, at least this isn’t a boilerplate “Who is Spider-Man?” story like Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man. The impulse to reintroduce new audiences to one of the most famous superheroes has always struck me as an odd impulse. So it’s nice to see a film where Spidey gets bit by a spider, then fights some brainwashed dudes, and saves the day without said day-saving meaning much in the grand scheme of things. This is not an event film, in other words; it’s a big installment in a serial and it doesn’t even look like a definitive first installment! Which isn’t great for a TV pilot, but hey, it’s certainly different.

Captain America II: Death Too Soon (1979): The second of two starring vehicles for the charisma-less Reb Brown is much more interesting than its previous installment. In it, Brown fights Christopher Lee, who blackmails world leaders with a chemical agent that makes people age faster. See, already cool, right?

Eh, not so much. Brown’s a walking black hole and this made-for-TV film’s plot meanders like a mother. The scenes where Brown is painting in a park and is interrupted by local toughs is especially laughable. Then again, so is much of everything else in this film, right down to the cheap production values on the motorcycle that Brown drives as Captain America. Cap’s signature stars-and-stripes shield, which looks like it was bought from a nearby 99-cent store, serves as his bike’s windscreen, too (!?!?!), and is so small that when the motorbike launches out of Cap’s battle van (?!?!?!?!) accompanied by several fire extinguishers’ worth of smoke, it looks like Cap’s riding a colorful, rocking horse-sized missile of doom. Unless you really want to see a rapidly aging Lee fight Brown, you can probably skip this one.

Dr. Strange (1978): For a movie about a surgeon that becomes the world’s greatest sorcerer, this made-for-TV film’s pretty damn sleepy. Peter Hooten (where do they find these guys?) plays Stephen Strange, a kind-hearted medico that gets wrapped up in the schemes of evil Morgan Le Fay (Jessica Walter), a sorceress trying to take over the world so that she can stay young forever. Strange is called up to help Thomas Lindmer (John Mills), who is secretly Merlin the ancient magician, to fight Morgan. Presumably because Dr. Strange is a relatively obscure superhero, this one’s a fairly straightforward and vanilla origin story. You spend most of the film’s 93-minute runtime watching a cookie cutter hero get the courage to dress up in a garish costume (complete with an ill-fitting cape) and duke it out on the Astral Plane with an evil woman in an equally garish costume. It has its moments, I suppose, and some cute psychedelic imagery. My favorite moment has to be when Le Fay tries to seduce Strange and trick him into removing the talisman-like ring that protects him from her. That moment was almost good! The rest is mostly indistinct and uninteresting.

Nicky Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1998): This is the one made-for-TV film I chose that wasn’t made in the ‘70s, that wild period where Marvel was most committed to bad ideas. In it, David Hasselhoff plays Col. Nick Fury, a grizzled old war vet that never met a rule he couldn’t break. I’m paraphrasing from David S. Goyer’s cheese-stuffed screenplay. (Goyer, incidentally, wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, along with many other comic book properties.) Basically, this is a fairly rote alternative to the origin story: Fury comes back from retirement and helps S.H.I.E.L.D. fight Baroness von Strucker (Sandra Hess), the daughter of his arch-nemesis…Baron von Strucker. While it’s always a delight to see the Hoff chomp on a cigar and wildly overact, there probably should have been more to this film than just a lot of juiceless Oorah-ing and weird creative decisions (why do HYDRA’s minions look like the Spy vs. Spy guys except without the pointy noses?).

First two episodes of Supaidaman (1978): This is easily my favorite of the collection of, well, stuff that I watched for this article. This live-action tokusatsu show is a weird mash-up of Spider-Man and Power Rangers. I didn’t know until now that select episodes were officially available for streaming via Marvel’s website. So you can actually watch this with real subtitles and everything, and see for yourself such sights as Spider-Man with a giant robot or Spider-Man fighting henchmen in bird costumes or Spider-Man fighting evil men in rubber monster outfits. That last item is what I’m into, apparently, because the intentionally poorly-subtitled versions I watched here and here are just as entertaining. In fact, I’d say that if you like what you see in those latter two links then you should definitely check out the official Marvel page. This stuff is nutty as all get-out and it’s certainly visually disturbing enough to make up for its plot’s many lapses in logic. A must-watch!

Simon Abrams is a New York-based freelance arts critic. His film reviews and features have been featured in the Village Voice, Time Out New York, Slant Magazine, The L Magazine, New York Press and Time Out Chicago. He currently writes TV criticism for The Onion AV Club and is a contributing writer at the Comics Journal. His writings on film are collected at the blog, The Extended Cut.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Animated Short

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Dimanche/Sunday. It seemed promising despite the crude animation; the sound design is witty, and it started out as a sort of fantasia on how children perceive things. But it keeps killing animals off horribly for no reason, and the surrealism comes and goes when it's convenient. A clearer visual style might have helped, but I don't think it knows what it's trying to say.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. The ending is mournful and beautiful, but the emotion is unearned, and the more I thought about this one, the less it held up. The books themselves, bird/butterfly hybrids, are endearing, but between the scattershot hat-tips to The Wizard of Oz, the internal logic that isn't, and the over-long and show-offy tornado intro, the story doesn't jell.

La Luna. The Pixar entry. Short and sweet, but didn't get much reaction from me or the theater at large. Usually a Pixar short is either really cute or hee-larious, or has one or two memorable images or new ways of thinking about a visual; this has a lovely rendering of oar marks on water at the beginning, but I had to check my notes to recall it. The competent pacing alone could snag it the statue…sometimes "professional" and "not an utter muddle" is enough in this category.

A Morning Stroll. It's far from perfect, but chickens are so funny to me, and the animated chicken who ties this triptych together is SO fluffy and has SUCH teeny legs that I immediately loved the short. In the first segment, it's basically animated as a couple of swoops, a beak line, and little stick legs, but it grooms itself so evocatively regardless…it's probably just me, the chicken thing, but it's cute. AMS also uses clever fonts and does a couple of new things with zombie humor (although it gets a little too in love with that subject in the final third), and it's the most fun and least self-serious of the lot. Definitely my favorite.

Wild Life. Gorgeous to look at, and almost there: good character beats (a dog busts out a wicked side-eye, for instance), switches up styles. But there's too much going on, too many interstitial cards and explainy letters, and not enough development of the central character except via the dismissive opinions of others. It's like it doesn't trust itself.

Should win: A Morning Stroll. La Luna is a bit dull, and Wild Life isn't quite cooked.

Will win: La Luna.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: IN DARKNESS

Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz) is a sewer inspector in Nazi-occupied Lvov; he's also a thief, robbing abandoned houses to provide for his family, and he and his partner Szczepek (Krzysztof Skonieczny) hide the spoils in the watery catacombs beneath the city. One day in 1942, the burglars run into another group in the sewers: Jewish families who have dug down through the floor of an apartment in the ghetto, knowing that going literally underground is their only chance to survive. Socha agrees to help them, but only a dozen of them, and only for $500 a week.

Directed by Agnieska Holland (Europa Europa) and based on a true story, In Darkness gets right into the action — Socha and Szczepek busted in the act by a pair of Nazi Youth — and though Holland skillfully alternates quiet moments and anxiety, the claustrophobic mucky sewer and the clean cold daylight above, the tension stays constant throughout. (I had to pee when I arrived at the theater; the movie is two and a half hours; I didn't move until the credits, except to squirm at plot twists.) It isn't just the dozen Jews in an impossibly precarious situation, but Socha's marriage and the lives of himself, his partner, and his family; whenever you start to relax, the band of refugees has to relocate, or Socha is compelled to stop buying them food, or Mundek (Benno Furmann) breaks into a work camp to try to find the stubborn sister of the woman he semi-secretly loves.

The tension derives from the larger situation, of course, but also from the way it's filmed. When you're in the sewers, it's dark, and you can't see much; the violent deportation of the ghetto's other occupants is merely heard from below, which makes it harder to bear. (Also heard, and seen, continuously: sewer rats. The children in the group eventually make pets out of them, but if this is something you're sensitive to, be warned.) And the final rainstorm sequence is filmed and edited flawlessly. The submerged screams, the belongings floating by, the deafening water are an impressive build to the ending, but also nearly intolerable.

In Darkness is also expert at letting all the characters be who they are — sometimes they're horndogs. Sometimes they're brats. Sometimes they're unexpectedly, or tragically, generous. Some of them are all these things; the script isn't afraid to make some of the refugees straight-up jerks, to let Socha ruin good moments, to let his wife (the excellent Kinga Preis) leave him and then come back to him and yell and laugh and be complicated in her love for him. A child almost blows the set-up, then catches her snap immediately and turns things around. It's not easy to avoid reverting to two dimensions of good and evil in a life-during-wartime drama, especially not one about that particular war; In Darkness is as much about the life as the wartime, putting the people ahead of the situation, and that lets the situation come through more clearly and with more texture (harder to watch, too, but that's baseball).

It's a truly well built story, frustrating and thrilling, controlled but not rigid. I don't think it wins its category, but it's very fine work.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: MONSIEUR LAZHAR

A teacher dies tragically, leaving her eleven- and twelve-year-old students variously bereft, disoriented, and determined not to react. Days later, Bachir Lazhar (Mohamed Fellag) — an émigré from Algeria with years of teaching experience who's trying to put a calamity of his own behind him — presents himself as a replacement. His classroom style is different from what the kids have gotten used to; he prefers orderly rows of desks to the "team-building" semi-circle, and the school's administrator (Danielle Proulx) has to tell him that he can't just casually whap a misbehaving boy upside the head.

Monsieur Lazhar points out gaps and failures like this throughout: the casually classist comments of parents who both expect the school to act in loco parentis and resent its attempts to do so; the compulsory English lessons when the kids can't conjugate in French yet (the film is from Quebec); the emphasis on fun, color, and camaraderie in the classroom when rules prohibit teachers from physically touching students in any way. The script doesn't lecture us on the topics, though, or get all Dead Poets Society about good vs. evil, or end in the victory (or ingenious compromise) you might expect from the subject matter. Whether it's observing the educational system, Lazhar's friendship with a fellow teacher, or the bond he forms with one of his students, the precocious and direct Alice (Sophie Nelisse), the story acknowledges that solutions don't always exist. We all just bumble forward as best we can manage, finding a way to live without information we think we need. (Speaking of which, if this is all seeming rather vague, I apologize. The plot isn't exactly spoilable, but the details will function better if you discover them for yourself.)

I liked that about the film, that it understood this and that it let the audience figure it out. It stuck with me, the ending that leaves things unsaid, the courtly reserve of Lazhar that wavers but doesn't break, the connections made or sought. The acting is uniformly good and natural; Emilien Neron as Simon is overmatched in a couple of scenes, but he's asked to play a reveal that may not fit in the first place, and on the whole, the kids (and Proulx) seem like they could be in a documentary.

I don't think Monsieur Lazhar wins its category, but it's a good movie. It trusts you.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

I haven't had much to do with the Harry Potter series; maybe one of these days I'll get around to reading the books, but to date, I've seen the films nominated for Oscars during the Death Races, and that's about it. …Wait, I saw the first film on a plane and liked it fine.

So, I don't have the same relationship to the story — or to bidding it farewell — that you might if you've read all the books and seen all the filmed installments, but the last chapter functions pretty well as both story and goodbye. The last hour lags a little, but I could live with that, because of how much it had to wrap up and put away (but the ultimate fight scene between Harry and Voldemort, played with the usual gusto by Ralph Fiennes, seemed like stalling after a while; in the end, it's two guys pointing very emphatically at each other).

But the pacing overall picked up a good deal from Deathly Hallows Part 1, and the effects looked great too — they seem to have matured along with the hero. The ride on the dragon and subsequent crash into the water, and the paintings on the walls of Hogwards scrambling to get the hell out of Dodge, looked like legends, one scary, one funny.

I make jokes about Harry Potter and the Compleat Roster of British Actors, but 1) it's not really a joke, and 2) Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Ciaran Hinds, and the rest make the HP tales seem important, but not self-important. A well-turned final chapter in a cultural moment.

No real idea about the movie's chances in the effects categories, although it could win Makeup.

‘SHOULD WIN’ VIDEO ESSAY SERIES: Best Picture TREE OF LIFE

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Press Play presents "Should Win," a series of video essays advocating winners in seven Academy Awards categories: supporting actor and actress, best actor and actress, best director and best picture. These are consensus choices hashed out by a pool of Press Play contributors. Follow along HERE as Press Play decides the rest of the major categories including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Documentary. Important notice: Press Play is aware that our videos can not be played on Apple mobile devices. We are, therefore, making this and every video in this series available on Vimeo for these Press Play readers. If you own an Apple mobile device, click here.]

Narration:

All of the 2011 Best Picture nominees have their merits, but one towers above the rest: The Tree of Life, writer/director Terrence Malick's film about…well what is The Tree of Life about, anyway? For a free-associative non-linear movie that skips back and forth through time and space, and that includes a lengthy early section recounting the creation of the universe, the movie was a surprising commercial success, dominating discussion among cinephiles throughout a summer moviegoing season that is usually overshadowed by much louder, dumber movies. And at the center of the discussion were very basic questions about writing and direction – about storytelling generally – that cut to the heart of what movies are and what they can be.

It's impossible to discuss the movie without posing a number of questions. Whose story are we seeing here? Is it the story of the middle-aged Jack, played by Sean Penn, and his younger self? That point of view would not account for the voiceovers and subjective sequences told from the point of view of the father, played by Brad Pitt, and the mother, played by Jessica Chastain. Is the creation sequence an integral part of the movie's vision or an unnecessary and indulgent side-trip? In the scene between the wounded dinosaur and the predator down by that prehistoric river, why does the predator seem as though he's going to crush his skull, and then suddenly back off? Are we seeing the first stirrings of the schism that is discussed and visualized in different sections of the film – the way of nature versus the way of grace? Or is there some other explanation? Is there a God in Terrence Malick's universe? The repeated shots of trees, water, clouds, sky and figures haloed or backlit by intense, almost heavenly light would seem to indicate that, yes, there is a God, but uncertainty permeates the entire story, if indeed there is a story – and this, too, was the subject of debate.

No other major American release provoked so many questions about the meaning of its images and situations, the agenda of its writer/director and the validity of its methods. And no other American release provoked such intense, personal reactions – such deep reflection – among people who saw it. Even those who didn't particularly care for Tree of Life or who had serious problems with its structure or tone seemed to respect what it was doing or trying to do. And the unusual rhythms of the filmmaking, at once fractured yet graceful, seemed to mimic the structure of thought itself. The mind races forward, the mind races backward; past becomes present, present becomes past. This is what it means to be conscious, to be alive. This is what it means to be aware of one's own mortality. These are the sensations that movies should provoke. This is the sort of reflection that movies should inspire. This is the achievement of Tree of Life. It is an original, beautiful, unique movie by a defiantly individual director, and Press Play's choice for Best Picture.

Serena Bramble is a rookie film editor and publisher of the blog Brief Encounters of the Cinematic Kind. Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for Salon.com and the founder of Press Play.

VIDEO ESSAY: Outstanding Collaborative Performance: The Fly (1986)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of four video essays arguing for the creation of a new Academy Awards category Outstanding Collaborative Performance. This category would honor teams of artists who create a vivid and memorable movie character whose existence is built upon performance but heavily assisted by CGI, immersive makeup, puppetry or other behind-the-scenes filmmaking craft. To read Matt Zoller Seitz's piece explaining why the film industry needs this category, and to view a video essay about the career of motion capture performance wizard Andy Serkis, click here. We make a case for Jeff Goldblum's The Fly here. A case can also be made for Yoda and E.T. Important notice: Press Play is aware that our videos can not be played on Apple mobile devices. We are, therefore, making this and every video in this series available on Vimeo for these Press Play readers. If you own an Apple mobile device, click here.]

NARRATION:

David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly would have been a shoo-in for a theoretical best collaborative performance Oscar. What makes it truly special is its empathy for its arrogant scientist hero, Seth Brundle, who tests his revolutionary new matter transporter on himself and becomes genetically fused with a fly that was not supposed to be in the telepod with him. Jeff Goldblum’s performance as Seth Brundle is a nexus point for all the film’s creative elements: direction, writing, acting, makeup, optical effects, miniatures and puppetry. Goldblum’s work here brings everything together. It’s kind of a thespian telepod.

The original The Fly is a triumph of visual effects and special makeup. But these aspects of filmmaking are, for the most part, separate from the acting.
This is the other one.

Where the subtext of the original was deformity, the remake is about mortality and decay. It’s a tragic love story about the fragility of flesh. And that requires a more ambitious, and subtler, merger of special effects, makeup and acting.

Seth Brundle impulsively enters his invention, the telepod, because he’s despondent over a misunderstanding. He mistakenly believes that his lover, reporter Veronica Quaife, played by Geena Davis, is still in love her previous boyfriend. For a while after, Seth thinks he’s superhuman — an outwardly normal-looking person with extraordinary physical powers, which the movie sells through old-school filmmaking tricks. These include a gymnastic stunt double … and a rotating set.
Unfortunately for Seth, the merger of human DNA and fly DNA isn’t quite done yet. With each passing hour, Seth becomes less of a man and more of an insect. And Jeff Goldblum’s performance becomes incrementally submerged beneath ever-more-unsettling layers of gruesome makeup.

The effects are layered on incrementally, scene by scene, and they are showcased almost entirely through a single character, Seth Brundle, and a single performance, Jeff Goldblum’s.

But it’s the very last scene in the film that makes The Fly qualify, beyond any doubt, for our theoretical best collaborative performance Oscar. When Seth tries to disentangle his DNA from the fly’s by bringing a third teleporter into the mix, Goldblum is nowhere to be seen, and the resulting, even more repulsive creature is played by a puppet. This is one of the saddest endings in all of horror, and it’s not just because of the writing, the direction, Howard Shore’s music, or that magnificent puppet. It’s because when we look at this pitiful creature, we’re remembering Seth as played by Jeff Goldblum.

Makeup masters Chris Walas and Stephen Doo Pwah deservedly won an academy award for their makeup effects on The Fly, and they graciously remembered to thank the film’s star.

But that moment also underlined a persistent problem in genre films that showcase nonhuman, or partly-human, characters. Whether it’s the acting, the makeup, the sets or the special visual effects that are being honored, the acclaim always has an implied asterisk next to it. Would the makeup and visual effects in The Fly have been as effective without Goldblum’s brilliant performance? No. And would Goldblum have been as magnificent and terrifying without the effects and makeup? Of course not. This was a collective effort that resulted in a singular achievement.

A critic, journalist and filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and the founder of Press Play. Steven Santos is a freelance TV editor/filmmaker based in New York. His work can be found at StevenEdits.com. He writes about films at his blog The Fine Cut. You can also follow him on Twitter.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

I had to watch the second Transformers for a previous Death Race iteration, so I thought I knew what to expect — i.e., not much, but perhaps a faint hope that the formidable Julie White would return as Sam Witwicky's mom.

She did, and she's accompanied by a host of other heavy-hitting actors, as well as fight-sequence upgrades; this may be one of the few franchises that's improving with each outing. John Turturro is back, along with his character's manservant Dutch (Alan Tudyk), and they're both having a ball; ditto John Malkovich as Witwicky's intense, Teddy-KGB-ish boss and Frances McDormand as the head of the NSA. My notes have something about how the casting kinda puts the "Oscars Death" in the Oscars Death Race, but while the script isn't Faulkner, it isn't terrible — or at least the actors keep the pacing on track.

The plot isn't much, of course — the Autobots and the Decepticons race to re-activate a technology that spent years buried on the moon, a good guy is actually a bad guy, can Earth be saved, etc. Leonard Nimoy plays the compromised Prime, Sentinel, and the man came dressed to play…if by "play," you mean "yell."

But the point of Transformers: Dark of the Moon isn't an acting master class, obvs, although it's courteous of Bay to include one. It's the crunchy beatings, and these work significantly better than those in Revenge of the Fallen — apparently, the production worked out a clearer color scheme for the 'bots in both car and 'bot form so it's easier to keep track of who's who in a punch-fest. It can still get a bit muddled, but it's better. And while the movie is much too long, it alternates kablam sequences with humor that usually succeeds: characters spluttering lines like "I don't care about your exotic milk, I care about respect!" while "You Light Up My Life" plays in an elevator; making Patrick Dempsey's skeezy character even more hateful by having him use the word "liaise." And I didn't mind the old Megan Fox, but Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, whose previous experience is as a model, is likable and a real pro at dashing through rubble in high heels. (Also, speaking of 'bots, does "Rosie Huntington-Whiteley" sound like it came out of the British Name Gener-A-Tron 5000 or what?)

I had fun watching it, despite several pieces of questionable taste (the skull that rolls into the foreground after a Decepticon crashes onto a civilian car; Dutch's…whole thing) and significant denial vis-à-vis Shia LaBeouf's crying ability. Even the flashback to the Kennedy White House is so over the top, it's kind of awesome — not least because the actor looks like Peter Noone strapped a loaf of sourdough to his head. …As you do.

It's nominated in tech categories, and could win Visual Effects — Bay's team knows how to give CGI physical heft in a way some of the other nominees don't — but I suspect Hugo takes that. The film itself was a solid 150 minutes of AC when it came out but needn't be bothered with now.

VIDEO ESSAY And the Oscar for Outstanding Collaborative Performance goes to…

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In this series of video essays, Press Play founder Matt Zoller Seitz argues for the creation of a new Academy Awards category: Outstanding Collaborative Performance. This category would honor memorable characters created by mixing performance with CGI, immersive makeup, puppetry, or other behind-the-scenes craft. Part 1 — a piece the motion capture performances of Andy Serkis, edited by Press Play contributor Steven Santos — is embedded above; to view the piece on an Apple mobile device, click here. David Cronenberg's make up and effects team in The Fly (1986) certainly would have garnered this award had it existed at the time. We make a case for Jeff Goldblum's The Fly here. A case can also be made for Yoda and E.T. Click on the links!]

Why hasn't Andy Serkis won an Oscar? Should he win one? Is Serkis an actor, or is his physical performance in a CGI-assisted role just a guide for digital effects?

Press Play's staff kicked these questions around last summer following the release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a movie dominated by Serkis' magnetic performance as the rebellious ape Caesar. We discussed them again when Serkis co-starred as Capt. Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin. It was not a new conversation. It's been happening among moviegoers all over the world for long time. And it's the subject of a new series of four Press Play video essays titled "Collaborative Performance."

This series argues for a new Oscar category that would honor characters brought to life through a combination of acting and behind-scenes-craft. This new category would not just acknowledge the important role that motion capture plays in modern cinema; it would open the door for honoring other forms of performance that have traditionally gotten snubbed by awards groups, including puppetry and acting under very heavy makeup.

Some background: In late 2001, Peter Jackson's first Lord of the Rings picture The Fellowship of the Ring merged special effects and acting with a new cleverness. That film and its sequels, The Two Towers and Return of the King, were populated by CGI characters whose movements were based on human actors. The performances were later merged with CGI brushwork — basically digital costumes and makeup. Earlier movies had attempted similar CGI trickery, notably 1999's Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and the practice itself was descended from Rotoscoping, a cel animation process that traced over live-action performers. (For historical context, read James Clarke's article here.) But the crew at Jackson's New Zealand-based special effects shop Weta Digital raised the bar, especially in scenes featuring Gollum, a character portrayed by Serkis.

Each time a new chapter of the Rings saga came out, there was a buzz about Serkis being nominated as an Oscar as best supporting actor, or perhaps getting a special award.

It never happened.

It also didn't happen for Tom Hanks or Jim Carrey, who played multiple roles in Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol respectively, or Crispin Glover, who was brilliant as Grendel in Zemeckis' Beowulf; all three films used motion capture technology.

Collaborative performance has a long history of greatness, and an equally long history of being snubbed by awards groups. That's a shame, because the best collaborative performances have a huge number of moving parts, yet result in characters that seem as real as any created by solo actors. Back in 1981, fans of The Empire Strikes Back floated the idea of giving Frank Oz a special award for his masterful puppetry in the role of Yoda, but in the end Oz had to be content with being implicitly honored as part of a team that also created tauntauns, walkers, TIE fighters, asteroids and space worms. There was talk of Jeff Goldbum getting nominated as Best Actor for playing Seth Brundle in The Fly — one of the most moving performances in all of horrror — but he got snubbed; when Chris Walas and Stephen DuPuis won a special makeup Oscar for their work on the film, they thanked Goldblum for making their victory possible. The irony, of course, is that, like many genre films, The Empire Strikes Back and The Fly were hugely dependent on the intuitive genius of performers.

Yes, it's true; these films and others won awards for their special effects. But the specific characterizations — the performances — that gave the films their magic were never given their due. To be fair to the Academy and other awards groups, there's no established method for judging the kinds of performances that somebody like Andy Serkis gives. What Serkls is doing in Apes and Tintin counts as acting, but not in exactly the same way as, say, Brad Pitt in Moneyball. In the latter, Pitt is playing a regular person in real surroundings. We can look at Moneyball and say, "That's Brad Pitt playing Billy Bean," and judge the performance's quality apart from other aspects of filmmaking that surround and/or support it. We can't really do that with Serkis' motion-capture performances because we can't see Serkis. He's wrapped in digital skin.

However, Serkis' motion capture acting can be compared, sort of, to Brad Pitt's work in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which the star played a man who ages backward. Pitt's performance generated the expressions and body language that CGI artists needed to create Button's gnarled-old-man physique in early scenes, as well as the "youthful" face and body that he acquired later. Pitt earned an Oscar nod as Best Actor for Button but did not win; I would not be surprised to learn that the special effects disqualified him in voters' minds. Some people consider this kind of performance to be "cheating," and think the same of performances given under immersive makeup. John Hurt's makeup-submerged performance as the disfigured John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) was nominated as Best Actor that year, but didn't win, maybe for similar reasons. That year's eventual Best Actor winner Robert DeNiro sported heavy makeup in the fat-middle-aged scenes of Raging Bull, but you could always tell it was DeNiro; he wasn't swallowed up like Hurt in The Elephant Man, Pitt in most of Button, and Jeff Goldblum in the second half of The Fly.

The devil's advocate might argue, "The Oscars already have categories honoring visual effects and makeup. Why should they add yet another category? When E.T. won an award for its visual effects, that basically counted as an award for creating the charater of E.T." Such objections miss the point of my proposal, and betray a prejudce against anything but the most plain-vanilla types of performance. E.T. is the result of a collaborative performance among many dedicated professionals who are tasked with a single purpose: to make us believe that this character is real. He is not one more special effect among many. The character is a singular achievement that deserves recognition apart from other accolades bestowed on the movie, just as Marlon Brando's performance in On the Waterfront deserved to be cited apart from that film's script, direction and photography.

The current method for judging collaborative performances factors makeup and special effects out of the equation. Why not change our way of thinking, and factor them in?

All the existing Oscars categories would still exist. We'd just add a new one: Outstanding Collaborative Performance.

Collaborative Performance would be a character-based category. It would be distinct from actor, actress, supporting actor and supporting actress. It would also be distinct from special effects and special makeup, which honor excellence in design and technique for whole films, not just a particular character.

The actor and the heads of any relevant filmmaking departments would be cited in a Collaborative Performance nomination. The actor's name would come first.

For example: "The Oscar for Outstanding Collaborative Performance of 1980 goes to: Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back. Frank Oz, performance and voice; Jim Henson's Creature Shop, fabrication; Industrial Light and Magic, motion control."

Or: "The Oscar for Outstanding Collaborative Performance of 2011 goes to Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Andy Serkis, performance and voice; Weta Digital, motion capture and computer-generated imagery."

I don't know precisely how a Collaborative Performance category might be administered, which branches of the Academy would choose it or vote for it, or which individuals or groups might be eligible to win it. I don't know how many nominees there should be, either — although considering the large number of special-effects driven movies being made every year, I bet you could find at least three characters worthy of nomination.

What I do know is that awards groups should find a way to honor one of the most potent sources of magic throughout movie history: the Collaborative Performance.

Discuss.

Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and the founder of Press Play. Steven Santos is a freelance TV editor/filmmaker based who has cut docu-series for cable networks such as MTV, The Travel Channel, The Biography Channel, The Science Channel and Animal Planet.