Working Title: Just Pick One Already!

This week Will Leschber splits hairs and Oscar camps…

Ok theater geeks, it’s go time. This is our Super Bowl. The Academy Awards.

So many Oscar races come down to a title fight: 12 Years a Slave vs Gravity; Avatar vs. The Hurt Locker; The Kings Speech vs The Social Network; Crash vs Brokeback Mountain; Shakespeare in Love vs Saving Private Ryan; Goodfellas vs Dances with Wolves; Forrest Gump vs Pulp Fiction; Gandhi or Tootsie; Kramer vs Kramer vs Apocalypse Now; Annie Hall or Star Wars; To Kill a Mockingbird or Lawrence of Arabia; All About Eve or Sunset Boulevard; Citizen Kane or How Green Was My Valley; Gone with the Wind or Wizard of Oz; Wings or Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans… (trick question film nerds).

As you peruse this list I’m sure you are thinking a few things: I’m sure 12 Years a Slave is great and maybe I’ll watch it one day; Thank god that towering achievement Dances With Wolves won over the endlessly forgettable and uninfluecial Goodfellas; I know Pulp Fiction is better but I’m not gonna feel bad about loving America’s Tom Hanks. Win Forrest Win! And lastly, I can hear you thinking, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans…? Are you making shit up again? What the fuck is that?

The voices keep telling me to see Birdman but all I really want to watch is the Lego Movie…

I’m getting around the posing of the dichotomy…What is more important, the Unique and Artistic Production or the Outstanding Best Picture award? Once upon a time we had an award for both (all the way back in 1927) but now it seems there can be only one. These days, bouts between the heavy, artistic “important” pictures and the awesome spectacle that only lives in the places between the silver screens has become a common conversation. (See Avatar vs Hurt Locker, and 12 Years a Slave vs Gravity.) There’s no assumed judgement here. I loved all of these films for very different reasons. I know, I know, the best films are a balance of these elements, but that doesn’t make for a good debate! I’m saying, if you only get one and you had to pick, dear reader, which do you choose?

What is more valuable and what is more valued? Do we strive to delight and transport in a way only film can? Or do we strive to reach new depths of the human experience? Or do we strive to rage against the dying of the light? Calm down Christopher Nolan, we get it, you are super deep.

This year that title fight looks like Boyhood vs Birdman. I show up to spectacle any day. Birdman was a visual feat and feast! But the greatest and best film this year is also the quietest and the most unassuming. That’s why it achieves more. I’d love to see Boyhood win because it’s a one of the most successful films to capturing something all of us experience that rarely makes it into narrative film; the feeling and memory of growing up and the importance of all the unimportant moments that build the mortar of who we are. That’s my pick. But what should win isn’t necessarily what will win. I made peace with that award show truth long ago. Who knows Imitation Game may show up and surprise us all. We’ll see.

There can be only one…Who will you choose?

Working Title: Lost in Transition

This week Will takes a look at Custom Made Theatre’s free reading series showcasing Dealing Dreams, a new play by Jeffrey Lo.

Transition. We all take notice of the big shifts like graduating college or getting a big job but the micro shifts (or lack of shift) in our daily lives comes to define who we will be. A work in progress, we all are. Anyone familiar with the creative process knows how integral change and refinement are to creating something of value. Custom Made Theatre is inviting you to a part of that process. Their Free Reading Series continues this month by showcasing a new work by local playwright Jeffrey Lo. Lo’s new play, Dealing Dreams, concerns itself with the myriad transitions that mark the lives of many modern mid-twenty-somethings.

These characters are smart, talented and college educated. Yet, they can’t quite shift away from the trapping nest of youth adulthood. Some cannot fly off to adult jobs, some cannot fly to adult relationships, some just cannot fly. It’s about many things: technology, adulthood, self identity (who am I without a job…who am I out of school…what’s my purpose…I was supposed to take over the world), who grows up, who needs to take steps back wards to step forwards.

The play reminds me of a thematic mash-up between Noah Baumbach’s 1995’s meandering college wit-fest Kicking and Screaming and David Fincher’s brooding, gaze into social alienation, The Social Network, (the best film of 2010, in my opinion). The former follows a group of friends who are about the leave college. They are smart, educated, and possibly terrified at the thought of life after college. They are witty enough to sharpen their tongues around campus circles but will that help post graduation? Is that a useful life skill or academic party trick? Which of them will be set adrift without class to attend? Kicking and Screaming spoke to me at a time when I was about to leave college unfinished and drift around my home town for a few years without purpose. You bet I identified with these intellectual loafers.

The Social Network is less about purpose and more about our place in the world. These characters do not loaf about parading out their witty words around for kicks. The characters in The Social Network wield their intelligence like a weapon and purposefully lash out with it to gain an upper hand, what they perceive as an upper hand at least. Though social warfare has consequences. The Kicking and Screaming crowd have a strong circle of friends with romantic possibilities but no where to go. As The Social Network fades to black our antihero has built the most far reaching and influential social site to date yet looks upon the vastness of it alone. Was it worth the cost?

Dealing Dreams lives around this playground; the youthful playground of purposeful ambitions, social fissures and ambling self-development. Like all good pieces surrounding technology, Jeffrey Lo’s new work also reminds us that these plays are not about technology; they are about how we use modern tools (social networking, online dating, genius playlists, etc) to navigate our world and how those tools affect how we define ourselves and relate to one another. Only when we look back can we see what was lost in transition.

Custom Made’s new free reading series piece will be directed by Christine Keating and will show Tuesday, Feburary 25th. For more information check the facebook event page, Free Reading Series – Jeffrey Lo’s “Dealing Dreams” http://www.facebook.com/events/253231238191609

Sources:

Kicking and Screaming (1995). N.d. Photograph. IMDB.comWeb. 18 Feb 2014.

The Social Network (2010). N.d. Photograph. IMDB.comWeb. 18 Feb 2014.