What to do with a problem like Rinko?

Rinko, Rinko, Rinko. Sure, I personally loved Gwyneth Paltrow's dress at the Oscars (well, I liked it on her, most others would die inside it) and I've grown to love Penelope Cruz' outfit, and Helen Mirren was a stunner. But, one person who didn't get any attention, and whose Oscar dress I am just seeing in proper detail for the first time, is Rinko Kikuchi. The Best Supporting Actress nominee for (and the very super best thing about) Babel (I've really grown to love that performance, whereas I've grown to just remain underwhelmed about fellow nominee Adriana Barraza. She's all the more impressive in my mind because she doesn't have a big star to help her story get attention, nor does she have to SCREAMATMELIKESHE'SDYING to express emotion (hi Brad Pitt). She also gets one of the very best scenes of the year to wade around in (I speak of course of the "September" sequence).

Anyway, the reason of this entry wasn't to discuss Rinko in Babel. It was to discuss her clothes. So, yes, everyone was sort of expecting Kikuchi (the, what? second Japanese woman ever nominated for an Oscar. Impressive) to wear something absolutely bonkers on the level of Cher or Bjork. Let us remember what she wore to January's Golden Globe awards.


Hilarious, right? I actually didn't mind it to be honest. She was having fun and doing her own thing and was just happy to be there, and compared to the uber-bland plastic un-fantastic expressions of Brangelina, she was positively jubilent. So it was with surprise today that I check out (as I usually do everyday) Go Fug Yourself and managed to see what she wore to the Academy Awards. I'm positively stunned.


Sure, maybe a necklace would've been nice, but the dress! The bracelet! The clutch! Even the hair totally suits this ensemble. It looks both European AND Asian (I keep picturing Maggie Cheung in those edible figure-hugging outfits from In the Mood For Love) and just all around stunning.

Here's hoping she gets some more work in bigger pictures instead of the unknown Japanese films she was in before Babel. A quick look at her IMDb filmography shows she is in the next film by Brick writer and director Rian Johnson, entitled The Brother's Bloom alongside Adrian Brody (sort of yay), Rachel Weisz (yay for the most part) and Mark Ruffalo (not yay, but i can handle it). Interesting. Funny how out of those four it's Mark Ruffalo who has been ignored by the Academy.

From a Yahoo story about the film.

...budgeted at more than $20 million and scheduled to start production March 19, with shoots in 12 countries in Europe and Asia.

Wow. Good luck to Rian Johnson. I was impressed with Brick, so we'll see how this one pans out. It's clearly trying to be more mainstream than Brick.

I liked this quote from one of the people on Rian Johnson's forum:

Per contractual obligation, Kikuchi will indeed appear deaf, mute, and nude in most scenes, with her character only barely tied into the rest of the story, despite deserving a film of her own.

How totally true is that? Very true. That's how much.

I'm so confused

So, I saw Babel. I think I am the very definition of "mixed". I can see strong points, but I don't see them as that strong. There are bits that don't seem like they should work, but they do. And there a bits that feel like they should work, but they don't. I can see many flaws, yet I don't think it's a bad movie. It's just confused. As confused as I am.

Take for instance the four individual storylines. The Tokyo one has no plot at all, yet it was probably favourite. The Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett doesn't have much more of a plot either. The Mexico storyline probably has the closest the movie comes to a fully fledged plot, but it doesn't feel right. The acting is a mixed bag, too. It's all positive, but people like Brad Pitt don't really have anything to do (Pitt screams for an ambulence a lot but that's it). My favourite was probably Rinko Kikucho, I definitely saw something there with her. But, she was let down by a plot that, as I said, doesn't exist. Adrianna Barraza is impressive too, but yet again, she doesn't have much to do except run around looking crazy in the second half of the film. I would prefer Kikuchi get an Oscar nomination out of the two, but really, I don't think either of the two or Pitt deserve the nominations they seem on the cusp of receiving.

Gustavo Santaolalla's score is good, but the sound design is atrocious. It's incredibly loud and high pitched and terrible to listen to. Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is nice, but there doesn't seem to be a destinct visual style. There are certain scenes that are incredibly well done (the Tokyo drug scene for instance) and then there's just sort of lazy scenes that... well... aren't (the shootout in the hills).

I have my issues with the movie - i doubt Innaritu actually has a reason for all of this stuff, he just dopes it - yet once it was over I didn't not like it. I can't say that I liked it though. Ugh. I'm confused. I don't know. I'll be happy when Innaritu and Arriaga's next films seperately are released. Hopefully they can ditch the "we're all connected" bull and make a proper film in proper linnear order. C+ or a B-.

This movie reminds me another 2006 release 2.37. That movie had all the positives of a good film and I can't say that I didn't like the movie, but the issues I had with it bugged me and I just couldn't possibly give it a higher grade. Aagh. Anyway...