Day: December 30, 2013

BAM Best Picture Award Profile: Day Watch (2007)

Posted on by bernardovillela

Each year, I try and improve the site, and also try to find a new an hopefully creative and fun way to countdown to the unveiling of the year’s BAM Awards. Last year, I posted most of the BAM Nominee and winner lists (Any omissions will be fixed this year). However, when I picked Django Unchained as the Best Picture of 2012 I then realized I had recent winner with no write-ups. I soon corrected that by translating a post and writing a series of my own. The thought was all films honored as Best Picture should have at least one piece dedicated to them. So I will through the month of December be posting write-ups on past winners.

Day Watch (2006)

Firstly, it must be said that I cannot recommend you go out and see Day Watch unless you’ve seen Night Watch first. Yes, this is a sequel. In a way similar to what occurred in 2002 this is a sequel that is a game-changer. However, while Attack of the Clones merely changed Star Wars in my eyes, giving me a glimmer of what it is that drew the fanbase; The game-changing here is completely narrative-based. I cannot get too deeply into except to say that it’s a second installment that not only trumps the first entirely, but also sets the table for almost anything and everything to happen in the third.

Now the bittersweet follow-up to that sentiment is that the third installment, at least on film, may never come. The films are based on a trilogy of novels by Russian authors Sergey Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasiliev. As best as I can tell co-writer and director Timur Bekmambetov still has ahold of the rights. While I was tempted to be mad at him for coming to the US and directing and producing things I either didn’t like or had no interest in seeing, I read a while back that one of the hold-ups was that financiers wanted to make a third installment in English, which I am against. If that’s the case I applaud the holding out.

Leading me to my next point that if you do seek these films out do so by watching with the original audio. I’ll not bash dubbing all the time, but when it’s bad it’s awful and the dubbing here is the worse. Aside from the fact that you hear the actors speak in the Russian language version you also get some of the most creative implementation of subtitles that you’re likely to see. The text floats about where it makes the most sense for it to be, the lettering is stylized and dynamic and is every bit as much an artistic statement .

At its very core, when boiled down to a bare minimum, yes this is a narrative like others you’ve heard of before. The series is a tale of the eternal unseen battle between forces of darkness and light in a very literal way. However, it’s the adornments, the style and the production that give the films their added flair and meaning. It’s also not a film whose cultural setting is inconsequential, which is a large part of why an English-language follow-up would be a mistake, being a Russian story very much factors into this film.

This was the first year my awards went to 10 Best Picture nominees. I cited it as not being a very strong year at the time, but the top couple of films were quite memorable. Even if this series never sees completion this is quite a way to go.

BAM Best Picture Profile: Wah-Wah (2006)

Posted on by bernardovillela

Each year, I try and improve the site, and also try to find a new an hopefully creative and fun way to countdown to the unveiling of the year’s BAM Awards. Last year, I posted most of the BAM Nominee and winner lists (Any omissions will be fixed this year). However, when I picked Django Unchained as the Best Picture of 2012 I then realized I had recent winner with no write-ups. I soon corrected that by translating a post and writing a series of my own. The thought was all films honored as Best Picture should have at least one piece dedicated to them. So I will through the month of December be posting write-ups on past winners.

Wah-Wah (2006)

In many of these recaps I discussed my pre-life with the film. In some cases they were either adaptations of stories I already knew rather well, or that I had anticipated for some time. I had no idea Wah-Wah was coming or even existed until right before I saw it. There was a review for it in the weekend section of the Philadelphia Inquirer and I decided to head out and see it based on that.

The last time I’d seen Nicholas Hoult onscreen prior to this film was in the marvelous About a Boy, which made a rather significant dent in the 2002 BAM Awards. This tale is a bit different but one I was drawn to nonetheless. Being perhaps the most obscure title I’ve ever selected as Best Picture I will cite an IMDb synopsis.

Set at the end of the ’60s, as Swaziland is about to receive independence from Great Britain, the film follows the young Ralph Compton, at 12, through his parents’ traumatic separation, till he’s 14. It is written and directed by Richard E. Grant, and based on true events from Richard E. Grant’s childhood.

So you have a few things at work here: although playing off two completely different cultures, I could certainly relate to the story of a British boy growing up in Swaziland. As a dual-dual citizen there is a that sense of belonging in two places that’s a commonality. With the impending independence there’s also the perfect backdrop for a coming-of-age tale. The feeling of ex-empire underscore Harry’s (Gabriel Byrne) feelings of inadequacy. The family and their situation are viewed with perfect clarity by Ruby, Harry’s new wife, played brilliantly by Emily Watson, who vocalizes the film’s title as an imitation of the family’s complaining. Alongside them is Miranda Richardson, as Ralph’s (Hoult) mother, and Julie Walters, too, as a neighbor.

In preparing this write-up I read on the IMDb page that this was the first film ever to be shot in Swaziland, which is certainly an interesting footnote. Of course, one of the great things about cinema is that it can take you places and underscore things you had never really considered before. The liberation from colonization of Africa had many ramifications and permutations and this is just one of them. It’s also a wonderful means of personal expression, of course, and that’s where this film succeeds. It’s not run-of-the-mill but it does put you as a viewer in a position to identify with situations even though the world you’re witnessing is not of this time and not your own.

Wah-Wah is a captivating, funny, heart-rending family drama and coming of age story that is one not much talked about that’s just waiting for you to discover it.