The Little Moments: BREACH

The best moments in film are sometimes big. Big reveals, big moments, big emotions tying into big realizations. "Luke, I am your father." "Mein Furher, I can walk!" "You can't handle the truth!" It's moments like those that reverberate in pop culture, blaze and sear their way into our collective memories. But I find, more and more, as I dig and expand my cinematic pallete, that it's really the small moments in films that give those big moments weight. A glance. A softly spoken line. A shaking hand that betrays a hidden fear or grief. Little pieces that, taken out of context, might not seem so impressive, but executed in their given story can hit you harder than the biggest plot twist ever. Without these moments, those big ones would diminish, and that's what I'm going to start focusing on.

"I matter. Plenty."

Breach is one of those films built on small moments, which never give way to big ones. It's very uncommon for a thriller, in the modern sense of the word, anyway; the film tackles a recent event but feels like something more akin to the mid-70s, when Hollywood was free of the Production Code but hadn't yet been taken over by corporations. You can easily see where it would be tempting to sex the story of Robert Hanssen up, to indulge and make it a more recognizable spy thriller.  There's the 25 year FBI agent who is really a traitor. The young and eager to impress analyst, yearning to make agent, who is assigned to trail him and also gain his trust. And of course, the stern but noble director whose focus never wavers from her target, but also makes sure the little greenhorn doesn't lose his way. Throw in some neon lighting, eighteen too many camera swoops per scene, and an average shot length of 1.8 seconds and this could've been a Tony Scott film, except the whole story would've been relocated to war torn Kosovo or a train that won't stop, and Hanssen would be recast as Denzel Washington.

Because You Asked For It: Oscar Nomination Pre-Coffee Commentary

Without the aid of caffiene or deep REM sleep, here's my shakedown on what did (or didn't) get nominated for the Little Naked Shiny Guy Awards:

*The cuts to the "Man on Street" interviews for the general public's favorite movies of the year is giving some great credence to the idea of mass firebombing.

*I like Franco and Hathaway, but man, I wish they'd bring back Steve Martin or Jon Stewart.

*It is way too fucking early to have to suffer Mo'Nique.

*All in all, a pretty damn great set of nominations, all for pretty damn great films. Nolan not getting a director's nod for Inception pretty much dashes my hopes that it would win Best Picture, but it's hard to argue with who got in there instead. King's Speech got the most nominations, but Social Network's got the early heat. It's going to be one of those two, with True Grit hanging out in the middle, abiding.

Full list and comments after the jump.

On Compulsive Fandom Buying

“Whatever, you know you're going to buy it anyway."

I've heard this phrase reverberate through dozens of articles and discussions about the Star Wars Blu Ray announcement, where to no one's surprise, it was revealed that only the Special Editions of the Original Trilogy would be included on the set, despite pretty much everyone in that fandom spending the last ten years bleating about how badly Lucas seemed to have missed the boat when it came to "upgrading" his films with new (at the time) technology.

A Little Joy Into Your Humdrum Lives

So hopefully my work ain't been in vain for nothin'.

This is my third go round starting a blog, mainly because I feel like I boxed myself in with the other two as far as what to use the blog FOR. As such, since I love just talking about film, cinema, movies, flicks, nickelodeons, the pictures, etc, I'm keeping this one open--an entry might just be recounting a movie I just watched (for good or ill) or some piece of filmic news I just heard, anything, really. And along the way, I hope to find some space to fill in some basic goings ons of me, myself, and the yahoo.

In any event, my goal is to update this at least three times a week. Keep me honest, people!