Head-Body-Head-Body, or: Learn How to Fight, Ya Bum!

So I'm driving down the street, on my way back to the station after lunch. At the corner of Ventura and G Street, a place where migrant day laborers frequently hang around waiting for a truck to roll up looking for a couple guys for the day. I stop at a red light behind another car. Two guys on bicycles roll past up to the intersection. Out of nowhere, a random assailant rushes one of the cyclists and throws a haymaker right into his midsection knocking him from his bike. Then another swift blow to the head. The man cowered and tried to run. The attacker has fire in his eyes and looked ready to kill him. He was shouting in what I assume was Spanish and advancing on the two cyclists. They tried to talk him down but he had his fists clenched, his nostrils flared, and he was itchin to open up a can on those two guys. I was just hoping they got out of the road before the light turned green. They did, the bikes didn't. So I had to maneuver between the fight and the bikes to go on my merry way.

I didn't look back to see how it resolved. I just assume they solved whatever it was amicably, and all is now well. Probably a case of mistaken identity.
If the ruffian did go through with it and kill them I didn't want to be a witness to a murder, for two reasons
1) Eww, gross.
2) Such a hassle. I don't have time for that. Well, technically, I probably do have time, but still...inconvenience.


Anyhow, this little affair brought me back to the halcyon days of internet video, when people would look up, post, stage, and pay for footage of "bum fights". (That was one adolescent itch I managed to leave unscratched, though, my contemporaries more than compensated for my disinterest)
There's something strange, but almost instinctive in people to love to watch people fight. I think it's lazy to cast it as simply a love of violence or even desensitization. Recent events in Tuscon show that people don't love violence, at least not uncritically. No one turns on the local news or reads in the paper about stabbings and shootings in their neighborhoods and cities and is amused/entertained. So it's not simple bloodlust. But there is something. Whether indigent immigrants or professional pugilists, people the world over love a good fight.
Even when it's staged.


Which brings me, as most things do eventually, to the cinema, and particularly in this case, David O. Russell's The Fighter.

The fascinating thing to me about this movie is that the eponymous 'fighter' is the least aggressive character in the story. Everyone else is a tiger on the prowl, protecting turf and attacking with abandon; Mickey (as played by Mark Wahlberg) is, oh I don't know (note to self: no more animal metaphors) a wise old owl, or perhaps, a soaring eagle, surveying everything, picking his spots, but mostly hanging back. Much of the commentary around the film mentions him as a "passive" character, lacking the charisma of Dickie (played to great effect by Christian Bale). 2 things about this:
1) It's perfectly written in terms of family dynamics. The flashy older brother, full of promise and braggadocio contrasts with the mild mannered younger son, who developed this persona to cope with being in the wide shadow of his sibling, despite surpassing talent.
2) His passivity (if we agree to call it that) works as a serviceable means to an end. It's not as though he doesn't do/accomplish anything, he just does it so deftly you don't notice what he's doing til it's done. In the ring you can be more of a brusier (see Butterbean) or you can be a tactician (see Lennox Lewis). In a fight, Mickey is more of the former, but in life he is clearly the latter, able to outflank his entire family/entourage to create conditions for peacable reconciliation.
I thought the fight scenes in the movie were competent, if unremarkable, and as such, I thought the best place to end the picture would've been the shot of the whole clan walking toward the ring: Mickey (in the center) with Dickie, Mom, Charlene, George. There's nothing wrong with the last fight, and it certainly helps the commerciality of the thing, but in my view the 'fight' of the movie was resolved when he had everyone in tow.
Passive? Ha. A knockout, indeed.

Who Is This "Oscar", Anyway?

If I had an award show/ceremony and/or statuettes to hand out for movies from the last year I would nominate the following and grant them thusly (winner in bold-face):




Best Picture:
Black Swan
The Kids Are All Right
Let Me In
Mother and Child
Please Give
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone




Best Director:
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right
Joel & Ethan Coen - True Grit
Claire Denis, White Material
David Fincher, The Social Network
Rodrigo Garcia, Mother and Child
Nicole Holofcener, Please Give
Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World





Best Lead Actor:
George Clooney, The American
Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours
Ewan MacGregor, The Ghost Writer
Edgar Ramirez, Carlos





Best Lead Actress:
Annette Bening, Mother and Child
Isabelle Huppert, White Material
Catherine Keener, Please Give
Hye Ja-Kim, Mother
Joey King, Ramona and Beezus
Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World





Best Supporting Actor:
Christian Bale, The Fighter
Pierce Brosnan, The Ghost Writer
Vincent Cassel, Black Swan
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Samuel L. Jackson, Mother and Child
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech





Best Supporting Actress:
Cecile de France, Hereafter
Greta Gerwig, Greenberg
Chloe Grace-Moretz, Let Me In
Rebecca Hall, Please Give
Mila Kunis, Black Swan
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Naomi Watts, Mother and Child
Kerry Washington, Mother and Child





Best Screenplay:
Black Swan
Let Me In
Monsters
Mother and Child
Please Give
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
White Material





Best Animated Picture:
Despicable Me
How To Train Your Dragon
Tangled
Toy Story 3





Best Cinematography:
The American
Let Me In
Mother and Child
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
The Social Network
True Grit
White Material





Best Editing:
The Ghost Writer
The Kids Are All Right
Mother
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
The Social Network
True Grit
White Material
Winter's Bone





Best Visual Effects:
Black Swan
Inception
Monsters
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Tron Legacy





Best Score
Black Swan
Inception
Night Catches Us
Shutter Island
Tron Legacy
True Grit





Best Debut Feature
Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture
Gareth Edwards, Monsters
Tanya Hamilton, Night Catches Us





Best Documentary
Catfish
Exit Through The Gift Shop





Best Foreign Language Film
Carlos
Mother
White Material


End Note #1: Obviously (hopefully it's obvious) this is based solely on what I saw, which was about 50-55 of the year's movies.
End Note #2: Most of the movie titles are from the back half of the alphabet, most of the actors/directors names are from the front half of the alphabet. Cosmic symmetry.