What I Watched -- The Artist

The Artist got lots of critical acclaim during its first theater run, but I just never got my butt out to see it.  Then it won Oscars for best picture, best actor, best director, costume design, and best original score, as well as being nominated for best supporting actress, cinematography, original screenplay, art direction, and editing.

When they did another two-week theater run last month, I finally managed to get there.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get this post written.

The plot is pretty simple: George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a great silent film actor at a time when silent movies are going the way of the dodo.  Peppy Miller (the lovely Berenice Bejo) is a fan who auditions her way into one of his last movies.  She becomes a star in her own right, adapting to the talkies in a way that George cannot.  Despite their differences in fortune, they can't seem to escape each other.

I'm not much of an old movie buff, so the whole silent film experience is fairly new to me, but for the most part I enjoyed it.  Silent acting seems to take one of two forms: the energetic or angry or funny scenes are overly dramatic, with big gestures and bold facial expressions; the quiet scenes were 180-degrees opposite, with lots of extreme close-ups of subtle changes in expression.

The film also stars John Goodman as a studio exec, and of course Uggie!

Bottom line: cute and enjoyable, but I don't know if it deserved all those awards.