A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

I’ll go out on a limb here: I’ll predict that Martin Scorsese will win this year’s Oscar for Best Director for the Aviator. I try to give my predictions for the Oscars every year (2001, 2002, 2004) mainly because I have no life, but mostly for the heck of it. It’s free, right? And so, looking at the past Oscar winners, they tend to be given for a body of work, not necessarily the current film being considered. Look at Denzel Washington’s win. He had far better performances before Training Day. And so, in the name of the Foot in Mouth Dep’t., I predict Marty Scorsese will win for the Best Director not so much for the Aviator but for all the good films he has directed in the past. (No, it won’t be Clint. He won for Unforgiven while Scorsese hasn’t received an Oscar for his work. The Academy wouldn’t want to have another Citizen Kane/Orson Welles.)

But that said, the Aviator, like Washington in Training Day, isn’t Scorsese’s best movie. It is a well-made movie nonetheless: good acting, great production-values. Is it something you should catch on the big screen? Yes, just to see the great details that went into filming this movie. Is it ultimately entertaining? Not exactly.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Aviator is how blue Leonardo diCaprio’s eyes are. And then you realize everything seems to be with a bluish-hue - even the grass seemed to look like algae. This of course was designed to make the sky even more majestic and to help us understand Howard Hughes (diCaprio) obsession with it.

Hughes made his fortune in Texas when his father invented the diamond-studded drill bit for oil wells. He made his way to Hollywood and got caught up in making movies. In the Aviator, we catch up with him while he’s making Hell’s Angels. In Hollywood, he mingled with a slew of starlets just as he was pursuing his love for aviation. When Hughes makes a bid for TWA, it sets him up against another commercial aviation tycoon, Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) head of rival Pan-Am Airlines. Trippe is as relentless at defending his company’s dominance of the skies as much as Hughes loved his airplanes.

Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn stole the movie from diCaprio. You couldn’t wait to see what will she say or do next. The movie drags on whenever she’s not on screen. The rest of Hughes’ Harem - Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner and Gwen “No Doubt…I Shouldn’t Quit My Day Job Yet” Stefani as Jean Harlow were more like stand-ins; picked because of how close they looked like to the real life actresses they were portraying more than anything else.

Also, diCaprio’s looks might have been working against him. (And I’m not just saying that to be smarmy.) He was great when portraying the young Hughes. But as the older man, diCaprio couldn’t pull it off. The suits he wore seemed too big for him, like a kid putting on his dad’s clothes. The prosthetics couldn’t hide Leo’s boyish looks. And as mentioned, Blanchett was all over him as Hepburn and you tend to miss her whenever she’s not on screen.

Despite these short-comings however, it is a good looking movie. The flying sequences were exciting enough to make you understand why Hughes loved to fly. The planes too were photographed like pin-up models, with Hughes lovingly caressing the fuselage as he would the thighs of one of his starlets.

It’s a good enough movie to watch in the theaters although it’s a tad long (170 minutes). The fact that I’ve mentioned that it’s long should give you an indication how it dragged in parts, especially towards the end (who wants to see more of Leo’s naked butt anyway? Fine we get it that he’s going nuts but please! Talk about gratuitous.) It’s a good enough movie but not exactly Scorsese’s greatest. Hopefully, that one’s still in him.