No one has answered my question yet; did anyone else recognize Scorsese’s cameo appearance?
I think I remember seeing him, but I don’t recall the specifics.
You hit the nail right on the head! I took my 11 year old son to see it a couple of weekends ago, knowing nothing about the movie except who it was directed by and that it was his first attempt at a child friendly movie, and that it was really good.
I made the right choice by going to see it at the only single-screen movie theater left in the state of Louisiana. It was like stepping into the 1940s. My son had never seen anything like it before, and he also really enjoyed the movie.
I didn’t think the film sucked, exactly; but it seemed to miss whatever mark it was aiming for. The sweet scenes weren’t really sweet, the child actors were a bit too precious, and the action scenes barely raised a pulse. Add the cartoon-ish background scenery that was created by the 3D effect, and the movie rates about a “C” for me. The best parts of the film were Sasha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley, who both made a valiant effort to rescue this from mediocrity. One person’s opinion, and obviously in the minority here.
[spoiler]During the flashbacks when Méliès is describing his history as a magician and flimmaker, there’s a moment with him posing and being filmed in front of his just-completed studio. The camera operator is Scorsese.
In a movie that Scorsese made with Ben Kingsley is a shot of Scorsese filming Ben Kingsley. There was something utterly charming about that, I thought.[/spoiler]
I am heartened that this same dynamic acting duo shares billing in the upcoming The Dictator. 
I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t perfect. It could have used more and better comic relief than Sasha Baron Cohen delivered.
I’m sure it will be nominated for best picture, and it deserves a nomination, but I don’t see it as a winner.
And as wrong-headed as notsoheavyd’s post is, he’s not wrong about one thing: Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood. Not saying Scorcese planned it that way, but this film will appeal to Oscar voters because it tells film industry folk how wonderful and important they are.
Movies set in Hollywood (Drive this year, for example) and films relating to acting or the film industry have a leg up in Oscar competition. Human nature.
Just saw it, in 3-D. It’s a beautiful movie, no question about that. The closeup scenes of the clockworks, the innards of the train station, the people rushing madly around–all a treat for the eyes. I liked the children’s performances, too (and I say this without having ever heard of either of them).
Pity about the drawbacks: the hackneyed dialogue, a very weak and somewhat incoherent plot, and the pedestrian performances by the adult actors.
A classic example of the old standby, “The scenery was great, but the actors got in front of it.”
As a teenager, I noticed and was annoyed at how many books starred authors as protagonists. Then I remembered the adage, “write what you know,” and it made sense to me. It’s just a weird quirk of the world, the same way that critters like us that speak language decide that speaking language is the key sign of having moral relevance.
Although it may be true that Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood, there’s another possibility: movie directors directing about movies are telling the stories they know best, and therefore tell those stories best.
Actually, until Crash, no film set predominantly in the Los Angeles area had ever won a Best Picture Oscar. And while films about authors and theater people have taken home the top prize, no film chiefly about films and filmmakers has. So your impressions don’t really dovetail with the history of the Academy.
That fact aside, I think Georges Méliès is just an interesting subject for a movie. Hugo is based on a children’s story and is obviously not meant to be a Méliès biopic but rather an introduction to him. Like the movie says, Méliès was hurt by the change in public tastes and WWI but equally destructive were his long-term battles with Thomas Edison who was trying to form a film monopoly and the poor financial decisions made by his brother Gaston.
It was alright, but honestly the good bits mainly made me wish they’d found a better movie to put them in. Its very pretty, the 3D is well used, the train station setting is cool, the re-creation of Melies stuff is neat.
But you pretty much know how the film is going to go an hour before the end and it starts to feel really drawn out. The comic relief is pretty flat, the characters weren’t really engaging and the acting was alright but not really enough to carry the film once the “oh-wow” of the sets wore off.
And how many different times did a character go off on a long speech about how great Melies movies were? They could’ve gotten rid of maybe half of those and cut about 20 minutes off the running time.
It was maybe an hour of good movie spread over two hours of actual movie.
I notice you narrowed it down to Oscar winners. I notice you are also excluding pictures about acting or stage performance. But when I say “Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood,” my meaning is not so narrow or literalistic. I am including in my thinking Oscar nominees and movies about acting generally.
Black Swan
The Kids Are All Right
Inglourious Basterds
The Aviator
Finding Neverland
Crash
Moulin Rouge!
Shakepeare in Love
L.A. Confidential
More if you go back further, and I have excluded a number of movies set only partly in L.A. or in which the locale does not feature prominently in the story.
I’m not being critical. As I said, it’s human nature to like films about things and places with which you are familiar. And for that reason I expect both Drive and Hugo will have a little extra appeal for industry insiders. (I hasten to say they are both worthy films on their merits.)
Saw it in 3D. Liked it.
We went to see it yesterday and loved it. I was relieved to learn that I did not get a migraine from the 3D, as the 2D version was not playing anywhere near us. The last time I saw a 3D movie I had bad problems, so the technology must have been greatly improved since then. We had planned to leave immediately if I started feeling sick.
Saw it and loved it. So did my 12 year old daughter.
I’m going to post on my blog in earnest more often, and my first this year is on Hugo.
Excellent blog post, MovieMogul, but the last paragraph sounds pretty dire. Nothing you can’t overcome I hope?
Thank you. Overcome? Eventually. But a very tough road ahead (you can read more in my previous Capra post; I’m using the blog as an outlet, though I still keep the personal stuff opaque).
Oh, I loved this film! To me, this was like ‘Cinema Paradiso’ - a modern film-maker’s homage to the roots of his craft. The connection between early cinema and magic was beautifully drawn.
Did anyone else catch the reference to the opening shot of ‘Citizen Kane’?
I saw it in 3D and it was lovely, despite the fact that we arrived late and were therefore seated far too close. The cinema was quite full.