{"id":1666,"date":"2019-12-24T15:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1666"},"modified":"2019-12-08T14:44:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T21:44:55","slug":"movie-hugo-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/24\/movie-hugo-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Hugo (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/7\/73\/Hugo_Poster.jpg\" alt=\"Hugo\" width=\"220\" height=\"326\">Hugo<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2011<br \/>\nRating: PG<br \/>\nLength: 126 minutes \/ 2.10 hours<\/p>\n<p>Enchanting. Charming. Magical. After re-watching this film again, I can still confirm <em>Hugo<\/em> (2011) legitimately earned all its technical Oscars, even if it didn\u2019t end up winning Best Picture. Ironically enough, this American movie about the origins of French film lost out to a French movie about the origins of American talking pictures (i.e., <em>The Artist<\/em> (2011)). Of course, the more surprising aspect of this film was how Martin Scorsese was able to make such an entertaining (and family-friendly) film that didn\u2019t involve the mafia at all.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, as an avid lover of classic films, I enjoyed the romanticism related to the earliest of film magicians. Scorsese\u2019s love letter to the origins of cinema\u2014and the masters of their craft like Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s (Ben Kingsley)\u2014is a stark reminder of how much we&#8217;ve lost of cinema\u2019s heritage due to external events that forced the artistic community to abandon their art. The amount of experimentation and inventive special effects at the turn of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century are still awe-inspiring, and <em>Hugo<\/em> gives a brief glimpse behind the scenes for how artists like M\u00e9li\u00e8s achieved them.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the M\u00e9li\u00e8s storyline is only half of this film, as the other half is filled with plenty of amusing sub-plots that swirl around the titular Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield). Inevitably, it\u2019s the people of the train station, whose lives intertwine with the numerous passengers just passing through, who gives this movie its heart. All this being said, I\u2019d almost recommend watching this film back-to-back with M\u00e9li\u00e8s\u2019 <em>A Trip to the Moon<\/em> (1902), along with several other classic silent films that make brief appearances like <em>Intolerance<\/em> (1916), <em>The Kid<\/em> (1921), <em>Safety Last!<\/em> (1923), and <em>Steamboat Bill, Jr.<\/em> (1928).<\/p>\n<p>Scorsese\u2019s love letter to classic, silent cinema, I give <em>Hugo<\/em> 5.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hugo Year: 2011 Rating: PG Length: 126 minutes \/ 2.10 hours Enchanting. Charming. Magical. After re-watching this film again, I can still confirm Hugo (2011) legitimately earned all its technical Oscars, even if it didn\u2019t end up winning Best Picture. Ironically enough, this American movie about the origins of French film lost out to a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,51,2,370,369],"tags":[50,1998,2002,1999,94,2001,1996,2004,2000,1997,13,8,2003,167],"class_list":["post-1666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21","category-5-0-stars","category-movie","category-nominee","category-oscar","tag-50","tag-charming","tag-classic-film","tag-enchanting","tag-french","tag-georges-melies","tag-hugo","tag-love-letter","tag-magical","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-silent-film","tag-the-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}