Review: "The Artist" is silent movie ode but just okay

"The Artist" PG
     The best picture of 2011 is a movie with almost no sound acting that won for acting, presumably in mime form. The overlong movie tells the story of a falling silent film actor and star, and the rise of his paramour, a sound film star.
     The movie is interesting as a recreation of historical time period piece and interesting show of old movies, but it was done much more real in Hugo when they used the actual films. 
     It is not a bad film however it is certainly not the best picture of the year, last year. That film should have been the final Harry Potter, or Hugo, or one of the other movies, but certainly not this one. It's a nice movie. It has heart. Likely the Academy fogies liked it because nothing much actually happens in it. The ending makes the movie. At least it goes through all the crowd pleasing moments. That's what they like.
     Technically there are some interesting gaffs though, such as the frame rate, which would have been jumpy not seamless, or the parts where people pose wildly for 1920s era flash cameras. This is an issue as even in 1930 cameras that took stills were not fast enough (the film stock that is, light levels, and shutter speed mostly), to take accurate sudden photos of still life in motion. Movie cameras were also rather primitive and had that jumpy frame rate.
Review By Adam Browne