Reviewing the Oscars

This year I was more interested in the Oscars then ever before. It's probably because I saw more of the nominated movies than usual and because I was caught up in the post writer's strike excitement.

In case you missed it, E! News began their Oscar coverage sometime around 8 am Pacific time; a whopping 9+ hours before the awards show began. I think I watched about 3 or so hours of Debbie Matenopoulos, Guiliana Rancic, Ryan Seacrest and company interviewing various style gurus about the most superficial details known to man. I don't know why I don't get disgusted with myself for watching this shit but at just holds my attention. Maybe it's because of moments like the one where Gary Busey talked shit to Ryan Seacrest, praised Laura Linney for her performance in The Savages, then after failing to recognize the gorgeous-looking and clearly horrified Jennifer Garner proceeded to hug her and kiss her on the neck. Awesome!

By the time the show started I was exhausted but I have to say I enjoyed it. I don't like Jon Stewart at all, but he was really funny. The I-Phone bit was hilarious although David Lynch already talked shit about watching movies on the I-phone.

The most notable thing were the numerous montages employed by the Oscar crew. I don't know how many montages are too many. I do know that you have to have the "In Remembrance" and "Greatest Oscar Moments" montages. We all could have probably done without a different montage before each award. If we want to put a positive spin on all the montages, one could say that maybe the montages will open your eyes to an actor or film that you have never seen. Other than that, it seems that people often criticize the length of the show so cutting out a few montages may help remedy this. Montage. Montage. Montage. I just wanted to see how may times I could use that word in one paragraph.

There weren't really any surprises as far as the awards go, with the possible exception of Tilda Swinton winning best supporting actress(I'm pretty sure everyone expected Cate Blanchett to win, although no one cares that she didn't). I loved seeing the actors/musicians/lovers from the film Once perform their nominated song, "Falling Slowly". After wanting to gouge my eyes out seeing three songs from Disney's Enchanted, the highlight of the night came when Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová were awarded best original song! Check out their performance if you haven't see it yet


When Adrien Brody was given the Oscar for best actor in 2003 over Daniel Day Lewis for Gangs of New York I was so pissed, because at the time I thought his performance as Bill The Butcher was legendary. I've been so pleased at all of the praise he's received throughout the award season; and last night I was just happy to see that Daniel Day Lewis' work in There Will Be Blood(topping his Gangs of New York performance and In my opinion turning in one of the greatest performances of all time) was validated as being the best.

The Oscars are great. You have to expect the superficial, annoying entertainment reporters and excessive montages. You watch because it irritates you so much that you love it. And, of course, you love movies.

Weekend Wrap-up

Something's Gotta Give: 7 out of 10



Notting Hill: 5 out of 10



Margot at the Wedding: 6 out of 10



Michael Clayton: 8 out of 10

The Oscars

Every year the Academy pisses me off and I swear that I won't watch the show because they don't know what the hell they are doing, but inevitably I get too excited not to care. After all, I love watching movies, so let's look at this years crop of best picture candidates and I'll do my best to handicap them starting with the least likely to win.

Juno: I liked this movie very much but I get the sense that it's completely out of its league in this category. The director, Jason Reitman is also nominated, which is appalling, since Joe Wright, David Cronenberg and so many other deserve the honor more. There just seems to be a pattern developing every year where at least one heart-warming sentimental comedy in going to be nominated and they just can't stand up to the brilliance of the other films.

Michael Clayton: The remaining four films are all very good. I just watched Michael Clayton last night and I thought it was really great. The pacing was relentless towards an extremely satisfying climax. Surely George Clooney was at his best but I wonder if he has any range as an actor. Tom Wilkinson is amazing as well, but I think this movie will fall short in most all of the categories it's nominated.

Atonement: I was not prepared to like this movie as much as I did. I absolutely loved it. Yes, the ending was a little anticlimactic, but certainly not bad enough to spoil the whole film. None of the cast were brilliant, but they were all very good and the cinematography and directing were the true stand out for me. The curse for this film is that, this year, there are unfortunately 2 films that come far closer to perfection.

No Country for Old Men: It feels like forever since I've seen this. I will also say that I think the Academy will choose this as the years best film although There Will Be Blood is a better picture. The Coen's deserve the Oscars for best directing and best adapted screenplay but ultimately, the overall experience laid out in There Will Be Blood should be recognized.

There Will Be Blood: I know I started this post saying how I would handicap the Oscar's and here I am just choosing my favorite. I can't remember ever liking two films in the same year as much as I like these films. Daniel Day Lewis' acting is transcendental, and watching him feels like I am staring at the most beautiful painting ever created. This along with the brilliant filmmaking, amazing sound, hell, even the silence is beautiful in this movie, make it my favorite of the year. I hope the Academy feels the same way.

Catching Up

Here's a quick recap of the last few days. I plan on posting a quick Oscar preview before Sunday, likely followed by my much delayed Top Ten List.

Gone Baby Gone(Ben Affleck): 7 out of 10

Cold Comfort Farm(John Schlesinger): 6 out of 10

Breach(Billy Ray): 6 out of 10

Frequency

Okay, the concept of this film is cool and intriguing but I'm not sure they pulled it off here. Dennis Quaid plays Jim Caviezel's dad in the Here's-what-happens-when-you-fuck-with-the-past movie. When Caviezel starts screwing with his now dead dad's ham radio he discovers the dude he's talking to is his dad before he died all the way back in 1969. Mr. Bright idea Caviezel decides to warn his dad about how he dies to prevent it and then gets him to help these murder victims from the future. But we all know if you try to change the past something in the future gets all outta whack and that's exactly what happens. Frequency isn't really a good movie but it's definitely worth watching if it's on cable or you have nothing better to watch.

28 Days

This was a pretty standard Sandra Bullock movie; kinda dumb, kinda funny. I found it weird that it was a movie about rehab but it sprinkled in comedy. Clearly it's a serious subject and it didn't treat it altogether serious or as a straight ahead comedy. The film could have been much better if the filmmakers decided what genre they were gonna go with. I'd much rather watch a movie like Clean and Sober or Manic or even Anger Management for that matter. I can't recommend this movie.

The Hotel New Hampshire

I recently read John Irving's charming book and found out that they made it into a movie in the 80s. I wondered how I had never heard of a movie with Beau Bridges, Matthew Modine, Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, Nastassja Kinski, and Wallace "Inconceivable" Shawn. That red flag told me to stay away from the movie, but by the time I finished the book I was determined to see it. It turns out Tony Richardson wrote one of the worst adaptations of a novel in cinema history and the actors each turned in their most horrible, ridiculously bad, and shitty performances of their lives. The book is full of quirky, lovable people and moments that while at first seem odd, you are made to love through Irving's great writing. The film was just a mash-up of all the craziest moments from the book with no character development and no explanation what so ever for the action on screen. It is a monumentally bad film so never never watch it please.

Possession

I was surprised to find Neil LaBute directed this dull movie, but then I remembered he hasn't made a good movie in ten years and I wasn't upset. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart fall in love as they are examining the lost letters of these two old English poets that they discover had a secret affair. The film bounces back and forth between centuries, telling each couples story but they don't really parallel each other at all. There's nothing particularly compelling or romantic about the story. I found it boring and utterly pointless. I'd skip it for sure.

P.S. I Love You

Romantic comedies generally fall into 2 categories. Those that create an unlikely fairytale situation as a basis for it's lovers to come together(i.e. While You Were Sleeping, Return to Me, Just Like Heaven, etc.), and those that are slice-of-life stories that closely resemble any given number of peoples lives(i.e. Woody Allen and Nicole Holofcencer films). This is by no means absolute but that's usually the way it goes. P.S. I Love You just so happens to be one of those movies that creates such an unlikely situation that if you don't buy it then you'll hate the movie.

The film stars Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler as Holly and Gerry Kennedy, two lovers struggling to wait out the early financial hardships of their marriage. When Gerry unexpectedly dies from a brain tumor Holly is left with a seemingly hopeless road ahead trying to cope without her true love. When she mysteriously receives a birthday cake from her dead husband she thinks it's a joke. She finds a tape recorder and discovers that Gerry has some how planned to send her letters over the course of the near future to show her how much he loved her. Holly is left happy yet puzzled as to why her dead husband keeps toying with her emotions, not allowing her to get over him. After much crying, goofiness, adventures with girlfriends, etc Holly finds out that Gerry's plan was to use the letters as a tool to help her mourn. With the realization that she can finally move on Holly sets out to live her life without her extremely sexy and unimaginably romantic husband.

Geez, I'd hate to be the guy to have to follow Gerry. "Here's a rose honey. What's that you say? You're dead husband planned months and months of romantic letters and activities from the grave?!?!" I mean what the hell!? As stupid and unlikely as I though this film was I still liked it. You have to go with the flow. It's lame from the get go if you don't allow yourself to believe that somebody could pull something off that's THAT romantic. Hilary Swank was ok and it was a bit funny. My wife particularly loved all of the hot Irish men in the film and hasn't stopped letting me know just how sexy she thinks they are. See it if you are in the mood for a fairytale romantic comedy. I am off to Gaelic Menswear-R-Us to buy a new wardrobe.

The Namesake

The dude from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (Kal Penn) has a fucked up name in this film about and Indian family and their lives in America. There is an unexpectedly long back story about Gogol Ganguli's parents and how he came to struggle with having such a weird ass name. The movie also examines the clash of cultures, marriage and relationships, youth, and more. It's a bit long winded, but despite my jokes I actually really liked The Namesake. Rent it for sure.

Rescue Dawn

Christian Bale stars as a pilot in this fairly average movie. He is flying a mission just before the start of the Vietnam Wat when his plane goes down over Laos. He is quickly captured and put in a POW camp when he begins scheming on a way to get out. Werner Herzog has made way better films(see Stoszek, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and others). This one is worth a rental if you can't think of anything else you really want to see.

Atonement

In my continuing effort to see the films receiving the most Oscar buzz, I was able to finally see what all the fuss was about in regards to Joe Wright's Atonement. I can say that I don't have to same problem of expressing my feelings about this movie as I did about There Will Be Blood. One thing the films do have in common is that I loved them both. Joe Wright follows up 2005's Pride and Prejudice with another triumph and is proving now to be one of the most promising directors around.

Adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan, the principle story of Atonement revolves around two rich sisters played by Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan. During one especially hot summer at there parents estate a romance develops between the oldest sister(Knightley) and the son of the family's housekeeper played by James McAvoy. A series of events unfold in very different ways when seen from the younger sister's point of view. When a young cousin is raped, Ronan's character falsely accuses her sister's new love of the terrible act ripping the new lovers apart and sending him to the war front in order to escape jail time.

At it's core Atonement is a romance. It's straight forward and relies on the wonderful story and the chemistry between Knightley and McAvoy; who are terrific in this film. The inherent emotion in such a film might have been enough to garner all of the awards and nominations it's received so far, but there is much more to this film than that.

Seamus McGarvey's cinematography is some of the most amazing I've seen in a quite some time. Having seen all of the nominees in this category, with the exception of Janusz Kaminski for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, McGarvey is right at the top of this category with Roger Deakins for No Country For Old Men. The main elements of McGarvey's cinematography that truly stand out are firstly the close-ups. Many of the shots in the film are close-ups that aren't so close that you become uncomfortable but are close enough that you immediately develop an intense feeling for these characters whether it be sorrow, disgust or pity. Secondly, and the thing that is most striking about the cinematography is the camera movement. Throughout the film, scenes will begin with beautiful wide shots that slowly(but not too slowly) dolly into the characters. The brilliance of McGarvey's camera movement comes to a head in a scene where McAvoy's character and two of his soldier buddies stumble upon an Allied rallying point on the beach in France after having been lost for days. I don't really know how long the seen actually lasts but it felt like 10 minutes or so in which camera follows McAvoy and his friends as they walk through this maze of soldiers from different branches and countries. All over there are beached ships, transport vehicles that are blown to shit and even civilians. There are thousands of people and everyone appears to be injured. Not once, in this entire ten or so minute exploration of the havoc that has been wreaked on this beach, does the camera make a cut. Sure there are plenty of long shots in the history of cinema and just because they never make a cut doesn't automatically make it a gorgeous shot. What made this long take special was the emotion of knowing that these soldiers are finally finding help, as well as the fact that the set is amazingly huge and the filmmakers coordinated such an expansive scene to the point where they were able to make it perfect without any cuts.

To me, Atonement feels like an old Hollywood film. It has a great story, skilled filmmakers and they casted just the right actors. There are no frills or gimmicks, just a well made movie. I think these are the reason's why it is so easy to express why I love this film so much. I'm not sure Saoirse Ronan deserves to be nominated for best supporting actress but that is really besides the point because everyone else that worked on the film was recognized correctly by their nominations. There's still time to see Atonement before the Oscars if you are into seeing the nominated films before the awards, but in any case I would definitely see it on the big screen because you'll lose much of the effect watching the DVD. That is unless you have a home theater. Stay tuned for my top ten films of the year list, in which Atonement will certainly be included.

Picture Perfect

Jennifer Aniston stars in this standard romantic comedy. She plays an ad exec. who pretends to be engaged to a guy she doesn't know so she can move up in her company and also bang this dude, played by Kevin Bacon, who only fucks chicks that are married or have a boyfriend. Panic ensues when the fake boyfriend becomes famous, at which point Aniston's character convinces the guy to put on a show for her friends and coworkers. The fake boyfriend, played by Jay Mohr, ends up falling in love before Aniston realizes what a bitch she truly is and I suppose you can fill in the rest.

Not the best romantic comedy of all time by any means, but I guess it's a pretty good movie if you are in the mood.

The Age of Innocence

I just decided that from now on I was going to post something for every movie I see whether it be a ranking from 1 to 10 or a short paragraph or a proper review.

In keeping with our recent reminder of just how talented Daniel Day Lewis is, Nicole and I watched Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence last night. This was the third time I had seen it and I think I like it more and more each time.

Scorsese's film, based on the book by Edith Wharton, is very slow and deliberate but in a very lyrical way. While some people might call it boring, I think that it keeps the film steady and allows the characters and story to develop.

Daniel Day Lewis plays a New York aristocrat in the 1800s who is caught between the sensible engagement and subsequent marriage to the fair Mary(played by Winona Ryder) and his lust for her sultry and somewhat scandalous cousin (Michelle Pfeiffer.). Day Lewis's performance is extremely controlled and much more subtle than his characters from My Left Foot and Gangs of New York. His performance, Scorsese's solid but not quite brilliant directing and Elmer Bernstein's beautiful music are what make this movie worth watching.

There Will Be Blood

I've finally gotten around to writing about There Will Be Blood. I saw it first about a month ago and I wanted to give it some time to sink in before I wrote about it. Yet to write anything, I saw it again a week ago and now I feel I've waited to long. There has been so much praise showered upon this film that I don't feel I can manufacture one original thought about it.

I can say that I was left completely breathless by Daniel Day Lewis' performance in the lead role.
I hindsight too I believe there is better directing and cinematography in the 2007 crop of films, but perhaps I'll talk more about that when I finally get around to making my list of the top ten films of the year. That being said, There Will Be Blood is easily one of the top five films of the years. And to use sort of a cliche, it's definitely a must see.