I love movies, I love pop culture, I love a lot of entertainment. This is my life and I love it.
09/09/2010
06/11/2010
03/09/2010
02/01/2010
Oscar Predictions 2010!!!
Tomorrow morning at 8:30, the nominations will be announced for the 82nd annual Academy Awards! Here are my yearly predictions (which normally turn out to be really wrong!), and I find that my predictions this year are more wishful thinking than anything. So we shall see how wrong I am tomorrow!!!
Best Picture
Avatar
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Star Trek
Up
Up in the Air
Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
James Cameron, Avatar
Lee Daniels, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Best Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
Best Actress
Emily Blunt, The Young Victoria
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Best Supporting Actor
Alec Baldwin, It's Complicated
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles
Stanley Tucci, Julie & Julia (suck on THAT Peter Jackson!)
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress
Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Best Original Screenplay
500 Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Up
Best Adapted Screenplay
District 9
An Education
In the Loop
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Up in the Air
Best Animated Feature
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
Up
Best Art Direction
Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Inglourious Basterds
Public Enemies
A Serious Man
Best Cinematography
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Nine
The White Ribbon
Best Costume Design
Bright Star
Coco Avant Chanel
Inglourious Basterds
Nine
The Young Victoria
Best Editing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Star Trek
Up in the Air
Best Documentary Feature
The Beaches of Agnes
The Cove
Every Little Step
Food, Inc.
Under Our Skin
Best Foreign Language Film
Ajami
The Milk of Sorrow
A Prophet
Samson & Delilah
The White Ribbon
Best Original Score
Avatar
The Informant!
Sherlock Holmes
Star Trek
Up
Best Original Song
"All Is Love" from Where the Wild Things Are
"Almost There" from The Princess and the Frog
"I See You" from Avatar
"Take It All" from Nine
"The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart
I know NOTHING about the sound categories so they are just identical from sheer lack or knowledge of the subject.
Best Sound Editing & Mixing
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen
Best Makeup
District 9
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Star Trek
Best Visual Effects
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek
There you have it people! Let's see how wrong I am in the morning!
01/26/2010
Whaaaaaaaat?!
So Avatar beat Titanic as the all time box office leader? This makes me sad.
01/25/2010
Grieve Grieve Sweet Charlotte
Lars von Trier's Antichrist startled me in ways that I never expected. The director's twisted tale of a couple grieving over the accidental death of their son was a horror film like I have never seen. When I walked out of the theater, I thought I just didn't get it. But as I walked to my car I realized how bold the acting was despite how heavyhanded I found some of the imagery.
Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe play the couple (billed as He and She). During a black and white prologue, the couple graphically make love (hello, penetration shot!!!) and, unbeknownst to them, their young son falls out of a window to his death. Dafoe, a therapist, thinks that his wife's doctor's are overmedicating her, so they retreat to their cabin called Eden (make of that what you will) where He believes he can make her face her grief and fears head-on.
As soon as the couple's retreat begins, He begins seeing horrible visions (dead fawns still attached to their mothers, a self-mutilating fox who literally mutters, "chaos reigns") while his wife slowly spirals out of control. In one horrible scene, she crushes his testicles with a block of wood and then, while he is unconcious from the pain no doubt, she brings him to climax and he ejaculates blood all over her shirt and face.
The film is hard to watch either from the brutal violence (genital mutilation pretty much always guarantees awkward moments) or the blatant symbolism. I rolled my eyes at von Trier's decision to blur our speechless onlookers at the son's funeral sequence and suppressed giggles when the animals started talking. I also thought that his use of slow motion was overused especially in the prologue and epilogue. It didn't help that von Trier amplified these moments with an overwrought aria that is unwelcome every time it starts blaring through the theater.
I will say this though: Gainsbourg and Dafoe are fearless actors. I recently read that actress Eva Green was originally cast as Her but her agents refused to let her do it. Gainsbourg, who won the Best Actress award at Cannes this past year, is unbelievably brave to bare such gut-wrenching emotion. Dafoe, an actor who I find myself being very drawn to as of late, matches Gainsbourg's intensity as the man desperately trying to hold his wife together. It is rather captivating to see him attempting to not unravel as he witnesses his wife's steep descent into violent madness.
01/22/2010
01/06/2010
Want to See What a Broken Record Looks Like?
Suck on that 181 movies! New record: 191. And here they are.
12/19/2009
"Did You Hear" How This Movie Sucks?
I like Hugh Grant. I like Sarah Jessica Parker. I even thought their new comedy, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, looked as though it would be kind of cute. How wrong, oh how wrong, I was!!!
Grant and Parker play Paul and Meryl Morgan, an estranged New York couple who are relocated to Wyoming by the Witness Relocation Program after they witness a murder. They have to give up their Blackberrys and leave their businesses behind! The horror! God forbid they reconfigure their lives SO THEY DON'T GET KILLED.
They stay in the quaint town on Ray, Wyoming (where the men are men and even the women operate firearms, golly I love a fish out of water scenario!) under the supervision of Clay (Sam Elliot) and Emma Wheeler (Mary Steenburgen), the local lawman and his deputy wife. Apprently, Clay and Emma do this all the time, something that I found very odd. I would think that someone in Ray would notice the frequent strangers posing as different members of the Wheeler family tree. It's not like Sam Elliot is fetching enough to have his own Big Love-like situation going on especially because his ever-present mustache seems to be controlling all of his inherent cerebral decisions.
Oh wait! I forgot! Everyone that lives 40 miles outside a major metropolis is simple, God-fearing and, well, stupid. That's at least the message I got from the movie. As Paul and Meryl spend more time together, they, of course, are reunited. I don't really see this as surprising because they have no access to the internet or any correspondence to anyone other than the simple, God-fearing townspeople.
The script sucks. Let's just get it out of the way. Hugh Grant is usually rather charming and quite lovable but he is reduced to a whimpering simp whose only purpose is to set up the talk-talk-joke rhythm of each scene. After each one of Grant's jokes, the scene is cut and the same setup occurs. Sarah Jessica Parker is the only person that is allowed to play successful New York women, apparently, since she played Carrie Bradshaw for so many years. Parker is a relateable and funny actress. Meryl is hypocritical and shrill. Who in their right mind would cheer for them?
Marc Lawrence directed Grant and Sandra Bullock in 2002's Two Weeks Notice, a great romantic comedy. I wish he would have cast Bullock instead of Parker. It might have elevated the chemistry, especially since Bullock is having such a banner year.
Not only are the main characters annoying as all hell, but the plot and execution is more predictable than a Saved by the Bell episode. Seriously. Screech breaking his mother's Elvis sculpture had more complexity than this ENTIRE movie. Don't insult the audience's intelligence. Paul and Meryl grew apart initially because of their infertility issues. Guess who has a baby bump in the last few frames?!?!
If Lawrence wanted to direct an interesting movie, he should have made a movie about the Wheelers. I think a dark comedy about an aging government appointed couple who take in witnesses would've made for a better flick. The cast could stay exactly the same and allow the actors to spread their wings a bit. Just a suggestion.
You've heard about the Morgans. Or at least some other couple a lot like them. Don't go.
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