2011 Academy Awards: The Live-Blog

2011 Academy Awards Predictions

Best Picture:
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

This is a tight one between Black Swan, The Social Network and The King’s Speech. They each have a lot of momentum as they come into this final race of the award’s season. Personally, my giant boner for Winter’s Bone has me pulling for it. That movie really deserves it.

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2011 Independent Spirits Awards Predictions

BEST FEATURE
127 Hours
Black Swan
Greenberg
The Kids Are All Right
Winter’s Bone

Despite having never seen Greenberg, I’m still a little surprised to see it here. Did the category need a little padding? I heard aight things about it, but they were just aight, nothing great or spectacular enough to warrant a nomination for the Best Feature. I still think I personally preferred Black Swan for its overall effect, but if there was ever a time and a place for Winter’s Bone to win this is it. It’s too quiet and still of a movie to win the big awards so I would love to see it get recognized here.

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Intriguing Preview Corner: Dogtooth

Well, I'm not really sure what to think of this preview, but it certainly fits the word Intriguing.

Thoughts?

Opinions?

Gonna go see it?

Pop Culture News: The Internet Uprising over Toy Story 3's Rotten Tomato Ranking

Oh Armond White, the grand master of being contrary. His review of Toy Story 3, besides claiming that "Transformers 2 already explored the same plot to greater thrill and opulence," has kept the otherwise well-received movie from a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. This in turn has held the beloved Pixar franchise back from being the only trilogy to have earned three 100% ratings. (I especially enjoy Roger Ebert's very prescient Tweet.)

Come on Mr. White, at least keep Transformers 2 out of this!

Movie Things I Hate: The Poster for Killers

I walk by this stupid poster every day in the subway and every time I see it I am compelled to stab things.

I don't think a tiny image on your laptop screen does the awfulness of this picture any justice. You should really try to stand 2 feet away from it with it's terribleness just as tall as you. There are so many thing to hate in it; the idiotic looks on their faces, the way she is holding the gun as if it were a dirty diaper, Ashton Kutcher's clear confusion, the ridiculous graphic design student aesthethic of the superscript dot--I hates it all so much!

I know none of this blog's fans would never dream of seeing this movie; just in case I implore the world to not only avoid the waste of space at all costs but to also tell all their friends how terrible this movie MUST be.

Parallel Lines, the Finished Product

Back in March I brought an interesting preview to your attention. Philips, the electronic company, sponsored a short-film contest. The catch was all the submissions had to follow the same script. Well, the results are out and I have to say the films are all very cool. Go check them all out. My personal favorite is the animated one, although the hunters are a very close second. All of them are incredibly unique and have a voice of their own, even if those voices are all saying the same lines.

If this is the future of advertising I might actually support it.

Links I Like: Academizing "Low" Culture

Oh NPR, your take on pop culture criticism is exactly my speed. This piece talks about how fans of the hoity-toity/"good" movies and music tend to look down on the more low-brow fare. As an unapologetic fan of summer blockbusters, the actiony shoot-em-ups that come barreling into the theatres and our lives once a year, I run into this problem all the time. My elitist friends who only venture into the cineplex for the latest Coen's piece or a Haneke retrospective don't understand my willingness to shell out $10 to see the explosions on a big screen and hear them in Dolby surround sound. My home TV doesn't look that good (although the new one is pretty close squeee!) and I think those are the movies that benefit from the big screen treatment.

I think this sort of divide in the movie-lover world boils down to a movies vs. films divide. People who are fans of "films" can oftentimes look down on mere "movies." Those who want to just be entertained by "movies" view the "film" aficionados as elitist snobs. It's the classic "us vs. them" battle playing out in the multi-plex.

Some movies try to bridge the gap. The first movie that pops into my head is Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It offered a clever and sharp take on the summer action movie. It was a pretty sharp satire on the dynamics within a marriage. Many dismissed it a just another piece of Hollywood schlock. Those people missed out.

The point I think everyone should take from the NPR piece? This line: "Something being Over There (this piece's phrase for referring to Low Culture) doesn't mean that there's nothing interesting to be said about it." This is the motto of this blog and as my readers I hope it is the motto of your movie-going experience.

Links I Like: The Surprise Factor in Movies

As I've mentioned before, I hate spoiling movies for people who haven't yet seen them. I think the joy of certain movies comes from a surprise twist or an unexpected tonal shift that the viewer never sees coming. But at the same time, I am guilty of over-researching the movies I pay to see. There are certain filmmakers or actors I will always seek out no matter what, but if I'm on the fence about something I will always read several reviews from trusted sources to help me decide if I want to spend $10 on it, or if I'm just going to wait for Netflix.

For all of these reasons I really enjoyed this piece. He argues that is a common problem and it stems from both the information explosion that is the internet and the new marketing scheme of the studios themselves. What do you think? Is this new ability to know so much more about the movies we see ruining the movies we see? Is this our responsibility to avoid potential spoilers? (On this note I am reminded of interviews with the creators of both District 9 and Hard Candy thanking both of their respective studios for putting out spoiler-free trailers. So is this a problem confined to the major studios?) What is our responsibility to our own movie-going experience?

Links I Like: More Hating on the Dreaded Rom-Com

Oh NPR, you always bring me such snarky movie analysis. Like this piece laying out several of the ways romantic comedies degrade women and insult the viewer's intelligence. High box office numbers be damned, these movies piss me off!

Intriguing Preview Corner: Parallel Lines

Boing Boing brought this film to my attention. In it five filmmakers make five radially different films using the same dialogue. What does this say about movies? Is the script that inconsequential or that open to interpretation? This contest, for which I am currently working on a submission, raises the same questions. The only stipulation, other than the time limit, is that the script remain the same. How should one analyze this idea that the script is such an incidental part of movie-making? Or are these just gimmicks?

Pop Culture News: Interactive Movies?

Software has been developed that enables an audience member in a theatre to interact with the protagonist on the screen. This video demonstrates the technology in action. This is an interesting technological development, but it's just Choose Your Adventures for the 21st century. Will making movies interactive strip them of the art and leave only the thrills? Is this a good thing for the form?

Rat-brains and Man-animals Unite: Nominating Battlefield Earth As The Comedy of The Decade

When terrible movies become B classics it is usually because they are so ill-conceived and wrongly presented they transcend their genre and become comedy classics. These movies are not supposed to make us laugh. Usually they hope to frighten and terrify us. The worst ones are those that try to make us think. A “deep” movie that fails miserably can be the funniest movie of the year. Battlefield Earth is best remembered as “the scientology movie” that is also terrible. The moviemakers hoped to take a best-selling science fiction novel and offer it up as insight into a little understood system of faith. What they created is instead a comic masterpiece. This movie is arguably the greatest comedy of the last decade not simply because it makes us laugh at its preposterousness. Battlefield Earth is a classic comedy and should be treated as such.

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Announcement: Live-blogging the 2010 Academy Awards

I felt the Golden Globe live-blogging went so swimmingly I am doing it again, only this time with the Academy Awards. The Oscars start at 8pm EST this Sunday so look online for me around 7 dissing the fancy dresses and frou-frou hair. Richmond friends should feel free to join me at home for this; drinking and the Oscars go hand in hand. Be sure to check out my predictions so we can figure out how good I am at this game.

See you Sunday night!

2010 Oscar predictions

After this year’s Golden Globes I am terrified to try and predict the Oscars. The last hour of the show saw every award go to upsets and generally unimpressive nominees. With the Academy voters skewing even older and more conservative, I have no idea what to expect.

But I’m willing to take a shot anyway.

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Announcement: Live-blogging the 2010 Golden Globes

I will be live-blogging the 2010 Golden Globe Awards, this Sunday. The awards begin at 8pm EST on NBC, but I will have some initial thoughts up around 7:30/7:45. Expect opinions on the nominees, the winners, the fashion, the drunken acceptance speeches, and the glory that is this year's host, Ricky Gervais. I will even respond to any comments in somewhat real time. Expect the comments to get snarkier as I get drunker during the evening.

Any Richmond area friends that would like to to imbibe and watch the drinkiest awards show of the season with me are welcome. Your comments may even be immortalized for the 10 or so person blogosphere I encompass.

Are you ready for this?

Best of 2009, and then some

2009 was not the best year for movies in recent memory, but it did produce some movies I will definitely talk about for years to come, as well as re-watch repeatedly. Here is my top five, plus an honorable mention and a handful of superlatives. This is absolutely a list of personal favorites and by no means a list of “films” that I expect to top all time lists any time soon. However, they all spoke to me for reasons I will try to explain. Plus, it’s my blog so I can list anything I damn well please.

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White Flight and Adventures in Babysitting; Protecting the Children from the Scary Black Man

“You kids must be from the suburbs.”

Although spoken by the white John Pruitt, this line of dialogue perfectly captures why Adventures in Babysitting is the perfect 80s movie for an urban historian. By the movie’s release in 1987, racial tensions had led to a re-segregation of America, and those self-drawn lines coincided with the urban/suburban divide. Adventures in Babysitting is about four white kids from the suburbs of Chicago, an urban center whose inner and outer ring suburbs represent the racial history of America much as a tree’s rings demonstrate its age, venturing into the city to rescue a friend from the scary forces threatening her. In this movie, and in the public mind, the city is a dark place with evils lurking around every corner. It exists as a contrast to the white shell both its suburbs and protagonists possess. This movie is all about white versus black and thus, good versus evil.

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