No Oscar Predictions This Year

I decided that I won't make Oscar Predictions this year - the first time in Styx history. I've been heading this way for years but what put me over the edge was an article in Entertainment Weekly which described how Supporting Actress nominee Melissa Leo for The Fighter (2010), was hurting her Oscar chances because of self-paid ads she put in Variety. Get that? Not only was I predicting movies even though I had not seen them all, I felt that I could predict based on analyzing the buzz and yearly voting patterns. Yet, as I've complained before, we're not told (a) who the electorate is (who is in the academy? who voted? do they have the same turnout problems as the off-year national elections?) but also how the freakin' voting process even works. Yet I was willing to act the fool and predict my 'winners' despite my massive ignorance.

But along comes EW to say that despite Leo's performance, or the performances of her colleagues, she could lose an artistic award because people don't like how she campaigned.

Not only does this mean that to predict the awards, I would need to know the inside politics of cockamamie 'campaigns,' but that the Academy voters seem to actively admit that the awards have nothing to do with a particular performance or movie. It's insular politics that - quite honestly - insult art.

Yeah, there have been naysayers claiming this in the past, but they seem to base this assertion on the results of the Oscars - that crappy movies and people win over more deserving candidates. But *I'm* basing my nay on the fact that the Academy is de-facto admitting that their decisions are not based on quality whatsoever.

That there are idiot voters in the US electing reprobate Tea-baggers is a problem within the Democratic system. That there are idiot voters who claim to be artists judging aesthetic quality belies the nature of their so-called Academy.

I'll still track the winners, but I wash my hands of the predictions.

Weird Thought of the Day: The 90s vs 00s

My brother and I have light-hearted kerfuffles over the value of 70s music (me) versus 80s music (me). We both agree, as guys in their late 30s will do, that all music in recent years doesn't match up. However, it got us thinking about the nostalgia recreation of those two decades and whether there's an actual taste/feel of the 90s versus the 00s? Is there any difference? Probably there is, given that my taste has been blunted by the fact that I can't remember much about those two decades as I was busy living life, but it's something that I'm going to investigate further. As far as I can tell, the two decades feel indistinguishable in terms of fashion, music, and taste. Sure, one decade was filled with peace, prosperity and joy (Clinton Years) and the other was war, hatred and death (Bush years) but did that effect movies and music?

The Expendables (2010 film)

I really so much want this movie not to suck. True, it's written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, so that's two strikes against, but I really really want it to work, since it contains nearly every single decent action hero over the past 30 years: Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin. The only ones missing are Jean Claude (who refused a role, sayeth the Wiki, which shows his choice in roles is as sharp as ever) and Steven Seagal, who also refused. Idiots.

So what are the odds that this will actually be decent? Low. And maybe low expectations will save it.

Fletch on Movies

As part of my Shabbat/convelescent reading, I've been going through the "Fletch" novels of Gregory McDonald. Like every red-blooded Genxer, I was introduced to Fletch via the movie, which I often put in my top 5 favorite movies. The first book has basically the same plot skeleton, but is not nearly the same level of comedy, as the film. I will have more to say about the books soon, but I wanted to jump the topic with a quote from a later book in the series, "Fletch's Moxie" which is about the movie business. McDonald sets his books in different 'worlds' and will go on a particular author-filibuster on that subject (e.g. the art world, journalism, politics).

"Moxie" is about movies and actors, and the following speech is a wonderful description (something I wish I'd written) about the terrible 'message movies' that usually win Best Picture, and what is mistaken as 'serious' filmmaking:

"I’m just reading this filmscript.” Fletch jiggled his knee under it. "I don’t know, of course. Never read a filmscript before. It strikes me as pretty terrible. The characters all seem to be like people you meet at a cocktail party—all fronts and no backs. They don’t talk the way people really talk. I do a little writing myself—on days when there are hurricanes. It seems to me, in this filmscript much time and space are wasted while the author is floundering around trying to arrive at an idea. All that should be cut away. Don’t you think writing should begin after the idea is achieved?" Mooney was looking at him like a bull bored with the pasture. "It treats controversial old issues in an insulting, offensive way. Instead of trying to create any sort of understanding, my reading of it is that it is trying to provoke hatred—deliberately."

Apply this to any number of the Best Pictures of the past decade (e.g. American Beauty, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, anything by Ron Freakin' Howard after Apollo 11).

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 2

A note about the acting awards: even though I, and everyone else, calls them, e.g. "best actor," the real title is "best performance by an actor" - which has some crucial ramifications.

Back in 2007 I quoted the TNR's Kaufmann why he doesn't judge the Oscars and he said: "Oh, I always watch the Oscar broadcast. I wouldn't want to miss the irritation--or the laughs. I'll never forget the year that Marisa Tomei beat out Vanessa Redgrave as best supporting actress." I liked this quote at the time, but it only makes sense if you describe the award as 'best actor' and not 'best performance.' Only a geriatric pompous gasbag would deny that while a person can be a better actor over a life-time, a specific performance, whether for the legitimate (read: obsolete) theater or a film, can be better than any other that year. It's akin to what I've heard about golf - people like the game because there's a possibility that on a particular hole, you can get a score better than the superstars, for that hole.

As such, when calibrating the acting awards, the voters may actually be rewarding a performance over an actor. And this is especially so when a performance is spectacular. The question is whether there's a curve; whether the pretty-boy leads who finally turn in a decent performance are given extra weight (a handicap, to continue - and exhaust my - golf metaphor) than others. Truly this is what has happened for Best Actress in the past - where some sexy - and popular - ingenue finally dials in a serious performance and is given extra credit. How else to explain the absurd wins of:

• 1997: Helen Hunt - As Good as It Gets
• 2001: Halle Berry – Monster's Ball (the most egregious of this already egregious category)
• 2002: Nicole Kidman – The Hours
• 2003: Charlize Theron – Monster
• 2005: Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line
  

There are probably many more from the earlier years. Suffice to say, that this is a clear pattern, especially for Best Actress, and while it's possibly from a weird sexism of the above-mentioned octogenarians, I'd personally bet on it.

Best Peformance: Actor -- Odds; Nominees:

1. Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009) *
   
2. George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009/I)
3. Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
4. Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
5. Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

OK, so while Clooney is awesome in general, he has won recently (Supporting in 2006), and is young enough to have a few more years of good potential performances. Renner is new and is honored to just be nominated (and I'm glad he's able to rise above his bad-guy turn in S.W.A.T.); Morgan Freeman has also won recently and since he plays his persona in every movie, I don't see his performance getting such a nod. Firth has been doing some good work recently, basically filling in Hugh Grant's soggy shoes, and his character is gay and oppressed - Milk may have, uh, milked that guilt award away. But, really, from all I've heard, the word on the street is that the voters are finally going to reward Bridges for his years of incredible work. As above with The Departed etc, there's no standout performance that can take away Bridges' lifetime (read: Big Lebowski) achievement award. I mean, it's his fifth nomination, with his first nom in his first starring role (The Last Picture Show) and he's never won.

Best Actress -- Odds, Nominees:

1. Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
2. Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
3. Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
4. Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
5. Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)*

I just see this as the classic battle between the Finally-Serious-Ingenue (Bullock) and the Truly-Great-Peformance (Streep).

Pros for Bullock:

1. She's been out of work for a number of years after spending her 20s as quiry-manic-pixie-girl romantic comedy leads. When she started work again, this past year, she returned with a vengeance: two romantic comedies and one drama (All About Steve, The Proposal and The Blind Side)
   
2. The movie she's in is racist as all git out, but specifically, just as racist as Crash, which won in 2004.

I'm outa time here (I just got home from an all-day-trip), so I'll say that the odds-makers are saying it's Streep, and A.O. Scott as well, and her performance was definitely wonderful (I saw it). She's also been nominated a billion times and has only won Best Actress once, even though she's the best of her generation, back in 1983! It's a real tough one - the stupid ingenue-award pattern, a la Halle Barre, vs. an overlooked superstar (like Jeff Bridges) who was great in Doubt, and others. I'm going to go with Streep on this and hope that it's because of the racism of "The Blind Side" in our Obama age. I'm going against my instincts, letting my intellect outvote my gut, but I'll gamble on it (although if I were a real gambler I'd put money on Bullock).

Best Supporting Actor - Nominees:

1. Matt Damon for Invictus (2009)
2. Woody Harrelson for The Messenger (2009/I)
3. Christopher Plummer for The Last Station (2009)
4. Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones (2009)
5. Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009)*

Oh this is another toughie. Plummer has had an awesome career and this is the only time he's been nominated, and he's getting way too old for other stuff. And he would win in a normal year (crushing even Tucci who is one of the best actors of this generation and who is also being nominated for the first time, for what I've heard is a so-so role, but who's young enough to get nominated again, especially because his work has been consistently great). But this is where the "performance" part of the award comes in: Waltz's performance was one of the best I've ever seen, and I think it trumps Plummer's lifetime achievement and Tucci's general awesomeness.

Best Supporting Actress

1. Penélope Cruz for Nine (2009)
2. Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air (2009/I)
3. Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart (2009)
4. Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (2009/I)
5. Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)*

Everyone says it's Mo'Nique (not Monique, not Monica, it's got a vestigial apostrophe like the umlaut of Spinal Tap), and that's good enough for me.

Best Original Screenplay

1. The Hurt Locker (2008): Mark Boal
2. Inglourious Basterds (2009)*: Quentin Tarantino
3. The Messenger (2009/I): Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman
4. A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
5. Up (2009): Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Thomas McCarthy

No time, no time. I'm hoping they'll award Inglorious because it was a genius film, but the leftover spillage will probably help The Hurt Locker.

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. District 9 (2009): Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
2. An Education (2009): Nick Hornby
3. In the Loop (2009)*: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
4. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Geoffrey Fletcher
5. Up in the Air (2009/I): Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

District 9 is supposed to be excellent (I just got it from Netflix and haven't seen it yet). I did just see "In the Loop" and it's as sharp as a samurai sword. I hope it wins and it's likely to, since it's an allegory of the Iraq War (which people still are against) while District is an allegory about race and immigration (which is passe in Obama's America... at least according to the standard Hollywood meathead)

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 1 (Picture, Director)

Oscar Day is upon us and, as has been happening more often in recent years, I have had no time to read up or prepare for my predictions... which will make them as accurate as always. Sadly, I have seen one or two of the nominated films, which naturally biases my analysis. Maybe, after my planned success at the super-Lotto, I will have the time and means to watch all the films, but until then, I will continue my flawed merry way.

Method

The baseline, so far as I've seen, is that the voters are truly trying to choose the best but (a) because most people in Hollywood are high-school dropouts, it's not clear that my criteria are anywhere near theirs, and (b) the voters are swayed by a number of crazy biases that put predictions into the random category. Big biases are: (a) the producer voters, often in their 70s and 80s, are not only stupid and uneducated, they are prejudiced with archaic stereotypes about life and meaning (see below for applications of this), (b) many of the awards are given to make up for last year's Oscar mistakes, e.g. Sean Penn wins for "Milk" because "Brokeback Mountain" was rejected a 2 years before aaaand (c) [current events' issues] California had just rejected gay marriage.

To be honest, I used to think that the voters were sympathetic to (d) 'lifetime achievement' candidates, but I think that it's just the fourth prong of the general computation - that a majority of voters will choose lifetime achievement if (a) there's no clear standout candidate, plus (b) no mistakes or (c) politics. Again, see below for applications.

As such, I need to analyze the candidate's (a) history of past work, concentrating on the past 3 years and then lifetime, (b) general murmuring of the quality of performance, (c) the zeitgeist of Hollywood-idiot politics, and (d) commercial success (which I've discussed before, but basically since the Oscars are simply put an industry awarding it's top employees, success is going to be rewarded - this can be called the Titanic effect).

This year, I'm also going to Odds from here - because there's some social-psychological merit in the collective wisdom of crowds. My basic ballot (and links) are from IMDb. Predicted winner is marked with a star (*).

Best Picture -- Odds; Nominees:

1. Avatar (2009) *: James Cameron, Jon Landau
2. The Blind Side (2009): Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson
3. District 9 (2009): Peter Jackson, Carolynne Cunningham
4. An Education (2009): Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
5. The Hurt Locker (2008): Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
6. Inglourious Basterds (2009): Lawrence Bender
7. Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
8. A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
9. Up (2009): Jonas Rivera
10. Up in the Air (2009/I): Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman

Now remember that this year they've expanded to 10 movies and revamped the voting system - which will make predictions harder than ever. Yet, even then, almost everyone thinks that this is a battle between two powerhouses: Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'll give pros/cons for those 2 alone because I don't have time to eliminate all the other movies, except for some quick comments:

Inglourious Basterds - the more time since I've seen the film, the more I feel that it's a masterpiece; both of Tarantino and of Borges-like meta-fiction. If there were no other strong contenders, then this would win - it would be like No Country for Old Men or The Departed - which were OK movies from great directors who got the top prize because the competition was weak. I happen to hate "No Country" and compared to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which wasn't even nominated!!) it's just plain bad. But compared to puppy-dogs like
Atonement and Juno , or good-but-not-spectacular Michael Clayton or There Will Be Blood then the Coens were given their lifetime achievement award. Same can be said for Departed (vs. Babel; Letters from Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine ; or The Queen) none of those four were quality enough to overpower the lifetime achievement of Scorcese... even though it was not his best film by a long-shot.

So sorry Tarantino; I hope you're still creative enough to make another brilliant epic like Inglorious.

Pros for Avatar:

1. It's one of the most lucrative movies in history - as of this week, it has grossed 2.6 billion dollars and it's still in theaters.
2. It has advanced film technology to the next level, just on it's own
3. It has restored the glory of the movie theater experience - and this is a big deal. Ya see, movies have been in competition with TV ever since the latter was born (e.g. it's why movies are 'letterbox' - to compete with TV's square screen). Personally, I avoid the theater because I enjoy movies 100x more at home. But my popularizing digital-3D, Cameron may have just saved the entire movie theater industry.
4. I've heard from others that it is derivative but fun. It's "Dances with Wolves" but with better explosions. And remember, Dances won.

Cons:

1. I've heard people grumble that it's derivative and dumb. Note, this really hasn't hurt a movie's Oscar chances in my memory. See, uh, Titanic.
   
2. I've heard people grumble that it's racist. This *really* hasn't hurt any movie. I was just thinking about this the other day: two of the biggest movies in Hollywood history are racist as hell: The Birth of a Nation (1915) - which glorified the KKK, and The Jazz Singer (1927) whose movie posters have a guy in black-face for goodness sake!

Pros for The Hurt Locker:

1. It depicts the Iraq War with "realism" (defined here as "it looks scary for people who've never been to war but has been derided by actual veterans"). As such, this movie can benefit from the Platoon - Deer Hunter effect. Not too shabby.
2. As above with 'Nam, many people in Hollywood want to be seen as 'serious' about a terrible current-event, and war is the best event to be current on. Most of the Iraq War movies have been turkeys. This is the best one yet (sez many many people). And that helps.
3. This is a war movie directed by a woman. That gets some votes, for a double glass-ceiling breaking (directing itself, and a war movie nukh).
4. This may be too weird vis-a-vis Hollywood politics, but Bigelow's cult classic Point Break (1991) starred Patrick Swayze who just died tragically, and that also could help.

After all has been said and done, I think that Avatar has too many pros, not enough cons. It's too freakin' huge and it did 3 things that nobody has done before (2 billion sales, grounbreaking new movie tech, saving movie theaters). Would Hurt Locker have beaten Inglorious without Avatar, dunno, but this one seems to be Avatar's win.

Best Director -Nominees:

1. Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)
2. James Cameron for Avatar (2009)
3. Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
4. Jason Reitman for Up in the Air (2009/I)
5. Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (2009)

These two categories go together - and in an uncontested year they'll share winners, as the Wiki sez:

Invariably, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 80 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 59 have also been awarded Best Director. Only three films have won Best Picture without their directors being nominated (though only one since the early 1930s): Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). The only two Best Director winners to win for films which did not receive a Best Picture nomination are likewise in the early years

And according to this fun stat site it's very rare for Best Picture and Director to be separated:

1. 1972 (45th) Picture: The Godfather (director Francis Ford Coppola was nominated).
   Directing: Cabaret (Bob Fosse).
2. 1981 (54th) Picture: Chariots of Fire (director Hugh Hudson was nominated).
   Directing: Reds (Warren Beatty).
3. 1989 (62nd) Picture: Driving Miss Daisy (director Bruce Beresford was NOT nominated).
   Directing: Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone).
4. 1998 (71st) Picture: Shakespeare in Love (director John Madden was nominated).
   Directing: Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg).
5. 2000 (73rd) Picture: Gladiator (director Ridley Scott was nominated).
   Directing: Traffic (Steven Soderbergh).
6. 2002 (75th) Picture: Chicago (director Rob Marshall was nominated).
   Directing: The Pianist (Roman Polanski).
7. 2005 (78th) Picture: Crash (director Paul Haggis was nominated).
   Directing: Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee).

Given that, I think it's probable that they will be separated this year with Avatar as best picture and Bigelow as best director. Mainly because all the pros (above) for Avatar winning 'picture' are about its production and not its direction/art. Hence, I believe the voters will intentionally split the difference. Then again, like with Peter Jackson's win for the Lord of the Frodo trilogy, they could just bow down to Cameron's expertise... but since he won for the same honors for Titanic, I feel Bigelow's strong candidacy will pay off in this.

Part 2+ will be for the other awards.

Glorious Purimshpiel

I saw the most excellent film, Inglorious Basterds, earlier, but rather than wait for all my ideas to coalesce around it I just want to say, on this Purim day, that the movie works perfectly as a Purimshpiel. It's possibly the most gloriously violent (and sadly fictional) destruction of Amalek by Jews ever shown on film.

Pic from here of the awesome Bear Jew.

Star Wars Revisited

I'm watching Star Wars (or as the neo-geeks call it now, "A New Hope" but as the nerds call it, "Star Wars") to see if it's apporpriate for my sons (yeah, that's the ticket). A few comments:

1. The ending sequence, the Battle of Yavin (a.k.a. The attack on the death star) is one of the best in movie history and has permanently elevated Lucas into the public discourse - it's why I even care about his later work and why I feel betrayed by his future crimes.

2. The Porkins Effect - This is what I'm now labeling the general status of Lucas' movie-making crimes. If you recall, and if you need help here's the online script, Luke's flight wing was the 'red team' with Luke as Red Five. One of his wingmates is Red Six, a.k.a. "Porkins":

INTERIOR: PORKINS' COCKPIT.

PORKINS: Red Six standing by.

Porkins, is, how do I say it, chubby. So, OK, I thought, maybe this is just a pilot nickname, like the Top Gun thing ("Maverick" "Ice man" "Certified Public Accountant"), but no: the official Lucas universe states that the character's name is Jek Porkins.

To review: despite all being White Anglo Saxon Protestant humanoids, many with classical Western names (Luke, Ben), sometimes they have made-up nonesense names (Han, Jek) that will be mixed up with real words (Solo, Porkins). And he's fat, so his name is Pork. As you see from the picture (more from here), many others have found this character problematic.

So what's my beef (pun intended) with Porkins? His name is childish, stupid, and unimaginative. And this impulse to turn fun, exciting, action into puerility is what overtook Lucas's latter films. This is related to the Ewok Effect, where serious matters are converted into cutesy-poo family-market pandering, but while Ewoks were meant to push toys, and thus demonstrates artistic integrity sacrificed for greed, Porkins is artistic integrity sacrificed for cheap laughs for six year olds.

True, both the Ewok and Porkins effects combined to create the dreaded, execrable Jar-Jar Binks, but my point here is to say that this impulse was present in even the first beloved film.

BTW, this looks like an awesome website made by fellow-travelers from my generation.

3. Inconsistencies between the Original Three and the Hated Last Three

Just for ease of use, even though the last triology were planned prequels, such that the first movie (A New Hope) is to be numbered 4, or somesuch, I declare here - in concert with all those born in the 1970s - that the original trilogy are to be numbered 1 2 and 3 while the last trilogy are to be burned at the crossroads at midnight and if they are to be referred to at all, they are to be known by their real-life chronology of 4, 5, and 6. Hear ye.

Ahem. Anyway, I am on record stating that the 6th movie, Sith, is the worst of the bunch. One reason it's atrocious is the ham-fisted attempts to make the prequels consistent with the original trilogy. Never mind that the technology of the latter trilogy is way better than what was to have taken place 20 years in the future, the biggest problem is that the entire tenor of the first three films - meant to resurrect the underdog resistance of WWII, think Casablanca - is totally undermined.

But besides tone, I now realize, seeing the first film again after a few years - possibly the first time since seeing Sith - is how many freakin' facts are wrong!

The best example is this dialogue between Obi-Wan and Luke:

LUKE: No, my father didn't fight in the wars. He was a navigator on a spice freighter.

BEN: That's what your uncle told you. He didn't hold with your father's ideals. Thought he should have stayed here and not gotten involved.

LUKE: You fought in the Clone Wars?

BEN: Yes, I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father.

LUKE: I wish I'd known him.

BEN: He was the best star-pilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me...

BEN: I have something here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned-fool idealistic crusade like your father did.

What do we learn from this:

1. Obi Wan and Anakin were about the same age, and lived together in Tatoonie as friends,
   
2. "Uncle" Owen knew Anakin and Kenobi and didn't want them to go off and fight for ideals in the Clone Wars,
   
3. Anakin and Obi-Wan were already, or later became, Jedi Knights, pilots, and were already enlisting to go on an idealistic crusade.
   
4. The Clone Wars seem to be already about fighting for ideals, the implication is against the Empire, and there were air-battles and tactics fought and implemented by Jedis,
   
5. The "ideals" of Obi-Wan, shared by Anakin, are meant to parallel Luke's desire to fight in the rebellion along-side his boyhood friends - and thus we can learn more facts from this nearly explicit parallel (e.g. Obi-Wan's relationship with Anakin was as comrades in arms just like Luke and Biggs).

Enough. Basta. None of those facts, which are fascinating and would make a good movie/trilogy, are present in the latter three films. Which begs the question that I will resist putting in all caps: Did Lucas watch Star Wars even once before he made the second trilogy? Seriously! It's like he forgot what he did in the first three, remembered only certain details through the Southern California doobie haze, and make the latter trilogy consistent with invented facts and not the real ones.

4. Han Shot First, Just have to say it, again. It's a motto for those of us betrayed by the Crimes of George Lucas. Pic from here.

Groundhog Day Alert

The official song of Groundhog Day: I Got You Babe (played over and over and over)



By the way, you heard it here first (unless I mentioned it last year) that Groundhog Day and Tu B'Shvat carry the same meaning: that each day is 6 weeks before spring. Pigday if the pig sees (and/or doesn't see) his shadow, and Tu B'shvat can be either 6 weeks before the start of Spring - defined as Rosh Chodesh Nisan - or 10 weeks (in a leap year)

The THX Menace

This may be my favorite, or at least most quoted, Citizen Dog: about the evil of the ear-blasting THX intro. Does anyone enjoy that? It seems designed by bullies and braggarts: "we need to hurt your ears, and waste your time, to show you how great we are." A pox on whoever invented that promo and for every filmmaker that includes it at the start of their film.

Fun: Television Tropes & Idioms

This is a very nice resource: Television Tropes & Idioms. An example, some of the tropes in the awesome Evil Dead (e.g. Army of Darkness) movie series (just the 'A's):

• Animate Dead: Subverted when Ash accidentally summons the titular Army of Darkness when he mispronounces a spell.
• Apocalyptic Log
• Arm Cannon
• Arrow Cam
• Artificial Limbs: When his hand is chopped off, Ash replaces it with a chainsaw. Later, he replaces that with a clockwork gauntlet.
  • And in the extended media beyond the films, he'll frequently swap out his gauntlet with the saw.
• Ax Crazy: How Ash copes with the events of the first two movies. By the third, he's turned it into Crazy Awesome.

A further explanation, using the last entry, the difference between Ax Crazy and Crazy Awesome:

[Pic of Jack Nicholson's character in the Shining] An "ax crazy" character is someone who is psychologically unstable and presents a clear danger to others. Ax crazies are capable of extreme violence, whether carried out with a Slasher Smile, a Creepy Monotone, or out and out murderous rage, and they're not too picky about their victims, which makes them extremely frightening to deal with. This mainly differentiates them from other eccentric characters who may themselves be obsessive, weird or seemingly crazy, but use this condition hand in hand with doing good, or at least not being in the way. However, some formerly established heroes can go through an episode of ax-craziness and still retain their heroic mantle.

vs.

Someone who is Crazy Awesome is someone who's nucking futs, in an amusing way, and is effective at what he does because of that craziness. In real life he'd get fired from whatever job he has/would have, or even arrested — at the very least, the things he does just plain wouldn't work. But somehow, he manages to be both effective and a character that the audience likes or even loves.

Like any good internet resource (especially those made by My GenX Brethren), each entry is hyperlinked to a bunch of other concepts. I declare this website, fun.

Pic from the website. Backpost finished 2009-12-02.

Inglorious Inevitability

Yeah, I've heard the movie is not all Jews killing Nazis... but considering I generally focus on the scenes in action movies that I prefer to remember, I may enjoy this immensely. But, since I have 3 kids, I'll hafta wait for the Netflix.

Trailer:

Back Blowout

So, there I was, minding my own business, right about to leave for hashkama minyan, grabbing my youngest son in an attempt to tickle and/or kiss him, when an almost audible muscular-explosion hit a whole bunch of my lumbars (see pic to the left of me in Terminator-o-Vision).

I've had back pains and problems before - a lovely paternal inheritance - but nothing like this. Holy macaroni.

I was able to struggle up the stairs from the basement and then collapsed on my living room couch where I stayed for 12 hours, almost totally incapacitated. To get to the bathroom I needed to crawl and a round-trip took about an hour. My wife was an indispensable help but since she's in her last trimester, we couldn't risk her supporting my weight (which usually requires two strong men or one small burro).

A fellow-congregant of my shul, a high-demand orthopedic specialist, even paid a house-call Motzei Shabbos. He gets a big bunch of Olam Ha-Ba for that.

It took 24 hours of immobility until I was strong enough to stand for a short period of time; 48 hours until I could sit for a minute or two and 72 hours until I felt half-way normal. Today I'm still in pain, but I can at least stand and sit for longer periods. Let's see if it can handle a three hour seminar today.

Oh, and what ran through my mind was the Wilfred Brimley line from one of my top-5 movies, Hard Target: when asked "can you get up?" he replies, in a weird Cajun accent, "I cannot dance, but I can get up."

It's in this clip below at 3:47 (to get there you need to sit through almost 4 minutes of straight gunfire, explosions and John-Woo-Style killing... see above for 'top 5.'):



Pic of my back pain from here.

Oscars 2009

As an indication of how focused I've been on my schoolwork, I totally forgot that tonight is the Oscars. So a-predictin' I will go (*=prediction):

Best Motion Picture of the Year

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): Ceán Chaffin, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall
2. Frost/Nixon (2008): Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Eric Fellner
3. Milk (2008/I): Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks
4. The Reader (2008): Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Donna Gigliotti, Redmond Morris
5. * Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Christian Colson

This is a very weak year for best pictures; yugh. Considering the disaster of the world economy, and because it's rags-to-riches with an ethnic twist, I suspect it will be Slumdog.

Best Actor

1. Richard Jenkins for The Visitor (2007/I)
2. Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon (2008)
3. Sean Penn for Milk (2008/I)
4. Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
5. * Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (2008)

Hollywood types are suckers for comebacks; Rourke.

Best Actress

1. *Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married (2008)
2. Angelina Jolie for Changeling (2008)
3. Melissa Leo for Frozen River (2008)
4. Meryl Streep for Doubt (2008/I)
5. Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

The pattern over the past few years is to reward pretty ingenues who take serious, challenging roles with Best Actress (cf. Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron) so I think this is Hathaway's.

Best Supporting Actor

1. Josh Brolin for Milk (2008/I)
2. Robert Downey Jr. for Tropic Thunder (2008)
3. Philip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt (2008/I)
4. * Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)
5. Michael Shannon for Revolutionary Road (2008)

The supporting categories are generally rough. Considering how "Dark Knight" was snubbed for the main Oscars (as well it should have, it sucked) I can see Ledger getting the award, especially because he died for the role (if the psychics are to be believed). If he hadn't died, then I'd say that Brolin would have a clear shot (since he has been turning in great work over the past few years); or Downey, following the Rourke/comeback-kid rule above. Hoffman is still the best actor of the bunch, so him losing this will fulfill the Kaufmann Rule.

Best Supporting Actress

1. Amy Adams for Doubt (2008/I)
2. * Penélope Cruz for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
3. Viola Davis for Doubt (2008/I)
4. Taraji P. Henson for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
5. Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler (2008)

I'm really in the dark here. I can't see Tomei getting it twice; and I think that Davis and Henson were awarded by being nominated. Adams fits the rewarding-the-ingenue rule of Best Actress except that she's such a big enough star to get that push. Usually, when in doubt, I'd go with whoever one SAG except, and this is funny, Winslet won best supporting for SAG for a role that is considered full actress for the Academy. Har de har har. Well, then I'll go with my original thought: Cruz. I think she's been doing great work and the other candidates may have split voting.

Best Director

1. *Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
2. Stephen Daldry for The Reader (2008)
3. David Fincher for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
4. Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon (2008)
5. Gus Van Sant for Milk (2008/I)

Two good rules of thumb for Best Director is that the Best Picture usually carries with it Best Director (only if it's a strong contendor, there's been some upsets), and like with acting, the Director's Guild Award can also be an indicator. In both cases, this year, Boyle (for Slumdog) looks most likely. He also has some edgy, critically acclaimed films in his past (Trainspotting), so that can help.

Best Original Screenplay

1. Frozen River (2008): Courtney Hunt
2. Happy-Go-Lucky (2008): Mike Leigh
3. In Bruges (2008): Martin McDonagh
4. Milk (2008/I): Dustin Lance Black
5. *WALL·E (2008): Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Jim Reardon

I hope Wall-E gets it. It was marvellous. If it doesn't then I suppose Milk.

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. *The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008): Eric Roth, Robin Swicord
2. Doubt (2008/I): John Patrick Shanley
3. Frost/Nixon (2008): Peter Morgan
4. The Reader (2008): David Hare
5. Slumdog Millionaire (2008): Simon Beaufoy

Were "Slumdog" super-duper strong, I'd say it would win this too; but it doesn't seem so overwhelming a favorite. My suspicion, is that Benjamin Button, considering it's overall nominee total, will win a whole mess of the art awards (Cinematography, Editing, etc - with the sci-fi stuff going to Dark Knight).

The Watchman Movie

So, the Watchman movie is finally going to come out (in March). I am not happy about this - the Watchman is probably the finest example of the comic book medium. By that I mean that the book tells a rich, deep, intelligent, and important story in a manner that is not only best done by a comic book, but that could only be appreciated as a comic book.

Those who've read the book will know what I mean. The visual accuracy of the book, where a precise visual on an early page will be echoed on a later page - and the echo is intentional and must be understood in that way. This precision cannot be done with picture-less text and will be almost impossible to do as a movie.

The only way to accomplish what needs to be done with the Watchman would be an HBO Wire/Sopranos multi-episode no-commercial non-stop week-by-week way. And even then, it'd be folly.

Oh well, like with Batman - a character I love and identify with - the pooch-screwing the Watchman (and my man Rorschach) will get in the movies can be remedied in the same way: just deny their existence.

Backpost: Premiere vs. Us

Backpost: 8/10/07, 2:54 PM. Just the post title.

So it's been almost a year since Premiere went belly-up. The magazine subscription service I use decided to give us another magazine in its place: Us Weekly. This is, not to exaggerate too much, a travesty of irony.

Premiere was a entertainment magazine that actually had decent journalism and an independent mind towards film criticism. It was on the high end of the spectrum (not too high; that realm is for frou-frou academicishe journals).

Us Weekly, on the other hand, is a bottom-feeding paparazzi rag. Paparazzi are a blight - they are paid to stalk and harass people - and Us Magazine expanded the market for this despicable practice with their tagline: "celebrities, they're just like US." Meaning that US magazine pays for ANY picture of a celebrity doing something ordinary. Pumping gas, buying milk, wheeling a carriage. Thus Us Magazine have given paparazzi to be even more intrusive, invasive, and offensive.

Leafing through the magazine once gave me an intense urge to jump into a mikvah and then burn down the company HQ.

How they dared to replace Premiere with Us shows either corporate ignorance or willful malfeasance.

Video of the Day: Raising Arizona

Raising Arizona was the first Coen Brothers movie I'd seen (I taped it off HBO back in '87 and subsequently had seen it dozens of times) and it got me hooked for a while [Dec 09 update: until "No Country" which I stopped watching after the second gruesome murder]. Also, it was when Nic Cage wasn't a total joke. So here's the best scene from the movie, which is also the best thing made in the 1980s (slightly NSFW).



Backpost finished 2009-12-06, fixed link.

Movie Review: Versus (2000)

Versus (2000): It's a Japanese Evil Dead II - it has the Raimi-cam, the humor-comic vib, and the production values (it feels like it's shot in one acre of Japanese forest). It has the same blood-love that I first saw in Kill Bill I (the Japanese love geysers of blood, although so did Raimi), but just like I love the shots of Ash with his chainsaw and shotgun, Versus has the hero with his Katana and 50 calibre sniper rifle.

It's a cheezy film, though, with clear continuity and story problems (new facts keep being introduced, exposition is fat and lazy). But if the phrase "Japanese Evil Dead II" makes your mouth water, see this film.

New Hulk

Just want to say that I've never liked the Hulk comics, but I did like the TV show (especially the theme songs, for the live action and cartoon). What the TV show did, because of technical necessity, was use a body-builder (Lou Ferrigno) as the Hulk. And it worked. It could be because of the laws of thermodynamics, but turning a 6' man into another 6' man, just with more muscles makes more sense than for a 6' man to become 9' tall and built like a dinosaur.

But we live in the age of bad-CGI and so the Hulk has to be animated. And it looks very very bad.

What is this supposed to look like? Ugh.

Kevin Smith & George Lucas

The Onion AV Club has a feature "The New Cult Canon" (which is about what you'd think) and Scott Tobias' entry on Kevin Smith's Clerks (IMDB Wiki) is about as scathing a summary of why Kevin Smith sucks as it should be. I remember hearing the buzz and then seeing the movie and wondering 'why is this any good?' The acting is atrocious and the dialogue was depraved. The rumor that it almost got an X-rating for language has an empirical basis.

Tobias is also correct about the well-known Death Star scene, whose decent dialogue was ruined by the painfully bad acting:

O'Halloran and Anderson aren't skilled enough as actors to serve as more than mouthpieces for Smith's lowbrow gags and bits of philosophy, and they often choke on his reams of dialogue. (Smith has always been praised for his tart screenplays, but to me, he's a writer much too in love with his own voice; his films are littered with scenes that are allowed to drag on several beats longer than they should.)... That said, even Anderson can't trample over this fine monologue about the destruction of the Death Star in Return Of The Jedi:

It's (unwittingly?) ironic that Smith talks about Lucas because both of them share the same directorial trait: that while they may know where to place a camera directing is also how to get the actors to do what is necessary to be good actors. And while I can't necessarily argue about their camera skills, neither Smith or Lucas's actors come off as convincing. How else could Natalie Portman be horrible for Lucas yet in the same year be nominated for an Oscar in another film?

Backpost; put up 11-10-2009. Pic from here.