Posts filed under 'Oscars'
January 24th, 2008
The thing to remember during this season of Oscar fever is that the movie that wins Best Picture is almost never the actual best picture. Usually it’s a pretty-good, fairly safe mainstream movie that either captures the mood of the moment or rewards someone who’s been in the business a long time and has (according to the Academy) earned the honor for previous work. A few recent examples:
Clive Owen stars in “Children of Men,” the real best picture of 2006.
2006: Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” won both Best Picture and Best Director. It’s solid, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nowhere near Scorsese’s best work. Too bad “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” were beaten by “Rocky,” “Ordinary People” and “Dances With Wolves,” respectively. For my money, last year’s best movie was “Children of Men,” a pretty amazing piece of cinema that combined powerful themes with jaw-dropping filmmaking.
2004: “Million Dollar Baby”? Really? I love Clint Eastwood, and I’m glad he’s still making interesting movies in his autumn years, but this cliched boxing drama wasn’t one of them. With cardboard characters, a by-the-numbers plot and a “controversial” ending few would find controversial, all it needed was warm, homey narration from Morgan Freeman to cement its mediocre status. Oh, wait. It had that, too. The real shame is that two truly excellent movies came out the same year: “The Incredibles” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” I know the academy won’t give the statue to an animated film (that’s why they created the “Best Animated Feature” category), but “The Incredibles,” animated or not, was exciting and complex in a way few live-action moves are. And “Eternal Sunshine,” with direction by Michel Gondry and a truly brilliant script by Charlie Kaufman, was — no kidding — the best love story of the last 25 years. (At least it won the screenplay Oscar.)
1999: This was the best year for films in recent memory, but “American Beauty” — 1999’s Oscar winner — was far from the year’s best film. Too pleased with itself for its supposedly “edgy” plot, “Beauty” wasted strong performances from Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening in its quest to be both hip and heartwarming. Meanwhile, truly edgy movies like “Fight Club,” “Being John Malkovich” and “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut” were ignored, along with just-plain-good movies like “The Limey,” “The Matrix,” “Office Space,” “American Movie,” “Toy Story 2,” “Iron Giant” and the list goes on … and on. All of them better than “American Beauty” by a long shot.
I could say more — Â and probably will in a later post — but I’d like to hear your take. Agree? Disagree? Have examples of your own? Share ‘em with us!
January 23rd, 2008
Here’s a bit of good news for local movie fans. “There Will Be Blood,” the new movie from director Paul Thomas Anderson that nabbed eight Oscar nominations yesterday, will final be shown on Rockford screens. The acclaimed drama (a Best Picture contender) is slated to arrive at ShowPlace 16 starting Friday. Critics can’t say enough good things about this movie (and about Daniel Day Lewis’ central performance), so I’m going to make sure to catch it on the big screen before it gets replaced by “Good Luck Chuck II: Better Luck Next Time, Chuck.”
Other new arrivals in local theaters this week include the step-dancing drama “How She Move,” the movie spoof “Meet the Spartans,” the wasn’t-this-movie-already-released-under-the-title-”The Net” Untraceable” and the long-awaited (long-dreaded?) sequel to “Rambo: Part III,” the simply titled “Rambo.” If it’s half as violent as the trailer suggests, it’ll be the funniest movie of the year.Â
But please, if you want to see what is, by all accounts, a truly memorable movie, check out “There Will Be Blood.” I’ll report back here as soon as I’ve seen it to let you know how it is.
January 23rd, 2008
Is the fact that this movie got one nomination (for Best Makeup)…
And this movie — the best one I saw all year — didn’t get a single one. Not one. It’s “Zodiac,” by the way, and trust me — it’s one of the movies we’ll still be talking about long after dreck like “Norbit” is (hopefully) long forgotten.
How about you? Anything in the nominations that makes you see red? There’s a complete list here.
January 22nd, 2008
Javier Bardem nabbed a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of cold-blooded killer Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.”
The blog is up and running (obviously) and the nominations are out. Let’s see who’s going to be fighting for one of those coveted naked gold guys. (Want to see more? There’s a complete list of nominees and categories at the official Oscar site, Oscar.com.)
BEST PICTURE: “Atonement,” “Juno,” “Michael Clayton,” “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will be Blood.”
BEST ACTOR: George Clooney (”Michael Clayton”), Daniel Day Lewis (”There Will Be Blood”), Johnny Depp (”Sweeney Todd”), Tommy Lee Jones (”In the Valley of Elah”) and Viggo Mortensen (”Eastern Promises”)
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett (”Elizabeth: The Golden Age”), Julie Christie (”Away From Her”), Marion Cotillard (”La Vie en Rose”), Laura Linney (”The Savages”) and Ellen Page (”Juno”)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Casey Affleck (”The Assassination of Jesse James Yada Yada Yada”), Javier Bardem (”No Country for Old Men”), Philip Seymour Hoffman (”Charlie Wilson’s War”), Hal Holbrook (”Into the Wild”) and Tom Wilkinson (”Michael Clayton”)
BEST DIRECTOR: Julian Schnabel (”The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Jason Reitman (”Juno), Tony Gilroy (”Michael Clayton”), Joel and Ethan Coen (”No Country for Old Men”) and Paul Thomas Anderson (”There Will Be Blood”)
Definitely a few surprises in there. I didn’t hear anyone predicting Viggo Mortensen for “Eastern Promises,” but I guess you can never underestimate the power of a nude fight scene. (Wonder if that’s the clip they’ll show during the ceremony?) Nice to see “No Country” and “There Will Be Blood” get nods for both Best Picture and Best Director. The Coens are definitely due for an Oscar after making some of the best movies of the past 20 years, but it’d be pretty exciting to see Paul Thomas Anderson, a young director who seems to embody that crazy energy of ’70s filmmkaing, get the gold. And by most accounts, “There Will Be Blood” is a singular achievement, one of those movies we’ll be talking about 50 years from now. I’ve liked all Anderson’s previous movies, from “Hard Eight” to “Punch Drunk Love,” and I’m dying to see “Blood.” Maybe now that it’s nominated, it’ll finally come to Rockford.
Any thoughts? The annual Beat the Movie Man contest kicks off Sunday, so start planning your picks now.
January 18th, 2008
If you’re reading this post, congratulations! The Movie Man blog doesn’t officially launch until Tuesday, Jan. 22, but I’m posting this entry early to give the software a test drive — and you discovered it. Nicely done!
 If you ask me, this is a heck of a time to start a film-related blog. The Sundance Film Festival is just getting underway, “Cloverfield” is finally in theaters after months of savvy Internet hype (click here for an example — and yes, it really is a related to the movie and not hyping Japanese soft drinks) and, of course, the Oscar nominations arrive on Tuesday. Plenty to write about, and that goes for you, too. So sign up and get ready to comment. I’ll see you here on Tuesday.
And shut off that cell phone — I hate a lot of noise in the theater!
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