I'll take Business Ethics for 1000
CNN.com's front page story is the cover of Time magazine. That is, the stories are the same, but rather than use the same picture, which they both clearly have the rights to, CNN is actually advertising an affiliated magazine by making the top story a story another division wrote.
The whoring ABC/ESPN do for Disney has been bad enough, but CNN actually likes to carry on as if they had journalistic ethics. It's what keeps them going every week when the ratings come out - sure, we got killed by O'Reilly again, but at least we have our principles.
If I'm going to run a news outfit, and I have a choice of sins between partisan hackery and corporate whoring, am I wrong to think that partisan hackery is the morally superior choice?
No one complained when Katrina Vander Heuvel at The Nation made the same choice to save an American institution from bankruptcy.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Your Favorite Movie is Lame: Kill Bill Vol. 1
Since someone had the gall to suggest Kill Bill as One of the 10 Best Movies of a Certain Year, the gauntlet has been laid down. We won't bother too much with Vol. 2 which is so bad, it makes Andrew Dice Clay look like Monty Python. But they were supposed to be one bad movie rather than 2, so let's treat it like a bad movie with a long intermission. The intermission was good - in between watching these two awful movies I watched a little sports, got some Popeye's Chicken and a job, bought a car, did some Madlibs, went on a trip or two. This movie had probably the best intermission of any bad movie I've ever seen.
Before we apply the cardinal sins of pretension, let's begin with what's just plain bad:
- DIALOGUE!!! Despite the lauds for Tarantino's dialogue, all the supposedly tough guy (girl) lines fall flat. They're all delivered as if they're crushing blows...but they aren't.
- CASTING!!! The key to action picks is that the actors actually look like they can kick butt, or are casually violent, or whatever fits their character. Jet Li looks like he's spent a lot of time fighting and training. Jackie Chan looks like he has a lot of fun while fighting and training. That's why they play those roles.
Uma Thurman looks like a stick figure model who buys shoes on Sunset Blvd. She is well-trained and well-choreographed, but we just never believe she's that tough because, frankly, she isn't. Vivica Fox is ok for her part, which is just poorly written, so much so that it kind of verges on Opie offensive. Lucy Liu is the worst. She seems like she'd have trouble taking apart a fruit roll-up let alone the daring likes of Laura Flynn Boyle, Ally McBeal. But oh wait, no, she freaking runs the Japanese Yakuza! Much of her action sequences rely on long shot and dynamic cutting because she has no physical presence. And most of the part where she takes over the Yakuza is done in anime because she can't pull that off either. Why not just use CGI? Claymation? A manakin? The only character who really works is the Japanese school girl assassin, who despite her diminuitive size emanates casual violence.
Ok, so now what's really wrong with the movie: It's less than the sum of its parts. It's got cool action, a very long suffering hero, and it's full of Tarantino's broad array of film techniques. But non of these things are put to use properly - they're just thrown in to fit whatever seems cool.
The main character has no character. Her tone shifts radically and Thurman cannot pull it together - in some scenes she's angry, in some comical, in some she's honorable, in other's brutal. Whatever happens to be cool at the time. The movie has no consistent tone, which is a big error.
All of the cinematic references have no point. They're simply to prove that, yes, Quentin Tarantino knows more about movies than you do. The first 'movie about movies', Once Upon a Time in the West, used cinematic references which altered the outcome of well-known Western scenes in order to make a comment not only about the West, but about the genre of the Western. Tarantino seems to think that it's enough to be cool by putting in references to other movies.
Then there's the revenge theme. Again in the superior Once Upon a Time in the West, the mystery is why the main character wants revenge. That drives the watcher's curiousity. Kill Bill is driven by the mystery not of why she wants revenge, which is very clear, but why she was wronged in the first place. Of course, that question is completely not dealt with in Vol. 1 leaving the viewing experience almost completely hollow.
More importantly, it puts the honus of the movie not on the main character, who is no mystery, but her enemies, who are. And nothing is done to explain them in Vol.1. What makes Vol. 2 so lame is that the explanation for why all these girls betrayed her is...NOTHING! You know what would have been cooler than nothing? ANYTHING! This took me 3 seconds to come up with: Why not have the bad girls betray Uma as a part of their own revenge paths? We are given no reason why Liu went from seeking vengeance on one Yakuza boss to taking them over. Vivica Fox has no backstory. We could imagine a brilliant device whereby they themselves were somehow fulfilling their own revenge. Then Vol. 2 could have turned their burden from Vol. 1 upside down by delving into Darryl Hannah and Bill. Instead, this film simply doesn't stand alone because the burden of the film is unfulfilled. And in Vol. 2 it is catastrophically ignored. Instead we get the stupidest finishing move ever - so lame in its attempt to be cool by being lame that it is...lame.
Of course none of this matters because Tarantino has nothing to say and never will. He just wants to make cool stuff. So he makes a movie where he thinks up all the cool stuff he can and then throws them together. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. Owen Wilson is cool. James Bond is cool. Punk Rock is cool. Owen Wilson cast as James Bond playing the Punk Rock scene probably wouldn't be that cool. In fact, it would probably be pretty lame. So Tarantino sits down and says, "Ok, chicks are cool, chopsake is cool, samurai stuff is cool, yakuza is cool, anime is cool, tough talking black girls are cool, this music is cool" and he makes a movie. But Quentin Tarantino isn't cool, and so we have to sit there watching an uncool guy's coolness fantasy.
If Tarantino would make a movie about trying to be cool, then he might actually make something that speaks to the viewer since most of us who aren't Ted Tyler are trying desparately hard to be cool. Instead, Tarantino tries to make movies about revenge, which he clearly knows nothing about - apparently revenge is flippant, occasionally comical or ridiculous, and occasionally obsessed with style.
In the end, you will only like this movie if you dig Tarantino's style. I don't.
Now then, let's go to the Cardinal Sins:
1) Preachy - No
2) Political - No
3) Psychosexual - Yes
4) Too Long - Yes, in fact so much so that they had to make it 2 movies
5) Whiny Hero - No
So why is this movie so lame? More to the point, why is it still so pretentious? Well, for that, we have to give credit to Tarantino - he's invented his own category of lame. You see, rather than rely on traditional methods of pretention, putting one's message before entertainment value, Tarantino puts himself before all previous. And Tarantino isn't a political snob with weighty messages to oppress with, no. Tarantino is an art snob who thinks he knows what art is and so he has to lord it over us - look at me, aren't I artistic? Don't I defy your conventions by paying tribute to them and mocking them at the same time? Aren't I clever?
Maybe a little. But you need a stern cock-punch.
Since someone had the gall to suggest Kill Bill as One of the 10 Best Movies of a Certain Year, the gauntlet has been laid down. We won't bother too much with Vol. 2 which is so bad, it makes Andrew Dice Clay look like Monty Python. But they were supposed to be one bad movie rather than 2, so let's treat it like a bad movie with a long intermission. The intermission was good - in between watching these two awful movies I watched a little sports, got some Popeye's Chicken and a job, bought a car, did some Madlibs, went on a trip or two. This movie had probably the best intermission of any bad movie I've ever seen.
Before we apply the cardinal sins of pretension, let's begin with what's just plain bad:
- DIALOGUE!!! Despite the lauds for Tarantino's dialogue, all the supposedly tough guy (girl) lines fall flat. They're all delivered as if they're crushing blows...but they aren't.
- CASTING!!! The key to action picks is that the actors actually look like they can kick butt, or are casually violent, or whatever fits their character. Jet Li looks like he's spent a lot of time fighting and training. Jackie Chan looks like he has a lot of fun while fighting and training. That's why they play those roles.
Uma Thurman looks like a stick figure model who buys shoes on Sunset Blvd. She is well-trained and well-choreographed, but we just never believe she's that tough because, frankly, she isn't. Vivica Fox is ok for her part, which is just poorly written, so much so that it kind of verges on Opie offensive. Lucy Liu is the worst. She seems like she'd have trouble taking apart a fruit roll-up let alone the daring likes of Laura Flynn Boyle, Ally McBeal. But oh wait, no, she freaking runs the Japanese Yakuza! Much of her action sequences rely on long shot and dynamic cutting because she has no physical presence. And most of the part where she takes over the Yakuza is done in anime because she can't pull that off either. Why not just use CGI? Claymation? A manakin? The only character who really works is the Japanese school girl assassin, who despite her diminuitive size emanates casual violence.
Ok, so now what's really wrong with the movie: It's less than the sum of its parts. It's got cool action, a very long suffering hero, and it's full of Tarantino's broad array of film techniques. But non of these things are put to use properly - they're just thrown in to fit whatever seems cool.
The main character has no character. Her tone shifts radically and Thurman cannot pull it together - in some scenes she's angry, in some comical, in some she's honorable, in other's brutal. Whatever happens to be cool at the time. The movie has no consistent tone, which is a big error.
All of the cinematic references have no point. They're simply to prove that, yes, Quentin Tarantino knows more about movies than you do. The first 'movie about movies', Once Upon a Time in the West, used cinematic references which altered the outcome of well-known Western scenes in order to make a comment not only about the West, but about the genre of the Western. Tarantino seems to think that it's enough to be cool by putting in references to other movies.
Then there's the revenge theme. Again in the superior Once Upon a Time in the West, the mystery is why the main character wants revenge. That drives the watcher's curiousity. Kill Bill is driven by the mystery not of why she wants revenge, which is very clear, but why she was wronged in the first place. Of course, that question is completely not dealt with in Vol. 1 leaving the viewing experience almost completely hollow.
More importantly, it puts the honus of the movie not on the main character, who is no mystery, but her enemies, who are. And nothing is done to explain them in Vol.1. What makes Vol. 2 so lame is that the explanation for why all these girls betrayed her is...NOTHING! You know what would have been cooler than nothing? ANYTHING! This took me 3 seconds to come up with: Why not have the bad girls betray Uma as a part of their own revenge paths? We are given no reason why Liu went from seeking vengeance on one Yakuza boss to taking them over. Vivica Fox has no backstory. We could imagine a brilliant device whereby they themselves were somehow fulfilling their own revenge. Then Vol. 2 could have turned their burden from Vol. 1 upside down by delving into Darryl Hannah and Bill. Instead, this film simply doesn't stand alone because the burden of the film is unfulfilled. And in Vol. 2 it is catastrophically ignored. Instead we get the stupidest finishing move ever - so lame in its attempt to be cool by being lame that it is...lame.
Of course none of this matters because Tarantino has nothing to say and never will. He just wants to make cool stuff. So he makes a movie where he thinks up all the cool stuff he can and then throws them together. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. Owen Wilson is cool. James Bond is cool. Punk Rock is cool. Owen Wilson cast as James Bond playing the Punk Rock scene probably wouldn't be that cool. In fact, it would probably be pretty lame. So Tarantino sits down and says, "Ok, chicks are cool, chopsake is cool, samurai stuff is cool, yakuza is cool, anime is cool, tough talking black girls are cool, this music is cool" and he makes a movie. But Quentin Tarantino isn't cool, and so we have to sit there watching an uncool guy's coolness fantasy.
If Tarantino would make a movie about trying to be cool, then he might actually make something that speaks to the viewer since most of us who aren't Ted Tyler are trying desparately hard to be cool. Instead, Tarantino tries to make movies about revenge, which he clearly knows nothing about - apparently revenge is flippant, occasionally comical or ridiculous, and occasionally obsessed with style.
In the end, you will only like this movie if you dig Tarantino's style. I don't.
Now then, let's go to the Cardinal Sins:
1) Preachy - No
2) Political - No
3) Psychosexual - Yes
4) Too Long - Yes, in fact so much so that they had to make it 2 movies
5) Whiny Hero - No
So why is this movie so lame? More to the point, why is it still so pretentious? Well, for that, we have to give credit to Tarantino - he's invented his own category of lame. You see, rather than rely on traditional methods of pretention, putting one's message before entertainment value, Tarantino puts himself before all previous. And Tarantino isn't a political snob with weighty messages to oppress with, no. Tarantino is an art snob who thinks he knows what art is and so he has to lord it over us - look at me, aren't I artistic? Don't I defy your conventions by paying tribute to them and mocking them at the same time? Aren't I clever?
Maybe a little. But you need a stern cock-punch.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Why Do People Want to Emulate Barbra Streisand?
Every year, some potentially pudgy Californian announces on American Idol that she wants to emulate Barbra Streisand. Sometimes, she's talented. Sometimes she's not. But why on earth would anyone want to emulate Barbra Streisand? None of the male singers announce they want to be just like Michael Bolton.
Let's recap the thinking here - I want to be an obnoxious loudmouth who uses my ill-gotten celebrity, dubiously earned in the culturally vacuous late-70's/early-80's, to make sure everyone knows how ignorant I am. Is this really every young girl's dream?
If only Clinton hadn't done her, she would have disappeared a decade ago.
Every year, some potentially pudgy Californian announces on American Idol that she wants to emulate Barbra Streisand. Sometimes, she's talented. Sometimes she's not. But why on earth would anyone want to emulate Barbra Streisand? None of the male singers announce they want to be just like Michael Bolton.
Let's recap the thinking here - I want to be an obnoxious loudmouth who uses my ill-gotten celebrity, dubiously earned in the culturally vacuous late-70's/early-80's, to make sure everyone knows how ignorant I am. Is this really every young girl's dream?
If only Clinton hadn't done her, she would have disappeared a decade ago.
Friday, February 10, 2006
2006 OSCAR PREDICTIONS AND NOTES
We'll be using Ted's soon to be patented technique of counting key issues and weighing their relative importance regardless of the talent involved. Since I've not seen all the movies, I will nonetheless be issuing weighty pronouncements on which movies and performances are the best. Note that I don't give a damn about directors.
I'll then follow with my top 10 for the year and other awards including biggest snubs and most ridiculous nomination of the year.
* Means Will Win
! Means Should Win (Of those nominated)
& Means Did Not See
BEST PICTURE:
*&The Gay Cowboy Movie (Brokeback) (Social Issue+Western+MinorityDir+GayBonus AKA Brokeback Factor)
& The Gay Intellectual Movie (Capote) (Brokeback Factor+Intellectual)
! The Racial Montage Movie (Crash) (Social Issue+Token Black+Ensemble Cast)
&The Better George Clooney Lectures Us Subtly Movie (Good Night and Good Luck) (Social Issue+Black&White+Hollywood Royalty Directs)
The Steven Spielberg Movie (Munich) (Contemporary Issues-Foreign+Speilberg)
This year's contenders hit the key issues much harder than last year's making it a much more competitive field, even if all of these movies are veer towards lameness. I'd give Capote a better shot if it were in black&white. Crash won't win because it won the Golden Globe, which means it can't win again. That and it just doesn't have the social issues managerie that Brokeback does. Good Night might have had a shot if Clooney were Clint Eastwood. Speilberg's film gets it's obligatory nod as well - I'm tempted to add sex farce to it's attributes list. Do you think he'd show up if he didn't get nominated. If he hadn't put out Munich, would they have nominated that cess pool that was War of the Worlds, just out of fear. How bad does a serious Spielberg pic have to be for it to not get nominated, and I'm not talking one of those movies he farms out to the interns, like Jurassic Park 2.
Anyhow, the almost comical panoply of hot button factors for Brokeback makes it the pick. Unless Spike Lee were to direct a movie about midget Maoris in black&white, I don't see anyone beating it out ever. Unless their are issues I missed in the films I haven't seen, I can't see it not winning.
BEST ACTOR
*!&Philip Seymour Hoffman is Capote - Brokeback+Intellectual+Biopic+accent
&Terrence Howard is a black guy and drug dealer - Social Issues+Token Black Guy
&Heath Ledger is gay - Social Issues+Brokeback
&Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny Cash (Ray-blackness) - Black&White+E True Hollywood Story+accent
&George Clooney is a Crusading Journalist - Black&WHite+Biopic+Crusading Journalist
This is a more difficult choice. I think Ledger and Howard just don't have a chance because they don't have enough star power to overcome their hotbutton deficit. Hollywood stops for E! True Hollywood stories, so I'm scared of Phoenix, especially in b&w. And Clooney has collected a lot of factors in his favor. However, I'm going to go with PSH, mostly because I liked him in Almost Famous, and because I'd like to pretend that intellectual beats out crusading journalist, and I know the Brokeback factor beats out b&w.
BEST ACTRESS
&Dame Judi Dench is a classy English dame (apparenty this is acting?) - Sex Farce+accent
&Felicity Huffman is transsexual - Social Issues-Who?+Brokeback Factor
!&Keira Knightly is a Jane Austen character - Jane Austen+accent
*&Charlize Theron is a miner living in a man's world - Socials Issues+Accent+Playing Ugly
&Reece Witherspoon is an E!True Hollywood victim - Black&White+Accent
A weak crew, as is usually the case - movies are written by men. Or maybe women aren't strong characters. Who knows? It's one thing for Reece Witherspoon or whoever to claim an award for playing a real live person, it's another thing for Dame Judi Dench to claim an award for playing herself. Huffman is the darkhorse - how bad is her who? factor...if you replaced her name with any other on the list for that film, she'd win. Don't count her out - remember Hillary Swank and the chick from the Crying Game...or was that a man? So I hear Knightly was good in a good movie from a Jane Austen book, but since I'd rather Jane Austen be banished from the culture, I think the clear choice here is Theron. You've got women's lib, you've got oppressed iconoclast, you've got an accent, and you've got a beatiful woman playing ugly. It's a powerful combo.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
*George Clooney is a Noble Conspiracy Victim - Social Issues-Foreign+Playing Ugly
!Matt Dillon is a Racist But Somewhat Noble Cop - Social Issues+Complex-Comeon, Matt Dillon?
Paul Giamatti is a Gutsy Comedic Sidekick - Social Issues-Already Ugly
&Jake Gyllenhaal is the Other Gay Cowboy - Social Issues+Brokeback Factor
William Hurt is a Wry Gangster in a Non-Comedic Film - None
First off - William Hurt is my inexplicable choice of the year. It's one thing that he has no hot button issues. Then he has no great lines. In fact, his character is TERRIBLE. And he STINKS in it. He ruins the movie. The movie is this weighty, serious pulp novel and in swaggers William Hurt, swirling in his leather chair and cracking wry jokes to the audience. What the hell? Who thought that was a good idea? He doesn't even stand up!
Secondly, Clooney would be my solid second, and may win out. The question is whether he's hollywood royalty or not. More importantly, what happens when, someday, someone is nominated for two movies. Are they going to show him/her twice in the split screen. I think they should have a body double so that when he/she loses, one can look really happy and we can still have the satisfaction of the other one being crushed, bitter and jealous. Or maybe they could just have Bill Murray do that.
Giamatti was nice but come on, he doesn't touch the social issues with his character, and he's probably playing himself anyway. And they're the wrong social issues.
That leaves us with Dillon and Gyl...the other gay cowboy. Dillon's character is complex and compelling so all he had to do was not screw it up. In this he succeeds. So really, this award should go to the writer. That said, come on, it's Matt Dillon. Did anyone else see Wild Things and take the time to watch his performance. Outrageously bad. It's like giving an Oscar to Keanu. By process of elimination, it goes to the gay cowboy. I can't really see him up there winning, so I'll hedge my bets and say that Clooney is a strong choice here, but...you know what, I changed my mind. Clooney's going to win.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
&Amy Adams is Someone I've Never Heard Of
&Catherine Keener is In A Gay Intellectual Movie - Intellectual+Brokeback Factor
!&Frances McDormand Decided to Take a Role This Year - Women's Lib+MerylStreep Factor
&Rachel Weisz is a Possibly Not So Innocent Noble Conspiracy Victim - Social Issues-Foreign
*&Michelle Williams is the Wife of a Gay Cowboy - Social Issues+Brokeback Factor
I originally thought McDormand would win, but she's too good. I'm going with the Brokeback sweep here. Incidentally, the one person I know who's seen her performance said that all the Brokeback guys in the audience laughed when her character finds out that her cowboy is gay. That's not cool.
THIS YEAR'S SNUBS:
OVERHYPED BLOCKBUSTER DIVISION - King Kong. I would have thought the Oscars would try to redeem this by giving it a nod or two. I guess Peter Jackson isn't Scorcese
TEPID FILM SET IN ASIA DIVISION - Memoirs of a Geisha.
SPIELBERG DIVISION - War of the Worlds
OVERHYPED BLOCKBUSTER SEQUEL DIVISION - Star Wars III. Come on, he even made Darth Vader George Bush...not even a little love for all that work?
GOOD EPIC DIVISION - Cinderella Man
BILL MURRAY DIVISION - Bill Murray taking stock as himself in Broken Flowers
MOVIES I WISHED I'D SAW:
The Whale and the Squid
Wallace and Grommit
Grizzly Man
Corpse Bride
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
TED TYLER'S OFFICIAL BEST 10 FILMS I SAW THIS YEAR:
1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2. Match Point
3. Cinderella Man
4. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
5. Crash
6. Kung Fu Hustle
7. 40-Year Old Virgin
8. Broken Flowers
9. Be Cool
10. Get Rich or Die Tryin' (OK, so I didn't see it. But in a terrible year for movies, why the heck not?)
We'll be using Ted's soon to be patented technique of counting key issues and weighing their relative importance regardless of the talent involved. Since I've not seen all the movies, I will nonetheless be issuing weighty pronouncements on which movies and performances are the best. Note that I don't give a damn about directors.
I'll then follow with my top 10 for the year and other awards including biggest snubs and most ridiculous nomination of the year.
* Means Will Win
! Means Should Win (Of those nominated)
& Means Did Not See
BEST PICTURE:
*&The Gay Cowboy Movie (Brokeback) (Social Issue+Western+MinorityDir+GayBonus AKA Brokeback Factor)
& The Gay Intellectual Movie (Capote) (Brokeback Factor+Intellectual)
! The Racial Montage Movie (Crash) (Social Issue+Token Black+Ensemble Cast)
&The Better George Clooney Lectures Us Subtly Movie (Good Night and Good Luck) (Social Issue+Black&White+Hollywood Royalty Directs)
The Steven Spielberg Movie (Munich) (Contemporary Issues-Foreign+Speilberg)
This year's contenders hit the key issues much harder than last year's making it a much more competitive field, even if all of these movies are veer towards lameness. I'd give Capote a better shot if it were in black&white. Crash won't win because it won the Golden Globe, which means it can't win again. That and it just doesn't have the social issues managerie that Brokeback does. Good Night might have had a shot if Clooney were Clint Eastwood. Speilberg's film gets it's obligatory nod as well - I'm tempted to add sex farce to it's attributes list. Do you think he'd show up if he didn't get nominated. If he hadn't put out Munich, would they have nominated that cess pool that was War of the Worlds, just out of fear. How bad does a serious Spielberg pic have to be for it to not get nominated, and I'm not talking one of those movies he farms out to the interns, like Jurassic Park 2.
Anyhow, the almost comical panoply of hot button factors for Brokeback makes it the pick. Unless Spike Lee were to direct a movie about midget Maoris in black&white, I don't see anyone beating it out ever. Unless their are issues I missed in the films I haven't seen, I can't see it not winning.
BEST ACTOR
*!&Philip Seymour Hoffman is Capote - Brokeback+Intellectual+Biopic+accent
&Terrence Howard is a black guy and drug dealer - Social Issues+Token Black Guy
&Heath Ledger is gay - Social Issues+Brokeback
&Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny Cash (Ray-blackness) - Black&White+E True Hollywood Story+accent
&George Clooney is a Crusading Journalist - Black&WHite+Biopic+Crusading Journalist
This is a more difficult choice. I think Ledger and Howard just don't have a chance because they don't have enough star power to overcome their hotbutton deficit. Hollywood stops for E! True Hollywood stories, so I'm scared of Phoenix, especially in b&w. And Clooney has collected a lot of factors in his favor. However, I'm going to go with PSH, mostly because I liked him in Almost Famous, and because I'd like to pretend that intellectual beats out crusading journalist, and I know the Brokeback factor beats out b&w.
BEST ACTRESS
&Dame Judi Dench is a classy English dame (apparenty this is acting?) - Sex Farce+accent
&Felicity Huffman is transsexual - Social Issues-Who?+Brokeback Factor
!&Keira Knightly is a Jane Austen character - Jane Austen+accent
*&Charlize Theron is a miner living in a man's world - Socials Issues+Accent+Playing Ugly
&Reece Witherspoon is an E!True Hollywood victim - Black&White+Accent
A weak crew, as is usually the case - movies are written by men. Or maybe women aren't strong characters. Who knows? It's one thing for Reece Witherspoon or whoever to claim an award for playing a real live person, it's another thing for Dame Judi Dench to claim an award for playing herself. Huffman is the darkhorse - how bad is her who? factor...if you replaced her name with any other on the list for that film, she'd win. Don't count her out - remember Hillary Swank and the chick from the Crying Game...or was that a man? So I hear Knightly was good in a good movie from a Jane Austen book, but since I'd rather Jane Austen be banished from the culture, I think the clear choice here is Theron. You've got women's lib, you've got oppressed iconoclast, you've got an accent, and you've got a beatiful woman playing ugly. It's a powerful combo.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
*George Clooney is a Noble Conspiracy Victim - Social Issues-Foreign+Playing Ugly
!Matt Dillon is a Racist But Somewhat Noble Cop - Social Issues+Complex-Comeon, Matt Dillon?
Paul Giamatti is a Gutsy Comedic Sidekick - Social Issues-Already Ugly
&Jake Gyllenhaal is the Other Gay Cowboy - Social Issues+Brokeback Factor
William Hurt is a Wry Gangster in a Non-Comedic Film - None
First off - William Hurt is my inexplicable choice of the year. It's one thing that he has no hot button issues. Then he has no great lines. In fact, his character is TERRIBLE. And he STINKS in it. He ruins the movie. The movie is this weighty, serious pulp novel and in swaggers William Hurt, swirling in his leather chair and cracking wry jokes to the audience. What the hell? Who thought that was a good idea? He doesn't even stand up!
Secondly, Clooney would be my solid second, and may win out. The question is whether he's hollywood royalty or not. More importantly, what happens when, someday, someone is nominated for two movies. Are they going to show him/her twice in the split screen. I think they should have a body double so that when he/she loses, one can look really happy and we can still have the satisfaction of the other one being crushed, bitter and jealous. Or maybe they could just have Bill Murray do that.
Giamatti was nice but come on, he doesn't touch the social issues with his character, and he's probably playing himself anyway. And they're the wrong social issues.
That leaves us with Dillon and Gyl...the other gay cowboy. Dillon's character is complex and compelling so all he had to do was not screw it up. In this he succeeds. So really, this award should go to the writer. That said, come on, it's Matt Dillon. Did anyone else see Wild Things and take the time to watch his performance. Outrageously bad. It's like giving an Oscar to Keanu. By process of elimination, it goes to the gay cowboy. I can't really see him up there winning, so I'll hedge my bets and say that Clooney is a strong choice here, but...you know what, I changed my mind. Clooney's going to win.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
&Amy Adams is Someone I've Never Heard Of
&Catherine Keener is In A Gay Intellectual Movie - Intellectual+Brokeback Factor
!&Frances McDormand Decided to Take a Role This Year - Women's Lib+MerylStreep Factor
&Rachel Weisz is a Possibly Not So Innocent Noble Conspiracy Victim - Social Issues-Foreign
*&Michelle Williams is the Wife of a Gay Cowboy - Social Issues+Brokeback Factor
I originally thought McDormand would win, but she's too good. I'm going with the Brokeback sweep here. Incidentally, the one person I know who's seen her performance said that all the Brokeback guys in the audience laughed when her character finds out that her cowboy is gay. That's not cool.
THIS YEAR'S SNUBS:
OVERHYPED BLOCKBUSTER DIVISION - King Kong. I would have thought the Oscars would try to redeem this by giving it a nod or two. I guess Peter Jackson isn't Scorcese
TEPID FILM SET IN ASIA DIVISION - Memoirs of a Geisha.
SPIELBERG DIVISION - War of the Worlds
OVERHYPED BLOCKBUSTER SEQUEL DIVISION - Star Wars III. Come on, he even made Darth Vader George Bush...not even a little love for all that work?
GOOD EPIC DIVISION - Cinderella Man
BILL MURRAY DIVISION - Bill Murray taking stock as himself in Broken Flowers
MOVIES I WISHED I'D SAW:
The Whale and the Squid
Wallace and Grommit
Grizzly Man
Corpse Bride
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
TED TYLER'S OFFICIAL BEST 10 FILMS I SAW THIS YEAR:
1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2. Match Point
3. Cinderella Man
4. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
5. Crash
6. Kung Fu Hustle
7. 40-Year Old Virgin
8. Broken Flowers
9. Be Cool
10. Get Rich or Die Tryin' (OK, so I didn't see it. But in a terrible year for movies, why the heck not?)
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