Oscar Shmoscar
I’m a movie fan so I allow myself to get a little excited for Oscar season. I think the odds of an Oscar going to the most deserving film in a particular year are only slightly better than the odds I’ll ever have the chance to win one. I just enjoy getting wound up by how stupid the mysterious members of the Motion Picture academy can be.
Let me highlight a few of the WTF moments from this year’s nominations.
Alphabetical Movie – Heartbreakers
If you have never heard of Heartbreakers, have no fear. You are part of that rather large contingent of people who looked at the movie poster and figured that any movie with Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman in it couldn’t help but be ruined by the presence of Jennifer Love Hewitt. The assumption is fair.
Hewitt does not, in fact ruin the movie but neither can she elevate it above a rather bland romantic comedy/confidence game movie that is notable more for being Anne Bancroft’s final film than it is for anything else. It is one of those movies that falls squarely in the “I’m glad I saw it once but I’ve never needed to see it again” category.
Alphabetical Movie – The Haunting
I think Robert Wise’s The Haunting is just about the perfect horror film. We never see an axe wielding serial killer. The characters aren’t chased about the house by a hideous creature. Death, when it comes, is not bloody or graphic.
In spite of all these things, the movie is as scary as any I’ve ever seen. Wise uses camera angles, sound design, facial expression and dialogue to create a haunted house so horrifying, you can’t imagine spending a night there. You don’t see what creatures walk the halls of that house but whatever is in your imagination is far worse than anything that could have appeared on screen.
Alphabetical movie – Hatari!
Hatari! (the explanation point is part of the name) plays more like a African Safari version of How the West Was Won than it does a movie that has crazy things like “characters” and “plot.” Through a series of vignettes, we meet several people of varying nationalities who spend their lives catching animals in Africa. Don’t worry – they aren’t poachers. The animals are being caught to put in zoos.
Much of the film involves long sequences of these characters trying to catch animals on the savannah and it must have looked awesome projected on the big screen. The story, such as it is, involves some romantic entanglements between a few of the characters but it is nearly 100% irrelevant. The attraction is the setting, not the story.
Alphabetical Movie – Harry Potter 1-8
Call me lazy but I figured that a single post that covered the entirety of the Harry Potter film series was sufficient.
I have, in the past several weeks, watched approximately 24 hours of film devoted to J.K. Rowling’s retirement plan. Most of it is good. Some is very good. None of it is great and none of it is awful.
That’s actually not too bad for a run of eight movies. It can be fairly argued that the source material is so strong that it should result in stronger films. I can think of plenty of examples of strong source material being made into bad movies. Go ahead and watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas if you doubt me. I’ll wait.
By the way, I’m going to be going into spoilers about the books and the movies so when you get done watching that terrible film, don’t come back if you don’t want to learn any secrets.
3-2-1 Contact
Roger Ebert has a very good series of essays he calls “The Great Movies.” In it, he writes about movies he personally considers the greatest films ever made.
Most of his choices are fairly indisputable. Films like Citizen Kane, Singin’ in the Rain and Casablanca are, if not universally loved, at least universally respected. He does make rather controversial choices, though, and his latest is one of those.
This week, he posted an article about the 1997 film Contact. My immediate response was “Great film? Really?”
Alphabetical Movie – A Hard Day’s Night
I’ve been in no particular rush to write a blog about this film because I’m currently in the middle of the Harry Potter films and there are eight of them. While I could do an individual blog about each film, I have to ask myself if my time is better served by doing other things.
The answer, of course, is no. But I’m going to wait anyway.
Laziness, my friends, is a skill that must be practiced like any other.
Butt-Numb-a-Thon 13: The roundup
I blogged a while back about how I missed out on Butt-Numb-a-Thon 12 and it sucked. Well, I was fortunate enough to be invited back for BNAT (pronounced Bee-Nat for you uninitiated) this year and I’m writing about the experience for – well – mostly my own benefit.
So hey, future me, enjoy! Read More…
Alphabetical Movie – The Hangover
A recent office conversation revolved around the question of whether or not there have been any truly great movies in the last five years. I’m terrible at remembering which year a movie came out so for me, the question was hard to answer. Of course I did what any geek with internet access would do and I looked it up.
When you actually look up what movies have been released over a five year period, you will probably come across a great man films that you liked or even loved. The question then becomes – what constitutes a “great” movie? If you don’t define your terms, you are pretty stuck.
I bring all this up because as we compiled our lists, The Hangover was suggested as fitting in the category of “great” films. I’m not sure that I agree but it could depend more on my definition than on anything else.
Alphabetical Movie – Hairspray
Easily the worst thing in the first two X-Men films was James Marsden’s Cyclops.
Yes, Halle Berry’s Storm was horrible but come on – Marsden was pretty much given the unenviable task of standing around and looking serious all the time. Occasionally, he would fawn over Jean Gray by looking slightly less serious and slightly more constipated. The Jean Gray/Wolverine/Cyclops love triangle made no sense because why the hell would need time to choose between Wolverine and a statue.
I think that the one thing Hairspray shows conclusively is that we can’t blame Cyclops on Marsden. He’s energetic and funny and a damn good singer. He’s the kind of guy that Cyclops wouldn’t be able to talk to if they were at a party together.
Grail Diary 