Really? Two hours before you-know-what and no discussion? There's restraint and then there's whatever this is. Especially in a tricky year like this.
Do you have a horse in the race?
I pretty much subscribe to the anything-but-Juno philosophy. Fuck bloggers.
Ooh, meta.
37 comments:
I may eat my words, but I predict that one of the seemingly easiest categories to predict (Supp. Act.) will actually go to Holbrook instead of Bardem.
It's a tough year. I think JUNO's gonna get the traditional screenplay consolation prize and NO COUNTRY will more or less sweep.
I think There Will Be Blood will do some heavy winning for three reasons:
1. Critically acclaimed.
2. Broad/epic filmmaking
3. "I Drink Your Milkshake" has officially become a catchphrase and was even mentioned in VH1's Best Week Ever.
I'm probably blinded by my love for the film however.
Yeah, Juno is a lock for the screenplay consololation prize.
I just discovered that I get E!. Um, how do I give it back?
Ryan Seaquest stealing Amy Adams' purse on the red carpet was pretty much the ugliest moment of television I've ever witnessed.
I hope Assassination of Jesse James at least gets credit for Casey Affleck's amazing performance, though I am incredibly sad that it got so snubbed. otherwise, I am mostly a there will be blood man all the way.
It's pretty fucking sick how I've had to resign myself to the near-inevitability of a Diablo Cody screenplay win. However, if Reitman takes director or Juno takes picture, however, unlikely, I'm probably going to have to call in sick to work tomorrow.
Ha ha! Ryan Seaquest.
Actually cheering for Casey Affleck over Javier Bardem as well.
I'm clearly pulling for Brad Bird in one of the weakest Original Screenplay fields in recent memory. Even Michael Clayton is starting to look pretty good right now. In other words, Shiva is cooler than hamburger phones. Congratulations, India.
The speeches are just too rushed. Ease off, Academy.
Sorry guys, as much as I liked Affleck (and Holbrook, for that matter), Supporting Actor this year is a case where the popular choice was the best choice. Ditto Daniel Day Lewis.
And yes, count me as another one who is dreading Diablo Cody's inevitable win.
Cody seems like a nice person and all, but since she has self-destruction in her past, hopefully she will pull a Troy Duffy and fade herself out of the scene in a few years! (and continue being a nice person, blogging only)
FFC's movie of the year wins BP. You guys are such sell-outs. =P
Let down a bit. I actually like Diablo Cody as a person, just not as a writer, so I'm not going to beat a dead horse that is a crying stripper and bitch too much about that. Oh how I wish Blood had won more, but it was nice and comforting to see Cormac McCarthy looking ecstatically happy, which considering his prose I didn't think was possible. I always thought he lived in a cave and killed his own food with a rock.
My preference of Casey Affleck is just because I think a great performance ought to somehow integrate the actor and the character.
While I can't imagine the Anton Chigurh character being performed any better I'm not sure the role actually required anything from the actor other than to just stay out of the way. A lot of the emotional weight that character yields can be sourced back to the writing and the filmmaking.
Not that I'm outraged or anything. This is the second year in a row where the film that wins the Best Picture Oscar could plausibly be called the actual best picture of the year. Here's hoping that the trend continues.
My immediate thoughts are:
1. I-tunes is now crashing as millions rush to download that song from "Once".
2. Anyone who claims they didn't dig that song from "Once", and the lovely acceptance speeches is a filthy, filthy liar and the worst hipster-snark in the history of mankind.
3. Whoever picked Swinton and Cotillard in the Oscar pool are going to be very rich
4. Diablo Cody/Juno hate is now officially more boring than Atonement.
5. Whats with all this soulful gazing at Powebooks? In the screenwriter nominee bumpers, one of the writers should have been passed out in a terrycloth bathrobe, an upended bottle of scotch on the floor, in a crumpled hill of yellow legal pads and collection notices. THAT'S Writing.
Alex:
Don't forget the SNL sketch!
Alex:
Don't forget the SNL sketch!
Wow.
That was really....awful.
2. Anyone who claims they didn't dig that song from "Once", and the lovely acceptance speeches is a filthy, filthy liar and the worst hipster-snark in the history of mankind.
I didn't dig the song.
Snark, snark.
Actually like The Moldy Peaches' "Anyone Else but You" better. I admittedly don't know how to begin to critique music and will probably look stupid in attempting to do so; but the Once song doesn't have the intimacy of a folk song or the forward momentum of a rock song. By going for something in the middle, it's really neither.
The Once phenomenon really leaves me cold. The most overrated film of the year, closely followed by Away From Her. Whatever it is that I love about the movies, I can't find it in Once. Talking about Schoonmaker juice, Once really doesn't have it. I do remember one kinda intense musical montage, but generally speaking there really isn't a lot of filmmaking excitement there.
I haven't really looked very hard, but have people been writing about it like they have been writing about Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, or There Will Be Blood? Or Juno for that matter? People seem to have a very sentimental attachment to it. Do they see it as embodying or celebrating their values? Challenging them? What exactly is it saying about love? About music? About life?
I liked ONCE in the moment but it's so ephemeral I suspect it's hard to mount a passionate defense for it. Don't mind the songs, actually, but I think the Hollywood version, MUSIC & LYRICS, better captured/executed the creative process. (I really dig M&L, for what it's worth.) In ONCE it seems like they sit down and songs spew forth magically from their lips and fingertips, just way too painless and quite bullshit.
Biggest Oscar surprise for me: the BOURNE sweep. It killed my score.
Still shaken by the year Phil Collins trumped Aimee Mann; I think my response for the tune was infused by the unexpected surprise that one of the nominated songs was, y'now...good. Listening to more than once good. Yikes.
Two observations in the actress categories:
1) Marion Cotillard is adorable, her win is a pleasant surprise, and she must marry me now.
2) Tilda Swinton appears to be carved out of some substance that not only reflects light, but generates it. Also, ditty on the marrying thing.
I send Bill on M&L, although the ending kinda left me cold, especially Hugh Grant's solo, how the fuck does he get a solo for a song he wrote on the morning of the concert? I mean there is Hollywood happy ending and then there is Hollywood happy ending. Seemed tacked on, really.
-HMSM
Tilda Swinton is a man.
Tilda Swinton looked like The Man Who Fell To Oscar.
Yeah, the ending of M&L sucks hard. Shame, really--the rest is surprisingly well-observed.
Tilda Swinton is most definitely NOT a man. (See: FEMALE PERVERSIONS or THE WAR ZONE.)
Or ORLANDO, but that just might make it even more confusing.
It bothers me that people are jumping on the cheap-and-easy anti-Juno bandwagon when they should be jumping on the anti-Michael Clayton train. I've seen worse movies this year, but none that made me feel as outright LOUSY as that movie did. Come on in, everyone, please reassure me that I'm not the only person in the world that hates that movie as much as I do.
So yesterday I was exposed to every news program on TV blaring how "we Europeans" snatched you'se Oscars away from you'se Americans, as if that was something to be proud of and totally surprising.
So in that spirit, neener neener, I guess.
Go Europe! Go Europe! Go Europe!
I missed the In Memoriam segment this year; so, I just heard that Brad Renfro didn't get a mention--that is frickin' weak.
I don't believe anyone who came of age in the 80's could watch Music and Lyrics without cracking a goofy smile several times.
I missed the In Memoriam segment this year; so, I just heard that Brad Renfro didn't get a mention--that is frickin' weak.
Just looked him up and he made the deadline. He died January 15, and the cut off was the 31st.
Frickin' weak indeed.
My
dead pool picks by the way:
Charlton Heston
Jack Chick
Kirk Douglas
Bea Arthur
Jean-Luc Godard
Billy Graham
Andy Rooney
Estelle Getty
Betty White
James Randi
I had two correct picks last year- Gerald Ford and Jack Palance. Haven't gotten shit this time around. Can't believe I didn't pick Gordon B. Hinckley.
I'll take some of that Estelle Getty action.
I have to say Renfro's death upset me a lot more than Heath's, not that there's any point in quantifying it.
it was terrible that they forgot renfro but what was worse is that they forgot sven nykvist.
Worse that they forgot Edward Yang.
I never thought I'd ever hear the phrase: "Estelle Getty action"
Can't say that I actually *hated* Micheal Clayton; but I thought it was the weakest of the Five (yes, including the dreaded Juno) Gilroy's script was so polished and schematic; it was a near quintessential example of the "perfect play" with all of its thematic objectives all polished up to a blinding sheen, like an Anthony Shaffer play.
Yesterday the annual arrived. Huzzah!
I read the Silent Hill review, and I must say, I wouldn't have guessed someone could make a good point about keeping at least part of the Sean Bean scenes alive. But you did, and now I'm all confused.
Well done. And this on the same day someone defended the imperial measurement system.
I know, everyone is sick of Juno-bashing it seems, but slamming Juno in front of one of it's co-stars (on a night it is up for an award) will never get old in my opinion.
03:22 -03:33
I just saw Juno. I liked it well enough. Better than Once or Michael Clayton or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Those all blew.
Anyway, I'm just upset because I was helping make a montage for the Report and there was a scene I was dying to use from The Last Detail but it's not possible because I can't find a copy of the DVD in the city. Drives me up the wall, I tells ya.
But why don't I own it?
All quiet on the Western front...
Rest assured that I'm working feverishly on my latest piece, which will be up very soon. Let's just say that spending a weekend surveying cinema's greatest alcoholic characters is, shockingly, an incredibly depressing venture.
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