Blake Snyder, 1957 - 2009

My job has kept me too busy lately to keep up with blog writing or blog reading, in part because all these celebrities keep dying on my watch. But I was dismayed, while going through my Google Reader backlogs, to learn that Blake Snyder had passed away suddenly on August 4th.

Snyder is best remembered by moviegoers as the writer for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot and Blank Check, but remembered even more fondly by the writing community for his screenwriting bible Save the Cat! But don't let the word "screenwriting" fool you - Cat is a brilliant blueprint for any writer, from novelist to playwright to, yes, screenwriter. With great humor and verve, Snyder lays out the basics of shaping a great story in a clear and refreshing way I have yet to see in any other writing how-to book. In fact, I'm generally against writing how-to books, but this one is absolutely essential. His passing touches me more than any of the others in the Summer of Death.

In an eerie coincidence, I purchased the sequel to Save the Cat! on the day he died. I was in Union Square's Barnes and Noble, killing time between an article interview and work, and spotted it on a table full of screenwriting books. I was surprised, I hadn't even realized he'd written a sequel. I picked it up, hoping it would cure me of my nasty writing procrastination streak. Now I'll appreciate it as among the last words of a gifted teacher and storyteller who truly loved movies and wanted to share that passion.

He'll be missed, but at least his words of wisdom will live on in his books and his stellar blog.

Tony Time!

The Tony Awards are tonight, lagging behind the rest of awards season like a runty little brother. Which is appropriate for such a blah Tony season. Granted, I've only seen a few of the shows this year - Hair, Next to Normal, Desire Under the Elms, and a pre-Piven puss-out Speed-the-Plow - but my still-avid theatre friends assure me I didn't miss much.

And what I have seen has been a mixed bag. Hair is my favorite musical, I've seen a frazillion productions of it, and this Broadway revival is among the best. If it doesn't snag Best Musical Revival I'll spit nails. Next to Normal, on the other hand, is only okay. I actually saw it back in 2001 as a condensed workshop performance and loved it, thought it was a great gem of a rock musical. But in its blown up, two and a half hour incarnation on Broadway, it's lost some of that original power in overstuffed power ballads and too much lag time where the story doesn't advance. As for Desire Under the Elms, well, it was shut out from the Tonys with good reason. A terrible clunker of a show.

What of the rest of the awards? Most categories are predictable - Billy Elliot for Best Musical, Hair for Best Revival, God of Carnage for Best Play (with Reasons to Be Pretty as the spoiler). That's less interesting.

It is, however, interesting that Reasons to Be Pretty is playwright Neil LaBute's Broadway debut and 33 Variations is Moisés Kaufman's Broadway debut, considering both have been NYC theatre scene staples for years.

Also interesting, Hallie Foote, one of the nominees for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play for Dividing the Estate, is performing in a play that her father, Horton, wrote, and Horton died in March.

As for the other categories, for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, David Bologna from Billy Elliot was nominated for the role of Michael, but the kid he shares the role with (due to child labor laws, natch) was not because the producers neglected to lobby to have them nommed together the way the three Billys were, so the Tony committee just went with the opening night cast.

Best Direction of a Play is interesting because Matthew Warchus is competing against himself (he's nominated for God of Carnage and The Norman Conquests). I suspect he'll win for Carnage.

But of course the most compelling awards are the big acting prizes. Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play is stuffed with A-list Hollywood names (Jeff Daniels, James Gandolfini, Geoffrey Rush), an A-list theatre name (Raúl Esparza), and a rising newcomer (Thomas Sadoski) so regardless the outcome that's a category to watch. Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play is similarly stacked with Hope Davis, Jane Fonda, Marcia Gay Harden, Janet McTeer, and Harriet Walter.

But the category I'm most interested in is Leading Actress in a Musical. Alice Ripley is a theatre staple, tremendously talented, and though I found Next to Normal a little uneven her performance is flawless. She deserves the award, no doubt.

Buffy Lives! Maybe.

Like any other television fan, I'm known to get a little cranky when my favorite show gets cancelled too soon. But some shows have healthy runs that come to their natural ending points, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of them. Other shows get dragged on past their prime, to their detriment. See also: Scrubs (now coming back for yet another season on ABC!) and Sex and the City. But now some braintrusts are itching to add Buffy to that list.

THR reports that the producers of the original film - you know, the one that came out in 1992 and bombed because the directing/producing team of Fran and Kaz Kuzui had mangled Joss Whedon's original script and turned it into a campy, schlocky mess - want to bring it back in feature film form. Sans Whedon, or any of the television cast.

Because that makes sense. If I had a turkey of a film that became a surprise television hit, I'd definitely try to re-do it as a film and strip away all the elements that made the TV version a success.

A Brief Update

I usually loathe when blogs take the time to explain absences because, really, who cares if your master's thesis or new baby prevented you from obsessively tracking the results of American Idol or whatnot. But I think that more than that, I hate when blogs go on unexplained hiatuses. So, a brief update. I started a new job in January, one that I love because I get to work with a very kind, very intelligent, and very witty group of people, and I get to do what I love, which is analyzing and writing about pop culture, media, politics, and all that good stuff. The only downside is that my hours are kind of crazy (nights and weekend), which makes it hard to keep up with my extracurricular blogging, especially when I don’t have much time to watch movies and TV and thus have nothing to review.

But I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. After all, summer movie season is almost here, and while I don’t see anything on the horizon that looks as promising as last year’s Iron Man, I’m sure there will be something worth commenting on.

Josh Freese Would Like to Make You An Offer

Josh Freese has a new album coming out. I’d never heard of Josh Freese before tonight, so I can’t say for certain whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I can say this – his marketing campaign is worth paying attention to. It’s not unusual for bands to offer pre-release packages of varying prices - $10 gets you a CD, $20 gets you a CD and shirt, $30 gets you a CD, shirt, and lithograph, etc. – for loyal fans. Freese, who Wikipedia (that fount of rigorously fact-checked knowledge!) says “is a permanent member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, and was the drummer for Nine Inch Nails from late 2005 until late 2008,” is willing to go the extra mile (or five) for his loyal, and loaded, fans, with several intriguing packages. $7 gets you a difital download, $15 gets you a CD/DVD and digital download, and for $50, Josh will call you on the phone and talk for five minutes about whatever you want. It gets weirder from there...

$250: Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you're into.)

$500: Meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank (filmed and posted on youtube) -Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 Steak and "all you can eat" Shrimp on)

$1,000: Josh washes your car OR does your laundry....or you can wash his car. -Have dinner with Josh aboard the "Queen Mary" in Long Beach, CA -Get drunk and cut each other's hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on youtube of course)

$2,500: Get a private drum lesson with Josh or for all you non-drummers have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome) -Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or DEVO (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the "Spearmint Rhino" -Signed DW snare drum. -Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve) -Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

[Ed. note – I’m assuming he has a baby, because otherwise the diaper implications are deeply unsettling.]

$5,000: Josh writes about a song about you and make available on iTunes. -Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the youtubes. -Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland -Get drunk together. If you don't drink we can go to my Dads place and hang out under the "Tuba tree" -Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on "Since 1972"

$10,000: Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle's 2003 tour. -Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking) -Twiggy from Manson's band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe's Chicken n' Waffle in Long Beach for dinner. -Josh takes you and guest to "Club 33" (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and The Tower Of Terror) -At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in Josh's Volvo station wagon. It's all yours....take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please.

$20,000: A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour. -Maynard James Keenan, Mark from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube) -Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd St where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining "Nirvana." See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted using a Fake I.D. at when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg's high- school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live.=2 0For another $25 he'll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut. -Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the "Ghosts And Legends" tour. (separate rooms...no spooning.) -Josh writes 2 songs about you and it's made available on iTunes and appears on his next record (you can sing back up on em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever....) -Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again...couples welcome and discreet parking available) -Pick any 3 items out of Josh's closet.

$75,000: Go on tour with Josh for a few days. -Have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story. -Take home any of his drumsets (only one but you can choose which one.) -Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while. -Josh will join your band for a month...play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.... -If you don't have a band he'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm) -Take a limo down to Tijuana and he'll show you how it's done (what that means exactly we can't legally get into here) -If you don't live in Southern California (but are a US resident) he'll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks. -Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin's place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.

I don’t know, man...I have always wanted my own personal cabana boy, but $75K is about $74.9K more than I can afford at any given time. Is this the future of self-marketing? Are all artists doomed to become glorified prostitutes in order to finance a creative career in this unfriendly economic climate? Or, in the very least, will we all have to devote at least 70% of our creative energy on figuring out new, wacky ways to promote the stuff we created with the other 30% of our creative energy? I can’t decide if this whole thing is brilliant or insane. I’m leaning towards brilliant, but to be fair I’m a little punchy because it’s 3:30 in the morning and I only got home from work an hour ago, because I’m financing my creative career by working in media, which is at least a clothes-on endeavor.

Five TV Shows That Need An End Date

Hey, remember when Lost first premiered, and it was really, really cool? With the WTF-polar-bear and mysterious monster and “Guys, where are we?” And then it got really confusing and half the characters died and the other half got arrested for DUI and we all kind of got over it? Well eff that, because Lost is back. Sure, it kind of sucks for you if you got into the show because of the specific characters from Season 1, because most of them remain dead and the rest have to share screentime with newer characters of varying quality. But the mysteries are kind of intriguing again, and answers are finally getting doled out at a decent pace. Clearly, setting a specific end date was the best thing that the show has ever done creatively because it has allowed them to focus on a specific story arc and stop, you know, sucking. Which got me thinking, what other shows would benefit from knowing when they’re going to end? Not counting, of course, Two and a Half Men, whose end date should have been somewhere in the same year it premiered.

1. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
This show kind of boxed itself into a corner, because pretty much every episode has to deal with the evil robots gunning for John Connor, and you know John’s gonna be fine because a few years later he’s yelling at some poor schmuck on the set of his next movie. Picking an expiration date will let them work towards tucking all those nasty loose ends into the movie continuity and save us from lame, supposedly nail-biting cliffhangers where we’re supposed to wonder whether this will finally be the episode where the evil robots win. (Hint: it’s not.)

2. How I Met Your Mother
Is she the mother? Wait, no, is she the mother? No, she’s the mother, right? It’s hard to tell whether the writers are teasing us intentionally or stalling for time. Eventually, they’re gonna have to reveal who the mother is, or the title of the show will just be silly. “Kids, let me tell you about the time I impregnated a transient behind a dumpster on Central Park West...” Setting an end date will let everyone breathe easier knowing roughly when the big reveal will come.

3. Gossip Girl
An end date? But we’ve only just met! True, Gossip Girl is only in its second season, and its quality is comparable to its first season – good news if you’re a fan, bad news if you’re not – but it can’t stay like this for long with so much drama and partner-swapping and scheming. They’re about one season away from an incest storyline. It doesn’t help that the kids are in theory going off to college in a season or two. So pick an end date and stick with it, because no one is gonna stick around to watch the adventures of Little J, aka Scrappy-Doo with the crappy ‘do. No one.

4. Heroes
Confession – I stopped watching this show last year. For all I know, they already set an end date, and it was two months ago. But on the off chance they’re still plowing ahead with this dreck, I heartily advise Kring and Co. set a stop date on this sucker and work on making a coherent story that builds into a larger arc, stat. Or, you know, keep hemorrhaging viewers, whatever.

5. Big Love
This would be a preemptive strike, because I feel like this season is the best one the show has had to date. But are you really able to keep track of all the Juniper Creek crazies? There’s a ton of them floating around, most just kind of doing their own thing while Bill builds his harem. This show needs to end with a bang, and that means laying the seeds now for an awesome finale two or three seasons, max, from now. Because, like Gossip Girl, Big Love is one tequila away from an incest storyline, and believe me, the therapy needed after that kind of thing is expensive.

2009 Oscars Liveblog

8:12 - I think Taraji P. Henson's dress is my favorite so far. Tim Gunn is a much better pre-show host than Ryan Seacrest and Ben Lyons.

8:30 - What's up with the music? Lawrence of Arabia theme in big band-style? Terrible. Oh, Hugh Jackman looks dashing. Here's the opening bit. Oh, no, no recession jokes, please. Oscars = escapism, the ultimate form of in fact. I can worry about the economy again tomorrow.

8:38 - Okay, that was pretty good, actually, Hugh Jackman acting out all the movies. Anne Hathaway was wonderful as well. Hugh to Mickey Rourke: "We're on an 8-second delay, but if you win we're switching to a 20-second delay."

8:45 - Fifteen minutes in and they really haven't given out an award yet? I mean, seriously?

8:47 - Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” Saw that one coming. Wouldn't have been my choice, I suspect this is more one of those wins actors get because of their general respect in the community as opposed to the specific performance.

8:54 - Oh snap, did Tina Fey and Steve Martin just make a Scientology joke? Ha! Awesome.

8:56 - Original screenplay: “Milk” Saw that one coming, too. Eh. I mean, whatever, I would rather see this award go to a wholly original story rather than a biopic. But I'm digging Justin Lance Black's speech.

9:01 - Adapted screenplay: “Slumdog Millionaire” Oh hell yes. Well deserved. Oh my, Simon Beaufoy just thanked "Dev and Latika"...Latika being the character played by Freida Pinto. Awkward.

9:07 - Best animated feature film of the year: “WALL-E” Also awkward, Jennifer Aniston trying to do the Wall-E voice when announcing. Another well-deserved win. Not unexpected in the least, though.

9:09 - Best animated short film: “La Maison en Petits Cubes” Hey, first surprise of the night! I thought Presto was a lock. Wow, that may be my new favorite Oscar speech ever...halting English capped off with "Domo arigato Mr. Roboto."

9:15 - Sarah Jessica Parker and Daniel Craig presenting together? That's random.

9:17 - Achievement in art direction: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

9:20 - Achievement in costume design: “The Duchess” Oh, awesome! The costumes for that film were gorgeous, so that makes me happy.

9:23 - Achievement in makeup: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Aww, he thanked New Orleans.

9:25 - Robert Pattinson and Amanda Seyfried presenting together! Too cute. "2008 in Romance" = most ridiculous montage ever? Seriously.

9:32 - Ha, Joaquin Phoenix joke. Natalie Portman to Ben Stiller-as-Joaquin: "You look like you work at a Hassidic meth lab." Achievement in cinematography: “Slumdog Millionaire”

9:41 - Commercial for "The Soloist" - so looking forward to that film. But it said it's coming out April 24, wasn't it supposed to be in March? Did it get delayed again?

9:45 - "2008 in Comedy" - I think I spoke too soon when I said "2008 in Romance" was the most ridiculous montage ever. What is this shit? Are these bits the "big secret surprises" the Oscar producers were hinting at for this year?

9:47 - Best live action short film: “Spielzeugland (Toyland)”

9:56 - As cute as Amanda Seyfried is all Marlena Deitriched up, I am so over montages both movie and musical. This needed to be a tight minute and a half, not a bloated five minutes. Oh, god, my beloved Baz Luhrmann was responsible for that dreck? Ouch.

10:05 - What a motley crew of presenters. Alan Alda, Cuba Gooding Jr, Christopher Walken, Joel Grey? Man, this just reminds me that Robert Downey Jr. so would have won for best actor had The Soloist not been bumped to '09. Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” Like it was ever gonna go any other way. Well done. Whoah, close ups on Brad Pitt and Adrien Brody with teary eyes during Heath's dad's speech. Wow, RDJ, too. Heath's sister is talking, Angelina's crying. Wow.

10:15 - Bill Maher presenting documentary: "Thank you very much, everyone's crying and now I have to go on." Best documentary feature: “Man on Wire” Oh god that dude just did a coin trick, then balanced his Oscar on his chin.

10:18 - Best documentary short subject: “Smile Pinki”

10:28 - Achievement in visual effects: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Would have been nice to see Iron Man get some love, but for all of Benjamin Button's flaws, I have to admit the visuals were amazing.

10:29 - Achievement in sound editing: “The Dark Knight” Hm. I think Wall-E still deserved it more.

10:30 - The smaller prizes are almost dispatched of, meaning the night can finally start heating up. Achievement in sound mixing: “Slumdog Millionaire” What, you thought Wanted was gonna get it? Oh wow, I think this guy is gonna have a panic attack right here on stage. Cut to Jennifer Aniston and a very douchey looking John Mayer...what is up with that creepy thin mustache? Ew.

10:35 - Achievement in film editing: “Slumdog Millionaire” What a haul for the underDog so far! Thought Button would get it, happy to be wrong.

10:37 - What in the...are they really playing out to commercial using Aimee Mann's "Momentum"? Random! I mean, awesome, I love that song, it's giving me flashbacks to 2002 when I was way into Aimee Mann, and sure, it's a movie song (from the Magnolia soundtrack), but still...random!

10:42 - Oh, hey, it's the In Memorium segment...wait, Jerry Lewis isn't dead yet? Oh. Nevermind. Wow, I am going to hell for saying this, but Jerry looks terrible. I feel like he and Dick Clark are on this horrible race to the grave. Speaking of unnecessarily morbid observations, over at DHD, Nikki Finke has declared: "The show has been on for 2 hours now. I've officially lost the will to live."

10:54 - Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): “Slumdog Millionaire”

10:56 - Still weird Springsteen didn't get a nod for Wrestler for best song. Wait, what the shit is this - are they really performing the Wall-E song as a mashup of gospel and Bollywood? What? What in the hell? Oh cripes. What now, they're mashup up Jai Ho and Down to Earth? Oh god this is making my ears bleed. That was a hotass mess.

11:01 - Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): “Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar Gotta admit that song is catchy.

11:07 - I love Freida Pinto's dress. Best foreign language film of the year: “Departures”

11:11 - Queen Latifah singing "I'll Be Seeing You" over the In Memoriam montage is so, so very wrong.

11:19 - Here we go, time for the heavy hardware. Wow, Reese Witherspoon's dress is ugly...it looks kind of like Kate Winslet's, but ugly.

11:21 - That is some crazy loud applause for all the nominees. Achievement in directing: “Slumdog Millionaire” Hell yeah. Hope this isn't one of those nights where one movie (Slumdog) gets everything but something else (Milk?) gets the big prize, that would make me sad.

11:29 - Performance by an actress in a leading role: Kate Winslet in “The Reader” YES!!!!! YES!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

11:35 - What a lovely speech by a lovely actress. Unbelievable. She looked lovely, from her chic coiffed hair to her sparkly bracelet to her unusual and stunning dress.

11:43 - Wait, I love Adrian Brody, but why of all things is he talking about Google? And hey, random, Robert Pattinson and Tina Fey are sitting behind Mickey Rourke. Performance by an actor in a leading role: Sean Penn in “Milk” Holy shit check that out, it's the only real surprise of the night. Eh, I wasn't impressed by his performance, plus I was looking forward to a weirdo Rourke speech. Penn says: "You commie-loving homo sons of guns." "I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me...often."

11:49 - Here we go...

11:51 - It's kind of neat how they're interspersing complimentary older movie clips with the current nominees. it's the first "fancy" "new" think they've tried that actually makes sense.

11:53 - Best motion picture of the year: “Slumdog Millionaire” !!!!!!! Proof of a just god.

So we come to the end. An Oscars with very few surprises, to be sure, but I'll take a predictable Oscars where something like Slumdog sweeps over a surprising Oscars where dreck like Crash wins. Here's hoping next year combines unpredictability with deserving wins. Watchmen, anyone?

Best Films of 2008: My Picks

In a few hours, the Academy will crown their pick for the best film of 2008. And while I agree with some of their nominees (Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, The Reader), it seems like most of my favorite films didn’t even make the shortlist. Which isn’t surprising since my taste runs slightly off the main stream. So here are my favorite films of 2008.

#10: The Wrestler
Honestly, I was on the fence with this movie, but the ending is what pushed it into a favorite for me. Had it ended any other way, it would have been an overly sentimental piece of schmaltz. But the end is just perfect.

#9: Rachel Getting Married
Like The Wrestler, this movie to me is like the cinematic equivalent of a short story. Small but powerful.

#8: Repo! The Genetic Opera
There’s something about this I just love, tuneful and anarchic. Go rent the DVD now if you haven’t already seen it.

#7: Australia
This one got drubbed by the critics but I don’t care, it’s sweeping and romantic and lovely.

#6: Funny Games
Another movie that didn’t get the credit it deserved, an unsettling mix of A Clockwork Orange and The Strangers.

#5: Frost/Nixon
Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are wonderful in this. I feel like every wannabe journo should put this DVD next to their copy of All the President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein.

#4: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
This Romanian film is very savvy in what it shows and what it doesn’t show. The most harrowing parts take place off screen, but that absence makes the horror more sharply felt. This is an important film, worth hunting down on DVD.

#3: Iron Man
The hell with The Dark Knight, this was the best superhero film of the year.

#2: Slumdog Millionaire
Sweet and sharp, a feel-good movie that isn’t afraid to kick you in the teeth a few times before giving you a happy ending.

#1: Cloverfield
This movie is not just my favorite of 2008, it’s one of my Top 5 of all time. Cloverfield doesn’t reinvent any wheels, just takes the wheels and makes them awesome.

Films that just missed my Top 10: The Reader, Blindness, Tropic Thunder, Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Charlie Bartlett, Wall-E, The Air I Breathe

And, to spread the love to my favorite movie genre, my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2008 are: Cloverfield, Funny Games, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Diary of the Dead, One Missed Call, Quarantine, Splinter, Mirrors, The Strangers, and The Eye

Okay, enough pre-show festivities. Tune back in at 8:30 for the Oscars liveblog!

2009 Oscar Predictions

Here are my predictions for the 2009 Oscars:

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon”
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”

Should Win: Frank Langella’s turn as Nixon was pitch perfect, sympathetic and intriguing.
Will Win: Mickey Rourke is pretty much a lock….Sean Penn could win in an upset but smart money is on Mickey.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Josh Brolin in “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road”

Should Win: Michael Shannon’s live-wire Revolutionary Road performance was mesmerizing, one of the best on-screen performances I’ve seen in a while.
Will Win: Heath Ledger

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie in “Changeling”
Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”

Should Win: Kate Winslet. Anne Hathaway’s turn in Rachel was great, but this is Kate’s year.
Will Win: Kate Winslet

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Amy Adams in “Doubt”
Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”

Should Win: Viola Davis
Will Win: This is tough...I see this going to either Marisa or Penélope. I think I’ll go with Penélope Cruz.

Best animated feature film of the year

“Bolt”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“WALL-E”

Should Win: WALL-E
Will Win: WALL-E

Achievement in art direction

“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Duchess”
“Revolutionary Road”

Should Win: Revolutionary Road
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Achievement in cinematography

“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement in costume design

“Australia”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Duchess”
“Milk”
“Revolutionary Road”

Should Win: The Duchess
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Achievement in directing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Best documentary feature

“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)”
“Encounters at the End of the World”
“The Garden”
“Man on Wire”
“Trouble the Water”

Should Win: n/a, haven’t seen any of them myself.
Will Win: Man on Wire seems to be favored.

Best documentary short subject

“The Conscience of Nhem En”
“The Final Inch”
“Smile Pinki”
“The Witness - From the Balcony of Room 306”

Should Win: n/a, haven’t seen any of them myself.
Will Win: The Witness - From the Balcony of Room 306

Achievement in film editing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best foreign language film of the year

“The Baader Meinhof Complex”
“The Class”
“Departures”
“Revanche”
“Waltz with Bashir”

Should Win: n/a, haven’t seen any of them myself.
Will Win: Waltz with Bashir

Achievement in makeup

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Hellboy II: The Golden Army”

Should Win: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Will Win: The Dark Knight

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Defiance”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E” (Walt Disney), Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam

Should Win: Jai Ho
Will Win: Jai Ho

Best animated short film

“La Maison en Petits Cubes”
“Lavatory - Lovestory”
“Oktapodi”
“Presto”
“This Way Up”

Should Win: Presto
Will Win: Presto

Best live action short film

“Auf der Strecke (On the Line)”
“Manon on the Asphalt”
“New Boy”
“The Pig”
“Spielzeugland (Toyland)”

Should Win: n/a
Will Win: “The Pig”

Achievement in sound editing

“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Should Win: WALL-E
Will Win: Iron Man might get this as the consolation prize for getting shut out of everything else.

Achievement in sound mixing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Should Win: WALL-E
Will Win: WALL-E

Achievement in visual effects

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”

Should Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Will Win: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, though Iron Man might get it in an upset.

Adapted screenplay

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Doubt”
“Frost/Nixon”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire

Original screenplay

“Frozen River”
“Happy-Go-Lucky”
“In Bruges”
“Milk”
“WALL-E”

Should Win: Frozen River
Will Win: Milk

Best motion picture of the year

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Should Win: Slumdog Millionaire, hands down, though Frost/Nixon is a close favorite
Will Win: I feel like this is Slumdog’s award to lose.

You can find reviews of most of the nominated movies here. Check back later for a live Oscar blog, and my own picks for the best movies of 2008.

Edit: 11:58pm - now that the winners are in, here's my tally:
I correctly predicted: Performance by an actress in a supporting role: Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, Original screenplay: “Milk”, Adapted screenplay: “Slumdog Millionaire”, Best animated feature film of the year: “WALL-E”, Achievement in art direction: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Achievement in cinematography: “Slumdog Millionaire”, Performance by an actor in a supporting role: Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”, Best documentary feature: “Man on Wire”, Achievement in visual effects: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score): “Slumdog Millionaire”, Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song): “Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar, Achievement in directing: “Slumdog Millionaire”, Performance by an actress in a leading role: Kate Winslet in “The Reader”, Best motion picture of the year: “Slumdog Millionaire”

I incorrectly predicted: Best animated short film, Achievement in costume design, Achievement in makeup, Best live action short film, Best documentary short subject, Achievement in sound editing, Achievement in sound mixing, Achievement in film editing, Best foreign language film of the year, Performance by an actor in a leading role

So that's 14 right and 10 wrong.

Movies: The Reader and The Visitor

Okay, did a last bit of Oscar catching up this weekend and caught The Reader and The Visitor, so now I’m officially awards ready.

The Reader is a fantastic film. As Hanna Schmitz, Kate Winslet gives a phenomenal, nuanced performance that has well earned her an Oscar nomination and hopefully a win later tonight. But credit should also be given to David Kross and Ralph Fiennes for their portrayals of Michael Berg young and old. The film is largely single-minded, sticking close to the narrative of Michael and Hanna as they reconcile their own pasts and passions, but the narrow focus allows for great exploration of the larger historical issues of the Holocaust. This is a beautiful, complicated film that offers no easy answers, a film that will stay with you long after you’ve left the theatre.

Then there’s The Visitor. I see now why Richard Jenkins was nominated for his performance as a recent widower trying to reconnect with life, though I’m not sure his performance was quite strong enough to win. The Visitor is a sweet little indie drama that also wrestles with difficult questions – not as difficult as The Reader, mind, but immigration debates are certainly timely at the moment. The Visitor follows the standard indie template where lessons are learned and everyone walks away a little sadder but wiser. It’s worth seeing but not a must see by any means.

And now I’m finally ready to make my Oscar predictions. The show is shaping up to be interesting if the pre-show chatter is any indication – at this very moment E! is forcing all of their employees to do the Bollywood dance number from Slumdog Millionaire...

Goodnight, Sweet Carrot-Topped Prince

Last night marked the end of an era – the last Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Oh, sure, soon enough you’ll be able to catch Conebone in Jay Leno’s old spot, but you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s going to be anything like the old Conan we knew and loved.

I admit, I have strayed. I recently shifted my fealty from Conan to Craig Ferguson. But I spent most of my high school years watching Conan, Andy, the PimpBot, Masturbating Bear, and the rest of the Late Night crew. I even remember playing hooky from school to catch tapings a few times. And while I found the show a little toothless in recent years – to be honest, it was never the same for me after Andy Richter left – I’m still sad that the era is over.

So how was the last show anyway? Pretty good, as it turns out. Andy dropped by, and Conan made some sappy speeches but also kept the funny going with a hilarious bit on people who play 1800s-style baseball. It was a great send-off for a scrappy little show. And now, you can watch Jimmy Fallon in Conan’s old spot. Or, you know, just watch Craig Ferguson dammit.

Movies: Friday the 13th

As you might have guessed, I take horror movies pretty seriously. I grew up watching the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series and all the other cheesy 80s slashers like Sleepaway Camp and Slumber Party Massacre. While nowadays I prefer psychological/supernatural horror flicks and zombie flicks, cheesy slashers will always hold a special place in my heart. Which is why I was apprehensive when I heard Michael Bay was re-making Friday the 13th. I wasn’t big into Transformers when I was a kid – my 80s baby memories are more defined by My Little Pony and She-Ra – so I wasn’t devastated the way some of my guy friends were by his hulking, messy crapheap of a movie adaptation. But Friday the 13th is something you just don’t mess with as far as I’m concerned. My friends and I even took a road trip one dark night to the Boy Scout camp that served as the filming location for the first movie. Which is why I’m relieved to say that the new Friday the 13th not only assuaged all my fears – it wildly exceeded all of my expectations.

Part reboot, part sequel, Friday the 13th dives right into the hack-and-slash terror with little preamble, which is exactly what you need for a movie like this. One group of unlucky campers is served up and sliced before the opening credits, after which a second set of campers rolls in and, well, you can guess what happens next.

This movie doesn’t reinvent the slasher wheel, it just freshens it up. Jason still plods along, dispatching pretty young things left and right. But there are several improvements on the 80s model. Director Marcus Nispel keeps the action tight with few narrative lags, and even when you know a kill is coming up, he keeps the tension going. And writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have delivered a crackling screenplay, filled with hilarious and true-feeling dialogue that will finally allow you to watch a slasher flick and cringe only at the copious amounts of blood, not the corny conversation. It’s well-acted, too. Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, and Amanda Righetti do a good job of carrying the movie, while Aaron Yoo and Arlen Escarpeta provide some great moments of comic relief.

You don’t have to be a Friday the 13th fanatic to enjoy the movie, it gives newcomers a quick nutshell summary close to the beginning, but if you are a fan of the older movies you’ll be pleased to spot several references to the first few installments. You know, the good ones, before Jason went to Manhattan and Hell and faced off against Freddie. If you’re only going to see one remake of an 80s slasher film this month, Friday the 13th is definitely the hands-down winner over My Bloody Valentine.

Awards Season: BAFTA 2009

So awards show season rolls on, and no, I’m not talking about the Grammys, because come on – Coldplay? Seriously? Viva La Vida is such crap. This awesome Obama/Christian Bale mashup is so much better than anything that’s been nominated for a Grammy this year. No, I’m talking about the BAFTAs, the British version of the Academy Awards.

I didn’t watch the whole thing – I spend about eight hours a day watching television at my job, which means I don’t have the attention span to watch much at home. I haven’t even made it through the premier of Lost, fercrapsakes. But the parts of the BAFTAs I did catch made me happy. Namely, Slumdog Millionaire sweeping the hell out of the night. That movie deserves every award heaped upon it and more.

Mickey Rourke won for The Wrestler, and this time he didn’t thank his dogs. Will this give him the Oscar edge? Sean Penn snagged the SAG, but Rourke got the Globe and the BAFTA. I still think it’s the category to watch, it could go to Richard Jenkins or Frank Langella in an upset. But at this point, smart money does point towards Rourke. You can see the rest of the BAFTA winners here.

All this awards madness does remind me what a wasteland the beginning of the year is for movies. Sure, next week we get the Michael Bay Friday the 13th, which may be terribly awesome or awesomely terrible. But what else? Even if I had enough free time to go to the movies right now, there’s not much I’d want to see. Confessions of a Shopaholic looks harmless enough, but it’s gonna tank because no one wants to see a generic romcom about overspending and credit card crises in this economy. And He’s Just Not That Into You has a stellar cast, but there are too many characters to balance screentime that I can’t imagine it’s that coherent a film. So if Watchmen doesn’t keep its March 6th release date, then I don’t foresee anything aside from Friday the 13th and The Reader dragging me out to the theatre any time soon.

But hey, if you’re feeling left out of the awards buzz because you didn’t see any of the nominated films, and if you have an ass of steel and can sit for twelve straight hours, then AMC theatres will give you the chance to see the five Best Picture nominees all in one day. Five movies for $30 is a pretty good deal, though your post-marathon chiropractic co-pay might null out the savings.

Not Going Gentle Into That Good Broadcasting Night

My favorite shows have a tendency to die early deaths. Some linger in the limbo of unresolved cliffhangers (Popular, Dark Angel), some get resolution in other forms of media (Angel’s comic book continuation, Firefly’s big screen outing Serenity, the upcoming Dead Like Me straight-to-DVD movie), and some are given the chance to write a satisfying finale episode before they’re yanked off the air (Birds of Prey, The O.C.). Almost all of them, however, get cancelled before they get to tell all the stories they wanted to. So if one of my favorite shows gets a miracle new lease on life via another network, I should be happy, right? So why can I barely bring myself to watch Scrubs in its final season on ABC?

It’s not just being too lazy to switch my Tivo from the NBC version to the ABC version. I did watch two of the first episodes this season. At least I think I did. They had the little ABC watermark on the bottom right so I assumed they were new, but I couldn’t help feeling like I’d seen the episodes before. After eight years watching these characters, I have to admit I’ve kind of grown tired of J.D. and Turk being manchildren, Elliot being a neurotic mess, Dr. Cox’s funny, angry rants. Every joke hit the same beat we’ve seen over and over, and the overarching moral “lesson” wasn’t fresh either. It’s become the kind of diluted, hacky tripe I’ve come to expect from sitcoms gone long in the tooth like Two and a Half Men, the difference being Two and a Half Men was never funny, while Scrubs, in my opinion, was pretty sharp in its first few seasons. There’s definitely something to be said about making a graceful exit. Those shows cut down in their prime will live fondly on in my memory, while Scrubs – which I once loved quite a bit – now feels like a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome.

Movies: Frost/Nixon, Benjamin Button, and The Wrestler

It’s the time of the year when all would-be Oscar pundits have to try and catch up with the end-of-the-year glut of prestige pics, and I’m no different. I’ve even sacrificed seeing The Unborn, which is normally the kind of cheesy horror flick I’d be all over, in order to get Oscar prepped. I’m excited to finally be in on the awards loop. When I was in college, I kept up with television because I could watch it at 3 a.m. while working on papers, and I kept up with literature because that was my major, but I fell behind in movies because taking three or four hours off to go see something in the theatre just wasn’t an option. Last year when I watched the Oscars, for example, the only nominated movies I’d seen were Enchanted and Juno. Of course, it would be easier to get caught up if most of the nominated films hadn’t been released in the past month, but the NYT’s David Carr addresses that better than I ever could. At any rate, here’s my take on a few of the newly-anointed Must Sees.

Frost/Nixon
Of the two Broadway-to-film adaptations of the year, Frost/Nixon is my clear favorite. In fact, it’s one of my favorite films of 2008, hands down. Anyone who has read All the President’s Men already knows that the journalistic digging of Woodward and Bernstein was the most interesting facet of the whole Watergate case, and Frost/Nixon now provides an excellent companion piece for any aspiring journo. Frank Langella and Michael Sheen are perfect as Richard Nixon and David Frost, their rat-a-tat back and forths provide some of the most exciting on-screen scenes I’ve seen in years, and they’re surrounded by a talented supporting cast that provide a few moments of levity. This is a sharp, smart movie, and I truly hope it gets some kind of reward on Oscar night.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
This movie, on the other hand, disappointed greatly. It’s shot beautifully, has many warm and wonderful moments, and is mostly well acted, but there are two glaring problems that kept it from fully gelling for me. First is the framing technique of a present day narrative with Cate Blanchett’s character on her deathbed in the midst of Hurricane Katrina, reflecting on Benjamin’s life story, which serves as the bulk of the movie proper. The present day narrative does nothing to add to the main story, and in fact served only to pull me out of the story every time I started to get sucked in. The other problem is the title character. If you take away the fact that he’s aging in reverse, Benjamin Button is really dull as hell. He’s reactive, not proactive, mostly bouncing around wherever life takes him. He has no truly shining moments where he does something spectacular or interesting, aside from aging backwards. Brad Pitt’s performance is pretty lackluster, too, a little deadpan and a lot dead-around-the-eyes. Every other character and actor/actress in the movie dazzles, there are fine performances all around, but without anything to really play off of with such a dull central character, the whole thing falls flat.

The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke gives a great performance in what is a really good movie. The best movie of the year, no, but better than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Milk, both of which got nods for picture of the year. Director Darren Aronofsky would have done well to tighten the first act up a bit, but by act two it really starts rolling and culminates in a surprising, moving third act. I really like that the movie doesn’t go for the typical schmaltz that comeback/underdog films usually go for – this is a movie that will stay with you for a while after the credits roll. Although I do feel compelled to say that I grew up in the town next to the town where most of this movie was set and shot, and believe me, that area of New Jersey is nowhere near as depressing as The Wrestler makes it out to be. Seriously.

2009 Oscar Nominations

The 2009 Oscar nominations are in! Not a ton of surprises across the board, but there are a few.

Performance by an actor in a leading role

Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor”
Frank Langella in “Frost/Nixon”
Sean Penn in “Milk”
Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”

+I would have preferred Leo for Revolutionary Road instead of Brad Pitt, but this will be an interesting category to watch.

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

Josh Brolin in “Milk”
Robert Downey Jr. in “Tropic Thunder”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt”
Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight”
Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road”

+The Robert Downey Jr. Tropic Thunder nomination is proof that he would have been a clinch for The Soloist had they not bumped it to this year. I'm glad Michael Shannon was recognized for his fantastic performance. And of course it's poingnant that Heath Ledger was nominated on the anniversary of his death.

Performance by an actress in a leading role

Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married”
Angelina Jolie in “Changeling”
Melissa Leo in “Frozen River”
Meryl Streep in “Doubt”
Kate Winslet in “The Reader”

+Interesting, the Academy voters apparently overrode Winslet's positioning for Supporting for The Reader and put her in for Leading, which knocked out a Revolutionary Road nom for her. This might improve her chances for a win, though, as voters won't have to split their votes for her between two categories.

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

Amy Adams in “Doubt”
Penélope Cruz in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Viola Davis in “Doubt”
Taraji P. Henson in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
Marisa Tomei in “The Wrestler”

+I would love to see Viola Davis get this.

Best animated feature film of the year

“Bolt”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“WALL-E”

+Again, the dog and the panda don't have a prayer.

Achievement in art direction

“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Duchess”
“Revolutionary Road”

Achievement in cinematography

“Changeling”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Achievement in costume design

“Australia”
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Duchess”
“Milk”
“Revolutionary Road”

Achievement in directing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Best documentary feature

“The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)”
“Encounters at the End of the World”
“The Garden”
“Man on Wire”
“Trouble the Water”

Best documentary short subject

“The Conscience of Nhem En”
“The Final Inch”
“Smile Pinki”
“The Witness - From the Balcony of Room 306”

Achievement in film editing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Best foreign language film of the year

“The Baader Meinhof Complex”
“The Class”
“Departures”
“Revanche”
“Waltz with Bashir”

Achievement in makeup

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Hellboy II: The Golden Army”

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Defiance”
“Milk”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)

“Down to Earth” from “WALL-E” (Walt Disney), Music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, Lyric by Peter Gabriel
“Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Gulzar
“O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire” (Fox Searchlight), Music and Lyric by A.R. Rahman andMaya Arulpragasam

Best motion picture of the year

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Frost/Nixon”
“Milk”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

+After the Golden Globes sweep, Slumdog's sitting pretty, making Frost/Nixon the real underdog.

Best animated short film

“La Maison en Petits Cubes”
“Lavatory - Lovestory”
“Oktapodi”
“Presto”
“This Way Up”

Best live action short film

“Auf der Strecke (On the Line)”
“Manon on the Asphalt”
“New Boy”
“The Pig”
“Spielzeugland (Toyland)”

Achievement in sound editing

“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Achievement in sound mixing

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Slumdog Millionaire”
“WALL-E”
“Wanted”

Achievement in visual effects

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“The Dark Knight”
“Iron Man”

Adapted screenplay

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
“Doubt”
“Frost/Nixon”
“The Reader”
“Slumdog Millionaire”

Original screenplay

“Frozen River”
“Happy-Go-Lucky”
“In Bruges”
“Milk”
“WALL-E”

The awards ceremony will air on Sunday, February 22, 2009, which gives you just about a month to try and see all the movies you missed in the end-of-the-year cinema glut.

Movies: My Bloody Valentine 3D

There’s no shortage of scary movies getting released this January and February, which is why horror junkies should feel safe skipping My Bloody Valentine 3D and getting their fix elsewhere. Horror movies don’t necessarily have to include a thrillingly original plot, as long as there is some coherency and lots of nail-biting moments. This movie has neither.

The movie opens with newspaper clippings and faux-news voiceovers giving the scant background of the story (a mine explosion trapped six miners in a shaft, one - Harry Warden - went crazy and pickaxed the other five to conserve air before falling into a coma), then it goes right into Warden waking from his year-long coma and going on a cross-town massacre that takes up probably the first twenty minutes of the movie, ending when Warden is gunned down right before he tries to kill Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), the guy responsible for the mine explosion in the first place. Cut to ten years later, Hanniger is back in town for the first time in a decade, and Warden is back from the dead and killing again...or is he?

My Bloody Valentine is the kind of slasher flick they don’t make anymore – but that might not be a bad thing. I say this as someone who grew up watching the 80s slashers, owns the Sleepaway Camp DVD boxset, and can’t wait to see how badly Michael Bay messes up Friday the 13th next month. When slasher movies were exciting and new, audiences seemed more inclined to handwave the less coherent plot machinations. But now that we’re used to more refined psychological components to our scares, having a spooky psycho killer with hazy motivations just doesn’t cut it.

The characters are wooden and the acting is uneven. While Jensen Ackles and Jaime King do a fine enough job with their roles, Kerr Smith, best known as Jen’s gay BFF on Dawson’s Creek, turns in a completely unsympathetic performance, which would be fine if his character didn’t get a third of the screentime. Don’t look for imaginative deaths, either – the killer sticks with his trusty pickaxe the whole time, which doesn’t make for much variety. And when faced with several choices for who the identity of the killer would be, the producers went with the least interesting option, leading to an anticlimactic ending.

The film could have been a campy treat if it didn’t take itself so seriously. The scene where the killer hacks up first a little person (played by Selene Luna, Margaret Cho’s personal assistant) and then a naked girl who is cursing a blue streak could have been a cheesy highlight in a film that embraced its camp value. But My Bloody Valentine positions itself as serious horror, and it really, truly isn’t. The original version was not a cinematic masterpiece, either, but at least its plot was coherent.

I should say, the theatre I saw My Bloody Valentine at was not equipped to do 3D, so I missed out on what I’m sure would have been several cool moments of severed jaws flying at my head and a pickaxe swinging towards my face, things that might have marginally improved my enjoyment of the film. But those are ultimately fun little tricks that can’t replace a well-made and entertaining movie. To be worth your money, a movie must be able to stand alone as a 2D experience as well as a 3D one. Unfortunately, My Bloody Valentine does not stand alone, and is not worth your money.

Worst Movies of 2008

Okay, I wanted to have this up earlier in the week, but then a plane crashed a couple hundred feet away from where I was working and I had to do the Media Thing of helping to cover it, which oddly enough doesn’t leave much time for mocking dreadful movies. But that’s what the weekend is for! As long as a plane doesn’t actually drop on my house as I'm writing this I should be okay.

So these are my picks for the worst movies of 2008, but with a caveat: no one is paying me to go see movies and review them (yet), I am under no obligation to see any particular movie and won’t part with much cash to see an obvious piece of crap if I can avoid it. So while I’m sure The Love Guru would have made the list had I seen it, I didn’t. Because that movie looks just terrible. So these may not be the definitively worst movies the year had to offer, but they were certainly a waste of my time, and if you’re a Netflixer, then maybe I can keep them from being a waste of yours, too.

10) The Ruins – This one wasn’t offensively bad, it was just bland. The characters were interchangeable, the horror was toothless. There was potential for a pretty good movie here that was mostly squandered with unimaginative direction.

9) 27 Dresses – Again, there was nothing offensive about this movie, but I literally cannot think of one single reason to recommend anyone sitting through it.

8) Sex and the City – I went into more detail about how this film fell flat in my review, but this is definitely one TV series that should have stuck with the high note it ended on instead of dragging its desiccated carcass onto the movie screen.

7) Jumper – Proof that a cool-looking trailer does not always translate into a cool movie. I still don’t understand why they felt the need to use two sets of actors and actresses for the older and younger characters when the age difference was something like five years. Incomprehensible plot, unimpressive action. Cool trailer, though.

6) Vantage Point – This was like eight different movies in one, and none of them any good.

5) Prom Night – No tension, no horror, no reason to waste your time on this remake-in-name-only.

4) Untraceable – Convoluted for the sake of being convoluted and boring as hell.

3) Made of Honor – A romantic comedy that’s neither romantic or comedic. Michelle Monaghan deserves better material than this.

2) The Happening – A couple years ago, I was on a cross-country flight when both my iPod and laptop ran out of juice, so I decided to watch the in-flight movie, The Lady in the Water. It was so terrible that I unplugged my headphones after thirty minutes and spent the rest of the flight staring into space. I thought that would be the worst movie M. Night Shyamalan could ever make. Let the record show that 2008 was the year he proved me wrong on that account.

1) Doomsday – I was nearly apoplectic with rage after sitting through this flaming pile of dross, because there was so much potential here. I love post-apocalyptic movies, I love plague stories, it looked like it would be amazing. And it starts out pretty well, until it suddenly veers off into bizarroland. No plausible explanation is given for why the isolated population of a country nigh overrun by cattle decided to go cannibalistic, or why the other half of the population is Medieval Fun Times With Malcolm McDowell. It was like the filmmakers couldn’t decide what kind of film they wanted to make, so they decided to make them all and, like Vantage Point, made none of them well.

If no movie I see in 2009 is even half as bad as The Happening or Doomsday, then I’ll give this year a solid win over the one that just passed, I swear.

Aggregation Goes Ass Backwards

We’ve only just successfully lured the Greatest Generation onto the internet, enabling grandma to throw a sheep at you any time she wants. There are finally enough reliable aggregation sources that we need only hit a few sites to get a good overview of the news each day. Life 2.0 is nicely streamlined and in sync with technology. Which is why you have to applaud a visionary like Joshua Karp for wanting to take a great leap backwards!

Wired’s “New Media Venture Turns Bloggers Into Print Journalists” tells the tale of an entrepreneur who is launching a twice-daily print version of blogs:

“Why hasn’t anyone tried to take the best content and bring it offline?” said Karp, who thinks print media is far from dying.

Hate to break it to you, Karp, but taking something from the web and turning it into print is hardly a revolutionary idea, and rarely a lucrative one.

Unlike other End of Nighers, I don’t think print media is completely doomed, not necessarily anyway. But the march towards digitalization will continue, and reversing the successful web aggregation formula for print? Well, were I the kind of person prone to posting pictures with humorous text overlays, I’d show you one that implies they are not going about this in the right way. But I’m not that kind of person, so you’ll just have to wait until you can pick up a copy of The Printed Blog on your morning commute.

2009 Golden Globe Awards

It's time! West Coasties, beware of spoilers. Feed readers, go to the blog itself for further updates.

7:58 - Best thing about the E! red carpet show was Ryan and the other woman being constantly rebuffed by Brad and Angelina.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

AMY ADAMS – DOUBT
PENELOPE CRUZ – VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
VIOLA DAVIS –DOUBT
MARISA TOMEI – THE WRESTLER
KATE WINSLET – THE READER

Awesome. Think this means she won't get it for Revolutionary Road? Or will she snag two awards tonight?

BEST ORIGINAL SONG – MOTION PICTURE

“DOWN TO EARTH” — WALL-E
Music by: Peter Gabriel, Thomas Newman
Lyrics by: Peter Gabriel
“GRAN TORINO” — GRAN TORINO
Music by: Clint Eastwood, Jamie Cullum, Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
Lyrics by: Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
“I THOUGHT I LOST YOU” — BOLT
Music & Lyrics by: Miley Cyrus, Jeffrey Steele
“ONCE IN A LIFETIME” — CADILLAC RECORDS
Music & Lyrics by: Beyoncé Knowles, Amanda Ghost, Scott McFarnon, Ian Dench, James Dring, Jody Street
“THE WRESTLER” — THE WRESTLER
Music & Lyrics by: Bruce Springsteen

I still say Repo! The Genetic Opera deserved a nod in this category.

8:14 - Yikes, what kind of push up bra is Eva Longoria wearing? Those puppies are racked up to her clavicle.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother
Denis Leary, Recount
Jeremy Piven, Entourage
Blair Underwood, In Treatment
Tom Wilkinson, John Adams

I cannot agree with any award that Neil Patrick Harris does not win.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Eileen Atkins, Cranford
Laura Dern, Recount
Melissa George, In Treatment
Rachel Griffiths, Brothers & Sisters
Dianne Wiest, In Treatment

Interesting. Atkins got the Emmy in September.

8:25 - Local news teaser: "A woman dies after a wild sexcapade in a hotel, after the Globes."

ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES, DRAMA

Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Hugh Laurie, House
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, The Tudors

No love for Hugh. Sad. He had a really stong year, too.

ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES, DRAMA

Sally Field, Brothers & Sisters
Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
January Jones, Mad Men
Anna Paquin, True Blood
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer

Huh! That is surprising. I haven't watched True Blood yet, actually. I have all the eps on my Tivo, I just haven't had a spare 12 hours to watch them. I think Mariska Hargitay had a really, really strong season on SVU last year, but she's already gotten Emmys et al for this role, it's nice to see some fresh Blood in there.

8:33 - Oh god, why did they have a shot of Tom Cruise touching Leonardo DiCaprio? Leo isn't a Scientologist, is he? That would break my heart.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

BOLT
KUNG FU PANDA
WALL-E

Yes, yes. Also, water is wet, the sun is bright, and you're an idiot if you thought this was gonna go any other way.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

REBECCA HALL – VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA
SALLY HAWKINS – HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
FRANCES MCDORMAND – BURN AFTER READING
MERYL STREEP – MAMMA MIA!
EMMA THOMPSON – LAST CHANCE HARVEY

I somehow managed to see none of these movies. Luckily this won't be an issue come Oscar time because I doubt many of these will even snag noms! Because lord knows the Academy hates to laugh or sing these days.

8:50 - Commercial for Confessions of a Shopaholic. Man, now THAT is a movie that is gonna be screwed due to external circumstances. Are people gonna line up to see a movie about frivolous shopping and credit card debt in this economy?

MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

A Raisin in the Sun
Bernard and Doris
Cranford
John Adams
Recount

The TV categories always serve to remind me that the Golden Globes are just the watered-down bastard hybrid of the Emmys and the Oscars. Yawn.

8:57 - If RDJ gets an Oscar nod, he'll get a haircut, right? Right?

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

TOM CRUISE – TROPIC THUNDER
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. –TROPIC THUNDER
RALPH FIENNES – THE DUCHESS
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN – DOUBT
HEATH LEDGER – THE DARK KNIGHT

Holy shit. Wow.

9:02 - Still can't believe Heath won. Day to day leading up to this I switched between "It's a gimme" and "He'll never get it." I think it helps that they stacked the category in his favor. I mean, Cruise and Downey were never gonna win, on account of the nature of their roles. PSH was fine in Doubt but not a firecracker like Heath. And Ralph was fine in The Duchess but nothing spectacular. Even if Heath hadn't passed away he might have gotten this one.

9:04 - "All these power players in one room! There's no scene like the Golden Globe Awards! We'll be right back!" Thanks, announcer guy, for reminding me how cheesy the Golden Globes are. I'd forgotten in your absence last year.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (GERMANY)
EVERLASTING MOMENTS (SWEDEN/DENMARK)
GOMORRAH (ITALY)
I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (FRANCE)
WALTZ WITH BASHIR (ISRAEL)

Cool. Ha, Colin Farrell announcing the award, and sniffling and snorting like a madman: "I still have a cold. It's not the other thing it used to be." Lord.

9:10 - I love Maggie Gyllenhaal's dress, she looks fantastic.

ACTRESS IN A MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Judi Dench, Cranford
Catherine Keener, An American Crime
Laura Linney, John Adams
Shirley MacLaine, Coco Chanel
Susan Sarandon, Bernard and Doris

BEST SCREENPLAY – MOTION PICTURE

SIMON BEAUFOY – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
DAVID HARE – THE READER
PETER MORGAN – FROST/NIXON
ERIC ROTH – THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN
JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY – DOUBT

Oh hell's yeah! Absolutely deserved. Absolutely.

9:22 - Amy Poehler and Patrick Dempsey presenting together? Did they pull names out of a hat or something? That is so random.

ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES, COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Steve Carell, The Office
Kevin Connolly, Entourage
David Duchovny, Californication
Tony Shalhoub, Monk

No big shock there. It was between him and Shalhoub. I was surprised Kevin Connolly was nominated. Good on Baldwin for thanking Tina Fey. That show would be nothing without Liz Lemon.

ACTOR IN A MINISERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Ralph Fiennes, Bernard and Doris
Paul Giamatti, John Adams
Kevin Spacey, Recount
Kiefer Sutherland, 24: Redemption
Tom Wilkinson, Recount

What, no love for the Kief?

9:35 - What the hell is Glenn Close wearing? Did she raid Prince's closet?

TELEVISION SERIES, COMEDY OR MUSICAL

30 Rock
Californication
Entourage
The Office
Weeds

Nice. I would have been happy with 30 Rock or Weeds or The Office. Tracy Morgan speechifying: "Tina and I agreed that if Obama won I'd do the speaking for the show from now on. I'm the face of post-racial America! Deal with it, Cate Blanchett!"

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – MOTION PICTURE

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT –THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
CLINT EASTWOOD – CHANGELING
JAMES NEWTON HOWARD – DEFIANCE
A. R. RAHMAN – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
HANS ZIMMER – FROST/NIXON

Again, well deserved. The score was a nice, tense mix of east and west.

ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES, COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Christina Applegate, Samantha Who?
America Ferrera, Ugly Betty
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Debra Messing, The Starter Wife
Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds

The reign of Fey continues. From her speech: "I know how lucky I am to have had the year I've had. And if you ever start to feel too good about yourself, they have this thing called the internet. There are a lot of people there who don't like you. I'm going to address some of them now. Babs in Lacrosse, you can suck it. DianeFan, you can suck it. And Cougar Fan, you can suck it, you've been after me all year."

10:08 - Wow. Spielberg's rambling, nattering speech almost put me to sleep.

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

DANNY BOYLE – SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE
STEPHEN DALDRY – THE READER
DAVID FINCHER – THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
RON HOWARD – FROST/NIXON
SAM MENDES – REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Totally called it. Though he might still get Best Picture, too. But I still think Benjamin Button might upset the streak in that category.

ACTOR, COMEDY OR MUSICAL

Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Colin Farrell, In Bruges
James Franco, Pineapple Express
Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges
Dustin Hoffman, Last Chance Harvey

Colin: "They must have done the counting in Florida!" Hey, timely joke, there, Col! Oh no, now he's "waxing lyrical" about love. He's drunk right now, isn't he?

10:30 - Sasha Baron Cohen joking about how the recession has affected celebs: “Even Madonna has had to get rid of one of her personal assistants. Our thoughts go out to you, Guy Ritchie.” The joke absolutely tanked. Tanked.

BEST MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

BURN AFTER READING
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
IN BRUGES
MAMMA MIA!
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

ANNE HATHAWAY – RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
ANGELINA JOLIE – CHANGELING
MERYL STREEP – DOUBT
KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS – I'VE LOVED YOU SO LONG (IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T’AIME)
KATE WINSLET – REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

Holy awesome hell that is fricking fantastic. Kate is an amazing actress and was wonderful in the movie. If she gets screwed at the Oscars again, I will choke someone. Kate, overwhelmed: "Anne, Meryl, Kristin...oh god, who's the other one? Angelina!" Later: "'Please wrap up.' Oh, you have no idea much I am not wrapping up. Okay. (Takes a deep breath.) Gather..." Cut away to Angelina giving major bitchface. Wow. Kate thanks Leo, Leo blows her a kiss, adorable. Oh god, she's crying, and now I want to cry, too. She is so lovely. So well deserved.

10:44 - Blake Lively and Rainn Wilson presenting, okay. Another odd pairing.

TELEVISION SERIES, DRAMA

Dexter
House
In Treatment
Mad Men
True Blood

ACTOR, DRAMA

Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Called that, too. Everyone loves a comeback. Oh shit, he just fell walking up the stairs. Damn, he couldn't take a minute to wash his hair before the awards? Gross. Also, I'm pretty sure I have the same sparkly scarf he's wearing. At least he didn't bring his chihuahua on stage with him. Did my audio just randomly cut out or did he spew an expletive that got beeped? Oh, now he's thanking his dogs. He thanked his dogs before he thanked Bruce Springsteen.

10:57 - Local news anchor: "Coming up, a sexcapade ends in death at a Park Avenue hotel." Okay, okay, we get it, good god.

10:59 - Here it is, the biggie. Cruise presenting.

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
FROST/NIXON
THE READER
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

Holy shit! What a sweep! That is awesome, awesome, awesome. It's a wonderful movie with great spirit and heart that is genuinely entertaining. It deserved every award it got. Ha, Danny Boyle just let loose some kind of bleeped expletive when he realized they were wrapping him up.

So that's it! I kind of didn't care about the TV awards, which were so anticlimactic after the Emmys in September. Sutrprisingly, I agreed with most of the movie wins.

The final tally for the movie categories:
Slumdog Millionaire: 4 (Screenplay, Score, Director, Best Picture)
The Wrestler: 2 (Song, Mickey Rourke)
The Reader: 1 (Kate Winslet)
Revolutionary Road: 1 (Kate Winslet)
Wall-E: 1 (Best Animated)
Happy-Go-Lucky: 1 (Sally Hawkins)
The Dark Knight: 1 (Heath Ledger)
Waltz With Bashir: 1 (Foreign)
In Bruges: 1 (Colin Farrell)
Vicky Christina Barcelona: 1 (Best Comedy/Musical)

Media Mashup: Eyeball Eaters, Bee Agitators, and the Real F-Word

Here are some Sunday afternoon links to kill some time before the Golden Globes:

A few years ago, a friend of mine was in an amateur production of Oedipus Rex that made such gleeful use of corn syrup blood and gelatin eyeballs that even my dangerously-desensitized-by-massive-exposure-to-horror-movies self was moments away from fleeing the auditorium in queasy horror. This? This is so much worse:

"Thomas said he pulled out his eye and subsequently ingested it," agency spokesman Jason Clark said Friday. [...] "He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one."

Oh, for the love of...did that actually need stating? I mean, really, the man who pulled his own eyeball from his head and ate it - twice - is mentally ill? Really? You don't say.

That story is almost as horrifying as this one: Tumor Found In Newborn's Brain Contained A Foot:

A pediatric neurosurgeon says a tumor he removed from the brain of a Colorado Springs infant contained a tiny foot and other partially formed body parts. [...] "It looked like the breech delivery of a baby, coming out of the brain," Grabb said.

Oh god. Oh god. OH DEAR GOD. Why, why, why do the interviewees with the least-writerly-jobs always feel the need to get extra imaginative in their quotes? Can't they find another way to unleash their creative side, like taking a pottery class or trolling on Digg or something? I'd normally have the urge to scrub my brain with bleach to eradicate that horrifying image, but now I also have the urge to mix in a little Gold Bond. Just, you know, in case.

Moving away from Things That Are Horrible into the land of Things That Are Awesome, you might remember David Thorne as the guy who tried to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider. He specializes - to use the word lightly - in engaging in protracted and hilarious e-mail exchanges with unlucky, unwitting souls, then posting the results to his too-cool-for-a-functional-splash-page website. Well, he's at it again, e-harassing a motorcycle salesman with typical motorcyclist concerns, like getting attacked by swarms of bees:

According to one [web]page though, bees are technically unable to fly due to their wings being too small for their body weight but I have seen them do it so this can't be true. Somebody should check the internet and make sure everything on there is correct.

Over at The Hathor Legacy, Jennifer Kesler wants to know whether intent matters when judging the sexism within a piece of media:

Not only are we not claiming to know the writer’s (or director’s, producer’s or network’s) intent when we criticize their product, but I would go one step further and argue that intent doesn’t matter.

And finally, Amy Siskind did a very interesting article for The Daily Beast that's well worth a read, How Feminism Became the F-Word:

Who is looking out for the women of this country? Well, I will tell you who is not: Ms. magazine.

If my friend's apartment has wireless internet that I can tap into, I'll try liveblogging the Golden Globes the way I did the Emmys, so check back in later tonight. And if that fails, well, coming up this week I'll be talking about Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, my best and worst movie picks for '08, and the new season of Scrubs.

Tropic Thunder Redux

I finally got around to watching my Tropic Thunder DVD this weekend. Sadly, upon second viewing the movie isn’t as hilarious as I remember. Some parts are still laugh-out-loud hilarious, of course, mostly the jokes that are character-based, but the overall impact is a little dulled. That’s always the risk with movies that rely a lot on outrageous gags for laughs, they don’t have a high repeat laugh quotient.

DreamWorks stuck an, um, interesting little surprise on the first disc. If you go to the main menu, click Special Features, click More, and click under the Previews on the thing that says DreamWorks Public Service Announcement, you’ll get to watch a minute and a half long PSA about people with intellectual disabilities, that says “People with intellectual disabilities deserve only one R word. Respect.” Alas, there is no PSA about not donning blackface, so they haven’t really covered all their bases as far as making reparations to the people they offended.

Also, the most popular Google search leading people to this blog is “Who played Rick Peck’s son in Tropic Thunder?” Like, at least a few people a day, every day, which – huh. Surprised that there are so many people out there caring, it’s such a throwaway bit in the movie. At any rate, I still don’t know the answer to that, just that he’s not really Ben Stiller’s nephew Carl but rather some unnamed actor. The cast commentary is not really enlightening on that front. Over the brief shot of the kid and McConaughey in the first act, Jack Black says, “Dude, that kid in the picture was the same one we used in the, uh, in the MTV short.” And Ben Stiller says, “Yes, we ended up using that kid in the MTV short because the kid was so good.” Then they go back to the commentary, which is amusing in some places, but mostly unsettling because Robert Downey Jr. chose to do the majority of it using his Lazarus voice and patois. Until the end, when he switches to the Australian accent. The man is a mad genius – and from day to day I vacillate between which half of that phrase to emphasize.

I still say the movie is worth seeing, and the extras are pretty good as far as these things go. And damn if Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson aren’t still the funniest freaking people to hit the screen in a long, long while.

Movies: Doubt

My favorite playwriting professor was fond of saying that in the theatre, the playwright is god. When compared to their Hollywood counterparts, the underpaid (compared to the director/talent) and underappreciated (compared to the key grip) screenwriters, this is certainly true. The playwright, after all, retains rights to their script forever and ever amen. This is the lone advantage of not having a union like the WGA backing you. So if you write a play (for example, Marsha Norman’s incomparable ‘night Mother), then some nutball amateur director wants to do something really out there with the setting (for example, changing the house to an ice floe), then you have the right to say no. Which, from what I hear, is precisely what Ms. Norman did. The playwright has the final say on everything. It’s an amazing kind of power to have – a power that, alas, seems to have gone to John Patrick Shanley’s head in creating the film adaptation of his Broadway play, Doubt.

The film, which is set in a Catholic school in the 1960s, concerns a priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a pair of nuns (Meryl Streep and Amy Adams), and the suspicion that the priest played a round of Knock the Pope’s Hat Off with an altar boy. No concrete evidence is given, of course, leaving plenty of room for Doubt. (Did that pun make you roll your eyes and groan? Then skip this movie. Trust me.) Hoffman and Streep give fine performances – when don’t they? Streep is especially effective as exactly the kind of scary nun my father remembers from his Catholic school days in Newark in the 1950s. He likes to say their school colors were black and blue. (It’s okay to groan at that one, too.) Amy Adams, usually so lovely, is a weak link. Her wide eyed, shivering innocence reads like they’ve stuffed Giselle, her Enchanted Disney-princess-in-real-life character, into a habit and shoved her onto the soundstage. Viola Davis as the mother of the maybe-maybe-not-molested boy is a real standout. If any character in the movie could have used more screentime, it’s hers, but alas, she retains the one allotted scene the character got in the stage version. In fact, hers is the sole character to not get the supersizing treatment on celluloid.

Shanley chose to both direct and write the screenplay in an act that is nothing short of this film’s undoing. What on stage was a tight, focused narrative about the power of conviction and the peril of doubt has morphed into a meandering, bloated, self-important narrative that says the same things said by the stage version, but in a much less elegant manner. Was there a minor character mentioned in passing in the play? Let’s give them a whole arc in the movie! Was one character’s long winded bloviating not enough to establish their character? By all means, give them several scenes worth of set-up – and retain the bloviating speeches to boot! Shanley ladles out the worst of both worlds in his screenplay. Not only is nearly every word of the play lovingly preserved – not always in the same order as on the stage, mind, with whole scenes chopped up and redistributed, making sure every word is crammed in there whether the transition feels natural or not – but Shanley gave himself carte blanche to follow his every whim in padding out the story. And his sole previous directing credit is that 1990 masterpiece, Joe Versus the Volcano, which he also penned. So while I suppose he can be forgiven for his inelegant framing of shots and unfortunate tendency to focus the camera on the wrong character at the wrong moment, what can’t be forgiven is the fact that he didn’t hand the movie over to someone who did know what they were doing. Similarly, he should have entrusted the script with someone who had enough emotional distance from the source material to excise the excess and bring the best parts to the fore, not bury the whole thing in a thick, rancid layer of offal.

But he didn't, and so we're left with this movie which further proves that Hollywood is no place for a god.

Movies: Revolutionary Road

I really, really wanted to love Revolutionary Road. Oh man, did I want to love this movie. Enough to brave the massive crowd at Union Square at 7:30 p.m. on Friday night to see it. Which, by the way, never in my life have I shown up thirty minutes early for a movie and still had to sit in the third row because nowhere else in a cavernous, ~250 capacity theatre-with-balcony had two adjacent seats left. Jeebus. But really, I love Kate Winslet, I love Leonardo DiCaprio, I love (or thought I loved) Sam Mendes...it looked like a no-brainer to rank as one of my Top 10 movies of the year. What went wrong?

Well, not the acting, that’s for sure. Kate gives a gutsy, stripped down performance. She is the rare beautiful actress who isn’t afraid to be ugly and broken down, and looks all the more breathtaking for it. And Leo acts the hell out of a character with no real redeeming qualities. Michael Shannon, best known to New York theatre audiences for his roles in the Tracy Letts plays Bug and Killer Joe, is a scene stealer as a crackling wire of a man who was recently released from an asylum, and whose multiple electroshock treatments have given him both clarity of vision and lack of filter in reporting on what he sees. His brief appearances are easily the highlight of the film.

I also couldn’t find fault with any individual scene within the movie. Each one is shot and framed beautifully and the characters interact in interesting and meaningful ways. No scene felt extraneous or indulgent. And yet. All of those beautiful scenes played out by skilled actors do not add up to a coherent, satisfying story. This problem is revealed within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, when the opening scene where April (Winslet) and Frank (DiCaprio) first meet goes into a scene of the couple, already chafing at their suburban married life, having a snarling fight on the side of a road. The movie only flashes back a few times to fill in the time between scene one and scene two. I understand that this is a movie about the disintegration of a relationship, so too much time can’t be expended on the happy, early days of the courtship, but it’s hard to be moved by the death of a relationship to which we’ve yet to grow attached. The stakes just aren’t there.

I was surprised because I thought that Mendes had said something wonderful and profound about the American family in American Beauty. But after we got out of Revolutionary Road, my friend and I decided to take advantage of one of the last nights of decent weather we’ll see for a while by walking the forty blocks uptown rather than taking the subway, so I had some time to think. And I realized that, in retrospect, American Beauty is nowhere near as deep and profound as I found it to be when I first saw it at age sixteen. Which probably comes only as breaking news to me and me alone. American Beauty, in fact, is much like Revolutionary Road - a series of beautiful and interesting scenes that, strung end to end, do not make that satisfying a narrative.

The script is a little too earnest, barely salvaged by the skilled actors bringing it to life. Several lines that I’m sure were meant to evoke some kind of genuine emotion in the audience instead led to gut-splitting laughter in my section of the theatre. Granted, we were all kind of woozy from lack of blood to the head, since we were craning our necks to watch the giant screen that was only a few feet away from us, but I can’t imagine those lines garnering a different reaction farther back in the theatre. Especially the very obvious Titanic car sex shoutout - I could hear the laughter over that little doozy ringing down from the balcony. The first half of the movie also drags on far too slowly. During one scene, I checked my watch, certain the movie must be drawing to an end. I was surprised to see we were only at the halfway point. It does pick up in the second half, where the narrative also starts to come together from the disparate parts, but by then it’s almost too late to salvage the film.

Still, it is a movie worth seeing, if only for the performances of Kate, Leo, and Michael Shannon. It’s wonderful to see Kate’s April and Leo’s Frank fall out of love, back in love, and definitively out of love once and for all, as they try to balance their own hopes and ambitions with society’s expectations and, in Frank’s case, their self-sabotaging tendencies. And even if he can’t tell a cohesive narrative, Sam Mendes does still know how to frame a scene beautifully. There’s one mostly silent shot towards the end of the film, where April is staring out the window of her suburban prison cell, that I guarantee will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.