It gets pretty hard to come up with a factoid every day once you get in the hundreds. Thankfully, I discovered a nice tool for inspiration courtesy of WordPress.
They have a nice button called “Random Post” that randomly selects some post that I have published, in case you couldn’t figure it out from the title. Since I’m fairly factoid heavy, most of the time, I get a factoid. Sometimes I’ll see an idea or thought that I liked and expand on it.
Several factoids from the past week have taken their inspiration from this button. Including this one.
The 2009 Oscars were a little more than three weeks ago, so I think we’re ready to move onto 2010. Next year’s ceremonies are 47 weeks away, but it’s never too early to start the chatter.
I felt like I should kick off my Oscars commentary this year with something that we all know will be in the running in some shape or form: “Toy Story 3,” the latest Pixar output.
Because it bears the Pixar brand, it automatically becomes the frontrunner in the Best Animated Feature race. In the nine years that the category has been around, Pixar has won five of the seven times it has had a movie in the category (losing only with “Monsters, Inc.” and “Cars”) and the last three years in a row. The studio is a juggernaut, and their movies clearly stand head and shoulders above any other animated film.
And “Up” scored Pixar its first nomination for Best Picture last year. The expanded field is no doubt to thank for this, but it got me thinking. With ten nominees every year, will there always be a spot for Pixar’s movie?
I looked at the history of the category, and it really doesn’t lend us any insight. To be honest, it’s pointless and arbitrary to apply the rules of a five nomination field to one with ten. But it’s obvious that having more nominees increases the chance for a niche to be carved in the category. I think few can argue with the fact that Pixar has the respect in the industry to have their movies represented repeatedly.
But ultimately, it comes down to the movie, as it always does. And “Toy Story 3” as expectations almost as unreal as flying a house with balloons. Both of the original “Toy Story” movies have a perfect 100 score on Rotten Tomatoes, but in the eleven years since, Pixar has continued its unprecedented run with only one movie with below a 95. “Cars” scored a 75% largely because the plot was stale in comparison to the other gems (in fact, it was the only Pixar movie since 2003 not to score a Best Original Screenplay nomination).
That proves a perfect segue into what must be the key element of “Toy Story 3”: the story. People have incredibly fond memories of the first two installments, and in order to hit big with audiences, it has to strike the perfect chord of staying true to its roots but offering a new and exciting experience. I’m a little tentative about all the new characters that Pixar is introducing in the movie. They all need to serve a purpose to the plot and be used tastefully, otherwise they are just noisy lawn ornaments.
But honestly, this is Pixar we are talking about. Time spent trying to find flaws in their work is time squandered.
Before I leave you, I want to talk about my plans for the “Oscar Moment” column this year. We’ve been through a whole season together, and looking back, I can’t help but feel like I was just talking to a wall. I set out to inform, and in doing that, I seemed to forgot to include. This speculation is only fun if you all engage in it with me. From now on, I am going to attach polls on Oscar Moments when I feel that they are worthwhile to gauge your opinion.
I’ve heard a ton of talk amongst the box office reports this weekend about ticket prices at movie theaters skyrocketing over 20% in some places. Honestly, enough is enough. This is probably the first time that I have gone on the record about the ridiculous ticket prices, but I can assure you that it won’t be the last.
I looked through my movie ticket collection today and looked at how much the first ticket cost. When I saw “Remember the Titans” in 2000, it cost $5 for a child’s admission. In 2010, that same ticket at the same theater would cost $7. That’s a 40% increase in one decade. Insane.
When it comes to “Brothers,” I’m not sure what I should be reviewing: the movie or the trailer.
If you managed to escape Lionsgate’s advertising push, good for you. Don’t watch the trailer because you can still be wowed by this movie.
But if you are among the vast majority that watched the trailer, you are going to find yourself deeply unsatisfied watching “Brothers.” In essence, it’s an exercise in frustration to watch. You will probably find yourself like me, wondering why I spent an hour and 45 minutes watching a full-length movie when I had already seen the condensed, two and a half minute version.
I feel like I would have loved this movie had it not been for the money-grubbing executives who feel the need to put all of a movie’s firepower into the trailer in order to put an audience in the theater. But unfortunately, all of the intensity that “Brothers” can deliver is revealed in the trailer, serving to satisfy only those who visit YouTube or go to see some other movie.
As you can tell by the trailer, there really is some good stuff here. The wow factor comes mainly from the three marquee actors, all of whom deliver powerful performances. Tobey Maguire, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for his work, is haunting, particularly after he returns home from captivity in Afghanistan. Natalie Portman as the grief-stricken wife is solid as usual, and Jake Gyllenhaal helps to build some very taut tension with his brother and disapproving father.
In fact, I almost feel like I should be giving two separate grades for “Brothers.” The trailer gets an A, but to the movie, I must give a … C+ /
I was trying to see how many people I could draw to my blog using popular people and things as tags, but I think I only got one hit off of the tags. I think it came from “cats,” but I’m not entirely sure.
The big question for me going into “Whip It” was Ellen Page. Can she play someone other than the spunky Juno MacGuff or is she truly a one-trick pony?
The answer? Basically, yes.
Page’s latest character, Bliss Cavander, the rebellious Texas teenager is very much a darker shade of Juno. But that didn’t make her any less enjoyable to watch. Page manages to remain fresh doing some similar schtick, and finding a niche at such a young age is truly an accomplishment.
The surprise of “Whip It” was actually Kristen Wiig. No, I’m not surprised that she was absolutely hilarious; Wiig had three supporting roles in 2009 and managed to steal every movie. She’s a great talent who will hopefully land a lead role securing her rightful place in the comedic stratosphere, but her surprise in “Whip It” was that she absolutely nailed the most crucial dramatic scene. It’s rare to find someone with this kind of range, and Wiig showed herself to truly be the full package.
Another big question was Drew Barrymore in her first time directing. Can she pull herself together and create something special?
The answer? A resounding yes.
“Whip It” is a comedic delight, with laughs and wit and quirks lurching at every turn. It follows Bliss as she secretly joins the underground world of roller derby, where the skates shred the track and the women are tough as nails. A bold name is also necessary for success with the fans, be it Smashlee Simpson (Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), or Iron Maven. Bliss settles upon Babe Rutheless, and with her moniker, she becomes the new poster child for the sport. But she has to keep her success a secret from her strict mother (Marcia Gay Harden) who wants Bliss to become the beauty pageant queen that she could never be. How much of this movie’s excellence came from Barrymore is unknown, but I feel like I had as much fun watching “Whip It” as she had making it. B+ /
In the fifth grade, a chapel speaker came to my middle school that asked the audience a series of responsive questions. He wanted people that knew the answers to raise their hands.
The first question: “Who can name the last five winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture?”
Of course I knew the answer, so I shot my hand up. Mine was the only hand raised. Awkward…
It’s so hard to find a good “dramedy” nowadays. Most films that are generally considered to fall into this category are heavily imbalanced, never giving a fairly even mix. But my quest to see all of the Academy Award-nominated performances of the past decade led me to check out “The Savages,” Tamara Jenkin’s beautifully bittersweet dramedy, and it hit the sweet spot. In fact, it hit so sweetly that it became my “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”
“The Savages” opens with an elderly man (Philip Bosco) writing on a bathroom wall with his own feces. This event sparks his two estranged children to move him into an assisted living center. And then the fun begins.
The two siblings, played by Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, have plenty on their plates as it is. Linney’s Wendy Savage is a wreck, caught in a dead-end affair with her married neighbor and trying to move out of the monotony of temping to achieve her dream of become a playwright. Hoffman’s Jon Savage teaches the works of the playwright Bertol Brecht to a nonplussed collegiate audience while never mustering up the energy to write his book. They remained isolated from each other – and practically from the world as well.
Yet in spite of themselves, they do what is required of them to take care of their ailing father. As the movie unravels, there is something harder in making the sacrifices in their own lives for Wendy and Jon. The effects of their father’s upbringing has left them both in a sorry state, and it proves near impossible for them to leave their grudges at the door. It’s Wendy, though, who finds it most difficult to cope; her antics range from questionably procuring money from FEMA to stealing painkillers from the deceased.
If I had to classify “The Savages” as either a comedy or a drama, I’d reluctantly say a dark comedy. There’s plenty to laugh at, but there’s plenty to cringe at as well. It’s a little bleak for a comedy, but Tamara Jenkins’ unsparing honesty and commitment to the emotional development of her characters is worth the pain. Linney and Hoffman are fantastic as usual, Linney showing us why she earned an Academy Award nomination for her role and Hoffman giving us reason to call his omission a snub. Be prepared to be floored not just by them, but by the movie as a whole.
When I was 10, I heard a five-second clip of Catberine Zeta-Jones singing “All That Jazz” from the movie “Chicago” on the news and suddenly became obsessed. I bought the soundtrack knowing nothing of the movie but those five seconds.
I proceeded to learn every musical number in the blink of an eye. There was a five-year span between buying the soundtrack and seeing the movie, so I knew the music thoroughly when watching it. But it was weird to put context to the songs I had known for so long.
If you read that and thought dirty thoughts, shame on you. But I’m glad that drew you in. What I actually meant is about 1/3 of the time I get in the shower, I am reminded of a Sandra Bullock monologue.
Here’s her speech; it’s from “Two Weeks Notice,” her 2002 comedy with Hugh Grant. To put it in context, she is telling her boss (Hugh Grant) why she can’t keep working for him.
I think about you in the shower .. .not in a good way, but in an I’m-so-distracted-I-can’t-remember-if-I-washed-my-hair kinda way – so I’ll wash my hair twice! So I have a hole in my stomach, I’m running out of shampoo and today is the first day in my life that I did not give a thousand percent on the job. And I hate that feeling.
Often times, thinking of neurotic Sandra helps me remember how many times I have washed my own hair. I guess I should thank her for that – hope this will suffice.
I completely forgot that I needed to do this post, so for any of you who happened to be waiting all month for this, my apologies. But maybe having the April preview post closer to the month itself will increase voting in the polls (wishful thinking) or increase excitement for the month’s releases.
April is usually that awkward month before Hollywood comes out all cylinders firing for summer, but I think this year boasts one of the month’s finest lineups in a long time.
April 2
The first truly BIG action movie of 2010 finally arrives! “Clash of the Titans” is that taste of high-octane blockbuster that will serve as the perfect tease for summer. After seeing the success of “Avatar,” Warner Bros. saw that they had the capability to create a 3-D version of “Clash of the Titans.” So, now the movie arrives in both the second and third dimension. This is the first time in my memory that three huge 3-D movies have come out within a month of each other, and I think it is only a preview of what is to come (just pray that your theater can accommodate the demand.) Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is the first big live-action movie to come out in 3-D. I’m excited.
Tyler Perry is at it again with “Why Did I Get Married Too.” The first one did pretty well, but if Perry can expand beyond his normal audience is still a question. Oh, and I forgot to mention it in the March preview, but the latest Nicholas Sparks sob-fest, “The Last Song,” comes out on Wednesday, March 31. It stars Greg Kinnear and some unknown actress named Miley Cyrus.
April 9
The comedy gods smile upon us at last! Tina Fey and Steve Carell together in “Date Night” seems long overdue. Let’s just hope that the writing of this movie deserves their talents.
And for those of you who liked Christian entertainment like “Fireproof” and “Facing the Giants,” then “Letters to God” will surely excite you.
“The Runaways” opens wide this weekend, but I don’t think this will be any big event given its lackluster performance in 244 theaters in this past weekend (strangely, not a one of them was in Houston, the fourth largest city in the county).
April 16
There seems to be a large cult fan base gathering around “Kick-Ass.” Sometimes that can be bad (“Snakes on a Plane”), and sometimes it works (“Cloverfield”). This seems to be a pretty entertaining premise: basically a send-up of “Watchmen” and ordinary people becoming superheroes. I think I’ll wait to get the audience’s take before I slap down some cash for this.
Please do yourself a tremendous favor. Before you go see Chris Rock’s urbanized version of “Death at a Funeral,” be sure to rent the original British version. Even if this latest spin fails, you will have seen one absolutely hysterical movie.
April 23
Disney Nature rolls out its annual Earth Day “nature porn” documentary, “Oceans,” shot in sweeping views that could make your heart turn green. Meanwhile, CBS Films (?) gives us Jennifer Lopez in “The Back-Up Plan” as a woman who bypasses the normal steps and gets pregnant. But in typical coincidental rom-com fashion, this all happens on the day she meets the perfect man.
The best of the worst this weekend appears to be “The Losers,” starring Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The movie follows a group of CIA agents who seek out the group that tried to assassinate them. Who knows, maybe this will make a good rental.
April 30
“The Nightmare on Elm Street” looks legit. I’m scared. Plus it has Jackie Earle Haley, the man who made “Little Children” crazy good. (For a different kind of nightmare, see Brendan Fraser in “Furry Vengeance.”)
As for the indie scene, which doesn’t seem to be too big in April, the best offering seems to be “Please Give.” A hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the movie follows a married couple (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) who have to wait for their elderly neighbor to die so they can expand their apartment. It seems to be that nice blend of comedy and drama which really has the ability to hit home.
“I Love You Phillip Morris” was slated for release back in February, but it’s here now for unexplained reasons. The movie premiered at Cannes last year and after some issues finding a distributor is finally finding a way into a theater near you – or will it? Rumor is that the movie had to be tamed down to find distribution due to its strong homosexual content. The two lovers here are Jim Carrey and Ewan MacGregor, a pair that discovers their love in prison. Before heading to the slammer, Carrey’s character was a straight Christian policeman from Texas. Now, he finds himself determined to bust out to be reunited with his lover. I’m curious to see if Freestyle Releasing can get it in front of a large audience … this is the third month that I have published this same blurb. Will they ever settle on a release date?
Thoughts, anyone? What are YOU looking forward to in April?
I was texting someone yesterday tehehehe to imply a more mischievous giggle than the normal hahahaha. But when I tried to type it, my iPhone auto-corrected tehehehe to thehurtlocker.
Could it be from all the texting I was doing during the Oscars? Either way, it’s pretty amazing that even my phone knows how obsessed I am.
After seeing “Avatar” yesterday for the second time in 3-D, I have come to this conclusion: it is the only 3-D movie that has not given me a headache or made my eyes hurt.
I don’t know if I have just been broken into the technology that much more or if James Cameron’s movie has really raised the standard that much.
Does anyone know? Seriously, let me know in the comments!
No matter your opinion on director Tim Burton, it can’t be denied that the man has some true creativity. This spark is what gained him notoriety in the late ’80s and early ’90s with hits like “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Recently, however, Burton has seemed to have found that creativity isn’t always synonymous with originality, and has mainly spent the past five years retooling other people’s work.
But while Burton puts his own unique spin on these projects, I have felt that each of them has lost a very distinct part of their original identity. With his remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the movie lost most of its original charm and fun. His film adaptation of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” dropped a sizable portion of Stephen Sondheim’s songs, and the story lost a great deal of character development.
Unfortunately, “Alice in Wonderland” falls into the same pattern. This time, Burton has stripped the movie of a lot of its sense. Granted, this is a fairly non-sensical story, so this isn’t the worst movie to receive this treatment. But Burton makes it lose even the most basic coherency, and no movie can be excused for that.
It’s hard to describe what exactly Burton’s take on “Alice in Wonderland” actually is. It is not a remake of the Disney animated classic like I assumed it would be. But it is not any sort of sequel, prequel, revamping, or modernizing of anything we have ever seen. This version is just off in its own little world, reminding us of our favorite characters but never giving us any reason to fall in love with them again.
The story follows Alice (Mia Wasikowska) at the age of 19, once again drawn by the white rabbit into the magical world where the impossible is very possible. The land is now being ruled by the ruthless Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), whose reign of terror is enforced by the fearsome Jabberwocky. Alice becomes public enemy #1 whenever it is foreseen that she will slay the beast. To ensure that her head stays on her shoulders, Alice enlists the help of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) along with a few other oddballs including the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp).
Burton said that his intention was to “try and make Alice feel more like a story as opposed to a series of events” because he never felt an emotional connection between the characters in the original. In this respect, his version is an utter disaster. I saw exactly the opposite of what he intended: Alice wandering from place to place with absolutely no plot building.
On the acting side of things, this is obviously Mia Wasikowska’s big moment, and this movie is obviously going to get her noticed. I’m sure this is only the beginning of many movies that we see this young talent in. As for the old pros, the only person that seems to be having any fun is Helena Bonham Carter. She makes the character her own, and it works. Not to mention, she made me chuckle every time she spat out the Red Queen’s trademark phrase “off with her head!” Johnny Depp can’t seem to make any more sense out of the Mad Hatter than we can, and in Anne Hathaway’s brief moments on screen, she seems to be fascinated only with twirling around the set like a ballerina.
In fact, the only thing about “Alice in Wonderland” that was executed exceptionally well was the mischievous Cheshire Cat, voiced by British comedian Stephen Fry. Striking the perfect balance between cute and dastardly, I found myself consistently begging for the blue smoke to materialize into the devilish kitty. But most of my wishing was not rewarded, much like my wishing for the movie to become something other than a mess. However, it is a mess that is distinctly Tim Burton – whether that’s good or not is up to you. C /
When I was 10, I heard a five-second clip of Catberine Zeta-Jones singing “All That Jazz” from the movie “Chicago” on the news and suddenly became obsessed. I bought the soundtrack knowing nothing of the movie but those five seconds.
Sandra Bullock follows me into the shower.
After seeing “Avatar” yesterday for the second time in 3-D, I have come to this conclusion: it is the only 3-D movie that has not given me a headache or made my eyes hurt.
Marshall and the Movies 
Recent Comments