It’s Oscar season! So here are my first thoughts on the competition, though with the caveat that there are a few of the nominated films I haven’t seen.

Best Picture

Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air. All in all, not a bad crop.

• Avatar certainly has momentum going in (here’s my review) but I don’t think it does everything it needs to to win Best Picture; its by-the-numbers story and gloss on characterization make it subpar. Its groundbreaking, gorgeous visuals won’t make up for that.
• Blind Side was heartfelt (heck, I cried), and I loved Sandra Bullock’s performance, but there’s nothing distinctive about it that would put it ahead of the other nominees.
• Inglourious Basterds was an inspired piece of filmmaking, featuring some nuanced and powerful performances; it’s certainly in the running, though its fantasy ending fizzled for me since we clearly know history says otherwise.
• Precious was precious (my review). Its depressing premise may relegate it to underdog status.
• Though I haven’t seen The Hurt Locker, I love the irony that James Cameron (Avatar) is up against this movie’s director, his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
• District 9? I liked it a lot, but let’s just leave it at “it’s an honor to be nominated.”
• I know critics have gone mad for An Education but nothing about its story made me want to cough up 10 bucks to go see it.
• Up? Wonderful, but I don’t see an animated film knocking off live-action performances of the kind represented in this list.
• Up in the Air was flawless, but I think its appeal is limited demographically.
• I meant to see A Serious Man since I’m a Coen Brothers fan but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. I will before Oscar Night but I don’t see it upsetting any of the frontrunners.

Next: Best Actor and more »

We’re supposed to be inspired by films about resilient inner-city children who surmount the obstacles of their lives — poverty, physical and sexual abuse, illiteracy, the shackles of welfare — and certainly that’s the proposition of the film, Precious: Based on the novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.

But inspiration isn’t what you leave this film feeling. What distinguishes Precious is its ability to draw you in because of the expectations you’re likely to bring into the theater and then push them aside, sometimes violently and sometimes with a measure of sudden grace.

The film’s trailer certainly sets up the gloom you expect from this type of story, but the film itself subverts it through a set of fantasy sequences that are a two-edged sword for Claireece Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe). Her fantasy life helps her survive the depraved abuse she suffers at home but it also threatens to keep her from grabbing what few opportunities life tries to hand her.

This is not a feel-good movie. Blind Side is a feel-good movie with a tidy happy ending. Set in 1987 Harlem, Precious will make you feel a little dirty before you are allowed to wring a tiny, yet valuable, drop of refined hope from the raw and crude morass that is the life of its main character. Precious’ happiness is in no way guaranteed, and doom hangs in the air even at the film’s end.

Next: Words hurt. A lot. »

Junkie1 suggested this activity: List 15 movies you’ve seen that will always stick with you — the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Mine are in no particular order.

1. Sound of Music. I have the entire movie memorized. Not just the songs. The. Entire. Movie.
2. Doctor Dolittle. The old skool Doc, not that Eddie Murphy travesty. Why is the Rex Harrison version better? Not just songs — Giant. Pink. Sea snail.
3. Hello, Dolly!. Barbra Streisand. ‘Nuff said.
4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. After the lackluster performance of the first movie, this less-is-more outing literally saved the franchise.
5. The Philadelphia Story. Suck it, b&w movie-haters. This movie sets the standard for banter-cum-sexual chemistry for all movie history.
6. Up in the Air. Maybe it’s because I just saw it a few days ago, but I’m about the same age as George Clooney so I take comfort in the poignant revelation that middle age shouldn’t keep you from being master of your own density. Yes, I said density. Extra points if you get the movie reference.
7. The Empire Strikes Back. The best of the Star Wars movies because it endured the least involvement by George Lucas in the story. Also, personally memorable because I watched it at the theater the day I graduated high school.
8. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I not only have the entire movie committed to memory, I also have the Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film™ committed to memory as well. And the differences between African and European swallows are permanently etched in my brain.
9. WarGames. Notable not only for launching Matthew Broderick’s career (yes, I know he appeared first in “Max Dugan Returns” but this movie really got him noticed), but also for launching an entire generation of people robotically exclaiming, “Shall-we-play-a-game?”
10. Empire of the Sun. Christian Bale’s debut. Epic. Steven Spielberg got shafted by the Academy, those bitches.
11. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was studying sign language when I went to see this at the theater. I pretended I was deaf for the whole two hours I stood in line and for the movie itself. Plus, it was a great film.
12. Raising Arizona. How can you NOT love a film with a line like, “Her womb was a barren place where my seed could find no purchase”? Totes brill. Plus, the beginning of my lifelong and unhealthy obsession with Holly Hunter.
13. Princess Bride. Thanks to this film, I have successfully avoided involvement in a land war in Asia. Wuv. Twoo wuv.
14. It’s a Wonderful Life. Stay away from the colorized version or I’ll shank you.
15. Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland. Ruby slippers. Witches. Munchkins. Flying Monkeys. Direct line of succession to “Defying Gravity.” What more do you people effing need?!

What would your stuck-in-your-DNA movies be?

WITH THE END of the year rapidly approaching, Junkie1, zRose 25 and I resolved to cram as many 2009 film releases into the holiday weekend as we could. I managed to make it to eight, all in the service of my upcoming year-end film review. I wanted to see as many of the year’s 277 releases as I could. Here’s what I thought of last weekend’s crop:

Have You Heard About the Morgans? Lackluster comedy that trades too much on urban and rural stereotypes (New Yorkers in Wyoming), apparently hoping to transcend them, but instead falling flat. The normally wonderful Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker (who looks like she needs a good steak dinner) must be listed as casualties.

Avatar. The second viewing was in a posh theater with big seats (only $18!), spurring Junkie1′s disdain for James Cameron to stratospheric heights. Meanwhile, zRose25 and I liked it a bit more than the first, which I reviewed here.

Me and Orson Welles. Yes, man-pixie Zac Efron shows off some acting chops but it’s Christian McKay who walks away with the movie with his portrayal of the mercurial, manipulative and massively talented Orson Welles. And how nice to see Claire Danes again.

Sherlock Holmes. Simply put: Rollicking good fun. Amazing chemistry between a career-ascendant Robert Downey Jr. and a rebounding Jude Law. Astounding visuals coordinated by director Guy Ritchie propel a plot so complex you don’t care as long as Downey’s there to explain it to you.

Up in the Air. I found it a poignant testimony to discovering the possibility, even in middle age, that you may yet change your life’s course. The twentysomethings found that depressing. You dang kids get off my lawn!

Nine. Slow start, first couple songs were meh, but it came alive whenever Judi Dench was onscreen. Overall: Enjoyable.

Invictus. This based-on-real-events film about how Nelson Mandela knit together his divided nation through rugby featured intense and understated performances from Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, and tight storytelling from director Clint Eastwood.

It’s Complicated. A more cheerful take on the difficulties of making emotional connections in middle age than Up in the Air. Nuanced performances from Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin contribute to many hijinks. Also, the screen lights up whenever John Krasinski comes on.

In my next post, I’ll share the joys and woes of seeing so many movies at the theater in so little time.

MOUNDS VIEW, Minn. — Snow day means watching movies in my family. Besides our excursion this morning for the first showing of Sherlock Homes (rollicking good fun), we watched Love Actually, one of my favorite movies, and The Holiday.

I nominate the new Internet Movie Database (IMDB) app [iTunes Store link] for the iPhone for the Nobel Peace Prize. Just think about all the arguments it has settled.

Factoid

IMDB’s mission statement makes the world a better place:

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the largest collection of movie, TV and celebrity information anywhere. We aim to list every detail about every movie and TV show ever made, including who was in it, who made it, the plot, user ratings, trailers, photos, reviews, and trivia.

Cease Fire!

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, the Cosmic Sitcom™ and Little Junkies have called a holiday ceasefire on our Craptastic Movies War™ to collaborate on our upcoming respective Best Movies of 2009 lists.

We’re working hard to watch as many movies as we can before the New Year. I’ve seen 50 of the year’s releases so far; I’m trying to get to 58. By contrast, the average American only sees about 6 movies at the theater in a year, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.

Don’t worry, we’ll get back to our regular Blog vs. Blog programming, complete with infographicals, very soon.

Factoid

This year the domestic box office (U.S.) exceeded $10 billion for the first time ever.

MINNEAPOLIS — It’s 4:15 am, and I just got home from the midnight viewing of the much-hyped, long-awaited Avatar, directed by the often-maligned James Cameron. I’m about to collapse from exhaustion but here’s how I summed it up in my 6,600th tweet:

Saw Avatar. If hype is how you judge, you’ll be disappointed. It’s Dances w/Wolves in space. But I liked it & the tech will change movies.

There’s nothing ground-breaking about the story. You’ve seen it before: Cynical, opportunistic protagonist tries to infiltrate aboriginal people then goes native, finds his destiny and has to betray the evil leaders who sent him in. Not a bad tale, though occasionally heavy-handed in its pro-environment, anti-greed themes.

STORY VS. STORYTELLING But the way the story is told, oh my. The visual effects, fully CGI characters and settings will change the way movies are made henceforth. I’m not usually one who lets “this film blows up good” effects cloud my judgment about the need for a good story at the heart of a movie. The story just barely meets that standard, but the storytelling exceeds it. This is no Transformers 2, which was an explosive but ultimately soulless spectacle.

Avatar‘s computer-generated characters played by Zoë Saldana (Star Trek) and Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation) are utterly believable.

Sam Worthington and Zoë Saldana are the heart of the movie, and they acquit themselves well, even as the stunning visuals threaten to overwhelm every other character, played by a talented though underused cast (including the wonderful Sigourney Weaver); there’s just so many of them that it’s hard for any (perennial faves Giovanni Ribisi and CCH Pounder, for example) to really stand out.

The villain, Colonel Miles Quaritch, is a pretty standard cardboard cutout; I would’ve enjoyed an opponent with more style. I suspect Cameron would claim the film’s antagonist is really greed and opportunism. Yadda, yadda. Abstract concepts don’t substitute for a real character.

The world of Pandora is under attack by greedy humans. Yes, those are floating mountains.

Avatar is one of those grand epics that will initially be judged by its hype rather than its merits. The romance between Worthington and Saldana’s characters, combined with the guy’s search for himself is probably how Cameron attempts to make Avatar more than a popcorn-crunching extravaganza — indeed, those were the same themes in Cameron’s huge box office success, Titanic, but this film’s visual effects are what people will be talking about.

The cynics will point to the predictable plot line and Avatar‘s resulting disappointment thanks to the over-hype in advance of the film’s release but, like Titanic, we’ll still be debating the success of this film a decade from now when the visual effects will be considered outdated. That’s probably a good thing.

Image from Deadline Hollywood.

IT’S CALLED THE BLACK LIST — film executives’ favorite scripts written in, or somehow uniquely associated with this year but not be released in theaters during this calendar year.

In previous years, the list has catapulted dozens of scripts into production and screenwriters out of oblivion. Diablo Cody’s Juno, Nancy Oliver’s Lars And The Real Girl, Scott Neustader’s and Michael Weber’s 500 Days Of Summer, are just some of the scripts that were made after appearing on the list.

Ninety-seven screenplays appear on the just-released version, according to Deadline Hollywood. Here are the Top 10 (as summarized by the folks at Entertainment Weekly and Deadline Hollywood):

1. The Muppet Man, by Christopher Weekes. The life and times of the late Jim Henson, the man behind Sesame Street and The Muppets.
2. The Social Network, by Aaron Sorkin. Chronicles Mark Zuckerberg’s complicated journey towards creating Facebook. Sorkin depicts both the founder’s motivations for starting the largest social network in the world and the human casualties that came with his profound success. Bonus: Currently in production by Sony, the film stars my beloved Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. Justin Timberlake is also attached.
3. The Voices, by Michael R. Perry. Jerry, a schizophrenic worker at a bathtub factory, accidentally kills an attractive woman from accounting. While trying to cover his bloody tracks, Jerry starts taking advice from his talking (and foul-mouthed) cat and dog.
4. Prisoners, by Aaron Guzikowski. When his young daughter and her best friend vanish on Thanksgiving Day, a Christian survivalist named Keller Dover takes matters into his own hands, imprisoning and torturing a suspect whom the police have set free. But does Dover have the wrong man? And if he does, who really has his little girl?
5. Cedar Rapids, by Phil Johnston. Tim Lippy is a small-town insurance man who’s somehow made it to middle age without having quite done anything. Everything changes when he unexpectedly gets the chance to represent his company at the Cedar Rapids insurance convention, where comedy ensues, of course. Now in production, the cast includes John C. Reilly, Anne Heche and Sigourney Weaver.
6. Londongrad, by David Scarpa. The writer of The Day The Earth Stood Still and co-writer of The Last Castle does an adaptation of Alan Cowell’s 2008 book, “The Terminal Spy: A True Story of Espionage, Betrayal and Murder,” chronicling the life and strange death of Alexander Litvinenko. Remember in 2006, when that ex-Soviet spy was allegedly poisoned with radioactive tea at a London sushi joint? That’s him.
7. L.A. Rex, by Will Beall (based on his novel of the same name). Rookie LAPD officer Ben Halloran gets partnered with scarred and tobacco-spitting Officer Marquez, and the unlikely team hit the streets of L.A. on the brink of a gang-rivalry explosion. Amid run-ins with the Mexican mafia, brutal gang murders, and corrupt cops, we soon find that Halloran may not be as squeaky clean as his brand new badge.
8. Desperados, by Ellen Rapoport. Wesley Robbins, a 30-something single attorney with an unhealthy obsession with coupling up, thinks she’s found the perfect man. But when he doesn’t call for days after the first time they sleep together she freaks out and sends him a scathing email, only to learn he’s been laid up in a Mexican hospital with some broken bones. On a whim, she and her girlfriends travel down south to erase the email before she ruins what she believes could be her one true love.
9. The Gunslinger, by John Hlavin. When a Texas Ranger is horrifically tortured and killed, his sharp-shooter older brother, Sam Lee Hensley, plots revenge against the mysterious, sadistic leader of a notorious drug cartel. Sam Lee’s quest for vengeance will cost him seven years in prison, his right hand and one eye. It will imperil his young nephew and wreak havoc on the lives of those who love him. And it will not bring him peace.
10. (tie) By Way of Helena, by Matt Cook. Set in the South at the turn of the century, Texas Ranger David Kingston and his Mexican bride are sent down to the mysterious town of Helena to investigate the multiple Mexican bodies washing up in the river. What they discover is an idyllic-like town where everything is not as it seems — Pleasantville meets High Noon. (tie) The Days Before, by Chad St. John. A man from the future keeps hopping one successive day into the past desperate to stop a vicious race of time-traveling aliens from wiping out humanity — a lightning-paced, time travel adventure is Back to the Future meets Independence Day meets Demolition Man accompanied by a gargantuan production budget.

You can read the rest here.

Little Junkies vs. Cosmic Sitcom: It’s on.

Last night, Junkie1 and I began collecting data on the crappy movies in her extensive DVD collection. As you can imagine, this was a task fraught with conflict. We began by discussing how to define crap. She went on and on about criteria and rating systems and voting and … yadda yadda yadda … keep talkin’, woman, I’m gettin’ me some tea … I’m still listening :: yawn :: …

In the meantime, let me point out that since Avatar was part of what started the Blog vs. Blog event, the haters (I’m calling Junkie1 out as a proto-Avatar hater) can at least be funny, hence the Webcomic above. Seriously, this Australian dude has a beef with James Cameron, as you can read here:

Titanic was about 2 hours too long.

The Abyss was 30 mins too long.

The “special preview screenings” he organised to promote Avatar showed nothing more than I could see in trailers online, at the time. (I won tickets to one of these screenings and spent a LOT of time and effort to get there, only to be let down by Cameron once again)

The 3D in Avatar does not make the graphics better. (Those glasses are annoying and I have seen better CG graphics in computer games)

The $500 million you used to make this “epic” could have gone to something much better – like cancer research or a campaign to get people worldwide to stop using Internet Explorer 6.

“Let’s make the aliens look like Giant cat people!”. Wow. I expected better from you, James. Where is the originality there? That idea has been used so many times.

Among his litany of issues with Cameron, he condemns Avatar to receiving mixed reviews and becoming “this generation’s Dances with Wolves, but in space.” FYI, the Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves has a 78 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes; Avatar is at 84 percent as of today.

State of the Crap

Anyway, back to Junkie1′s crappy DVD collection. Instead of a complicated rating system, we agreed to scan the collection, passing by movies we both liked or, while mediocre, didn’t sink to the level of crap. All this minus actually defining what crap is, because, like, who has time for that, right?

We did agree on some criteria for debating the possibly redeeming qualities of the films in question, namely:

1. Story
2. Characters
3. Plot
4. Believability
5. Success of the film’s dramatic or comedic intent
6. Production values
7. Visual effects (if applicable)
8. Rotten Tomatoes and Netflix ratings

We spent 45 minutes last night going through the first of five cabinets filled with DVDs. My Crap Count so far: 15. Hers, of course, differs. Stay tuned!

My growing list of the crappy movies in Junkie1′s DVD collection.
We’re only getting started, yo.