Movie Trailer Review; Episode 27

The Brothers Bloom is a delightful romp… I’m not 100% on it, but I liked it well enough.  My favorite thing about going to Uptown to see a film is getting to see a bunch of trailers for movies that you’ve never heard of.

The Girl From Monaco

This film seems to be one of the millions of films that are made abroad every year that is in every way superior to the movies that come out of Hollywood.  The film looks sexy, with beautiful photography, the trailer had deceit and adventure and a sympathetic protagonist.  Only a small handful of those millions of foreign films make it to America at all, and every year only one of those films becomes a movie that average people might actually see, I don’t think this is that film.  This is the film that you see and it sticks with you but nobody else you ever meet will have even heard of the movie.  /commentary.  The Girl From Monaco is written and directed by Anne Fontaine who has several credits to her name in the vane of films that as an American I have never heard of.  The trailer introduces us to Bertrand, a lawyer who is defending someone in a murder case, and his bodyguard and his bodyguards former lover, The Girl From Monaco.  Soon it seems apparent that Bertrand is being played as a pawn in a greater scheme, but what could it be?

The Hurt Locker

In 1991 Katherine Bigelow made Point Break and for that I hate her for giving Keanu Reeves work.  I kid, I kid.  Point Break is a move that I dislike because it is dumb and bad, but a lot of people like it because they think it’s dumb and bad and awesome.  The Hurt Locker is Bigelows latest film which based on the trailer is smart, and awesome and awesome.  Set in the modern Iraq war, The Hurt Locker follows a bomb squad around in their work, it stars Jeremy Renner, Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes.  The trailer is action packed, fun and gives you just a hint of what the movie is about and really makes me want to see it.  This was a grade A trailer.

Rudo y Cursi

In my write up of The Girl From Monaco I ranted about foreign films that Americans never see, I do think Rudo Y Cursi is a foreign film that Americans might see. Rudo y Cursi is the story of two brothers from a small town that get the chance to follow their dream and play professional soccer.  The film is directed and written by Carlos Cuaron and produced by Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men).  The trailer is a lot of fun and I really think it will be bigger than most foreign films get.

Away We Go

Enter Garden State, or Napoleon Dynamite, or Juno.  Away We Go is the indi darling film of the year.  Written by David Eggers (the master behind McSweeney’s) and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), Away We Go is the story of an unmarried couple expecting a child and how their relationship grows as the pregnancy progresses.  It stars John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (SNL).  The trailer is fun and funny and it has a lot of good gags.  This is a stretch for me to think about Sam Mendes doing this light material (his last film, Revolutionary Road, was one of the heaviest unwatchable painful movies ever) but I’m excited to see what he does with the material.

Food Inc

A couple weeks ago I finally got around to seeing the documentary King Corn which attempts to take a look at the industrialization of corn farming in America.  The film analyzes how we got to this point and where all the corn goes and it does so with a pretty even hand, you can tell that they just want to shout that High Fructose Corn Syrup is evil, but they don’t do that, they just explain the pro’s and con’s of it.  Food Inc on the other hand seems to be dusting off the soap box (the one that is mostly crushed by Michael Moore) to take on food industry head on.  This film I will be approaching with the same delicate gloves that I use when I watch a Michael Moore film.  Food Inc is directed by Robert Kenner.

I feel like I’m missing one, but I can’t remember what it is.

-Josh

Movie Trailer Review, Episode 26

Just saw the movie Taken and it was grade “A” awesome!  Four new trailers to review.

Terminator Salvation

This film is being directed by Mcg (who the hell calls them self Mcg?) and is being produced outside of the typical Terminator cannon because it is being produced without James Cameron on board in any way shape or form.  We all know that ill tempered Christian Bale is playing John Conner which is kinda cool and the film was written by Paul Haggis who has written some of the best screenplays in Hollywood in the last decade (Casino Royal, In the Valley of Elah, Crash, and Flags of our Fathers).  The trailer was cool… showed a tank rolling over some skulls, Christian Bale sounding like a Batman who is done trying and it pretty much tells us the entire plot of the movie.  I’ve never rated trailers on a number scale, but if one was terrible, ten was awesome and five was mediocre then I would give this trailer a four.

Haunting in Connecticut

Co-written by a guy who wrote Carnosaur and another guy who wrote Kalifornia (left and right punch, watch for the uppercut!) and directed by a first time feature directory (OOOOH!  There it is!  This film is gonna suck!).  The trailer is just awful and clearly draws on some of the most typical cliché is modern horror including a quick reflection in a television and strange markings tattooed all over a body.  I’m a little bit surprised that the trailer didn’t just give the end of the movie away because it sure didn’t hold anything else back.  The trailer seems to say to the audience “I think you’re too stupid to understand the images on the screen so I am going to walk you through each one step by step so that you’ll understand it an want to see the film”.  Of course it ends up having the inverse reaction and makes me want to destroy the print before I or anyone else has the misfortune of seeing it.

Angels & Demons

I only hope that Ron Howard learned what he did wrong in the first movie.  I liked how short this trailer was and I hope that the movie delivers.

12 Rounds

John Cenas daughter gets kidnapped by an escaped convict that he put behind bars.  Trailer suffers from the same thing the trailer for Haunting in Connecticut does.  The convict makes Cena do a bunch of errands like Die Hard; With a Vengeance.  This was a terrible trailer and looks like a terrible movie… so I guess it fits.

Verdict; movie was way better than the trailers.

-Josh

Short reviews of other Oscar films

Hello.

Revolutionary Road

I hated this film. It is dark and devoid of hope and is completely unlikable. I’m sure that is what Director Sam Mendes was going for and I respect it, but I don’t like it. The film touches on a lot of the same themes as American Beauty (also directed by Mendes) but where American Beauty was poetic and engaging Revolutionary Road was dark and depressing. Both Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio delivered fantastic performances but I don’t recommend this film.

Doubt

First off Doubt is a fantastic looking movie. The cinematographer was Roger Deakins. Something that I have noticed about cinematographers are either average (get the job done) or excellent and Roger Deakins is the best of the excellent. It isn’t like directors and actors who have performances that vary from film to film, if someone tells you that Roger Deakins shot the film you know it looks amazing. Blah blah blah. Doubt brings three great performances from Phil Hoffman, Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. My only complaint about the movie is that it gets a little ‘stage play’ talky in the third act. The film was directed by John Patrick Shanley who also wrote the original play and screenplay.

Waltz with Bashir

This is an animated film that was Israel’s submission for best Foreign Film. It deals with a massacre that occurred at the Sabra and Shantila POW camp during the Lebanon war in 1982. More specifically it deals with Ari, a former Israeli solider who has blocked all memory of the event at Sabra and Shantila and how he reconnects with other soldiers that were there so he can try and remember his involvement with the event and come to terms with it. The film looks just stunning and the vector animation that drives the film really adds to the movement and momentum that live action just could not have delivered. If the academy was smart (which we already know they are not) they would have nominated the song ‘Beirut’ from the film for best song.

The Wrestler

This film was amazing. It knew what it had to do and it delivered on it in spades. This is by far the most straightforward film by Director Darren Aronofsky and it shows his impressive talent and vision with the film medium. Both the film and the director deserved nominations (which they did not get) for this film. Based on his performance in this roll and who he is up against Mickey Rourke earned this nomination and deserves the award.

-Josh

the Oscars as Marketing

I talk a lot about the Academy Awards so I’m suprised that I had never considered this before, but I was listening to the /filmcast that featured Stephen Tobolowsky and he brought up the interesting concept that the Oscars are nothing more than a marketing tool for films that are currently in the theater. Based on his theory The Dark Knight didn’t get nominated for best picture because it already made a bucket of money but the Curious Case of Benjamin Button is still in theaters and still has money to be made…

Maybe this is happening more and more over time, but there has been a lot of discussion about how the films nominated this year are amoung the lowest grossing films ever to be nominated.

-Josh

More problems with Windows Live Writer

I don’t know why I have never run into this problem before, but I was getting an error that said

"Invalid Server Response – The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid".

And so I googled around and found this site that listed several fixes and none of them worked.  The fix ended up being setting up the link to my xmlrpc.php as ‘schalicto.com/xmlrpc.php’ instead of ‘www.schalicto.com/xmlrpc.php’ .  Lame, but fixed.

Josh

Academy Awards 2008 (and how they continue to suck)

I get passionate about things… unfortunately they tend to be really unproductive things like yo-yoing, politics and movies.  And there is one thing that you can bet on and that is that you will hear me rant every single year when the Academy Award nominations are released.

Best Picture

This is the category that has me the most steamed.

• Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Straight up, right off the bat, this film does NOT deserve to be on this list.  The script was (as previously mentioned) almost a direct retelling of Forrest Gump.  Brad Pitt did not do any acting (more on this later).  And the film was not Oscar level great… it was good… but not a buyer and not great.  Cinematography and direction however were fantastic, but those have their own categories to compete in.
• Frost/Nixon: I have not seen this movie, but I don’t have a problem making bold and ignorant statements about how good it is.  It’s probably very good.  It might be Oscar quality, but let’s be honest about things, the only reason this got nominated was because Ron Howard directed it… I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, just a true thing.
• Milk: Another film that I have not seen but have no problem judging.  It looks great.  I have heard from people who I trust that the film isn’t all that great.  I guess I don’t really have anything else to say about it.
• The Reader: This happens every year, some BS film that I have never heard of ends up as a best picture nomination and they never win and they always suck.  Where did this film even come from?  (does a little research) Oh… it’s an obligatory WWII film… figures.  This film should not have gotten nominated and The Dark Knight should have been nominated in its stead.
• Slumdog Millionaire:  I’ve seen this one and it’s fantastic.  This film really has all the makings of a real Oscar Best Picture.  The acting is great, the story is great, the Cinematography is great, the direction is great.  It’s just an absolutely great film.  This should win best picture because IMHO it is the best picture of the year (The Dark Knight is number 2).

Best Male Actor in a Lead Roll

• Richard Jenkins(The Visitor) : Don’t care.
• Frank Langella(Frost/Nixon): Don’t care.
• Sean Penn(Milk): Don’t care.
• Brad Pitt(The Curious Case of Benjamin Button): Does not deserve a nomination!  He did not do poorly in this film, it was not Seven Years in Tibet or anything (although I have heard people criticize his accent, I thought it was pretty solid… not as solid as Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump… but still solid).  But the performance was not great and to be honest he didn’t do much acting, he just did a lot of standing around looking bewildered.
• Mickey Rourke(The Wrestler): Amazing.  Should win.

Best Female Actor in a Lead Roll

Just like the left field nomination that is present in the Best Picture category every year, the Best Female Actor categories are always full of performances from movies that nobody has ever heard of.

• Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married): Who what why?
• Angelina Jolie (The Changling): I don’t have anything to say.
• Melissa Leo (Frozen River): Same for this one.
• Meryl Streep (Doubt): I need to see this film.
• Kate Winslet (The Reader): Hurm… The Reader again… wtf?

Best Director

• David Fincher (Curious Case of Benjamin Button): I get this.  David Fincher has made three groundbreaking films and has never been nominated.  As I said before this was a very well directed film and I would completely support Fincher for this award if he didn’t have such stiff competition.
• Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon): It’s Ron Howard.  Nuff said? Whenever Ron Howard makes a nonshitty film he seems to get a nomination and whenever he gets a nomination he gets a win (he is three for three), let’s see if we can break that streak.
• Gus Van Sant (Milk): I had forgotten this was directed by Gus Van Sant… he’s a (kinda) great director and he was nominated before with Goodwill Hunting.  He probably deserves this nomination but I doubt that he will win.
• The Reader (Stephen Daldry): Again?!?! This guy has a couple nominations under his belt (With The Hours and Billy Elliot) which makes his the most nominated and least winningest person on the list… does that make him the worst good director? or the best terrible director? It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t have the chops to win.
• Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire): I wish I could have lunch with Danny Boyle (I’m buying).  Danny Boyle has made eight features and you have probably heard of about half of them but they are all pretty awesome.  The direction in Slumdog Millionaire was top shelf and with such a solid filmography under his belt Danny Boyle deserves this Oscar.  But even without his filmography Danny Boyle still deserves the Oscar based on just this film alone.

Those are my thoughts for now.  I’m going to try and see The Reader (I really hope it sucks) but I doubt that I’ll see Milk or Frost/Nixon (they are getting plenty of coverage elsewhere).  I will also do a write up of the nominations for Supporting Male Actor and Supporting Female Actor this weekend.  Bye for now.

-Josh