Ho Hum Oscar

When I learned I would be spending Oscar night at work, counting product and managing the process, I was a quite a bit disappointed. I've not missed an Oscar ceremony since I can remember, but then I saw this year's crop of contenders and my unease was lifted. It's not that their bad movies, even though I'm refusing to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for what I can only surmise is all the schmaltz and none of the substance of the staggeringly great novel, it's just that out of some incredibly films released this past year, only a small portion of them were nominated in sparse categories, but really this is one man's opinion.

It's also my choice not to do like I usually do and pick winners for each category, but I do have picks in the six categories that I have passion for.

Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer for Beginners. Sure, he's the favorite, but it is the most nuanced and wonderfully acted supporting performance by a male this year. As should happen every year, the statue should go to the most deserving performance.

Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer for The Help/Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids. In a perfect world these polar opposite performances would both receive the recognition and prestige that they deserve as well as the spotlight for being able to create characters that transcend caricature and are full fleshed out in all their sassy, gonzo, beleaguered, strong and inspirational women. It was so fun to watch both of these women work and make everything seem so effortless.

Best Actress: Viola Davis for The Help. It's rare that an actor wholly disappears into the character they're playing and none make it as effortless as Viola Davis does. She makes Aibeleen into a person, who we can know and understand even though we're only with her for a few days out of her hard and weary life. Her speech about her dead son is the crowning achievement of this performance piece and adds yet another layer to this deliciously, sweet onion of a woman.

Best Actor: George Clooney for The Descendants. As much as I loved the facial expressions and nuances of Jean Dujardin, it doesn't compare to the intensity and power of this performance. The seething undercurrent of the rage that fills Matt King's heart mixed in with the deep anguish of that wrenches his soul and causes him to be pulled to and fro. It makes for a cocktail of emotions and control that would have crushed a lesser actor.

Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. Forty or so movies in a film career that spans over 40 years and there have been some films that haven't cut the mustard, but this film is so well-written and such an intriguing and fantastic ride that it is worth the legacy of this fantastic filmmaker and is definitely the most original screenplay of the group and deserving of the title.

Achievement in Sound Editing: Drive. It's really criminal and ridiculous to have shut Drive out of every major category. Opinion is one thing, but to almost completely ignore staggering performances and incredible camera work is just utterly blind. I hope Drive wins this honor because it deserves d so much more than this.

Thanks for reading my rants. I hope you all have a wonderful Oscar night and if you bet on the awards, I hope that it's a frugal one for you as well.

A Quick Update: January

Fresh start! No time for repeats!No time to dwell on the past, we're moving forward and beyond. So anyway, I saw 28 movies over the last month and have gotten 2012 off to a great start. Not all of them have been great and some of them were hold outs so that I wouldn't have doubles on last year's list, but all will be included with ratings here and now:

Winter in Wartime (3)
A Dangerous Method (5)
The Crow (1)
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains (4)
Bridesmaids (5)
House of Sand and Fog (4)
Submarine (5)
War Horse (4)
Othello (3)
Little Caeser (3)
Beautiful Boy (3)
No Country for Old Men (5)
The Towering Inferno (3)
Crazy Stupid Love (5)
The Lady Vanishes (5)
Super 8 (5)
Nixon (2)
Incendies (5)
Save the Tiger (5)
The Iron Lady (4)
Last Night (4)
The Ladykillers (1955) (3)
Bellflower (4)
Attack the Block (5)
Heathers (5)
Sabotage (5)
This is England (4)
The Farmer's Wife (3)

El Scorcho

You're in my dreams again
we laughed, we danced, and I held you tight.
Tighter than I'd ever dare in life for fear you'd wriggle away.

I hang onto these dreams
like I hang on your every word,
every look, every slight gesture toward me.

I can't help it.
I don't want to help it.
I want it.

I want to feel the longing in my hands
to hold onto yours.
The longing in my heart
to lay my head on your chest
feeling the sounds of yours

I try not to believe my dreams,
but I'm happy there.
I crave them and curse my body for
awakening.

How do I tell all this to you?

You'll run,
you'll fade away,
you'll just ignore my very existence,
until my texts stop coming
and my calls drop out of memory.

Silently loving you
up close
is my safety,
my way of keeping you around,

But I see the way you look at her,
the way you talk about him.
The words you say to them
and the arms outstretched for them
and not me.

They flock to you
as if you are the only one tossing bread
for them to feed.

They think they have you caged.
I fear sometimes you'll give in,
but when they leave,

I'm here,
you're here.

My mind tells my mouth to smile
it does.
You smile back.

My mind tells my body to lunge forward and sweep you off your feet and into a kiss,
it doesn't.
You make no move either.

I don't see it in your eyes,
but I think I hear it in your voice,
feel it in your body language.

I'm wrong.

My mind swims,
my heart beats out of my chest,
 and my mouth dries
as I try the words on my tongue,
but they fall,

into oblivion where they'll stay until
the day I say I'm ready.

Everyday I wait is another day closer
and another day farther away
as I put it off.

I have to be satisfied with dreams,
hopes,
desires,
and fantasies;

For now.
For as long as it takes for me
to say...

My Favorite Movies of 2011

I had some self-control this year and rather than grabbing some number of movies over 20, I whittled it down to just 20. Mainly, I really didn't find an incredible list of films that had the wow factor that I always crave from the cinema, but the films I did pick just floored me with how well put together they are and how unique and incredible in terms of heft of emotion they evoked.

This is also the first year that I'm writing this list earlier than the end of January because of my proximity to Seattle and my deep love of many films released this year earlier than December, I was able to easily cast off any films that may be in wider release toward the end of the month.

Well, without further pandering or adieu, here are my top 20 films of 2011 in alphabetical order, but  in no other way ranked:

50/50: I didn't think it was possible to strike a perfect balance between comedy and real life drama, but this film is able to do it and then some. It is at it's core the essential human story of the fear and emotional toll that our mortality weighs upon us and it's incredibly hilarious.

Another Earth: What would you do if you had a chance to know if your life could have been different? How would you feel about looking at what could have been? These are the exact questions that the characters in this film struggle with and try to make sense of and it's an utterly fascinating journey to watch.

The Artist: Ever since I saw City Lights in college I've had a passion for what silent films can teach us about life and human expression. This film is able to expand upon the silent genre so much that hamming it up in front of the camera is not the only thing we see, but we can also see every raw emotion and slight change in demeanor as it plays across the actor's silent faces and it brings an extraordinary life to the screen that was unparalleled by any talkie this year.

Beginners: It's an utterly unique experience for a film to tackle so many obstacles in a protagonist 's one journey on screen, but this film is able to take each one in stride and bring the story into a unified whole of emotion and a powerful lesson about who we are and what we tell ourselves about the people we've known forever and those we want to know forever.

Bridesmaids: Was there a funnier comedy this year? The simple answer is no. This film broke all of the rules regarding the subject matter it chose to tackle and the way that subject matter is portrayed. So many fully formed characters came out of this film that they literally jumped off the screen and into our hearts by striking our funny bones.

Crazy Stupid Love: Films about love are a dime a dozen, but films that think and portray love as honestly and openly as this one are extremely rare and something that's lacking in many romantic comedies of recent years.


The Descendants: Every look every line of dialogue and every sunny locale used to hide the festering and fetid anger boiling beneath the surface of these character's lives is impeccably crafted and ingeniously woven into the fabric of this crumbling and soon reunited family unit. It's an excellent film in every way.

Drive: This slow burning and quiet film erupts into fits of extreme brutality and violence with a magnitude that shook me to my core and kept my eyes glued to the screen. It's a brilliantly plotted and superbly acted film that is not what any of us could have expected, but it's what we all had hoped for.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: David Fincher has a way of delving into the deep dark catacombs of the human soul that no other director has so efficiently and so often tapped. He is the only man that could make this as brilliant an adaptation as it is keeping us guessing even if like me you read the book before seeing the film.

The Guard: Hilarious and criminally underseen, this film is a new type of buddy cop movie, where the audience is the main cops buddy and the other guy like us is along for his wild and inventive ride. From frame one to the last I never could, nor wanted to guess what happened next, it's a fantastically surprising and fresh film.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: The end of any behemoth franchise is a bittersweet one and rarely do we get such a spectacular and magnificently well crafted ending as we did with this one. It wrapped up the film plotlines and put a wonderful bookend onto the Harry Potter franchise.

Midnight in Paris: Woody Allen, as a filmmaker, has had some wildly inventive films, but none go as far into the fantasy realm as this one does and yet has it stay so grounded in the reality of the characters and what they feel as nostalgia for a time when they hadn't even existed as strange as that sounds.

The Muppets: Speaking of nostalgia, this film is chock full of it from the nods to muppet tropes of yore and the idea that in a CGI filled film landscape there can exist a film so pure and devoid of cynicism that it can and does make me believe again that a frog and a pig can be in love and that breaking out in song will always make you feel better.

Rango: I'll admit it, when I saw the previews for this film I wrote it off and scoffed at the idea, but the animation style, the character development along with the wonderful voice talents brought me around and I had an incredibly enjoyable time learning about and watching this daring cowlizard, who has delusions of grandeur.

Shame: I knew that with a film rated NC-17, I was going to be bombarded with flesh and several scenes of graphic sex acts, but what I didn't expect, or at least was at the back of my mind, was the incredible, brave and searing performances by the two leads that brought the story into focus and helped me to understand things about myself that I wouldn't think a film about sex addiction could.

Super 8: My whole film life has revolved around the films of Spielberg, so to have a wonderful homage to his works is an incredible treat, but what I never expected was for the film to completely take on a life of its own and create a world that burst forth from the homage and became its own complete and wonderful original thought.

The Tree of Life: I've honestly never seen anything like this film in all my years of watching film and I don't expect to see anything like it ever again. I usually hate pretentious answers to films of this scale when the audience is asked what it's about, but I really only have one answer for what this film is about and the reason everyone should see it. It's about us. Whether you realize it or not, everything that makes us human is battling within this film and depending on who you are it can come out either way.

The Trip: Of course I latched onto a film about two wonderful comedians playing versions of themselves on a food road trip through Northern England, but what I didn't expect were the deep themes of life and where their own lives are headed, that the men face while on the trip. It's a welcome surprise, which turned this film from just another road movie into a film that discusses what it means to vacate one's life for a while and how it effects the things we leave behind.

Win Win: To understand this film is to understand what it means to be stuck in an uncompromising rut in life and to suddenly have something dropped in your lap that can turn it all around. Yet, it's not all roses as something dropped in one's lap always comes with bitter consequences and this film deals with all of those consequences head on without flinching and with a grace that's impeccable.


X-Men: First Class: I have always loved the X-Men and to see a wonderful origin story that predates the original film origin story is incredibly refreshing and reinvigorates the storyline by bringing in new blood while paying wonderful homage to the old films. I loved the new superhero aesthetic placed into an old school style.

Year End Statistics 2011

In the last year I faced some personal challenges and became a professional of the retail variety so I have changed my movie watching habits, to a degree that compared with last years numbers, I've seen 37 fewer films and actually no repeats, bringing my grand total to 372 films I watched during 2011. Now, being off by 37 might seem like a lot, but I tell you folks, I tried. I really tried to exceed the year that was 2010. Not necessarily forcing myself to watch films, but really planning out what I would see and when and seeing if I could sneak a few more in there for good measure. I'm not disappointed by the number, but I guarentee you it will be smaller next year. For one thing I will still have a job for at least the first few months of the year and I'll be busy catching up on being me and experiencing life outside the theater walls with their speaker systems, bright lights and undignified rows of texters and loud whisperers, but until then I'd like to share my statistics and I'll compare this year's numbers to the previous two years numbers and we'll see how my habits have changed if at all over the years.

DVD home ownership, me or someone else's:
2009: 71
2010: 43
2011: 30

Internet Streaming:
2009: Netflix: 101, Hulu: 4
2010: Netflix: 145, Hulu: 2
2011: Netflix: 128, Hulu: 0

DVD Rentals:
2009: Netflix: 134, Blockbuster:  24
2010: Netflix: 144, Blockbuster: 19
2011: Netflix: 137, Blockbuster: 10


OnDemand (Comcast):
2009: 5
2010: 6
2011: 1

In Theaters:
2009: 62
2010: 50
2011: 66

Total:
2009: 401
2010: 409
2011: 372

A Quick Update: December

Well, I nearly did it, but my schedule this month due to the holidays nearly did me in, so I wasn't able to completely make my goal of seeing a movie a day this month and possibly pushing myself over in the grand total arena. Yet, I did watch 28 movies this past month and had no repeats. See the next post for the totals for the year and the statistics for the methods of viewing I've pursued. So, here at last are the movies I've closed out 2011 with and their ratings.

The Beaver (3)
Take Shelter (5)
Like Crazy (5)
L'Enfant (4)
Raising Arizona (5)
Melancholia (4)
All the President's Men (5)
The Postman Always Ring Twice (4)
In a Better World (4)
The Game (4)
Shame (5)
Hesher (3)
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (5)
Cell 211 (5)
Delicatessan (5)
Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol (4)
Young Adult (5)
Scream 4 (3)
The Small Back Room (3)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Thrones (3)
North by Northwest (5)
Cliffhanger (2)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (5)
The Artist (5)
Arsenic and Old Lace (5)
Heavenly Creatures (4)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (4)
The Adventures of Tintin (4)

A Quick Update: November

So, some good news and some bad news this month. The good news is that I brought my total movies seen up to 342, the bad news it is only that high, which means with one month left to go, it's looking like I might not get beyond last years total, but miracles happen. Anywho, let's get down to brass tacks. This month I saw a grand total of 21 movies with no repeats. Now, let's see the titles and ratings.

Stranger Than Paradise (3)
Peep World (2)
Life During Wartime (2)
Being There (5)
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (5)
The Lincoln Lawyer (3)
Panic Room (4)
The Birdcage (3)
Martha Marcy May Marlene (5)
Noises Off (3)
Small Town Murder Songs (2)
Ghost in the Shell (4)
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (4)
The Conspirator (3)
The Day of the Jackal (4)
My Dog Tulip (5)
The Muppets (5)
The Beatles: Help! (4)
Rushmore (5)
Hugo (4)
The Descendants (5)