HIMYM, or How I love Robot-Robin

"Robot initiating pull over to the side of the road until jackass apologizes to me sequence be bop be bop be bop boo boo" 

Scott Pilgrim vs The World, or How the cast is here!

500 Days of Summer or How is this what indie rom-coms look like now?

I am getting very excited about this movie, and I don't know why. The two stars have never really been my thing but the quirky premise and this teaser trailer have me enthralled. But I'm thinking this might just be a bit too emo, indie, Sundancey even for my own good.

In Maddow's words: talk me down!

Princess and the Frog, or How Disney needs to come back to form!

Gorgeous no?

[src]

30 Rock, or How "Puerto Rican doesn't sound right"

This show will never cease to amuse me.

Jack: It's not because you're a... I'm sorry. What... do you call... yourself ?

Elisa: A Puerto-Rican.

Jack: No, I know you can say that but what do I call you?

Elisa: Puerto-Rican.

Jack: Wow. That does not sound right.

United States of Tara, or How Toni's a hoot!

United States of Tara

Written by Diablo Cody

Starring: Toni Collette, John Corbett, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson & Keir Gilchrist.

If you love Toni you'll tune in so instead of trying to praise this (albeit uneven) Diablo Cody penned pilot, I'll just highlight what I loved:

"I can't deal with this right now..."

"Cougar crossing!"

"It tastes homo-made."

"You're not going to the gun range. That's our guy thing, that's three."

Rosemarie DeWitt or How I'm Seeing Double

Rosemarie DeWitt deals with a troublesome sister:

(It's Toni - she has multiple personality disorder!)

Rosemarie DeWitt deals with a troublesome sister:

(It's Anne, she's got crazy hair and thinks she's Sheba!)

Doubt, or How Meryl will rip your heart out

Doubt

Written and Directed by John Patrick Shanley

Starring: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis.

While the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's stage play is still an enjoyable 'did-he? did he not?' moral ride, it lacks something which the premise hints at: ambiguity. As a director, Shanley spends less time trying to hit moral ambiguities than in creating horribly didactic film gimmicks (I'm looking at you animal imagery!) that dissolve any punch the moral minefield he concocted for the stage had in the first place. That said, leave it to Meryl, Amy, Viola and Hoffman to make the film the performance showcase it should be and raise it above its directorial crutches - especially when Shanley let's them do their work (with his words nonetheless!) and creates wonderfully (tragi)comic scenes that are at once a battle of the wills and a cross-section of the changing world of the Christian faith in the mid-twentieth century. A-

Kate Winslet, or How I'm Seeing Double

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, or How if I see Brad gape one more time...!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Dir. David Fincher

Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson & Tilda Swinton.

The premise is a good one (courtesy of Mr Fitzgerald): a man (the eponymous Ben) ages backwards. The short story is an exercise in absurdist fiction, more akin to magical realism than to the meditation on life and death that Fincher and Roth offer in this epic- American film. But for all the beautiful cinematography, sumptuous art direction and dazzling visual effects, Ben Button proved irritatingly confounding to me: why were we being offered such a passive, do-nothing protagonist (not unlike Roth's other famous protagonist, Forrest Gump), being told his story with the aid of the oldest framing device of them all (person at deathbed recollects and adorning his story with snippets of historical events and an array of semi-believable secondary characters?

But what really got to me was the lack of tension; the lack of conflict. Benjamin is such a distant, tabula rasa type character that his motivations seem perplexing and altogether a matter of circumstance than anything indicative of any character arc at all. He just goes hither and thither; becomes a sailor, a lover, a button empire heir out of no will of his own - only the Daisy episode towards the end seems to be more structured around any agon and this is quickly forsaken for what seems like a rushed and foolhardy ending. But for most of the film, Benjamin is just drifting through easily recognizable historical moments and fable-like snippets of 'lessons on Life' which might suggest a great backdrop for this (hi)story but felt empty and too didactic for my taste (that 'backwards clock' framing tale irritated me for its clear "I'm a metaphor!" eagerness).

And I'm not even going into the fact that all the female characters seem underwritten (and so male-centered!): why else borrow an age-old female triumvirate (matron, crone and maiden) and give us the least fleshed out characters of the film? Or the fact that Brad's performance is so bland and uninspiring (he really doesn't have much to do other than gape throughout) he doesn't sell me as a compelling character not even as a constructive plot device. Or even the logical impossibility of the 'Benjamin dies as a baby' image: wouldn't he have been an old man with a baby face if he was born as a baby with an old man face? 

Flawless filmmaking, yes, but a good film needs to be more than an exercise in craft and have some heart, conflict; heck even an interesting lead would have been just fine. /rant over. C+ 

Golden Globe Predictions 2008, or How it's hard to predict foreigners' tastes

I'm betting on all the 'foreign flavor' of Slumdog to triumph over the Fincher epic (which I just saw last night and couldn't stomach!) and on the TV side I'm betting on some Hamm-Fey love.

** Predicted Winner

^^ Secretly Rooting For

Actual Winners (I got 15/22)

Best Picture, Drama:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
^^Revolutionary Road
** Slumdog Millionaire

Best Picture, Comedy:
Burn After Reading
^^Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Mamma Mia!
**Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Director: 
**Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
^^Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road

Best Actor in a Drama:
^^Leonardo DiCaprio, Revolutionary Road
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
**Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Actress, Drama:
**Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long
^^Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road

Best Actress, Comedy:
^^Rebecca Hall, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
**Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
Frances McDormand, Burn After Reading
Meryl Streep, Mamma Mia!
Emma Thompson, Last Chance Harvey

Best Actor, Comedy:
Javier Bardem, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
^^Colin Farrell, In Bruges
James Franco, Pineapple Express
Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges
**Dustin Hoffman, Last Chance Harvey

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams, Doubt
^^**Penélope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
Kate Winslet, The Reader

Best Supporting Actor:
Tom Cruise, Tropic Thunder
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes, The Duchess
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
^^**Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Best Screenplay:
**Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire
David Hare, The Reader
Peter Morgan, Frost/Nixon
Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Patrick Shanley, Doubt

Best Foreign-Language Film:
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
Everlasting Moments (Sweden)
**Gomorrah (Italy)
^^I've Loved You So Long (France)
Waltz With Bashir (Israel)

Best Animated Film:
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
^^**Wall-E

Best Original Song:
^^"Down to Earth," Wall-E
"Gran Torino," Gran Torino
"I Thought I Lost You," Bolt
"Once in a Lifetime," Cadillac Records
**"The Wrestler," The Wrestler

TV Series, Drama:
Dexter
House
In Treatment
^^**Mad Men
True Blood

TV Series, Comedy:
^^**30 Rock
Californication
Entourage
The Office
Weeds

Best Actress, TV Drama:
Sally Field, Brothers and Sisters
Mariska Hargitay, Law and Order: SVU
^^**January Jones, Mad Men
Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
Anna Paquin, True Blood

Best Actor, TV Drama:
Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment
Michael C. Hall, Dexter
^^**Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Hugh Laurie, House
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, The Tudors

Best Actress, TV Comedy:
Christina Applegate, Samantha Who?
America Ferrera, Ugly Betty
^^**Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Debra Messing, The Starter Wife
Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds

Best Actor, TV Comedy:
^^**Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Steve Carell, The Office
Kevin Connelly, Entourage
David Duchovny, Californication
Tony Shalhoub, Monk

Best Supporting Actress, TV:
Eileen Atkins, Cranford
^^**Laura Dern, Recount
Melissa George, In Treatment
Rachel Griffiths, Brothers and Sisters
Diane Wiest, In Treatment

Best Supporting Actor, TV:
^^Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother
Denis Leary, Recount
Jeremy Piven, Entourage
Blair Underwood, In Treatment
**Tom Wilkinson, John Adams

Best TV Mini-Series:
A Raisin in the Sun
Bernard and Doris
Cranford
**John Adams
^^Recount

Salma on 30 Rock, or How :: does the Macarena ::

Sure, trying to see Salma 'I had Pinault's baby' Hayek as a poor nurse is a wee bit of stretch, but did the writers on 30 Rock give her great lines last night. My favorite?

"I find that authoritative rapid Spanish subdues white people."

A Girl Cut In Two, or How wtf is with that ending?

Had I seen Claude Chabrol's La Fille Coupée en Deux before JD's Endings Blog-a-Thon I might have tried to muster some thoughts on this film's bizarre and altogether confounding ending.

Premise time: The beautiful Ludivine Sagnier (playing the naïve/not so naïve Weather girl Gabrielle) finds herself the object of two men's affections. One happens to be a pervy older gentleman who's a respected writer with a wife and specific sexual tastes. The other is a (clinically!) crazy playboy heir who's obsessed with Gabrielle. Yeah, rock, hard place, yada yada. 

Anyways, what the trailers promise is a thriller or at the very least a twisted Match Point meets Eyes Wide Shut ends up being a soap opera-ish film where sex, love and death collide in the figure of Gabrielle. And even though the payoff in the film is non-existent, Chabrol gives the audience an epilogue of sorts involving  a magic trick (wink wink can you guess where the title comes from? wink wink) which seems so scattershot, so didactic and poorly executed that instead of shedding light on a, as of yet undisclosed, metaphor for Gabrielle's conundrum it muddles the entire experience and leaves you wondering: wtf?!

Supporting Actress Blog-a-Thon, or How Kathy Bates is Mrs Helen Givings

This post is part of the start of the year festivities over at Stinky Lulu's Supporting Actress Blog-a-Thon. Check out the Class of 2008 over there.

My choice for this? 

Kathy Bates as Mrs Helen Givings in Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road.

Much has been made of the Titatic reunion in this Richard Yates' adaptation and true to form, a decade later, Kate and Leo prove that they have grown into remarkable thesps. And yet, Mendes surrounded them with such gifted supporting actors (the electric Michael Shannon, the wide-eyed Zoe Kazan - and yes, she is related to that Kazan, the chirpy Kathryn Hahn) that there's never enough praise for one of the most accomplished ensembles of 2008 (the ensembles of Demme's film, Kauffman's opus and Nolan's blockbuster are among the other ones I cherished).

That's a long way of saying: I want more people to think, watch and warm up to this film, because, upon second viewing it only gained more depth and power and this is in part due to its strong cast. 

But, on to Kathy:

Kathy Bates is one of those rare actresses that finely works good comedy characters (About Schmidt, Titanic) even when the material doesn't deserve it (Failure to Launch, Waterboy) so it's always rewarding seeing those comedic chops being used for purely dramatic purposes. In Revolutionary Road, Bates creates such character in the pithy Mrs Givings. This is a character actor who you can laugh at but cry with. 

She brings much needed comedic respite in this bleak drama in her scenes with her son John, but she also brings a certain vulnerability and pathetic eagerness that makes her all the more tragic when (com)pared with the Wheelers. Mrs Givings is indeed symptomatic of the suburban way of life of the 1950s - caring for lawns, enjoying small talk on weekends - and Bates portrays her not as a cartoonish character nor as a pity case, but as a woman who thoroughly thrives in this world yet can't get beyond the deluded nature of that world, to the chagrin of her son, her husband and the Wheelers themselves. That this is all tinged with (both intentional and unintentional) comedy just makes the performance all that more remarkable.

Following are a couple of lines that Bates sells so well they could be laugh riots by their lonesome, but given her organic performance in the film, feel very at home in Yates' sordid tale and in Haythe's screenplay. They tread the line of being boringly mundane and horribly quotidian, which seems to be exactly what Mrs Givings represents for both the Wheelers and for Yates.

"Now of course it isn't very desirable at this end, as you can see Crawford Road is mostly these little cinderblocky, pickup-trucky places. Plumbers, carpenters, little local people of that sort."

"It's like the European house leaf only these have the most wonderful yellow blossoms!"

"John, come look at this fabulous picture window!"

Kate and Leo might be getting the press, and Shannon might be looking to bag a nomination (precursors be damned!) but Bates really adds a wonderful breath of fresh air to this sometimes claustrophobic, though for that not less enjoyable gem of a film.

The Endings blog-a-thon, or How Nine to Five's Ending is hysterical!

I know I am fashionably late to what looks to have been a wonderful end of year, party, but here goes my post for Valley Dreamin's The Endings Blogathon

Haven't you ever braved it to the end of a movie only to find it wraps up the "End" with a couple of title cards that tell you what happens with every character involved? I usually find these title cards a bit of cheap way to end a movie (it is common and sometimes admissible in biopics and "based on real events" films, in which case you sort of expect the filmmaker/screenwriter to cut off the story at some point and fill you in - but still!)

In any case, sometimes a film will surprise me by using these title cards to great effect and the fantastic Nine to Five is a perfect example. If you haven't seen this film (and really, how could you pass up Jane in glasses, Dolly way back when and Ms Tomlin in all her glory?) you should check it out. I watched it recently and fell in love with it - oh the joy of seeing a crisp, smart and well-written comedy focused on gender dynamics!

Anyways, the end image is hilarious. After all their plans have been revealed and they are about to be called in to be arrested, as luck would have it these three ladies end up having something to celebrate anyways:

And then, true to its tryad formula, Nine to Five offers us the fates of our three heroines - very much in line with what the film has offered us of each. That they are each paired with out-of-context and yet such apropos snippets of scenes just make them more delightful:

The beauty of them are the simplistic images they convey and the ways in which they only make sense if you've been watching and relishing the hysterical laugh riot until now. 

See? Title cards like this make me giddy whereas something like this:

Nothing against Ron Howard and his film, but *snore*. But really, if you're gonna make us read in the theater (and not because you're aiding our linguistic impairments) you really should make it worth our while, no? And with that:

"Manuel continues to readjust to internet world after a 2 week hiatus in internet-less land. This Endings Blog-at-Thon marks his return to blog-a-hood."