Category: Movies

From the Hollywood Stock Exchange:

AwardOptions allow traders to buy and sell the Oscar nominees with exclusive Hollywood Derivatives centered around the 80th Academy Awards.

Five HSX AwardOptions will be issued for the nominees in this category. Each AwardOption is offered at H$5.00. The AwardOptions will halt trading at 4 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 24, in preparation for the awards ceremony to be held that evening.

The AwardOption for the winner in this category will cash out at H$25.00, while those failing to win will delist at H$0.00.

Right now No Country for Old Men, the Coens, Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie seem to be the favored investments.

First, There Will Be Blood is worth seeing simply for the performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. I’ve seen just one other of the five Oscar-nominated best actors, George Clooney in Michael Clayton, and Day-Lewis is in a whole other league from Clooney, good as Clooney was. Simply extraordinary.

I’ve seen four of the five best picture nominees now, all but Atonement. It’s hard to say, but I think I’d put There Will Be Blood last of the four. Michael Clayton was more intriguing, Juno more entertaining, No Country for Old Men more challenging.

There Will Be Blood is an episodic biography of a fictional oil man, much the way The Aviator was the biography of the real Howard Hughes, or Citizen Kane was of a mostly fictional tycoon. There’s a little bit about a silver strike, small oil finds, a large oil strike, a pipeline — beads on a string, some larger and more complete than others, but nothing in between. Why did this happen? Why did he get that way? Why did he do that? We get a glimpse, but no real answers.

I find this troublesome. The Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness was entertaining, but I didn’t feel I knew any more about the lead character at the end than I did going in. Good Night, and Good Luck was another good film that left more questions unasked than answered. Ken mentioned to me Michael Clayton — how did the woman attorney get to murder? That’s a big step. I’m glad that many films are trying to be more than they are, and I certainly respect the constraints of telling a story visually in 120 minutes, give or take (158 for There Will Be Blood). I just don’t think the current crop quite gets it done.

Critics have written that this year’s best picture nominees are a particularly bleak look at the world and indeed they are. They say it’s the temper of the times. A film historian might point out however, that the most successful type of films during the depths of the depression were comedies and musicals. The audience sought relief from everyday life. Perhaps now we have too many other ways to find lighter fare with television and the internets, I don’t know. But the unexpected success of Juno may be one indication. I’d watch all four of these films again for one reason or another, but Juno is the one I’d look forward to seeing.

Atonement this weekend.

The Envelope.com has the complete list.

BEST PICTURE
“Atonement”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

BEST ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie, “Away From Her”
Marion Cotillard, “La Vie en Rose”
Laura Linney, “The Savages”
Ellen Page, “Juno”

BEST ACTOR
George Clooney, “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis, “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp, “Sweeney Todd”
Viggo Mortensen, “Eastern Promises”
Tommy Lee Jones, “In the Valley of Elah”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett, “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee, “American Gangster”
Saoirse Ronan, “Atonement”
Amy Ryan, “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton, “Michael Clayton”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Casey Affleck, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
Javier Bardem, “No Country for Old Men”
Hal Holbrook, “Into The Wild”
Tommy Lee Jones, “No Country For Old Men”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Tom Wilkinson, “Michael Clayton”

BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, “There Will Be Blood”
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “No Country for Old Men”
Julian Schnabel, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”
Tony Gilroy, “Michael Clayton”
Jason Reitman, “Juno”

NewMexiKen saw the acclaimed film No Country for Old Men late this afternoon. I haven’t read the Cormac McCarthy book upon which the Coen brothers film is based, but the movie reflects his usual view of the world as a bleak and violent place.

This film is expected to garner a number of Oscar nominations Tuesday, so it’s a movie you should see.

NewMexiKen thought Juno was terrific. And Ellen Page even more than terrific.

What an entertaining, delightful film.

Roger Ebert’s 10 best.

Top three:

Juno
No Country for Old Men
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

The only film I’ve seen from Ebert’s top 10 is the wonderful Away from Her that might snag Julie Christie a second Oscar just 42 years after her win for Darling. (She has two other nominations.)

NewMexiKen has seen exactly none one of these 17 films.

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA
“American Gangster”
“Atonement”
“Eastern Promises”
“The Great Debaters”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

BEST MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY
“Across the Universe”
“Charlie Wilson’s War”
“Hairspray”
“Juno”
“Sweeney Todd”

FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (Romania)
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (France/USA)
“The Kite Runner” (USA)
“Lust, Caution” (Taiwan)
“Persepolis” (France)

The Envelope.com

Update: Three of the above — “There Will Be Blood,” “Juno,” and “The Kite Runner” — are reviewed by David Denby in this week’s New Yorker. And Anthony Lane reviewed “Atonement” last week.

“Once,” “Namesake” and “Waitress” were the first three DVDs shipped to the general membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences back in early September. (Additional ones were sent just to specific branches.) Since then, they’ve received “A Mighty Heart,” “Breach,” “Spider-Man 3,” “Reign Over Me,” “Zodiac,” “Things We Lost in the Fire,” “Freedom Writers,” “Knocked Up,” and “Across the Universe.” Not specifically in that order.

The Envelope

A very, very good film.

In what seems to me like a pretty good deal (time for money), Lonesome Dove — the 1989 mini-series with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones — is available from iTunes for $9.99. That’s more than 6 hours of great drama for your iPod or Mac — two long domestic airplane rides.

Roots, by example, is $34.99.

BTW, downloading over 4GB of videos (Lonesome Dove) is veeeeerrrrrry slow.

Earlier this year when Pan’s Labyrinth collected several early Oscars — the film won for art, cinematography and makeup — many were surprised when it didn’t win best foreign language film of the year.

See the movie that did win — Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) — and you’ll understand.

NewMexiKen recommends you see the film Away From Her starring Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis. The film was released last year and is available on DVD. It’s an adaptation from Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”

In its way it’s the most depressing film I’ve ever seen, yet strangely redeeming — and valuable for what you might learn. I wish I had seen it five years ago; I would have understood my dad’s reaction to the death of my stepmother better, if nothing else.

Life is so f***in’ perverse.

Update: Munro’s story is online — The Bear Came Over the Mountain.

Jaws in 30 seconds with bunnies!

Excellent use of car chases and ‘splosions.

Actually, the film was quite good. Matt Damon has the character down, in this the third Bourne film. The action is non-stop at a frenetic pace, made to seem all the more frenzied by the camera movement and split-second editing. The plot has more holes than a prairie dog town, but who cares?

David Denby has a good review, summing up with, “The material is formulaic, but, of all the current action franchises, this one is the most enjoyable.”

Taking my clue from David Denby’s look at the evolution of romantic comedies, A Fine Romance, Sunday evening NewMexiKen watched It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The 1934 Frank Capra film is considered the first wacky romantic comedy — a genre culminating most recently with Knocked Up. Any 73 year old film will be dated; even so this one is totally enjoyable. And it doesn’t take too much imagination to realize what a breakthrough it was. Gable was 32 and Colbert 30 when they made the movie, which won all five top Oscars — best picture, best actor, best actress, direction and screenplay.

Denby had this to say about the film:

As everyone agrees, this kind of romantic comedy—and particularly the variant called “screwball comedy”—lifted off in February, 1934, with Frank Capra’s charming “It Happened One Night,” in which a hard-drinking reporter out of a job (Clark Gable) and an heiress who has jumped off her father’s yacht (Claudette Colbert) meet on the road somewhere between Florida and New York. Tough and self-sufficient, Gable contemptuously looks after the spoiled rich girl. He’s rude and overbearing, and she’s miffed, but it helps their acquaintance a little that they are both supremely attractive—Gable quick-moving but large and, in his famous undressing scene, meaty, and Colbert tiny, with a slightly pointed chin, round eyes, and round breasts beneath the fitted striped jacket she buys on the road. When she develops pride, they become equals.

The cinema added something invaluable to the romantic comedy: the camera’s ability to place lovers in an enchanted, expanding envelope of setting and atmosphere. It moves with them at will, enlarging their command of streets, fields, sitting rooms, and night clubs; rapid cutting then doubles the speed of their quarrels. Out on the road, in the middle of the Depression, Gable and Colbert join the poor, the hungry, the shysters and the hustlers; they spend a night among haystacks, get fleeced, practice their hitchhiking skills.

David Denby takes a fascinating look at romantic comedies, from It Happened One Night to Knocked Up. From last week’s New Yorker.