|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 5:59 pm
It's all based on user submission. So, if a rumor becomes prevalent, a group of dedicated and uninformed fans can easily have it say something like Dylan Baker will be playing the Lizard in Spider-man 4.
Conversely, a really dedicated troll can get it to say Rosemary Harris will be playing "Aunt May/Carnage" in Spider-Man 3, (this was, like, '05) and release a faked press release. (wherein "Spider-Man" was spelled incorrectly numerous times) So I wouldn't take it's work as fact. Not the first time I've seen that, though, so maybe.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 6:22 pm
Why did I think IMDB had a staff that handled cast information, etc? Now I'm all bummed again. gonk
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:26 pm
Slumdog Millionaire = Good.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:42 pm
Gran Torino = Not perfect, but still badass
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:11 pm
John Corben Gran Torino = Not perfect, but still badass Aye. Watching something like that, it's hard to believe that Eastwood is as old as he is. Oscar nominations, anyone? Personally, I'm glad to see Robert Downey Jr. get some recognition for his role in Tropic Thunder, which actually very well played. Though his Tony Stark was still better. Similarly glad to see In Bruges get a nod for Best Original Screenplay. After seeing the Wrestler, I'll be pretty disappointed if Mickey Rourke doesn't win Best Actor. He was absolutely incredible. I'm pulling for Benjamin Button for Best Picture and Directing, but I think they'll both go to Slumdog Millionaire. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it was also a great film. And yeah, I'd say Ledger's pretty much got Best Supporting Actor locked up. But what do I know? Oh, and I finally saw Repo! The Genetic Opera. Very good movie. The story was compelling and the music was awesome. I actually thought Paris Hilton was pretty great in it, and fit her role well. Then again, that could be said for most of the cast.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 1:57 am
RDJ was good in Iron Man, I mean he was damn perfect for the role, but the Academy does not read comic books to understand movies, nor should they have to either. I mean to be blunt, the only reason that Ledger got nominated for a comic book movie is that he's dead. He earned it and should have been given the nomination if he hadn't died, but just how likely would that have been?
It's not like Brad Pitt or Ed Norton ever got seriously considered for Fight Club (or Snatch), Viggo Mortensen for any of the LOTR movies, and on and on. The thing is that there's two things that the Academy does not recognize; the first is outstanding comedic acting and the second is any genre that steps significantly out of a narrow range of narratives.
If you look at what Ledger had to do from a perspective of craft, he should be the easy winner. The first thing he had to do was take on a new interpretation of a very iconic role that is famous across several mediums, the most recent film version of which is one of the best loved actors in Hollywood ever (despite his absolute s**t performance). The second is that he had to appear convincingly mentally unstable and do so under a lot of make up. The third is that he had to do all of this while accepting a world where men dress up in flashy costumes and beat each other up. That is a massive amount to be asking of any actor, and what it kind of came down to is that the burden of legitimizing comic book movies as being mainstream film as much as Scarface, Heat, and Dog Day Afternoon are fell onto his shoulders. Here we are six months later and if that wall hasn't been smashed, it's been significantly cracked. TDK did precisely what it set out to do, and that was to set a new critical standard for comic book adaptations, which largely focused on Ledger who did a magnificent job of covering up Christopher Nolan's shortcomings as a director (which are several but not damning).
So there's that acknowledgment coming from the Academy of that first thing by nominating Ledger, and then by nominating RDJ for Tropic Thunder rather than Iron Man you get that representation of the second thing. But even at the same time, I can't say that he earned a nomination for Iron Man. Again, yeah he defined the role for decades to come, but he just didn't have the time or space to really give us the range that you need in a performance that earns that nomination, and I'm thinking of performances like Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York, Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, or Russell Crowe in The Insider. I think that it's also a nice acknowledgment for him as a person, that not just audiences are backing his redemption in terms of being able to sustain his recovery from drug abuse to build himself a solid and serious career.
There's shades of that in Rourke's nomination as well, that he has this reputation of being difficult, of playing sleazy characters in mostly s**t movies, and yet he can still earn that nomination through hard work and a willingness to dig in and take the real roles. So I dunno, I see a lot of maturing and progress in this year's awards, and I think a lot of that is because the ratings for last year were the worst in history. No one gives a s**t when you hand out awards to people for movies that no one either got the chance to see or no one gave a s**t about. I'm not saying you nominate Michael Bay every year, but I am saying that when a lot of people respond in specific ways to a movie or to an actor, you have to sit up and take notice instead of just ticking boxes against some esoteric checklist that has little to no internal logic. There's a reason that Titanic won so many Oscars, and there's a reason why so many people watched that happen, and those reasons are neither mutually exclusive nor entirely concurrent.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:35 am
Playing a leading role and a supporting role are two entirely different things, though. That's why they're categorized differently, and why I can say with full confidence that I wouldn't consider RDJ for the Best Actor of the year for Iron Man but would support his consideration for Best Supporting Actor for Tropic Thunder, despite the obvious dissonance in my thinking he played Stark better than Lazarus.
The Oscars have always been a bit of a joke, if you ask me. Ask anyone who's into movies what the best movie of '99 was, and 9 times out of 10, your answer will be Fight Club. It's my personal favorite movie. What nominations did it get? If I recall correctly, a sole nomination for a technical award. This phenomenon can actually be seen throughout all of Fincher's career - Se7en was in the same boat, despite stellar performances from Spacey and Freeman and a superbly written script. Zodiac was, by all accounts, the 3rd most critically acclaimed film of last year. Not a single nomination. Is it a lack of quality on the parts of these films? No. They don't fit the 'Oscar' mold, so they get ignored and glossed over. Another perfect example would be Christian Bale's role in American Psycho. A brilliant performance. But the movie's admittedly disturbing subject matter inherently excluded it from being involved in any of the "major" awards.
They have gone some ways to correcting that this year, I'll give them that. Downey Jr.'s nomination proves that, as do the nominations for In Bruges for Best Screenplay and even Ledger's for Best Supporting Actor. So maybe it isn't just on account of his death. Or maybe his death was a catalyst for his impending nomination which was, in turn, a catalyst for the nominations of other movies not fitting the 'Oscar mold.' They're not guiltless, though - TDK definitely deserved a nod for Best Picture. It was nominated for 8 awards, a number bested by only TCCoBB and Slumdog Millionaire, and tied for by Milk. All of the other three films are in that category. It seems to movie that if a movie is that good in that many ways, it certainly deserves consideration for the title at the very least.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:46 am
And then add in "hard out here for a pimp" winning for song...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 4:42 am
Saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop last night. That movie surprised the hell out of me. Kevin James kicked a**. Literally. He beat the crap out of guys.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:11 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:21 pm
Megan Morse Saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop last night. That movie surprised the hell out of me. Kevin James kicked a**. Literally. He beat the crap out of guys.
It did for me too. I liked it, I can't say that about alot of recent movies either.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 7:11 pm
So far recently I've seen The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Of the three, The Wrestlers was easily the best movie. I've never seen a ficticious account of anything that was more absolutely ******** accurate then that. I'm a big pro wrestling fan. I subscribe to the newsletters. I went to Eddie Guererro's memorial show. I have Ric Flair's autograph, and when I was little, the guy who dressed up as Santa for me and my cousins was an AWA promoter named Al Derusha. There is not a false note, a single embellishment in that entire movie. Rourke nails the aging wrestler personae COLD. He is Jake the Snake, Terry Funk, Roddy Piper, Lex Luger and Bret Hart. It's a slice of America that people turn a blind eye to, and it's put right out there on the screen, larger then life but just as real.
But it wasn't nominated for Best Picture.
Slumdog Millionaire is going to win, and it deserves to, if only because The Wrestler and Wall*E weren't nominated. If the Animated category hadn't been created to insure that Pixar didn't ever get their hands on a Best Picture Oscar, this would have been their year. Slumdog is a wonderful picture that deserves to rise above the rest of the things nominated if only because it is so outside that realm of what "Best Picture" ostensibly SHOULD be. It lays its story out plainly, and doesn't expect you to enjoy it on some higher level other then the story it presents to you. It's a love story despite the severe hardships the characters suffer, and it doesn't become enmired in the poverty and horrors that it shows; but they are there, true facts of life.
I liked Benjamin Button a lot better when it was called Forrest Gump.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 7:17 pm
Now for something totally different.... Stephen Colbert Congratulations to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. on it's thirteen Oscar nominations which proves that the American people do approve of torture.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:38 pm
Cassandra Wu-san Cain Megan Morse Saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop last night. That movie surprised the hell out of me. Kevin James kicked a**. Literally. He beat the crap out of guys.
It did for me too. I liked it, I can't say that about alot of recent movies either.What really stuck me as I was watching it is that the character of Blart actually possessed the six qualities of a hero as put forth by Waid. I'm definitely buying the DVD.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:48 pm
The demo for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is out on Steam, Fileshack, and other places around the internet. The drawback to it is that it's a 1.76GB download for a demo.
The plus side is that it is completely and utterly awesome. The limted gun selection is there (6 or so weapons, but you can only carry 3 at a time), limited health boxes, AI that isn't retarded, as well as a genuinely spooky atmosphere and plays-with-your-head story points. Alma is back, and she's gonna ******** your s**t up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
