It's All Over...Finally!- Final Oscar Predicitons

I've been watching or covering the Oscars with varying degrees since 1998. And I can say with certainty, this is the most wide open race I've ever seen.
The amount of blood on the floor, the amount of money and mud thrown around, and the sheer numbers of different frontrunners has been startling. And with each new revelation or each new award we start to think of the possible scenarios. At this point, our fingernails are chewed clean off.


Sure there have been other tight races: 2009's "The Hurt Locker" vs. "Avatar," 2004's "Million Dollar Baby" vs. "The Aviator," and 1998's "Saving Private Ryan" vs. "Shakespeare in Love," but this year is seems different.
This year there are an endless array of possibilities from who will win Best Director and Best Actress to which films people love compared to what they merely respect.
Will Ben Affleck and "Argo" continue their sweep of public sympathy for the Director "snub," or will "Lincoln" outsmart its way to the top? Can "Life of Pi" dominate the awards like its quietly been dominating the world wide box office? Actors love "Silver Linings Playbook," but will the rest of the Academy?
Will a James Bond theme song finally win an award? There are tight races from top to bottom from production design to sound editing.

So here's my guesses and ideas about what may happen on Sunday night. Will some of them be wrong? Yes! And thank god for that because without the surprises....things get boring.

See picks on the next page....

Focus unleashes "Anna Karenina"

     I was already excited, but now, I'm nearly foaming at the mouth.

     Focus Features has unveiled a first look at their giant adaptation of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina." Featuring some awe-inspiring pomp and circumstance, it seems the novel is going to be given the lush and expansive treatment it richly deserves.

     Directed by Joe Wright and adapted for the screen by god-among-men Tom Stoppard, from what we can glean from the trailer, the film detailing the search for love and happiness of a young woman and her embattled affair amongst Russian's aristocracy is going to oscillate between real live sets and a limbo-like set with a stage, amphitheater, and gilded ballroom. If the ambition on display pans out as well as it looks in these two and a half minutes, audiences are in for a real treat. (Plus it'll be absolute catnip for the Academy.)

Trailer after the jump

A Heart Full of Love- Les Miserables Teaser Trailer Released

After much ballyhooed casting choices, little screen stills here and there, and those paparazzi photos of a newly shorn Annie Hathaway, we're all going to finally get some kind of idea of what we're getting this Christmas in the much-anticipated screen adaptation of "Les Miserables" in the form of a teaser trailer.
Obviously it's full of stark and beautifully shabby period art direction and costumes, the faces of the cast (Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne etc) as well as stern-faced Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, but we also get some singing.
Unlike the past few movie musicals first trailers, they don't seem to be hiding that it's a musical. We get to see the gaunt and dejected Fantine (Anne Hathaway) singing one of the show's greatest songs "I Dreamed A Dream."

Teaser after the jump

She's Not There- "My Week with Marilyn" Review

      It seems like every few years, whether we want it or not, we're inundated by some new, apparently big revelation about one of our favorite stars of classic Hollywood yore.

     Katharine Hepburn was bisexual!

     Bing Crosby was an abusive drunk!

     Cary Grant dabbled in LSD!

     A new author always seems to be chomping at the bit on the Today Show with their newest and juiciest bit of dirt to unearth for all to see a truer and more potent side of who (insert celebrity name) really was.

     So in 1995 when Colin Clark, in his memoir "My Week with Marilyn" detailed his affair with the titular bombshell during the making of her film "The Prince & The Showgirl" in the summer of 1956, it was an instant success. Fans clamored for as much new and scandalous information as they could about the star that many still don't feel like we knew very well at all.

     Unfortunately, for all of it's talk of these missing pieces to the Marilyn Monroe puzzle, the frothy film of "My Week with Marilyn" ends up a slow and shallow attempt that never really reveals much of anything at all.

Bruised But Not Broken- Warrior Review

Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton face-off for one final bout in "Warrior"

Warrior: Two brothers, both with the weight of the world and their past on their shoulders, enter the cage. Only one may leave with the five million dollar prize.
     "Warrior" is an action-packed drama about a pair of brothers both traumatized by their shattered childhoods, who now are trying to redeem themselves in the tumultuous and dangerous ring of mixed martial arts. One brother, Tommy (a mercurial Tom Hardy), a  shaken, returning veteran from the Iraq War, and the other Brendan (Joel Edgerton) a high school physics teacher haplessly trying to pay the mortgage.They along with their father (played with sweet sadness and unbridled fury by Nick Nolte) try to use fighting to fix their troubled pasts, but also to embolden their fleeting futures.

     In an age when more and more people whine and complain that the movies they see don't reflect their regular American values, and that things like "The Blind Side" are the only antidote, "Warrior" goes a long way to remind that movies with heart need not check their intelligent dramatic tension or their fierce emotional performances at the door. This film written and directed with great blue collar gumption by Gavin O'Connor ("Tumbleweeds" and "Miracle") is muscular, taut film with some amazing performance to buoy even its silliest moments.

You've Got It Bad Girl- Young Adult Review

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) doing everything she can to win back her man

     Just imagine that worst-case scenario version of seventeen year-old yourself. Think of all of your little quirks you had then, those annoying and frustrating habits that you've been able to lessen or eliminate from growing up or gaining some life experience.

     Now just imagine that version of yourself is 37 and completely unchanged from that petulant and socially inappropriate teenager, and even worse, blithely oblivious that that kind of behavior is not expected or even wanted anymore. This is a good starting place to try to describe the ballsy, slightly manic, and always delusional Mavis Gary, Charlize Theron's protagonist in the new comedy "Young Adult" from writer Diablo Cody ("Juno," TV's "United States of Tara") and Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air" and "Juno").

     Mavis is a mess. As a writer of a series of young adult "Sweet Valley of the Traveling Pants"-style novels (that was recently canceled) about popular blonde girls whose intelligence and smarts are like obviously ignored because they're so popular and beautiful, she spends most of her time recovering from her hangover from the previous night, drinking vast amounts of Diet Coke, and procrastinating from finishing her final book by online shopping and watching "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" for inspiration. It's not a full life, but she's so happy if for nothing else then to be living in the Big City (Minneapolis) and not in her tiny little hometown of Mercury, Minnesota.

Crazy Heart Review

Crazy Heart
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall.
Written and Directed by: Scott Cooper.

Starring as Bad Blake, a once-prominent country singer whose life has been nearly shattered by hard living and booze, Jeff Bridges once again reminds why he has been one of the most consistent and important actors of the last 40 years in his latest film, the unexpected and nuanced indie, “Crazy Heart.”

Blake lives his life like one of the country songs he sings in his liquor-soaked sets. He’s flirted with huge success, ruined four separate marriages, lives one bottle of whiskey at a time, and doesn’t have a relationship with the one son he knows about. But just as it seems Blake is going to be destroyed at the hands of his demons, fate graces him with many opportunities to amend his ways and finally have the opportunities he wants.

Fate gives him a job in the form of a songwriting gig for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), his protégé who eventually surpassed him in money and fame but never forgot where or who he came from, and a woman named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring music journalist and single mother Blake meets in Santa Fe, who despite her difficult past, tries to love Blake for the man she thinks he can be.

Now, it’s true, the down-and-out country singer who tries to change his ways with the help of a loving woman is not the most original film concept ever conceived (see the even-better 1983 film “Tender Mercies”), but this film by first time writer/director Scott Cooper elevates beyond the clichés by the surprising decisions he makes and the lovely and simple performances by his lead performances.

First and foremost Cooper, adapting the 1989 novel by Thomas Cobb, has injected a light touch and unexpected humor to a story that could have been bogged down by its own seriousness. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its gravitas; it has heaps of it, but just when you think the film is going to descend into a woe is me diatribe, it brings you back with a beautiful humanity. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Jean, with a hopeless romantic heart and delicate strength is just like the audience; she, despite all of his red flags, has fallen in love with Bad Blake just like we have.

Most importantly though as we’ve seen in other musical films such as “Ray,” about Ray Charles, “Bird,” about jazzman Charlie Parker, or the Johnny Cash film, ”Walk the Line” it’s so important that we as the audience are drawn into the musician’s magnetism, their presence on stage; we need to understand why audiences are drawn to them. “Crazy Heart” is no exception. The musical numbers sweat with an authenticity. You’ll believe that all of these new original songs written by T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, including the film’s theme song “The Weary Kind,” have been hits for decades.

Even though Bad Blake is a fictitious character, he’s brought to vivacious and startling life by the genius that is Jeff Bridges. Ever since his breakthrough in the 1971 classic “The Last Picture Show,” Bridges has showcased a realism and a naturalistic quality in his acting that has made him severely underrated in forty year career. He doesn’t have the determined focus of Robert De Niro or the volcanic spurts of a Sean Penn. He’s a restrained naturalist. It’s the way he looks at someone after they’ve delivered a line of dialogue, or the way that he laughs at the reality that has become his life; it just feels so lived in, so present, so charming. It’s his unadorned purity as an actor that seems like a much more difficult task than the typical grandstanding and scenery chewing.

The film occasionally gets trapped into the clichés that it mostly avoids and that can be a bit disheartening, but for the most part “Crazy Heart” is like a good country song. We’ve heard it all before, but it takes a real stylist, a true artist, to make it seem all shiny and new.
Grade: B

Can't We Be Friends?- The Social Network Review

When we first lay eyes on Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in “The Social Network,” he looks pretty unassuming. His close-cropped, curly hair, his slight build buried in a baggy sweatshirt, his sad eyes all scream an everyman, your average nerd. But after waxing poetically about trying to get into one of Harvard’s elite final clubs to his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), she promptly dumps him because frankly, he’s not a very nice guy. Then, almost as if he flips a switch, Mark’s eyes change from that of sadness and longing and become cold, steely, and full of fire. He leaves in a huff, and takes his anger out in the only way that he seems to know how, on the Internet.

It’s these rants—along with a pretty crass and comical internet site about the women of Harvard (that’s too good to spoil)—that brings him to the attention of the university’s conduct board as well as the Winklevoss brothers (Armie Hammer, pulling double duty by playing both roles) a pair of upper-crust, identical twins on Harvard’s rowing team. They’re looking for a programmer to create Harvard Connection, a site where users could add friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Sound familiar?
So when Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm and tells his good buddy Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and suggests a site called The Facebook where users could add friends, send them messages, and update personal profiles to notify friends about themselves, but they have to be invited to join, just like the exclusive clubs Mark isn’t getting into, we all begin to get a bit suspicious. He asks Eduardo to be the CFO, gets $1000 for startup costs, and they begin their work.

Noted wordsmith Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men,” TV’s “The West Wing”) beautifully and efficiently sets up the film as part intellectual thriller part court room drama. The narrative I’ve described above is interspliced with scenes from the two lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg by Saverin and the Winklevosses. We never know with whom our allegiances lie because as much as we think we know the true story, no one, except maybe the real Zuckerberg, will ever truly know what happened in those beer-soaked back rooms.



Based on “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezerick, Every time a new piece of information is revealed, we’re expertly cut back to the depositions in the conference rooms, where each side is able to put its own spin on the events. Credit editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter for being able juggle all of these intricate pieces with precision and flair.


David Fincher, a director so-closely and adeptly associated with striking visuals and beautiful set pieces (Remember “Se7en” or “Fight Club”), has allowed Sorkin’s dialogue to soar through. The expert camera work is still there, but just as an added bonus, we get a script so witty, so cunning, that the words feel like daggers to gut every time.

The reason the dialogue sounds so good though is it’s being said by a cast of some of Hollywood’s freshest and most sparkling new talent. Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin seems to be the only person in the film with any shred of soul left. The film contends the only mistake he ever made, in Zuckerberg’s mind, was dreaming too small. It’s a tragic performance that will leave you breathless from his awkward arrival through the embittered tell-off he gives Mark towards the close.

Justin Timberlake, with a laid back charm and earthy realness, plays Sean Parker (a sort of devil in disguise), the co-creator of Napster who befriends Mark as a way to get in on the action of Facebook and to show Mark what potential spoils can be gained from living the high life.

The film is held together though, through the amazing breakthrough of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark. Eisenberg isn’t a stranger to movie audiences. He’s been the awkward, stammering, young twentysomething in “Adventureland” or “Zombie Land,” but his work here is something completely new. He can rattle off Sorkin’s dialogue with such ease and beauty you’d think he thought it up himself. His facial reactions show everything he’s feeling and he doesn’t mind anyone seeing it. He’s able to carry such bravado and such fierce ambition; you know he’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals, no matter who he hurts.

The film has caught considerable flack from the actual people involved for the dramatic liberties that Sorkin and Fincher have taken to tell their story, but the filmmakers are not looking for complete or exact accuracy. They’re not making a documentary, and the film speaks more directly to a generation of people and how they interact with the world around them. The film taps into such a primal and integral part of the college experience: wanting to be accepted, wanting to be liked. Mark creates Facebook in the first place is to be able to control who gets into his special little club.

In a world so large and expansive where even the most confident individuals can feel lost in the shuffle; Mark wants to create a place where people can come together, and a place where he can feel better about himself. He’s a 21st century Citizen Kane whose relationships are laid waste to his mile-high ambition.

Unlike Citizen Kane though, we don’t really know if by the end Mark Zuckerberg has any trace of the young guy who we meet in the beginning of the movie. He has certainly changed from the beginning, but how much? You as an audience will be immeasurably changed by the continued power of “The Social Network.” Grade: A

For Your Precious Love

The more I ponder “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the tough yet continually electrifying new film directed by Lee Daniels, the more I’m unsure of what to adequately say about it. Is it really meant to be just a piece of entertainment? Or is it more a strong social commentary? Or is it merely a well-structured character study? It is in this questioning, this inquiry into the complexity and nuance, that the raw and glittering facets to this diamond of a film can truly be found.

As the title says, “Precious” centers on the title character, Clarice “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a morbidly obese, illiterate, 16-year-old black girl, who lives in a rundown, Harlem apartment with her physically and emotionally abusive mother Mary (comedienne Mo’Nique).

After her high school teacher finds out she’s pregnant for the second time by her absent and drug-addicted father, the principal kicks her out of high school. But instead of leaving her destitute without an education, the principal suggests Precious go to a program for troubled teens looking to get their GED because her math teacher says she has an aptitude for math.

Mary thinks that school won’t do her daughter any good, and thinks going down to the welfare office to qualify for assistance is a better idea than bothering with school. Defiantly, Precious decides to go to school instead, despite her mother’s fuming rage. But it’s ultimately in this class, under the tutelage of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) that Precious really begins to awaken and become a real person.

This normally would be the point in the oft-mocked Lifetime movie where the young protagonist would learn to overcome her adversity and become her high school’s valedictorian or something equally ridiculous. But screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher by strictly sticking to Sapphire’s novel and with director Daniels’s assured direction, “Precious” transcends any kind of cliché. These characters are fully-realized people full of flaws and all haunted with demons of the past and their uncertain futures.

Both Precious and her mother Mary are locked into relationships that feed off of each other’s worst qualities. Mary treats her daughter as her whipping boy, yet Precious sticks around, allowing her mother to still treat her horribly. The violence that happens between mother and daughter is so casually treated it seems an expected way of life by both victim and abuser.

Mo’Nique, in her first dramatic role, is a fiery tornado as Mary. She’s equal parts malevolent and pitiful, desperate yet vindictive. But just when you thought that her performance would only hit the bitter and evil side, she throws in moments of sheer crestfallen grace. She’s a broken woman struggling under generations of what she’s told it means to be a woman, and ruined by the lack of love she’s never received.
Similarly to Mo’Nique’s performance is the startling work of Gabourey Sidibe.

To be plucked from obscurity and in her first major film role to have the instincts and raw talent that is this 24-year-old has, is something beyond extraordinary. She plays Precious as a subtle storm of emotions, uncertainties, and sadness wrapped up in the blank stare of someone slowly being destroyed by their circumstances. She’s so convincing, you wouldn’t believe that it’s the same effervescent and excitable girl who’s been doing the interview circuit to support the film.

The supporting cast is also quite strong with Mariah Carey, yes I said, Mariah Carey, in a sturdy and sympathetic role as a welfare worker trying to help Precious through her turmoil.

To say this film is a must-see is the understatement of the year. Films like this don’t come along very often. Let me rephrase: experiences like this don’t come along often enough. You don’t just watch “Precious”; you take it in as if to witness something for the very first time.
Grade: A