Posts Tagged ‘Nicole Kidman’
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Well, another Oscar ceremony has come and gone, and what’s to make of it? I wish I knew.
I know that the telecast was not as painful a viewing experience as I had braced myself for. I spent a lot of time before the show making sure my eye-sockets were in peak physical condition because I was planning on doing a lot of eye-rolling at bloated, self-important celebrities who derided the current war with Iraq.
But much to my chagrin, there was very little political boasting and what little there was, I couldn’t disagree with. By the end, I was practically begging someone to say something half-baked. Thank goodness for Michael Moore. If you didn’t see it, his anti-war rant and personal attacks against Bush after winning Best Documentary for Bowling for Columbine were not very well received by the audience. I would expect nothing less.
Truthfully, I felt the show, for the most part, was a tepid affair. Things were pretty much going to plan until about the last fifth of the show unraveled. Adrain Brody winning Best Actor and Roman Polanski winning Best Director both for their work in The Pianist floored me. It’s not often that I emit audible gasps, let a lone multiple gasps, but such was the case tonight.
Perhaps I was more blind-sided from their respective victories because I’ve not yet made it out to the theater to see The Pianist. This must be remedied quickly.
Cami and I have had several discussions about our reluctance to see the movie. We’ve conjured several excuses. Think of all the dozens of films you’ve seen about World War II or the Holocaust. These aren’t pleasant periods in history to visit. Given the current climate where we are experiencing these horrors in real-time, why would we subject ourselves to it as a form of “entertainment”.
Another issue in particular that bothers us is Polanski’s sorted history as a nearly-convicted rapist. The story is to convoluted to go into here, but you should investigate it if you’re not familiar with it.
Sometimes it is difficult to separate art from the artist. Considering the results are often such personal reflections of the creator, if you condemn a man for his actions, how can you not condemn his final product of expression?
That seems black and white, but I don’t feel like supporting the work of a rapist, do you?
But on the other hand, several great artists – those we would call the grand masters – were more often than not, especially horrible people during their living years. How many artists can you think of who abused their wives, were drug addicts or alcoholics. The list is nearly infinite. But if their work was sound and still capable to inspire, we look past these transgressions and even go so far to put the artists on a pedestal. Why do we need to wait for Polanski to be dead and his crimes erased from our collective memory before we can appreciate his work?
Despite the moral quandary we find ourselves in, I cannot resign myself from the fact that I will always support the arts more than the artists. And if a community of his peers felt his film was worthy enough to recognize, then I owe it myself to learn more about it. When that will be, I cannot say.
/switching gears/
Another shocker of the evening was Eminem winning Best Original Song for “Lose Yourself” from 8 Mile. I thought there was no greater long-shot in the category – especially when you consider the rapper’s notorious history and his unwillingness to perform the song at the ceremony. It was even more shocking to see the Academy actually honor the song that WAS the best, rather than some emotional clap-trap that rang false. I would have looked to U2’s “The Hands That Built America” for that one.
Beyond that, what’s left to say? I know that I wasn’t pleased to see Chicago walk away with Best Picture. It was never anything more than glossy, yet well-executed fluff to me. I think I’ll have to lobotomize that part of my brain that can’t stop replaying “All That Jazz” over and over again.
I was disappointed that Martin Scorsese didn’t walk away with something for Gangs of New York. From the looks of things, it was shut out completely. I could be wrong on that, though. I think the boat has sailed for old Marty. I’m the reasoning behind most Academy voters is, “If he didn’t win for Goodfellas, why should he win for this?” The best he can hope for at this point is Lifetime Achievement.
I was especially pleased to see Conrad Hall be awarded for Best Cinematography for Road to Perdition as well as Chris Cooper winning Best Supporting Actor for Adaptation. Both were richly deserved.
And lastly, I was especially pleased to see that Spirited Away won Best Animated Picture. This is something I can use as leverage to introduce Cami to the wonderful world of anime! Actually, I would have been please just as long as they didn’t give the damn thing to Ice Age or Treasure Planet. Blech!
That’s a lot for now. I’m certain there will be more to reflect on later. If you have any thoughts about last night’s show, feel free to share your thoughts.
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I just watched Spider-Man for the first time. I don’t know why I waited. I guess i didn’t think it would appeal to me, but it did. ::THWIPP!:: Thumbs up!
I also watched Birthday Girl starring Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin. It was a very good film. It’s British and I really hadn’t heard much about it, but it was a good find. Russian mail order brides? Bank robberies? Plot twists galore? Count me in!
I was clicking through the links on the right and stumbled across the music of ComradeF over at The Misc. Check out the tracks with Lucy Doll here, they are definitely worth your time.
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This blog was lost in The Great Server Crash of January 2004. These blogs are automatically generated by a PHP script operating through the site. It takes my words and translates them into HTML before saving them to the server. Due to an internal error caused by my hosting provider, this blog was lost before I had a chance to save a hard copy to my machine at home.
One thing is for certain, though. It was likely insightful AND hilarious!
Please enjoy the rest of the archives…
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My wife and I also saw Bewitched on Saturday night. Patti wanted to go to it bad enough that she endoured the Friday night show of Land of the Dead.
Bewitched – Be Boring. Okay, the inherent problem within the story is that Will Ferrell’s character gets too much screen time and Nicole Kidman’s character doesn’t do much of anything. I felt this was echoed and even magnified for the actual movie.
Some of the effects were cool – such as Michael Caine’s appearances in the grocery store, but it would take many more tricks to make this film interesting.
The end of the movie is a little sketchy for me as I was fighting sleep. I was doing those little head bobs during the last fifteen minutes of this movie, but I’m fairly certain I only missed a bunch of talking and an obvious ending. This A-list cast couldn’t wiggle their noses and save this script.
Land of the Dead: I am a fan of this series and am also pretty certain that the dead will walk one day, but this film was just okay. I’d say it was much better than Day of the Dead, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead (original or remake). If they have spent so much time with Zombies and are short on supplies, why do they fire 30 rounds on full automatic into the torsos of the Zombies? Use your head man! (and shoot theirs!)
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If you didn’t see Bewitched this weekend, today’s joke isn’t going to make a heck of a lot of sense. Go check out Joe Dunn’s most recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies for a strip that cuts to the heart of the matter. Joe and I had the same problem when it came to writing a comic about Bewitched, but I would say Joe solved it better than I did.
In the meantime, anyone turned off by today’s comic might get a kick out of today’s Web Comic List incentive sketch. Click here to vote for Theater Hopper so you can see it.
Cami and I went to see Bewitched on Saturday. And despite my usual highly-attuned chick flick early warning detection system, I was eager to tag along for the ride.
After watching the film, the question to myself is “If you knew Nora Ephron was the writer/director, why did you still go anyway?” I guess in the back of my head, I was holding out hope that Will Ferrell could save the movie. Sadly, when buried under a mountain of schmaltz, he can’t.
But before we get into that, let’s make one thing clear. I HATE Nora Ephron. She has either had a hand directly or indirectly in some of the worst movies to pervade modern cinema. Look at her credits on the IMDB, it reads like a who’s-who of celluloid tripe. Sleepless in Seattle, Michael, You’ve Got Mail, Lucky Numbers, When Harry Met Sally, Hanging Up. Strike that. It reads more like a rap sheet.
Her movies are a Better Homes and Gardens photo spread disguised as entertainment. People with copper kettles dangling from racks above kitchen islands. Stories about stupid people, rote misunderstandings and problems that pale in comparison to the real life issues that we combat every day. Her movies aren’t an escape from reality. They lobotomize it.
MAYBE I can give a pass to When Harry Met Sally, because it was a unique relationship drama during the era of late 80’s blow-em-up action movies. But the clich
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This is not how I wanted to start the week.
Sincere apologies to those of you who have been checking the site since Friday. I didn’t post a comic last week due to the fact that I was recovering somewhat from the Thanksgiving holiday but also because Henry was sick and decided to toss his cookies all over me and we were left to manage a sick child over the weekend.
Then, on Sunday night, I sit down at my computer to work on Monday’s comic and, well… my scanner crapped out on me.
I guess I’m not totally surprised. I own a HP ScanJet 2200c that worked SWIMMINGLY with Windows XP but was choked to death by Vista’s persnickety peripheral acceptance parameters. I was able to patch it with some advice I found online. But in examining this recent failure, learned that it wasn’t a fail-safe method. The scanner would still be prone to crashes and I think that’s what happened here.
So, tonight after work I will be going to Best Buy or Office Max or someplace that sells cheap scanners so I can get caught up. My friend Brandon J. Carr suggested a WACOM Cintiq as a scanner replacement. That’s a tempting offer, but last I checked, I hadn’t won the lottery. So it’s low-tech for now. Relatively low-tech, I suppose. In the meantime, you’ll have to be patient with me. I promise to have a new comic for you on Tuesday!
I suppose since I don’t have a comic to blog about, I can tell you about the two movies I saw this weekend.
I went to see Transporter 3 Wednesday night and went with Cami to see Australia on Saturday night. I hadn’t seen the first two Transporter movies, but there was something about the trailers for the third one that made me want to check it out. I knew it was going to be cheesy. I didn’t know it was going to be so boring!
I fell asleep in this movie. That… shouldn’t be happening in an action movie, should it?
I’ll give credit to the stunt coordinators and to Jason Statham. I felt like they put together a few interesting sequences. But the plot was impossible to follow and they gave WAY too many lines to the girl played by Natalya Rudakova, who was impossible to understand.
That girl has so many freckles, she looks like she was shot in the face with a freckle gun.
By the way, you’re going to hear me drop that zinger a lot. You’ll probably hear it again if you listen to The Triple Feature tonight. Why? Because I thought it was clever when I thought of it and I’m clinging to it like a dog to a bone.
Anyway… the plot? Who cares? The action? So-so. It ends okay, but not before you can recover from the TRULY IDIOTIC sequence involving The Transporter crashing his car into a lake and resurfacing it with a bag from inside his trunk that he inflates with THE AIR FROM HIS TIRES! By that logic, shouldn’t the car be able to drive across the surface of the water and not sink? Ugh.
Yeah. Don’t waste your money on this one. Not even if you’re in it for a cheap laugh.
As for Australia, both Cami and I had high hopes for this coming in, but we left disappointed. I guess we had hoped that Baz Luhrman had gotten things out of his system with Moulin Rouge. But the fact is, there are enough farcical elements and screwball antics in the first act, you don’t trust the picture when it tries to deliver an emotional blow.
I appreciate the scope of the film. It truly is epic and serves as a great calling card for the Australia Board of Tourism. But there’s no shape to the thing. It can’t make up it’s mind if the main story is about Nicole Kidman’s character fighting evil cattle barons, her romance with Hugh Jackman’s Drover or her growing affection for a half-breed Aboriginal boy played by Brandon Walter. Toss in the Japanese bombing of Darwin at the onset of World War II and you’ve got more than you can deal with.
Luhrman’s tale is bookended with information about Australia’s practice of taking half-white/half-Aboriginal children away from their families to be led into a life of servitude. The called them The Lost Generations. So, in some respect, you expect the film to be about their struggle. But their story is a fractional element of the tale, you wonder why he bothered?
I was also turned off by the main villain of the piece, Fletcher, played by David Wenham. Why is it that all of Luhrman’s villains are the sniveling, mustache-twirling sort? I don’t hate them because they’re evil. I hate them because they are annoying and cliched.
I was also particularly annoyed by everyone’s insistence on calling Hugh Jackman’s character “The Drover.” A drover is the Australian equivalent of a cowboy. Someone who herds animals across long distances. Jackman’s character is meant to be so adept at the practice, he’s simply known as “THE” Drover. That’s kind of bad-ass, until Nicole Kidman’s character calls him Mr. Drover and everyone else in the film shouts his name over and over again – DROVER! DROVER!
That would be like shooting an American Western and naming your lead “Cowboy.” It’s generic and silly.
Let’s not even go into Luhrman’s repeated parallels in the story to The Wizard of Oz. He keeps ramming it down our throats when then connection is tenuous at best.
Ultimately Australia did a good job of displaying the magic and enormity of the Northern Territory, but I cared very little for the stories of the people in the midst of it. It felt bloated and sloppy. I thought the movie could have ended at any number of points and I would have been satisfied. But at 2 hours and 45 minutes, it drags on and on and on. A true epic shouldn’t feel like a chore. It should feel like it’s presenting you a world you never want to leave. A place you want to know more about. Luhrman’s vision gets you only half way there.
That does it for my blogging. Hopefully that’s enough to tide you over in the absence of an actual comic. Again, apologies for the technical snafu. Let’s just blame Microsoft and call it a day, huh?
Be sure to tune into The Triple Feature tonight at 9:00 PM CST over at TalkShoe.com and expect a new comic here tomorrow.
Thanks again!
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