FotM: Adam's vote goes to . . .

Look, I still don’t like the idea of 10 nominees for best picture. I never have, and probably never will. That said, choosing who I would vote for if I were a member of the Academy was surprisingly simple.

Currently, I’ve seen 7 out of the 10 nominees. There are at least 4 or 5 pretty good films in the bunch, with 2 that I’d say come the closest to being “great.” I’ll come right back to that . . .

I guess that you could say I’m an intellectual sort when it comes to films. I like films that try to tackle big themes, cover new ground, and communicate that elusive something. While I love being entertained, I don’t consider the having of a good time to be the ultimate goal of a film, or the chief sign of its quality. There have been a number of films (Fight Club, anyone?) I’ve seen that I didn’t necessarily enjoy that I consider to be examples of true craftsmanship, and I’m glad I watched them. Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that my way of looking at films is the “right” way of doing it, and that other approaches are wrong.

That would be stupid.

My point is this. I don’t normally go for the popular choice. When people were proclaiming The Dark Knight the single greatest thing since the dot got put before the com, I was one of the few pointing out what I thought were flaws. When people went nuts over Star Trek, I . . . well, you remember.

So, having said all of that, making my choice for what I would vote for as the Best Picture of 2009 was surprisingly simple.

Avatar.

Nothing I saw in 2009 equals the experience I had with James Cameron’s juggernaut. The only other film that I considered for this slot was Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but, as great as IB is, (and it is one of the best films an already venerable filmmaker has ever made) I don’t think that anything released between 01/01/2009 and 12/31/2009 comes close to the monumental achievement that is Avatar.

I’m astounded at the fact that almost everything I saw at key points on the screen was created by a computer. Watching it for the first time, I was skeptical of the idea that the incredibly lush world of Pandora was digitally generated. I mean, come on, obviously those blue guys were fake, but what about that tree? The water in the lake? The wind from the helicopter blades moving through the grass? Surely that had to have been real. No computer can make something look that good, and that authentic. There’s no way it could have been left up to processors and microchips.

But it was, and, while it was beautiful, there was even so much more to it than that.
See, Avatar is the kind of thing that George Lucas wanted to make with his Star Wars prequel trilogy. What he didn’t seem to realize is that mere visual trickery isn’t enough to make an audience invest in something. Our brains may enjoy the sight of a superbly created digital world, but our hearts want something to hang their proverbial hats on. I was sold on this thing, man. I wanted to see the Na’Vi triumph over the invading human scum, and I wanted Jake and Neytiri to end up together so desperately.

What Cameron’s done here is truly remarkable. He didn’t just demonstrate a mastery of CGI that no one to date has equaled. He made a film in which, even as your mind is marveling at what it’s watching, you partially (even totally) forget that what you’re seeing is created by a computer. Your heart simply sees a man and a woman standing side by side in a gorgeous place that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

So, with respect to Quentin Tarantino & Kathryn Bigelow, on Sunday night, Best Picture (and for my money, Best Director) should go to James Cameron for Avatar.

Crosses fingers, hopes for the best

It's almost 1 AM and the Academy Award nominations are about 6 1/2 hours away. For some reason, I felt like an 11th hour post to make some predictions. Here's what I think you can expect in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.

Best Picture: Avatar, District 9, An Education, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, Star Trek, Up, & Up in the Air. Possible dark horse(s): Invictus and maybe even The Blind Side.

Best Director: James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Lee Daniels, & Jason Reitman. You can bet money on those picks.

I think there's a definite possibility Zoe Saldana (Avatar) might get the very first acting nomination for a character created entirely using VFX. Here's hoping that Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) gets a nod too.

Now, let's see what happens . . .

FotM: Hello, Oscar people, listen to me and I shall tell you things you know not of . . .

The Academy Award nominations are all about the snubs. Let's face it, the revelation (and subsequent analysis/rehash/blogger heaven) of what hasn't been nominated for an Oscar is often times much more interesting than what has received the coveted nod for the most prestigous honor the American film industy can bestow. There's no doubt that Tuesday's announcement will start the conversation afresh.

I know that nothing I write here will influence the nominations one bit, for two reasons.

Reason #1: No member of the Academy reads this blog.
Reason #2: The voting closed a week ago.

That said, Watchmen is one flick that I think deserves to be recognized by the Academy, even though I'm nearly positive it won't. The look of the film is spectacular. Creating Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's dark, dreary world was no easy feat, and and merits a nomination for Best Art Direction for Francois Audouy, Helen Jarvis, & James Steuart.

The single biggest thing that I hope for, even though it's a hope against hope, is that the Academy will recognize Jackie Earl Haley's portrayal of Rorschach with a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Look, Rorschach is special. If you get the chance to be Rorschach and you're crap, there will be thousands of people calling out for the immediate loss of your salary, if not your imminent demise. Rorschach isn't a hero with easily defined motives and a neat set of "powers." I think he's as close to a fully realized flesh and blood person as a superhero can be.

I seem to remember Alan Moore once saying that his goal with the character was to explore what it would be like if someone like Batman lived in the real world, and that he would probably be a psychopath. In a role that could have easily been butchered, Haley isn't just good. He's great. He captures the essence of the character in a way that feels so wonderfully right. In a story made up of archetypical "heroes" dealing with nothing less than the loss of heroism and morality in a cruel world, Haley brings Rorschach's bleeding heart and anguished mind to cruel, beautiful life.

While we're at it, could we swap out Star Trek's probable Best Picture nomination for a nod for Watchmen? I'm just saying . . .

FotM: The Final Frontier

In 1961 John F. Kennedy set the nation on the path to the moon and ignited the imagination of the American people. Space adventures were a thing of science-fiction movies with characters like Buck Rogers & Flash Gordon; the only people that claimed to be in space already were the Russians and at the height of the Cold War this frightened us as a nation. However, Kennedy ignited our nation with a collective goal – in less than a decade he not only wanted to have men in space, he wanted to have them on the moon.

Traditionally, our nation is a nation of adventurers and pioneers; we blazed across the great west, heralded Lewis & Clark, & romanticized the cowboys and it was natural that we would do the same thing to space. Gene Roddenberry was just as captivated as the rest of the nation and in 1966 “space, the final frontier” was uttered for the first time and though Kennedy’s speech had been eloquent, nothing summed up our nations desire for space better than the words that started Roddenberry’s show. Thirty-seven words changed the face of science fiction, and how we look at space forever.

In the sixties NASA shot into space, but not as quickly as Roddenberry blazed into the final frontier. Though his original adventure series only lasted for three seasons its appeal was so grand that in 1979 his space adventure would hit the big screen with Star Trek the Motion Picture. The first installment of the franchise dealt directly with NASA and its exploration of space, something the rest of the films would not do; with the first Trek to the big screen Roddenberry brought Kirk and crew to V-ger a powerful extraterrestrial being who turns out to be an accidental by-product of our nations original forays into space. Though this film literally played on the space race that spawned Star Trek it did not manage to capture the imaginations of the nation.

However, Roddenberry managed to squeeze a second film out of Paramount Pictures and The Wrath of Khan managed to do what the original series and the first film could not. It made space as glorious as we’d always imagined it, and brought the excitement back to Star Trek; with the perils of revenge, exploration, friendship and sacrifice Kirk, Spock and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise tapped back into the pioneering spirit that fascinates us about space exploration and continued to push into the great unknown that is not just space but the universe and attempt to explain the unexplainable.

Though each Star Trek film would take the Enterprise to a thematically different place what mattered was that Star Trek embodied our future in space, a blend of “adventure, discovery, intelligence…that assumes a positive future for humanity” [NASA]. Only a handful of brave men and women could go into space on the Apollo missions and the voyages that would come after it but anyone who could get to a theatre could take part in the adventures of Captains Kirk and Picard and could imagine themselves as a space explorer, a member of Star Fleet or a crew member on the Enterprise.

As Star Trek continued to influence the imaginations of the public it managed to influence generation after generation of astronauts as well. The first space shuttle was named Enterprise in honor of Kirk’s Enterprise, Roddenberry's ashes launched aboard the Columbia and most recently Paramount let NASA screen the newest Star Trek for its people in space.

Forty years ago we accomplished one of our nation’s most ambitious goals and landed a man on the moon. Just as the memory of the Apollo 11 astronauts will live on forever in the heart of our nation so will Star Trek because it “touches a fundamental nerve in…Americans, because we're pioneers and explorers...things that are the good parts of our country, and Star Trek captures that in a glorious way and gives us a picture towards the future" [space.com].

As it turned out Kennedy was correct “no single space project in this period [would] be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space”, Kennedy just didn’t know he was talking about Star Trek.

"He LOOKED like a Carlos. . ."

WOW

Box office numbers through history kind of fascinate me. Things that are HUGE now if adjusted for inflation could be soooo tiny, and things that looking back at seem so small would actually be HUGE when adjusted for today.

I do not think that box office numbers are the sign of a great movie, or even my favorite movies, but I do think that if you combine good reciepts with great critical and fan praise it's probably a safe bet that your movie is a frackin' good movie.

Some people might know where this is going.

Like it or not JJ Abrams Star Trek is the highest box office draw in the history of the franchise. This is a giant accomplishment for everyone involved from the Studio & Rodenberry's family to the actors. It means Star Trek has finally started to appeal to more than a core fan base, an aging core fan base at that.

I am excited to see what Paramount does next with Kirk and his adventures. If only I could get back on the lot by the sequel...

To see the adjusted box office for all the franchise you can go to this article.

FotM: Summer's Coming!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Originally uploaded by carlosjtj

For me the love of movies doesn’t stem from a specific film, but the entire pantheon of films themselves. While I may like some films a lot more than others there is nothing like sitting in a darkened theatre and watching a movie flash before your eyes. The summer may not hold the movies that I consider the technically best of the year, but it traditionally holds the most entertaining movies of the year – the kinds of movies that drew me to the theatre before I knew how to define a film from Bergman, Coppola or Altman – the movies that the average moviegoer rearranges their weekend to see and tops the box office charts with astronomical numbers.

When I look at the summer charts it is really hard for me to narrow down to one film that I am excited about seeing more than the others; May in particular is a huge month this year with Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation crammed into the first official summer month. Still, I think that I have to say more than anything else I want to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in July.

Harry Potter gets my final vote not because I am more excited for it than any of the other films I have mentioned, but because by the time July rolls around the film will be eight months overdue! The Half-Blood Prince was slated to come out in November, as the fall is typically when the Harry Potter films are released (with the exception of Order of the Phoenix) but in July of 2008, right after director David Yates announced that editing was completed Warner Brothers announced that due to the WGA strike and the lack of a July tent-pole The Half-Blood Prince would be moved into the same 2009 weekend that The Dark Knight occupied in 2008.

The problem with this little announcement is in the second argument.

Harry Potter wasn’t moved because of the writers strike and a hole in the summer schedule, it was moved because in July of this past year The Dark Knight creamed any and all box office competition and continued to break box office records until its release on DVD. Warner’s thinks that The Half-Blood Prince will make more money in the summer than the fall. I’ve already written an entry about what I think of the box office shifts this past year, but I still hold that this is one of the most absurd.

My grievances with Warner’s decision aside I must say that I am looking forward to part six of the Potter installment because not only is it a game-changer, but it is by far one of the most emotional and gut-wrenching books of the entire J.K. Rowling series. I also think that after cycling through three other directors Columbus and his producers finally found the perfect performer in David Yates. Yates began his work on the series with Order of the Phoenix and will continue through the end of the franchise; he is a powerful, competent director who has finally brought the books to the screen almost exactly as I saw them in my head.

I hope that this summer will be a great time to escape into movies that will excite my imagination, and maybe a few that will stimulate my intellect. Right now I am incredibly excited that I get to see The Soloist this month – another fall movie that got pushed onto the 2009 calendar…but April 24th doesn’t quite count as a summer film.

FotM: Wishing It Were Somehow Fall Again

Boo hoo, boo hoo, the summer movie season is almost upon us. While fanboys and fangirls across the country are getting their pup tents ready for the sidewalk in front of the theater playing the big movie and people everywhere are already loading up on enough caffeine to power a small country to stay awake through midnight screenings of new summer movies, I’m wishing that it was fall again. I used to get into the summer movie season, I really did. But, after the disappointment of the last few years, there’s just not much to be excited about.

I know, I know. My compatriots and fellow contributors to this blog will no doubt talk to you quite effusively about the number of upcoming summer films that they simply cannot wait for.
To be honest with you, I’m only looking forward to a few films this summer. Who knows? Maybe they’ll be awesome. However, I don’t have very high hopes for the remainder of the summer movie season. Let’s take a stroll through a few of big up-and-comers and I’ll give you my rundown.

X: Men Origins: Wolverine - This looks like it could be a very good addition to the franchise. This is encouraging, due in no small part to the fact that Brett Ratner had taken the X-Men series for a drag in the mud with the awful X-Men: The Last Stand. I understand that Bryan Singer’s heart was set on doing Superman Returns, but you’re telling me that BRETT RATNER was the best choice that they had? BRETT RATNER? Mr. Rush Hour? Really? Hopefully, X-Men Origins: Wolverine will result in a rebound for the franchise. We’ll see.

Star Trek – BLASPHEMY. Pure and simple. Star Trek, at its heart, has always been about ideas. It’s never been about blowing things up or seeing skin or whatever, it’s about ideas. I agree that the franchise needs a kick in the pants. This just ain’t the way to do it. By giving control of the franchise to J.J. Abrams, a non-fan, the powers that be have committed a gargantuan blunder. He might think that there’s something exciting about rewinding everything and going back and seeing Kirk and Spock’s first mission together. I do not. I could care less about their first mission together. I would very much like to see what happens NEXT in the Star Trek universe. There are a multitude of characters and storylines that could be combined to make a great Star Trek film. J.J. Abrams might think that there’s something exhilarating about seeing Spock struggle with human emotions. Well, J.J., you might not know this, being a non-fan and all, but we’ve been there and done that. TONS of times. He might think that there’s something cool about seeing Uhura in various stages of undress. I’m revolted. Uhura is an icon. I think of her on a similar plane as my mother . . . I don’t need to see that. I don’t want to see that. J.J. might think that seeing everything blowing up all over the place is cool and exciting. Dude, those movies have already been made. They’re called Star Wars films. That’s why Star Trek doesn’t have the wide appeal that Star Wars does. Where Star Wars had the Saturday morning matinee feel down pat, Star Trek has always been about ideas. A great Star Trek movie like Star Trek: First Contact isn’t just a great film because of how exciting and visually dynamic it is. It’s also great because it delves into what it’s like for a man to face the deepest, darkest part of himself and what he’ll do to save the life of one of his closest friends. J.J. doesn’t get that. I do. As if all of this wasn’t enough, J.J. has supposedly decided that he needs to mess with the Star Trek timeline too. For the love of god, can you not leave me with ANYTHING, J.J.? This movie will probably make a ton of money and a sequel will probably get greenlit in the second week of release, but I won’t be there. Abrams, how would you like it if I went and took something that meant a ton to you and screwed with it until it was almost unrecognizable? Would you? That’s what you’re doing, and I can speak from this side of it. It’s awful. I hope you’re not happy.

Angels and Demons – I’m kind of up in the air on this one. I never saw The Da Vinci Code, and this one does look interesting. Still though, sometimes seeing movies that set high energy storylines in established institutions is a bit of a turn off. You wake up the next morning and everything’s the same in the world and end up feeling let down. Or you spend the whole time in the theater thinking about how fake it is and how you’ll wake up the next morning with nothing changed. Get what I mean?

Terminator: Salvation – Has a summer movie ever looked more uninteresting? I’m not exactly a Terminator fan, but what’s supposed to be compelling about a guy who’s supposed to hold the fate of mankind in his hand having to work with a compassionate killer robot while trying to keep his relationship with a pretty girl afloat? It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. What’s more, what I’ve seen of the film’s color palette from the trailer is nasty. How many different shades of grayish brown can there be? In addition, is there some good reason that Christian Bale is the new face of the franchise? He’s already not very compelling as Batman, and I’m not thoroughly convinced that he’s capable of carrying the Terminator franchise from here on out. I understand that Arnold can’t do the films anymore since he’s busy trying to govern the state of California and all, but he sort of IS the franchise.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – Are you kidding me? I have 4,003 better ways to spend an hour and a half.

Up - With Up, I’m hoping that Pixar can rebound after WALL-E, a lovely but unlively public service announcement. The trailer looks good, so hopefully this is a harbinger of good things to come.

The Taking of Pelham 123 – This looks like it could be either really good or really bad. I’m hoping for the former. Denzel Washington vs. John Travolta? Now that’s got possibilities!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: I had no interest in watching a bunch of machines beat up a bunch of other machines the first time around. My feelings have not changed.

Public Enemies – This feels like a fall movie trying to sneak its way into the summer marquee. I’m quite looking forward to this one. The combination of Michael Mann, Johnny Depp, and the story of John Dillinger makes this one a must-see for me. Heck, just Mann and Depp together would make this a must-see. I’m also pleased that Marion Cotillard has a major role. She’s a terrific actress that deserves more work. There might not have been a ton of folks that saw La Vie En Rose, but, oh man, are they missing out! Now, THAT is a great movie. Sorry, getting sidetracked . . . Unfortunately, when I saw the trailer for Public Enemies, the sound mix was terrible and I had a really hard time understanding Depp’s dialogue. I hope that it’s not indicative of the mix that’ll be used in the final film. Here’s hoping Public Enemies lives up to its potential. It’s got LOADS.

Bruno – No thanks.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – I’m not going to watch any of the films until I’ve read all of the books, so that rules this one out for me.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra – I couldn’t care less.

Inglorious Basterds – Tarantino is back!!! This one looks very interesting. Now, I’m concerned that it might be too violent for my sometimes delicate sensibilities, but I definitely want to see this. The question is, will this be one of QT’s talky, loopy, violent movies a la Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, Vol. 2 or a straightforward bloodbath a la Kill Bill, Vol. 1? The casting of Brad Pitt is really bizarre too. When I think of people that QT would want to work with, Pitt’s not the guy that comes to mind. However, knowing his track record, it’s probably a really good idea. Tarantino’s one of those filmmakers that, unless you absolutely can’t handle the subject, when he makes a new film, you don't ask a ton of questions. You just pack up and go.

So that’s what I think of the summer movie season. After having my hopes dashed year after year, I just think it’s better to keep ‘em at a minimum. I’m always willing (and hoping) to be surprised. We’ll see.

Let the hate mail begin . . .