Hang onto your pants, gang, I've got a huge, exclusive scoop that will shock the world.
President Barack Obama has swept the 2009 Academy Awards, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, Musical Score, Art Direction, Costumes and Cinematography.
The nine statuettes is an unprecedented haul by a single individual, and the first time a sitting U.S. president has garnered the film industry's must illustrious prize.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak praised Obama's skills, gushing about his "amazing charisma" and "ability to reach into an audience's heart and still it with moments of quiet yet powerful emotion."
Friday's announcement was somewhat controversial, though, in that the Oscars were given out four months earlier than usual, and before the end of the calender year. Many Oscar hopefuls -- including "Amelia," "Up in the Air" and "The Lovely Bones" -- have yet to even open.
Sherak brushed aside claims that other films were unfairly excluded from the normal nominating and voting procedures, which were set aside by a special unanimous vote of the Academy's board of directors.
"I find that claim to be highly racist," Sherak said. "Criticism of the Academy's well-deserved honoring of our country's greatest president ever is more evidence of the Republican Party's hate machine."
He also sidestepped a question from a Variety reporter pointing out that Obama did not actually star in, produce, write, direct or otherwise contribute to any film in 2009, or ever.
"Based on the president's silky smooth voice, magnetic charm and intellectual firepower, it's only a matter of time before he turns his attention to filmmaking. These awards are meant to recognize the unparalleled achievements yet to come," Sherak said.
If you subscribe to the Indy Star or look at the links of my published work, you'll note a piece I have today in The Indianapolis Star. It's the cover story of GO (the Friday entertainment section) on the Heartland Film Festival.
I thought I'd point it out, and offer my thoughts on why I took the freelance job.
Given how much has gone on with the whole layoff/arbitration thing, I'm sure there are folks who consider me a massive hypocrite for accepting work from the newspaper that cut me loose. Given all the (unwarranted) attention to my donation of my settlement check from Gannett, it may seem strange to take money from the same institution.
"You haughtily refused to take their money on principle, but now you'll cash their freelance check?" is likely what some may say.
The truth is I bear no ill will against the Star as an institution. I may dislike, even detest some of the decisions they've made, particularly related to how they treat their labor force. But I still take the newspaper, I still care about the product and I have a great deal of affection and respect for the people who toil to put out a quality product.
If I can do anything to help them do that, I'm thrilled to contribute -- particularly to the "soft news" side of lifestyle and arts coverage.
As I said in my web video about the settlement check: The legal process is done. It's time to move on.
This was a high-profile freelance job on a subject in which I like to think I'm an expert. I gave no second thought to taking it, and now that I do, the feeling remains the same.
You can read the main article here and the sidebar here.
I was somewhat worried that I wouldn't care for "All About Eve," despite its status as one of the greatest mid-century films. Forgive me, but I thought it might be a little too chick-flickie.
Don't get me wrong -- I love a good flick as much as anyone. But the problem is that even a bad action flick will usually have something to appeal to my masculine instincts. When a chick flick founders, it often has nothing going for it.
Of course, I discovered a wonderful movie with perhaps Bette Davis' finest performance in her amazing career.
An Oscar pedigree isn't a sure sign of greatness -- after all, "Around the World in 80 Days" is supposedly the best picture of 1956 -- but "Eve" deserves the Academy's accolades. The film was nominated for 14 Oscars, including an astonishing five in the acting categories -- a feat I'm not sure has ever been equaled.
It won six of them, including best picture, director, screenplay and the supporting actor statue for George Sanders, whose portrayal of venomous theater critic Addison DeWitt set a standard that inspired many subsequent cinematic portrayals of critics, including Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole) in "Ratatouille."
What most surprised me about the movie was that I'd always thought it was Bette Davis' picture, when really it's much more of an ensemble cast. Davis' iconic line -- "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" -- is what people remember, but Anne Baxter's role is at least the equal of hers in terms of size and scope.
The two main themes of the movie are aging and stardom, and how they intertwine. Davis plays Margo Channing, the queen of Broadway who has recently turned 40. Her best friend and co-star is Karen (Celeste Holm), who's the sunny ying to Margo's narcissistic yang.
Despite unchallenged prominence in the theater, a young handsome director (Gary Merrill) for a boyfriend and the adoration of the crowds, Margo sees threats to her status all around her. She thinks that Karen's playwright husband (Hugh Marlowe) keeps writing roles for her that make her seem too old for the part.
Ironically, Margo greets the one true threat to her with open arms: Eve (Baxter), an obsessed young fan who has watched her every performance in her current show, "Aged Wood." Karen takes pity on the girl and invites her to meet her idol Margo, who's swayed by Eve's sympathetic tale of heartbreak and a husband killed in the war.
Soon Eve is living with Margo as her assistant -- despite the fact that she already has one, Birdie. Birdie is an acerbic former actress herself, now relegated to waiting on the current queen and occasionally referencing her own former status on the stage.
Thelma Ritter was also nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Birdie -- Davis and Baxter got leading actress nominations, and Holm for supporting. It's ironic that in a movie with so many meaty female roles (even Marilyn Monroe had a small part as an aspiring actress), only a male actor won an award for his work.
Eve's doe-eyed manner is eventually revealed to be a put-on by an aggressive and conniving climber who not only wants to copy her idol, but actually supplant her. Eve becomes Margo's understudy, and with the unwitting help of Karen replaces her for a single performance that is praised by DeWitt, who writes a biting column in which he laments so many older actresses portraying 20-year-olds.
Rather than getting slapped down as an upstart, Eve's plan actually works. The film opens with her receiving the most prestigious award on Broadway, with Margo and Karen relegated to also-rans. In a clever coda Eve, having now become everything she ever wanted, encounters her own young admirer who quickly moves to assimilate herself into the big star's life.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who wrote and directed, offers up an acerbic portrayal of showbiz as a dog-eat-dog world in which everyone has an angle to play. Even friendship and love are treated as channels through which power flows or is withdrawn.
I also enjoyed the many sarcastic references to Hollywood and movies, which is treated by the theater folk as the ultimate sellout. Of course, in 1950 the majority of the cast and crew, including Davis, got their start on the stage.
The thing I liked about "The Boys Are Back" is the same thing that ultimately limits it as a film: Its unstructured nature.
This drama about a single father struggling to raise two sons, each from a different marriage, unfolds organically, without the conventional three-act structure. Some notable events happen in their lives, but the bulk of the movie is spent with the threesome hanging out in their ramshackle home, getting into arguments and having some boyish fun.
It's a good movie, with a powerful performance by Clive Owen as the father, and Nicholas McAnulty and George MacKay are knockouts as the sons.
Joe Warr is an English guy and sportswriter at a major Australian newspaper. His job has him gone a lot, so when his wife (Laura Fraser) passes away fairly suddenly, Joe realizes that he's become something of a stranger to their 6-year-old son Artie (McAnulty). He confides to a friend that his boy views him as a guy who visits them every few weeks and brings him presents.
Joe and Artie set out on a road trip to connect, and this morphs into a laid-back approach to parenting that eventually becomes a creed: "Just say yes." Instead of burdening his child with a lot of rules and chores, he allows the house to become a shabby playroom where they can throw water balloons, jump into full bathtubs, or do anything else they want that's irresponsible (but not unsafe).
This draws the tut-tutting of the mothers of the community, which only encourages Joe more.
The dynamic changes when Harry (MacKay), who's about 14, comes to live with them. Harry's the offspring of Joe's first family, which he abandoned when he got Artie's mother pregnant. Harry quickly adapts to the free-for-all, but as you might expect he's got some deeper-seated issues to resolve with Dad.
Director Scott Hicks ("Shine") and screenwriter Allan Cubitt, adapting the autobiographical novel by Simon Carr, adopt the boys-will-be-boys attitude of the protagonist into their storytelling style. As a result, the interactions between father and sons feel authentic, while some of the things transpiring outside their little clan can feel contrived.
For example, Joe faces increasing pressure from his boss to go back out in the field, which builds to a crisis where he may lose his job. But this subplot is dropped suddenly, without resolution. A potential romance between Joe and a single mother (Emma Booth) likewise gets the short shrift.
I also didn't care for the device of Joe's dead wife appearing to him to have conversations about their son. It dredges up too many other movies with dead lovers who return as ghosts.
The movie is at its best when it's just the father and his sons, trying to engage them in a way that's nurturing but masculine. Despite societal changes that's still freewheeling, uncharted territory, and "The Boys Are Back" explores it with gusto and heart.
If "Couples Retreat" looks a bit familiar, you are not imagining things: It's a passably funny comedy assembled from spare parts of other movies.
You've got the couples-on-vacation shtick crossed with the aging horndogs routine, with a little bit of water sports thrown in. Kristen Bell, who got to see some wildly inappropriate tropical yoga in last year's forgettable "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," participates in an encore in this movie.
Heck, the yoga guy even recycles Leslie Nielsen's "let me slip into something more comfortable" joke from the first "Naked Gun" flick. I prefer Nielsen's version, in which he changed from one business suit into another, than the yoga guy's swapping out an unnervingly small Speedo for a shinier one.
The movie stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, who launched their careers together with "Swingers" and co-wrote this script (along with Dana Fox). Vaughn does his usual motor-mouth charmer thing, while Favreau perpetually looks like he's bottling up something inside him that will eventually require an emotional catharsis, or at least a trip to the bathroom.
The set-up is that four couples take a trip to a resort called Eden expecting a vacation paradise, but instead get stuck with a lot of tedious relationship counseling and New Age bonding exercises.
The trip was initiated by Cynthia and Jason (Bell and Jason Bateman), an overly analytical duo who like to present everything in PowerPoint presentation -- even the fact that they're considering getting a divorce. They implore their friends to accompany them to the relationship resort so they can get the group discount.
Dave and Ronnie (Vaughn and Malin Akerman) seem to have the strongest relationship, but turmoil lies beneath a placid domestic surface filled with children and kitchen tile crises. Meanwhile, Joey and Lucy (Favreau and Kristin Davis) are phoning in their marriage until their daughter goes to college so they can split up.
Shane (Faizon Love), the big-bellied and big-hearted dude, has just split up from his wife and has brought along a chirpy 20-year-old party girl (Kali Hawk) he just met two weeks ago.
The island is run by Marcel (Jean Reno), a spiritual healer-slash-marketing genius, who built an identical resort next door to the one for married couples, except this one is for singles and consists of one long sex party.
Joey is anxious to get to the singles side for some action, while Lucy is aching for some downward dog time with the ripped yoga instructor.
The rest plays out pretty predictably: Shane realizes he shouldn't try to relive his youth, Dave and Ronnie discover some cracks beneath their seemingly stable foundation, and Cynthia and Jason learn to chase their inner libido.
The movie is directed by Peter Billingsley -- forever Ralphie from "A Christmas Story," who's gotten into the producing game ("Iron Man") and now steps behind the camera. He handles the cast nicely, and there are some good laughs here and there. Too bad so much of "Couples Retreat" seems plucked out of comedy's recycling bin.
If "My Life in Ruins" looks thematically similar to Nia Vardalos' breakout hit "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," that's because it is.
Once again the order of the day is corny but heartfelt humor, unlikely romance and learning to appreciate the little things in life.
Vardalos, looking utterly gorgeous, plays Georgia, an American scholar who moved to Greece to study the ancient ruins, but lost her job and is now consigned to giving tours for a crappy tourist company.
She always gets stuck with the lousy group, the broke-down bus and the surly driver. But things change with the help of a kooky tour group consisting of a crotchety old jokester (Richard Dreyfuss), a kleptomaniac grandmother, some horny Spanish divorcees and a doofus Florida Gator, amongst others.
It doesn't hurt that her driver, Poupi (Alexis Georgoulis), grows less hairy and more dreamy as the movie goes on.
The movie doesn't have a lot of brains -- for instance, we never learn what it was that made Georgia decamp from the States -- but it does have plenty of heart.
Extras are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray: Eight deleted/alternate scenes with director's commentary, a gag reel, and three separate commentary tracks by Vardalos, director Donald Petrie and screenwriter Mike Reiss.
Commentaries are nearly always better when two or more people team up to do them, so why the threesome didn't join forces rather than each doing their own thing is puzzling. Especially since Vardalos' track contains many long pauses.
Still, she is just naturally funny, as in this comment about an onscreen joke about Greek women having mustaches: "Now, that's a silly joke, because as a Greek girl I don't have a mustache ... because I had laser done."
Hang onto your pants, gang, I've got a huge, exclusive scoop that will shock the world.
