Entries in the Category "michelle pfeiffer"
Osssssssscars!
I am reading all these bloggers who’ve pledged to see all the Best Picture nominees, or all the films with a non-technical nomination (that’s Sarah Bunting, and she almost did it). Some of them spent two Saturdays in a row parked in a movie theater seat watching five wannabe Best Pictures back-to-back. My major regret going into Oscar night is that I haven’t seen enough of the nominated movies. Living virtually across the street from a limited-release haven like the Cedar Lee, just about every one of these movies has crossed my path (not something I could say back when I was living in Lansing, Michigan--sorry Lansing). I went to an Oscar party in which the crowd was generally well-versed in movies—not just the big ones, but independents, foreigns, documentaries—and I wished I could have given more opinions instead of continually saying, “That looked really good. I heard that was good. I was going to see that. Everything I’ve read online says that was overrated, actually.”
The real problem is this whole being-in-grad-school thing, which will be over soon enough. I’ll be a cultural civilian again by May, and then it’s seeing movies all the time, reading books all the time, just because I damn well want to. And maybe next February I’ll plan my own Oscar film binge.
This year, I had to content myself watching the Oscars having seen only Inglourious Basterds, Up in the Air, Julie and Julia, and one-third of The Hurt Locker. I'm catching up on the other movies at my usual snail’s-pace rate. (Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning movies I have seen in the past few months: Valmont, Mrs. Brown, Frozen River, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Gangs of New York.)
Anyway, here are my totally uneducated thoughts on the proceedings.
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Movie Reviews: Talented Teens and "Actresses of a Certain Age" edition
This is kind of sick, but one night I was on Netflix Instant looking for a short movie to watch before bed, and I had read on the Internet that day about a girl who was killed by an Amtrak train. So, uh, I decided to watch Stand By Me, a great coming-of-age movie which is about, among other things, kids getting hit and/or almost getting hit by trains.
I’ve never read the Stephen King story on which the movie is based, but I’ve heard it’s great. The movie definitely charms with its 50s detail and foul-mouthed little boys. What’s really distracting, though, is looking at all those young Hollywood actors and thinking about how none of them ended up where people expected. Like, the fat kid slimmed down, is now a regularly working actor (I may have watched his former show, Crossing Jordan, a time or two) married to a former model. The kid who actually seems to have a future as an actor is the one who didn’t (instead he died from drug addiction). The smartass who was already a pretty big star is in the reality TV doldrums now. I especially like that the kid who, in the movie, grows up to be a writer, actually did. Wil Wheaton, one of the few teen Hollywood success stories.
More movies follow!
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Reviews: Epic Wednesday: Mob Rule
I started with Scarface, figuring that I wouldn’t want to watch it after six hours of Godfathering. All I really knew about it was that it was a remake (but not really) of a crime film from the 30s, and that at the end Al Pacino says, “Say hello to my leetle friend.” And shoots people. Also, you can buy the poster at any college bookstore.
More about Scarface, as well as The Godfather(s) after the jump.