The 30 Day Film Challenge - Day 2: My least favorite film

The way things are goin, they gonna crucify me

Yesterday I talked about how it was hard to choose my favorite film. Today I have to choose my least favorite film. And that's not hard at all. Bad Boys II doesn't just scrape bottom. It crashes through the bottom and finds a new pit in which to fester.

This requires some context. Most of Michael Bay's movies are merely bad, like say, Armageddon. It was a trial to sit through, but I made it to the end with only a sneer on my face.

Bad Boys II, on the hand, is not merely incompetent but offensive. I trudged out of that theater mad enough to strangle Mickey Mouse. And Disney didn't even release the movie.

At the time, I was having fun writing reviews as what I called "Memos to Jerry Bruckheimer," who sometimes gives us good bang for the buck with movies like Crimson Tide. With Bad Boys II, there was less than no sale. For at least a week afterward I felt like I had been forced to bathe in raw sewage and take a couple of swallows to boot.

I was so furious, I banged out what has to be the most scathing critique I've ever spat out. What follows may not be appropriate for children under 17, which pretty well describes Bay's mental age. But I wrote him and Jerry this anyway.

Bad Boys II

Review by Eric Robinette

Grade: F-

Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Gabrielle Union, Joe Pantoliano, Jordi Molla and Peter Stormare, who should be having interesting discussions with their agents now

Shoddily written (if you can call it that) by Ron Shelton and  Jerry Stahl, from a “story” (term used loosely) by Shelton and Cormac Wibberley & Marianne Wibberley

Offensively Overdirected by Michael Bay

Memo to Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay

From a truly disgusted film critic

Good God, Jerry and Mike. Where do I start in writing about “Bad Boys II?” I’ve always known you guys are the premier purveyors of cinematic wretched excess, but until this movie I didn’t know that you’re also a couple of sick fucks.

I know that’s harsh, guys, but what else am I supposed to think about a movie that wallows in being as repulsive as possible? What am I to make of the chase scene in which dead bodies spill out the back of a van, and a pursuing car beheads one body?

And what the hell was the deal with the shot that shows two rats fucking, Mike? Has it been your secret ambition to be a documenatarian for National Geographic, and this is the best you could come up with? Or is that how you learned about the deed and you wanted to share? Between this and the lovemaking among the parachutes in “Pearl Harbor,” you guys sure must have had some interesting experiences in your youth, I’ll tell you that.

If the audience at my screening is any indication, I guess the point of these two lovely scenes is humor; the lemmings laughed loud and long at both of them. I weep for humanity. I guess this is what becomes of audiences after years of the desensitizing your movies have caused. You really do reap what you sow.

I know I sound like a tightwad, but you know what? I don’t care. I’ve fallen for your brainless action romps before (I actually liked “The Rock”) but until now, you’ve never gone to such lengths to be offensive. It’s like you guys sat together and said, “Let’s take a big chunk of our money and see just how much shit we can get away with.”

But what’s the point of spending all that money if you get nothing from it? Mike, you have a reputation for being one of the more, um…aggressive action directors we have, and I’ll actually admit, you’re not without talent. But you have an uncanny ability to sabotage your own good ideas.

For instance, in one of the highway chases, the villains are driving a car carrier, and they detach the cars one by one, so bingo—instant obstacle course. Good idea, Mike. Too bad you totally fucked up the execution. There are so many edits in the scene---cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut---that I couldn’t tell where anyone or anything was.

Then there’s the shootout in the druggies’ house in which the camera whips around in a circle from one room to another, ducking through bullet holes and the like. Yeah, you ripped it off from “Panic Room” and “Swordfish,” (which, ironically, ripped off you), but it’s still a good idea. SO WHY DO YOU KEEP CUTTING AWAY FROM IT AND INTERRUPTING THE FLOW??

And the word flow reminds me---why in God’s name is this movie two and a half hours long? So you could include the scene in which Will Smith and Martin Lawrence discuss a bullet wound in the butt and a crowd of department store shoppers think they’re gay lovers? The shot of the little kid asking, “Daddy, what’s an erection” was an especially charming (cough) touch.

And what’s with the scene in which a young kid taking Lawrence’s daughter on a date is terrorized by Lawrence and Smith, who waves a gun in his face and asks him, “You ever have sex with a man? Want to?”

If you had to have a cheap joke like that, a writer with half a brain would have at least included a scene of the boy slapping the daughter around or something. But nooooo. You use the scene for a cheap laugh and make your stars and yourselves look like homophobes in the process. It’s especially dispiriting to see Will Smith stoop so low. Did you kick him an extra million to get him to say those lines?

There’s so much more I could talk about, like the scene in which the camera ogles a dead woman’s breast implants, but even you should have the smarts to get my point by now: You went too far this time. It’s enough to make me want to retreat to the relative comfort of “Charlie’s Angles: Full Throttle.” At least McG and his gals aren’t into necrophilia.

I know Mike was the one calling the shots on this, Jerry, but since you’re his boss, you share responsibility for Bay’s misdeeds.  It’s a shame because I had liked most of your movies lately. With “Remember the Titans,” “Black Hawk Down” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” under your belt you actually seemed to have acquired taste, “Bad Company” and “Kangaroo Jack” notwithstanding. But you’ll have to make something as classy as “Vertigo” to get back in my good graces. And, no, making me sick with one of Bay’s chase scenes does NOT count.

Yes, there should be room for dumb action movies where every other shot is an explosion---but for every kind of movie, there is a line of taste to be drawn, and “Bad Boys II” crosses it by a country mile. It’s the worst movie of this year, and of your careers.

Now I’m sure you and the less discriminating members of your audience would respond to me by saying, “Man, it’s only a movie.” Or as somebody on the Rolling Stone message boards so delicately put it, “ya its sick humor but it didnt stop the whole theature from rumbling with laughter.this is what i want some critqes to do for a change. Grow a spine and pair of peanuts. then untighten their azcrack so they can stop breaking wind out of their ears and crapng out of their mouth”

You must be so proud to have such articulate defenders, guys. I’ll tell you and your defenders what, though. I’ll actually take that advice. I’ll grow a “spine and a pair of peanuts” when you grow a brain and a sense of decency. But I don’t think I’ll hold my breath.

The 30 Day Film Challenge - Day 1: My favorite film

Facebook has a fun new game going on called the 30-Day Film Challenge. Being a film buff, I can scarcely resist  a Film Challenge. And since I can't keep my mouth shut when the subject turns to movies, I'm going to expand and expound upon each choice in this blog.

For the first day, you are asked to name your favorite movie. And that's not such an easy thing for a film buff. Presented with that ubiquitous query, we are bound to rattle off title after title. When I get asked this question I always name three movies (more on the other two below).

Forced to name one, however, I always choose one by the greatest director of all time. And that choice is Vertigo. And among Hitch's films, that's actually an easy choice.

Why? Well, consider the fact that I first saw it on the USA Network, via a crummy, faded print that was edited for time, and not very cleanly to boot. Even with all that, the movie still entranced and devastated me.

As Martin Scorsese has pointed out, it was remarkable that directors like Hitchcock could work within the studio system making films that were commercial and simultaneously very personal statements. And yet, at the time, it was perhaps a little too personal for some people. Commercially, it did OK but wasn't one of Hitch's bigger hits. Critics tended to be dismissive, with one cracking that Vertigo was another "Hitchcock and bull story."

Time has been generous to the film, however, which is slightly ironic because of the way the movie plays with time. Vertigo, better than any other movie, captures the timeless state of a dream - how a dream feels at times like you're lost in a fog - and how at other times it amplifies your most intense emotions - especially when the dream turns into a nightmare.

The story revolves around Jimmy Stewart trying to remake a lost love - and since I've been through some heartache recently, Vertigo would probably resonate all the more if I watched it now.

No matter when I see it, though, Vertigo washes over me and envelops me.  And like all the greatest movies do, it feels different every time I see it - not unlike a dream.

Other titles considered: Citizen Kane, A Hard Day's Night

REVIEW: Sucker Punch

Wow. I didn't know that Zack Snyder was actually Benjamin Button.

Well, what else am I to think after seeing the confounding visual confetti that is Sucker Punch? Clearly, the man is aging backwards. How else to explain the observation that has first feature film, the Dawn of the Dead remake, is his most mature work, while each subsequent movie has become increasingly juvenile? Were it not for the fact that his next film is the Superman reboot, I'd say Snyder's good and ready to film Dora the Explorer: The Geographic Epic! 

I imagine if I were to stumble across the creation of the Sucker Punch screenplay, by Snyder and Steve Shibuya, it would be like a text message exchange between two teenagers hopped up on Red Bull and aerosol huffing. Like so:

Zack300: So Steve, I've got this AWESUM idea for a movie!!!

Steve ShiBOO-YA: Yeah? Well it be as cool as that 72-hour X-box marathon we had last weekend??

Zack300: Better! Ya see, it'll have this big battle that's in, like, World War I, only it'll have planes and those big blimps, and things will be blowing up everywhere!!! 

Steve ShiBOO-YA: SWEET!! Hey, I got an idea! Let's write this together! We'll also have the German soldiers be, like, steampunk robots!

Zack300: Oh, I know what would be cool! We could have this big, like, hero robot that the good guys can ride, and then it flies and they shoot stuff down from the air!

Steve ShiBOO-YA: Nice! And then we can have the main guy shoot down the warplanes with a pistol!

Zack300: Yeah! And then in the next scene, they'll fight these dragons n' stuff! We can have one be a baby dragon, and then the mama dragon gets mad and breathes FIRE on em!!!

Steve ShiBOO-YA: YESSSSS!

Zack300: Hey, how bout this: Let's have the heroes be girls with guns n' swords!

Steve ShiBOO-YA: Babes! Can we make em so we see their boobs??

Zack300: Aw, I'd like to but my folks would kill me. Their no fun. We can put em in tight outfits and push-up bras, tho!

Steve ShiBOO-YA: Wow! Your a genius!

---------------
Or something like that.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with a movie that's an adolescent fantasy per se. And it's not like the action is your typical blizzard of editing with a paper shredder. Unlike Michael Bay, Snyder knows how to stage an action scene competently and with panache. Visually, Sucker Punch looks fabulous. All of Snyder's movies do.  Sure, the slo-mo has gotten a bit old, but he doesn't OD on it here. But the visual design is imaginative. I'm not sure why one of the sets has movie posters from golden-age Warner Bros. musicals like My Dream is Yours and Gold Diggers of 1933, but it's a nice touch for movie buffs.

While Sucker Punch is consistently ridiculous, I was rarely bored watching it. Snyder paces it well, and I found it more entertaining than the leaden, self-important Watchmen.  Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish and especially Jena Malone give committed performances, as if the whole thing actually meant something.

The problems are failures of tone and nerve. The divisions between fantasy and reality are never clearly explained. The action scenes, snazzy as they are, feel so unreal that I never believed the characters were actually in jeopardy. Only once does Snyder cross-cut between the action scenes and the "real world," such as it is, so when he does, it throws the movie off-center.

To make matters worse, Snyder tries to throw in a third-act twist that makes zero sense. And as if that weren't bad enough, he seems to want to take the whole thing seriously, after treating the previous two-thirds like they were so much visual Pop Rocks. No sale.

Snyder recently said that his Superman reboot would be his most "real" movie since Dawn of the Dead. God, I sure as hell hope so. As it stands, his movies remind me of another DC Comics hero, via the 60s Batman series, which would have the SOCK! POW! and ZAP! titles. Sucker Punch, however, is more of an OOF!


GRADE: C-

Elizabeth Taylor, 1932-2011

After Elizabeth Taylor died on Wednesday, I came to regret The Flinstones even more than I already did. That movie, of all movies,  represented the only chance I ever got to see Liz on the big screen in a movie in first release.  That's only too telling about the state of movies today.

I'm not going to get all sentimental and claim that her cameo was a bright, shining light that made the movie good for about five minutes. Not even Taylor could pull that off. Still, Liz Taylor was Liz Taylor, and I was grateful for any reason to experience her star power, however displaced it might have been.

That film only made me wish all the more I could have experienced her charisma at full force in a movie theater. Even on the diminished contours of the TV screen, she was absolutely entrancing. One of my favorite glamor shots of all time was the moment in Father of the Bride where she is revealed in her wedding dress via multiple mirrors. This shot made me forget to breathe for a few dazzling seconds.

It wasn't just that her beauty was otherworldly, it was that she actually seemed open, engaging, approachable. She wasn't an ice queen, she was passionate, and that passion was magnetic.

Sometimes that passion was taken for granted. While scrolling through the abundance of tributes for Elizabeth Taylor Monday, I came across this interesting quote from UK film critic Barry Norman, who said:

"She was actually not at all a bad actress. In films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? she was extremely good."

Perhaps Mr. Norman meant well, but that struck me as condescending. Too often, when someone is a beauty, we as a society tend to act surprised when they actually have talent. And that's galling when it should have been obvious with Liz.

Her most notorious role was no doubt Cleopatra - but she and Richard Burton made two much better films - Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? (for which Liz won an Oscar) and Franco Zefereilli's The Taming of the Shrew, in which both of them aced Shakespeare. No small thing, that.

In my book, her best performance may be in Suddenly Last Summer. Yes, it's an overheated drama - it's Tennessee Williams, after all - but Liz more than held her own with no less than the great Kate Hepburn. Author A. Scott Berg quoted Hepburn herself as saying that Taylor "preferred being a movie star to being an actress. But don't be fooled, because I think she is a brilliant actress, truly brilliant. Especially with the Williams stuff."

But Kate boiled down Liz's essential dilemma when she said that Liz preferred stardom to actual acting. Stardom seemed to fuel her. But by the same token, she was a magnet for trouble and tragedy, not always of her own making. As at least one tribute  pointed out, "She was a star at age 12, married at 18 and a divorcee the same year. She became a bombshell goddess at 19 and a widow at 26."  For even other famous people, that range of experience takes an entire lifetime.

Even her scandals affect me personally now. I've been going through some struggles in recent weeks. I won't bore you with the details, but it's been tough - sometimes tougher than I think I can handle.

And yet, Taylor survived one of her most brutal scandals. When she took up with Eddie Fisher, who left Debbie Reynolds for Taylor, Reynolds and Taylor were not exactly on the best of terms for quite some time. And yet on Wednesday, there was Fisher and Reynolds' daughter Carrie saying, "If my father had to divorce my mother for anyone, I’m so grateful that it was Elizabeth. This was a remarkable woman who led her life to the fullest rather than complacently following one around." Reynolds herself paid lovely tribute to Taylor.

If that sort of thing can be forgiven, that gives me hope for my relatively meager troubles.

Still, no one summed up Taylor's legacy better than her son, Michael Wilding, who said "Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman, and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished.

"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."

Amen.

PS - Costar Paul Newman paid her fine tribute some years ago on TCM. Watch and listen.

REVIEW: Paul

I have a thing for Pauls. Paul is my favorite Beatle. And Paul is my favorite movie thus far of 2011.

Yeah, I know, that's a bit of a goofy lead, but it's more than a bit of a goofy movie, which makes it all the more delightful. It continues the adventures of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who made their names in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the ingenious spoofs of zombie movies and action flicks, respectively. They also co-wrote the script for Paul.

This time, however, director Edgar Wright is not at the helm. Taking his place is Greg Mottola, who made Superbad and the shamefully undervalued Adventureland. Although Mottola isn't a visual stylist like Wright. all of Mottola's movies have an excellent feel for character, which is what makes Paul more than just a goof on E.T. This may look like an alien stoner movie, and Paul does smoke weed, but it's not Dazed and Confused Close Encounters. There's an underlying sweetness and affection running through the movie.

At first, I was a bit afraid that, as is too often the case, the trailer gave away most of the best gags and told the whole story in two minutes: two British uber-geeks on a UFO trek stumble across the world's most laid-back alien,voiced by Seth Rogen. Problem is, he's in the run from agents played by Jason Bateman, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio.

As the film unspools, however, it keeps surprising and playing off the strengths of its cast and crew. Mottola has an especially good feel for working with comic actors, given that Hader has appeared in all three of Mottola's films, and Wiig has starred in the last two. Both of them are fun to watch, with Wiig hilariously playing up the satire of her character being a wacky Creationist. When we first meet her, she's wearing a T-shirt that says "Evolve this!" with a cartoon showing Jesus blasting a hole through Charles Darwin's head. Love thy neighbor, indeed.

In addition to the sharp satire, Pegg and Frost's screenplay crams in a plethora of references to the works of George Lucas and especially Steven Spielberg. I can't help but love a film that takes a playful shot at Mac and Me, the awful 1988 E.T. ripoff that overflowed with McDonald's product placement.

The movie does falter a bit in the home stretch when it shoehorns in an over-the-top action sequence that feels out of place because action isn't Mottola's forte, and because it throws off Paul's genial tone. Regardless, I was smiling too widely and laughing too much to care. As that other Paul once sang, Venus and Mars are all right tonight - and so is Paul.


GRADE: A-

The Oscars weren't THAT bad - but ...

Forgive me for being a bit late to the party on this one, but I spent the past week in Florida for some much-needed R&R - and besides all that, my smartphone's keyboard is just too teeny to write more than a micropost. 

The vitriol that followed this year's Oscar telecast really surprised me. I rather enjoyed the show. Last week's show  was certainly better than last year's mess of a telecast, hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin (though the problems were not their fault). My friend Scott Copeland, also an ace Oscar watcher, agrees with me. So did EW's Ken Tucker. So we're not alone. And we're not crazy. 

Contrary to popular opinion, the hosts were NOT the problem with this year's show. Or at least not half of them. I will grant you that James Franco was out of his element, in more ways than one. Anne Hathaway, however, was a delight, and I'd be happy to see her host the Oscars or another show with a better-matched co-host. Hathaway was bright and charming and would probably have been better off hosting on her own.

However, even Franco himself wasn't the problem. The problem was the writing, which was off point this year. Most of the gags weren't funny. The fake song montage was cringe-worthy. And the writers missed an OBVIOUS gag by NOT having Hathaway pull Hugh Jackman onstage, echoing their duet the year Jackman hosted. Come on, guys. That's the same syndrome that afflicted Muppets from Space, when it missed the Pigs in Space reference. Sometimes the obvious gag is the right one. 

(Side note: I hope whoever did the sound mix was fired. The distant, echo-y vocals made a crop of already forgettable songs sound that much worse.) 

However, I did like how how most of the awards were presented. The screenplay presentations were clever, and the new tradition of having the presenter laud each individual nominee came off much better than it did last year. Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock handled their duties with great aplomb. And even though I don't much care for Celine Dion, I will give credit where it is due. Her "Smile" during the In Memoriam segment was nicely understated. And bravo to whomever asked the audience to hold their applause until the end, averting the unseemly clap-o-meter.

All that said, the Oscars could stand to make a few changes. Foremost among those is to stop trying so hard to cater to the young crowd. Most of them are not that interested and are never going to be, no matter what you do. This is the same mistake my industry, the newspapers, made. They tried so hard to court teens and 20-somethings, they ended up alienating their most loyal audience. Same with the Academy.

Part of the allure of the Oscars is its sense of history and old Hollywood glamor. So why not capitalize on that more? Many of the great classic stars are gone, yes -- but a number of them are still with us. Olivia de Havilland is still around. So are Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney. Seeing them would be a total  gas. Get 'em while they're still here. Look at how much fun Kirk Douglas was this year!  You don't even have to go back to the golden age. Try to lure some people out of retirement, like Gene Hackman or Sean Connery. They'd brighten any telecast. 

In the meantime, I'm content with mostly good memories of this year's show. I'm only sorry that more people didn't see it. Sucks to be them.

Oscar predix: The BIG ones

When the Oscars air Sunday, Sunday just might be a literal term for me.

This will be the first year I'm not watching the Oscars in Ohio. I'm taking a trip down to the Mouse House in Florida, where I understand the sun has been rather abundant of late. So not long after I wipe myself out walking through World Showcase at Epcot, I will be relaxing and watching the telecast

However, since I'm quite busy getting ready for the trip, I MIGHT not have time to predict as many categories as I usually do, or go into great detail on how I made all my picks.

That being the case, I plan to at least give you the major categories now, and if time allows, I will at least list the techs on Friday. I will also be Tweeting @sircritic and posting on Facebook that evening if you'd like to follow me in those domains.

For now, here are the Big Six in this domain:

BEST ACTOR

Javier Bardem, Biutiful: He has a lot of passionate supporters and was something of a surprise nominee. He’s almost always great. But his film has not been widely seen, and it’s not that well liked.

Jeff Bridges, True Grit: He’s one of the industry’s most well-respected actors, and he accomplished the unenviable task of following in John Wayne’s footsteps. Only thing is, he just won last year, for Crazy Heart, and I’m not sure he’s SO beloved to win two years in a row, like Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks did.

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network: He very effectively shattered the beef against him that he plays the same likable geek every time, playing Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg as a standoffish genius/traitor, bu he still found an emotional center to the role. I think some voters will be put off by the coldness of the character, though.

Colin Firth, The King’s Speech: He had to play someone who was afraid of his own shadow, but who still seemed like he could be king, and he did it with absolute assurance. Firth is extremely well-liked, and he has a lot of goodwill from his nomination for A Single Man last year. And he’s in the presumed Best Picture winner. The Oscar is his to lose.

James Franco, 127 Hours: He had to carry an entire film almost on the strength of his performance. He is very often the only character onscreen. He IS the film. He’s co-hosting the Oscars this Sunday, so obviously he’s very well liked. However, many find a movie about a man who has to hack his own arm off a very tough sit.

Sir Critic’s prediction: Colin Firth

If it were up to me: Much as I love Firth's performance, I think Eisenberg did the canniest, trickiest work of the lot.

BEST ACTRESS

Annette Bening, The Kids are All Right: Let’s face it, Bening is greatly overdue. If anyone can beat front-runner Portman, it’s her. Bening will win someday. Just not this year.

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole: Kidman turned in her best work in years for this very affecting film, but Rabbit Hole never gained much traction, and Kidman won fairly recently for The Hours.

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter’s Bone: Her film has a fervent following, and it’s largely because of her. She was very natural and powerful in a difficult part, and she’s only 20. But all that being the case, she’ll be back.This isn’t her time.

Natalie Portman, Black Swan: She’s won every precursor award under the sun, and even people who didn’t like Black Swan tip their hats to Portman. The one thing that might trip her up is fatigue; she has two movie in theaters now, with at least two more on the way.

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine: Much as she did in Brokeback Mountain she took the part of a tragic figure and made her mutli-dimensional. But like Kidman, she’s the lone nominee from her film, which hurts her chances. Some other year.

Sir Critic's prediction: Natalie Portman

If it were up to me: Portman gave the performance of the year. Period. If anyone else wins, even the great Michelle Williams, Natalie will have been robbed.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale, The Fighter: Bale once again amazed with his chameleon-like abiltites. You completely by him as a gaunt crackhead and forget he was Batman. The question is, are people ready to forgive his sometimes boorish behavior? I think so.

John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone: Hawkes impressed many with his haunting turn as Jennifer Lawrene’s uncle. But the film is remembered primarily as Lawrence’s vehicle.

Jeremy Renner, The Town: Renner is on a roll, having been nominated last year for his similar live-wire performance in The Hurt Locker. However, The Town did not score very high in the nominations.

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids are All Right: He’s immensely winning as a man who tries to connect with the biological children he’s never known. He’s been doing good work for years, so he’s due - but this role may not be hefty enough.

Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech: Riotously funny but still maintainng gravitas when needed. Rush's performane is as key to the success of The King's Speech as Firth's, He’s the person most likely to upset Bale, but one must remember he’s already a winner, for the film Shine.


Sir Critic's prediction: Bale

If it Were Up to Me: It's not just Bale's weight loss that did the trick - he moved me too.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams, The Fighter: Adams blew her goody-goody image out of the water with her tough-talking performance as Mark Wahlberg’s squeeze. This is her third nomination, so some may say she’s due. But costar Melssa Leo will cut into her vote.

Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech: Carter isn’t just due, she’s overdue, and she’s very touching as the suffering but steadfast Queen. However, her performance is a bit light compared to others in this category.

Melissa Leo, The Fighter: She completely disappeared into her role as Mark Wahlberg’s oppressive mother, and she’s won most of the precursor awards. However, she put off some voters with her misguided Oscar campaign glamour shot ads. She and Adams may cancel each other out.

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit: The 14-year-old may be small in stature, but she loomed large in True Grit, where she was really the lead. She more than held her own with the likes of Matt Damon and Jeff Bridges and did it with supreme confidence. However, the category fraud may put off voters, as will her young age.

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom: Many people say once you see her film, you have a hard time not voting for her. But can enough people say that?

Sir Critic’s predicton: This is the toughest call in the major races.  You could coook up any scenario for any of the nominees winning. However, I lean toward the Hailee Steinfeld scenario most strongly.

If it Were Up to Me: If I vote with my heart, I vote for Amy. But in all honesty,  Steinfeld impressed me even more.

BEST DIRECTOR

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan: The auteur has built a strong following over the years, and people who love Black Swan really love it. But too many people find his in-your-face approach off-putting

Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit: The Coens are among the most well respected auteurs out there, and True Grit is their biggest hit to date. But they won very recently, for .No Country for Old Men

David Fincher, The Social Network: Yet another well-regarded autueur, Fincher is long overdue for a win, and his film earned the best reviews of his career.

Tom Hooper, The King's Speech : He won the Director’s Gulld award, which makes him  a favorite, and people love his film. But the winners usually exhibit strong visual personalities, and one could argue Hooper doesn’t have that. And this time, Hooper won't have the support of guild TV directors, who I believe tipped the scales in his favor at DGA.  

David O. Russell, The Fighter : Like Fincher, he’s a respected auteur and is hitting a carrer peak. However, he has a penchant for alienating some of his actors (George Clooney refused to work for him ever again after Three Kings.)   

Sir Critic’s prediction: Conventional wisdome dictates that Hooper will take it, but I think we’ll see a repeat of Chicago’s year, when the relative neophute (Rob Marhshall) won DGA, but the autuer (Roman Polanski) won the Oscar. I predict Fincher. 

If it were up to me: The non-nominated Christopher Nolan, dammit! But since he's not here (grumble), I have to go for Fincher, who took a dialogue-driven film and still made it distinctly his. 

BEST PICTURE

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids are All Right

The King’s Speech

127 Hours 

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit 

Winter’s Bone

Sir Critic's prediction: Rather than going over each film, I’ll break this down very simply. Only three movies have a shot at winning. True Grit is the long shot, leaving The Social Network and The King’s Speech as the main contenders. It’s an old Oscar story: The warm and fuzzy traditional film vs. the edgy, rule-breaking movie that Says Something Important. Whenever that battle happens (e.g. Forrest Gump vs. Pulp Fiction, heartwarming almost always wins. The King’s Speech is the film to beat. 

If it were up to me: Inception topped my list last year. I just wish it had a chance in hell of topping Oscar's list. Oh well. I can dream, can't I? 

HE SAID/SHE SAID: I Am Number Four

Wow! My hands come with the flashlight app! 

Timing in Hollywood just makes me laugh sometimes. Earlier this week, entertainment writer Mark Harris published a dissection of Hollywood malaise called The Day the Movies Died.

Only a day or so after Harris' essay ran, Hollywood released I Am Number Four, which turns out to be an excellent audio/visual companion to Harris' piece. You want to know why Hollywood is in trouble? Because it keeps making movies as soulless and mechanical as this one.

When one sees the words "Produced by Michael Bay." one must take the movie with a bit more than a grain of salt.I tried to take it with at least a couple of salt shakers, because the movie had potential - but it failed to live up to it.

I wish I could have seen the movie my colleague Hannah Poturalski was watching. She writes:

D.J. Caruso’s I Am Number Four was entertaining and action packed, but still romantic and thoughtful — you know, in a manly sort of way. Admittedly, I didn’t recognize the director’s name but after looking him up I realized he’s made a number of films I’ve liked — Disturbia (note: Rear Window was so good), Taking Lives, The Salton Sea.

I don't so much lay the blame at Bay's galumphing feet. He didn't direct the movie, Caruso did. And Caruso is a pretty decent action director. Unlike Mr. Bay, he knows how to shoot and edit an action scene so that a viewer can tell what in the world is going on. Caruso's problem is, he hasn't gotten a hold of a decent script lately.

Disturbia was fun, but that was a great movie only to people who had never seen Rear Window. Eagle Eye had some strong action scenes and an imaginative premise - which made less and less sense as it went on.
With I Am Number Four, history repeats itself in short order.

It starts with a fair amount of intrigue. Alex Pettyfer plays the title character, an alien teenager who travels with his guardian Henri (Timothy Olyphant). They're on the run from a batch of nasty aliens who have no hair, but a lot of really gnarly teeth. Living on Earth is difficult for Number Four (who goes by the name John Smith) because he's a showboat who has super powers. And, as is always the case in such stories, a girl (Dianna Agron, AKA Quinn of Glee) by being so darn pretty and lovable. (Added bonus for locals - it's set in a place called Paradise, Ohio, and Agron actually mentions Dayton. She must have a thing for scripts set in Ohio, since Glee is too.)

Yes, the story is about as dopey as the seventh dwarf, but for the first hour or so, it's actually fairly compelling.  The story focuses on the characters, and the lead actors are all solid. Then, it devolves into an elaborate demo reel for visual effects artists and sound editors.

For Hannah, that worked. She said:


Suspense built up pretty well throughout the film. As well the film’s imagery during the action (scenes) was good — I mainly liked seeing the big beasts fight each other.


She also found merit in the film's characters, noting,

As well, the relationship between Henri and John was a thoughtful one because they were like father and son. Henri was very protective of John and made the ultimate sacrifice. Even the friendships that develop between John and the geeky Sam (Callan McAuliffe) and bully Mark (Jake Abel) were enjoyable to watch on-screen. Pretty much all the relationships had relatable moments that made them more sincere.

Eventually, my mind got bored enough that I started asking questions. For example, Henri goes to pains to delete every digital photo of John on the net, replacing them with a handy-dandy "photo not on server" logo. Um ... maybe I'm being too logical here, but if EVERY photo of you disappears from a Facebook album, wouldn't that actually draw MORE attention to you?

The character of Number 6 (Teresa Palamer) is so thinly written, she might as well be called "Hot Chick Who Kicks Ass in the Last Reels." And I could see the final "twist" of the big battle scene coming about three country miles away.

At the very least, I had hoped I Am Number Four would be turn-your-brain-off fun, but it asked me to suspend so much disbelief that my disbelief got too heavy and crashed to the ground. I Am Number Four won't  kill the movies, but it will sure keep them on life support.

GRADE: C

Read Hannah's full review here.

The Day the Movies Died: We Don't Tell Stories Anymore

Mark Harris has written a detailed, thorough and thought-provoking analysis of why Most Movies Suck. I'll write a more considered response later, but for now I will say this: The article backs up my long-held belief that the studios are run not by entertainers who love movies, but by business majors who love profits.

But there's another key point Harris makes. It's not ALL Hollywood's fault. It's ours too. Here's a link to the piece, and some key excerpts:

The Day the Movies Died: Movies + TV: GQ

For the studios, a good new idea has become just too scary a road to travel. Inception, they will tell you, is an exceptional movie. And movies that need to be exceptional to succeed are bad business. "The scab you're picking at is called execution," says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). "Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they're right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint."

Right now, we can argue that any system that allows David Fincher to plumb the invention of Facebook and the Coen brothers to visit the old West, that lets us spend the holidays gorging on new work by Darren Aronofsky and David O. Russell, has got to mean that American filmmaking is in reasonably good health. But the truth is that we'll be back to summer—which seems to come sooner every year—in a heartbeat. And it's hard to hold out much hope when you hear the words that one studio executive, who could have been speaking for all her kin, is ready to chisel onto Hollywood's tombstone: "We don't tell stories anymore."

How did hollywood get here? There's no overarching theory, no readily identifiable villain, no single moment to which the current combination of caution, despair, and underachievement that defines studio thinking can be traced. But let's pick one anyway: Top Gun.

It's now a movie-history commonplace that the late-'60s-to-mid-'70s creative resurgence of American moviemaking—the Coppola-Altman-Penn-Nichols-Bogdanovich-Ashby decade—was cut short by two movies, Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977, that lit the fuse for the summer-blockbuster era. But good summer blockbusters never hurt anyone, and in the decade that followed, the notion of "summer movie season" entered the pop-culture lexicon, but the definition of "summer movie" was far more diverse than it is today. The label could encompass a science fiction film as hushed and somber as Alien, a two-and-a-half-hour horror movie like The Shining, a directorial vision as singular as Blade Runner, an adult film noir like Body Heat, a small-scale (yes, it was) movie like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, a frankly erotic romantic drama like An Officer and a Gentleman. Sex was okay—so was an R rating. Adults were treated as adults rather than as overgrown children hell-bent on enshrining their own arrested development.

Then came Top Gun. The man calling the shots may have been Tony Scott, but the film's real auteurs were producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, two men who pioneered the "high-concept" blockbuster—films for which the trailer or even the tagline told the story instantly. At their most basic, their movies weren't movies; they were pure product—stitched-together amalgams of amphetamine action beats, star casting, music videos, and a diamond-hard laminate of technological adrenaline all designed to distract you from their lack of internal coherence, narrative credibility, or recognizable human qualities. They were rails of celluloid cocaine with only one goal: the transient heightening of sensation.

Top Gun landed directly in the cortexes of a generation of young moviegoers whose attention spans and narrative tastes were already being recalibrated by MTV and video games. That generation of 16-to-24-year-olds—the guys who felt the rush of Top Gun because it was custom-built to excite them—is now in its forties, exactly the age of many mid- and upper-midrange studio executives. And increasingly, it is their taste, their appetite, and the aesthetic of their late-'80s postadolescence that is shaping moviemaking. Which may be a brutally unfair generalization, but also leads to a legitimate question: Who would you rather have in charge—someone whose definition of a classic is Jaws or someone whose definition of a classic is Top Gun?

....while that bland assembly-line ethos hasn't affected the small handful of terrific American movies that reach screens every year, it's been absolutely devastating for the stuff in the middle—that whole tier of movies that used to reside in quality somewhere below, say, There Will Be Blood but well north of Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? It's your run-of-the-mill hey-what's-playing-tonight movie—the kind of film about which you should be able to say, "That was nothing special, but it was okay"—that has suffered most from Hollywood's collective inattention/indifference to the basic virtues of story development. If films like The Bounty Hunter and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time define the new "okay," then the system is, not to put too fine a point on it, in very deep shit.

"The sad thing," says HBO programming chief Michael Lombardo, "is that a world has closed to a group of serious storytellers—and there are some stories that should be told in a two-hour format. Our success is a sort of silver lining in a story that's economically driven by what studios are doing to try to survive in a complicated international market. But the losers ultimately are people who are looking to appreciate serious work in film."

Blaming the studios for everything lets another culprit off too easily: us. We can complain until we're hoarse that Hollywood abandoned us by ceasing to make the kinds of movies we want to see, but it's just as true that we abandoned Hollywood. Studios make movies for people who go to the movies, and the fact is, we don't go anymore—and by we, I mean the complaining class, of which, if you've read this far, you are absolutely a member. We stay home, and we do it for countless reasons: A trip to the multiplex means paying for parking, a babysitter, and overpriced unhealthy food in order to be trapped in a room with people who refuse to pay for a babysitter, as well as psychos, talkers, line repeaters, texters, cell-phone users, and bedbugs. We can see the movie later, and "later" is pretty soon—on a customized home-theater system or, forget that, just a nice big wide-screen TV, via Netflix, or Amazon streaming, or on-demand, or iPad. The urgency of seeing movies the way they're presumably intended to be seen has given way to the primacy of privacy and the security of knowing that there's really almost no risk of missing a movie you want to see and never having another opportunity to see it. Put simply, we'd rather stay home, and movies are made for people who'd rather go out.

Discuss. Please.

Those wacky MPAA explainers

GASP! It's creature terror!!!

Last night while I was watching Glee, a trailer for the new werewolf movie Red Riding Hood came on. I'm looking forward to the film. I'm a fan of Amanda Seyfried, and I like the director, Catherine Hardwicke.

However, I couldn't help but laugh at the MPAA advisory at the end. We all know that the association's rating system is a nebulous mess, to put it mildly. But seen along with their misplaced ratings are often hilarious explainers of why a movie earned its rating. 

Red Riding Hood: Rated PG-13 for violence, creature terror and some sensuality. 

"Creature terror?" What the hell is THAT? Sounds like a vague description of any of the Twilight movies. And for the record, none of them got saddled with that:

Twilight: Rated PG-13 for some violence and a scene of sensuality.
New Moon: Rated PG-13 for some violence and action
Eclipse; Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action and violence

Nope, no "creature terror" to be found there. How bout Van Helsing? That had creatures in it.

PG-13 for nonstop creature action violence and frightening images and sensuality. 

So what's the difference between "creature action violence" and "creature terror?" Did Red Riding Hood make one of the raters nearly pee their pants? I'll give them one thing about Van Helsing, it certainly did have frightening images. Just not the kind they had in mind. 

How bout the Transformers movies? 

Transformers: PG-13 for intense sequences of of sci-fi action violence, brief sexual humor and language.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action violence, some crude and sexual material and brief drug material.

Hm. No "giant robot terror" to be found anywhere. But I have to give the MPAA props for coming up with different wording to describe those movies' lame attempts at humor.

Were any of the Jurassic Park movies rated PG-13 for "dinosaur terror?" Come to think of it, that kind of counts as creature terror. Had these explainers been around in 1975, Jaws might have been labeled with "Carnivorous fish terror." 

But no. All we get for all three of those movies are variations of "science fiction terror." Maybe the raters were getting bored, because in 1997, things started gettting silly with their explainer for Twister: 

PG-13 for intense depiciton of very bad weather. 

I swear I'm not making that up. That is the MPAA's official rationale for the Twister rating. Look it up. 

Hey, why don't we have some real truth in the ratings. Let's try these on for size:

Your Highness: Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, pervasive language, some drug use and Natalie Portman overexposure.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Rated PG-13 for instellar giant robot combat, sensuality due to lack of clothing for Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and drug references via the homage to a classic Pink Floyd album title. 

Friends with Benefits (actual Mlia Kunis rom-com about friends who start having sex): Same reasons as No Strings Attached, except with the Black Swan instead of the White Swan. 

The King's Speech: Rated R for some language. Because we all know hearing a king say "fuck" a lot is just as harmful as seeing Sharon Stone stab somebody to death with an icepick after sex.

A chat with Randy Newman (and a Pixar flashback)

February 12, 2011

Forgive me for not posting here too often lately, but I think this post will make up  for it. You see, Friday, I had the distinct pleasure of talking to one of the great singer-songwriters and film composers, Randy Newman. He is coming to Middletown, Ohio for a concert on Feb. 19, which I will attend. Linked here is my interview with him for the Middletown Journal.

As I suspected, it was a lot of fun to talk to him, and he came across as a very down-to-earth guy who happened to have a sardonic sense of humor. This was a particular honor for me, not only because of Newman's status alone, but because he was the third man I'd spoken to who worked for Pixar. Newman has composed the music for most of Pixar's movies, including all three Toy Story films, a bug's life, Monsters, Inc. and Cars.

Alas he's not written the score for this summer's Cars 2. That would have been ideal to talk to him about that   and have that part of the interview released in June, along with the film. However, Michael Giacchino has written the score for Cars 2, probably because of its international/spy caper themes, whereas Newman's music has a much more Americana vibe. All very understandable, though.

For those of you who may have missed it, or for those who'd like another look, here is my other Pixar interview, with Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera, the director/producer, respectively of Up. This post also contains a video of my interviews. I've always been rather proud of the fact that Docter liked my query about what he and his fellow filmmakers took away from Up.

Enjoy! I sure did!

The Best Films of 2010 - Better late than never

It's about here that I'm supposed to make a statement about how good or bad last year was for movies, but I'm mot going to do that. No matter how good or bad the year is, I find that the top films always deserve to be remembered - and are a refreshing reminder that, contrary to popular opinion, great movies ARE still out there - and there are many of them.

Tto be eligible for my list, a movie has to have premiered  in the Dayton area during the calendar year of 2010. (With three exceptions, as noted below).  That means that Blue Valentine won't make my list until next year.

If I gave a movie a full review, the title will link to it.

Runners-up (in alphabetical order)

Best Worst Movie - This documentary on the making of the hilariously bad Troll 2 focuses on the dichotomy between its actors, who mostly knew they were in a piece of junk - and the filmmakers, who cluelessly believed they had actually made something artful. On the whole, it's more entertaining than Troll 2 itself.

Crazy Heart - It could have been a cliched soap opera with a country twang, but in the hands of this cast and crew, it became something touching and genuine.

Despicable Me - At first glance it looked just like a funny gag reel, but actually turned out to have strong heart too. Hooray for the Minions!

Easy A: Yes, Easy A. Watch Emma Stone's performance and believe. The screenplay is sharp and witty to boot.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest: Most critics pegged this as the weakest of the "Millenium Trilogy," but I disagree. What makes it distinct is that even though it's primarily a courtroom drama, it's still dramatic and suspenseful. (The second film, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is a solid action movie, but is  the least memorable of the lot.)

Hereafter: Clint Eastwood's latest film at first landed on a lot of Oscar prognosticators' lists by default - and then disappeared. It should have stayed. It's a fascinating look not so much at the afterlife, but what people believe to be true about it and how it affects them.

Inside Job - Not being a mathematical creature at all, I have a hard time wrapping my head around the world of finance, but Charles Ferguson deconstructs the implosion of our economy with startling clarity - and the story of its unraveling is by turns despairing and enraging.

The Kids are All Right: This is the movie that JUST missed my top 10, but that takes nothing away from this terrific acting showcase about the tough love of an unconventional family.

The Town: You know, even though Ben Affleck is on camera in his second directorial effort, his very fine film convinced me that he could quit acting and go into directing - and I absolutely mean that as a compliment.

The Tillman Story: Pat Tillman never wanted anyone to make a fuss over him. He just wanted to do his job and to do it well. The best thing about this documentary, is not so much how it reveals that Tillman was crassly exploited, but that it reveals what kind of man he was. And we lament his loss all the more.

Out-of-town specials

Two outstanding films didn't play Dayton in 2010, but they're too good to be excluded from these rankings.

Buried: This intense film about Ryan Reynolds being buried alive in Iraq developed great buzz - which dissipated in a halfhearted release that prevented the movie from reaching as many eyes as it should have. And that's a great pity. This film has the same basic concept as 127 Hours - man confined to narrow space, limited opportunity for visuals - but it's better than Danny Boyle's film which didn't stay with me the way it should have.

Waking Sleeping Beauty: Never mind Tangled. Here was the best film featuring Disney animation released in 2010. This documentary painted a picture of how Disney animation arose from near-irrelevance in the mid-1980s to become a powerhouse in the 1990s. And it makes me long to see Disney reach those heights again.

The 10 Best

10) Flipped: Rob Reiner's best film in nearly 20 years was barely released, and people missed a lovely lilting look at the male vs. female viewpoint which is even more effective than When Harry Met Sally ....

9) How to Train Your Dragon: How does DreamWorks produced its best film to date? By hiring guys who made one of Disney's best films, Lilo & Stitch. It also sported 2011's best use of 3D, with breathtaking flying scenes.

8) The Fighter: Much more than just another boxing crowd-pleaser, this movie is about the dynamics of the family, and how they can damage, when applied recklessly - and heal, when applied with care.

7) Toy Story 3: The last 30 minutes of the film sensationally run the emotional gamut - and Pixar leaves me in tears. Again.

6) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: When I first saw this murder mystery, I thought, "Feels like a David Fincher film." Lo and behold, Fincher is directing the American remake. If his film as half as engrossing as this film was, it will make my 2011 Ten Best List.

5) The King's Speech: So this film is supposedly ordinary and stodgy, is it?  As Bertie might have said, bollocks. This film has more soul than those who despair at its Oscar front-runner status.

4) Shutter Island: Some people misguidedly dismissed Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel as a show-offy lark. Those people ought to take another look. Like many of Hitchcock's best films, it's a stirring, emotional trip that repeat viewings will enrich."Is it better to live as a monster - or to die as a good man?"

3) The Social Network: The film begins with the line, "When people reject you, it won't be because you're a nerd. It'll be because you're an asshole." It ends with the line "You're not an asshole. You just try too hard to be one." The soul of this film lies in the distance between those two lines.

2) Black Swan: Natalie Portman's stunning performance is the best of the year, revealing with startling force the dangers of thinking that being perfect means never making mistakes.

1) Inception: An astonishingly intricate structure. Pulse-pounding action scenes.  Effects that are both groundbreaking and refreshingly old-fashioned. A screenplay that kept me guessing and still makes my mind reel, even after viewings in the double digits. A tale of human heartbreak and redemption. Put more simply, Inception was the film of 2010 that Had It All.

The Social Network's Oscar chances go Up in the Air?

On the surface, The Social Network and Up in the Air would seem to have little in common. But Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly notices some striking similarities that give me pause.

Like The Social Network, Up in the Air won a lot of Oscar precursors, but then gradually lost its momentum as Avatar and finally The Hurt Locker outpaced it.

Cue the current race. The Social Network was winning every award under the sun - at least until a few weeks ago, when The King's Speech started winning every other award under the sun.

Similarly, a lot of critics liked Up in the Air, (including me - it topped my 10 best list in 2009) but it gave way to films that were 1) A cultural phenomenon and 2) A scrappy, hard-hitting little indie directed by a woman who just happened to be the ex of the guy who made the cultural phenomenon.  It became a great David and Goliath story. Ultimately, I think Oscar voters thought "James Cameron has had his glory, let's give the upstarts theirs and make our own milestone in the bargain."

This year's story is a little different, though. The Social Network is clearly this year's critical darling. Save for maybe Toy Story 3, no film was better reviewed in 2010. So of course it would win with all kinds of critics' socieities.

Then came the Golden Globes, and The Social Network won there. That was a bit of a surprise, to me at least. I thought The King's Speech, with its very European story, would appeal heavily to the Hollywood FOREIGN press. It probably did. Nevertheless, the Facebook movie prevailed.

Then along came the Producers Guild, who turned the tide in favor of The King's Speech. Then it went on to win the SAG and DGA prizes as well. So many critics' jaws' dropped that oral surgery bills must be skyrocketing.

And yet, I wasn't SO shocked. One could argue the producers' went for it because it took years to make, with the filmmakers respecting the Queen Mother's wishes to wait until she passed on. The SAG awards went for TKS because it had a fairly large ensemble, which always helps. And I think the fact that the film was directed by Tom Hooper helped the regal story both at SAG and at DGA, because Hopper had a lot of goodwill directing the highly acclaimed HBO miniseries John Adams. Unlike the Oscars, the guilds have a heavy membership in the TV categories.

But  in his blog post, Gleiberman asks a good question. He points out that both Up in the Air and The Social Network suffered backlashes. They both fell victim to the general sentiment of "Yeah, it was good, but not as good as a lot of those highfalutin critics said it was."

So that makes me and Owen wonder  - just what IS an Oscar film supposed to be?  I think a lot of folks - Academy voters and Joe Schmoes alike - think Oscar = BIG, either in feeling or in spectacle. An Oscar winner can be a large-scale epic like Lawrence of Arabia, or a heart-tugger like Casablanca. Or both, like Titanic. An Oscar winner has to have a WOW factor. For a lot of viewers, both Up in the Air and The Social Network lacked that. Both films, especially The Social Network, try to SAY SOMETHING, but a statement never has as much pull as a handkerchief.

There are always exceptions  but in the end, it comes down to the age-old difference between the favorite film and the best film. For some, The Social Network may be the "best" movie. But for many others, The King's Speech will be the favorite. That's why I think the latter will win.

And as I wrote earlier this week, there is no shame in that.

John Barry, 1933-2011

John Barry once wrote a song called You Only Live Twice - and the great film composer who passed away Sunday kind of did just that.

Looked rather like Michael Caine, didn't he?

Justly, he is most famous for his work with the James Bond series. He may not have written the theme - that's credited to Monty Norman - but Barry made it what it was with his brassy, guitar-driven arrangement, which sounds both timeless and very 60s at once.

It's easier to list the Bond scores Barry did NOT compose. Through 1987's The Living Daylights, he contributed to all of them except Live and Let Die (George Martin), The Spy Who Loved Me (Marvin Hamlisch), and For Your Eyes Only (Bill Conti) All the Bond films scores from Tomorrow Never Dies onward were composed by David Arnold, who is very much a Barry devotee.

Of the Bond title songs Barry wrote, the most famous is probably Goldfinger, but my personal favorite is You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra, with its lovely string arrangement.



As for the scores, by far my favorite is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the one with "the other fella," George Lazenby. LOVE the fuzz tone and the Alpine horns.



And if that music sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it in association with another movie, Pixar's The Incredibles. It was the teaser music. And Michael Giacchino's score for that film owes a VERY large debt to Barry.



But Barry also lived another very successful life as a composer for non-Bond films, winning Oscars for Born Free, Out of Africa, and The Lion in Winter, which I just recently saw for the first time. Barry's scores were often characterized by sharp uses of brass contrasted with lush string sections. He was one of those composers who had a very definite sound - a sound we will very definitely miss.

And besides, how can I not love the guy when he sort of has a Beatles connection? Vic Flick was a member of the John Barry Seven who played the classic guitar line in the Bond theme. He also played in the film score of A Hard Day's Night - that's him plucking out the guitar line to "This Boy" in the scenes where Ringo is wandering around without the others.

Had to do it!