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How to Win Your Oscar Pool

By :John Latchem | Posted: 28 Feb 2010
Media Magazine

Everyone who watches movies likes to speculate as to the Oscars, whether or not they want to admit it or not. Most of the people I talk to dismiss the Academy Awards as a bunch of elitists who don't really know anything and pick stupid movies to win. But let's get real, as a marketing tool, the Oscars are invaluable, and deep down we all acknowledge they mean something. After all, those same people who like to tell me the Oscars suck are always the first to exclaim they can't believe so-and-so lost, or are so happy the such-and-such won.

And, for those of you who like to partake in unsanctioned activities related to the Oscar ceremony March 7, I give you my guide to navigating the nominees and picking the winners, based on my own observations and experiences of watching these things play out through the years.
'Regular' Categories
Best Picture

The favorite is The Hurt Locker, which has swept through most of the preliminary awards (DGA, WGA, Producers Guild). Though the film wasn’t a strong entry at the box office ($12.7 million), it was limited to a release of only 535 theaters (compared to 2,500-4,000 for most mainstream films). But it has been a strong performer on the DVD and Blu-ray charts, and its early availability on disc (since Jan. 12) should help its profile with Academy voters. Remember when Crash won in 2005 after being the only best picture nominee on disc during the voting rounds?

Of course, this year a number of nominees are on disc by now, and a lot of the buzz lately centers on a late surge by Inglourious Basterds, winner of the SAG ensemble award. The theory goes that more voters have general affection for Basterds, whereas other movies on the list are either loved or not, and with the Academy’s weighted scoring system, a film that consistently earns more second- and third-place votes could sneak into the top spot.

Personally, my affections are torn between Basterds and Up in the Air, and since I most recently saw Up in the Air, I’ve been leaning toward that one. But I’d love to see Basterds win.

For the record, if Avatar wins, it will be among the worst best pictures ever. It’s easily the worst of the best picture candidates I’ve seen (I’ve yet to view The Blind Side and An Education). Avatar may have won the Golden Globe for best picture — drama, but I tend to discount the Globes as a predictor of Oscar success since they have a limited voting pool and quirkier-than-Hollywood-normal tastes. And this year was an anomaly, since the HFPA doled out all their awards to the box office winners (best comedy GG winner The Hangover earned zero Oscar nominations).

It’s worth noting that Inglourious Basterds was somehow left off the American Film Institute top 10 films of 2009 list. In the eight previous years the AFI has honored top films, only The Departed (2006) and Slumdog Millionaire (2008) won the Oscar without a corresponding AFI nod. (Slumdog Millionaire is not an American film and thus it wasn’t eligible for AFI consideration).

Prediction: The Hurt Locker, Summit
Dark Horse: Inglourious Basterds, Universal
Best Actor

The award is Jeff Bridges’ to lose. The sentimentality factor will kick in here, as it has done with the earlier award shows, since Bridges has been around forever, is well liked, and rarely wins anything.
Prediction: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Best Actress

Sandra Bullock has won all the other awards, so she’s the favorite. I haven’t seen The Blind Side, but in the previews she seems a bit over-the-top, but maybe that’s because she’s been stereotyped in the cutesy comedy roles. The only reason she wouldn’t win is the kind of snobbery that cost Eddie Murphy an Oscar for Dreamgirls. Otherwise, Meryl Streep will win.
Prediction: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Dark Horse: Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Best Supporting Actor

This seems to be a lock for Christoph Waltz as the Nazi baddie in Inglourious Basterds. He clinched the Oscar in the first five minutes of the movie, and the rest is just candy.
Prediction: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress

I questioned how someone who broke up their name with an apostrophe would win an Oscar, but after seeing Precious I understand the hype. Mo’Nique’s character may be detestable, but the actress plays her with so much conviction and against type it’s impossible for voters not to take notice.
Prediction: Mo’Nique, Precious
Best Director

The Academy will not sacrifice a chance at history, especially when the nominee is deserving. Kathryn Bigelow will become the first woman to win best director.
Prediction: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Best Original Screenplay

This is a tricky one. The two that stand out are The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds. Screenplay is sometimes seen as a consolation prize, so the Academy could give this award to the movie that doesn’t win best picture, if it is indeed between Hurt Locker and Basterds. Since I picked Locker to win best picture, I’ll take Quentin Tarantino here, but if you don’t have Hurt Locker winning best picture, you may want to take it in this category, or to hedge your bets, pick Hurt Locker in both. Hurt Locker also won the Writers Guild Award in this category. A long shot is A Serious Man, with the Coen Brothers swinging serious cred at awards time.
Prediction: Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds
Dark Horse: The Hurt Locker or A Serious Man
Adapted Screenplay

This is an easy call. Since Up in the Air will be shut out of the other major categories after spending the early part of the awards season as the frontrunner, the Academy will have no trouble giving Jason Reitman an Oscar for adapting Walter Kirn’s novel. Sheldon Turner shares the credit for penning an early draft of the script.
Prediction: Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air
Animated Feature Film

OK, this one seems like an easy call. Since Up was also nominated for best OVERALL picture, it seems like a no-brainer to take this category. In fact, if a nominee in this category is nominated for the bigger prize as well, is there really a need for the formality of this category at all?
Prediction: Up, Disney/Pixar
Original Score

The Academy has tended to defy logic in the music category that past few years, honoring quirky scores by composers nobody has heard of. This year seems to be a departure. I wouldn’t be surprised to see James Horner win for Avatar, but I think the frontrunner is Michael Giacchino for Up, which already won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and a Grammy in the category.
Prediction: Michael Giacchino, Up
Dark Horse: James Horner, Avatar; Alexandre Desplat, Fantastic Mr. Fox
Original Song

The Princess and the Frog has two songs here, neither of which I consider the best of the movie. Of the two that are nominated, I think “Down in New Orleans” has the best chance in a category Disney once owned, but I suspect the statuette will go to “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart to cap off the Bridges win for actor.
Prediction: The Weary Kind, Crazy Heart
Dark Horse: “Down in New Orleans,” The Princess and the Frog
Documentary Feature

Prediction: The Cove
Dark Horse: Food Inc.
(Hollywood loves advocacy films)
Foreign-Language Film

Prediction: The White Ribbon, Germany
(It seems to have the most exposure, but to vote in this category, members have to sit and watch all five nominees, so if you haven’t seen ’em, pick ’em.)

Cold Souls (DVD Review)



By : John Latchem | Posted: 23 Feb 2010
Home Media Magazine




Street 3/2/10
Fox
Comedy
Box Office $0.9 million
$19.98 DVD
Rated ‘PG-13’ for nudity and brief strong language.
Stars Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Emily Watson, Dina Korzun.

Remember that “Simpsons” episode where Bart sells his soul for $5 to prove he doesn’t need one, only to spend the rest of the episode miserable without it? Cold Souls is a lot like that, only much more bizarre in a way a live-action treatment of the material would have to be. The result is a delightfully dark comedy that makes us question the very nature of our existence.

Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti, though I hesitate to refer to the character as a fictionalized version of himself. Struggling to grasp the nuance in his performance in a production of Uncle Vanya, he comes across an article about Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) who specializes in removing souls and storing them in cold storage. The intended result is to unburden the patient of his or her troubles.

Most movies would portray Flintstein as an obvious fraud, but Cold Souls assigns legitimacy to his methods. He sticks Paul in a giant soul-sucking machine, which converts the soul into some mundane object that is stored in a jar (in Paul's case, a chickpea).

To add to the complexity of the situation, a woman named Nina continuously visits Flintstein to deliver souls trafficked from Russia and purchased by mobsters from the poor. Flintstein offers his clients a chance to experience these other souls.

Paul chooses what he thinks is a Russian poet, which helps him in his play. But Paul begins having visions of the soul owner’s life and is overwhelmed. He wants his old soul back, only to learn Nina has stolen it to give to her boss’ wife, who is a Russian soap opera actress.

At its core, Cold Souls is an exploration of the relationship between soul and identity. In its examination of the human soul, the film reveals its own: the tug-of-war between the spiritual and physical realms. Does a self-proclaimed intelligent species such as ours still need to cling to divine concepts to maintain our happiness? It’s no accident that Paul’s decent into despair after losing his soul takes him to the icy wastelands of Russia.

Writer-director Sophie Barthes has decided to swim in the pool usually reserved for the likes of Charlie Kaufman. The esoteric nature of metaphysical reality on display here makes Cold Souls the spiritual successor to such works as the Kaufman-penned Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Cold Souls is anchored by two of my favorite performers, Giamatti and Strathairn, both at the top of their game. Russian actress Dina Korzun is equally effective as the soul mule, whose own life is falling apart as a result of the residual traces of all the souls building up in her head.

The film has been available as a rental since Feb. 2. Unfortunately, the DVD offers nothing like a commentary or featurette in which the filmmakers discuss the themes they explore. This DVD version is sparse on extras, offering only a handful of deleted scenes and a featurette about the simple yet elegant design of the soul extractor, and how it adds to the tone and charm of the film

Martin Scorsese's latest film "Shutter Island" can be summarized by one sentence:"What happens at Shutter Island remains in Shutter Island".

The biggest criticism of Shutter Island is that the movie is too long and too philosophical, and that the last fifteen minutes are the only part of the film which catches the attention of the audience. But the questions being asked by the film are questions that are still relevant today.
The film opens up with a ferry chugging through a murky fog towards an island somewhere off the coast of Boston. The island, when it comes into view, resembles Alcatraz(even the rocks and the large granite fortresses on the island tell the audience that those who visit never return). The time is 1954, certainly a time viewed by many as the dark ages (what with the McCarthy era, the cold war, and the shadows of Auschwitz and Hiroshima). As for DiCaprio, his role as a U.S. marshal seems typecast at first...a hard-boiled detective whose wife has died, who has constant remainders of the death camps he freed during the war...he is seasick, he has constant migraines, and when he sleeps, he has nightmares in which he either envisions his dead wife, or the corpses of the dead piled up at Auschwitz.
So like any good detective, he carries within his soul demons which make his existence one in which every day he is moving deeper and deeper into the bottom of Dante's Hell.
Without giving away too much of the plot, we are told that he was sent there to investigate the disappearance of a female patient, a mother who was confined for murdering her three children. To state anything else would be to give away the entire movie. Be patient. Be very, very patient.
As I watched the film, my mind kept making references to Edgar Allen Poe:
The human tombs where the mentally ill are kept, the constant emergence of ghosts in DiCaprio's dreams, the continuous flashbacks to death camps and corpses, dead children, the Daliesque ghost visions of his dead wife, the German Psychologist (played brilliantly by Max Von Sydow) who, when viewed through DiCaprio's imagination probably performed medical experiments on Jewish children, and the constantly murkiness of each frame (everything is damp and cold and indifferent as granite). Then there are the philosophical arguments:
is it better to lobotomize the violently mentally ill, or tranquilize them. Then there is the creepy soundtrack. The best part of the soundtrack for me was when Max Von Sydow is listening to a violin concerto by Mahler, but the tonality of the concerto is as if someone is slowly strangling a cat. My wife said to me, "I think there's something wrong with the soundtrack." I thought to myself, "No, This is a not too subtle hint that everything in DiCaprio's world is out of kilter."
If you do go to Shutter Island, when you arrive home, reread Poe's "The Telltale Heart." Poe's short stories were about the subconscious mind, and how the subconscious can create it's own reality. There is nothing more terrifying then the mind creating an alternate reality, being a patient in a mental institution talking to people who are non existent, or someone whose mind cannot differentiate between a toaster and a television set.
As far as the 1950's being the dark ages, we now send the mentally ill off to state penitentiaries, or force them to sleep in cardboard shelters in darkness. What we don't want to see, our minds eventually block out.
One question you will need to ask yourself as you leave the movie:"Is the world that I am Living in the real world, or is it a total creation of my imagination?"
Only the shadow knows, and he's not telling.

By : Mike Clark | Posted: 08 Feb 2010
Home Media Magazine

Bad Girls Film Noir vol. 1

Street 2/9/10
Sony Pictures
Drama
$29.98 DVD
Not rated.
Stars Lizabeth Scott, Evelyn Keyes, Gloria Grahame.

Echoing Sony’s “Martini Movies” line, which sometimes serves fun selections in the wrong kind of glasses, not everything here is as described. But the lineup shrewdly combines film history with a luridly commercial hook, and deep-sea diving into the archives is always to be encouraged.

In order of preference:

The Glass Wall (1953): If you can overlook its preposterous premise, this one is fairly stylish, and movie lovers will have a ball reading period marquees in the many nighttime shots of Manhattan. All an illegal immigrant (Vittorio Gassman) has to do to remain in the U.S. is to locate a musician he once aided in World War II and whose last name he doesn’t know. The movie opened not quite two weeks after lead actress Gloria Grahame took a supporting Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful, and it’s one of many that explains why she must be the woman for whom the term “silky” was invented. Her character steals a coat here, but she’s really not “bad,” despite what her crone of a landlady thinks. An odd subplot deals with the musician in question (Jerry Paris) longing to join jazz great Jack Teagarden’s group, though from appearances here, its gigs are mostly in low-grade bars.

The Killer That Stalked New York (1950): This was Columbia’s ‘B’-movie answer to 20th Century-Fox’s own 1950 plague movie Panic in the Streets. Evelyn Keyes, who really does look appropriately pasty throughout, picks up smallpox in Cuba (one of those virulent Batista strains) and begins rotting the Apple via simple human interaction. Given her luck with a crook lover (two-timing her for a while with her sister), it’s obvious that bad luck follows Keyes around. There’s another crabby landlady, and, in the supporting cast, Dorothy Malone and Lola Albright, two actresses of my youth who easily convinced me that there was life beyond Mickey Mantle. It’s effectively shot in black-and-white by Joseph Biroc, who later specialized in photographing the young Ann-Margret in color.

Bad for Each Other (1953): Army surgeon Charlton Heston leaves the service to push pills for Pittsburgh society matrons, giving the actor one of his rare coat-tie-tux-hat roles. Lizabeth Scott is less a bad girl than a bad influence – though anyone can tell she’s no good because she handles 78 records not by the edges but with her fingers. There’s also an unusual scene where “Perry Mason” actor Ray Collins (as her father) implores Chuck not to marry her because she’ll grub his money. Though in black-and-white, the movie is only a little more noir-ish than, say, The Robe, which had gone into wide release only a few weeks earlier. Mildred Dunnock made a career of playing suffering moms from Death of a Salesman on down, and she’s Heston’s – exactly three years before pulling more maternal duties for Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender.

Two of a Kind (1951): The least interesting of the bunch, though its sounds as if it ought to be fun. Edmond O’Brien lets Liz Scott (she’s back) talk him into crushing his pinkie with a car door so that he’ll fit the description of the long-lost son of rich folk prime to be bilked. Into all this is plunked cute-‘n’-perky Terry Moore, who does for the movie’s noir-ish tone about what Roy Rogers would were he to walk in instead.

As far as extras go, the disc has a recent interview with Terry Moore (can it be more than a quarter-century since she was in Playboy at 55?), plus a 1956 half-hour teleplay called The Payoff that Blake Edwards wrote. Howard Duff and Janet Blair are the stars – which means (when you combine Blair’s casting with male lead Charles Korvin’s in Killer) that this set oddly features the actor and actress who sported the movies’ definitive cleft chins

The Annual Golden Globe Awards will be presented this year on January 17th.
Many of the nominees are now available or will be available soon on DVD.
Best Motion Picture, Drama
Avatar
The Hurt Locker (coming to DVD on Jan 12)
Inglourious Basterds (now on DVD)
Precious
Up In The Air
Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical
500 Days of Summer (now on DVD)
The Hangover (now on DVD)
It's Complicated
Julie & Julia (now on DVD)
Nine
Best Animated Feature Film
Coraline (now on DVD)
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (coming to DVD Jan 5th)
The Princess and the Frog
Up (now on DVD)
The Golden Globe Awards is one of the few awards ceremonies that span both Television and Motion Picture Achievements. Most of the Television nominees have previous seasons on DVD such as Big Love, Dexter, House, Mad Men, True Blood for Drama.
And for Musical or Comedy there are 30 Rock, Entourage, and The Office.

Great music transforms dots and lines on a page into dreams and fantasies, reaches out to all that is eternal and sacred, and captures for eternity the voice of God and all the angels in Heaven. When I watched the opening of "The Soloist", there was nothing more beautiful, and nothing more sad, than listening to Jamie Fox (who plays the homeless street musician Ayers) (in real life a one time Juilliard student until the voices in his head took over his entire life with the exception of the music in his memory) attempting to play the first movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony on a violin with only two strings. In the shadowed street corner where Ayers has marked off his piece of territory within an indifferent city and an even more indifferent planet, the cars go by as if sand in a dust storm. When Ayers is approached by Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez (Robert Downey), Ayers begins speaking in a language that has no subject, no predicate, and seems to be without any purpose nor form, until one listens to the poetry of "pigeons clapping". Then the sky opens up above the city, clear blue and infinite.
The movie is based on a true story about Mr. Lopez's relationship with a homeless schizophrenic. "The Soloist" makes no pretense of attempting to understand the world of those whose universe is locked inside a dark cage where no one is allowed, a world where hallucinations are far more real and threatening than anything in reality. For Ayers, the street is all he knows...he is terrified when he steps outside its boundaries. Even when he is given his own apartment, the walls close in and the voices inside his head corner him. The audience is not allowed inside Ayer's consciousness, but they do see his soul when he begins screaming out and no one is there to hear.
Throughout the movie I did keep asking myself what would have happened if Ayers was just sitting in the corner of shadowed cement talking to the voices in his head, but not playing a violin. Would Lopez have noticed Ayers when he came out of the LA Times building and headed home? I don't know about others, but when I come in contact with someone who is homeless, I go out of my way to avoid contact. I know there is little that I can do to help. Their world is not my world...it is some other world I have no desire to acknowledge. I am the one in the car with the windows closed and the air conditioning turned on high.
Who are the homeless? The homeless include those with mental disabilities; veterans with post-traumatic stress syndrome; victims of domestic violence; and persons with drug and alcohol addiction. Many of those with chronic mental illness are at the last stages of life. Because of limited medical attention, the illness progresses into disability, morbidity, and premature death. The average life expectancy of someone who is mentally ill and out on the streets is 41 years. Pneumonia and influenza are the biggest killers, brought on by lack of food, shelter, and clothing. The homeless population is expected to rise considerably in the next ten years.
One thing I did notice was that in the film the agencies feeding, clothing, and housing the homeless were many religious based. I would like to see such atheistes as Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins examine the people who reach out to those who have no defenses against the world, and try to condemn the work they are doing. The mission with the flickering neon light is a light in a totally indifferent universe.
"The Soloist" is also a movie about journalism, a movie about how words can touch the heart of an entire city. But if predictions are right, someday in the near future we will live in a world without newspapers a world without journalists like Steve Lopez who bring forth in their columns realities we would rather turn away from. There are stories that need to be told,and people with the insight and integrity to bring them into language. A society without words, without metaphors, without stories to pass on from one generation to the next, will be a society without a soul.

Crank - The totally true story of just how much a badass machine Jason Statham is during his free time, when he's not making movies that punch you in the face with awesomeness. This movie is all about the excessive, and it dives in happily and headfirst.

American Psycho 2 - Replace Patrick Bateman with Jackie from That 70's Show, and that's bound to be a recipe for success. Who needs ambiguous reality and an eerily charming serial killer when you have a half-baked b-movie slasher flick set in an FBI training academy of what must be the most inept damned potential Feds to have ever existed in the history of anything.

Slumdog Millionaire - So this kid's life sucks, and he's all in love with this chick but can't see her, and then it's all like cry cry and bang bang with the guns and such, but it's all a story he's telling while he gets the bejeezus knocked out of himself, which makes it kind of weird that he can remember things he wasn't there for, but then there's dancing and I didn't care anymore. And there's a gameshow. Plus it totally won oscars and stuff.

Warner Bros. launches 'on demand' DVD sales
By Thomas K. Arnold, Special for USA TODAY

One of Hollywood's biggest movie vaults is about to be opened wide.

Warner Bros. is launching an innovative "on demand" DVD initiative in which fans eventually will be able to order any of the 6,800 theatrical features in the studio's library not available on disc and receive a custom-made DVD within a week for $20.

Only about 1,200 films in the Warner library have been released on DVD, large part because of space constraints at retail. "This news is going to make a lot of people really happy," says George Feltenstein, senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing at Warner Home Video.

The Warner Archive Collection launches (warnerarchive.com) with an initial slate of 150 films that have never been on DVD, such as 1943's Mr. Lucky, with Cary Grant and Laraine Day, and 1962's All Fall Down with Warren Beatty and Eva Marie Saint. The oldest film in this first wave is the 1923 silent scorcher Souls for Sale; the newest is 1986's Wisdom, with Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez.

Plans call for 20 or more classic films and TV shows to be added each month, Feltenstein says. To order films, consumers go to the website, select titles and place orders, which are manufactured and shipped in shrink-wrapped plastic cases identical to those of commercial DVDs. Consumers also will be able to order films digitally, downloaded directly to their computers, for $15.

"Our goal is to eventually open up our entire vault," Feltenstein says. "We've been working on this for three years. I've always said it would be great if people could buy anything in our library, and now the time has come, because the technology finally exists."

As a general rule, films considered for release are evaluated by how well they did in the VHS era, which saw about 4,100 movies from Warner's library released on videocassette over a span of more than 20 years. Other factors include the availability of good-quality prints, consumer requests and interest on the black market.

"Some films that are not available on DVD have gotten a lot of bootlegging," Feltenstein says. "We track that on the Internet."

Initially, special features will be limited to original theatrical trailers, but down the road additional extras might be added, Feltenstein says. "Right now, our focus is to get some of these movies that have been sitting in the vaults for years out there to the public, so that by Christmas we'll have at least 350 films available," Feltenstein says.

That's music to the ears of film aficionados such as Mike Weldon, 64, of Costa Mesa, Calif. "I think it's great, because there are a lot of movies out there we just don't get exposure to anymore," he says. "There are films I'd like to own and see every few months, but I just can't find them anywhere."

Scanning the initial list of titles, Weldon points to Homecoming, a 1948 romantic drama from MGM starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner. "Here's one right now," he says. "I've been looking for that everywhere."

Titles currently available at Casa Video:
Abe Lincoln In Illinois, The Rain People, The Sergeant, Captain Nemo And The Underwater City, Countdown, The Big Circus, Convicts 4, On Borrowed Time, This Woman Is Dangerous,
Edison, The Man, Captain Sindbad, All Fall Down

Coming Soon:
The Abdication, The Actress, The Adventures of Mark Twain, Along the Great Divide, Carbine Williams, Close To My Heart, Crime and Punishment, Crisis, The D.I.,
Darby's Rangers, Doc Savage, Emma, Forsaking All Others, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The George Raft Story, Goodbye Mr. Fancy, Homecoming, Heart Beat, Idiot's Delight,
The Invitation, John Loves Mary, The Kiss, Kidnapped, A Lion in the Streets,
The Little Drummer Girl, Love On the Run, Lost Boundaries, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, Mannequin, The Mating Game, Men in White, Mrs. Parkington, The Money Trap, One Trick Pony, Payment On Demand, Promises in the Dark, Rage, Spring Fever, Strange Interlude,
Toast of New York, Wild Orchids, When Ladies Meet

Note: All Warner Archive titles are located on the "Warner Archive" shelf, in the W's of New Releases.