Vic Sage

For 30 years, DeNiro was one of the best actors of his generation and a movie icon. But his career took a turn, I think, after RONIN, an excellent caper/thriller by John Frankenheimer that completely flopped in 1998; he followed it with the utterly mediocre ANALYZE THIS (99) and MEET THE PARENTS (00), which were both huge hits in which he parodied aspects of his psycho-tough guy screen persona. And with only a few exceptions in the 14 years since, his work has been pedestrian commercial crap showing little ambition beyond cashing his check. His recent work with David O. Russell (SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, and his cameo in AMERICAN HUSTLE) have been more interesting, but may only constitute a blip, not a trend in a better direction. We'll see, i guess.

my wife watched it over the weekend. "good performances; depressing" was her summary. I happily avoided it.

Looks like I've only seen half of them. Ok, Bucket, but where are your "anytime" and "clockwork orange" lists?

Rian Shunter here. I liked the way Ellen announced Idina's name TWICE after her performance, to try and make up for fucktard Travolta. It's amazing how self-involved these pricks are... if you are a presenter, you have one job, just one; to announce the person's name correctly. If you can't be bothered to do that right, don't show up. Send a native-american woman to give your speech. She'll be much more articulate i'm sure. yeah, Ellen, was amusing enough but there was really very little entertainment value in this year's show. The pizza thing didn't work at all. And i lost the damn pool.

THE 87 "BEST PICTURE" OSCAR WINNERS TO DATE THE FULL LIST (1927-2013): * = did not see *2013 - "12 Years A Slave" 2012 - "Argo" 2011 - "The Artist" 2010 - "The King's Speech" 2009 - "The Hurt Locker" 2008 - "Slumdog Millionaire" 2007 - "No Country for Old Men" 2006 - "The Departed" 2005 - "Crash" 2004 - "Million Dollar Baby" 2003 - "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" 2002 - "Chicago" 2001 - "A Beautiful Mind" 2000 - "Gladiator" 1999 - "American Beauty" 1998 - "Shakespeare in Love" 1997 - "Titanic" 1996 - "The English Patient" 1995 - "Braveheart" 1994 - "Forrest Gump" 1993 - "Schindler�s List" 1992 - "Unforgiven" 1991 - "The Silence of the Lambs" 1990 - "Dances With Wolves" 1989 - "Driving Miss Daisy" 1988 - "Rain Man" 1987 - "The Last Emperor" 1986 - "Platoon" 1985 - "Out of Africa" 1984 - "Amadeus" 1983 - "Terms of Endearment" 1982 - "Gandhi" 1981 - "Chariots of Fire" 1980 - "Ordinary People" 1979 - "Kramer vs. Kramer" 1978 - "The Deer Hunter" 1977 - "Annie Hall" 1976 - "Rocky" 1975 - "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" 1974 - "The Godfather Part II" 1973 - "The Sting" 1972 - "The Godfather" 1971 - "The French Connection" 1970 - "Patton" 1969 - "Midnight Cowboy" 1968 - "Oliver!" 1967 - "In the Heat of the Night" 1966 - "A Man for All Seasons" 1965 - "The Sound of Music" 1964 - "My Fair Lady" *1963 - "Tom Jones" 1962 - "Lawrence of Arabia" 1961 - "West Side Story" 1960 - "The Apartment" 1959 - "Ben-Hur" 1958 - "Gigi" 1957 - "The Bridge on the River Kwai" 1956 - "Around the World in 80 Days" 1955 - "Marty" 1954 - "On the Waterfront" 1953 - "From Here to Eternity" 1952 - "The Greatest Show on Earth" 1951 - "An American in Paris" 1950 - "All About Eve" 1949 - "All the Kings Men" *1948 - "Hamlet" 1947 - "Gentleman's Agreement" 1946 - "The Best Years of Our Lives" *1945 - "The Lost Weekend" 1944 - "Going My Way" 1943 - "Casablanca" *1942 - "Mrs. Miniver" *1941 - "How Green Was My Valley" 1940 - "Rebecca" 1939 - "Gone with the Wind" 1938 - "You Can't Take It with You" 1937 - "The Life of Emile Zola" 1936 - "The Great Ziegfeld" 1935 - "Mutiny on the Bounty" 1934 - "It Happened One Night" *1932/1933 - "Cavalcade" *1931/1932 - "Grand Hotel" *1930/1931 - "Cimarron" *1929/1930 - "All Quiet on the Western Front" *1928/1929 - "The Broadway Melody" *1927/1928 - "Wings" How many have you seen? 75/87 List up to 10 films on the list that, if you got home tonight and it was on, you'd happily watch it again from beginning to end: "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" "Unforgiven" "The Silence of the Lambs" "Annie Hall" "Rocky" "The Godfather Part II" "The Sting" "The Godfather" "The Apartment" "Casablanca" List up to 10 films that you would have to be strapped into a chair with your eyes peeled open, ala CLOCKWORK ORANGE (note: that one didn't win), in order to watch again: "A Beautiful Mind" "The English Patient" "Out of Africa" "Ordinary People" "Kramer vs. Kramer" "In the Heat of the Night" "The Sound of Music" "Gigi" "Gentleman's Agreement" "Gone with the Wind"

Novak's career-defining role was as a woman who submitted herself to artificial transformation, and became a monster for it. You're right, this is not a characterization of the plot; it's your summary of Novak's role in the plot, which i think is inaccurate for the reason I stated.

Non-exclusivity is not a solution because its an economic absurdity right now. The same reason you don't see HBO programs on SHOWTIME, and vice versa, as well as all the other original cable tv programming on other channels (at least for a long while), is that they use theair exclusivity period to draw subscribers to their channels. Independent producers sell them that exclusivity in order to raise the money to make the program in the first place; and studios use it to create cash flow for the same purposes, and/or to establish their own distribution platforms in the new media. So "non-exclusivity" isn't going to happen when "exclusivity" has so much value to them. But the answer to the problem of costly subscriptions isn't to seek a single monolithic corporate entity to take over the business, whether GOOGLE or otherwise... that represents the continued consolidation of media into fewer and fewer hands and a death-knell for democracy just so we can see movies cheaper. At any rate, content moves through windows of exclusivity... feature films go to some theaters in an area, not to EVERY theater (they bid for them), otherwise they'd be cannibalizing themselves. Then, they go to certain PPV/streaming/dvd rental platforms (not all of them), then to a premium cable channel (not all of them), then to a basic channel, then to a network broadcast channel (CBS and ABC don't offer the same movies at the same time to its audiences), then to off-network syndication, at which point every channel and its brother can license the show. Then, it goes into the public domain and anybody that owns a copy can screen it. Now, just as there once was VHS, BETA and Laserdisk formats competing in the marketplace, and HBO and Showtime, and various gaming platforms (all of which often feature exclusive content), we are in a transitional period. There will be winners and losers. There will be formats and providers that succeed and those that fail, and the failures will sell off their rights to the winners. Eventually, we are likely to have a single iCloud where each studio/network/content-owner will have its own digital ppv channel available to consumers, offering some combination of subscription, PPV and ad-based free programming, so you'll be able to access anything at any time. But only those providers with a critical mass of content will be able to get away with a subscriber model; the others will offer more PPV and free ad-based programs. And as pipes get broader, A-V content will face the same issues as music did, in that if they don't offer content for a reasonable price (or what the consumer considers reasonable), the consumer will engage in "self-help" (i.e., piracy, rendering EVERYTHING in the public domain), which will ultimately drive down the consumer price to "itunes" levels. But underlying all these considerations is not public interest; it's private profit. You'll have to pay more than you want for your entertainment, because they know you will. It's our drug. I want my... i want my ... i want my MTV....

There are only 2 decent SNL movies that i've seen: The Blues Brothers (1980) and Wayne's World (1992). Both were big hits, too, and spawned sequels. But the rest of the SNL movies were all flops of varying degrees. I actually liked Coneheads (1993) (its got a sort of quirky off-kilter sweetness] but Wayne's World 2 (1993) and Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) are both crap . I did not see the others, none of which i even liked as sketches: *It's Pat: The Movie (1994) *Stuart Saves His Family (1995) *A Night at the Roxbury (1998) *Superstar (1999) [actually this sketch was pretty funny] *The Ladies Man (2000) *MacGruber (2010) But some folks also include Office Space (1999) as an SNL spinoff movie because one of the characters, Milton, was introduced in Mike Judge's animated shorts for SNL. In that case, it goes to the top of my list. Going further afield, there is also the off-the-wall sketch movie MR. MIKE'S MONDO VIDEO (79) by Michael O'Donaghue, head writer of SNL in its first 5 years, and a running character, Mr. Mike, that featured alot of those early cast members. It's gross/disturbing/funny/weird, and i mean that in a good way. Then, there are movies by SNL cast members, including the entire oeuvre of Belushi & Ackyroyd, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy, Martin Short Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Will Farrell, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, Farley & Spade, Tina Fey, and Kristin Wiig. �..

i don't know if VERTIGO was career-defining so much as career-capping; she had done PICNIC, MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, PAL JOEY and BELL, BOOK & CANDLE leading up to it, and never really did another successful thing after it. It was pretty much a 5-year career, but the image of her in BELL, BOOK & CANDLE, petting and singing softly to her cat to put a love spell on Jimmy Stewart while staring seductively and hypnotically right at me, is the one that will stay with me forever. VERTIGO is an all-time great movie, but its much less about Novak than it is about Stewart. In VERTIGO she is the object, in BELL she is the subject. And i would disagree somewhat with your characterization of the plot of VERTIGO; she is not turned into a monster by submitting herself to artificial manipulation; it is Stewart who becomes the obsessed monster, and Novak the sacrificial lamb to the power of the male gaze and killed by her inability to escape it. Stewart is the monster; WE as viewers, as voyeurs, are the monster in that story.

Ceetar wrote: RealityChuck wrote: The problem with Netflix (and Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus and HBO Online and everything else) is the fragmentation of the market. Film producers sell streaming rights to the highest bidder (if they're willing to sell them at all) and the highest bidder also insists on exclusive rights. Thus streaming films don't come from multiple sources, and no one source has everything. Each service has plenty of good things to watch, but no one will have everything you want to see. Yeah, this is the main problem. Everyone wants a piece of the action. There are problems like this in a lot of industries. Perhaps it'll take something like NetFlix getting bought by Google and having the wealth to just buy enough that everyone else is forced to go through them. In the meantime, the consumer is stuck with struggling to figure out the best option, which is never good. yes, your right, monopolies give the best deal to the consumer. Lets make sure google owns everything; i'm sure they'll make the price cheaper then. And yes, the problem is the "Fragmentation of the market", allowing a wider range of independent producers to finance a wider range of films then were available when the gatekeepers had a tighter grip on the access to the marketplace. Yes, no matter your niche interest, there is a tv station, podcast, website, youtube channel, or satellite radio program that caters to it and, gosh darn it, that's a big problem for the viewing public. The multi-platform "competition" that you are bemoaning, illusory as it is (lets remember there are like 6 media companies on the planet that own ALL these things), is the only countervaling force in the marketplace to total monopoly control, and drives technological, economic and content competition, to whatever degree those things still have meaning. But lets by all means wish for the day where everything is owned by one entity, and we have to see what they decide we can see, and we pay what they decide what we have to pay. Sounds like heaven, because then it'll be easy to find everything in one place.

Seeing Novak like that was sadder than the IN Memoriam montage and having to listen to Bette Midler sing "Wind beneath my wings". Goldie Hawn is on her way there, too. I hope these women are watching this closely and stop mutilating themselves.

Is your favorite food JERKy? your favorite color Maroon? your favorite medical condition anal leakage? just wondering.

i used to make such a fuss; big viewing party with my friends, an oscar pool, yyybbb. At some point, it just stopped. i don't miss the party, but i still have a family-wide oscar pool.

McReynolds over Harrelson, Mazzilli and Orosco? Fie! I say fie upon thee! Raise your warhammer and meet me on the field of honor!

I plan on hunkering down with D-Dad whoah, too much information. wait, what do you mean by "hunkering"? Oh. never mind, then.

from the Academy Award thread: I've only seen 3 of the best picture nominees so far (GRAVITY, HER, AMERICAN HUSTLE). Of that small group, i was most impressed with GRAVITY. While i appreciated HER (particularly Johannson's vocal performance -- when is that going to be a category?), i did find it meandering after a time, even though ultimately moving and worthwhile. I'm just not a big Joaquin Phoenix fan. But i did like Amy Adams more in this than in AMERICAN HUSTLE, which i think is entirely overrated. The performances are fun, in a cartoony, garish way, and its entertaining enough, more or less, but its mostly about hair... bad hair. I was not moved or particularly interested in any of it. And that the low-level scumbags figure out a way to get over on the high-level scumbags doesn't give me quite the uplift one might think. But Bale is certainly incredible (once again). But GRAVITY was masterful in every aspect; the beautiful cinematography and design, the stellar performances, the taut direction, the powerful themes... its all there. I definitely want to see WOLF OF WALL ST and have some interest in NEBRASKA, too, but no interest at all in CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, PHILOMENA, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, or 12 YEARS A SLAVE, . Well, I might catch up with SLAVE on cable, but the other 3 would require a "desert island"-type situation.

So right after he gets named as a top 100 prospect, and one of the Mets' top 10, you pronounce him a bust. At age 21. ok. And wasn't Billy Beane the baseball version of Billy Beane?

Since I'm a straight woman the admittedly sexy voice of Scarlett Johannsen didn't help me get through this one. i presumed this was the difference in our responses to the film, i just didn't want to reduce it to that. But yeah, that's probably it. I can listen to ScarJo read a grocery list and get a woody, so Joaquin's response seemed entirely plausible to me.

i agree; I'm just not willing to criticize it for failing to do what it is not trying to do. Even Harryhausen at his height never animated an entire movie, just limited scenes within a movie. The films that are pure stop-motion animation are the simplest kind of claymation or short films. The fully animated feature-length movie you're suggesting would cost at least $100m, probably more, due to the time and labor-intensive nature of stop-motion. That they were not willing to invest that much in a 1st time feature of this type, with a subversive script to boot, doesn't surprise me and i don't fault them for it. Given the probable budget for this project, i think they made the right aesthetic choices with regard to the animation style; they avoided slick Pixar-style realistic CGI or smooth, soft classic Disney-style cell animation. They made it blocky, stiff and lego-like. so good for them. Maybe if this one's a huge hit, we can lobby for a full stop-motion sequel!

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME! i can't get that song out of my head. I forced Sage jr. to go with me. He was reluctant because he's 13 and it looked too much like a kid's movie. But his friends said it was good, and Rotten Tomatoes scored it in the high 80s, so he agreed to go with me. And he liked it alot. I did too. Aside from the jokes, puns, pop cultural references and clever action stuff, the movie was about something. And it was subversive to boot. It's not just dealing with the typical "believe in yourself" and "power of imagination" type themes kid movies usually traffic in, though it does that stuff well. And it doesn't just settle for the "individualism over conformity" theme so common in dystopian SF, though it's about that too. And its got a father-son reconciliation thing, and that's nice too. But the movie actually has an overarching socio-political viewpoint. This is a big corporate studio movie that opposes corporate control of culture, where "president business" lives at the top of a huge office building and tries to control all expressions of culture and fix it permanently in place, and society is coerced into thinking that happiness comes from following instructions. But the heroes are an anarchic group, one is even a "pirate", that wants to give the power to build and rebuild the culture back to the people, to mash it up and recreate it as their imaginations dictate, and to stop following the prescribed instructions. Basically, its playing out the social debate we're having in this country about who controls our culture and makes a plea for "fair use" by the people. In a movie produced by a Time Warner subsidiary. That's pretty cool, i think, and warrants bonus points. Story-wise, yes, its frenetic pace doesn't do it any favors or give the characters room to develop and breathe, so the emotional content is fairly minimal until the end. And the father-son denouement should really have been more strongly foreshadowed and set up earlier so it paid off better. As to its animation style, i appreciated that it didn't go for the slick Pixar CGI look, or classic cell animation look, but gave it the stiff, blocky movement suggestive of a Lego universe. Might it have been better, or at least more thematically pure, if done in stop-action? Yeah, probably, but i don't begrudge it for what it isn't. I appreciated it for what it is. Not flawless, but a fun and smart family movie that is biting that hand that feeds it.

themetfairy wrote: I couldn't suspend enough disbelief to go along with this one. I kept hoping Joaquin would drop the phone in water. Have you looked around lately? The movie is practically a documentary in its portrayal of a society that relates better to its machines than to its people. I know plenty of people having love affairs with their phones.

It meanders, and i'm no fan of Joaquin Phoenix, but i thought it was a moving (almost profound) film, and I would fall in love with Scarlett Johannsen's voice, too.

Harry Lime is the VILLAIN of "The 3rd Man", and isn't on screen very much, and is charming (even if amoral) when he is. Blanchette is the protagonist of JASMINE, a shrill, pathetic self-deluded creature occupying the center of nearly every frame of the film, and we are presumably supposed to care about how things turn out for her? Yeah, not so much.

Ceetar wrote: Ceetar wrote: I want to see it but my wife is still punishing me for Wreck-It Ralph 2 years ago. The hell? What was wrong with Wreck-It Ralph? That's what I said. She clearly didn't play enough of those games as a kid to get the nostalgia involved. Come to think of it, she didn't like Scott Pilgrim either. bah, I'll just watch it myself at home when I get a chance. i had no particular nostalgia for those games either (other than Pong and Pac Man and Space Invaders), but its a charming movie and a fun concept regardless. I'm looking forward to LEGO as well.

i didn't include it only because he didn't actually direct the movie (except for framing sequence and voiceovers). But i would give it an honorable mention, because it is indeed hilarious, even if a little wearing after a while.