Pixar Ranking

Pixar. There's no way to sum up there incredible and monumental critical/box office success. I've seen all but one of their films. The one I missed was Cars, which I don't really care to catch up on. I have decided to rank the other nine films I have seen. This is more of a preference list than a list of the Best, though I'm sure there would be some serious overlapping.

1. Wall-E

2. The Incredibles

3. Monsters Inc.

4. Up

5. Finding Nemo

6. Toy Story

7. A Bug's Life

8. Ratatouille

9. Toy Story 2

What are your Pixar rankings?

Rethinking Best Supporting Actress

When you do "best of" rankings, everything depends on your mood. I think I may have made an error in my own Best Supporting Actress ranking by placing Marion Cotillard in 3rd, behind 2nd place winner Mo'Nique. What's done is done, but if I had to make those rankings again today, Marion would take silver (to first place winner Anna Kendrick!).

I think Marion's is the type of performance that grows over time. I think Mo'Nique's is the complete opposite. Everyone was so blown away by Mo'Nique's "powerhouse" performance the second they saw it. In five years time, I wonder if it will pack the same emotional punch that everybody thought it did.

This is where Marion's strengths lie. There's no way that her performance as Luisa Contini will decay as Mo'Nique's might. It may just be the dynamics of Nine vs. Precious, but I truly believe it's something more. Mo'Nique came out of nowhere with Precious. As soon as people saw the film in Sundance there was buzz. The more people saw it, the more intense the buzz grew. It was a comedienne/talk-show host who was giving one hell of a dramatic performance. Marion, on the other hand, was set to be in one of the baitiest Oscar movies of the season: Nine. When Nine failed to take off with audiences and critics, nearly everything connected to it (save Penelope) was left behind in the dust. It was seen as an all-around disappointment because expectations were soooooooooooooooo high.

See the difference? Precious became a surprise hit. Nine became a surprise critical and Oscar failure. Mo'Nique was on the upswing of Precious, and Marion was brought down with Nine. It was expectations that let Mo'Nique soar, and it was expectations that let Marion's chances of a second Oscar nomination plummet. But when we look back in five years and regard Nine as a "total mess," won't Marion's performance seem more impressive? And when we look back in five years and expect the second-coming of Christ from Mo'Nique, won't we all be disappointed? It's the momentum of the season that can help an actress get nominated. Not to defy Mo'Nique's speech, but there is more to winning an Academy Award than just the performance, like it or not. It wasn't about the "politics" so much as the momentum-The Precious momentum carried her, not the other way around.

In 2015, let's all revisit Precious and Nine, and pay close attention to Mo'Nique and Marion. I'd be surprised if people still hailed Mo'Nique as they do now. Marion's lack of an Oscar nomination will probably be on some of those "worst snubs" lists.

What are your thoughts? Which performance do you think will be better in five years' time?

Movie Meme

I filled out the following survey thanks to a tip from Andrew at Encore Entertainment. Here it is:

Gender: A Single Man
Describe Yourself: Happy-Go-Lucky
How Do You Feel Right Now: Enchanted
Where Do You Live: Boys Town
What's the Weather Like There: Little Miss Sunshine
Where Would You Like To Go Right Now: Chicago
What's Your Biggest Fear: Reversal of Fortune
Your Life Is A Film, Give It A Name: Splendor in the Grass
What Will You Be Doing Today: Do the Right Thing
Give Us A Piece of Advice: Throw Momma from the Train

Happy 34th!

Happy 34th Reese!

Movie Posters

Certain movie posters are really great, and even if the film is bad, at least they have an awesome poster. Other movies receive utterly lazy posters. Time for a round-up of 2010's the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Good:

Repo Men... simple, sweet, and blue

The Runaways... clever, eye-catching, and explosive

Letters to Juliet... those eyes, that look, those colors

The Bounty Hunter... the plot is bad, but the poster is charming

The Bad:

Green Zone... laziness in poster design will not help this dud make any money

When in Rome... both stars are pretty, but neither has that movie star factor

Extraordinary Measures... Brendan Fraser is amused, Harrison Ford is not. Neither are we

The Last Song... stop invading on our movie territory Miley!

The Ugly:

Date Night... great and super-funny stars, dullest poster

Clash of the Titans... snoozeee...

Hot Tub Time Machine... somebody must have come up with this plot and poster within a span of four hours

Legion... mind-numbingly uncreative

What are your thoughts? Comment!

Favorite Actresses

We all have favorites. People who we just love to love despiteof their credentials or filmography. Case and point: the recent love-fest for Sandra Bullock because everybody just seems to really love that girl in spite of never having turned in a performance that wowed everybody (sorry, The Blind Side.)

I've decided to list my favorite actresses. This is not a list of whom I think are the best actresses (with perhaps some overlappage), but rather a list of which actresses excite me on and off the screen. I've limited the number of actresses to fifteen, and they are actresses currently making movies. If you're reading this, please join in either in the comments or in your own blog and tell me about it so I can link to it!

Here they are...

(order is completely 100% random)

Marion Cotillard

Penelope Cruz

Anna Kendrick

Nicole Kidman

Michelle Pfeiffer

Parker Posey

Amy Adams

Susan Sarandon

Renee Zellweger

Julia Roberts

Reese Witherspoon

Keira Knightley

Jennifer Aniston

Sigourney Weaver

Evan Rachel Wood

Love Me If You Dare

See Love Me If You Dare. This has to be pretty brief, but a basic overview...

Girl is an outsider, Boy is a troublemaker. Boy meets Girl. Boy and Girl start a "game" in which whoever holds their toy carousely thing gets to give the other one a dare? Game? Game.

Roger Ebert gave it two stars (ouch!). I give it four (yay!).

It stars my new love Marion Cotillard (who I used to hate based on ... I don't even know), and her current hubby-ish thing Guillaume Canet. Totally worth checking out! It's available on Netflix on demand. By the way, it's in French!

Oscar Predictions

My first Oscar Predictions on my blog! Here goes nothing!

Best Picture
The Hurt Locker

Best Director
Kathryn Bigelow

Best Actor
Jeff Bridges

Best Actress
Sandra Bullock

Best Supporting Actor
Christoph Waltz

Best Supporting Actress
Mo'Nique

Best Original Screenplay
Inglourious Basterds

Best Adapted Screenplay
Up in the Air

Best Animated Feature
Up

Best Foreign Language Feature
El Secreto de Sus Ojos

Best Documentary Feature
The Cove

Best Documentary Short
Rabbit a la Berlin

Best Live Action Short
Kavi

Best Animated Short
The Lady and the Reaper

Best Original Score
Up

Best Original Song
"The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

Best Sound Editing
Avatar

Best Sound Mixing
The Hurt Locker

Best Art Direction
Avatar

Best Cinematography
Avatar

Best Makeup
Star Trek

Best Costume Design
The Young Victoria

Best Film Editing
The Hurt Locker

Best Visual Effects
Avatar

Damn

It seems I have indeed lost ABC. I will find alternate ways of watching the broadcast, but it still sucks that I can't watch comfortably with a nice TV and a cozy couch to snuggle up in. But let's not dwell on the negative. Let's take a moment to look at something else lovely...

...and predictions will be up tomorrow!

Lovely Marion

I don't want to come off as a bitter person (see: last two posts) so enjoy Marion Cotillard's smooth and sweet rendition of "My Husband Makes Movies."

Oscars Suck...

...when you can't watch them live! So Cablevision customers in the general area of NY/CT/NJ will not be able to watch the Academy Awards, or anything on ABC7 for that matter, because Cablevision and ABC7 had a falling out. If this isn't resolved, 12:01 AM on March 7th ABC goes black!

Is this some kind of cruel joke? Would this EVER happen on the weekend of the Superbowl? I think not. But then again we live in a society where a football is more revered than art. Awesome.

And what the hell ABC? Why would a television network voluntarily black out approximately 3 million Cablevision customers? Network television is already dying, and somehow losing what I presume to be one of your top three markets sounds like something I would generally try to avoid. From what I hear, you're going to become obsolete eventually, are you just trying to speed this up or something? Pull the band-aid off quickly instead of slowly sort of deal? Congratulations, you get the All That Film moron award of the year.

But is Cablevision to blame? Earlier this year we Cablevision customers lost HGTV and Food Network for a period of about two weeks because of a dispute (seems to be their favorite word) between Cablevision and Scripps Network. Should we have seen this coming? I would have never guessed that one of the networks that has been around since my 80 year old Grandma was in her twenties would ever disappear from my home. And while Cablevision has come off as the cheapest company I've really ever heard of with these two disputes just in 2010, ABC is really coming off as the scummiest company for doing this. C'mon. The weekend of the Academy Awards? Even if I switched to Fios or Direct TV I would still miss the broadcast. So thanks guys! I've only given you countless hours of my life watching everything from Desparate Housewives, to Good Morning America and The View. So honestly, what gives?

If ABC were to guess how bad I feel for them in this situation, it would probably end up somewhere between as bad as I feel for Sandra Bullock and Meryl Streep at this moment. Frankly, my dears - I don't give a damn.

What's more awesome is being in high school as all of this unfolds. As difficult as it is to find a house with Verizon Fios/Direct TV, it's even more difficult to ask somebody to crash at their house until 12 AM on a Sunday night. Parents have work, we have school. Add that to the fact that the majority of people in my high school don't care or know what the Academy Awards are, and wouldn't have even known that they were unable to watch them on Sunday.

So my options are pretty limited. It's looking like a no-go for the Oscars this year. Don't worry ABC, I haven't been following the Oscars closely ever since February 23rd, 2009.

This post probably seems bitter. Good.

What The Hell

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/03/01/cablevision-customers-in-new-york-area-may-miss-oscars-this-weekend/

I think I'd kill myself. Holy crap.