Animated Weekend: Two Cats, Multiple Movie Homages

Jose here.

Last weekend I decided to catch up with some Oscar nominated films and realized I was doing terribly in the Animated Feature department having only seen Rango when it came out last year. Back in December after watching Arthur Christmas and The Adventures of Tintin I was sure I'd done my homework, as those were the nominees we were all expecting. However clever old AMPAS sneaked up on us delivering the weirdest lineup the category has seen in its young history. Not being a fan of Dreamworks animation, at all, I decided I might as well just get done with it and saw the 4 movies back to back. 

I kept a journal to accompany me down this trip.

This is how it went...

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4 Days Till Oscar. Flashback to "A Dignified Superstar"

It's all right. You can get your cheap laughs. I shall remain the dignified superstar that moi am."
-Miss Piggy to "Jonathan" at the 52nd Oscars 

What was Miss Piggy so miffed about in April 1980?

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The Foreign Language Sweet Spot

Robert here, making no claims to predicting this year's Foreign Language Film category, or making any judgments based on quality. In the life of the mid-west movie lover, we're still waiting for all of these films to show up in our area. But I wanted to make on observation on what is supposed to be one of the more solidly predictable categories this year.

Einstein supposedly said "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." So you say you find yourself pretty certain that A Separation has its Oscar locked up based on critical praise and a slew of other awards this season. Tell that logic to The White Ribbon, Waltz With Bashir, Pan's Labyrinth, Paradise Now and Amelie; all foreign language front-runners that had it all come Oscar night, except an Oscar. Whether A Separation meets this same fate is not for me to say.

But consider not what the critics think, nor that Nathaniel is hardly the sole voice to name it the best... in any language. Don't even consider the huge stack of awards its won this season. Instead wonder if it hits the foreign language "sweet spot" that seems to have developed in the past few years. We all know that in the Foreign Language category, voters must watch every entry. This may work against popular films like Amelie and Pan's Labyrinth that are whimsical or fantastical, making them look too slight to voters in the shadow of lesser known but more complex, socially conscious fare. But not too complex, please. The Academy is still The Academy and films with the structural or moral ambiguity of Paradise Now, The White Ribbon and Waltz With Bashir are less commonly embraced than movies with clear messages.

A few frontrunners in the past decade have managed to go the distance, and good as some of them have been, they've all met the requirements of the sweet spot: serious but not ambiguous, complex but not too challenging. Come Sunday we'll know into which crowd A Separation falls. Until then, if I were a betting man, I could think of a dozen other categories I'd rather push my chips into.

Counsel Me This

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JA from MNPP here. Have you been following the rumor-mill over Ridley Scott's next movie? Until recently just the name "Ridley Scott" had become too encumbered by bad movies for me to get excited about what he was up to.  The last movie of his that I like without reservations is Thelma and Louise, 21 years old now. So I have worried that "the Ridley Scott of today" is on a fool's errand, returning to the world of the Alien franchise... does he have anything of that caliber in him now? But that trailer for Prometheus is so good, you guys. So good! I've seen it about a dozen times and it still sends chills down my spine. Granted it's only a trailer - the movie could still be a mess. But it's been enough to draw me back into Ridley-Scott-sville.

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Aiding in me caring about what Ridley's doing next is the fact that what he's doing next is the first movie script written by The Road and No Country For Old Men author Cormac McCarthy, and that the actor circling the lead has been Michael Fassbender. That's a double-pow of awesomeness that trumps any misgivings I might have regarding Ridley. The film's to be called The Counselor, and they're selling it as "No Country For Old Men on steroids." So basically this thing will ejaculate in your eye and then slap you across the face. It's that manly! From its brief synopsis it sounds like Breaking Bad or Weeds to me, only with a fancy-pants lawyer getting in over his head with the drug-business instead of a high school teacher or sassy widow. 

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Deadline reported last night that Fassbender has signed on for sure, and the actors they're looking at for the villain - and they can't help but foolishly conjure Javier Bardem's iconic turn as Anton Chigurh (don't set the bar so high right out of the gate, you guys) - are Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper and Brad Pitt. I'm Team Pitt all the way. He needs another good bad guy role right about now, and I'd love to see him go toe to toe with his Basterds co-star. What says you?

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Burning Questions: Is Nic Cage Gone For Good?

Michael C. here just back from an encounter with the Spirit of Vengeance.

There is something about movies not screening for critics that makes me want to see titles I would otherwise self-deport to avoid. I think it’s the idea that they’re trying to get away with something. I want to go to prove that they're as awful as I suspect. Not rational behavior, I admit, but I feel I have to produce some explanation as to why, when my friends suggested we go see Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, I went, instead of doing something sensible like jumping in front of a bus.

Of course, my friends didn’t think the movie would be good either. These days one sees a Nicolas Cage movie for the same reason one Googles “epic fail” or watches the GOP debates: the promise of spectacular, instantly classic moments of insanity. Cage’s recent films have been so consistently bonkers that they are now a genre unto themselves. A genre wherein a drug-fueled communion with imaginary iguanas is classified as “same old, same old”.

It’s reach a point where I don’t think it’s unfair to ask, Will Nicolas Cage ever give another great performance?

 

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