Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 4:00PM 
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
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 12:01PM 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.
A Separation, Oscars (11), foreign films Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:38AM 
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. 
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 11:00PM 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?
Burning Questions, Ghost Rider, Nicolas Cage, superheroes Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 4:00PM Has this film year overstayed its welcome? Let's take a flashback then, way back to April 1965 when Sidney Poitier read out Julie Andrews as the winner of Best Actress. Julie was her typically gracious self repeating her ambiguously directed gratitude (she only really thanked Walt Disney) so much in her short speech she had to stop herself. "...but then I've already said that!"
Sidney Poitier escorts Best Actress Julie Andrews off the stage
I don't think we've ever talked about this particular win (strange that) at The Film Experience but it's quite atypical. "Mary Poppins" isn't a particularly baity role, however iconic. She's also "practically perfect in every way" which leaves virtually no room for a character arc. Can you think of a Best Actress win that's correlative?
Julie's speech was much cheekier at the Globes. Do you know who she thanked in her speech? The answer is after the jump.
