Monday, April 4, 2011 at 2:10PM the first and last images or words from motion pictures.
Can't share the last image as both movie stars are right there in closeup. So here's the dialogue.
first line: All right. Toast time!
last line: She's a professional. She's better than me.
Can you guess the movie?
first and last Monday, April 4, 2011 at 11:10AM 
Jim Broadbent as Dennis ThatcherWhen it comes to blindfolded Oscar predictions, almost nothing beats the supporting categories. I have this vague fantasy of time travel and returning to propose all 10 supporting acting nominees correctly one April to reams of laughter from the internet. They can be so hard to see coming for so many reasons including: adaptations sometimes lean on different characters than the novels or plays that birthed them, ensembles are tricky because you don't know who will win "best in show" reviews, one lead films are tricky because the huge role at the center (The Iron Lady, J. Edgar) sometimes end up sucking up all the oxygen and other times have coattails. Then there's the small matter of Oscar being more diverse aesthetically when it comes to supporting work. Here is where comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy and even comic book movies (Dick Tracy, The Dark Knight) can show up even though they rarely if ever get play in lead categories.
Kenneth Branagh? Christoph Waltz? Philip Seymour Hoffman x 2? Viggo Mortensen x 2? Armie Hammer or Josh Lucas? Ben Kingsley? Christopher Plummer? Jim Broadbent -- his Iron Lady performance already has tongues (and fingers) wagging -- Richard E Grant or Anthony Head? Nick Nolte? Brad Pitt? You can drive yourself crazy thinking about all the possibilities. Maybe you have?
The first predictions for 2011
NEW TOPIC: This is as good a year as any, I assume, to prove my frequent statements about Oscar's double standards with gender. There are at least three very high profile films with young male leads this year: HUGO CABRET (Asa Butterfield is 14 years old), WAR HORSE (Jeremy Irvine is ??? years old), and SUPER 8 (Joel Courtney is ??? years old).
Asa Butterfield, Jeremy Irvine and Joel Courtney
If you've ever doubted my assertion about this double standard -- some people have objected to the statements -- watch how these performances are treated this year while keeping in mind how Hailee Steinfeld's work was greeted in True Grit as if the heavens or the red sea had parted. The media, critics and Oscar voters are quick to shove aside experience and accomplishment in women when a "fresh player" enters but not so with male actors. My prediction: at least one of these three does work on par or better than Hailee's and doesn't get anything like her traction. Watch and see.
Obviously there are exceptions, as there are to every rule: There was no denying Haley Joel Osment's gift in The Sixth Sense (1999) although he did get demoted to Supporting and lost to somebody who already had an Oscar, and Justin Henry won a nomination at 8 (!) for Kramer Vs. Kramer. In both cases the films were absolute sensations at the box office. Dramas no longer explode with audiences like Kramer vs. Kramer did but in today's dollars its box office haul was truly insane. We're talking a domestic haul closer to the latest Harry Potter than a True Grit or King's Speech. In other words, even Oscar doesn't ignore the zeitgeist.
Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 11:00PM 
If you don't love Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and much to my surprise I heard from two readers who don't at all, this past week has probably been a bit of a "???" on the blog. So much Psycho excitement. And all on account of a book. You know those, right? It's the oddest thing but they're made of paper and they have no moving pictures!
If you missed my interview with "What You See in the Dark" author Manuel Muñoz it's here. I had three copies to give away and entrants had to name their favorite thing about Psycho. I drew the winners randomly from the entries.
Congratulations to...
Lindsay in Oregon who loves Psycho because it always scares her.
Dan in Michigan considers himself a musicologist. His favorite thing about Psycho?
I've always obsessed about the meaning of that shot of the Beethoven Eroica Symphony. That and the resemblance between Herrmann's score and the Shostakovich 8th Quartet.
I do know who Beethoven and Shostakovich are but otherwise I'm lost. I am unschooled in music.
And the third winner Joel in Illinois wrote simply...
REE-REE-REE-REE-REE!
LOL. I hope by 'favorite thing' he meant the score and not the stabbing. God, that score. A lot of people mentioned it actually. Because our "best shot" series is so much about the visuals Wednesday was a rare instance of a lot of Psycho talk that barely ever drifted to that indelible and influential score.
Psycho, What You See in the Dark, books, contests Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 8:30PM Congratulations to Christopher in Los Angeles who is the winner of the Tangled Blu-Ray contest. I pulled the winner randomly from your entries but read all of them so that I could LOL at your answers to "Which movie characters hair would you most like to braid?" It was the girliest question I have ever asked on this blog and maybe even in my life. Which is [ahem] saying a lot.
As for Christopher, he said.
I would like to braid Ariel's hair. I had a mad crush on her as a kid. Must be because she was the only Disney princess wearing a bikini.
Those specialty bikinis always do it, don't they? Think of what a formative experience Princess Leia's gold bikini was to boys in the early 80s.
I thought I'd share two more entries that particularly amused me. These are from Evan and Matthew who said respectively.
Shelby Eatenton from "Steel Magnolias." Why? Because clearly, I'd be braiding her hair at Truvy's shop, which would mean I'd get to hang out with five of the sassiest women of all cinematic time.
I think I'd pick Clementine's from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" -- all the different hair colors she has! A magical rainbow braid.
Thanks to all who entered and voted on the poll of which animated films I should write up next. Coming up this month: The Rescuers and Beauty and The Beast as per your votes.
Tangled, The Little Mermaid, contests Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 6:00PM 
Craig here with Take Three. Today: Isabella Rossellini
Take One: Blue Velvet (1986)
“She... Wore... Bluuuuuue Vel-vet.” Indeed she did: bluer than velvet was the night. Ladies and gentlemen, Rossellini was the Blue Lady, Miss Dorothy Vallens, in David Lynch’s mid-eighties masterpiece Blue Velvet. Vallens was a tortured torch singer, a gas-guzzling freakopath Frank Booth’s (Dennis Hopper) late-night inviter and pervy amateur detective Jeffrey Beaumont’s (Kyle MacLachlan) sexual initiation vixen. And yet, behind it all, lay a fretful wife and mother. Rossellini’s introductory scene in the film showed her as a midnight siren, a depressed blue dahlia who, once done with her sad, strange rendition of Bobby Vinton’s titular song, seems to dematerialise into a pair of Lynch’s signature red curtains.
After she finds snooping Jeffrey in her closet she’s both defender of her home and explorer of her own dark thoughts. She’s furious, but as excited by the imminent enveloping mystery as he is; you can just make out the glimmer of utter thrill creep across Rossellini’s face as she jabs his cheek with a breadknife. Here's to Rossellini for nearly making Dorothy as kinky as her male lead. She doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as demolish it, with an infuriated stare and exclamation to camera (“Grand Central Station!”) when more than one guest visits her gloomy apartment at once.
More of the sublime Saddest Music within Blue Velvet, plus the ageless silliness of Death Becomes Her after the jump.
