Podcast: Side Effects & Oscar Symptoms

Have you ever sleepwalked? Joe, Katey, and I (Nathaniel) discuss this creepy phenom and a wide variety of other things that Steven Sodebergh's Side Effects brings to mind in this spoilery discussion including 'best in show' acting honors and which thrillers it reminds us of.

For those who'd like to see the movie fresh, the Side Effects discussion takes up the last half of the podcast. The podcast begins with very brief words on A Good Day To Die Hard (which just opened for Valentine's Day Weekend) before we move on to Oscar theories like "which Oscars can Lincoln and Amour win?" and "Who the hell will win Best Director?" as well as pressing Oscar-Obsessive-Only Worries like "will winning the Oscar kill Jennifer Lawrence's drive as a young actress?"

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the end of the post. 

Side Effects & Oscar Symptoms

Second Viewings Playbook

David here. What induces you to give a film a second viewing? Usually, I suspect it comes down to adoration, and the desire to feel that rush of emotion again, whether it was delirious laughter, cathartic sobbing or immobilising terror. The 'Repeaters' are the films that become mainstays of your life, the comfort food, the personal canon. We’ve all got them.

Robert's second viewing face

Rarer, though, are the second viewings induced by curiosity. There are so many movies from every decade and country that there’s really always something new to watch -- why waste time on something you’ve already seen and didn’t even like that much? Movies, especially in Oscar season, don’t exist in a vacuum – there is so much discussion around movies, be it from friends or critics or random people on the internet like me, that sometimes you’re forced to think about films you didn't respond to more often than you would have otherwise. Sometimes you find yourself needing to reevalute.

A case in point after the jump...

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Lawrence & Hoult Reunited... At the Box Office

Jennifer Lawrence recently split from X-Man boyfriend Nicolas Hoult and now they're reunited ...sort of... at the box office. He's a sort of dead heartthrob with a thing for a charismatic blonde in Warm Bodies while she's a charismatic blonde with a thing for a barely living headcase in Silver Linings Playbook.

Top of the Box Office
01 WARM BODIES $19.5 *NEW*
02 HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS  $9.2 (cum. $34.4) 
03 SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK  $8.1 (cum. $80.3)  Beau's Review
04 MAMA  $6.7 (cum $58.2) 
05 ZERO DARK THIRTY $5.3 (cum. $77.7)

In other movie/money news: Bullet to the Head, the only wide release going up against the zombie romcom Warm Bodies, came in at #6 which is amusing since that's how you generally kill the walking dead; The Best Picture nominees continue to make a lot of bank in the bottom half of the top dozen box office with those long legs at the box office;  A Royal Affair which is competing with Amour for Best Foreign Film just crossed the $1 million mark in US arthouses, always a significant line for subtitled pictures. Amour has reached $2.5 million, the lowest grossing Best Picture for decades... though it's still in under 100 theaters. (Expansion still in progress. Stay tuned.) Globally speaking it's still slightly behind Caché and The White Ribbon as the most successful Haneke picture. 

What did you see this weekend? Or were you all about The Superbowl?

SAG Carpet Pt 1: Silhouettes and Character Arcs

Red Carpet Line-Up Returns. I don't know if you've missed it but I have. This two-part SAG edition is less quickfire chat and more epistolary but we haven't talked to Kurt Osenlund in way too long since he flew the coop for The House Next Door. 

NATHANIEL: Kurt  I miss you. You have moved to the far off land of Brooklyn and we never see each other. And yet, when I watch the Best Actresses walking the red carpet I know you're out there somewhere gazing at the same visions. So a few questions to kick things off about the Screen Actors Fashionista Guild.

Which of the Best Actresses did it for you? And was this in line with what you think of their performances or the inverse of that? Character arcs aren't cut from runway cloth but sometimes I think people judge the gowns based on how much they're currently loving the woman inside.

"Impossible" Naomi, Dress-Lining Jennifer, "Mama" Jessica, Marion Cotillard

poll by twiigs.com

Anyway, tell me your "best", both performance wise and clothing wise. (Don't cheat and say Helen Mirren since she didn't show. Or the cameras just didn't bother searching for her because 'getouttahereHitchcock'!). [More plus Supporting Actresses after the jump]

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Silver Live-Blogging SAG Playbook (The Show!)

Previously: THE ARRIVALS

8:00 The announcer just said Zero Dark Thirty Jessica Chastain is "Zero Dark Flirty". Regret to inform that his was not even the worst pun of the intro. This was not even in the bottom ten of worst puns. Yikes. "Argo Seat Yourself"??? (And you don't even want to know how much television pays writers for this sort of thing. Can I apply?)

8:02 I Am An Actor from Jane Krakowski, Chris Tucker, Helen Hunt, Hal Holbrook, Sofia Vergara. Followed by Nicole Kidman with some hot razor cut flat iron hair to announce... 

8:06 SUPPORTING ACTOR. I predicted Tommy Lee Jones because of the huge audience response he gets in Lincoln. But perhaps I'm too stuck back in November and the TLJ hoopla has ended. The award goes to... oh, wow. Tommy Lee Jones. Who is not there. His absence does him no favors in a possibly very tight Oscar race.

8:08 Bradley Cooper, whose hair is unusually light brown fluffy. (I'm reminded of Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie ...as both Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels) and Jennifer Lawrence introduce their own movie. They use a clip of the "silver lining" monologue over images of the cast. 

8:10 SUPPORTING ACTRESS. Justin Timberlake arrives in his 'suit and tie shit, suit and tie shit ♫' (plaid pattern potpourri but quite fetching)... and tries to do a little dance to the piped in canned show music [more after the jump]

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