Gary Oldman just revealed that the sequel to The Dark Knight should hit theaters in 2011. I’m beyond excited. No word yet on if Christopher Nolan is directing though…
Author Archives: sdennison
Um.
So the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are is on Apple trailers. I’m kind of ridiculously excited. I’m also not tech-savvy enough to embed a video, so just go here.
UPDATE : Embedded Trailer
Revolutionary Road
So, I was lucky enough over the past three days to get to personally meet the screenwriter of the movie Revolutionary Road, which I finally saw Sunday night–and I can safely say that the critics in general have been completely unfair in their lukewarm reception of the movie. It’s fantastic. Sure, it’s depressing as hell, but I’ve heard the book (which is now much higher on my reading list) is even darker, and the movie itself is well worth seeing. To put it simply: every Oscar nomination The Reader got should have gone to Revolutionary Road. Thankfully Michael Shannon was nominated for his knockout performance, but Kate Winslet, while in a more histrionic role here, gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. There isn’t a single gesture, glance, or line that seems out of place–hell, she even does a different American accent than she did in Eternal Sunshine–and I get the feeling that her Oscar was really for her two amazing performances this year, even if it was officially for the lesser one.
Revolutionary Road is the fairly straightforward story of a marriage going to hell, but if you’re prepared for a dark, depressing journey, it’s well worth your time. The movie is so well-done in every aspect–writing, acting, directing, set design, costumes–that it takes on layers and depth that far transcend the typical “suburbia sucks” motif. I can safely say Revolutionary Road is one of the best pictures of 2008, and it’s worth the money you might spend to see it.
8.8/10
Some Thoughts About the Oscars
I realize that I already posted a pretty long rant about the Oscars in response to an earlier post about the messed-up nominations, but now that almost a month has passed and I’ve calmed down a bit, I thought I would examine then again (and then throw in my predictions for who will win this Saturday.)
I think everyone knows that the Oscars aren’t really that important, insofar as they’re just another way for Hollywood to congratulate itself on how awesome it is. Yet, every year, I obsess about who might win and spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting my predictions, which are inevitably wrong in all but the most obvious categories. This year, though, I just don’t care as much, and I have a theory as to why that is: in the face of overwhelming public pressure and opinion regarding 1) The Dark Knight and 2) WALL-E, the Academy ignored both of them and picked, for the most part, the same old Oscar-bait movies. You know the Oscars aren’t that relevant when The Curious Case of Benjamin Button picks up a Best Picture nom just because it was “supposed” to, (that’s the only reason I can think of for its thirteen nominations) and other, unprecedented film achievements like The Dark Knight and WALL-E are practically absent from any of the major nominations.
This is weird to me, because last year the Oscars did such a good job of going beyond both typical Oscar movies and public opinion, and I wonder what brought about this year’s reversal. Consider: last year’s top-grossing movies were Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3, and Transformers. Blatant Oscar bait like American Gangster and Charlie Wilson’s War was, for the most part, overlooked. Instead, we got to see movies like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Juno, and Atonement (kind of Oscar bait-y but still good) acknowledged–I’m pretending that Michael Clayton wasn’t nominated for anything. But this year–well, what happened? Benjamin Button, The Reader, Frost/Nixon, all movies that might as well be titled “Give me an Oscar” but aren’t all that good (although Frost/Nixon was very entertaining) dominate the major categories. The acting races are all fairly predictable, and the only genuinely eclectic category is Best Original Screenplay. I can’t give an explanation for this, but I do know that if the Academy can’t get its shit together and move with the times, they risk becoming truly irrelevant, to the point where no one, and I mean no one, cares, which I hope doesn’t happen.
There is some hope, mainly in the fact that Slumdog Millionaire is the favorite for Best Picture and Director. It’s an example of the Academy taking notice of a public reaction to a movie that is truly original, engrossing, and extraordinary, and deciding to acknowledge it as the year’s greatest achievement in film (obviously I’m a bit biased here.) Richard Jenkins’ and Melissa Leo’s nominations also give me hope that the Academy can rebound from its inexplicable adoration of the The Reader and Benjamin Button. We’ve come a long way from the days of movies like Titanic and Forrest Gump winning Best Picture instead of, say, L.A. Confidential or Pulp Fiction, and I suppose only next year will tell if the Academy can keep its credibility.
On a semi-related sidenote, my personal Oscar predictions, reasoning and deduction and whatever aside:
Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire
Best Actress: Kate Winslet
Best Actor and Original Screenplay: Milk
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger
Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (I have a not-so-secret theory that Penélope Cruz only got a nomination because she made out with Scarlet Johansson.)
Slumdog Millionaire
OK, so I put it off as long as I could, which turned out to be about 10 hours, because I didn’t want to immediately post a long, overly gushing movie review right off the bat. But I’ll come clean: this was my most anticipated movie of 2008, and since the second time I saw it it’s become one of my favorite movies of all time. And no one I’ve talked to yet has disliked this movie.
It’s difficult to describe how unequivocally awesome Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is. We already knew Boyle was a great director after Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, but this movie blows away both of those combined, and pretty much any other film released this year. Sure, you could listen to the complaints that it’s too fairy-tale, unrealistic, sentimental, gimmicky, but those are minor quibbles in the face of a movie that evades the trappings of sentimentality or cheesiness and becomes, really, a movie unlike any other that’s been made.
As far as the plot goes (minor spoiler alert): Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik, a boy from the slums of India who becomes a participant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. He is one question away from winning 20,000,000 rupees, and the movie uses the game as a framing device to tell Jamal’s life story–with each question, we get a flashback to an event in his life that provided the answer. The story is so brilliantly told that I don’t want to give any more away, suffice to say that Jamal is searching for Latika, the love of his life. Yeah, it’s a romance, but it’s really impossible to pigeonhole this movie into any one genre. Like I said, it’s unlike any film I’ve seen before.
I saw this movie twice because it was so damn good, and I can safely say that it was worth it. It’s cinematic in the best way possible–the colors and action essentially jump off the screen, an effect made possible by the astounding cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle and addictive score by A. R. Rahman. Since I can’t ramble on forever about the genius of this movie, I’ll pick out two things: 1) Dev Patel’s performance as the older Jamal. I didn’t really appreciate it until the second time, but he manages to be restrained at the same time while still conveying the emotions brought up by his life story and making his determined love for Latika completely convincing. He was definitely snubbed by the Oscars (did we really need Downey Jr. to be nominated for Tropic Thunder?) and I hope to see more of him in future films. 2) Duh. Danny Boyle. Without him this movie wouldn’t have worked, period. The screenplay is great, the acting is great, hell, even the subtitles are great, but Boyle left his mark all over this movie, which means that it becomes larger than life and easily the most engaging cinematic experience of the year.
In short? Believe the hype. Danny Boyle deserves the Oscar, and so does this movie.
Rating: 10/10
The Wrestler
Hey look, a first post. I’m happy to say, though, that The Wrestler is a movie worthy of first-post status—when I went to see this movie on Sunday, I in no way expected it to be as good as it was. Yeah, sure, I expected some good performances, but The Wrestler transcends its seemingly simple story in so many ways that it easily lands a spot as one of the best movies of the year. The story is nothing more than Mickey Rourke playing Randy the Ram, a washed-up pro wrestler who decides to fix his life, but the extraordinary acting, directing, and writing come together to form an essentially perfect movie, minus some cheesy dialogue about Randy being a Christ figure. What’s interesting about The Wrestler is that I couldn’t tell you why or how it’s so deeply affecting—all I know is that I was completely riveted for all of the running time and was almost moved to tears by a couple of scenes. Yep, it’s that good. Kudos to Darren Aronofsky and especially Rourke and Marisa Tomei, who give this movie a soul. Go see it as soon as you can.
9/10
Owl Pellets 