Golden Globe Nominees Announced

This year's HOLLYWOOD FOREIGN PRESS ASSOCIATION (HPFA) Golden Globe Award Nominees are out and here are some of the 'biggies':

Cecil B DeMille Award - Stephen Spielberg

BEST MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA
American Gangster
Imagine Entertainment/Scott Free Productions; Universal Pictures
Atonement
Working Title Films Limited; Focus Features
Eastern Promises
Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films; Focus Features
The Great Debaters
Harpo Films; The Weinstein Company/MGM
Michael Clayton
Samuels Media and Castle Rock Entertainment a Mirage Enterprises/Section 8 Production; Warner Bros. Pictures
No Country For Old Men
A Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss Production; Miramax Films/Paramount Vantage
There Will Be Blood
A Joanne Sellar/Ghoulardi Film Company Production; Paramount Vantage/Miramax Films

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA

Cate Blanchett – Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Julie Christie – Away From Her

Jodie Foster – The Brave One

Angelina Jolie – A Mighty Heart

Keira Knightley – Atonement

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA

George Clooney – Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis – There Will Be Blood

James McAvoy – Atonement

Viggo Mortensen – Eastern Promises

Denzel Washington – American Gangster

BEST MOTION PICTURE - MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Across The Universe
Revolution Studios; Sony Pictures Releasing
Charlie Wilson's War
Universal Pictures/Relativity Media/Participant Productions/Playtone; Universal Pictures
Hairspray
Zadan/Meron Productions / New Line Cinema in association with Ingenious Film Partners; New Line Cinema
Juno
Mandate Pictures/Mr. Mudd Production; Fox Searchlight Pictures
Sweeney Todd
Parkes/MacDonald and Zanuck Company; DreamWorks/Paramount Distribution / Warner Bros. Pictures

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE - MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Amy Adams – Enchanted
Nikki Blonsky – Hairspray

Helena Bonham Carter – Sweeney Todd

Marion Cotillard – La Vie En Rose

Ellen Page – Juno

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE - MUSICAL OR COMEDY

Johnny Depp – Sweeney Todd
Ryan Gosling – Lars and the Real Girl
Tom Hanks – Charlie Wilson's War
Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Savages
John C. Reilly – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

Cate Blanchett – I'm Not There
Julia Roberts – Charlie Wilson's War

Saoirse Ronan – Atonement

Amy Ryan – Gone Baby Gone

Tilda Swinton – Michael Clayton

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE

Casey Affleck – The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Javier Bardem – No Country For Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman – Charlie Wilson's War
John Travolta – Hairspray
Tom Wilkinson – Michael Clayton

BEST DIRECTOR - MOTION PICTURE

Tim Burton – Sweeney Todd
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen – No Country For Old Men

Julian Schnabel – The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

Ridley Scott – American Gangster

Joe Wright – Atonement

(I'd like to see SWEENEY TODD win big... Who do you like? ;)

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

It's funny, but even after reading all 7 Harry Potter Books, I still look forward to each new movie when it comes out, seeing it as soon as possible and then buying the DVDs as soon as they're available so I can watch them again and again. It's like going over to an old friends' place and seeing new things about them you didn't notice the last time you visited, catching up with any changes, seeing them in a new and different light than what you remember sometimes, but hopefully having a fun, fond visit.

The first 4 movies were excellent adaptations in my opinion, managing to reduce the huge tomes down to very watchable, entertaining 2-3 hour movies that were true to the spirit and characters of the stories. So I had high hopes for HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, getting a chance to revisit a story I hadn't read for a while. (I try not to reread the book that goes with the movie right before seeing it, trying to let the movie stand on its own merits first, then going back to refresh my memory.)

Unfortunately, somewhere between the screenwriter, the editor and the director, (or maybe even the studio), it was decided that the people watching HARRY POTTER movies were looking for shorter and shorter movies, as if we don't have the attention span needed to sit and watch a movie that would do justice to J. K. Rowling's book, so this one got compressed and chopped up and speeded up so much that quite a bit of the storyline is lost and so is much of the message of this volume. It feels like they felt that substituting dark and brooding lighting and quick-cut flashbacky type scenes would be enough for audiences to 'get' the story, thus cutting out an extra, but much needed, 20-30 minutes from the film to make it fit what they felt was a more 'commercial' amount of time for a movie.

It's too bad because this book becomes a lynch pin in the story line, setting up the impending battle for the last two books, putting people into place, setting up sides for the final outcome. For anyone who hasn't read the books and only knows the stories from the movies, this one skips over too much or doesn't give enough screen time to important plot points for viewers to appreciate the intricacies. There's great cinematography and amazing sets, but no scene ever seems to last long enough to really establish the story - like quick dark sketches stitched together, almost more like a music video than a movie...

The actors, as always, are wonderful, though. The casting of these movies has always been spot on and make them worth watching in and of themselves, even with the odd editing. By using all Brits, the movies retain the very English look, feel and sensibilities of the books, something I appreciate.

Now if only the Powers That Be could figure out that Harry Potter fans would sit for 3 hours or even longer for a movie if it was done right, especially with such great actors, people I can't get enough of most times. Maybe they'll do a better job with movie 6, HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. However, it's supposed to be by the same director as ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, but with the writer of the earlier ones doing the screenplay, so I'm hopeful they can work together this time to create the best HARRY POTTER movie yet...

In the meantime, off to go buy a copy of HPATOTP - while not my favorite of the series, still very watchable overall, and something to keep me in the Harryverse until the next one is released. (That and rereading the books, of course...) Plus I want to see the deleted scenes and other neat material included with the 2 DVD set. Probably a lot of what I missed in the movie hit the cutting room floor and this may finally be my chance to see what it was. (Or if I find a really good deal, I'd rather get the 3-disc set. Off bargain hunting on eBay and Amazon I go...)

(2007) Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman (and Many Many More!)

On Sale at eBay
On Sale at Amazon

THE BLACK DAHLIA - A Missed Opportunity

Since I get HBO/CineMax free for 3 months, I'm trying to make the most of it by catching up on movies I missed when they were in the theaters. THE BLACK DAHLIA is one such movie. I've read about the case for years, so when Hollywood finally decided to make a film about it, I'd wanted to see it, but for some reason, never got to on the big screen.

Now I'm glad I didn't waste $20+ (ticket + popcorn + drink) on it.

While I like Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johannson, and Hilary Swank in some things, and a few Brian DePalma films, this was a waste of all their talents. Based on the book by James Ellroy, which was more a noir detective love-triangle with the Black Dahlia crime as backdrop than an actual telling of the Elizabeth Short murder investigation, the film doesn't even do the noir thing well - in fact it's a mish-mash of pieces of noir-like vignettes jammed together. Unlike LA CONFIDENTIAL, where I understood the chemistry between all the leads and cared about each, the characters here fell flat. I didn't really care who ended up with which girl or if any of them survived to the end of the picture.

When it opens, it starts by introducing the fictional characters Ellroy used to weave in and around the Black Dahlia case rather than using any actual detectives. Even that could have worked if they had been truly interesting, but they end up as 1950s caricatures from bad B pics. Then, when the body is finally discovered in the movie (and even shown in its gruesome state - at least they got that mostly right), the story veers back off onto the fictional love-triangle and uses made up movie tests of Elizabeth Short to try to show what kind of girl the movie needs her to be to justify the weird and strange tangents into fantasy it takes... (Kind of reminds me of PEARL HARBOR, another Josh Hartnett movie - one that takes a title that will 'sell', tells a wholly unrelated and fictional story for most of the 2-3 hours, pasting something historical into it - mostly at the end and badly - to try to justify the title used to lure moviegoers into parting with their pocket change...)

It's too bad Hollywood missed a great opportunity to find (and let) someone tell a more accurate and compelling story of Elizabeth Short's real life LA murder: the sheer number of suspects, the hundreds of investigators involved (not just the two the movie boiled it down to), the terror 1950s LA experienced wondering who might be next, the seedy corruption of the times, the evidence that would disappear making it hard to prove who knew and said what when, and the fact that to this day it remains unsolved (unlike the movie's made up ending).

This is one movie that WON'T go on my 'watch again and again' list and definitely will never be added to my DVD collection! In fact, it was so bad, that after watching it, I immediately deleted it from my DISH DVR so it wouldn't take up valuable space for a better movie, even with hundreds of hours of available time for recording... (I LOVE that the DISH DVR is allowing me to also record HBO/Cinemax so I don't have to try to stay up til all hours to watch these movies I originally missed. Even for free, I wouldn't have wanted to lose 2 hours of much-needed beauty sleep over THE BLACK DAHLIA! LOL)

(2006) Rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, sexual content and language

Starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johannson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner

WRITTEN IN BLOOD - An Interesting Indie

Michael T Weiss is one of my favorite actors, so any time he's in a movie, I check it out, hence WRITTEN IN BLOOD. Originally released direct to DVD in Hong Kong -- always a sign that it might not be quite up to Hollywood's ever so high standards -- it was fairly hard to find when it first came out. I managed to locate an overseas company willing to ship an original Region 5 (English/Chinese Language) DVD to the US (won't buy bootlegs) but then I had to get software that was 'region free' so my computer DVD drive would stop screaming "Wrong Region!! Na na na NA naaaa" (The lengths I'll go to somedays to watch my movies... LOL) Also part of the joys of liking actors who tend to do small, indie films - half the fun is the 'hunt for the wild movie'...!

The movie stars Michael T Weiss as Matthew Ransom, a cop whose life is falling apart all around him, mostly with his own help, but he suddenly has more trouble when his partner is accused of killing his own wife. It goes from bad to worse when his partner's daughter starts falling for him. Not willing to believe his partner could be guilty, Ransom tries to figure out what really happened while his own life unravels.

I like the interaction between Weiss, Peter Coyote and Maureen Flannigan. The chemistry works well, as they slowly circle in on the truth, winding tighter and tighter until it can only end one way.

The writing gets a bit cliched on occasion and some of the plot is a tad hackneyed, but there are enough dramatic scenes and twists to make it worth watching. (Not to mention Michael T Weiss in suits, out of his suits and so on! As always, he's in great shape - although his hair seemed to have a life of its own in this one. LOL)

Now available on Region 1 US/Canada DVDs, this is a good one to add to any MTW or Peter Coyote collection.

(2202) Rated R for language, violence and some sexuality

Starring Michael T. Weiss, Peter Coyote, Maureen Flannigan, Steve Rankin, Dan Gauthier, Gwen McGee

STRICTLY BALLROOM - Strictly Great Fun

Another of my all-time favorite movies is STRICTLY BALLROOM, a little, campy Australian film Baz Luhrmann (MOULIN ROUGE!, ROMEO+JULIET) threw together back in the early 1990's, long before the TV ballroom dancing craze took over.

It's a hilarious musical story of what if?: what if a champion ballroom dancer decides he wants to dance his own steps in the nationals?

While ballroom dancing styles appear to vary from couple to couple when you watch a show like DANCING WITH THE STARS, the 'required steps' are actually quite 'regulated' as to what's kosher, how each is done, and what's not allowed, apparently based on what can be 'taught' (meaning 'money-making' for a dance studio). Heaven forbid someone should dance their own steps ala Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire or Savion Glover, showing more talent than is teachable - what would the world come to?!?

So it becomes just about everyone's goal in the movie to get Scott Hastings, our hero, to conform to the 'rules' - everyone except Fran, a beginner who loves the way he dances, and maybe a bit more.

The whole movie is done consistently tongue-in-cheek which is actually quite hard to do and do well, but this one does it. It's amazingly quirky and funny and fascinating and a little gem. The music is wonderful and the dancing is fantastic, especially during the 'finals'. What's even neater to me is that the lead male (Paul Mercurio) was a dancer who learned to act for this movie and the lead female (Tara Morice) was an actress who had to learn to dance. I think each did a good job 'crossing over'. =) Also, the guy playing Scott's dad (Barry Otto - Dad to actress Miranda Otto) is actually a comic actor who also learned to dance for his role as a former ballroom champion.

If you enjoy Australian sensibility and humor (and accents!) or even just love ballroom dancing, then definitely check this movie out!

(1992) Rated PG - Language

Starring Paul Mercurio, Tara Morice, Gia Carides, Barry Otto, Bill Hunter, Sonia Kruger, Pat Thomson, Antonio Vargas

Find STRICTLY BALLROOM on eBay
Find STRICTLY BALLROOM on Amazon

PRACTICAL MAGIC - Another of My Favorite Films

Another film I caught this evening on my new DISH satellite setup (for probably the 10th or 11th time since it was released) was PRACTICAL MAGIC with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. This is one movie I don't mind watching over and over as I love the chemistry between them as sisters. (I'm dark haired and my younger sister is a strawberry blond, I'm more bookish, she's more outgoing, I stayed at home, she travelled all over and so on - may be why I identify a bit, eh?...)

This is an example of a movie where I've never read the book it's based on. Now that I have all the actors firmly in mind as each of the characters, I would find it hard to go back and read the original material without having their faces and nuances pop up in my mind, coloring the reading and possibly losing the story's original flavor. (I also find the opposite true - read a book first, get certain images in mind, then find that the movie doesn't match my 'own' version in my head...)

PRACTICAL MAGIC is about what would normally be a thriller topic, but the characters here come first with their witchcraft being an extension of who they are and do rather than the entire focus of the film. It's funny and heartbreaking, dramatic and scary, with a nice touch of irony, each in good balance with the other. The way the movie handles the multiple generations, from the not-so-crazy-as-they-appear-at-first aunts, played by Stockard Channing & Dianne Wiest, down to the sisters, Bullock & Kidman, and on to Bullock's daughters is great, too, with each a reflection of the previous, sometimes mirrored, sometimes reversed, but all steeped in magic.

This is one film I keep in my DVD library so I can pull it out whenever I want a nice witchy warm feeling with what feels like old friends (and family). =)


(1998) Rated PG-13 for some violence, intense thematic elements and sensuality

Starring Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Goran Visnjic, Aiden Quinn

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE - HBO Film

I admit - I started to watch the movie tonight on HBO just out of sheer curiosity to see how they would handle such a 'sensational' topic: the first 'mainstream' naughty pin-up and bondage girl, the 'notorious Bettie Page'... I've read various things about Bettie over the years and wanted to see their version of her story to see how it jibed, figuring they would emphasize the sex over the story.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised at Gretchen Mol's characterization. She's beautiful in her own right and I hadn't seen her in much before so didn't approach the movie with too many preconceptions about the lead actress. In fact, she does such a great job subsuming her own looks and character into Bettie's, I would never have known who she was without looking it up. (From her pics on IMDb.com, Gretchen's usually a blond, but she looks equally amazing as a brunette in TNBP.)

Gretchen Mol manages to capture the 'innocent little girl in a woman's body' quality of Bettie, the joy and exuberance at life, the blindingly beautiful smile, the absolute happiness and playfulness Bettie exuded in the bulk of her pictures, nude or not. Bettie managed to make it all look like fun and natural (unlike the bulk of the pinups you see around today, where the women either look slutty or angry or bored.) Gretchen Mol caught those qualities Bettie was best known for amazingly well herself, never once making me think 'oh this is an actress playing Bettie' but feeling like I was really watching the original.

The movie, no doubt, took quite a few liberties with events and people, but I think they did a great job overall, managing to keep even the full nude scenes tasteful but mostly accurate based on the source material, showing a full range of the type of pics and movies Bettie actually posed for and acted in without making it seem the only justification for the whole movie. (Small differences, like using Jaguars instead of Cheetahs in the famous jungle pics can be forgiven since I like Jags better anyway. =)

The look and feel of the movie, bouncing between black and white and color was also done well. It puts you in a 50's old classic movies mood to start with, then makes you feel as if you've fallen into the real world with the characters in all their original color glory, 'fleshing' out scenes, if you will. (Bad pun, I know!)

Definitely worth watching in my opinion for anyone interested in the 1940's & 1950's, Bettie Page and the beginning of the 'sexual revolution' (mainstream, that is...) as Playboy and other magazines became commonplace.

(2006) Rated R for nudity, sexual content and some language

Starring Gretchen Mol, David Strathairn, Lily Taylor, John Collum, Norman Readus, Chris Bauer

Get your own copy:
THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE on eBay
THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE on Amazon

Magic Movies - Films I'll Watch Over and Over Again

I've noticed over the years that I'm the kind of person who would rather watch my favorite films, magic movies that capture my imagination, over and over and over again (either on TV or DVD) rather than go to a new movie at the theatre, spending $20-40 (or more nowadays) and 2-3 hrs on something that may or may not be very good. (I'll make an exception and take a chance, though, if one of my favorite actors/actresses comes out with a new movie!) Of course, now that I'm living in a much smaller town than before, the opportunities to watch them on the big screen have diminished slightly, so TV and DVD have become even better friends than before. =)

When I find a movie that has all the right chemistry (actors, writing, directing, etc), I can enjoy it repeatedly without ever getting bored. In fact, if a movie is well done enough, I will notice more and more with each viewing: scenes and nuances and moments I didn't catch with earlier screenings, lines I missed, jokes I may not have gotten the first (10) times...

Most of the ones I really love would rarely be called classics. They're just movies that speak to me for one reason or another.

So I've decided to celebrate and share some of my old favorites and new finds here. (I have so many, though, picking a few at a time may be the hard thing...!)