Tag: Film

10 Serious Academy Award Blunders

oscarsThis weekend, I’m going to watch the Academy Awards.  Why?  Nostalgia, I guess.  Frankly, over the years, Oscar’s record for picking good movies is hit-and- miss, at best.  And at worst, he’s made some horrible blunders.  For example, here are 10 incredibly good films that never even got nominated — for anything — not even the crappy awards nobody cares about, like Sound or Cinematography.

Modern Times
Charlie Chaplin was at the height of his powers.  This is his best movie.  Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t like Charlie’s politics in those days.  However, political fashions change, and  these days, Chaplin is a genius again.

To Have and Have Not

I don’t need to say anything else.

The Lady From Shanghai
The only person snubbed by Oscar more often than Orson Welles was Alfred Hitchcock.  Think about that for a moment.

Kind Hearts and Coronets
Oscar didn’t even notice.  Fortunately, ordinary people love this movie and it’s been playing the dusty, funky little film theatre circuit ever since.

Paths of Glory
One of the greatest anti-war films — ever.  Paths of Glory was released at the height of the Cold War, ten years before Vietnam made anti-war fashionable.  And if Hollywood is anything , it’s fashionable.

Touch of Evil
Here’s that Orson Welles fellow again, and this time he’s with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Akim Tamiroff and even Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marlene Dietrich.  How groundbreaking is Touch of Evil?  Any film nerd will tell you the opening scene is one of the first and finest “continuous takes” in cinematic history. (Hitchcock tried it in Rope, with limited success.)

Mean Streets
Martin Scorsese is the Rodney Dangerfield of movie making.  For 50 years he’s been making great movies, such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Good Fellas, and on and on and on.  However, he only has one Oscar to show for it: Best Director, The Departed  (2006)  Mean Streets is just one of the first times Martin made a movie and Hollywood looked the other way.

Miller’s Crossing
Hollywood didn’t get on the Coen Brothers’ bandwagon until the Bros were impossible to ignore.  As a gangster flick,  Miller’s Crossing is worthy of anything by Scorsese — uh — oops!  Since then, though, the brothers could put their names on the Burbank Telephone Directory and it would be Oscar bait.  (I’m looking at you, True Grit — 10 nominations? — I’m laughin’.)

Heat
Al Pacino AND Robert DeNiro.  And this in a year when Nicholas Cage won the Oscar for Best Actor.

In The Mood For Love
The most sadly sensuous movie of the 21st century.  If this thing doesn’t make you cry,  you’ve recently died.

 

Shrek Killed Eddie Murphy

shrekRemember when Eddie Murphy was funny — and not just regular funny — Axel Foley funny?  Ya ever wonder what happened to Eddie Murphy?  I’ll tell ya what happened to Eddie Murphy.  Shrek happened to Eddie Murphy.  Yeah, Shrek!  Now, I’m as huge a Shrek fan as the next over-the-hill heterosexual male, but the truth is Shrek is the biggest career killer since Rebel Without A Cause bumped off James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

Let’s look at the facts:

In the Shrek universe there’s Shrek, Fiona and Donkey — Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy.

Mike Myers — He’s the guy from Saturday Night Live.  The guy who was Wayne Campbell from Wayne’s World and Dieter from Sprockets.  The guy who went on to become Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.  Mike Myers was born to play Shrek.  He brings that perfect balance of testosterone green and 21st century sensitive to the animated screen.  He turned a stereotypical ogre into a multi-layered personality, tough but tender, an ogre for the ages.  But what has he done since then — a 30 million dollar lawsuit and The Cat In The Hat?  The Cat In The Hat!  In 2003, Golden Raspberry created a special award for “The Worst Excuse For An Actual Movie” and gave it to The Cat In The Hat.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a fly-by in Inglourious Basterds — but nobody cares, and these days Mike Myers is just another used-to-be funny Canadian.

Cameron Diaz — Let’s face it, Cameron Diaz is not a very good actress.  She has her moments, but I don’t see her playing Lady Macbeth anytime soon.  The thing is, at one time, her films were cute and sometimes, through no fault of her own, they even made money.  Then she did Shrek.  Since then, despite one last kick at the Charlie’s Angels cash cow, Diaz has been in so many trash movies she’s earned — earned —  a hazardous waste warning from the EPA.  In 2014, she received not one but two Worst Actress Awards (in the same year!) from The Golden Raspberry — and then … she did Annie.  Honestly, suicide bombers have brighter career expectations than Cameron Diaz.

Eddie Murphy — Now, there was a funny guy.  He made us laugh on Saturday Night Live.  He made us roll off the sofa and pee our pants when he did his red leather Eddie Murphy Raw shtick.  Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop (1, 2 and, slightly, 3) The Nutty Professor, Doctor Doolittle — these are all funny movies.  Then Shrek and Fiona hove up on the horizon (for the record, Donkey is Eddie Murphy’s best role — ever.)  Unfortunately, since then, his career has gone down the toilet.  Take a look!  Since 2001, Eddie Murphy has given the world Pluto Nash, I Spy, Daddy Day Care, Norbit, Imagine That and A Thousand Words (a movie Rotten Tomatoes refused to rate above 0!)  This isn’t a creative slump — it’s a tsunami of godawful.  In 2010, The Golden Raspberry named Eddie Murphy The Worst Actor of the Decade (coincidentally, he beat out Mike Myers for that honour.)  Personally, I’d invest in Kodak, Enron and Blockbuster before I’d put my money into an Eddie Murphy movie.

Obviously, you don’t have to be Jerry Bruckheimer to figure out what’s going on here.  Shrek is cursed.  Clearly, Dreamworks has disturbed the Fairy Tale gods, and now Shrek, Fiona, Donkey and their real life personas must pay the price.  That’s what happened to Eddie Murphy.  Hollywood is cruel.

The 4 Rules Of Sex In The Movies

sex in filmSex is to the movie industry what Jean Paul Sartre is to the forward pass in American football: even though they exist simultaneously, they literally have no connection to each other.

Back in the day, sex in the movies was a heated glance, a passionate kiss (sometimes two) and then a slow fade-out or a quick change of camera angle.  It wasn’t reality, but everybody could kinda, sorta figure out what was going on.  Somewhere in the 60s, things changed and movie makers started slipping a few bums or a breast or two into their films — the cliché “T and A” of all good advertising campaigns.  Audiences liked it, critics applauded, and when the censors didn’t notice, film makers got bolder — and even bolder.  By the 1980s, pretty much every movie except Rambo had an obligatory soft-core porno scene, and after that, the studios simply went nuts.  Soon there was so much skin on the silver screen that it looked as if hard-core porn and mainstream movies were eventually just going to meet somewhere in the middle.  Luckily, before it got to “Anthony Hardwood Meets Meg Ryan,” the studios came to their senses.  Now the industry is governed by a strict set of rules which has returned sex in movies to its roots: it isn’t reality, but everybody can kinda, sorta figure it out.

Here are the basic rules:

Foreplay — These scenes begin with a heated glance, normally in a hallway, a doorway or an abandoned somewhere else.  This is followed by a ferrrrrocious grappling, where the two characters clinch and chew on each other like a couple of starving wolverines.  Snarling and slobbering, they tear at their clothes, smash each other into walls, stumble over furniture and generally wrestle each other to the ground, the floor, a desk, a kitchen table, a sofa, the hood of a conveniently placed ’57 Chevy, or sometimes even a bed.  Vertical to horizontal takes anywhere from 45 to 90 seconds, the director calls cut and everybody checks for bruises.

Underwear* — The amount of underwear a female movie character gets is directly proportional to the fame of the actress portraying her.  The more famous the actress, the more likely it is she’ll get a bra, keep it on, and even have sex without removing it.  Lesser-known actresses spend a lot more time topless and sometimes don’t even get panties.  A perfect example of this is Emilia Clark.  In the beginning, when she and Game of Thrones were relatively unknown, Clark’s character Daenerys Targaryen spent most of Season One wearing nothing more than an injured air and a ribbon in her hair.  However, after the Emmys started coming in, Clark’s character got to put her clothes back on, and for the last 5 seasons, has hardly undone a button.
*This rule does not apply to male characters who are allowed to take off their shirts anytime but must — miraculously — have sex without ever removing their underwear.

The Rule of Twelve — Every sex scene in contemporary movies has to contain these twelve mandatory elements: closed eyes, sweat, an arched back (women only) a standing thrust, a sitting bounce, one haunch-to-paunch clinch, a clawing hand, a gripping hand, a half-bum silhouette, at least one soundless moan, two barrel rolls and three nose-to-nose close-ups.  Whatever’s left is up to the director’s discretion.

And finally:

The Rule of One — One (and ONLY one) sex scene is allowed per movie– whether it’s Anne of Green Gables or The Marquis de Sade’s Summer Vacation.  The general consensus is that one scene is art, two is indefensible as art, and three is … well, you might just as well be doing porn.

At the end of the day, everyone in the film industry will tell you that sex is used for realism and to advance or enhance the storyline.  But, think about it.  How much better would Gone With The Wind have been if we’d seen Rhett and Scarlett banging away on the ruined steps of Tara?  Would our appreciation of Casablanca been enhanced by a ménage a trois between Rick, Ilsa and Victor Laszlo?  What about Citizen Kane?  Or The Wizard of Oz?  Or a little man-on-man grab-ass in The Shawshank Redemption?  No, no, no, no and no!  The truth is sex in the movies is just a gratuitous way to put bums into theatre seats — full stop.