Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Oscar stats

A wealth of data, trivia, and facts on the upcoming Academy Awards from Scott Feinberg, considered one of the best Oscars forecasters in the whole world.

From his blog:

  • The film with the most nominations has won best picture in 14 of the past 20 years. (Last year, however, was an exception, with “Slumdog Millionaire” triumphing over “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”) This year there is a tie between two films: “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker.” Very helpful indeed.
  • Most films that have won best picture also garnered nominations for their director, screenwriter, film editor, and at least one actor. This year, only 2 best picture nominees have done so: “The Hurt Locker” and “Inglourious Basterds.”
  • Should “Avatar,” “District 9,” “A Serious Man,” or “Up” win best picture, it would become only the ninth film to win best picture without an acting nomination in 65 years, or since the best picture race was capped at 5 nominees. That statistic is not particularly important anymore, though, since the best picture field has been expanded to 10 nominees. What is of much greater importance is what happened from 1931/1932 through 1943, when the best picture field last featured 10 or more nominees: only one film won best picture without an acting nomination, “Grand Hotel” (1931/1932). In other words, the rule still holds true.
  • In the past 31 years (the time period for which widespread data is available), no best picture winner has domestically earned less than $43,984,230, the box-office take of “The Last Emperor” (1987). That means that a win by any of the following best picture nominees — unless they get a huge boost from their best picture nominations — would establish a new record for the lowest-grossing best picture winner: “The Hurt Locker” ($12,671,105), “An Education” ($8,795,228), or “A Serious Man” ($9,228,768).
  • Should either “Avatar” or The Blind Side” win best picture, it would become the first film to win best picture without a nomination for best adapted screenplay or best original screenplay in 12 years. The last was “Titanic” (1997).
  • Should “An Education,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9,” “A Serious Man,” or “Up” win best picture, it would become the first film to win best picture without a nomination for best director in 20 years. The last was “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989).
  • Should “An Education,” “The Blind Side,” “A Serious Man,” “Up,” or “Up in the Air” win best picture, it would become the first film to win best picture without a nomination for best film editing in 29 years. The last was “Ordinary People” (1980).
  • Should “Up” win best picture, it would become the first film with a PG-rating or lower to win best picture in 20 years. The last was “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989).
  • Should best director nominee Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”) win, he will become the youngest best director Oscar winner in history, breaking a record that has been held for 78 years by “Skippy” director Norman Taurog (who was 32 years, 8 months, and 18 days of age when he won on November 10, 1931) by 4 months and 2 days.
  • Should best actor nominee Jeff Bridges (“Crazy Heart”) win — something he is widely expected to do based on his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins — he will have waited longer between first nod and first win than all but 3 others in the 81 year history of the Oscars: Henry Fonda, who waited 41 years between his best actor nod for “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) and best actor win for “On Golden Pond” (1981); Alan Arkin, who waited 40 years between his best actor nomination for “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” (1966) and his best supporting actor win for “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006); and Jack Palance, who waited 39 years between his best supporting actor nod for “Sudden Death” (1952) and his best supporting actor win for “City Slickers” (1991).
  • Should best actor nominee Morgan Freeman (“Invictus”) win — something he is widely expected not to do based on his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild losses — he would become the second oldest best actor winner. On March 7, his age will be 72 years, 276 days. The record holder: Henry Fonda (76 years, 317 days).
  • Should best actress nominee Sandra Bullock (“The Blind Side”) win — something she is widely expected to do based on her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins — only two Oscar-winning performances will have come in movies that grossed more money domestically than hers ($237,914,805 and counting). Those two: best supporting actor Heath Ledger (“The Dark Knight,” 2008) and best actor Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” 1994).
  • Should best actress nominee Carey Mulligan (“An Education”) win — something she is widely expected not to do based on her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild losses — she would become the fourth youngest best actress winner. On March 7, her age will be 24 years, 279 days. Those younger when they won: Marlee Matlin (21 years, 218 days), Janet Gaynor (22 years, 222 days), and Joan Fontaine (24 years, 127 days).
  • Should best actress nominee Gabby Sidibe (“Precious”) win — something she is widely expected not to do based on her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild losses — she would become only the fifth actress to win the best actress Oscar for her big screen debut. The others: Shirley Booth (“Come Back, Little Sheba,” 1952), Julie Andrews (“Mary Poppins,” 1964), Barbara Streisand (“Funny Girl,” 1968), and Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God,” 1986).
  • Should best actress nominee Meryl Streep (“Julie & Julia”) lose, she will extend her record number of acting losses from 13 to 14. Her closest living competition is way behind her: Jack Nicholson (9), Peter O’Toole (8), and Al Pacino (7).
  • Should best supporting actor nominee Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) win — something he is widely expected to do based on his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins — he will become the first actor to win an Oscar for a performance in a Quentin Tarantino-directed film. The others who have been nominated but lost for their work with the celebrated “actors’ director”: John Travolta (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994); Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994); Uma Thurman (“Pulp Fiction,” 1994); and Robert Forster (“Jackie Brown,” 1997) for best supporting actor.
  • Should best supporting actor nominee Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) win — something he is widely expected to do based on his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins — he will have given only the eighth performance delivered largely or entirely in a foreign language to win an acting Oscar. The others: Sophia Loren (“Two Women,” 1961) for best actress; Robert De Niro (“The Godfather, Part II,” 1974) for best supporting actor; Meryl Streep (“Sophie’s Choice,” 1982) for best actress; Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God,” 1986) for best actress; Roberto Benigni (“Life Is Beautiful,” 1998) for best actor; Benicio Del Toro (“Traffic,” 2000) for best supporting actor; Marion Cotillard (“La Vie En Rose,” 2007) for best actress; and Penelope Cruz (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” 2008) for best supporting actress.
  • Should best supporting actor nominee Christopher Plummer (“The Last Station”) win — something he is widely expected not to do based on his Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild losses — he would become the oldest best supporting actor winner. On March 7, his age will be 80 years, 84 days days. The current record holder: George Burns (80 years, 69 days).
  • Should best supporting actress nominee Anna Kendrick (“Up in the Air”) win — something she is widely expected not to do based on her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild losses, as well as having to compete in the same category with castmate Vera Farmiga — she would become the seventh youngest best supporting actress winner. On March 7, her age will be 24 years, 209 days. Those younger when they won: Tatum O’Neal (10 years, 148 days), Anna Paquin (11 years, 240 days), Patty Duke (16 years, 115 days), Anne Baxter (23 years, 310 days), Teresa Wright (24 years, 128 days), and Goldie Hawn (24 years, 137 days).
  • Should best actor nominees George Clooney (“Up in the Air”) or Morgan Freeman (“Invictus”), best actress nominee Helen Mirren (“The Last Station”), and/or best supporting actress nominee Penelope Cruz win, he and/or she will become the 17th person to win 2 Oscars within 5 years. The others: Walter Brennan, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Sally Field, Jodie Foster, Tom Hanks, Katharine Hepburn, Glenda Jackson, Sean Penn, Anthony Quinn, Luise Rainer, Jason Robards, Jr., Kevin Spacey, Meryl Streep, Hilary Swank, Spencer Tracy, and Peter Ustinov.

Naturally, his forecast that my beloved Meryl Streep will likely not win her WAY OVERDUE third Oscar, after her dazzling turn as Julia Child in last years’ Julie & Julia, was totally heartbreaking.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Acceptance

This is the sweetest and most amazing video of an exchange between a parent and a child about the latter coming out and the unfair and unequal treatment GLBT individuals face daily:

Never trust what you see on TV

This clip shows you how even the simplest scenes we see weekly on television are (or can be) completely put together behind the scenes.

I guess they could really show us anything …

Stupid Callous Homophobic Hateful Legislation

A very smart clip from a witty lady:

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

In a few chosen words

Owen Gleiberman, is one the two top movie critics for Entertainment Weekly.  Like his colleagues, he watches movies and makes reviews whose lengths primarily depend on the movies’ hype.  A big release will get an extensive review spanning a couple of pages, while an independent title might get just an eighth of a page.

The following week, no matter the hype, new titles are released, and the older reviews are condensed more and more and pushed towards the back of the Movies section.

Since Avatar is now quite old, its once extensive review has been condensed to this:

As spectacle, James Cameron’s 3D alien-jungle epic is indelible – a true rush – but as a film it all but evaporates as you watch it.

I couldn’t agree more.

Amazing how in a few chosen words, the value of such a tectonic phenomenon can be so effectively expressed.

Is Avatar’s influence all positive?

I read this article by Mark Harris, one of my favorite editorialists on Entertainment Weekly, and I found it so interesting and relevant, I had to post about it.

Harris means to address those wondering if Avatar’s Zoe Saldana should have gotten a Best Actress nomination for her portrayal of fierce warrior Neytiri.  He doesn’t think she should have, and I happen to wholeheartedly agree with him and his line of reasoning.

Here’s what he said (in its entirety because I really couldn’t leave anything out – I hope I’m not breaking any laws…):

Jake-and-Neytiri If you've read about Avatar, you know by now that it's the future of movies. And if you've seen it, you know that the future of movies apparently looks a lot like the present of movies — big, expensive, effects-driven action, but updated with high-tech immersiveness. More problematically, though, Avatar is also being touted as the future of movie acting. Last summer, at an EW panel at Comic-Con, director James Cameron argued that we have to think differently about the kind of ''performance capture'' work that's on display in Avatar, in which actors have every micro-twitch registered and reproduced digitally on big blue tail-swinging loincloth-wearing counterparts. Performance capture, Cameron insists, is good for actors: ''Not only does it not replace them, but it empowers them.'' Say what? Well, for example, ''Will Smith could still make an action movie when he's 75 years old, looking like he looks now.''

Personally, I'd rather see what Smith does when he's 75 and looks 75, with those additional decades of life playing across his features; I'm not sure that digital Botox empowers anyone except studio executives who wish that moneymaking stars would never change. But Cameron really loses me when he claims that these techniques capture ''100 percent of what the actor does. Not 98, not 95 — but 100 percent.... Every nuance, every moment of their creation on the set is preserved.''

It sounds good — and in a season in which the hype dials all go to 11, there are even suggestions that Zoë Saldana, who lent her voice and facial and body movements to Cameron's computers so he could create the Na'vi woman warrior Neytiri, deserves Oscar consideration. If only it were true. The fact is, a computer can't pick up every nuance of an actor's work, because great performances have nuances that are ineffable and unquantifiable, not to mention vulnerable to eradication with one thoughtless flick of a digital paintbrush. 100 percent? Not even close.

neytiri Zoë Saldana may be a fine actress, but I don't feel that her work in Avatar can fairly be labeled an onscreen performance. What I saw was a CG character created in very large part by an army of technicians; to me (and I know many disagree), Neytiri is a superb visual effect enhanced by an actor, not a performance enhanced by F/X. When Saldana was ''playing'' the role, she may have widened her eyes in fear or narrowed them in disgust; she may have recoiled in horror or crumpled in sorrow. Did she sigh, swallow hard, or express conflicting emotions? Beats me, since Cameron could easily have added, eliminated, or altered anything she did. Did Saldana blush in her scenes with Sam Worthington's Jake? Doesn't matter, because the Na'vi don't blush; unfortunately for actors, the flat-featured, heavy-browed, shimmery-eyed look Cameron has given his new species permits a less-than-human range of noble-primitive expressions.

Great actors surprise their directors every day, and when that happens, smart directors either rejoice or get out of the way. What they don't do is run to the nearest laptop to sweeten or sandpaper away the subtleties that make what they just saw so compelling. Nora Ephron did not program Meryl Streep to make Julia Child's shoulders sag with remembered grief when she's crushingly reminded that she'll never have children. Lee Daniels did not use a computer to give Mo'Nique's voice the unpredictable pitches of rage, fear, shame, and self-justification she brings to the shattering climax of Precious. Kathryn Bigelow's work on The Hurt Locker, for all its technical mastery, makes plenty of room for Jeremy Renner's unsettlingly jovial/creepy rhythms. Those directors cast those actors because they recognized mysterious reservoirs of idiosyncrasy that no technology can replicate or amp up. In Scott Cooper's affecting Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges lets his analog gut hang out and his undigitized weariness (along with 40 years of experience) inform his work in a way that's pretty much the essence of what a first-rate screen actor can do. Do you want to explain to him how much better he could be if only he were ''empowered''?

Avatar deserves applause for many things, including its huge leap in making CG creatures plausible by turning its cast into face-voice-and-body puppeteers. But that's a breakthrough in animation, not screen acting. Performances ''captured'' the old-fashioned way still set a standard of excellence that this film, for all its innovation, can't touch.

Like I said, I totally agree with everything Mr. Harris wrote here.  While I love good visual effects, acting can't be thought of as “improved” by digital touch ups, and the day we start thinking it can, performances won't be regarded as highly for a movie's quality and overall success as they are today.

And movies will lose one of their most magical qualities forever.

Friday, February 12, 2010

What’s your biological age?

Mine is probably 95:

Scientists have isolated a gene sequence that appears to determine how fast our bodies age, the first time a link between DNA and human lifespan has been found.

The discovery could have a profound impact on public health and raises the best hope yet for drugs that prevent the biological wear and tear behind common age-related conditions such as heart disease and certain cancers.

The work is expected to pave the way for screening programmes to spot people who are likely to age fast and be more susceptible to heart problems and other conditions early in life. People who test positive for the gene variant in their 20s could be put on cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and encouraged to exercise, eat healthily and avoid smoking.

The breakthrough is unlikely to lead to drugs that dramatically extend lifespan, but doctors say it may help prolong the lives of patients whose genes make them susceptible to dying young.

"This may help us identify patients who are at a greater risk of developing common age-related diseases so we can focus more attention on them," said Professor Nilesh Samani, a cardiologist at the University of Leicester, who led the research.

The research highlights the difference between chronological age and biological age, the latter of which is determined by our genetic makeup and lifestyle factors, such as diet and smoking. Two people of the same age can have biological ages that differ by more than 10 years.

The study, published in the journal Nature Genetics, was prompted by the huge variability in the age at which people develop medical problems that are often considered diseases of the elderly.

"I see patients in their 80s with high blood pressure who have healthy coronary arteries and I see people in their 40s who don't seem to have any risk factors yet have advanced heart disease," Samani said. "We think this kind of variability must have something to do with premature ageing."

Click here to read the whole article, which has a lot more details on the research findings.

Are you up for an Aircruise?

A British company has come up with a new design for the infamous zeppelin dirigible that they posit will be the new ‘in’ way of travelling.  It would take 37 hours to go from New York to London, so it would really be more like a cruise than a flight:

article-1248159-08211A1C000005DC-408_634x436 Towering, kite-shaped airships could herald a new era of luxury transport following today's introduction of the Aircruise concept.

Standing 98ft taller than Canary Wharf, packing 330,000 cubic metres of hydrogen gas and capable of lifting 396 tonnes, the Aircruise concept features penthouse apartments, bars and even dizzying glass viewing floors.

Aircruise was created as the antithesis of a hurried, crowded passenger jet. London-based design and innovation company Seymourpowell wanted to rethink transport - on the premise 'slow is the new fast'. It could ferry 100 people from London to New York in a leisurely 37 hours as opposed to the seven it takes now by airplane.

aircruise Silent and pollution free, the Aircruise combines solar power with a primary hydrogen drive for a cruising speed of around 90mph.

It can fly up to a maximum of 12,000ft but if there are specific areas of interest en route it can drop down to a few hundred feet.

Theoretically, it could ferry 100 people from London to New York in a leisurely 37 hours or from Los Angeles to Shanghai in just under four days.

If one can get past the fear of what happened the last time this kind of travel was attempted, especially given the higher attention given nowadays to safety, it actually looks like a pretty cool experience.

Check out the video:

Link.

Who’s smarter than cats?

Dogs!!  Sorry, but I couldn’t resist posting this, which is quite old but I just found now, because I’m a dog person and love my two little girls:

Cats and DogsIt will cause outrage among some cat owners, but research suggests the pets are not as clever as some humans assumed – or at least they think in a way we have yet to fathom.

Psychology lecturer Britta Osthaus says cats do not understand cause-and-effect connections between objects. She tested the thought processes of 15 of them by attaching fish and biscuit treats to one end of a piece of string, placing them under a plastic screen to make them unreachable and then seeing if the cats could work out that pulling on the other end of the string would pull the treat closer.

Osthaus, of Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, said: "This finding is somehow surprising as cats regularly use their paws and claws to pull things towards them during play and hunting. They performed even worse than dogs, which can at least solve the parallel string task."

Chalk one up for man’s best friends!

Click here for the full article.

Disclaimer: I love cats too, I’m just a little afraid to get scratched, so I never had one, and having two dogs, we don’t think it would increase the level of peace to add a feline to the tribe.

Beasts from Earth’s past

These fossils were discovered and presented last year, but I only came across them now in a “best of” selection.

On land:

Fossil hunters working in an open-pit coal mine in Colombia have unearthed the remains of several giant prehistoric snakes, thought to be the largest ever to have slithered on earth.

snake The boa constrictor-like beasts, aptly named Titanoboas, weighed more than one and a quarter tonnes and measured at least 13m long from nose to tip. At their widest, the snakes would have come up to the waist of an adult human.

The partial skeletons of eight individuals were uncovered at the site, alongside the fossilised remains of what may have once have been the creatures' dinner: a 2m-long giant turtle and an ancient ancestor of the modern crocodile.

The fossils were encased in rock dating back 60m years, and so give scientists an unprecedented insight into the large animals that ruled the tropics after the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65m years ago.

"Now we have a window into the time just after the dinosaurs went extinct and can actually see what the animals replacing them were like," said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto.

The region of Colombia where the snakes were found was very different 60m years ago. It would have been a thick rainforest cut through by a network of rivers, resembling the modern Amazon.

The discovery has lifted a veil on the climatic conditions at the time the beasts were alive, since cold-blooded animals grow much larger in warmer environments. The largest cold-blooded animals alive today live in the tropics where it is hottest, but farther away from the equator they get steadily smaller.

Based on the snakes' size, the researchers calculated that the tropics were on average 5C warmer than they are today. The study marks a first in using the size of animals from their fossilised remains to infer the climate of the world tens of millions of years ago.

And underwater:

The fossilised skull of a "sea monster", which may be the largest of its type ever found, has been unearthed on the Dorset coast.

Pliosaur The skull from the ferocious prehistoric predator the pliosaur is 2.4 metres long and could belong to a creature measuring up to 16 metres in length from tip to tail and weighing up to 12 tonnes.

Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that terrorised the ocean 150m years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

They had short necks and huge, crocodile-like heads that contained immensely powerful jaws and a set of huge, razor-sharp teeth.

"It could have taken a human in one gulp; in fact, something like a T-Rex would have been breakfast for a beast like this."

"They had massive muscles on their necks, and you would have imagined that they would bite into the animal and get a good grip, and then with these massive neck muscles they probably would have thrashed the animals around and torn chunks off.

"It would have been a bit of a blood bath."

Scary creatures for sure.

Movies. My passion.

This NYTimes.com article by Dave Kehr about the future of Blu-ray DVDs offered a lot of information about different topics that I found incredibly interesting.

It notices that regular DVDs didn’t start getting adopted by the public until their price (and that of their players) fell considerably, a trend that seems to be repeating with Blu-ray discs, whose prices are still quite steep compared to regular DVDs.

Furthermore, while DVDs only had to compete with VHS, which offered a clearly inferior experience, Blu-ray has to face-off against new technologies like “digital downloads, streaming video, and video-on-demand services,” apart from regular DVDs, which are a good enough product for many consumers.

Kehr also points out that while Blu-ray is a far superior technology compared to regular DVDs, it doesn’t mean it works for everything.  While new releases, especially blockbusters, translate wonderfully to it, older movies require so many touch ups (apparently needed to make them look acceptable on such an unforgiving, perfectly sharp medium) that sometimes the feel of the original film gets lost.

Then, Kehr states something that left me totally baffled:

Restoration on that scale costs a lot, so much so that only the most famous titles seem to justify the expense, as exemplified by Warner Brothers’ recent high-definition transfers of “Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz” to Blu-ray. It’s safe to say that only a tiny fraction of the movies produced by Hollywood studios, much less those from international sources, will make the cut.

This isn’t the first time this winnowing has occurred. When VHS arrived, the format was forgiving enough to allow the studios to transfer many of their titles to tape directly from the video masters they had already made for television distribution. Many of those titles disappeared in the transition to DVD because studios felt that more obscure films wouldn’t be profitable enough to justify striking new prints and preparing new digital transfers.

As a result huge swaths of our film heritage have vanished. After 10 years of DVD the studios seem to have concluded that all the films that will make money in home video have already been released; that number is a very small percentage of their output. Turner Classic Movies online says that of the 162,984 films listed in its database (based on the authoritative AFI Catalog), only 5,980 (3.67 percent) are available on home video.

Read that again.  Less than 4% of all the movies ever made are available on DVD, which is really the only medium one would refer to nowadays.

What about the other 96+%???  Are they all lost forever?  Never to be seen by human eyes ever again?  We’re talking about thousands and thousands of movies, many, one would think, of considerable quality.

Once the initial shock passed, another quick calculation dashed my youthful dream of watching the highest number of movies I could possibly muster in my lifetime.  I calculated that even if I had all of the almost 163,000 movies available to me, and watched 2 each night, at an average runtime of 2 hours each, it would take 223 years to watch them all.

It would not be doable even if a person didn’t have to work and could dedicate 8 hours each day to watching movies.  In that case, it would still take 112 years to watch them all.  And that doesn’t take into account the thousands more movies that would be produced in that century.

A human impossibility that doesn’t justify losing that movie library forever or not having it available, which amounts to it being lost anyway.

The Blind Side

The Blind Side Movie Given that The Blind Side star Sandra Bullock is giving Meryl Streep some unfortunate competition for her third Oscar, I decided to go see if she was really that good.  She is.  Her performance is decisive but contained at the same time, and the role is unlike anything we’ve ever seen her in, accustomed as we are to think of her as a comedy or action star.

That being said, she doesn’t even come close to Streep’s masterful work in Julie & Julia, and I really hope that my heroine will prevail.

The movie tells the story of the rise to football glory of a black, poor, lonely kid (an understated and very good Quinton Aaron) taken in by Bullock’s family when he has nowhere else to go.  The story is true too, which always makes for a more compelling experience.

Besides Bullock’s own accolades, the movie itself garnered a Best Picture nomination, unarguably the beneficiary of the Academy’s doubling of that category’s recipients.

The Blind Side is a generally well made movie that knows how to pull at your heart strings and won’t disappoint.  At the same time, it’s not that memorable and, were it not for Bullock’s performance, it would have faded much more quickly.

Grade: 7

Thursday, February 11, 2010

For All Its Success, Will ‘Avatar’ Change the Industry?

That’s the title of a very interesting article from the NYTimes.com:

Even as James Cameron’s science-fiction epic “Avatar” continues to dazzle the audience with its visual wizardry, filmmakers and studios are struggling to figure out when, if ever, viewers can expect an equally striking on-screen experience.

Asked last week if any similarly ambitious film were in the works, Alec Shapiro, senior vice-president for sales and marketing of Sony Corporation’s content creation group, whose digital cameras were used on “Avatar,” was stumped. “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “I can’t, offhand, see another half-billion-dollar production.”

Mr. Cameron and his producing partner, Jon Landau, have talked of possible sequels to “Avatar.” But 20th Century Fox, which distributed the movie and helped underwrite production and marketing costs of about $460 million, has yet to announce plans for any successor to a film that was at least 15 years in the making.

In a research report published by Barclays Capital on Wednesday, Anthony J. DiClemente and George L. Hawkey called “Avatar” an “outlier”: a unique event that leaves the business environment around it largely intact.

“While ‘Avatar’ is likely a watershed for digital and 3-D technology,” they wrote, “it does not tell us that the underlying economics of the film business have changed.”

Mr. DiClemente and Mr. Hawkey predicted that “Avatar” would be a moneymaker, though they do not expect imitators anytime soon.

As for cinematic technology, the achievement of “Avatar” was not so much a single leap — like the one from silent film to sound — as an integration of complex filmmaking systems that allowed Mr. Cameron to combine live actors and computer animation in a relatively seamless, and believable, blend of fantasy and the real world. Critics and audiences noted a qualitative difference between what they saw on the screen in “Avatar” and what they saw in other recent films that used 3-D or motion-capture technology.

One more indication that Avatar is a unique phenomenon that will be hardly replicated by Hollywood anytime soon.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I personally don’t find a 2D movie any less impressive than a 3D one, especially when technical wizardry isn’t the focus and every other element of the filmmaking process is well developed.

Can a man have sex with another man and not think of himself as a homosexual?

Yes, according to Afghan men belonging to the Pashtun ethnic group:

An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it.

The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually -- yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual."

Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot "love" another man -- but that doesn't mean they can't use men for "sexual gratification."

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.

The report said: "When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"

The report also detailed a disturbing practice in which older "men of status" keep young boys on hand for sexual relationships. One of the country's favorite sayings, the report said, is "women are for children, boys are for pleasure."

Sounds to me like these guys are quite retrograde and confused, especially about the technical definition of homosexuality, which is “Sexual activity with another of the same sex.”

Here’s the link to the FoxNews.com article.

Did the Best Picture gamble work?

The New York Times looks into it:

It did exactly what it was supposed to do,” said Ronni Chasen, a longtime awards consultant in Los Angeles. The broadened field includes box office behemoths like “Avatar,” inspirational fare like “The Blind Side” and genre films like the sci-fi parable “District 9,” in addition to typical Oscar bait: artful war tales (“The Hurt Locker”), the sophisticated coming-of-middle-age (“Up in the Air”) and British period dramas (“An Education”).

For the first time since the 1992 awards, the best picture nominees also include an animated film, the Pixar hit “Up,” which had crossover appeal among moviegoers and critics. And there were still spots for indie-popcorn flicks like “Inglourious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist World War II adventuretainment, and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” elevated urban grit.

And a very interesting statistic:

Will “The Blind Side,” the feel-good Sandra Bullock box office hit that was a surprise addition to the best picture list, swing votes from these contenders? Not likely, industry veterans say.

For one thing, Oscar rarely splits the vote between best director and best picture — it’s only happened, the Academy says, 21 times in 81 years — so the five films with director nods (“Avatar,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious” and “Up in the Air”) are considered the “real” best picture candidates.

For another, the top prize usually goes to films that have nominations across multiple categories, chiefly in acting and in editing or screenplay or both, in addition to directing. Four managed that feat this year: “The Hurt Locker,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Precious,” and “Up in the Air.” (Awards watchers were quick to note one film that won best picture without a screenplay nomination: “Titanic” in 1998.)

The article continues with more information about the new voting system as well, which thankfully Ray was able to explain to me, because it can sound very confusing.

Proposition H8

Here are some choice quotes from Ted Olson’s opening statement in the Prop. 8 trial currently undergoing in California, a trial that could see that despicable (and illegal) constitutional amendment struck down.  An appeal is a guarantee regardless of the outcome.

Here’s the full text of the statement.

Ted Olson:

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men;” a “basic civil right;” a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.

In short, in the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is “the most important relation in life,” and “of fundamental importance for all individuals.”

In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court concluded that under this State’s Constitution, the right to marry a person of one’s choice extended to all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, and was available equally to same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

But Proposition 8 singled out gay men and lesbians as a class, swept away their right to marry, pronounced them unequal, and declared their relationships inferior and less-deserving of respect and dignity.

In the words of the California Supreme Court, eliminating the right of individuals to marry a same-sex partner relegated those individuals to “second class” citizenship, and told them, their families and their neighbors that their love and desire for a sanctioned marital partnership was not worthy of recognition.

While marriage has been a revered and important institution throughout the history of this country and this State, it has also evolved to shed irrational, unwarranted, and discriminatory restrictions and limitations that reflected the biases, prejudices or stereotypes of the past.  Marriage laws that disadvantaged women or people of disfavored race or ethnicity have been eliminated.  These changes have come from legislatures and the courts.  Far from harming the institution of marriage, the elimination of discriminatory restrictions on marriage has strengthened the institution, its vitality, and its importance in American society today.

Proposition 8 had a simple, straightforward, and devastating purpose:  to withdraw from gay and lesbian people like the Plaintiffs their previously recognized constitutional right to marry.  The official title of the ballot measure said it all: “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.”

Proposition 8 singles out gay and lesbian individuals alone for exclusion from the institution of marriage.  In California, even convicted murderers and child abusers enjoy the freedom to marry.  As the evidence clearly establishes, this discrimination has been placed in California’s Constitution even though its victims are, and always have been, fully contributing members of our society.   And it excludes gay men and lesbians from the institution of marriage even though the characteristic for which they are targeted—their sexual orientation—like race, sex, and ethnicity, is a fundamental aspect of their identity that they did not choose for themselves and, as the California Supreme Court has found, is highly resistant to change.

If such powerful and undisputable arguments don’t convince the judge to rule in our favor, nothing ever will.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Book of Eli

the book of eli I wanted to see this movie because I’m into end-of-the-world scenarios, but I knew not to expect too much from the lukewarm reception The Book of Eli received among critics.

Denzel Washington plays Eli, a solitary man travelling west through a post-apocalyptic landscape.  He meets bad guys along the way, but seems to know all the right moves (lots of cool fighting) to beat them back.  As the title suggests, he carries with him a book.

We don’t really know what the book is until about a third of the way in, when the bad guy in chief, played with panache by Gary Oldman, intends to snatch it away from Eli.  Lots of fighting ensues, and I won’t say more not to spoil anything.  Suffice it to say that Oldman wants the book of Eli to use it in the same way it’s been used for millennia.

Both Washington and Oldman do a good job, but the material they can work with is a bit limited.  Technically, the movie is well made though, so if you don’t have too high expectations, you might enjoy it.

No glory and no shame.  Barely registers.

Grade: 5

1064!

That’s the number of posts on this blog, including this one, from its inception to today!!

I just realized, when I went to the ‘edit posts’ page, that I had published the one thousandth post at some point last October.  Click here to see which post that was.

Wow, I never thought I’d be so prolific, and I already have 64 in the bag for the next one thousand!!

District 9

district 9 This was the kind of movie that, regardless of genre, I wish Hollywood made more of.  It was original, unpretentious, and of very good overall quality.

Co-written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, a virtual unknown, and produced by über-wunderkind Peter Jackson (him of The Lord of the Rings), District 9 is part movie, part fake-documentary.  It tells the story of a guy who, put in charge of a sensitive evacuation operation, ends up paying a high personal price but also making new friends in the process.

Newcomer Sharlto Copley plays the part of the trapped fugitive very convincingly, aided by incredibly good visual effects, given the low budget.  The makeup is very good as well, as are the creative weapons the filmmakers have conjured up.

A nice touch was that, like many movies nowadays, this one had a built-in sequel, but the setup was so subtle that it wasn’t bothersome in the least.  And the movie was so well made that I’m actually hopeful they will make a follow-up.

District 9 just earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination and I have to admit that at first I was puzzled by such a choice.  But then I realized that, given its originality and high quality, it actually did deserve the distinction of a nomination.

While at first there were rumors that a product like Star Trek, which had successfully rebooted the venerable franchise, might make the cut, I’m glad District 9 got the nod instead, as artistically speaking it is a more deserving motion picture.

Definitely a must see for any sci-fi fan out there, but a movie worth seeing by all.

Grade: 8

Earth

earth Another phenomenally good documentary, Earth follows three very different families of animals (bear, elephant and humpback whale) in their yearly journeys for survival and prosperity.

By following such different creatures, the film shows us a large swat of our planet’s ecosystem and how different species interact with each other and the nature around them.

The quality of the images, the narration (by James Earl Jones in the American version), and the flow of both are excellent, and there are a lot of very useful and interesting data as well.  I would recommend this to anyone who loves nature or animals.

Kids will surely love it, , however, the youngest ones might be a little impressed by the couple instances where an animals is chased and captured by a predator.  I guess it’s all part of life though, and it’s a good lesson for them to learn.

Grade: 9

Monday, February 08, 2010

Avatar King

As I hinted in my review of James Cameron’s latest offering, Avatar finally passed Cameron’s own Titanic on February 2nd on the domestic front, to claim the crown of top box office grosser of all time domestically as well as internationally and worldwide:

Avatar has sailed past Titanic to become the highest-grossing movie of all time. In just 47 days, Avatar has grossed $601.1 million, while Titanic made $600.8 million in its entire run and took 252 days to cross the $600 million mark.

With this milestone, Avatar has completed the triple crown of box office gross records: first, it topped the foreign-only chart on Jan. 23, then it reigned over the worldwide chart (foreign plus domestic) on Jan. 25, and now, as of Feb. 2, it resides atop the domestic chart.

The article from Box Office Mojo then goes into an interesting analysis of the admissions record:

All told, Avatar's estimated admission count is 60.7 million thus far, or less than Titanic through the same point (47 days in). It's also less than half of Titanic's 128 million total estimated admissions. Emphasizing the impressiveness of Avatar, it took such recent blockbusters as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Spider-Man 2, The Passion of the Christ and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith their entire runs to reach around 60 million admissions.

Only the money may matter to Hollywood, but attendance is important from an audience and cultural perspective. The disparity between Avatar and Titanic is so huge according to this method, that it is safe to say that Titanic sold a boatload more tickets.

Pointing out the estimated admissions in no way diminishes the box office achievement of Avatar. The purpose is to add perspective. There is no doubt that Avatar is a phenomenon in its own right with its own unique set of circumstances and that it stands as one of the greatest box office runs of all time.

Very interesting.  I guess it’s safe to say that no matter how high Avatar ends up pushing the grosses records, it won’t be able to pass Titanic in terms of attendance, although Avatar’s run has been so unstoppable that everything’s possible.

Personally, although Titanic was destined to be toppled sooner or later (and I’d rather see a movie like Avatar do it then a far less deserving summer blockbuster like a Shrek or Transformer rehash), it feels bittersweet because Titanic was on a completely different level in terms of the overall quality of the product.

Can we actually resurrect extinct species?

Looks like it’s possible, but not in a Jurassic Park kind of way.  You actually need to get your hands on DNA samples of the creature you want to resurrect from still existing descendents:

A tortoise hunted to extinction before Darwin ever arrived on the Galapagos could be brought back to life thanks to new genetic research.

tortoise2 While rummaging through genetic data from 156 Galapagos tortoises living in captivity, researchers have discovered that nine of them are descendents of Chelonoidis elephantopus, a species hunted to extinction by whalers in the 19th century, before Charles Darwin visited the islands. Now they hope to resurrect the extinct ancestors by selectively breeding their descendants, according to an article on PhysOrg.com, an online science news service.

The research was made possible thanks to the discovery of bones from Chelonoidis elephantopus found in several old museum collections. Samples of genetic material from the bones were then compared to data banks of DNA sequences from living tortoises, revealing that a lingering heritage still lives on in a few surviving individuals.

Researchers theorize that the nine identified living descendants of the vanished species are the grandchildren of lucky elephantopus survivors which may have been taken by whalers as future meals but then thrown overboard. Those last heroic survivors then must have come ashore to nearby islands and mated with the native species living there.

Although their genetic lineage has been diluted over time, researchers think the heritage is still strong enough to revive the extinct species after only four generations of selective breeding.

The only catch is that the project could take over 100 years to complete because tortoises have such long life spans. But the project could serve as a model for how to revive other extinct species that have surviving lineages too.

Link.

That chair is your enemy!

A new study found that spending long amounts of time sitting down is unhealthy, regardless of how active you are for the rest of the day, which means that even people who exercise a lot are at risk:

Here's a new warning from health experts: Sitting is deadly.

Scientists are increasingly warning that sitting for prolonged periods - even if you also exercise regularly - could be bad for your health. And it doesn't matter where the sitting takes place - at the office, at school, in the car or before a computer or TV - just the overall number of hours it occurs.

Research is preliminary, but several studies suggest people who spend most of their days sitting are more likely to be fat, have a heart attack or even die.

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

Still, in a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

Get moving!

Dangerous fun

This adorable impala was captured by three cheetahs who then proceeded to play with him rather than kill and eat it.

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Full story here:

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The new addition

This was too funny not to post:

A Quote By

Sarah Silverman, comedian, writer, actress, and singer when asked about her decision not to get married until all Americans, including gays and lesbians, are legally allowed to do so:

"Not only that, but lately I’ve been really annoyed by any liberal person getting married who says they stand for gay rights. How can anyone in good conscience get married right now? How is that different than joining a country club that doesn’t allow Jews or blacks?"

The Road

the road I had read such positive reviews of this movie and its message of hope that when I saw it was still playing around here I decided to check it out.  I’m glad I did.

The story follows a father and son slowly trying to reach the sea by foot after an unexplained catastrophe has ravaged the planet and the human race.  In this post-apocalyptic world the dangers are many, from illnesses to starvation to bands of carnivores that have lost any trace of humanity.

A steely hope of survival for his son is what guides and informs every decision the father makes.  Will it be enough to save the two of them?  And given that nothing seems to have been left behind of the world as they knew it, is it even worth it?  Wouldn’t it be easier to take the path of suicide, a choice made by thousands, if not millions, rather than wait to slowly or violently die?

The movie is very bleak and quite anguishing and you probably won’t like it if you’re squeamish, but the sight of a world where nature has been wiped out and only a few humans struggle to survive is quite sobering.

Viggo Mortensen in the role of the father gives us another great performance and his casting was perfect for the figure of a man desperately trying to do what’s best for his child and who’s unwilling to give up hope for a brighter future.

Of note are the technical departments: cinematography, makeup, costumes, and art direction are all top notch and the direction is good.

A do-not-miss-it film if you like this kind of theme.

Grade: 8

Surf's Up

surf's up Likely greenlit on the heels of the stunning worldwide success of March of the Penguins, I was a little wary ahead of watching Surf’s Up, fearing I’d have to sit through a boring copycat job that only tried to cash in on its predecessor’s accomplishments.

Luckily, I have to admit that I was wrong and that this animated movie is actually quite good and original.  The most striking difference from any other cartoon I’ve seen on the big screen is its fake-documentary narration style that we’ve become so accustomed to watch on TV (think The Office or 30 Rock) but rarely at the movies (a voiceover narration is more common) and strictly with live action.

Surf’s Up tells the story of a young penguin who loves to surf and wants to make it big, following in the footsteps of his hero, Big Z.  Will he be able to follow his dreams and make them reality?  Will he have the support of family and friends?  What is the reality of competitive surfing at the highest level?

All these questions and more are answered, via a smart script that will satisfy not just the little ones but their parents as well.

Grade: 7

Sunday, February 07, 2010

It's Complicated

It's ComplicatedThis light comedy features Meryl Streep as the woman both Alec Baldwin, her ex husband, and Steve Martin, her architect, are vying for.  Given that it’s been a long time since she was in a relationship, her discomfort with the situation is great and the proximity of her three grown up kids makes it all the more awkward.

Streep is, as usual, excellent, even when the screenplay doesn’t call for any particular histrionics and her pairing with Baldwin works particularly well.  Baldwin, the star of the TV show 30 Rocks, has seen a big resurgence of his career and is in great shape here.

The movie, written and directed by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give) is just an average comedy, but it’s not disappointing and quite funny.  Naturally, the best reason to watch it is the chemistry between Streep and Baldwin, regardless of the actual quality of the film.

As an aside, the movie also features John Krasinski (from The Office) and Hunter Parrish (from Weeds), two of the sexiest new stars on the scene.  Parrish especially is quite the looker…

Grade: 6

Up In The Air

up in the air The latest offering by Jason Reitman, the director of Juno, Up In The Air is a good dramedy that features an interesting and well written screenplay and impeccable acting on the part of the three main characters.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a guy whose job it is to fire people he’s never met before, who work at companies he’s never been at before, all simply to avoid their actual managers the unpleasantries (and possible dangers) of firing their own employees.

Reitman shows us how Bingham enjoys living a comfortable life on the move without any roots, anyone to be responsible for, or anyone to have to respond to.  Everything changes when a young colleague tries to save the company some money without thinking of the repercussions it could have on the people on the other end of their consulting gigs.

The film flows nicely and gently transitions from a cynical worldview to a more humane one.  As is always the case, a good screenplay makes a movie shine, and this is one of those cases.  Nothing feels fake, out of place, or unneeded.

Clooney, the luscious Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick all hit the mark with their respective portrayals, especially Clooney, who this time showcases more than his usual four facial expressions.  The casting was made in heaven as the role of Ryan Bingham seems tailored to his persona.

The movie has won critical acclaim and several awards, and is now up for a Best Picture Oscar, but its chances are slim.

A nice drama with a slower, simpler pace.  A movie that almost seems to come from another era, when making a good, standalone motion picture was what every director aspired to.

Grade: 8

Treasure Planet

treasure planet An ultra modern take of the story of Treasure Island, this Disney 2D animated movie doesn’t disappoint because the narration flows nicely and the characters are sympathetic.

I actually really liked the visual effects, and for being less than a decade old, it proudly held its own in the face of the new 3D wonders created, primarily, by Pixar.

The story is quite simple: a youngster who feels trapped into his own skin grabs the opportunity for adventure and escape and tries to strike it big.  Will he succeed when a whole band of bad guys are onto him?

A nice movie for the whole family.

Grade: 7

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Mamma Mia!

mamma mia! Adapted from the wildly successful Broadway show, this turned out to be one of the most successful musicals of the past decade and with good reason.  If I had to pick one word to describe it, it would have to be uplifting, in spite of the many bittersweet moments that don’t necessarily spell out the word “joy.”

Mamma Mia!’s screenplay is not memorable, and some actors aren’t that great either, especially when they have to sing and dance (primarily Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth, who come across as a little stiff).  No matter, because the strength of Mamma Mia! lies in its soundtrack, which is the reason why it ultimately works so well.

The legendary Swedish group ABBA’s songs, to whose lyrics the screenplay is adapted, are sung with such passion and joy by the four female leads that they inevitably bring you along for the ride, making you want to sing and dance and laugh and cry with them.

My two favorites are actually not the most famous ones, like “Mamma Mia!” or “Dancing Queen,” but rather “The Winner Takes It All” and “Slipping Through My Fingers,” both sung in such a heartfelt way by my beloved Meryl Streep.  The second tune especially, brought a tear to my eyes thinking of the day when our Nicole will be getting married.

Amanda Seyfried, whom I already knew from the TV show Big Love, is not only a good actress, but a fine singer as well.  It will be interesting to watch her career progress as she’s so young, but clearly a very talented girl.

Mamma Mia! has its flaws but the end result is so unabashedly bubbling with glee, you’ll be sad it eventually comes to an end.

Grade: 8

Lions for Lambs

lions for lambs Sometimes it is quite striking how a story with so much promise on paper can turn into such a lukewarm and, frankly, disappointing movie.

After all, it stars Meryl Streep, the goddess of the acting craft, Tom Cruise, a de facto movie star, and Robert Redford, a celebrated actor and director, who also directs.  It’s a drama about a war that’s still ongoing and a twisted political system.  Supposedly, it should have lured many constituencies, all but guaranteeing its success.

Alas, the attempt to stuff it with too much is probably what doomed the picture.  At the closing, I felt unsatisfied and let down by the lack of character and story development, brought about primarily by the lack of time to address all that was trying to be said.

Having said that, the movie is not terrible and the war related scenes are quite gripping.  Is it worth the time?  Hardly.  I watched it mostly because I am such a big Meryl Streep fan that I want to see every movie she makes.

Grade: 5

Monday, February 01, 2010

An amazing journey

Animal’s migration is something that always amazes me, especially when the trip involves travelling for thousands of miles.  This little creature actually travels from the Arctic to Antarctica, and vice versa at the end of the winter.  Every year!

From the BBC:

The Arctic tern's extraordinary pole-to-pole migration has been detailed by an international team of scientists.

The researchers fitted the birds with tiny tracking devices to see precisely which routes the animals took on their 70,000km (43,000 miles) round trip.

[…]

Starting in August and September, this small bird - which weighs little more than 100g (3.5oz) - will head away from Greenland with the intention of getting to the Weddell Sea, on the shores of Antarctica.

It will spend about four or five months in the deep south before heading back to the far north, arriving home in May or June.

[…]

migration The birds then head south along the coast of western Europe and western Africa before making a choice, either to continue hugging Africa or sweep across the Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to continue the journey along the Brazilian coast.

About half the birds that were tracked decided to take the South American path. It is not clear why, but the researchers believe wind might make either route seem favourable to the terns.

After spending their northern winter months in Antarctic waters, the terns then fly back towards the Arctic.

But rather than retracing their southward flight paths, the birds follow a gigantic "S" pattern up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

"This is completely new knowledge," Mr Egevang told BBC News.

"They make a detour of several thousand km but once we start comparing the route to the prevailing wind system, it makes perfect sense - moving in a counter-clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere, and clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

"It's just more energy-efficient for them to do that even though they are travelling several thousand more km than if they flew in a straight line."

Spellbinding.

Fighting for one’s rights

I found out a few days ago that there is a very courageous gay couple in Italy that has gone on hunger strike to protest that country’s continued inaction regarding securing any kind of rights for its gay and lesbian citizens.

They don’t particularly focus on same sex marriage, although that is probably the main point of contention, rather, they want some kind of discussion to begin at the political level to take the GLBT community into consideration.

Today is their 30th day without any food, and I can’t imagine the strength and will it must take to do something so brave and dangerous for one’s health.

Click here for a live feed webcam of their plight.

I wonder how much longer they can go on.  I wonder how much longer the political establishment will continue to ignore them.  And mostly I wonder, if either or both of them were to actually lose their lives for this cause, would it make any difference?

Francesco and Manuel, stay strong.