The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards

I know, I’m running way behind this year, but I’ve got to throw in a post about the Golden Globes, even though my respect for the prize isn’t what it used to be and certainly doesn’t rise to the level of the Academy Awards. Let’s just say that, given the continued importance the industry confers to these prizes handed out by about 80 people (in the whole world!!) it’s a little hard to ignore them.

The show flowed nicely and first time presenter Ricky Gervais did a great job. I love his brand of humor and I’ll watch anything he’s in. He is so witty and funny it’s hysterical.

I’ll get right down to a few considerations about the winners and “losers.”

First off, Best Picture went to Avatar and I totally expected Up In the Air to prevail (and I wasn’t the only one, judging by Jason Reitman’s face … ), or maybe Inglorious Basterds, given the audience’s reaction in the room when the film was mentioned. Instead Cameron got to take home the biggest award of the night, and I can’t say it didn’t deserve it, especially after having just seen Up In the Air. The other two candidates never really had a chance, especially after Avatar opened with such a bang.

Cameron also won for Best Director, which is actually quite deserved, considering the amount of time and work that went into the making of Avatar. These two wins all but position the blue juggernaut as the true favorite to win those same Oscar categories in a few weeks.

The Hangover’s win in the Comedy/Musical category wasn’t a big surprise, and since I’ve heard only nice things about this movie, I’ve added it to my Netflix queue. I saw only 2 of the other 4 candidates, and just judging by the word of mouth, The Hangover deserved to win.

The acting categories had few surprises, if any. In the leading categories, Jeff Bridges was a heavy favorite for Drama, and Meryl Streep and Downey Jr. were clear choices for Comedy. On the other hand, I was quite stunned by Sandra Bullock’s win in the Drama category. I had read that Gabourey Sidibe was the biggest obstacle on Streep’s path to her 3^rd Oscar, but apparently Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire peaked too early and has now fizzled, while Bullock’s The Blind Side is still going strong and might be her only real chance ever at recognition from the Academy. Hopefully, the nomination will be enough of an honor and Streep will still win her more than deserved and grossly overdue Oscar for Julie and Julia.

Mo’nique’s and Waltz’s wins in the supporting categories were also not stunning. What always puzzled me, rather, is why would the Hollywood Foreign Press Association go to the trouble of wisely splitting the acting awards between Drama and Comedy, which allows the latter to actually get the recognition it deserves, while it’s always left in the dust at the Academy, and not split the supporting categories, as if it were impossible to find supporting players in both categories to award.

The Animation award went, deservedly, to Up, but I’m reading that Fantastic Mr. Fox’s stock is rapidly rising, so Up better watch its back for the Oscar race. Unless it gets a nomination for Best Picture, in which case it likely won’t win anything since I’m not sure it can be nominated in both categories.

Up also won for its beautiful score (by Michael Giacchino) while Up In the Air had to make do with the only win for Screenplay. Song and Foreign awards were completely unknown to me, while I enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s introduction and speech for his Cecil B. DeMille honorary award.

On to the TV awards. Drama: I can’t wait to start watching Mad Men, given all the love it receives from critics of all stripes, and frankly I would have had a tough time picking my favorite from the 3 series I watch that were nominated, Big Love, Dexter, and True Blood. On the Comedy side, Glee, unsurprisingly, prevailed over perennial favorite 30 Rock. I just hope that at some point Modern Family will get recognized because it really deserves it, while I can hardly understand the nomination for Entourage over far funnier comedies (The New Adventures of Old Christine comes to mind).

I’m super happy for Michael C. Hall’s win (Best Actor Drama) for Dexter because he does a hell of a job (and is super hot too, even with that ugly hat on his head!) and for Tony Collette’s for United States of Tara (Best Actress Comedy). The sheer amount of acting she does on that show justifies any award.

Alec Baldwin’s win for 30 Rock (Best Actor Comedy) also is warranted, since he’s always incredibly funny, while both supporting winners, John Lithgow for Dexter and Chloë Sevigny for Big Love, were my favorites and did a stupendous job the past seasons of their shows.

Finally, Grey Gardens, which won for Best Mini-Series or Made for TV movie, is now in my Netflix queue as well, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Overall a very enjoyable ceremony with few surprises, a couple nice speeches (Streep never disappoints) and many well deserved awards handed out.

From now on, it’s all about the Oscars.

2009 - The Year That Was

I know I’m terribly late for this end-of-the-year post, but I wanted to make sure all the movies posts were in to include them.

2009 was a year with highs and lows, as usual, but this year they both were very accentuated.

The high was finally getting to go on our long-in-the-works honeymoon as part of our first family trip to Italy.  The Italy visit went great.  The kids got to spend time where I grew up, visited with their grandparents, and finally met their 2 cousins.  Also, all my relatives embraced us with love, which made me proud of my extended family and shattered many of my own beliefs about their closed-mindedness.

The honeymoon was spent on a cruise (my first ever, and definitely not the last) in the Mediterranean.  We had a great time, got to spend a few days together without the kids, and saw many beautiful places in a short span of time.

The low of the year, unfortunately, was the loss of my father-in-law, Big Ray, who passed away at the end of August leaving a big hole in the lives of everyone.  He had been sick for a long time, so his passing was not unexpected, but painful nonetheless.  He was a good man.  Rest in peace.  You will be remembered.

Work went on as usual and I got recertified for OnBase without problems, which was a relief.  From now on, re-certifications should go pretty smoothly.  2009 also had ups and downs on my slow path towards the Green Card.  While my latest petition got audited and seemed like all was lost, in the end it was approved, and I’m now one big step closer to that much desired permit.

Ray’s adventure as an independent worker had its challenges, but is still ongoing, in spite of having had to take a full time job because of the tough economic times.  The kids keep growing at a fast pace and seem to flourish, which is always a relief.

One thing Ray and I realized is that 2009 was probably the last year the two of them believed in Santa Claus, and that by the end of the year they’ll have figured out (or they’ll have been told) that there’s no big guy dressed in red living at the North Pole, building toys for all the kids of the world.  Oh well, Christmas will still be fun, even without that long protected secret.

On the cinematic front, as predicted at the end of 2008, the roster, thanks primarily to Netflix, ended up being much richer, with a grand total of 60 movies watched!  Many were good, a few not so much.  Some were great and others stunk pretty bad.  Here’s a quick recap:

9
Kung Fu Panda
Sex and the City
Sicko
Slumdog Millionaire
Star Trek
Up

8
Amores Perros
Changeling
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The
Eastern Promises
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Gomorra
Hancock
In Bruges
Iron Man
Julie & Julia
Little Children
Milk
Omen, The
Outrage
Revolutionary Road
There Will Be Blood
Transamerica

7
101 Dalmatians
Anastasia
Babel
Balto
Déjà Vu
Doubt
Enchanted
Horton Hears a Who!
Hunchback of Notre Dame, The
I Am Legend
Incredible Hulk, The
Into the Wild
Kite Runner, The
Lakeview Terrace
Monster House
Prayers For Bobby
Shortbus
X Files: I Want to Believe, The

6
Dark City
Eating Out
Ghost Town
Monsters vs Aliens
Rendition
Shooter
Tropic Thunder

5
Brüno
Cloverfield
Early Frost, An
Happy Feet
Regular Guys
Robots
Time Traveler's Wife, The
Transformers
Under One Roof

4
Reservation Road

3
Terminator Salvation

2
Solaris

So no movie got the highest grade, but I can’t complain with all the 9s and 8s in that list.  Unfortunately, there were a few bad apples in the bunch, but overall I’d say it was a pretty good year.

The 5 Best Movies of 2009 were:

1. Changeling
2. Milk
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Transamerica
5. Up

And the Best Picture of 2009 was … by a nose … Slumdog Millionaire, which once more matches with the Best Picture Oscar winner of 2009.

2010, with a renewed subscription to Netflix and a promise I made to myself to start going to the movies more often, like I used to do up until a few years back, is poised to be even richer than 2009, and I already have 6 titles to blog about, so I better get moving…

So long 2009, hello 2010!!

Gomorra

A very insightful and believable look into the Naples Mafia.  Gomorra is filmed with a very realistic style, with no glamour à la Godfather, and the cast of unknowns helps in making this movie feel more like a documentary than a film.

Several stories either intertwine or run parallel to each other, but the underlying message of desperation and inevitability is recurring.  If you are part of the Gomorra, you can reap the financial benefits, but your life belongs to the boss that runs the clan you are a part of.  Your existence is inextricably connected to the needs of the family.

And if you’re not an insider, then you are just someone who needs to do his or her job, with their heads held low and their mouths kept shut.  If you have to pay, you pay, and if you have to give something up, you just do it without asking questions.

Furthermore, you have no power over the decisions that the boss might make about your destiny, no matter how long you served him or what you gave up for the Gomorra.  You can try to put up a wall around you, but sooner or later, you’ll have to bend.  Or you will break.

At times heartbreaking, it is most definitely worthy of all the accolades it collected among critics and award circles.

Grade: 8

Hancock

This was a comic book superhero that I had never heard of before and I wanted to watch it out of pure curiosity.  How true it is that you often enjoy something more when you expect less of it.  I thought Hancock was entertaining, funny, and original.

The twist involving Charlize Theron was a total surprise to me and from there the movie keeps going steadily towards a plausible ending, which is often quite an achievement for a superhero movie.

Will Smith, as usual, is well cast as the hero du jour, and plays well what is, fundamentally, a very human and imperfect man.  That’s probably what I liked most about Hancock.

After all, the main reason we like a superhero like Spider Man or Batman  is their vulnerability, their inner humanity that’s been augmented in some way, which allows them to perform acts they normally could not.  But they remain, at their core, human, and as such, imperfect.  Hancock is the ultimate tormented, vulnerable, and imperfect hero, one who has no clue why he even is who he is and does what he does.

This movie was a nice surprise.

Grade: 8

The Incredible Hulk

Ang Lee tried his skilled hand at this superhero in 2003 (his version was titled simply Hulk) and everyone considered it a failure.  Hulk made $132 million dollars domestically and almost a quarter of a billion worldwide, but the studio, salivating for box office tallies in the league of the Spider Man and Batman franchises, immediately scrapped plans for a sequel and set the character aside.

Five years later, Hulk’s helm was handed to Louis Leterrier, a director with a very short resume.  His effort, titled The Incredible Hulk, improved over Lee’s by less then $3 million domestically and less than $20 million worldwide, but it was still considered a big success.

I personally disagree with the bad rap earned by Hulk, a movie well acted, with an interesting love story, and decent visual effects.  Furthermore, any studio lucky enough to get a director as talented as Ang Lee to work on one of these often empty projects should count its blessings.

The new version benefits from Edward Norton’s acting skills and visual effects whose quality has exponentially advanced in 5 years, but the basic story is quite predictable and the newly introduced character of Emil Blonsky, played by Tim Roth, feels increasingly ludicrous as the movie rolls towards the inevitable face to face between him and Hulk.

Overall this isn’t a bad comic-book-based movie,  but I don’t think there has been much improvement over Lee’s version.

Grade: 7

Eating Out

I’ve thrown a bunch of gay-themed titles in my Netflix queue, and this one was among the first I wanted to see.  Fortunately, Eating Out, while not memorable, is funny and entertaining.  And full of hot guys.

The story isn’t terribly original and it certainly borrows heavily from the sexual fantasies of any average gay man who’s ever had a fling for a straight friend, but it holds its own.

By the end of the movie, you feel  satisfied and grateful that the campiness was tasteful and not overwhelming, that the acting was decent, and that you’re actually smiling.

You can’t say all those things of too many comedies out there nowadays.

This might actually be a good movie to watch even for straight guys who are open-minded and aren’t afraid to peer into what might go on into the minds of gay men.

Grade: 6

Solaris

A short while back, I found a list of what were, supposedly, the 10 best sci-fi movies ever, and naturally, I put those I hadn’t seen in my Netflix queue.  One of them, was 1972’s Solaris, remade unimpressively by Steven Soderbergh in 2002 with George Clooney in the starring role.

While I usually disparage the studios for constantly remaking past movies instead of creating original content (as if there were no good new ideas floating around), I have to say that lackluster as the remake was, it was light years better than the original.

Needless to say, I was incredibly disappointed and also incredulous.  I actually couldn’t believe how lame, boring, and tiring this pompous celluloid stinker was.  Tiring yes, because with a cardiac arrest inducing runtime of 2 hours and 45 minutes, it took me at least 4 hours to watch it since I kept falling asleep.  I have occasionally experienced falling asleep watching a movie, but this was way worse.  No matter how early in the evening and how rested I was, in the span of 10 minutes I was already in the thralls of a drug-like stupor, and staying awake took real effort.

You can only imagine my shock when I went to check what grade this crap had gotten on Rotten Tomatoes and I saw a big, fat 97!!  I couldn’t believe it.  97!!  One of the highest rated movies on the site and I couldn’t even watch it without constantly falling asleep because I found it boring and inept?!?!

I skimmed through some of the reviews and they all rave about how visionary Andrei Tarkovsky was and adjectives like brilliant, ravishingly beautiful, smart, and unique are lavished like candies on Halloween, and yet, the only reviewer I found myself agreeing with was the one that wrote: “Tarkovsky's camera lingers oppressively on things that mean absolutely nothing.”

A couple examples to this point:

1. The main character is talking about the meaning of life and such, and the camera starts closing in on him, more and more, until the screen is filled only by his ear.  HIS EAR!!  Why?  No reason.  Or at least none that I could fathom.
2. The main character has made a decision on what to do and is talking to another crew member; the conversation is over but the camera lingers on, to the point where it starts to feel awkward.  Then, it slowly pans over to a small plant on a shelf, closing in until it, again, has filled the screen.  Nothing the characters said or that is coming up in the following scene has anything to do with that plant or plants in general.  Nothing.

I expected so much and was so disappointed by this movie, it ended up being the worst I saw in 2009.  It had a potentially good amount of things to say, but they all got lost among countless pretentious camera movements, a glacial pace that was unnerving, a screenplay that could have been whittled down to a bare 20 minutes, and acting so theatrical is was jolting and distressing.

Skip it.

Grade: 2

The Omen

I finally saw this very old and very famous horror movie and wasn’t disappointed.

As everyone probably knows, it’s the story of a couple whose son might not be the sweet little boy everyone imagines him to be.  Little by little, his father begins to understand that something is not quite right, prodded by a priest who’s trying his best to warn him of the impeding disaster looming over his family.

Gregory Peck in the role of the father is very good, as is Lee Remick as his wife.  The kid is played very eerily by Harvey Stephens, whose only other acting credit in a movie is for a cameo in the recent remake of The Omen itself.

This is a very good movie that reminds you that there was a time when producers and studios were more concerned for the movie in question than for what it could spawn in terms of sequels,  prequels, or merchandising.  In fact, I was quite shocked and incredulous when the end of the movie set up what we nowadays would immediately think of as the sequel (coming soon to a theater near you) even though that never happened.  It was simply the very effective and appropriate end for that film.

How revolutionarily refreshing!!

Grade: 8

Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton, by Philip Kerr

This was a very interesting read.  It was written in an older British English that was a pleasure to listen to, especially since the reader, Byron Jennings, did a very good job.

The story is a murder mystery that’s being investigate by Sir Isaac Newton and his trustworthy right-hand man.  Intertwined to their investigation are observations by the great thinker that are just as intriguing as the mystery itself.

All in all this was a very enjoyable book that I felt quite passionate reading.

Grade: 8

Amores Perros

This is the movie that put Alejandro González Iñárritu on the map.  Just like in his two following (and more famous) movies, 21 Grams and Babel, he weaves together a number of different stories that have some common thread.

The location is Mexico and Iñárritu’s cinéma vérité directing style, with its gritty tones and unpolished looks, affords the viewer a total immersion into a world so cold, tough, and unwelcoming, you end up feeling nothing but sympathy for every protagonist’s ups and downs.

Every actor does an excellent job and by the end of the movie you feel drained from witnessing all the different ways in which one’s life can take a whole new and unexpected turn, stemming from events over which one has no input or power.

This is one of those movies that film lovers should watch.

Grade: 8