MADness—the Blog

This is the last day of February, which gives my son great joy.  He got to mark off another day on the calendar and turn the page to the next month.  March has a cool picture of a Mustang.  He doesn’t know what a Mustang is—he’s four—but he’s excited about it anyway.

Expect the excitement to pick up in Hollywood this week.  Next Sunday we’ll know who the winners are, finally.  Which means a week of hype and predictions and office pools and rumors and gossip and loss of all perspective about what it all means.  I’ll try to be careful what I watch and what I read.  It’s the silly season.

Awards, in a way, are silly to begin with, and awards for making movies are even sillier.  I understand the need for champions in sports; there you have competitors whose sole focus is to win.  Movies operate in a very different realm.  A movie isn’t made to beat anything else but to engage and entertain its audience.  Yes, some movies do that well and some don’t, and I appreciate the need to recognize excellence.  Some effort goes into making the Oscars about quality, but there are so many other factors at play, and the nature of determining what’s best is so inexact anyway, that the awards are often, if not usually, about something else. 

The Oscars started as a p.r. campaign for the industry, and it’s been a very effective one at that.  The Oscars are the best promotion that the film industry has ever dreamed up.  The Oscars get people’s attention, even people who don’t go to movies often.  I’m glad for that.  I’m glad the movie business gets three or four hours of prime-time TV to promote itself.  Even when the show stinks, it’s still a great advertisement for the movies. 

I wish somehow the awards didn’t mean so much.  But since they do, I wish they’d pick better winners.  I’d like to say I take it all with a sense of detachment, that I don’t take it too seriously.  I should know better.  How often have I been disappointed.  But this is what happens.  I start reading stuff.  I start thinking:  this year they’re gonna get it right.  This year—yes, this year, at last!—they’re going to do the right thing and agree with me! 

You’ll have to excuse me.  If I didn’t get excited, it wouldn’t be the Oscars.

I had seen this item in the L.A. Times this week but didn’t get a chance to look at collector Ira Resnick’s site till tonight.  If you’re a fan of art from classic Hollywood (and how could you not be), it’s certainly worth a look.  The book is Starstruck. I think I know what I want for my birthday.

Dan Callahan at Slant, on Carole Lombard:

At her breathless, frazzled, sexy best, Carole Lombard defined the screwball comedy genre of the 1930s. A hot blonde made for clinging white satin, she was most distinctive when encouraged to be slaphappy and out of control, working up a full head of steam and building comic sequences to crescendos of hysteria. Her basic good nature always shone through her performances, so that even when her work was uneven (which was often), she always managed to get a viewer rooting for her. With her high forehead and penetrating blue eyes, Lombard was obviously intelligent, yet she had a talent for playing none-too-bright, childish women who lived exclusively and triumphantly in their own world.

How do you parody Hollywood when you make a small joke and it’s true in 24 hours?

Me, 2/14:

Now that Valentine’s Day is a certified winner, I would suppose that the smart folks in Hollywood will soon be coming out with other holiday-themed movies.

EW, 2/15:

The romantic comedy’s success practically greenlights Warner Bros. next attempt at a holiday-themed ensemble comedy, New Year’s Eve, which they are contemplating putting into production immediately.

Still waiting for word on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

 

The Hurt Locker won six BAFTA Awards last night in London.  The acting honors, no surprise (and with no argument), went to two Brits.  Here is a rundown of the major prizes:

Best Film — The Hurt Locker
Best Director — Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Outstanding British Film — Fish Tank, Kees Kasander, Nick Laws, Andrea Arnold
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer — Duncan Jones (Director), Moon
Best Leading Actor — Colin Firth, A Single Man
Best Leading Actress — Carey Mulligan, An Education
Best Supporting Actor — Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Best Supporting Actress — Mo’Nique, Precious
Best Original Screenplay — The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal
Best Adapted Screenplay — Up in the Air, Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner
Best Animated Film — Up, Pete Docter
Best Film Not in English Language — A Prophet, Pascal Caucheteux, Marco Cherqui, Alix Raynaud, Jacques Audiard

Avatar won two awards, for production design and visual effects.

Notable line of the night was from Colin Firth:

Firth drew laughs by thanking “the fridge guy” in his acceptance speech, that being the refrigerator repairman who knocked on his door just as he was about to shoot an e-mail to director Tom Ford declining the role of a bereaved gay professor.

“All I know is, don’t ever press ‘send’ until you have had your fridge repaired,” Firth said.

 A recap of awards handed out earlier in the season is here.

Congratulations to the champs at this year’s ACPT.

A – Dan Feyer
B – Joon Pahk
C – Louis Lana

Way to go, Dan!  For the past five years, Tyler Hinman owned the tournament.  He was the youngest champ ever, and his five wins in a row were unprecedented.  If anyone was going to knock Tyler from his perch, no surprise it’s Dan Feyer, who gave Tyler and everyone a run for the money last year.  This year Dan made it to the top — and if I may steal a title — he is the true King of CrossWorld. 

Enjoy your reign, Dan.  (Tyler’s still young.)

The modern Olympics and the movies both got their start within a few months of each other, and it’s no surprise that the drama of the games has inspired more than a few stories for the big screen.  My favorite Olympics-related movie is Robert Towne’s Without Limits (1998), the story of track star Steve Prefontaine; Billy Crudup and Donald Sutherland are excellent.  But since it’s wintertime (you wouldn’t know it on a sunny day in Southern California, but that’s what they tell me on the TV), here are three films about some of the ”cooler” sports—for those of you who just can’t get enough.

The Cutting Edge (1992)
Olympic Games:  Albertville, 1992
Fact or Fiction:  Fiction
Athletes:  U.S. figure skaters
Story:  D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly as two Olympians who meet in ’88, then team up for a run at the ’92 games

 

Cool Runnings (1993)
Olympic Games:  Calgary, 1988
Fact or Fiction:  Based (loosely) on a true story
Athletes:  The bobsled team from Jamaica, of all places
Story:  An against-all-odds bunch who show you don’t need to win the gold to be heroes

 

Miracle (2004)
Olympic Games:  Lake Placid, 1980
Fact or Fiction:  Fact (yes, a true miracle)
Athletes:  U.S. men’s hockey team
Story:  “The greatest upset in the history of sports“  (you wouldn’t believe it if it weren’t true)

More than 50 million people do them weekly.  About 700 meet each February.  This is their weekend.  The American Crossword Puzzle Tournament happens this Saturday and Sunday in Brooklyn.

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Wordplay (2006)
Patrick Creadon, director
Trailer

A thoroughly enjoyable documentary, and the next best thing to being there.

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Wordplay (2006)
The 1996 Election Day Puzzle
Jeremiah Farrell, constructor; Will Shortz, editor

Bill Clinton and Bob Dole on the most famous crossword puzzle in history.

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2009 ACPT Finals — “A” Division

I was there for this one.  It was an incredibly thrilling finish to the tournament (ACPT finals, for whatever reason, are typically nail-biters).  When four-time champ Tyler Hinman finally fills in the last few letters and turns from the board, he thinks he’s finished in third.  He’s the last in the room to know.

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The question this year:  can Tyler do it again?  Good luck to him and all the competitors.

This front-page article in today’s L.A. Daily News says, “The future is finally here.”  Sounds like somebody’s watch is running fast.  I think the future is still in the future.  But this is not about time, or time travel.  It’s about video-on-demand, or how we can watch movies and be more lazy than ever before.  Never again will we need to go to the theater, or the video store, or even the mailbox.  Welcome to the world of VOD.

Actually, I like going to to the theater.  Though, I admit, it’s not always convenient, especially with a four-year-old at home.  So I’m all for the idea.  Sort of.  Day-and-date (VOD and theatrical opening the same day) is likely to be only for independent films for some time, not the big Hollywood releases, and I don’t blame the studios.  They don’t want to cannibalize their own business.  And I don’t want the theaters to go out of business, either.  As I said, I like going to them.

Here’s your Oscar trivia question of the day:  What’s the first day-and-date release to be nominated for an Academy Award?

Your Oscar trivia answer here.

Which is no surprise coming from the Coens.  It’s a movie that mocks the Job-like Larry Gopnick, the hapless physics professor whose wife is leaving him, whose kids can’t stand him, whose fate is an endless series of one misery after another.  What does it all mean?  The film is not about a man’s search for meaning, or search for faith, as I’ve read in some places.  It’s about how much crap can one man take, and how much crap can an audience take, before they cry “bullshit.”  Larry’s problem is neither God nor the devil.  His problem is the Coens.  He’s a character in a Coen Brothers’ movie and that fact is what seals his fate.  He’s a poor schlemiel deserving and receiving no pity from the cold-hearted filmmakers who seem to be getting payback for something, though who knows what and who cares.

The Coens are brilliant filmmakers.  Thoughout their many films, the writing is crisp, the direction is flawless, the performances spot on.  The problem with nearly all their movies is the evident contempt the Coens have for their characters, the audience, and the critics—who seem, for the most part, to be utterly clueless that the joke is on them.

I know this is the first place most people check for the all-important box office results, so let’s get to it.  Here are the “winners” of the weekend:

1. Valentine’s Day — $52,410,000
2. Percy Jackson & The Olympians:  The Lightning Thief — $31,100,000
3. The Wolfman — $30,627,000

I still don’t understand why anyone except the people who make a movie should care how much money the movie makes at the box office, but that’s where we are.  Somewhere along the way the Sunday news shows got it in their heads that the weekend box office is IMPORTANT NEWS, and every week we get to know who “won the weekend” even before the weekend is over.  Not to mention, who lost.  Winners and losers.  That’s what it comes down to.  (Hey, where’s Avatar this weekend?  Yesterday’s news:  Loser!) 

That said, I am heartened to know that a movie called Valentine’s Day is the No. 1 movie on Valentine’s Day weekend.  What would it say about us if a horror remake like The Wolfman beat it out?  I can’t say which is a better movie—I haven’t seen them—but I’ve yet to read a good review of either.*  That doesn’t matter, though.  Movie reviews will never be IMPORTANT NEWS.

Now that Valentine’s Day is a certified winner, I would suppose that the smart folks in Hollywood will soon be coming out with other holiday-themed movies.  If they hurry, they could open St. Patrick’s Day next month, and Memorial Day should be just around the corner.  In fact, few holidays have a well-known movie title commemorating the occasion.  There’s Independence Day, of course.  The best of the lot is Groundhog Day (which opened, coincidentally, 17 years ago this weekend, exactly two years after that heart-warming lovefest called The Silence of the Lambs).  Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Boxing Day, and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day are titles still waiting to be taken.  (If Hollywood ever runs out of holiday titles, don’t worry.  Those geniuses at Hallmark will come up with a new one.)

* I rather liked this part of Roger Ebert’s review:  “Valentine’s Day” is being marketed as a Date Movie.  I think it’s more of a First-Date Movie.  If your date likes it, do not date that person again.