Countdown for the Oscars
So it's that time of year when you prepare to get yet another glimpse of perfect and unreachable torsos, complain about the US film industry but watch their movies just the same, select a couple of favourites, make your predictions, and get ready to stay awake until 4 a.m. just to see if you were right.
I don't usually get to the Oscars in my best shape, being acquainted with just three or four nominees at best. On this occasion I'm going to try something different. My intention is to watch ALL NOMINEES I can get ahold of before that special night. Internet being my friend, I think I'll be having a feast. It didn't really start as a plan, but having watched five of the ten movies in the Best Picture category, I decided to go all the way down to ten and beyond. Including documentaries.
Also, just for fun, I'll be posting my impression on the films as I go through them XD Beware, I have a complicated taste with traces of things that never see the light, so my mini-reviews can't be taken too seriously. The best thing to do is always to go to the cinema (come on, at least once) and see for oneself.
These are the movies I have watched so far for Oscar's sake. Five of them are nominees for the Best Picture award and I list them in relative positions until they can be arranged in my own ultimate One to Ten sequence. As I have mentioned before, this year there are TEN nominees in this category.
(1 = Best, 10 = Worst)
1: DISTRICT 9
Overall Rating: 10 / 10
Originality: 10 / 10
Emotional Impact: 10 / 10
Visual Experience: 8 / 10
Re-watch Potential: 6 / 10
Highlights: Truly original, enrapturing. This is a wonderful film made of pure gore and legend. Just not for everybody. And don’t take your kids to it, makes Tarantino look like Disney.
This movie goes right straight up to my top-ten-most-electrifying films. It doesn't matter whether you're in the cinema with your eyes on the big screen, surrounded by darkness, or at home with a humble laptop by your side and birds singing outside. In minutes you'll be taken someplace very, very different.
It’s tough to watch, but you can’t stop watching. And feeling. And thinking OMG YES.
4: UP
Overall Rating: 8 / 10
Originality: 10 / 10
Emotional Impact: 8 / 10
Visual Experience: 7 / 10
Re-watch Potential: 5 / 10
Highlights: The characters. It’s 90% proudly character based. The characters eat you. MY NAME IS DOG.
The computer-animated-3D film I have most enjoyed. I loved the script, it’s so tender. You can only guess how much effort and emotion was put into each detail. Also, anti-cliché, can you believe it?? Pure original fluff.
Is it fair though for the movie to be listed simultaneously as nominee in the Best Picture and Animated Feature Film categories?
5: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
Overall Rating: 7 / 10
Originality: 4 / 10
Emotional Impact: 7 / 10
Visual Experience: 6 / 10
Re-watch Potential: 10 / 10
Highlights: Awesome villain.
Tarantino’s gone soft on this one. Not a bad movie, definitely not his best. Perfect appetizer for people who’re new to his style. The whole Nazis vs. Jews theme is getting old, though.
In my opinion this could've been a masterpiece if only some scenes had been cut short five or ten minutes. Dialogues and scenes get occasionally tedious, occasionally brilliant. The cute blond Jew could’ve been cut short as well. I would so have preferred a dark, pale, unattractive Jewish bitch. The blondie was too cute to move me.
Worth going to the cinema for, some scenes are ahhhhh fantastic. Also, I hope the actor who plays the Super Nazi Villain snatches an Oscar because man he’s earned it.
There’s definitely re-watch potential for this, it’s probably one of those movies you need to grow an acquired taste for in order to enjoy properly. Perhaps my Overall Rating will climb up a little next time.
8: AVATAR
Overall Rating: 5 / 10
Originality: 4 / 10
Emotional Impact: 4 / 10
Visual Experience: 8 / 10
Re-watch Potential: 2 / 10
Highlights: Sigourney Weaver!!! ♥
The most overrated film of the year. Annoyingly similar to your favourite Nature-Loving-Indians vs. Bad-White-Conquerors movie. What is different? The indians are blue, particularly tall and with tails. Aside from that they have the regular naïveté, romanticism and arrows which triumph over evil.
Seriously, what was the point of spending 400 million dollars to shoot Pocahontas In Space? Nothing can beat Pocahontas, sorry James.
10: UP IN THE AIR
Overall Rating: 4 / 10
Originality: 3 / 10
Emotional Impact: 3 / 10
Visual Experience: 1 / 10
Re-watch Potential: Are you kidding?
Highlights: Ryan Bingham (George Clooney)’s job is original and fun to watch.
Quite the cliché disguised under a misleading beginning. The first thirty minutes are original and fun, I give you that. Then the movie progresses towards a cheap drama seen a thousand times before and a pretentious and failed attempt to unsettle the audience with a dilemma only middle-age simpletons would find moving: to marry or not to marry?
Characters are cartoonish, dialogues try too hard to be witty. Total waste of money.
That's it for now, there'll be more soon XD