this is a movie post.

[miss_universe93]

You guys! I haven't updated in 6 days! I haven't been online in 4 days! I am seriously tripping out. Uni started this week, which is the reason for my absence - it takes me an hour each way to get there and I'm there four days a week (Tuesdays off), so I've just been hella busy. Which sucks because I have been planning both these recaps for days now and they never go down on paper as good as when they're in my head. oh well. Here they are before I go to bed, and I will have a longer update on the weekend!

Oh, before I do, I'd like to welcome girled to the flist :D Woo, more new people!


Oscars!

• Firstly, I would just like to inform everyone who lives elsewhere how sucky the timing of the Oscars is, and by timing, I mean the time it airs. The Oscars are Sunday night for 'Mericans, which translates to 12 midday Monday for us. One of our free to air channels showed the whole thing live from 12, which was when I was in my first ever uni lecture. Thankfully they re-aired it at 9.30 that night - but it wasn't the full Oscars, it was a highly edited version. It was literally just categories in which an Australian was nominated: art direction, costumes, visual effects, and animated short, plus the acting awards, director and best picture. I was really hanging out for the screenplays (as I do every year) but we didn't get to see them. (Though Milk for original and Slumdog for adapted didn't really surprise me when I read it in the paper the next day).
  
• I am very proud of myself that I managed to see Benjamin Button, Doubt, Changeling and The Reader pre-ceremony, but pissed that three of them didn't win anything lol.
  
• So, Hugh hosting. The musical number at the start was like the best thing in history LMAO. ("The Reader...I didn't see the Reader...I even went to the theatre, but there was a liiiine!")
  But you could definitely tell that they lowered the budget for the whole event. He was literally sitting in people's laps; he was so close to the audience. It's like the producers invited too many people and had to throw in a couple extra rows of chairs. But anyway, the song at the start was brilliant. Pizza box millionaire! Soap box Wolverine! Anne Nixon Hathaway!
  
• I also particularly liked the fact that they showcased films of last year that never had a chance of winning an Oscar. That Pineapple Express redux was hilarious ("There's no film crew." "Yeah there is! That's the cinematographer from Titanic!" LMAO).
  
• I should talk about the Supporting winners, yeah? I'd just like to throw out there that I don't think last year's lack of ratings had anything to do with the ceremony, more the fact that the winners were predictable. All four of last year's actor winners had grabbed the same gongs at the Globes and similar, so it was nice this year to have an WTF moment when Penelope Cruz won. I would have put money on Viola Davis if I had any.
  
• We all knew Heath was going to win and he won and he should have won regardless of life status. He really should have won in 2005, but I love me some Phil Seymour so I won't shame his good fellow nominated name. Also, HE WORE A BEANIE LOL. I almost wanted him to beat Heathus just to hear his speech. I mean, I know his Best Actor acceptance in 2005 was pretty eloquent, but he wasn't wearing a beanie then.
  
• Speaking of supporting actors missing in action, I have a query. WHERE WAS JAVIER? I know DDL didn't show up either, but according to my mum he's an awards show hater whereas Javier has shown no signs of that, plus he's dating Penelope Cruz and he starred with her in Vicky Cristina, so it really made no sense for him to be a no-show. Weird.
  
• Sidebar, the presenting of the awards this year was weird. The whole spiel each previous winner had to do about the nominee felt really pretentious and presumptuous, though it was amusing to hear them dance around Marisa Tomei playing a stripper and Robert Downey Jr playing a moron. I miss the Oscar clips though.
  
• It was really awesome when Whoopi Goldberg and Cuba Gooding Jr went off script and were like WTF IS THIS MAN, YOU'RE STEALING MY THUNDER!
  
• Actual acting awards: I saw The Reader on Sunday night and it was really incredible - second best film of this Oscar season to Milk in my humble opinion. Kate really did deserve all the accolades she got. And she's so humble about it too, which I love. I'm not really a huge fan of hers because every once in a while she undermines her talent by making bad film choices (which is just my opinion, really) but when the stars line up for her she can be amazing. I hope she thanked the German kid, though.
  
• I am so happy Sean Penn won because Milk is the most incredible film I have seen in a long time and I love him. I will go on more about this when I put my thoughts up about Milk. "You commie homo-loving sons of guns!"
  
• The one thing I love about the Oscars is that they have to find ways to boil the films up for Best Picture into a couple of lines or 30 seconds worth of shots that encompass it, and they did that brilliantly this year. The Best Picture montage with all those other winners interspersed was beautiful and it made all five films seem amazing. (Well, except Benjamin Button, but I'm biased because I really didn't like Benjamin Button). In particular Frost/Nixon looked really amazing in there ("Because when the President does it, it isn't illegal." "...I'm sorry?" ooh!) , and it made me want to see Slumdog slightly more ("How much can a slumdog possibly know?"), though not enough to make me actually go see it. Though I'm beginning to feel like the entire purpose for the final scene of The Reader was so they had that "when I was 15 years old I had an affair" soundbite for this kind of purpose.
  
• Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's kind of a big deal for a film to win Best Director and Best Picture when none of it's actors had been nominated. Am I confusing this with Best Directors whose movies weren't nominated? I'll tell you what I am confused about - how can a movie be the best picture of the year when, according to the Academy, it's actors weren't up to par with Nun Meryl Streep and an Australian-American-African-American Robert Downey Jr?
  
• How do people get invites to this thing?! I was wondering during the pre-show why Zefron and Hudgens were on the carpet, but that made sense when they performed in the musical musical (and her voice didn't even sound as squeaky as usual). But when Mickey Rourke was hearing his gratuitous scripted nomination, R Pattz was sitting behind him to the left, and behind him to the right was Tina Fey. And then they cut to a shot of Seal and Heidi Klum clapping. Seal and Heidi Klum. Seal. And Heidi. Klum.
  
• If I were to do a picspam of random actors from these Oscar movies who haven't been recognized for their awesome performances, who would look at it? I'm talking, like, Emile Hirsch or Diego Luna in Milk and Mr Burn Notice from Changeling and the German kid/young Ralph Fiennes from The Reader, all of whom were amazing and none of whom got any recognition at all. I'm particularly invested in Mr Burn Notice and his faux-Irish accent!
  
• I think my Mum's is now in love with Mickey Rourke. I don't know whether to be scared or to just embrace my future John Paul Gaultier-clad stepfather.

MILK!

• My two contentions when it comes to this movie are:
  - a) It's amazing and everyone should see it,
  - b) It's beautifully done and sensitively done and I was really sad that this was yet another film focusing on gay relationships where one half of the relationship ends up dead, not once but twice, and even sadder that yet again that's the true ending of a true story.
  
• I LOVED that this film used actual archive footage of the same stuff we saw acted out. I think the issue with this film being released here is that as non-Americans most of us have never heard of Harvey Milk and so the archive footage really works to hammer it into your head that all of this happened. And speaking of that, people in the theater literally gasped when he was shot, probably because they had no idea Harvey Milk died.
  
• I love gay relationships and age gap relationships so suffice to say I was rooting for Harvey/Scott from the second they met. They are just absolutely perfect. Hell, they're still perfect even if they are apart for most of the film's second half. I think it's beautiful that this film really makes you root for them much like all the film's characters are rooting for their cause. Their relationship was shown really simply too - you know Harvey loved him when he took those pictures of him on the floor with their dog, when he made him dinner, when Scott kicks out all the workers and makes him dinner later on. It's all done really simply and it's so lovely. Though I bet Sean Penn and James Franco probably had some long conversations about boundaries and crap, since they're so up close and personal throughout.
  
• Diego Luna is awesome in this. You never really know whether Jack is crazily endearing or just endearingly crazy, and I feel like he represents a lot of the same people Harvey was trying to save. The whole six o'clock/six-fifteen business was heartbreaking.
  
• On that note, I really didn't think Josh Brolin's performance was anything special and the nom really should have gone to Diego or someone else.
  
• You know what, James Franco ain't getting his props neither. You go, James Franco! Just stop doing films like Nights In Rodanthe, would you? Yes, even if you were uncredited.
  
• Best quote in this: You're going to meet so many men, the sexiest, funniest, brightest men. You’re gonna meet so many of them, fall in love with so many of them, and you won’t know until the end of your life which ones were your greatest lovers and which ones were your greatest friends.
  
• My mum said as we were walking out of the cinema that what makes Sean Penn fantastic is that he's a wonderful character actor, which is completely true. Even in the crowded scenes of the film or when the camera wasn't directly on him, he was still Harvey, and he played Harvey from his fingertips to his toes. Even the way he picked up a glass or put down a phone had a certain mannerism to it that wasn't Sean Penn. It's amazing that he can do that so well, but that's what makes him such a great actor.
  
• I'm really happy Sean Penn got Emile Hirsch back for this film. Sean handpicked Emile for Into The Wild (which he directed) and I love that they get to play mentor/newbie in this film - it seems so appropriate. Emile Hirsch is really good in this too. He plays his character really subtly and you can tell he's gay before he even says anything, just from the way he moves his hand when he talks to Harvey for the first time on the street. It really is adorable. And Cleve is awesome anyway - there's one scene when Dan White (Josh Brolin) walks out of the room and everyone is talking about what his motives are and Cleve just goes "Is it me or is he cute?" LOL. And Emile gets the one and only blow job scene!
  
• The whole thing of whether or not Dan White was gay is interesting to me. I get that they needed to give the audience a motive for the killings and that's a classic one, the closeted gay killer who thrives on homophobia in order to suppress himself. What I can't understand, though, is in real life Dan White only got booked for manslaughter and was released within five years. Ugh. It's probably a good thing that he killed himself a few years later.
  
• You know what, you guys, don't go on a Wikipedia trail of this movie after seeing it because it's just unbelievably sad, the whole story. On the real life Scott's page: After being discharged from the United States Navy, Milk spent many hours taking pictures. Scott was his favorite model; sometimes Milk spent entire rolls of film just taking pictures of Scott. *cries*
  
• Anyway, beautiful film, see it, buy it on DVD, and join me in waiting for some movies focusing on homosexuality that don't leave you feeling super depressed because everyone dies!