Movies
The Oscars are quickly approaching. This year I saw three of the five films nominated for best picture.
I really wanted to see Milk but it was only on at one theatre near me and at that theatre it was only there for two weeks so I never got a chance to see it. Which sucks since it's suppose to be really good and Sean Penn is the current front runner to win Best Actor.
The Reader I didn't care that I missed since it got poor reviews. Personally I feel something like Doubt, the Wrestler, the Dark Knight or Wall-E should have been nominated instead. Every year it seems like there's one movie that makes me wonder what the academy was thinking when they did the nominations (last year it was Juno).
Of the three that I've seen I decided to give my opinion on them in case anyone wanted to get in some last minute viewings before Sunday. Below the cut there are some spoilers for Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire but not Frost/Nixon.
3. Frost/Nixon - Acting wise, it's really good. I'd have no problems if Frank Langella (who plays Nixon) wins for Best Actor. And I thought there were some really interesting moments between Nixon and Frost since they basically had a duel going on in the form of an interview.
But I also found some parts to be a bit slow. I think part of my problem is that I know next to nothing on Nixon/Watergate; any US history course I took ended with JFK and I never cared enough to do my own research on the subject. I think someone who was more interested in the Nixon period would have liked it better.
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - This movie only barely loses out as my favourite. I'm not a Brad Pitt fan at all and I thought he did a really great job. It really wouldn't surprise me if he won for Best Actor (even though Sean Penn is the favourite).
I found it to be a really sad movie though. A big theme in the movie is death, it starts off with a woman on her death bed, most of the movie takes place a nursing home where people die and a lot of characters end up dying throughout the story. I'll admit that all the death bothered me but I think that's mostly because I saw it about 1 1/2 weeks after losing my grandmother. So you might want to avoid it if you just had a death in the family.
The other big thing in the movie is the romance between the two lead characters. At first I found the relationship a bit creepy since although they're the same age, they meet when she's around 7 and he still looks like an old man. But as the movie went along, I really started to love it and that's because 1)they spend a lot of years apart where they don't even see each other at all and 2)even when she's an adult, he refuses her until she's older. I really like the fact that they were able to fall in love with other people and experience other relationships before finding each other because, when they finally got together, it made everything so much more special.
1. Slumdog Millionaire - I love this movie. I want it to win. And I'm probably going to see that stupid Avatar movie now that Dev Patel was cast as Zuko (OUTRAGE! HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOKKA!) since I want to squish him and bake him some cookies.
When I first heard about the movie and even when I actually went to see it, I had my doubts but it really turned out to be not what I expected. I didn't realize that the majority of the film would be told in flashbacks so show how the main character knew the answers to 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'. It really sucked me in and I got to the point where I probably would have cried if there wasn't a happy ending because I just wanted the characters to be happy and to finally get a break in life. And although there's a fair amount of violence in the movie, I found that overall it was a pretty uplifting movie.
The only thing I really have to complain about is the subtitling. For the early flashbacks, the movie is subtitled because the children actors didn't know English (it switches to entirely to English once the flashbacks hit 'the teen years'). Instead of normal subtitles at the bottom of the screen, the subtitles jump around and usually appear next to the actor who is speaking. It's really since your focus has to keep jumping around, following the subtitles. Eventually I did get use to it but I could understand if other people had problems the entire time.
I really wanted to see Milk but it was only on at one theatre near me and at that theatre it was only there for two weeks so I never got a chance to see it. Which sucks since it's suppose to be really good and Sean Penn is the current front runner to win Best Actor.
The Reader I didn't care that I missed since it got poor reviews. Personally I feel something like Doubt, the Wrestler, the Dark Knight or Wall-E should have been nominated instead. Every year it seems like there's one movie that makes me wonder what the academy was thinking when they did the nominations (last year it was Juno).
Of the three that I've seen I decided to give my opinion on them in case anyone wanted to get in some last minute viewings before Sunday. Below the cut there are some spoilers for Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire but not Frost/Nixon.
3. Frost/Nixon - Acting wise, it's really good. I'd have no problems if Frank Langella (who plays Nixon) wins for Best Actor. And I thought there were some really interesting moments between Nixon and Frost since they basically had a duel going on in the form of an interview.
But I also found some parts to be a bit slow. I think part of my problem is that I know next to nothing on Nixon/Watergate; any US history course I took ended with JFK and I never cared enough to do my own research on the subject. I think someone who was more interested in the Nixon period would have liked it better.
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - This movie only barely loses out as my favourite. I'm not a Brad Pitt fan at all and I thought he did a really great job. It really wouldn't surprise me if he won for Best Actor (even though Sean Penn is the favourite).
I found it to be a really sad movie though. A big theme in the movie is death, it starts off with a woman on her death bed, most of the movie takes place a nursing home where people die and a lot of characters end up dying throughout the story. I'll admit that all the death bothered me but I think that's mostly because I saw it about 1 1/2 weeks after losing my grandmother. So you might want to avoid it if you just had a death in the family.
The other big thing in the movie is the romance between the two lead characters. At first I found the relationship a bit creepy since although they're the same age, they meet when she's around 7 and he still looks like an old man. But as the movie went along, I really started to love it and that's because 1)they spend a lot of years apart where they don't even see each other at all and 2)even when she's an adult, he refuses her until she's older. I really like the fact that they were able to fall in love with other people and experience other relationships before finding each other because, when they finally got together, it made everything so much more special.
1. Slumdog Millionaire - I love this movie. I want it to win. And I'm probably going to see that stupid Avatar movie now that Dev Patel was cast as Zuko (OUTRAGE! HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SOKKA!) since I want to squish him and bake him some cookies.
When I first heard about the movie and even when I actually went to see it, I had my doubts but it really turned out to be not what I expected. I didn't realize that the majority of the film would be told in flashbacks so show how the main character knew the answers to 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'. It really sucked me in and I got to the point where I probably would have cried if there wasn't a happy ending because I just wanted the characters to be happy and to finally get a break in life. And although there's a fair amount of violence in the movie, I found that overall it was a pretty uplifting movie.
The only thing I really have to complain about is the subtitling. For the early flashbacks, the movie is subtitled because the children actors didn't know English (it switches to entirely to English once the flashbacks hit 'the teen years'). Instead of normal subtitles at the bottom of the screen, the subtitles jump around and usually appear next to the actor who is speaking. It's really since your focus has to keep jumping around, following the subtitles. Eventually I did get use to it but I could understand if other people had problems the entire time.