Slim Pickings
From People magazine: Cher’s Oscar ensembles
Don’t you think the Oscar lineup this year is a little thin? Not that we expect the Academy to get it, but they could at least try. Among the Best Picture nominees, there’s nothing to love with a passion, and nothing to hate with a passion. Benjamin Button is not worth getting worked up over: it’s an artily-photographed meditation on Botox. Slumdog Millionaire is very enjoyable, love the colors, but Best Picture? A Mumbai slum kid who joins Who Wants To Be A Millionaire—feh. Wowowee, there’s a subject ready for the big screen: a game show with a body count, and it would be true-to-life!
Where is the overweening ambition of today’s filmmakers? Has everyone gotten kind and gentle all of a sudden, or are they just scared?
Again, I repeat my plea to the Academy to force the nominees and guests to choose their own outfits and style themselves for awards night. The broadcasts of the last decade have been too proper, the movie stars styled to within an inch of their lives; is it any wonder the TV ratings have plunged? Now more than ever, we need our entertainment. Let’s have some Cher-ness and bring on the dead geese with a high-kicking opening musical number by Hugh Jackman and Baz Luhrmann. Eek, I forgot to watch Australia. I hope it’s still on. If it’s bad, I hope it’s baaad.
David Denby on the nominees.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 4th, 2009 at 09:18
it’s bad, actually, but hugh jackman is… mmmm…
February 4th, 2009 at 12:24
David Denby with New York Times’ A.O. Scott on their thoughts on the Oscar nominees 2009.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10020
February 4th, 2009 at 13:26
Doubt was really good. Why they snubbed The Dark Knight for best pic is just so annoying.
February 4th, 2009 at 19:53
vicky cristina barcelona should’ve been on that list. far from woody allen’s best films but way way better than all the five nominated
February 4th, 2009 at 22:19
And we’ve not even yet talked about The Wrestler.
February 4th, 2009 at 22:48
Agree with you except for Slumdog. I thought it kicked major butt. A brilliant idea of a story set against the blighted shitscape of Mumbai. And there is no pus-filled boil exploding on you.
Benjamin Botton is blah and I agree with one of the posters that Dark Knight was overlooked.
Have you seen Milk? I haven’t but I will.
Sounds like it might be really Oscar worthy.
Time magazine says that even Nicole Kidman agrees that Australia is unwatchable.
February 4th, 2009 at 22:49
A deserving nominee who has to win: Meryl Streep for Doubt
February 5th, 2009 at 09:48
Australia was exasperatingly long. Not even the rodeos, the costumes, and the panoramas and even statuesque Nicole can keep me from yawning. Of the five, Milk I think is the most deserve, Slumdog is like the little movie that could so it will be there because everybody seems to love it. Frost/Nixon is brilliantly acted but self-important, it could have been a great TV movie. Kate was the only thing that saved The Reader from utter mess. And though technically brilliant, thanks to Fincher, Button is so traditional, so Forrest Gump-ish, that the Academy would fall for it. I’d put The Wrestler, Rachel Getting Married, Revolutionary Road or even Wall E on that list.
February 5th, 2009 at 09:53
Here’s Nicole and Baz, one of the photos in an oeuvre of actor-director tandems taken from Vanity Fair, I think in time for this year’s Oscars. There’s Boyle and Dev Patel, Sean Penn and Gus Van Sant, Penelope and Woody, Kate and husband-director Sam Mendes, Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke, Heath and Chris Nolan and others.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/actors-directors-portfolio200903?slide=7#globalNav
February 8th, 2009 at 07:06
In the Newsweek Oscar Roundtable: Brad Pitt — what a self important prick! Di ko na sya crush even if he played Tyler Durden.