[QUOTE=EquipoiseI loved him in both and of course his Departed character is a nice guy, very sympathetic, but his Blood Diamond role was one of the best of his career (though The Departed was, IMO, the better of the two movies). By nearly all accounts that I’ve read from People Who Would Know, his accent was dead on. Or do you know how a Rhodesian who’s lived in South Africa for many years sounds? I’m not saying I do, but I believe the people who’ve said it was right.[/quote]
I think his accented sounded accurate enough. It always just takes a few minutes for me to get used to an actor who I know well doing an unusual accent. I tend to sort of fixate and become too aware of them. After about 15 minutes, I accepted leo’s character and forgot about the accent. I thought he was good in the movie, in some scenes very good, but his character in The Departed resonated more for me. Maybe it was just because it was a better overall movie. Maybe it was because he was more sympathetic.
I’m surprised there’s so much support for Babel – my first reaction on seeing the nominees was that there’s no way it deserves to be nominated for Best Picture. Children of Men was a better movie. Is it really just running on the “Crash”-vibes from last year…?
I also think DiCaprio should have been nominated for The Departed – it was a much more complex role than the one in Blood Diamond, and he pulled it off brilliantly.
I haven’t seen it, but I’m cautiously glad that Little Miss Sunshine got a Best Picture nomination, because I think we need to see more comedies in that category. It’s “Best Picture,” not “Most Ponderous, Heavy, Deep Picture,” which is what it sometimes seems like.
I’ll post off your comments, Dio, since mine are very similar.
I agree. LMS was good and funny, but not Best picture material.
I haven’t seen BD, but it’s hard to imagine him being better in that than he was in TD. I was absolutely blown away by his performance-- and I usually can’t stand the guy, so I’m generally biased against him.
Take it to the bank, baby!
You’re probably right. How do you think it compared to “The Departed”? I thought that movie was brilliant.
The only foreign film I’ve seen on the list is “El Laberinto del Fauno” (might was well use the original title, since it’s the “foreign film” category). No slight to the others, but I sure hope that one wins.
Babel isn’t terrible. There are some good things about it and some good performances. It’s not like it’s a Wayans Brothers film. But it also has some dead spots, it takes itself too seriously and it seems like it’s consciously designed to be Oscar bait. It’s like they decided to cross Syriana with Crash and rake in the statues.
The Departed is the most entertaining of the Best Picture noms, IMO, and the one that I think would probably hold up the best to repeated viewings (something characteristic of all of Scorcese’s best work). Letters is very good too, but once you’ve seen it, you don’t feel any pressing desire to see it again.
I still haven’t seen Pan’s Labrynth. Will probably see it this weekend. The buzz is unbelievable for that one.
My dad’s cousin got another nom for Sound (his team won for Ray in 2005, this time he is part of the team nominated for Dreamgirls). He’s about 6’5 and despite all the wins he’s had he never gets to speak. The guys he works with are all much shorter and one year you only saw him from the neck down.
I’m thrilled about all the nominations for Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s easy the best movie I’ve seen in years.
I don’t really care for films in which the entire plot is driven by every characters inability to make a single intelligent decision for the entire film. I could go on and on, but what sort of man takes his cleanliness-obsessed wife with obvious OCD issues to the Moroccan desert? What idiot, in an attempt to save their marriage, would take his wife to a place which she didn’t want to go in the first place?
And those were decisions made prior to the opening scenes. We’ll not even go into what happened during the movie.
True. Years in which only three songs are nominated are not uncommon.
When it comes to multiple song noms from a single film, as one can expect Disney has done it a number of times. Beauty and the Beast had 3 song nominations: “Belle”, “Be Our Guest” and “Beauty and the Beast” (the eventual winner). Aladdin had 2 (“Friend Like Me”, “A Whole New World”), Lion King had 3 (“Circle of Life”, “Hakuna Matata”, and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight”), etc/
Post 1980 non-Disney movies with multiple nominees are (all with 2 nominations) Cold Mountain, Philadelphia, The Bodyguard, White Nights, Footloose, Flashdance, Yentl, and Fame.
No, O’Toole accepted the Honorary Oscar and gave one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. When it was first publicized that he was receiving the Oscar he said he didn’t want it, he’d rather have a competitive Oscar, but he changed his mind and decided to accept it. Venus is playing in limited release. It’s only playing in one theater in Chicago and I saw it Monday night. I had this insane idea that I would be prepared by having seen all the acting nominees, but then Ryan Gosling had to come in and ruin everything. (just kidding, I’m happy for him and really want to see Half Nelson). Venus is a very very small film, a character study about a old man who’s near the end of his life. He has all kinds of health problems and won’t last long. In his heyday he was quite the dashing actor and was a skirt-chaser. Now he’s old old old and though he still acts occasionally to pay the bills (his specialty is old man corpses), his womanizing days are several decades behind him (O’Toole could probably relate). He meets the crass, dimwitted, sloppy grandneice of his best friend and she revitalizes him, to an extent. He doesn’t want to go to bed with her, he couldn’t even if he tried, but he does want to do things like smell her neck, kiss her shoulder, explore her hand and wrist, and remember what it was like to touch a young woman, to feel smooth skin.
She’s a cunt and a half though, and makes him buy her something for every touch: earrings, a tattoo, a dress. He’s not creepy, but she’s creeped out by him the way most 21 year olds would be by the attentions of such an old man with an old man smell, but he puts up with her cringings to be able to touch and smell her, and she puts up with his touches to be able to get things from him. It’s not a Sugar Daddy tale because he doesn’t have a lot of money (he lives in a small apartment over a paint store), and it’s not exactly a love story. I’m sure it wasn’t much of a stretch for O’Toole to play this guy, but he was very very good, heartbreaking, and I’m glad he was nominated. The actress who played the girl (Jodie Whittaker) was a revelation and should have been nominated too. I hated the character for most of the movie but ended up feeling very sympathetic toward her. According to IMDB, Venus was her first film role.
Indeed there was no host for the 1989 ceremony. (That year’s show also had the infamous Rob Lowe/Snow White Proud Mary number which AMPAS had to apologize for after Disney threatened legal action.)
Hugh Jackman wuz robbed! Robbed, I say! His performance in The Prestige was, by far, one of the best I’ve seen in my life. I haven’t seen all the performances that were nominated, but the ones I saw were nowhere near as good as Jackman’s. I’d not have bitched if he got nominated for The Fountain, even though I didn’t care for the film, he deserves an Oscar, dammit!
