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Showing posts with label academy awards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academy awards. Show all posts

Thursday, June 10, 2010

All About Steve

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Apparently this movie was on the Razzie list of worst movies and Sandra Bullock won worst actress for her performance in All About Steve, but I, personally, enjoyed this movie. (Ironically she won Best Oscar for The Blind Side the same weekend.)

I rented it with Marcus over the holidays while visiting my family in Minnesota. My Mom watched it with us and we all just giggled.

It's not thoroughly thought-provoking. It's not Oscar-winning or even Oscar-nominated, but if you're in the mood for something simple, entertaining, and unexpected, get this movie on your netflix. Sure, it's a bit hokey. And while watching it, I remember thinking, I can understand why this movie wasn't super successfull. But still, it's sort of a cute movie.

If for nothing else, see this movie for the red boots. Because..."they make my toes feel like ten friends on a camping trip."

One last note. I just adore Sandra Bullock and not just because we share ethnic (slavic) heritage. Seriously. It's hard not to like her, am I wrong? In the midst of all of this personal shit with her marriage, she went on the MTV Movie awards asking that things to back to normal. She's not going anywhere, therapy's expensive, and let's just go back to everyone "making fun of me." That's what she said. Here's the MTV Movie Awards video, and below is a preview of All About Steve. (Two notes about the MTV Movie Awards: Tom Cruise's performance was pretty spectacular. Guess he's had so many meetings with these exec types that he nailed this character. Nailed it! The Sandra Bullock and Scarlet Johansson kiss was pretty hot. Pretty hot!)




Here's a trailer if you need a preview:




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Posted by Katie Strand at 3:06 PM 0 comments
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Thursday, April 22, 2010

James Cameron was robbed!


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Although it's been a few months since The Academy Awards, I still feel compelled to say my piece about James Cameron, Avatar, and Mr. Oscar that went to his ex-wife.

Now I liked The Hurt Locker. I thought it was extremely well done on all levels. Writing, directing, acting, and editing. It was moving and disturbing. I was very happy that Kathryn Bigelow won for best director. I thought she deserved the Oscar.

But Avatar deserved the Oscar for best picture, absolutely.

My theory is, filmmakers are jealous. You see, previous nominees and winners of Academy Awards vote for who wins. While it's a larger pool of voters than say, The Golden Globes, which is something like eight people or something (not really, I believe it's around 80 people), they are not immune to bias. Maybe Cameron isn't friendly enough at industry cocktail parties. I don't know. Maybe they're all tired of his unbridled success, notoriety and monetary gain. But the Academy awards aren't supposed to be a popularity contest, they're supposed to....What are they supposed to do? Oh, right. Congratulate and acknowledge filmmakers and actors for achievement in entertainment or some such thing. Now I have worked in filmmaking and enjoy watching films immensely, but it is a very self-congratulatory industry. It's basically one big advertisement for celebrities and films. Imagine education. What if education had a show, watched by millions of people, celebrating the best teachers in the country. Maybe we wouldn't be closing schools, laying off teachers, and cutting educational programs like arts and physical fitness. But alas, it seems the powers that be believe no one would watch that awards show.

Anyway. That's my piece. Avatar should have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I agree with Kathryn Bigelow's win for Best Director.

One last note. I recently watched James Cameron's Aliens of the Deep, which is a deep-sea documentary Cameron did between Titanic and Avatar. Did anyone else notice he didn't really make any big motion pictures between Titanic and Avatar? Anyway, I heard an interview with Cameron in which he states, "I'm still young enough to do the more active things like going in rovers and doing deep sea photography, so I took ten years off after making Titanic to do those kinds of projects.

Did you notice the glowing forest in Avatar looks very similar to some deep sea photography of self-generating-light-up organisms? Well, I kind of suspected Cameron got his inspiration from deep sea life and I think I was right. While the documentary isn't nearly as dramatic as Avatar or Cameron's other films, it is definitely worth seeing. Also, I applaud Cameron for doing what he wanted with his time, money, and energy. Titanic was a big, huge hit. Almost as big as Avatar. Instead of making more big blockbuster films, Cameron went and made documentaries about stuff that really intrigued him. I feel as though he's a fellow inspiration hunter like me. I like that.

I really did like the glowing forest in Avatar.

Oh, and Cameron still got the last laugh, it seems. Avatar is reportedly the highest grossing film of all time, at $2.72 billion. So maybe he wasn't exactly robbed considering the film cost $240 million to make. That's a pretty big profit. Though money isn't everything. Just ask James Cameron's face when he lost the Academy Award to his ex-wife.

Still, I loved Avatar.

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Posted by Katie Strand at 3:09 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Cove - Louie Psihoyos' Oscar speech & a guide on how to create change...

The Cove is a beautiful, brilliant and heartbreaking documentary well-deserving of this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary.

The Cove is about the very inhumane killing of dolphins in a secret Cove in Japan. (Not giving anything away here because the doc mentions this Cove in the first 5 minutes of the film.) Anyway, if you’re like me and sometimes sensitive about seeing visual depictions of violence towards animals or humans, don’t let this fact deter you. Although there were times when I had to look away briefly from the screen, overall the filmmakers have done an amazing job of creating a film that, while telling the true story in full, visual detail, they also approach the problem of the film, how do we get visual and video access to this secret Cove? with zeal and, quite honestly, a sense of adventure and fun. Now don’t get me wrong, their cause is serious, heartbreaking and awful in innumerable ways, and while their ultimate goal is clearly to stop this and other atrocious acts against our oceans and the life they inhabit and sustain (which really is all life when you get down to brass-tacks), Louie and his band of renegade sea-lovers maintain a startling lightness as they embark on this mission impossible.

I commend The Cove director, Louie Psihoyos, his black-ops team on camera, and his behind-the-scenes documentary crew for making a film that is not only beautifully shot and edited, but is meaningful, moving, and while heartbreaking and tear-jerking, leaves viewers with a sense of how to tackle life’s most horrendous atrocities... With determination, compassion, fervor, and lightness fully in-tact. Oh, and with friends. (I feel certain the team from The Cove now all consider each other friends, if not friends as well as their own version of war-vets. Let’s call them mission-vets.) Anyway, Louie banded together crazy-talented and brilliant people who can dive and hold their breath for inordinate amounts of time, disguise cameras as rocks, are passionate about saving our oceans and marine-life, and go stealth like it’s a birthright.

But I was disappointed that Louie was cut-off during his Oscar acceptance speech. While watching, I could only shake my head and speculate that he was probably cut-off to avoid controversy or some such bulls#%t.

Undeterred and true to form, Louie created a video of what his Oscar acceptance speech would’ve been had he been allowed to complete it. His speech is poignant and succinct, and really, not so controversial at all.

Thanks, Louie. For creating a film and a team that not only brings to light an atrocity that the world must know about and stop, but for inspiring the rest of us to create change with compassion, lightness... and friends.




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Posted by Katie Strand at 4:05 PM 0 comments
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Saturday, March 13, 2010

The Cove - Louie Psihoyos' Oscar speech & a guide on how to create change...

The Cove is a beautiful, brilliant and heartbreaking documentary well-deserving of this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary.

The Cove is about the very inhumane killing of dolphins in a secret Cove in Japan. (Not giving anything away here because the doc mentions this Cove in the first 5 minutes of the film.) Anyway, if you’re like me and sometimes sensitive about seeing visual depictions of violence towards animals or humans, don’t let this fact deter you. Although there were times when I had to look away briefly from the screen, overall the filmmakers have done an amazing job of creating a film that, while telling the true story in full, visual detail, they also approach the problem of the film, how do we get visual and video access to this secret Cove? with zeal and, quite honestly, a sense of adventure and fun. Now don’t get me wrong, their cause is serious, heartbreaking and awful in innumerable ways, and while their ultimate goal is clearly to stop this and other atrocious acts against our oceans and the life they inhabit and sustain (which really is all life when you get down to brass-tacks), Louie and his band of renegade sea-lovers maintain a startling lightness as they embark on this mission impossible.

I commend The Cove director, Louie Psihoyos, his black-ops team on camera, and his behind-the-scenes documentary crew for making a film that is not only beautifully shot and edited, but is meaningful, moving, and while heartbreaking and tear-jerking, leaves viewers with a sense of how to tackle life’s most horrendous atrocities... With determination, compassion, fervor, and lightness fully in-tact. Oh, and with friends. (I feel certain the team from The Cove now all consider each other friends, if not friends as well as their own version of war-vets. Let’s call them mission-vets.) Anyway, Louie banded together crazy-talented and brilliant people who can dive and hold their breath for inordinate amounts of time, disguise cameras as rocks, are passionate about saving our oceans and marine-life, and go stealth like it’s a birthright.

But I was disappointed that Louie was cut-off during his Oscar acceptance speech. While watching, I could only shake my head and speculate that he was probably cut-off to avoid controversy or some such bulls#%t.

Undeterred and true to form, Louie created a video of what his Oscar acceptance speech would’ve been had he been allowed to complete it. His speech is poignant and succinct, and really, not so controversial at all.

Thanks, Louie. For creating a film and a team that not only brings to light an atrocity that the world must know about and stop, but for inspiring the rest of us to create change with compassion, lightness... and friends.




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Posted by Katie Strand at 12:00 PM 0 comments
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