Morlock

I felt like the epilogue is what made the movie.

Let Me In. It's not a great story to me, but this is a very good take on it. Very similar in many ways, though with a few marked differences to the original, most of which work very well. The score is good in the film, and finally does get somewhere beautiful in the end, but it is still not as immediately striking as the theme for the first one (a more romantic film).

Saw Never Let Me Go and True Grit. Wow- two 2010 movies that actually felt alive and skillfully conceived and executed. I understand the 'Cinema is Dead' proclaimers, but there's simply not enough proof to back it up.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana. I'm loving it.

I loved the film's use of Tchaikovsky. But I don't think Mansell added anything of value that didn't come from Tchaikovsky. He did a good job- but strictly as an arranger.

I think it's about time to reread the series. Last time it took me a month and a half (slow reader), that should get me back in the swing of it by the time this starts. (I've been reading a superb single volume fantasy book, really got me back in the whole mindset).

Actually, I have to take that back. That was my stance on Kingsley (based also on his public appearances)...however I really, really, liked him in Shutter Island.

I had tickets to see that at a film festival a couple of years back, but something came up...never got around to it. And Kingsley has really been getting on my nerves recently.

Mansell did not offer a score. Tchaikovsky's score was terrific, though. All Mansell did was dirty it up a bit. Yes, not a good film. But Gone Baby Gone is. Saw Exit through the Gift Shop. Good stuff.

Wow.

Yeah, I watched Sons of Anarchy, which was entertaining enough...but after greatness, passable entertainment just doesn't cut it. I do hope there'll be great genre series in this current wave. I hope it's Song of Ice and Fire, but I'm not terribly optimistic. Saw How to Train Your Dragon. Simply wonderful. Dreamworks continuing the trend of Kung Fu Panda, as opposed to Monsters vs. Aliens. Powell's score is fantastic, too.

Glad to hear it.

Yes he was. The credited director told Russell not to tell anyone until he passed. That is about as convincing as the superhero who's invisible when no one is looking.

Everyone's mother has either seen it or has tickets for it here.

Blame the writer's strike, not me. Saw The King's Speech. Wonderful performance, film is only pretty good. Geoffrey Rush's role is quite annoyingly conceived. Helena Bonham Carter is magnificent.

One of my favorite films. A practically perfect black comedy.

What's not to enjoy? It's a plucky adventurer story, a detective film. The setting is grim, sure...but I thought it was wonderfully crafted storytelling, with a great main performance and a supporting cast every bit as good (Screw Bale, give John Hawkes the Oscar!). I don't think it's a masterpiece, just a really, really, good film. Like I posted a couple of months back, I was pleasantly surprised by this. It was fun and had no small amount of wit. It quite successfully managed to make a child's idea of a treasure hunt come alive without feeling condescending or apologetic. In a way, it taps into the same vein as The Goonies (It's probably better made, though without the oodles of nostalgia, of course). A damned entertaining yarn.

That is not the point, a composer is not nominated to compete against his own, previous better works, but between a bunch of other scores that happened to have have been written at around the same time. That was not my point, but an additional annoyance. The emphasis was that an okay score beat a score I consider to be a masterpiece.

"it's only a movie"?! Now you're giving me an ulcer. Many annoying ones to choose from, but at the moment, 2002 annoys me the most. Five scores I like nominated, three of them truly exceptional (Williams, Bernstein and Newman), yet the winner is Elliot Goldenthal -a composer I love, but for Frida, pseudo-Mexicana crap that might just be his least interesting work (though it is certainly fun for 3 minutes at a time). The multiple indignities piss me off. In general, the outright travesties (Fame, 'Round Midnight, Babel) are a fact of life I can live with- it's the utter mediocrities winning when true masterpieces are present that really irritate me. 2002, 2004, 1996, 1983- one of my absolute favorite scores was nominated each of those years only to lose to an okay score that isn't even one of its composer's best works.

I agree with Alex. The Matrix is a superbly cast film.

If a person can make a good 3 hour film, I'm all for it. It's just really hard to do. Many of the best movies are the best in part because they took the time to let everything breathe. It's not necessarily a genre thing- The Leopard's story isn't an epic one, yet it had to be the length it is to achieve what it did. I don't notice it as much with action-adventures (maybe I don't see enough of them), but I definitely agree that many comedies are overlong, and for no good reason at all, just poor directing.

But... Those are good movies. That's not the point. Of course, it would be impossible to come up with 5 culturally important films that people can agree are bad (I like 3 of those films). But talk about raising the level of discourse- saying that a popular and critically acclaimed film is full of shit- that actually can get people to think about these things. Trying to speak truth to power is a great thing. Challenging the sports-fan like mentality that's going around, with people rooting for and against films for reasons that have little to do with the content of the film (And I don't mean to exclude myself from that). People accept that the Oscars are nonsense...but at least they deal with films that are relevant. It's easy to argue that Twilight is just the product of a marketing decision. An argument that we've been hoodwinked by Inception's, though...true or false, that's an argument worth having.

Terrible choices, the lot of them. Even as a curiosity, the razzies suck. Why can't they ever pick a film that people had actual expectations from? Everyone agrees these films suck. Nominate a Crash, or Babel, or Inception, or Gladiator...show some backbone, or at least some wit. As it stands, it is just poorly produced snark. Morlock- who thinks The Onion should take over the Razzies

It was kind of an weak tea...diluted Gondry -only his silliness, very little of the inspired imagination- mixed with Rogan and his co-writer's geek sensibility. I love Eternal Sunshine, and I love Pineapple Express, but the both of them, toned down, in the same film- didn't work at all. Not bad like Be Kind Rewind, just boring. All irreverence, no weight to anything.

Facebook and online networking were just window dressing, and all it was really saying was 'LACK OF CONNECTION'. It did have moderately interesting ways of saying it, but really, I found it to be more like a dramatized op-ed piece, and a 7-8 year old one, at that. It is impressive that they managed to craft an entertaining movie out of it, but that's not a terribly laudable or ambitious goal to me.