Halloween Cinerama: Movies to check out for October 31st

What a crazy couple of days it’s been! I would never have guessed that Wednesday’s post would end up on the front page of WordPress, but, low and behold, it did. I’ve had more views on Wednesday, Thursday and today than I’ve ever gotten before, and it’s very exciting. Thank you to everyone who read and commented, and welcome to all you new readers. I usually have new posts every Wednesday on rotating regular topics. Today, though, I thought I’d provide you guys with a little something extra, by way of greetings and thanks.

Next weekend is Halloween, which means legions of folks will be preparing for parties, making food, assembling costumes and (of course) renting horror movies. I love horror movies. I love the squirmy way they make me feel, and surprises I get when I’m watching one for the first time with friends. However, I have my limits. I like my horror movies to be somewhat smart and original. I don’t go in for that torture-porn stuff like the Saw or Hostel franchises. Other movie series, like Halloween or Friday the 13th are good for a while (Far be it from me to question the brilliance of John Carpenter or Wes Craven), but lose their appeal over time. For a horror movie to appeal to me, it has to explore new territory.

If, like me, you get tired of the same old slasher flicks year after year, here are a few movies that just might pull you out of your rut.

28 Days Later

I’m not going to hold back here. “28 Days Later” is one of my favorite movies. Say what you want about director Danny Boyle’s lack of consistency over the course of his career, when it comes to genre movies, the man’s got it down. On its surface, “28 Days Later” is a post-apocalyptic horror movie in the vein of “Night of the Living Dead” (A group of survivors try to stick together and ride out a virus that’s turning people into mindless raging cannibals. Conflicts ensue; violence and psychological infirmity inevitably follow). But Boyle and writer Alex Garland (“Never Let Me Go”) make the movie something much more profound. “28 Days Later” is really about survival tactics in extreme situations, and what those choices do to the people who make them. How far would you be willing to go to ensure your own survival? How much do you care about the safety of your friends? Horror movies don’t get much more philosophical than this.

The Mist

Okay, so perhaps this movie doesn’t quite fit in with the smart set. But it’s a lot of fun. “The Mist” made a stir when it first came out, but kind of lost steam after a while, which is a shame, since it’s such a satisfying movie. This story of a small town plagued by otherworldly creatures and a thick, mysterious fog really delivers in the thrills and chills department. It’s part Twilight Zone, part David Cronenberg movie. Plus, it’s fun to watch “serious actors” like Toby Jones and Marcia Gay Harden go over the top in campy roles. It’s based on a story by Stephen King, which you’d be able to recognize even if you didn’t see his name on the poster, since the writing has his style all over it. This movie is also a great way to gear up for AMC’s upcoming TV series “The Walking Dead,” since “The Mist” director Frank Darabont is the show’s creator and directed the pilot. All of AMC’s TV spots have been noting Darabont as the director of “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” which is great, but I think this movie is really what makes him qualified.

Pontypool

If you’ve seen some of my previous posts, you’ll know that I like Bruce McDonald’s “Pontypool” an awful lot. It was the first movie I ever watched at a film festival, and it holds a very special place in my heart because of that. Of course, that’s not the only reason I like it. The movie also has those smart and original qualities that I hold in high esteem when it comes to scary movies. Set in a radio station in rural Canada, “Pontypool” follows a day in the life of prickly radio host Grant Mazzy (an amazing Stephen McHattie), and two producers of his morning show (Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly). A seemingly normal morning is thrown totally out of whack when a strange virus that appears to be carried through speech patterns infects the town and turns citizens into a violent mob. The best part? We hardly even see the disease victims. Instead, we hear them through outside radio reports and voices outside the station. It’s a tactic that borrows more from “War of the Worlds” than from “Night of the Living Dead,” and works wonders. Watch it, watch it, watch it.

Shallow Grave

Danny Boyle’s first movie was an impressive debut that established a unique voice, a talent for working with dark material, and Ewan McGregor’s career. This often-overlooked but effective thriller tells the story of three self-absorbed flatmates (McGregor, Kerry Fox and Christopher Eccleston), looking for a fourth person to live with them. Their chosen man, Hugo, moves in, but dies of an overdose the next day, leaving behind a briefcase chock-full of money. The group decides to keep it, and bury Hugo themselves. Of course, this choice sets them down a path fraught with consequences. While McGregor ended up being the star-in-the-making here, the real person to watch is Christopher Eccleston (who you might recognize from “28 Days Later” and his one-season turn on “Doctor Who”) as a shy, unstable accountant who totally loses it over the course of the movie.

The Frighteners

Like “The Mist,” Peter Jackson’s “The Frighteners” is just good old-fashioned sloppy fun. It’s like a much darker “Ghostbusters.” Michael J. Fox plays a small-town paranormal investigator who uses a couple of ghostly accomplices to con homeowners into calling him to exterminate ghosts they don’t actually have. It’s a pretty sweet gig, until someone starts killing off townspeople, cutting numbers into their foreheads beforehand. Some of the writing can tend towards the cheesy, but the climax is nice and creepy. As scares go, “The Frighteners” is a creative middle-of-the-road pick for those who want something riskier than a Tim Burton movie, but less hardcore than “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Videodrome

While it’s more sci-fi than horror, David Cronenberg’s bizzarro cult classic still delivers tension, violence and gore aplenty (it wouldn’t be a David Cronenberg movie if it didn’t). James Woods plays Max Renn, a sleazy cable CEO whose approach to programming decisions lean more towards pornography than family-friendly fare. One day, he comes across a broadcast of a shockingly violent program called Videodrome. After deciding that he needs to include the mysterious show in his lineup, Max slowly starts to lose it as he tries to track down the program’s creators, and discovers political conspiracy and surprisingly prophetic visions of the future from the mysterious Brian O’Blivion, who only allows himself to appear via television. Technology and biology intertwine in this movie in simultaneously riveting and repulsive ways that only Cronenberg could devise. It’s not for the faint of stomach, but it sure is good.

Cronenberg fans check this out: David Cronenberg’s iphone charger

Diabolique (1955)

This one’s a classic thriller of the Hitchcock variety, with a great plot and some delicious old-school scares. At a French boarding school, two women conspire to murder the school’s cruel headmaster, Michel Delasalle: his wife, Christina, and his mistress. Nicole. Michel physically abuses both of them. It’s particularly hard on Christina, who has a heart condition. Nicole and Christina drown Michel in the bathtub, and then dump the body in the school swimming pool. But, when the pool is drained, Michel’s body is nowhere to be found. What’s more, he (or someone who looks just like him) keeps showing up around town. “Diabolique” is a twisty, tense experience with an ending that will leave you breathless. The movie was remade in 1996 with Sharon Stone and Chazz Palminteri, but that’s not the one you want. Trust me, go with the original.

Near Dark

Way before she won the Best Directing Oscar for “The Hurt Locker,” Kathryn Bigelow directed this 1987 movie about a newly-minted vampire traveling the highways with a group of fellow bloodsuckers in a Winnebago. If you’ve ever read the excellent graphic novel series “Preacher,” this movie’s a fair comparison. It takes place in dry, desolate parts of the country, and is bloodier than a rare steak. It’s a movie that’s been getting more attention of late, thanks to Bigelow’s big win, so now’s the time to get a jump on it. Bill Paxton is the standout performer as the rash, merciless Severen.

Slither

This movie has a solid background in the “Evil Dead” and “Tremors” school of horror movies (also great choices for Halloween viewing). “Slither” is a campy, gross-out party of a flick filled with in-jokes and references to the legendary B-movies it draws so heavily on. Nathan Fillion plays small-town sheriff Bill Pardy, whose dull existence leading the law enforcement department gets shaken up when people and animals go missing, and local businessman Grant Grant (a wonderful Michael Rooker) starts behaving suspiciously. He’s more aggressive than normal to his wife (Elizabeth Banks). There are strange rotting smells coming from the basement. Weirdest of all, he’s got this nasty rash that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Suddenly, weird sluglike creatures start turning the townspeople into zombies. Fillion, Rooker, Banks and Gregg Henry as the town’s foulmouthed mayor all look like they’re having a blast, and I don’t blame them. The effects are icky fun, and the script is filled with a kind of goofy dark sarcasm.

The Orphanage

I’ve been watching horror movies for a while, and my reactions to the scares on screen vary. Often I jump, sometimes I gasp. Very rarely, if ever, do I scream. I screamed during “The Orphanage.” Twice. It’s one of the few movies I’ve seen during which I was legitimately frightened by the things I saw. If you’ve seen it, you know why, because this movie is nothing if not haunting. If you haven’t…well, the feeling won’t be the same if you know what happens. It’s just better if you don’t know. But despite the scary bits (and there are plenty), “The Orphanage” is also a touching, emotional movie. It’s rewarding in lots of ways. Director J.A. Bayona goes places with his horror, both in terms of surprise and dramatic heft that few other modern directors do. It’s a treat to watch. Just don’t watch it alone.

“That Guy” File #1: Clancy Brown

Where you’ve seen him: The Shawshank Redemption, Carnivale, Highlander, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), Lost, The Guardian and Starship Troopers, among many others. You’ve also heard his voice on a number of cartoons, including Spongebob Squarepants.

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times now, I did a top ten list in August of “That Guy” character actors for Scene Stealers. It was a list that I’d been mulling over for quite some time, and took my time writing and editing before I sent it in. For two days after the list was posted to the site, I was proud of myself. For once, I thought, I’d gotten a list right. I hadn’t skipped over any obvious choices, and I’d made sure to create a diverse list of recognizable actors.

Then, an astute commenter brought up a glaring oversight, one that was so obvious that it frustrated me for the rest of the day: Clancy Brown was not on my list. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a dumb mistake. It was doubly frustrating, considering that in my personal list of favorite “That Guys,” Brown is my number 1. So, as a means to atone for my faux pas, he’s going to be the first actor we look at here.

If you’ve watched any movies or television at all since 1984, the chances are pretty good that, at some point, you’ve seen Clancy Brown in something. The man is all over the place. Like most good “That Guys,” Brown’s unmistakable. He’s got a big, serious face, and a deep, serious voice. Both features lend themselves well to threatening characters, which is what he’s best known for. In “The Shawshank Redemption,” he’s Captain Hadley, the warden’s cruel lackey who seems to enjoy disciplining wayward prisoners a little too much. On “Carnivale,” he was Brother Justin Crowe, a Methodist minister with disturbing supernatural powers and a penchant for destruction. And, of course, if you’ve seen “Highlander,” you’ll remember him this way:

It’s a ridiculous, scene-chewing role in a movie that’s notable only for how awful it is, but you get the sense that Brown must have been having a lot of fun with it. After all, what other way is there to deliver a closing line like the scene above than to just play it up?

In fact, Brown’s the reason I started getting enthusiastic about character actors. He was my first recognizable “that guy,” since he kept popping up in just about everything I saw. He lends a solid presence to the movies he’s in, but is particularly noticeable in genre movies, where he gets to use his somber face and creepy voice to their fullest extents.

For my money, the strongest example of Brown’s acting is on HBO’s short-lived (and lamented) “Carnivale.” It’s really hard to imagine any actor other than Brown playing the confused, sinister Brother Justin Crowe. For illustration, I’ll direct you to the following clip:

In his role as Justin, Brown’s got the intimidating thing down pretty well, but over the course of the series, he brings out the character’s conflicted nature too, as Justin slowly comes to realize the antagonistic role he’s destined to play in the events to come. His attempts at doing good works are met with heartbreaking disaster, and the soul-searching that follows leads Justin to use his powerful supernatural gifts to manipulate the people who get in his way. It’s not necessarily a shocking transformation, given the way the character’s introduced, but it’s one that’s riveting to watch, mostly because of Brown’s clear ability to embody the character.

Clancy Brown is a That Guy’s That Guy. He’s a hardworking actor who’s made a good career out of small but memorable roles. Perhaps the man’s most impressive achievement is that over the course of a career that’s stretched for 20 plus years, he’s remained consistent in the roles he’s gotten. He’s talented and prolific, which certainly counts for something. And if you’re looking for a good, threatening authority figure, you can’t do much better.

Shot-For-Shot: Let The Right One In/Let Me In

Here is the first in a series of regular columns that I’ll be posting each Wednesday here on the blog. To find out more information and see what other topics I’ll be covering, check out last week’s post.

Generally speaking, remakes occupy a difficult space. They live in a kind of cinematic Catch-22 filled no-man’s land. The problem is this: for a remake to be considered a good film in its own right, it has to vary somewhat from the source material and establish fresh territory on familiar ground. But in order to cater to the fans of the original film, the filmmakers (as with beloved literary adaptations) have to be true to the source material. It’s a tough line to walk. To my mind, the best approach is to re-make movies that are well respected, but don’t have a wide modern audience, because it provides a kind of pedigree while also introducing an old concept to new audiences, as with James Mangold’s remake of “3:10 to Yuma.”  Or, as was the case for Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot remake of “Funny Games,” justify the remake by bringing the original movie’s message to the audience it was really meant for.

All of this is to say that while it is possible for a remake to be good, it’s not easy. There are just so many potential pitfalls. Some remakes are made too soon after the original film’s release. Some take too many liberties with the material. But most are just plain unnecessary. “Let Me In” falls squarely into the first and third categories. It’s an English-language remake of a Swedish movie, “Let the Right One In,” released in 2008 that has an established (and still growing) cult following. “Let Me In” does a make a few interesting diversions from its source film, and novel of the same name, but is so concerned with keeping “Let the Right One In’s” subtle tone that it neglects to develop these changes in interesting ways.

The plot of the original film is as follows: Oskar, a 12-year-old kid with divorced parents, is constantly bullied at school. He harbors disturbing violent fantasies about getting back at the nasty kids who torment him. One day, in the courtyard of his apartment complex, he meets Eli, a girl his own age who has recently moved in along with an older man who appears to be her father. Oskar and Eli become friends and begin a sweet and awkward relationship. Then, Oskar finds out what the audience has known all along: Eli is a vampire. Her “father” kills people to drain them of blood to feed her. Surprisingly, Oskar isn’t bothered by any of this. His relationship with Eli continues to grow until Eli accidentally turns a neighbor into a vampire, and the consequences threaten to drive the two kids apart.

“Let Me In” follows the same plot, with a few changes. It adds a local policeman, played by Elias Koteas, who’s trying to solve a series of violent murders (no guesses as to who’s responsible). The vampire girl (here called Abby…That’s right, Abby) also has a slightly more competent guardian, played by Richard Jenkins. His character is sloppy, like his Swedish counterpart, but he’s less comedic and more disturbing. The scenes of Jenkins attacking drivers in their cars, his head covered by a black plastic trash bag, are tense and creepy as all get-out. The apartment complex neighbors are also a lot younger and better looking than the depressed, late middle-aged band of losers portrayed in “Let the Right One In.”

Barring the changes made to Jenkins’ character, the additions made in the American film are the most disappointing thing about it. Not because the film’s writer/director Matt Reeves took liberties with the source material (in fact, the addition of Koteas’ character is closer to the novel), but because he failed to fully explore them. Koteas, for example, seems like a decent cop just trying to do his job, confused about everything that’s happening around him. Because of the way his character was introduced (he’s the first one we meet), I constantly found myself wondering what he thought of everything over the course of the film. Yet the audience never gets his side of the story. We know nothing about him. He merely shows up from time to time as a vague background presence. Abby and Owen’s (Oskar’s) neighbors in the apartment complex are never explored much either. In “Let the Right One In,” they were, and their presence added another interesting and gloomy layer of atmosphere to the film.

This isn’t to say that “Let Me In” is a terrible film. It’s not. Technically speaking, there’s very little wrong with it. After seeing the movie with my friend Dan, he told me, “If I hadn’t already seen ‘Let the Right One In,’ I’d have thought this was the best movie I’d ever seen.” I’m inclined to agree. “Let Me In” is smart, creepy, and builds to an epically satisfying climax. It does well all the things that “Let the Right One In” did, with one or two small-ish exceptions. But, when it comes down to it, this movie is about as original as an English-language dub of its Swedish source. What’s more, the original film is not hard to find, nor is it hard to understand (I’m of the mind that if you aren’t willing to read subtitles, you just shouldn’t bother watching movies, because you’ll miss out on most of what’s good. Sorry). There’s no real reason it needed to be made. It is, as Scott Tobias puts it in his review on the A.V. Club, “a beautiful redundancy.”

Coming Soon to No More Popcorn

I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted here on the blog. I’ve been doing the job hunt thing, and my movie-watching in general has been a little slow of late. But Fall always gets me feeling inspired and productive, and in the spirit of that, I’ve decided to update this blog every Wednesday with a series of regular posts regarding different topics, with occasional other posts thrown in here and there. Here’s what I’ll be covering, starting next Wednesday:

“That Guy”: Inspired by this list I did for Scene Stealers a while back, this series will look at the careers of ubiquitous character actors — “That Guys” — and examine their most popular (and their most interesting) roles.

Nostalgiaville: These posts will be devoted to childhood favorites, particularly ones I haven’t watched as an adult. How do they hold up? I’ll be looking at how interpretations of children’s films vary as the audience gets older, as well as other factors like overlooked subtext, symbolism and aesthetics.

Plan 9 Cinema: This series will focus on movies that fall into the “so bad they’re good” category. And yes, before you ask, “Troll 2″ and “The Room” are both on the list. Depending on how these posts develop, the series may be expanded to contain guilty pleasure movies.

The Non-Fiction Section: As you’ve probably inferred from the title, these posts will be about documentary films.

Shot-For-Shot: In these posts, I’ll be writing about film remakes. I’ll compare remakes to original sources and look at movies inspired by other movies, ones that may not be direct remakes, but borrow heavily from other films.

These posts will appear once a week, and will cycle. I’m not sure of the order yet, but keep your eyes on this space for continuing developments!

Abby Goes to Silverdocs

Davis Guggenheim, director of "Waiting for Superman" at Silverdocs

So, I’ve been interning at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for nearly a month now, and so far DC has been pretty good to me. I’ve seen all kinds of interesting sights, and met a plethora of interesting people. Because CPB is such a fabulous organization (they’re the ones who put up the money for pretty much most of what you hear and see on NPR and PBS) I sometimes get to reap the benefits of working for them. For example, on Wednesday I got to go to Silverdocs, a documentary film festival put on by AFI and the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Maryland. Because CPB helped sponsor the event, I got to carry around a sponsor’s pass that allowed me to do pretty much whatever I wanted for the whole day. And what I wanted to do was see movies.

I went to two screenings on Wednesday: “Into Eternity” and “The Red Chapel.” Both were films by Danish filmmakers, Michael Madsen (No, not that Michael Madsen) and Mads Brügger. Both were really interesting films, in distinctly different ways. I’m going to offer reviews of each, starting with “Into Eternity,” below.

Into Eternity

“You are now in a place where we have buried something from you to protect you.” That’s the opening line of “Into Eternity,” which is all about Onkalo, a facility under construction in Finland that will house the world’s nuclear waste. The film, as you might expect, is fairly grim, with lots of footage of desolate, snow-covered barren landscapes suggestive of a nuclear winter. Director Michael Madsen creates a kind of Lynchian atmosphere, switching between shots of talking head scientists and executive officers at Onkalo and shots of the facility itself, deep underground, with crews blasting their way further and further down to create a space for the radioactive waste. The film plays like a subterannean environmental doc-horror movie. It’s dark, frank, creepy and cold. It seems to reflect the director’s own attitude towards his subject: that Onkalo is a bizarre, unbelievable, complex and scary entity.

Madsen’s goal seems to be to make “Into Eternity” a letter to the future. He addresses the camera directly from time to time, out of the dark, lit only by a match. The point here is that the radioactive waste that Onkalo will house will remain dangerous for about 100,000 years, which, generally speaking, is a pretty long time. Madsen asks questions of his “future audience.” What is it like during their time? Have they gone into Onkalo? Why?

Although the presentation and style of the film is fairly potent, the premise wears pretty thin after a while, which is saying something, since the movie only lasts about 87 minutes. After the first couple of instances, Madsen’s matchlit monologues feel a little bit pretentious. And, after the introduction of the idea of a nuclear waste disposal facility as big as Onkalo, the only other theme of the film seems to be how our current civilzation will communicate to future civilizations about what is buried deep beneath the ground in Finland, and why they should never go there. It’s an interesting question, but one that never really goes anywhwere, and feels a bit circular by the end of the film.

On the whole, “Into Eternity” is a pretty interesting piece of work, though, in spite of its flaws, and does some interesting things with the documentary form. If you’d like to find out more information about the movie, you can check out this Science Friday interview that host Ira Flatow did with Madsen.

The Red Chapel

It’s hard for me to sum up my feelings about “The Red Chapel,” director Mads Brügger’s film about North Korea. Simply describing the film doesn’t quite do it justice. The trailer helps a little, but doesn’t really encompass the whole scope of the film. What I can say is this: it is one of the best films I have seen so far this year, and if you are interested in documentaries as an art form, or even just the art of satire, you cannot afford to miss it.

I’ll do what I can to explain the movie, which has already been getting a decent amount of buzz (it won the World Cinema Jury Prize at Sundance). Mads Brügger is a Danish journalist who sets out on a crusade to expose the evils of the North Korean dictatorship of Kim Jong Il. He wants to go to the country to make his film but, of course, he has to do it in a way that won’t get him stopped or killed by the North Korean government. So he sets up a comedy troupe, named The Red Chapel (after a group of Nazi Germany-era communist spies) and sets them up as a sort of cultural exchange to teach the North Koreans about Danish comedy. The troupe consists of two Korean-born, Danish-raised comedians named Simon and Jacob. Jacob is a self-described “spastic,” a visibly physically handicapped man. Brügger uses Jacob as his lynchpin, because North Koreans do not tolerate physical handicaps, and the country’s handicapped babies (Brügger tells us) are usually either killed or sent to camps where they die fairly quickly. The rest of the film, which plays out like a weird mix of investigative journalism, “Borat” and “Waiting for Guffman,” follows Brügger and company’s journey in North Korea, their interactions with their handlers, and rehearsals for their cultural presentation. Phew!

The most impressive thing about “The Red Chapel” is that any of it ever happened at all. As cheeky as Brügger appears at the start of the film and through the narration, it’s just as obvious that he’s aware what he’s doing is dangerous and a little unethical. Jacob suffers an emotional breakdown during the course of filming, and it’s up to Brügger and Simon to try and keep up appearances in front of the Koreans, all the time fearing that the lot of them may get carted off to one of Kim Jong Il’s death camps hidden out in the North Korean countryside. Brügger has got to have a lot of balls to be able to pull off the stunt that he did, and I love him for it.

The other impressive element of the film is the way it presents the relationships between the Danish troupe and their Korean handlers, particularly Mrs. Pak, the government functionary who accompanies the troupe everywhere they go. The communications breakdowns between Brügger, Simon, Jacob and Mrs. Pak are pretty absurd, but all genuine. Mrs. Pak’s relationship to Jacob, too, is weird to watch. She constantly says that he feels like a son to her, even though she’s only known him for a few days. Does she really feel close to him? Or is she trying to put on a good face for the sake of her “dear leader?” It may be a little of both.

In any case, “The Red Chapel” is a fascinating film to watch. It may not be perfect (the end falls a little flat), but it’s a thrilling, funny, poignant and pretty much unprecedented look into a bizarre, two-faced society.

To find out what other folks have to say about the movie, check out this review from Cinematical’s Eugene Novikov.

Oscars reactions, or the Kathryn Bigelow praise post

Well, the Oscars are over. This year’s ceremony was pretty dull in comparison with previous years, especially last year’s, which was so flamboyant I almost mistook it for the Tonys a couple of times. I’ve come to realize that as much as I enjoy making fun Oscar schmaltz, that’s really all these awards have going for them. Otherwise it’s just…boring. So instead of best original song performances, we got some ridiculous interpretive dance renditions of the best score nominees, which made absolutely no sense, and James Taylor playing “In My Life” over an In Memoriam montage, which, again, felt like it came out of nowhere. And expanding the Best Picture nominees to 10 didn’t seem to work in the Academy’s favor either, since “The Hurt Locker,” the winner, had the lowest gross of any film to win the award. Kudos, Academy. Maybe next year you’ll consider inviting Hugh Jackman back. At least he was fun.

But enough about the ceremony. Let’s talk about the winners!

Personally, I didn’t find any surprises until pretty late in the proceedings. Christoph Waltz won for best supporting actor (to give it to anyone else ought to have been punishable by law), Jeff Bridges won for best actor, Sandra Bullock for best actress and Mo’Nique for best supporting actress.

Best foreign film went to an Argentinian movie no one had seen (“El Secreto de Sus Ojos”) instead of a movie people had (“Un Prophete” or “The White Ribbon”), just like last year, when “Waltz With Bashir,” “The Class” and “The Baader Meinhof Complex” all got the shaft in favor of “Departures,” which left most everyone in the television audience saying “huh?” If there’s one area in which the Academy members continually leave people unsatisfied, it’s the foreign film category, so the surprise was, in fact, no surprise at all.

But there were two categories that made a lot of people happy (including me!), and those were Kathryn Bigelow winning Best Director, and “The Hurt Locker” winning best picture (read: James Cameron and “Avatar” getting neither award).I’m a Bigelow fan, so seeing her be the first woman to win the award for best director gave me a case of the warm fuzzies. If you’re not familiar with her, I suggest you listen to this interview with Studio 360′s Kurt Andersen. I defy you not to be blown over by how cool she is.

Other notes:

-The anglophile in me was stoked to see Carey Mulligan nominated for “An Education.” It’s really fun to see actors from accross the pond make their way through the world of British film and Masterpiece Theater productions and finally get mainstream attention after years of sheer hard work. I hope we end up seeing more of her.

-Is it just me, or was Sean Penn’s impromptu introduction to the best actress category just weird? I had no freaking clue what he was talking about, although I suspect he gets that reaction a lot just in general.

-Jeff Bridges’ acceptance speech sure was long, but it was totally groovy. He is The Dude.

-I know “In the Loop” had no chance of winning adapted screenplay, but I wished it would have won, for the same reasons I desperately wanted “In Bruges” to come from behind and win best original screenplay last year. It was a fabulous movie with a fabulous script and had incredibly talented people working on it who don’t get enough credit. Everyone reading this: if you haven’t seen Armando Iannucci’s show “Brasseye,” do yourself a favor and watch it. You will be glad.

Everything is new!

Hey all!

Welcome to the new home of the blog formerly known as Two Awesome Movie Nerds. There have been a few changes (obviously), but everything from the old site was carried over to the new one successfully! Hooray! I hope you’ll keep coming here for more of the same great content you’ve been provided with over at Two Awesome Movie Nerds. Your support and feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated!

-Abby

Nerds on the Net: Abby

I’m profiled on lawrence.com today! I’m afraid my profile isn’t all that interesting, but there’s a ton of good trailers posted there for movies I like. Woo.

Nerds on the Net: Abby's new blog

Hey guys! Abby here. I recently decided to go off and create my own movie blog. It’s called Violent Cases, and in it I’ll be examining different kinds of movie violence, as well as general themes of violence in movies. I just put up my first proper post, about “Inglourious Basterds” and “The Battle of Algiers.” It took a while to do, but I’m pretty proud of the final result. I hope you’ll check it out and tell me what you think! It seems like this project is going to be kind of an undertaking, so I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be updating my posts. But do expect more to come!

Movie Review: 9

We’re giving our two cents on Shane Acker’s movie “9.” Sorry for the delay! I am basically lazy and like to procrastinate far too much. In any case, we hope you enjoy the review!
-Abby