Ambival.net http://ambival.net Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:34:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.1 en hourly 1 2010 Oscar Predictions http://ambival.net/movies/oscar-10-predictions http://ambival.net/movies/oscar-10-predictions#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:10:06 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2064 Okay I’m done now :)

And the winner is … NOT ME! lol 8/21 is my final score. Just 2 better than last year. I really thought I’d do at least a little better than that. It was still a far from disappointing night, though. I think back to last year’s Slumdog sweep and I don’t know how my love of Oscar even survived that. Baldwin/Martin gags were lame but made me laugh buckets … even Sandra Bullock earned her win with a beautifully engineered speech. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to regular Moët after sipping a Grand Vintage over 4 hours!

Wrong! Best Picture: Up in the Air (that’s my final answer) I still really want Up in the Air, but feel like Inglourious Basterds is the one I’ll be most happy with in years to come. I’ll be fine with Avatar or The Hurt Locker
Correct! Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) I’m fairly convinced this is hers.
Wrong! Best Actor: Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) I don’t want Jeff Bridges to win this (if he does, I’ll pretend it’s for The Big Lebowski). I’d prefer Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, and this is the first time I’ve ever really been happy with a Clooney nomination. I’ve still not seen A Single Man. Really, anyone but Bridges or Freeman (I didn’t think either were very good at all).
Wrong! Best Actress: Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) As with Bridges in the Actor category, I don’t want Bullock to win this (if she does, I’ll pretend it’s for 28 Days). Until I saw Julie & Julia the other day (review soon hopefully), I was Gabby Sidibe all the way on this – it just doesn’t seem they could give the Oscar to Mo’Nique and then not recognise her too, and she is fantastic in Precious (review of that soon too). Then I saw Julie & Julia and I haven’t seen a more joyous movie all year. It’s the first time in my lifetime that Meryl Streep has been nominated and I actually really wanted her to win. I haven’t seen The Last Station.
Correct! Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) One of the few cases where I couldn’t be happier with the favourite.
Correct! Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique (Precious) I’d love for one of the Up in the Air girls to win but even I can’t pick just one so I concede it must be Mo’Nique’s.
Wrong! Best Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino) I wish this was a bigger no brainer than it seems…
Wrong! Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air (Jason Reitman) This seems to be the only one I can seriously hope for for my favourite movie of the year.
Correct! Best Editing: The Hurt Locker I thought I was as torn on this category as the other smaller tech categories, then what Roger Ebert wrote in his predix made me realise why my gut had chosen The Hurt Locker and now I’m certain. This is almost as deserving of a win as Thelma Schoonmaker’s work on The Departed was 3 years ago.
Wrong! Best Cinematography: The Hurt Locker
Wrong! Best Animated Feature: The Princess and the Frog This might be one of my “wasted predix” but I just found this one so much better than the other nominees.
Correct! Best Art Direction: Avatar One of the few you really can’t argue that this movie actually deserves.
Wrong! Best Costume Design: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus Just ‘cos of the ones I’ve seen this was the movie I liked most, but not that much. Inglourious Basterds shoulda been in here.
Correct! Best Make-Up: Star Trek Another “meh” category. I simply haven’t seen the other nominees.
Correct! Best Visual Effects: Avatar No-brainer of the year.
Wrong! Best Sound Effects Editing: Inglourious Basterds Shrugs lol. Another I might change before the show. None really stood out greatly to me as better than the others.
Wrong! Best Sound Mixing: Avatar See above. Just, nothing for Transformers 2, please.
Wrong! Best Score: The Hurt Locker I swapped this out of my nominations predix for the Public Enemies score at the last minute and was surprised when it came up. I watched the movie again a week or so ago and was reminded why I originally thought it should be nominated.
Wrong! Best Original Song: “Almost There”, The Princess and the Frog I know, it’s probably “Crazy Heart”, but I just didn’t even like the song in that movie let alone Bridges. I’d much prefer my fave song from Princess get this, like Disney used to.
Correct! Best Documentary Feature: The Cove I’m sure this one’s between Food Inc. and The Cove (reviews to come soon hopefully), and I think Food Inc is a much more important movie, but The Cove packs an emotional punch you just can’t forget and with its closing line about “if we can’t stop this, than we can’t stop anything“ (words to that effect), arguably does make it more important too than the all-embracing Food Inc.
Wrong! Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon has it, I think. Pretty sure this is between The White Ribbon and Un Prophete … I hope to see both in the next couple of days…

I also hope to watch 6 of the nominated shorts before Sunday, in which case I might include those categories for the first time. (thought there were some on Sky Anytime but they were old ones, grr). Anyway, that is all for now :)

Nominations Predictions from earlier

*Currently tallying*… doing this way too fast, alert me if I’ve made an error with any of my red/green right/wrong indicators :-P

53/96 … almost exactly the same as last year!

Okay, I think I’m done. Nominations are tomorrow. As always, my final list is a complex combination of actual informed expectations, personal preferences, and the odd wild card, with the final deciding factor always being “does it sit well with me?” 2010 has been that rare year where I can truly say all of the following sit pretty darn well with me, and that happens to match up nicely with the prevailing trends on predicting sites. As I’ve said already, once I saw Up in the Air and loved it so darn much, I knew everything was gonna be okay.

Edit: lol and I already made a swap – Michael Gambon is the only thing I think Half-Blood Prince should be up for. It’s almost less likely even than Isabelle Fuhrman but I’ll probably get less WTFs for it :-P

Best Picture

Best Director

Best Actor

Best Actress

Best Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actress

Best Original Screenplay

Best Adapted Screenplay

Best Editing

Best Cinematography

Best Score

Best Original Song

Best Sound Editing

Best Sound Mixing

Best Animated Feature

Best Visual Effects

Best Art Direction

Best Costume Design

Best Make-Up

  • Star Trek Correct!
  • District 9 Wrong!
  • The Road Wrong!
]]> http://ambival.net/movies/oscar-10-predictions/feed 8 Is-Slottet [Ice Palace] http://ambival.net/movies/is-slottet-ice-palace http://ambival.net/movies/is-slottet-ice-palace#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:15:28 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2526 I have some reviews from the past month to fill in before this one but I want to jump ahead and write this one while it’s fresh in my mind the very day I watched it. This is another movie that has been on my “to watch” list far too long. The initial reason was that I only had a dull VHS copy of the movie with no subtitles on it, and I decided to wait either until I found time to learn a little Swedish (something I still want and plan to do for a variety of other reasons) or some subtitles showed up on the net. Then, I waited so long that I decided perhaps I should read the book and then watch the movie with no subtitles, which is what I eventually did. I read the (translated) book over the past few weeks, and it instantly became one of my alltime faves. The simplicity of language and degree to which I related to the emotions conveyed, the likes of which are rarely, if ever, conveyed, just blew me away. I had a hard time thinking how it could make a movie, let alone one that clocks in at a mere 75 minutes.

By the time I got to watching the movie, then, I had the book as a background and I had also acquired subtitles, so I was set. The irony is – and this serves as encouragement to anybody reading this and having the same hesitations about watching – the smattering of dialogue in this movie is really nothing to worry about, should you either have no subtitles, or even if you have them and just don’t like reading them. This is a visual interpretation all the way, and frankly, it’s the only way you could even hope to attack the complexity of the inner world of these characters in the novel: by practically ignoring it, and letting the viewer fill in the gaps, which is as pure as cinema gets if you ask me.

The story is almost embarrassingly simple and does nothing towards selling you the experience of either reading or watching (but if you need this kind of movie “selling” to you then you’re frankly on the wrong site, lol): two young girls, Siss and Unn, meet and immediately connect on a level they can neither understand nor communicate. Unn is new to Siss’ school and distant from the other kids. Siss goes to Unn’s house and they share an intimate moment in Unn’s bedroom, after which Unn says she has a secret she wants to tell Siss. Siss gets uncomfortable and leaves, and the next day, Unn mysteriously disappears. I won’t go further than that, except to say that what follows not only continues a much-needed exploration of unspoken feelings but also the grief process, growing up, and moving on (I feel like I should at least acknowledge the lesbian aspect of the story but I honestly did not even think of this while reading the book, reading the girls’ attraction to each other on a much deeper spiritual level, with all that follows stemming merely from Unn’s secret that Siss, and us, never learn*… the book is just that minimal, not to mention so averse to such easy descriptors as the ‘L’ word…).

I would recommend the book much more enthusiastically than the movie because there is just so much more there, including a heartwrenching “second ending” which is understandably excised here (I was overjoyed, if that’s the right word, by the portrayal of the ice palace’s collapse, however). But considering this was made in the late 80s for what can’t have been an enormous budget, I was seriously impressed by how well the film simply visualises the book (this does, by the way, entail some underage nudity, for those who need to know these things). I really didn’t expect the scenes of the ice palace itself to be so overpoweringly visceral. I almost didn’t expect to see the ice palace at all, assuming a film of such paltry length would somehow take the story on a more metaphorical and talky level. This is a film that takes a minimal novel and strips it down even further. It’s all about the images, the faces, and a haunting (if a little synthy) score. It actually interests me how a person who hadn’t read the novel first would take it. It didn’t blow me away nearly as much as the book, which left me teary-eyed and speechless, but I really can’t imagine a better way it could have been filmed.

* This secret, now I’ve had time to process both book and movie, seems simply to be that Unn is afraid she won’t go to heaven, and it follows perhaps that this is because of the attitude towards homosexuality at the time the story is set, in the 30s – but again, the way it read to me in the book, it seemed to me that Unn was afraid of not going to heaven, but equally afraid of elaborating on why, which is what unsettles Siss, who leaves before such a thing can ever happen…

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/is-slottet-ice-palace/feed 0 Star 80 http://ambival.net/movies/star-80 http://ambival.net/movies/star-80#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:32:48 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2521 This has been on my “to watch” list for probably nearly a decade now, since I first came across Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and Lenny, both of which instantly added him to my list of favourite directors despite his very short resume (in addition to these, there’s only Sweet Charity and Cabaret). It’s amazing in all that time of procrastinating that I never came across any plot info about the movie, and I’m glad… I came to this movie knowing very little about the real life story it’s based on – only that it had something to do with a Playboy model – and as such I got as much out of its shocking turns as it’s possible to get, so I recommend you do likewise and stop reading if you plan on seeing it any time soon, though I won’t get into too much detail (but don’t look at the tags).

This movie reminded me a lot of two other movies I’ve seen in the past couple of years: Lipstick (which shared actress Mariel Hemingway) and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with a small (less rollercoaster-ish) dash of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as good as any of these, nor at least three of Fosse’s other works (I’ve not yet seen Sweet Charity, though I hear it’s a pretty straight 60s musical so I doubt it’ll wow me), it’s a particularly slow, procedural build to an electrifying finale that left me emotionally drained. It’s certainly worth a look if you’re into such raw Seventies/Early-80s grit.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/star-80/feed 0 Synecdoche, New York http://ambival.net/movies/synecdoche-new-york http://ambival.net/movies/synecdoche-new-york#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:25:04 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2474 What to say of this movie on a first viewing? It seems redundant to defend it against the negative reviews it received in light of Roger Ebert naming it the best movie of the last decade, but I still can’t imagine how anybody could flat out dismiss this. I would see why a person wouldn’t like Synecdoche, New York – like all of Charlie Kaufman’s work since Being John Malkovich, it’s knowingly complex, bordering pretentious, and arguably overreaching – but for the same reasons, you kinda have to give it some credit while it remains relatively unknown alongside so many more shamelessly mainstream releases of the last few years.

It’ll take me at least a second viewing and probably many more to really settle on an opinion myself. This really is the kind of movie that makes me think so hard my brain feels physically stretched by the end. It’s packed with ideas, and those ideas packed within ideas, like a Russian doll of philosophy. It’s full of great actors, of actors playing actors… and it’s the first Charlie Kaufman movie to have some seriously impressive set design too. And you have to remember all the while that all this comes as Kaufman’s directorial debut. Anybody with half a brain would’ve expected so much less than this (look what happened with the reverse, when Kaufman’s two-time director Michel Gondry wrote and directed Be Kind Rewind), so the mere achievement of simply putting it on film so coherently as he has (yes, it’s confusing; but in that way in which you trust it all makes sense somehow) is almost as mindblowing as the script.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/synecdoche-new-york/feed 0 2011 Oscar Predictions http://ambival.net/movies/2011-oscar-predictions http://ambival.net/movies/2011-oscar-predictions#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:55:52 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2491 I forget when I did this last year but I’m pretty sure I usually make it somewhere between nominations and ceremony day so that I can pick up the increased hits I get on these pages in this time in the hope of keeping the old Google rank up (it’s slid in the past few years but always worth doing my best lol). So, of course, this page will be nonsense for at least a few months, and even then it’s just a bit of fun. But for now I will crawl the net for as much info about upcoming releases that catch my eye (hint: this is a good place to start), and the comments are open for you to spew titles at me too (last year someone posted a fabulous comment full of titles).

Best Picture

  • Miral
  • The Tree of Life
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
  • The Ghost Writer
  • Shutter Island

Best Director

  • Julian Schnabel, Miral
  • Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
  • Jodie Foster The Beaver
  • Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer
  • Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island

Best Actor

  • Willem Dafoe, Miral
  • Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life
  • Johnny Depp, The Rum Diary
  • Sean Penn, Fair Game
  • Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine

Best Actress

  • Freida Pinto, Miral
  • Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
  • Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine
  • Naomi Watts, Fair Game

Best Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actress

  • Jodie Foster, The Beaver
  • Elle Fanning, Somewhere

Best Original Screenplay

  • Somewhere, Sofia Coppola
  • The Beaver, Kyle Kinnen

Best Adapted Screenplay

  • The Green Zone, Brian Helgeland
  • The Rum Diary, Bruce Robinson
  • The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin
  • Miral, Rula Jebreal

Best Editing

Best Cinematography

  • Stuart Dryburgh, The Tempest
  • Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life

Best Original Score

  • Alexandre Desplat, The Tree of Life

Best Original Song

Best Animated Feature

  • Rapunzel
  • Toy Story 3
  • The Illusionist

Best Art Direction

  • Robin Hood
  • The Tempest

Best Costume Design

  • Robin Hood
  • Colleen Atwood, Alice in Wonderland
  • Sandy Powell, The Tempest

Best Make Up

  • Alice in Wonderland
  • The Tempest
  • Robin Hood

Best Sound Mixing

Best Sound Effects Editing

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Best Visual Effects

  • Alice in Wonderland
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Best Documentary Feature

  • Oceans
]]> http://ambival.net/movies/2011-oscar-predictions/feed 3 BAFTA Predix http://ambival.net/movies/bafta-predix http://ambival.net/movies/bafta-predix#comments Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:24:23 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2494 going to start the entry with “I don’t bother predicting the nominations for these awards but…” but, eep, well it seems I didn’t even bother with this last year lol. Anyway, this is like an Oscars preview, I guess, and I’ve decided that since the awards are so predictable this year (you can find predictions all over elsewhere that will be 100% right, and I could easily transcribe if I wanted), I’m going to root for the underdogs, the ones that I love, unless those happen to coincide particularly well with the “locks”. So, yeh, again the “predictions” moniker isn’t entirely correct, but y’know, it’s the internet, and you gotta use the keywords.

In short, you could say that this year I’m going for a score of zero, lol. (actually, having completed the list, I reckon it might just be my usual 50/50 again with the lesser categories working in my favour…)

… 8/21!

Best Film: Up in the Air Wrong!
Outstanding British Film: Moon Wrong!
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer: Duncan Jones, Moon Correct!
Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker Correct!
Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino Wrong!
Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air, Jason Reitman Correct!
Film not in the English Language: Let the Right One In Wrong!
Animated Film: Coraline Wrong!
Leading Actor: George Clooney, Up in the Air Wrong!
Leading Actress: Saoirse Ronan, The Lovely Bones Wrong!
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds Correct!
Supporting Actress: Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air Wrong!
Music: Crazy Heart Wrong!
Cinematography: The Hurt Locker Correct!
Editing: The Hurt Locker Correct!
Production Design: Avatar Correct!
Costume Design: A Single Man Wrong!
Sound: Avatar Wrong!
Special Visual Effects: Avatar Correct!
Make Up & Hair: Nine Wrong!
Rising Star: Carey Mulligan Wrong!

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/bafta-predix/feed 0 New York, I Love You http://ambival.net/movies/new-york-i-love-you http://ambival.net/movies/new-york-i-love-you#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:04:39 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2473 I had a gut feeling I wouldn’t be as crazy for this as I was for Paris, je t’aime as I simply don’t feel the same connection to this city (which I haven’t visited) as I do for Paris (which I have, multiple times). In addition to this, the directors list for this one – Jiang Wen, Mira Nair, Shunji Iwai, Yvan Attal, Brett Ratner, Allen Hughes, Shekhar Kapur, Natalie Portman, Fatih Akin and Joshua Marston – does not really wow as much as the list for “Paris…” – which included segments by the Coens, Wes Craven, Gus Van Sant, Alfonso Cuarón, Tom Tykwer, Alexander Payne and Isabel Coixet.

Overall I was surprised how tonally it felt so similar to the Paris movie – which certainly makes a case for an argument of producer as author, they being the only solid connection between the two movies – and some of the shorts work really well. I made something of a point of not looking up the credits of this movie before watching so I can assure you when I tell you that, it has nothing to do with names when I say my favourite of all was easily the one directed by Shekhar Kapur and written by the late Anthony Minghella. It’s a poetic musing with the stunning Julie Christie, John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf that’s hard to describe as anything but beautiful and worth watching the whole movie for on its lonesome.

The problem with the movie – and I guess I have to admit I can’t really qualify this since, like I said, I haven’t been to NYC yet – is that it really doesn’t ever feel like it’s necessarily about New York at all, as much as the Paris movie felt it was about Paris. It could be about multicultural Anywhere. Maybe that was partly the point, but it seems a kind of senseless waste of the location and title to me.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/new-york-i-love-you/feed 0 Sherlock Holmes http://ambival.net/movies/sherlock-holmes http://ambival.net/movies/sherlock-holmes#comments Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:58:14 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2472 You might have spotted from my last review that I tend to not really like when sweeping statements like “return to form!” are embraced on a massive scale. I’d heard from many quarters that this was Guy Ritchie’s best film, if not “ever!” than at least in a long long time. I was one of the few who actually thought “his worst”, Revolver, was actually slightly fascinating and I still look forward to seeing that one again, in addition to his other universally despised effort, Swept Away.

All I can say is, if this is one of Guy Ritchie’s best, then it’s only because people have grown or been conditioned to detest his true style (which I believe shows best in Revolver) so much, and that this is as far from a true Guy Ritchie movie as it’s possible to get. It’s a studio production all the way, sacrificing risk and innovation for nuts and bolts tech specs and star power. Yes, the movie is slick and gorgeous, the action sequences first rate, and Downey Jr. / Law / McAdams all have their moments. At best I had hoped from this something approaching the joy of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie had; unfortunately, storywise it’s closer to the later installments of that franchise – so if you were okay with those, you’ll probably be okay with this too. I was just bored witless by the movie’s last half hour, and the chance of me even thinking of watching it again are approximately zero.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/sherlock-holmes/feed 0 The Princess and the Frog http://ambival.net/movies/the-princess-and-the-frog http://ambival.net/movies/the-princess-and-the-frog#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:43:08 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2456 This is not a movie I expected to wind up liking anywhere near as much as I did as the end credits rolled… those who know me will know I have been a pretty huge fan of Disney in my time and even in those times when I mightn’t have liked the product, I always found them to be a fascinating company, in the way they’re perceived both positive/negatively, in the way they change (or try to change) with the times, and yet the way they seem to (most of the time) retain the spirit of Uncle Walt all the way.

I was one of those who never quite understood the decision to quit 2D animation. Yes: Home on the Range was a disappointment that seemed to confirm whatever reasoning lay behind it, but I was never one of those who considered the likes of Atlantis, Treasure Planet, and most of all Lilo & Stitch (which gets better every year, I swear), to be so much worse than the most average of their earlier output (Robin Hood, *The Great Mouse Detective*… they haven’t always been classics, is what I’m saying); and while it’s true they weren’t living up to the heights of Pixar’s CGI work, or constantly doing their best, they were for the most part easily still better than the output of Dreamworks etc.

That long intro is a way of saying, I was never going to be saying in this review, as so many have, “at last, Disney return to form!” because I honestly don’t think they ever lost it. Mis-steps, yes; total betrayal of their roots? No. The only time I feared they had lost it, as a matter of fact, was much more recently than their closing of the 2D department. If you’ve read my reviews before, you might have seen my semi-rant about Enchanted… another movie which people embraced with strangely deluded arms which seemed to think Disney hadn’t been doing 2D Princess stories for half a century let alone half a decade. I thought the animated sequences in that movie were honestly just embarrassing – and I thought its message, its way of taking the whole “love at first sight and happily ever after” thing of old and treating it “responsibly”, was plain depressing and couldn’t be further removed from what I (and I’m sure many others) turn to Disney for.

I mention that because (finally we can get to the movie!) this was what I really worried for a while would be repeated here. I’ve been following this movie (and the next big 2D from Disney, Rapunzel, about which I at least had the same reservations) since it was announced and especially after Enchanted I really thought my time for loving Disney was coming to an end with the changes I kept hearing. I won’t get started on the other embracing comments about this being Disney “finally” having a black Princess (wow, it only took ‘em 80 years, amazing), despite that princess turning into a bright green amphibian 30 minutes in…

There’s a moment very early here when the heroine’s father informs her, “you can wish on a star but the star can only take you part o’ the way…” The heroine in this scene is still a very young girl. It brought me right back to that scene in Enchanted when the little girl’s father says something similar to her, to which she replies astutely, “I’m only six!” to which he retaliates, “You won’t always be.”

Luckily, The Princess and the Frog has this moment for a better reason.

What this movie does for much of its first hour is similar to what Disney tried to do with Enchanted, this new “responsible” approach, telling kids you can’t just dream your life away or rely on daddy’s credit card to get you out of trouble or, indeed, just wish upon a star which (among many things) are all things Disney have been criticised for doing for decades now. I understand these criticisms and the well-meaning behind them, but I can’t agree with them. Disney is dreaming. In any case: here it isn’t, as was the case in Enchanted, the whole message. The responsible approach to magical thinking – the “having a fall-back plan in case your dreams don’t come true” thing – here is a starting point from which the film makers then work towards delivering the old Disney message in a way that works better than ever in a world where that former message is all too hopelessly prevalent.

I cannot find the words to express the relief I felt and how astonished I was when the final act of this movie came out of nowhere to make all my pent-up frustrations with the run-up to it completely blow away. Like I said, I’m not gonna go all out and say it’s their best since Beauty and the Beast or Lady and the Tramp or god forbid further back (really would you believe there are people on this earth who completely dismiss the 90s resurgence stuff as “not really Disney”?), but it is certainly for me their best since Lilo & Stitch, and there are elements, particularly in the last half hour, that really did take my breath away like nothing from the studio has since Tarzan. I haven’t even talked about the quality of the animation itself or Randy Newman’s songs etc, but it’s probably been covered plenty elsewhere. I really cannot wait to see it again without all the fears I came to it with this time around, and my hopes for Rapunzel are beginning to crawl their way back too a pretty frenzied peak.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/the-princess-and-the-frog/feed 0 A Serious Man http://ambival.net/movies/a-serious-man http://ambival.net/movies/a-serious-man#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:29:35 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2459 Of this, The Road and Invictus, all of which left me with very little to say, this I’m sure is the one I’m most likely to see again some time and get much more out than I did here on a first viewing. I realised only recently that the reason I probably grew a little tired of this one is because I’ve been spending a lot of my time so far this year catching up on the whole of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” series. I’ve watched the whole 7 seasons in a little over 2 weeks. And the basic flow of this movie really feels a lot like an episode of that show, only not nearly as funny and provocative. In place of what’s missing is an introspective look at what might be the reason such things happen to the seemingly nicest of people. On a first watch, like I said, I just didn’t see the appeal it seems to have had for others. It’s a remarkably uneventful movie, the implications of its message being equally remarkable in their lack of consequence. But it’s far more watchable than those other movies that left me cold, and I look forward to seeing if a second viewing is more rewarding.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/a-serious-man/feed 0 The Road http://ambival.net/movies/the-road http://ambival.net/movies/the-road#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:29:00 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2458 Another movie I really have very little to say about and of which I had relatively high expectations. I haven’t read the book on which this is based yet and (especially now I’ve seen the movie) I’m pretty sure it will be a more fulfilling experience. I felt this, more than any other problems you might find with it, was just far too long for what it ultimately shows and tells us. It could have been done a a 30- or even 15- minute short, and better. I wasn’t overawed by either Viggo Mortensen’s or the kid’s performance, I just got the idea within 15 minutes and it doesn’t develop anything new beyond that point. It’s not that I dislike a depressing filmgoing experience (I’m sure those who love the movie think this is the only reason anybody would not like it), because heaven knows I do; but I dislike movies that repeat themselves so flatly as this one does. It’s ironic that when this movie leaked on the internet initial copies had 30 minutes of footage missing. I feel like anybody who mistakenly viewed that version might’ve been the lucky ones.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/the-road/feed 0 Invictus http://ambival.net/movies/invictus http://ambival.net/movies/invictus#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:28:31 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2457 Hmm… I’ve been holding onto this and a couple of other movies to write about for a week now until I had something that gave me a larger body of words to bury them under, lol, because I just really didn’t have a lot to say about them. There was no reason I would necessarily have my attention seized by a story about football uniting people over race in apartheid Africa, but I had more hope for this one than I might have otherwise because Clint Eastwood is frankly on a roll lately. I mightn’t have been personally wowed by Flags of Our Fathers and Iwo Jima but the achievement was immeasurable, and last year’s Changeling and Gran Torino both remain among my top 10 of the year.

This is as solidly built as anything Eastwood has done in the last 10 years, for sure. I just was never going to be interested in this story. I was excited for Morgan Freeman’s performance as Mandela, but if I’m absolutely honest, I even found disappointment here. Freeman is an amazing actor but he really felt lost to me here. He can do a lot of things but this movie shows he is not up to portraying real people of such magnitude. The fact that I was more impressed by Matt Damon’s performance (which is the best he’s been since The Talented Mr. Ripley) really says it all.

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/invictus/feed 0 Golden Globes 2010 http://ambival.net/movies/golden-globes-2010 http://ambival.net/movies/golden-globes-2010#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:22:28 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2435 I have a feeling I will do better than my 6/14 of last year here. What I am noticing about this year’s awards season is (especially with the Oscars having 10 Best Picture slots now) how surprisingly predictable it is and yet how even if the wildest outcome occurs, most people are gonna be pretty satisfied. With that said, the following is not exclusively the ones I “really” think will win, rather a combination of that and a few that I really deep down personally want to win. I shall be live tweeting my thoughts from red carpet time onwards :)

7/14

Best Motion Picture – Drama: Up in the Air (really want this, here and at the Oscars) Wrong!

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama: Gabourey Sidibe – Precious: Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire (haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard enough) Wrong!

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama: Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart (haven’t seen it, but by all accounts… plus he’s overdue: here and the Oscars, please) Correct!

Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: (500) Days of Summer (unlikely, but it’s the one I like best) Wrong!

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia (not a lot to pick from here) Correct!

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical: Joseph Gordon-Levitt – (500) Days of Summer (again, just the one I liked best) Wrong!

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture: Mo’Nique – Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (same as Sidibe in the lead: haven’t seen, but heard plenty) Correct!

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture: Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds (the surest of my predix) Correct!

Best Animated Feature Film: Up (hmm, maybe even surer) Correct!

Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon (though the HFP really like Almodovar, right?) Correct!

Best Director – Motion Picture: Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker (here and the Oscars please, but less of the big deal about her being OMG Roger Moore voice a woman!) Wrong!

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture: Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds (this is so the best of the five nominated it’s ridiculous) Wrong!

Best Original Score – Motion Picture: Karen O and Carter Burwell – Where the Wild Things Are (I didn’t like the movie much, but the music was some of the most original of last year, shame Bruno Coulais isn’t nominated for Coraline) Wrong!

Best Original Song – Motion Picture: “The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart) (getting Wrestler vibes from this and Bridges) Correct!

(I don’t do the TV ones but Drew Barrymore deserves anything)

]]> http://ambival.net/movies/golden-globes-2010/feed 0 Top 100 Movies [2009] http://ambival.net/movies/top-100-movies-2009 http://ambival.net/movies/top-100-movies-2009#comments Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:18:11 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2424 I wasn’t sure if I’d bothered/got around to doing this last year but I did so I’ll continue the habit. I’ve been “locking” this list at the end of each year since 2004 now so it is kind of interesting to see how it changes over time afterall [2004 2005 2006 2007 2008]. I haven’t actually updated the current list on the site in months either so this is the absolute latest, making it doubly worth a front page entry. There are still some unreviewed titles, but that number does go down a little each time too.

  1. Almost Famous: Untitled Cameron Crowe
  2. Tarzan Kevin Lima, Chris Buck
  3. Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton
  4. Harold and Maude Hal Ashby
  5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show Jim Sharman
  6. The Exorcist: The Version You’ve Never Seen William Friedkin
  7. The Birds Alfred Hitchcock
  8. The Bad Seed Mervyn LeRoy
  9. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc Carl Dreyer
  10. Schindler’s List Steven Spielberg
  11. Unforgiven Clint Eastwood
  12. The Fisher King Terry Gilliam
  13. The Strawberry Statement Stuart Hagmann
  14. The Wizard of Oz Victor Fleming
  15. Buffalo ’66 Vincent Gallo
  16. Pieces of April Peter Hedges
  17. Uptown Girls Boaz Yakin
  18. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques Demy
  19. Cinema Paradiso Giuseppe Tornatore
  20. Magnolia Paul Thomas Anderson
  21. The Ninth Configuration William Peter Blatty
  22. Punch-Drunk Love Paul Thomas Anderson
  23. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron Kelly Asbury, Lorna Cook
  24. Once Upon a Time in America Sergio Leone
  25. Brokeback Mountain Ang Lee
  26. Natural Born Killers Oliver Stone
  27. War of the Worlds Steven Spielberg
  28. V for Vendetta James McTeigue
  29. Whistle Down the Wind Bryan Forbes
  30. Artificial Intelligence: AI Steven Spielberg
  31. Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Michael Wadleigh
  32. Moulin Rouge! Baz Luhrmann
  33. Yentl Barbra Streisand
  34. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button David Fincher
  35. Lawn Dogs John Duigan
  36. Tideland Terry Gilliam
  37. Riding in Cars with Boys Penny Marshall
  38. The Iron Giant Brad Bird
  39. Once Upon a Time in the West Sergio Leone
  40. Before Sunset Richard Linklater
  41. A Home at the End of the World Michael Mayer
  42. Man on Fire Tony Scott
  43. The Innocents Jack Clayton
  44. Vol. 2 Quentin Tarantino
  45. Palindromes Todd Solondz
  46. Millions Danny Boyle
  47. Fahrenheit 9/11 Michael Moore
  48. The End of the Affair [1999] Neil Jordan
  49. Felicia’s Journey Atom Egoyan
  50. Girl, Interrupted James Mangold
  51. Marnie Alfred Hitchcock
  52. Carrie Brian De Palma
  53. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane Nicholas Gessner
  54. Heavenly Creatures Peter Jackson
  55. Mandy aka Crash of Silence Alexander Mackendrick
  56. Lolita Adrian Lyne
  57. Two for the Road Stanley Donen
  58. Robin and Marian Richard Lester
  59. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle Eric Rohmer
  60. Niagara Niagara Bob Gosse
  61. Show Me Love/ Fucking Åmål Lukas Moodysson
  62. May Lucky McKee
  63. Limelight Charlie Chaplin
  64. The Big Sleep [1946] Howard Hawks
  65. Citizen Kane Orson Welles
  66. Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock
  67. The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola
  68. Les Yeux Sans Visage Georges Franju
  69. Pink Floyd The Wall Alan Parker
  70. A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick
  71. The Truman Show Peter Weir
  72. The Big Lebowski Joel Coen
  73. The Opposite of Sex Don Roos
  74. The Horse Whisperer Robert Redford
  75. Moonlight Mile Brad Silberling
  76. Little Voice Mark Herman
  77. Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer
  78. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Peter Jackson
  79. Ed Wood Tim Burton
  80. Catch Me If You Can Steven Spielberg
  81. The Girl on the Bridge Patrice Leconte
  82. Bringing Out the Dead Martin Scorsese
  83. The Ninth Gate Roman Polanski
  84. Fight Club David Fincher
  85. Vanilla Sky Cameron Crowe
  86. Babel Alejandro González Iñárritu
  87. Once John Carney
  88. The Prestige Christopher Nolan
  89. The Fountain Darren Aronofsky
  90. Shame Ingmar Bergman
  91. Easy Rider Dennis Hopper
  92. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Stanley Kubrick
  93. Dawn of the Dead [1978] George Romero
  94. Léon: The Professional Luc Besson
  95. All That Jazz Bob Fosse
  96. The Hudsucker Proxy Joel Coen
  97. The Wicker Man Robin Hardy
  98. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry
  99. Breaking the Waves Lars Von Trier
  100. I Am Sam Jessie Nelson
]]> http://ambival.net/movies/top-100-movies-2009/feed 0 Whip It http://ambival.net/movies/whip-it http://ambival.net/movies/whip-it#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:07:12 +0000 Melody http://ambival.net/?p=2419 Let’s face it, I would’ve seen anything that came with the label “Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut” on it, but I won’t deny I was a little, “ugh” when it turned out to be a movie about skating with Ellen Page in it. I look back on that me and smile pityingly. This is as joyous as you’d expect, a truly old-school “follow your dreams” tale with colourful (and quite surprisingly violent at times) skate scenes a plenty. There’s really not much more to say than that: it aspires to little more than being mildly inspiration but mostly kinetic fun and Drew proves herself more than capable behind the camera. If you’re as crazy about anybody involved as much as I am crazy for Drew (my heart leapt when I realised she was actually in front of the camera too, along with another fave of mine Juliette Lewis), then that’s icing on the cake (which is probably all squished from being thrown at somebody in the movie’s most Drew-ish scene lol).

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