Posts Tagged ‘Up’

Dear Pixar,

Allow me to explain to you why Cars 2 might forever be known as your first real “flop.”

Some people thought that it was inevitable – that it was just a matter of time before you did something less than extraordinary. You have had one of the most incredibly successful run of releases going all the way back to your first full-length feature film in 1995’s Toy Story. With each new film it appeared that you could do no wrong, following up each critical and financial success with another. What’s more is you have continued to raise the bar for filmmaking practices in general, not just with computer animated family fare. You have become the yardstick to which all storytelling of your ilk must be measured, but it appears the time come when you have finally failed to measure up to yourself.

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Gregory Peck's performance as Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" is widely regarded as the most idealic father figure ever seen on film.

We here at Movie-Thoughts try to find interesting views on anything movie-related, scouting magazines, web pages, newspapers, et al, to get judgments and attitudes from varying corners of our culture. Today in the latest (June) edition of The Catholic World Report we came across an article written by Steven D. Greydanus that, in the spirit of Father’s Day (which as a reminder is June 20th), documents the image of American fathers as depicted in Hollywood films over the past 60 years or so.

Mentioning roles from Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in 1962′s To Kill a Mockingbird, to Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), to Steve Martin in the remake of Father of the Bride (1991), to Will Smith in The Pursuit of Happiness (2006), to Christian Bale in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma (2007), he covers the various depictions of fatherhood as ideal patriarch, pivotal familial figure, impotent supporter, and so on. He even goes on to include in the conversation the depictions of father figures like Mr. Fredrickson in Pixar’s Up (2009).

Depictions of the American father were perhaps never better than with Peck playing Atticus Finch – a widower who despite any possible reservations or grievances about living without a spouse exemplifies the ideal patriarchal figure by being intelligent, morally grounded like no other, nonthreatening by default but firm and steadfast when needed, and self-sacrificing. Conversely, in Father of the Bride (both original and remake) the father is seen as insecure and lacking control of himself as well as others in his family. In 3:10 to Yuma (both original and remake) the father is portrayed as being impotent – meaning he’s unable to provide for his family or sufficiently defend its honor (at the beginning of the films, that is). What all of these depictions do, Greydanus argues – with as various as they’ve become and as unflattering as they can be – is demonstrate not the competence or imperativeness of individual fathers but the importance of the father figure. Whether the father is Atticus Finch, George Banks, Darth Vader, or completely absent, the depicted family dynamic and its accompanying story typically make a case for how influential the paternal role is.

Personally, we found this article to be extremely refreshing. Not just because it didn’t revel in the Father Knows Best personas of yesteryear but because an article like this explicitly stands against the modern-day depictions of the everyday father that you can find on The Simpsons, Family Guy, and yogurt commercials without even having to mention them. With however many sitcoms and commercials that show how overweight, impotent (in all definitions of the word), lazy, and simple-minded fathers supposedly are (which arguably make the case that fathers are by and large ineffectual), it’s nice to be reminded that the real importance of the father figure can always be found in the movies our culture generates. Fathers don’t always know best, but their role helps shape the social fabric of our patriarchal country (for better or worse, depending on your attitude towards the patriarchal arrangement).

Send us your thoughts and opinions on this topic via the comments section of this post or our contact page. We’d love to hear from you!

The Coen Brothers are likely to earn another writing Oscar for their film "A Serious Man," but have stiff competition with Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" and Mark Boal's "The Hurt Locker"

Continuing our breakdown of the major categories for this year’s 82nd annual Academy Awards, here is our analysis of the nominees eligible to receive the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Also See: Best Supporting Actor, Best Leading Actor, Best Supporting Actress

Best Original Screenplay

The Golden Globes are often a useful bellwether, but since the Hollywood Foreign Press doesn’t separate Original and Adapted Screenplays, Up in the Air’s win there only suggests the outcome of the Adapted Screenplay category at the Oscars.  Quentin Tarantino won the Critic’s Choice for his Inglourious Basterds screenplay so he has a good chance of winning.  However, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, who have two previous screenplay Oscars for No Country for Old Men and Fargo, have just as strong a chance for A Serious Man.  Moreover, they won with the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics so they may edge out Tarantino for the win.  Mark Boal’s powerful screenplay for The Hurt Locker could pull a surprise win since it beat the Coens at the Writers Guild and the winners there typically win the Oscar as well.  Less likely would be a win for Up which, though emotionally touching, may not be able to compete with the more serious fare offered by the other screenplays.  The least likely winner would be Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon’s screenplay for The Messenger, which, though powerful, is the nominee that has received the least nominations from other prestigious bodies.
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With "500 Days of Summer" (above) and "The Hangover" both being critically acclaimed comedies, which film received the bigger Oscar snub?

A recent Variety article by Glenn Whipp takes a (very) light jab at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by pointing out, as many have done, that comedies have yet again stayed out of the Oscars’ list of Best Picture nominations. Two pics he mentions specifically are 500 Days of Summer and The Hangover. The latter made the American Film Institute’s Top 10 of the year, and the former even made the Movie-Thoughts Top 10. Both films were critically acclaimed, with The Hangover earning 78% on RottenTomatoes.com and 500 Days of Summer earning 86%.

Whipp notes in his article that it is not the concept of comedy that the Academy has excluded, being that A Serious Man has black comedy, Up in the Air has spurts of humor, Up is debatably an action/comedy, and Inglourious Basterds is peppered with tongue-in-cheek fantasy.

So what’s keeping The Hangover away? Crudeness is no doubt the answer, but that’s only an explanation for its brand of humor. In other matters that the Academy judges, which include artistic quality and technical prowess, the film can be said to fall short. The topic of human interest (which couldn’t be a broader label) is another favorite of the voters, so if Judd Apatow’s 40 Year Old Virgin didn’t have a chance, then certainly The Hangover wouldn’t. But what about 500 Days of Summer? A smart, funny film about how to get over what you thought was a great relationship surely satisfies the Academy’s criteria, right? Apparently not. We are left to only guess, which is really all we can do.

This all begs the question of, if we were to consider these two films’ omission by the Academy a snub, which was the bigger snub? Leave your vote in the comments section of this post or via this site’s Contact page. Tell the world what you think!

It's that time of year again!

Oscar nominations were released today! See which of your favorite movies/people were nominated, and tell us if you disagree with any of them. Are there any snubs?

We here at Movie-Thoughts are soon going to be starting a continuing piece dissecting these nominations one category at a time, so be sure to check back regularly!

The 82nd Academy Awards will be aired on March 7th, and will be hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

Best picture
“Avatar”
“The Blind Side”
“District 9″
“An Education”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious”
“A Serious Man”
“Up”
“Up in the Air”

Best actor
Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman, “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner, “The Hurt Locker”

Best actress
Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”
Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”

Best supporting actor
Matt Damon, “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer, “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci, “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”

Best supporting actress
Penelope Cruz, “Nine”
Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique, “Precious ”

Best director
James Cameron, “Avatar”
Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”
Lee Daniels, “Precious”
Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air”

Best foreign-language film
“Ajami” Israel
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” Argentina
“The Milk of Sorrow” Peru
“Un Prophete” France
“The White Ribbon” Germany

Best adapted screenplay
Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, “District 9″
Nick Hornby, “An Education”
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, “In the Loop”
Geoffrey Fletcher, “Precious”
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air”

Best original screenplay
Mark Boal, “The Hurt Locker”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, “The Messenger”
Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, “A Serious Man”
Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Tom McCarthy, “Up”

Best animated feature film
“Coraline”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
“Up”

Best art direction
“Avatar”
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”
“Nine” “Sherlock Holmes”
“The Young Victoria”

Best cinematography
“Avatar”
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“The White Ribbon”

Best sound mixing
“Avatar”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Star Trek”
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

Best sound editing
“Avatar”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Star Trek”
“Up”

Best original score
“Avatar,” James Horner
“Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Alexandre Desplat
“The Hurt Locker,” Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders
“Sherlock Holmes,” Hans Zimmer
“Up,” Michael Giacchino

Best original song
“Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog,” Randy Newman
“Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog,” Randy Newman
“Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36,” Reinhardt Wagner and Frank Thomas
“Take It All” from “Nine,” Maury Yeston
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart,” Ryan Bingham and T Bone       Burnett

Best costume design
“Bright Star”
“Coco Before Chanel”
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”
“Nine”
“The Young Victoria”

Best documentary feature
“Burma VJ”
“The Cove”
“Food, Inc.”
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”
“Which Way Home”

Best documentary short
“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province”
“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner”
“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”
“Music by Prudence”
“Rabbit a la Berlin”

Best film editing
“Avatar”
“District 9″
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious”

Best makeup
“Il Divo”
“Star Trek”
“The Young Victoria”

Best animated short film
“French Roast”
“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty”
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)”
“Logorama”
“A Matter of Loaf and Death”

Best live-action short film
“The Door”
“Instead of Abracadabra”
“Kavi”
“Miracle Fish”
“The New Tenants”

Best visual effects
“Avatar”
“District 9″
“Star Trek”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoe Deschanel in director Marc Webb's "500 Days of Summer," written by Scott Neustadler and Michael H. Weber

The Writer’s Guild of America has announced its nominees for the year’s  Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplays. The nominees for Best Original include the following:

500 Days of Summer (Scott Neustadler and Michael H. Weber), Avatar (James Cameron), The Hangover (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore), The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal), and A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen).

The nominees for Best Adapted include the following:

Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper – based on novel by Thomas Cobb), Julie and Julia (Nora Ephron – based on separate books by Julie Powell and Julia Child), Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher – based on the novel Push by Sapphire), Star Trek (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman – based on Star Trek as created by Gene Roddenberry), and Up in the Air (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner – based on novel by Walter Kirn).

Notable films that were not eligible for the WGA awards because they were not written under the guild’s jurisdiction were: District 9, Inglourious Basterds, The Road, A Single Man, and Up.

Source: Variety

A still from "Coraline"

The American Film Institute has released their choices for the top 10 films of 2009. The list comprises the following films (in alphabetical order):

Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar, Up, and Up in the Air.

Being that Up in the Air hasn’t yet been released into theaters nationwide, its inclusion on this list might act as great promotion and cause the film to have a bigger opening weekend than it would have. The Hangover might also enjoy boosted DVD sales.

Select groups representing these respective films will receive AFI’s awards at a ceremony in Los Angeles on January 5th.

Source: Variety

Quick Opinion: What the hell is The Hangover doing on this list? Certainly there were more deserving films that could have taken its spot in AFI’s top 10 of the year, such as Star Trek or Ingloureous Basterds, to name a few. But to play Devil’s advocate for a moment, many people have been lobbying for years for comedies to get more credit from organizations like AFI because while a successful comedy may not be “artistically superior” (as not every comedy can be Annie Hall) it nevertheless may be impressively effective in garnering the reactions its genre seeks to induce. To The Hangover‘s credit its reception was surprisingly positive from critics, and since its release it has penetrated pop culture thoroughly. Is this grounds for being mentioned with films like Precious, The Messenger, and Coraline? Tell us what you think.

Pixar's "Up" is this year's front runner for Best Animated Picture

This year, because the number of films submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences reached at least 16, there will potentially be 5 final nominees for Best Animated Picture for the 82nd Academy Awards. The academy has not yet viewed all 20, and so nothing is set in stone, but the odds that five or more films will be disqualified (lowering the number of nominees down to 3) are thought to be minimal.

The 20 submitted features are:

• “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”
• “Astro Boy”
• “Battle for Terra”
• “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
• “Coraline”
• “Disney’s A Christmas Carol”
• “The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer”
• “Fantastic Mr. Fox”
• “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”
• “Mary and Max”
• “The Missing Lynx”
• “Monsters vs. Aliens”
• “9”
• “Planet 51”
• “Ponyo”
• “The Princess and the Frog”
• “The Secret of Kells”
• “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”
• “A Town Called Panic”
• “Up”

Two records have been made, with 6 submissions being made in 3-D and 4 films being shot in stop-motion.

The last day for a film to be submitted for nomination is next Monday, which also means that all films in the list above have until then to have their L.A. qualifying run.

All Academy Awards nominations will be released Feb. 2nd, with the awards show on March 7th.

Source: Variety

Suddenly Dickens' timeless tale is too scary? Humbug.

After reading numerous reviews of Robert Zemeckis’ newly released A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey, it appears that there are two main congruences among the majority of critics who disliked the film: 1) the film lacks the warmth and emotional weight of the book and other adaptations; 2) certain parts are too scary for children. The lacking of an emotional connection (which no critic I have yet read has successfully explained and/or articulated) is certainly a valid critique if one were to grade the film based purely on a personalized evaluative judgment, but the argument that the film is too scary for kids intrigues me.

Exactly what makes a movie “too” scary for kids? And for that matter, who said the movie was made just for kids? Pixar’s Up, which was released earlier this year to wide critical acclaim and is a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination, opened with a montage that explicated how Mr. Fredrickson and his wife were unable to conceive a child of their own, and how later Mr. Fredrickson eventually became a widower. Those old enough to understand what was being explained got teary-eyed, while little kids just sat there confused. This is certainly not “kiddy” material, and yet it’s at the beginning of a children’s movie. Critics praised this. The consensus is that one reason Pixar is such a fantastic filmmaking company is because their films can be thoroughly enjoyed by audiences of all ages. The point becomes – if Pixar can be heralded for not being afraid to appeal to audience demographics aside from just children, then why criticize Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol for attempting to do the same thing? Read the rest of this entry »