NationStates Jolt Archive

best picture, best diector, best actress, best supporting actor...

i'm happy having seen both mdb and the aviator, mdb was a much better movie. as for the rest of the competition i don't know but they didn't look that good.

I'm glad Jamie Foxx won for Ray. He deserved it.

Sideways was fantastic.

The highlight, though, was Sydney Lumett's acceptance speech for his lifetime achievement award. "I thank the movies" Damn...I want to be that cool...

Million Dollar Baby was amazing; I saw it last night. I was happy Jamie won, but if Clint had won I wouldn't have felt bad; Clint Eastwood is an acting god and MDB deserved all its awards tonight.

I saw MDB but none of the other best picture nominees. Good movie though.

Well, if you go to rent Million Dollar Baby, make sure they don't confuse it with the 1941 period comedy starring Ronald Reagan. :D

With The Sea Inside winning best foreign film and Million Dollar Baby getting the Best this makes it the
(I think this is supposed to be a suprise, but I haven't seen Million Dollar Baby)
-just in case I'll make my conclusion a spoiler-

The Year for Euthenasia

i have "rope burns" by f.x. toole on order. its the short story collection MDB was taken from, i guess the author really lived it, he first published at age 70 after a lifetime as a boxing coach and cutman(and a brief stint as a bullfighter). it looks pretty good.

snip lol

I found MDB just like Clint's last film (Mystic River) - overindulgent, predictable and shallow. The film felt forced - in that scenes and scenarios were created just to give the actors a chance to show how good they are at acting.

It was so obvious that something bad was going to happen to Hillary Swank, to allow her to do some amazing acting scenes (much like Mystic River allowed Sean Penn to overact in some scenes). There was so much lead up to her fighting, that the boxing was rushed through - as if it's an afterthought. Then this big long dragged out ending leading to the inevitable and blindingly obvious climax.
And the supporting characters were badly drawn and 1 dimensional. They weren't characters so much as caricatures. Look at Hillary's family - they really went out of their way to show them to be white trash. It was simply laughable when they turned up to visit her in hospital, after having spent a week at Disneyland etc. I guess this was to show that they really were 'bad' people, but was just totally unnecessary.
No reason was given for Clint's estrangement with his daughter - it's just thrown in to give him a chance to look pained and create an air of tragedy about him.
Then there's the ppl in the gym: The idiot, the bully and his sycophant. Must have been hard coming up with those characters.

I haven't seen 'The Aviator' or 'Ray' yet (I bought them on DVD a couple of weeks ago, but just haven't gotten round to watching them yet). Though without seeing them, I still think Scorcese should have won for best Director, cause based on his previous work and comparing it to Clints, he's miles above Clint. Clint uses too much dark/light and contrast as a way of showing pained emotions. It gets annoying after a while. "Look, highly contrasted scene, bet something bad's going to be said or done!"

I found MDB just like Clint's last film (Mystic River) - overindulgent, predictable and shallow. The film felt forced - in that scenes and scenarios were created just to give the actors a chance to show how good they are at acting.

It was so obvious that something bad was going to happen to Hillary Swank, to allow her to do some amazing acting scenes (much like Mystic River allowed Sean Penn to overact in some scenes). There was so much lead up to her fighting, that the boxing was rushed through - as if it's an afterthought. Then this big long dragged out ending leading to the inevitable and blindingly obvious climax.
And the supporting characters were badly drawn and 1 dimensional. They weren't characters so much as caricatures. Look at Hillary's family - they really went out of their way to show them to be white trash. It was simply laughable when they turned up to visit her in hospital, after having spent a week at Disneyland etc. I guess this was to show that they really were 'bad' people, but was just totally unnecessary.
No reason was given for Clint's estrangement with his daughter - it's just thrown in to give him a chance to look pained and create an air of tragedy about him.
Then there's the ppl in the gym: The idiot, the bully and his sycophant. Must have been hard coming up with those characters.

I haven't seen 'The Aviator' or 'Ray' yet (I bought them on DVD a couple of weeks ago, but just haven't gotten round to watching them yet). Though without seeing them, I still think Scorcese should have won for best Director, cause based on his previous work and comparing it to Clints, he's miles above Clint. Clint uses too much dark/light and contrast as a way of showing pained emotions. It gets annoying after a while. "Look, highly contrasted scene, bet something bad's going to be said or done!"

i hated mystic river but i like million dollar baby, it was much better that that dreck marty put out this year. hell i liked gangs of new york better than the aviator and gangs kinda sucked, but at least it wasn't insufferable boring as well as overlong horrendously miscast and completely self indulgent. dicaprio has some talent, but he's limited and scorcese needs to stop casting him in roles that are way over his head.

I never saw MDB. Did Sideways or Closer win anything? Both movies were fantastic.

I never saw MDB. Did Sideways or Closer win anything? Both movies were fantastic.
Sideways won best adapted screenplay, which is extra sweet because I met that guy last spring and talked with him for a while (Alexander Payne). So someone I met was giving an acceptance speech. Nifty.

I found MDB just like Clint's last film (Mystic River) - overindulgent, predictable and shallow. The film felt forced - in that scenes and scenarios were created just to give the actors a chance to show how good they are at acting.

It was so obvious that something bad was going to happen to Hillary Swank, to allow her to do some amazing acting scenes (much like Mystic River allowed Sean Penn to overact in some scenes). There was so much lead up to her fighting, that the boxing was rushed through - as if it's an afterthought. Then this big long dragged out ending leading to the inevitable and blindingly obvious climax.
And the supporting characters were badly drawn and 1 dimensional. They weren't characters so much as caricatures. Look at Hillary's family - they really went out of their way to show them to be white trash. It was simply laughable when they turned up to visit her in hospital, after having spent a week at Disneyland etc. I guess this was to show that they really were 'bad' people, but was just totally unnecessary.
No reason was given for Clint's estrangement with his daughter - it's just thrown in to give him a chance to look pained and create an air of tragedy about him.
Then there's the ppl in the gym: The idiot, the bully and his sycophant. Must have been hard coming up with those characters.

I haven't seen 'The Aviator' or 'Ray' yet (I bought them on DVD a couple of weeks ago, but just haven't gotten round to watching them yet). Though without seeing them, I still think Scorcese should have won for best Director, cause based on his previous work and comparing it to Clints, he's miles above Clint. Clint uses too much dark/light and contrast as a way of showing pained emotions. It gets annoying after a while. "Look, highly contrasted scene, bet something bad's going to be said or done!"

I completely disagree and I'm sorry that you're too cynical to have indulged in the movie rather than sat outside the experience analyzing it. And as for Sydney Lumett, hells yes.

i hated mystic river but i like million dollar baby, it was much better that that dreck marty put out this year. hell i liked gangs of new york better than the aviator and gangs kinda sucked, but at least it wasn't insufferable boring as well as overlong horrendously miscast and completely self indulgent. dicaprio has some talent, but he's limited and scorcese needs to stop casting him in roles that are way over his head.
eww, that doesn't bode well for me watching 'Aviator' - though the main reason I haven't is cause DiCaprio's in it. I saw part of a doco about the Aviator on TV the other night. Scorcese mentioned that as far as he was aware, the only reason him and Dicaprio were together again was because they have the same agent. Might just be a joke, of course. But it would explain a lot.

completely disagree and I'm sorry that you're too cynical to have indulged in the movie rather than sat outside the experience analyzing it.
I don't think it's cynical to expect a drama to actually have solid reasons to explain character's actions and behaviour.

Scorcese mentioned that as far as he was aware, the only reason him and Dicaprio were together again was because they have the same agent. Might just be a joke, of course. But it would explain a lot.

It more than likely isn't a joke. 'Packaging' is the thing for agents, putting together talent that they have together for a film or tv show. It's a big way to broker power. Michael Ovitz became 'the most powerful man in Hollywood' at the head of CAA by pioneering (in that he did what studio heads in the 'golden age' did) that practice. So it's entirely likely that Aviator was put together that way.

Well, DiCaprio did do better in Aviator than I expected him too, thought I must grant I had pretty low expectations of his performance.

Million Dollar Baby was pretty good, but Clint really needs to make a movie that is light and happy.

eww, that doesn't bode well for me watching 'Aviator' - though the main reason I haven't is cause DiCaprio's in it. I saw part of a doco about the Aviator on TV the other night. Scorcese mentioned that as far as he was aware, the only reason him and Dicaprio were together again was because they have the same agent. Might just be a joke, of course. But it would explain a lot.


actually dicaprio was a little less miscast in the aviator than in gangs and blanchett and alan alda were good in supporting roles, i just thought the aviator overall was an overly long shallow biopic which didn't really give you anymore insight into hughes than you'd get half paying attention to a history channel bio on the guy.

OMG did you see/hear Beyonce? I mean, worse than bad English is bad French. Why don't certain US-Americans just stop doing things they have no whatsoever talent for?

Thomas Hayden Church got ripped off.

Million Dollar Baby was a very good movie, it deserved to win. The boxing was ok, and I though Lucia Rijker (real woman boxer, very good) had an amusing role as the German champ. In honesty, in a real boxing match for that kind of fouling you would get DQ'd, but still a very good movie. And Jamie Fox as Ray was just great.

The only best picture nominated films i saw were Finding Neverland and Ray, though i do want to see the other three too. Finding Neverland was wonderful, i thought it was a beautiful, magical movie. I thought Ray was a little overhyped, though i liked it, but Jamie Foxx was truly amazing in it. It's like he channeled Ray Charles. It was honestly eerie at times what a good job he did.

I want to see Hotel Rwanda quite badly. Have any of you seen it?

I want to see Hotel Rwanda quite badly. Have any of you seen it?
yeah, its pretty good in that great tragedy sort of way, don cheadle is amazing and nick nolte is very good. sophie okonedo was also good, but it wasn't such a stand out preformance i would have expected an oscar nod.

very much in the tradition of schindler's list, where one person's struggle to save a group of people is counterposed to the overall tragedy of the genocide, and the survival of the few can somehow make the death of the many less overwhelmingly and numbingly appalling. there is a very real danger of making any genocide somehow unreal by the numbing effect of its scale.