SUPER BOWL SUNDAY

It's time.

I may not be a churchgoer, but this Sunday is a holy day for me. It's the mecca of movie mania. The most fabulous festival of film. The ultimate big screen bash. Come Sunday night, I will be glued to the TV shoving food into my mouth in celebration of the day I live for. My Super Bowl.

THE OSCARS!!!

I know that the Oscars aren't always awarded accordingly, and that they don't necessarily reflect all of the best movies of the year (I'm an indie fan, too), and about half of the ceremony is just spectacle and stupid celebrity banter, but I looooooove the Oscars! I love deliberating whether Anne Hathaway or Hilary Swank is wearing the better dress. I love that awful feeling of suspense as you wait to hear whether your favorite flick of the year has won Best Picture (that is, until that awful feeling of let down when they reveal that your favorite movie of the year has just lost to "The Hurt Locker.") I love it all. But really, I love it because it's an entire night of nationwide celebration over what I love the most: movies.

For me, Oscar night isn't just a night, it's a full-blown, built up celebration that begins weeks in advance. One of the ways I psyche myself up is to review what went down at the most previous Academy Awards ceremony. That gets me reminiscing about the year before that, and the year before that... you get the point. I have a lot of fun with it, so I thought I'd share it with you. Below is a list of Oscar trivia. I hope it gets you stoked for the big night!

- The youngest person in history to win any kind of Oscar was Shirley Temple. She was 5.
- The youngest person in history to win a standard Oscar was Tatum O'Neal for "Paper Moon," at 10 years old.
- The five major Academy Awards are for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay (original or adapted). Only 3 films in history have ever won all five awards: "It Happened One Night," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and "The Silence of the Lambs."
- Meryl Streep holds the record for most Best Actress Oscar nominations, at a total of 16.
- The youngest person in history to win a Best Actress Oscar was also the only deaf actress to win an Oscar, period - Marlee Matlin, for "Children of a Lesser God."
- Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director 5 times throughout his life, but he never won once.
- Hailee Steinfeld, who plays Mattie Ross in 'True Grit," has African American ancestry. If she wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress this year, she'll qualify as one of 14 black actors who have won Academy Awards throughout history.
- The first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1927, and the winner of Best Picture was a silent movie called "Wings."

Sources:
http://www.seeing-stars.com/awards/oscartrivia.shtml
http://www.reelclassics.com/Articles/General/oscar-trivia-article.htm

The Many Dimensions of 3-D

Today I want to explore one of the most vexing movie trends of my time. Let's talk about 3-D.

If these people from the '50s saw "Avatar," I think they'd wet themselves.

Hey, all you '90s children - remember when "Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over" came out, and all of us 12-year-olds couldn't believe it was in 3-D? How cool was that gonna be, right? (The exponential decline of the "Spy Kids" series aside, of course.) Do you remember a world in which 3-D movies were occasional, and therefore all the more exciting? I do. And I want to know what in the name of celluloid happened. Why does every computer-animated sequel these days have to be in 3-D? Seeing a movie in 3-D used to be a treat, and now it's a gimmick. This annoys me to no end, not because I have something against 3-D film, but because the majority of fantasy/animated movies will look just as beautiful - and less cluttered - without 3-D film. I think there are movies which lend themselves to 3-D quite nicely, but also some that I would never, ever want to experience. I now offer a list of examples further explaining what I consider to be appropriate 3-D applications.

Good 3-D: "Avatar," 2009

This movie, to me, is the current yardstick against which all other 3-D films should be measured. The 3-D works because it enriches the setting, feel, and overall epic experience of the movie. It's consistent and clean-looking, and you can tell it's not just in there for shock value. I saw it in 3-D with my dad, and we found ourselves trying to swat the on-screen insects of Pandora. Ok, I realize I've set the bar pretty high here, so you might be saying, "Well of course, there's nowhere to go but down now," but just hear me out.

Mediocre 3-D (most of today's movies): "Alice in Wonderland," 2010

Don't get me wrong here. The visual effects of "Alice" are completely stunning, but you can tell almost immediately that this movie was not translated to 3-D for the same purposes as "Avatar." There are scenes in the movie that were obviously included just for the 3-D shock value (Oh no! That croquet ball is flying RIGHT AT ME!!!), and they're not even that compelling. I first saw this movie in 3-D, and then the second time I saw it in good old-fashioned 2-D. By the time I saw it in 2-D, I had totally forgotten I had ever seen it in 3-D - that's how forgettable it was. A classic example of what we're seeing in today's theaters: pretty at the time, weak in retrospect.

Bad 3-D: "Titanic," 2012

Your eyes do not deceive you. It's happening. According to James Cameron, a 3-D version of "Titanic" is in the works - look for it in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the real Titanic's disaster. Let me just start by saying, I absolutely adore "Titanic." I even have the geeky 3-disc edition boxed up in fancy, royal blue plastic. But in 3-D? Uh-uh. I'm not saying I don't have faith in the quality of the 3-D conversion, because I totally do - knowing Cameron, it's probably going to look beautiful. But let's take a little stroll down memory lane and think back to when we all saw the original "Titanic" in 1997. Audience members bawling, Celine Dion keening... it was intense enough back then. Can you imagine how brutal it's gonna be now? The movie is already visually overwhelming, along with emotionally wrenching - convert it to 3-D and you've got a movie that's too busy to look at, too in-your-face to escape. And then there's the matter of tastefulness. Sure, the first two hours will probably be a blast. But in that last hour, when 1500 terrified people start jumping to their deaths and shooting themselves in the head, it's no longer fun - it's frightening and, dare I say, tacky and even disrespectful. Not gonna lie, I'm probably gonna go see it (I never got to see it in the theater - I was only seven at the time, and my parents decided I was too little to sit through a 3-hour movie, let alone one so scarring), but I'll be replacing my 3-D glasses with critic goggles. I just think it's a bad idea, man. Sincerely.

Am I just an old-fashioned square? Let me know what you think.

The Great Bad Movie Generation

Don't let the title fool you - this is not a rant about how bad today's movies are. It is hard to resist a rant, however, when I remember that my generation is responsible for the "Twilight" and "Transformers" franchises. But hey, there are embarrassing movies to be found in every decade, right? (1990s: "Wild Wild West") But the difference between my generation and our predecessors is that we embrace the bad stuff.

We are a generation that relishes bad movies, more so than any other. Have you noticed that? And when I say "relishes bad movies," that's not an attack on how bad our taste is, or how we don't appreciate great movies - we do. But we also appreciate how it feels to crack up in a crowded theater when Robert Pattinson calls Kristin Stewart a spider monkey. We appreciate the outpouring of awful Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies that is as regular as the seasons. We appreciate celebrations of bad movies, from re-runs of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (the show that started it all) to midnight screenings of "The Room" (which used to screen at The Moxie here in Springfield, and still screens at The Tivoli in St. Louis). We love our Oscar-winners and indie sleeper hits, but we also know that you can learn just as much from watching a bad movie as you can from watching a good movie - and that sometimes, it's more fun.

I think this infatuation with bad movies has ushered in a new and different era of film appreciation, and I will proudly stand by with my football and water bottle in hand as it develops. So say what you want about my generation's Hollywood. Maybe our attention spans are too short. Maybe we're too sequel-happy. Maybe our romantic comedies are sexist. But you know what? At least we understand that only by viewing all types of movies - the good, the bad, the parodies - can we get the whole picture. The more bad stuff we watch, the more we will learn to appreciate the great stuff.

If anybody has a favorite bad movie that fills their life with joy, please share it! In the mean time, I have included a thematic YouTube montage for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

"This is OUR TIME!" - What Hollywood and the Facebook Generation Have In Common

How many Harvard guys does it take to screw up a network?

The quote in the title of this entry comes from my favorite movie of 2010. Entrepreneur Sean Parker says it as he surveys a vibrant L.A. night club in David Fincher's drama, "The Social Network." Although Parker's motives in the film are more than slightly sketchy, I can't help but think that he might have hit on something.

As a Hollywood-obsessed media student, the Oscars are my Super Bowl. I never miss them. Over the years, I have noticed an increasing trend involving Best Picture nominees and winners - timeliness. More than ever, it seems like the movies that take home the most statuettes are the movies that speak for our times. One recent instance was the 2005 upset "Crash," which explores the problems of racism in America through several intertwining stories. Other examples of this trend include last year's war-themed Best Picture winner, "The Hurt Locker," and the critically acclaimed film "Up in the Air," which comments scathingly on the current job market. 

This year, the trend of timeliness continues with "The Social Network." If this movie wins Best Picture, I will be absolutely overjoyed. It's not just of the time, it's of my time - and it's pretty freaking thrilling to watch a historical movement that I witnessed play out on the big screen. I am a proud member of the Facebook generation. We are a people that prioritize connectivity, accessibility, and living in the moment - kind of like the makers of today's most compelling movies. 

If you haven't seen "The Social Network" yet, rent it now. We can Facebook chat about it afterwards.