Bring Back Hugh.

Oscar Rundown

This year was just....wow. More lows than highs in the ceremony, chuckles instead of belly laughs and predictable winners made this year's telecast a snooze fest.

First the good.Predictable yet deserving winners. King Colin was crowned Best Actor (still think he should've won last year) for his moving performance in The King's Speech. Natalie Portman was awarded Best Actress for her physically, emotionally and psychologically demanding role in Black Swan. I found her speech to be very sweet and I got a little choked up. She's been one of my favorites for a long time so it was great to see her win for such a deserving performance. My husband won Best Supporting Actor. Very, very long overdue but there was no competition. Christian Bale owned that role. And now, Batman has an Oscar. Melissa Leo collected Best Supporting Actress for her infuriating performance in The Fighter. There were others I would've rather seen win and when they called her name I was ok. But dropping the F bomb? I don't care how excited you are, you're on television and Kirk Douglas is standing next to you.

The King's Speech took Best Picture which I was more than happy with. I had other favorites but the film was moving and told an incredible story that spread across many genres. The film also collected Best Original Screenplay. Inception swept special effects, cinematography and sound categories and rightfully so. I'm glad the film got something. The Social Network got Best Score and Best Adapted Screenplay. Aaron Sorkin's speech was not what I expected. The ego was curved and he seemed genuinely appreciative.

Biggest upset, Tom Hooper winning Best Director for The King's Speech. Should've been David Fincher. Creating and filming a story about the creation of a website and making it compelling and tense takes creativity and talent. The film was edgy and generation defining. I think in years to come this mistake will be acknowledged. Personally I think The Social Network got pretty robbed.

The bad.
The performances were shortened even more than usual! Randy Newman's acceptance speech were longer than the Mandy Moore/Zachary Levi and Florence Welch/A.R. Rahman performances.

There were some seriously unnecessary time wasters that included auto-tuned musicals and a "look" at the first Oscar telecast. To be fair, this may have been an excuse to bring out worthy host Billy Crystal.

Corey Haim omitted from the In Memoriam. This is something that irks me. If you're going to have an In Memoriam, then include everyone. Corey Haim was in the iconic The Lost Boys and Lucas. His passing deserves to be honored.

The ugly.I think we all know what the worst part of the night was. Marisa Tomei's dress? Wasted time acknowledging the renewed contract between the Oscars and ABC? False to both. James Franco and Anne Hathaway were just rotten. Hathaway seemed nervous and overcompensated with giggles and pretty outfits. She did the best she could with her poor material and less than stellar co-host. It's a shame because she is a stunning and talented woman. Franco was asleep with his eyes open. Their were comments about Franco's state of mind, if he was high and so on but I don't think people realize that that's probably how James Franco actually is. He's incredibly talented, but he's weird. The Academy should've known what they were getting into. The fact that he was nominated probably didn't help his state of mind; talk about nerves on top of nerves.

No. montages. Are you kidding? You want to appeal to a younger audience? We love montages! We didn't even get a teaser trailer of each nominated film throughout the night. I cry foul. This killed the ceremony for me. Two Oscars ago, they had these great montages of films from different genres like romance and comedy. It was amazing. People young and old eat that stuff up.

My advice, bring back the montages! Do something clever with presenters. Fozzie and I imagined reuniting famous movie couples or duos as presenters. That'd be great! And I think the title of this post speaks for itself.

The dream is always the same.

Risky Business

I recently went through Risky Business overload, having to write a five page (single-spaced) paper on its structure. But all this work made me love and appreciate Risky Business so much more. The 1987 film about a naive high school virgin turned pimp extraordinaire is an interesting look at business and stars Tom Cruise when he was good Tom Cruise...Tom Cruise at his finest.

Tom Cruise isn't jumping off couches in Risky Business, just dancing around in his underwear to Bob Seger. He's very believable as Joel, a guy who just wants to get into college and get laid. He's got the boyish innocence and politeness that can be associated with that age and position, learned mostly from having such strict parents. One of my favorite Joel moments is when he's sitting down to dinner and sucks on the icy Salisbury steak from his TV dinner and pours himself a whiskey and Coke, not knowing the proper proportions. Hilarious.

The controlling idea of Risky Business is quite extraordinary: corrupted youth will become the future leaders of America. The film ends with Joel learning he's going to get an incredibly high recommendation from a Princeton alumnus, Rutherford; he's basically already in. He may take everything he's learned as a pimp and put it to use in his studies and future business endeavors. The film is saying the future leaders of big business are pimps and that customers are the prostitutes. Perhaps Joel went on to work for Lehman Brothers, AIG or other investment firms that profited from ill-gotten gains. Cruise's boyish innocence portrayal makes the controlling idea that much sadder, that this kid could go on to contribute to the fall of our economy. But the film can be interpreted as ending on a hopeful and uplifting note. So maybe Joel will not become a future business pimp. We just don't know.

The soundtrack is phenomenal. Very 80s, but very dreamlike and hazy. Tangerine Dream creates a foggy daze around the audience with their music, much like Joel must be feeling at times. He probably can't believe he's been doing the things he's been doing, that all these things keep happening to him. He may feel like he's living in a dream and the music definitely enhances that feeling.

There's something incredibly special about teen films from the 1980's. People can connect with at least one of the iconic teen characters, whether it's Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink or Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club; they speak to us. Whether it's a desire to make a connection or stop feeling lost or stuck, 80s teen characters had such a profound amount of heart. It's hard to articulate, but I have a serious soft spot for 80s teen characters, Joel included.

Ben Mendelsohn in Animal Kingdom

What an emotional, terrifying, roller coaster ride of a movie! The Australians certainly know how bring the tension. While all the hype is around Jacki Weaver as the matriarch of a crime family, she didn't do it for me as much as Ben Mendelsohn, the quiet yet completely unstable oldest son. Weaver was fantastic, but she didn't show her true colors until towards the end; I was scared of Mendelsohn the entire time. He's very quiet, reserved and controlled, even when he kills someone. You never see him coming. He hides behind a facade of caring about his family, but is really just out for himself. Never has hearing someone say, "I just want you to talk to me. You can tell me everything, I just want to know," been so scary. He's chilling.

Netflix

Away from Her-Supposed to be a brutal and honest look at a devastating disease.
You Don't Know Jack-Definitely wanted to see this HBO film.
Fright Night-Netflix Instant. Talked about this in my vampires in film and television class.

Texas Forever.

Friday Night Lights

On Wednesday, the final episode of one the most well-reviewed, natural, well-written, and well-acted shows in television history played its final game: Friday Night Lights. I haven't seen the finale yet; I'm just delaying the inevitable. I am not ready for this show to end. Friday Night Lights' story has not run its course. There is still so much to be told about Dillion Texas and the Taylors.

Throughout it's five seasons, FNL has created memorable, fully-realized characters who could be your neighbors, your football coach, your quarterback and so forth. They have tangible hopes and motivations; I don't think I've seen a show with more believably written characters than Friday Night Lights. There's been no melodrama; everything that's happened, it makes sense characters would do those things. I totally bought that Landry would kill Tyra's assaulter, even if the show kind of forgot about that weird storyline. I definitely believe that Tim Riggins would take the fall for his brother's chop shop. These plots may seem out of the realm of ordinary, but they are real and believable in the FNL world.

Not only where these character well-written but the acting was over the top phenomenal. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton had the most amazing chemistry. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were married in real life. They fight like every other couple and they work through their troubles like every other couple. Their marriage has been so beautiful to watch. I've even seen them grow closer as the show progressed. They are one the most functional and one of the best TV couples out there...ever. They may never be able to be topped.

Other actors really grew into their characters and got better as the show went out. Taylor Kitsch went from being a broody, mumbly character to a character who really used physicality well. Those eyes...speeches were being spoken with those eyes. And his comedic timing got better. Zach Gilford began taking on seriously heavy story lines and ran with them. Who could forget "The Son?" Or even the pilot? Adrianne Palicki grew her character out of a stereotype into one of the strongest female characters on the show, next to Tami Taylor of course.

And then there's Michael B. Jordan...he and his crew had to come in season four and be the new cast as the kids we'd grown to love moved on. They weren't "pale imitations...but worthy replacements," as Alan Sepinwall so eloquently wrote. They were new characters with new story lines...not better, just new. It's really hard to change a cast and keep the story lines good and the audience interested. The FNL writers are just that good, probably because one of their fearless leaders is Jason Katims, the creator of Roswell.

Friday Night Lights is inspiring and heartwarming, as seen in the episode "Mud Bowl" or heartbreaking, leaving you crying and feeling lost as a viewer, like in the "Pilot". The writers have done such a great job making this show about much more than football or your run of the mill teen drama. FNL is about family, town, team, culture, love, commitment and so on, powerful themes that make for fantastic story lines. This show's writing has been so consistently strong, with a few holes, but there are some episodes that no matter how many times I see them, it's like the first time.

I just can't say goodbye to this show. I imagine I'll be doing a lot of crying during that final episode, especially when the theme starts. I look forward to seeing the actors move on to new projects but they will always be residents of Dillion in my heart.