I'm guessing, by day's end, the closing of more than 7,000 U.S. Starbucks coffeehouses for up to three hours for training purposes will get more press than any story about foreclosures, subprime lending woes, stagflation or the cost of milk and gasoline.
Yes, we can ignore the worst economy America has seen in a decade because a chain of caffeine-slingers decides it needs to motivate its employees at the expense of people drinking coffee after 5:30 p.m.
Yes we can.
I, The Amazing Chriskin, have stepped in for Mr. Harrop on this Sunday afternoon to offer you my predictions for tonight's 80th Annual Academy Awards (winning picks in blue, losing picks in red):
BEST PICTURE: "There Will Be Blood" ("No Country For Old Men," I can't be angry about this one)
BEST DIRECTOR: Joel and Ethan Coen, "No Country For Old Men" (LONG OVERDUE!!!)
BEST ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood" (DRAINAGE!)
BEST ACTRESS: Julie Christie, "Away From Her" (Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"... mon dieu!)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Javier Bardem, "No Country For Old Men" (CALLED IT, FRIENDO)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There" (ACTUAL WINNER: Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton")
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: "Juno" (Hope for strippers everywhere)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: "No Country For Old Men" (The Dude abides)
BEST SONG: "Raise It Up" from "August Rush" ("Falling Slowly" from "Once")
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: Marco Beltrami for "3:10 to Yuma" ("Atonement")
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: "Ratatouille" (BINGO)
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: "Mongol" ("The Counterfeiters" won, as Austria bests Genghis Khan)
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: "Sweeney Todd" (ACTUAL WINNER: "Elizabeth: The Golden Age")
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Roger Deakins (Twice nominated, Roger seemed to cancel himself out -- "There Will Be Blood" wins!)
BEST ART DIRECTION: "Sweeney Todd" (BARBER-IC!)
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: "No End In Sight" ("Taxi To The Dark Side" - At least Michael Moore didn't have to make a fool of himself with an acceptance speech)
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: "Freeheld" (You go, girls!)
BEST FILM EDITING: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" (ACTUAL WINNER: "The Bourne Ultimatum")
BEST MAKEUP: "La Vie en Rose" (OUI OUI)
BEST SHORT FILM (ANIMATED): "Peter & The Wolf" (Howlin' good pick)
BEST SHORT FILM (LIVE): "The Mozart of Pickpockets" (Requiem for a Winner!)
BEST SOUND EDITING: "Transformers" ("The Bourne Ultimatum")
BEST SOUND MIXING: "Transformers" ("The Bourne Ultimatum" - Darn you, Damon)
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: "Transformers" ("The Golden Compass" - really?)
OSCAR NIGHT RECAP: Harrop here again... Chriskin was less than amazing in his Oscar picks, not even breaking the .500 mark. But I can't complain, as Joel and Ethan Coen finally get the kind of Oscar appreciation they should have received for "Fargo." I'm somewhat sad to see "There Will Be Blood" not come away with much beyond Day-Lewis' Oscar, but it's great to see Paul Thomas Anderson go in a new route... It's not crazy to say he'll be back to Oscar Night again, next time as a winner. Jon Stewart is funny on "The Daily Show," and decidedly not so on the Oscars... bring back Steve Martin if Billy Crystal doesn't want to do it; maybe let George Clooney run the show from now on instead of letting him go off and make socially conscious, critically acclaimed films. Somewhere, Donald Theodore "Donnie" Kerabatsos is smiling... Walter, too, probably.
These guys were pumped to see Mervyn's at the old Buckingham Square Mall bite the dust. This is one of my new favorite Aurora-flavored YouTube videos at the moment. I doubt I'm the only Sentinelite proud of our former reporter J.C. O'Connell's brief appearance at the 1:11 mark in the video... and it's good to see someone THAT excited to see Mayor Ed Tauer. Go get 'em, Ed!
UPDATE: Unless I'm mistaken, you can also catch a glimpse of a Sentinel photographer later in the video. The first Sliced Bread reader to point out this section of the video will receive, courtesy of yours truly, one piece of authentic Sentinel memorabilia. No purchase necessary, all Sentinel employees and their families are not eligible to win.
I come to bury HD DVD, not to praise it;
The evil that technology does lives after it,
The good is oft interred with the obsolete,
So let it be with HD DVD ... The noble Blu-Ray
Hath told you HD DVD was capricious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath HD DVD answered it ...
Here, under reign of Blu-ray and the rest,
(For Blu-ray is an honourable format;
So are they all; all honourable formats)
Come I to speak in HD DVD's funeral ...
HD DVD was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Blu-ray says it was capricious;
And Blu-ray is an honourable format….
Blu-ray hath brought many film titles to your home:
"Spider-Man," "Close Encounters" and more;
I thrice prognosticated HD DVD the winner of the format battles,
Which HD DVD repeatedly lost;
I speak not to disapprove of Blu-ray,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
Many users loved HD DVD once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for it?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with HD DVD,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
(With apologies to the Bard)
Be sure to check out the Monday, Feb. 18, Aurora Sentinel for photos from Jeff "Maestro" Hughes' visit to Murphy Creek K-8 in Aurora. Hughes was recently part of the orchestra for the Foo Fighters' Grammy performance on Feb. 10 after taking part in an online contest via YouTube for the chance to rock out with the band on an international stage.
• The Obama camp needs to make sure it can keep enthusiasm high after Hillary Clinton had very strong showings in some states many thought would be much closer than in reality. The Clinton machine will continue to churn with plenty of money and punch; losing California might deflate some of the more youthful spirits buoying the Illinois senator's poll numbers.
• Rush Limbaugh will be a good listen Wednesday afternoon.
• Romney and Huckabee are brave souls for continuing on their bids for the White House — or they're just really good at wasting people's money after McCain has seemingly been ordained as the next GOP presidential nominee.
• People everywhere know how to vote. People outside of Iowa don't know how to caucus. Whatever money is saved by not holding a primary in Colorado, it's not of equal or greater value to the amount of voters disenchanted by the caucus process or level of confusion among some of the precincts, fumbling around with procedural matters and trying to figure out who's free for the state delegation meetings.
• Buzz is not enough to win the election... neither is piggybacking off someone else's record.
• Who would have thought: Rudy Giuliani, kingmaker?
• The Democratic primaries will stop being crucial May 20 with the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, where one candidate will emerge victorious... Forget the ground hog and prepare yourself for three more months of Clinton vs. Obama.
There will never be a perfect film.
That is the conclusion I come to after watching “There Will Be Blood.”
This is the cinematic equivalent of an A-minus or (to put it classically) Icarus: A soaring achievement that becomes so good, its failures shine ever so brightly under the light of critique.
In this case, our Daedalus — that expert inventor of images in Greek lore who fathered Icarus — is Paul Thomas Anderson.
Anderson’s trademark large-ensemble cast is pared down in this character study of oilman Daniel Plainview, portrayed with otherworldly vigor by Daniel Day-Lewis.
Witnessing Day-Lewisí performance (For which I am at a loss of words to define — ‘explosive’ is too tame) must be somewhat akin to watching the testing of a nuclear weapon.
Plainview is greed, ego, capitalism, America unleashed on all who cross his path — he is a destroyer of worlds, yet Anderson and Day-Lewis make sure he at least has the appearance of a good-natured man who looks to do well for himself and his family.
It’s an act, just like our quiet introduction to this bombastic character at the film’s beginning: Plainview says nothing while mining for silver alone, a maverick from start to finish.
Later, Plainview takes a fallen colleague’s son under his wing, further luring our minds into believing him when he recites his line about being a family business and caring about his people whilst pitching his services to townsfolk in search of someone to deal with their big, black, sticky problem while simultaneously making them rich.
Plainview’s story intersects with plenty others, none of which are developed enough to matter much at all at the expense of keeping the film under a three-hour running time.
Plainview’s main antagonist is the youthful preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano, “Little Miss Sunshine”), whose Church of the Third Revelation stands to gain from Plainview’s drilling in the surrounding community. Daniel is a man of money while Eli, deep down, is a man of money disguising himself as a man of the cloth. You can see how this may cause some strife.
Plainview and Sunday go back and forth in their protracted exchanges of arguments and humiliation. The most theatrical barrage in this warring of men (save for the ending, which I shall not divulge) sees Daniel being baptized and brought into the fold at Eli’s church to secure a business deal, The slapstick humor and bombast of Eli is not nearly as humorous as Plainview’s response, but each requires the other to be truly appreciated.
The action may not speak louder than the words in “There Will Be Blood,” but Anderson gives us a number of indelible scenes shot to near-perfection: The well explosion, with all its mess and fiery destruction, is breathtaking to see.
To match these brilliant images, Anderson has Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood’s eclectic score panging throughout the film. Some may find it avant-garde, others genius — I enjoyed nearly every second of it.
Audiences for “There Will Be Blood” will generally fall into two categories once the final credits roll — those that see it as a new American classic, and those unready to crown it due its final act.
That’s not to say there isn’t much to debate during the first two hours of the film ñmuch of what makes the film one of the best of this decade is witnessed before we learn the fates of the main characters. But how one deals with the denouement will tell whether this is a surefire masterpiece deserving of a Best Picture Oscar, or just another very good film helmed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
Bottom line: Daniel Day-Lewis deserves the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of Plainview. The film deserves more than its fair share of consideration when it comes time to select the Academy Award winners for Best Picture, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay. But like the New England Patriots, nobody’s perfect — but that won’t stop me from enjoying all the good things about “There Will Be Blood” for years to come.
© Blogger template Coozie by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008
Back to TOP
