The striking writers have let
up and the show must go on. It’s officially Oscar week. Fantastic news for
people who are really into celebrity fashion and gossip but for those who don’t
care whether Jen and Brad and Angie will all be there at the same time and
really just wanna watch some movies this is also a good time of year because it
means they should start playing better flicks in the theatres.
Be Kind Rewind
finally opens this week, as does the funny-looking
high school medication comedy
Charlie Bartlett
. Unfortunately, neither is playing up here – maybe
next week.
The Village 8 is screening some Oscar heavyweights this week but they’re also opening
Vantage Point
, a high-energy thriller with lots of running,
confusion, beating drums and cars chasing each other. The plot centres around
the assassination of a U.S. President but what makes the film interesting is
that it’s told in
Rashomon
style.
Rashomon
is an old Japanese flick directed by the master Akira
Kurosawa in which the same sequence of events is told from multiple points of
view, revealing a larger truth. It’s an awesome movie and easily available on
DVD. In
Vantage Point
(the title kind of hits you over the head a bit doesn’t it?) those points of view keep
revealing clues as to who done it. What looks like a woman hugging a dude is
actually someone slipping secret information and when you see it from this
angle, the conspiracy unfolds… Yawn.
It’s not all mindless action, it’s actually kind of smart and the acting is solid — Forrest Whitaker, Sigourney
Weaver, Matthew Fox. And Dennis Quaid – he’s fine in this movie but honestly
Dennis Quaid doesn’t really do it for me. He always seems to come off kind of
whiny and useless. I’ll take Randy Quaid any day. I don’t know, maybe I’m being
a little too hard on Dennis. He was pretty good in
Traffic
and
The Parent Trap.
Speaking of hard-ons –
Lindsay Lohan, who also stared in
The Parent Trap,
posed nude for a New York fashion magazine this week.
Lindsay’s had a rough go of things lately. The media has painted her a drug
fiend, a criminal, and a slut, making many directors wary of working with her,
but I smell a comeback.
In other entertainment news,
Blu-Ray beat out HD DVD as the newest and greatest format to watch movies on.
What does that mean? It means pretty soon we’re all gonna have to go out and
drop $500 bucks on new Blu-Ray players and/or Blu Ray compatible laptops.
Awesome. How much longer until I can just download whatever flick I want for
five bucks? (That’s what the Hollywood writers were striking about — they got
robbed on the DVD format and want their cut of online sales.)
But that’s the future.
Presently there are a few decent DVD’s just out — the generic-but-entertaining
American
Gangster,
the solid war pic
In the
Valley of Elah
, and
Michael Clayton
starring George Clooney, who’s up for a best actor
Oscar that everyone, George included, seems to agree will go to Daniel Day
Lewis. I don’t care too much about the Oscars this year, except to point out
that Canadians are well-represented. We might even win the Best Animated Short
category with
I met the Walrus
, a
5-minute taped conversation that took place in 1969 when a Toronto teenager
managed to sneak into John Lennon’s hotel room and interview him. The whole
thing is set to pen-and-digital animation and it rules. Apparently CTV is going
to show it right after the Oscars finish on Sunday night. Check it out.
