Just some stuff before I decide that I can't watch anymore (which should be in a few minutes):
:: If they awarded the Best Picture Oscar based on the first half of a movie, Up would be a shoo-in. Its second half was a major let-down, though.
:: Michael Giacchino has deserved an Oscar for several years, and Up is a fine score. I liked what he did with Star Trek better, though. That score has grown on me hugely since it came out last year.
:: I'm reading a new book about John Hughes and the Brat Pack right now, so it freaked me out a little when they did a special memorial for Hughes and brought out some of the Brat Pack. Wow.
:: Speaking of which, the degree to which Matthew Broderick's voice hasn't changed at all since Ferris Bueller is a bit unnatural.
:: The applause for the Hughes memorial seemed a tad unenthusiastic, didn't it? And they showed some young people in the audience looking bored or confused, as if they wondered why they were honoring a guy who made noted movies in the 1980s and then dropped out of sight.
:: So far my favorite acceptance speeches are the guy who wrote Precious and the costume designer who opened with "Yeah, I've already got two of these" and proceeded to point out that costumers who do films set in real life today deserve recognition as much as those who do the Elizabethan epics do.
:: I liked the "Best Original Score" ballet they did. And if James Horner's score to Avatar had been as good as the sixty seconds or so they played of it, that score would have won. But it wasn't.
:: I'm liking Alec Baldwin. But then, what do I know? I'm the one person who liked Jon Stewart and David Letterman as hosts.
:: I don't care if it lengthens the ceremony, Lifetime Achievement Awards should happen on Award Night. Roger Corman deserved to stand up there on stage.
:: I think that Queen Latifah is a beautiful, beautiful woman. No real point here, just that she's beautiful.
:: Back to Alec Baldwin: he really seems to tone Steve Martin down a bit, nicely.
:: We're in the greatest era of visual effects ever, and only three movies get nominations in that category? Hey, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences: WTF?!
:: I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn't think that James Cameron was being a dick when he did his "I'm the King of the World!" thing in 1998 when Titanic won. I just thought it was a funny mimicking of a famous moment from his movie. Didn't bother me at all.
:: 11:10 pm and the show's still going strong. I, on the other hand, am not. So I'm off to bed.
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
4 comments:
Actually, the Cameron "king of the world" line never bothered me either. If you saw the film, it's funny; if you didn't, it comes off as arrogant. (Of course, no one actually saw Titanic; it was a box office bust, or so I hear.)
Some responses to your random thoughts:
:: The applause for the Hughes memorial seemed a tad unenthusiastic, didn't it? And they showed some young people in the audience looking bored or confused...
Damn kids.
:: I'm liking Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin rocks, and I really liked how he played off Steve Martin. I wouldn't mind seeing these two return next year.
Roger Corman deserved to stand up there on stage.
Hell yes! And Bacall, too... for god's sake, she's one of the last of the true Hollywood royalty!
:: I think that Queen Latifah is a beautiful, beautiful woman.
Hell yes again!
:: I think I must be the only person in the world who doesn't think that James Cameron was being a dick when he did his "I'm the King of the World!" thing in 1998 when Titanic won.
You're not. I too have always gotten the joke/reference and don't understand how so many people misinterpreted it. And the truth is at that moment, standing in that spot, he WAS king of the world. As anyone would be. Sheesh.
Wanted a bit more space than Facebook to expand into your Up complaint. I see where you are coming from with the "last third is big chase/action" complaint, but what Pixar film (or any modern animated or action film) does that NOT apply to? Toy Story, Toy Story II, Monsters Inc, Incredibles, Wall-E - all have a big action scene at or near the end. Maybe Ratatouille? Can't recall. I get the note, but it's a much broader one, isn't it?
It's not that there's a final big action set-piece in Up that bothered me, it was the nature of it: like I said, fisticuffs and dangling over precipices and a scenery-chewing villain. All of the Pixar movies climax with either action or, at least, a tension-filled sequence, but few are as...well, boringly routine as Up's.
Toy Story's has no villain and instead grows out of the story about the hero (Buzz) who needs to figure out a new way to live. Toy Story II's is a kind-of homage to the cowboys-and-Indians thing that's prevalent in the movie (even though it's not as good as the first film's, also because it's too routine). Monsters Inc is about good guys and villains right from the start; ditto The Incredibles, which still managed to make its final action scene fit into the film's theme. Up didn't do that.
During the first half of Up, I felt like I was watching Pixar come of age in making a movie that wouldn't need a big action climax to work. And then it did one anyway. Up feels like two different movies. I could almost feel the Pixar people saying amongst themselves, "We've gotta end this movie with an action piece! How can we do that...oh yeah! Make the explorer guy a dastardly villain!" How about not ending with action? Of all the Pixar films, Finding Nemo came closest to doing so, which is a big part of why that's my favorite Pixar movie.
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