The Last Emperor

The 1987 Academy Awards was the first year that I remember watching the awards show. I remember watching it with my mom and even though I had not seen many of the movies nominated we would try to guess who was going to win. It became a tradition to see who can guess more correctly and probably started my obsession with the awards show. One of the reasons it might have stuck with me is because the movie that ended up winning nine awards including Best Picture was The Last Emperor and the clips they always showed had the Emperor as a kid walking under this huge tarp. As an 11 year old kid it looked so cool.

The Last Emperor is about just that the last Emperor of China. At the age of 3 Pu Yi becomes the Emperor of China in 1908 and in tradition is forced to live in the Forbidden City. There he is worshiped and coddled and unaware of the changing world around the city. As he grows up he learns that China has become a Republic and no longer recognizes him as Emperor. As the outside world starts creeping into the very traditional Forbidden City Pu Yi tries to modernize things but it is too late and eventually his family is forced to leave by the new Chinese government. He tries to reclaim his role as Emperor in Manchuria with the help of the Japanese but is used as a puppet for the Japanese government till the end of World War II when he is captured and tried as a war criminal. Eventually he is released from jail and dies as a commoner.

The Last Emperor is the 5th and last biopic to win Best Picture in the 80's. The movie is told from the Emperors point of view through flashbacks from the imprisoned Pu Yi. While it is interesting to see his point of view of the events I would have liked a little bit more context of the surrounding world events that shaped what was going on at the time. Besides for a little bit about Pearl Harbor from a news reel we don't learn anything else about World War II and why the Japanese were trying to use him as a puppet. The movie is kind of slow moving and without the context of what is going on around him it is kind of confusing. One of the reasons the movie won Best Picture is because of how large of production it was. It used one of the largest number of extras and costumes. It was also the first movie to be allowed to shoot in the Forbidden City. But overall I found it to be too slow. Ultimatetly the movie was nominated and won Nine awards(the most since 1960 when West Side Story won 10) but was not nominated for any acting awards the last time that happened was in 1958 with Gigi. The Last Emperor was also the first PG-13 movie to win Best Picture.

Like I said 1987 was the first year I watched the Academy Awards with my mom and the movie I remember her hoping to win was Moonstruck with Cher. Moonstruck was nominated for 6 awards and won 3 including Best Actress for Cher. The big category that I was interested in that year was Best Song. The 80's were a great time for songs in movies and almost every song that won was a radio hit. This year was no different as "(I've Had) The Time of You Life" from Dirty Dancing won. The big competion for best Song was from "Storybook Love" from The Princess Bride.

Lots of movies were overlooked that year that should have got more nominations. The Princess Bride with only one nomination for Best Song should have been nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. There are so many quotes from that movie that became famous there should have been some recognition for the writing. Also, two Vietnam War movies that came out that year mostly got overlooked by the Academy maybe because Platoon won the year before and they didn't want to appear to be giving awards to too many Vietnam War movies. But Good Morning, Vietnam and Full Metal Jacket should have got some nominations. Robin Williams got his first Best Actor nomination for Good Morning, Vietnam but it should have got more nominations. Full Metal Jacket probably should have won Best Picture but it wasn't even nominated. I am not a big fan of Stanley Kubrick but this is one of his best movies. The only nomination it receved was for Best Screenplay but should have been nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Best Supporting Actor for R. Lee Ermey as Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

Two Cent Tuesday: Super 8

Welcome to Two Cent Tuesday where I give my two cents on a movie.  This week I will give my two cents about Super 8.  The new movie directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg.

Super 8 is about a group of kids in 1979 who are trying to make a movie using their parents Super 8 camera.  They sneak out one night to try and shoot a seen at a train station where they end up witnessing a horrible train accident.  After his accident weird things start happening in there quiet little town and they may have evidence of it on their camera from the accident.  It is up to these kids to figure out what monster was inside the train and has been unleashed on their town. 

The movie is a lot of fun.  It is meant as a throwback to early Spielberg movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET and Jaws.  For me it reminds me of another movie Spielberg produced and I loved as a kid The Goonies.  Just about ordinary kids going on this incredible adventure. In The Goonies it is after pirate treasure in Super 8 it is after an alien.  Still lots of fun. The kids in the movie are really cool.  Each has their own personality and while they may be stereotypical they are still a lot of fun.  The creature is OK it doesn't bring anything really new to the alien genre and the ending is a little cheesy on how they finally defeat the alien.  But the movie is really about kids having a good time and the adventure they go through.  During the credits they show the zombie movie the kids are making during the rest of the movie.  It is definitely worth sticking around for.
Overall a fun adventure movie that reminds me of the movies I loved as a kid.  B+

Platoon

For me 1986 will always be remembered for a specific sports moment and not for movies.  I remember watching on that fateful October when Bill Buckner let that ball roll through his legs and the Red Sox lost the World Series.  But 1986 also saw one of the best movies of the 80's released. 

Platoon is about a young soldiers experience in Vietnam.  He starts of as an idealistic recruit and that learns that war is hell.  The two sergeant's that are over represent the good and bad of men.  Chris Taylor(Charlie Sheen) is caught between Sergeant Barnes(Tom Beringer) and Sergeant Elias(Willem Defoe) in a battle of morality.  Elias is the caring Sergeant who takes Taylor under his wing and Barnes is the tough as nails Sergeant who will do anything to get what he wants.  The tension comes to a head after Barnes orders the killing of civilians and Elias threatens to report him. 

The movie is dark and gritty and really shows the horrors of war.  Oliver Stone wrote the movie based on his own experience in Vietnam.  The movie is controversial due to the portrayal of American Troops killing of civilians.  But it really shows how in war there are both good and evil people and war is never pretty.  The tagline for the movie says it all "The first casualty of war is innocence". Also,  the last lines of the movie where Taylor is talking about being born of both Elias and Barnes and how each one fights for control of his soul shows how we take what we need from both the good and bad to make us whole 

The movie won 4  awards besides Best Picture it Won Best Director for Oliver Stone, and Best Editing and Best Sound.  It's actually the ones it lost that are surprising.  It lost best screenplay to Woody Allen who won for Hannah and Her Sisters.  And both Willem Defoe and Tom Beringer lost the Best Supporting Actor to Michael Caine for Hannah and Her Sisters.  It would have been tough to choose between Defoe and Beringer but either one would have been better then Michael Caine. 

Other Oscar Notables:
Marlee Matlin was a suprise win for Children of a Lesser God and at the age of 21 is the youngest person ever to win Best Actress and the only deaf person to win. 
William Hurt was nominated the second of three times in a row for Children of a Lesser God
Probably the oddest nomination was the nomination of Crocodile Dundee for Best Screenplay.
And one my favorite movies of my childhood  Stand By Me was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay based on Stephen Kings novella The Body.

Question

I have a question for the 5 – 10 people that read my blog(or the 1 person who clicks on it 10 times by mistake).

What would you like to see in my blog? Reviews of more current movies? Less wordy posts? More pictures? Less lists? More  thoughts on movie related stuff similar to my post on the rating system?

To my Facebook friends are the posts on Facebook becoming annoying?

Basically let me know how to make my blog more interesting.

  When I started my blog I wanted to do something different that’s why I started doing the movies that won best picture in chronological order. I figured there were already lots of web sites that people went to for the current movie reviews(rottentomatoes.com, Yahoo movies, IMDB) there was no need for another one. But if my views on current movies would interest people let me know.

Listomania Sunday: Father's Day Special

Today is Father's day so I thought I would do a list of best movies that have a real life Father and child in the same movie.

1.  Wall Street-with Martin Sheen and Charlie Sheen
2.  On Golden Pond-Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda
3.  Paper Moon-Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal
4.  The Pursuit of Happyness-Will Smith and Jaden Smith
5.  It Runs in the Family-Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, and Cameron Douglas

Almost making it on the list Lara Croft: Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie and Jon Voight.

Out of Africa

After writing a huge post about Amadeus I realized that I probably should try to make my posts shorter.  I am going to try to keep this one brief.  Out of Africa is the 4th out of 5 biopics to win Best Picture in the 80's  and the 2nd in a row.

The movie follows Karen(Meryl Streep) a Danish women who marries a Baron out of convenience then moves to Africa to start a dairy farm. After getting to Africa she finds out her husband changed his mind and they start a coffee plantation instead.  Along the way things with her husband doesn't work out and she falls in love with a free spirited hunter Denys(Robert Redford).  He is not the settling down type and is constantly on safaris or hunting trips.  They love each other but he refuses to settle down.  In the end things don't work out with either Denys or the plantation and she is forced to move back to Denmark broke.

The movie is based on the autobiography of Karen Blixen who after moving back to Denmark starting writing books.  Not really a big fan of romance movie this movie didn't do much for me.  Most of the movie was filmed in Africa and it looks beautiful but the love story part is just OK.  The most annoying thing about the movie is Meryl Streeps accent which she said she tried to make as authentic as possible but ended up being annoying.  Robert Redford does a pretty good job at being Robert Redford.  He was his normal charming self.  Out of all the nominations Out of Africa got I am surprised Redford did not get one.  In fact Redford has only one nomination for his Acting and that was for The Sting.  Probably because he makes it look so natural and effortless.  Ultimately the film was nominated for 11 awards including Best Picture, Best Director(Sidney Pollack), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress(Meryl Streep her 6th Nomination), and Best Supporting Actor(Klaus Maria Brandauer as Karen's husband).  It won a total of 7 awards but none for acting.  Geraldine Page won Best Actress for The Trip to Bountiful and Don Ameche won Best Supporting Actor for Cocoon.

The most notable thing about the Oscars this year was the fact that The Color Purple was nominated for 11 awards and didn't win any.  This tied the record with The Turning Point for most nominations without a win. The biggest surprise was that Steve Spielberg was not nominated for Best Director marking only the second time that a movie was nominated for 11 awards but the Director wasn't nominated(the first was for Pride of the Yankees). 

Other Oscar Notables
William Hurt won the Best Actor Oscars for Kiss of the Spider Women and became the first person to win an Oscar for playing a homosexual role. Hurt went on to be nominated the following two years but lost those two. It struck as odd that he was that popular in the 80's and hasn't really done much since then. Although he was nominated again in 2005 for a History of Violence. 
Harrison Ford was lost to Hurt for Best Actor who surprisingly onfor his role in Witness. Supprisingly this is his only Oscar nomination.
Angelica Houston won Best Supporting Actress for Prizi's Honor which was directed by John Houston making her the first actress to win in a movie directed by her dad. John Houston also directed his dad Walter to an Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre making him the only director to direct their father and daughter to an Oscar and the Houston family the first to have three generations of Oscar winners.
Back to the Future was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and in my opinion should have been nominated and won for Best Picture.
The other big snub was the omission of the song Don't You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds from The Breakfast Club.
And why no nominations for The Goonies?

Listomania Sunday: Alien Invastion Movies

I recently saw a sneak peak at the movie Attack the Block.  The movie is about aliens that invade inner city London and a gang of teenagers have to fight them off.  The movie is a fun and exciting movie with lots of action and some cool looking aliens.  It got me thinking about the best movies about aliens. And with Super 8 coming out this weekend seemed like a good time to for a list.
There were too many movies with aliens to come up with just a list of 5 so I decided to narrow the list down to best alien invasion movies. These are movies that have aliens coming to Earth for whatever reason.  I was thinking of including Close Encounters of the Third Kind but decided that was more of an alien abduction movie.


1.  Independence Day-An instant classic when it came out. Lots of destruction crazy aliens and great one liners.  Made Will Smith an action star and gave Jeff Goldblum one of his best roles.

2.  District 9-A little different alien invasion movie. Instead of aliens coming to take over the world they accidently crash land in South Africa and are forced to live in quarantined area.  Making more of a political statement then about alien invasions but still has some great action.

3.  Signs-Even if the aliens don't show up till the end the suspense in this movie is great.   The movie slowly builds up the tension and had me hooked the whole way through.

4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)-Another example of the original being much better than the remake. Again a movie that makes more of a political statement using aliens. Here one alien comes to Earth and warns men to stop using nuclear weapons or face the wrath of the aliens.

5. Evolution-A crazy comedy about tiny microorganisms from space that evolve rapidly and threaten to take over an Arizona city.  Love David Duchovny and Julianne Moore who normally play much more serious roles in comedic roles. And Seann William Scott as the wannabe firefighter is hilarious.

The one movie that I had great debate in including in this list is E.T.  A great movie about a more peaceful alien then some of the other movies but just missed out.


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Amadeus

When I think about Amadeus two things come to mind. First is the song Rock me Amadeus by Falco the second is the annoying laugh from the movie. The movie is the third out of five movies that won best picture in the 80's based on a historic person. This is one of those movies that I had seen once before but didn't remember that well(besides the laugh). But watching it again I realized that this is a really good movie.

Amadeus is about the life of Mozart and his rival Antonio Salieri. The movie is told in flash back by an elderly Salieri(F. Murray Abraham) who is in a mental institute after trying to kill himself. He begins telling his story about how he first met Mozart(Tom Hulce)and became intensely jealous of Mozart's natural talent. A court composer Salieri worked for Emperor Joseph II and made recommendations to the Emperor. Mozart instantly impresses everyone with his talent. Salieri who has made a promise to God to devote his life and work to him see the very vulgar Mozart as a mockery of his God given talent. Salieri couldn't understand how God could give such a gift to someone who had very little respect for anything. Salieri eventually turns his back on God and makes it his life purpose to destroy Mozart. Because of his influence on the Emperor Salieri is able to make it very difficult for Mozart to get any work. He tells everyone that Mozart like young girls so no one will hire him to tutor, and all of his opera have short runs due to Salieri's suggestions. He does this even though he recognizes the immense talent that Mozart has. Mozart does not realize that Salieri is the one blocking his rise and Mozart lives in poverty and becomes an alcoholic. Eventually Salieri decides that he will have Mozart write one last piece then kill Mozart and claim the last piece as his own. While the plan doesn't work out exactly as planned but when Mozart ends up dying penniless Salieri feel guilty which leads him trying to kill himself.

For a three hour movie the pace is fast and at the end it doesn't feel like it was three hours. The acting is great. Hard to believe that a guy from Animal House would be nominated for an Academy Award but that's what Tom Hulce did. He portrays Mozart as a complicated man with both whimsy and desperation. He lost Best Actor to F. Murray Abraham who was amazing as the insanely jealous and calculating Salieri. Also good in the movie was Jeffery Jones and I think he should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. In total Amadeus won 8 Academy Awards besides Picture and Actor it also won Best Director(Milos Forman),Best Screenplay Adaptation (Peter Shaffer for the adaption of his own Broadway play), Best Art/Set Direction, Best Sound, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup. It also marked the fourth time that a movie that won a Tony Award for Best Play also won Best Picture at the Academy Awards(the other three are from the 60's and are My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and A Man for All Seasons).

The only other movie I have seen that was nominated in 1984 was the equally good The Killing Fields. That movie about a New York Times journalist covering the fall of Cambodia in 1975. Haing Ngor won Best Supporting Actor for the role of the assistant to the journalist. Haing Ngor was not an actual Cambodian doctor and not a professional actor. He became the second no professional actor to win the awards(Harold Russell was the first for The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946). Also, after watching Sam Waterston on Law and Order for so many years it is weird to see him in anything else but he was nominated for Best Actor for this movie also.

Other notable Oscar Nominations. Sally Field won Best Actress for her role in Places in the Heart and gave her famous "You really like me" speech. Also nominated for Best Supporting Actor was Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. All of the nominations for Best Song were very popular songs on the radio including Ghostbusters, Footloose, and the eventual winner I just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder from the movie The Woman in Red. And John Williams was nominated against himself for Best Original Score for the movies Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The River. He lost to Maurice Jarre for A Passage to India. Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes was nominated for Best Screenplay and P.H Vazak was listed as one of the screenwriters. P.H Vasak was the name of a sheepdog owned by writer Robert Towne who didn't want to be associated with the movie.

MTV Movie Awards 2011

Well the MTV Movie Awards are tonight thought I would give my two cents on them.

The MTV Movie Awards usually nominate the highest grossing movies and movies that speak to the masses. I like to think of myself as a film goer that can appreciate both the indie art house movies and the mindless summer blockbuster, but nowadays I find myself tending to see more critically praised movies and not so much the big budget movies. There was a time when I would have seen all the movies nominated for Best Movie but those days have passed I guess I am just not the target demographic for MTV anymore. In fact there was a short time when I would have seen all the movies nominated for Best Movie at the MTV Awards and Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Oh well guess people change I just hope that I am not becoming one of those movie snobs I hated growing up. I did manage to see 3 of the movies nominated (Inception, The Social Network, and Black Swan) but those 3 were also nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. MTV usually nominates a few movies that were also nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars but very rarely does a movie win both. Three movies have won both awards they are Titanic, Gladiator, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Lately though it seems like voting has been taken over by Tween Girls. I don’t think movies like Terminator 2, A Few Good Men, Seven, or Pulp Fiction would win these days. The past two years the Twilight movies have won Best Movie beating movies like The Dark Knight and The Hangover.  It has the most nominations again this year so we will see if it can make it 3 years in a row.
Lets get to the predictions
Update in Red with Winners. All in all I did pretty well. I correctly predicted 10 our of the 12 winners. 

Best Movie-The nomination that most surprised me here was Black Swan thought it was a little too trippy for most people.
My prediction- The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. My personal Pick- Inception
Winner-The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Best Female Performance- Jennifer Aniston seems out of place here with the much younger crop of nominees.

My Prediction: Kristen Stewart Personal Pick: Natalie Portman
Winner-Kristen Stewart

Best Male Performance-Battle of the two guys from Eclipse

Prediction; Robert Pattinson Personal Pick: Jesse Eisenberg (honestly it’s the only one I had seen in this category)
Winner-Robert Pattinson

Best Breakout Star-I hate it when they nominate people who have been on TV shows for Breakout Performances but I don’t think Olivia Wilde has a chance here. Also I have no idea who Xavier Samuel is from Eclipse so I am going with that he is not a breakout star. It’s a difficult choice between Hailee Steinfeld, Andrew Garfield, and Chloe Grace Moretz.

Prediction and Personal Pick: Chloe Grace Moretz
Winner-Chloe Grace Moretz

Best Comedic Performance-Just recently saw Easy A and glad I did because it is the funniest movie out of these choices.
Prediction and Personal Pick-Emma Stone
Winner-Emma Stone

Best Line from A Movie-Tough choices but I am going to go with the dialogue from the movie that won best Screenplay at the Oscars.
Prediction and Personal Pick: “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook”-Social Network
Winner-"I want to get Chocolate wasted" Grown Ups

Best Villain-Hard one I only saw two of the movies nominated and neither one of those are great villains.
Prediction: Tom Felton from Harry Potter Personal Pick: Can I just pick the winner from 1996 and say Kevin Spacey from Seven still the best villain to win the award.

Winner-Tom Felton

Best Fight-This one is for me is between Kick-Ass and Inception two of my favorite fight scenes of the year.

Prediction: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Personal Pick: Inception
Winner-The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Best Kiss: Another category with two Eclipse nominations

Prediction: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson Personal Pick-Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis
Winner-Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson

Best Jaw Dropping Moment-wow a category without an Eclipse Nomination but another Tween sensation will probably take this one.
Prediction: Justin Bieber Personal Pick: Inception
Winner-Justin Bieber
Best Scared-As-Sh_ _ Performance-Again no Eclipse nominations here but not sure who is going to win.

Prediction and Personal Pick: Ryan Reynolds
Winner-Ellen Page

Biggest Badass Star-Not sure what constitutes Biggest Badass star but the best badass in this group is the smallest

Prediction and Personal Pick: Chloe Grace Moretz
Winner-Chloe Grace Moretz

Terms of Endearment

I always think of this movie as a chick flick.  Hard to believe that the guy who help create and write the Simpsons also wrote and directed this movie.  While there is some comedy in the movie it is mostly a tear jerker.  It is also the third family drama to win Best Picture in the past 5 years but at least this one didn't have the mother leaving the father and son like Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People.  Although the movie does portray men as imbeciles and in the end the father gives up custody of the kids. 

The movie is about a relationship between a mother and daughter.  Over the years they have many battles yet they still love each other.  Aurora played by Shirley Maclaine is a little overbearing and is constantly calling Emma  played by Debra Winger.  After Emma gets married to Flap Horton(Jeff Daniels) Aurora tells her that she is making a big mistake.  Even after Emma and Flap move out of Houston to Iowa Aurora still calls multiple times a day.  Emma and Flap start drifting apart and both end up having affairs.  After Emma moves away Aurora starts up a friendship with her astronaut neighbor(Jack Nicholson).  This brings new happiness to Aurora's  life that she hasn't had in a while.  When Emma is diagnosed with cancer the two women become close and the differences they have had become less important.  Aurora and Flap still have their differences and when it becomes clear that Emma will die everyone decided that it is best for Emma and Flap's kids to go live with Aurora. 

While the end is very emotional and the movie takes a different tone after Emma gets diagnosed with cancer I found the movie as a whole to be kind of boring.  Which is odd since I remember liking it the first time I saw it, but this time just didn't do anything for me.  The movie moves very slowly and I found the laughs few and far between.  Shirley Maclaine and Jack Nicholson won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.  Shirley Maclaine clearly deserved it as she was very good in the movie but Jack Nicholson who played the retired Astronaut just didn't do much and while the character is memorable I am not sure he deserved the win.  Debra Winger was also great in the movie and she was also nominated for Best Actress but lost to Shirley Maclaine.  While Jeff Daniels was good as Flap he did not get nominated but John Lithgow did as the forgettable Sam they guy who Emma has an affair with.  This was James L. Brooks first movie he wrote and directed after writing and directing for TV.  Known for his comedy this was a very different type of movie for him.  He does have a skill at capturing what feels like real life with it's comedy and heartache which he also shows in his other nominated movie from 1997 As Good as it Gets(which also earned Jack Nicholson an Oscar).  This one just doesn't work for me and I struggled to stay awake all the way through. 

1983 does not seem like it was a great year for movies.  The only other movie I saw that was nominated for Best Picture was The Right Stuff about the early years of the space program.  A good movie but not a great movie either.  The biggest movie in 1983 was Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi which got 4 nominations in technical categories but no major ones.  I love the fact that War Games a teen sci-fi movie got 3 nominations.  Winning best song in 1983 was "Flashdance...What a Feeling" from the now iconic Flashdance.  Scoring no nominations were classics such as Scarface and A Christmas Story.  The big foreign language film from 1983 that managed to sneak into the Best Director and Best Screenplay race was the Swedish film Fanny and Alexander by famed director Ingmar Bergman.  Although I never saw it the movie is considered one of the best movies from that year.  Other movies from 1983 that I never saw that are supposed to be good are Silkwood, The Big Chill and Yentl.