Two Movies

Watched two movies in the last two days, both of them Oscar winners.

"Spotlight" was the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2015, and we pulled it out and re-watched it on Sunday.   The movie, which details the Boston Globe's investigation and reporting on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Boston in 2001-02, holds up terrifically as a drama and a thriller.  If anything, the movie is all the more searing in light of further news developments on this issue that came to light in the past year.  No doubt, this is a movie that stands the test of time and will still be compelling to watch ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.

Four Stars all the way from The Grandstander

Got around to watching "The Favourite" yesterday.   My reaction to this one is simple:  THIS got nominated for ten Academy Awards?  Marilyn was in and out of the room as I watched this, and when she asked me how it ended, I had a hard time in answering her.  When you have to go to the Google Machine to research what the ending of a movie was all about, well, that's not my kind of movie.

One review I saw said that the movie was "idiosyncratic".  I suppose that is one way to look at it.  It was prettily photographed and the costumes and make-up were eye-catching, but it was also pretty pretentious.  The acting from Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone was good, but when the sum of the parts add up to a story that is just, well, weird, it's not for me.

The Oscar it won was for Best Actress for Olivia Colman.  Good for her, but after seeing this movie, I still say that Glenn Close got shafted by not winning the Award for "The Wife".

Only One Star from The Grandstander.

Sunday Morning Kwick Komments.....

Kwickies for your konsideration.....

• The 2016 Pittsburgh Pirates are a good team, certainly one that could be capable of competing for a post-season spot.  That said, they look like the Sad Sack team of Sad Sack manager John Russell of 2010 when they play the Cubs.
• It was hopeful when the Bucs took a 2-0 lead against the invincible Jake Arietta in the top of the fourth inning yesterday, but then thoroughly demoralized to watch Jeff Locke spit the bit in the bottom of the fourth  y giving up an infield single, a walk, and a soul-crushing three run home run to the first three batters he faced after having been given a lead.
• Pirates now 0-5 against the Cubs this season.  Combined scores of those games: 37-11.  It is at a time like this that a true Ace needs to take control of a game and pick his team up and turn things around.  We shall see what Gerrit Cole does with just such an opportunity this afternoon.
• I take nothing away from the Cubs.  That is a very good team put together by Theo Epstein, who may well be the best baseball executive since Branch Rickey.  Their arrogant manner, a tone set by manager Joe Maddon, and the media's unbelievable slurping up to Maddon and the team that will ensue all summer long will make them one of the most disliked teams, on a national basis, in recent memory by the time the post-season rolls around.
• I am at the point where I am mightily tempted to skip watching games that Jeff Locke is scheduled to pitch.
• Did you see that the Pittsburgh Riverhounds lost their game against the Cincinnati Whatevers last night?  This was the game where Vontaze Burfict, Pacman Jones and other assorted Bengals Thugs served as honorary captains for the Cincinnati team.  That victory in a minor league soccer game must have been sweet revenge for those Bengals, whose thuggish and downright dirty play snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and gift-wrapped an NFL playoff win for the Steelers a few months back.  Maybe it made this lady smile again:

• Earlier in the week, Marilyn and I watched the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" on TCM.  I was surprised how well this movie has held up over all the years. Despite the fact that we don't use terms like "colored" or "Negro" anymore, the message sent by this movie is still absolutely spot on.  This was an absolutely fabulous cast in they movie headed by Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, and Sidney Poitier.  And I was surprised to see that spicy housemaid in this movie was played by Isobel Sanford, aka, Weezie Jefferson.

• And speaking of terrific movies, we once again watched last year's Best Picture Oscar winner, "Spotlight", last night.  The movie was even better the second time around.  Also, one of the extras on the Blueray disc featured a discussion of the actual Boston Globe reporters portrayed in the movie, and it was uncanny how perfectly the actors in the movie "got" the real life persons that they were playing.  If you still haven't seen it, you should.  Great movie.

"Spotlight" - I Believe I Had That....and Other Oscars Thoughts

Your Best Picture of the Year, and as predicted by The Grandstander, "Spotlight".  Terrific movie and a deserving winner, and I am glad that it won.

Indulge me while I boast a bit about my Oscars Predictions.  As seen in this space yesterday, I made predictions in nine categories, and was correct in six of them, including the biggie, Best Picture of the Year.  Doesn't always work out that way, but I had it going for me this year, it seems.  For the record, I missed on Adapted Screenplay, Director, and Supporting Actor.

Some other Oscars observations....

• The elephant in the room, the #OscarsSoWhite issue, was capably addressed by Chris Rock in his opening monologue.  Then, as often happens in such events, it was beat to death throughout the show.  As NPR's Scott Simon observed on Facebook, as soon as the issue became a comic prop, the message became hopelessly diluted.
• Chris Rock did what a host has to do....a good opening, then he kept the traffic moving.  His comic bits were okay. I thought that his interviewing movie goers in Compton was pretty funny.  As for the Girl Scout cookie bit, cute, and if they REALLY sold $65,000 with of cookies in that auditorium, then too many people were walking around with too much cash in their pockets.
• I thought the speeches of the four acting winners were well done.  Classy.
• For the second year in a row, the single best performance  on stage was turned in by Lady Gaga.
• Fashion trend - women wearing over sized eyeglasses with very dark frames.  It's not a bad look.
• Another fashion note - Best dress of the night was that backless number worn by Rachel McAdams.  Gorgeous.

• Final fashion note.  What was up with Kate Winslett's hair?
• "Max Max: Fury Road".  Six Oscars.  Really?  As my friend Dan Bonk observed, they could give it a thousand Oscars, and I'm still not going to go see it.
• I've said it before and I'll say it again, they need to ditch the Oscar for Best Original Song.  All it does is eat up a lot of time during the telecast.  In fact, the nominated songs were so mediocre (to be kind), that only three of them were actually performed during the show, thank God.

I will close by saying that two of the best movies that I saw all year, "The Martian" and "Brooklyn" received no love at all from the Academy.  Multiple nominations, zero Oscars. It's to bad, but it happens.  I sometimes like to go back and look at past Oscars Awards for any given year.  It is interesting to see that sometimes movies that win big, become quickly forgotten, while the movies that they beat are still being watched and loved by audiences.  For example, in 1995 and 1997 "Forrest Gump" and "The English Patient" beat out, respectively, "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Fargo".  Of those four movies, which two would you rather watch today?  Twenty years from now, when people look back on the 2015 movie year, I am guessing that they will still want to watch "Spotlight", "The Martian", "Brooklyn", and "Bridge of Spies".  Those same historians may be scratching their heads over "Mad Max" and "The Revenant".  Time will be the ultimate judge of what the Best Movies of 2015 were, and I think that this year, the Academy got it right for the most part.

As for me, I am looking forward to watching my newly purchased Blue-Ray of "Spotlight", perhaps as early as this afternoon.

Movie Review: "Spotlight"

Few movies have had more buzz prior to its release as has "Spotlight".  Critics have been fairly unanimous in their praise, and it is a dead certain cinch to be nominated for a passel of Academy Awards, and may well be the odds on favorite for the Best Picture of the Year.  It has also been called the best movie EVER about the newspaper business, something that might be hard for fans of "All the President's Men" to accept.  In fact, so much has been made about that opinion, that I had cause to wonder, "Do newspaper critics love this movie because it is a great movie, or do they love it because it is a great movie about newspapers?"

The movie takes place in 2001-02 when the special investigative reporting team of the Boston Globe undertakes an investigation into the sexual abuse scandals that were occurring over a period of decades in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.  Specifically, the investigation's focus centered on the institutional cover up by the Archdiocese and the legal community in Boston.

The subject matter is such that I suspect that many people will choose not to see this movie.  Fine.  However, it needs to be noted that this, tragically, is a true story.  These events really did take place.  

That aside, is this a good movie?  It absolutely is.  It depicts the work that goes into reporters cultivating sources, digging for the facts, hitting dead ends, wearing out shoe leather, and making sure that the story gets told and told correctly.  It is a thriller, and the very nature of the story is such that you are moved and deeply affected by the story.  As a piece of motion picture art, this is a terrific movie.  Any awards that this movie garners in the awards season ahead will be well deserved.

Directed by Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, "Spotlight" includes a terrific ensemble cast....Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci.  Not sure if any one actor will dominate the Oscars.  Surely Ruffalo and Keaton will receive acting nominations, and I wouldn't be upset if Tucci received one either.  The Oscars do not have an award for Best Ensemble Cast (as the Screen Actors Guild does), but if it did, the "Spotlight" would be a cinch for it.

Lots of good lines in this movie, but the one that was a real grabber to me was "If it takes a village to raise a child, then it also takes a village to abuse one."

Four stars all the way for this one.