Melancholic Picturegoer

The Oscars 2012

2012-02-27T07:42:00.000-08:00

Couple of words about the Oscars 2012. Overall, I think this was the fairest distribution of the prizes on my memory. The Artist and Hugo were my favourites, and I am glad they were both given considerable amount of Oscars. The Artist got the important ones, whereas Hugo got the technical ones, but this is perfectly justified. And this dog, Uggie, is now a legend!

I am also glad that the Descendants won almost nothing - it was well below the level of the other movies nominated. And yes, Muppets got the Oscar as well! Nevermind it is for the best original song only, it is still such an achievement for generally not-for-oscars movie.

Rango was also my clear favorite to win the best animation, especially considering the other nominees.

So, overall, that was a very good, and, in my opinion, just ceremony. I can only hope that the tradition of giving the Oscars to the movies that can be understood by wider audience is going to be continued in the future.

P.S. Sacha Baron Cohen was as provocative as usual.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Dictator

2012-02-24T09:28:00.001-08:00

After being banned from attending the Oscars ceremony as the Dictator character, Sacha Baron Cohen filmed this awesome reply - worth watching, he makes sure we don't question his sense of humour.

P.S. "Planet of the Rapes" - how does he manage to come up with these jokes?!

The Descendants

2012-02-23T09:50:00.001-08:00

Matt King(George Clooney) is the chairman of the family trust which owns massive pieceof land on Hawaii. After his wife suffers from the boat accident, he tries to overcomethe pain and re-connect with his two daughters.

As somebodycorrectly put it, this movie is the living evidence of how flawed the newconcept of the Oscars is. Previously, each category had only 5 nominees,strictly, whereas now they include “between 5 and 10”. This resulted in moviesbeing nominated, which are clearly not up to speed with the rest of thenominees, and that only highlights their mediocrity. And yes, the Descendants isone of those movies.

The Muppets

2012-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

The oldMuppets’ theatre is in danger: greedy oil businessman Tex Richman wants to getcontrol over it to dig for oil reserves that are under the theatre. Walther,who is on the trip to LA with his brother, accidentally hears the plan, and nowit is the race against the time: Muppets have to reunite to raise $10,000,000to save the theatre.

When Ifirst saw the trailers for the Muppets, I was amazed. Finally, goodold-fashioned parody is coming along, with nice little subtle jokes aboutalmost just everything on Earth! “The Immigrant Song” trailer was probably evenbetter than the original one. However, the actual movie lacks this grit, and itis easy to understand why.

Shame

2012-02-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

Brandon isa 30-something man living in New York who is unable to manage his sex life.After his wayward younger sister moves into his apartment, Brandon's worldspirals out of control… And this is it. The whole storyline of the movie can besummarized in 2 short sentences, and trust me, you cannot add much to thedescription – and that is probably the biggest shame of the whole film.

Moneyball

2012-01-25T14:52:00.000-08:00

The OaklandA’s general manager Billy Beane finds himself in a very unfortunate position oflosing the three star players to other teams. Now he has to assemble a new teamon a limited budget, and he employs young Yale graduate Peter Brand to employstatistical analysis to find the undervalued players.

The storyis based on the real events and tells us about the real Billy Beane, making italmost semi-documentary. The case study of Moneyball technique is pretty commonin business schools and in general on economic courses, and thanks to the bookby Michael Lewis it became known to wider audiences.

Oscar nominees 2012

2012-01-24T07:53:00.000-08:00

So, here we go again. The Oscars 2012 are going to be hard-contested, competitive and fabulous. This year's ceremony is miles away from 2011, when there were only two real good movies which were actually up to the benchmark. This time there were many very good movies, and in particular it will be hard to decide between Hugo and the Artist.

I am personally delighted that Hugo got 11 nominations, closely followed by 10 for the Artist. Hugo was the best picture I saw in 2011, but apparently it was little understood and watched. We will see whether the justice will be served. It was also refreshing to see Moneyball in nominations - the movie is pretty distinct from all the others, but I will blog about it in detail a bit later. However, the best actor of the year, I believe, is Gary Oldman. His Smiley is one of the most distinct characters of the year, and the iconic scene recreating the talk between two spies is absolutely brilliant.

The showdown between the Artist and Hugo will be an interesting one, don't miss it on 26th February!

Filmography 2011

2012-01-21T06:28:00.000-08:00

Adding to the previous post, almost mindless but very nice-looking cut.

Hello

2012-01-21T06:26:00.000-08:00

Beautifully done

Jeeves and Wooster (TV Series 1990-1993)

2012-01-19T12:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes Iget very nostalgic about good old British series, which had great sense ofhumor and a very light approach to entertainment. Whenever the nostalgia setsupon, I usually re-watch Sherlock to remind myself of the inescapable glorious walkof the progress, but this time I opted for Jeeves and Wooster instead. And Iloved it.

BertramWooster is a wealthy gentleman who manages to get himself into trouble wheneverhe tries to solve other people’s problems. Then it is the time for his smartand psychological butler, Wooster, to help to resolve all the troubles.

Rango

2012-01-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

Rango is apet chameleon always on the lookout for action and adventure, except the fakekind, where he directs it and acts in it. After a car accident, he winds up inan old western town called Dirt. What this town needs the most is water, butthey also need a hero and a sheriff. The thirsty Rango instantly takes on therole of both and selfishly agrees to take on the case of their missing water.

You’ve gotto love London Tube’s ads of the movies. During the year, all the movies thatwere advertised in the underground were great – think Drive, Tinker TailorSoldier Spy, Hugo, Artist. It may be that good movies have impressive budgetsand can afford buying the space underground, or it may be that the Tube workersare actually critics who choose the film adverts on the merit of the film.Whatever the reasoning, Rango was advertised quite a while ago, and yes, in myopinion it is the best animation of 2011.

Movies From An Alternate Universe

2012-01-17T00:59:00.000-08:00

Movies From An Alternate Universe on the Behance Network

Great stuff! I laughed on Avatar poster for about 5 minutes.

The Artist

2012-01-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

Hollywood,1927: Silent movie star George Valentin is famous and wanted by his fans. Hemeets Peppy Miller, a young dancer, and propels her to the top of the movieindustry. But as the sound enters the Hollywood, will George Valentin stand upto the challenge or surrender?

I willdefinitely remember the year 2011 as the year of extreme nostalgia about theold movies. It seems to me that suddenly that feeling overwhelmed all the majorproducers, and as the result we saw so many films heralding how good the timeswere. The suit was started with Drive, the movie that initiates a time travelinto 1980s movie production with all the main attributes in place: poundingsoundtrack, violence and L.A. Then there was Hugo, in which Martin Scorsesetook us back to the very beginning of the film production and has shown thefate of one of the pioneers of the industry, Georges Méliès. This time, thenostalgic Michel Hazanavicius take us to 1927, the era of silent black-and-white movies andbooming movie industry.

Movies to wait for in 2012

2012-01-12T06:53:00.000-08:00

This is the list of movies not to be missed in 2012. Not all of them will be up to expectations, of course, but we will hope for the best.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

2012-01-09T07:26:00.001-08:00

In the 4thinstallment of the Mission Impossible series, Ethan Hunt and his team areracing against time to track down a dangerous terrorist named Hendricks, whohas gained access to Russian nuclear launch codes and is planning a strike onthe United States. An attempt by the team to stop him at the Kremlin ends in adisaster, with an explosion causing severe destruction to the Kremlin and theIMF being implicated in the bombing, forcing the President to invoke GhostProtocol, under which the IMF is disavowed, and will be offered no help orbackup in any form. Undaunted, Ethan and his team chase Hendricks to Dubai, andfrom there to Mumbai, but several spectacular action sequences later, theymight still be too late to stop a disaster. © IMDb

I do notconsider myself as the great fan of Mission Impossible franchise. The firstpart, released in 1996 (!) was action at its purest, with the small intrigueset up by the question “Who betrayed the group?” and the soundtrack whichpretty soon was installed on 95% of mobile phones as the alarm clock signal. Sincethen Ethan Hunt became iconic spy, even though the franchise overall was goingdownhill. The second part was an absolute failure, already too surreal for aserious action movie but still not surreal enough for Matrix-style movie. Thethird part improved a little bit but generally it was still laughable.

Hugo (2011)

2012-01-08T07:26:00.000-08:00

The movieis set in Paris in 1930s and closely follows the storyline of “The Invention ofHugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick and tells the story about a boy who lives on the trainstation, his father, a robot called automaton and dreams which never reallyleave us.

This is thework of well-known director Martin Scorsese, which is notably different fromhis other works. The Departed, The Shutter Island, The Aviator, Bands ofNew-York: those are the most famous ones and they have one feature in common,they are not movies for kids or fairytales. Scorsese’s choice of genre for thenext movie, Hugo, caught me by surprise; I definitely didn’t expect him to takeon the Christmas tale. I had a bad feeling about it (I am a great fan of the 3movies mentioned above), and I am so glad that I turned out to be wrong. Thegenius of Scorsese shines in whatever movie he decides to make.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

2012-01-06T22:30:00.000-08:00

This English-language adaptation of the Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson follows a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), as he investigates the disappearance of a wealthy patriarch's niece from 40 years ago. He is aided by the pierced, tattooed, punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). As they work together in the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander uncover immense corruption beyond anything they have ever imagined.

This was probably the most waited-for movie of this winter, and you can quite understand why. David Fincher, the director behind the Fight Club and the Social Network, took on the bestseller detective by Stieg Larsson and invited Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara to play the lead roles. On every account that should have been a good movie.

The best movies I have seen in 2011

2012-01-06T03:23:00.000-08:00

Little warning to start with: the movies mentioned are not the best of 2011 – simply because I have not seen all the movies that were released in that year. These are the films that moved me most, that intrigued me and fascinated me. I will probably write something about them at greater length later on.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

2012-01-05T03:43:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his longtime trusted associate, Doctor Watson (Jude Law), take on their arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris), with the help of Holmes's older brother Mycroft Holmes (Stephen Fry) and a gypsy named Sim (Noomi Rapace). © IMDb

This is the second installment of the Sherlock Holmes franchise starring Robert Downey Jr. as the great detective. The first installment, which I saw exactly two years ago, was very impressing. That was a completely new take on Sir Conan Doyle’s never dying detective story, full of style, fascinating action, humorous dialogues and amazing soundtrack. Robert Downey Jr. reinvented Sherlock; his Holmes is arrogant, sociopathic but nevertheless absolutely loveable. The movie was peppered with something called “flash-forward” – which is how Sherlock planned his fights. Overall, the movie was easy to watch, the storyline kept attention and visually it was very organic.

No doubt, after the success of the first part producers had to start working on the sequel. Lucky for them, the arch-enemy was mentioned only briefly and hence there was the storyline left unexplored. Clearly, there was pressure to deliver the same kind of Holmes, but more of it. And this is where, I think, the whole myth broke down.

Hello World

2012-01-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Thank you for reading my blog. After long contemplation I have decided to start the blog about what entertains me the most - movies.

That's me, by the way:

Or maybe not exactly.