Culture

The Oscar nominees have been announced. My reaction is, as usual, lukewarm. From the top (of the page): DiCaprio did not deserve a Best Actor nod. Jude Law might have. Bill Murray might also have, but I didn’t expect anything there — the Academy seemed unlikely to recognize his work twice in a row. You only get one quirky nomination per decade, or something. Paul Giamatti, however, is the big slight. What’s up with that? My choice would be Clint Eastwood, but if Giamatti had been nominated it’d have been a tough choice. ...

In the lobby of the Lowes Harvard Square today, while waiting for Million Dollar Baby, I saw the following two posters side-by-side, much like they are below if your browser window is quite large. Both these movies are distributed by Warner Brothers. They’re both comic book adaptations. They ought to both appeal to a similar audience. What are the execs at Warner Brothers thinking? This is why Marvel-based movies are on a fairly strong run, while DC-based movies are not.

$81.3 million was pretty close; it actually hit $85.85 million. Not too shabby, although still somewhat behind Spider-Man and the Harry Potter flicks.

Bill Condon’s next movie will apparently be Dreamgirls. I’m quite happy that I won’t have to wait another six years for his next. It’ll be a remake of the stage musical, which I know nothing about; the storyline isn’t terribly compelling to me. But hey, it’s Condon.

A while back I pointed to the University of California’s online academic text archive. Robin Laws put this to good use, discovering a collection of Hollywood screenwriter interviews. I’m gonna read just about all of those.

Screw it — while there are three or four 2004 movies I want to see that I could see if I was willing to delay this puppy another couple of weeks, I’m gonna go with what I’ve got. The rules, as per last year: This is the list of my ten favorite movies of 2004. I didn’t see every movie I wanted to see, so I can’t claim it’s the ten best movies of 2004. I’m also being a little liberal about foreign flicks; if it was made in 2003 but was released in the US in 2004, or if it hasn’t been released in the US yet but I saw it in 2004, I’ll count it as a 2004 movie within reason. E.g., Days of Being Wild was released in the US in 2004, but was made in 1991, so it doesn’t get on the list. ...

“I’m blogging your T-shirt.”

For Sean Stewart fans, there’s an eight page comic book (original) featuring Perfect Circle’s DK up on the web. Steve Lieber illustrated it. It’s good.

I am firmly dedicated to seeing as many 2004 movies as possible before I crank out a best of list, which means that I won’t be doing mine until mid-January. Maybe late January, since the Brattle has that Zhang Ziyi flick I wanna see. However: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Closer, Life Aquatic, Kinsey, The Incredibles, Gozu, Last Life in the Universe, Zatoichi, Eternal Sunshine, Spider-Man 2, aw crap that’s ten already? This is gonna be tough.

If you happen to live in Boston and you’re that kind of obsessive, the Brattle Theater is showing the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back to back on Sunday, January 2nd and Monday, January 3rd. Starting on the 7th, they’re reviewing some of the best movies of 2004, including Last Life In The Universe on the 7th, Takeshi’s Kitano’s Zatoichi on the 8th, and Goodbye, Dragon Inn on the 11th. Plus a lot of other good stuff. I’ve gotta make it to Before Sunset, myself. ...