Shane Life

This was the first time in four years that Alli and I have not hosted an Oscar party at our house. With the job change and everything going on, we needed to take a break this year and just enjoy the show on our own. HOWEVER…

Why is it impossible for them to stay on schedule? My DVR cut off and I missed the final 4 awards (read: THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES). Fortunately, the Internet came to my rescue and I was able to see the acceptance speeches from Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Kathryn Bigelow and…Kathryn Bigelow.

I have to be honest. Last night’s awards were somewhat of a disappointment to me. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin weren’t funny (nor really were both of them necessary…why two hosts?) and the outcomes — well, I just can’t get on board with The Hurt Locker. Look, I appreciate the significance of Bigelow’s win. It’s ludicrous that a woman has not already won a directing Oscar. But I think that Peter Sciretta from /film said it best in his tweet:

What I liked:

• Pete Doctor wearing the bottlecap pin on his tux to commemorate Up.
• The way that the Best Original Score nominees were presented by the League of Extraordinary Dancers.
• Ben Stiller dressed up as a Na’vi from Avatar, which was hilarious.
• John Hughes tribute. The man was responsible for some of the funniest movies of the 80′s and 90′s.
• Christoph Waltz finally getting his acceptance speech right. Everything else he had said in acceptance speeches had been an incoherent mess.
• Up winning for Best Score (seriously, I was probably happier about this than anything else during the evening). Giacchino is amazing.
• Doug Benson’s (host of the I Love Movies podcast) live tweets during the show. Hilarious.

The big surprises:

• Precious winning the Best Adapted Screenplay award. Really was certain it was going to Up in the Air.
• The Hurt Locker winning Best Original Screenplay (although once you saw how much the night was swinging towards Bigelow’s movie, it wasn’t as surprising). I thought this would be Tarantino’s for Inglorious Basterds.
• Farrah Fawcett being left out of the In Memoriam montage, but not Michael Jackson.
• Mo’Nique didn’t get played off the stage. I was sure that when she won that she would ramble on for 5 minutes.

What I didn’t like:

• Baldwin and Martin. Just not very funny.
• Really shocked about Up in the Air getting shut out. After seeing all 10 Best Picture nominees, I truly believe this was in the top 3. Fortunately, Jason Reitman is young. He’s doing great work and will continue to do so.
• The pre-show hosted by Kathy Ireland was just PAINFUL to watch.

So, what did you think? Did you watch the whole telecast?

So, it’s one of my favorite weekends of the year — Oscar Weekend. And that means that we also finished up the Best Picture Showcase at AMC today.

First things first, a disclaimer: I am recently employed by AMC and have to state that these opinions are my own.

Last weekend, we had Avatar, Up in the Air, Precious, The Blind Side and Inglorious Basterds. (If you want to read about weekend 1 of the Best Picture Showcase, you can revisit my previous post.)

So to complete the 10 Best Picture Nominees today, the lineup was:

• Up
• An Education
• The Hurt Locker
• A Serious Man
• District 9

As we did last weekend, we arrived late since we’d seen (and own) Disney Pixar’s brilliant UP.

So technically our day was supposed to start with A Serious Man, but we actually kicked it off with the movie I was most looking forward to today: An Education.

I really loved An Education. Carey Mulligan is just unbelievably charming and complex in a terrific coming-of-age story penned by one of my favourite (with added ‘u’ because he’s British) authors, Nick Hornby. Filled with great performances from Peter Saarsgard, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson and that dude who is supposed to marry Amanda Seyfried in Mamma Mia!, all are eclipsed by Mulligan, who just brings so much wonderful charm to Jenny, the main character. The story is one we’ve heard before, but I just really connected with this story and thought to myself, “It’s too bad that nobody has a clue about this flick.”

Next flick up was The Hurt Locker, many critics’ pick to win the coveted Best Picture Oscar. I guess I just didn’t see the same movie because to me, it did NOT live up to the hype. It was a decent enough movie, but it really reminded me a lot of Jarhead (hat tip to Alli, who helped me remember the name of that movie). It’s a decent movie, but I really didn’t like it as much as I wanted to for whatever reason. Anthony Mackie was really the saving grace here.

A Serious Man was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. I have never really liked the Coen brothers, but have tolerated them. This flick was just incomprehensible. And I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Nearly everyone in our theatre felt the same way, wondering how it’s possible that this horrible, make-you-want-to-blow-your-brains-out-depressing movie could have a chance as the Best Picture of the year. Absolutely hated it.

My feelings on A Serious Man may have helped me to hate District 9 considerably less. I got a text from my brother telling me that he guaranteed I would hate it. Well, Jake, you were wrong. I didn’t hate it. It was unbelievably ambitious, but we’ve come to expect that from Peter Jackson. The beginning of the flick was a bit disjointed, but once it, *ahem*, takes its “turn”, it becomes a lot more entertaining. For those of you that have seen District 9, I have a question for you: did you think that the story had some parallels with Avatar? Alli brought that up after the movie and I had to chuckle because it’s not terribly far off.

So, after 2 weekends, Alli and I tackled 8 out of the 10 Best Picture nominees, having seen the other two multiple times. The Best Picture Showcase experience is such a blast (and I’m not just saying that because I work for AMC) if you love the movies. I happen to love the movies.

So my final rankings of all 10 films (my opinion, based upon how much I actually liked the films…I realize that I have no ability to judge these films based on anything else but my own personal opinion):

1. Avatar
2. Up
3. An Education
4. Up in the Air
5. The Hurt Locker
6. Inglorious Basterds
7. District 9
8. The Blind Side
9. Precious Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
10. A Serious Man

I realize that putting The Blind Side as high as I did leaves me open for ridicule. But I really didn’t like Precious or A Serious Man. AT ALL. As far as what is going to win? I think it is a two-horse race between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I’m giving the edge to Avatar right now. But The Hurt Locker has a ton of momentum. We’ll have to see…

So what were your thoughts? What do you think will take the Oscar for Best Picture Sunday night?

Since the Academy upped the number of Best Picture nominees for this year’s Oscars from 5 to 10, the Best Picture Showcase format at AMC had to change. While 5 select cities (New York, Chicago, LA, Washington D.C. and Toronto) will have 24-hour marathons, Kansas City hosted two venues, including my home theatre, Studio 30, which sold more Best Picture Showcase tickets than any other city in America.

The lineup for the first weekend was:

• Avatar
• Up in the Air
• Precious
• The Blind Side
• Inglorious Basterds

Since Alli’s been sick (and we’ve seen it twice), we decided to cut out on seeing Avatar again and showed up about 15 minutes prior to Up in the Air. We settled into our seats (which we purchased ourselves…I went as a fan, not as a Community Manager) and enjoyed the day.

Mostly.

The experience of the Best Picture Showcase is a blast for movie lovers like us, but one thing you can never avoid is the gut-wrenchingly uncomfortable movie. This year, that movie was Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire.

Brutal. Just utterly brutal. Stereotype-filled to the brim. Good performances from Mo’Nique and Gabourey Sidibe, but they are certainly a type. Their performances reminded me of something I heard Matt Damon say once that it’s easy to win an Oscar, you just have to pick the right role (I think it was Damon…I can’t find a link to the quote, but I’m pretty sure it was Damon when he was on Inside the Actor’s Studio).

As far as the other movies go…

The Blind Side was a nice movie. I’m not convinced that Sandra Bullock would win Best Actress any other year but this one. It’s certainly her best performance since Crash, but is it Oscar-worthy? I don’t know. I can certainly see why people love that movie. It’s inspirational. It’s about our national past-time, football. But The Blind Side is definitely one of the movies that benefited from the expansion to 10 Best Picture nominees. That being said, the kid that plays SJ is hilarious.

Inglorious Basterds was what I expected. Tarantino certainly has a style that can be appealing to some. But the typography nerd in me was annoyed by the opening credits where he managed to stuff at least four different typefaces in, which is a big design no-no. Christoph Waltz was absolutely brilliant as Hans Landa and deserves every single bit of acclaim that he’s received. The story itself…*shrug*. There were people who’ve said that Inglorious Basterds is Tarantino’s best work so far. I respectfully disagree…and not just because of the typography.

On second viewing, Up in the Air was my favorite film we saw. Jason Reitman, like Tarantino, also has a very specific directorial style. But where Tarantino’s style has seemingly remained the same, Reitman’s is evolving into something fantastic. The shots he captures of Ryan Bingham’s America are really beautiful and the performances from leads — Clooney, Kendrick and Farmiga — are all terrific, with Anna Kendrick (who we’ve really only known as Jessica from the Twilight movies before now) really doing an amazing job as Clooney’s young understudy Natalie.

Just a quick comment on the Best Picture Showcase itself. Now that I work for AMC as a Community Manager, it was an interesting experience. I didn’t attend as an employee, but a fan of the movies, just like most everyone else in the theatre. And for people who love the movies, the Best Picture Showcase is an amazing time. I’m looking forward to finishing it up next weekend, with:

• Up
• A Serious Man
• The Hurt Locker
• An Education
• District 9

I’m most looking forward to seeing An Education and The Hurt Locker. An Education was written by one of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby, while The Hurt Locker…well, I’m anxious to see what all the hype is about.

The Oscars are only a week away, so it’s fitting that this story came out on The Daily Beast today: 10 Ways to Win an Oscar:

So I think we can lock up the four acting awards right now (not that they weren’t already):

• Best Actor: Jeff Bridges (Get fat, go ugly)
• Best Actress: Sandra Bullock (Speak with a funny accent)
• Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (Holocaust, Accent)
• Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique (Go ugly)

Now that those awards are decided, the real battle comes down in Best Picture and Best Director. Now, usually, that award goes to the same film. It’s certainly had exceptions in the past and I get the feeling that this year might be another exception.

See, I’m not sure that the Academy will discount the juggernaut Avatar in favor of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker for Best Picture. However, I am pretty sure that Bigelow is going to win the Best Director award. Now, those two might flip-flop, but I am not sure that one movie will take both those awards. Lord knows that most of Hollywood is rooting against James Cameron. You have to imagine that many of them are thinking, “Doesn’t he have enough? Top two box office movies of all-time? And Aquaman!”

Whether or not Avatar/Cameron or Hurt Locker/Bigelow win remains to be seen, but at least actors now have a formula on winning an award, if they so desire.

• I need to see The Hurt Locker. I’ve got the Redbox DVD, but haven’t had time to watch it yet.
• Is UP the first picture to be nominated for Best Picture and Best Animated Picture? I’m assuming so, but not sure.
• No big surprises for the acting nominations except perhaps
• Really want to see An Education, especially since Nick Hornby (one of my favorite authors) wrote the screenplay

There are lots of opinions on what’s good and what’s not, but here are the certainties (at least in my mind):

• The acting awards will go to Bridges, Bullock, Waltz, Mo’Nique
• Up in the Air will win Best Adapted Screenplay
• Inglorious Basterds will win Best Original Screenplay
• Avatar will win all the technical awards

All the rest of the major awards are kind of a crap shoot. Momentum seems to be favoring The Hurt Locker right now, but Avatar or even Tarantino’s Basterds could come out of nowhere to win. It’s anyone’s guess right now.

What do you think?

Like many people, I watched the Golden Globes last night. Awards season is a favorite for Alli and me and we picked up some Original Pizza, some Throwback soda and settled in for a night of glamour, movies and TV…all from the comfort of sweats on the couch.

First things first: Ricky Gervais was really disappointing. For as much smack as he talked prior to the show about how he was going to be brutal to the stars, all he really did was self-promote (not unheard of) and get in maybe one good dig at Mel Gibson. The rest of his jokes were just really MEH.

Some other thoughts:

• I really felt that Jane Lynch got robbed for supporting actress in a TV series. I’ve never understood why they lumped all the supporting actors and actresses into one all-encompassing category, including comedies, dramas and mini-series. She should have won. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Big Love, but Sevigny didn’t deserve it. Sue Sylvester is the heart and soul of Glee.
• Speaking of Glee, I’m so glad that it won. I love that show.
• I still have very little desire to see Grey Gardens.
• Toni Collette won a shocker for TV actress in a comedy. I won’t say she’s not deserving…I was just really surprised.
• Alec Baldwin is the new Tony Shalhoub.
• I think that Julianna Margulies winning Best Actress in a Drama series was a shock to everyone except Julianna Margulies.
• T-Bone Burnett does not look like he should. He should at least have a beard.
• I really like how the Oscars splits the screenplays into adapted and original. Like Just Cara said, when you are blessed with great source material, it’s hard to mess it up. Unless, of course, if you’re Rob Marshall.
• I love Robert Downey, Jr., but I was really hoping for Joseph Gordon-Levitt to pull out the Best Actor Comedy win. He was awesome in (500) Days of Summer, one of my favorites of the last year.
• The room was amazingly cold toward James Cameron during both of his acceptance speeches. And I was thinking, it’s gotta suck to be a filmmaker during the year that James Cameron comes out with a movie. It’s once every 10 years, but still. It’s gotta suck.

Overall, it was a decent show…not a ton of huge surprises. Would have liked to see Gervais push it a little more. It will be interesting to see Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin host the Oscars. I doubt they will go after any of the actors in attendance, but you never know.

Another thing to note, if you’re a Twitter user and you watch the Twitter stream during shows like this, I highly recommend following Doug Benson. He hosts a podcast called “I Love Movies” and is totally hilarious.

Alli has been wanting to see Nine ever since she heard of it and it seemed like a can’t miss film: a musical based on a Fellini movie that was directed by the guy who directed Chicago and starred Daniel Day-Lewis and like, a bajillion other Oscar winners. Oh, and it was also put out by perennial Oscar hoarder, Harvey Weinstein.

It really had the pedigree to be something special.

Yeah…not so much.

It wasn’t that it was bad…it had moments of brilliance, particularly the choreographed numbers with the Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie “Be Italian” and Kate Hudson’s “Cinema Italiano”. And Daniel Day-Lewis…well, that guy is just phenomenal. Even faced with sub-par writing and a flimsy plot, he really delivers as Guido “The Maestro” Contini, the famed Italian film director with writer’s block. He brings life to a completely unlikable character who is tortured because of the 7 women of his past and present: his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his muse (Nicole Kidman), his makeup artist (Dame Judi Dench), an American journalist (Hudson), a prostitute from his childhood (Fergie), and his enigmatic, canonized mother (Sophia Loren).

Honestly, if this movie is about anything, it can be found in the 3-minute “Cinema Italiano” number with Kate Hudson, in which she actually sings that style is more important than substance and that’s why Contini’s movies are so great.

It seems like Rob Marshall took this nugget a little too close to heart because while the film is absolutely gorgeous (one of my favorite scenes was the opening one where we meet Guido for the first time in his sound stage…that shot is amazing), but it completely falls apart because it can’t deliver on any semblance of a story.

Without Daniel Day-Lewis and Marion Cotillard, this movie would be a complete travesty, but they manage to save it in their unique ways. Cotillard is so charming as Conini’s tortured wife who knows that he’s a scoundrel, but sticks with him “for the film”. I didn’t particularly like her in Public Enemies and was really bummed when she beat out Ellen Page’s Juno for Best Actress in the 2008 Oscars, but she is really likable in this movie, despite its many flaws.

Like I said, Nine has some moments and is buoyed by two very good performances, but it can’t overcome the terrible script and just didn’t deliver as the Oscar bait that Harvey Weinstein wanted us to believe that it was.

On New Year’s Eve, Alli and I headed out with my folks for a double-feature at ye ole Olathe AMC.

This is such a fun time for movies. So many great flicks come out at the end of the year so they can be eligible for Oscar season and the two that we saw were early front runners: Up in the Air and Nine.

Up in the Air

I’ve heard nothing but good things about Up in the Air. It seems destined for Oscar gold and potentially the elusive Best Actor statue for Clooney. It certainly solidified to me that Jason Reitman is no one-trick pony. His last 3 films (Up in the Air, Juno, Thank You for Smoking) have really been stellar from a directorial standpoint. He’s got a unique voice and I’m looking forward to more from him as he continues to grow as a director.

The movie itself was interesting and heartfelt, but I think that my expectations may have failed me again. I went in expecting the best movie of the year and what I got was quite good, but I felt like it didn’t deliver in certain places. However, one place it certainly delivered was in the female performances. George Clooney is darn near overshadowed by Anna Kendrick (Twi-hards will know her as Jessica), who portrays Natalie Keener with an earnestness that I could completely relate to and I felt rang so true for the current generation of workers who have grandiose, unrealistic visions of how technology can completely change everything about how we live our lives. Now, coming from me, that may sound a little weird, but it’s a good life lesson that she receives.

Vera Farmiga (The Departed) is also quite charming as Clooney’s love interest, Alex, but I didn’t find her nearly as interesting as Kendrick’s Natalie.

OK, so let’s talk about George Clooney. He’s terrific. But I just felt like he was playing George Clooney, who I like…I just didn’t think it was that much of a stretch.

Writing this review has made me kind of want to see the movie again…to see if I missed something. I’m not sure that I did, but I want to make sure. I just didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

I started the last year unemployed.

I lost my job on December 11th last year, was unemployed for the first three months of the year, which isn’t exactly the ideal way to start a year. Even so, I thought it was pretty fun. I got to hang out with my wife pretty much all day long for 3 months straight, save the times she had practice, mural jobs, or if I had an interview.

In March, I joined Cerner and I have been there ever since. The first couple months there were a complete blur and then it was summer. The family headed out (I wish I could say in the family truckster, Griswold-style, but alas, it was just an oversized van) over the Fourth of July to visit our good friends at their ranch in Wyoming. We rode horses, I almost died twice there, first almost falling off a mountain, then being bucked off a horse. It was a phenomenal trip and made me remember how much I love the outdoors, especially the wide open spaces of Colorado and Wyoming.

I wrote a post in August about sweatshirts and silverware that was one of my favorites of the year.

I saw a bunch of movies, several of them courtesy of two great sites: Lost in Reviews and Scene Stealers. But the best time that I had at the movies (maybe besides Avatar), was spending an entire Saturday in the Cinema Suites at the Olathe AMC watching the Best Picture Showcase the day before the Oscars.

In September, I attempted to take a picture of my dog everyday. It didn’t work so well.

I celebrated my 5-year bloggiversary.

Alli was the featured artist at our alma mater’s Homecoming (also my 10-year Honor Year). She painted the walls black and had one wall painted with just words.

I bearded up for the winter, just before I saw Rob Bell in concert, which was totally amazing, as I kind of expected.

Alli and I also went to New York, which was a great trip. I went for the Web 2.0 Expo, where I saw The Onion’s web editor Baratunde Thurston give an amazing talk called “What the Hashtag?”

On the same trip, we saw the Complexions modern ballet and ate dinner at Perilla, my Top Chef favorite (from the very beginning) Harold Dieterle’s restaurant in Greenwich Village, which was arguably the best meal of my life.

And then it was December and I started a huge project at work, turned 33, and celebrated Christmas and rang in the New Year. That was my 2009.

As for 2010, I have no idea what to expect. I didn’t think that 2009 was terribly exciting, but looking back, I’m more aware of how much actually happened. I’ve made a lot of new friends at Cerner and have actually met some bloggers and Twitterers this year.

2010 will certainly be an interesting year for me spiritually, as I begin work as the Assistant Pastor of the Olathe Community of Christ church, my home congregation for over 25 years. It’s not a full-time position by any means, but it’s certainly going to take a lot of my time and energy in the coming year. I’ll be preaching next Sunday, January 10th and again in February. I expect to be preaching a lot more in my home congregation this year.

I hope that your 2010 brings you joy.