I say two wildly divergent movies today. You would not expect them to be in one days viewing. But your all-american boy is a good cinema fan. He likes movies.
But he also learns lessons. He will share them with you presently.
1. If you must change your date, do not let advertising sneak out.
Movie #1 I saw was Charlie Bartlett. You may not have seen these advertisements back in August for the movie. However? They were there. They were going to go up against an art film called The Bourne Ultimatum, but they got out.
Then the movie got pulled, to be released in Feburary. This is bad mojo. A real rule of thumb is if you get your movie pulled at the last moment, it blows. Even if it has real redeeming value like Charlie Bartlett, no one will see it.
Don’t believe me? Google the box office. Is it still under 4 million? You see my point.
2) Don’t see a movie that you can YouTube the salient clip.
YouTube I Drink Your Milkshake. Or won’t you? Fine.
I waited 2 hours and 26 minutes for this. I am not a happy panda. Do not make the same mistake I did. But this lesson does dovetail into lesson #3 quite nicely.
3) Running Time.
I don’t know exactly where this theory came up, but if a movie wants to pass itself off as an longer than 2 hours 30 minutes, it better be close to Godly. The Godfather was the best of this bunch. The Lord of the Rings achieved a certain level of greatness. But There Will Be Blood does not achieve this. It opens with exposistion and ends at a level somewhere beyond melodrama. And yet, Oscars? Again, it dovetals easily into lesson #4.
4) The Oscars hate good acting.
You know how the old joke goes? You play a drunk, a handicapped, or ugly your shit up, you get an Oscar. It’s supposedly funny because it’s true. Al Pacino got his Oscar for playing a blind guy yelling hoo-ah! Daniel Day Lewis got his first best actor Oscar for having only a working left foot. And let’s be honest, Tom Hanks playing an AIDS-infected gay man with an IQ of 75? It was worthy of two Oscars.
But you know what they love better than handicapping or uglying yourself up as a character? Overacting! The closer you get to an impression of Jon Lovitz Saturday Night Live Character, the better. And far be it for me to call John Huston’s performance as Noah Cross in Chinatown overacting. Seeing Daniel Day Lewis impersonate that for the 158 minutes of my life wore on me. It was annoying.
5) Iron Man is going to be AWESOME!
Robert Downey Jr. is going to be completely awesome as Tony Stark.
Hooray for Summer Hype!
YAY!
