Vicky, Christina, Barcelona - 4.5

We watched Woody Allen's Vicky, Christina, Barcelona last night. I'm feeling bullet point-y, so here goes:

• Penelope Cruz really makes the movie. She playes the crazy ex-wife who injects herself in to the theretofore lifeless love triangle making it a much more interesting quadralateral of some sort.
  
• I've seen all of the Supporting Actress nominees now, and Cruz should win hands down. I'd have Marisa Tomei and Viola Davis a distant 2nd and 3rd and Amy Adams and the Mom from Ben Button bringing up the rear.
  
• Alexa and I watched the movie without subtitles the first time, which was fine. Most of it was in English and, except for a few scenes where Cruz goes nuts, the Spanish was pretty straight-forward. After we were done, I went back and re-watched Penelope's freakouts with the subtitles on just so that I could understand more than 25% of what she said. Pretty great stuff. The term "niete mierda" is definitely going to become a focal point of my Spanish vocabulary.
• Besides Penelope Cruz, the acting was abrasively bad. Scarlett Johansen played one of the title characters (Christina) and annoyed me a lot, and she couldn't hold a crap-scented candle to Rebecca Hall's Vicky. Just terrible.
  
• And the acting wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the arrogant-sounding narrarator that WOULD NOT SHUT THE HELL UP. Seriously, the jerk kept describing the completely mundane things that were happening on screen. "Now Vicky is eating lunch. Later she sits in a chair, reading a book, before standing up and going to bed." Completely pointless, Woody Allen should seriously get his head out of his ass if he thought the narrator was A) neccesary or B) a good idea.
• Final word: Watch this one on HBO just for Cruz. In fact, just skip the first 45 minutes, and watch the last hour of the movie. It's not a great , or even a very good, movie, but Cruz's manic performance really is marvelous.
  

The Reader - 6.5

[Note: There are some medium-strength spoilers in this review. You might want to wait to read it if you are planning to watch the movie.]

"Everyone knew Kate would get a best-actress nod, and as a five-time loser, she still seems likely to win the category. But it somehow besmirches her honor to be recognized for the execrable Reader (aka Boohoo, I Bonked an Illiterate Nazi)."
-Slate Critic Dana Stevens, discussing the Oscar Nominations

"I believe the movie may be demonstrating a fact of human nature: Most people, most of the time, all over the world, choose to go along. We vote with tribe."
-Roger Ebert, in his review of The Reader.

Wow, so those are two really different opinions from two critics that I generally really like. The Reader was a pretty divisive movie, and while I basically come down with Ebert and the pro-Reader crowd, I can definitely see where the haters are coming from. (I might add that I also very much appreciate Stevens turning her angry parenthetical "aka" in to an acronym (BIBAIN) for use in the remainder of her article. Bravo.)

Most of the negative reviews I read focus almost exclusively on the aspects of the movie related to the War and the Holocaust. While Kate Winslet masterfully plays the aforementioned "Bonked Illiterate Nazi", to me, The Reader really isn't about the war. At its core the movie is about, as Ebert says much more eloquently than I ever could, what happens when people "go along." I'd have to spoil a lot of the plot to go in to more detail, so I'll just say that I thought they did a great job addressing that theme.

Now, in my humble opinion, they could have presented the same message without playing the Nazi card, and I think the movie would've been much better off. In fact, if Kate Winslet had been an illiterate communist or an illiterate Iraq veteran or, for that matter, an illiterate pig farmer the story would've been just as strong, and all of powerful emotions rightfully elicited by the mere mention of WWII wouldn't have been there to muddy the waters. I can completely understand that a rather philosophical movie with a mostly-sympathetic (and often-naked) ex-internment camp guard as the main character isn't some people's cup of tea. I didn't consider the WWII references central to the movie's overall message, but 5 second shots of the piles of shoes at Auschwitz clearly alter the tone of the movie. The final scene especially was too much, and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor.

So, I liked --- or maybe liked isn't the right word --- I appreciated The Reader, and although it's hardly the best movie she's been in, Kate Winslet gave one heck of an impresive performance, so I won't begrudge her the Oscar that she will almost surely win in a few weeks. If anyone is curious, I'd slide this in to my 2009 list just ahead of Benjamin Button at number 9, but even though it's in my top 10 for the year, I have a hard time recommending The Reader. It certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, so I'd suggest reading Ebert's review and if you're still interested after that, go ahead and give the movie a shot.

Pancho's Toast

Pancho, Alexa's Godfather, made a really nice toast at the engagement party that I've now put up on Youtube.

This is actually and encore performance of the toast. He had given a similar version in Spanish a few moments earlier. Although he did wimp out on the request for a French translation later on.

(A big thanks to Momo for taking the video).

Doubt - 5.5

Four actors from Doubt got Oscar nominations, but (as my dorky brother informs me) it's only the fourth time in history that a movie with that many acting nominations didn't get a best picture nomination. I don't know what that says, but it seemed like a decent way to start a review for a movie that left me feeling ... well, not too much.

Doubt was fine. Of those Oscar nominations, one performance was really good (Viola Davis), two were solid (Amy Adams, Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and the last one (Meryl Streep) was a bit over the top and not at all Oscar-worthy, but still decent enough. The problem is that performance quality seems to have an inverse relationship with screen time --- Viola Davis awesome, but was only on the screen for 5 or 10 minutes.

There is definitely a reason it didn't get a Best Picture nomination. Other than the acting, there was really noteworthy going on. The movie was pretty slow and dull, and frankly, unless your a big dork like me, there are probably better movies out there right about now.

Andes Photos

We took a trip to Mendoza, but we only had one night to spend there and we ended up overlapping with the Dakar Rally race. As such, about 3/4 of our waking hours were spent in the car, getting back in forth. It wasn't a complete waste though. As you can hopefully see from the pictures, the Andes are incredible.
(View Full Photo Set)


That's just about it from my family's trip to Chile. I'll put a few miscellaneous things up tomorrow, and then maybe start putting up some old stuff after that.

Top Movies of 2008

I'm taking a day off from pictures (Tomorrow, the Andes). Instead, here is a ranking of all the movies I saw from 2008. I think there are some clear divisions here, so I'm breaking it up in to tiers.

Tier 1 - Really Freakin' Good
1) Slumdog Millionaire
2) Wall-E
Tier 2 - Really Good
3) The Wrestler
4) Frost/Nixon
5) Milk
Tier 3 - Good!
6) The Dark Knight
7) Iron Man
8) Happy Go Lucky
Tier 4 - Alright
9) Benjamin Button
10) Forgetting Sarah Marshall
11) Baby Mama
12) Tropic Thunder
13) Bank Job
14) In Bruges
Tier 5 - Bad
15) Bond: Quantum of Solace
16) 27 Dresses
17) Pineapple Express
18) Harold and Kumar 2
19) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
20) Jumper

Valparaiso Photos

My Mom, Dad, Sister, Nancy, Matt and I headed to Valparaiso for a day after we got back from Patagonia. Here are the pics.
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Engagement After-Party Photos

After the Engagement Party there's the Engagement After Party.
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And After the Engagement After Party there was sleep. Lots of sleep.

Engagement Party Photos

I've gotten yelled at by a bunch of people for these, so without further ado, here are pictures from our engagement party at the Club de Polo in Santiago.
(View Full Photo Set)


Thanks again to everyone who came. We really appreciate it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 6.0

So, as I twittered my way through Benjamin Button yesterday (a failed experiment that I won't be repeating), I compared the movie to Forrest Gump, only to be informed through the magic of the internet that they have the same screenwriter. I said then that the tone and feel of the two movies were similar, but in retrospect, that tweet was off the mark. The two movies share lots of surface characteristics (largely set in the deep south, boats, on-off-on love story, lots of voice over narration, unique protagonists, etc), but Button lacks that certain something that always makes me stop and watch, at least for a minute or 2, when I see Forrest Gump on TV.

Benjamin Button is a pretty movie. It's more or less a well acted movie. In a lot of ways, it's even a unique movie. But one thing it isn't is fun. Button is as silent as Gump is talkative. Hell, everyone in the movie is quiet. I guess if no one talks then no one has to talk about why the hell Brad Pitt is aging backwards. Combine the generally sparse dialogue with David Fincher's Se7en-like lighting and you've got a pretty dark and somber love story. It's like they thought that no one would buy in to the whole reverse aging thing unless they made the movie serious enough to cancel out the silliness of it's central conceit.

The last 30 minutes of Button were great and even moving, but I'm not convinced the payoff was worth sitting through the pretty, but mundane, set up. A tragic love story is fine and good, but that could have been done in the hour and a half that Pitt and Blanchett were on screen together. It's the other 90 minutes that didn't do ... well, they didn't do much of anything. There were none of the little moments (the silly quotes, the music, the ping pong, the fake historical footage) that made Gump fun to watch, and the few set pieces they tried fell flat (Daisy getting hit by the car, the war scene, the "miracle" first steps).

In he end, Button is a bit too serious and a bit too sloppy, and not even fine performances and amazing special effects could quite overcome the fact that, at it's core, Button was a great love story buried within a dull character study.

Photos from Patagoina

Here are some pictures from my trip to Patagonia with my family.
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These were taken from all of our camera's so there are lots more over at flickr. I might do captions for these eventually, but for now, it's just the pictures.

Valparaiso With Ben

Here are a few pictures from my Trip to Valparaiso with Ben
(View Full Photo Set)

Click on the picture for a larger view or click here for the full set of photos. I'm going to do my best to post at least one photo set per day until I've got all of my pictures from my family's visit online.

Engagement Party Pic

I've got a ton of pictures from the last few weeks of frantic traveling that should make it online in the coming days now that my family has headed back to NC, but for now, here is a decent picture of Alexa and I all gussied up at our engagement party.

Twit

I've posted twice (!!) recently in Twitter, so I'm adding it to my sidebar. I'll drop it if I have another 300 day period of silence.

New Years Resolutions

I've got 2 resolutions this year. First, I'm taking a mulligan on my 2008 resolution, and trying again to read more books. I failed (miserably) last year, only reading something like 13 out of the 24 books I planned to read. Pretty pathetic really. Anyway, I'm going to try the same thing again, and I've already finished 2 books this year, so I've got a small head start. Also, I've found that blogging about books isn't my thing, so I've added a list of what I have read to the sidebar, so if you're interested, scroll down a little bit and you mock me for failing at the same (not-too-tough) resolution 2 years in a row.

The second one is a boring physical fitness one. I'm thinking of training for a Half Ironman, but since I'm not fully committed (and it is freaking expensive to join a pool and buy a bike), I'm going to go with something more modest. I'm going to try to do at least one push-up every day for the entire year. The worst part about push-ups is getting down on the floor, but once I do that I usually do at few push-ups without too much long-term misery. So far, I've done sets of 20, 20, 2, 15, 20 and 25. 6 days down 359 to go.

Worst Movies I saw in 2008

When there are 4 movies I like less than 27 Dresses, you know there was some crap. Here's my list of my 5 least favorite movies from the 19 I watched last year, worst movies first.

1) Jumper - 2.0 - Watched as much as I could stand on a plane. It was truly oh-my-god-how-did-this-get-made bad, but it wasn't offensively-bad like my 1 out of 10 prototype, The Cell.
2) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 2.0 - For the first 30 minutes, I kept waiting for a big joke where they would reveal that Indiana Jones had become an actor, and we were watching a (really bad) movie within a movie. That revelation never came ... and the movie only got worse from there.
3) Harold and Kumar 2 - 2.0 - I didn't finish it, so maybe it got better once Neal Patrick Harris showed up, but the first hour was as horribly unfunny as the first movie was hilarious.
4) Pinapple Express - 3.0 - More disappointing than point-blank terrible. It was a good idea that just didn't work.
5) 27 Dresses - 4.0 - It's on a worst movie list, but a 4.0 for a unabashed chick flick is a pretty good score coming from me, so this one goes down as a success in my book. Like I said when I reviewed it, Katherine Heigl is really a pretty good actress.

Movie Reviews Catch up

I'm hopelessly behind in my fake movie reviewing career, so it's catch up time. Here are a bunch ratings with 1 or 2 line comments. Note that many of these movies are really freaking good and deserve a lot more attention than I gave say, this hunk of poo, but whatareyagonnado.

I want to watch Benjamin Button and Doubt (and maybe Revolutionary Road) before I do my best of 2008 movie list, but if you remember that I gave Wall-E a 18.6 out of 10 and I liked Dark Knight and Iron Man a good deal, you can extrapolate a lot of said list from here if you are so inclined.


At any rate, here are my blurbified reviews (stuff from this year first):
Slumdog Millionaire - 9.0 - Pretty easily the best movie of 2008, and probably the my favorite movie since Pan's Labyrinth, which is maybe my proper-noun Favorite Movie. Two Thumbs up. Four stars. A must see. Etc Etc.

Frost/Nixon - 8.0 - Nice character study with great performances. It was surprisingly exciting considering not a ton happens.

The Wrestler - 8.0 - It's a completely different kind of movie, but the comment for Frost/Nixon applies again. Mickey Rourke should probably win Best Actor.

Milk - 7.5 - See comment for Frost/Nixon one more time. This gets docked half a point since they didn't manage to get it out before prop 8.

Happy Go Lucky - 7.0 - Frost/Nixon, Version 4.0. Happy Go Lucky is a straight up character study, and thus is pretty much free from the burden of a plot. Amazing performance from the crazy brit lady though.

Tropic Thunder - 6.0 - This was pretty funny! It was made even funnier by the fact that I watched it right after watching ...

Pineapple Express - 3.0 - How the hell did this work out so badly. It seemed like an ok idea, but I don't think I laughed once. Seriously.

And a few older things ...

Cronos - 7.0 - Guillermo Del Toro's first movie. It was pretty good, but honestly, I would just watch Pan's Labyrinth for the 20th time before rewatching this puppy.

Guess Who is Coming to Dinner - 8.5 - Really great movie that has aged surprisingly well.

The Hustler - 6.0 - Pretty good movie that hasn't aged too well.

New Year Pictures

Hi gang, grab your Dramamine and check out what my camera can do when I shake it around like crazy and take pictures at night. Here are some pictures from New Years eve in Santiago.

I'll have the first of the pictures with my family in the next few days.