03/03/11

ScreenRant: James Franco, you silly, silly dude. I’ve loved ya since “Freaks & Geeks” and have, like many, quite enjoyed the nutty couple of years you’ve recently put together. Your performance as co-host at this year’s Oscar show keeps your leftfield run going strong. Were you high? What were you looking at all night? Was that experimental enunciation or were you preparing for a new soap opera character? No need for answers, I thought the performance was a treat, and easily the most interesting part of the night. Sure, it made a lot of old farts happy that the very good The King’s Speech won Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. And sure, I was glad that an art house movie featuring a great, great cast did so well. But damn, I though this year’s show was one of the worst of recent memory. That said, on my tally sheet I got all 11 major awards correct but one, Best Director. I had David Fincher down instead of Tom Hooper, who did do a great job. My Wish List, however, is a different story. Most of those picks were wrong. Wins for Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Randy Newman, Wally Pfister and the run of technical wins for Inception all made me happy, as did every second of screen time the producers gave the drop dead gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence. As a whole, I’d say that the night was a definite bummer. The King’s Speech is a great movie, but not one that will stand tall as a deserving Best Picture winner. In my book, as long as Christopher Nolan is making movies, there are very few who can compete with him. My pick for best picture of 2010? Hmmm … tough call. I’d have been happy with Inception, The Social Network or Black Swan. Or even Another Year, which wasn’t nominated. Oh, and one more thing: weren’t we all kinda/sorta waiting for the next piece in the Banksy puzzle? Talk about a let down!

Tops at the Box: This is a tough time of year at the theater, especially if you like good cinema. The studios take the late winter and spring seasons to dump their very expensive trash (meanwhile, the cheap failures end up on DVDs in other countries). The smaller indie flicks, thankfully, slowly begin to spread out to the smaller cities, if only weeks before they come out on home video. Anyhow, some garbage called Gnomeo and Juliet took the No. 1 spot last weekend, bringing in just under $15 million. The movie has somehow already grossed about $75 million in 17 days. Yikes. Me? I went and saw the very good Blue Valentine this past weekend. Still can’t get that one off the brain.