MTV Movie Awards

The MTV Movie Awards are basically a waste of time and the worse big budget Hollywood films get, the worse these awards get. I won`t deny, when I was an adolescent I used to find them fun but that was when movies were fun and stars were made such because they had talent and personality and things like that. Today`s stars seem mostly to be kids involved in trends whose careers will die the moment their current franchise runs out.

Nevertheless, Julian Stark from Movies and Other Things has been writing about the awards for some time now (she`s efficient like that), covering nominees, predicting winners (as if these awards, voted on by the fans, actually honour the true `best`of anything) and so forth. You can even check out her post-show coverage which is more in depth than it really needs to be. So, maybe because Jillian had them on my mind or maybe because nothing else was on, I watched the show. Here`s a few notes on it:

• The entire pre-show was basically an hour long ad for season two of Jersey Shores as all the cast members show up on the red carpet in limos (reminding me of Seth Meyers` joke on Weekend Update that all you need these days to be considered a celebrity is a pulse). Then the fat annoying one named Snooki co-hosts the event, which ends with a ten minute preview of the upcoming season. It`s further proof of MTV`s desire to push popular culture as low as it possible can before it disappears entirely.


• Tom Cruise was funny in Tropic Thunder. He wasn`t here.


• Host Aziz Ansari is not funny. Not in the least. I have no idea if he wrote any of this material or not but man was it painful. This guy is just a further signal of how stupid, witless and meaningless contemporary stand-up comedy is becoming. Remember when Chris Rock used to host MTV award shows and he was hilarious.


• Speaking of Chris Rock, he seems to be the only of his four Grown Ups co-stars who knows that their award presentation speech isn`t funny. Rob Schneider seems optimistic about it though.


• P Diddy gets one of the show`s biggest and only laughs alongside Get Him to the Greek co-stars Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. Too bad it comes after the most tasteless as Hill compares the feud between Jacob-loving Twilight fans and Edward-loving Twilight fans to the war between Israel and Palestine. Real classy boys.


• Katy Perry`s songs have a way of getting under your skin. Props to her for actually singing as well.


• Christina Aguilera is America`s best cover artist. Here`s a girl who can actually sing but only pops up every couple of years when there is a trend to leech on to. First she thought she was Brittany, then she thought she was black, then she thought she was Marilyn Monro and now she thinks she is Lady Gaga. My hopes of her ever doing something that is an honest reflection of herself (like Reflection from Mulan) quickly evaporates every time she releases a new album.


• Amanda Seyfried won an award for Jennifer`s Body. I didn`t think more than ten people saw that.


• Rain won for Ninja Assassin. See above.

There`s more I could say but I don`t really care anymore. The show was pathetic. New Moon basically won everything to no one`s surprise, nothing was really funny or clever and the only person who actually won an award that was deserved on some sort of serious level was Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air. Until next year.

My Last Word on the Oscars

I'll be glad when tonight is over because it will be the longest possible time until the blog world is bombarded with ceaseless posts about everything Oscars again. It's not that I blame people, we have to find our inspiration somewhere, but really, once you reach a certain point, there's only so much Oscar coverage one can take.

This doesn't mean that people out there who I respect didn't do a good job in their writing and it doesn't mean I didn't read it, I just didn't comment about it very much. That said, I recognize the ugly double standard that is going on here right now as I myself give my final word on the Oscars, which are happening, as probably everyone knows, tonight.

That said, if you don't want to read this or put too much thought into it, well, I don't blame you, but I haven't written much this past week and figure I might as well cap it off with something now that I'm back in Toronto. And, if nothing less, maybe you'll just read it because you like me and find my style somewhat entertaining and want to know how good I am at this whole political voting thing. Hey, it's a possibility. So I won't prolong it anymore: here's my predictions on who will win tonight, who should win, and anything else that comes to mind.

Best Documentary: The Cove will win because it has the most prolific reputation amongst the nominees. It's that simple really, although Food Inc. may have a shot too.

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon because it took the Golden Globe and the Golden Palm at Cannes, plus it's the only one of the nominees I've heard of so that has to count for something, no?

Best Animation: I'll say this: Disney is taking home a prize in this category tonight. What I'm curious about though is whether or not Up's place in the Best Picture category will mean a split vote for the film and The Princess and the Frog will take it? Oscar certainly does love a comeback and Dinsey's first 2D animated feature since Home on the Range certainly falls into that category, even if it didn't do quite the business it should have. My vote's still on Up though. Pixar just seems too unstoppable.

Beat Visual Effects: Avatar. Duh.

Best Original Song: Crazy Heart's got this one covered. When a film has more than one song nominated it tends to split the vote, as is the case with Princess and the Frog; Nine was uninspired and Crazy Heart took the Golden Globe award. Personally though, I prefer Flyin' and Fallin' from Crazy Heart, but that's just me.




Best Adapted Screenplay: A tough category. I'm going to eliminate District 9, An Education and In the Loop right away. It seems to be an even draw between Precious and Up in the Air. Precious has the advantage in that it pretentiously announces that it is based on a book right in it's full title, which I refuse to type out in whole, but Up in the Air is the better film, so I'll vote for it.

Best Original Screenplay: It's unfortunate that Inglourious Basterds came out in a year of hugely prolific films because, on any other year it would have been a no-brainer to give it this award. I'd still like to see Tarantino go home with this one. He is, after all, the best writer of all those nominated. I think it will probably go to The Hurt Locker out of default though. Inglourious Basterds doesn't seem like it will win anything else in the major categories except best supprting actor, which means it doesn't really have much of a shot here either.

Best Director: I know Kathryn Bigelow is going to win unless the Academy goes against the Director Guild by not picking the same winner, but that rarely happens. In theory though, the best choice would be Lee Daniels. Not because Precious has the best direction (and really, does Daniels really need anything to increase his already pompously sized ego?), but because the Academy is sometimes accused of trying to atone for their past mistakes (Paul Giamatti is nominated for Cinderella Man after being overlooked for Sideways, etc.). This then reminds me of several years back in which the Academy were deemed homophobic for letting Crash win Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain (people seem to have forgotten though that they gave Phillip Seymour Hoffman the acting trophy for playing an openly gay man in Capote that same year). I also assume that if Brokeback Mountain had won people would have cried that the Academy is racist too. How better to atone for this than giving the award to a gay, black director? It's just a thought.

Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. Don't argue, just accept the inevitable.

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz. See above.

Best Actress: A lot of people are rooting for Merly Streep, but I don't know, her performance as Julia Child came off more as imitation to me than actual acting. It also doesn't help that Julie and Julia was a wholly uninspired film. Therefore I'm voting for Sandra Bullock. We'll forget All About Steve and say that 2009 was a huge comeback year for Bullock and we all know Oscar loves a comeback.

Best Actor: It seems like Jeff Bridges is the forerunner in this category for Crazy Heart and his performance certainly does deserve the award. However, Oscar is sometimes know for pulling some fast ones in this category (Alan Arkin over Eddie Murphy, Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke), so could the award maybe go to Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus? I haven't seen the film myself so I can't comment on the quality of the performance, but Freeman is the only nominee who played a real-life character and Oscar history dictates that the Academy seems to favour actors who play real people. My vote's still on Bridges though.

Best Picture: It's between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'm going with Avatar. It made billions of dollars, revolutionized film technology and The Hurt Locker may have shot itself in the foot over the controversy caused by it's producer writing stupid letters basically begging Academy members for votes. Also, considering how Oscar seems to be going for viewers this year instead of prestige, Avatar is the best bet.

With that out of the way I hope everyone enjoys the show and (partially) hope Tarantino can refrain from spitting on people during the red carpet. It still irks me that John Hughes will be getting his own tribute when Patrick Swayze and Eric Rohmer will simply be limited to getting their picture in a montage. Oh well, I'll live, I think.

Up In The Air (5 out of 5)

One of the things they teach you when studying human resources is that if firing someone ever gets easy, you should maybe consider re-evaluating your career path. Like almost everything learned in the classroom setting, I took this advice at face value and logged it in the proper annals of my brain without ever considering the elegiac implications of such a statement: the very thing that Up In the Air, as subtle and biting an overturning of contemporary North American corporate culture as there has ever been, is all about.

The hero of the story is Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who acts as the guy who is called in when big companies outsource work to downsize their staff because they don’t want to deal with the mess themselves. It’s his job to fly into town, inform the recipient of his company of the bad news, console them, alert them to their options and bid them adieu, never to see them again.

This is Bingham’s life for all but a handful of days of the year: always flying, never stagnant enough to ever become attached to anything of worth or value to him except his job. He essentially has no home, no past, no future and no definition: a man adrift in a world whose only loyal inhabitant is himself. Consider him a merge between William Hurt’s Macon Leary from the Accidental Tourist and, maybe more accurately, Marcello from Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolche Vita. He's always drifting from one encounter to the next, never staying put, never feeling anything, never being anything to anyone. Life is essentially getting from one necessary banality to the next on the way to either retirement or death, which, to men like Bingham, may be about the same thing.

Bingham is the typical archetype for the North American corporate success story. He’s married to nothing but his work, which his does with cold, unaffected precision. In between he hosts informational seminars in which he tries to convince people that life is essentially carrying a backpack: you must fill it only with the most necessary items in order to travel lightly and without strain. Pictures are only for those with bad memories, Bingham advises, so throw them out and make room for something you need.

The heaviest object that can be carried in the backpack is personal relationships. Not only do they weigh you down and slow you up, but they require extra baggage costs. And sure enough, when Bingham meets a similar minded girl Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel lounge their flirtation involves debating which rental car service is superior, their attraction revolves around their collections of VIP cards and their eventual sex seems more out of a need to pass the time between firings than any sort of lustful desire.

There is, however, one thing of meaning that propels Bingham. Because of his constant travelling he wants to be the seventh man in history to accumulate over 10 million Frequent Flier Miles. Such an achievement would provide the only kind of elite status he has to prove he is anything more than nothing.

Then something happens. After the young, aptly named, Natalie Keener (Twlight’s Anna Kendrick) is hired, she brings with her plans to save the company money by setting up Internet connections with clients in order to do their work without the constantly high travel expenses. Bingham is quick to reject this proposition and for good reason. Not only is the sole human connection he ever makes going to be taken away from him and automated, but the chance to achieve his goal would be ripped out from under him.

Bingham is soon assigned to take Natalie out on the road with him to teach her the ropes of the business. The two initially clash. He can’t understand her naivety and optimism: looking for perfect love, thinking she can change the world, etc, and she can’t understand how his life has become so simple and meaningless, and all the while we are reminded of that virginal young girl in the café across from Marcello in La Dolche Vita.

Along the way Bingham subverts his course in order to take pictures of a cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé (ala the dwarf in Amelie) against famous American backdrops for their wedding. Bingham is estranged from his family, has never met his brother-in-law to be, and can’t understand why anyone would want pictures of themselves in places they have never been before.

The answer to Bingham’s ignorance comes during the wedding (the film's center and best section) in which it is revealed that the reason for the gimmick was because the couple could not afford a honeymoon, but still wanted something symbolic in it’s place, and the power of the symbol is both salient and enlightening: the pictures are fake but meaningful, while Bingham’s life is real but empty. It’s the turning point of the film.

Up In the Air thus becomes a gentle meditation of the importance upon which North American culture places on career-mindedness and high salary living. The film is only the third from Canadian director Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman after Thank You For Smoking and Juno, who by now should be considered within the upper pantheons of great contemporary directors and here strikes an even balance between what was most rewarding about those two films. It both satirises corporate culture to great humorous effect but also delves deep into the personal psyche in order to examine the toll that such a life takes on the very fundamentals of living. The American Dream, it is shown, has failed us again.

Thus, Bingham, through his relationship with the two woman and his life and from his time at home with family, he slowly grows to realize that life is nothing without, not only things to be proud of, but people to share the pride along with. Like Marcello, he’s seen too many things and been around too long to even break out of the mould he’s set for himself, yet his story is not one of tragedy but one of hope. It’s too late for him, but there’s still life beyond the flight schedule board for the rest of us.

Golden Globes 2010

So I just finished watching the Golden Globes. It was the first time I've ever watched the entire show because, quite frankly, I don't care much about television and the Golden Globes always seemed to me to be the poor man's Oscars. They aren't as funny, as shamelessly glamours, and their comedy categories (which sometimes do good work by honouring worthy films that otherwise wouldn't garner serious awards consideration as was the case this year with The Hangover) give a certain credibility to films that would otherwise be thrown on the scrap heap to be forgotten about as history moves on without them. I'm talking about stuff like The Proposal, It's Complicated, Sherlock Holmes, Julie and Julia, and Nine.

I'm not going to talk about the winners and whether or not they were truly the best in their category (okay I'll do it once: 500 Days of Summer was clearly a better film than The Hangover, and really, Robert Downey Jr.? But no hard feelings) because, unlike other years, I haven't seen all the nominees and therefore don't have the adequate information to pass informed judgements.

What I want to do is make an observation. The other day I was reading Matt Singer's brief review of An Education over at Termite Art and he made the comment that TV is getting so good that it is beginning to overshadow the cinema. This comes as absolute horror to me as someone who has lived and breathed cinema and kept TV at even greater than an arms length away.

But as I was watching the Golden Globes and seeing all the TV nominees for shows I've never seen like Big Love, Dexter, True Blood, Glee, and so on, I realized that Singer was maybe on to something, especially when compared to those above listed nominated films like Julie and Julia and It's Complicated.

Then I got to thinking back over what were the most popular films of 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine, New Moon, Night at the Museum 2, Terminator: Salvation, and the absolute stinkiest of them all, Transformers: Rise of the Fallen. It was a depressing realization: Hollywood really was in the crapper this year. It's 2009 and instead of producing our own contemporary classics the best we can do is honour a hack musical remake of one of Fellini's most invaluable masterpieces?

Then Martin Scrosese took the stage to accept the Cecil B. Demille Award and things got worse for me. Sitting through a montage of one of America's most value directors to ever stand behind a camera's work, I was left thinking: There were more essential, classic, absolutely unforgettable moments in those few minutes of montage then there have been in all of 2009. I considered myself definitely depressed.

And then, with the TV awards behind and the major awards just over the horizon, I was reminded that, even if 2009 looked and felt like a total wash, amid all the meaningless wreckage, were films made out of the very stuff that make us fall in love again and again with the cinema every day of our lives. Film's like Inglourious Basterds, 500 Days of Summer, Up in the Air, The Hurt Locker and Avatar.

Then Jeff Bridges, one of America's true acting treasures, won best actor for Crazy Heart (a film I haven't seen but am planning on and hope you are too) and was given a standing ovation. "Yes," I thought, "these moments are the reason why we film lovers stick it out even through the worst of years." It was a reminder of what is still, after over 100 years of history, the most unchanged fundamental necessities of film: good actors, playing strong characters, immersed in good stories.

Then, as Avatar began winning all the big awards, I was indeed satisfied in my realization that the most popular film of the year was also the best. It wasn't the one about mutant super heroes, vampire lovers, living museum displays, intergalactic robots or any other such gimmick. It wasn't based on a theme part ride, a video game or a toy chain. It wasn't a sequel, a remake, a reboot, or any other such quick money making scheme. It was a bold, beautiful, original piece of art and a glorious entertainment to boot. And it is a film that I hope Hollywood has learned a valuable lesson from: that people essentially crave and are drawn to new concepts and new ideas that are presented in classical film conventions (stories told with pictures). In 20, 10, even 5 years Twilight and Transformers will simply be the bad aftertaste of an era in filmmaking in which big studios thought they could get away with phoning it in.

At the end of the day, there will never be a shortage of kids who buy into fads and trends because it is the "it" thing to do at the time, and even more people like my girlfriend's friend (who I alluded to not so lovely the other day) who have no concept of transgression or originality or passion or emotion or even intelligence and whose narrow tastes, day in and day out, are making it harder and harder for me and people like me to see the films that matter the most to us.

Regardless, in spite of everything, I must hold my head up high and look forward to tomorrow because, no matter how bleak it may look right now, as history has proven and as Brandon Lee so truthfully said in The Crow: "It can't rain all the time."

A complete list of Golden Globe winners can be found here, and probably just about everywhere else too.