Author: Mike P. Lewis

Why Rocky, The Hurt Locker, and Liz are Losers

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My sister is a smart lovable gal.  Sometimes she is wrong and she hates it when people point this out to her.   She responded to my recent Oscar predictions post with some interesting comments.  She said,

I won’t remember Avatar in ten years. Hell, I can barely remember it now; I had to go re-read a review to remind myself of what the actual plot was. I left Avatar thinking “Wow, you know, that looked really cool.” But Best Picture? Really? No.

and

I should note now that my brother compares the Oscar race between Avatar and Hurt Locker to the Star Wars vs. Rocky Oscar race for Best Picture, and where he comes down on the side of Star Wars on that one, I’m firmly in the Rocky camp.

Interesting comments.  But totally wrong. As an older brother, it is my duty to explain why.  Here we go:

Liz, first off I can see why you’d think this way.  You said you got sick from the 3D for Avatar and in your review you can’t even remember what the plot of Avatar was.  Well if you were so sick and you don’t know what the movie was about, you probably shouldn’t pick it for Best Picture.  But just realize that you’re in the minority and the rest of the country is quite aware of what occurred on the screen and loved it.  Maybe you should to rewatch in non-3D

Now about Rocky vs. Star Wars.  Have you seen the first Rocky lately?  The dialogue is atrocious. Rocky’s relationship with Adrian is one of the worst written and acted relationship in cinema.  It’s severely dated.

Star Wars is a different story altogether.  If you don’t think Star Wars was a seminal film in cinema history, you’re retarded.

Star Wars references are so deeply embedded in popular culture that you don’t even realize it.  You can’t even watch CNN now without them trying to copy many of the technological ideas that were first shown in a movie over 30 years old now (election hologram anyone?)  Everyday references to the main characters and themes of Star Wars are casually made. Darth Vader has become an iconic villain.  Phrases like “evil empire” and “may the force be with you” have become part of the popular lexicon in EVERY industry and culture.  Do you even remember what Apollo Creed’s nickname was?

Rocky is a good movie, but Star Wars was a good movie that changed cinema forever.  Almost all (or the majority) of science fiction films have been influenced by Star Wars and it basically created the modern-day blockbuster genre.  How many Rocky parodies are there?  Could you imagine a Spaceballs or Fanboys of Rocky?  No, the only thing keeping the Rocky films alive are Sly Stone’s attempt to remake the original time and time again.

I could go on and on about how Star Wars impacted both society and film but i think you get my point.  It was a major game-changer. This is why i compare it to Avatar.  While i don’t think Avatar will have the impact of Star Wars, i do believe it represents a large step-function in how films will be made going forward.  Major dramatic films are being made in 3D.  Future films will be made, realistically, without actors.  Think about that.  Major realistic, dramatic films without actors.  That’s what Avatar has introduced.

Let me just say that in 2007, NASA launched a space shuttle carrying a pair of Rocky’s shorts into space to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the film.  Wait, no, that’s a lie.  They didn’t.   What they DID do is launch the space shuttle with the original lightsaber on board.  It was the lightsaber that was used by Luke Skywalker. After spending two weeks in orbit, they brought the lightsaber back to Earth on November 7.  And you think this film, Star Wars, where they are doing event like this and making more references to over 30 years after the film was released shouldn’t win a “Best Picture” Oscar.  Really Liz?  Really?

Oscar Predictions

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The Oscars are coming this weekend. I’ve done a pretty good job this year of seeing most of the nominated movies.  So, without further blabbing, here’s my predictions for who will take the Oscar home and who I think should.

Best Picture

This is the most interesting race because we have two very different front-runners.  The Hurt Locker is a great story with an extremely authentic look at human nature and war.  Avatar is a technological marvel but is also has a thin plot.  It’s also interesting because this is the first year with the crazy new voting structure.  There are 10 films nominated.  The voters rank the ten in order of preference. If one film has over 50% of #1 votes, it wins.  If not, then the film with the least #1 votes is elinimated and those votes are redistributed and the process begins again.  This means a film that doesn’t originally have the most #1 votes could end up winning.  Whatever, i don’t really care that much.  Here’s what i think:

The Hurt Locker is a great film.  Maybe my favorite war movie ever. It’s raw and gutsy.  Avatar is also a great movie.  It has a generic story but the look and feel of the film was spectacular.  When i left the theater, I had a “holy crap, that was really something” feeling that rarely happens after a movie.  Ten years from now, i’ll remember my Avatar viewing but probably not my Hurt Locker experience.  Thus, i’m voting for Avatar. Which will win?  Star Wars, a similarly seminal film, lost out to Rocky in 1977.  But Lord of The Rings won in 2003.   I don’t think LOTR wins if it’s only one film.  I think in general, the Academy doesn’t like voting for big blockbusters but i have a hunch Avatar wins here.  I want:  Avatar / Should Win: Avatar

Best Actress

All i can say is that Carey Mulligan was the best performance this year.  Hands down. That girl will be a star.  Sure, Meryl Streep was good in a Julia Childs movie but that movie wasn’t good.  If Sandra Bullock wins, i’ll throw up on my TV.  She was good but she was playing Sandra Bullock with a southern accent. Puh-lease.   Give it to Carrey.  I didn’t see Precious but i heard that gal was great.  So caveat this pick.   That said, i know that the Academy has a love affair with Meryl Streep and loves her.  They also hate giving it to first-timers.  I want: Carey Mulligan / Should Win: Meryl Streep

Best Actor

I’ll tell you right now that Jeff Bridges wins here.  Everyone loves him.  He’s awesome.  He’s The Dude. This is a total lock.  I’m still pissed that the guy from Notorious was nominated.  This guy not only acted like Biggie Smalls but was able to rap like him.  He’s the most nuanced rapper in history and this guy got it down. We gave an Oscar to Jamie Fox for Ray Charles and Reese for June Carter, we should give one to this guy.   Of the nominees who were actually nominated, i like Jeremy Renner the best. His performance was amazing. He owned that movie.  The George Clooney and Morgan Freeman nominations are a total joke.  I like both those guys but those are the best acting performances of the year? Really? I don’t think so.  So, I want: Jeremy Renner / Should Win: Jeff Bridges

Best Director

This is so similar to Best Picture.  I love The Hurt Locker and i give her extra props because she directed Point Break (check out this for a great spoof) but you have to give it to James Cameron.  It was always believed we’d get to a point where human actors were necessary.  A world where you’re only limited by your imagination.  George Lucas wanted that with Jar Jar Binks.  Nobody had been able to do it.  Now we have. James accomplished it – all it took was perseverance and half a billion dollars.   BUT, everyone hates James Cameron. People think he’s a dick.  I see the Academy not wanting him on the podium. Especially after his “I’m the king of the world” speech last time.  I see an upset and Kathryn winning.  I want: James Cameron / Should Win: Kathryn Bigelow

Best Supporting Actor

This one is even easier than Best Actor.  Christoph Waltz wins hands down.  He rocked that movie so hard, it wasn’t even funny.  His personality was so cunning and creepy.  You could see him toying with the other actors.  A little gesture here, an inflection here.  He put on an acting seminar.  Everyone else just pulled up a chair and starting taking notes.  I want: Christoph Waltz / Should Win: Christoph Waltz

Best Supporting Actress

I have no idea who wins this. I hear the Precious gal was great.  Of the other 4, i like Vera Farmiga the best.  She was great in The Departed and was great here too.  Maggie was ok, but not award-winning.  Anna was good but more annoying than inspiring.  Penelope Cruz was in a horrible movie.  So it’s between Mo’nique and Vera.  I’ll wager that Mo’nique gets it because it seems to be more of a moving role.  I want: Vera Farmiga / Should Win: Mo’nique

Best Animated Film

Up is the best animated film but my favorite is Fantastic Mr. Fox.  It is one of my favorite films of the entire year.  Wes Anderson goodness.  I’ve seen the film twice and would be happy to see it another 20 times.  Loved it. I want: Fantastic Mr. Fox / Should Win: Up

Original Screenplay

The Hurt Locker takes this one.  The Coen brothers wrote a seriously awesome screenplay in Serious Man but it wasn’t that fun and the Academy hates not fun movies that aren’t about the Holocaust.  I don’t think anyone really took Inglorious Basterds seriously and people will feel bad voting for Avatar over Hurt Locker and want to throw the film at least one Oscar.  I want: Hurt Locker / Should Win: Hurt Locker

Adapted Screenplay

Everyone loves Jason Reitman.  He’s cool, he’s on a roll, his movies are good and his part of the Hollywood family.  People see Up In The Air and they think it’s a movie of our times.  It’s not, but they’ll give him the Oscar anyway.  I personally prefer An Education. That movie was creepy, joyful, and inspiring all at the same time. Nicky Hornby rocked that one.  He’s also been a on a roll with About a Boy and High Fidelity.  I want: An Education & Nick Hornby / Should Win: Jason Reitman

Notes About John Hughes

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John Hughes in the bomb

John Hughes wrote and directed some of my favorite childhood movies.  Movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Uncle Buck and more.  I was pretty sad to hear about his death last year.   There is a good article in Vanity Fair this month with quotes from actors from his movies including Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall, and Molly Ringwald.  Some good excerpts:

Ringwald: I remember the first thing that I saw of him—I didn’t know what he looked like; I didn’t know anything—were his tennis shoes. He was really into sneakers. It was not what I really thought of as a film director. His hair was spiky. He looked kind of relatable to me.

Hall: The word “dweebie”? Gotta credit Judd Nelson for that. I was on the Breakfast Clubset when he ad-libbed that. I think Judd’s responsible for that being part of our vernacular: him yelling, “You’re a neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie!” I remember John laughing.

Broderick: It was extremely pleasing to make John laugh. He had a quiet, very real, uncontrollable laugh: an eyes-closed, head-half-down, bent-over-quiet thing.

Hall: There’s a scene in The Breakfast Club between the principal and the janitor, Paul Gleason and John Kapelos, where one asks, “Who’d you want to be when you grow up?” and the other says, “John Lennon.” I think that was really John to some extent. He was such a Beatles fan.

Hall: When I was doing Weird Science, I got a call from my agent on a Wednesday, saying, “Stanley Kubrick is interested in you for a role in his Vietnam drama that he’s doing, Full Metal Jacket.” Got a call back on a Friday saying, “Well, now he wants you for the lead, as Private Joker. He’s gonna call you tomorrow.”  All I can compare this to is waiting for Oz to call. The stories preceded him: his privacy, living in London, sort of extricating himself from Hollywood, all that shit. I was shaking in my boots. The phone rings. Stanley Kubrick gets on and says, “I want you to know: I just screened Sixteen Candles three times … and you’re my favorite actor since I saw Jack in Easy Rider!” I’m like, “Whaaa? Am I fucking hearing this?”

The long and short of it was, it was such a drawn-out, wild process of negotiating with Kubrick, via his attorneys, that it had a real effect on my family. [Hall ultimately withdrew from the negotiations.] But my point in telling this story is, had I not had this collaboration with this great guy, I never would have gotten that call from Kubrick. I received the greatest compliment of my life, and I owe that to John Hughes.

Cool Green Stuff

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As Kermit used to say, “it’s not easy being green,” which is why i thought these items were pretty cool…

First there’s a new Puma phone that was announced this week at MWC (the largest mobile conference in the world) and instead of trying to compete with iPhone/Android and trying to do everything it’s just a cool phone, with some cool “fun” features (pedometer, compass, audio player with turntable) and a solar panel on the back so you don’t run out of juice.  Pretty sweet.

Second, there is some more solar powered stuff:

These are lamps on a highway that are wind powered. As far as practical renewable energy concepts go, these wind-powered highway lights are pretty elegant.  I don’t see why we don’t get these on EVERY highway.

Finally, there’s just some bike new from LA:

Los Angeles is known for its freeways, and those guys are impossible to ride a bike on. That’s where a proposal from a cycling activism organization called the L.A Bike Working Group comes in. The group recently proposed a “Backbone Bikeway Network”–a system of bikeways that is comparable to a freeway for cyclists.  I don’t see this happening any time soon, but it would be really great if it did

An Education – Hello Carey Mulligan

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I watched An Education this weekend and thought it was a great movie.   The film tells the story of a 16-year-old girl who is the target of a sophisticated seduction by a 35-year-old man. This happens in 1961, when 16-year-old girls were more naive and were actually (sort of) looking for older men to take care of them.

The movie has a good script, but the real story is the job played by British actress Carey Mulligan who plays the 16-year old girl.  Watching the movie with the Kesners, we all couldn’t help but comment how she reminds us of Audrey Hepburn.  There’s no one else that came to mind.  The movie could have been sad or creepy but because of Carey’s lightness and joy of character, it is instead it is a romance.  In 1998, I remember watching the movie Playing By Heart which has a few small roles for a little-known actress named Angelina Jolie.  I remember and seeing her absolutely kill every scene. I knew i was watching someone who was going to be a star.  Although two completely different actresses, I felt the same way about An Education and Carey.

Check it out – it’s a good movie.

iPad Thoughts

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I’m not sure if you’ve heard about the iPad.  Unless you’ve been under a rock, you can’t avoid the Apple madness.  I’m up in San Francisco this week and couldn’t help but feel the Apple riptide and get drawn into the hype.  So I watched the announcement and here are my thoughts

The iPad is super-duper slick.  I can see some great use-cases for it, such as:

  • If i was pitching a presentation to someone at a restaurant, in an elevator, or anywhere – the iPad would be a much better way to present the presentation than a laptop.  I could see it becoming a must-have for entrepreneurs
  • If i had kids and a family room with lots of people, having a family iPad that people use publicly would be great. Anyone in the family could us it in front of the TV or as the home iTunes download system for movies and TV shows that syncs with their AppleTV
  • Games. This could be one of the most sick gaming machines. It has the graphics, accelerometer, and connection needed to really be badass. I could see someone making a truly unique iPad gaming experience.

All these great ideas and reviews make me love the iPad but i’m not going to get one.  I’m not feeling it yet (not because of the video joke and jokes) and here’s why

  • i have an iPhone and i have a Macbook. I’m not feeling a huge need to have an iPad. If i did, i would want to replace my MacBook and i don’t think the iPad is powerful enough to be a replacement yet. I want all my songs on it (need more than 64 GB) and i want to run a browser and email at the same time. Until those happen, my laptop is vastly superior.
  • The A4 chip seems like a bad idea.  No way Apple is going to consistently be better than Intel or AMD at making low power chips.  Maybe they can now and early billions from it, but it can’t be a long-term solution
  • No camera bums me out.  I’m not sure but i think I’m going to want to take pics with the iPad. Maybe not but i like video skyping and i like taking random pics.  Give me a camera

If you know, you know that i feel that i’ve seen the future. I know what i want and where i want Apple to take me.  It’s this:

  • I want an iPhone device that has huge storage, enough for music (b/c i don’t see cloud music solution for another 5 years), and a fast enough processor that i can put all my files on it and use Google Docs and Dropbox for shared files
  • A portable keyboard and docked monitor so i can plug my phone into them and use it as a desktop computer when i’m at home or at work.
  • Over time, the files get saved more and more in the cloud and my phone become a portable processor, harddrive and network card.  That’s all

I saw with the iPad a keyboard doc and saw this future is coming.  It’s coming but slowly.  i can’t wait

Ebert’s Essays

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I’m reading Roger Ebert’s great essay about Making Out Is Its Own Reward and thinking to myself, “Ebert’s writing is the best kept secret on the Internet.”

Last week I read his article Nil By Mouth where he describes how it feels to not be able to eat following his throat surgery. He offers some great observations from religious to the social.  It’s an amazing essay and a must read for anyone who eats to appreciate what truly results from a meal. Hint: it’s not the food.  One passage:

One day in the hospital my brother-in-law Johnny Hammel and his wife Eunice came to visit. They are two of my favorite people. They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, and know I’m not. I mention that because they interpreted my story in terms of their faith. I described my fantasies about root beer. I could smell it, taste it, feel it. I desired it. I said I’d remembered so clearly that day with my father for the first time in 60 years.

“You never thought about it before?” Johnny asked.

“Not once.”

“Could be, when the Lord took away your drinking, he gave you back that memory.”

Whether my higher power was the Lord or Cormac McCarthy, those were the words I needed to hear. And from that time I began to replace what I had lost with what I remembered. If I think I want an orange soda right now, it is after all only a desire. People have those all the time. For that matter, when I had the chance, when was the last time I held one of those tall Nehi glass bottles? I doubt I ever had one from a can.

In this latest essay Making Out Is Its Own Reward, Ebert provides a trip back in time to a period where America’s youth was held by all parts of society to the “3 foot rule” where when you’re with a girl/guy 3 of your 4 feet had to be on the floor. He discusses the impact it had on a poor professor who was a touch more liberal, what it meant for him and his life as a teenager in the 50’s, and how that relates to kids today.

The blog from Ebert is a treasure. Some article are solely focused on movies but regardless to topic the writing is fantastic. You get the sense that he’s willing to write about anything with honesty and care. I hope it continues as can’t wait to see what he writes next