Somehow, we have reached a point where M.I.A. can play the Super Bowl Halftime show, where she made an appearance along side Madonna, LMFAO, and Cee-Lo. Somewhere, in 2005, 18-year-old me just had his head explode. Anyway, M.I.A., as she is wont to do, gave us all the finger, predictable people responded predictably, and it turns out that anyone who would be inclined to listen to M.I.A. probably didn’t care too much about this whole thing to begin with. Now let’s watch the hilarious, hilarious Bradshaw touchdown and never speak of this again.

The nominations for the Oscars went out this morning and with them, the first round of quick reactions and predictions. After several months of following smaller, but not insignificant awards, here are our official predictions and complaints. Agree? Disagree? Let us know!

Best Picture

The Artist

War Horse

Moneyball

The Descendants

Tree of Life

Midnight in Paris

The Help

Hugo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: The Artist. It’s had all the steam throughout the early awards season, and it doesn’t appear any of the other films have the clout to take it down.

Who Should Win: Really it’s a wide open category if The Artist loses, but look for The Descendants to take the statue if Oscar voters aren’t into French silent films.

Who Was Snubbed: Young Adult. Not a single nomination for Jason Reitman’s latest. It’s surprising The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got nothing, but the lack of any love for Young Adult is a travesty.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Viola Davis, The Help

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Who Will Win: Michelle Williams. She’s clearly been the front runner through most of awards season and though Meryl Streep has had a lot of buzz, Williams is by the far the safest bet of all nominees.

Who Should Win: If not Williams, it will be Meryl Streep. The other three nominees are all deserving, but Oscar politics always trump anything else.

Who Was Snubbed: Tilda Swinton. I’m not sure if We Need to Talk About Kevin was eligable for the Oscars, but if it was, it’s a travesty she didn’t get a nod. Also deserving: Charlize Theron, who carried Young Adult.

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

George Clooney, The Descendants

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

Who Will Win: George Clooney. He has a Supporting Actor award already, and as is the Oscar way, he’ll win because it’s his time.

Who Should Win: Honestly, this category is dynamite. If it’s not Clooney, expect either Oldman, Dujardin, or Pitt, in that order.

Who Was Snubbed: Michael Fassbender for Shame and Michael Shannon for Take Shelter. Two of the most talked about performances of the year got no attention. I expected at least one to get a nod, and it’s surprising neither of them did.

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Who Will Win: Jessica Chastain. Sometimes the Oscars are about welcoming people into the community of Oscar winners, and after a huge year, expect Chastain to get that honor.

Who Should Win: This is another loaded category in which anyone has a convincing argument, but if it’s not Chastain, Bejo could steal the show.

Who Was Snubbed: Though she really didn’t get nominated for any other awards, Shailene Woodley from The Descendants deserved at least a little attention for her breakthrough performance.

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Who Will Win: Christopher Plummer. This is the closest thing to a lock in this year’s ceremony.

Who Should Win: Honestly, Plummer. He owns Beginners and is truthfully the most deserving.

Who Was Snubbed: Albert Brooks. Without a doubt the biggest snub of the Oscars. Though no one expected him to beat Plummer, not even getting nominated was absolutely crazy. Special Mention also goes to Patton Oswalt for Young Adult.

Best Director

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Terrence Malick, Tree of Life

Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese. When Oscar voters are in doubt, they always go with one of the all time greats.

Who Should Win: Alexander Payne. Consider it the consolation prize for The Descendants if The Artist picks up Best Picture.

Who Was Snubbed: David Fincher is notably absent from this list, but given the overall lack of love for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, it’s not too surprising.

Best Original Screenplay

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist

Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, Bridesmaids

J.C. Chandor, Margin Call

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Asgar Farhadi, A Separation

Who Will Win: Woody Allen. Midnight in Paris was a phenomenal film, and given his uneven work in the last 10 years, this could be the Academy’s last chance to honor one of the greats.

Who Should Win: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo have the best shot at sneaking in if Allen doesn’t win. Hazanavicius has a shot as well, but he’ll win elsewhere, leaving the door open for the breakthrough comedy duo.

Who Was Snubbed: Diablo Cody for Young Adult. It’s ridiculous this film didn’t get a single nomination. It rank with Albert Brooks as one of the biggest snubs of the year.

Best Adapted Sceenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants

John Logan, Hugo

Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian, Moneyball

George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon, Ides of March

Peter Straughan and Bridget O’Connor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Who Will Win: Payne, Faxon, and Rash. Again, look for The Descendants to pick up a bunch of awards that aren’t Best Picture. That’s not to detract from the fact that they actually deserve this award though.

Who Should Win: If the Descendants  lose, the safe money is on Sorkin and Zaillian, picking up Moneyball’s consolation prize.

Who Was Snubbed: Yasmina Reza and Roman Polanski for Carnage. Easily one of the funniest films I saw all year.

First up is “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. Where to even begin? I guess I should let you know that I only saw bits and pieces of the first one while on a bus traveling to a rowing event. This meant it had bad sound, I was likely tired and in the process of cutting weight. I came to this movie with fresh eyes (you really don’t need to know much about the first movie to get the plot of this one), so maybe I missed something that would have changed my opinion, but I’m skeptical.

The dialogue is terrible. It’s presented as pithy and witty. But it’s neither. You might get wrapped up in the way it’s acted (which has the airs about it), but don’t be fooled. Just take a look at IMDB’s “Memorable Quotes” page and you’ll get the idea.

The only redeeming quality of this movie is the way it looks. The color of the movie is very cool. Blues and greens pop out creating a look that does seem to evoke a historic feel. The movie also periodically slows things down for certain action scenes, sometimes using a narrative to explain the thought process behind certain movements. This produces some effective scenes that breed excitement. But they are few and far between, and had they been used more, they would have likely lost their charm. The final part of the movie I liked was the abundance of amazing facial hair. It’s just luxurious. It’s hard to go wrong when you have beards like this:

(not even the best one, but no appropriate images are easily available)

Rounding out this post is “The Adventures of Tintin”. Which in my opinion was delightful. It wasn’t perfect, and some parts of the movie seemed to drag a bit for me, but I for one had a good time. When I tell people that I’ve seen the movie, they always ask me what I thought about the animation. “Was it creepy?” or “Was it hard to watch for the entire time?” were the two questions I was asked the most. My response is that it seems so for the first few minutes, but tends to just fall into the background.

(Real)

The plot centers around the first meeting of Tintin and Captain Haddock. The movie merges the plot lines of a few of the different comics to set up the series. In a way, it was somewhat of an overview of the whole series. This provided one of the most interesting features of the movie. Captain Haddock, as any reader of the comics would know, is a terrible alcoholic, and it features prominently into the plot. This is the first kids movie that I recall seeing that features alcohol this prominently. It certainly made for interesting questions from my “Little Brother” Joshua on the way back from the movie. It is brought to attention in the film, but the actions still make it a little fun. I’m guessing most of the readers of this review are over 21 or close. But don’t let the alcohol dissuade you from taking young people to see the movie if it’s appropriate.

Anyways, there are the reviews. See Tintin, don’t see Sherlock. It’s that simple people.

I’ll start where the movie starts, Budapest. It’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to, and the opening shot over the parliament building captures it perfectly. We then get our introduction to the story. Having only ever seen the original Mission: Impossible, I can assure you that there’s no need for context. You’re going to get it very quickly. A few bodies later, and we’re straight to the point: Tom Cruise being a badass with a nice cast of backup characters including the always funny Simon Pegg as Benji. 

Directed by Brad Bird (Writer/Director for Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and The Iron Giant among other things) in his first live-action movie, it nails everything down tight. Can we talk about smooth? This movie had some sort of witchcraft that made it so that transitions were completely effortless. Other action movies are like when you play the game Mousetrap. You set it up, but you didn’t set it up quite right. It takes a little bit of human hands to make it work. MI was like the commercial for Mousetrap, it just worked, and it makes it look so easy. We go though such a number of challenges to global safety, threats of defeat, tech failures, car chases, and explosions to fill three action movies, but in the right hands, it just all clicks.

And that brings me to the pacing of the movie. Fantastic. MI puts you through your paces, but recognizes that sometimes you need to cool it off just enough to build a bit of suspense. My cousin who I saw the movie with had just been telling me about this app called RunPee which alerts you when it’s the best time to use the bathroom during a movie. MI only had two spots which they recommended you could skip out on. One of those scenes was a few minutes of the bad guys shooting at things underwater. 

So this movie has it all. Pretty people, cool gadgets, good humor, and awesome title sequence (not quite as good as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but more on that later) loads of action, but more importantly smart pacing of said action. If you want to understand why we have so many sub-par actions movies, it’s because movies like this (and Die Hard) make them so enjoyable to watch. And I’m sorry for this, but I feel obliged: Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to go and see Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Trust me, it’s an enjoyable and easy mission.

New guy here. Name’s Andrew. I’ll be doing some movie reviews for the good ol’ blog here and might venture further into some other territories like the future of media, it’s cultural impact, and good workout music. But before I do that, I just wanted to take a moment and introduce myself.

To give you a little background, my brother is one of those cool cat you see blogging here. Ah glorious nepotism. Anyways, after a freak science accident left me with super powers charity auction  left me with a year-long movie pass, I decided it’d be cool to write some movie reviews. TUIW has graciously agreed to let me post them here. I warn you in advance many of these reviews will not happen the weekend the movie comes out. So don’t wait for my review before you go out to see movies.

For some personal background, I currently live in St. Louis where I do marketing and product development work for a tech start-up. I was a college DJ for four years and currently am woking on some projects in the music scene down here. I have a wide variety of media taste (including Disco!), and I’m working really hard on being less judgmental of other people’s choices.

I look forward to typing out things for ya’ll. Always feel free to give me your feedback and opinions. And if you want some social ambiance (phatic communication for you nerds) you can follow me on the twitters here. 

Catch you on the flip side,

Andrew

A couple of otherwise excellent previews of the return of Breaking Bad have put me in kind of an awkward position. I’ve been a flag-waver for Breaking Bad since marathoning the entire first season the morning of the second season premiere. It is a great show, probably the best on television right now and certainly the most criminally underwatched. So why do we need to trash Mad Men to make that point? Both New York Magazine’s set profile and Chuck Klosterman’s think piece for Grantland seem to misstate some stuff about Mad Men, all in the process of making a point that I largely agree with.

Broadly, I understand the impulse that is driving all of this. Like when The Wire was being ignored while airing at the same time as The Sopranos, it is insanely frustrating when all your friends watch and obsess over Mad Men but won’t bother with the arguably better show airing on the same network. Mad Men and Breaking Bad become tied together and it becomes more and more irritating that no one seems to care just how GOOD the latter is getting.

But, all due respect, I really don’t understand a lot of the points they’re making. Klosterman says that on Mad Men “every action the characters make is not really a reflection on who they are; they’re mostly a commentary on the era,” which seems kind of asinine to me. Maybe in the first season, when the show a little worse about making “weren’t things different in the 1960s” jokes, that was the case. But what makes Mad Men so effective is just how good it has gotten at digging deep into its characters and having their actions driven by who they are. The ending of this season, where Don Draper chose his sexy but demure secretary over a professional equal, was so frustrating precisely because it was the kind of terrible decision we’ve seen Don Draper make over and over again for the last four years. Klosterman says “all their decision can be excused…by the circumstances of the period…so we can’t really hold [the characters] accountable for what they do” which is the total opposite of what makes Don Draper such a tragic figure. He KNOWS better and still chooses the easy path. The show hardly invites us to excuse his (or any of the characters’) choices and instead invites us to be as angry at them as we want (as in, once again, the completely infuriating season finale).

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ preview of Breaking Bad suggests that Walter White is unique
for the way that he “suffer[s] crushing reversals with lasting impact.” I’m actually not clear on what the writer, David Segal, is trying to say here. Is he saying that, unlike Don Draper, Walt’s misdeeds have left “permanent scars?” Because Don’s lies destroyed his family and seem to have wreaked psychic havoc on his daughter (the extent of which was dramatized this year). And Tony Soprano’s actions certainly had lasting impact on the lives of others around him, even if he never changed. And Breaking Bad’s nearest predecessor, The Shield, was all about the long-term cost of poor choices.

I don’t mean to be the guy scolding other people for comparing two comparable works of art because I certainly do that all of the time. But I guess I feel like Mad Men is being misrepresented? Or at the very least oversimplified in order to prop up the pro-Breaking Bad side? Or maybe I’m just feeling especially good about Mad Men right now for some reason? The important point here is that AMC has two of the greatest shows ever right now and just because we’re excited for one coming back after a far too long hiatus doesn’t mean we need to go around trashing the other one, you know?

Best Feature
Black Swan

Best Director
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

Best Female Lead
Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Best Male Lead
James Franco, 127 Hours

Best Supporting Female
Dale Dickey, Winter’s Bone

Best Supporting Male
John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

Best Cinematography
Matthew Libatique, Black Swan

Best Foreign Film
The King’s Speech

Best Documentary
Exit Through The Gift Shop

Best Screenplay
Stuart Blumberg & Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right

Best First Feature
Aaron Schneider, Get Low

Best First Screenplay
Lena Dunham, Tiny Furniture

John Cassavetes Award (For the best feature made under $500,000)
Daddy Longlegs

“Radiohead’s new record, The King of Limbs, is presented here as the world’s first* Newspaper Album, comprising:

• Two clear 10″ vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve.
• A compact disc.
• Many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradeable plastic to hold it all together.
• The Newspaper Album comes with a digital download that is compatible with all good digital media players.
• The Newspaper Album will be shipped on Monday 9th May 2011 you can, however, enjoy the download on Saturday 19th February 2011.
• Shipping is included in the prices shown.
• One lucky owner of the digital version of The King of Limbs, purchased from this website, will receive a signed 2 track 12″ vinyl.
• *”perhaps”

In the U.S., the mp3 version of the newspaper album is $48 and the WAV version is $53. In the UK, the two sets are £30 and £33; in Europe, €36 and €39; and in the rest of the world.

A digital-only presale version is also available:

“Radiohead’s new record, The King of Limbs, is presented here with a choice of two digital formats:

• MP3 version is a 320K constant bit rate file.
• WAV version is a full CD quality uncompressed digital audio file.
• One lucky owner of the digital version of The King of Limbs, purchased from this website, will receive a signed 2 track 12″ vinyl.

The King of Limbs can be pre-ordered now and downloaded on Saturday 19th February 2011.”

In the U.S., this version is $9 for mp3s and $14 for a WAV version. In the UK, £6 and £9; in Europe, €7 and €11

If this isn’t the best Valentine’s Day present I’ve gotten from a band, then I don’t know what is.

On the TV side of the SAG Awards, the Best Ensemble winners were Boardwalk Empire and Modern Family. For Comedy, Alec Baldwin won his fifth consecutive award for 30 Rock and Betty White was the surprise winner for Hot in Cleveland. In drama, Steve Buscemi and Julianna Margulies for Boardwalk Empire and The Good Wife respectively.