Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

Updates: me, movies, and how much Lost rocks

Posted on Written by

In no particular order:

  • Much to my own amazement, since my decision not to drink alcohol because it’s interfering with my exercise plan, I have not in fact had any alcohol. There was one night I actually wanted to have a cocktail, but we didn’t have a lot of time and I did have to work out the next day, so I passed. Saying no to margaritas at La Fiesta is pretty goshdarned hard, though. They make a very tasty, and very deadly, margarita.

  • I know I need to post some pix of My! Amazing! Transformation!â„¢. I need to get batteries for my camera. How lame of an excuse is that? And yet: oh so true.

  • My guilty pleasure these days: SecretTweet. I have no idea if these are real or not, but unless they start mentioning space aliens or something, they could be. This is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate my own life more.

  • Movies we’ve seen recently:
    • Sin Nombre: I don’t know the provenance behind this movie. I was looking for something to see and I used the Rotten Tomatoes score to come up with one. It’s a film in Spanish with subtitles about a family trying to get to US from Honduras, and a boy who’s part of a violent, territorial Mexican gang, how they meet, and what happens. The simplicity of the storylines and the tightness of the focus on the story I think shows it’s clearly a first film by a young writer/director, but he’s a very talented writer/director who is interested in issues that have no easy and clean solutions.

    • Adventureland: It’s a very sweet look at summer 1987 after a kid graduates from college before he starts grad school. I’m kind of disturbed that 1987 = historical flick though. I liked it, but it was a small movie. I’m also kind of tired of movies in which everyone’s shared experience is one that I have nothing in common with. At least it’s not as bad as when I watch a high school movie and might as well be watching an artifact from a lost African culture for all I have in common with it.

    • Sunshine Cleaning: An interesting indie film that suffered from one too few passes on the script. Yes, the scriptwriter is saying this. There was some really good material in here, but it needed…I don’t know. Some kind of oomph. And less randomness.

    • I Love You Man: Paul Rudd is every girl’s fantasy boyfriend—the fantasy boyfriend you could bring home to mother. (You save the other fantasy boyfriend for…well…you know.) It was definitely an enjoyable flick, and I remember very, very little about it, other than they didn’t do the obvious (and so overdone) thing of having Rudd’s character end up in a fracas with another woman, leading his girlfriend to draw the wrong conclusions! which I was definitely expecting.

    • Monsters vs. Aliens: Jesus, does Pixar make it look easy, and then everyone else makes it look so hard. I don’t even remember that much about MvA, other than I was impressed that Hugh Laurie can do yet another accent that isn’t his normal voice. Such a great title though. Man, such a great title.

  • There are simply no words to describe how much “Lost” has rocked since they, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, decided to “let the freak flag fly.” You know none of the actors signed up to be part of a sci-fi/ancient Egyptians/ghosts/assassins/time travel/comedy/romance/action/adventure spectacular, and you know just as hard that the writers/creators could give a flying fuck what the actors signed up for. They have an end date! They don’t have to spin this out forever! Let’s ROCK this town!

  • Darin says the official “Lost” podcast by Damon and Carleton is Teh Awesum, so you should listen to that. (I have zero time to listen to anything, I’m finding, so I have not added it to any of my iPods, but I laugh like a hyena when Darin recounts the latest one.)

  • And, as always: Actors, there are no small parts, only small actors. Michael Emerson signed for two or maybe three episodes. And he took over the entire damn series. You can do it, folks.
  • I thought “The Unusuals,” a new cop show on ABC, was going to be about a precinct of detectives in NYC who have very strange, minor superpowers. I like my idea for the show much better than theirs: It turns out to be a very boring police procedural about a bunch of cops Who Are Quirky. We took it off the list of stuff to be recorded during the first half hour.

  • I was mostly satisfied by the “Battlestar Galactica” finale—so long as they ended without Galactica, say, plunging into a nearby sun with everyone on board I was going to be okay. (The show was so dark for the last half season I honestly didn’t know what they were going to do.) As Ted Tally says, you have to give your audience a little glimmer of hope at the end. Just a tad. I think the BSG guys didn’t have as tight a grip on their stuff as the Lost guys do, but there was still so much wonderful stuff in there over 4 years I don’t care. (For example: if you’re going to start every episode with the statement that the Cylons have a plan, get a kilo of cocaine, lock all the writers in a room for the weekend, and figure out that damn plan before you go Season 2, okay? Remember that for next time.)

Oscars

Posted on Written by

Quick hits on today’s nominations:

It’s good to see the Academy leaned strongly toward popular movies that people might have actually seen this year. At least a little bit. (C’mon, Academy: meet us halfway.) I know Benjamin Button got some ungodly number of noms, but I also don’t know anyone who’s seen it, whereas I know tons of people who saw, loved, and talked up Slumdog Millionaire. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll vote lots of awards for the little movie that has long stretches take place in Hindi. It’s the multicultural future, people!

Best Motion Picture of the Year:

  • “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
  • “Slumdog Millionaire”
  • “Milk”
  • “Frost Nixon”
  • “The Reader”

    Still haven’t managed to make it out to see Benjamin Button, which is 3 freakin’ hours long and needs to be the best thing since sliced bread to make me shoehorn that into a date night. Of the three we have seen— Slumdog Millionaire, Milk, and Frost/Nixon—the best far and away is Slumdog Millionaire, which you should go see right now if you haven’t seen it yet.

    Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role:

  • Frank Langella, “Frost/Nixon”
  • Sean Penn, “Milk”
  • Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
  • Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler”
  • Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”

    Seen three of these as well, and Mickey Rourke is just as fabulous as everyone says in The Wrestler. As Darin put it, while watching that movie you don’t think about parallels to Rourke’s career, you think about the fucking character he’s playing. That said, Sean Penn was also pretty great as Harvey Milk, but Rourke’s career comeback story makes for much better copy.

    Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role:

  • Anne Hathaway, “Rachel Getting Married”
  • Angelina Jolie, “Changeling”
  • Meryl Streep, “Doubt”
  • Kate Winslet, “The Reader”
  • Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”

    We’ve seen one of these: Anne Hathaway, who was really good in her role, but the entire movie annoyed me so much that I refuse to think about it any more. This is probably Kate’s year—and it’s a Holocaust movie! Lesson learned: always listen to Ricky Gervais for career advice.

    Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role:

  • Josh Brolin, “Milk”
  • Robert Downey, Jr., “Tropic Thunder”
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Doubt”
  • Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”
  • Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road”

    Ha! They definitely want viewers’ butts in seats this year! Sorry, Josh, you were wonderful, but this is Heath’s year.

    Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role:

  • Amy Adams, “Doubt”
  • Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Christina Barcelona”
  • Viola Davis, “Doubt”
  • Taraji P. Henson, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
  • Marisa Tomei, “The Wrestler”

    Again, seen one of these, and while Marisa Tomei was very good in The Wrestler—that whole Oscar thing: not so much of a fluke!—I have no idea whose year this is.

    Achievement in Directing:

  • Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire”
  • David Fincher, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
  • Stephen Daldry, “The Reader”
  • Gus Van Sant, “Milk”
  • Ron Howard, “Frost/Nixon”

    I actively disliked the direction in Milk, and I thought Frost/Nixon was just…stentorian. I think this is Danny Boyle’s.

    Best Animated Film:

  • “Bolt”
  • “Kung Fu Panda”
  • “WALL-E”

    Are they allowed to give it to anyone other than Wall-E? Check the Academy’s charter on this one.

    Best Original Screenplay:

  • Courtney Hunt, Frozen River
  • Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky
  • Dustin Lance Black, Milk
  • Martin McDonough, In Bruges
  • Andrew Stanton, Wall-E

    I’m happy to see Martin McDonough here, because In Bruges was a classic McDonough piece, contrasting outrageous humor and horrifying, wrenching violence in one of the more thrilling and affecting movies we saw last year. Of the three I’ve seen, I’d probably go with Milk, as kind of a consolation prize for losing everything else.

    Best Adapted Screenplay:

  • Eric Roth, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”
  • John Patrick Shanley, “Doubt”
  • Peter Morgan, “Frost/Nixon”
  • David Hare, “The Reader”
  • Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire”

    Probably Benjamin Button, to make up for losing every other damn category to Slumdog Millionaire.

    • Quantum of Solace: the review

    Posted on Written by

    One Thanksgiving holiday tradition is that a whole group of the family goes to a movie and leaves the kids with other family members who don’t mind watching them. This year the tradition got changed a little: now all the kids go to a kids’ movie with their watchers, and the rest of us go to a non-kids movie. And this year that movie was Quantum of Solace.

    Let me start by saying: this movie is a lot better than you think…however, you have to go in thinking it’s going to be bad.

    It isn’t bad, exactly. The worst thing about the movie is that it thinks it’s smart, and wow is it ever not smart. There are movies that can get away with letting you fill in the details—Syriana, any of the Bourne movies—and you feel smarter because the movie didn’t lead you by the hand through every last bit. Then there’s Quantum of Solace, which lets you fill in the details to the point where you go, “That doesn’t make any fucking sense!”

    Too much handwaving, and what you have is an action movie where you’d better not think about anything for more than a moment. It has to have a story, or you’re just watching nice explosions and amazing fight choreography. Mind you: it doesn’t have to be a good story. I’m not expecting Shakespeare. I am expecting something where A –> B –> C, instead of A –> 76 –> @ –> Y9.

    For example: why does Bond go to Haiti? It’s the initial start of this adventure, and the explanation given by the MI-6 guy makes no goddamn sense, no matter how you look at it. It sounds very intelligent, but it’s complete gibberish. Bond has to go to Haiti because if he doesn’t, there’s no damn movie.

    On the way home we decided our favorite moment of the movie was (spoilers!) the bit involving Miss Fields. Miss Fields is sent from the embassy to babysit Bond in a hotel room and make sure he doesn’t get into any sort of trouble (like killing everyone he comes across, or destroying entire hotels, or any of the things we’ve seen him do up until this point). Bond of course does what he usually does with a pretty girl in a hotel room, and then he leaves the hotel room to get into trouble…and when he finally gets back to the hotel, Miss Fields has been cruelly dispatched (as seems to happen to Bond girls so very frequently). M then chastises Bond, saying that Miss Fields was murdered because of her connection to Bond and it’s all his fault.

    Uh, lady? Who in the hell decided that it was a good idea to send a pretty girl to babysit Bond in a hotel room the first place? Sorry, but that responsibility goes straight to the top, so get over yourself already.

    There are some incredible action scenes, and I can see why Daniel Craig is clearly going to die filming one of these movies some time before he finishes his contract. But if they don’t work a wee bit harder on giving us a story, no one’s going to freaking care.