Feminist, agnostic, aesthete, Australian.
History shows I'll post whatever the heck I feel like and to hell with rhyme or reason. Please drop me a line and feel free to ask me anything. I won't bite!
I just saw The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep. I didn’t particularily care for it - it was more of a kind of psycho-drama with the ageing Thatcher still dealing with her husbands death with some flashbacks that were very un-illuminating. In the creators wish to make a film that won’t alienate neither conservatives or progressives (although I thought it was kind of dodgy that they cut off a newsreader before he could say what Thatcher’s detractors claim), they seem to have forgotten to actually say something about her rule and legacy, beside recounting the basic policies and events. History is meant to be contencious!
Meryl Streep’s performance, however, was quite good. If she gets the Oscar, it would be a deserving win.
P.S. Please enjoy this classic clip from A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
(Source: youtube.com)
And the Academy Members are: Unmasking the Academy
The full roster of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has never been published. Times reporters confirmed the identities of more than 5,100 Oscar voters — more than 89% of all active voting members — and found Oscar voters are overwhelmingly white, male.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
Milena Canonero won the 2006 Oscar for Best Costume Design for her work on Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette at the 79th Academy Awards (presented in early 2007).
- Written by Benjamin -
This weekend, the film industry’s biggest and most grandiose awards ceremony will take place. Legends will be established and awards will be handed out to the year’s … best films … right?
… WRONG. A resounding wrong to be exact.
Why am I taking such a strong stance? Because I’m tired of being told which movies are ‘the best’. I’m tired of movies that get fantastic reviews shunned from even being nominated. It’s a joke, and I’m done with it.
Angie Han, a writer for Slashfilm wrote an article this week summarizing who represents a majority of the nearly 5,800 voters for the Academy. No surprise, 94% of voters are Caucasian and 77% are male. Most importantly, the median voter age is 62, with only 14% of voters under the age of 50.
So why does this matter? How many people do you know over the age of 62 that even watched HALF of the movies you did last year? It’s no wonder why the Oscar winners are so predictable & why movies like “The Dark Knight” or “The Muppets” aren’t even nominated for Best Picture despite their excellent overall critical reviews!
Let’s look at two examples. “The Dark Knight” has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This means that out of 283 nationwide critic reviews, 265 gave the film a positive review. If you can remember, “The Dark Knight” wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture. To be fair however, it was nominated for a few other awards - but not for the big one.
In 2008, there were five films nominated for Best Picture. Here’s the Rotten Tomato scores for each film:
- The Reader, 60%
- Slumdog Millionaire 94% (winner)
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 71%
- Milk, 93%
- Frost/Nixon, 91%
(Full disclosure: Slumdog Millionaire was also one of my favorites from 2008).
So how does “The Reader” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” get nominated over “The Dark Knight”? Go back and read about the voter statistics and you’ll get my point. I could come up with this scenario each and every year.
Lastly, consider my favorite film this year, “The Muppets”. It earned a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which means that out of 190 nationwide critic reviews, only 7 gave the film a negative review. 7 critics across the US gave the film a bad review - yet no Best Picture nomination.
I’ve given up on the Academy Awards. I will probably watch the ceremony this year but the awards will be (mostly) meaningless.
(Source: macguffins)
I’ve decided Halle Berry is my definite favourite for best dressed Best Actress (2001, for Monster’s Ball as Leticia Musgrove) of the last 10 years. Though I still maintain that Helen Mirren was the sexiest dressed in 2006 and Hilary Swank’s blue Guy Laroche outfit (2004) was also iconic (it’s what happens when you go with your heart over some boring outfit your sponsor (in Swank’s case, Calvin Klein) wants you to wear).
I was actually surprised how many Best Actress winners looks I have loved, since the last few years I’ve found a bit boring and matronly (Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman - though I guess Natalie gets excused because she was pregnant and had to deal with the whole Galliano anti-semitic rant while she was a face of Dior, which must have been awful since she is Jewish herself (she eventually wore Rodarte).
Emma Stone at the Oscar Vanity Fair party last year.
Normally I really hate how interesting up-coming actresses start dressing really sophisticated and almost matronly in Chanel (and others) after some big break and lose all their individuality. But try as I might, there is nothing bad I can say about this particular outfit - the miniskirt, the train, the fireworks, the different colours, I love it all.
Bette Davis was nominated for eleven Academy Awards for Best Actress in a leading role and won twice, for Dangerous in 1936 and Jezebel (pictured) in 1939.