Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

Umm, what's that you say?  An Everybody's Linking for the Weekend on a Saturday?  This is madness!  However, in what is traditionally the weekend where I try to figure out what I want to do with the next month of my life (planning is highly-underrated), I figured I might as well start out November with a bang and scare you (see, Halloween) into thinking that I might get everything on-time this month.  Without further adieu...

In Entertainment...

-For those of you who are devoted YouTubers, nothing this week could quell your excitement over a second film from the Holy Trinity of the site, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and Mamrie Hart.  The trio made Camp Takota last year, and unlike almost every other YouTube film that followed, it didn't endure horrific reviews as a result (cough Not Cool cough).  I personally am excited to see what these three bring as they're amongst my favorite YouTube content creators, particularly since the title (Dirty Thirty) seems to be about them owning their age a little bit more, which is rare on YouTube where everyone tries to be fourteen.

-I am so bummed that I missed the Leah Remini 20/20 interview last night.  I'm not wild about Remini (she was funny on an average sitcom and her brash persona occasionally rubs me the wrong way) and I find that most celebrity gossip is kind of boring these days, but man am I weirdly excited to hear the juice about Remini and her break from Scientology, considering it's one of the oddest and strangest things in Hollywood over the past several decades, and continues to be a really interesting topic considering stars like Tom Cruise and John Travolta are still involved with the church.  Remini is the biggest star to leave the organization, of course, and so likely had more access to the higher-ups in the Church.  The interview is chronicled pretty heavily in the article I linked above, so if you didn't record it or don't have access to a TV, read through as it's a fascinating look at Remini's involvement with the church and her relationships (that have spilled into the press) with Katie Holmes and Kirstie Alley.

-Every week I find Lady Gaga more and more phony and infuriating, and this week was no exception. Gaga apparently said a couple of years ago she wanted to quit music because she was tired of being treated as a "commodity."  This would potentially resonate (I'm sure celebrities get sick of being a product when they want to just create art), but Gaga made a point in her first album and every album after that about wanting to be a celebrity, and that was her primary goal.  One of her earliest hits was a song called "Paparazzi" and she demanded at the Grammys "take my picture Hollywood, I want to be a star."  Her latest sorts of comments feel just as manufactured as everything else about the singer-turned-actress, and seem to be launched more because her music career left her and not the other way around.  This sort of crap is what turned me off to her in the first place, and it isn't helping right now, and no amount of Julie Andrews musical moments are going to make me change my mind.

In Politics...

-One of the larger questions this past week has been around whether or not Sen. Marco Rubio should resign from the Senate.  I initially was going to do an article about this, but Smart Politics beat me to the punch, and it was so thorough I figured I'd just link.  I think Rubio himself did, in fact, quell this discussion with his epic takedown of Jeb Bush earlier last week, but the reality is that it's a question worth having. Rubio isn't running for reelection like Rand Paul, so it's not like he's going to be using the Senate seat anytime soon, and there is limited precedent but it's there for giving up his seat (Sen. Bob Dole resigned his seat in 1996, as the article points out).  I think it's a pragmatic question as well-look at Sen. Dean Heller who managed to gain a great leg-up in 2012 by being a temporary but real incumbent (it's likely he would have lost had it been a true open seat race, giving the Democrats a vital seat headed into 2016 where they're looking for anything they can grab to get five more).  Rubio, from a pragmatic side probably should give up his seat then, but doing so could invite comparisons to Sarah Palin when she resigned the Alaskan governorship and he wants to avoid that at all costs so I cannot fathom he will do so.  Expect Hillary Clinton to be eyeing how many votes he missed in comparison to her voting record in 2007, though, as this will be fodder in 2016 for certain as they appear to be the likely nominees.

-Speaking of the former senator, Mark Halperin did an epic takedown of the Republicans in a piece this past week for Bloomberg where he highlights that Republicans are stuck in an echo chamber on Hillary Clinton.  This is something, I think, we all are stuck in, quite frankly.  I talk with Democrats who are petrified of Clinton being the nominee because they don't think enough people like her, and yet every Democrat (and some lay people as well) seem to be willing to cast their votes for her, albeit with great fervor or a pinched nose (at the end of the day, though, they count the same).  Halperin correctly points out that Clinton's team is better at debates, and has a party that is much less likely to demand things of their nominee that could be deemed general election poison (it seems impossible, for example, for next year's RNC to not have speeches about Benghazi and email servers, which will not play well outside of a primary considering public polling on the matters).  It's also worth noting that, using the past four elections as a guide, the Democrats have more electoral college votes that seem likely to be in their corner than the Republicans (the Democrats don't need states like Florida and Ohio, for example, but the Republicans can't afford to lose them).  All-in-all, Clinton has an upperhand if you throw away the fact that historically she should have a tougher race.

-And we'll finish out the political portion of this link roundup with an excellent profile of Al Gore and his look at An Inconvenient Truth ten years later from Politico.  The article is interesting not just because of a few choice little anecdotes in the write-up (how is it possible that Al Gore has never met Jeb Bush considering they've both been on the national stage for decades and considering Al Gore is very well-acquainted with his brother).  While he didn't endorse his former rival for the President's attention (Hillary Clinton and Al Gore are hardly good friends), he did point out the Democrats have his support more than the Republicans in 2016.  It's an interesting read, particularly for those who were inspired by his powerpoint ten years ago, so check it out.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week..

-Democrats can hug Republicans-it'll be all right, Freedom Caucus.  You can't catch liberalism.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-I feel a little guilty every year that I don't really celebrate Halloween, particularly since I feel like I'm abandoning the quintessential gay holiday, so in deference to that, I shall put perhaps the gayest moment in all Halloween movies below.  Check it out, and I dare you to not want to change your costume to match Bette's:

Just One More...

-If there's a name you need to memorize immediately before next summer's Olympic Games, it's Simone Biles, who became the first gymnast ever to win three consecutive world championships this past week, besting Olympic champion Gabby Douglas (who became the first Olympic champion to make a medals stand since 1981 at the world championships).  At this rate, it seems Team USA will be the ones to beat come next Summer, and expect a lot of NBC promos touting a rivalry between Biles and reigning Olympic champ Douglas, who is looking to become the first woman since Nadia Comaneci to medal in two consecutive All-Arounds, and potentially the first since Vera Caslavska to win the title back-to-back.

And Then There Were Two

Last night's debates in Boulder, Colorado, did a lot of things.  First off, they showed us that CNBC is the CNN we never knew we had (can you imagine what Jon Stewart would have done with that performance?!?).  Secondly, we found out that Chris Christie is in fact still running for president (no word yet on whether Rand Paul was there for the debate).  And third, I think we finally got our finalists for the Republican nomination.  After last night, most pundits have found it's time to start writing off the gargantuan field of Republicans and focus in on 1-2, which is precisely what they're doing now.  Let's take a look as to why, shall we?

The reality is that no one needed a win more last night and no one got more of a loss than Jeb Bush.  It was painful to watch Marco Rubio's takedown of his former mentor, the man who in many ways allowed him to get to where he is today, but a lot of what I said Monday was reliant on Bush being able to put away Rubio.  That didn't happen, and it's hard to imagine the Koch Brothers watching last night's debate and not handing the junior senator from Florida their $750 million.  Bush is in a position now where he'll probably stay in for a couple more weeks and see what he can play at, but he would need to be ruthless and, quite frankly, pray for a scandal in Rubio's court in order to get back into the game, and considering the race he's run he doesn't have that in him.  For all intents and purposes, Bush is now done with politics, and one wonders if the Bush Dynasty is done on that level.  Even the most impressive of presidential dynasties (the Kennedys, the Adamses, the Tafts) can't sustain forever and third generations have shown that they have a difficult task in keeping the tradition alive, so George Prescott Bush should probably start honing his debating skills now if he wants to keep the family tradition afloat.

The outsider candidates lost a bit of steam last night, much to the happiness of Reince Priebus and most of the Republican Party (at least the ones who keep the lights on at the RNC).  Donald Trump is not someone who handles losing well, and it's shown.  Quite frankly just compare Trump to Hillary Clinton and the way they both handled faltering in an early state.  Clinton, a political vet who knows the value of the long game better than anyone else in the Capitol, didn't sweat for a moment when she slipped behind Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire, knowing A) she had huge leads in other early primary states that could compensate and B) polls are barely worth the paper they're written on this far back from the elections.  Trump, meanwhile got whiny (and don't believe for a second that that tweet went out without his go-ahead disparaging Iowa)-Clinton would have known that people would move beyond Carson, whose support is built on sand, but Trump and Clinton are separated by multiple things, but most critical is their approach to drive.  Trump wants to win big, for everyone to like him and for everyone to come around to him and worship him; Clinton, on the other hand, just wants to win-the margin makes no difference.  Clinton's wanted to be president her entire life, Trump thought it would be good just to prove he could do it, and cannot handle the fact that he might not win every state.  Putting it bluntly, Hillary Clinton is far tougher than Donald Trump.  And that's going to become more apparent as other people start to gain in the polls.

Ben Carson's strange in my opinion in his appeal.  Trump and Fiorina I've been able to understand, even Ted Cruz, but Carson's Novocaine approach to the campaign trail is shocking in that it caught on, especially considering he's never done anything really impressive politically except for one prayer breakfast a few years back.  However, this lead and the underlying numbers behind it make me think that he's just a passing fad similar to Santorum and Cain in 2012 rather than someone with staying power like Trump-that debate performance was bleak, and his radical comments can't handle the scrutiny of the race outside of Iowa.  Fiorina I have admitted before has done way better than expected, but her track record in her career is not one of success, and that hurts compared to Trump and Carson who were clearly successful in their career, even if it wasn't politics.  Fiorina seems like a strong option for Secretary of Commerce or a high-profile ambassadorship or even RNC Chair, and in that regard she's far better off now than she was before the presidential race (she's got that up on Jeb Bush), but her moment in the sun has passed.

Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee were all strong-on-paper, weak in practice candidates.  Huckabee hasn't realized that his time has passed, as evangelical Christians and social conservatives don't have the strength anymore to win outside of select pockets of the map, and he's too old news (he should have run in 2012).  Rand Paul's Libertarian views better-matched with the Tea Party movement that has lost its steam, resulting in him becoming an after-thought and considering Adam Edelen's poll numbers, one wonders if he might be forced to drop out before a single ballot is cast (he should have run in 2012).  And Chris Christie, whose performance has definitely improved in recent weeks, got a fatal jab too early in the race with Bridgegate, a scandal that was impossible to overcome nationwide even if he could survive in New Jersey (he should have run in 2012).  John Kasich is also on the bench, of course, but he's running for Vice President right now, probably as the running mate of Marco Rubio, and I am guessing he'll make a high-profile dropout/endorsement (which I don't think anyone's done yet-we've just had dropouts) of the senator in the coming months.  He knows he's still a valuable asset as a statesman and brings along grand approval ratings in a critical battleground state (the Republicans can't win the White House without Ohio), so he's fine, and perhaps no one outside of Carly Fiorina will gain more by losing the presidential race.

That leaves us with the two contenders: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.  They won't appear that way in the polls for a few weeks or maybe 1-2 months, but that's where we're headed.  Rubio has the clear advantage.  The Republican nominee has needed the establishment's support every year since 1964, and Cruz ain't getting that considering his position with Mitch McConnell.  Marco's narrative, his ability to win Florida, his potential appeal amongst Hispanic voters, and the youth/future-leaning narrative of his campaign juxtaposes the best against Hillary Clinton.  Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is arguably the best debater in the contest, and knows that while Trump/Carson may be passing fads, their support is not-70% of the race in some polls has gone with the anti-establishment candidates, and Cruz if he gets a hold on the race early enough could use that to propel himself to a grand position.  His fundraising, poll numbers, and ability on both the big stage and little is impressive, and should not be underestimated (he's arguably the smartest candidate, something liberals would be loathe to forget).  Who emerges ahead is still a question mark (anyone calling the race uniformly for Rubio right now is an idiot-this is not a Clinton v. Sanders lopsided race), but we now have this three-ring circus down to a duel.

OVP: Film Editing (2014)

OVP: Best Film Editing (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach, American Sniper

Sandra Adair, Boyhood

Barney Pilling, The Grand Budapest Hotel

William Goldenberg, The Imitation Game

Tom Cross, Whiplash

My Thoughts: Whew-as we continue to get back into a writing schedule that actually allows for my goal of twelve articles in a week, it seems about time to rejoin our OVP, n'est-ce pas?  Where last we left off I had given Dawn of the Planet of the Apes the Visual Effects Oscar and we were headed into the Film Editing race, that most silent of arts that is amongst the most difficult categories to judge at the Oscars (if you're saying "what the heck is this and why is it so wonderful?," click the OVP link up top or start perusing all of the past contests listed below and be vocal about your choices for the winners).  The editing races once again relied heavily on the Best Picture nominees, though weirdly not the winner (for the first time since 1980 the Best Picture winner wasn't nominated for Best Editing).  Since we don't have that option, let's go alphabetically for a change of pace, shall we?

American Sniper, like all but one of these films, is getting its first mention in this article, and we start my complicated journey with the film which relies a bit on the editing.  Clint Eastwood's film is a juxtaposition, as there's some interesting conversation happening here about the effects of war, and the actual battle scenes in the film are impressive.  I highlighted this in my review (all the full reviews of the nominees are above...and I promise that's my last shameless plug for myself), but the scene highlighted in the first trailer is riveting.  We get an extended sequence where Bradley Cooper has to decide if a woman and boy are a risk of carrying a bomb or whether he's about to kill an innocent civilian.  The entire sequence is a testament to the black-and-white nature of war that Eastwood is trying to get across, and like most of the film's action sequences it is highly-compelling.  The problem is the film goes so off-its-rails in the back half and the scenes start to feel like a commercial rather than a movie-a more sharply edited approach might have cleaned up this portion of the flick.

Boyhood had to be a titanic type of endeavor for any editor, splicing together a decade's worth of scenes and clips into something not only watchable, but also that makes sense with previous scenes.  You never get the impression in the movie that there wasn't a vision for what is happening onscreen, and indeed it feels like each scene flows perfectly to the next.  This is harder than it seems; after all, we spend so little time with Ellar Coltrane's Mason at each age and the editors manage to make the movie have the right pacing where we feel a pang of nostalgia even as the film goes, but still rushes us so we get the sense of how quickly life moves by.  It's a great trick, and also allows us a nice balance between Mason and the periphery of his life with his parents and sister slowly checking in but ebbing and flowing in importance based on his age.  This is one of those nominations you have to treasure, as it's impossible to look at it and not think that the Academy could have ignored these subtle touches and instead just gone with another quality action picture.

A film that I really enjoyed, even if I don't think editing was where its talents most thoroughly resided, was The Grand Budapest Hotel.  The film is a luxury for the eyes, but it's worth noting that it's story has some rough shifts and especially toward the end we get some sequences that feel hurried and sort of glossed over.  I think one of the biggest issues I had with the film, the Agatha story being too small compared to where it ends up in the larger scope of the ending, is a combination of editing and writing. The film feels like we left scenes between Agatha and Zero on the cutting room floor, which would be fine (Gustave and Zero are more interesting together anyway), but considering how significant she is to the film's final ten minutes I wonder if perhaps the editors should have either pushed for a change to the ending or shifted more focus to the love story rather than the story of friendship.  I think this would have made the film less interesting, but in its current state the editing comes across as messier than it should be.

The film is a joy, though, compared to the nightmare that is The Imitation Game, the major dud of this nominations field.  I have gone into great detail of why I had such a poor reaction to this movie before, but the editing (and, admittedly, the writing which goes hand-in-hand with this category) is a huge part of that.  The major problem I had with The Imitation Game is that the entire film is predicated on a relationship between Joan and Alan, that they are the most significant romantic relationship they'll ever have, particularly on the part of Alan for Joan.  The entire film we see Alan trying to show that he loved Christopher his Computer and Joan his friend, but the beginning and ending of the film needs him to have actually acted on his homosexuality rather than just reject it, and by cutting scenes (that may well have never existed-sorry editors, this isn't an exact science for giving out trophies) that show him as homosexual, we don't get a story that seems authentic.  The scenes therefore feel like they're from two different films, and adding on the weird random shots of the war interspersed with the movie, this is a pretty jumbled mess of an editing job.

Whiplash is a conundrum for me here, because the editing occasionally is excellent, approaching wonderful.  The back-and-forth arguments between Teller and Simmons, as well the the musical performances have the approach of an action movie, they are so sharply cut and drawn, and I can see why people went gaga over this film in this category last year.  However, the film doesn't really know what to do once it leaves the classroom.  The scenes between Teller and his father/girlfriend feel out of sync and choppy, like they're being rushed to get back to the good stuff, and when major characters (particularly Melissa Benoist's love interest) feel completely glossed over that's a problem.  This is a small quibble considering how strong the actual musical performances are, but if you're competing for an Oscar you have to get to that minutia.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Eddie Awards have nominees for both Drama and Comedy/Musical, so all of the Oscar nominees managed to make the ballot here.  In the drama categories we had Boyhood emerging victorious over not only Whiplash, The Imitation Game, and American Sniper, but also Nightcrawler and Gone Girl.  The Grand Budapest Hotel won Comedy/Musical against Into the Woods, Birdman, Inherent Vice, and Guardians of the Galaxy.  The BAFTA chose instead Whiplash (making this one of the more contentious battles at the Oscars earlier this year) with Nightcrawler, Birdman, The Imitation Game, Grand Budapest, and Theory of Everything all getting runner-up status.  As for sixth place, Birdman probably makes the most sense since it was the Best Picture nominee and scored both precursors, but considering its extended sequence gimmick it may not have landed at all with the Oscars who thought it "wasn't edited," and I would buy an argument for Nightcrawler (considering it landed both precursors) and Theory of Everything/Selma because this category crushes hard on Best Picture nominees.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Let's see here-I'd probably keep maybe one of these contenders and fill up the rest with my own list.  Birdman surely deserved inclusion, and considering AMPAS crushed harder on it than I did I am not 100% certain why it didn't manage to make the cut considering it had a tall order to create that extended shot trick.  Under the Skin was a marvelously interspersed movie, leaving just enough mystery to keep you guessing while still enough clues to make it pretty obvious at the end what you just watched.  Stranger by the Lake did pretty much the same thing, even if the film would be far too wild for Oscar's tastes.  And finally, I have to go with the precursors who credited Nightcrawler (and in particular the extended scene toward the end) rightfully for honoring one of the most gripping films of the year.

Oscar's Choice: Oscar likes a story of a young man overcoming the odds, and Whiplash's flashy editing was too hard to ignore.

My Choice: This easily goes to Boyhood, as the film that took on an almost impossible-seeming editorial feat and made it look easily.  Follow that with Whiplash, American Sniper, Grand Budapest, and finally Imitation Game.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with Oscar and Whiplash or are you on my side with Boyhood?  Anyone want to vouch for Imitation Game getting nominated here (or in most categories)?  Why do you think Birdman got skipped by Oscar?  And what film had the best editing overall of 2014?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2014: Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2014

Past Best Film Editing Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

OVP: Persepolis (2007)

Film: Persepolis (2007)
Stars: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Gabriele Lopes, Danielle Darrieux
Director: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Foreign language films occasionally get a slight pass from critics because they are different and because they feel new.  This is occasionally because they are, in fact, new in their approach to the medium, but more often it's just the language barrier.  There is a doubly low threshold for critical love for animated films that are in a foreign language, as Persepolis proved a few years back when it won an Oscar nomination and mad props all across the critical community.  While the animation is occasionally inventive, I found the film a bit dull and listless, and the main character annoying, and not in a way that felt particularly compelling or sharp.  The film's approach is more where the plaudits came from, in my opinion, rather than of anything of great substance on the screen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film tells the tale of Marjane (Mastroianni as an adult, Lopes as a child) as she grows up as a privileged youth in Iran.  We follow her as she explores adolescence, frequently taking moralistic detours and finding herself drawing the world in broad strokes.  She goes back and forth from Iran, and we see her life framed up against the unrest that followed the downfall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah.

One of the first things that really bothered me about the film and Marjane in particular is that the entire story of her youth to adulthood is so rife with cliche that it's hard to believe from scene-to-scene that she's the same person.  Critics may argue that this is a moot point, and they may be right since the film is autobiographical of director Satrapi's experiences, but I think she took dramatic license with the story as it unfolded.  As the movie goes forward Marjane seems to be whatever the plot most needs her to be, learning a lesson in the most absolute terms to underline every "this REALLY happened."  There's a scene late in the film where she gets a man arrested by pretending he made a pass at her and laughing about it to a disappointed grandmother.  The scene is meant to show how flighty Marjane is and how she doesn't consider the consequences of her actions, but the truth seems to be that either the Marjane of earlier in the film has lost mad IQ points or she simply didn't do this, because only a fool could know her grandmother and not know that she would disapprove.  I'll allow some extra forgiveness on some of the troubles with love (we've all been fools in that department), but even there we're left with a woman that seems smart and, more appropriately, self-assured who then watches her marriage crumble into oblivion even though we can tell from the outset that it will end poorly, and she seems self-aware enough to be able to realize that as well.

This story convenience makes the film frustrating.  The animation is interesting, and I loved the juxtaposition of the black-and-white and the color, making her youth that much more relatable to the audience (it feels like it could just as easily be Paris, New York, or London rather than Tehran, and I suspect that was the point).  However, the lead protagonist is too contradictory, and you can't get a sense of her mood.  Some will claim "that's a teenager," but in reality teenagers are relatively consistent and have moral compasses that remain in roughly the same direction as they reach adulthood.  Few teenagers have the wild changes of attitude and opinion that Marjane does, and this feels like a heightened version of the character, but as someone who is trying to instill a larger lesson about the unrest that occurred in Iran in the 1980's and 90's, the directors need a more constant main character, and not one that becomes a series of eye rolls.

As a result, I can't really recommend this movie and while I see why people liked it, I found the film too surface-level and too basic.  I had a similar reaction to Waltz with Bashir (though I liked that movie much better than this), a movie with spellbinding animation but one where the story is too simplistic and too reliant on its assumed prestige.  Persepolis is an interesting failure in this regard, but a failure nonetheless.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Film: Crimson Peak (2015)
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of Guillermo del Toro are ones that I generally like more in theory than in practice.  My first encounter with one of his movies was a doozy, the brilliant and excellent Pan's Labyrinth, still one of my favorite movies from the mid-Aughts.  However, everything after that for some reason hasn't really clicked.  I didn't like Pacific Rim except for the Charlie Hunnam-exploitation, and the Hellboy movies left me a bit cold and uninspired.  His films are visual feats, especially in the ways that he crushes on his favorite color of red, but the substance is almost always lacking and the story is thin.  The movies rely upon rather predictable plots, which shows in this handsomely-executed and occasionally amusingly-acted piece that still is utterly predictable and lacks some of the scares you'd hope for from a horror movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), a young woman of a considerable fortune in the turn of the 20th Century who wishes to become the next Mary Shelley, writing stories about ghosts when publishers demand she consider romance instead.  She is pursued initially by a handsome doctor Alan McMichael (Hunnam), but instead falls for the charming but enigmatic Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), who woos her away after her father's untimely death to be his wife, living alongside his harsh and domineering sister Lucille (Chastain).  As the film progresses, Edith becomes sick and is haunted by the spirits of women who died violent deaths in the house, all the while realizing that her husband and his sister are involved in an incestuous relationship and are slowly poisoning her.

The film's predictability is really one of its major downfalls.  The thing is that in an era where we are trained to expect a twist (M. Night Shyamalan has left his mark in that regard), the film's straight-forwardness is in some ways refreshing.  We don't need to have a random dead main character to make this film stand out.  However, the film feels almost like it drags as a result of the lack of suspense.  The initial idea about Thomas and Lucille (that they're an incestuous brother-and-sister pair of fortune-seekers) is actually what happens, which causes the film to be kind of dull.  Horror movies rely upon surprises and the occasional shock death to keep their films moving, but Crimson Peak has no surprises-what you see is what you get, and as a result we never get the sense that Edith is in any real danger.  The film's ending results in her running away with Alan and ending up fleeing the mansion, while a dead Lucille becomes the new ghostly lady-of-the-house.  This is exactly what you'd have expected upon the first trailer, and the film doesn't have enough oomph to really sell such a predictable premise.

This is a problem not of anyone really involved, but because the film feels more like a series of portions rather than a cohesive vision.  The actors are all good, particularly Chastain as the creepy Agnes Moorehead-style sister, and the set decoration/costumes are divine to behold.  The effects are appropriately gory (someone's been watching The Knick), and the eyes get a series of truly great images, particularly the house with the roof that won't mend.  However, nothing seems to fit together.  Each scene feels more like a vignette rather than something that makes sense with the previous moment.  We never get a reason, for example why everyone seems to marvel at Edith, who has man flaunting after her despite her bookish disposition and nose-turned-up attitude.  We also don't get why Edith didn't scoop up Alan right away considering her need for her father's favor and the fact that Alan is a sweet, nice guy who also happens to be a brick house.  The entire story, in fact, surrounding Thomas and his allure evades me.  Hiddleston is appropriately attractive and we do get to see some male nudity as he constantly promised on Graham Norton, but his character is kind of a wimp and it's hard to see what his appeal to Lucille is, considering she's the sharper and stronger player in the relationship.  With a lack of suspense in the film, these loopholes start to make more sense and the movie, which feels plucked from a mystery novel of the time, can't quite modernize the tale enough to translate well to the cinema.

That being said, I'm going with three stars here because it's still interesting even if it's not particularly great.  It's the sort of film that if it looks appealing, you won't leave without having enjoyed what you saw, and if you aren't interested, there's nothing to surprise.  This isn't Pan's Labyrinth, a film that would convert new del Toro patrons, but it's not a movie that will alienate the current fanbase.  Like Quentin Tarantino in a lot of ways, del Toro seems to be stuck in his own shadow and hype, but he's still good enough to not make totally narcissistic work (quite yet).

Those were my thoughts on Crimson Peak, what are yours?  Did anyone love the film or hate it (it evaded a meh from me except for some acting and visuals)?  What do you think are its Oscar chances?  And what do you want to see next from Guillermo del Toro?

5 Reasons Jeb Bush Should Stay in the Race

Over the past week, one of the biggest questions in politics wasn't surrounding Donald Trump's Iowa poll numbers or Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearings, but instead around former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Bush, who started the Republican primaries as the obvious frontrunner for the nomination, is clearly in panic mode.  He's spent the past few days telling Megyn Kelly that he's not dropping out, then making it clear that he might drop out if what people want is the Trump/Carsons of the world (and that he has "cooler things to do"), and finally has spent the last couple of days with donors, who are probably more there because his father and brother are there to try and ease concerns, rather than to support the other Bush that's actually running.  With the poor poll numbers and terrible press, many have moved the question from if to when on whether or not Jeb Bush should drop out of the race in a similar fashion to Scott Walker earlier this year.  While I thought at the time that Walker's dropping out was probably the right decision, Bush getting out this early in the race, despite his poll numbers and campaign cuts, would be the wrong one for the five following reasons:

1. John McCain

It's not often the Bush family clings to John McCain for hope, but if Jeb Bush truly wants to win the nomination pulling a McCain is clearly his best option.  Around this time in 2008, McCain was trailing badly in the polls and similarly to Bush he was also cutting staff in the face of an overwhelmingly tough field, dominated by a brash New Yorker with unconventional GOP politics.  However, McCain turned things around with a clear focus on New Hampshire, which paid off handsomely and he ended up winning the nomination.  This appears to be the same sort of strategy for Bush, and it's not the worst one he's had.  After all, this is the only early state where he's currently in third place, and it's also the state where his father turned the 1988 primaries around in (plus, the Bush family's constant connections with the Sununu family can only pay off in this regard).  Admittedly McCain had an actual history in the Granite State (he won the state in a major coup in 2000 against Jeb's brother), but if Jeb Bush is trying to find solace and a way to convince the team to hang on, John McCain is the start and end of that sentence.

2. Trump and Carson Will Fall

Watching Donald Trump start to take a hit in Iowa after all of these months is a great deal of hubris considering the branding he's done toward the entire field and calling them "losers," but it does point to a crack in his facade.  The reality is that Donald Trump's schtick doesn't have enough gas to make it to Iowa, or at least it can't stand up to the scrutiny of national media if the media actually thought he would be the nominee.  The same has to be said for Carson, who lacks Trump's braggadocio and celebrity-appeal, but still has his propensity for saying outrageous things that would be a death knell in the general election.  These two men will likely implode in the next few months, perhaps right after Iowa when New Hampshire Republicans (an admittedly more moderate bunch) see the writing on the wall and decide to go with their most electable candidate.  If Bush is spending his time there, he could benefit and become the establishment favorite against Trump, a title that would help with races like Florida and Super Tuesday when Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street types get desperate.

3. Marco Rubio is the Only Real Competition

With Scott Walker out of the race, and Kasich/Christie/Paul non-starters, Jeb Bush has a surprisingly narrow race to what will almost certainly become a duel for the top slots.  Rubio is a very good candidate, one who has a cutthroat team and who will go after the jugular if need be (lest we forget, he basically destroyed Charlie Crist in 2010 and he was also higher up the food chain in the state), but his poll numbers are not that much better than Bush's.  Admittedly Rubio retains advantages that Bush doesn't (namely higher approval ratings/more opportunity to soar), but he's also had quite a window to gain since the last primary and it hasn't really happened.  Bush has more ability to raise money and has more universal name recognition if they need to get an establishment candidate fast, and Rubio doesn't have that leg-up on him quite yet.  Rubio remaining roughly tied with Bush means that Jeb is still in the race.

4. Tea Party Doesn't Vote

Here's the thing-the Tea Party and "new voters" that are attracted to Trump and Carson don't vote.  In 2010, we had perhaps the only true stand of the Tea Party, and it bombed dramatically in major statewide elections (notice how we never had Sens. Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, and Christine O'Donnell).  Voting in caucuses is hard and time-consuming, and New Hampshire will go with the leading establishment candidate.  The reality is that a lot of lay voters won't turn out, and so Carson, Trump, and perhaps even Cruz will be in trouble if they can't get a great GOTV system.  Jeb Bush will be able to afford a great GOTV system, and while his brother's path to election isn't possible anymore, let's not forget that President Bush had far fewer major contenders to split the vote amongst.  Jeb Bush, who has so far lost dramatically as a result of the myriad candidates running, could finally gain from such a field if he only has to hit 20% to take a victory.

5. This is His Only Shot

No one saw that Joe Biden speech and had as much inner-angst as Jeb Bush.  The son of a president and the brother of another, he knows better than anyone the amount of history and dreams-realized that comes with the position, and the incredible reward of achieving such a goal.  Bush has wanted to be president just as long as Hillary Clinton, and almost certainly longer than anyone else in this race.  At 62 and considering his fall from grace this primary it seems impossible to believe there will be a Bush 2020 race, and despite his protestations that he has "cool things to do" this is a man who has spent his entire professional career trying to reach the White House.  Giving up on that, particularly with so many unknowns left, would be a fool's errand.

These points aren't meant to negate the fact that Jeb Bush is in deep, deep trouble.  Wednesday's debate he needs to not just have an okay performance like the past few rounds, but a great performance.  He needs to find a way to score some points on Trump/Carson while clearly being better than Rubio and holding off Carly Fiorina, who will want a rebound in her numbers and has done better than Jeb in previous outings-that's a tall task for any politician, much less one who has failed to do so twice in the past year.  He also needs to find a way to gain on Trump in New Hampshire, and more-than-likely will need to find roles for his father and brother on the campaign trail and utilize them in a way he didn't really want to do so before (but now he really has no choice but to cash in a bit on their GOP legacy as it's his best trump card).  However, to put him in the same place as Scott Walker would be foolish, and he would be left with a very strong "what if?" if he didn't stay in for a while longer.

Everybody's Linking for the Week

I had family in town so we're doing the rare "Everybody's Linking for the Week" rather than the weekend.  Still, though, we have a lot to cover here so let's get started!

In Entertainment...

-Obviously the saddest news out of Hollywood this week was the demise of screen legend Maureen O'Hara at the age of 95.  The actress, most noted for her collaborations with director John Ford and actor John Wayne, was a major headliner of the Golden Age of Hollywood and a wonderful actress.  My first interactions with O'Hara were as a kid, particularly in one of my collective family's favorite movies McClintock!, a comedy western with Wayne where she plays a stuck-up woman coming home with her daughter for a divorce.  The sight of O'Hara in that gorgeous dress sliding down into the mud made me uproarious with laughter.  As I got older I got to see some of the other facets of her personality, especially in film classics like Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man.  The Academy Awards thankfully honored O'Hara just last year with an Honorary Oscar after years of fans pleading with them to give her that trophy.  It was a career capper for a career like few others.

-Reese Witherspoon is either A) in need of another $10 million or B) recently suffered amnesia as she is advocating for a Legally Blonde 3 for some inexplicable reason.  For those who may remember, Witherspoon nailed her ditzy blonde legal savant act in 2001, but the followup was an absolute train wreck.  Witherspoon's coming off a truly great performance in Wild, but I really wish she'd continue that line of thought before coming back to this character, as I'm tired of us getting long after-the-fact sequels to films that weren't that good in the first place (see also Men in Black III).

-In time for her latest book as Robert Galbraith (I have my copy of Career of Evil staring at me from a shelf nearby), JK Rowling will be doing her first interview as Galbraith on November 2nd, discussing why she wrote under a pseudonym and discussing the Cormoran Strike novels.

-And in news you might have missed regarding everyone's favorite chanteuse, Adele made history once again with her spellbinding "Hello" video.  Directed by Canadian filmmaker (and master of the world's greatest hair) Xavier Dolan, the video is apparently the first music video ever shot in iMax.  I previewed the song last week on the blog-now that we have the full version, anyone want to give their opinions of the full thing?  Comments are below...

In Politics...

-One of the biggest stories of the week surrounded Canadian heartthrob (and also, the new Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau and his huge win for the liberals in Canada.  The Nation looked at how Hillary Clinton may be able to emulate this, with a focus on taxing the rich, infrastructure investment, and an embrace of diversity.  Clinton has made the diversity angle a key part of her campaign (every stump speech will name-check African-Americans, Latinos, women, gays, the military, and senior citizens with utter abandon), and thanks in part to Bernie Sanders influence, Clinton has gone after a more progressive economic platform.  However, infrastructure, an issue that we do need to address in the country does seem like a major winner, particularly as it's a way to start addressing economic issues in poorer areas of the country and might help Clinton with blue-collar male voters, a group she needs to improve her status with in order to take the White House.

-Easily the most press-shy of the former presidents, George W. Bush was all over the news this past week.  First it was his comments about Sen. Ted Cruz, whom he attacked in a pretty harsh way for a former president who has eschewed political fights constantly since he left the White House six years ago.  This is a bit surprising not only because Cruz is a former Bush employee (he was a domestic policy advisor to the then governor when he ran for president in 2000), but also because Cruz isn't exactly who Jeb Bush has been attacking on the stump.  The Florida governor has been most heartily going after Donald Trump, and most pundits (including yours truly) view Marco Rubio as the candidate that poses the biggest issue between Jeb and the nomination, so it's strange that President Bush decided to attack his home state's junior senator instead, as this was clearly a calculation from the governor's team.  The second thing that came up was the continued attacks on Jeb Bush for his defense of his brother, particularly in regard to how he "kept America safe" while he also attacks Sec. Clinton for her role in Benghazi.  The Atlantic wrote a piece agreeing with Donald Trump that George W. Bush didn't do enough to protect the United States in the months preceding 9/11, something that has become taboo to discuss in most corners of American politics.  Personally I think this may be one of the few advantages Trump's candidacy poses for the GOP-his stances on positions and ability to call out what he considers BS (which occasionally is and occasionally isn't just that) is more valuable than the ludicrous assertions of Ben Carson which just go as hard right as possible without more valuable discussion as a result.

-At the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner this past weekend, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders went after Sec. Hillary Clinton by name about her stances on the big banks.  Sanders attacks on Clinton are the most pointed so far of the campaign, and a surprising change-of-pace for the senator, as #feelthebern has been celebrating his atypical approach to politics.  As a result of this, I wonder how this will do for his campaign, particularly for a man that has been using his bully pulpit to decry negative campaigning.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

-With the news that Gilmore Girls is back (HOORAY!!!), I want to know why Pushing Daisies isn't next.

YouTube Video of the Week...

-This video is super long, admittedly, but if you wanted to understand everything about the new paid YouTube (or YouTube Red, not to be confused with RedTube which is VERY different and highly NSFW) and why ESPN can't put YouTube videos out any more, please watch Hank Green explain it as only he knows how:

Just One More...

-The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at what scientists are doing to try and save the snow leopard as climate change has resulted in much of their territory being decreased.  This is particularly important considering articles like these, where they list out species that have gone extinct only in the past 15 years.

OVP: Steve Jobs (2015)

Film: Steve Jobs (2015)
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterston
Director: Danny Boyle
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Michael Fassbender, Supporting Actress-Kate Winslet)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I have an anathema to biopics, especially this time of year where the Oscars go gaga for them and I kind of want to throw up in response.  Seriously-they're so formulaic and so rarely say something interesting about the protagonist that history or the news media hasn't already discovered.  It's usually the same sorts of stories too, as frequently we see biopics of incredible human beings who accomplish feats against the odds (after all, who wants to see a biopic of just an ordinary human being?).  I went into Steve Jobs, though, a little curious.  After all, one of about four biopics from the past five years that I genuinely admired and loved came from Aaron Sorkin, writer of Steve Jobs, and was also about the Citizen Kane-style rise of a tech icon (in that case, Mark Zuckerberg and The Social Network).  Sorkin and director Danny Boyle don't disappoint in once again finding a new mold to fit the biopic in, but here we have a less successful execution thanks to a severely-botched third act that threatens to destroy an impressively-started motion picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film unfolds in three different acts, centered around the launches of a trio of products: the Macintosh, the NeXT, and the iMac, all of which left an indelible print on the world of technology but in wildly different frames of success.  The film follows Jobs (Fassbender) and his right-hand woman Joanna Hoffman (Winslet) as they encounter a series of interactions with various people in Jobs' world, including his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Rogen), former Apple CEO John Sculley (Daniels), and his daughter Lisa.  The film watches as his relationships with all three change, and in some cases remain the same, with him constantly having a chilly distance to his daughter, revering Sculley as the father he had but apparently didn't want, and condescending Wozniak as a friend he needs to protect.  The film's third act addresses these years of interactions, when we know Jobs is about to translate from being a genius to becoming a sort of demigod in the world of technology, reinvigorating his company in a way that changed electronics and the world forever (not for nothing, but I'm writing this article on an iMac).

The film's framing device of these three launches is interesting, and keeps us from having to see a ploddingly simplistic look at how Jobs came from humbled roots (we get that hinted enough with the conversations with his longtime Apple co-founders), but it does occasionally come with issues.  For example, with the exception of Winslet most of the side characters end up being pretty two-dimensional.  Rogen's Wozniak, without a tale of how two such completely different men were able to create something so compelling, is just whiny and seems to hero-worship Jobs and yet despise him at once.  This may well be true, but the reality is that Rogen's performance isn't enough to make us comprehend that conundrum.  The same goes for Jobs' jerk attitude toward Lisa's mother Chrisann (Waterston)-the film treats her as a one-night stand that resulted in a baby, and we get little indication as to why Jobs was interested in her in the first place.  Fassbender's performance is remarkable, wonderfully-felt and delivered and really just a joy to behold as the titular character, but no one else around him seems to be of much use to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.  I only recluse Winslet because she's so damn good at an underwritten character here (which, admittedly, is not what I'd call her strength).  Her Joanna is a woman who is so surface-level that Winslet does a remarkable job of inserting just enough moments of depth in her relationship with Jobs (whom you can tell she views a bit as the kid brother she never had and is constantly doting upon/scolding), though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that her accent-work needed some help.  These two are the best part of the movie by a country mile.

The writing is a conundrum for me.  I have long ago realized that Aaron Sorkin is an acquired taste, but occasionally even he needs to reign himself in, and his fast-talking, hyper-intelligent creations are frequently their own worst enemy.  Sorkin, despite his protestations, is not great at writing women (evidenced by the Winslet comments above), and in particular this shows with Jobs' daughter Lisa, who in the third act is unfortunately saddled with a series of mood swings that completely betray his previous precocious attitudes toward her (plus, no woman born in the tail-end of the Carter administration could spout a Judy Jetson-style zinger with that much ease).  However, the entire third act is a mess, with Wozniak, Sculley, and Lisa all coming to Jobs to try and gain absolution, and all are granted it by him with a handsomely-wrapped bow.  The reality is that this happens with almost no real indication as to why (after all, he had been on the cusp of a great new moment in technology multiple times before and failed-the character himself couldn't have known the iMac would revolutionize the PC), since he's still a prick who has purposefully prioritized his career over personal relationships and family.  The fact that Sorkin ended with a sloppily-tied-together "happy family moment" ending is appalling and cringeworthy, and really disregards most of his previous moments with Jobs.  The ending of this film, based on the first ninety minutes, should have little to do with his daughter and more to do with his professional vindication despite a constant barrage of personal failures.  The fact that the final scene is him lovingly looking at a girl he barely knows feels like something a studio executive demanded, but it reeks of lousy writing and a directorial choice beneath what Boyle/Sorkin pulled together in the stellar first two-thirds.

I hate poor endings to movies, and part of me wants to go with two stars just because the film left me with such a bitter taste in my mouth, but I'll relent and go with three based on the excellence coming from Fassbender and Winslet.  Overall, though, I left disappointed and wishing that the man who brought us something so extraordinary in The Social Network had better stepped up to the plate.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Film: The Bourne Identity (2002)
Stars: Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Clive Owen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Julia Stiles
Director: Doug Liman
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Matt Damon is a constant reminder to me that I'm getting older.  I actually remember when Matt Damon became famous.  I remember watching him in School Ties and having "stirrings" (I believe it was the first time I ever saw a guy naked, something we almost all do for the first time at the movies).  I remember when he was nominated for an Oscar and became a bona fide movie star.  No other actor do I remember this evolution more fully for than Matt Damon and so every movie I see him in I realize I'm getting a little bit older (Matt's still got it, however, and still does give me stirrings).  For some reason I never got around to what has become Damon's quintessential non-Will Hunting role, however, which is Jason Bourne, a role he played to great acclaim throughout the Aughts.  As I start to finish up the 2007 Oscar nominees and get eventually to The Bourne Ultimatum (that extremely rare sequel that wins Oscars despite no nominations for its two predecessors) I will be rectifying this situation, and did with this film, yet another movie star turn filled with a strong performance by my constant time capsule.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts with one of the oldest tropes in action movies, the man lost without an identity.  Here it's Damon's Jason Bourne, a deadly assassin that is ready for anything that people throw at him, except he doesn't know why he's randomly been found floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.  The first thirty minutes, quite frankly, are kind of ridiculous and the plot is relatively easy to follow.  Because the film doesn't seem to have been made with a clear sequel in mind, we get an interestingly loose script, one that allows for a lot of hanging plots but they kind of work.  Action movies usually suffer when they explain too much (this is actually true of almost all movies-mystery is an asset that they have a firmer grasp upon than television), and the reasons for his assassin program, and his entire history are largely forgotten in the film.  Had the movie never had sequels that I'm guessing will basically explain an origin story, Jason Bourne would have been a character that just sort of existed in an obsessive fanfictionable bubble, like Hannibal Lecter or the Wicked Witch of the West.  Not a bad way to go.

Of course Bourne eventually created a much larger franchise so I suspect the latter movies will burst that bubble, but this sort of translucent approach to the plot actually helps the story quite a bit, and keeps you guessing.  The central love story is fascinating primarily because of a key casting choice, putting Franka Potente in the lead instead of Julia Stiles.  Potente, most famous for her work in Run Lola Run, is a fun and earthy actress, someone who seems genuinely lost in her life and I liked the organic feel of her performance, but the laws of Hollywood clearly would have dictated that Stiles, then a true movie star, would have gotten the lead; after all, she'd headlined two mid-level hits and is blonde/American.  The fact that her character just sort of is there, keeping us completely on our toes, works in a way I wasn't expecting.  The performance isn't good, it's barely existent, but it's a red herring that actually threw me off in the movie, and that's rare in cinema after all of these years.

It's these sorts of touches that elevate what is essentially a pretty basic action story.  Damon is great and charming and sexy, but he's always great and charming and sexy, and he's better at movie star roles than serious acting like Invictus.  I loved the sort of random creations that exist on the sidelines like Clive Owen's assassin or Brian Cox's high-level diplomat who is over his head.  The film runs on cliche and predictability, but it has personality and occasionally knows that it needs to veer just a little bit left instead of right to keep us guessing.  All-in-all it's not a masterpiece, but it's definitely a movie you come back to for the sequel.

And those are my thoughts on The Bourne Identity, the first of three Bourne reviews I will be sending your way in the next two weeks.  What are your thoughts on this film?  Are you a fan of Matt Damon (and not just for the stirrings)?  Am I in for a treat as the series progresses?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Pan (2015)

Film: Pan (2015)
Stars: Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Adeel Akhtar, Amanda Seyfried
Director: Joe Wright
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Yes, I had read the reviews, and I still went in anyway.  I have loved JM Barrie's story about the boy who doesn't grow up since I was a kid, and that love has grown through the year's, what with PJ Hogan's masterpiece in 2003 (if you haven't seen it, get thyself to thy Netflix queue) and just generally how the story has so many classic elements.  As a result, with actors like Garrett Hedlund and Rooney Mara, brilliant director Joe Wright, and the Pan lore, I couldn't miss this movie even with its giant splat of a tomato over on RT.  That was clearly a faulty logic considering what I ended up viewing, but there it is.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film has so many problems it's hard to know where to begin.  I think what might be the first and worst problem is the beginning.  The Peter (Miller) here is pretty nondescript, and not someone with any sort of real personality, which is sort of appropriate-Peter Pan is not known for being one of your deeper protagonists.  However it shows when you put him center stage and not Wendy, so thoughtful and full of contradictions.  Peter here is seen as an imp, but considering he's under the control of a cruel pirate nun (it comes across as ridiculously as it sounds in what is surely the worst portion of the film, though that's not for a lack of competition) it's seen as totally justifiable.  After the nun sells the boys to the pirate Blackbeard (Jackman), things get even weirder.

It must be discussed, since it's arguably the sequence that people have eye-rolled the most over, but the entire Nirvana/Ramones scenes are just terribly bad.  I'm not sure if Joe Wright spent too much time watching Mad Max, but I don't get why we had an elaborately-staged musical scene in a film with almost no other musical scenes, in the middle of the movie where Jackman and all of the Lost Boys perform Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" like we've just entered the Thunderdome.  Did Wright not realize that we would be getting another Mad Max movie this summer that would clearly make this parallel not only ridiculous but also people would pick up on it?  Either way, the entire scene is jarring in a bad way and doesn't jive with the rest of the film, and sort of puts you off of Jackman's Blackbeard during his very first scene.  While admittedly I am not nor have I ever been a Hugh Jackman fan, Daniel Day-Lewis himself could not sell this scene.

Jackman's performance is appropriately hammy given its nature, though it never finds the calculating brilliance that Jason Isaacs brought to Hook in 2003's Hogan adaptation (again, I would have nominated him for an Oscar that year-for real).  While Isaacs played his character as a cartoonish human, Jackman just goes full-on cartoon, a narcissist who doesn't really play on his narcissism, who is willing to ruthlessly dig up Neverland just to extend his rather pointless seeming life.  He isn't aided by much else in the film though.  We have Rooney Mara eyeing the racism line pretty hard as Princess Tigerlily.  While she never explicitly is stated as being a Native American, her father clearly is and considering Mara is white in real life, I feel like the filmmakers made a grave mistake here not casting an actual Native American actress to play the role (which PJ Hogan did #justsaying).  Mara's performance, like a lot of her work, is pretty hit-and-miss here (click the tag below for my complicated history with the admittedly-talented but not always consistent Oscar nominee), as she plays the role as too straight and kind of boring.  Garrett Hedlund, an actor I more consistently admire and follow, isn't much better, especially in earlier scenes where he seems to go from zero to ninety in terms of Captain Hook's lunacy.  The script does him no favors in this regard, it's worth noting; despite us knowing him as the future nemesis of Peter Pan, we get very few hints aside from fourth wall-breaking winks as to why Hook would eventually come to despite Peter.  Instead we get a horny, cranky, and manic piece-of-work from the actor, and the entire time I just kept thinking "but he was SO good in On the Road!"

The production work is sort of in the vein of How the Grinch Stole Christmas-there's so much of it that you want to think it's good, but in reality it's mostly gaudy and awful.  The steampunk design of the clothes is the sort of costume work that is showy, and maybe even wins accolades, but it doesn't fit with the film's motif, particularly when you compare it to the docile World War II sequences and the Hook-inspired Tigerlily and her tribe.  The Visual Effects are also bloated and gross-the Neverbird in particular is a weird creature, one you can't tell if it's good or evil, but just that it looks like the creature from Up!.  All-in-all even the visuals, which should have been a silver lining, are atrocious.

All-in-all then this is a failure.  I would normally bemoan this fact since Peter Pan is such a wonderful story, but as I've pointed out several times this has already been done, and quite well, by PJ Hogan so we have a definitive version of this tale.  Apparently we also needed a prequel for some reason, or so some now-fired studio executive thought.

Ranting On...Awards Snubs

The never-nominated Mia Farrow

Snub is a word that gets thrown around a lot regarding award shows, and it's one that I frequently use.  After all a big part of the fun of awards shows is around cheering for your victors and agonizing over a specific nominee that you were dying to get into the race or that you wanted to win.  However, I frequently feel that the term 'snub' is thrown around way too often.  Entertainment Weekly, in particular, has made a career out of bludgeoning the word to within an inch of its life, frequently doing slideshows of thirty or more snubs after awards are announced, and one of my great pet peeves in this scenario is that, well, every single quality person can't be nominated, otherwise it wouldn't be an honor.  You can't list five people who were snubbed for Best Actor but still want the men in the lineup nominated-there's five slots, so it only really qualifies as a "snub" if you would nominate the person or give the person the trophy, and would be willing to throw out a different nominee, as well as all but four other potential nominees.  This sort of defense of awards show is why I started the Oscar Viewing Project, as I wanted to see if I made the same mistakes of "snubbing" certain people and films because there's only a finite amount of accolades, especially when you consider certain film years are better than others.

This is a particularly galling problem when people discuss winners, of course-everyone thinks that X, Y, and Z actors should win, but the reality is that unless you can name a specific performance that was the better of everyone else that year, your argument doesn't hold water.  However, I think it's more interesting when you talk about who the most snubbed actor who has never been nominated is (we're sticking to actors, though any aspect of film works for this conversation and the comments are there for a reason, and if you want to go with directors or what have you know I will join you) at the Oscars.  I've written multiple articles about this, scientifically showing how Jim Carrey and Mia Farrow top the list if you look at the Globes while Mia Farrow and Dirk Bogarde are tops if you look at the BAFTA Awards.  However, it gets more complicated than that if you look instead at the larger picture of who should have been nominated the most but never made the cut.

The reality is when people crow about actors, particularly actors who have never been nominated for the Oscars, they don't really go at it with a specific performance in mind that was snubbed, and state who shouldn't have made it and how the "snubbed" was better than every other potential contender for the nomination.  I actually googled quite a few articles about actors who should have been nominated, and a lot of them laundry listed every single film that the actor made that might be sort of good, but hardly is it representative of what was clearly one of the year's five best performances.  In theory you might think that, say, Ewan McGregor deserves a nomination but you raise an eyebrow when someone lists The Impossible as one of the films he could have been nominated.  John Cusack hasn't done anything in his career to win a nomination for a specific performance, but he frequently shows up on these lists because he's the rare male movie star to never win an Oscar nomination.  Collectively, yes, they both might deserve mention (and McGregor probably did for Moulin Rouge!), but you saturate your point if you list every good film the person made because that's entering Entertainment Weekly territory in terms of "everything's a snub."

The reality is that most actors only turn in a handful of performances that are truly one of the year's five best if you get objective about it, and that includes actors who do get nominated (I haven't done the math completely on it, but I don't think I'd nominate any actor into the double digits for the Oscars, including Meryl Streep though she and Nicholson might be close), but there are few actors who have never been nominated who have actually deserved multiple nominations.  Someone like Mia Farrow, arguably the pinnacle of the "she never got an Oscar nomination?!?" conversation is part of the list of people who clearly deserved one nomination, and maybe two, but I think we wouldn't hear a peep about Farrow's lack of inclusion if she'd been simply nominated for Rosemary's Baby and never was cited again.  Farrow may have five Globe nominations, many of them for Woody Allen movies, but while you might have one favorite that you'd include, by-and-large if she was nominated for Rosemary's Baby you wouldn't hear too many complaints here.  One-and-done is not completely egregious for Farrow.  The same can be said for Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, and Donald Sutherland, the latter of whom it's actually questionable where he would have gotten the nomination (Ordinary People? MASH? JFK?-those are pretty strong lineups without him in the conversation).  One nomination would seem fine for these guys.

It's actually a pretty short list of actors whom I can think of who have never been nominated that even clearly deserved two citations.  Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation and Under the Skin), Jim Carrey (The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Peter Lorre (M and The Maltese Falcon) are about it.  Honestly you'd have to go to foreign actors who don't work in English primarily to find someone whom I'd nominate three times without an issue, and even then legends like Jeanne Moreau and Gong Li are stacking up against some steep odds.  All of this is to say that the snub categorization is pretty wrong in my opinion-there are hundreds of movies released a year around the world, and only five get to make it on the nomination list, so some great performances are going to get left in the dust.  While I understand the idea that the Academy and other awards bodies should pay more attention and I wish they wouldn't just knee-jerk nominate certain people (sorry Meryl, but even you know it's true), the reality is that snubs, especially for long-neglected actors, aren't as common as you may think and before you groan about a Richard Gere or a Hugh Grant never being nominated, make sure you come armed with whom you're cutting from the lineup.