tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567168789336947243.post2973398772446846210..comments2024-02-25T09:45:48.931-05:00Comments on Lally's Alley: MY OSCAR GUESSES (UH…RUMINATIONS)Lallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05310472614196384595noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567168789336947243.post-42635614034598212222009-02-23T02:43:00.000-05:002009-02-23T02:43:00.000-05:00Just got through watching the Oscars this evening,...Just got through watching the Oscars this evening, and went to compare your picks with the real winners. You hit most of them right on the head.<BR/><BR/>My sense is that Slumdog is another one of those PC picks with "third world" traction which everyone seems to get excited about, just out of a sense of guilt, or curiosity, or whatever. Every two or three years some non-Western country manages to put something together, looking a little clunky and flat, and the academy falls all over it. I haven't seen it, and don't want to. Didn't they used to put all those into a basket category once upon a time, "best foreign language film" or something? Gee, I'm dumb about this stuff.<BR/><BR/>I was routing for Rourke, but that movie may have been too "B" to foreground what talent he still has left.<BR/><BR/>I haven't seen Milk, but my guess is I'd be disappointed in the choice of Penn for Best Actor. Ditto with Ledger, who if he had lived would certainly have gone on to other chances--hated to see Brolin miss it, but he too will have other nominations in the future. Ditto with Hoffman and Downey, though Hoffman's part as the priest was so suitable to his look and talents, one like that's not likely to come along again soon. <BR/><BR/>I'm looking forward to seeing Vicky Cristina, having just watched two other Allen films, Match Point and Scoop, in the last two weeks, both set in Britain, oddly. <BR/><BR/>Wall-E was a pleasant surprise. I have a deep sense of impatience with these new slick computer-animation movies, with their crass voices and hard-edged condescension. At least the old Disney stuff and cartoon shorts we grew up on were sweet and innocent; the new ones in the last 30 years have become almost like porn in their cynicism. But Wall-E made some kind of narrative sense, and didn't belittle its characters. The robots had real identities. Also, it parodied the "human" character traits--obesity, gullibility, vulnerability--and showed how dependent they had become on machines. That's something the new generation of techno-animator producers haven't had the guts to do: Denigrate technology. <BR/><BR/>I already feel Winslet is becoming over-familiar, that she'll peak too early and become complacent, the way so many pretty actresses do after a first series of successes. When she just sits quietly, she can look stunning, but when she starts to talk and grin and giggle, I tend to cower in embarrassment for her. Her face has that pleading upsidedown smile that used to be popular in the 1940's--imagine her with a long blonde wave, a husky drawl, and a "heavy" cigarette like Betty Bacall. Maybe she just suggests an overgrown teenager trying to fend off her prom date. Whatever, she just doesn't do it for me.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com