By Aaron 3/31/2008

You must be asking, what is this “shelf series”? I constantly find myself in conversations about why “x” movie is overrated, and “y” movie is underrated and I wanted to talk about them and hopefully spark some debate about whether the movie is truly overrated and underrated. This series had been in the back of my mind for a while, and hopefully I will follow this edition up more faithfully than I have my “Fanboys” series.

A comedy about fear of commitment, hating your job, falling in love and coming to terms with maturity. Sounds like the tagline of High Fidelity! Or maybe it’s the movie Scott Rosenberg wrote BEFORE High Fidelity. Beautiful Girls is a 1996 movie that stars Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman, Michael Rapaport, Natalie Portman, and Rosie O’Donnell in a movie where Willie (Timothy Hutton) goes back to his small hometown for his ten-year high school reunion.

While Mo (Noah Emmerich) is happily married with a bunch of kids, Tommy (Matt Dillon) is about to lose the woman he loves (Mira Sorvino) because he can’t move past his high school flame (Lauren Holly). Meanwhile Paul’s (Michael Rapaport) weird obsession with super models destroys his relationship with Jan, who Paul cannot get over. Willie is in a mid-mid-life crisis because his piano career has not taken off and he is unsure if he should marry his girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish). Willie gets more confused when he falls for Marty (Natalie Portman). Yes, since the movie was made in 1996, she was only fifteen, and she was playing a seventh grader. Instead of a weird Ryan Gosling or Michael Pitt turn, Marty’s youth serves more as a barrier that forces Willie to begin to come to grips with the problems he’s facing.

Summaries are boring. This movie is not. It packs a very powerful dramatic punch while also being very funny. Funny in the sense that there are everyday things we do that the movie draws attention to things everyone does but are funnier on film. One example is a great sequence when the guys contextualize their rating system for comparing girls and move from girls from their high school years to the porn stars of today (the girls aren’t connected but the guys seem to be just as familiar with the porn stars as with their old classmates). This is just one example of how the movie seizes onto great moments in life and seamlessly puts them onscreen. Generally, the story and feel of the movie is very entertaining and puts a big smile on my face every time I watch it.

The acting is also extremely high quality. Timothy Hutton shows just as much talent in this movie as he did in Ordinary People (what happened to this guy?) Natalie Portman, even as a kid, is VERY good – building on a great performance post-Leon and showing why she would be so successful ten years later. Another gem performance that stands out is Uma Thurman’s Andera, who despite little screen time has some great lines. Finally, and most surprising – Rosie is hysterical in this movie. Perhaps she is playing herself very well here, but she has great timing and delivery and for once I actually *gasp* kind of like her.

Now what is remarkable to me is just that NO ONE HAS SEEN THIS MOVIE! It gets me so angry. Look at that cast! It’s only ten years old! Why is it collecting dust? Turning up in Best Buy bargain bins? People turned Rosenberg’s other movies into cult-faves and while I won’t question their quality (in this article) this movie clearly stands out. It’s personality and emotion is almost unmatched. When I think of the perfect chick-flick comedy I think of this movie. It has everything you would expect of that genre but it has so much more. My point is that if you have to see this movie.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.