By Aaron 12/25/2007

Back to the madness. The Nicholas Cage/Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster National Treasure: Book of Secrets has nothing in common with the indie fave Juno, which makes their showdown all the more intense. Both movies had their own humor and their own modes of tension. As always, the rules are simple, Thunderdome rules: two movies enter, one movie leaves.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets is the sequel to the 2004 treasure hunting flick where Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage), Patrick Gates (Jon Voight), Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), and Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) found the templars’ treasure. In this flick, they set out to find a mythical treasure that will clear the name of the Gates’ ancestor, Thomas gates, accused of being the chief conspirator of the Lincoln assassination. Typical Disney fare ensues with mixed success. You can read my review here.

Juno follows 16-year old Juno (Ellen Page) who struggles with a surprise teen pregnancy after she attempted to end her boredom by sleeping with her friend Paulie (Michael Cera). Running from the abortion clinic and supported by her parents (Allison Janey and J.K. Simmons) and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirbley) decides to give her baby to a seemingly perfect couple anxious to adopt (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). But everything, and everyone is not as it seems. Along with a great soundtrack and a phenomenal script by first-timer Diablo Cody, this film easily jumps into the top year movies of the year. You can read my review here.

Challenge 1: Acting

Hopefully you did take the time to read my Juno review so I don’t have to repeat myself in raving about Ellen Page (she SHOULD win the Oscar, but likely won’t) and the rest of the perfectly cast actors in Juno. The actors in Treasure were not so much bad or good, but limited by a mediocre Disney script. While Jason Bartha does everything he can to give the movie heart and laughter, it just cannot topple the insurmountable powerhouse of the Reitman-Cody-Page juggernaut of Juno.

Treasure – 0; Juno – 1

Challenge 2: Directing

Does anyone know who directed Treasure? Nope. I could check, but my internet has been pretty slow lately. Pretty much whoever it was did a pretty average job. They took a Disney action flick and made it pretty good, and pretty entertaining. So you know, average marks. But you can better believe Jason Reitman worked his ass off to create a kick ass follow up to his already well directed Thank You For Smoking. Like I said at the end of the last category, and will likely say it again below, the Reitman-Cody-Page juggernaut of Juno is too much for the random Disney hack who churned out his run of the mill sequel.

Treasure – 0; Juno – 2

Challenge 3: Writing

Again I have previously addressed this – that the poor actors of Treasure – including some fine talents like Cage, Bartha and Keitel are sadly burdened by some random-ass Disney hack who churned this sucker out when he caught an entertaining Civil War segment on the history channel. At the very least, the amazing effort of Diablo Cody was going to stomp the shit out of him anyways. Her story is far and above better than the clichéd action fare of Treasure, being original in its genre (avoiding possible cliché pitfalls of teen dramas at nearly every turn) and being an overall entertaining story. Her dialogue is better than the few great lines Bartha is allowed to utter (or improv) as actors from Page to Janey dispense witticisms that would have shut Riley down fast.

Treasure – 0; Juno – 3

Challenge 4: Action

Treasure did do some things right – providing more, and better action than the original, albeit unrealistic and implausible, but action is action. The heists Gates has to pull off in the name of history and science are sharp and fun, aided by his side kicks Bartha and Kruger, they are entertaining and exciting. For Juno – I mean, they should just write this category off with a “who cares” glance – I mean Juno is exciting, and tense, and you’re worried about the characters, but the pace of the movie, and the feeling of the movie is not about “action” because real life doesn’t have “action” – normal people don’t break into the White House, or the Library of Congress, or find rooms full of gold.

Treasure – 1; Juno – 3

Challenge 5: Comedy

Let me help Treasure put up their petty defense of this category. Bartha is great in this movie – his Riley Poole is hilarious, and provides a funny side kick that is almost as good as Connery was in The Last Crusade. His timing is decent and his character as a whole is one you can connect to, which helps his comedy. Unfortunately for him, ALL of the characters in Juno are easy to connect too. And they’re a hell of a lot funnier and wittier. Connect the dots: all characters funny + connected to you = funnier movie. I mean, most readers probably skipped over this category – Juno is one of the funniest movies of the year!

Treasure – 1; Juno – 4

Challenge 6: Drama

Treasure went through the motions of a slightly above average Disney flick – and we all know how tense those are. I mean, did anyone REALLY think any of the Gates characters would die? I mean, Disney can’t let any of them die until they check their box office numbers and decide on how many sequels they’re going to make. The weak villains didn’t exactly make things super tense or suspenseful either. Juno on the other hand has several storylines that you wonder about: how will the pregnancy go, will she keep the baby, will she end up with Paulie, and so on. Plus, since the movie is so real, it’s a lot easier to be involved in the story, involved in the characters lives, something that is pretty hard to do when Gates casually busts into the Library of Congress.

Treasure – 1; Juno – 5

Challenge 7: Music

This category is almost as unfair as comedy. Juno even let Treasure take off the boxing gloves for this one and go bare handed but it wasn’t close. While Treasure tries hard to pull itself, scraping as all hell, into the same league as Indiana, Indiana had John Williams. Ben Gates, does not have John Williams. Ben Gates has…Breaking Benjamin and some other random hacks. Yawn. I mean, John Williams would have just been a starting point, a way to enter combat with their head held high. Juno on the other hand leaps into the ring with an armful of original lo-fi acts revolving around Kimya Dawson (solo, with Antsy Pants, and The Moldy Peaches). The rest of the crew are no slouches either, and Kimya’s down to earth, humorous lyrics and emotional feeling knock Treasure down pretty damn fast.

Treasure – 1; Juno – 6

Challenge 8: Entertainment

As it is pretty clear by now, Treasure is a little behind and a category like Entertainment can be pretty subjective here. What is entertaining? Explosions and action? Or witticisms and comedy? Oh yeah, it’s DISNEY action. And the sharpest humor I’ve ever seen in a movie. Wonder which one I’m going to go with here. Maybe this category wasn’t very fair either, as I said in my Juno review that Juno was one of the most satisfying movies I have ever seen.

Treasure – 1; Juno – 7

Challenge 9: Intangibles

Juno laid down her killer instinct for a second and considered not even coming back to the ring, just to let Treasure get one more category and escape anymore of the embarrassing bludgeoning Juno had been dishing. Then Juno remembered that Diane Kruger never really kissed Nic Cage and Michael Cera came up and patted Juno on the shoulder, prodding her to get back in the ring. I spoke several times about Juno’s triple threat, but the one-two-punch of Page-Cera, although not used that often, was plenty to take this category easily.

Treasure – 1; Juno – 8

Juno looked down at the bleeding Treasure, crying in it’s shame and Juno said, "Paulie’s cooler than you, you pathetic Disney action flick. But try to have a Merry Christmas – maybe you can soak that knee and nurse your bloody face."

 

Previous versus matchups

The Golden Compass v I Am Legend

Atonement v Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

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.