The Sky is Falling!

By Aaron 10/28/2007

A one armed man, diamonds, grave robbing, hijackers, prison breaks, carrier pigeons, and windmills. Sound exciting? You bet – episode four of Pushing Daisies crams in the action now that back-stories are established and characters’ personalities have been fleshed out.

“The case” this week is discovered when The Piemaker’s crew is outside the pie shop and Ned revives a dead pigeon which flies up into a plane that crashes into a building. Anxious to cash in on a possible crime while business has been slow, Emerson rushes the team up to the scene of the crime where the police have examined the body of the dead pilot and concluded it was suicide. Luckily for Emerson’s wallet the widow does not agree and Emerson sees green.

While there, Chuck trips and Ned has to watch helplessly as she falls because he cannot catch her. Thankfully for Chuck’s sake, the owner of the apartment where the plane crashed is able to catch her. Chuck’s eyes light up and she leaves Ned and Emerson to talk to the dead guy so she can go have coffee with the new guy. Ned is shocked by Chuck’s quick abandonment of the team she so adamantly wanted to be a part of so she could have coffee with some new guy. To make matters worse, Ned is all upset that he can never hold Chuck, or catch her, something he runs over and over in his head – and to Emerson’s annoyance, to Emerson as well.

Meanwhile, Olive has deduced that Chuck is the Aunts’ ward, and that Chuck must have faked her own death. Olive personally brings pies to the Aunts’ house so she can scheme Chuck’s downfall. She tries to get the Aunts to come to the pie shop they would see Chuck, but the Aunts are reluctant to leave. That is when Olive decides to share a quest with the Aunts to find the owner of the dead carrier pigeon Ned brought back to life – and left in Olive’s control. Olive’s intentions being not only her curiosity about the message, but as an end goal to get the Aunts to go to the pie shop. When the quest to find the owner of the pigeon means Olive and Chuck’s paths cross, will Olive reveal Chuck to the Aunts?

The show is picking up speed and really milking the sexual tension between Ned and Chuck. They seem to be more and more in love as the show goes on – but they certainly have no way around the “no sex” issue and when that becomes an issue Ned might be in trouble.

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.