SNSD & music videos

The Boys, from best: The Boys I like. It is really unoriginal, and some of the chanting which is reminiscent of Telephone/Hollaback Girl is a bit dumb. I’m glad to understand the lyrics for once; they’re not quite as terrible as some of their other songs, even if they still have simplistic juvenile undertones. The video h/as really pretty snow and flowers. The girls look good when dancing in a group; the dancing itself is pretty good, though the later parts are totally from Bring It On. Best choice for the lead single given what else there is…

Trick sounds good the majority of the time, but sometimes it bugs me. And I suspect the former is when the production overwhelms the vocals; likely not a good sign.

Lazy Girl is kinda fun; I am mostly interested in their singing the title, though the part with that at the end’s annoying. The vocals are kinda off and it’s a bit repetitive.

Oscar I like the title. Some total shrieking esp in the bridge brings down an ok song.

Telepathy is ok, though it likely is even at that level because I was amused by “telepassy” and then I felt bad about it. Forgettable otherwise…well exc some whiny parts.

Say Yes If Kelly Clarkson needlessly stretching syllables doesn’t work, neither does SNSD doing the same. It sounds vaguely Disney Channel. Can they have a song w/o any shrieking? It’s like Glee’s Mercedes up in here. I say no.

Top Secret is ok tho short & w/some bad pronunciation & w/a bad talking part.

My J It starts meh. It somewhat improves sometimes but sometimes does not. I got bored before the end.

How Great is Your Love Bored now.

Sunflower is beyond dull.

Vitamin fails.

Well, there’s also a translation of Mr. Taxi, which is a great song though better in Japanese.

They usually have one single per release, but if they go w/2 I guess Trick would be a non-bad choice? The album cover’s bad too; only Yoona looks kinda good. Well, this isn’t as much of a disappointment as Kelly Clarkson’s album but I had higher expectations from her. Though her one noteworthy song is awesome, which The Boys is not.

Criminal’s music video is great. It’s not amazeballs, but the imagery is beautiful, she looks beautiful, and the concept while not original is executed well. It’s also slightly unexpected given the lyrics which is nice. I’m glad that this is her best video era ever for her most successful radio era ever and her best album ever (Rolling Stone & EW agree with me, so there.). # of vids I really liked from previous Brit albums: 2, 2.5, maybe 1, 2, 1, 2. 4.25/5

We Found Love’s music video is interesting with nice imagery, but I don’t like the casting and it doesn’t make me like the song any more; it’s really repetitive and unoriginal, with some nice sounds coming from Harris. 3.5/5

The 5 Oscar triple winners (Dir/Actor/Actress or 3 acting awards)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Nicholson hamming his way to an Oscar by being an annoying a-hole who just doesn’t know when to stop. Fletcher was just kind of there. Dourif was mostly one-note. The movie feels longer than it is. 2/5

It Happened One Night On the enjoyable side, even though I don’t see why Colbert would fall for Gable given the way he treats her. I will say I laughed out loud…I think twice? Definitely once after their fake fight. I’m happy that they end up together, though we don’t even get to see the actors do a reconciliation scene. Like people say it does feel ahead of its time. It’s a decent choice for the first Big Five winner, better than the other 2, though I think if it had lost Best Actor then the amazing Gone with the Wind would be a Big 5 winner instead. 3.25/5

Silence of the Lambs is surprisingly blah. Foster was blah. The supporting cast was blah. I wasn’t scared. The writing was somewhat interesting, but it felt like a supersized episode of some police procedural. Hopkins is arguably great in a totally supporting role, but I suppose there weren’t many choices. The competitors were mostly (at least eventual) Oscar winners in meh role. Of course one BP nominee had a great cast but they were obviously miles away from Oscar noms because it was “just voice work.” I did watch it the whole way through, so I suppose it sufficiently captured my interest. 2.25/5

Network is decent but I mostly just liked the Dunaway parts and she was better when directed by Katy Perry’s uncle in a somewhat similar role. Maybe I’m ageist against old men movies. I did enjoy the commentary on television, though it wasn’t brilliant or scintillating. Beatty and Holden were histrionic and bugged me. The non-nominated actors were mostly blah. Straight was great in her tiny role and the Academy ignoring the underage hooker was good as it let Foster keep a lower profile before her big comeback as an adult, and she has two lead Oscars now – more than, say, Meryl Streep. Oh, Finch was okay too; he was kinda likable, his award was posthumous, and the Academy I suspect had Rocky as a second choice given its Pic win. 2.75/5

Streetcar Named Desire is anchored by 2 amazing lead performances, a quite good Hunter, and a mostly unmemorable Malden exc for his mean scene though the competition was whatever and he later lost for Waterfront, so it’s cool. Plus otherwise Network would be the only one with 3 acting Oscars; even though this movie deserves its 3 for another set of actors, I understand why they didn’t want to make Brando the youngest winner ever. I have more to say, but it’s worth its own post, when I get to it. 4.5/5

Some Unsatisfactory Books

Adults/Allison Espach: I think I felt like I had to read this book just because I’d wanted to months ago but could never find it. I expected a well-written novel of manners, relatively enjoyable but a bit on the cold side. That’s more or less what I got, though the writing wasn’t quite as good as I expected, and it was more of a coming of age story. Though the storytelling is a bit weird; time jumps before tracking back were gratuitous, and the characters felt pretty flat and unreal, obviously constructions in a novel rather than feeling like people. I was a bit bored sometimes but at those moments I would quickly skim through pages before the pace picked back up. There’s not really a “point” to the book, and there weren’t any passages that really popped out at me, nor any particularly original sentiments/ideas/plot strands. I wouldn’t say I regret reading this, so there’s that, but I don’t know who I would recommend this to either. 2/5

Q/Evan Mandery So stupid. I have a strong feeling that I may have been intrigued primarily by its unoriginal concept’s similarity to an episode of the best show, Buffy (“Hell’s Bells”). Neurotic, annoying, and there are minor details left unexplained. I kept with it hoping the story would go somewhere, but it does not. Tangents annoy. The second half is ridiculous and does not hold up to the cool premise. The main character is boring and his novel/story ideas sound really dull to match him. Yes, the protagonist is a writer, so meta out the wazoo. But referencing your writing as bad and pointing out flaws that are not corrected does not make it any less bad. The prologue is the best part of the book, quickly painting a believable love story featuring characters that a reader would want to get to know better. It’s almost as if he wrote a short story then decided he would improve slash butcher it by turning it into a time travel novel. I usually read the first then last chapter of a book before deciding if I should read it. I do not know why I did not do this, but this book reaffirmed for me the wisdom of doing so as I would not have wasted time in such a way. However, he’s not altogether a bad writer. His other book First Contact shows definite potential; it mixes genres much more fluidly and has much more sympathetic characters. Both reference both Hitchhiker’s Guide and Woody Allen, and as I read the former I can see that the tangents used are supposed to be in the same vein but they just do not work. They are uninteresting and don’t move the plot or say much about the characters. 0.75/5

Liesl & Po Lauren Oliver’s first two books are on the great side. This book is not. I mean, maybe my standards are too high for a children’s book, but children’s books can be magical and awesome just the way adult books can. But when the characters are types rather than being fleshed out with personalities, the ending is nonsensical and contrived to wrap things up quickly, and it feels like you’re waiting during the whole book for something to finally happen, that’s not so good. Similar to The Night Circus, the book does capture a fairy-tale feeling well. The way Oliver conceives the afterlife is interesting, if a bit on the cutesy side. The illustrations are nice. The feeling of sadness is captured relatively well. I was just more bored than I should have been given how quickly the book ends. 2/5

Movies I Recently Watched

Rebecca: In the courtship phase especially, I find the 2 main characters annoying and the story boring, which really makes one accurately anticipate the level of quality for the rest of the movie (Well okay it is less boring.). He looks way too old, and she looks kinda old; this isn’t actually pertinent, but I really don’t have much to say about their boring performances, esp Oliver who I feel was miscast rather than just being lazy. I wanted it get to Judith Anderson – rightfully considered one of the best supporting perfs ever, esp in her 2 crazy monologues to the second Mrs. De Winter. Sanders is also great. One of the best supporting pairings I’ve seen, though I don’t mind their losses (or, you know, non-nom) too badly since Anderson got the E&T of the EGOT to keep her company and Sanders won for his even better performance in Eve. 2.5/5

Sunrise: I found this okay. I probably would like it better if I understood more about film. The acting is…well, the two women’s I found relatively good. I got what they were serving. The guy’s not as much. The story is fairly interesting and attention-keeping. The music and titles were nice and I was impressed with the visuals esp given the time period. But the most exciting thing about the movie was that I could add pretension points from watching one of the Silent Classics esp since I DID enjoy it more than many recent Oscar winners. It’s just not really my cup of tea. 2.5/5

Mommie Dearest: My credibility probably isn’t particularly strong if I say I prefer Mommie Dearest to Sunrise, but I do. It’s a camp classic, yes, because of the completely OTT performance by Dunaway with all the screaming and such lines as “No wire hangers EVER” but the performance is actually genuinely good, nay, great. Her Oscar-winning performance in Network is kinda a preparation for this role which is more of all the factors I enjoyed in her Network performance, plus she’s much more the center of this film. And it was fun to combine what I knew about Crawford with things I learned from the film. My favorite non-tantrum/breakdown scene, for example, was when Crawford found out she’d won the Oscar , which was the most likely scenario since the only other actress in a BP nominee was Bergman who’d won the year before over Stanwyck’s legendary performance after being labeled box office poison which makes for a great narrative esp for Mildred Pierce being her first nom at her age. Ooh plus the scene rehearsed of the best scene from Mildred Pierce, the Veda slap. I’ll even go as far to say that Dunaway is more fun and impressive to watch in this movie than Joan Crawford is in her Oscar-winning turn. Better than most Actress winners I’ve seen, really. Maybe I’m just a sucker for performances which involve the Most acting rather than the best, but I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be with Elizabeth Taylor in Virginia Woolf; there, the screaming seemed somewhat artificial and a way to convince us through loudness that she was acting really well as Martha. Dunaway’s screaming jags felt more natural, more like Dunaway actually became Crawford. Oh I haven’t really said anything about the rest of the movie…well, it’s there to provide scenery for Dunaway to gloriously chew. The later parts reminded me of All About Eve a bit in that we’re forced to deal with the younger actress take up the screen more often than the much, much better real star. But Scarwid while okay as an actress like Baxter didn’t have Awesome George Sanders to play off of, or an interesting character (if less so because of Baxter) or good (well, amazing in the case of Eve) writing. This is one of those movies that is carried by a truly great performer who really elevates everything, and without her the movie would be ridiculous and/or forgettable. But she is there, so 3.75/5

Heathers: I don’t see the big deal about this movie. It’s supposed to be a teen classic and Mean Girls is supposed to be a wannabe inferior version of it. But there are almost no quotable lines, the acting is pedestrian (I don’t see how Winona Ryder is a multiple Oscar nominee.), the characters are boringly unlikable, I was barely amused yet alone laughing and it’s not because it was too dark as I couldn’t properly suspend my disbelief to be disturbed…I guess I appreciate things in the media that it helped influence though. Like Mean Girls, or the Ashleys on Recess. Oh I did like Doherty but there wasn’t enough of her. 1/5

Gillian Anderson: Bleak House/of Mirth

I love the book House of Mirth, but the casting was on the atrocious side. Most of the performers are dull and/or annoying. The most disappointing was 3x Oscar nominee & 3x Emmy winner Laura Linney who seemed exactly like an actress in 2000 putting on an affected unrealistic accent. The most important was Lawrence Selden’s actor who was supposed to be so charming that women fell all over him despite his lack of wealth; he too dully annoyed me. I’ll say that Gillian Anderson, who was amazing in Bleak House, could be great in terms of facial/emotional expression and far surpassed the others in the movie, but I didn’t feel that her voice was quite right and I wasn’t able to fully sympathize with Lily. The way Wharton wrote Lily, despite her failings and errors, I was always on her side and could more or less understand the decisions she made. Anderson’s Lily often came off to me as stupid (and perhaps a bit too old), and with basically no other decent actors to play off of and an average script, she doesn’t have much to work with at all. 1.5/5

Bleak House: What a freaking strong ensemble. Anderson is amazing…I don’t remember the un-famous actors’ names, but of the others with nominations, Tulkinghorn’s actor is great-to-excellent, Esther is great, John Jaryndyce is good-to-great. Others who are good-to-great are Caddy, Woodcourt, Rosa, and Charley, while most of the rest are good. Carey Mulligan and Richard are dull and take up too much time, but I blame that on undeserving Oscar nominee Mulligan. Only Smallweed and Hortense actively annoy me, but it’s relatively easy to skip past the few parts in which they don’t have stronger actors to elevate them. In terms of the sheer number of actors deserving of awards attention, few things I’ve watched match this. Angels in America by focusing on 8 actors gives each more time to shine I suppose, but it has its actively annoying element in Thompson and dullness in Louis. A Streetcar Named Desire, I don’t see how Malden got his Oscar by being just okay most of the time; he had one scene that was even memorable. Hunter was consistent but didn’t wow me at any time. All About Eve boasts amazingness from Davis and Sanders, and some greatness from Ritter in an undeveloped role, but the rest of them are best described as serviceable. Anyway, it is greatness. 4.5/5

Plays

Tony sweeps

Real Thing dull w/some smart meta pretension. I really don’t see how this is the play with the material get 2 lead and one sup Tonys in a year (and 2 lead Tonys for its revival). I barely even remember Charlotte, and I guess it is clever to talk at length about plays in a play – certainly it worked wonders in some of Shakespeare’s. But it was a slog. 1.25/5

Fences inert plot w/OTT jerk hero but Davis’ role (more obviously supporting than in The Help) salvages esp w/2 awardsbait monologues. The other supporting characters bored and were mostly drowned out by Troy; I can see why given Denzel’s movie acting style the Drama Desks declined to even nominate him. 1.75/5

Virginia Woolf uneven w/1 actor/character each who’s great/good/ok/bad. The screen was better off when Dennis was silent and Burton talked over the somewhat boring Segal who reminded me of Peppard in Tiffany’s. Taylor seemed to rely a bit too much on histrionic yelling and her performance didn’t feel particularly spontaneous as the character seems to be; her crying jag at the end while possibly her best-acted scene doesn’t feel quite earned given how she plays her character previously. Burton’s is one of the best male perfs ever, but given the choice of 2 recent Actor Tony winning roles the Academy would go with the one who did it on Broadway too. 3.25/5

Overall awards sweeps

Angels in America amazing esp Parker/Streep but w/many ridiculous chunks esp suck Thompson. I’ve seen this multiple times but I find that the best way to enjoy it is to just skip all of Thompson’s scenes; the whole angels thing while giving the title to the play gets more absurd and over the top each time I watch it. Oh, the epilogue part is also really unrealistic and tacked-on but it is effective in heartstring-pulling from being inspiring, so yay I guess. A fascinating dynamic I wish we could have gotten more of is Parker meeting Kirk. But we did plenty of Streep/Parker and Streep/Kirk to make up for it, each showing a different aspect of the characters vs. in the other parts of the play. Emmy winner Wright I enjoyed most with Parker; his relationship with Kirk while possessing the correct lived-in feel didn’t feel dynamic or original, and Shenkman’s character is supposed to be annoying so he is. Oh, and Pacino while he’s good at overpowering his screen partners doesn’t really help their performances. Except of course Streep is more awesome and more than holds her own opposite him with her approach being to give those in her scenes more incentive to shine, it feels. Even Thompson is slightly tolerable in her scene with Streep. Wilson is somewhat dull but it really works for his character, given his self-repression, and I thought the ending was really unfair to him; plus he looks really good opposite Shenkman given their contrasting approaches. Kirk outshines but is also dragged down by the two actors most central to his storyline; I also don’t see why someone like him would even go for Shenkman’s character. 4.5/5

Doubt OTT hamming inc Streep exc Davis. I’m glad Kate Winslet was around to get her overdue Oscar and prevent Streep from having her 2 lead Oscars be Sophie’s Choice and…this. Though maybe if Davis had won, we would have gotten a la Zellweger/Kidman a next-year-makeup for Cruz in Broken Embraces instead of Sandra Bullock being tied for lead Oscars with Meryl Streep. And then this year would be clear for Streep…hopefully her Thatcher is amazing anyway. Of course Legend Ledger was around to provide a legendary performance and cut off PSH’s role which won the LEAD Tony. 2.5/5

August Osage County good w/great scenery-chewing actressing roles esp Streep’s…yes, the queen’s in the adaptations of all the Drama Desk/Tony/Pulitzer winning plays. If Meryl Streep loses this year, it feels like this could do the trick esp with her Crumbling Marriage Therapy Movie and Tina Fey comedy looming like Winslet with Revolutionary Road or Penn with 21 Grams. It’s the actressing-est play ever based on the Tonys, after she’s just played a legendary figure, and Tony Actress winning roles have more overlap with Oscar Actress winning roles than the other 3 categories combined. And ever since the Baftas ended a decade and a half of ignoring Meryl Streep and letting her re-enter winner’s contention, she’s been building momentum more and more – losing against a first-time nominee with arguable category fraud, losing for the film that made her a rare bankable older star, losing against an even more overdue actress because the Academy didn’t buy into Winslet’s category fraud, and losing against…Sandra Bullock (though, yes, she was in half a comedy and J&J didn’t get nominated much otherwise). Her co-star is also Best Actress winner Julia Roberts who I’m guessing will be pushed supporting which I would not mind esp since I don’t see the Oscars being bowled over by 2 old actresses in the same year (Streep’s sister’s role won the Sup Tony.). It does feel a bit like too much of the “comedy” is shock factor at old-ish women cursing and being vulgar but the Academy should feel that Streep’s being Brave in a Serious work. 3.5/5

Other Recent Reads

Ondine is pretty irritating, both the play and the character. Overall I prefer Medea’s approach to the issue Ondine faces. She kinda reminds me of Sabrina Fairchild, although Audrey managed to use her immense charm and talent to make me like Sabrina so if there’d been an Ondine movie I’m guessing I would have enjoyed her Tony-winning performance while finding the movie lacking, but that’s the way it is with most movies from my fave performers. The characters are dumb and the situations seem to be trying to be funnier than they are. And the emotion feels completely artificial. 0.75/5

The Medea monologues are obviously good for Actressing in their sad/mad melodrama (It's the only role in a play w/3 Tonys.), but a bit longwinded and repetitive to read without moving forward the story much – though like other plays of the like, most of the story is exposition about what’s happened previously. The only other notable role is Nurse, who while doing nothing for the vast majority of the play has two lengthy lamenting monologues at the beginning of it that I definitely can see being nom-worthy with the right actress, and nommed it was for both the Tony and Emmy when played by former Medea Judith Anderson. I wonder if Medea as a role would be as winning if the competition wasn’t so weak; the year a relative unknown won for it, the others were unknowns in plays that are pretty unknown. The year that stage legend Caldwell won, she was against movie stars in obscure-ish roles. And the year there was definitely another renowned actress in a plum role, there was a tie. The play itself, it’s okay; it does a decent job at telling the story. 2.25/5

A Doll's House Brilliant and incisive, astoundingly quick at establishing characterization, really uses the constraints of a play to its maximum potential to show a beautiful snapshot of the events of a small time frame. Nora is one of the best-written female characters in fiction; even though many novels spend hundreds of pages establishing theirs I can think of a number of the most celebrated that don't come to life as much as Nora does. I'd love to see a proper Oscar-y adaptation of it. The only actress that comes to mind to play her is Kate Winslet but that's largely because I love her...oh, maybe Elisabeth Moss fits the age range. She's excellent too. 4.75/5

The Help

This picture kind of illustrates what I like and dislike about the movie (actor/theme-wise).

I pretty much agree with the Metacritic rating of The Help: C+, for largely the same reasons. The film can be entertaining and well-crafted, but often it veers into condescension, schmaltz, and gratuitous slapstick. The writing is uneven, which may or may not be due to Stockett. The romantic plotline is useless; I think we can figure out that what Skeeter really cares about is her career from, you know, the movie. Oscar-placement-wise, I wonder if Emma Stone could in any way campaign supporting. She’s definitely gone for long stretches at a time; Viola Davis is the one who does the beginning/end/occasional middle narration. Viola Davis gets the most emotional arc and does a great job with it, but if she can be considered lead-borderline-supporting, I think Stone should be too. There have been plenty of more obvious lead roles that got supporting noms/wins and vice versa. ‘Course, there’s the question of whether Stone would get enough traction, but she did manage to be the only Globe nominee last year who wasn’t at least partially riding on the coattails of a previous Oscar nom. I suppose if she has no chance at a supporting Oscar nom, it would be simpler if she got a 2^nd lead Comedy/Musical Globe nom. Not that the film was funny, but it would obviously be much easier to get into categories and gain momentum if it’s campaigned as such. Previous Oscar nominees are theoretically aplenty in potential Globe nominees though: Davis, Foster/Winslet in a more egregiously labeled “comedy,” Theron, even if as usual the Oscar nominees should be drawn mostly from the drama field. 

Oh right, the actual movie. There are really only 5 characters that are up for discussion. Hilly is one-note evil, and Howard plays her as such; it’s not very interesting, and I know this is shallow but I like my queen bees to be prettier. Like Regina George says, “She’s not pretty. I know that sounds bad or whatever, but the spring fling queen is always pretty!” I will say that she’s better than Evan Rachel Wood in Mildred Pierce, a similarly spoiled evil princess. Chastain’s character is marginally more complex and created to be more likable obviously, but I found her annoying and Chastain’s performance was just there. Maybe one of her other million movies out this year boasts a stronger turn from her. Spencer…I don’t get the hype. Yes, she’s “sassy” in a stereotypical way; I don’t find her funny, I don’t find her sympathetic, and frankly I was bored when it was her storyline onscreen rather than Stone’s or Davis’s. I suppose she could be a scene-stealer since she’s, you know, the main character in her own storyline, oh wait that’s not a scene-stealer is it. It seems unfair that out of the 5, Stone is the least talked about as a possible Oscar nominee because either A) 3 supporting actresses for a movie has been done just once and it’d imply the movie has no lead, or B) if Davis is lead people would grumble about how Davis shouldn’t be a category up from Stone and how Stone reduced the chances of an actual supporting player (whether in or outside of this film). I’m not entirely convinced that Davis deserves a Lead Oscar for this performance; a supporting win, yes, a lead nom, yes. But she would certainly be a better choice than many others from the past (at least a handful from the last decade alone) and performances have won lead Oscars with less % of the screentime. She just doesn’t make me go “Yes, she Deserves a win” the way I went with Abbie Cornish (snubbed everywhere) and Michelle Williams (snagged that 5^th slot). I will be psyched if the movie gets a SAG ensemble nod since it would technically make Stone a Sag nominee. The music is blandly emotionally manipulative; it could have a bid. The costumes are nice I guess. Nothing particularly exciting happens in relation to directorial/cinematography decisions. For the greatness of the two main female performances this movie is worth watching, plus for others to make their judgments on one of the most Oscar ensemble actressing movies of the last decade. What’s the competition, really? Even The Hours for its having 3 female-led storylines had one of those nominated for its male actor instead of La Streep. And Chicago got a nom for Reilly and got traction at the Globes and such for Gere for lead. 

2.5/5 (Yes, that's a C+ for me.)