Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Link Abides

Fandango Top 10 Jeff Bridges performances. I'm glad The Door in the Floor is above Crazy Heart. That's when he shoulda won his career Oscar. I gave him the gold
Topless Robot
bizarre news of the week: someone is greenlighting another Chronicles of Riddick feature for Vin Diesel?
Hollywood Elsewhere even more bizarre but not exactly news: a rumor that Scorsese and von Trier may unite for a creative partnership involving, uh, Taxi Driver. I actually love this idea because I think as long as you aren't remaking but riffing on, it's all good. And creative partnerships can sometimes reinvigorate people.
Rob Salem
best couples on tv, with Modern Family's gay duo topping the list
Coming Soon Madonna has lined up her next directorial gig, and her Anglophilia is still showing
The Envelope a fun 'if i ran the Oscars' piece with Lloyd Kaufman (The Toxic Avenger)

Today's Must Read...



...or maybe it's 'must peruse' since there will be many articles. For the Love of Film, a blog-a-thon about film preservation has now begun. This one, hosted by Ferdy on Films and Self Styled Siren has been very well publicized and is sponsored by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Check it out. Whenever this topic comes up I get ugly angry that Hollywood doesn't funnel more of its vast wealth back into the preservation of their own artform. Take Avatar for example... should some of those billions go to saving some disintegrating silent?!
*

3 comments:

Danny King said...

I actually just watched The Big Lebowski tonight. I had some problems with the film overall, but loved Bridges' character. I have to catch up with so many of his previous films. I think Starman is on my schedule for tomorrow.

Iggy said...

This is off-topic but I wanted to comment about it and this seems to be the less inappropiate thread. So, sorry.

Last night I could finally sit through the whole Goya awards ceremony (with no breaks), and even though today analysts say it was a funny and entertaining show, I found it was one of the most boring awards show I've ever seen. I don't blame it on the host, who as expected is funnier in his show than here, but on the winners. My God, it seems as if realizing their speeches wouldn't be edited, they had agreed to name every single person they've ever met in their lives.

That said, the highlights of the night weren't so much on the winners but on the stars.

The first big surprise of the evening was the first public appearance together of Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem, sitting on the front row.

But the biggest surprise was kept for the end. Almodóvar appeared to give the BP award and brought down the house. First, he was received with a spontaneous standing ovation and then he got the biggest laughs from the audience with his speech about how he was convinced to join the show and a couple of self-deprecating jokes about him not winning and needing public attention.

Here's the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziex4QPTBw0

Other than that, Celda 211 won in the main categories as expected (even though people were predicting a sweep that didn't happen).
Personally, I'm happy that Agora took home 7 awards, most of them technical, but also the Best Original Screenplay. I think it's a movie that deserved more enthusiastic reviews. To me, it has the flavour of those old classic period movies that tell stories that aren't told anymore. Amenábar talent for different genres seems unlimited.

El secreto de sus ojos took home the Best Spanish Language Foreign Film (thus, beating The Milk of Sorrow)and the Female Breakthrough Performance award. And oddly enough Slumdog Millionaire won the Best European Film Award, which was presented by the hot German, born in Barcelona Daniel Brühl (the most underrated performer of IB, imo) in perfect Spanish.

Anonymous said...

Nice post, kind of drawn out though. Really good subject matter though.