It's an honor...

Just to be nominated for a LAMMY!!!  Thank you so much to anyone who voted for Insight into Entertainment.  Please vote starting tomorrow!

Best Running Feature: Wednesday's Movie Mashup

Best Festival/Awards Coverage: 30 Days of Oscar

Best Podcast: Reel Insight

Thank you!!

LAMB Devours the Oscars

It's here!!!  This is my favorite feature over at the LAMB, and somehow they decided to let me run it this year!  We've got a great group of writers, some newbies, some of the Old LAMBs, and it starts tonight!  There will be one new post every day until February 27th.  Here's the roster:

Category/Movie	Author	Blog
The Social Network	Tom	Movies Reviews by Tom Clift
Toy Story 3	Marshall	Marshall and the Movies
The King’s Speech	Jenny	10 Things I hate about your movie
Black Swan	Julian	Movies and Other things
Inception	Adam	Hope lies
True Grit	Clarabela	Just Chick Flicks
TBD	Yong	Yongs Fave Films
The Fighter	CS	Big Thoughts from a Small Mind
TBD	Jess	Insight into Entertainment
TBD	Duncan	The Kinematoscope
Best Director	Sebastian	Films from the Supermassive Black Hole
Best Actor	Univarn	A Life in Equinox
Best Supporting Actor	Aiden	Cut the Crap Movie reviews
Best Actress	Andrew	Encore’s World of Film & TV
Best Supporting Actress	Phil	Phil on Film
Best Original Screenplay	Jason	The Athletic Nerd
Best Adapted Screenplay	Jason	The Entertainment Junkie
Cinematography	James	Cinema Sights
Art Direction	Larry	The Movie Snob
Costume Design	Rich	Wide Screen World
Sound Mixing	Jason	Invasion of the B movies
Editing	Hatter	Dark of the Matinee
Sound Editing	Red	Anomalous Material
Visual Effects	Jason	The Entertainment Junkie
Makeup	Rachel	Rachel’s Reel Reviews
Original Song	Travis	The Movie Encyclopedia
Original Score	Robert	His eyes were watching movies
Animated Short	Dylan	Blog Cabins
Live action Short	Branden	Foolish Blatherings
Documentary Feature	Nick	Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob
Documentary Short	Kevyn	The Cinematheque
Foreign Film	Colin	Pick n Mix Flix
Animated Film	Stevee	Cinematic Paradox

LAMBcast #53 - Best of 2010

And so, it is finally time to draw line in the calendar and reflect on the past year in film. James, Jess, Nick, Jason and Dylan document their Best of 2010 in a variety of categories. The highlight: James' pick for Best Ensemble, by far.

Also on tap:

* Listener Feedback
* LAMB of the Week
* Trailer Talk: Battle: Los Angeles
* Last LAMB Standing
 
For the LAMB of the Week, we take a look at LAMB #262, The Film Vituperatem:


You can listen to the podcast here, or check it out on itunes of course!

LAMB devours the Oscars!!

It's almost here! For the first time I'm going to be running this feature (my favorite!).  If you weren't a member last year, here's a little summary of what goes on: for the past three years, we've had an event where a different LAMB wrote up an analysis of each award that the Academy would be handing out once we find out who is nominated.  Then Dylan got commitments from everyone, took volunteers for the "lesser" categories and randomly assigned the major ones. You can do a review of the films, give your predictions, etc.  Whatever you like.  You can click here to check out some previous articles. What we ended up with was a diverse, excellently-written daily series timed to lead up and stop on the day prior to the Oscars.

If you're interested in taking part this year, please respond to this to me via email (insightintoentertainment@gmail.com). Serious interest only, please, as we can't have empty days. There are but 24 categories at the Academy Awards, but the Academy, in it's infinite wisdom, gave us the chance to do 33 different essays with a focus on each of the 10 Best Picture nominees in addition to the 23 other categories.  However, with nearly 800 LAMBs, it'll be first come, first served for starters.

The nominations are handed out on January 25th. The awards show is on February 27th. Typically, LAMB Devours the Oscars ends on the day before the show. The span of time from nominations to awards is once again 33 days so we're all set.  We will be starting on the day of the nominations and ending on the day before the show.  I will need some brave souls to do their write-ups early to make sure we start on time and continue each day.

Lambcast, MILFcast, oh my!

 In case you haven't gotten enough of my voice this week, there are two more chances to fill the void.  Episode 38 of the Lambcast is now available.  I chatted with my partner in crime, Rachel, as well as the LAMB old guard Dylan, Nick, and Jason.  We discussed our most anticipated films for the rest of the year.  Check it out on itunes or listen below.   And in a last minute guest spot, I appeared on the MILFcast (also on itunes, Episode 6 or so).  Some new friends were made, possibly a marriage proposal, and lots of suggestive talk.  It was pretty funny.

Part 2 of the Pixar Podcast - Episode 30

The second part of the Lambcast I did with Tom, Dylan and Sebastian has arrived.  We start off with the movie we all like the least (though we know people who love it), and then get on to the final movies from the last few years.  There's a long discussion of Toy Story 3 and each of our Top 3 Pixar favorites.  Episode #30 is done!  Enjoy.

My first appearance on LAMBCAST is here!!!

It's finally here.  I had a blast recording this with Dylan, Tom, and Sebastian.  We got into a huge discussion of all things PIXAR.  All eleven movies (Toy Story 1, 2, 3, A Bug's Life, Monster's Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall*E, and Up), and a bit about Pixar's place in the whole as a whole and our own individual worlds.  There was a really great split in the ages of our little group.  Dylan and I saw the first movies in high school, and Tom and Sebastian remember Toy Story as one of the first movies they ever saw.  I think it gave great perspective on the films.  Also, we went on so long, it's been divided into two parts, this is episode 29.  Here's the first half, or you can download it on itunes.

2010 Lammys! FYC

The 2010 Lammys have started their quest for nominations. Please consider Insight into Entertainment if you're a member of the LAMB when submitting your nominations. Thanks.
You can vote here. http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/482056

Jane Campion: Bright Star

The latest movie from Jane Campion, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director of The Piano, has created another similarly dour period piece with moments of terrific acting, but not a particularly interesting love story that has all the complexity of its hero's Wikipedia page. John Keats is a penniless poet who falls in love with an emerging fashionista Fanny Brawne who cannot considering marrying such a poor person, but wants to learn from him about poetry. Campion assumes everyone watching has mind-reading capabilities as she spends long scenes just letting us look at the characters looking at each other. There's a terrific scene when Keats' roommate, Mr. Brown, sends Fanny a valentine as an insulting joke, and proves that Fanny has no skills at anything but flirting and sewing. I found it hard to believe the love story that ensues. Many movies that describe an artist and his muse often rely on the fact that the woman is as in love with the art as with the man. This is not true, though Fanny seems to appreciate parts of Keats' poetry, she constantly talks about how she isn't an expert in poetry. The movie fails to give another reason for their love affair, though they do make it seem extremely tragic that it never develops as Keats dies at 25 of tuberculosis. Overall, I wasn't impressed with Bright Star. Almost Famous makes the love story and struggles of artists more believeable and interesting and Pride and Prejudice does a better job with a period piece. 2 of 5 stars/lambs

Lamb Devours the Oscars: Best Achievement in Makeup

I was privileged to be assigned to this category last year, so I've done my research and you can see the background here at last year's post. It's a fairly recent award and it looks like my rule of thumb for who gets nominated has nearly held up this year as well. Last year I said "Usually only 3 movies are nominated, often one of the best Picture nominees, a major movie, and then something random." I was only off by saying a best Picture nominee rather than a period piece, which Benjamin Button was both last year. This year the nominees are: The Young Victoria (period piece), Star Trek (a very big movie, with other nominations for visual effects and sound), and Il Divo (the random choice if ever there was one). Here are my individual comments on each movie from a perspective of makeup.

The Young Victoria tells the story of Britain's Queen Victoria from just before her ascension through the beginning of her reign and marriage. She reigned from 1837 to 1901, the longest of any female monarch in global history. This means, the make-up must be appropriate for the 19th century. In addition, it seems that the Academy has lumped hair design into the category for makeup. The two nominees for Young Victoria, Jenny Shircore and John Henry Gordon, are both listed (on IMDB) as hair stylists/designers, and Ms. Shircore is listed as the makeup designer. She also won the Oscar for Elizabeth. Lumping them together makes sense to me if you think of it as all of the things done to a character that are not costumes be one award. The makeup throughout the movie made Emily Blunt look young, fresh, and regal, and the hair styles of all the characters put them into a recognizable time period. Victoria has to battle between the influences of British politicians and German/Belgian relatives and politicians. The hair styles, while perhaps not perfectly accurate, did make it easy to visually distinguish between the two without being too strange. Given that Benjamin Button won last year, and this is a good movie overall, I expect this to win the Oscar. You can read my full review of the movie here.

Star Trek could give Victoria a run for the money if the Academy loves sci-fi as much as I do. The nominees are Barney Burman (prosthetic makeup designer), Mindy Hall (makeup), and Joel Harlow (prosthetic makeup supervisor). All are first time nominees, but have tons of movies to their credit. I would give them the award for the sole reason that I had no idea Eric Bana was even in the movie thanks to the insane amount of prosthetic make up that made him into a very Trek-appropriate bad guy. Also, their challenge of making beloved characters come to life in different actors at a younger age while still trying to make them seem like they belong in 2009 rather than 1970. There were lots of other "species" of characters throughout the movie that fit in seamlessly, which is a huge credit to the make-up department. So while I do think Victoria will take the award given the Academy's recent history of period pieces, they have a split history of giving the award to incredible prosthetic work so don't count Star Trek out.

Finally, the random selection, Il Divo. This movie was release in Italy in 2008, and made the various film festival circuits winning some awards, mostly for acting. It did win the Italian version of the Oscars in this category however. In fact, the two nominees for this movie are the most nominated of the bunch. Vittorio Sodano (prosthetic make up designer) and Aldo Signoretti (key hair stylist) were nominated together for Apocalypto, and Signoretti was nominated for Moulin Rouge as well. Since I doubt many people saw this (it had a limited release last April in addition to the film festivals), I'll summarize it. It's a story about the former Prime Minister in Italy, Guilio Andreotti, who was accused of ties to the mafia and negative ties with the Vatican, and basically follows him and his family through various accusations from his political opponents of murdering people who got in his way. The movie won the Jury Prize at Cannes, but having seen the movie I have no idea why it was nominated in this category. All the people look fairly normal, though given the titles of the nominees, I presume several are wearing prosthetic pieces. Nothing particularly interesting struck me, so I highly doubt this movie has any chance of winning.

If I had to give the odds of winning, I'd say Victoria has about a 70% chance of winning, with Star Trek at 29%, and simply by virtue of being nominated, Il Divo has 1% chance. I hope this helps you fill out your Oscar Ballot!

L.A.M. Blog-a-thon: TV thoughts

The L.A.M.B. is having a blog-a-thon to discuss the high quality of television that has risen to the level of films. Since I watch A LOT of TV, I thought I'd sum up what I think of what I watch.

Shows I watch live if possible (this is a big deal as I DVR everything and can't stand commercials):
Bones - The most consistently good show on TV. They might not get very far with each episode and they don't do a lot of small arc storylines, but they always make it work.
Grey's Anatomy
Friday Night Lights - Still my favorite show, season 3 really turned it around.
The Closer
Big Bang Theory - This show always makes me giggle. As a grad student in a fairly nerdy scientific field I find it pretty hysterical.
Monk
The Mentalist

Shows I always DVR:
How I Met Your Mother
Chuck
Fringe
Lost - I've stuck with it all these years and just can't give up. I've put a lot of trust in the fact that they're going to make me not confused by the end of the series, but I'm guessing I'll be disappointed.
Private Practice - I like the medical dramas, even when they're barely about medicine and more about the moral dilemmas.
Ugly Betty
ER - Of the 15 seasons, I watched probably 9 or 10, but I really liked this most recent season. The ending wasn't any better or worse than the sum of the series, but it wasn't particularly memorable.
Numb3rs - I told you I was a nerd.
CSI
Psych
Saving Grace

Shows I will watch if I remembered to DVR and have time:
House, MD - I didn't really like the most recent season, but given the cast changes, I might pay more attention.
30 Rock - If I miss this live, I'll catch it online Friday morning for sure.
Two and a half men
Jon and Kate Plus 8
Scrubs
Dancing with the Stars

Shows I watch on DVD cause I don't get the channels they've shown on:
Dexter - I first caught this during the writer's strike when they put it on CBS as a filler, and loved the stories. How they manage to make us root so strongly FOR a serial killer, I still don't quite understand, but this show is awesome.
The Tudors - I loved watching Anne Boleyn's final season, and Rhys-Meyers is terrific if capricious as Henry VIII.

Shows I own and rewatch on DVD:
Sex and the City
The West Wing - The first 4 seasons are amazing and then season 7 brings it back and finishes it brilliantly.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - My favorite season is probably 4, but I own 6 so I can watch the musical and the Buffy/Spike romance.
Gilmore Girls
Arrested Development
Angel
Friends - Still my favorite show of all time. I've seen every episode and watch it repeatedly.


This is to show I watch a lot of TV, lots of different kinds of TV and I really enjoy quality TV. If you're looking for filmic quality TV, "Sex and the City " already made it to the cineplex and was of the best quality the show proved. However, I don't thin that will work very often. "Friday Night Lights" came from a movie that came from a book, and only the TV show is amazing and worth watching on Direct TV because you get more scenes and no commercials (it's sponsored television rather than commercial-based, not sure why that works, but I loved it). The writing on FNL is superior than almost any movie. Even if you're not from Texas and don't understand or watch football (which I imagine makes for a small demographic), you can love these characters and find amazing acting, storytelling, and except for a small snafu in the second season, a brilliant series. So that's my recommendation - watch seasons 1 and 3 and you'll enjoy this wonderful TV that feels like film. I've written about this a few more times, here and here.

Lamb devours the Oscars: Best Make-up

It's my turn. Check out the review I wrote for Best Achievement in Make-up for the LAMB event.

L.A.M.Blog-a-thon: Chapter 3 REMAKES

This post is part of the L.A.M.Blog-thon Chapter 3 regarding remakes.

There are lots of movies that have sequels that are really remakes (Hulk (2003) and The Incredible Hulk (2008)) and movies that are updated versions of previous movies (The Women (1939) and The Women (2008)). And successful or not (The Women 2008), sometimes stories do benefit from updating, and others are just such good stories that everyone should have a chance to see the actors from their generation recreate the vision. However, that requires holding up all the standards that the original used to make its mark. The version that bothers me most and actually prevents me watching the remake more than 3-4 minutes at a time is Pride and Prejudice. The BBC mini-series version is the gold standard for all costume dramas. Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennett and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy have chemistry, charisma and created a believable tension that was actually resolved before they fall in love. The sets and costumes are impeccable, the characters traveling around England that looks like they're in Jane Austen's time. The pace of the film mirrors the writing and the details are perfect, with Mr. Collins moving from the pages into the slimy, sycophantic character we all know him to be. However, in remaking this into a feature film with Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen in the lead roles. They're fine, though Macfadyen is so good at being the brooding Mr. Darcy that you never find a reason Elizabeth falls in love with him. The dialogue is trimmed from the original Austen texted, and occasionally diverging from her words to create new ones (less good ones!). But what bothers me are the details, the costumes are inconsistent, inappropriate and Keira Knightly always appears windblown and frumpy when all women of the period did was make sure they looked good. The movie exaggerates all the character traits - Elizabeth doesn't care about what people think of her, Mr. Darcy is super pompous, and Mrs. Bennett perfectly shrill. However, the people of Austen's time were more about understatement than exaggeration. It just doesn't represent the original work well, nor does it represent a good remake of the BBC version.

Here's a link to the best scene in the BBC version. They have it on YouTube, but won't let you embed it. And below is a scene from the Keira Knightly version. Just look at how different the costumes are put together.

L.A.M.Blog_A_Thon: Volume 2 - Christmas Scenes

As I love holiday movies, I have many favorite movies, and usually a favorite scene within each movie too, so I love this month's theme for the LAMB blog-a-thon. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is a family favorite ever since my grandparents were forced to spend the night due to a blizzard on Christmas Eve. Not having any way to entertain her parents, my aunt put this movie on and the rest is history. I've even found kindred spirits by quoting the movie in front of strangers and having people respond in kind. (B-mama, I'll get you something "real nice" for the holidays). Anyway, quoting the best scene properly is something of a badge of honor in our family and usually leads to disagreements about the actual words, leading to putting the movie on and watching it all the way through as this scene is close to the end. Enjoy.

Who are you thankful for?

The L.A.M.Blog-a-Thon this month is celebrating the people in entertainment that we are thankful exist and practice their craft. "The catch is, it can't be a director or actor. Those cats just get too much love already, don't you think? With these posts you can focus on anyone working in the film industry from any time period from any country that isn't a director or actor. It is okay, though, if the person has done both directing and acting, so long as your post acknowledges their exceptional work in another part of the filmmaking process." While my choice already gets a lot of love, I am yet again thankful for his work. Aaron Sorkin. Writer.

I like nearly everything Aaron Sorkin has had come to the screen. And by nearly everything I'm including everything I've seen, and the nearly encompasses the stuff I haven't seen. I loved "The West Wing", which continued to be good even after he left thanks to the genius that was the set of characters he created. Even more relevent to the past week was the final season of "The West Wing" when a minority Democrat candidate wins the White House. The NYTimes had a terrific article describing how prescient it was (though Sorkin didn't write it, he did get a cameo in the final episode). "Sports Night" was fun, sassy, and just never found its audience. There are elements of both of these shows in "Studio 60", which never found its footing, but has achieved some of the same brilliant moments of its predecessors. I like the fact that Sorkin picks all kinds of small elements of society and brings them into prominence on his shows. He gave President Bartlett M.S. and educated a whole viewership about it, if only on a superficial level. He always seems to present situations where people matter more than the politics of the action - e.g. it's significant that Tom Jeter was speeding because he wanted to see his brother before he deployed to the Mid-East and not just that he's a celebrity getting out of a ticket, or Toby saving the astronauts by exposing a military asset. Sorkin makes it clear what matters and that things are rarely as simple as they seem at first. He makes us think about why we believe what we believe, and I admire that about his writing.

The feature films he wrote include A Few Good Men, The American President, and Charlie Wilson's War. Here's my favorite speech The American President:





Anyway, I am Thankful for Aaron Sorkin and everything he's brought to television and film.

WE WON!!!

Thank you to Lara Croft and all the wonderful people who read the essays and voted for her (and me) over at the LAMB. I appreciate it.

Final Round of the LAMB Action Hero Roommate Battle

I know it's Tuesday and you were probably looking forward to a new post about the top-grossing movie of one of the last few years. However, something very important has come up and I need to ask for your help.

Please go to the LAMB and vote for Lara Croft after you read the essays about why she would be the far superior roommate to silly Tony Stark.

LAMB Action Hero Roommate: Round Two

Thanks to all your support, dear readers, Lara Croft and I made into Round 2 of the LAMB Action Hero. We're up against John McClane from the Die Hard series of films. The idea is to argue who would make the better roomate. Go check it out if you have a chance, and of course vote for Lara!

Lambs Dissect the Oscars

With the first red-carpet awards show (SAG) out of the way and good intentions to end the writer's strike on the horizon, I'm allowing myself to get excited about the Oscars. The Large Association of Movie Bloggers has decided to give excellent advice about how to win your office/friend/family pool for the Oscars. Check it out weekdays until the Oscars. Personally I will be critiquing Best Animated Feature. Enjoy!