BLUE MAG

Perhaps I’m the only person who would get excited about director Martin Scorsese’s written tribute to Antonioni but these words are so good:

Where almost every other movie I’d seen wound things up, “L’Avventura” wound them down. The characters lacked either the will or the capacity for real self-awareness. They only had what passed for self-awareness, cloaking a flightiness and lethargy that was both childish and very real. And in the final scene, so desolate, so eloquent, one of the most haunting passages in all of cinema, Antonioni realized something extraordinary: the pain of simply being alive. And the mystery.

The rest of the NY Times article can be found here.

From AP:
“In the empty, silent spaces of the world, he has found metaphors that illuminate the silent places our hearts, and found in them, too, a strange and terrible beauty: austere, elegant, enigmatic, haunting,” Jack Nicholson said in presenting Antonioni with the career Oscar. Nicholson starred in the director’s 1975 film The Passenger.

I’m getting tired of reporting the deaths of film greats.

He was “probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera,” Woody Allen said in a 70th birthday tribute in 1988. For me the last of the GREAT filmmakers has passed. Continue reading Ingmar Bergman, 1918 - 2007.

A buddy of mine saw Andy, the latest ABC “Bachelor,” at a triathlon a few weekends ago. Here is photographic evidence that Andy just “can’t turn ‘it’ off”…

(Not gonna say So it goes, not gonna say So it goes…) Well, sad news today as Kurt Vonnegut has died. He was 84.

Like many people, Kurt Vonnegut’s writing makes me extremely happy. My friends gave me a hardcover copy of “Slaughterhouse-Five” for my 21st birthday and it is something I will always cherish. I would love nothing so much as to see a movie of “Cat’s Cradle,” even if it sucked.

You can read that book, which I don’t believe I’ve ever stated before is my favorite novel, for free here.

Death came as it does to all things real or imagined to French philospher Jean Baudrillard Tuesday night in Paris at the age of 77. He was one of France’s leading postmodernist thinkers and a fierce critic of consumer culture. Continue reading Jean Baudrillard, 1929-2007

Academy Awards

The shameless meat parade known as the Academy Awards took steps in redeeming itself for what will forever be known as the “Crash Debacle” by awarding Martin Scorsese a much deserved best director award Sunday night. This ties him with 3-6 Mafia for one academy award apiece. The fact that his picture “The Departed” went on to win best picture also shows the Academy in good light. Scorsese’s win and composer Ennio Morricone’s “special Oscar” also served as a powerful reminder of how behind the times the awards are. That Morricone has never won anything and it’s taken 26 years for Scorsese to win is nothing short of awful. Not to mention that Alfonso Cuaron (who actually directed the best movie this year, “Children of Men”) wasn’t even nominated. Despite this history I found little to take issue with this year. Sure, it was a little boring but overall I was happy with the results. This either shows that I’m getting older and more complacent or … I guess that’s all it really shows.

Independent Spirit Awards

On the other side of town in a parking lot in Santa Monica the Independent Spirit Awards were a different animal entirely. Hosted by Sarah Silverman and if seen uncut on IFC was the more like those R-rated celebrity roasts than an awards show. I’m not sure what was left for AMC to air a few hours later. It was a very brisk affair clocking in at just less than two hours and had the atmosphere of hanging out with friends rather than some gala ball full of sparkling diamond dresses (see above.) That said I was a little tired of “Little Miss Sunshine” before this show and now am really tired of that movie being the Indie darling of the year. I was rooting for “American Gun” of course and in the end it did have the best song and dance number performed that afternoon (the awards started at 2PM) by Neil Patrick Harris.

Golden Razzies

“Basic Instinct 2” took home Worst Picture and I am sorry but “Wicker Man” was robbed. Nick Cage’s foray into confusing, woman-hitting horror was by far the worst thing to end up on movie screens this past year and deserved some recognition for it’s incredible badness. Our former buddy (remember when we liked him?) M. Night picked up a couple for Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor for his work in “Lady in the Water.” The Waynes brothers picked up some recognition for their opus “Little Man,” somehow getting an award for Worst Adapted Screenplay by connecting the premise to an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. All these wonderfully terrible “films” are available on DVD and in some cases Blu Ray and HD-DVD so you know what to do.

I’m watching this Oprah Oscars thing with Julia Roberts interviewing George Clooney, and I’m quite positive I’m not the first one to say this, but when they heck is George Clooney going to play Cary Grant. Hopefully in a movie about Cary Grant, who has a fascinating story, not in a remake. Unless it is a remake of “North By Northwest” made by David Fincher, which would be the best movie ever.

And that marks the debut of a fun feature here on BLUE MAG, a phrase I’m borrowing from my wife: And That’s What I Want to See In the Movies.