No Beaks: The End?

A Rare Saturday Post...

I figured it out!  This is "A Trip to Florida"

Oscar Recap

So the 80th Academy Awards are in the can, as they say in Hollywood, and despite a couple surprises, it was No Country For Old Men that really took the show. 

No Surprises Here:

No Country won for Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay and in a no brainer Javier Barden took the Best Supporting Actor award.  Once again the Cohen brothers put together a materpiece that is regarded by its peers and movie fans alike.  The Squad and I were supposed to see this movie a while back, but it never happened.  I managed to check it out on one of my many days off this month and found it to be pretty good.  It is definitely a return to the dark-like realms of a Fargo for the Cohen brothers.  Still, the thing that gets me is the way in which Joel and Ethan can make such vivid characters.  From Raising Arizona, to Fargo and especially the Big Lebowski all have these great characters to watch.

Surprises:

I was surprised to see that Ellen Page didn't win Best Actress for Juno.  She was really great in that movie.  I didn't see La Vie En Rose and probably never will.  But Juno did pick up the award for Best Original Screenplay, which was a good call, because that movie was really well done.  It was written by former exotic dancer Diablo Cody.  Cody actually started out as an online blogger and hails from Chicago.  I think Juno deserved the Best Picture award...  but alas, I'm not part of the Academy! 

You Do or Don't Suck:

Jon Stewart was...  entertaining.  Hell anything is better than Ellen DeGeneres!  Also, the three songs from Enchanted were terrible.   It was funny that out of five songs, three were from the film and none of them even won the award.

That's all I got about the Oscars.  Later...

Reviews

So I've checked out a couple movies on the silverscreen and via Netflix the last couple weeks...  here is what I've got for you:

Gone Baby Gone starring Casey Affleck and directed by big bro Ben is a movie about Southies, which seems to be the only thing Ben Affleck knows about.  However, go with what you know, right?  This movie is pretty good and asks a tremendous moral question that will keep you thinking on your way out of the theater.

I give it 3 and a half Beaks!

Next, we have Michael Clayton starring George Clooney.  I usually like it when Clooney plays a know it all character who is great at what he does.  And this movie is really no exception.  Clooney is a fix-it man for a high powered law firm in New York.  In the middle of trying to fix the fall back of a high profile lawyer's mental breakdown during a multi-billion dollar lawsuit, he goes a bit too deep for the corporation involved in said lawsuit...  Duhn, dunh, daaaaaaa!!!!!  The plot isn't too different from your run of the mill lawyer drama i.e. John Grisham novel remake.  However, the acting is much better.

I give it 3 Beaks!

Dreamgirls and the Fantastic Four:  Rise of the Silver Surfer were a couple of my Netflix arrivals.  Dreamgirls is probably the worst movie I've ever seen.  I can't understand why anybody was nominated for an award in what is the cheesiest musical I've ever.  As for the Fantastic Four, until Jessica Alba actually shows her ta-ta's in this movie, they are pretty much the lamest of the Superheros...  The acting is pretty bad, the whole marriage plot line was ridiculous and to be honest, I like my superheros to work solo.

One Beak each here...

Lastly, a sleeper is a little Irish independent film called The Hand that Shakes the Barley.  This movie focuses on the events that let to the rise of the Irish Republican Army in the early 1920's.  It is hard as hell to understand what these guys are saying, but the movie is really interesting.  It shows a lot about the political and social turmoil of Ireland and the effects of British authority over the region in the 20th Century.  I would definitely make it a selection on my Netflix Queue!

I give it 3 Beaks!

That's All For Now!

Transformers: Much More Than Meets the Eye

How did I get my wife to go and see Transformers with me at the movie theater?  Easy...

I said, "Boss, I've been waiting 20 years for this movie!"

I mean how can you say no to that?  And it's true!

Seriously, how many of us young men and women as former boys and girls can remember playing with Transformers?  How can you not think back to making your own driving and flying sounds, inserting the dialog from countless hours of cartoon watching and finally creating that one of a kind "transforming" sound effect from robot to machine and back to robot?

I sure as hell can...  and I can always remember how cool it would be if the damn things transformed themselves, because some of them took forever to figure out!  Seriously...  and while you were transforming your Transformer, you had to continue making that "transforming" sound effect until completely finished.  It was not easy...

(After writing that I think this will be the way we describe our generation to younger generations.)

Grandpa Mr. W:   "You know sonny, before special effects, WE had to transform our Transformers ourselves, using imagination!"

Grandson W:  "You're old Grandpa!"

Anyway, the movie is awesome.  I might have to go see it again for nothing more than just watching the Transformers, Autobots and Decepticons alike, transform and fight and transform and fight over and over again!

As for the movie, Shia LaBeouf and the people who play his parents are good and Megan Fox is pretty hot.   Furthermore, Michael Bay did a great job making the dialog atrocious.  This way it doesn't take your attention away from the awesomeness of the Transformers themselves.

I give it a solid three and a half beaks!

Movie Monday!!!

Been a while since a good movie review, mostly because I have been addicted to watching my Netflix, but actually made it to the theater yesterday!

The Boss and I took in Knocked Up.  It has a pretty simple plot, stoner guy knocks up a really hot girl after a one night stand.  Now he has to prove to her he'll be there for her and she has to accept that...  However, you don't go and see a movie like this for plot, just comedy and laughs.  And it has plenty of those.  The stoner, played by Seth Rogan, is good for a few chuckles but it's his stoner buddies who steal the show.

The buds all live in a house together, where they are actively creating a Mr. Skin-like website without knowing that Mr. Skin's already exists.  Otherwise, the just sit around getting high and making really dumb bets and making fun of each other.  This provides for the majority of the comedy.  Of course, Paul Rudd is quality as well. 

While I was a big fan of the Rogan and Rudd performance in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which was by the same director as Knocked Up, it really wasn't as strong this time around.  Rudd was great in a Vegas scene when the two are trippin' on shrooms, but Rogan comes off as a pussy and not funny.

Despite that disappointment, Knocked Up makes it up thanks to stoner buddies like Jason Segel of How I Met Your Mother fame.  They put together a quality performance.

Lastly, stay tuned till the end to see the money shot.  Yes...!

And the Oscar goes to...

I think it's always kind of funny, that when I watch the Oscar's often the winners are for movies I've never seen...  This year, that wasn't the case.  Yes, I've seen The Departed!  In fact, I saw two of the five best picture nominees.  Little Miss Sunshine, one of the funniest movies of all time...  did get a win for Best Original Screenplay, so not too bad on that one.  Forrest Whitaker came away with a big Best Actor win.  Gotta love a guy who can win and Oscar and die on ER in the same year. 

However, the truth is that I missed all those awards cause I fell asleep at 9:30...  just after catching Chicago's very own Jennifer Hudson take home an award for Best Supporting Actress in the film Dreamgirls. 

I haven't seen that movie yet...

In other news, the Badgers lost a big one yesterday...  but all I gotta say is that we'll be seeing OSU again in the future, on neutral ground, and they better be ready.

Yip!!!

Movie Review Time

The Boss let us go to the movies for the first time in ages on Sunday...  to see the foreign film that is taking the world by storm:  The Lives of Others.

This movie takes place in the former East Berlin just 9 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The main character is a Stasi or Secret Police agent for the German Democratic Republic.  He's a bad man...  an intense interrogator and the kind who bugs houses and such.  Well...  he gets the task of bugging the home of a playwright, but in the meantime falls in love with the playwright's actor girlfriend.  This leads the Stasi agent to begin letting the couple off from events that would've led to prison time...  like writing an article critical of the GDP published in West Berlin's version of Time Magazine, "Spiegel."

It's a gripping tale, and it really brings to mind a lot of questions about political vs. physical vs. ideological borders.  Especially when the movie advances in time and the Berlin Wall eventually falls... 

Think about it...  What would you do?  You've lived in the ultra Communist/Socialist state that everyone was running away from...  and now?  It's collapsed.  Would you stay?  Leave?  Interesting questions...  Because life goes on, even the Live of Others!

I love movies like that...  If you can't read, it's in subtitles, so I'd pass and go see Norbit or something else.  However, I highly doubt Norbit and The Lives of Others would be playing in the same theatre and such.

Yip!!!

No Action, Just Animation

So after contacting David Faustino's agent it seems he's unavailable.  He only managed to get out something about how most actors don't want to participate in a film that involves long hours of binge drinking.

Oh well, moving right along.

Now I'm thinking something animated.  Like No Beaks with us all being cats and dogs or animals in a forest or in a barnyard.

I vote for the barnyard one, cause then I cant be a pot bellied Pig, which are cool cause George Clooney had one!

Yip!