Reader Spotlight: Chris

Continuing the weekly or twice weekly series of reader spotlights. Today's reader is Chris a Midwestern reader with a great sense of humor who started reading TFE in his senior year of high school back in the mid Aughts and never stopped. That's the way we like it, the never-stopping part.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience or first movie obsession?
CHRIS: I'm pretty sure it was The Little Mermaid, because I have a distinct memory of Ursula's entrance. I can't remember my first movie obsession, because there have been so many. Probably the biggest was the summer that Moulin Rouge! and Hedwig and the Angry Inch came out. I flipped for both movies individually, but collectively they made me feel like musicals were back for good.

Take one Oscar away and give it to someone else.
I have to go with two on this one (and I'd take them away from double winners actually): First, I'd give Sean Penn's Mystic River Oscar to Bill Murray for Lost in Translation, because Murray gave a career-defining performance and, let's be honest, Penn was light years better in Milk anyway. Second, I'd give Hilary Swank's second Oscar to Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine, because it's her best work and Hilary Swank was the weakest performance in the category by a mile!

You're suddenly in charge of world cinema for a year! How do you you wield this awesome power?
I'd get rid of the whole "Oscar movie" release pattern! I hate that having to wait all year for the quality movies, and then try to cram in far too many movies into too little time. Plus, living in the crappy midwest means most of the smaller films don't stick around and I have to rush to see them ASAP anyway.

Have you ever dressed as a movie character for Halloween? And has a movie character ever dressed as you?
I went as Wall•E. Made it myself, too! On the flip side, Joseph Gordon-Levitt totally raided my wardrobe in (500) Days of Summer.

Chris makes his own costumes. JGL steals his look! 

Three Favorite Actresses?
Only 3 is so not fair! I'd have to go with Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Laura Linney.

Name your favorite movie in the following five genres: musical, drama, scifi, horror, woody allen. Go!
Aladdin, Boogie Nights, Children of Men, The Shining, Interiors. Most of those are hard to narrow down just to one, but I was half tempted to put The Room as one that fits all these categories. Jokes!


Previous Reader Spotlights: Peter, Ziyad, Andrew, Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Jamie, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Dominique, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, Leehee and BBats

10 Years Ago Right About This Very Second...

... Oscar night was wrapping up for the films of 2000. The lady whose smile devoured the world was loving her life.

Did you watch on that night? Were you into the Oscars yet? How is that particular race holding up for you.?  It broke down like so among the "Big 8"

• Picture: Gladiator
• Director: Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
• Actress: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich
• Actor: Russell Crowe, Gladiator
• Supporting Actress: Marcia Gay Harden, Pollock
• Supporting Actor: Benicio Del Toro, Traffic
• Original Screenplay: Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous
• Adapted Screenplay: Stephen Gaghan, Traffic

It was a spread the wealth night. Honestly, I'd forgotten that Almost Famous won Original Screenplay since it missed the Best Picture slot that many expected it to nab. You can blame the Weinsteins and the late entry Chocolat for that, I suppose. The other wins I remembered. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon won 4 Oscars but I still think it got the shaft (among their nominees) and should've taken Best Picture with ease. And I still maintain that Erin Brockovich was the keeper from Soderbergh's double dip.

And remember this? Winona Ryder sure loved musicians back in the day (in more than one way).

Thoughts? Jump back a decade, won't'cha.

"I think, Evelyn, that we've lost touch..."

Evelyn: Why, what's wrong?

Patrick: I need to engage in homicidal behavior on a massive scale, cannot be corrected, but I have no other way to fulfill my needs. We need to talk.

Evelyn: Talk about what, Patrick?

I'm pretty sure that a fresh Oscar gets you an 8:30 res' at Dorsia any night you want.

Three whole days have gone by and I haven't mentioned how pleased I was to see Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) receive his Oscar from former fiancé Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon). And they still don't seem very important to each other!

Patrick: It's over Evelyn. It's all over.

Evelyn: Touchy Touchy. i'm sorry I brought up the wedding. Let's just avoid the issue, all right? Now.. are we having coffee?

Patrick: I'm fucking serious. It's fucking over, us. This is not joke. I don't think we should see each other anymore.

Evelyn: But your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends. I really don't think it would work.

If you don't know what the hell we're talking about your assignment is to watch American Psycho (2000) immediately. For maximum time capsule pleasure, try to find a store that still rents VHS tapes so that you can return some videotapes later.

Bale's performance as the psychopath is justifiably classic already but less often discussed is how much Reese nails her vacant pseudo human fiancee. Reese has always been so great at comic stylization. When are the great directors and screenwriters going to give her something worthy of her gifts again? It's been way too long.

Christian Bale's Oscar was 10 years late but at least it arrived. Speaking of which, under the decade too late rule, who is due for a statue in 2012? Whose coronation should we obsess over next?

Calling the Splits

Serious Film's Michael C. here to ask an inconvenient question. As predictions are being finalized around the web it becomes clear that a large bloc, if not a majority, of pundits are predicting a picture/director split with The King’s Speech taking picture but David Fincher claiming the director trophy. 

No doubt there is some wishful thinking at play by those still stinging from The Social Network’s flame out at the guilds awards. “Okay, maybe those Philistine voters will deny Social Network the big prize but how could they bypass an established master like Fincher in favor of Tom What’s-His-Name?”

The King Speaks. (The king being Fincher. His movies do rule.

I don’t mean to throw cold water on a plausible scenario that I would much prefer to a Speech sweep, but the burning question is this: When has a picture/director split ever been predicted? The answer: No time I’m aware of.

Here are the 6 times in the last 30 years picture director split along with the expected winners going into the ceremony:

2005 - Crash/Ang Lee
Brokeback Mountain was widely favored to win both prizes. There was, to be fair, an inkling of a Crash win here and there, but the vast majority called it for Brokeback early on.

2002 - Chicago/Polanski
The conventional wisdom that the only thing preventing a Chicago sweep would be the urge to give Scorsese an overdue win for Gangs of New York. Instead we got a Polanski win predicted by exactly nobody.

2000 - Gladiator /Soderbergh
Pundits thought they saw a spilt coming this year as most predicted DGA winner Ang Lee to repeat at the Oscars but popular favorite Gladiator to take top honors. They were half right. Traffic’s Soderbergh blindsided Lee. 

1998 - Shakespeare in Love/ Spielberg
Do we need to go over this one again? Private Ryan was thought to be a lock for both prizes.

1989 – Driving Miss Daisy /Oliver Stone – The smart money was on Born on the Fourth of July to take Picture along with director. Miss Daisy pulled an upset.

1981 - Chariots of Fire/Beatty
If anyone was going to upset the epic Reds in the top category it was assumed to be box office hit On Golden Pond, not tiny, foreign Chariots of Fire.

And here are two more widely predicted splits that never happened:

2006 - Little Miss Sunshine or Babel /Scorsese
Many imagined that voters would be satisfied looking elsewhere for picture after finally giving Scorsese his due. Nope. They genuinely loved The Departed.

1995 - Apollo 13/Gibson
The prevailing mood was that DGA winner Apollo 13 would take picture and, since Howard missed a director nomination, the acting branch would carry Gibson to a directing trophy. Braveheart took them both.

Fincher supporters can take solace in the fact that splits appear to favor big name auteurs in the directing category, or that we're due for a split since they seem to occur about every five years. Other than that, history suggests either the most obvious of outcomes or a wild card that nobody sees coming.  

My knowledge of what was predicted gets hazy before the 80's. Is there some precedent for a Speech/Fincher split I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

Zoinks! Nicole + Cate, Holly + Anna

Aussie actresses Nicole and Cate are fans of each others. We shouldn't be surprised and perhaps we already knew but have forgotten. The March issue of In Style asked four Oscar winning actresses Nicole Kidman, Anna Paquin, Hilary Swank and Susan Sarandon to name their "Oscar Inspiration" and they chose Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Jessica Lange, and Vanessa Redgrave respectively.

This photo has a certain imaginary Film Experience spark as it's an actress (Kidman) that readers tend to think I'm rather too scarily devoted to combined with an actress (Blanchett) that I tend to think readers are rather too scarily devoted to. ;) Not that they both aren't great actresses, mind you.

The article may well have been titled "Airbrushed Inspirations" because all of the photos are way way glossy. But it's a fun concept. Here's what Cate said about her Oscar win for The Aviator.

I was frankly relieved when I won -- relieved I wouldn't have to answer all the questions about what it feels like to lose, and relieved because, playing Katharine Hepburn, you can't but disappoint some people. You have to throw caution to the wind when you take on those real-people roles; you can't think of the outcome.

I don't see this info at In Style's official site but here is a photo-set. The Hilary Swank/Jessica Lange photos are fun but the one that just thrilled me, for the sheer nostalgia, was seeing The Piano's mother and daughter Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin reunited.

The Piano (1993) is among my all time favorite movies and who wouldn't want such a reminder. Anna is apparently now taller than Holly! Although one reason I object to the super processed/airbrushed photo shoots that are the norm these days is that in the age of Photoshop when a photo looks too plastic, I just assume no one was in the room together. Let me see an errant hair or a wrinkle or a weird pucker of cloth, or some PROOF that these are flesh and blood people in a room together.

The other thing I think of when I look at this photo is: DOES HOLLY HUNTER WATCH TRUE BLOOD? Heh. I do. I wonder.