You’d think people who get paid to recite lines, hit their cues and say the right thing would do some, if not all, of the above during a gala ceremony honoring their peers.

Anyone who so much as channel surfed onto the 69th annual Golden Globes telecast last night spotted one bumble or another. Maybe more.

Meryl Streep dropped an “F” bomb during her acceptance speech for her work in “The Iron Lady.” Natalie Portman walked to the wrong podium. The teleprompter had a hiccup, leaving Rob Lowe to stare at the screen as if he had never ad libbed a second in his life. Johnny Depp looked like it was his first time speaking before a live audience.

“Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara had trouble with multiple names, but we’ll cut her some slack since one of them was “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius.

It’s a good thing Robert De Niro or Warren Beatty, two of the worst public speakers in Tinsel Town, weren’t in the building.

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“Troll 2″ is a movie so bad it’s great.  The same holds true for “Plan 9 From Outer Space” and “Showgirls.”

But 99.5 percent of terrible movies are just … terrible. That’s especially evident with the following five features, a quintet which cost millions to produce and yielded very little in return.

Dishonorable mentions include “The Change Up,” “Green Lantern,” “Larry Crowne,” “Sucker Punch” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” But these five movies went above and beyond the call of duty in draining precious hours from our lives.

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In many ways “Friends with Benefits” is akin to a reboot of “No Strings Attached,” which came out just a few months ago, and that’s good news for conservative moviegoers.  Like “No Stings,” “FWB,” which stars the magnetic Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, ultimately arrives at the conclusion that sexual relationships are apt to get very complicated very quickly and have the tendency to materialize into love.  Or tears.

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However, this rule doesn’t really apply when it comes to gay men.  A greater percentage of male/male relationships (compared to male/female or female/female) can be purely sexual without any “strings attached,” and, to the filmmakers’ credit, that nuance is not lost in “Friends with Benefits.”  Woody Harrelson, who is very funny as an over-the-top gay character, offers this wisdom.  But the ideas that “monogamy is against our nature” and casual sex comes with negligible emotional and physical baggage–particularly when there’s a woman in the equation–has been roundly rebuked in recent years and Hollywood romantic comedies deserve a lot of the credit.

There are even a few jokes that specifically target liberals: Kunis refers to hybrid cars and local/organic/sustainable food as “bullshit” on separate occasions and Harrelson says that “no one wants to fuck Obama” because his ears are too big.  For years romantic comedies have been a haven for conservative moviegoers because they tend to glorify monogamy as opposed to loveless sex.  But now they’re also subjecting liberals to the types of barbs right-of-center folk have endured for decades!? Could Hollywood finally be turning a corner?  With the advent of new media, conservatives finally have had a megaphone to complain about these digs that typically only go in one direction (ours).  Maybe it’s having an effect! (more…)

Natalie Portman and her fiancé, “Black Swan” choreographer Benjamin Millepied, just had a baby boy, and People Magazine gives the name an A+:

Their son’s name is Aleph, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

So what’s in a name? Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, much like alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Aleph is the number 1 in Hebrew and can also be spelled “alef.”

Its esoteric meaning in Judaic Kabbalah, as denoted in the theological treaty Sefer-ha-Bahir, relates to the origin of the universe, the “primordial one that contains all numbers.”

…

Thor, perhaps the most Shakespearean of Marvel Comics heroes, is a refreshingly fun adaptation of another comic character destined for franchise glory. In an inspired piece of hiring, “Thor” is directed by Kenneth Branagh, famous for his numerous Shakespeare adaptations. His unabridged version of “Hamlet” was my favorite screen version of the Great Bard’s most famous work, and though it’s no surprise that he can stage a large production, it’s good to know he can handle the physicality of a CGI-laden blockbuster as well.

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In this one, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) hails from the realm of Asgard, and is apparently more of an alien than a god or deity. Cast out of Asgard by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) as punishment for narcissism and disobedience, Thor’s stripped of his powers and banished to our little marble, landing in small town New Mexico. There, he’s confronted by a world that greets his stories of fantastic kingdoms and powers with scorn, and where his mighty hammer, containing the thundery awesomeness of his powers, remains inaccessibly stuck in a block of stone. Thor then must not only clash with a civilization that doesn’t respect his ancestry, but also with the machinations of villains back home and some surprisingly well-intentioned government agents. (more…)

Soul Surfer

These days, it seems everyone wants to be famous – and the younger the person, the more attention-obsessed they seem to be. But what if you garnered international attention because a shark literally bit off your arm?

That was the dilemma faced by Bethany Hamilton on Halloween of 2003, when the teenage champion surfer survived a surprise shark attack off the coast of her home in Hawaii. Yet unlike others who have made the news due to freak occurrences, Hamilton has continued to fascinate the media due to the fact that she not only survived and recovered, but has become an even bigger star surfer since then.

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Her odds-defying story is now the basis of the new film “Soul Surfer,” which dives in to Hamilton’s story by showing that her entire family has two big passions: catching waves and celebrating their Christian faith. Early on, the couple of church scenes seem like a gloss as the focus rests on surfing action and Bethany’s teenage social life.

But once the film digs deeper into her story with the attack and a riveting sequence depicting her family’s desperate race to get her to a hospital, “Surfer” finds surer footing and its performances – including Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt as Bethany’s parents, and Anna Sophia Robb as Bethany herself, with “American Idol” champion and country singing superstar Carrie Underwood as her youth minister – also take root.

Aside from the inherent spectacle of surfing Hawaii’s spectacular coastline in competitions, “Surfer” proves affecting not only for its depiction of a family bonding through trauma but also for its portrayal of Bethany’s mission trip to the Indonesian coast after the devastating tsunami there. Her realization that there’s always a bigger crisis than your own to help others through is a timely reminder amid the ongoing tragedy in Japan.

(more…)

***UPDATE: Gov. Huckabee’s released a statement:

“I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar trophy and I am glad she will marry her baby’s father. However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not “slam” or “attack” Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country.”

I agree that the use of the terms “attack” and “slam” go too far — which is why I was careful to use “criticize” in the headline. I also agree he didn’t criticize her or anyone else for being a single mother. I didn’t criticize either the Governor or Medved for that. My issue was their contention that Portman was somehow promoting single motherhood. Furthermore, I also think singling the Governor out as most outlets have done is unfair, which is why I included Michael Medved in both the story and the headline. However, if you read the transcript, Huckabee does make it sound as though Portman “boasted” about her situation, which I found unfair and which lays the rest of his statement at her feet, at least in part. This was the focus of my criticism.

***END UPDATE

In the past and with great relish I’ve criticized Natalie Portman on this site for her political musings, and I couldn’t agree more that glamorizing single motherhood and downplaying the necessity of the father is as destructive to our society as anything. Dan Quayle was absolutely right in criticizing “Murphy Brown” and after all the snotty left-wing snarking quieted, I think we can all agree that history acquitted Quayle — even Murphy Brown herself admitted the former Vice President was correct. Natalie Portman, however, is not Murphy Brown. She never glamorized single motherhood. If anything, she glamorized motherhood, and that’s all the difference in the world.

And so, as much as I respect and personally admire Michael Medved and Governor Mike Huckabee, it’s impossible for me to defend either against the criticism they’re facing. Their misguided attack on Ms. Portman wasn’t only unfair, it played right into the hands of almost every negative stereotype of the social, religious conservative there is.

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For starters, unlike Murphy Brown, Portman is not a fictional character. She’s a living, breathing human being who has just been unfairly singled out and held up for a public shaming. Secondly, she’s been with the father of her child for two years now and the two of them are currently engaged and appear to be very much in love. Only in its narrowest meaning does the term “single mother” even apply here. In the real world, Portman is not on her own and the child does and will have a father in its life. 

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Well, we know which one Salon Mary Elizabeth Williams would save first if her house was burning down. If you think that the article reads more like seething, unspoken envy of a beautiful starlet that seems to have it all, you’re not alone. The entire piece has a Sweet Valley High mean girl aesthetic, in which a beta-wanna-be-alpha female projects her insecurities onto the popular girl by way of criticism over the most inane things.

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The tagline: “In her acceptance speech, the “Black Swan” star suggests that pregnancy trumps a career. She’s wrong.”

Did you hear that, Natlie Portman? What’s-her-face at Salon thinks you’re wrong. No! Williams couldn’t let Portman have her moment in the sun without seizing upon her big, round, potential-laden belly.

thanking her fellow nominees, her parents, the directors who’ve guided her career, and then at last “my beautiful love,” dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, for giving her “the most important role of my life.” That’d be when he impregnated her, I’d wager.

At the time, the comment jarred me, as it does every time anyone refers to motherhood as the most important thing a woman can possibly do. But the reason why didn’t hit until I saw the ever razor sharp Lizzie Skurnick comment on Twitter today that, “Like, my garbageman could give you your greatest role in life, too, lady.”

Yes, because turning bathroom stall wall-level writing into an article for Salon is exponentially more important than creating and fostering life and raising it for the next eighteen years. (Natalie Portman is a/n [insert pejorative here]!)

But is motherhood really a greater role than being secretary of state or a justice on the Supreme Court? Is reproduction automatically the greatest thing Natalie Portman will do with her life?

Williams’ presuppositions are based on humanism which downgrades the divine and places greater emphasis on man’s desires. Williams misses that her examples of secretary of state or the Supreme Court were created by man, and that man had to be born in order for those positions to be created. She argues that the things created by humans, who required birth for their establishment, are greater than the that which created their originator.

This is indicative of what’s wrong with progressivism. The logic is insipid.

If Williams can point to me an example of a job created by an individual who existed without birth, I’ll be glad to discuss her argument on those terms.

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Though the 83rd Academy Awards was rarely entertaining (okay… it was about as much fun as a chemistry midterm), it was, for the most part, apolitical.  There were a couple of exceptions, however, the most notable was perhaps cinematography winner Wally Pfister who gave special thanks to his union crew on “Inception.”

“Inception” Cinematographer Wally Pfister with Christopher Nolan

From ABC News:

Backstage he went further, expressing shock at Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal, which would limit union’s collective bargaining powers…

“I think that what is going on in Wisconsin is kind of madness right now,” Pfister says. “I have been a union member for 30 years and what the union has given to me is security for my family. They have given me health care in a country that doesn’t provide health care and I think unions are a very important part of the middle class in America all we are trying to do is get a decent wage and have medical care.”

Yes, nothing like an Academy Award winner who can afford to send his three children to whatever school he wants coming to the aide of the unions that have destroyed the public schools.

Regardless of your perception of unions, comparing Hollywood unions to the Wisconsin teachers union is hardly apples to apples.  Hollywood unions bargain with corporations that have money they have earned by making movies like “Memento,” “Batman Begins,” “The Prestige,” “The Dark Knight,” and “Inception” (just to name a few Pfister has worked on personally), and unions collectively bargain to get a greater share of the revenue.  Governments, on the other hand, don’t earn anything; they extract taxes from citizens, many of whom have fallen on tough financial times.  Pfister’s union crew bargains with the capitalists that have a stake in the outcome of the negotiation, a vested interest in reaching a reasonable agreement with the unions – their bottom line depends on it.  Governments, on the other hand, have no such bottom line to worry about (see: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).  In Wisconsin, the unions are trying to strong-arm politicians (many of whom are bankrolled by the unions come campaign time) in order to pad their pension fund with tax dollars, all at the direct expense of the state’s fiscal health.

Hollywood unions bargain with corporations for the corporations’ money; in Wisconsin, they’re bargaining with union-backed politicians for the taxpayers’ money.  It’s one thing to add to the Warner Brothers’ tab; it’s quite another to add to the citizens’.

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After all of the talk and the countless award ceremonies that have preceded it, the Oscars ceremony will finally take place tomorrow evening. The 83rd Academy Awards are bound to be exciting with ten best picture nominees and several tight races that could surprise some viewers. I’m hoping for a few surprises and a few well-deserved victories tonight. Here are my predictions as to who will win and who should be taking home Oscar gold in the major categories.

Best Actress:

Will Win: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

Should Win: Annette Bening, “The Kids are All Right”

This is the category where I am hoping for the biggest upset. Portman has the momentum but I found both her performance and the film to be disappointing. The plot of “Black Swan” was over-the-top and over-dramatic and the film doesn’t deserve the recognition that it’s been receiving. On the other hand, Annette Bening was in complete control of her character in “The Kids are All Right” and played the part of a woman trying to hold her family together wonderfully. Let’s hope that the Academy agrees and hands Bening her first Oscar. (more…)

We’ve come a long way from the 1980’s. The 1989 classic comedy “When Harry Met Sally” which asked whether a man and a woman could be good friends without romance getting in the way. The 2010 repulsive comedy “No Strings Attached,” asks whether or not two “sex friends” can keep sleeping with each other without actual feelings getting in the way. Aside from its dumb plot, “Attached” is over-sexed, overdone and overcome by a terrible script.

The story begins by introducing us to two young people named Adam and Emma who are at camp together. After a brief and unfunny scene where Adam asks to do a sexual act with Emma, the story flashes ahead a couple for years. After another dead-end scene, the story flashes forward again showing us the other early meetings between the duo. The story finally settles on the couple at an older age, where they are played by Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman.

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Adam is a regular single guy who has recently gotten over a break-up with his ex-girlfriend. Unfortunately, she continues to be a part of his life when he discovers that she’s dating his father Alvin (Kevin Kline). Alvin is an airhead Hollywood actor who doesn’t understand why his son would have issues with his new girlfriend.  Like the caricature of actors often portrayed in films and television shows, Alvin is beloved by his fans but despised by his own child. If given strong material, Kline could have earned a few laughs in his role as a childish and immature parent. Instead, the role is thankless and unfunny.  

In the Alvin scenes and in many other ones, the story’s humor stems from raunchy jokes and sexual punchlines. From jokes about sex to women’s periods to lesbians, this story features dozens of punch lines that just don’t work. From its start “No Strings” is more interested in sex than in its characters and it shows in the relationship between Alex and Emma.  

The romance that eventually starts between the two never feels real. Adam begins developing feelings for Emma but the two characters never really connect. Even as they start formally dating, the chemistry doesn’t exist between Kutcher and Portman and neither character is interesting to watch. The dialogue during their ” romance” is often unbelievable and at times, it is downright atrocious.   (more…)

NOTE: This is the first in a series of ten reviews counting down this year’s best picture nominees from my least favorite to the film most deserving of this year’s Oscar.

Director Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman plays Nina, a New York City ballerina who, age-wise, has reached the now or never point of her career. No longer a young ingénue, the window in which she can still achieve the greatness and artistic immortality she’s aspired to her whole life is rapidly closing and what could be her last opportunity looks to be as the lead in a new production of “Swan Lake.” Because Nina is truly gifted, a hard worker, and willing to do most anything, the dance troupe’s controlling and manipulative artistic director Thomas (Vincent Cassel), gives Nina the role but only after unceremoniously retiring Beth (Winona Ryder), his current star.

Nina’s desire to please and be liked makes her perfect for the White Swan, but this is a dual role. She must also play the Black Swan, which requires something Thomas has never seen in Nina, a dark, dangerous and manipulative side. What Thomas does see, however, is someone he can take advantage of. One of the perks of his job is that he is the god of this particular theatre and the lord over of a company of young, ambitious girls (with amazing bodies). His willingness to take full sadistic advantage of this situation is what makes him a both a loathsome human being and one of the very best at what he does.

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Nina goes to work, putting everything she can into every rehearsal, going so far as to injure herself at times.  Distracting her is Erica (Barbara Hershey), her suffocating and neurotic mother. Once a notable ballerina herself, Erica is both Nina’s biggest cheerleader and desperately jealous of her own daughter’s success. There’s also Lily (the ridiculously fetching Mila Kunis), a new and talented addition to the troupe who seems to naturally inhabit the qualities necessary to a Black Swan. Nina is both threatened by and attracted to this potential rival and Thomas does everything in his power to encourage both emotions.

What you can see from this premise is how much potential the Best Picture nominee had. Unfortunately, the script is only interested in exploring the many well-worn cliches we’ve seen a dozen times before —  not that anything could’ve saved the whole affair once the more bizarre elements kick in and the overwrought melodrama begins.

To be fair, my expectations might have hurt my overall opinion. Having seen it a few weeks after its release when all the critical gushing and awards acclaim had left their mark, at the very least I was expecting the story to move in new and different directions. That was a mistake. How many neurotic, passive-aggressive stage mothers have we seen like Hershey’s Erica? And has there ever been a dramatic film where the artistic director wasn’t a controlling, manipulator with a god complex? Meanwhile, a couple of potentially interesting characters get the short-shrift. (more…)

As I’ve written before, 2010 was actually a good year for movies.  The King’s Speech, The Fighter, Inception, Toy Story 3, Tangled, and How to Train Your Dragon were all great entertainment.  We’ve seen terrific starring roles from actors ranging from the heretofore unwatchable James Franco to the ever impressive Christian Bale, from the magnificent Colin Firth to the chameleonic Geoffrey Rush.  We’ve seen some actresses in supporting roles who have outshone their second-tier parts: Melissa Leo and Amy Adams in The Fighter, Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech.

But when we look at the leading actresses of 2010, the dearth of great performances and great parts is stunning.  The Golden Globe nominees for best actress this year were Halle Berry in the anonymous flick Frankie and Alice, playing a crazy person in her usual over-the-top style; Nicole Kidman in the anonymous flick Rabbit Hole, playing a grieving mother in her usual cold and remote style; Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, playing a teenage girl looking for her meth-making dad; Natalie Portman in Black Swan, playing a crazy person with a constipated look plastered on her mug; and Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, playing a spoiled girl who gets knocked up, married, and presumably divorced.  Has anyone seen any of these women in any of these films?  And if the disastrous Natalie Portman – Queen Amidala masturbating, anyone? – is the frontrunner for Best Actress at the Oscars, how far have female figures fallen?

Far.  Quick, think of the ten greatest living film actors.  It’s not that tough – we have iconic male film stars all the time.  Now think of the ten greatest living film actresses.  Now take away all women over 50.  Still thinking, aren’t you? (more…)

Throughout the history of the Western world, men traditionally called the shots in relationships and women were the ones who demurely followed their lead. People also seemed to meet up, fell in love or at least tolerated each other, and get married in short order before supposedly living happily ever after.

Of course, it was probably never really that simple. And man, how times have changed, with women calling the shots just as often as guys and one-night stands and cohabitation enabling more and more people to delay settling down until later and later in their lives.

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But the new romantic comedy “No Strings Attached” takes a look at one other phenomenon of our sex-saturated society: the concept of friends with benefits, in which a man and woman try to eschew all romantic connections and obligations and instead try to just be friends who happen to hook up together. And because it’s a romantic comedy, it tries to ask if it’s really possible to have that arrangement without falling in love.

Following the friendship of Adam (Ashton Kutcher) and Emma (Natalie Portman)from their first awkward meeting as young teens at summer camp through their late 20s, “Strings” starts off with a fun and energetic zip and tangy dialogue before devolving into a pat and predictable second half. Adam works as a writers’ assistant on a “Glee”-style TV show, while Emma is a doctor who lives with a couple of other doctor friends.

When Adam awakens naked and groggy on the womens’ couch after meeting Emma for a night of too much drinking, he can’t figure out who he might have slept with. But just when he figures out that nothing happened with anyone, his private conversation with Emma in her room winds up crossing exactly that line – and she wants to keep the relationship of fun sex with no emotional attachments.
This might seem like a dream situation for a horny guy like Adam, but he’s grown up as the son of a playboy TV sitcom star (Kevin Kline) and knows that he doesn’t want to follow in his dad’s pathetically shallow footsteps. As he starts to fall for Emma, he and the audience have to come to terms with a sad secret from her past. (more…)

The rigors of performing are surprisingly underrepresented in film. Then again, maybe not; I suspect that people don’t become actors and dancers and comedians just so they can dwell inside themselves all day. They crave attention and approval, sure, but it’s their job to take the stage. Art is subjugated in the interest of self, not the other way around.

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Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” inhabits the mind of such a performer, one whose psyche has at some point suffered a crippling blow. Its heroine seeks perfection of ballet, her craft, but proves ill-suited to the character creation process. Performers have all sorts of methods and philosophies on the subject, but most seem to say that any performance is in some way grounded to the self. But what about one who has very little self to ground their performance to?

Natalie Portman stars as Nina, the aforementioned ballerina. It’s her best screen performance, one that conveys the distress of a tortured soul coupled with roiling psychological repression. That’s apart from the physicality of portraying a top-tier ballerina, for which she reportedly trained for 10 months. Those only accustomed to her popular image as either, a) the Effervescent Love Interest, or b) the Deeply Concerned Love Interest, are in for a surprise. (more…)

I started out trying to write a typical, end-of-year, best of list. I really did. I agonized for days over the best movies I had seen in 2010. But every time I had something I was sure of on my list, I realized that it really wasn’t that great after all. In fact, it was downright disappointing. My list grew shorter the more I considered the matter, until at last I was left staring at a blank page (this will come as little consolation, I know, to our esteemed editor Mr. Nolte, who was promised said piece in a timely manner.)

The problem, I decided, was two-fold. For one, I am a crank and a pessimist, and becoming more so with every passing hour it seems. And for another, we are living in era of chronic political, cultural, and creative decay of the kind that afflicts all empires in their twilight (Of course, I don’t have to tell you that the two are not unrelated, and that the latter is very much a proximate cause of the former).

So there we have it. I cannot give you a best of, because what I have seen this past year has been mostly dreck – occasionally tolerable dreck, but dreck just the same. So instead I shall give you the only honest list a pessimist can give, and that is my top letdowns of the year, the movies that were advertised as good, and should have been good…but weren’t. Shall we begin? (more…)

“Black Swan” tells the story of a ballerina whose performances, according to her director, are too restrained. Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, the young dancer who works tirelessly to be perfect onstage. Offstage, however, Nina loses control of her own life, a change mirrored by the film’s own flaws. As Nina eventually loses her own sense of reality, the story loses credibility as over-the-top plot developments overshadow everything else.

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Early on, director Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”) does a wonderful job creating the story’s atmosphere. Aronofsky shows the drive and ambition that consume ballerinas as they rehearse. The world he depicts is one of fierce competition, unbridled passion and intense dedication.

Nina is one of the most intense dancers performing in an upcoming staging of “Swan Lake.” Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) will be directing and s searching for a new lead. Since she has passed her prime, former prodigy Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) is being replaced, much to her disdain. Leroy thinks Nina is a good dancer but the lead actress must be able to show the two distinct sides of this particular character.

The lead “Swan Lake” is the coveted role of the Swan Queen. The Swan Queen must play the White Swan and her evil twin, the Black Swan. Leroy notes that Nina would do well as the White Swan but not as the loose and carefree Black Swan. After he admits this, Leroy tries to take advantage of a disappointed Nina. When she fights back, she earns his respect and is soon offered the lead. (more…)

There comes a time in many movie stars’ careers when they decide they want to take chances, and break the mold in which their image has been cast. Think of happy-go-lucky Tom Hanks playing a gay lawyer dying of AIDS in “Philadelphia,” or Oscar queen Meryl Streep bursting into song and dance in “Mamma Mia.”

On December 3rd, it’s Jim Carrey’s and Natalie Portman’s turn to flip the script on their personas. As a gay con artist named Steven Russell who will do anything to be near his cellmate and true love (played by Ewan McGregor) – even repeatedly breaking in and out of prison – in “I Love You Phillip Morris,” Carrey regains the wild, anything-goes zeal of his early movies while taking chances that more serious-minded actors wouldn’t even attempt. Case in point: the graphic sex scene in which Carrey announces to the viewer in jubilant voice-over narration, “I am gay, gay, gay, gay, gay!” (The only graphic scene in the movie, by the way).

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On the other hand, Portman makes her bid to break out of the young-actress pack and reinvent herself as an acting powerhouse with her turn as an emotionally unbalanced ballerina who goes batshit-crazy under the pressure of a high-profile lead role in “Black Swan.” Whether cutting herself, trying to purge herself with bulimia, getting high as a kite on a laced drink or engaging in a tawdry girl-girl sex scene with costar Mila Kunis, Portman’s performance almost literally shrieks “Look at me, Oscar!” when she isn’t shrieking at her overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey) in the film’s many argument scenes.

To be sure, these are wildly ambitious films for their genres – and, in the case of “Black Swan,” it’s a genre-defying attempt at art altogether. With the almost-impossible true-life tale “Morris,” Carrey is able to show off his anarchic comic mastery in a series of hilarious con and fraud scenes as he shows how Russell got in over his head while trying to live a life of glamorous excess on a sheriff’s salary. He then goes even funnier in depicting the countless ways that Russell tried to trick his way into or out of the prison walls where his true love Morris (McGregor) was either being held or freshly released. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

The world’s highest-grossing film and one of the most awarded TV shows are also some of the greenest productions around.

“Avatar” and “30 Rock” were among the winners of the 2010 Environmental Media Association awards on Saturday night, which recognized individuals, organizations and productions that help increase public awareness of environmental issues.

The awards were presented at an eco-friendly ceremony at Warner Bros. Studios that featured organic food and compostable dinnerware. Actors Olivia Munn and Jason Ritter hosted the event, which was sponsored by one of Hollywood’s favorite green-mobiles, Toyota Prius.

Other productions recognized for spreading a green message were the documentary “Gasland” and TV shows “Bones,” “Handy Manny,” “Living With Ed” and “Lights, Camera, Take Action! Backstage With Disney’s Friends for Change.” (more…)

There are certain things that make you a man.  It’s not a matter of mere plumbing or chromosomes.  A man is more than that.  A true man defeats his enemies.  A true man can make it happen with the ladies.  A true man can repeat, verbatim, all of the classic dialogue from Heat.

Heat (1995) is more than just a heist film – it’s an epic, a shambling three-hour monster of a movie that soars and frustrates, leaves your jaw hanging in awe and you scratching your head wondering what the hell is going on.  The star power it unleashes is literally unparalleled, the direction by Michal Mann is superb, the music is incredible (go buy the soundtrack now), and the cinematography creates a vision of Los Angeles that is more real than the reality.

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I will not insult your manhood by recapping the plot.  Actually, it’s so dense and convoluted it would take forever anyway.  Plus, there are the tangents that I still don’t fully get – what the hell is that whole Natalie Portman subplot doing in there anyway?  And some parts you just have to see for yourself – think Waingro’s plot line.  Bottom line: if you have never seen Heat, go buy it immediately.  Until you do, if you are biologically male, you are not entitled to stand while urinating.

For many of us, Heat has a personal connection that comes from both its time and place.  I saw Heat in Houston the day it came out (December 15, 1995), having been waiting for it for months thanks to the remarkable trailer.  I was there for a buddy’s wedding the next day; at that wedding, I would meet my hot wife for the first time.  About a month after, the giant law firm I was then slaving away for moved into the 444 South Flower building.  You probably know it best as the bank De Niro’s crew robs.  Before I quit (I had more business than many of the partners but they offered me the same crappy $500 bonus they gave to the guy caught sleeping under his desk, so I counter-offered that I’d keep everything), I must have walked past the spot where Val Kilmer first opens up with his CAR-15 a hundred times thinking, “Dude, I know where you’re coming from.” (more…)