My Choice for Best Picture
Posted by Chap at 2/24/2008 9:02 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
(Warning!! These are just my opinions and carry no other weight!!)
A few weeks ago, I posted my list of all-time favorite movies.
http://oxroadsouth.com/2007/12/22/my-list-of-top-ten-movies.aspx
With the Oscars on TV tonight, I am reviewing 2007 movies. Let me say, first of all, that I did not like "No Country for Old Men." It is the kind of pretentiously nihilistic art-house [junk] which Hollywood mistakenly considers a classic just because the Coen Brothers directed and they've had a couple good movies. (one positive: I will note that Javier Bardem is a creepy bad guy).
Twenty years from now no one will watch it. Too bad no critics have the guts to call it out. And they say that politicians are spineless!
A week ago, Sharon and I saw "There will Be Blood." Ugh. I'm usually a big Daniel Day-Lewis fan. His role in "Gangs of New York" ... well, he plays the campaign manager I always wanted. But this movie turned me off. I guess if you like seeing workers exploited, religious faith ridiculed and children treated cruelly, then you will appreciate this movie. I don't so I didn't.
So what did we like?
"Kite Runner" was a really beautiful movie. Just great. Being a son and being a father, I appreciated that aspect of trying to live up to your father's name, as well as the difficulty in re-entering your old culture.
But my favorite movie was "Into the Wild." This really should be a finalist for Best Picture. Sean Penn did a fantastic job taking a best-selling book and capturing its essence, which is the real story of a young man who walks away from civilization before starving to death in the Alaskan wilderness.
The protagonist Chris McCandless came of age in an era before cell phones, Internet and Britney Spears. Do you remember it? It seems so far away. He graduated from WT Woodson High School in 1986, the same year I graduated from Fairfax High School -- just two miles away. We both played high school sports.
Growing up in conservative Fairfax suburbia during the Reagan era, it was only natural for a young man to break free and test himself once he reached adulthood. In that respect, the actor that played Chris McCandless caught the wanderlust of our pre-Google generation in which searching was something you did on a bike or canoe, not by hitting a computer key. Hal Holbrooke is the perfect foil as the "Greatest Generation" survivor looking for a legacy. Their scenes together are cinematic magic. The other best supporting actor are the wide open spaces of America, whether the southwest, Great Plains or the final frontier of Alaska.
I never knew Chris McCandless. Maybe he ran by me one night in high school when I was playing a soccer game or hitting a blocking sled. But having watched the movie I feel like I knew him. He was real to me.
That's my best picture for 2007. Congrats to director Sean Penn.
Chap Petersen!
Wow, mid thities and you've gone all crotchety already. What's wrong? Put on some pound since your high school glory days and now your hernia truss is pinching you? Some guys go prematurely grey, sounds like you've gone prematurely bitter.
Let's put this in perspective, shall we. The fact that the Oscars are televised is the same thinking as professional sports, they do it to make money because people will watch. Of course, people will watch a car wreck on the beltway too. They're pretty, glamourous people who have to pay for their statues and the television revenue makes the nut.
You've got to remember that people who watch "art house crap" also have another name, constituents. Finding a good movie, a good book, a nice meal all these things where people need to utilize their creativity to produce something you will enjoy, is a crapshoot. Totally opinion driven. I recognize that opinion is the large part of the legal profession. Sometime it works and sometimes it doesn't. You ought to try a profession where opinion doesn't matter, like science and technology. One equation can ruin your whole day....
By the way, barrister, I thought "creepy bad guys" were lawyers bread and butter?
Lighten up brother....(wink)
BC
You got me, BC. I'm not down on the whole industry. There are some I like. But why do modern movies need to be violent in order to be "cutting edge"?
I can just see the studio execs in LA now: "We can't greenlight this film! Chap can't relate to it! He'll think it's pretentious crud!"
It was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel for crying out loud! Being put off by violence in a film based on a Cormac McCarthy novel is like being offended when you walk into a bar and see people drinking. What on earth did you expect? (Not to sound too snarky, but next time you see a film adaptation of a book, you might want to take a peak at said book beforehand.)
Same goes for There Will Be Blood - tough movie, but challenging and visually poetic. Not made to commercial tastes, but must everything be? I thought it was a great movie and so did my friends. I guess we're all just pretentious nihilistic art house types.
Help, I'm getting killed on this thread!
Chap,
The February 2008 IEEE spectrum magazine had an article on "snowclones." Phrases in the American lexicon such as "X is the new Y" and "I'm in your X, Y'ing your Z" are the new rage. The latter coming from the gaming world, " I'm in in your base, killing your dudes."
My point is, Violence is the new sex or violence is the new narcotics is the problem. And while we would usually, not give our kids unsupervised weapons or heroin, we give them video games.
And this is what permeates our society.
BC