All of that was articulated in the two and a half minute trailer and that is exactly what Seven Days in Utopia, based on the David L. Cook book of the same name, was, perhaps only stressing the descriptions “wholesome,” and “spiritual journey” more than I had anticipated. And oh boy, was this movie wholesome, easily achieving its family-friendly G rating. That the movie was wholesome, though, was a much more enjoyable characteristic than the film’s emphasis and almost alienating insistence on the importance of said spiritual journey. The movie’s continual stressing of the necessity of a spiritual life, and a Christian one at that, I maintain, is its one main flaw, resembling, at times, something along the lines of propaganda.

Leaving this flaw aside, however, the movie does have many great qualities. Robert Duvall being a key one. Duvall is still able to command a screen unlike many of his contemporary leading actor counterpoints, and command he sure does.

Similarly, the chemistry between Black and Duvall is more than palpable, having co-starred in two other films (Sling Blade and Get Low) prior to this venture. As most of the movie is centered around the interactions and mentoring between these two men, their charismatic and deep relationship comes off as a great characteristic of the movie.

It would also be a mistake not to mention the excellent casting choice of Black, himself. As an avid and competitive golf player he provided an authority and aesthetic style to the film not regularly seen in movies dealing with the same sport. Matthew Dean Russell’s choice to cast an actual golfer in this role was one of the best decisions he made regarding the film, a decision not seen in movies like The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Greatest Game Ever Played or Tin Cup.

The supporting cast, too, all play their likable Southern characters well: Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood), Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker) and Kathy Baker (Edward Scissorhands) play their wholesome and chaste characters with ease.

In terms of direction, Russell definitely takes some chances, ones that would be hard to find in any stock inspirational, family sports movie. These choices, including editing techniques, though original for its genre, do not really add anything substantive to the movie, the way that Russell had probably hoped. That being said, though, Russell did achieve what he set out to do– he has created an inspirational and motivational sports movie perfect for viewers of all ages.

The film hits theaters September 2nd (today).

RENT IT.

While some people may disagree and say he has always been a stable working actor, nothing will compare to the productions he has lined up in the next year. Earlier this year he wrapped up filming on both ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ opposite Tom Cruise as well as ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.’ He is currently filming ‘The Avengers’ featuring an all star cast (Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo just to name a few) as well as providing the voice for a new character in the next Ice Age flick. Even after all that he will then step into the shoes of Matt Damon as the new lead in the ‘Bourne’ franchise! That doesn’t even include his lesser known projects like ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’ and ‘Slingshot’ (which he is also producing).

While it may seem a bit premature I really do think this time next year we will be talking a lot more about Jeremy Renner.  He won’t just be known as a two-time Academy Award nominated actor, but as a staple in the Hollywood action star category.   I say bring it on, I think he’s got the looks and the acting chops to pull it off.

What do you think Banters? Next big thing or over-exposed?

Apparently, Bigelow and Boal have been working on the project for a while and wanted to start filming early this summer, but when Osama Bin Laden’s death –especially, how the Navy Seal Team 6 went about it–became headline news, the writer/director team decided to incorporate that into the script.

And what’s more? The as-of-yet untitled film has just been picked up by Columbia Pictures, ensuring the movie a ton of publicity (think The Social Network and 2012).

Let’s be real, as soon as the whole Osama Bin Laden finding and killing thing happened, we all knew it was only a matter of time before someone made a movie out of it. I just didn’t realize it would be THIS soon.

Nevertheless, if someone was going to do it, thank God Bigelow and Boal got to it first. If we learned anything from The Hurt Locker, it was that Bigelow and Boal, when teamed up, can make a typical action film anything but. Here’s hoping that this duo brings something similar to this film.

Because of the new developments, Bigelow aims to start shooting at the end of the summer and is looking for a late 2012 release date.

Now, if only she would make a movie about the failed Rapture,  because I’d definitely watch that.

Would a studio rather have an Oscar winning movie or a big blockbuster?  That seems to be a big question out of Hollywood studio execs and although it may seem that studios would want the best quality movie possible, the answer is they don’t care.  Cause like anything else, it’s all about money, and big blockbusters are big money.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen just won the 2009 Razzie award for Worst Movie of the Year.  Well it also was one of the top money making movies of the year, so as bad as it was, it made a ton of money, and already a 3D third movie is in talks.

But recently a ton of big blockbusters have been very bad.  Sure they have crazy CGI technology and may be entertaining, but they are terrible.  It seems the new trend over the past few years is there is always a few movies each year that goes under the radar, then suddenly blows up around Oscar time and beats out some big time movies.  Crash (2005), Slumdog Millionaire (2009), and now The Hurt Locker (2010) are three small budget movies that have won the Oscar for Best Picture recently.  Event No Country For Old Men (2008) could even be considered a smaller budget movie as well.

In a time when the economy is in a recession, paying millions for big name actors and big names stunts may not be the best way for a studio to get the biggest ROI out of their product.  It may be better for studios to produce smaller budget films but those of better quality and push those.  It won’t require the big money to make, clearly it doesn’t need the big names to draw fans in, and when the positive press gains, the studio will clearly have a great money making movie, and a quality movie on top of it.  They will increase DVD/online sales, TV rights, and additional positive press for the studios.  I hope studios can learn from these smaller movies like The Hurt Locker and can produce better movies for movie fans in the future.

Would you like to see studios produce more small budget but quality movies?

The Oscars have come and gone and I can’t believe I spent about 4 hours (including the red carpet preview) watching the Oscars last night.  Wow…do I really need to find something to do on Sunday nights.  I was very happy with the winners announced and was glad to see The Hurt Locker come out on top with 6 awards.

Here are some brief observations of the Oscars.

-How the hell did they come to the decision to have Kathy Ireland do the red carpet interviews?  I feel like the guy in charge must have had a crush on her back in her Necessary Roughness model days and now this gave him the chance to meet her in person.  She is more irrelevant than pogs and was so incredibly fake and that necklace was just not necessary it was laughable.

-The hosts were very good.  You can’t go wrong with pairing Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.  They worked off of each other very well, kept it simple and the jokes were basic.  Some fell short on me since I’m not an LA person, but like the job they did and too bad as the show went on we saw less and less of them.

-Neil Patrick Harris did a good job with the preopening opening to the Oscars and it seemed like that was an audition to see if he could host the awards next year.  I’m putting my money down now that he will be looked at and possibly get it next year, I was very impressed with him.

-Star Jones had the most awkward red carpet interview with George Clooney.  She basically hit on him and acted like a 13 yr old girl whose locker was filled with Clooney pictures, right in front of his girlfriend/wife person.  If she would have punched her, it would have been youtube gold.

-Was it me or was George Clooney pissed off the entire night?  He’s usually a huge fun goofball and was on the red carpet, but during the show just seemed real pissed off.  Maybe that’s just his face, or maybe he hates the camera on him.  Maybe I missed a joke that was at his expense but it really seemed like every time the camera was on him he was so pissed off.

-Why did they waste time with dancers as they nominated the Best Score category?  I give the dancers credit, they were amazingly talented and it broke my back just looking at them, but what was the point.  The show was running long enough as it was and it was just a pointless waste of time.

-They didn’t show movie clips when presenting Best Cinematography.  Isn’t the whole point of that category to visually show how good the cinematography was?  I consider that a more important category than some others and it got no credit.  Just weird.

-What happened to Farrah Fawcet and Bea Arthur on the memorandum video montage?  Somebody messed up big time on that one.

-Tyler Perry’s little speech as he gave the Best Editing category made no sense.  He kept talking about the camera angles and how different shots could look and different angles would help make the scene look differently, except that doesn’t have to deal with editing, that has to deal with directing.  It just didn’t make any sense and he wasn’t funny like his movies.

These are just a few observations I had, what were some of yours?

Jersey Shore Mocks The Hurt Locker

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are finally here. This Sunday night, March 7th, is the big night: Oscar Night. I for one am extremely excited for the Oscars.  I think it’s the best of the entertainment award shows probably due to the magnitude of what is on the line.  The past couple years might have been a little dull in terms of the show itself, but I am extremely excited nonetheless. I guess the media does a good job at promoting the show.

The Oscar’s is where history is made and trivia questions are created. My friends and I often try to list backwards the past 10 best actors, 10 best pictures etc. You guys know what I mean.  We all have those great trivia questions to see who knows the most useless movie knowledge. For example, can you name the 5 best picture films since 1985 that start with the word “The.” No cheating.

Anyways, this year we have some interesting battles. The first, the battle of the ex’s. Kathryn vs Cameron – former husband and wife go head-to-head for best director. Cameron got the Globe but the Bigelow got the DGA. What will the Academy have to say?

The other big matchup involves the same movies. The Hurt Locker takes on Avatar as a real-life war movie takes on a fantasy war movie. Again, both movies have received awards during the season, so it is still a toss up. I think the Academy will lean towards the Hurt Locker here, but we shall see.

Then we have plenty of locks. Waltz is a lock for Best Supporting Actor for Inglorious, Bridges is a lock for Best Actor for Crazy Heart, Mo’Nique seems to be  a heavy favorite for Best Supporting Actress, and Bullock is a lock for Best Actress. Also, UP is a complete lock for Best Animated Feature.

The media build up is all for this Sunday night. The big show is upon us. It should be one hell of a night.

Will you be watching this Sunday?

Keep Bantering

The Oscars of the UK, aka The BAFTA’s, happened a couple days ago.  The Hurt Locker took home the top prize.  Unlike the Golden Globes which gave the Best Picture award to Avatar, the BAFTA’s gave the award to the true best film of  2009. However, one thing I wanted to quickly discuss is actually something unique to the BAFTA’s.

Like the Grammy Awards, the BAFTA’s give out a rising star award. This is a category that is not included in the Oscar show. I actually think it’s a pretty cool award, and the Academy might want to think about adding some additional categories to spice up the show. Adding this category is something to consider.  The show currently is too straight forward. For lack of a better phrase is pretty ‘by-the-book.’  However, bashing the Academy is not why I want to quickly discuss the award.

The BAFTA’s gave the rising star award to Kristen Stewart. The young actress has dominated the big screen recently with the Twilight series and Adventureland.  She is also starring as Joan Jett in the 2010 anticipated film “The Runaways.”  Stewart beat out Jesse Eisenberg, Carey Mulligan, Nicholas Hoult, and Tahar Rahim. This a big moment in the young career of Kristen Stewart.  Clearly, the success of Twilight has catapulted her fame to stardom. Smile Kristen!

The award was first given out at the BAFTA’s in 2006. Past winners include Noel Clarke, Shia LaBeouf, Eva Green, and James McAvoy.  Just looking at the short group says a lot.  Green, McAvoy and LaBeouf are all huge names now. Will Stewart be as big as them? Is she as big even now? I think you have a big argument to say she is definitely as big as Green and maybe even bigger than McAvoy. I’m not sure she is at the Shia LaBeouf level yet.

What are your thoughts on Kristen Stewart?

The month of February is commonly considered a dark period for movies. Nick mentioned that it is the graveyard for film. New releases are basically overshadowed by the award season.  In fact, Oscar nominated films get a distribution boost in February in order to milk the buzz they get from the nomination.

So, we know that you are not going to hit up the theaters for new releases. Instead, we know that you all are going to try to catch up on the Oscar movies that you didn’t get to see the first time around.  Get this, “An Education” went from 100 theaters before being nominated for the award, to over 700 after receiving the nod for Best Picture. However, Summit’s “The Hurt Locker” was sent to DVD, which went from being in theaters to being completely removed. Theaters will not show movies that get sent to DVD FYI. So, Summitt messed up.

As we are in the Oscar season, there is trophy talk everywhere. We have a year where 10 films got nominated and lots of movie hooplah to go through.  Since we know you all are trying to play Oscar catch up, we wanted to help you out.   Here are the 10 films nominated for Best Picture and our review for each one.

1. The Hurt Locker

2. Avatar

3. Up in the Air

4. Precious

5. Inglorious Basterds

6. The Blind Side

7. District 9

8. An Education

9. UP

10. A Serious Man

Keep Bantering

This past Saturday night, while I was stuck on Martha’s Vineyard (“MV”) with no ferry going back to Cape Cod, I caught the end of the SAG’s at the steamship authority. I crowded around the only TV there along with all the authority attendants, and we all watched Inglorious Basterds take home the top prize for Best Ensemble.  If you don’t know by now I am a huge Hurt Locker fan, and being loyal to my fanhood, I was pulling for Kathryn Bigelow’s masterpiece to take this trophy.  One of the attendants was screaming for Nine and another was clearly pulling for Precious but wasn’t so overly emotional about it.

After the Basterds was announced as top dog, I immediately felt a sigh of defeat. At this point, I’m pretty emotionally invested in the Hurt Locker.  However, being stranded on MV allowed me to really think about this. Hey, I had nothing better to do. Hurt Locker really had 3 people in it, Precious had only a handful, An Education was dominated by Carey Mulligan, and Nine wasn’t going to win. Let’s just be honest, that attendant was going nuts for basically nothing. The Basterds had lets say between 12-15 people that all had fairly important roles in the movie. The star of the movie wasn’t Waltz, as much as it was Tarantino.   The Basterds was a true ensemble movie.

Christoph Waltz, who will win Best Supporting Actor, was still supporting. He’s as much a lock as Brett Favre’s dramatic tussle with whether to return or not next season.  Sure, he had the best performance of the movie but his screen time did not dominate the film. Only those scenes where he actually was in, did his presence really dominate.  Each personality in this film played an important role and added to the dynamic and wit that made the Basterds great.   I think that handling such a large cast and producing such a great result was what put this movie over the top from the SAG voters.  Clearly actors know good acting, and I think they got it right here.

Judging from results alone, it is apparent that actors clearly think that managing a cast of 15 people is a lot harder than managing a 3-5 person cast.  I’m not taking anything away from The Hurt Locker or Precious but managing a large cast has got to be straight tough. While I think The Hurt Locker is a better movie than the Basterds, the top prize at the SAG is best Ensemble performance, not Best Movie. The ensemble performance for Basterds was second to none and deserved the trophy. SAG got it right.

Keep Bantering