Month: January 2004

Oscar Noms

THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS ARE IN BOYS!

I love The Lord of the Rings so I must point out that it recieved 11 Nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Cold Mountain, for the record, was royally snubbed in both of the aforementioned categories.

Here are the rest of the nominees:

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Johnny Depp – PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

Ben Kingsley – HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG

Jude Law – COLD MOUNTAIN

Bill Murray – LOST IN TRANSLATION

Sean Penn – MYSTIC RIVER

(you’ll notice that I’ve italicized one of the names above, that is because I believe this person/film will be the victor) After each category I shall explain my prediction… and hope to God that I am accurate 🙂

Okay, so this category is pretty much not one you usually have to think about very much. Now, I will concede that Bill Murray got the Golden Globe for Best Actor (Comedy). But this is the Academy, and the Academy sadly rarely gives out Best Actor awards for comedic performances. Now, this is not a end all be all of the awards syste. Sean Penn turned in two quality performances this year, one in Mystic River and the other in 21 Grams, he’s my bet for Best Actor.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Alec Baldwin – THE COOLER

Benicio Del Toro – 21 GRAMS

Djimon Hounsou – IN AMERICA

Tim Robbins – MYSTIC RIVER

Ken Watanabe – THE LAST SAMURAI

This category is a little trickier. Alec Bladwin is ruled out in my book because The Cooler has only been out for a few weeks on very limited disribution. Benicio has won before, Djimon really is an awesome actor and deserves to win… and In America as a film has been around for a while and has a fair sized viewership. Tim Robbins is a solid actor but my bet is on Ken Watanabe, he had a gut-churning sweet role in The Last Samurai. He is my pick.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Keisha Castle-Hughes -WHALE RIDER

Diane Keaton – SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE

Samantha Morton – IN AMERICA

Charlize Theron – MONSTER

Naomi Watts – 21 GRAMS

This line up is full of good chioces. Whale Rider has been a critical as well as an audience fave, which puts Keisha high up on the list, and so I’ve chosen her. Diane and Samantha are solid, but probably not as well known as the roles Charlize and Naomi had in their films.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Shohreh Aghdashloo – HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG

Patricia Clarkson – PIECES OF APRIL

Marcia Gay Harden – MYSTIC RIVER

Holly Hunter – THIRTEEN

Ren?e Zellweger – COLD MOUNTAIN

Yeah yeah yeah, Ren?e won the Golden Globe and that is the primary reason I’ve chosen her for the Academy Award too. She was nominated for Chicago last year but failed to attain the coveted little golden man. The other two high marks in this category are Shohreh, she has been a critical favorite, and Holly Hunter, who had an eye-opening role in Thirteen.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

BROTHER BEAR

FINDING NEMO

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE

The Triplets of Belleville would win most likely if it had been playing in more than just one theater in New York City. But seeing as that is the only place in the continental U.S. that you could view the film, I doubt that it will win. Brother Bear? No. Nemo? The fact that that film even EXISTS boggles my mind: the detail and faithful recreation of the ocean floor is amazing. And the story is not that bad 🙂

ART DIRECTION

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

THE LAST SAMURAI

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

SEABISCUIT

I like the Lord of the Rings. ’nuff said.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

CITY OF GOD

COLD MOUNTAIN

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

SEABISCUIT

I want City of God to win really badly in this category… however Girl With A Pearl Earring and Master and Commander are worthy competitors, especially Girl. It details a fictional period of the life of legendary painter Vermeer, whose work is noted especially for it’s photographic quality and unique representation of light.

COSTUME DESIGN

GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

THE LAST SAMURAI

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

SEABISCUIT

For the third film, nearly every culture and character has a part and thus the whole breadth of the epic trilogy and it’s incredible costume design can be taken in 🙂

DIRECTING

CITY OF GOD

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

LOST IN TRANSLATION

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

MYSTIC RIVER

LOTR does have the buzz. City of God is nominated, which is awesome. But it will not win. Mystic River is Clint Eastwood’s best since Unforgiven… but it has nothing on LOTR!!!

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

BALSEROS

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS

THE FOG OF WAR

MY ARCHITECT

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND

Just a slightly-educated guess.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

ASYLUM

CHERNOBYL HEART

FERRY TALES

Sure beats me 😛

FILM EDITING

CITY OF GOD

COLD MOUNTAIN

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

SEABISCUIT

Truth be told, I think that City of God might win this one, it is a strong competitor. But I still think that LOTR has the buzz.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

EVIL

THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI

TWIN SISTERS

?ELARY

It’s the only one I’ve heard of before 😛

MAKEUP

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

Gotta love them orcs!

MUSIC (SCORE)

BIG FISH

COLD MOUNTAIN

FINDING NEMO

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

Enough Film Critic’s associations have picked Howard Shore again for Best Score, even though he’s already won for LOTR. Cold Mountain got T Bone Burnett to do the music (he did O Brother, Where Art Thou?), which could tip the scales. Big Fish was good, if reserved Danny Elfman. Finding Nemo was vintage Pixar. I have not seen House of Sand and Fog.

MUSIC (SONG)

“Into the West” – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

“A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow” – A MIGHTY WIND

“Scarlet Tide” – COLD MOUNTAIN

“The Triplets of Belleville” – THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE

“You Will Be My Ain True Love” – COLD MOUNTAIN

The only other song on this list that even is good is the one from The Triplets of Belleville. Cold Mountain with two? 😦 A Mighty Wind got nominated, that is awesome. Not likely to win but awesome still to be nominated. Also a great song.

BEST PICTURE

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

LOST IN TRANSLATION

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

MYSTIC RIVER

SEABISCUIT

… You know why.

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

BOUNDIN’

DESTINO

GONE NUTTY

HARVIE KRUMPET

NIBBLES

Even though Pixar won this one last year, I’m going to go with them again 🙂

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

DIE ROTE JACKE (The Red Jacket)

MOST (The Bridge)

SQUASH

(A) TORZIJA ([A] Torsion)

TWO SOLDIERS

Um, I have no idea what these even are.

SOUND

THE LAST SAMURAI

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

SEABISCUIT

Lost last year but won Sound Editing? Odd. Gonna flip flop this year 🙂

SOUND EDITING

FINDING NEMO

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

My uneducated pick 🙂

VISUAL EFFECTS

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL

Master and Commander was awesome and detailed, Pirates got a little old and cheesy. LOTR? Just right 🙂

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

AMERICAN SPLENDOR

CITY OF GOD

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING

MYSTIC RIVER

SEABISCUIT

The other films in this category all deserve to be there hands down, but adapting Tolkien to the screen? Who would take on such a monsterous task? And it has as yet not won an award as such and so deserves above the others to take home the little golden guy.

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS

FINDING NEMO

IN AMERICA

LOST IN TRANSLATION

I’ve heard that this film is written so well, it is a favorite for this award.

Four For Four

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King has just gone and won every single freaking award it was nominated for. That means it got Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Director and Best Picture. Yes. Yes, oh yes. Oscar countdown begins with the nominations on Tuesday… be watching 😉

Slaughter all the meat

Well I am finally plunked down at my computer for the first time in several days, looking forward to a time of R and R (so to speak) for the next day. My life spiked into one big, blurred crescendo beginning on Monday morning and hurtling onward almost without relenting until just now.

I love life. I love God. I love my friends and my Roo.

Thank heaven that I am finally hittin the hay.

“I already have one enemy working against me: myself.” – Kristen, this girl from Offenhaur who has a unique way of expressing low self-esteem 🙂

“The story of my life”

Well I finally went to see Big Fish! And it was a whopper. I mean, you could chalk this one up as the one that got away but it is more likely to swim around in your mind for weeks to come. After landing this big fish and cleaning it and cooking it up for supper, I felt that it would be good let it flop around for a while before whacking its head off with a hatchet.

So, here is why Big Fish is good, great, a quality movie with only a few instances of naked bottoms being shown, and why it is a gazillion times better than Cold Dead Lifeless Soulless Heartless Worthless Mountain. First of all, Ewan McGregor does an excellent job playing Young Edward Bloom. He does a decent job of having a southern accent and oozes smiles and determination and sappy charm. Alison Lohman is okay as Young Sandra Templeton/Blom, but I found her to be kind of… how shall we say… ‘not really in the movie much’. Albert Finney is excellent as Senior Edward Bloom and as such deserves a nomination of some sort for his performance. Billy Crudup is Billy Crudup, nothing new, he’s not bad but he’s not dynamic either. Jessica Lange is good for the bits that we get a window in on her character as Senior Sandra Bloom… again, not in the movie quite enough I think. And then there’s Helena Bonham Carter who plays a witch and a woman. And let’s not forget Steve Buscemi, one of the reasons that any movie can become instantly better because he is in it. The story was fascinating and definitely full of wonder and adventure and imagination. One of the overall criticisms I’ve heard most for the film is that it doesn’t break out enough and explode with that imagination. Which I will agree with. Now, don’t get me wrong, the film is gorgeous, well-filmed and full of color. But I do get the sense that there was potential here that was not quite fully realized along the way. Pity. All those things aside, Big Fish is definitely a great movie and one that merits being seen multiple times at that. I particularly love the theme of the value of the life of one man, and the many other lives that it touches and how because of this one person, so many things are so very different than they might have been without him. Ciao.

Big Fish

lead acting: 9/10

supporting acting: 7/10

story: 8/10

directing: 8/10

production design/value: 9/10

overall score: 8.2

Classes

Well I have been through the better part of my first week in classes, which has been nice, busy, and also a kind of rude awakening back to the cruel dead world.

Also an awakening back to the fact that I do not belong to that world, and that my Roo is back and I can see her *more*. I have friends in all classes, which is awesome 🙂 And my classes look like they’ll be forgiving and not too harsh on me. It is the combination of work and school and a seeming inability to get to bed before 2a.m. that strikes fear into my very heart. I need to figure out a way of controlling my time, because, invariably, no matter how late I am up out doing something or hanging out with friends I will still stay up for a little while longer while at home to savor a few moments alone to reflect on the day and God and perhaps blog or send an email or two 🙂

To all of ya’ll who wondered what my schedule would be looking like this is basically it for the semester:

Monday: class 8am-9:15am

break 9:15am-12:30pm

class 12:30pm-1:20pm

break 1:20pm-2:30pm

class 2:30pm-3:20pm

break or work 3:20pm-sleep

Tuesday: class 8am-9:15am

break or work 9:15am-7pm

bible study 7pm-9pm

roo bible study 9:30pm

Wednesday: class 8:30am-11:20am

break 11:20am-12:30pm

class 12:30pm-1:20pm

break 1:20pm-2:30pm

class 2:30pm-3:20pm

break or work 3:20pm-sleep

youth group (if I can make it 😛 ) 7pm-9pm

Thursday: break/work early-6pm

519 8pm-?

Friday: class 8am-9:15am

break 9:15am-12:30pm

class 12:30pm-1:20pm

break 1:20pm-2:30pm

class 2:30pm-3:20pm

break or work 3:20pm-sleep

Saturday: break or work

“So you wrap your legs around this Inman feller?”

My chosen favorite line from the movie Cold Mountian, a line uttered by the bouncy slurred twangy character of Ruby Thewes… played by Ren?e Zellweger.

Gaul, what a picture. The film was good, there is no doubt that it has production values and that it was made with the utmost of care and attention to detail. I found the story itself to be uninspiring though, and also generally predictable. There were some great cameos, but that is a problem when the cameos are a larger reason that the movie is good rather than the story or the performances by the leading actors. Jude Law does a good job as Inman: he starts out clean, grows an awesome beard, shaves it, grows more awesome beards, and shaves them. All the while his eyes are atwinkle with the grave certainty that his soul is forever damned because of the crap he has witnessed on the battlefield. Nicole Kidman does a flat pitiable job as Ada Monroe, if her character is supposed to be adrift, aimless and mostly pitiful for the duration of the movie then she nails the role and lots of little awards go her way. But I for one found the entire love story to be rather stilted and ponderous, slowly aching its way towards a very obvious and not very touching conclusion. Donald Sutherland is in the movie, though not for long. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays one of the most detestable roles I have seen an actor play in a movie since seeing Peter Weller as Bill Lee in Naked Lunch, or Jennifer Connolly playing Marion Silver in Requiem for a Dream. Jena Malone has a neat, if very brief and quite final cameo in the film. And Natalie Portman has a cameo and does a pretty durn good job of her role. But my #1 favorite supporting character is Mr. Thewes, played by good old Brendan Gleeson, whom you might all remember as Hamish from Braveheart… or the executive from MI:2… or the dad from 28 Days Later… or the club weilding sheriff from Gangs of New York… and he’s going to be in Troy, yes.

All in all I don’t reccomend seeing this film in the theaters, because you won’t be able to fast forward the crappy scenes, which are abrupt and quite offensive. Again, Philip Seymour Hoffman dissapoints me by playing this sick role.

And I realized that I don’t really have a rating system in place for my movies so I will have to institute Joel’s Movie Rating System for beginning with this year. So far here are the ratings for the only two films I’ve seen in the theater this year:

1 = whoever made this nasty crap needs to be shot… now.

2 = whoever created this smelly piece of trash needs to be given many savage indian rug burns before being banished from Hollywood for all time.

3 = whoever pooped this stinker out needs to quit asking their daddy for jobs in Hollywood.

4 = whoever shot this snotball from their cranium ought to start wondering how a no-talent hack like themselves made it into the industry.

5 = whoever made this film needs some serious improvement but they aren’t ignorant of elements that make a story good or entertaining.

6 = whoever crafted this film did a good job and I can tolerate it… but probably only once.

7 = whoever spent time on this film did a decent job and deserves accolades and money and should continue to work.

8 = whoever worked hard on this film has solid talent and I will certainly enjoy and come back for more in the future.

9 = whoever this person is should be glad that God allowed them to make films because they were born for it and should never stop until they die.

10 = this number only reserved for films which blow me out of my shoes and prove to me once again that magic still exists in the chemical emulsion of film.

The Last Samurai:

lead acting: 7/10

supporting acting: 9/10

story: 7/10

directing: 8/10

production design/value: 8/10

overall score: 7.8

Cold Mountain:

lead acting: 5/10

supporting acting: 7/10

story: 4/10

directing: 8/10

production design/value: 8/10

overall score: 6.4

Phlighpze (Pronounced ‘flips’)

Nobody can possible match up to me! I stayed up until 11pm last night using the phone in two ways: for the internet and for talking to people. And then I woke up at 5:30am and went to work for 7 hours! I am superman! I am so amazingly good at functioning in life. Actuallly it’s all thanks to the devil: coffee. And even though it is a diuretic (meaning it sucks water out of your body instead of giving water to your body) I still live upon it sometimes. Gaul, if only the Arabs had never discovered that God created a bean with the potent qualities that the coffee bean contains. And so now I have discovered that coffee is indeed addicting and detrimental, it stunts your growth, makes you unhappy when you can’t drink it, and generally prevents you from being a human in the wee morning hours until you succumb to its siren call of slow death.

In other more jubilant news Big Fish hits theaters nationwide tomorrow and I hope to go and see this baby soon, though I will have to wait for Roo to come back because she wants to see it with me. In other good movie news, even though I still haven’t seen it, Cold Mountain was overlooked for a DGA nomination. That means a huge boulder has been placed in the path of this seemingly perfectly crafted Oscar baby in the fact that Anthony Minghella (the director) has been rejected for a Director’s Guild of America nomination, a key forcasting board for the Academy Awards. Only six times in the 55 year existence of the DGA has their award for Best Director not been the same as the Academy award for Best Director. Ooh, and that seems to pretty much cut Cold Mountain out of THAT category, which paves the way even more for Return of the King. And it seems that the runtime for the Extended Edition of that film when it comes out will be more along the lines of 4 hours and 15 minutes versus the 4 hours and 50 minutes it was purported to be 🙂

I’m out for now.

Pop the bubble

Day 7

the shore

I can see the shore from here

I see your town, your house

and you

The score is

I count the letters of your name

I count the days ’til you

are here again

Day 7

And I’m love galore

Hello bloggers. Time has been kind to me and thusly I have been kind to time. However I must awaken at an ungodly hour tomorrow so I regret to say that this is the extent of my blog entry. The Notwist comes to America again this year and I am excited, I want to see them again. Toodles!

Ring in the new year

Happy New Year all of you guys…

I got sick but thank heaven it was not with the flu… just some nasty headache/sniffles/sore throat/achy joints/phlegmy discharges disease. I will be well in a few, and I even managed to survive working from 7-11 this morning at Panera. Much to the chagrin of me and the few other pitiable workers who were subjected to such abject torture there were quite a few idiot customers who came in. There were even people who called the store BEFORE we even opened doors this morning… I mean, come on people! It is New Year’s Day! Stay home. That phonecall alone indicated two things: 1. that the person in question was already AWAKE at 7:30am on New Year’s Day and 2. that they fully intended to come in and make me SERVE them on New Year’s Day. I tell you that it is disgusting. And that is my cheerful New Year’s Rant.

In other news I’ve made a resolution to stop complaining about work related poop. 🙂

I will catch all of you folks on the flipside hopefully.

~Sicky

2003: Wha Happen?!?

Joel’s 2003 Year In Review

I suppose I should start reviewing the year by breaking it down into categories. You know, for organizational purposes. And I suppose like all Year In Review essays, this one should begin with the obvious: Our ubiquitous President.

This year has been a very headstrong year for the Prez. He has seen a war waged, another country torn asunder by our unfathomable military might, the capture of a madman, the lack of support from our conceited European comrades, and the repeated threats from a piddling Asian nation with a reckless dictator at the helm. All the while, pleasing the press with zillions of funny quotes, enough to fill up a sequel to the book George W. Bushisms. “The trouble with the French is that they don’t have a word for ‘entrepeneur’” and “By dethroning Saddam we have not only freed the American people, but have made it safer for our own people.” Anyhow, I still love him as a President, and considering that Howard Dean is the most prominent challenger in the upcoming election, no doubt Dubya will come out the victor once again.

Next up is my roundup of major catastrophes of the year. The spring and summer passed without so much as a massive earthquake or devastating hurricane. But in July a gargantuan super-cell thunderstorm shredded Northwest Ohio, reaching its peak fury while rushing through Bowling Green. A good chunk of one of the trees flanking the driveway to my house was torn off by winds reaching in excess of 90mph. The roof to the Moore Musical Arts center bit the dust, and a chunk of the Field House wall was blown in. The entire overhang at the Meijer Gas Station was blown away. Trees fell, houses were crushed, cars crumpled like tissue paper, and the city suffered a cumulative $147,000 worth of damage. Ouch. B.G. recovered though. The whole nation winced in August, when a power outage that began in my beloved Ohio rippled across eight states and put an estimated 50 million people out of power. I was in the midst of a Final Cut Pro class at the exact moment that the ripple tore through Bowling Green. Our computers flickered off and then auxiliary power took hold and we continued class. Gradually we began to notice the scope of the outage. Hurricane Isabel was the next big thing to beat us up and it turned parts of Maryland into an estuary.

Logically following my scatterbrained observations about catastrophes comes my critique of the popular culture. So far we saw gay tastes becoming very very very chic, even though gay lesbian bisexual and transsexual people comprise a very tiny fraction of our society, somehow they purport to have a far greater importance to the popular culture than anything else. Shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Queer as Folk, even Surprise By Design have flaunted the gay element. New shows that grew in popularity included The O.C., a drama about a poor kid living with rich kids in California. Alias had another smashing season, according to its fans. The Sopranos continued on… who cares. Six Feet Under and Carnivalé on HBO garnered more attention. CSI spawned half a dozen other spinoff shows. But I don’t watch TV so I don’t really care about all that crap. In music Norah Jones became the new front-running musician by winning five Grammys while groups like Fountains of Wayne, Switchfoot, Good Charlotte and The Ataris broke into the mainstream. Johnny Cash died and that was enough to cause a fountain of re-releasing, tributes and biopics to spurt forth. Barry White died and that was enough for a lot of people to go out and promptly listen to his soothing voice over and over and tell themselves that he wasn’t dead… in fact he was still alive in binary on a silver disc and singing especially just for them. In films Chicago mopped up at the Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, while The Pianist made off with Best Director and Best Actor… a funny coincidence because Roman Polanski cannot get his award or he will be incarcerated on U.S. soil on charges of Statutory Rape. But everybody knew that already. The Two Towers was only nominated for 6 awards and it took home 2 of them… for technical achievements.

I will save up all of the rest of my movie opinions for Joel’s Oscar Preview edition later on in a month or so.

Now here come the lists! First off I have the top 10 movies that I saw IN THE THEATER this year:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2. Cidade de Deus (City of God)

3. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away)

4. Adaptation.

5. School of Rock

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

7. X2: X-Men United

8. L’homme du tren (Man on the Train)

9. 28 Days Later

10. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Next up is the top 10 movies that I saw ON VIDEO/DVD/TELEVISION (for the first time) this year:

1. Braveheart

2. In The Bedroom

3. The Elephant Man

4. About Schmidt

5. Ed Wood

6. The Man Who Wasn’t There

7. Braindead (Dead Alive)

8. Lost In la Mancha

9. GATTACA

10. Holes

Yeah so a few of those films are old I know and it probably comes as a shock to some of you that I had never seen them up to this year, but I swear on my honor that it was the very first time I’d seen these wonderful movies.

I’m also including the top 10 movies that I need to see in the next few weeks here so that my life can be complete:

1. The Last Samurai

2. Mystic River

3. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

4. Big Fish

5. Lost In Translation

6. Bubba Ho-Tep

7. Love Actually

8. Girl With a Pearl Earring

9. Capturing the Friedmans

10. The Matrix Revolutions

Notice that Cold Mountain is not the list, even though there are a number of actors in it that I would enjoy seeing (Giovanni Ribisi, Brendan Gleeson, Natalie Portman) who don’t have the big sappy roles that Jude Law and Nicole Kidman have.

Next up is (don’t forget!) the top 10 fricken’ worst movies that I saw this year anywhere, could have been in the theater, on video or DVD, and hopefully not on TV, because I don’t watch TV so I don’t care about all of that crap. The funny thing about crappy movies is that you can easily make fun of them. It is for this reason that I probably watched most of the movies on this list with Jeremy Cordy. Here goes:

1. Freddy Got Fingered (almost as bad as Dudley Do-Right)

2. Severed (A home movie starring Bono and some guy with make up on)

3. Coyote Ugly (lots of promiscuous sex)

4. Freddy Vs Jason (lots of naked girls and then two invincible monsters fighting each other forever and never winning or losing)

5. Saving Silverman (Jason Biggs is always funny in a stupid way… but the movie proved Neil Diamond lo be a moron)

6. Revolution (Al Pacino gave an intensely thankless performance in this movie about… painful accuracy paid to the revolutionary war recreation without any real thought given to a useful or entertaining story)

7. Scare Crow Slayer (a very entertaining story about a crazed living scarecrow)

8. Ravenous (Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle eat people in this movie… you should go rent it)

9. From Dusk Till Dawn (creative assets aside, I hated this movie)

10. Baby Watchers (I just had to find a way to put this on the list J)

Next up is the top 10 new bands that I have had the privilege of getting into this year. The criteria to be on this list doesn’t necessarily mean that the band itself is new or that I hadn’t heard of them before, just that I bought or otherwise obtained and got into music of theirs over the past calendar year. Here goes:

1. The Fire Theft

2. Kent

3. Folk Implosion

4. The Postal Service

5. Brian Eno

6. Luxury

7. Joe Christmas

8. Jets To Brazil

9. Radiohead

10. Hot Hot Heat

Next up is the top 10 songs for the year. I had to think long and hard about this one because there are so many songs that I freaking love. It has been a journey a year long to figure our which songs fit into the top 10, and there are quite a few omissions that I sadly had to make in order to get it down to 10, but nonetheless I feel good about this list. It is a good list. And here it is:

1. Heaven – THE FIRE THEFT

2. Saker Man Ser/Things She Said – KENT

3. One Part Lullaby – FOLK IMPLOSION

4. I Ruined It – JOE CHRISTMAS

5. Secret of the Easy Yoke – PEDRO THE LION

6. Johnny and Mary – THE NOTWIST

7. Black and White Film – THE GREAT FICTION

8. Brand New Colony – THE POSTAL SERVICE

9. Rocket Boy – JETS TO BRAZIL

10. An Ending (Ascent) – BRIAN ENO

Next up is the top 10 people who died this year. I rank these people according to the level of how much I will miss them, not on whatever the saps of the popular culture think. Here are the stiffs:

1. Mr. Rogers (I WILL miss this man and his tattooed arms indicating how many men he sniped in WWII)

2. Earl Hindman (Tim Allen’s faceless neighbor Wilson on Home Improvement)

3. Johnny Cash (famous singing man with the deep throaty voice)

4. Katharine Hepburn (super mega famous actress from a bygone era)

5. Gregory Hines (famous dancing man)

6. Al Hirschfeld (famous New York caricaturist)

7. Bob Hope (famous entertainer of the U.S. and Allied troops through many wars)

8. Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird)

9. John Ritter (he played a former fat kid in IT)

10. Rod Roddy (famous voice announcer for 30 years on the infamous show The Price Is Right)

Well I suppose that about does it for Joel’s 2003 Year In Review. Be on the lookout around January 17th for my Oscar blog entry, since that is the due date for the Academy voting ballots. Then on January 27th we’ll see if I was right in who would get nominated. Then I’ll make my predictions of who will win, and then we’ll see if Joel really understands the twisted and labyrinthine awards process of Hollywood once and for all!

Goodbye, and Auld Lang Syne everybody! Happy New Year (in a bit) J