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The Cavalcade takes a look at the 2010 Oscar Nominations

Posted in Academy Awards, movies, Oscars with tags Academy Awards, movies, Oscars, Oscars Wild on February 1, 2011 by Paxton

This is what I wait all year for. The reason I saw 50+ movies last year. The Oscar nominations.

I’ve been doing this review of the Oscar nominations for about 5 years now. Check out my Oscar nomination reviews from 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007. I’ve clearly shown that I know more than the Academy. So let’s see what I think of the nominations this year. I’m only going to look at the “money” categories because no one really cares about sound mixing unless they are actually a sound mixer.

Best Actor
Javier Bardem in “Biutiful” (Roadside Attractions) – Dammit. Where the f**k did this movie come from? I saw 50+ movies last year and I’ve never heard of this.
Jeff Bridges in “True Grit” (Paramount) – Yes. Agreed. Well done.
Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network” (Sony Pictures Releasing) – Just watched this. It deserves all the praise it’s getting.
Colin Firth in “The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company) – This is one of those I know I should see and my wife will want to see, but I’m like…”I’ll pass.”
James Franco in “127 Hours” (Fox Searchlight) – Apparently this movie is NOT a prequel to the 1993 Renny Harlin classic, Cliffhanger, starring Sylvester Stallone. And Franco does NOT play a younger version of Sly’s Gabe “Mountain” Walker. I don’t know about you, but that adjusts my expectations to somewhere below…zero.

Supporting Actor
Christian Bale in “The Fighter” (Paramount) – I didn’t like this the first time when it was called The Wrestler.
John Hawkes in “Winter’s Bone” (Roadside Attractions) – I totally thought this was porn when I first read the title. I was like, “Go Academy!” Nope. It’s about a small girl who searches for her druggie dad who put the family trailer up for his bail. Sounds all lovely and depressing. My friend Dr Mike’s wife will love it.
Jeremy Renner in “The Town” (Warner Bros.) – Yes, I couldn’t agree more. This movie is great and Renner is fantastic in it.
Mark Ruffalo in “The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features) – So both Hawkeye (Renner) and The Incredible Hulk (Ruffalo) from the upcoming Avengers movie are nominated for Supporting Actor awards. That’s pretty awesome. Oh, and Batman. Forgot Bale was up there too.
Geoffrey Rush in “The King’s Speech” (The Weinstein Company) – This movie got a lot of nominations. I know my wife is going to want to watch it.

Best Actress
Annette Bening in “The Kids Are All Right” (Focus Features) – Lesbian couple, raising teenagers, Oscar noms, blah, blah, blah.
Nicole Kidman in “Rabbit Hole” (Lionsgate) – A couple’s son dies, they drift apart. The Academy loves these depressing dramas.
Jennifer Lawrence in “Winter’s Bone” (Roadside Attractions) – Kid searches for trailer park druggie dad. Not porn. Touching.
Natalie Portman in “Black Swan” (Fox Searchlight) – Lots of angry lesbian sex between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Of course I want to see this. Too bad it was filmed by Darren Arnofsky who totally ruined similar sex scenes with Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream.
Michelle Williams in “Blue Valentine” (The Weinstein Company) – Supposedly a very sexy picture. However, I don’t think I would agree because Michelle Williams is not sexy.

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Awesomeness Elsewhere – Jan 21, 2011

Posted in blogging, movies with tags blogging, movies on January 21, 2011 by Paxton

Each Friday I’ll try to keep you up to date on some of the goings on for me around the Internets. In case you didn’t remember I also write columns for Strange Kids Club and I run a vintage movie advertisement blog called Held Over!

– This week in my Strange Kids Club column, Forgotten Favorites, I talk about the 1982 teen comedy Zapped! starring Scott Baio, Willie Aames and Heather Thomas’ breasts. I also looked at an ad for Zapped over on Held Over.

– All this week on Held Over I looked at 4 other ads (besides Zapped!) for 1980s teen sex comedies like Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgmont High. Head on over there to see them. My personal favorite was the ad for the movie Joy Stick.

– Also on Strange Kids Club I posted my weekly look at DVD/Blu-Ray releases for Jan 18 in my column On The Shelves. See me talk about Takers, Death Race 2 and Justified.

Go forth, check out the awesomeness and I’ll see you back here.

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Movie Board: The worst movies I saw in 2010

Posted in movies, reviews with tags Academy Awards, Movie Board, movies, Oscars, reviews on January 13, 2011 by Paxton

So, on Tuesday I talked about my favorite movies of 2010. Now it’s time to take a look at the Movie Board and pick the worst movies I saw last year. Here’s a quick refresher of this year’s Movie Board:

My Movie Board 2010

You can see previous years’ Movie Boards here.

Now let’s see what movies I felt were a waste of my valuable time in 2010.

In no particular order.

Sex and the City 2 – Yes I saw this. My wife loved this show. She has the full box set of DVDs she watches nearly every summer. I watch the show every once in a while with her. It’s not awful. I can’t watch too much of it at once, but I don’t hate the show. It can be pretty amusing at times. I even went to see the first movie with her, and enjoyed it. So I expected at least some light humor and to be mildly entertained. Instead, I HATE THIS F***ING MOVIE. Hate it with all the fiery hatred in the bowels of Hell. They should have stopped at the last movie. The Samantha character is RIDICULOUS. At 60, they are still trying to make her the fiery sex bomb and it doesn’t work anymore. She looks old. And her antics are cringe inducing. The Carrie character, who was never my favorite anyway, is off the charts irritating in this one. Why anyone would go out with, or stay married to her is beyond me. This movie was worse than terrible. It was offensive. If there’s a part 3, I will not see it. But judging from the box office, there won’t be a part 3. So there is a God.

The American – F**k movie studio marketing departments. F**k. Them. They totally played this as a European Bourne Identity. However, it’s more like those old, slowly paced ’70s action movies everyone remembers loving but when they watch them now, realize how goddam boring they are. I think I was more pissed at the bait and switch than this being a bad movie. If I had known what I was in for and adjusted my expectations, I think I might have enjoyed this. I say MIGHT. It is a very European style movie with long boring shots, minimal dialogue and some nudity. I just went in expecting something completely different and I totally blame the marketing departments of the movie studio. They can suck it.

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Movie Board: My favorite movies of 2010

Posted in Academy Awards, Harry Potter, movies, reviews with tags Academy Awards, books, Harry Potter, Movie Board, movies, Oscars, reviews on January 11, 2011 by Paxton

Here we are again. It’s time for my annual encounter with The Movie Board. We’ve been through a lot, Movie Board, and it’s time to do it again. Let’s dance.

First off, let’s take a look at this year’s Movie Board.

My Movie Board 2010

According to it’s all-knowing whiteness I saw 52 movies this past year. Very close to last year in which I saw 53 movies. I was on a tear throughout the summer, way ahead of my pace for last year, but the pace slowed to a crawl in September with the birth of my son. However, I rallied and was able to get my movie viewing total back up over 50. Actually, the number of movies I saw was probably closer to 60 as I also saw movies like True Grit (the original), Death Trap and Harry Brown, but they were all released before 2010. And this list is for movies released within the calendar 2010 movie season.

Anyway, from this list I’ve culled my favorites. And here they are in no particular order.

Inception – Mind bending. Best way to describe this movie. Leo is great in this. I think I prefer this movie to Shutter Island. I’d definitely watch Inception again before watching Shutter Island. Sure, some of the dream mechanics are a little…ill defined. Sure, Ellen Page’s character actually going into the dream made little to no sense. But I enjoyed it all the same. Fun and interesting story, action and a cliff hanger ending that usually SERIOUSLY pisses me off but didn’t here. I love that rotating hallway fight sequence. So awesome.

Salt – I was blown away by this movie. It’s brutally AWESOME. The action is intense. I was not expecting the action and suspense in this movie to be as balls out awesome as it is. Angelina is great and Liev Shreiber is also great (as usual). So ridiculously good. It’s like a female Bourne Identity. I seriously think this is nearly as good as the first Bourne Identity (not the last one, the first one).

Harry Potter 7-1
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I – I have seen every one of these movie in the theater. And dammit if every one of these movies hasn’t gotten better and better. Prisoner of Azkaban is phenomenal, Goblet of Fire is pretty good, but then Order of Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince are nothing short of spectacular. And this movie just continues that awesomeness forward. However, many people I know have been saying they were disappointed with this one. I think it’s all expectations. This movie is much darker than any other of the movies. Plus, it covers the section of the book where Ron leaves and Harry and Hermione are running/searching for horcruxes alone. Many people thought that storyline was boring in the book but I loved it. It shows just how difficult a time they had and just how cut off from the rest of the wizarding world they really were. Makes what happens later mean more. I love this movie and I can’t wait to watch the next one. Oh, yeah, since this is a Part I, it sets up a lot of the story for Part II, which may throw people off also.

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Holy crap, I just ran a marathon!

Posted in exercise, life, movies, running with tags exercise, Held Over, life, movies, running on December 22, 2010 by Paxton

So, I ran my first marathon on Sunday. It was the culmination of many, many months of preparation and training. I officially signed up for and started training for this race back in May, so I’m glad that it’s all over now and I can say that I have now run a full marathon (26.2 miles). And I am even happy with my time; 5 hours and 10 minutes. The marathon was not as soul crushing and hard as I expected, but that’s not to say it was easy. I think the key for me was running the actual race with a buddy. My friend Mike and I ran the race together and provided each other with much needed distracting conversations and encouragement especially in the later miles (20+).

The marathon I ran was part of a larger group of races called The Tri-2B Tuff Challenge.

The Tri-2B Tuff Challenge consists of three distance races in three months. You can either do three half marathons or two half marathons and a full marathon. I did the latter.

The first race was the Jacksonville Marine Corps Half Marathon on Oct 2. Mike and I mistakenly believed that race started at 8am so we showed up ready to run at 7:30am. However, when we showed up people were dismantling the starting line. After asking around we discovered that the race actually started at 7am. Undaunted, we backed our butts up to the dismantled starting line, started our watches and ran the race anyway. It took a while, but we wound up catching up with some of the stragglers and finishing the race anyway.

The second race was the Outback Steakhouse Distance Classic Half Marathon on Thanksgiving Day. We double checked the starting time for that race and showed up early so we started with the official clock. This race was awesome. I enjoyed the course and it was actually fun to run it.

The last race was the Jacksonville Bank Marathon (or you could run the half marathon) on Dec 19 (this past Sunday). Finish those three races and you win the Tri-2B Tough Challenge. I’m glad I did it. Since I was training for the marathon anyway the two half marathons in Oct and Nov kept me from slacking off too much on training.

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