Recent Stories with tag 127 hours

Yes, awards season is finally over--blah blah blah boringest Oscars ever, blah blah blah.  But all in all, the films nominated this year weren't so bad (even if the wrong film won Best Picture), so now's your chance to catch up with some of the recent Oscar losers. Let's take a look at recent DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. In terms of the big releases of late, 127 Hours is out this week, and if ninety minutes in a cramped space with James Franco isn't enough for you, Danny Boyle's film is also bundled with the Oscar winner for Best Live Action Short (and probably the best Oscar speech of the night), Luke Matheny's God of Love. 

Also out now is Love and Other Drugs, which didn't get Anne Hathaway a Best Actress Oscar nomination, even though she was naked and dying (which usually does the trick). Same goes for Get Low, starring Bill Murray as Bill Murray and Robert Duvall as a crotchety old hermit who wants to throw his funeral party before he's dead. Sorry Duvall, any other year you'd get an Oscar nom, but this year his slot (Old Dude) went to Jeff Bridges instead, not that anyone had a shot at beating Colin Firth. From the creators of The Triplets of Belleville, very French full-length cartoon The Illusionist lost Best Animated Feature to Toy Story 3. You'd think that the Christina Aguilera/Cher musical Burlesque would've at least gotten a Best Song nomination, since that category was so weak this year.

Last Friday marked the release of the one- and two-disc version of Megamind, a computer-animated hero/villain story with the voices of Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, and Tina Fey. The other big release from last week was Due Date, aka Planes, Trains, and Automobiles 2. The odd couple buddy road trip is uneven and overly long, but it has its moments, and if you like Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, then you'll like the movie well enough too. No comment on The Rock and Billy Bob Thorton in Faster.... (more)

The 35th Annual Toronto International Film Festival wrapped up yesterday with the Cadillac People's Choice Award--there's no festival jury, so this is TIFF's only award--going to The King's Speech, an English period piece about King George VI (Colin Firth) ascending to the throne and seeing a speech therapist. That award automatically puts the film in the Oscar race, as Toronto (and Telluride, more and more) now marks the beginning of the frantic award season. (And see Juno, Precious, and Slumdog Millionaire as examples of films that got the start of their Oscar campaign at Toronto.) 

Besides that, there seemed to be not as many heavily buzzed-about films at this year's TIFF. If you want to get into the word on the street, I heard that Danny Boyle's new film 127 Hours (about hiker Aron Ralston, who had to cut off his arm in order to survive) was good; It's Kind of a Funny Story (about some crazy teenagers and an institutionalized Zach Galifianakis) was bad; and Darren Aronofsky's psychological ballet thriller Black Swan got mixed reviews (critics seemed to like it more than the general public). Nonetheless, I know I'll end up seeing all three.

My final festival film was Rabbit Hole, an adaptation of the 2007 Pulitzer prize-winning play about a husband and wife's grief after the accidental death of their child. On stage, the couple was played by John Slattery and Cynthia Nixon, which in the film is translated into Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman. That makes sense--in both cases, he's charming and she's brittle. Both actors give strong performances (they've got the material to do so), and the patient, mature direction is surprisingly care of John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. The film fleshes out aspects of the play, adding characters only mentioned in the original piece, as well as throwing in a support group subplot that is entirely unnecessary. But despite all those positive attributes, Rabbit Hole runs into the eternal problem of turning a great play into a film (see Doubt): The exact reasons that a play works well--the focus on the words and the big speeches and the acting flourishes--are what limit it as a film. Simply put, I like Rabbit Hole the play more.