The Carpetbagger has a fun theorizing piece on celebrity interviews
Actress Archives says goodbye to actor James Whitmore (RIP)
Low Res goes xenophobic (but has an archival point)
wipe that smirk off your face has really tough Oscar trivia. I'm stumped
Scanners on the ho hum controverseries for this year's Oscars
Silly Hats Only the Muriel Awards have begun
The NY Post on the New York Times strange sin of omission in regards to one the First Lady of MGM Norma Shearer. As you may have guessed, this is not okay with yours truly
Thompson on Hollywood the WGA winners. Stop this Slumdog train, I want to get off. I get that people like it but Best WRITING ??? ... and so often? I weep for our collective discernment skills. P.S. On a totally shallow note: How cute is Milk screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black?
Finally, I love this piece at Bright Lights After Dark that talks about the problem of "craftsmanship" in our prestige pieces. Erich Kuersten gets right at the heart of the problem I couldn't quite articulate concerning overly beautiful films like Doubt or Revolutionary Road ...
"ass-over-tit rock poetry" is a shockingly apt description of ...Woolf, is it not? I love reading Kuersten.Craftsmanship in cinema has become synonymous with stifled - when every aspect of your production -- every crew member-- is doing everything above and beyond to get the script quite right and enable them to win awards. When it's something that's meant to be kind of spontaneous and off-the-cuff, like a two person character drama, or some fly-on-the-wall sort of minor key mood piece, like Doubt or The Valley of Elah, for example, you can see the sterility of the Sundance film school-style stress on crafstmanship vs. say, the ass-over-tit rock poetry of something like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.
...It has to do with film schools churning out competent gear-heads eager to show off their expensive educations with key lighting and tracking shots instead of dropping acid and going off to Vietnam or whatever heart of darkness is in vogue this year. People are scared of themselves, and it's just not interesting after awhile watching them avoid the mirror.
