A Look Back At The 2015 Oscars: My Love For "Birdman" & My Hatred For Sean Penn

Well, the 2015 Academy Awards (for 2014 films) are about a month old and the stench emanating from the self-congratulatory ceremony still permeates the film world like a pregnant skunk hit by a garbage truck. What follows is one not-so-humble man's overview of the results and his review of the winner for Best Picture...

First, let me state for the record that this was the first time in thirty years that I did not watch a single minute of the Oscars. Between the overt politicization of Hollywood and the ever-growing sense of disdain that the Left Coast propagates for the movie-going audience in general, I made a conscious effort to avoid the Academy Awards like the plague. No pun intended (well, maybe) but "The Walking Dead" was on right through the heart of the Academy Awards anyway so it wasn't really that hard of a choice...

Three people at this year's ceremony exemplified why I now hate the Oscars with a passion. First was the host, Neil Patrick Harris. Now, don't get me wrong...I think the former Dr. Doogie Howser is awesome. Hell, the man was in the "Harold & Kumar" flicks, for God's sake...how could I not acknowledge his awesomeness?!?! My issue with NPH (coupled with Ellen DeGeneres' recent pathetic hosting attempt) is that the oh-so-vocal gay minority in Tinseltown seems to have more sway than common sense when it comes to picking an emcee for the most important night in film. How about we stop bowing down to The Almighty Pagan Idol of Political Correctness and find the next Billy Crystal instead of making 5 percent of the populace happy?!?!

The other two misfits in question are Sean Penn and Patrica Arquette, who decided (in true neo-hippie fashion) to use their precious time at the podium to take potshots at how awful they think America is. Arquette (who is worth millions upon millions of dollars) pathetically turned her Best Supporting Actress speech into an awful bra-burning feminist diatribe about "equal pay for equal work"...hey Patty, check back with me when you, Julia Roberts & Meryl Streep are struggling to make mortgage payments, okay? And then there was the oh-so-tough Sean Penn, who scowls his way through life like the petulant spawn of Robert Mitchum and a wolverine. Spicoli couldn't resist taking a shot at anyone opposing Dictator Barack Obama's unilateral immigration policy actions while presenting the Best Picture award to "Birdman" and director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Kudos to Robin Wright for getting the hell away from Penn and his toxic views years ago and becoming possibly the best actress out there right now with her work on "House of Cards"...

Speaking of "Birdman", I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the Oscar winner about a week after the trophies were handed out. While many have shot the flick down as pretentious and undecipherable, I actually enjoyed how it skewered the massive egos that dominate the acting community. Michael Keaton (in a role reeking of irony) plays a former film superhero who wants to re-establish his chops on Broadway in a "passion project" that drains every last dollar he has to his name. Edward Norton, Emma Stone & Naomi Watts are part of a stellar cast that never hams it up or pushes things too far. While Inarritu goes a little too far at times (especially with the "haunting" presence of Keaton's alter ego), he does a nice job of keeping things interesting visually. Definitely better than "Titanic" but not even close to achieving the heights of previous Best Picture winners "Forrest Gump" and "Unforgiven", "Birdman" gets a solid 3 Eddies for solid narrative content soaring above inconsistent execution...

As Jack Nicholson Would Say...

We're baaaaaaaack!!! Yes, "Frankenstein Vice" has been brought back from the dead (no pun intended)...new posts will be popping up soon, most likely in late February or early March 2015. Pop culture will never be the same again!!!

“Adventureland” vs. “State of Play” - Which is Style & Which is Substance?

Agent 5150’s DVD reviews of the week feature a film about corporate & military corruption leaching into the highest levels of our government and a flick about college students working in dead-end summer jobs who like to smoke pot. Guess which one has more to say about life?

That’s right - “Adventureland” is your winner. A John Hughes-style romp with heart and brains to spare, “Adventureland” stars little-known Jesse Eisenberg as a Michael Cera clone (albeit with a bit more wit and good looks than Hollywood’s resident nerd of the moment) who needs to pick up some quick cash in order to move to New York and attend grad school at Columbia University back in 1987 when it was moderately affordable. With a college degree under his belt, he’s actually overqualified for most menial jobs (does that sound familiar in reference to today’s world or what?), so he stumbles into a gig working the midway at Adventureland, a Pittsburgh amusement park that’s run by a likeable but borderline psychotic couple (SNL’s Bill Hader & Kristen Wiig). Love enters the picture (as it always does in a movie like this) when Kristen Stewart appears, and the rest of the film is essentially an endearingly awkward mating dance. All the usual lessons from 80s teen flicks are present…don’t overanalyze the events of your life, don’t pass up the sure thing in love for the pipe dream, etc…but the movie comes off as anything but stale and recycled. 3 wistful Eddies…

On the other hand, “State of Play” is a fairly formulaic paranoid thriller based on the BBC miniseries of the same name. Given it boasts an Oscar-pedigreed cast featuring Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren, and Ben Affleck, one would expect greatness…or at least something new and different. Instead, we get the typical ‘you can’t trust anyone’ spiel. The performances in “State of Play” aren’t really inspired, either; Crowe and Affleck are competent but unremarkable as a reporter and Congressman (respectively) while Mirren is much too abrasive as Crowe’s newspaper editor. Meanwhile, Robin Wright Penn and Rachel McAdams are stuck in two thankless female ‘sidekick’ roles - Wright Penn as the woman who puts a wedge between Crowe & Affleck, McAdams as the novice blogger who plays Gal Friday to Crowe’s Crusoe. I’ll reluctantly give “State of Play” a weak 2 ½ Eddies…

In the end, I guess I would much rather frolic in “Adventureland” than stumble around in “State of Play”…

Playing Catch Up!!!

Sorry for being incommunicado for so long, kids. Inspiration, that fickle muse, took a major siesta for a few weeks behind Agent 5150’s back; however, the mojo has returned so here are some entertainment nuggets that cover the last half of August 2009. The obvious starting point is the big news that broke yesterday…

1) Disney buys Marvel: Well, we all thought Wal-Mart would eventually take over the world, but it looks the Mouse House will have something to say about that before all is said and done. As a former comic book geek, I am deeply saddened by this news. You already need a sizeable loan to buy a handful of comic books each week (they currently average $3.99 an issue!), but Disney will surely figure out a way to extort more money out of the unwashed masses still living in their parents’ basement. Cynical? No, realistic…just look at how the price of admission to Disney’s theme parks has escalated over the last few decades. Outside of any major university, I defy you to find me a business entity with a higher year-to-year percentage increase in prices. Let’s just hope that Disney doesn’t castrate Marvel like they did ESPN…I mean, does Mickey really want to screw around with the guys to my right?

2) New Collective Soul: I’m still not sure if their latest effort is technically another self-titled affair (following the 1995 classic that featured “December” & “The World I Know”) or if it’s called “Rabbit”, but this new album simply rocks. Easily their best CD/MP3 since “Disciplined Breakdown”, “Rabbit” has but one misfire…the sappy, generic “You”; the remaining ten tracks range from blistering arena rock (“Welcome All Again”) to goofball party tunes (“Fuzzy”, “Lighten Up”) to tender personal disclosures (“Hymn For My Father”) to new-classic behemoths (“Dig”, “My Days”). Ed Roland and company are in top form here…like The Cars in the 70s and 80s, Collective Soul are underrated troubadours for the 90s and 00s who are never ‘hit-and-miss’ like their peers (sorry Pearl Jam fans, but “No Code” sucked and “Riot Act” wasn’t much better!). 3 ½ Eddies for “Rabbit”…

3) Quick Hit DVD Reviews: Agent 5150 has actually been able to catch a few flicks recently in between lawn mowing marathons and mass resume mailings. Let’s get up to speed, shall we?

“Push” is fun junk food for the brain, a decent ‘X-Men’ rip-off that’s actually just as good as the summer blockbuster “Wolverine”…2 ½ Eddies.

“Gran Torino” closes the book on Clint Eastwood’s ‘Dirty Harry’ persona like “Pale Rider” did for ‘The Man With No Name’. Yes, I know in both cases the main characters are technically different from the classic personalities they represent, but the similarities are just too striking to ignore. That being said, “Gran Torino” feels a bit manipulative on an emotional level, and Eastwood explores themes he’s already covered over and over and over again…3 Eddies.

“Killshot” stars Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane in an Elmore Leonard adaptation that surprisingly only saw a limited U.S. theatrical release earlier this year despite Rourke’s presence hot on the heels of “The Wrestler”. Maybe that’s because the flick is average at best - not much charm or humor in this crime drama…2 Eddies.

“Yes Man” once again shows that Jim Carrey is slightly ahead of Adam Sandler in the battle to claim the title of ‘Hollywood’s King of the Moderately Amusing Movie’. Very similar in tone to “Liar Liar”, “Yes Man” is a tolerable comedy with just enough sweetness to make it digestible…2 ½ Eddies.

“Horsemen” is a straight-to-DVD thriller starring Dennis Quaid that doesn’t try very hard to hide the fact that it’s a mirror image of “Seven”. Still, “Horsemen” manages to weave its disturbing little spell fairly well - Quaid plays haggard and obsessive with a nice edge, and the overwrought ending doesn’t sink things completely…2 ½ Eddies.

Finally, “I Love You, Man” is an overrated buddy comedy about grown men trying to find buddies. Paul Rudd is a bit too nerdy here; also, a little less gay innuendo and a little more nastiness in the script could have made “I Love You, Man” much, much better…2 ½ Eddies.

That’s it for now, people…wake me up when September ends. Just kidding…I’ll be back atcha in a week or so. And please forgive me for the lame but appropriate use of your song title, Green Day…

Now That I’ve Finally Seen “Slumdog Millionaire”...

Agent 5150 has a fantastic daughter, a month away from being 8 years old. While I get to experience the priceless moments of watching my child grow up, I don’t get to see movies in the theater too often any more (those of you out there with kids can easily relate, right?)...

In the end, the tradeoff is a no-brainer, but it’s especially easy to swallow in this day and age of stupid screenplays, ridiculous popcorn prices, and obnoxious cell phone users. However, one of the minor drawbacks I deal with every year is the fact that I never get to see the five (soon to be ten) ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award nominees until they come out on DVD in the late spring or early summer after the Oscars have already been handed out. You can peruse my previous blog posts and see my recent reviews for “The Reader”, “Frost/Nixon”, and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (I try my best to see all of the nominated flicks, but some just obviously aren’t my cup of tea & I won’t waste my time with them, integrity be damned…that’s why “Milk” isn’t included here). Since I finally chiseled some time out to see “Slumdog Millionaire” about a week ago, I feel as though I can FINALLY throw my two cents’ worth out there into the blogosphere with respect to the Academy’s 2008 selections...

First off, let’s look at “Slumdog Millionaire”...neither as great as critics would lead you to believe or as horrendous as its detractors would have you think, “Slumdog” is a typical Hollywood underdog romance, albeit set in India. We follow a street urchin named Jamal through all of his young life’s hardships as he plugs along on his quest to reunite with his one true love. There are laughs and tears, betrayals and tragic misunderstandings. Blah, blah, blah.

The conventional script doesn’t do the film any favors. The acting is adequate, but not great. Danny Boyle’s directing is subpar - a slo-mo, hyperkinetic, handheld camera mash-up. The terrible soundtrack grates on the nerves of anyone with decent musical taste. So why does Agent 5150 give “Slumdog Millionaire” a respectable rating of 2 ½ Eddies?

Quite simply, the one factor that makes “Slumdog” Oscar-worthy is the framing device used as both the film’s climax and a clever tool for disclosing the events of Jamal’s life. Jamal (at this point, played by Dev Patel) is on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” and as the nefarious host pushes him through question after question, the answers unfold as flashbacks to the formative moments of the ragamuffin’s early years. Brilliant stuff...almost makes up for the mediocrity that permeates the rest of the movie.

So, in retrospect, how does Agent 5150 look back at 2008’s Oscar choices for ‘Best Picture’? With grave disappointment. Of the four nominated films that I saw, none were true classics. “Slumdog Millionaire” & “Benjamin Button” were mildly ambitious but flawed. “The Reader” and “Frost/Nixon” were humdrum projects that pandered to typical Academy tastes (biographies, historical dramas, Holocaust tales). The impending expansion of the ‘Best Picture’ field from five to ten is a dark cloud of embarrassment hanging on the horizon for the Academy...if you can’t find five good flicks to nominate in any given year, how are you going to come up with ten?!?!

“Knowing” When A Movie Stinks...

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit too harsh on Nicolas Cage’s latest hit with that title, but “Knowing” is a flawed, schizophrenic flick that teases us with phenomenal special effects & freaky ‘end of days’ logic but ultimately fails due to a pathetic sideshow featuring cheesy otherworldly forces...

“Knowing” is essentially a misguided cross between “The DaVinci Code” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. Cage stars as an MIT professor who comes across a 50-year-old list of numbers in a time capsule. Since he’s obviously a super-smart dude, he cracks the numeric puzzle in an alcohol-induced haze & realizes he’s stumbled upon a detailed prophecy for the end of the world (and a few other catastrophes that will occur in the meantime). Of course, in the grand tradition of disaster flicks, nobody believes him, so he’s stuck trying to figure out a way to save the world all by himself...

Director Alex Proyas does a superb job visually with the catastrophes wedged into the screenplay - I’m not sure but my mouth may have actually been hanging open in awe at his two showcase scenes of destruction. However, the last twenty minutes are a supreme letdown, a copout that should embarrass the screenwriters totally & completely. No spoilers here, but suffice it to say that “Knowing” has one of the dumbest endings ever in the history of major motion pictures. If omnipotent celestial beings judged us on the climax of this flick, we’d be doomed...

In summation, “Knowing” could have been a creepy jaunt in the tradition of M. Night Shyamalan’s first few flicks; instead, we get yet another example of Hollywood’s insistence on shying away from intelligent scripts in favor of the easy out...a weak 2 ½ Eddies for “Knowing”...

The Knack – Most Underrated Band of All Time???

I happened to stumble across a couple of ‘instant watch’ gems on Netflix a few nights ago – a 2004 documentary feature and a (debatably) live 2001 concert video, both featuring The Knack. After inundating myself for two and a half hours with the music and myth of Doug Fieger & company, I remembered how much I loved their songs and how utterly abused they were in their heyday back in the late 70s & early 80s...

Everyone has a band or two, or a singer, who they consider their ‘secret’...not necessarily an obscure act, but a performer or group who hang around on the fringes of success, never quite becoming blockbuster icons. For Agent 5150, those acts include Living Colour (look beyond “Cult of Personality”, my friends), Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers, Zebra, and The Rainmakers. However, the one ‘guilty pleasure’ group whose half-dozen studio CDs I always seem to turn to escape the same old, same old (yes, I admit it...there’s only so much “Panama” I can take!!!) are The Knack...

Laugh if you will, Frickers (and you know who you are), but the fact is The Knack were much, much more than a Beatles knock-off. “Get The Knack”, their mega-selling debut, may be one of the best albums of the rock era…period. From beginning to end, one infectious song after the next, the disc gets in your head and never leaves. Sure, “My Sharona” may be widely acknowledged as one of the greatest songs of all time by fans and haters alike, but little known gems like “Siamese Twins (The Monkey And Me)”, “Frustrated”, “Your Number Or Your Name”, and “(She’s So) Selfish” are far better than most of the ‘hits’ on your iPod today. Even the follow-ups that ultimately doomed the band in its first go-round, “...but the little girls understand” and “Round Trip”, are solid. When The Knack launched a comeback with three more albums (“Serious Fun”, “Zoom”, “Normal As The Next Guy”) from 1991 to 2001, the public was indifferent (with the exception of the minor hit “Rocket O’Love”) but the music was still excellent...

Hard to believe, but time has been harder on the band than the critics were. Original drummer Bruce Gary died in 2006, and singer & primary songwriter Doug Fieger has been battling cancer for years. The most important thing is Doug’s health, but I have to admit that it saddens me that we’ll probably never hear from The Knack again beyond the occasional nostalgia gig. With that in mind, let’s cherish the music they gave us, pompous critics be damned. Go ahead, crank up “My Sharona” but don’t forget to groove on “That’s What The Little Girls Do”, “The Hard Way”, “Africa”, “Lil’ Cals Big Mistake”, “Won’t Let Go/Aces & Eights”, and “Pop Is Dead” as well...

It’s never too late to “Get The Knack”, kids!!!