The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

  This was a much harder movie to enjoy than the first one.   I'm a little surprised this didn't kill the franchise but I haven't seen the third one yet.

The Pevensie children are finally starting to adjust to life back in mundane old England when they are summoned once more to Narnia.  However, what has been a year for them has been over four centuries for the land they once ruled.  Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) has not been seen in all that time and the Narnians have suffered a number of invasions by the neighboring country of Telmarine, with the intent of wiping them all out.  Prince Caspian X (Ben Barnes) is heir to the throne but his plotting uncle and regent Miraz (Sergio Castellitto) wants him dead.  When Miraz's wife gives birth to a son, Caspian flees to the woods.  He blows a hunting horn, Susan's (Anna Popplewell) to be exact, which is what summons the ancient queens and kings.  The Pevensies aren't exactly the same as they once were, either.  Peter (William Moseley) in particular has been chafing at the restriction that goes with not being royalty in his real life.  He practically jumps at the chance to lead an army again. 

As I said, this is a much more slight effort with no real attempt to pull together the depth of character found in the first film.  I found Ben Barnes' accent to be atrocious and it really took me out of the moment whenever he opened his mouth.  If it weren't for Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis, I would say skip this one entirely.  Dinklage has one of the most emotive faces I have ever seen, even covered completely in fake hair.  He provided the film's only real humor or humanity.  Warwick Davis played a more menacing character than the villain himself, which was difficult with all the scenery-chewing Castellitto was doing.

Jack Reacher (2012)

I don't care what anyone tells you, this movie was sorely miscast.

I am a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series.  I've read all the books and I had a lot of trepidation when I heard that Paramount had optioned One Shot as a movie, seeing as it's not the first in the series and no one has done a movie on this character before.

Then they went and cast Tom Cruise and I lost all interest whatsoever.  I have nothing against the man, he is just not what I pictured in my head when I think Jack Reacher, a man described as 6'5", 240 lbs, blond and blue-eyed.  We're talking Chris Hemsworth bulked out like The Rock. 

Taking that aside, it's not a terrible action movie.  It's just a lousy Jack Reacher movie.

A sniper shoots five random people from a parking garage, then flees.  The police scour the area and find a thumbprint on a quarter in a meter belonging to James Barr (Joseph Sikora), a former Army sniper.  They arrest him and offer him a choice between life in prison and the death penalty if he will confess.  He says only "Get me Jack Reacher."  Reacher (Tom Cruise, sadly) is a former Military Police officer who roams the land, dispensing justice.  He sees the case on the news and immediately heads for Pittsburgh to confer.  But he's not there to clear Barr's name.  Due to a previous incident that was hushed up by the military, he is there to put Barr down for good.  Only a plucky young attorney (Rosamund Pike) can convince him that all is not as it seems with this case.

I found it unfortunate that the movie could not manage the same level of intelligence and suspense as the novel.  They compensated by adding more humor and a car chase.  Werner Herzog is underused as the villain, also a shame since I think he would have been super-creepy if we could have seen more of him.  Conversely, Robert Duvall's part was expanded a bit, if I remember the book correctly.  I can't really complain about that too much, though, since he was effortlessly charming.  As a matter of fact, I really liked the rest of the cast.  I just couldn't help myself from mentally replaying scenes with someone else in the lead.

Les Miserables (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Costumes, Best Make-up, Best Original Song, Best Production Design, and Best Sound Mixing    I actually saw this on Christmas Day with Christy but I haven't had a chance to sit down and post about it. 

I have been guardedly optimistic about seeing this movie.  You know I love me some musicals but after getting burned by Nine three Christmases ago I tend to be more cautious.  I am happy to report that this is way better than that Daniel Day-Lewis mediocrity.

Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) has served a 19-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf a bread to feed his starving nephew.  He gets released on parole but the guard, Javert (Russell Crowe), is a real prick about rules and puts him on the tightest leash he can.  Unable to get a job, Valjean steals some silver from a church but the priest (Colm Wilkinson, who played Valjean on Broadway) not only refuses to give him to the cops, he gives him more silver to take.  Moved by such charity, Valjean decides to give his life to God and skips parole, reinventing himself as a factory owner and mayor of a small town.  Fantine (Anne Hathaway) is one of his workers, but a fight with another woman puts her out onto the street.  She has a daughter named Cosette (Isabelle Allen) whom she boards with a shifty innkeeper (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his wife (Helena Bonham Carter).  Now jobless, Fantine drifts through the cracks in society, selling everything she can --including her body-- to pay for her child's upkeep.  When he learns that her fall from grace was partially due to his own negligence, Valjean promises to find Cosette and raise her as his own. 

Cut to eight years later, Valjean and Cosette (now Amanda Seyfried) live in Paris during one of the most politically charged periods following the Revolution.  The young men of the city are planning a protest of their rampant poverty and ill-treatment, led by firebrand Enjolras (Aaron Tveit) and his friend Marius (Eddie Redmayne).  That is until Marius catches a stray glimpse of Cosette and falls madly in love.  They're French; it happens.  Bad news for Eponine (Samantha Barks), the girl who desperately wants Marius to love her.  She knows exactly who Cosette is, too, because she is the daughter of the innkeepers Thenardier, who now run a gang of theives.  Rather than let her father break into their house, she screams a warning.  Valjean thinks the cops have finally found him and decides to make a run for it with his ward. 

Jesus, a lot of stuff happens in this movie.  There's more but you can go see it for yourselves.  Block off your schedule, though, and take tissues.  You'll be crying or close to it for three hours.

They used live singing for this movie (meaning that they filmed the actors singing in takes, rather than lip-synching to a pre-recorded soundtrack) which I liked because it felt much more organic and real.  Unfortunately, they really only filmed them singing.  There are a lot of close-ups during songs, rather than actors singing as they move through scenes.  On the one hand, this drags down the action, but on the other, it really allows them to emote the hell out of what they're singing.  As far as the quality of singing, I'd rate it as high.  Christy thought Eddie Redmayne sounded a bit like Kermit the Frog in some parts, but as the only one who didn't have a background in singing or musical theater, I thought he did a fine job.  "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" was probably his best song.  The surprise stand-out for me was Aaron Tveit, a Broadway performer who stole every scene he was in. 

I will probably buy this when it comes out but I probably won't get the soundtrack.  Call me a purist, but I'm happy with the original cast album.

Scrooged (1988)

  The Christmas streak continues. Sometimes you just get tired of all the cute, feel-good Christmas movies and you want to watch something more...you.  This is that movie.

Frank Cross (Bill Murray) is a TV executive trying to put on a live adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic Christmas Tale.  He is a total asshole to his subordinates including his poor put-upon Assistant Grace (Alfre Woodard).  This is probably why he gets a visit from his dead former boss (John Forsythe) warning him that three other ghosts are coming for him:  Christmas Past, Present, and Future.  Christmas Past (David Johansen) takes him back to his childhood, where all his favorite memories happened on TV, and then to the day he turned his back on his sweet, charitable girlfriend (Karen Allen).  Christmas Present (Carol Kane) takes him to his brother's house, whose invitation he blows off every year, and to the subway exhaust grate where the homeless man he ignored (Michael J. Pollard) has frozen to death.  Meanwhile, a disgruntled employee (Bobcat Goldthwait) breaks into Frank's office and threatens him with a shotgun.

It's very 80's (he drinks Tab and vodka!) but the story is timeless.  Bill Murray is at his best when he plays an asshole and the supporting parts are very well-cast.  The stand-out for me is Carol Kane.  She's just so cute and violent!

Honestly, there's no reason why you shouldn't already have this movie and this is the perfect time of the year to watch it.  I know, I know, Christmas was yesterday.  That's ok.  It just keeps giving.

Obligatory Year-End Post (2012)

Well, okay, it's not obligatory but it certainly is ubiquitous.  I scroll through my favorite movie news sites and it seems like everyone and their brother is posting some sort of "Best Movies of the Year" or "Top 10 for 2012".

I can do that.  Hell, according to that little counter on the right, I've watched over 200 movies this year so far.  I can put together a bitchin' list. 

Number 10:  Prometheus -- Yeah, you can sit there and pick it apart but where's the fun in that?  It's like seeing a Monet by microscope.   

Number 9:  Wreck-It Ralph -- Sugar-sweet and visually stunning.

Number 8:  Man with the Iron Fists -- I was totally surprised how much I liked it.  It was cheestastic fun.

Number 7:  Skyfall -- Good story, great interaction with the cast, and a creepy memorable villain. 

Number 6:  The Dark Knight Rises --  Probably should have been higher on my list but that middle part is a real slog of depression to get through.

Number 5:  Looper -- This had a great sci-fi premise and some of the best use of make-up I've seen all year.

Number 4:   Lockout -- I don't care what anyone says. This movie was fun.

Number 3:   Pitch Perfect -- I had no expectations going into this and I loved it. What's a little surprising is how much critics seemed to love it. I really expected this to be one of those movies you're embarassed you admit you like but it got made legit so raise your heads high, aca-bitches! 

Number 2:  The Avengers -- Ok, the only reason this one is second is because I knew I would love it.  I walked into the theater expecting to be wildly entertained and I was.  And that's why..

Number 1:  Cabin in the Woods -- Best film of the year.  I knew nothing about this film except that people were losing their tiny minds over it.  Now, I think I could watch it every day for a year and not get tired of it. 

So there you go. 

In other news, Merry Christmas, everyone!  I just finished opening all my presents and I can say that the Nail Polish Fairy has definitely visited me.  I'm going to need to be irradiated so I can grow more fingers and toes just to put these colors on!

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

  Wednesday night I had to do a lot of baking.  I tried to just put this movie on as background because I'd seen it before but I realized just after the opening credits that wasn't going to work.  I hadn't seen it since maybe the year after it first came out in theaters and, while I do have some issues with it, it deserves to actually be watched.  So I turned it off, baked my cookies, and picked it up again on Thursday.

I remember thinking this movie wasn't all that great when I first saw it.  I think battle scenes without blood are silly and I found the story to be badly dated. Those things are still true with the second viewing but I minded them less.  Maybe it was finally seeing them on blu-ray.  The colors looked amazing and the detail was good without being oh-my-God-I-can-see-every-pore-on-their-faces. 

The four Pevensie children are sent out to the country to avoid the London Blitz attacks.  Lucy (Georgie Hensley), the youngest, discovers a magical portal through the back of a disused wardrobe into the world of Narnia.  She tries to tell her siblings but they don't believe her until her next oldest brother Edmund (Skander Keynes) follows her because he's a snot.  Once in Narnia, Edmund falls into the hands of the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) who preys upon his snottiness by promising him the ability to rule over his brother and sisters if he will lure them to her castle. 

Eventually, the two oldest children make it through the wardrobe and into Narnia.  Edmund bails as fast as he can to the Witch's castle while Lucy and the other two meet Beaver (voiced by Ray Winstone) and his wife (voiced by Dawn French) who tell them of a prophecy that the four children will one day become the kings and queens of this land and winter will be banished.  The great lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is waiting for them with an army.  Peter (William Moseley) wants to stay and fight but is torn by the duty of keeping his little sisters and brother safe.  Susan (Anna Popplewell) is a wet blanket.  She doesn't really do much of anything except bitch.

The source books were essentially Christian dogma for children and the symbolism gets a bit heavy-handed but that shouldn't necessarily put you off from seeing this film if you're not Christian.  I will say that the age window for really enjoying this film is quite small, maybe 10-14.  I can't imagine anyone younger than that caring about the plot or anyone older being satisfied by the action.  Still, it's a very pretty movie and shouldn't simply be dismissed out of hand.

Moonraker (1979)

  This falls under the Dumb But Cute category of Bond movies.  Just because your movie is set in space doesn't mean you can get all slap-happy with story and plot.

Bond (Roger Moore) is put on the case of the missing space shuttle, Moonraker, and flies out to California to visit the shuttle manufacturer Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), who reeks of villainry.

Seriously, it's like he went to a Kim Jong Il's tailor.  Anyway, Drax allows Bond free access to his facilityand sends his manservant to quietly kill him.  Meanwhile, Bond meets astronaut and head scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and giggles like a schoolboy over her name.  Forget the fact that the woman is a highly-trained member of an incredibly select sub-group of scientists, let's chortle over her name sounding dirty.  After Bond learns nothing at Drax's place, he wanders over to Venice and discovers a glassblower's shop that doubles as a lab.  He also bumps into Dr. Goodhead again and, surprise, she's working for the CIA.  Drax gets fed up with Bond nosing around and hires Jaws (Richard Kiel), the metal-toothed giant from The Spy Who Loved Me, to get rid of the MI6 agent for good.  Jaws catches up to them in Rio but manages to meet a sweet pig-tailed blond (Blanche Ravalec) and fall head over heels.  Then space happens.  Bond and Goodhead (ugh, I hate typing that) uncover Drax's cunning plan to fly a bunch of hot people into his space station --hidden by radar, of course-- and hit the redo button on Earth by launching globes filled with nerve gas onto the planet. 

This is Rob's favorite movie of the series, just for sheer silliness.  I was less amused but I did like that they fleshed out Richard Kiel's character.  He's much more entertaining here and even gets a line of dialogue.  You can definitely see some Star Wars influence with the laser guns and the astronaut battle but it comes across as very dated and campy now.  Not the best of the Bond series by any means, but at least it wasn't horribly offensive.

Secret Agent (1936)/Champagne (1928)/Blackmail (1929)

  Much like The 39 Steps, this movie makes use of the suspense-filled world of international espionage.  War hero Brodie (John Gielgud) is recruited to British Intelligence and sent to Switzerland to eliminate a German spy.  To help him, he is assigned two partners:  the General (Peter Lorre), a mercenary to actually pull the trigger, and Elsa (Madeline Carroll), to pretend to be his wife and handle all the administrative tasks.  But when things start to get complicated, Elsa ad Brodie begin to rethink where their loyalties lie.

This is one of the more well-known films in this collection and there's a reason why.  The star power is good, the dialogue is snappy, and the plot is twisty for the time.  The ending is a little pat but you can't have everything.
  This one took almost three days to get through.  I don't know why but it just did not grab me.  And not for being a silent film, either, since I generally like those.  This one I kept trying to place the score against various pieces from Fantasia.

Betty (Betty Balfour) is a socialite who runs off on a cruise to elope with her boyfriend (Jean Bradin).  Her father (Gordon Harker) thinks that he's a gold-digger and pulls out all the stops to keep his daughter from marrying.

Seriously, he goes to his only child and tells her that he lost his entire fortune, forcing her to live in squalor.  When she remains upbeat and even gets a job, he has a family friend (Ferdinand von Alten) basically stalk her to keep her from going back to her boyfriend.  I would probably sue my dad if he tried to pull that kind of crap. 


  Even though this was made only a year after Champagne, it's a talkie, one of the first to use a double-track for dialogue and score. 

Hitchcock's weird sense of morality is on display here as well.  Alice (Anny Ondra) has a fight with her cop boyfriend (John Longden) and decides to go home with an 'artist' she met at a restaurant (Cyril Ritchard).  He turns out to be a rapey sort of artist and, in the course of the assault, Alice stabs him to death with a kitchen knife.  Terrified (and traumatized) she runs instead of calling the police.  Thanks to a staggering amount of evidence left behind, her boyfriend quickly figures out that she's the murderer but he's willing to help her out.  Then some shady dude (Donald Calthrop) shows up, also with evidence from the scene and tortures Alice and her boyfriend by holding it over their heads.

Here's the thing:  you don't want Alice to go to jail because she's basically a nice girl but she did in fact kill a man (in self-defense) and clearly feels horrendously guilty as a result.  Hitchcock plays with that guilt, framing the blackmailer --who, I must stress, is NOT a murderer-- as worse than the person who committed the crime and the person who is helping to cover it up.  That puts a rather different spin on things, doesn't it?  Does he deserve to go to jail in her place just for being an asshole?

The Santa Clause 2 (2002)

  So it turns out that although I don't own any Christmas movies, Christy owns plenty.  Packing those gift bags took almost six hours so we had plenty of time to watch another film in our theme.

I remember seeing the first Santa Clause movie back in the late 90's when I still lived at home but I never caught any of the sequels.  This one wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. 

Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) has been Santa for going on eight years when his faithful elves Bernard (David Krumholtz) and Curtis (Spencer Breslin) spring the second "clause" on him:  if he doesn't find a Mrs. Claus within the month, he loses all his magic and goes back to being a regular guy.  Why this would suddenly occur 8 years later, no one knows.  Meanwhile, Scott's son Charlie (Eric Lloyd) has been busted for repeatedly tagging school property and winds up on the Naughty List.  Curtis comes up with the bright idea to clone Santa as a toy to manage the North Pole while the real Santa straightens out his kid and tries to find a date.  Unfortunately, Toy Santa turns into a horrible despot with an army of tin soldiers and the woman Scott ends up falling for is Charlie's icy principal, Carol Newman (Elizabeth Mitchell). 

It skews a little young for me and relies heavily on you having seen (and remembered) all the jokes from the first movie, but these are easily surmountable obstacles to enjoyment.  Would I run out and buy it?  No.  But if you have a family, it's not a bad franchise to own.

Gremlins (1984)

  Christy decided to be a good litle elf this season and volunteered to put together gift bags full of candy for the patients at the hospital where she works.  Then, of course, she got horribly sick for three straight days so she guilted me into helping her. To get us into the festive spirit while we were stuffing bags full of candy, she wanted to watch a holiday movie.

No shit, this was the closest thing I had to a Christmas movie.  I know I don't normally do any sort of theme here, like 25 days of Christmas movies or whatever, but bear with me. 

Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is a terrible inventor but a loving, if slightly doltish, father.  While in Chinatown, Peltzer comes across a strange little creature called a Mogwai.  He finagles it away from the shopkeeper's grandson and takes it home to his son, Billy (Zach Galligan), as a Christmas present.  Now this is not what you would call a low-maintenance pet, as the Mogwai comes with a lot of restrictions.

1.  No bright lights.
2.  No water of any kind.
3.  No feediing after midnight.

Still, Gizmo is an adorable addition to the household and totally worth all the rules.  Until one of the neighbor kids (Cory Feldman) spills water on him, causing a bunch of little Mogwais to pop out of his back.  The new batch are just as cute, if a little more mean-spirited, until they manage to get some late-night snacks and morph into green scaly little bastards who wreak havoc on the sleepy town.

I love that even after almost 30 years, the animatronics still hold up today.  The gremlins are still as creepy and hilarious and gross as they were back in the 80's.  This is a great combination of horror and comedy and should probably be in your holiday rotation. 

A Christmas Carol (2009)

  Purely coincidental tie-in to the holiday season.  I'm up to C-H-R in Rob's server. Next is some anime series I think.  

I can't be 100% sure, since I was never a huge Dickens fan, but this seemed like a really faithful adaptation of the book.  An old miser named Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve to show him what was (Jim Carrey), what is (Jim Carrey), and what will be (Jim Carrey) if he doesn't stop acting like a total douche to everybody on Christmas.

The whole thing is motion-capture animation (or mo-cap) because it was directed by Robert Zemeckis who was deep in his "mo-cap is totally the way of the future, you guys" stage.  Some of the backgrounds are pretty but all of the faces are pure, uncut nightmare fuel.  It's very much the Jim Carrey Show as well, with some random moments of Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, and Gary Oldman thrown in.

There are so many variants of this story to choose from, there really is no reason to pick this one.  Do yourself (and your kids) a favor and find a different version.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

  This is definitely the best Moore-as-Bond film.  It cut a lot of the camp and replaced it with an actual plot that almost made sense.  The only really shitty part of this movie was the editing.  John Glen did the editing for On Her Majesty's Secret Service too, which also had some problems in that regard.

Anyway, this adventure sees Bond (Roger Moore) teamed up with his Russian counterpart, Agent XXX (Barbara Bach).  She can't emote worth a damn, but that's okay because she might have the best rack --shape, not size-- of all the Bond girls so far, although Diana Rigg's were pretty amazing. 

I might be slightly drunk right now.  I can neither confirm nor deny. 

So, a Russian and a British nuclear sub go missing.  Agents 007 and XXX are sent to Cairo to investigate.  They figure out that the evil mastermind behind the plot is Karl Stromberg (Curd Jurgens), who wants to build an underwater paradise for people to live by making the surface all radioactive.  Really, he's a humanitarian.

He has two main henchmen, Sandor (Milton Reid) who dies too fast to care about, and Jaws (Richard Kiel), a 7-ft tall giant with metal teeth.  I kind of wish he had gotten his own spin-off movie.  But really, a guy who can be in both Cannonball Run II and Happy Gilmore is all right in my book.

I digress.  Stromberg, underwater city, nuclear warheads, blah blah blah.  There's a submarine car and did I mention Barbara Bach is freakin' hot?

Rich and Strange (1931)/The 39 Steps (1935)

  Or its alternate title:  East of Shanghai.

I have not seen the new movie Hitchcock, with Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, yet but thanks to reading about it I know that Hitch's wife was Alma Reville.  Now I've started looking for that in the credits of his movies. 

The title here comes from a quote from The Tempest and the story is from a novel by Dale Collins. 

Fred Hill (Henry Kendall) is bored with his life of drudgery and longs for adventure on the high seas.  Miraculously, a rich relative decides to give Fred and his wife Emily (Joan Berry) an early inheritance by sending them on a trip around the world.  This is basically the equivalent of a monkey's paw.  Fred is immediately laid low by seasickness, leaving Emily in the company of dashing Commander Gordon (Percy Marmont).  Finally feeling better by the time they hit Egypt, Fred rejoins his wife...for about a minute.  Long enough to get hit in the eye by a Frisbee on deck.  But it's a Frisbee thrown by a princess (Betty Amann), so there's that. 

This rivals some of the National Lampoon vacations for sheer travel hell. 

  This is one of his more famous films.  It's been remade several times, in fact, on the basis that you can never have too much of a good thing.

Canadian Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is at a music hall in London when he meets a mysterious and beautiful woman (Lucie Mannheim) who tells him that she is a secret agent.  There are men who have stolen state secrets, preparing to move them out of the country.  She has a contact in Scotland who is to help her, but she is killed the same night.  Hannay decides to carry out her mission for her, not incidentally because he is being blamed for her murder.  Chased across the moors as a wanted man, Hannay runs across lovely but unsympathetic Pamela (Madeline Carroll), who doesn't believe a word of his claims that a foreign agent missing the last digit of his pinky (Godfrey Teale) will stop at nothing to see those secrets out of England.

It runs a bit long, especially when compared to modern spy films, but is still an excellent thriller. 

2013 Golden Globes Nominations

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
The 2013 Golden Globes nominations in a pear tree!

Can you smell it in the air?  It's award season!  Time for all good little cinephiles to gather round the glow of a computer monitor and bitch that their favorite didn't get represented.  So without further ado, I present the list:

Movies
Best Picture, Drama:
“Argo”
“Django Unchained”
“Life of Pi”
“Lincoln”
“Zero Dark Thirty”

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy:
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
“Les Misérables”
“Moonrise Kindgom”
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
“Silver Linings Playbook”

Best Director:
Ben Affleck, “Argo”
Kathryn Bigelow, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Ang Lee, “Life of Pi”
Steven Spielberg, “Lincoln”
Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”

Best Actress, Drama:
Jessica Chastain, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Marian Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”
Helen Mirren, “Hitchcock”
Naomi Watts, “The Impossible”
Rachel Weisz, “The Deep Blue Sea”

Best Actor, Drama:
Daniel Day-Lewis, “Lincoln”
Richard Gere, “Arbitrage”
John Hawkes, “The Sessions”
Joaquin Phoenix, “The Master”
Denzel Washington, “Flight”

Best Actor, Musical or Comedy:
Jack Black, “Bernie”
Bradley Cooper, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Hugh Jackman, “Les Misérables ”
Ewan MCGregor, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
Bill Murray, “Hyde Park on Hudson”

Best Actress, Musical or Comedy:
Emily Blunt, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”
Judi Dench, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Maggie Smith, “Quartet”
Meryl Streep, “Hope Springs”

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams, “The Master”
Sally Field, “Lincoln”
Anne Hathaway, “Les Misérables ”
Helen Hunt, “The Sessions”
Nicole Kidman, “The Paperboy”

Best Supporting Actor:
Alan Arkin, “Argo”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “Django Unchained”
Philip Seymour Hoffman, “The Master”
Tommy Lee Jones, “Lincoln”
Christoph Waltz, “Django Unchained”

Best Screenplay:
Mark Boal, “Zero Dark Thirty”
Tony Kushner, “Lincoln”
David O’Russell, “Silver Linings Playbook”
Quentin Tarantino, “Django Unchained”
Chris Terrio, “Argo”

Best Original Score
Alexandre Desplat – "Argo"
Dario Marianeli – "Anna Karenina"
Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil – "Cloud Atlas"
Mychael Danna – "Life Of Pi"
John Williams – "Lincoln"

Best Original Song
Keith Urban – “For You” (Act Of Valor)
Taylor Swift – “Safe & Sound” (The Hunger Games)
Hugh Jackman – “Suddenly” (Les Miserables)
Adele – “Skyfall” (Skyfall)
Jon Bon Jovi – “Not Running Anymore” – (Stand Up Guys)

Best Foreign Language Film:
“Amour”
“A Royal Affair”
“The Intouchables”
“Kon-Tiki”
“Rust and Bone”

Best Animated Feature:
“Rise of the Guardians”
“Brave”
“Frankenweenie”
“Hotel Transylvania”
“Wreck-It Ralph”

TelevisionBest TV Series – Comedy
Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

Best TV Series – Drama
Breaking Bad
Boardwalk Empire
Downton Abbey
Homeland
The Newsroom

Best Actress in a TV Series – Drama
Connie Britton, Nashville
Glenn Close, Damages
Claire Danes, Homeland
Michelle Dockery, Downton Abbey
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife

Best Actor in a TV Series – Drama
Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
Jeff Daniels, The Newsroom
Jon Hamm, Mad Men
Damian Lewis, Homeland

Best Actress in a TV Series – Comedy
Zooey Deschanel, New Girl
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Lena Dunham, Girls
Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation

Best Actor in a TV Series – Comedy
Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Louie C.K., Louie
Jim Parsons, Big Bang Theory

Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie
Kevin Costner, Hatfields and McCoys
Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock
Woody Harrelson, Game Change
Toby Jones, The Girl
Clive Owen, Hemingway and Gellhorn

Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie
Nicole Kidman, Hemingway and Gellhorn
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story
Sienna Miller, The Girl
Julianne Moore, Game Change
Sigourney Weaver, Political Animals

Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series, Miniseries or TV Movie
Hayden Panettiere, Nashville
Archie Punjabi, The Good Wife
Sarah Paulson, Game Change
Maggie Smith, Downton Abbey
Sofia Vergara, Modern Family

Best Supporting Actor in a TV Series, Miniseries or TV Movie
Max Greenfield, New Girl
Ed Harris, Game Change
Danny Huston, Magic City
Mandy Patinkin, Homeland
Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family

Best Miniseries or TV Movie
Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields and McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

So, see anything you like?  I can't say any of these really come as a surprise to me.  They're basically the same ones all the critics have been talking about, for better or for worse.  I don't do the same thing with the Globes as I do with the Oscars, where I watch as many as humanly possible, but I like to start loading my Netflix queue with them since they seem to be a decent bellweather. 

The Change-Up (2012)

  It's Freaky Friday with Ryan Reynolds as a man-child and Jason Bateman as a neutered husband seeking wish fulfillment instead of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.

Utter tripe.  Ryan Reynolds doesn't even get shirtless.

Avoid at all costs.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

  Merry Christmas?  I guess.  It's a little early.  

This is a terrible movie as well, but not as bad as the last one.  I'm really starting to dislike Roger Moore as Bond.  I mean Connery had his moments but this Bond just sucks.

Renowned assassin Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is after Bond so M (Bernard Lee) pulls him from active duty.  The tacit agreement is that Bond will use his free time to hunt Scaramanga and get to him first.  He accomplishes this by completely failing at everything he touches.  He is aided in failure by Agent Goodnight (Brit Eklund), a dumb blonde who is assigned the Far East branch of MI6.  Also, that horrible Southern stereotype character is back for some unfathomable reason, spewing racist diatribe in some misguided attempt at comic relief.

Trust me, the only relief is when the end credits roll.

The Cheney Vase (1955)/The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1962)

  This little number comes to us from the "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" show.  I remember catching old reruns on TV when I was a kid. 

Lyle Endicott (Darren McGavin, who played the Dad in A Christmas Story) gets fired from his job as Assistant Curator at a museum.  On his way out, he overhears one of the museum's benefactors mention that her live-in companion is leaving soon.  This particular lady, Ms. Martha Cheney (Patricia Collinge), is in possession of a priceless vase that she inherited from her father.  Endicott worms his way into her life in an effort to find the vase, making the infirm old woman a prisoner in her own home.

Seeing as this is Hitchcock, of course, this backfires on him in a spectacular way. 

Despite the recognizability of the cast, Hitch is the star of this show.  His lead-in and closing bits are warm, funny, and just the slightest bit dark.  Just the way I like it.

  I couldn't find a poster just for the episode "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".  It's only about a half hour long with commerical breaks.  This one I know I've seen before.

A circus magician's wife (Diana Dors) convinces a teenage runaway with a problem seeing the difference between reality and fantasy (Brandon De Wilde) to murder her husband, the Great Sadini (David J. Stewart).  This blows up in her face because crazy people are crazy and therefore unpredictable.  That's why they shouldn't have access to giant saws.

The Farmer's Wife (1928)/The Manxman (1926)

  Seeing how much you guys liked the last collection of films I did, I thought I'd try it again with the Alfred Hitchcock Legacy Collection.  This is a much more manageable number, though, with only 20 movies instead of 50.  They're all Hitchcock, mostly his super-early stuff.  I already saw The Lady Vanishes through Netflix so I skipped it and went for the second one.

The Farmer's Wife is about a widowed farmer (Jameson Thomas) who decides to remarry.  He wanders around his village, proposing to the unmarried women.  However, he finds the prospects to be an exercise in humility as he is turned down again and again.  Finally, he realizes that his best bet is his housekeeper Araminta (Lillian Hall Davis).

Frankly, this was a snoozefest.  It's not particularly clever or funny and it drags on for far too long.  There is very little of the signature wit and a lot of reliance on British country stereotypes.  Give this one a miss.

  This was a much more lively and engaging story, even if I'd seen some variation of it before. 

Two best friends are in love with the same girl.  Pete (Carl Brisson) decides to work his passage to Africa in order to make his fortune.  Before he leaves, he wrings a promise from Kate (Anny Ondra) that she will wait for him.  He asks his best friend Phil (Malcolm Keen) to watch over her while he's gone.  Phil and Kate spend hours and days in close proximity and then, deliverance.  They get a telegram saying that Pete has died.  As sad as they are to have lost a friend, they're also happy they can finally be together.  Except, of course, Pete isn't dead.  He comes back none the wiser about the two of them and Phil convinces Kate to stand by her promise and marry the guy. 

And he's a great guy, that's the shitty part.  If he was an asshole or beat her or humiliated her in public, they would have had no problem declaring their love for each other and telling him to shove off.  But he's not.  He treats Kate like a queen, is good-tempered, and a good provider.  He's even over the moon when he finds out Kate's knocked up.  Apparently they don't teach math in the Isle of Man.

This is much more in line with Hitchcock's later works, being funny in a darkly sad sort of way and having a strong moral bent.  It puts duty over love, the ultimate "Bros before hos" with dire consequences for failing to adhere to that code.

Live and Let Die (1971)

  This is the worst Bond film yet.  Worse than the yellowface incident.  Just awful.

And it could have been so awesome!  That's the really sad part.  It had voodoo and heroin smuggling, a really smooth villain, and a beautifully ethereal leading lady.  Squandered.  You had Punjab from Annie running around in skull make-up and you choked!  This movie sucked so bad it actually made me like the theme song a little less.  And it's one of the better theme songs of the whole series!

Bond (Roger Moore) goes to New York in order to spy on Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), the ruler of a small Caribbean island that is not Jamaica.  Kananga doesn't make a move unless his pet Tarot reader Solitaire (Jane Seymour) tells him it's okay, so Bond immediately sleeps with her.  Now robbed of her second sight, Solitaire joins him on the run. 

There's an absolutely useless scene at an alligator farm, a too-long/stupid boat chase through the bayou and a villain "reveal" that is absolutely ridiculous.  Not to mention the introduction of a character that is such a vapid Good-Ole-Southern-Boy cliche I nearly turned off the movie. 

The whole film is cringeworthy.  Rob called it "Bond's Blaxploitation Movie" and he's not wrong.  Horribly offensive.

Pump Up the Volume (1990)

  When Christy found out I'd never seen this movie she almost shit a brick.  Apparently, I have been remiss in my knowledge of the oeuvre of Christian Slater.  My bad.  I own Heathers and consider it to be the apogee of his cinematic achievement (with Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves at the other end of that scale).

This one doesn't suck, though.  It is very much a product of its time, however, and perhaps rides the coattails of John Hughes' Breakfast Club just a little too much.  But it's still not bad.

Shy NY-transplant Mark (Christian Slater) hates his new Arizona high school and misses his old life.  He manifests this by turning into Happy Harry Hard-on, an unlicensed radio operator railing against the oppression of his life.  Mark is comfortable in his anonymity but when the populace starts to revolt against the tyrannical principal (Annie Ross), it takes a poetry-writing stalker (Samantha Mathis) to convince him that one voice can make a difference.

This movie is very high school and very 90's.  The soundtrack is decent and overall the movie isn't terrible, as I've said.  You just have to ignore that twitch in your eye every time you see a stonewashed denim jacket or rat tail on screen.  My advice:  drink.  It's even more enjoyable.

Gojira (1954)

 That's right, it's the often imitated, unmistakable, original smash-Tokyo movie.  When a monster has been on film pretty much constantly over 60 years, you know it's got to be good.

This is the gold standard for non-supernatural monster movies.  Sure, it's horribly dated and the production values sucked but it is a bonafide classic and you just can't argue with that.

There is a plot to it involving a scarred scientist, a dainty woman, and a scrap metal salvage specialist in a love triangle but who gives a good goddamn about any of that?

GODZILLA!  That's the star of the movie and that's who you're waiting to see.  And wait you do, my friends.  First he teases you with some wrecked ships and glowing water, then there's a footprint and some trilobites.  You have to be committed to this movie before it lets you take a peek under its skirts. 

The monster goes through a sock puppet phase before evolving into what is clearly a man in a suit and yet somehow manages to be charming instead of irritating.  The end is complete shit, though, with the biggest deus ex machina "solution" you've ever seen.  It makes about as much sense as a chocolate tea kettle.  But that's part of what makes it a masterpiece.  Even though you know it's crap, it still captures the imagination.  This is a great idea let down by the production values of the time.  That's why they're still churning out sequels and why Godzilla has changed from Scourge to National Hero.  He may have started out as a metaphor for nuclear disarmament but the Japanese knew they were on to a winner and we can all be grateful for that.