Saw this article today from Drew Magary at Popcornbiz and thought I’d share his tips with AATM readers, particularly Dan, Harry and Aaron, who will all be getting cinematically teabagged by yours truly when I rule the weekend with my awesome Oscar picks. I need some revenge and redemption after getting worked by Dan, Aaron and Harry (in that order) in picking Oscar nominees.
1. Pay Attention To Everyone Else’s Predictions And Slavishly Follow Them
Listen to who people in the industry are predicting. Don’t go with any wild, outside the box predictions just because YOU have a hunch. Oh, you think Jeremy Renner could sneak in a shocking Best Actor win? You are wrong. That isn’t happening. Ever. Get your picks from people who know what they’re talking about. Entertainment Weekly. Roger Ebert. The Gurus of Gold. Trust me. This will help. Don’t go it alone, and don’t think you can intuit some magic insight about how Oscar voters vote that no one else can divine. That is stupid. Let everyone else in the office weed themselves out of the pool by making these wild stabs.
The only surprises that happen at the Oscars are the ones that, really, NO ONE sees. There may be a shocking win on Sunday night. I promise you it won’t be one you picked.
Continue reading ‘Five Tips for Winning your Oscar Pool’
I’m sending you back to 1982 via Trailer Tuesday with The Pirate Movie, a musical loosely based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s “comic opera,” The Pirates of Penzance. You remember 1982. It was the year of the Tylenol cyanide scare, the first artificial heart transplant and the year Michael Jackson’s Thriller sold 20 million albums to become the biggest selling record ever.
Ogden Marsh is Hollywood’s typical snapshot of small-town, Podunk, Midwest America. Located in Iowa, it’s the kind of place where hunting, pickups, farming, the gentle smell of manure and voting Republican are generally the norm. It’s the type of town without strangers, where kids ride bicycles gleefully and without fear down Main Street, and where the entire town shows up to cheer on the high school baseball team. It’s idyllic, old-fashioned and charming. And when The Crazies opens you already know how this film is going to turn out; this Normal Rockwell-esque hamlet is about to get it’s ass kicked.
I realize it’s easy and popular to bash the Twihards, Stephanie Meyer’s craptastic writing and the whole fabric of the Twilight universe, but while I poke fun at the fanbase (divided equally between cougars and those who just bought training bras), I do think some people tend to bash the movies and books simply because of the mass appeal. However, with that said, when I see Twilight fans sending ignorant hate mail, it just makes me want to mock them ceaselessly.
Even Johnny Depp Thinks 3-D Movies Suck
Another reason I hate 3-D is I can’t even recognize it onscreen. Say what? Yeah, I have amblyopia – commonly referred to as “lazy eye” – which means the brain doesn’t fully acknowledge the images seen by the amblyopic eye, which, in my case, is my right eye. I wore a patch when I was really little and it went away until I was about 17 or 18. As of today, it’s just something I live with. And I’m not the only person suffering, as much as 5 percent of the populations suffer from amblyopia, with up to another 12 percent suffering from some degree of stereoblindness, which is the inability to see depth properly. That’s why Johnny Depp won’t be seeing Alice in Wonderland in 3-D. He recently told Entertainment Weekly, “I’ve got a weird thing where I don’t see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can’t see 3-D.”
What are your thoughts on 3-D movies nowadays and in the future? Yay or nay?