Pam and I watched three movies that had Oscar
nominations over the weekend. The first was Anna Karenina, then Hitchcock, and
finally Argo. Here follows three brief reviews:
The great Tolstoy book was placed on screen in an
almost surreal way with the heavy use of 3rd party dream sequences
that were a bit confusing at times, but I would sit down and watch Keira
Knightley for two hours in practically anything, her of the beguilingly crooked
teeth but amazing beauty and talent. Jude Law is terrific as Anna’s faithful
husband, while the dude who plays Count Vronsky is positively dreadful. His
only qualifications for the roll seem to have been his striking blue eyes and
the fact that he “looks Russian”. Karenina is a great story of infatuation, temptation
and the wages of sin, great book, mediocre film. The costumes and photography
were amazingly well done, and the despite its 2 and a half hour running time,
the story moves right along. Still, when Knightly wasn’t on camera, I was
bored.
I love Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve seen all his movies
multiple times. I believe him to be one of the few real geniuses in cinematic
history. I also love Anthony Hopkins, who may be one of the two or three best actors
alive today. So, what was not to like? Enjoyed every minute of this film, which
essentially tells the story of the making of Psycho, of how Hitchcock was
considered old and over the hill, and couldn’t get Paramount to approve the
movie so he financed it himself by mortgaging his house in exchange for 49% of
the profits. Of course, the rest as they say is history. Great performance by
Hopkins. I especially loved the 98 minute running time, as if the ghost of
Hitchcock was in charge of editing!
Finally we watched the 2012 Best Picture winner…Argo.
Terrific picture. Suspenseful, great pacing, amazing actors. In short, it
deserved its awards. The fact that Affleck didn’t receive a Best Director
nomination just proves how screwed up is “the Academy.” I lived through the
1979 hostage crisis with Iran. I remember it very well. As I watched the film I
kept thinking, here it is 34 years later and we have learned absolutely
nothing. We’re still hip deep in Iran’s business, still getting our guys killed
in Afghanistan, still rubbing shoulders with towel-heads from Jordan to Yemen,
WHY??? Nothing good has ever come from fooling around in the Middle East. Can
we just develop our natural gas reserves here and tell the whole lot of them to
hit the road?! I say Frack, Frack, Frack and then Frack some more until we have
to buy ZERO barrels of oil from the Abdul’s of the world, then we’ll see what
becomes of their “civilization”. But, I digress. Argo was amazing. Who knew
that Ben Affleck had actual talent?
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