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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Best Actress has nothing on Best Actor. Consider the lineup of male performers with a legitimate chance of being nominated: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joaquin Phoenix, Denzel Washington, John Hawkes, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Jackman, Bradley Cooper, Ben Affleck and Jamie Foxx. Truthfully, I could make an argument for any of those guys -- especially Cooper, who is a revelation in "Silver Linings Playbook"; he gives a performance that will forever change how audiences view him as an actor.
Five weeks ago, most Oscar experts polled by Gold Derby believed Silver Linings Playbook was out front to win Best Picture, followed by Lincoln in second place. Since then, the forecasts have changed radically.
The acting is certainly good with the three lead actors being outstanding, but Anderson's script hamstrings the movie from beginning to end. Finally it all becomes tiresome and oblique and the audience leaves feeling completely frustrated.
The Avengers. Joss Whedon deserves some kind of award for turning what could have been the clunkiest superhero-supergroup spectacle since Fantastic Four into a razor-sharp, bullet-fast fun-fest, but they don't give Oscars for that.
When the kids were little, the phrase "don't bite the hand that feeds you" was in fact quite literal. I know you really want the Cheerios and you want to show off your choppers, but don't bite my arm as I put them on your plate.
While many want The Master to be an assault on what they see as a kooky and possibly dangerous cult, I'm not convinced that The Master is or has to be about more than its two main characters struggling and ultimately failing to make themselves whole.
A lot of other leading 2012 Best Picture contenders have similar problems -- they don't fit classic Oscar theories -- and that's confounding a lot of us experts. Our crystal balls are suddenly cloudy.
The Master, while also ponderous, complex, intriguing and likely to win Oscars, stands out as a profound, artistic saga brought to seething life by performances so startling they stayed with me for days afterwards.
The director offers up some odd ensemble scene where Hoffman does a cutesy song and dance routine before a group of sycophants where most of the women are completely naked, making one wonder how they were motivated to strip while the men remain modestly clothed.
On September 27, Dark Blood the last film that River Phoenix appeared in, yet never completed will premiere at the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht. Nearly nineteen years after his death, the Dutch director George Sluizer will unveil Phoenix's final film.
In its intelligent, chilly essence, Paul Thomas Anderson's film is an intense, eye-to-eye war between two different yet interdependent psyches.
This is not a feel-good movie. But it is a master class in acting. It is a haunting fictional story that is all too true. As with great writing, it takes us into the labyrinth of human nature, rife with emotional hunger, desperation and rage.
The Silver Linings Playbook and Lincoln are the ponies most Oscarologists are betting on to win the Academy Awards' race for Best Picture, according to a poll conducted by Gold Derby.
A lot has been said about whether the Cause is code for Scientology. Anderson drew a lot of inspiration from L. Ron Hubbard and the origins of Scientology, but to say that The Master is about Scientology misses the point.
You can't take your eyes off The Master, neither Paul Thomas Anderson's new film nor Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of Lancaster Dodd. Francine is tough material, but this tightly conceived near silent film is well worth seeing.
In Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, "The Master" (his sixth), not only does he go out on a limb, but he allows two of our finest actors--Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman--to hang precariously from that limb with him.
