Post Oscar Splash

Oscar party was pretty good, I thought.  My most exciting moment was when Searching for Sugarman won Best Documentary.  There were some looks by stars that I thought were appalling -  George Clooney and Ben Affleck sported those incredibly ugly beards, especially Clooney.  Ugh!!  As for the women, I think Kerry Washington, a talent with potential beauty, has gone for the scrawny, emaciated look.  Why, why does this look persist?  I really don't get it.  Lara Flynn Boyle comes to mind. 

Oscar Time

Top 10
The Master
Silver Linings Playbook
Searching for Sugarman
Argo 
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Late Quartet
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty 
Polisse
Central Park Five

Honorable Mention
Take This Waltz
Promised Land 
Killer Joe
Bernie

Best TV Series/Shows
Homeland
Mad Men
Real Time with Bill Maher
Smash
The Killing
The Good Wife
Boardwalk Empire

Best Cast
Silver Linings Playbook

Best Song (and most blunt)
I Wonder from Searching for Sugarman

Best Freckles
Eddie Redmayne in Les Miserables


Best Scene
Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook dancing to Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash singing Dylan's song, Girl from the North Country.

Oscar Nominations - OMG!!!

What?  The Master did not get nominated as one of the 10 best pictures of 2012 and no best director nor best cinematography nods?  Outrageous!  And what about The Late Quartet and a nod to Christopher Walken?  And neither Kathyrn Bigelow nor Ben Afleck were nominated??  The Oscar show can't mean much this year because of these oversights.

5 Holiday Season Movies

Django Unchained - An extremely bloody and gory slave revenge fantasy.  C+
Promised Land - A good, solid movie about fracking with Matt Damon and Francis McDormand.  B
Impossible - The horrors and anguish (continual) of the southeast Asia tsunami, based upon a true story. C+
Les Miserables - A long, but sometimes compelling musical with the astounding Hugh Jackman, etal, including oncoming and dazzling new star, Eddie Redmayne.   B-
The Central Park Five - An astonishing film about a total miscarriage of justice.  Frightening in many ways.  B+.

Whoa! + It's About Time

Want some laughs right about now?  Check out Silver Linings Playbook.  This is one very funny movie, with a snappy script and good acting, especially by Jennifer Lawrence.  Robert DeNiro and Bradly Cooper also shine.  In response to some criticism out there, this is not meant to be a serious movie about bipolar disorders.    Yes, it is about time that Smash got nominated - for best TV Series, Comedy or Musical  - by the Golden Globes!

Television Shows and more Oscar Contenders

Homeland continues to be the best show running now.  Other good shows I'm watching are Boardwalk Empire and The Good Wife. Of course, other great shows like Mad Men, The Killing,  Real Time with Bill Maher and Smash are currrently on break.  I've seen a few more Oscar contenders:  The Late Quartet, Lincoln and Argo.  These are all good movies and well worth viewing.  I particularly liked The Late Quartet - an emotionally intense movie centering on the 4 musicians.  I see an Oscar nod here to multi-talented and always intriguing Christopher Walken

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel and Sessions

Diana Vreeland . . . is an exceptional documentary, mainly because Diana Vreeland was such a visionary, an artist, a woman of extraordinary perception of the beauty of people, clothes, sets, designs with a sense of fashion and trends like no other.  The accolades from so many peers is no surprise.  This film has to get an Oscar nomination.  Sessions, a movie about a sex therapist with polio patient in an iron lung who can't move his arms or legs.  John Hawke (Winter's Bone) again gives a nuanced and fully dimensional performance.  At times you almost forget he has any disability.  Helen Hunt as the therapist and William Macy as the priest also give very strong performances.  There's Oscar potential here too.