Monday's Words of Wisdom

"And since the movie is basically the "Oscars for Tony and Helen" show, let's go ahead and end with them: both are perfectly satisfactory, neither is revelatory: Mirren can do this kind of character in her sleep and very much seems to have done just that, rousing herself only for the florid Oscar clip scene that showed up so big in the trailer ("all they can see is the Great and Glorious genius AL-fred Hitch-cock!!!"), while Hopkins, considerable more alert and robust in his unashamedly hammy performance, resembles the famous director not at all: his makeup is a joke, but of course that's not the actor's fault, and while Hopkins gets the positively dehydrated sense of humor down, and in the film's opening nails a perfect "good evening", he doesn't come even close to capturing the psychological dysfunction that the movie wants us to see there, very clearly preferring to play a more avuncular Hitch than the screenplay apparently has in mind."
- Tim Brayton

Tim Brayton, as I've noted long ago, is one of my favourite writers, and I can always depend on him for articulating my thoughts in ways much more eloquent than I can ever hope to do on my own. The excerpt above is taken from his brilliant review of Sascha Gervasi's Hitchcock, which you may remember I mildly liked if only because it made for a fun double bill with Psycho. I noted in my own review that "Hopkins is never Hitchcock; he's Hopkins playing Hitchcock. And the same can be said of Biel and Johansson, unfortunately" so I think Tim's right on the money with this one. I do wonder, though, if Mirren and Hopkins have what it takes to be in the Oscar race despite their clip-ready performances. This is far, far from their best work and both have been well-rewarded in the past.

What My Favourite Bloggers Are Up To...

School's really getting the better of me these days and blogging is kinda on the bottom of the list of priorities. I do keep up with my usual reading though so I thought I'd highlight a few of the interesting things that came around on the web last week, in case you missed them:

Over at dark eye socket, Craig Bloomfield had an interesting list for Halloween. Instead of writing up another one of those generic best horror films of all time lists, he went for the Top Five Scary Masks in Non-Scary Films. His choices are top-notch. I'm so bad at remembering specifics from films (unless I obsessively rewatch them) that I can't even think of anything that would possibly extend his list to a top ten.
Anyway, I've been a fan of Craig's Take Three series, so it's shameful that I only recently visited his own blog, but he's become my new favourite blogger.

At PopMatters, Jose's looking back at the short but powerful filmography of Jean Vigo, calling it history's most perfect filmography. I commented on his own blog that Luis Bunuel is my go-to guy when somebody asks me for a perfect filmography, only to realize that I'm actually missing a couple of titles. Could they be so bad to change my perception of Bunuel? I hardly think so. Then there are more recent filmmakers whose filmographies we're readily familiar with. Tarantino, Farhadi and to an extent, Paul Thomas Anderson all have good records for me, though not close to perfection. Have a read and chime in with your thoughts. 

At Grantland, Bill Simmons has an interesting take on the career trajectory of this year's Oscar host and one of the greatest comedians of all time, Eddie Murphy. He thinks Murphy doesn't get quite enough praise for his genius and ends his piece with this:

"I don't know why we stopped caring about Eddie, why we never give him the benefit of the doubt, why we never consider him a pioneer, why we were in such a hurry to marginalize him. I just know that we don't, and we don't, and we don't. And we did."

At Antagony and Ecstasy, Tim Brayton gives another one of his monthly previews, this time for November's films. He's as funny and cynical as ever. Reading his previews are very often more enjoyable than watching the actual films. 

"Immortals is going to be awful, and it really causes me pain that Immortals is going to be awful, because it's the third film by Tarsem Singh, after The Cell and The Fall both of which I pretty much love all the way down to my toes. Setting aside the fact that it's a 300 knock-off, I pray that it will be easy on the eyes, at least. Something that will not be true of Jack and Jill, in which Adam Sandler plays both of the title characters. Yes, it's the Adam Sandler drag movie we've all been waiting for."

Finally, in non-film related news, The Cat with Binoculars, who's always great at highlighting amusing things (and art pieces) had this video to share from Conan O'Brien's interview with Louis C.K. No one can make me laugh as much as he does. Hilarious, his stand-up from last year, was the most aptly titled film of the year.