Lou Tayor Pucci and JK Simmons in The Music Never Stopped
The best bets in theaters now are the combo thriller/love story The Adjustment Bureau and the Baby Boomer-friendly The Music Never Stopped.
Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy, which is also now playing on HBO Signature as Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Five Days Without Nora).
Oscar winnerThe King’s Speech is on my Best Movies of 2010 and is still kicking around in some theaters.
Here’s you chance to see the Oscar-winning performance by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo in The Fighter. Mark Wahlberg stars as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Bale) and his powerful, trashy mom (Leo). As one would expect, Bale nails the flashier role of the addict, deluding himself about both past glories and his importance to his family. Leo is almost unrecognized under her teased hair, and is accompanied by a hilarious Greek Chorus of adult daughters, each trashier than the last.
The boxing scenes are very well done, and Wahlberg matches Sylvester Stallone and Hilary Swank in making us believe that he is, indeed, a boxer. See my list of 10 Best Boxing Movies. It’s also on my list of Best Movies of 2010.
The Must See film right now is The Adjustment Bureau, a first rate love story embedded in the action thriller genre. The Music Never Stopped is a crowd pleaser that opens this weekend.
Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy, which is also now playing on HBO Signature as Cinco Dias Sin Nora (Five Days Without Nora). The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom.
Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech and The Fighter are on my Best Movies of 2010 and are still kicking around in some theaters, as is Oscar nominee 127 Hours.
Oscar winner Natalie Portman and Natalie Portman in Black Swan
You can still see Oscar winners True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter and Oscar nominee Another Year. They are on my Best Movies of 2010. 127 Hours and Biutiful are also good movies out now.The Illusionist is the wistful and charming animated story of a small time magician who drifts through an ever bleaker array of gigs while helping a waif blossom. Cedar Rapids is a fun and unpretentious comedy. Kaboom is a trippy sex romp. Nora’s Will is a wry family dramedy.
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.
Planning this year’s Oscar Dinner proved challenging (despite being a great year for movie Food Porn). Fortunately I received some great suggestions from my readers.
Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2011.
COCKTAILS AND STARTERS
First, the pièce de résistance: Severed Hand Ice Sculpture for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone.
We will be floating the ice sculpture in an Appletini Punch for The Social Network. I read that, after seeing the film, Mark Zuckerberg made the Appletini the official cocktail of Facebook.
Pistachios from Inception. It looks like the guys are sharing a bowlful of pistachios while assembling the team in Mombasa.
Beer Nuts from The Fighter. Amy Adams’ bar looks like a beer nut kind of place. I am told by a New Englander that the Eklund-Ward clan would be drinking Narragansett, but I can’t find ‘Gansetts in California, so a MGD or PBR will have to do.
Tortilla Roll Ups from Toy Story 3. This is inspired by the all-time funniest movie scene involving a tortilla: Mr. Potato Head executes a prison escape by putting his facial features on a tortilla that can slide under a door.
DINNER
Cowboy beans from True Grit. Obvious and right out of the movie.
Steak and Organic Roast Vegetable Salad served with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. The Mark Ruffalo character serves steak (he mists it with truffle oil) while hosting the family at his house. Earlier, he brings a bottle of Petite Syrah to dinner, which impresses the Annette Bening character (before she drinks too much of it too fast). We see organic strawberries from his restaurant’s garden, but I can see his menu featuring a nice salad of roasted veggies.
DESSERT
Coffee from Inception. From the Parisian cafe scene.
Sheet cake from Black Swan. (We will not vomit it back up.)
English toffees for The King’s Speech. They’re English and we will have difficulty speaking when we are chewing them.
(I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.)
You’ve sent me some great suggestions for my Oscar Dinner. Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man. We also had airplane bottles of liquor for Up in the Air, fastfood chicken for Precious and Middle Eastern fare for The Hurt Locker. I particularly relished having prawns for District 9; (“prawn” is the South African slur for the aliens). You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.
But this year, I was stumped on 127 Hours The King’s Speech and The Fighter and asked for your help.
127 Hours: imagemoved said, “all he had was freeze dried food and granola bars. He also left that bottle of Gatorade in his car. Maybe do something with that?” The Wife suggested a water bottle with the exact number of milliliters of water that he had when he got stuck. The Wife has so far vetoed my idea of a water bottle with faux urine (the protagonist recycles his own urine while trapped). But Ana may have a winning idea: “Ginger ale, pineapple, white grape, and cranberry juice punch with an ice hand floating inside (pour water in a latex glove and freeze, remove glove and place in punch) — A bit gruesome but funny too, right? …right..? lol”.
The King’s Speech: I think Ana also has a winner here: “English toffees. 1) They’re English 2) Their stickiness renders you temporarily incapable of speech. Get it? Eh, eh? “. They also made a big deal of serving tea in The King’s Speech, but I really like the idea of gumming up my jaw with the toffee.
The Fighter: Ana suggests “Boneless Buffalo Wings — They’re manly and something you’d eat while watching a boxing match…and their flavor is a real ‘knockout’.” But something tells me that Amy Adams would be serving the buffalo wings WITH bones in that bar. Maybe I’ll just pick up some MGD or PBR.
Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was Grandma Ethel’s Brisket for A Serious Man. We also had airplane bottles of liquor for Up in the Air, fastfood chicken for Precious and Middle Eastern fare for The Hurt Locker. I particularly relished having prawns for District 9; (“prawn” is the South African slur for the aliens). You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.
But this year, the elements of my Oscar Dinner are not so obvious (despite being a great year for movie Food Porn). Now, I do know what I’m going to serve for True Grit, Black Swan, Toy Story 3, Inception, The Social Network and The Kids Are All Right.
But I’m stumped on 127 Hours The King’s Speech and The Fighter. I need to find food and/or beverages found in these movies or inspired by the movies (typical of the movie’s setting, a pun on the movie, etc.) Any ideas? I welcome your suggestions.
Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent in Mike Leigh's Another Year
There are more excellent movies in the theaters RIGHT NOW than any other time of the year. Right now, you can see Another Year, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Black Swan, The Way Back, Somewhere, Biutiful, The Fighter, Rabbit Hole and Fair Game. It just doesn’t get any better than this for movie fans.
True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance, and Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. The King’s Speech is the crowd pleasing story of a good man (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer to inspire his nation in wartime with the help of a brassy commoner (Geoffrey Rush). Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey. Another Year is Mike Leigh’s brilliant observation of the human condition, and asks why some people find contentment and others just cannot; Lesley Manville has the flashiest role – and gives the most remarkable performance – as a woman whose long trail of bad choices hasn’t left her with many options for a happy life.
Biutiful is a grim, grim movie with a great performance by Javier Bardem in a compelling portrait of a desperate man in desperate circumstance, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel).
Somewhere is Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) artsy portrait of a man so purposeless that he can find no pleasure in pleasure. An A-list movie star (Steven Dorff) is living at the Chateau Marmont with his expensive toys, booze and drugs and an inexhaustible supply of beautiful, sexually available women, but without Without any purpose or connection to others, his debauchery is completely joyless. To his surprise and discomfort, his eleven-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) moves in for a few weeks.
The Way Back is inspired by the story of a 1940 escape from a Siberian gulag by men who walk over 4,000 miles to freedom in India – a trek of 4000 miles. It’s beautifully shot by director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Master and Commander) but, eleven months of trudging through dangerous, unfamiliar territory while suffering from starvation and exposure is really impressive, but not that engaging.
I strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner. The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and trashy mom (Melissa Leo). Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent. All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010.
I Love You, Phillip Morris is an entertaining offbeat combo of the con man, prison and romantic comedy genres. Red Hill is a stylish contemporary Aussie Western. Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
I’m pretty pleased with this year’s Oscar nominees. The Academy did better than usual and avoided its frequent horribly undeserving nominations and inexplicably unjust missed nominations.
I’m downright giddy that my pick for the year’s best movie, the underdog indie Winter’s Bone, earned four Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Best Supporting Actor (John Hawkes) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Director Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini).
Of the ten nominees for Best Picture, eight are on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – all except 127 Hours (which I have not seen) and The Kids Are Alright (which was OK but not great in my book). The one-year old format of ten Best Picture nominees made it pretty obvious that True Grit, The Social Network, Black Swan, The King’s Speech and Inception would make the list along with the deserving Pixar entry Toy Story 3. The question was about the other four, and, fortunately, Winter’s Bone and The Fighter slipped in.
I’m also delighted that Australian veteran actress Jacki Weaver was nominated for her role in Animal Kingdom as an impossibly upbeat gal who can effortlessly put out a contract on her own grandson.
Christopher Nolan should have gotten a Best Director nod for his Best Picture nominee Inception. I wish that Winter’s Bone‘s Debra Granik had been nominated for Best Director. And I did find it odd that GasLand rated an Oscar nod for Best Documentary, but not The Tillman Story or Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. But those are just quibbles relative to my complaints in other years. Here’s to the Oscars!
Somewhere: It's Dad/Daughter Month at the Chateau Marmont
Now is the time to catch future Oscar contenders on the big screen, especially crowd pleasers like True Grit, The King’s Speech and Black Swan.
True Grit is the Coen Brothers’ splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance, and Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn. The King’s Speech is the crowd pleasing story of a good man (Colin Firth) overcoming his stammer to inspire his nation in wartime with the help of a brassy commoner (Geoffrey Rush). Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a rip roaring thriller and a showcase for Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey.
Biutiful is a grim, grim movie with a great performance by Javier Bardem in a compelling portrait of a desperate man in desperate circumstance, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores perros, 21 Grams, Babel).
Somewhere is Sofia Coppola’s (Lost in Translation) artsy portrait of a man so purposeless that he can find no pleasure in pleasure. An A-list movie star (Steven Dorff) is living at the Chateau Marmont with his expensive toys, booze and drugs and an inexhaustible supply of beautiful, sexually available women, but without Without any purpose or connection to others, his debauchery is completely joyless. To his surprise and discomfort, his eleven-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) moves in for a few weeks.
I strongly recommend Rabbit Hole, an exquisite exploration of the grieving process with great performances by Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhardt, Diane Wiest, Sandra Oh and Miles Tenner. The Fighter is an excellent drama, starring Mark Wahlberg as a boxer trying to succeed despite his crack addict brother (Christian Bale) and trashy mom (Melissa Leo). Fair Game, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson story with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, is also excellent. All are on my list of Best Movies of 2010.
I Love You, Phillip Morris is an entertaining offbeat combo of the con man, prison and romantic comedy genres. Red Hill is a stylish contemporary Aussie Western. Season of the Witch is a bad Nicholas Cage/Ron Perlman buddy movie set among the plague, crusades and witch hunts of the 13th century.
“. They also made a big deal of serving tea in The King’s Speech, but I really like the idea of gumming up my jaw with the toffee.
