Possum Holler

Once again it is that time that all Possum Holler readers look forward to: the moment that I make my Oscar picks so that you all can watch and laugh as they are all wrong!

But I do think that the Academy has an opportunity on Sunday to right two wrongs and finally acknowledge a pair of legends.

Best Actor: Peter O'Toole, Venus (Wrong #1, righted)
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen (Could easily be Streep, though)
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls (This year's foregone conclusion)
Animated Film: Happy Feet
Art Direction: Dreamgirls
Cinematography: Children of Men
Costume Design: Dreamgirls (I really wanted to go with Marie Antoinette, though)
Director: Martin Scorcese, The Departed (Wrong #2, righted)
Documentary: An Inconvenient Truth (Though probably not technically that great, I don't see them not acknowledging it's impact)
Documentary Short: Recycled Life
Film Editing: Children of Men
Foreign Film: Pan's Labyrinth
Musical Score: Babel
Best Song: Dreamgirls (I'm cheating here and claiming victory if any of the three songs from Dreamgirls that are nominated wins)
Animated Short: No Time for Nuts
Live Action Short: The Saviour
Sound Editing: Letters from Iwo Jima
Sound Mixing: Dreamgirls (I didn't even watch it, but I'm relying on it heavily)
Visual Effects: Pirates of the Carribean
Adapted Screenplay: Children of Men
Original Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine (Tough category, but I'm thinking they will use this to reward the "little film that could")
Best Picture: The Departed

Now for my personal Top 10 of 2006:

1. The Departed
2. Children of Men
3. The Queen
4. United 93
5. Pan's Labyrinth
6. Volver
7. Little Miss Sunshine
8. Marie Antoinette
9. The Science of Sleep
10.The Devil Wears Prada

And my 5 favorite:
1. The Departed
2. Marie Antoinette
3. Bobby
4. Volver
5. A Scanner Darkly

I had hoped to write more about all of these movies, but they're just going to have to be quick hits for today.

United 93
Director: Paul Greengrass
Possum's Grade: A-

World Trade Center
Director: Oliver Stone
Possum's Grade: B-

Volver
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Possum's Grade: A

Few movies this year have stayed with me like this one. Almodovar is great at that though. Three years later and I still think about Hable Con Ella.

Sherrybaby
Director: Laurie Collyer
Possum's Grade: C+

But a solid A for Maggie Gyllenhaal.

I'll try to get my Oscar picks and Top 10 up tomorrow!

For those of you who have not heard, I did not get the job in California. However, they do want to keep me in mind for another position that they will be looking to hire at the end of the year which could be a good opportunity depending on what happens between now and then. And now for this week's reviews:

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Possum’s Grade: A-

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about this movie. Judging from the trailers, it would seem to be an animated, fantasy story, though little else is known. The New York Times has even done a piece about parents who have taken their children to see it, despite it’s ‘R’ rating, thinking it was a family film. The word from people who had actually seen it ranged from “amazing” to “gruesome and troubling.” So, of course I had to find out for myself.

Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of a young girl named Ofelia who is moving to a military camp with her mother who has recently married a Spanish captain and is pregnant with his son. It is 1944, and though the Spanish Civil War has been over for a few years (I spent today researching Spain’s history on wikipedia), the maquis resistance to Generalisimo Francisco Franco (still dead) is prominent in the mountainous areas.

Ofelia adores her mother but frustrates her when she becomes overly involved in the fairy tales that she loves to read. Little does she realize that her daughter may be fairy tale royalty. Once Ofelia and her mother arrive at the military camp it does not take long for us to see that Captain Vidal, her mother’s husband, is a truly evil man. As the pregnancy takes it’s toll on Ofelia’s mother’s health, she becomes close to a servant of Captain Vidal’s who is also an undercover aide to the rebels living in the hills.

While living in the camp, Ofelia is visited by a fairy that leads her into a labyrinth in the forest where she meets a faun. The faun tells her that she possesses the soul of the long, lost princess of the underworld and that she must complete three tasks in order to return to her kingdom.

The movie then alternates between these fantasy world tasks that Ofelia takes on and an all-too-brutal reality. This isn’t to say that the fantasy sequences are an escape. Ofelia must encounter terrifying characters that are both human and non-human.

In the end we are left to wonder whether this fantasy world is a figment of the girl’s imagination or her real destiny. This distinction might just determine whether the ending is happy or tragic.


Idiocracy
Director: Mike Judge
Possum's Grade: B

The studio pretty much killed this one when it was released to theatres because they were scared of it. After watching it on dvd last week I can kind of see why. It is the most pretentious and heavy-handed movie I've ever seen. It casts a condescending glare on a large population of Americans and suggests that we are a nation that will become progressively stupider.

All that said, it is the funniest movie of the year save for Borat, and if you can handle the vulgarity it is quite a riot.

Coming reviews:

As time permits, I will write about the other movies I've watched recently (United 93, World Trade Center, Volver), the movies that I currently have from Netflix (Sherrybaby, Running With Scissors), and/or the movies I want to see in theatres soon (Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Children). I also would like to revisit The Departed. An ambitious schedule leading to the Oscars as things get busier at work, but I'll do my best!