Oscar 2009: Previsões

[MacGruber]

‘Reader’ revealed

Posted by Kristopher Tapley · 12:23 pm · November 24th, 2008

Stephen Daldry’s “The Reader” has begun it’s big Oscar season reveal after behind-the-scenes drama has defined the film for a number of months. Dare I say it — given the circumstances — but the effort feels rushed. It’s an oddly disorienting narrative that takes some time settling into an emotional groove, but when it does, it packs affecting punch.

The weird thing is it feels like the last 123 minutes have transported me back to the mid-1990s. This is a film that recalls the heyday of Harvey Weinstein’s grip on this time of year, perhaps in atmosphere more than quality. It should be no surprise, then, that Anthony Minghella is one of the producers attached. There are echoes of his work throughout, and really, Daldry might be the only filmmaker with the right doses of prestige and dramatic flavor to take up Minghella’s mantle.

I’ll get into more later, but I have to mention Nico Muhly’s exemplary score and exquisite photography from Chris Menges and Roger Deakins, both credited. Stand-out particulars.

http://www.incontention.com/?p=3116

[MacGruber]

Trailer internacional (e horrível!) de Slumdog Millionaire.

 

http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/11/23/worst-movie-trailer-ever-slumdog-millionaires-international-trailer/

[Administrator]

Estranho o trailer internacional ser ruim. O americano é simplesmente o melhor que vi até hoje dentre os oscarizáveis.

 

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Sean Penn colocou prostéticos ou algo assemelhado para fazer Milk? Ele parece diferente em algum aspecto...

 

 

 

[FeCamargo]

 

Está claro que Revolutionary Road é denso o bastante e difícil o bastante para espantar alguns votos, enquanto Benjamin Button é puro deleite para os membros votante. Algo mais simples e fácil de se conectar. Não mexe com coisas incrustradas na personaldiade de todos. As críticas, todas, apontam isso!!! 

FeCamargo2008-11-24 21:39:39

[pantalaimon]

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939098.html?categoryid=2880&cs=1

Crítica da Variety de "Button". Eles gostaram, mas acham "estranho" o épico e falam em um certo problema para chegar ao público.pantalaimon2008-11-24 21:46:20

[pantalaimon]

Ah, já postaram aqui a crítica, sorry. ;/

 

Gostei desse FYC de "Milk", muito bom.

[Garbage]

Milk está com 91% no Rotten.

O nariz do Penn ta bem estranho, deve ser protése.

[pantalaimon]

É, caiu, mas continua muito bem.

[Bart Scary]

Bom o fyc de Milk??? Meu deus o que tem demais naquele Sean Penn narigudo encostado num balaustre (ou corrimão sei lá o que é aquilo). Realmente suuuuper criativo.

[FeCamargo]

Tenho que concordar com o Bart. Esse FYC de Milk está bem fraco.

 

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

não preciso nem dizer q toda crítica pode contêr spoilers, portanto qd sentir q tem "alguma coisa errada", pule o parágrafo

 

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- Emanuel Levy -

 

Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The A-

 

Though vastly different from "Slumdog Millionaire," in its good moments, which are plentiful, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," achieves the same kind of magical realism, a style that fits its eccentric, epic storytelling. Moreover, "Benjamin Button" represents the same, welcome change of pace for its director-auteur David Fincher that "Slumdog Millionaire" represents for Danny Boyle. It may be premature to predict, but as of today, "Benjamin Button" and "Slumdog Millionaire" are the two best pictures of the year, based on their original conception and superlative accomplishment.

With "Benjamin Button," which ironically is his first PG-13 picture, Fincher reaffirms his status as one of the most exciting and innovative directors working today. With a relatively small output to his credit--only 7 features in 16 years--Fincher has managed to do experimental work within the confines of the studio system, without ever repeating himself. Though some themes run across all of his output, each of his films is different narratively, visually, and technically.

Putting to most effective use state-of-the-art technology, "Benjamin Button" does proud to Hollywood this season. It's a big, massive, uniquely American tale that combines bravura special effects with good writing, and splendid performances that are not buried or overwhelmed under the heavy weight of CGI. A feast to the eyes, here is a movie that, unlike other highlights this year, such as "Revolutionary Road," "Doubt," and "Frost/Nixon," can never be mistaken as an extension of literature (the former) or theater (the latter).

An artistic highlight of the year, "Benjamin Button," assisted by critical support, should receive about 10 (or more) Oscar nominations across the board: Best Picture, Director (Fincher has never been nominated), Screenplay, Actor (Pitt) , several Supporting Actors and Actresses , and of course, a sweep of the technical categories: Special Effects, Sound Effects, Production Design, Make-Up.

Make no mistake the premise is taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1921 short story of the same title, about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards. But Fincher's picture is much richer, very loose adaptation of its source material, not least because of its new locale, New Orleans (Fitzgerald's story is set in Baltimore), epic scale, and narrative scope, which spans almost an entire century, from 1918, when the hero is born up, to the present, the Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

If in its high levels of aspiration and execution, and undeniably exuberant joy of filmmaking, "Benjamin Button" bears resemblance to "Slumdog Millionaire," in structure, tone, and theme, the film is a companion piece to "Forrest Gump." The reason for this similarity is rather simple: Both pictures are scripted by Eric Roth, who won an Oscar in 1994. The new film also credits the work of Robin Swicord on a previous version of the scenario. (The project has been in development, in various forms and with different directors attached, for over a decade).

Let me be more specific in the comparison of the two films. Like "Forrest Gump," "Benjamin Button" represents a grand, massive yet cohesive tale of a not-so-ordinary man, the people and places he discovers along the way, the affairs and adventures he experiences, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time, eternal love.

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"I was born under unusual circumstances," says Benjamin (Brad Pitt) at the beginning of this magical yarn about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards. Both ordinary and extraordinary, Benjamin is like any of us, a man who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, tracking a journey that's as fascinating and unusual as any man's life can potentially be--only more so.

In "Forrest Gump," director Robert Zemeckis showed shrewdness and technical skill in turning dubious material into a uniquely poetic American comedy. The picture's Oscars and phenomenal commercial success suggested that it touched deep chords in the American public consciousness (and among Academy voters). It remains to be seen how exactly will "Benjamin Button" connect with the audience in the zeitgeist of the post 9/11 era.

That film's hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a retarded man, but blessed with innate decency and courage. Forrest is simple, but his heart is always in the right place. "Forrest Gump" implies that we, the viewers could be as good and patriotic citizens as Forrest Gump, if only we could have the courage to be simple and naive. Veiled with cool technology, the film was so smart that many viewers disregarded its sanctimonious tone, and that it packaged innocence as a higher state of being.

Trusting the audience, "Benjamin Button" makes no such mistakes. The hero may be simple, but the movie is not, a function of Fincher's more cynical philosophy and modernist aesthetics than those that defined Zemeckis' work circa 1994. Even so, like Forrest Gump, as a character, Benjamin belongs to the same type of men that are at the center of such seemingly diverse narratives as "King of Hearts," "Being There" (1979), with an Oscar-nominated role by Peter Sellers, "Rain Man" (1988), which brought a second Oscar to Dustin Hoffman. Unlike those protags, however, Pitt plays his role in a straightforward manner, without any condescension or gimmickry.

Essaying his most demanding and complex role to date, one that should garner him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, Brad Pitt begins as a character who may be naﶥ and limited in consciousness, but is generous in feeling and heart, hence facilitating the audience's identification with him. As the glue that holds the episodic film together, Pitt never allows his persona's eccentricities to become a comedic or satiric caricature, though a good dosage of humor is interspersed throughout the yarn.

This odd epic tale of a man who ages backwards unfolds as a series of set-pieces that pay impeccable attention to the time and setting in which they take place. What unifies the film, other than Pitt's character and his first-person voice-over narration, is a framing device, a contemporary hospital setting.

Hence, the tale begins at the present time in a New Orleans' hospital, in which Daisy (Cate Blanchett), Benjamin's grand amour, is dying. Her concerned daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) is at her bedside, reading to her from his personal diary, which is full of scribbled notes, photos, and postcards. It's hard to tell why Fincher felt the need to return one too many times to the hospital scene, often just for one sentence or a single observation--perhaps to remind us that what we are watching is related from Benjamin's subjective and consistent perspective. It's one of the film's few structural weaknesses, interrupting the otherwise smooth flow of events and also prolonging the running time.

Most of the richly textured yarn, however, consists of chapters, dozens of them, each fastidiously created and meticulously related. In terms of storytelling, the whole movie is seamless, which is not a minor feat, considering the film's length (close to three hours) and large number of flashback episodes (at least 30).

The saga begins with a strange-looking baby, small but wrinkled, being dropped by a white man at the steps of an old-age home. He is soon picked up by Queenie (a marvelous Taraji P. Henson), a sensitive attendant, who raises him as her own son; he calls her mamma to everyone's surprise. Unbeknownst to him, Benjamin does have biological parents: His mother died at child birth and his father (Jason Flemying) appears and disappears in his life, often in the least expected moments, resulting in a peculiar bonding between the two men, based on one-sided ignorance but mutual respect and caring.

Though a child, Benjamin is bald, hearing-impaired, wears heavy glasses, and is placed on a wheelchair, all elements that make him more of an "insider" among other old men and women, mostly members of the Southern upper-class. Throughout the narrative, Benjamin returns to Queenie's place, only to face time and again "bad news," usually tales of deaths of this and that person of his life.

Like Forrest Gump, early on, Benjamin falls for a young, red-haired girl named Daisy (played by different actresses, among them Elle Fanning, before Blanchett takes over as a young woman), the granddaughter of a kind matron, who had taught him how to play the piano. Daisy, of course, is the name of the protag of Fitzgerald's famous novel, "The Great Gatsby," which the movie alludes to visually by making Pitt look like Robert Redford, who starred in the 1974 Hollywood version alongside Mia Farrow.

The text is laced with one good recurrent joke, an older man who keeps telling Benjamin, "Did I ever tell how I was struck by lightning seven times in my life," which is followed by visual illustrations of this motif, each time assuming different ideas, shapes and forms.

A loose string of vignettes, presented by Fincher at a varied pacing, the film establishes Benjamin as a passive hero, sort of a reactor or (accidental) emblem of his times. He's a timid man-boy, or boy-man, depending on the phase of the story, whose passivity and sometimes slowness are balanced by a genuinely sweet nature and open-mindedness to new experiences, including booze, women, and adventures out on a wild boat.

It's a tribute to Fincher's consistently deft touch that, despite the heavy use of special effects, and the fact that death is the most recurrent motif in Benjamin's story, the movie as a whole is not sad or depressing, just melancholy and lyrical, and in moments extremely touching and even poetic. The last scene, in which Benjamin, an old man as a baby, is held in the arms of Daisy, the love of his life, might reduce you to tears.

If the corny "Forrest Gump" made you feel bad about enjoying it, "Benjamin Button," a far more cerebral and existential tale, should make you contemplative and meditative about issues of life and death, fate, predestination, and accidental circumstances.

It's a pleasure to report that Brad Pitt meets the enormous challenge called by his multi- nuanced, endlessly shifting role with considerable charisma and panache. Though aging from 80 to a baby, he's always recognizable as Pitt (I mean that as a compliment), either through his voice or other physical and emotional attributes. And watching him through the ages, with the midsection displaying him at his most handsome, inevitably reads like a catalogue of his two-decade screen career, from the hunks he played in "Thelma & Louise" (1991) all the way to the gray-haired maturity he showed in "Babel" (2007).

Cate Blanchett, who plays an impossibly difficult role, stumbles several times, both as a younger and older figure, and is most interesting in the mid-sections.

The entire cast shines, especially Taraji P. Henson, Jared Harris, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond.

Replete with rich images and symbols, "Benjamin Button" is a field day for semioticians and structuralists. Take the feature's opening and closing symbolic sign, a huge clock. When the saga begins, Daisy tells us that the clock was built by a craftsman named Monsieur Devereux (Canadian Elias Koteas) as a tribute to his lost son, a WWI fighter. After that, Devereux simply disappeared, but not his creation, which decorates the glorious New Orleans train station. At the end of the journey, after hurricane Katrina hits hard, the last image in the movie is of the same clock, washed by water, crushed on the floor.

The lush, impressive score of "Benjamin Button" was written by French composer Alexandre Desplat, who recorded his score with an 87-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at the Sony Scoring Stage.

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comparações com forrest gump estão sendo constantemente feitas por se tratar do mesmo roteirista, só q de forma muito mais positiva em relação ao filme de zemeckis!  (eu sou suspeito p/ falar, adoro forrest gump, um filme q transborda uma inocência genuína, algo completamente oposto do cinismo e hipocrisia q impera a sociedade nos tempos atuais, mais ok, se eles (os críticos) preferem um forrest gump um pouco mais dark, tb não vejo problema nenhum em gostar )

 

o filme realmente parece ser superlativo em vários pontos, só não entendi se a critica q levy fez a blanchett foi positiva ou não

 

e se o elenco inteiro realmente 'brilha' e eles indicarem todos eles, vai dar mais q 18 indicações! (sonhando alto, muito alto)!

 

e esse cara nunca dá um A+? pelo menos, nunca vi ... outras cotações dele p/ os filmes desse ano:

 

australia: C-

dark knight, the: A

frost/nixon: B

doubt: B+

milk: B+

revolutionary road: B+

slumdog millionaire: A-

wall-e: A

wrestler, the: A-

 

detonou australia!!!

D4rk Schn31d3r2008-11-25 01:09:35

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

Australia C-

 

By far the weakest film made by the otherwise visionary director Baz Luhrmann, "Australia" is a guilty pleasure par excellence, a schmaltzy (borderline embarrassing and risible), anachronistic, overlong saga, calculatingly made with an eye on the global box-office.

Designed as a glamorous star vehicle for Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, "Australia" may be the most expensive Australian film ever produced, boasting a budget north of $150 million, a result of a luxurious paychecks and a lengthy, troubled production which took years to be made. Fox, which distributes the picture, stands a slight chance to redeem the costs domestically (the figure above doesn't include P&A), but internationally, "Australia" may do better if audiences will be lured to attend the kind of Hollywood pictures that are simply not made anymore.

The term middlebrow is written large over the entire picture, whose writers (or rather cooks, because it's such a mishmash of a movie) include such pros as Stuart Beattie ("Miami Vice") and Ron Harwood ("The Pianist," "Diving Bell"). Nonetheless, "Australia," like all of Luhrmann's features, is conceptual work that for better or worse (here the latter) bears the signature and aesthetics of its auteur-director. (All year, there have been rumors of studio interference during production and post-production).

Problem is, Luhrmann wants to play it both ways, make an old-fashioned war romance a la "Gone With the Wind" (or "Indochine" with Catherine Deneuve), and also offer poignant commentary on racial Australian politics vis-୶is the Aboriginal, and by implication, other half-castes and minorities.

End result is truly a mishmash, a movie that uneasily blends in themes and imagery various genres: Westerns, war films, dramatic romances, prison melodramas, message and social problem pictures. Sadly, wearing its big heart and enlightened message on its sleeve, "Australia" confuses pictorial beauty with real art, schmaltz with genuine emotion, kitsch with cohesive aesthetics.

While well-respected by critics, Luhrmann is not a particularly commercial director. "Strictly Ballroom" did O.K. but placed Luhrmann as the forefront of Australian directors. The deconstructive "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" impressed critics with its audacious, post-modernist sensibility but didn't find large audiences. "Moulin Rouge" was a brilliant and innovative musical that, despite being Oscar-nominated and released at least two or three times, was a moderate success (slightly over $50 million in the U.S.)

Thus, understandably Luhrmann, who lost a couple of year prepping "Alexander the Great" (a subject grabbed by Oliver Stone's failed epic "Alexander"), and has not made a picture in seven years, felt pressure to demonstrate his commercial viability as a major director, opting for a retro family entertainment that would have been perfect had it been made in the 1940s or 1950s.

I will not be surprised if "Australia" divides critics along national lines, and if Aussie reviewers would consider the movie to be an important or even significant work, due to its topic of the mistreatment of Aboriginals and alert social consciousness. A title card at the end of the film signals the socio-legal status of this minority, past and present.

In its current shape, and insistent eagerness to please viewers, "Australia" is banal, bombastic melodrama, marked with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and with a blatant distinction between heroes and villains. It's the kind of fare that your grandparents would like because it would remind them of movies they used to see during the Golden Age of the Studio System.

Narratively, "Australia" pays tribute to at least a dozen Hollywood movies that have entered our movie lore and pop culture consciousness for one reason or another. The most obvious and explicit homage is to "The Wizard of Oz," segments of which are actually shown to the public in the story itself. Moreover, Judy Garland's heartfelt song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" serves as a musical key and crucial thematic motif throughout the film.

Other segments, images and characters borrow or pay homage to, chronologically, "Gone With the Wind," "Casablanca," "Red River," "A Place in the Sun," "The Searchers," "Giant," "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Out of Africa," "Dances With Wolves," and so on. In a future essay, I'll illustrate the influence of each of these cherished Hollywood classics on specific scenes and characters in "Australia."

The yarn is narrated by a charming boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters), a bright and alert native, who in the course of the narrative finds himself torn between the whites (Mrs. Boss as he calls Sarah Ashley) and his own people; he is often reminded of his origins by the vision of his grandfather, who serves as an inspirational figure, and at the end, conducts one courageous act that determines the fate of the central characters.

Before switching to a "serious" but schmaltzy melodrama, "Australia" begins as a broad satirical comedy, exploiting the notion of "the fish out of water." In the first scene, an elegant, ditzy Englishwoman arrives at the remote Northern Territory ranch of Faraway Downs to look for her husband. "The strangest woman I'd ever seen," Nullah observes, and he is right. As played by Kidman, Lady Sarah Ashley comes across as a prim, rigid, and uptight femme, the sort of women that Susan Hayward or Yvonne De Carlo used to play opposite Gable or Cooper. Kidman is too old and too intelligent to play such a part, and her "shy" and "shocking" reaction to her lingerie being flown out of her white-blue suitcases, while a comedic brawl is taking place in a saloon, is one of the film's most embarrassing scenes, in which you want to close your eyes.

From that low-comedy point onward, the plot picks some dramatic momentum, when Sarah, upon realizing that her husband was murdered, takes over a shabby, rundown estate occupied by some macho Aussie cattlemen and a loyal clan of Aboriginals. Would Sarah make Faraway Downs a viable enterprise? (Did Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara save Tara from decline and demise?)
One thing leads to another and Sarah realizes that she needs to drive her cattle to the Darwin port and convince the Australian military to buy them. But who will do the job? Enter Drover (Hugh Jackman), a rugged Aussie cowboy, who represents a variation of the kinds of roles Gable used to play (in "Gone With the Wind" and other MGM movies, such as John Ford's "Mogambo").

While Drover's liberal politics (pro-Aboriginals) is honorable, it also places him in direct conflict with the other racist bigots. There's another problem: As his name indicates, Drover refuses to settle down or commit to one woman. He's the epitome of the "Reluctant Lover." Would Sarah melt Drover's heart and succeed in domesticating him into being a more responsible man and surrogate father to Nullah?

Sarah's loyal staff consists of Drover, Nullah, Drover's Aboriginal mate Magarri (David Ngoombujarra), the boozy bookkeeper Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson), and the Asian cook Sing Song (Yuen Wah). Together, they form a new kind of multi-racial community, guided by principles of honor, dignity and respect, in defiance of the dominant Aussie culture, in defiance of dominant culture.

The plot's most simplistic element is the portraiture of the villains, King Carney (Bryan Brown) and particularly Neil Fletcher (the usually reliable David Wenham), who try to stop Sarah in every way they can.

The cattle call and stampede owe a heavy debt to Howard Hawks' "Red River" and other Westerns, such as Kevin Costner's Oscar-wining "Dances With Wolves," though considering the film's large budget, the CGI images are not particularly compelling or impressive.

The film's second half is better and more engaging, though equally melodramatic. It deals with Nullah and his family, and their need to be protected from ruthless Aussie officials, who plan to quarantine him in Mission Island, where half-caste boys are detained. Would the kids be rescued and saved? In this segment, Luhrmann
may be paying tribute to Mark Robson's "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (1958), with Ingrid Bergman as a British woman who, despite lack of credentials and experience, becomes a missionary in China and devotes her life to the local kids.

Again switching narrative gears, the film's last reel consists of a series of heartfelt separations, farewells, and reunions, all highly predictable and conducted by the rules of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Acting-wise, "Australia" belongs to the males, Hugh Jackman, who has never looked more physically handsome, vet David Gulpilil as King George, Nullah's grandfather, and particularly Brandon Walters, as the narrator and central character, whose alert screen presence and intelligent conduct are the best thing about the whole movie.

The film has been overtly designed as a star vehicle for Nicole Kidman, who had appeared in Luhrman's musical Moulin Rouge, for which she won her first Oscar nomination. Unfortunately, though she occupies the screen for most of the time, Kidman renders a lukewarm, undistinguished performance. Recently, there's been a level of sameness about her screen work, whether she plays historical or contemporary figures. Strangely, the mega close-ups that Luhrmann's glowing and admiring camera allots her don't do much for her acting, because her beautiful face lacks emotive expressiveness.
D4rk Schn31d3r2008-11-25 01:01:22

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

Film Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Bottom Line: An intimate epic about love and loss that is pure cinema

By Kirk Honeycutt

Nov 24, 2008

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

Opens Dec. 25 (Paramount Pictures)

The fantasy element in F. Scott Fitgerald's 1922 short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," in which a man ages backwards, does not begin to suggest the urgent drama and romantic fatalism that director David Fincher and writers Eric Roth and Robin Swicord have so strikingly brought to the screen in the movie version. Fitzgerald's story is little more than a plot gimmick. Yet the film transforms this gimmick into an epic tale that contemplates the wonders of life -- of birth and death and, most of all, love.

Superbly made and winningly acted by Brad Pitt in his most impressive outing to date , the audience for this Paramount/Warner Bros. co-production is large. Strong boxoffice should ensue.

Although hard to pigeonhole, the picture comes closest to Latin American magic realism, which juxtaposes the fantastic with the realistic. The film shares elements with another Eric Roth-written film, "Forrest Gump," wherein a most unusual man sets out on an odyssey through 20th century American history. But Fincher, an unusual but winning choice as director, makes certain that "Benjamin Button" has none of the whimsy or coy historical revisionism of "Forrest Gump."

CM8ShowAd("Middle2");

Even the framework for the story underscores that there are forces within nature that man cannot control. Daisy (Cate Blanchett), a dying woman in a New Orleans hospital, gives her daughter (Julia Ormond) a memoir to read as Hurricane Katrina bears down on the city. The memoirist is none other than Benjamin (Pitt), born on the day of victory in Europe in 1918.

He was, he writes, "born under unusual circumstances." He's a baby that looks like a failing man in his 80's with poor eyesight, brittle bones and wrinkled flesh. His mother dies giving birth and his father (Jason Flemyng) abandons him, fittingly, at an old-age home. A maternal black woman, Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who runs the place, takes him in and raises him in the one environment where he can pass unnoticed.

He truly fits in among African-Americans and people old and forgotten by time. Everyone is an outsider here. As a somewhat younger old man, he meets Daisy as a small girl (Elle Fanning) visiting an ancient relative. Their friendship will last both of their lifetimes -- although ones moving in opposite directions -- and will evolve into romance and passionate love.

Much keeps them apart though as Daisy pursues a career in ballet while Benjamin, once he gets a handle on what's happening to him, is a man who will never feel comfortable in his own skin. The job on a tug boat with its hard-drinking pilot (Jared Harris) takes him to Russia and an affair with a British spy's wife (Tilda Swinton) and then into naval action in World War II.

After the war, Daisy's career takes off. Also she can't quite make up her mind about involvement with a man growing younger each year. But when commitment comes, contentment, brief though it may be, ensues.

Benjamin's story is preceded by Daisy's recollection of a watch maker (Elias Koteas), who having lost his beloved son in World War I made a clock for the New Orleans train station that ran backwards so that time might move the same way and his boy would come back to him. Thus, narratively and thematically, the film positions time-running-backward as part of man's enternal desire to cheat death and to clng to those closest to us.

Pitt's Benjamin is a touching and poignant figure, a person often lost within his own life but with a comic spirit that allows him to accept his backward fate. Blanchett illuminates the screen with a beauty and intelligence that makes Benjami's pursuit of Daisy as much a quest for life as for love. As the adoptive mother, Henson embodies the essence of a good woman who derives her strength from God and her instncts from common sense.

Fincher 's direction is sure handed over the entire 166 minutes, which never feels long or pretentious. The film takes Donald Graham Burt's brilliant period design in stride, never overemphasizing it nor lingering on an artifact. Claudio Miranda's cinematography wonderfully marries a palette of subdued earthern colors with the necessary CGI and other visual effects that place one in a magical past.

[thalesgn]

e esse cara nunca dá um A+? pelo menos, nunca vi ...

 

 

 

A+ não existe, seria o equivalente do 10 com louvor.

[(Õ.ô)]

Pessoal,

 

 

 

Parece-me que esses dois filmes não são só uma questão populista:

 

 

 

dark knight, the: A

 

wall-e: A

 

 

 

 

[Dohko Jr.]

Pessoal' date='

 

 

 

Parece-me que esses dois filmes não são só uma questão populista:

 

 

 

dark knight, the: A

 

wall-e: A

 

 

 

[/quote']

 

 

 

Também acho...todo mundo ta falando de filmes "feitos pra ganhar Oscar", e se esquecem desses 2 ai em cima (que na minha opinião, Wall-e já ganhou a Melhor Animação).

 

 

 

E não to gostando nenhum pouco desse oba-oba em cima do filme do Sam Mendes só pq o livro é bom (acho ele um diretor excepcional, MAS vamos com calma..) e o Australia ta sendo detonado no Rotten....tá 58% agora, com 24 criticas...Dohko Jr.2008-11-25 09:35:06

[saulomeri]

Milk está com 91% no Rotten.

O nariz do Penn ta bem estranho' date=' deve ser protése.

[/quote']

 

Acho que eles corrigiram alguma crítica, tida como negativa anteriormente, pois acabei de ver no Rotten e o filme tem 100%, e com 21 criticas.

 

Eu gostei do FYC de Milk, parece anuncio de campanha política, bem no tema tratado pelo filme.

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

e esse cara nunca dá um A+? pelo menos' date=' nunca vi ...[/quote']

A+ não existe, seria o equivalente do 10 com louvor.

 

e B+ seria 9 com louvor?  kidding

 

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vamos as atualizações do RT, o q na verdade não define quais filmes vão p/ o oscar mas sim, aqueles q com certeza não irão :

 

australia - 58% (14/10) 5.7
changeling - 57% (85/65) 6.1
dark knight, the - 94% (246/16) 8.5
defiance - 50% (3/3) 5.1
doubt - 100% (5/0) 8.2
frost/nixon - 92% (11/1) 7.5
milk - 100% (21/0) 7.9
rachel getting married - 88% (112/16) 7.6
wrestler, the - 100% (17/0) 8.0
slumdog millionaire - 92% (92/8) 8.2
wall-e - 96% (208/8) 8.5

 

australia fora?  claro q ainda tem poucas críticas, mas se não fugir muito disso aí e com esse percentual e média de nota, está fora sim!

 

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e a trilha do desplat é um deleite sonoro, belíssima!

D4rk Schn31d3r2008-11-25 11:41:13

[Administrator]

Seria muito bom ver Jonathan Demme indicado por Rachel Getting Married e tirando Luhrmann ou Nolan da jogada.

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

usuário web detona gran torino!

 

Having seen GRAN TORINO on Sunday, I can safely say that I think it's one of the worst films of the year. If you replaced the Warner Bros. logo with an old Cannon Films logo, you'd have a perfect fit for a half a million dollar quickie, art movie-exploitation flick thing. It's always a joy to watch Eastwood on the screen, but it's as if he's playing a pastiche of himself in this one. The story is pure cornball with zero charisma from any of the actors. The guy who played the young priest was particularly bad. The film looks like it was shot for ten bucks and change.  No decent lighting. This thing is so underwhelming, it's like a shock to the system. Do not go in expecting Mystic River or Million Dollar Baby quality. It's not even as good as something mediocre like Blood Work. Every line of dialogue is so on the nose, your jaw will just drop after thirty minutes.

[FeCamargo]

 

 

A questão é que o oba-oba em cima do filme do Mendes não é por causa do livro, e sim pela aparente qualidade que ele e sua equipe criaram. A densidade do filme assusta e ele consegue segundo críticas, a melhor adaptação literária recente, comparado a Quem Tem Medo de Virgínia Woolf. Isso não é pouca coisa, ainda mais falando do livro base, que é um clássico americano.

 

.....

 

E onde raios foram parar os comments do screening de The Reader que aconteceu em NY no dia 24???

FeCamargo2008-11-25 13:27:20

[MacGruber]

Pessoal' date='

Parece-me que esses dois filmes não são só uma questão populista:

dark knight, the: A
wall-e: A

[/quote']

 

 

Dois filmes inesquecíveis...

Wall-E não vai ser indicado pq existe um certo preconceito contra animações e a criação de uma categoria só para o gênero dificulta ainda mais. Mas TDK tem muitas chances de conseguir, principalmente pq parece ser a grande solução para a Academia fazer do Oscar uma premiação popular de novo. Mas como o Thales falou, já discutimos demais isso.

BrnoSoares2008-11-25 13:27:24

[FeCamargo]

Ai...

 

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

ihhh, acho q é isso q o tapley +/- quis dizer ontem, mas ficou com receio de falar sem ter aquela certeza e não ser o primeiro a comentar ... por isso foi assistir uma segunda vez, depois deve ter parado num bar pra se embebedar e até agora não acordou! 

D4rk Schn31d3r2008-11-25 14:31:08

[D4rk-Schn31d3r]

bom, vamos aguardar mais reações a the reader e GT (apesar de nunca ter levado a menor fé nesse)

 

por enquanto os únicos 2 filmes q parecem lock são: SM e milk

 

acredito q das outras 3 vagas, 2 vão ser de TCCoBB e RR, a última como sempre é bem dificil de prever, no meu achômetro deve ficar entre: TDK, the wrestler, rachel getting married, frost/nixon, doubt, the reader e mais longe: australia

D4rk Schn31d3r2008-11-25 14:50:07