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The Oscars: No Dark Knight for you! [Use Spoiler Tags!]
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I appreciated it! Kind of. It was overdone at moments. The "I WON'T?!?!" and "SAY IT!!!" scenes in particular. But the last scene with him is just fantastic.
Bad example there- I think it's pretty safe to assume that the only reason the people in charge of the civilian boat agreed to the voting was that they knew there'd be a riot if they just flat-out refused to do anything.
They weren't from Arkham, they're just regular prisoners. That kind of criminal would have certainly been in Arkham.
My favorites:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
BEST DIRECTOR
Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon
Stephen Daldry, The Reader
Gus Van Sant, Milk
BEST ACTOR
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn, Milk
Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
BEST ACTRESS
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie, Changeling
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Meryl Streep, Doubt
Kate Winslet, The Reader
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Josh Brolin, Milk
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Amy Adams, Doubt
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis, Doubt
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Frozen River , Courtney Hunt
Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh
In Bruges, Martin McDonagh
Milk, Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E, Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Pete Docter
(I've only seen Milk and WALL-E, and I know Milk doesn't deserve it, not so sure if WALL-E does.)
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Eric Roth
Doubt, John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon, Peter Morgan
The Reader, David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire, Simon Beaufoy
(I've only seen Doubt and Slumdog Millionaire, but I'll be surprised if one of the other movies makes a better case for this category, with perhaps the exception of Frost/Nixon.)
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E
(Yeah that's right, I liked Bolt better than WALL-E.)
For the ones in the spoiler, they're categories I don't know enough about or haven't seen enough of the movies in them.
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Changeling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Australia
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Duchess
Milk
Revolutionary Road
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
Man on Wire
Trouble the Water
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
The Conscience of Nhem En
The Final Inch
Smile Pinki
The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306
BEST EDITING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
The Class (France)
Departures (Japan)
Revanche (Austria)
Waltz with Bashir (Israel)
BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT
Auf der Strecke (On the Line)
Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland (Toyland)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
(Hellboy was an okay movie, but the visuals were stunning.)
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Alexandre Desplat
Defiance, James Newton Howard
Milk, Danny Elfman
Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman
WALL-E, Thomas Newman
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
''Down to Earth,'' (WALL-E)
''Jai Ho,'' (Slumdog Millionaire)
''O Saya,'' (Slumdog Millionaire)
More categories I don't know enough about under the spoiler.
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
BEST SOUND MIXING
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
As you can see, I was a big fan of Doubt and Slumdog Millionaire. I think it's a crime that Doubt didn't make it to the Best Picture list, much more so than Dark Knight.
I think I'm going to be the only one who has Viola Davis from Doubt as their favorite Supporting Actress. She was the black woman, the mother of the kid who the priest (supposedly) molested. She only had a few scenes in the movie, but the one where Meryl Streep confronts her about what she thinks the priest is doing, and the Viola Davis says "It's only for a few months" with tears streaming down her face...I was like "I doubt she'll get one, but she deserves a nomination for that." I'm really glad she got one.
I'll put up my picks for what I think will actually win once I've seen more of the movies.
I love that not a single supporting actor, all the way down to Eric Roberts, is less interesting than Christian Bale.
God, that last scene was indeed brilliant. That was one spot where the writing was absolutely stellar, and the acting met the challenge.
I thought his delivery was appropriately intense, as opposed to Bale's Batman growling. :P
Why was Bruce Springsteen's "The Wrestler" not nominated for Best Original Song? It won the goddamn Golden Globe but is completely snubbed in a category that only has three nominees?
In that case, get out and see it as soon as you can. Seriously, given the premise of the movie -- the David Frost interviews in which Nixon is caught in a lie red-handed and ultimately confesses to a conspiracy -- it would have been incredibly easy to justify portraying Nixon as the villain and mean-spirited bully he's so often dismissed as. Instead, he's portrayed as a man who's struggling with feelings of guilt and remorse. A guy who lost everything, but who's dead-set on trying to clear his name and get back into the political fray "out east".
Certainly, there's no getting around the fact that he was guilty as sin, and the film doesn't shy away from the fact that he could be a bully, a blowhard, and worst of all a politician at times. But in spite of all of that... man... I felt bad for Nixon at the end of the movie, and if he were alive today, I'd buy him a cheeseburger.
Yeah I don't know how many inmates you've been around but I doubt NONE of the inmates there would have been so hard pressed to push the button.
Hell forget the inmates, I'm pretty sure any civilian on that boat with children on board would find it impossible to push the button.
Thing is NOT ONE PERSON EVEN TRIED TO GRAB THE DEVICES.
That's knock down drag out implausible to me. Not one person had to be restrained? Not one group of people tried to band together to save their own asses?
This invalidates every opinion you had and will ever have.
I thought the character was interesting, but Eckhart's portrayal was pretty bland. He was plain jane before he flipped, and he was unconvincing after.
You know how the military handles a possible riot situation? It's not by voting.
Good god. BECAUSE THEY HADN'T HAD THEIR HUMANITY BROKEN. The Joker failed in part of his plan. People were better because of people like Harvey Dent, Gordon and Batman. Whereas our government sucks, people here suck and I'd push that button without thinking.
People were going out dressed as Batman because of the type of symbol of justice he'd become, he and Dent inspired people and gave them hope and stopped them from being the dregs of society who would do that.
And even criminals will turn on paedophiles, just because theyre scum doesn't mean they're mass murdering scum.
Because the Ocars are fucking stupid.
Seriously, did we really need TWO Slumdog Millionaire songs?
The movie begins with Nixon haggling for a bigger payday. >_>
I chuckled.
Most of the military was on the convict ship; the civilian ship had minimal security. You think the guards that were there didn't know that the mob wouldn't have a tough time overpowering them if given a reason to start acting irrationally?
The voting thing was a stall - a ridiculous one at that, but what else are the guards going to do? It was all "we're civilized people, we have to act rationally... let's do a vote! that'll justify mass-murder!" It gave the civilians an illusion of control.
You seem to be forgetting that people are less likely to act in large groups. If it had only been a couple people, it would have been realistic to grab. In a group that large, everybody was waiting for someone else to do the deed.
Yeah that's another thing, COs aren't really like that. I mean to be a prison guard you kind of HAVE to be resistant to intimidation.
To be fair, it's kinda in the title
Type A personalities are exactly the kinds of people who would have tried something in that situation. You're telling me there were no Type A people on either ship?
That's the only reason I'm not bitching about the constant barrage of spoilers the last few pages. :P
You basically just killed your ridiculous argument that The Dark Knight is some kind of human character study by saying that you'd easily press the button in the actual world.
You're making an argument that says "Hey, this shows the darkness and limits of human civilization!...if we had a goddamn bat-themed vigilante running around."
To be fair, that was a bad year for movies, but still.
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I don't disagree with you, but I didn't like the whole melodrama in that scene. It seemed like it was just put in there to counter all the "Crowd turning on Batman" and the masses not seeming that great on a whole ....
Yes, but are they trained to incite a riot over the privilege to blow up a ship of civilians? If that's true, I think our prison system is in need of reform.
Whew, glad THAT'S over with.
We don't have hope. But look how much happier Americans have become just in the two days of Obamas presidency. He inspires hope and by association people believe they can be better.
All the people on the boat wanted to do it, none of them wanted to die and every last one of them was thinking what the Joker expected them to think, that they should blow up the other boat. But noone could act and one of the criminals is the one who ends up acting selflessly.
Indeed.
Obviously not every jerk will change but what would the world be without Kagera. People give their lives to serve a flag and people in another country. Because of belief in an ideal.
Do you think there were no type A personalities in those crowds that did nothing when people collapsed on New York sidewalks or heard a woman being stabbed in Central Park?