Have you ever wondered what teachers discuss in the breakroom when they’re not reading through stacks of student essays and tests? Besides the usual topics of grades or lessons, Mitch and Christina often digress into conversations about movies, music and tv. We’re two English teachers who harbor secret hopes of one day becoming famous entertainment world critics. We know we’re a little obsessed, but we’ve accepted it, even embraced it. We’ve created this blog to invite you to join our conversation.
Best Picture In Retrospect: Traffic
I did not see Gladiator but based on the general consensus, the Academy would like to have this one back. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a bigger critical success, but Traffic is the film that had the more realistic chance of winning. In fact, Gladiator’s win must have been a shock after Steven Soderbergh accepted his award for Best Director. Ralph Cifaretto must have fixed the votes this year.
With most of the races this year seemingly settled before telecast (Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, Monique are all considered locks), all the drama is rightfully placed on The Hurt Locker vs. Avatar for Best Picture. To celebrate the biggest award in the entertainment industry, I’m going to take a look back at all the Best Picture races since 1994. I figure this is a good place to start because it was the last time a Best Picture race symbolized the traditional vs. progressive ideologies of the industry. Will Hollywood embrace the future of the industry by voting for Avatar or will it go the traditional route the way it did for Forrest Gump in 1994? I’ll post 1994-1999 now and then 2000-2008 later tonight. I’ll list the movie that won the award first and in bold-faced.
1994: Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption
What a shocking elimination episode! none of the four singers I predicted went home so that means I have to sit through another Jermaine Sellers performance. We also lost our best looking contestent, Janell Wheeler. As she stated afterwards, maybe Janell should have used her guitar on Tuesday night. She may have given a very mediocre performance, but I thought she built up enough goodwill to withstand a bad first live week,.
The same can be said for Tyler Grady. Sure, on the authentic rocker scale he was starting to edge closer to Constantine Maroulis, but this was the first week the judges gave this criticm. In a very respectful way, Tyler blamed the judges for telling him way too late that he needs to update his 70s retro style. Even Simon agreed as he mouthed the words, "He's right" afterwards. I thought Tyler had a bigger following than he actually did.
While I did like last night’s episode, more than “What Kate Does,” I feel like this show hasn’t moved very far since that first double episode. Last season, I was never bored with the show—there was always something engaging happening, or some difficult but interesting concept to try to wrap your mind around, and you knew what the characters’ objectives were—you had an idea where everything was leading. This season everyone’s just wandering aimlessly, and we don’t know what the purpose of being on this island is anymore.
I’m going to keep this shorter than last night’s report. What a big disappointment.
Todrick Hall- “Since U Been Gone”- To change up a song or to not change up a song. That is the question. I was really looking forward to Todrick tonight, but I thought his version of Since U Been Gone was pretty bad. I still like his voice, but it would have been hard to enjoy anyone singing that song with that arrangement. Grade: C-
And we’re live! A couple of things stood out for me tonight. I thought Randy and Kara were huge improvements over how they usually are. I really hope Randy doesn’t slip back into his Dawwg Pound routine once the guys perform. And second of all, The Beatles! I know they did two nights of Beatle songs last year, but that was when the contestants had to sing Beatle songs even if they didn’t want to. It was nice hearing a more obscure Beatle song choice like Fixin’ A Hole. Well, relatively speaking. How obscure can a Beatles song really be? Anyway, on to the performances:
I have finally gotten around to writing about my 5 favorite albums of the last 30 years. My biggest motivation in publishing this list is to hear everyone else's personal list. I'd love to read about which albums you consider your favorites.
5. Guided By Voices- Bee Thousand- Lead singer and writer Robert Pollard was a school teacher who led Guided By Voices on the side. Since teachers can’t afford high production values when recording their music masterpieces, Bee Thousand sounds as if it was recorded directly onto a tape recorder. When a group has songs as catchy as these, there is no need for studio trickery. Bee Thousand consists of 20 songs in less than 40 minutes. In the tradition of Wire’s Pink Flag and The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, musical ideas never overstay their welcome with extended guitar solos or extraneous verses. The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory is the quitessential song on this album. It’s hard to imagine a song whose chorus hinges on this oddly name title to be as touching as it is. The lyrics don’t matter. It’s the passion behind the delivery and the insanely addicting melody that make me play the song on repeat almost every time.
The final cut to 24 usually produces a few surprising moments. Tonight, I only counted one. I felt as confused as poor Thaddeus Johnson when he was sent home despite being told he didn’t do anything wrong during Hollywood Week. To his credit, Thaddeus didn’t whine to the judges like the annoying girl who ended last night’s episode.
I split the final 24 contestants into different tiers.
There are certain people that carry this show, and I think, as we all know, Terry O’Quinn is certainly one of them. While last week’s episode was criticized mainly because of its focus on Kate, I think this one will be praised mainly because of its focus on Locke. I think it’s fascinating that Terry O’Quinn has had to play three different Locke characters throughout this series—the original Locke, Smoke Monster Locke and sideways timeline Locke—and each one retains qualities of the others but also has its own differences. I love it. And I love this alternate timeline. I don’t know where it’s going or what the purpose is, but I love that these characters finally have a better life.
Not exactly the greatest episode of Lost. In fact, I was fairly disappointed that after the intense season premiere, this episode seemed to go nowhere. Also after watching all of season 1, and seeing how well the directors used to frame those flashback episodes, this one just didn’t seem to work well at all. Hopefully it's just setting up better episodes to come.
I thought the best scene was where we see Sawyer with the wedding ring he intended for Juliet. It was just a reminder of how amazing an actor Josh Holloway is. I also liked that we were reminded that Kate came back for Claire—that at least gave some connection to everything happening off the island.
Hollywood Week is here! I actually like the way the show builds certain contestants up during the first round only to send them packing without much further airtime. I also like when I feel vastly overrated singers get a ticket to Hollywood only to be sent home when the judges come to the realization that they weren’t that good. Case in point for this was Vanessa Wolfe, the “authentic” country girl who turned into a deer in headlights on the Hollywood stage. American Idol rightly gets criticized for its overly sappy moments, so it was surprising to see Vanessa’s exit interview conclude with “ I took a risk, and it didn’t pay off.” So much for being better because of the experience.
My Top 5 Favorites:
1. Crystal Bowersox- She is the one who performed at the very end. I feel like the judges shortchanged her by giving most of the credit to her infectious personality. I had a different impression. I think the audience got so into her performance because of how great of a singer she is. Regardless, it looks like she has what it takes to make it very far this season. The same goes to…
2. Andrew Garcia- I thought it was funny choosing a Paula Abdul song to sing in honor of the former “judge”. There was nothing funny about a performance that was a hundred times better than the original. To alter a song like that so early in the competition shows supreme confidence. Usually the plan at this stage is to play it safe and not polarize the judges with bad song choices (see Maddy Curtis) or surprise arrangements (see Josia Leming from a few seasons ago). I hope he continues to be this brilliant.
It's been a crazy week for me , and I have a feeling next week will be just a little bit move exciting. I think with the monolithic Lost premiere and the anticipation of Hollywood Week, everyone put American Idol on the back burner. I'll be watching in the hospital room next Tuesday. I can't wait to tell Baby Pollock that she was born on the same day that Ellen Degeneres made her triumphant debut on American Idol.
I still have to finish my favorite albums list, but I'm also working on a list of favorite tv shows over the past 20 years list. The one show I keep thinking about is Siskel and Ebert. I'll have a lot more to say about this show soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some of my favorite clips from the show. Luckily, many of the reviews from around 1986 to present are available at atthemoviestv.com. I think these reviews do a great job of showing just how entertaining the show was.
Cop And a Half & Broken Arrow- How can these two movies posibly be related? Watch these back to back to get the full effect. It's even funnier to think Broken Arrow came out three years after Cop And A Half.
It certainly was Hurley. There was so much going on in that first episode, I’m not sure where to start. We now know the answers to some of the questions, but are faced with three times as many questions to take their place!
Let’s start off with the biggest revelation: Based on the events of last night, we see that Juliet setting off the bomb has created two separate time lines. The first one we see supposes that the plane never crashed in 2004 because Juliet detonated the bomb that counteracted the electromagnetic energy of the Island resulting in the Swan Hatch never being built (which caused the crash in the first place). I’m assuming the whole Island exploded (or sunk, I guess b/c it’s underwater) when the bomb went off. So our beloved characters are now on a plane that actually lands at LA-X, and I’ll get to that in a minute. The question is what happened to everyone on the Island at the time of the explosion (Dharma people, the Others, etc)? Do they all die? And do Jacob and the Man in Black know about this alternate timeline?
Our second timeline follows the explosion of the bomb. Here’s where I’m more confused. I don’t understand why none of the characters died. Why did they jump to 2007? Did everyone else go with them? What happened to the bomb? Did it disappear?
Anyway, the writers have a lot more explaining to do. However let’s get to what we have noticed. On the plane first:
The night before the premiere! Now there are some people out in Hawaii who have already seen the first episode (lucky), but I don’t know anything about it except the two minute preview that ABC has on their website. So based on that and my ideas from the end of last season, here’s what I think this show is about and then the questions this leads to. I had a hard time putting everything into words …but I tried.
