Day: December 25, 2011

“This weird mashup of The Zookeeper (with Matt Damon instead of Kevin James as the suddenly single guy who talks to the animals) and The Descendants (a man grieving for his wife and taking his two kids on a journey of discovery) might seem an odd detour for Cameron Crowe, who in his early 20s wrote the Rolling Stone article that became the 1982 teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

“Crowe graduated to writer-director and made three good movies: Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. That last film came out more than a decade ago, yet such was our pleasure in it and its siblings that we’re still in mourning for his late talent. How could we have known that his last film, Elizabethtown, about a depressed man coping with a family death, was not an arrant misfire but the launching of Crowe’s soupy-sappy period?” — from Richard Corliss‘s 12.22 Time review of We Bought A Zoo.

I’m not quite down with the punctation of Mr. Clooney’s first sentence. The “quite honestly, I am” isn’t necessary. The second passage should read “Democrats eat their own — they find singular issues and go, ‘Well, I didn’t get everything I wanted.”’ And the third passage should read “Republicans are always better at this. If Obama was a Republican running,” etc.

I’d been meaning to re-watch Melancholia, but putting it off at the same time. Then I saw this still and decided to watch it again without fail.

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson leapt over Arizona Cardinals linebacker Daryl Washington for a touchdown yesterday. Jamie Foxx did the same thing in Oliver Stone‘s Any Given Sunday…but he didn’t land on his feet.

You can never foresee a fall-holiday lineup a year or ten months ahead of time. Winners are always concealed. Surprises always happen. That said, 2012’s award season seems undernourished. September through November, I mean. December looks decent. This is only a first-glance, cut-and-paste spitball list. A mere 16 films. HE conveys special interest.

September 2012: Argo (9.14, HE), d: Ben Affleck, cast: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler; Looper (9.28, HE), d: Rian Johnson, cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo; Savages (9.28, HE), d: Oliver Stone, cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demian Bichir. (3)

October 2012: The Gangster Squad (10.19, HE); d: Ruben Fleischer, cast: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone; Untitled David Chase ’60s “Music-Driven” Film (1.19, HE), d: David Chase, cast: James Gandolfini, Brad Garrett, Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald. (2)

November 2012: The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21, HE), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles; Gravity (11.21, HE), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. (2)

December 2012: Les Miserables (12.7, HE), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway; Great Hope Springs (12.14), d: David Frankel , cast: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12.14); Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film (12.14, HE); This Is Forty (12.21, HE), d: Judd Apatow, cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy; World War Z (12.21), d: Marc Forster, cast: Brad Pitt; Lincoln (mid to late December, HE), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones; Django Unchained (12.25, HE), d: Quentin Tarantino, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Sacha Baron Cohen; The Great Gatsby (12.25, HE), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher. (9)