LORD OF THE RINGS 2 - FIRST BEST FILM NOMINATION FOR A SEQUEL SINCE GODFATHER 2 ?

Peter Jackson woz robbed! Can you name the directors of Chicago or The Hours?

I rememember they nominated Moulin Rouge for best film but not best director, which was mental.

I would say that they're carving Charlie Kaufman's name on the Oscar as we speak, except I would have said that about Being John Malkovich, and they gave it to American Beauty (possible future trivia answer).

Best Original Screenplay is the only nomination for Y Tu Mama Tambien => the Academy can eat my fuc.

I'm not for a variety of reasons, though I know it's held close to the heart of many (hi Nicole!). I say this having a variety of favorite musicals myself and obviously the basic principle of the musical still works for me, otherwise I wouldn't have favorite videos (and then of course there's the South Park movie, which should have won just about every award that year running -- for whatever reason I seem to accept musicals more in animated form than live action in terms of recent efforts). Otherwise, it feels like a dead form, a mystery play of the mid-twentieth century.

Polanski won't win, probably ever, because of his creepy history - the Academy won't be able to separate the man and the director.

I'm not sure why anyone cares about the Oscars anymore (I mean, fer chrissakes, A Beautiful Mind was the last best picture winner?!), but it's oddly fun to try to pick out patterns and predict their choices and then ultimately, scream out, "What were they thinking?!".

Wow, why so much Moulin Rouge hate around here? I thought it was easily one of the best films last year. Fantastic spectacle and a great ear for how pop songs own us.

best director: Martin Scorsese. It's their nod to him, since Gangs might not win, and he's never won before (which is just ridiculous, isn't it?).

No more so than Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Charles Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Nicholas Ray and Stanley Kubrick.

best actor: Jack Nicholson. Obvious choice, I know. Maybe Daniel Day-Lewis. Not Nicholas Cage, because I think people are just sick of him now.

But Nicholson already got his "Twilight of his Years" oscar five years ago. Though this is apparently his best work in decades.

Do you reckon that Nicholas Cage's switching between serious and action and back mean that he'll never get one?

supporting actor: Paul Newman. Another obvious choice, but the competition doesn't look too hot.

I hear Christopher Walken is great.

I'm not sure why anyone cares about the Oscars anymore

For spectacle, and to focus the mind (the same reason as best-of-year lists).

Word.

the nomatations that needed to happen
Best Picture:
Far From Heaven
25th Hour
Bloody Sunday
About Schmidt

Foriegn:
City of God
Bloody Sunday

Best Supporting Actress:
Isabelle Huppert-The Piano Teacher
Denuve-8 Women
Bebe Neuworth-Tadpole

Best Actor:
Eminem- 8 Mile
Donald Sutherland-Aarat
Branugh-Rabbit Proof Fence

Best Supporting Actor-
Hugh Grant-About a Boy

Yes, but it had the worst story and plot of any film I've pretty much ever seen, and I've seen Riding With Death AND Air Bud. I literally just couldn't watch the damned thing. It was pretty to look at but I don't recall too much love for The Cell and that was based on the same principal: style and popart over the story.

Anyway, I don't know any of these movies, I spent all of Lord of the Rings throwing popcorn back and forth with my date, and hearing him wax poetic on Liv Tyler, and we discussed whether or not all those hobbit boys were dating. So I vote for that movie.

plus the bathos laden mr cellophane and how absurd the tap dancing gere is.

look at how deep and impt the last kraft/ebb was, and tell me that you think that this is a 1/100th as good.

"Mr. Cellophane" can only be called "bathos-laden" if you think that Amos deserved the shoddy treatment he got from Roxie and Billy, and the whole tap-dancing thing, while not technically amazing, was really clever as far as integrating another aspect of the musical world into the narrative world. It was also Gere's second-best moment in the movie (the best being the press conference puppet routine).

I have no idea what you're talking about with "the last kraft/ebb" so I can't compare to "Chicago". I do know that I went into the movie knowing the show and knew it was going to be a lot of sex, dancing, and meanness mixed in with some stellar tunes andI wasn't disappointed.

second-czjs was safe, she didnt seem to have any danger at all.

third, all of the musical numbers were absurd- i wrote this for south side call box:
So the actors are bad, musicals are never about the acting-get to the singing and dancing. For a book and score that is supposed to be about evil, we sure get our fair share of absurdity and banality. The opening number “All That Jazz” manages to be decent and avoid making it into the usual nostalgia fest, but it runs down hill quickly from there. There is a 1920s burlesque that makes Queen Latifah’s regalness look tawdry. There is the Cell Block Tango, which in good productions combines the best of sex and death, but in this one manages to be boring and vaguely racist. There is John C Riley in “Mister Cellophane” as a literal sad clown on a rickety stage, who you feel sympathy for about six seconds, and then it disappears into Bathos. The previously mentioned Razzle Dazzle which has so many props there must have been a sale at the Generic Cliché Warehouse. Then, of course is the last number, with the two supposed murderesses playing themselves in a ritzy stage review, there is so little irony, and the camp is so accidental, it reminded me of an awards show.

I disagree so completely with what you wrote it isn't even funny. The entire point of the movie is that the musical numbers (excepting the first one and the last one) are filtered through Roxie's warped idea of what a stage revue is like; she retreats from unpleasant and tense situations by turning them into stage productions a la Bjork in "Dancer In The Dark". Latifah's character is not meant to be moral or regal in any way shape or form and I don't see how you could think she was unless you looked at her name instead of watching what happened on the screen during the "real world" scenes that played underneath her song. I don't see how the Cell Block Tango can be seen as boring considering it has the best dancing in the movie, it's the best song in the production, and the cutting back-and-forth between the dance sequences and the real-life monologues were fantastic, and I REALLY don't see how it was racist. "Mr. Cellophane" does go on for too long and is the weakest part of the movie, but again the back-and-forth technique (which is really what impressed me about the movie and its approach to storytelling) held my interest. Criticizing "Razzle Dazzle" for excessive razzle-dazzle strikes me as criticizing a forest for having too many trees, and the last sentence starts out with such a glaring factual error ("the two SUPPOSED murderesses"? Where the hell do you get "supposed" from?) that there's no way that I'm going to agree with the conclusion you've drawn.

as well i am not criticizing the razzle dazzle for its razzle dazzle but its poorly done razzle dazzle.

and the other scenes with gere, they are silly dan.

Latifah was "queen of the cell block" in the sense that she was the warden in charge of it who would do favors for people who did favors for her (be they money or otherwise; there's the scene in her office concerning Roxie's diary where she appears to be getting a little cozy with CZJ).

Gere wasn't as amazing as people seem to think he was (unless they just went in thinking "Gere is a gimp who won't be able to sing or dance despite having half a year to work on it before filming"), but I honestly think you're letting Gere-hate unfairly color the rest of the film.

See, now I think of either Being John Malkovich or phallus puppetry.

and the puppets, im sorry it didnt move me.

I'm so happy Spirited Away is nominated for best animated film. As much as I liked Lilo and Stitch, I hope Miyazaki gets to triumph over his evil Disney overlords! If so, I promise to do the Cabbage Patch dance.

Hey, now that's a hoped-for victory I can really get behind if it comes true. Rah!

(Oh, you're talking about drugs...)

Jeez, you didn't have to actually share that image with us! *vomits*