Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1965

The Contenders:

Lee Marvin: Cat Ballou (winner)
Laurence Olivier: Othello
Rod Steiger: The Pawnbroker
Oskar Werner: Ship of Fools
Richard Burton: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Devil's Playthings

Film: Idle Hands
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on The New Portable.

Horror comedies are evidently really hard to make. I say this because so few of them are any good. The vast majority of them appear to be comedy first, horror second. This works out to the detriment of both the comedy and horror elements. Oh, sure, there are some really good ones out there (Tremors, Slither, Shaun of the Dead and any number of others), but most of them aren’t funny and even fewer are actually scary. Idle Hands manages a few laughs and no scares, so I guess in that respect it’s slightly ahead of the curve.

There’s a surprising amount of plot for such a nothing of a movie. At least there are a lot of plot elements with which I need to contend. Anton Tobias (Devon Sawa) is a high school burnout who wants nothing more from life than to sit on the couch, watch television, and smoke a huge amount of pot. This is a philosophy shared with and endorsed by his two friends Mick (Seth Green) and Pnub (Elden Henson). Despite his constant television watching, Anton is unaware of a killing spree going on in his town that has recently included his parents. This is despite the fact that Anton himself is responsible.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2009

The Contenders:

James Cameron: Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow: The Hurt Locker (winner)
Quentin Tarantino: Inglourious Basterds
Lee Daniels: Precious
Jason Reitman: Up in the Air

Why Remake This?

Film: Maniac
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.

Remakes tend to have a poor reputation, and with reason. Frequently they are made as something like a cash grab, trying to capitalize on name recognition. There was a decade or so-long trend of immediate American remakes of Japanese horror movies, most of which were terrible and most of which seemed to be nothing more than trying to make a buck from an audience that won’t watch something with subtitles. Still, I can understand the appeal of a remake. Your story is already written, and if you feel like you can add something to the way in which that story was told, the remake seems like a perfect choice. All of this leads me to a single question: of all the movies that someone could remake, why in hell would someone want to remake William Lustig’s Maniac?

Yet, that’s where we are here, with a 2012 remake of a film that feels honestly like the actual film stock was made of oil and grease. This remake features two things that make it perhaps more interesting than the original version. The first is that it stars Elijah Wood as the deranged killer obsessed with mannequins who goes around New York killing women, scalping them, and attaching their hair to his mannequin collection with a staple gun. Do yourself a favor—reread that sentence, since that is the plot here, and decide whether or not this is worth your time. The second potentially interesting fact about the film is that it is filmed like a first-person perspective video game. While Wood appears in pretty much every shot, we see his face only in mirrors and similar objects.

Thing's Starring Role

Films: I Lost My Body (J’ai Perdu Mon Corps)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on basement television.

It seems that in a futile effort to watch as much as possible before the surprisingly early Oscars ceremony this year, I’ve decided to focus almost entirely on the Best Animated Feature category. At least that’s where my reviews have been for the new additions. I Lost My Body is the oddball entry into the category. There’s often one film that is either substantially unusual in some way or that is clearly not made for children. Traditionally, this is the “Oscar is really stretching out to reveal exciting and interesting film” nomination, and it’s one that has no chance of winning.

So what can I say about this film? It’s certainly unusual, and it’s one of those movies that has a long and storied path of getting made. It spent a good seven years in development, only to be released, nominated for an Oscar, and immediately picked up by NetFlix.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1994

The Contenders:

Bullets Over Broadway
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Heavenly Creatures
Pulp Fiction (winner)
Three Colors: Red

Stop Bugging Me!

Films: Phenomena
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I’m not a massive fan of a lot of Italian horror. So much of it turns out to be nonsensical in my opinion. I get the sense in many cases that a lot of Italian horror—Dario Argento’s films as much as anyone else’s—are not written with the plot in mind. Argento seems to write with scenes he wants to film and then writes something that sort of loosely connects them. That seems like the case with Phenomena, a film that has particular plot points that seem like they should be important and then turn out not to be.

So let’s dive into this thing head-first. We’re going to start with a murder—a young woman gets abandoned by a tour bus somewhere in Switzerland, gets attacked, and is beheaded. Eight months later, Jennifer Corvino (Jennifer Connelly) show up in roughly the same area as a new student for that favorite of all Argento tropes, an all-girls school. We’re going to learn three things about Jennifer that are of varying levels of importance based on what you think the movie is going to be about. First, she is the daughter of a famous actor. Second, she frequently walks in her sleep. Third, she has the ability to talk to insects.