Why 12 Years a Slave Will Win Best Picture and Gravity Won't

Basically these are the two main contenders at the moment, and it's really not that hard to see why my title is accurate here. To whomever watched both, if you actually think Gravity (2013) will win top honors maybe you should go back to film school for a semester. Both actually have similar underplots; which is the story of survival against immeasurably difficult odds and circumstances. But here's where one triumphs over the other. What's that thing that's really important in a film that has to be nuanced and explored and worked on before principal photography even starts? Oh yeah, the fucking story. What's the story of Gravity? The plot? Two astronauts are stranded in space trying to get home safely. The end.

Both Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen are auteurs in their own right but you have to admit that McQueen's work, though less prolific than Cuaron's is far superior. Here he's taking on a story that basically enormous in scope and emotion, it has to be dealt with delicately and with finesse, and he accomplishes that task beautifully. 

Visual effects don't equal Oscar gold no matter how awesome, didn't we learn that with Avatar?

I may not be a 'big player' in the film business but I did graduate (with honors I might add) from two of the top film studies programs in the country and was taught by some of the best professors in the academic world so excuse me but I know a thing or two about these things. Also, I pride myself in knowing what wins Oscars and what doesn't. A film based mostly on gimmick and technical tricks will not win anything but technical awards. Like anyone gives a shit about those anyway. Oh Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects awards are coming up, time for me to freshen my drink and use the bathroom. That's where Gravity will hit home runs.

Three huge contenders for acting nods this year, (L to R) Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyoung'o and Chiwetel Ejiofor)

On the other hand we are blessed and I truly mean blessed with a film like 12 Years a Slave (2013) which doesn't come out every so often, it will definitely be in that category of There Will Be Blood (2007), The Social Network (2010), and others that granted didn't win Best Picture honors but that was mostly due to politics, but it's a film that 50 years down the line film schools will make their students study.

It's basically the Slavery version of Schindler's List (1993), which I have to say while watching I saw so many similarities between. It was a no-holds-barred account of the story of a man through whom we saw the atrocities of what people are capable of doing to other people that actually happened in our human history. It is brutal, and yet so sincere, that's how you approach making a movie about such a delicate subject. 

the brutality and visceral nature of Schinder's List made people appreciate and understand the content in ways they'd never had before, same goes for 12 Years a Slave.

Really all you have to look at is the history of the Academy Awards, yeah they're political, yeah they're just dumb show and a fashion 'meat parade' as George C. Scott famously quipped but who wins Best Picture? Perfect example is when The Hurt Locker (2009) triumphed over overblown bullshit gimmicky crap film Avatar (2009)...in 2009. Here's a few things that matter to the Academy; Scope, brevity, STORY, and pathos. Usually a film has to have all to win. Some times they miss the mark, but I think there's nothing about this film that they can use against it. It is literally perfect Best Picture material. A better film couldn't have been fitted for that category. And they LOOOOOOOVE it when a true story is brought to life. My friend and I are talking about this as we speak and she said the following about 12 Years a Slave; 'it's dark and violent and hard to watch', all good points. But that's never stopped the Academy. Sure Passion of the Christ (2004) didn't even get nominated, but that was largely due to controversy of antisemitism and a valid one at that, and also lest we forget the same director won a decade earlier basically every award for the 'dark, violent, and hard to watch' epic Braveheart (1994). And what else fell into all those categories? One of the greatest films of all time that as difficult to watch as it was we all still did and we were better people for it, that's why all awards went to Schindler's List (1993) the year prior. 
This film to me is basically the new version of that, it has all of those things I spoke of earlier; heart, pathos, humanity, tragedy, redemption, and it makes us FEEL rather than sit there going 'woah that was cool'. So it's no question in my opinion, and if you want to put money on it, I'm ready. 12 Years a Slave to win, Steve McQueen to win, John Ridley to win, Chiwetel Ejiofor to win, Michael Fassbender to win, Sarah Paulson to win. I'm putting all my eggs into this basket this year, and though it might not turn out as I want on some of them, the first two are a sure thing in my mind. 

Trailers below: 

Enough with the Open Letters! French Films are Exploitive. We Get It.

Lea Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)

So if you religiously check Indiewire.com every morning like I do, you'll see that the director of the sleeper hit Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), Abdellatif Kechiche has penned an open letter to its star, France's new 'it' girl Lea Seydoux, who called the filming of said film an experience that was both trapping and disrespectful in terms of dealing with its racy sex scenes. Guess what folks, without racy sex scenes there would be no French cinema to speak of let's just be honest here. Especially now-a-days with directors like Christophe Honore and Catherine Brellait leading the charge of how-much-gratuitious-nudity can we cram into a 2 hour film and the answer is...a lot. But you know what? With such content comes responsibility, and I'm going to side with Seydoux here. To be fully nude surrounded by grips, electricians, script supervisors and who else is no fun, and to have to do it take after take, can be exhausting, not like I would know, but I'm sure at this point shooting porn is a more wholesome experience than going full on French.

Kechiche basically blamed her for trying to destroy the very same film she helped make into a success and also not to mention helped to win the Palme D'Or. He writes, "Miss Seydoux, who after having repeatedly thanking me publicly and privately and having wept in my arms at Cannes for allowing her to take on this noble role … has, against all odds and all personal coherence, radically changed her attitude towards me." 

In his letter Kechiche calls Seydoux 'spoiled and opportunistic' um, exaggerate much?

So why don't we just calm the fuck down and take a look at the mistakes we might have made as directors. Actors are by definition fragile individuals who look to directors not only for guidance but for comfort, and not exploitation, unless of course you like that sort of thing. And now, I'm going to name a perfect example of someone who refuses to follow these guidelines and has the balls to blame his actors for not 'being comfortable'. 

20 year old Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris (1972)

One, Bernardo Bertolucci has been accused of this very thing on several occasions. The first and most infamous case I can remember is when Maria Schneider, Marlon Brando's co-star in the then X-Rated Last Tango In Paris (1972) famously said that in the scene where Brando's character sodomizes her with butter lubricant (there's honestly no wholesome way for me to describe this folks, sorry) that she felt that not only was she being raped by Brando, but by Bertolucci himself who just let it happen without asking her not even once if she was comfortable, if she wanted to stop and catch her breath, if it was all too much, you know, everything we as girls would like to be asked in scenarios like that...even if it's simulated. It's just polite.

This misogynistic behavior on Bertolucci's part continued up until The Dreamers was released in 2004 and sex-pot Eva Green basically said the exact same things. It's a film I've seen on a few occasions and I can tell you that yeah, the sex is pretty gratuitous, and no one had to work harder at it (no pun intended) than Eva Green, she had the most nude scenes, the most sex scenes, the most bodily fluid involving scenes as gross as that sounds, and she said that sometimes even though she's a seasoned professional and full fledged Frenchie, it was hard, and she felt that she received no guidance or comfort from her director who basically sat behind the camera and watched like some perv with a box of donuts and a pair of night-vision goggles. 

Eva Green in one of her most erotic scenes in The Dreamers (2004)

 I believe that Bertolucci is someone who makes gratuitously sexual films for his own personal pleasure, kind of like the James Spader character in Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) so he can whack off to them later, he just happens to be really good at it and call it art, and let's face it a lot of French directors seems to go down that road.

So in conclusion; Kechiche - You should be thankful that Lea Seydoux who is huge not only in France but currently in America even participated in that film, and without her quite honestly I don't think the Palme D'or was within your reach. Enough with the open letters, there's this cool devise called the telephone, pick it up after a bottle of Bordeaux and go nuts. But also realize you are not blameless here brother. Here's a link to his open letter: 'Blue is the Warmest Color' Filmmaker Pens Enraged Open Letter; Slams 'Spoiled,' 'Opportunistic' Star Lea Seydoux

Trailers below: 

Say What? 'Legitimate'-Gate and Its Repercussions

Todd Akin; the picture of privileged white-man hypocrisy. And also he looks somewhat like a serial killer.

As Lynne Koplitz once put it 'I'm not well adjusted, I'm on Vicodin when I visit you', well I had to take a Vicodin because i hurt my ankle, but it's making me all euphoric and woozy so I feel this is the best time to write about the whole 'legitimate rape' debacle that has everyone up in arms, because this means I can't get too crazy and angry, and can just barrel through this with a mellow distance.

Unless you've been planning your suicide and don't have much time for CNN, newspapers, HuffPo, or people talking around you, you've heard of 'legitimate rape-gate'. Some foo named Todd Akin, who's apparently running for republican senate (good luck with that) said something along the lines of when a woman is 'legitimately raped' her body has a way of shutting her reproductive organs so that she doesn't get pregnant. Ergo abortions should be completely illegal even in cases of rape, because rape can't get you pregnant, unless you were wearing a short skirt and asking for it, you disgusting whore.

Now there's nothing I love more in this world (aside from Aussie shepherd puppies) than old white wrinkly dudes on capitol hill talking about a woman's body and anatomy like they've ever even touched a boobie in their entire lives. Every time Uncle Fester has something to say, he looks like his knowledge of the female body was taught to him by his sister in an outhouse (ok I went a little Larry Flynt just now) or, him and his wife procreate through a hole in the sheet without looking at each other, fully clothed. And Mr. Todd Akin looks like he hasn't fornicated with ANYTHING for millenniums. Not only that, he's entering dangerous 'Anne-Coulter territory' to where even the Republican party itself is turning its back to you and disassociating you from their politics. Once that happens, it basically means you've fallen pretty far buddy. 

First of all, I'm very much of the opinion that not only 'my body, my choice', but that it is highly unfair for 'lawmakers' who are mostly white men get to make these kinds of decisions for us, just because their daddy's paid for their Law School back in the 50's get ANY say in this whole debate coming up with scientific theory that even a hungover 8th grade science student would go 'oh yeah, that's not true'.

If anything though, I think what Akin said, as horrendous and utterly disgusting it was, might bring some good to this whole election after all. If people slowly start to realize that this is actually how people in the Republican party think (and i'm sorry, but it's true. You always get flub ups and hypocritical statements coming out of their circle, I mean Sarah Palin's brain was like a hotbed for thoughts like that) then, Obama has more than just a fighting chance. 

The whole thing is beyond infuriating, especially putting words like 'legitimate' and 'rape' even in the same breath, and does so much damage by offending basically the entire female population all over the world, it basically makes us remember that we're still #2 even though we're supposedly as progressive as we all think we are. Some people just need their mouths taped shut, and most of those people are Republicans, this just proves my point. 

See video below.

Real Housewives of Officially the Dumbest State in the Union

Left to right: Jacqueline (basically the sweet nice one who just happens to be an awful parent), Teresa Guidice (everyone's new favorite girl we love to hate) Caroline (The mother hen 'we are family' should be tattooed on her face) Kathy (the crazy hot and at times smart new edition from last season who loves belly dancing) and Melissa Gorga (the youngest and prettiest of the bunch who has been in Teresa's cross hairs for a while now)

 Put on your bling and spray tan the shit out of yourself because Real Housewives of New Jersey is back bitches, and this time 'It's all about family'...if you don't get the joke, it's just something that the cast constantly says verbatim in every single episode. Like: 'Mommy, I want to go to the bathroom' response: 'It's all about family.' 

This installment is in my opinion the best of the whole franchise. ...of Atlanta was just a wee bit obnoxious and unrelatable (Thanks for nothing, Kim and NeNe), ...of Orange County was and still is rather boring, ...of Beverly Hills made me want to put panty hose over my head and sit with an assault rifle at a tower, and yes it's a very close second best, ...of New York I just never got into, nor into any of the millions of spin offs so fuck it altogether. ...of DC was actually quite interesting but they cut it loose after housewife Michaele Salahi and scumbag hubbie Tareq infamously crashed the White House State Dinner back in '09. Now, even that's too low for Bravo standards. Don't fuck with Obama, Andy Cohen. 

So now we're back to the Garden State which the media milks like the fattest cow in the pasture with shows like Jersey Couture, Jerseylicious, and of course, my personal fave Jersey Shore. And Bravo is staying on the tattooed, fake tanned, skanky, and sweaty dumb-as-fuck bandwagon if it  kills them. 

No new characters since the uberbitch Danielle Staub left the show (thank god) and was replaced with new token uberbitch's Teresa's sister-in-law Melissa and Teresa's cousin Kathy. So basically, more MILF's. 

In the season premiere Teresa explains to her former allies why exactly she's been such a cunt and betrayed all of them for attention. She actually looks sincere in this photo, no?

Teresa's had a pretty hard last season - she filed for bankruptcy, her husband was cheating on her (what? guys totally jacked up on steroids with little to say other thank 'fuck off' to their 9 year old kids are cheaters too? why I never), and he was arrested for drunk driving. So basically living up to the Jersey reputation which enrages regular New-Jersian's even more, but she's come out of it a few buckets of botox later emerging in the premiere of the 4th season last week looking fantastic, whory, and a bit more mellow. I'm sure her doc doubled her xanax dosage. 

Teresa's husband, Joe Guidice or as she refers to him 'Juicy Joe' (no joke) doing what he does best...weightlifting.

More than anything, she's threatened by the meteoric rise of unlikely lovable character Melissa who is a mommy of three and still in her 20's. She looks like the poor-man's version of J-Lo/Eva Longoria which is ironic considering she's probably richer than the two of them combined. As like the rest of them classy broads in Jersey her hair and make-up are well off the Richter scale and every day she manages to look like a high end prostitute that a governor or major athlete gets busted with. 

With the premiere, it's looking like the friction between aging hag Teresa and hottest-mom-in-Jersey Melissa will be the focal point as they fight it out for the soul of Joe Gorga (Melissa's juicehead hubby and Teresa's juicehead brother). So when you think about it, it's very A Streetcar Named Desire, except with morons. Teresa is Blanche, Melissa is Stella, and Joe is Stanley with (if you can imagine) even more muscles and more of an oaf. 

Anyway, Season 4 promises all that sun-burnt drama served in marinara sauce on a plate of diamonds, with a luscious side-dish of hair extensions and an extra helping of shameless self-promotion. Dig in America. Third episode runs this Sunday, May 6th. Please watch it and then feel vengeful hate for me because I recommended it to you.

Below is Melissa's 'first single' called 'On Display' (of course it is) don't expect too much. It's actually kinda funny I wish I could show you how it first ran on Bravo last season when she performed it 'live' because it was so auto tuned it was ridiculous.

And here is the season 4 promo. It should just be subtitled 'Lots of Drama happens for no particular reason'

Adding My Voice to the Uproar Against Rush Limbaugh

Like the rest of the country, male of female, I am completely outraged and appalled by Rush Limbaugh's comments made last Wednesday, February 29th against law student Sandra Fluke and I couldn't sit idly by and not add my voice to the uproar. This is egregious and shameful, and I am beyond infuriated that this kind of thing still goes on in our country. 

Now, was I surprised that Rush Limbaugh said something offensive and vehemently wrong? No, that's what he does. He's a professional asshole after all, and his 'public criticism' sub-category page on Wikipedia is longer than it's history page of the Soviet Union. But enough is enough. He's lucky he gets to wave the first amendment in our startled faces every time verbal diarrhea projects out of that filthy sewer he calls a mouth. 

Now, because this blog is regarding the media, I think I'm entitled to cover radio, though despite what anyone says, it is a dying medium. Alas, Rush's talk show still manages to reach and influence a huge amount of the nation's populace.

And just like he stands behind that great American tradition of Free Speech and Free Press, I would love it if Sandra Fluke would introduce him to that other great American practice - lawsuits. Under the constitution, what he said is protected, but I'm sure he'll get across the board 'guilty' verdicts from any jury following a defamation of character suit, and that wouldn't be punishment enough as far as I'm concerned. For someone who so openly and shamelessly preaches sexism, misogyny, and chauvinism, it's shocking that he still has a syndicated radio show. Now, it has been reported that no less than 8 sponsors have pulled advertising from his program, which is clearly a sign that you can't just say whatever the fuck you want in this country and not expect there to be ramifications such as public humiliation total loss of respect from your colleagues and peers. 

If you've been living under a rock, here's the gist of what happened the other day. Sandra Fluke is a 30-year-old graduate Law Student at Georgetown University (so right off the bat, you know that she's had more education than Limbaugh) who testified to the democratic members of the House of Representatives in favor of contraceptive being covered by health insurance clauses. A very important request to make, and something that should be seriously considered. Rush, being the classy, reasonable, and thoughtful gentleman that he is immediately took to the airwaves and called her, among other things, a 'slut' and a 'prostitute' and said, and I quote: 

"So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch". 

When I first heard this, there wasn't enough Pepto Bismol to keep my lunch down. He also made a sick joke about how abortion is akin to sticking 'an aspirin between your knees' and other things that I don't even want to repeat.

This broadcast was so hateful, that it made me seriously resent the first amendment and makes me wish that there was an exception clause in it at the very end; an asterisk with Rush's name next to it and state: 'Should apply to everyone except the following'. Of course, we as free citizens can just all do the clearly right thing and not listen to him, but that's not going to happen. He's popular specifically because he makes wildly outrageous and incendiary comments and then apologizes about them later to keep the money for his show rolling in. Of course he's going to be crucified in the court of public opinion, but that's what he wants. He wants to be able to call himself a martyr of free speech, when all he truly is, is a monger of hate speech, and a sorry excuse for a human being. 

All that aside, it's just a shining example how we as women in 'the free-est country in the world' are still second class citizens and are subject to this kind of torment and insult in this 'very progressive' society. It's a hypocrisy and Limbaugh is king of the hypocrites. By the by, he only apologized after severe public pressure to do so and threats of pretty much all of his sponsors to pull the money they invest in his show. So basically, he's not sorry and he did mean what he said.

Here's the transcript directly from his show. Listen at your own risk. If you vomit all over your computer and have to go to the apple store and replace the logic board  I'm not taking responsibility.

Really interesting article on Slate - 
Pills for Sluts? Six questions for Rush Limbaugh about sex, promiscuity, and contraception.