Race for Understanding

Sometimes it’s good to look outside of the little bubble of film, literature (and occasionally politics) here at The ‘Spin and find a good cause to champion. Autism has become one of those things where everyone knows someone affected by it yet there is still a huge “unknown” factor and so much research that needs to be done.
If you live in the greater Philadelphia region, there’s a 5k Run for Autism Awareness being held at the beautiful Tyler State Park near Newtown, PA in scenic Bucks County on Saturday April, 17th 2010.
Get all the details about how to register and get involved here at the site for The Race for Understanding.
All proceeds will go to help Autism Speaks in their tireless efforts to solve the puzzle that is Autism.
If you don’t live in the area and would like to learn about events in your neck of the woods, go to the official Autism Speaks website where you can learn how to participate or simply make a donation.
82nd Annual Academy Award Nominations
And here are your nominees...
Well, as expected the new 10 Best Picture Nominees format allowed for such popular films like District 9, Up and The Blind Side to compete against the usual suspects…but the biggest surprise was the inclusion of the Coen Brothers’ unfairly little seen (and the ‘Spin’s Best Picture of the Year at The Davies) A Serious Man. Had any “man” film made it to the dance, I would’ve bet money on A Single Man instead. It’s nice to be surprised sometimes.
Here are your 10 Best Picture Nominees:
- Avatar
- The Blind Side
- District 9
- An Education
- The Hurt Locker
- Inglourious Basterds
- Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
- A Serious Man
- Up
- Up in the Air
Click here for the IMDB’s complete list of nominees.
And what were the biggest snubs? No love for Emily Blunt? No love for Abbie Cornish?
Oh well, girls…at least you are young and have years ahead of you to get your eventual just ”reward”.
Feel free to share your predictions on who you think will take home the big prize!
A Damn Good Flood

Specimen One: Toby, a former high-ranking member of the now defunct fallaciously pacifist eco-freak religious cult, God’s Gardeners. Specimen Two: Ren, a former Gardener, and up until just now, an exotic dancer at Scales & Tails. Could it be? Are these two women the last people on earth? Told in a series of alternating POV’s, flashbacks and flash-forwards, part of the fun of Margaret Atwood’s sometimes laborious novel, The Year of the Flood, is finding out if they are…or if they aren’t…and if they aren’t…who or what awaits them in a post-apocalyptic world?
Though it’s by no means a necessary pre-requisite, perhaps if I had read Atwood’s earlier novel Oryx and Crake (whose events run somewhat parallel to The Year of the Flood in the same futuristic and doomed universe) I would not have been as confused early on, and when certain characters made an appearance or particular events were referenced, there would’ve been more “AHA!” moments for me. But you see, it’s not so much a grand serial epic or the apocalypse per se that Atwood is most interested in. It’s the speculation… Read the rest of this entry »
Revisiting There Will Be Blood – The Best Film of the 2000’s

The whole world was on fire. And there was fire in the Blood.
Most film bloggers and critics raced against time and each other to get in their “Best Films of the Decade” lists after the clock struck midnight and we were suddenly thrust into Arthur C. Clarke’s…dun dun dun…TWO THOUSAND AND TEN. With the past decade so fresh on our minds, so many films yet to be seen or uncovered, so many to re-watch and re-examine, and the world-famous polling for this decade not to start until April over at Wonders in the Dark…it seems like there is still so much left to say about the 2000’s, or the Noughties as people like to call them now.
Yet all I can think of is one word.
DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAINAGE!
Drainage, my boy!!!!!!!!!!
Looking back, the 2000’s were to my generation what the 1970’s were to my father’s. It seemed the dawn of a new golden age. Gone were the nostalgia tinted frames of the 1980’s and 1990’s and here was the first decade to exist completely within the context of my adulthood…under the harsh scrutiny of my ever-evolving critical eye. This was a decade where film reflected the big ideas, big dreams and previously unimaginable nightmares of the post-millennial, post 9/11 generation. Read the rest of this entry »
The 4th Annual Davies Awards in Film
A Look Back at 2009:
Once upon a time…
…in 2008, while the world economy went into a tailspin, Hollywood delved into super-depressing, self-important mode and the Davies Awards asked sourly, “Why So Serious?”
But then the Brothers Coen and Quentin Tarantino looked around with their impish grins and wondered, “Why can’t we be a little serious but have fun, too?” Meanwhile, The King of the World, James Cameron awoke from a decade long hibernation to deliver us into a fantastic world we had never seen and finally made a film where 3D technology rose above gimmick status. All the while, his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow masterminded the ultimate coup-d’etat. Will a woman director finally take home Oscar…for a war film?
But these golden days seemed so far far away back in January…
2009 began ominously. The multiplexes seemed a dark abyss. Read the rest of this entry »
Up, Up and Away

Now is the time for Vera Farmiga in UP IN THE AIR.
A staggered release schedule, the mother of all blizzards and those pesky holidays kept me from heading out to the theaters to see Up in the Air until this weekend…finally. I’m a few weeks behind the buzz on this one, so I doubt I’ll be able to add anything new to the discussion, but I’ll never shirk my duty to recommend something worth your time and money.
Up in the Air comes in for the landing as advertised – how nice for a change! Read the rest of this entry »
Village of the Damned

As Ace of Base once sang, "Don't Walk Away."
In the year preceding the start of World War I, a small German village is quietly rocked by a series of cruel events (crimes against the seemingly innocent) committed by unknown culprits in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. The town’s children are both potential victims and suspects as the twisted natures of their parents’ sins are soon laid bare. In the midst of paranoia and gossip (though not as pointedly delicious as Clouzot’s Le Corbeau), a kind schoolteacher woos a sweetly naive nanny, a baron’s marriage disintegrates, a steward’s family crumbles, a pastor spares no rod and a doctor commits the greatest of sins. Originally conceived as a mini-series, there are many narrative threads and characters to keep track of, and Haneke provides glimpses into the varied lives of the different classes at work in the village and constructs something akin to a psychological case study of the personality types on display. One wonders how much more some of the stories would’ve opened up had Haneke the luxury of six or more hours to weave his tale.
The biggest problem with a Michael Haneke film is that it’s a Michael Haneke film. Read the rest of this entry »


