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!

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Is that a piano key?

Recently over at Wonders in the Dark, Sam Juliano posted an engaging piece where film buffs were invited to name their favorite movie scores of all time. 

Even I had been so bold as to name the greatest film composers not so long ago here at The Schleicher Spin. 

And while it’s true, many of the greatest films are also imbued with beautiful original musical scores where the moving images flow in perfect harmony with the composers’ notes…it made me wonder… 

What of the artists who take a well-known existing piece of music and create moving images that become married to the music’s rhythm? 

It’s been so parodied over the years…but can anyone deny the jaw-droppingly imaginative conceit of Stanley Kubrick using Richard Strauss’ “The Spoke Zarathustra” for the opening to his greatest cinematic achievement (hell, THE GREATEST CINEMATIC ACHIEVEMENT) 2001: A Space Odyssey? 

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…

State of the Union Drinking Game V. 2010

"Look...guys, relax...you know I still got this....right?"

Hope…where have ye gone?  Back to Arkansas?  Did you take the Laughter with you, Hope?  Were you shot in the face at the Crawford Ranch?  I sure do miss the good ol’ days of Bubba…and Dubya…when we could all laugh our problems away. 

I wrestled for a long time with putting up a drinking game for the 2010 State of the Union which will air live this Wednesday night, January 27th at 9pm EST. 

The ‘Spin has come a long way from the days of playing “Bush or Chimp” during past States of the Union. 

I feel maybe I’ve grown up some in the past few years…or maybe the country has.  Or maybe politics just aren’t funny these days.  There’s not much to laugh about with an economy still in shambles, wars still ongoing, Tea Parties gaining traction and a non-functioning and totally inept Congress that can’t get anything done. 

But I’d be a fool to overlook the fact that when my 2008 Presidential Debate Drinking Game appeared as a top link on The Huffington Post website, it was the first time The Schleicher Spin was put on the map.  To this day, despite all my literary and film-based blathering, that ridiculous thing remains my most popular post ever.

So, what the hell…if this is the new Great Depression…then consider Prohibition repealed, and let’s make COCO proud…

The Weary Kind

Naw, lil' darlin', lemme tellya a little story...

There’s a telling scene about half way through writer/director Scott Cooper’s accomplished début film Crazy Heart where big Bad Blake tells his new “old lady” Jean that the best new songs are the ones that make you feel like you’ve heard them before.

Well, we’ve heard this one before:  Down-and-out alcoholic country crooner Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges in the role of a lifetime destined now for Oscar gold) gets involved with a sweet but jaded reporter named Jean (the strangely appealing, droopy-eyed and increasingly Olive-Oil-esque Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her young son (Moppet-for-Hire Jack Nation) and tries to make good one last time while living in the shadow of the uber-famous singer he taught everything he knew (a slightly miscast and pony-tailed Colin Farrell).  The film follows Blake’s ups and downs as he tries to create the family he never had, revive his career and clean-up his act.

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. 

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.

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! 

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.