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I believe the word you are looking for is “FINALLY”

Gary Oldman received his first Oscar nomination ever last week for his role in the quite good Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I’m not going to lie, I was kind of surprised; he’d received a lot of buzz very early on in Oscar season but I hadn’t heard much lately and assumed the film was Too British to really make much of an impact on the Academy. I am delighted to be wrong!

But let’s be serious. As I said last year when my Michael Fassbender obsession exploded, as a Gary Oldman fan, I am not unfamiliar with the pain and tragedy of working through an actor’s back catalogue on a quest to see everything they’ve ever done, only to encounter performances in middling to horrendous projects too upsetting to comprehend. This nomination is reward for our suffering. We all know what he’s awesome in (tip: everything), so instead I bring you the Top Five Most Horrible Gary Oldman Films Ever.

Believe me, it was challenging to restrict this list to only five. (Beware spoilers and also maybe some scary imagery.) Continue reading →

Movies: Best and Worst of 2011

2o11 marked a year where I was significantly down in the number of times I went to the theatre to see a movie (87 in 2010 vs only 37 in 2011). I blame the significant increase in soccer that I’ve been watching in the last eighteen months, of course, and the long stretch at the start of the year where I didn’t go for like two months and which I blame on my losing the will to live after Fernando Torres went to Chelsea.

In any case, top/bottom five lists since I haven’t seen enough to really do ten in each category.

Favourites

  1. Pink Ribbons, Inc.
  2. Shame
  3. Drive
  4. Hysteria
  5. Another Year

Least Favourites

  1. Season of the Witch
  2. Faust
  3. Red Riding Hood
  4. Dream House
  5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1

(All 2011 reviews.)

in this game, fire represents life

There is a Survivor revival going on in my family and from the encouragement of my sisters, I have started watching the series again. This show has never exactly been a paragon of egalitarian virtue as there is always at least one racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive contestant each season. Survivor: South Pacific really takes this up to a whole new level with the presence of Brandon Hantz in a way that makes me ill enough to actually bother complaining about in writing.

survivor_brandonhantz.jpg

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a TIFFket, a tasket

The Toronto International Film Festival starts on Thursday and I completely failed to post the films I ended up getting. I had my usual panic while picking my films because the advanced ticket selection phase starts the same day that the full title list is revealed, which means you basically have zero time to read up on everything on offer. Eesh. I’m trying to branch out with which of the different programmes I see films from (I tend to end up in the Real to Reel, Contemporary World Cinema, and Special Presentations programmes most often), and I think this year I was drawn to things that sounded hilarious and bizarre.

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TIFF 2011: preliminary lists

My secret hope and wish has come true: A Dangerous Method and Shame, both starring Michael Fassbender, are playing at the Toronto International Film Festival this year!

shame.jpg

TIFF released their first fifty films today (of what I imagine will probably be over 300 total) and already I’m excited by a bunch of stuff on the list, including: Albert Nobbs, Anonymous, Coriolanus, Drive, Take This Waltz, and We Need To Talk About Kevin.

A Dangerous Method is part of the Gala program, so I will probably try to see it at one of the non-Gala screenings; I went to the gala screening for Across The Universe four years ago and there was no Q&A, which I gather is typical of the galas, so I don’t much see the point in attending that just to see Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen, and Kiera Knightley wave from the stage. Shame is in the Special Presentation program where I’ve usually had very good luck with Q&As, so I’ll definitely be trying to get tickets to whenever the evening screening of that one is.

If they announce Soderbergh’s Haywire in the next round of titles, I might just lose my mind. Consider this the start of Fassbender Fall!

we're reaching a real low point here

I just got back last night from five days in Orlando where a) the temperature was actually colder than it was in Toronto (“colder” being a relative term), and b) the conference I attended for work was super fabulous, ultra-nerdy, and is probably making me come across as obnoxious in my gung-ho-ness and exuberance in Being Inspired To Make Great Changes™. This is all background to the fact that for the first time in ages I actually had access to HBO to watch True Blood as it aired, only I got the time wrong and missed it. Fail. So I watched it this morning while attempting not to bake to death in my 4000°C apartment. (Toronto heat wave, I hate you.)

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What do you think about manta rays?

I don’t know if this is the case for other people, but I find that the movies I rewatch over and over are not, in fact, my favourite movies. I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I watched The Departed or High Fidelity but it don’t even bat an eyelash at the prospect of watching any one of these more than once a week.

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