Oscar @ MindSay

The ‘Coin Killer Game’ is an interactive solution to a viral marketing challenge posed by most anticipated release of 2007, the new Coen brothers movie, No Country for Old Men.

This attraction is being hailed as the best piece of filmmaking ever evidenced by the cinematic siblings - its certain to be a ‘must-see’ movie for millions of devoted fans. In this film, a compressed air tank welding villain played by Javier Bardem asks a gas station attendant ‘How much have you ever wagered in a coin toss?’. The same dialogue has been preserved online in the opening frames of the Coin Killer Game.   

 After uploading a personal photo, each visitor must click the ‘flip this coin’ prompt and watch as an American quarter rotates up above the banner, where it disappears… The user is asked to chose ‘Heads or Tails?’

This exciting challenge ends with each visitor ultimately losing the match, and then watching in horror as his or her personal photo becomes a ‘death portrait’.

The game imagines the player's death portrait and simulates what each face would look like after being struck by the villain’s signature weapon. Check out the author’s own face after the gruesome attack.

     

The Coin Killer Game is the next evolution of online marketing; already a facebook widget, this application is almost certain to convey tens of thousands of unique viewers to the No Country for Old Men site before the campaign ends in late November. 

BEST PICTURE
Will Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Of all the pictures that are nominated (and I have seen them all) this one was the most cohesive throughout and aside from one story point that I totally disagree with was the most enjoyable filmgoing experience
Should Win: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
This movie cannot be denied
Got Robbed: INTO THE WILD
A great movie from top to bottom (script, directing and acting) that received almost universal critical acclaim yet got snubbed by the Oscars for some odd reason. Maybe they hate Sean Penn.

BEST DIRECTOR
Will Win: Joel & Ethan Coen (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN)
After having to basically flip a coin to see who gets credit for waht on their fiolms, the brothers are finally nominated as a duo and they truly deserve to win for making a truly great film.
Should Win: Joel & Ethan Coen (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN)
See above.
Got Robbed: Sidney Lumet (BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD)
Lumet showed just how awesome a director he still is with this movie and just how much so many of today's directors can learn from him. If you haven't seen this movie you are doing yourself a disservice. Besides how many more chances will there be to recognize Lumet's genius? The man is a billion years old!

BEST ACTOR
Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis (THERE WILL BE BLOOD)
I hated There Will Be Blood, I hated it with a passion but there is no denying Day-Lewis' performance. It is the single most intense performance by any actor since...well since Day-Lewis' last role.
Should Win: Daniel Day-Lewis (THERE WILL BE BLOOD)
What did ya think I was kidding about how good he was?
Got Robbed: Denzel Washington (AMERICAN GANGSTER)
The movie was astoundingly uneven but Washington gave a great performance, bringing a level of understated malevolence that I didn't think Denzel had in him.

BEST ACTRESS
Will Win: Ellen Page (JUNO)
The Academy loves to think of themselves as "discoverers of talent" and what better way to show that then by giving a big award to a little snot nosed punk? Now I loved Juno and though Page was wonderful in it but if we are being honest it wasn't an Oscar worthy performance. If they wanted to give Page some credit they should have nominated her for Hard Candy; now that was a great performance!
Should Win: Laura Linney (THE SAVAGES)
Linney is one of the most underrated actresses in Hollywood and this was a part that seemed to be tailor made for her talents.
Got Robbed: Angelina Jolie (A MIGHTY HEART) & Keri Russell (WAITRESS)
A Mighty Heart wasn't very good but Jolie gave a strong performance that deserved recognition and should have been given the nom over Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Russell was a revelation in Waitress and if the Academy wanted to give the lead actress in a small independent comedy-drama a nomination then Russell was the one who deserved it.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Will Win: Javier Bardem (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN)
Bardem transformed himself into the years best villain as well as one of the best bad guys in film history. And he did it all while sporting one of the most ridiculous looking hair styles in the world.
Should Win: Javier Bardem (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN)
Javier Bardem ftw.
Got Robbed: Ben Foster (3:10 TO YUMA)
Foster's deranged sidekick with distinctly homo-erotic undertones was was the best thing about this movie

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Will Win: Ruby Dee (AMERICAN GANGSTER)
At 83 this is Dee's first nomination and it will likely be her last so I see her being the beneficiary of the "recognize 'em before they die" award that would have gone to Hal Holbrooke if he wasn't competing with Javier Bardem.
Should Win: Amy Ryan (GONE BABY GONE)
Ryan kicked massive amounts of ass as the lousy mother of an abducted child and was the best of this bunch of nominees.
Got Robbed: Can't think of any other performances this year that were deserving.

BEST ANIMATED MOVIE
Will Win: RATATOUILLE
Like all of Pixar's movies this is really good but not the best of the year or even of the nominees.
Should Win: PERSEPOLIS
Based on a really cool graphic novel, watching Persepolis is like having the comic come to life. It is an amazing film.
Got Robbed: THE SIMPSON'S MOVIE
How the hell does Surf's Up get nominated but the Simpson's Movie doesn't? Did the Academy think they were nominating Happy Feet or something? And why is this category only allowing three nominees while all the others have four? This is just dumb.

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Will Win: WAR DANCE
Of all the nominees this is the most hopeful so I can see the Academy wanting to reward that.
Should Win: NO END IN SIGHT
This movie makes my blood boil and should be required viewing for every US citizen. It's been years since I've had as visceral a reaction to a film like I had for this one.
Got Robbed: KING OF KONG
My favorite movie of 2007 and deserving of as many accolades as it can possibly get. The Academy really fucked up by not nominating this movie.

I was looking at some of my children's books.  Picked up the a Sesame Street one, and started examining the differences in the character.  Once I figured it out, I tried my hand at drawing them.

- Everyone but Grover have round eyes
- Grover has oval eyes and one red lip
- Oscar has fuzzy eyebrows
- Cookie and Elmo almost looks the same
- Cookie's eyes are googly
- Elmo eyes are not
- Cookie has no nose

Letters and numbers add the finishing touch!

I just have to share this article with you all in case you didn't see it.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/oscars2007/speeches

It's 2 pages of the funniest stuff I've read in a long time. Go read it and laugh yourself silly.

What I think of as the ensemble film of globalization is evolving into a genre all its own, and the results so far are pretty good. Traffic, Crash, & Syriana were all serious, well-crafted films involving large casts of actors following multiple story lines that intersect in particular ways. Their ostensible topics may differ – the trio above focused on drugs, racism & oil – but underneath is a core belief that people really are more interconnected, interdependent really, than we imagine. In a sense, each is committed to the idea of the butterfly effect, the thought that how a butterfly flaps its wings in Mongolia will impact the weather in Florida. Except that, at least for the first and last of these three films, the butterfly effect is articulated in the cruder, more violent formula by which most of the rest of the world knows it: Dick Cheney sneezes and the Third World gets pneumonia.

I’ve always thought that the origin of this genre lay in the work of the late Robert Altman, whose Nashville in particular anticipates much the genre would offer: ensemble acting, multiple storylines, people caught up in politics they don’t really understand. In a sense, it’s closer to Crash in that it takes place in one city. I don’t think Altman thought he was doing a film about globalization, but I think he did show a younger generation of filmmakers and screenwriters how to go about it. Both Traffic & Syriana were written by Stephen Gaghan, who also wrote the screenplay for Rules of Engagement, based on a story by Virginia’s new senator, James Webb, and The Alamo, which attempted to de-mythologize what was once known as “Polk’s War.”

The Academy Awards in particular have been good to this genre, awarding Crash the Best Picture prize over the highly favored Brokeback Mountain. In addition to Best Picture, Crash won Oscars for editing and writing, and got a supporting actor nomination for Matt Dillon. Both Traffic and Nashville – both of which are better pictures than Crash – made the shortlist for Best Picture, while George Clooney won for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana, for which Gaghan was nominated for best screenplay adaptation, an award he won previously for Traffic. Magnolia, another film that is formally close to this genre (tho in its case more an instance of Altman-worship), got a supporting actor nomination for Tom Cruise & likewise a nomination for writing for its writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Lone Star, one of a couple of John Sayles’ pictures to follow this general model, likewise got a writing nomination.

This year’s candidate from the globalization ensemble category is Babel, and it comes will all the requisite elements: three story lines involving four sets of characters, set variously in Morocco, Tokyo, Mexico & Southern California. Even more than Traffic, which based one of its story lines around a major U.S. politician & another around a highly romanticized feminist drug lord, the narrative threads in Babel focus on its non-Anglo characters – the only real exception are the two tourists in Morocco played by Brad Pitt (the role of his lifetime, which he manages not to screw up, letting the bags under his eyes do much of the heavy emotional lifting that’s required) & Cate Blanchett, who increasingly looks like the best actor alive. Even in the Mexican section of the tale, the two children brought across the border by their nanny, stuck with watching the kids on her own son’s wedding day, are little more than a narrative appendage. When, after problems that I won’t recount here, they find themselves stranded – ages 6 and 4 perhaps – in the middle of the desert, the film functionally ignores them, focusing instead on Adriana Barraza’s role as the nanny. Similarly, the film spends at least as much time with the two Moroccan goatherds – themselves children – who are playing with the rifle their father bought to ward off jackals when the younger one shoots into a passing tourist bus on a desolate road. The man who sold them the gun was given it as a gift from a big game hunter from Japan for whom he had served as a guide, and it’s the story of that hunter and especially his deaf teenage daughter, fabulously played by Rinko Kikuchi, that makes up the fourth tale of Babel. In her case, she’s an object of constant rejection & deeply depressed at least partly as a result of her mother’s suicide the year before. Her rage is directed pretty much at everyone around her, tho it gets perilously transformed when she decides to “solve” her problems by losing her virginity, which she proceeds to attempt in the most inappropriate & inept ways. Given that her narrative is to some degree the “comic relief” that contrasts with the Mexican & Moroccan tales, the most powerful scene in the entire movie comes when she gets smashed on pills & whiskey & finds herself in a crowded disco where she alone can’t hear the music. Her isolation is clearly intended to serve as an objective correlative for everyone else’s situation in this film and, as clumsy as that imagery may sound, the director, Alejandro González Iñárittu, makes it the most successful drug & disco scene in a motion picture since David Hemmings ran into The Yardbirds in Blow-Up forty years ago.

Babel is by no means a perfect film – it’s really no stronger than Syriana & a far cry from either Crash or Traffic. Still, by comparison with some pictures that have won the Best Picture Oscar – Chicago, Rocky, Out of Africa, even the bon-bon Shakespeare in Love – Babel is The Godfather and Children of Paradise rolled into one. The relationship between the Japanese family & the events in Morocco is so contrived as to make you want to laugh when you see the connection. Yet like all ensemble pictures, Babel offers a wonderful setting for great acting, even on the part of “amateurs” in Morocco. Barraza & Kikuchi have both been nominated for supporting actress Oscars – a tough category in a year in which Jennifer Hudson single-handedly stole Dreamgirls with her Aretha-meets-Janis song-as-tantrum – and it’s worth noting that without this film genre, neither Barraza or Kikuchi would ever get the kind of multi-million dollar PR boosts to their careers that both are about to receive. Barraza is a great character actor, but great character actors go for decades without recognition. Kikuchi is just starting her career and her credits were heavily weighted with TV commercials and video game roles right up to this last year.

One aspect of Babel, the film, that I found disturbing was its soft landing for all of the Anglo characters – the wife survives, the kids are found (a detail that is not even shown on screen) – while the Moroccan family lies in ruins, the nanny finds herself deported & the teenage girl is left naked & still a virgin when her father finally comes home to the penthouse they share. There are very different ways one could look at this disparity – Iñárittu is chicken & wants to give the audience at least part of a happy ending; Iñárittu wants to show that it is always the others who get hurt most, even when it is the Anglos who appear to be most at risk throughout much of the movie. Either of these results is plausible and, afterwards, the folks I was with and I could not decide which line of reasoning guided the director. In part, I think that the Tokyo story – in which the heroine is clearly a rich kid, living in a penthouse with a father who can go globetrotting to hunt exotic animals – deliberately messes with the race = class equation that would otherwise jump out at you (as it does, say, in Crash). So maybe it’s a step toward a more sophisticated argument that causes Iñárittu to forestall this blow. But there is no question that this robs Babel of a good deal of its potential dramatic effect.