Z!TV: February 2015

Saturday, February 21, 2015

What will happen at the Oscars? LOTS of BIG, FAT LOSERS!

In the 1st Annual Oscars Big, Fat Losers, we’re going to go over the list of Oscar nominees and, rather than further praise the likely 2015 Oscar winner, we’re going to call out the biggest loser in the bunch.

So, since my invitation to the Academy Awards was lost in the mail, let’s have some fun...

Best Actress

Likely Winner: Julianne Moore in “Still Alice”
Possible Upset: Felicity Jones in “The Theory of Everything”
Who Everyone Forgot 7 Mos. Ago: Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl”
Likely Doesn’t Care (she's French...she doesn't care about anything): Marion Cotillard in “Two Days, One Night”
BIG, FAT LOSER: Reese Witherspoon in “Wild” - Reese tried too hard. Playing a woman who used to play with heavy drugs, sleep around, and cheat on her dedicated fiancé, the woman discovers her mom is dying and decides to commune with Zzzzzzz. Oh, and she’s nekkid. But it’s for naught. No one saw Wild. No one will.

Best Actor

Likely Winner: Eddie Redmayne in “The Theory of Everything”
Who Everyone Wants to Win: Michael Keaton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
Who Wins the Really Big Prize (a Marvel franchise): Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Imitation Game”
Possible Upset: Bradley Cooper in “American Sniper”
BIG, FAT LOSER: Steve Carell in “Foxcatcher” - Well, let’s make things clear: Carell is certainly no loser. You start out as a Daily Show correspondent and become one of the biggest box office draws in movies? Not so bad. But Carell keeps making these bizarre dramas that never really connect: Even Almighty, Get Smart, Burt Wonderstone (at least, I think those were dramas). Carell decided, around the time he agreed to make the Hallmark channel-rejected movie “Dan in Real Life,” that he wanted to be a real actor. Or, rather, that he just doesn’t want all the news stations, sometime in the future, to state “Known best as the 40-year-old virgin, Steve Carell died tragically today...” With that in mind, Director Bennett Miller, who could’ve done anything he wanted, with any actor he wanted, after Moneyball chose to surrender any chances of getting a director nod by casting Carell. And he seemed to have made his decision based on Carell’s nose. Apparently his schnoz was the only one that would take to the prosthetic. The real loser here: Bennett Miller. And Carell is now "Oscar nominee, Steve Carell" and no longer "The actor best-known as the 40-year-old virgin."

Best Supporting Actress

Extremely Likely Winner: Patricia Arquette in “Boyhood”
Looking for a Series On Showtime: Laura Dern in “Wild”
Not Gonna Happen: Keira Knightley in “The Imitation Game”
Throatiest: Emma Stone in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
BIG, FAT LOSER: Meryl Streep in “Into the Woods” - Oh, Meryl, we love you, but Hollywood will never give you an award for your singing.

Best Supporting Actor

Likely Winner: J.K. Simmons in “Whiplash” (for playing J.K. Simmons in everything)
Possible Upset: Ethan Hawke in “Boyhood”
Cursing Under his Breath: Robert Duvall in “The Judge”
Still Angry at Marvel: Edward Norton in “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”
BIG, FAT LOSER: Mark Ruffalo in “Foxcatcher” - Dude’s been nominated before in the category (The Kids Are Alright) and won a ton of critics awards...and here he is playing second fiddle to the 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Best Director

Likely Winner: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"
Practicing Tracking Shots: Wes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Back to the old Oscar Bait 'n' Tackle Shop: Morten Tyldum, "The Imitation Game”
BIG, FAT, LOSER: Richard Linklater, "Boyhood" - He might actually win this thing. I mean, it’s hard to make a movie that everyone admires but is so utterly awful. Each character, save for Arquette’s, is a 2D caricature: the divorced dad who tries too hard to connect w/the kids; the drunk step dad who grumbles “I’m having a drink with dinner, you got somethin' t' say 'bout that?!”; the guy whose glory days are long past so now he has a crappy blue-collar job and hates life and takes it out on the step-kids... Linklater also seems to think that, in film, showing and telling are just not enough, so he must show and tell and show and tell again...juuust to be certain that we get every little thing at all times always...heaven forbid the audience have to work for anything.
40-Year-Old Virgin: Bennett Miller, "Foxcatcher"

Best Picture

Likely Winner: Boyhood
Likely to Spin-Off to an Adult Swim Animated Series: Birdman
Loser That Leaves Everyone Guilt-Ridden: Selma
Possible Upset: The Theory of Everything
Can't Break the Code: The Imitation Game
BIG, FAT LOSER: The Grand Budapest Hotel - Hey, listen, it's a great film. It's possibly Anderson's best. But it's still Wes Anderson doing exactly what he always does. Do I think it should win? Yeah. Will the academy? I dunno...they seem SO impressed with a guy who filmed the same actors again and again over 12 years, in spite forgetting to write a script, that Anderson's chances are, like his slacks, ultra-slim.
Left vs. Right, Us vs. Them, Write vs. Wrong: American Sniper
Remake of Fame (but with Drums): Whiplash

Those're the biggies, folks! Looking forward to seeing how it plays out...Updates will happen here Oscar night!

Friday, February 20, 2015

How white are the Oscars, really?

—
BLOG NOTE:
Z!TV’s 1st Annual Oscar’s BIG, FAT LOSER Coverage
is coming OSCAR NIGHT!
—

With no black nominees in the acting categories, people declared the movie Selma was snubbed. People accused “Oscar” of being racist. People wondered why Kendall Jenner was spending so much time with Tyga.

Oh, sorry, that was not people, that was People magazine.

Well, yes, we all know by now that all the good actors in 2014 were white.

And perhaps this anger at the Oscars -- actually the other actors in the Screen Actors Guild who vote for people they feel may be deserving of an Academy Award -- should be directed at the black actors.

Perhaps the actors sucked.

Maybe it was the writers and directors.

Perhaps the material was weak.

If you were to get Denzel Washington to play Stephen Hawking in Theory of Everything, it might be a different story. First of all, that’s a movie everyone in the world would go see. I mean, seriously. Denzel would be one badass science nerd-slash-genius-slash-tough-ass-mother-flucker.

Denzel Washington as Stephen Hawking

But, more importantly, would "Oscar" have "snubbed" him the way they did for his performance in The Equalizer?

We all know the answer -- it’s obvious...

Definitely not!

Had Chadwick Boseman who played James Brown in Get On Up! taken a turn in an all-black version of Grand Budapest Hotel, as directed by, say, Lee Daniels, would he and the others had been snubbed?

No.

Daniels proved his expertise as a director with “The Butler.” In that film, based as closely on a real-life White House butler’s life as Guardians of the Galaxy was on the life of NASA’s Buzz Aldrin, Daniels showed us the parallel but divergent paths of Black America. He was so generous a director, he did this about 37 times: The butler serves a nice dinner for the president, the son goes to a sit-in; the Butler meets heads of state, the son gets arrested; the butler pets a kitty cat, the son argues with Black Panthers. It’s really not completely ridiculous and overblown at all.

And not nearly as ridiculous as making Oprah’s wife-of-the-butler character a cheater, a drunk, depressed, and any other Oscar-likely emotional state.

Which brings me to my point: The Butler was not snubbed. (Admittedly, EW wrote about this last year. http://www.ew.com/article/2014/01/27/butler-oscar-snub-lee-daniels) No...wait...that was my point last year...

My point this year is this: Maybe the movies with the black actors in them suck. Maybe the actors suck.

Now, I’m not going to pretend I can judge such things. I’ve not studied acting, nor have I studied directing. But, more importantly, like most of the academy, I’ve not seen Selma, Get On Up, or that artsy film which starred Halle Berry that almost nobody has heard of.

The Oscars aren’t about race. They’re about the zeitgeist. Whatever wave is moving through Hollywood will be embraced by the academy voters. Last year it was in-your-face art like 12 Years a Slave, The Wolf of Wall Street, or -- to a lesser degree -- Captain Philips.

This year it’s the art of filmmaking -- new ways of telling stories filmically: Birdman (the phony continuous 1-take surrealist film), Boyhood (based on the concept of the famous documentary Seven-Up), Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson doing what Wes Anderson singularly does, but doing it slightly better than -- and with weightier prospects -- than usual).

Clint Eastwood was snubbed, and I haven’t heard one person shout, “Does Oscar hate old guys?” (No, it doesn’t) or “Does Oscar hate Republicans?” (Hells yeah.) The fact is, Eastwood’s American Sniper is garbage.

But, wait, Bradley Cooper was nominated. Yes, because his performance was incredible. There was absolutely no sign of Bradley Cooper in the portrayal of depressed murderer, under-appreciated (by Michael Moore) soldier, and Jesse “That Old Body” Ventura-hater Chris Kyle. Can we say the same of David Oyelewo?

I don’t know, I didn’t see Selma.

Nor did anyone in the Academy.

But it's possible that his portrayal of MLK was not great. It's possible that he didn't capture what we the audience know of MLK at all. It's possible that the director forgot to give the audience some way to understand that King wasn't just the guy who sermoned "I have a dream" and was a multi-dimensional person with a more quiet and just as powerful demeanor when not speechifying, and it's very possible that whoever that person was, we didn't see him portrayed via directing, or the acting, in any way we the audience could buy.

But, you know, it's so hard to say since I didn't see the movie.

Don’t blame the game, blame the players: If Oscar wasn’t racist last year, it likely wasn’t racist this year. If the Academy’s president for the last several years is a black woman, can we really say they’re racist?

No, what we can say is that the reason there’s no diversity in the Oscars race is BECAUSE THERE'S NO DIVERSITY IN HOLLYWOOD!

Well, Michael Keaton, it turns out, is 1/25 Cherokee.

You want diversity? Movies starring black actors other than Kevin Hart need to be made and seen. And while they don’t need to be good, they need to pretend to be good. That’s how nominations are made.

Denzel in a wheelchair, man...Denzel in a wheelchair.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Kylie Jenner’s Got Something ‘Cavernous’ - A New Home

Kylie Jenner, who’s dating rapper Tyga, recently purchased a “cavernous” new home, according to TheHollywoodGossip.com

Yes, young Ms. Jenner’s new home is wide open and awaiting Tyga. There’s no doubt she’ll be able to fit him right into that huge thing.

Images on THG’s site seem to indicate areas with cobwebs that have not been touched as yet, but, overall, it looks like every part is ready for heavy use.

Meanwhile, over on Realtor.com, the images show that Jenner’s got everything a rapper would want: The wide front doors lead to a compact and only slightly used box of a room with plenty of fun accessories. She’s got a nicely manicured front, wide back doors, fresh-smelling carpet, clean and inviting chimney, and a back area with a great deal of room for something sporting lots of wood.

It's Hard to Say If I've Ever Seen So Much Wood Inside Someone's Back Yard.

Yup, it all seems to be ready for Tyga.

Jenner has reportedly begun decorating with many accoutrements, much of it being items which likely won’t stay inside for long — once Tyga makes his way in, it’s very hard for us to say what else will fit.

No doubt, Jenner’s backyard is expansive, although, since she’s still young, Kylie hasn’t the expansive yard of sister Kim. She has however sought advice from sister Khloé who Z!TV has learned told Kylie to keep in mind that once you go this big, it’s difficult to ever accept anything smaller later on.

The house. We mean the house.

-30-

Monday, February 9, 2015

2015 Grammys – Gosh, Pharrell, Walt Would Be So Proud…

LL Cool J introduced AC/DC, who sang exactly what we’d expect them to sing, then LL then came out and rapped some warped version of a tired song nobody liked when we were kids. After which a bulimic girl warbled a song she could barely sing. Then Tom Jones came out with his great granddaughter and sang the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”

Kanye West auto-tuned himself.

Madonna flew.

But, y’know, I will forever remember Pharrell trying really hard to make a statement…But instead making me think that the only thing his act was missing, was the partner he looked (and danced) just like: