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Movie Rec: "Doubt"
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 09:41 pmI don't know that the best part of "Doubt" was yet (still a lot to process), but here are some high points:
1) An entirely unobtrusive yet highly effective soundtrack by Howard Shore.
2) Excellent casting of minor characters, so that everyone's face was memorable and told a story.
3) Amy Adams as a sweet nun with a secretly tough and ethical core.
4) Viola Davis. Her screen time is short, but her performance is onion-like, starting with the surface and stripping her character down, layer by layer until we see what's at her core. I almost want to hand her the Oscar now.
5) Clash of the Titans=Philip Seymour Hoffman vs. Meryl Streep. Words seem to fail when it comes describing the interactions between their two characters, but... riveting, raw, and driven. There are a few which approximate what I'm thinking at the moment.
I had thought this might be a small screen rental, but I'm glad we went and saw it on the big screen, even with the flickering projection and the crowded, hot theater. Highly deserving of all the praise it's gotten, and well worth going to see while it's still in theaters.
~~~
In other movie news, the Oscar nominations have been announced. (OK, a few days ago they were announced, but I work too much now to blog things as they happen.) Anyway, I'm pleased that I have seen three of the Best Picture nods and seeing the other two shouldn't be too much trouble. I'm more excited to see "Slumdog Millionaire" than "The Reader", but mostly because I've heard great things about the former and nothing about the latter. I am somewhat disappointed that I haven't gotten a chance to see more of the foreign films that were nominated and more of the best original screenplay category. Interestingly enough, "Hellboy 2" is also on that list, but up against some stiff competition in the best makeup category ("The Dark Knight" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"). All in all, a lot of good stuff this year, and not quite as much in "DARK AND GRIM AND DEPRESSING" category as there was last year.
1) An entirely unobtrusive yet highly effective soundtrack by Howard Shore.
2) Excellent casting of minor characters, so that everyone's face was memorable and told a story.
3) Amy Adams as a sweet nun with a secretly tough and ethical core.
4) Viola Davis. Her screen time is short, but her performance is onion-like, starting with the surface and stripping her character down, layer by layer until we see what's at her core. I almost want to hand her the Oscar now.
5) Clash of the Titans=Philip Seymour Hoffman vs. Meryl Streep. Words seem to fail when it comes describing the interactions between their two characters, but... riveting, raw, and driven. There are a few which approximate what I'm thinking at the moment.
I had thought this might be a small screen rental, but I'm glad we went and saw it on the big screen, even with the flickering projection and the crowded, hot theater. Highly deserving of all the praise it's gotten, and well worth going to see while it's still in theaters.
~~~
In other movie news, the Oscar nominations have been announced. (OK, a few days ago they were announced, but I work too much now to blog things as they happen.) Anyway, I'm pleased that I have seen three of the Best Picture nods and seeing the other two shouldn't be too much trouble. I'm more excited to see "Slumdog Millionaire" than "The Reader", but mostly because I've heard great things about the former and nothing about the latter. I am somewhat disappointed that I haven't gotten a chance to see more of the foreign films that were nominated and more of the best original screenplay category. Interestingly enough, "Hellboy 2" is also on that list, but up against some stiff competition in the best makeup category ("The Dark Knight" and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"). All in all, a lot of good stuff this year, and not quite as much in "DARK AND GRIM AND DEPRESSING" category as there was last year.
