The Nighthawk Awards: 2008

No one knows how to bring you back around better than Danny Boyle.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Slumdog Millionaire  **
2. The Dark Knight
3. Wall-E  *
4. Milk  *
5. Revolutionary Road
6. Rachel Getting Married
7. Let the Right One In
8. I’ve Loved You So Long
9. Happy-Go-Lucky
10. The Visitor
11. In Bruges
12. Iron Man
13. Doubt
14. Burn After Reading
15. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
16. A Christmas Tale
17. The Reader
18. The Wrestler
19. Changeling
20. Paranoid Park

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It was 18 years ago today

Our first picture together – by a waterfall off Route 6 on the road to Tillamook

As Veronica and I lay awake at four this morning listening to Thomas cough, something we had been doing since two since he is still terrible at blowing his nose and instead sniffles, allowing everything to go into his lungs and give him a raspy cough, I reminded Veronica that it was now the 12th of September.  “I assume that’s important,” she said.  “It means eighteen years ago today you were wearing sunflowers.”

That’s a reference to the sunflower dress that she was wearing the first day I met her.  Yes, I remember what she was wearing.  I remember the really cute manager I met on my first day at Barnes & Noble, the one who was all excited about the firemen who came into the store in full uniforms, the one I thought was 31 because she was a manager and in charge and so mature (she was 23) and who, I would later learn, thought I was 19, because of my youthful exuberance, I am certain (I was almost 25).  The manager who I picked out in the Secret Santa exchange (after putting two other names back) and who, when I was waiting for her to leave the breakroom so I could put her final present in her locker, looked at me and said “Are you waiting for me to leave so you can put my Secret Santa gift in my locker?”

We’ve survived through working together at five different jobs, through autism and diabetes, through far too many moves to mention and through a lot of early mornings wishing Thomas was asleep so that we could get back to sleep.  But I wouldn’t have wanted to go through this with anyone else for these last 18 years.

Our most recent picture together. She’s still wonderful. I’m still me.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Animated Film – 2008

One of film’s most lovable couples.

The 81st annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2008.  The nominations were announced on 22 January 2009 and the awards were held on 22 February 2009.

Best Animated Film:  Wall-E

• Kung Fu Panda
• Bolt

Most Surprising Omission:  Waltz with Bashir

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Waltz with Bashir

Rank (out of 16) Among Best Animated Film Years:  #11

Oscar Score:  81.8

Alternate Oscar Score:  91.8

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1961

“We’re disturbed, we’re disturbed / We’re the most disturbed / Like we’re psychologically disturbed” (p 207)

My Top 10:

1. West Side Story
2. The Hustler
3. One, Two, Three
4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s
5. The Bridge
6. Elevator to the Gallows
7. A Raisin in the Sun
8. Pocketful of Miracles
9. The Misfits
10. Macario

Note:  There are 16 films on my list.  Three of them are listed below, as they were Consensus nominees (The Guns of Navarone – #13, Fanny – #15, Judgment at Nuremberg – #16).  The other three are all the way down at the bottom.
Note:  Unfortunately, this is a year where there were several source materials I was unable to get, so I had to do the best I could.

 

RCM: La Bamba

Revisiting Childhood Movies Part XXI:

La Bamba

• Director:  Luis Valdez
• Writer:  Luis Valdez
• Producer:  Bill Borden  /  Taylor Hackford
• Stars:  Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosanna DeSoto, Elizabeth Peña
• Studio:  Columbia
• Award Nominations:  Golden Globe – Picture (Drama)
• Length:  108 min
• Genre:  Musical (Biopic)
• MPAA Rating:  PG-13
• Release Date:  24 July 1987
• Box Office Gross:  $54.21 mil  (#15 – 1987)
• Ebert Rating:  ***
• My Rating:  ***
• My Rank:  #30 (year)
• Nighthawk Nominations:  none
• Nighthawk Notables:  Best Soundtrack
• First Watched:  on video when first released
• Number of Times Watched as a Kid:  5 or so

As a Kid:  I wasn’t that much into music yet in 1987.  Yes, I had been watching videos on MTV for a few years but I didn’t know that much, especially about older music.  In fact, I had a tendency to believe that any song that I didn’t know who was singing it (“Eve of Destruction”, “American Pie”, “The Longest Time”) that it was being sung by The Beatles (when my brother John corrected me on these, he explained that he could understand if I had thought “Eve of Destruction” was sung by Springsteen, but by The Beatles?  I explained that I assumed every major song was sung by The Beatles.).  I hadn’t yet seen The Buddy Holly Story but I had a vague notion of The Day the Music Died because of growing up with “American Pie”.  Then this film came out.  More importantly, since I didn’t see this film in the theater, the soundtrack came out, a soundtrack that my brother Kelly bought during a summer that he and I shared a room.

 

Erik’s Totally Radical Tubular Awesome 80’s Music Lists (that might make you want to gag me with a spoon*): Part I

*:  Or, fuck me gently with a chainsaw, depending on your 80’s movie frame of reference.

 

Introduction:  This wasn’t intended to be a multi-part post or to be so damn long.  In fact, it was originally just going to be a list of my Top 100 Songs of the 80’s.  Then it grew and grew and Veronica kept saying I had to post it or I would never stop adding new lists.  Well, I finally got to writing the most significant part, the first list (the top albums) and the last list (the top songs).  Then, as I added more details in those lists and made them both countdown lists (ending with #1 instead of starting with it), I realized each of those really needed to be their own posts, for length reasons, if nothing else.  So, those two have been spun-off into their own, more detailed posts.  This post is mostly just lists, though there are a lot of them.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2007

Oh, Josh, that dog was the least of your concerns.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. No Country for Old Men  **
2. Atonement  *
3. Across the Universe
4. There Will Be Blood  *
5. Ratatouille
6. Eastern Promises
7. Michael Clayton  *
8. Gone Baby Gone
9. Juno  *
10. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
11. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
12. 3:10 to Yuma
13. Away from Her
14. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
15. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
16. Lust, Caution
17. I’m Not There
18. Persepolis
19. Charlie Wilson’s War
20. Once

Analysis:  Those are all **** films.  There are also a few more (24 in total), but they will be listed down below in the Drama and Comedy sections.  Both the 24 **** films and the total of 46 **** / ***.5 films are the second most ever, behind only 2005.