Dubya's Oskar Korner--Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen + Paris + Owen Wilson + 1920 Peugeot = 2012's answer to Doctor Emmett Brown's DeLorean.

Um, yeah. This movie is about a dude who time travels to 1920s Paris and meets Hemingway, Picasso, the Fitzgeralds, Dali, etc.

If that sounds like your cup of tea then go ahead, knock yourself out. The movie's on DVD now. Either way, you now know what the concept is and I saved you a "What the wha~~~" moment. You're welcome.

Dubya's Oskar Korner--MONEYBALL

***SPOILER ALERT--I give away the entire ending PLUS the POSTSCRIPT ***

I had high hopes for this one but it was disappointing. This movie was consists of: talking about stats, talking on the phone, talking to negotiate trading of players, talking about changing the world of baseball  and barely any baseball is ever played. Jonah Hill plays a smart aleck Ivy Leaguer who figured out a way to get a bargain rate badass baseball team and Brad Pitt is the General Manager of Oakland Athletics who hires Jonah Hill to help him run his team.  The movie starts with Brad Pitt's team losing in the postseason, which is exactly what happens again after investing 2 hrs+ in this movie. Yeah, you heard that right.

In the postscript you learn that Brad Pitt's character turned down what would have been the biggest paycheck any GM had been offered to go to the Boston Red Sox.  Boston hired the statistician that actually inspired Jonah Hill's theories, so we are to believe the Red Sox won a few years later using the same ideas. This of course cannot possibly be true because if it's theory alone then Brad Pitt's team would have won and the $$$ offered to Pitt's character proved that the almighty dollar was still very much in play in assembling a winning team. Besides, we all know that the key to winning baseball is steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.

Dubya's Oskar Korner--The Artist

Oscar's nominations announced recently and this year we hit an all-time lameness. They doled out 9 Best Picture nominations and there's not a single one that the normal non-Hollywood civilians care about.  Every year I try and go out to see all the Best Picture nominated films and so I really resented all these duds that I had little and negative interest in seeing. As a public service, I will review the films for you and you can decide whether you should see these flix.

Here are some basics about this movie:

#1. It is a BLACK AND WHITE movie

#2. It is a SILENT MOVIE

#3. It is a movie about making movies (a movie subject I find to be the most tired, even more so than WWII/Holocaust movies)

Any one of the traits above would have made me stay far away from it. That the filmmakers had the gall to combine all 3 of the minuses in their movie means that there was very little chance I would have seen it if it hadn't been nominated.  

STORY:

It is about a silent movie star who goes into a downward spiral as he is overtaken by the advent of talkies.  At the same time that his life is going down the crapper, a pretty ingenue's star begins to rise to super stardom.  

DUBYA'S VERDICT

This was a delightful little movie that warmed my cold cold heart that was dead set against it before the movie even started.  Both the male and female leads were fantastic and the actor Jean Dujardin deserves all the accolades and will probably win Best Actor.  He reminds me of Gene Kelly in many of the shots, not to mention the movie itself has a very similar storyline to GK's Singing in the Rain. JD really nails the old Hollywood acting style down, which normally would mean that the performance is filled with outdated affectation that us modern folk would laugh at.  But this guy brings such sincerity that it just works.  The movie is meant to be a crowd pleaser and has no objectionable material so my money is on it to win Best Picture by default.