Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

There is never any shortage of arguments as the Academy Awards begin to loom closer. Although we are still about three months away from the 82nd annual ceremony's nominations to be revealed, the controversy cloud has already swirled up with The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's official site's announcement of the fifteen films that have been shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature Award. Why would this be controversial? Well, because the only film on the list that I'm really familiar with is Louie Psihoyos' The Cove. That may be a bad example, as I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about most films that have passed through the public radar during the past year, but it is easy to let some decent documentaries to slip under undetected. Still, two of the most prolific films of the genre this past year, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story and the surprise hit Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which boasts quite a high Tomato Meter rating on Rotten Tomatoes, are not present on the list. Not saying that the fifteen movies the Academy included on their list doesn't sound interesting, but none of them compare to Anvil!'s rating, nor do some of them even register a rating.

The above rant isn't to say that the Academy hasn't done anything right for this coming ceremony. In addition to adding five more nominees onto the ballot for the Best Picture category, as I covered yesterday, the cult film director Roger Corman garnered an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards last week. Of course, the exploitation master's sometimes lacklusting career isn't without its naysayers. An argument between two Cinematical writers have been brewing today, and I'm taking the side of Scott Weinberg, the supporter of Corman's massive body of exploitive fun.

The Spider-Man 4 rumors keep piling in. Monday, I wrote about how Rachel McAdams shot down the rumor that she would be filling the role of Felicia Hardy/The Black Cat. Today, Deadline Hollywood has already replaced McAdams role in the rumor mill, claiming that Anne Hathaway has been approached to take on the villain, or misunderstood love interest, or Marvel's answer to Catwoman or whatever the hell you want to call The Black Cat. There is no denying that Hathaway does look the part, but as many of the rumors coming in, I highly doubt there is any truth in this.

Finally, my patience is wearing thin with our local movie rental store, Movies to Go. There are a few others, but they're not even worth mentioning. Anyhow, void of newer releases Anvil!, Away We Go and Gigantic, but stocked with about twenty copies of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, as well as a few other flicks that make the second attempt at the video game franchise adaptation look like Citizen Kane, such as Sasquatch Mountain, several Girls Gone Wild selections and the straight-to-Nickelodeon George Lopez movie. Not only that, but I could spend days talking about how wrong the categorizations are, such as the Classics section, which is actually period pieces, or the fact that I noticed Into the Wild in the Comedy section. Also, we have the inability to alphabetize correctly, and the blaring sounds of The Pussycat Dolls emanating from the back, while the gaggle of harlotry that operates the cash registers have zero knowledge on basic movie information. Being a small store, I don't expect an academic lecture on Fellini or a section of exploitation rarities to rival Something Weird Videos' archives, but come on, I'm seriously thinking about committing the sin of starting to rent off of the Red Box. Come to PS3 Netflix.