Oscar the Grouch

I saw 7 in theaters, this year. I think that's a new personal best.

I should qualify that. I don't really have the same taste, personally, as the Academy; I tend to watch movies in theaters specifically because they demand a giant screen and kicking sound system, less because they're objectively good movies. I suffer from no illusions that My Bloody Valentine 3D will get an award (though it's a damn fun little film if you're in any way a fan of 80s slashers) but I'd rather pay 30 bucks to see that than, say, Doubt (with dialogue that Merchant & Ivory would have found overwrought and costumes that would make the History Channel blush). So it's unusual for me to have that much overlap with the stuff that actually gets nominated. Whatever, that's what DVDs are for.

BEST ACTOR
Who Will Win - Sean Penn, because California's anti-gay Prop 8 will be fresh in the minds of the Hollywood Elite.

Who Should Win - Mickey Rourke. The Wrestler was not a happy movie by any stretch, but it's unquestionably one of the best performances of Rourke's career.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Who Will Win - Heath Ledger. Even if he was still alive, it was a riveting performance, easily the best in The Dark Knight.

Who Should Win - Honestly? Heath Ledger. Sucks to be Robert Downey Jr.; against just about anyone else he'd get it, but Ledger really pulled out all the stops.

BEST ACTRESS
Who Will Win - Meryl Streep. Doubt is An Important Movie™ and Streep is An Important Actress™.

Who Should Win - Meh. Hollywood is never known for giving women good roles in general, but this year was particularly uninspired on this front.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Who Will Win - Someone other than Marisa Tomei, so who cares.

Who Should Win - Marisa Tomei, for committing completely to an unflattering role and making it come to life. Pity that our culture punishes sex workers.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Who Will Win - This one's a tough call, but I'm gonna give the edge to Wall-E. With the first half hour being dialog free, it would have been easy to make missteps, but they pulled it off with grace and aplomb.

Who Should Win - Don't get me wrong, Wall-E is a work of art and a milestone for the ages, but In Bruges deserves at least an honorable mention here.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Who Will Win - Another tough call because none of them stand out as the obvious choice. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Slumdog Millionaire, with no "who SHOULD win" entry because, frankly, none seemed especially better than the others.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Wall-E. Period.

BEST DIRECTING
Who Will Win - Danny Boyle for Slumdog. Of the five picks, Slumdog is the only one that shows a real variety in directing styles and manages to still remain coherent as a picture.

Who Should Win - Jon Favreau for Iron Man. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?)

– Tovarich

Of Golden Globes and Undead Trollops

Poor Marissa Tomei. Despite giving a bold and provocative performance in The Wrestler, she got screwed out of a Golden Globe because she forgot one of Hollywood's cardinal rules: in much the way that the Academy doesn't reward those who go full retard, mainstream actressess aren't supposed to actually strip. Just ask Elizabeth Berkeley, who committed career suicide with Showgirls; or Jessica Alba, who kept her bra on in Sin City and lived to tell about it; or Demi Moore, who went from playing an empowered, self-actualized ecdysiast in Striptease to a brutalized sexual assault victim in GI Jane. There is a corollary to this rule, however, which is that "exotic dancer" is one of the few roles an adult actress is allowed to portray in the main(ish)stream cinema world. Thus we get Jenna Jameson in Zombie Strippers, the most ambitious exploitation flick you never saw.

At once political satire and titty flick, Zombie Strippers is set in a dystopian near-future in which the religious right and now four-term president George W. Bush have made sex so socially unacceptable that strip clubs have been driven completely underground. A soldier infected with a government-created disease wanders into one, infecting the star dancer. What follows is a 90 minute examination of philosophy, the meaning of life and death, and the obligatory stripping and gore sequences such a premise would demand - and this is likely the only review i ever expect to write where a sentence like that is recorded without a trace of irony.

The zombie plague, you see (it's always a plague these days - an infections disease with a well understood, bodily-fluid-based transmission vector, with no known cure and an unavoidable conclusion; it's zombies that are the cultural allegory to AIDS, not vampires) only turns male victims into the classic Romeroesque shamblers with no soul or vocabulary. Women, meanwhile, retain their intelligence, and gain new powers of speed, strength, and dexterity, accompanied by a lack of fear and incredible unstoppability. The only drawbacks: the slow but inevitable decay of the flesh and an insatible hunger for brains. This means the resultant undead super stripper has essentially unlimited earning potential until she eats her customers, a fact exploited by club owner Robert "Freddy Kruger" Englund, playing against type as a germophobic queen in a performance that has to be seen to be believed.

Though never seeking to rise above a b-movie chuckler, Zombie Strippers actually plays lip service to some fairly complex ideals about the meanings of life and death. The goth dancer, for instance, is fascinated by the state of undeath and longs to experience it for herself; Jameson reads Focault and isn't afraid to drop the names of his theories; the farmer's daughter and her boyfriend grapple with the meaning of existence and whether or not God exists. It's not Shakespeare, but it suggests that the writer and director at least had a search engine and weren't afraid to use it. The script does tend to bog a touch with refereneces that don't really go anywhere, but let's face it - with a title like Zombie Strippers, are you really here for the dialog?

At the end of the day, this is in many ways your basic low-budget camp fest that fails to hit the legendary level of badness necessary to become a cult classic, but is entertaining on its own merits. The acting is over the top as it should be, the stripping is entheusiastic and well-shot, the effects are silly but show continuity, and the film makes just enough zombie oeuvre references to work. You even get a commentary track with both Englund and Jameson, which is almost worth the price of admission alone. The real question is whether Jameson can rise from the death of her adult film career as an undead Julie Strain.

– Tovarich

Award Fatigue

Ratings for all awards shows have been slipping for years, so this isn't exactly a new concept. But even around the TLA offices, where awards-season buzz has continued unabated through thick and thin, the apathy has become palpable. To wit: Not a single Golden Globes party has been scheduled by any of our employees. And I'm not even upset about it Why is this happening?

• Celebrity Culture Used to be, the news was full of news, and only the occasional variety or talk show would delve into the movie business. Now, the movies are the news, and celebrities from Angelina Jolie to Kevin James are overexposed even before their movies are released. Shows like The Oscars were your chance to see them with their guards down, as real (yet undeniably fabulous) people. No more.
• Everyone's a Critic Do I really need the Golden Globes to confirm that Slumdog Millionare is a fucking great picture? I've already had 20 people tell me I need to see it. Hell, the homeless guy down the street hasn't been to a movie in three decades and even he's telling me to go see it.
• Too. Many. Awards. I'm not talking about Cinematography and Editing, which are actually among my favorites. I'm talking about the Indie Awards, the Film Critic Circle Awards, the Extradited Eskimo Awards. Half the awards are doled out before the films even play in Philly! I think the reason the Golden Raspberry Awards (pictured above) are gaining in popularity is because it's the only organization doing something different than the rest.
• Time's Up Comics like to joke about the epic length of the Oscars, but somehow back in the '70s, they got the show done an hour earlier, with full dance and song numbers, and no need to cut off the speeches early. The speeches are the best part! Honestly, I look at old broadcasts and I can't tell what they're doing differently. Yesterday I listened to The Beatles on my iPod and "Eleanor Rigby" clocks in at 2 minutes and 2 seconds. Oasis can't even get to the first lyric by then. Time used to be more precious.

That said, I'm sure I'm going to be on my couch on Sunday night, watching the stars get drunk during the Globes. But it feels more like an obligation than a joy. Would I even be watching if I didn't still work in the industry? Are you watching?

– David Gorgos

© TLA Entertainment Group