The Morning After: AMC Best Picture Showcase Part 2

I attended the second weekend of AMC’s Best Picture Showcase and considering how I felt about the first weekend , I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular. What I got to see on the second weekend surprised me greatly though. The second weekend had a lineup that started with Hugo in 3D, The Help, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Artist and Midnight in Paris. From the limited amount of information I sought out to be familiar with the films I was going to see The Artist was easily my most anticipated film in the lineup. The lineup surprised me from start to finish. I’m going to jump into the films briefly and then I’ll give my overall impressions on all the nominations and who I feel will win and what my personal favorite film was from the nominations.

The Morning After: AMC’s Best Picture Showcase Day 1 Reactions

The Oscars are easily one of my anticipated events every year and for the past six years I have attended an event called the Best Picture Showcase. It’s a showcase event hosted by AMC theaters, where they play every Best Picture nominee. From the moment I found this event back in 2007, it was a can’t miss event for me. I was always lamenting the fact that I could never see each Best Picture nominee before the big show because I wasn’t always able to find a screening at a local theater. This weekend was the first installment of the 2012 Best Picture nominees and some of the Snowball Summit crew attended the event with me. The four films that we got to see were War Horse, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and The Descendants. I had no real expectations for War Horse and I had seen Moneyball three times already so my excitement surrounded the final two films of the day, The Tree of Life and The Descendants. The Best Picture Showcase has been a great experience over the last six years and this weekend wasn’t any different but it did offer some conflicting feelings for me. Those concerns are the reason for this article. I’ll start by breaking down the films in a series of mini-reviews and I’ll recap it all by reflecting on my overall impressions of the day.

The Morning After: The Horror Hut Reviews ‘The Woman in Black’

For weeks now, we’ve seen the trailers. Those creepy, cryptic children in the background, echoing their flowly rhymes while dark, macabre action happens in pictures. Let me just say for openers, that is THE way to hype a movie. When I first saw the clips released on-demand, I wasn’t a fan. The movie looked too drab and time-particular for my tastes. But after weeks of these new trailers, wherein eerie kids spout off couplets to hype the film, I couldn’t wait to see it. Children, in my opinion, are the ultimate gateway to successful hype for a horror movie. It’s something about the innocence and quiet calm of a younger child, that makes you want to listen and wonder, what they know that we don’t. That, plus the consistancy with which they released the new spots on TV, really makes me take my hat off to whomever thought of the idea. I haven’t seen such great distribution and packaging of a product in over 15 years. With that said, that makes this film the perfect choice for my ‘Horror Hut’ column to break into modern day and tackle the new era in scary movies. Ladies and gentlemen, ‘The Woman in Black’:

The Morning After: Chronicle

Confession: I have a sick obsession with superheroes and their superpowers.

The Morning After: Moneyball

If you have been a frequent visitor to Snowball Summit, then it’s safe to assume that you have seen me post articles about baseball. There’s something about America’s pastime that just gets me. Whether it was the rush of getting a cool baseball card when I was a kid or watching movies about legends like, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig or Jackie Robinson and truly feeling like these men where mythic beings. Baseball was my original math class. Learning how to calculate my batting average or ERA when I was a kid was as exciting to me as sitting down and watching the Rebels battle the Empire.

The Morning After : Warrior

Boxing is kind of irrelevant and wrestling is fake. That’s what has given the massive rise to the MMA phenomenon in this country. UFC has just struck a deal with Fox Broadcasting and the octagon is going to be brought in to each and every living room in America. It’s no surprise that Hollywood has capitalized on this movement but only that has taken so long for them to truly understand the growing groundswell for this sport.

The Morning After: Contagion

The threat of viral disease and infection has been a constant danger to human society for as long as humans have been on this planet. There have been countless instances where epidemics have ravaged the human race and none quite more devastating than the Bubonic Plague or The Black Death that killed over a third of the population in Europe in 14th century. The threat of epidemics in modern times is something that needs to be taken quite seriously. With outbreaks of ecoli and bird flu or even N1H1, the constant threat that disease is ever present. That’s the subject of that Contagion.

The Morning After: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Jeremy’s Take

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the riskiest motion picture to be released in a very long time. It doesn’t have any previous super-heroes to bring in a loyal flock of fan boys, it’s not a mega-billion property based off a successful book franchise*, and it doesn’t have a big name director, screenwriter or actor attached (aside from Andy Serkis and James Franco). So what is a franchise that’s nearly 43 years old supposed to do to compete in a time when super-heroes and toys are what compile most of the summer movie industry?

The Morning After: 30 Minutes or Less

Well I tried opening this review with a clever play on words about delivery and pizza but after reading it back to myself I realize I sounded like an idiot; not like that wouldn’t have worked for the review considering idiocy runs amok in this film. It’s no idiocy on the same level as Mike Judge’s criminally underrated Idiocracy but more along the lines of man-child stupidity a la Step Brothers. I guess the only real question that needs asking is whether or not 30 Minutes or Less delivers or if I’m just glad I got to see it for free?

The Morning After: Crazy,Stupid,Love

Jeremy’s Take

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a good movie. It’s not as great as it pretends to be (the whole time it masquerades as an indie art house film) but ends up being pretty damn solid. There are a lot of great performances, it’s extremely well written, and the film has a wonderful soundtrack. There are a few unfortunate caveats that tear away the illusion of you watching something important, and that’s the ham-fisted ending that shoves the meaning of the film in your face – as if you didn’t already need a lesson on love before you walked into the theater. But that’s why you go to see these films right?