The Adventures of Psychic Sika: Ben Affleck in tights.

Everybody seems to hate the idea of Ben Affleck as Batman. I don’t.

I think it’s going to be awesome. And not just because I am convinced Ben Affleck reads this blog, but also because I predicted it would happen back in March, 2011.

Well, kind of predicted it. I think I was close enough with this picture I posted.

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My Oscar Picks for the 85th Academy Awards in 2013

It’s only hours until the 85th Academy Awards and just like previous years I’m picking out who I think will walk away with the golden Oscar statuettes.

My selected winners are in red.

Disclaimers: 
1. I haven’t seen any of the short films nominated but I am confident with the guesses I made.
2. I made some more guesses in some other  categories I don’t have a clue about.. like Art Direction and Costume and Sound and Editing and stuff like that.
3. I hated Tree of Life last year. This year I don’t hate any of the films nominated, even though I found Lincoln quite boring. Maybe it’s because I’m not American. Or a history buff. I still believe in Daniel Day-Lewis though, mainly because I thought he had a lovely beard.
4.  I just want to suggest to all filmmakers that next year they try to keep the lengths of the movies down. I understand that “Life of Pi” had to be approx. 3 hours and 14 minutes, but did we really need all those Russell Crowe musical numbers in “Les Miserables”? Not to mention “Beasts of the Southern Wild” which could have been cut down with at least one beast.

Best Motion Picture

Argo
Amour
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty 

Achievement in Directing

Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Michael Haneke, Amour
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln
Denzel Washington, Flight
Hugh Jackman, Les Misérables
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty
Naomi Watts, The Impossible
Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

Alan Arkin, Argo
Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Master
Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook
Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams, The Master
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables 
Helen Hunt, The Sessions
Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook
Sally Field, Lincoln

Best Animated Feature Film

Brave
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman
The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph

Original Screenplay

Amour, Michael Haneke
Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino
Flight, John Gatins
Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola
Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal

Adapted Screenplay

Argo, Chris Terrio
Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin
Life of Pi, David Magee
Lincoln, Tony Kushner
Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell

Best Foreign-Language Film

A Royal Affair (Denmark)
Amour (Austria)
No (Chile)
War Witch (Canada)
Kontiki (Norway)

Original Score

Anna Karenina, Dario Marianelli
Argo, Alexandre Desplat
Life of Pi, Mychael Danna
Lincoln, John Williams
Skyfall, Thomas Newman

Original Song

“Before My Time,” J. Ralph; Chasing Ice
“Everybody Needs a Best Friend,” Walter Murphy and Seth McFarlane; Ted
“Pi’s Lullaby,” Mychael Danna and Bombay Jayashri; Life of Pi
“Skyfall,” Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth; Skyfall
“Suddenly,” Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer and Alain Boulil; Les Misérables 

Achievement in Production Direction

Anna Karenina
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln

Achievement in Cinematography

Anna Karenina, Seamus McGarvey
Django Unchained, Robert Richardson
Life of Pi, Claudio Miranda
Lincoln, Janusz Kaminski
Skyfall, Roger Deakins

Achievement in Costume Design

Anna Karenina, Jacqueline Durran
Les Misérables, Paco Delgado
Lincoln, Joanna Johnston
Mirror Mirror, Eiko Ishioka
Snow White and the Huntsman, Colleen Atwood

Best Documentary Feature

5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How to Survive a Plague
The Invisible War
Searching for Sugar Man

Best Documentary Short Subject

Inocente
Kings Point
Mondays at Racine
Open Heart
Redemption

Achievement in Film Editing

Argo
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Achievement in Makeup & Hairstyling

Hitchcock
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Misérables

Best Animated Short Film

Adam and Dog
Fresh Guacamole
Head Over Heels
Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”
Paperman

Best Live-Action Short Film

Asad
Buzkashi Boys
Curfew
Death of a Shadow
Henry

Achievement in Sound Editing

Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

Achievement in Sound Mixing

Argo
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall

Achievement in Visual Effects

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Life of Pi
Marvel’s The Avengers
Prometheus
Snow White and the Huntsman

 

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Funny Stuff (TBA)

Wow, it’s been ages since I posted something.

I know what you all are thinking; “Sika, have you been out partying all nights of the week with celebrities with one girl under each arm, drinking champagne and ended up having orgies with models and stuff?”

Yes. And also my computer broke. But now I am back with a new one, so get ready for a bunch of upcoming hilarious posts. I haven’t written any of them yet, but I’m working on some stuff with working titles like;
Top 10 Best Movies 2012.
Infiltrating Swedish Television.
Fat Ballet Girl.
Top 10 Annoying TV Characters 2012.

and of course, my favorite:

Top 10 Profanities to use when your computer breaks and you realize nothing has been backed up.

Movies I Would Love to See Made: Thelma & DeLuise

Plot Summary: A road trip cross country to Mexico with Thelma (Geena Davis) and DeLuise (Dom DeLuise), filled with funny hijinks, rape and murder. 

More Stuff I Would Love to See Made:

Sitcoms I Would Love to See Made: Krueger Town
Movies I Would Love to See Made: Big Momma’s House 3 
Kids Shows I Would Love to See Made: SpongeBob Hoskins SquarePants
Bands I Would Love to See Formed: Huey Lewis and the FOX News
Sitcoms I Would Love to See Made: Sparks and Recreation
Movies I Would Love to See Made: Rise of the Planet of the Abes

Celebrating 1,000,000

Wow, congratulations to us! We just reached 1,000,000 visits here at the blog so me and Lunki celebrated with coffee at our favorite cafe. We go there all the time, but this time we walked in with our heads held high.

When we reach 2,000,000 we plan on getting some cake too. Or at least a couple of cookies.

Sika McBeal

Remember the show Ally McBeal and how the main character often heard songs in her head? I do that too!! I hum the “Love Theme from The Godfather” whenever I’m walking somewhere. I’ve done it for years.

That’s pretty much all I have in common with Ally McBeal though. I (sadly) do not suffer from bulimia, I have no law degree (or degree of any kind for that matter), I make no money and I find an aging Harrison Ford pretty disgusting.

What song is in your head when you’re walking around?

Summer Recap

As you might have noticed, we’ve had a summer hiatus here at the blog. But now we are back! Well, I am back NOW, Janne the Director has been back for days and has already angered millions (potentially) of Batman fans by posting a negative review of The Dark Knight Rises. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s really funny. And spot-on.

So.. here’s a recap of what has happened since I posted something last. I have watched tons of sports. The Summer Olympics in London almost gave me an overdose. I’m not sure why I watched as much sport as I did, but I suddenly found myself having both the TV and a couple of webcasts

going simultaneously. I just had to know who won the women’s individual Archery competition, at the same time as I had to find out who the better field hockey team was, Argentina or Australia!

Sweden was kind of a disappointment at the Games with 8 medals, ranking them the 37th country at the medal table. You might think “Hey, that’s not too shabby for a country with a population of only 9.5 million people!” I thought so too, at first, until I discovered that Switzerland ranked 33rd and they have even less people in their population! But I don’t care, the Swedes fought well, most of them, and we did get a silver in the men’s handball tournament which made my whole summer.

And speaking about sports, since Zlatan Ibrahimovic left AC Milan for Paris Saint-Germain, I am presently a PSG fan. My philosophy is “Don’t follow a team, follow a player”.

Okay, what else can I tell you..? We have almost completed the Swedish pilot we’ve been working on. It has taken time, mostly because of the summer hiatus and because, well because I am not a hard worker. I can’t wait for it to be finished so we can send it off to Swedish Television. We’re almost nearly done, it might be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Oh, I almost forgot! I also bought and devoured Columbo – The Complete Series [DVD]! That might explain why the pilot has taken so long to finish…

We have Beards so we know Movies: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Brace yourselves; here is my review of The Dark Knight Rises. It’s loaded with SPOILERS so you might not want to continue reading on if you haven’t seen the movie yet. (And if you want to read the review in Swedish instead, click here!)

I didn’t like it — period. It was epic but stupid. I usually like Christopher Nolan movies the first time I see them, but then they tend to dissolve like Fizzies in water as soon as I re-watch them. However, this time it was enough to see the movie once (or perhaps I will like it when I re-watch it..?)

Nolan doesn’t seem to like superhero comics and tries desperately to put everything in a realistic world, which I would like if he did it completely and not just when it suits him. When something from the comic book Batman is removed, Nolan excuses it with it “not suiting his realistic version” but as soon as something is deemed false or illogical he credits it to be “in honor of the comic book world’s suspension of disbelief” – something that DOESN’T define good comics at all…

I have decided to keep this review as short as I possibly can (believe me – it could have become longer!) and to achieve that I have made a list of 10 things (in no particular order) of stuff I don’t think worked and then end with a few words on what I actually did like.

1. The Plot.
I challenge you to re-tell the plot for me without scratching your heads and think “was that how it really was?”, because without the powerful musical score which tells you “what you see now is really important, believe me!” the house of cards will fall. Let me give it a try:

“Ehrm… Bane, who is like a cool character… ehrm… plans to blow up Gotham.. for some reason… Oh, yeah! Because that girl’s dad wanted that and he… ehrm.. is like in love with her.. eh.. Yeah, but he doesn’t blow up the town, he just lets a bomb tick for five months so that..

Ehrm… Fuck it! Let’s talk about Bruce Wayne instead! I mean, he IS the hero and the centre of the story and he… ehrm… builds some kind of energy-thing in secret that only he and Morgan Freeman know about… and perhaps a hundred construction workers who built the underground damn that…

Fuck it! Let’s talk about Batman instead!! Batman is the true centre of the story and he quit being a hero because… ehrm… thanks to the fact that he in the last movie took responsibility for what Harvey Dent/ Two-Face did.. ehrm.. crime has been outlawed in Gotham. Actually, we should outlaw crime everywhere; it’s a great idea.

Yeah, but Batman returns because… Bane returns? Or because that tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun asks him? I’m not really sure but I’ll bet it was memorable because it was a major plot point…

Anyway, Batman returns only to get the shit beaten out of him and get to spend the rest of the movie like he was Ivanhoe (and yes, just like in that one, he chooses the wrong girl here as well).

Because, he should have chosen Catwoman (who isn’t called Catwoman in the movie because Nolan thinks that is silly) even though she’s obviously a lesbian, at least she is one up to the point where they needed an ending that says Bruce Wayne “made it” because.. ehrm… Alfred said so. Yeah, that he has succeeded if he has a coffee somewhere in Europe with a woman who loves him. *cough* Not farfetched at all.”

2. The Characters.
Pretty much every character seems to be driven by the screenwriters as if they were puppets. None of them seem to have a will of their own, and they are only driven by what is important for the extremely hollow plot. Why does Alfred leave? “Well, it’s because it’s needed for that really clever final scene which is almost Inception-like, but amazingly even more strained”.

Bane talks about torturing souls and setting off an atomic bomb with a five-month countdown.. Why? Is it to play Caligula on the deserted streets of Gotham (who still seem to have garbage pickups and other stuff a city needs to not completely deteriorate)? NO, it’s because he’s a fool in love, a henchman who starts to cry when the musical score plays a “sad theme”.

I actually only thought two characters were believable, Commissioner Gordon and the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun. To be honest, I can’t believe no other character reacts to all the bad stuff happening like they do!

The girls are actually pretty kick-ass, but sadly they only fill one purpose: How I Met Your Mother or Who Shall Alfred See Bruce Have a Coffee With in The End?

3. The Fingerprints
Bane needs fingerprints from someone on the board of Wayne Enterprises to activate the atomic bomb, so he sneaks in to their office building in the middle of the day with a bunch of armed guys and forces someone to accompany him voluntarily.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to use Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints, which he already has in his possession? I mean, he bought them from Catwoman earlier and I’m pretty sure Bruce’s fingerprints work better. (And did the board even know about the bomb? Should its safety even be in jeopardy due to their fingerprints?

4. The Bomb.
In the Screenwriting business there’s a lot of talk about a movie’s “time lock”. You know; in romantic comedies the guy has to say to the girl that he loves her before she marries the wrong guy, in a thriller they have to find the exonerating evidence before an innocent person is executed and so on… It’s basically a deadline for the main character that sprays gasoline on the fire we call “excitement” in a movie.

The most classic “time lock” is the ticking bomb. “We have to save X and defeat Y before the bomb explodes!”

I would have loved to have been at the meeting with Warner Brothers when Christopher Nolan pitched his idea:

-“And then Bane threatens to blow up Gotham City with an atomic bomb!”
“-Wow, how exciting! How much time does Batman have to save the city?”
-“FIVE MONTHS!”

5. The Police.
I will give you all the time and money in the world to complete this mission: Trap 3000 policemen underground without killing them, keep them there for five months without them starving to death (even though they only seem to be able to receive tiny notes from the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun through a manhole cover) and make sure when they are trapped that they all somehow lose their guns, because when they finally resurfaces it will look so much cooler if they face their enemies unarmed. (I don’t know, perhaps I missed a scene where the starving policemen eat their guns to survive?)

Sure, it helps that the first hour of the movie establishes that the Gotham Police Force is as incompetent as the police force in The Blues Brothers… but still! Come on.

6. Spa Torture.
Bane wants to “torture Bruce Wayne’s soul” and accomplishes that by throwing him into a pit. A pit where nice old men massages his aching back and gives him life advice and a way to freedom through a climbing wall where you need to be able to jump like a panicky child to be able to get through.

Oh yeah, and a TV so he doesn’t miss what’s happening plot-wise, so the screenwriters doesn’t have to have someone retell him everything that has happened later when (WHEN, not IF) he manages to escape. Ehrm… great torture, Bane. Kudos.

7. Closed Off Gotham.
Nobody can get in or out – the whole town is closed off. Which is why it’s so important for Bruce Wayne and the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun to get a school bus full of orphan children out of there before the city explodes. Bruce asks the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun to nicely persuade those extremely stupid army guys who are guarding the only bridge out to let them through because… well, because they are orphan children. If you don’t help orphan children you will never win a Miss USA contest.

Smart plan. An even smarter plan would have been if Bruce Wayne had explained to the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun which way he himself took when he returned from that prison pit abroad. I would personally have chosen that way instead of the bridge.

8. Kryptonite.
Nolan doesn’t like silly supernatural figments in his Batman movies (who he doesn’t even want to call Batman movies) so he removes the fact that Bane inhales something called “Venom” in the comic books to be able to become Popeye strong. No, Nolan thinks it’s more “for real” that Bane walks around sniffing some kind of pain relieving gas through his mask.

Why even put it in there? Well, it’s in there because the screenwriters needs an Achilles heel in the middle of the face of their… ehrm… physically invincible villain… who really isn’t that invincible, it’s just that people have been eating all the guns in the city so nobody has the possibility to shoot the guy. If Bane was real smart he would down a couple of Tylenol instead, but I guess Nolan would find that idea tasteless due to… well… Heath Ledger.

9. The Bomb. Again!
An atomic bomb that explodes within a minute of Bat-flying-thing distance from the city? Congratulations Gotham! You have cancer.

10. Alfred likes cafés.
One example of something that sums up the entire Dark Knight screenplay structure is Alfred’s love of having a coffee at a specific café in Florence ONCE a year and fantasizing about Bruce Wayne showing up and having a good life. It’s ONLY at that café, once a year that Alfred thinks about Bruce Wayne; the man he raised, having a good life.

How lucky that Bruce listened carefully to Alfred when he told that story, so he later can show up there with a lesbian Catwoman (that was her only function in the movie, right?) because it IS a nice scene… so nice that you don’t even care how extremely obvious the setup is.

And THAT is how everything in the screenplay is set up. Every action, every character, every scene, every “bad guys has their own court of law, and even if it’s cool it doesn’t serve a purpose because it’s always the same judgment”-concoction is based on “Yeah yeah, the point of it is FUN” – which is the opposite of “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.”

Which is fine by me, but if they make a movie where the journey doesn’t matter I think it would be a good idea to make it a SHORTER JOURNEY!!

Okay, so what DID I like then? I really liked all the actors, but mostly the tiny guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun. The movie is powerfully epic, bit parts who was in the trailer, the plane hijacking in the beginning, Bane up to the point where you get to know why he does what he does, Bruce Wayne limping, Gordon’s fast recovery when it is really needed and stuff like that. It’s mostly good stuff that I expect in every movie and not stuff I should be surprised to get in a comic book movie.

I’m insanely jealous of everyone that loved the movie…

More “We have Beards so we know Movies!” Reviews
Men in Black 3
Prometheus 
The Hunger Games
The Thing (2011) vs The Thing (1982) vs The Thing from Another World (1951)
The Turin Horse
Straw Dogs
Abduction
Midnight in Paris  Green Lantern
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Death Wish 1-5
Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D
Super 8
Melancholia
Insidious
Red Riding Hood
The Hangover Part II
Fast Five 
Thor 3D 
Tron: Legacy

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