There’s always that one jerk at your Oscar party; you know the one.  He’s rooting for just ONE movie because he’s only SEEN one movie; for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay.  If there were an award for Best Key Grip, he’d want that one movie to win that award too.  And he doesn’t even know what a Key Grip does.  How do you know that?  Because you asked him.  And he didn’t know.  The jerk.

Don’t be an Oscar Jerk.  See all the movies.  You’ve still got time.  And they’re all (FINALLY) playing within an hour of Bing thanks to the Art Mission, Endicott Cinema Saver, and Regal.  (Where’s AMC at???  Oh well; they have good popcorn.)

I’ve seen three so far.  And here’s what I think of them, in order of least sucky to most sucky.

Frost/Nixon
SEE IT AT REGAL, ITHACA
Plot summary: Jerkface president commits crime.  Jerkface president never admits he’s wrong.  Playboy TV host wants to interview Jerkface president.  Jerkface president accepts cause he’s low on cash.  Playboy TV host corners president into admitting he’s a jerkface.

Frost/Nixon moves quick, has got entertaining characters, phenomenal actors, and great direction.  For history/politics dorks, this movie is entertaining as hell.  But if you’re looking for typical Hollywood fluff, you might want to check out Slumdog Millionaire.  It’s basically every James Cameron film you’ve ever seen, but set in India.

Milk
SEE IT AT THE ART MISSION, DOWNTOWN BING
Plot summary: Closety gay guy meets man in subway.  Man convinces guy to move to San Francisco and open camera shop.  Guy opens camera shop but has no rights.  Guy runs for political office 3 times and fails.  Guy finally gets into office.  Total jerkface other guy shoots first guy dead and gets off by saying he ate too many Twinkies.

This film did not win an endorsement from the Hostess company.

Milk has such brilliant acting that you’re driven crazy by the fact that the script doesn’t measure up.  Political dorks will be frustrated that the film doesn’t explain more about the politics; the romantics will be annoyed because you never learn why Milk is drawn to such dysfunctional relationships.  It’s not that the script is BAD; it just that it isn’t INCREDIBLE, and you want it to be.

Oh well.

Slumdog Millionaire
SEE IT AT REGAL, FRONT STREET BING
Plot Summary: Boy grows up in Mumbai, India.  Total jerkfaces kill boy’s mom in religious squabble.  Boy scrapes by as con artist and becomes obsessed with orphan girl.  Boy loses track of orphan girl and ends up appearing on the Indian Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  I’ll leave out the rest of the plot because the ending is the only one of the three that can’t be looked up in a history book.

Slumdog Millionaire is a Hollywood epic set in India.  It’s a pretty standard but well-constructed romantic adventure.  In other words, it was nominated for the same reason films like Titanic are nominated—they entertain a whole lot of people because they’re relatable and have charismatic stars.

If you’re looking for “profound”, don’t see Slumdog Millionaire.  Go see Doubt.  It wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, but it should have been.

BTW, I tried to see “The Reader” yesterday at the Art Mission, but couldn’t because it was sold out.  Get there early.  "Benjamin Button" is playing at the Cinema Saver.

OK, so maybe you’ve heard the buzz about the new Gus Van Sant movie “Milk” starring Sean Penn and James Franco.  The NY Times called it the “best live-action mainstream American movie” of the year.  Apparently, they really liked that animated dog movie Bolt.

Question is, if it’s so hot—and there’s rumors that it might take Best Picture—why isn’t it in Bingo yet?

Probably because the topic has shoved it into that weird grey area where wanna-be mainstream movie meets art flick.  Milk is about one of the first openly gay politicians to be elected to a major office in the US—as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.  A year later, he was murdered alongside the mayor by a guy who claimed he did it because he ate too many Twinkies the night before.  Seriously.

A friend of mine did a little digging and found out that Regal (corporate) doesn’t plan to put it in Bingo because the release isn’t wide enough.  Then he called Focus Features, who told him it’s coming to Ithaca and Syracuse this Friday.

But I did a little digging myself and talked to the folks over at the Art Mission Theater who said that “we are trying very very hard” to show the film in town.  We’ll see what happens.

People are calling it the new Harry Potter.  And it’s not really that.  Other people are calling it the new Interview with a Vampire (since author Anne Rice suddenly decided that God was WAAAAY cooler than blood-sucking vampires and started writing Christian novels).  It’s not that either.

But it might be the next middle-school girl obsession.

Twilight’s a new movie from a four-book series written by swim-team mom Stephanie Miller.  Describing how she came up with the novel, she said that she had a dream one night about a teen couple: “One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire. They were discussing the difficulties inherent in the facts that … the vampire was particularly attracted to the scent of her blood, and was having a difficult time restraining himself from killing her immediately.”  Let’s not try to read too much into her unshakable interest in the “fantastically beautiful” high school boy—being a swim-team mom gets lonely sometimes I guess.

Anyway, pre-teen girls are certain to want to get all cuddly with Twlight leading pretty boy Robert Pattinson (who also played Cedric in Harry Potter).  You need proof?  Opening nights are ALREADY selling out and the movie doesn’t come out till Nov 21st.

If you’ve got kids, buy your tickets (and Tiger Beat magazines) now.

SPOILER ALERT: James Bond fans that don’t want to know ANYTHING about the next movie SHOULDN’T read this post.

If you’re a true James Bond fan, you remember the scene in 1964’s Goldfinger when Shirley Eaton is asphyxiated in pure gold for betraying her boss.

Well in a super-clever update to that concept, Quantum Of Solace’s Gemma Arterton’s will be drowned by oil.  Ewwwwww.  I’m impressed that the actress agreed to do it.  She has more faith in special effects people than I do; those are the sorts of moments in film-making where four days later the actress gets incredibly sick and goes into a coma and the filmmakers throw up their hands and go, "whoops, I didn’t know that black sludge we poured on her could do that."

Anyway, here’s the pic.

Quantom of Solace comes out November 14th.