What is your favorite fairy tale, and what version is it that is your favorite? No Disney stuff.

Very hard question. I think my favorite is Beauty and the Beast but my favorite version is the one that I see in my head.

But my favorite fairy tale character is the Big Bad Wolf.

Who do you want to be?

Movies to Watch in April

So March is about over. I saw Paul and liked it. It wasn't great but it was a decent and fun diversion. I might see Sucker Punch tomorrow but I think the reviews might make it a rental for me. There are lots of other films for me to see from this month but, seeing as we're heading into April, there are tons of movies to check out here too.

Paramount of these is Your Highness, with James Franco, Natalie Portman, and... Danny McBride? Seriously, this movie looks hillarious and there are very few comedies that look funny to me. A high fantasy adventure mixed with low-brow humor and pot jokes. It's a recipe for disaster but something tells me this is going to work.

Here are my other April Picks... with trailers!:

• Source Code (You've seen the ads so there's no need for the trailer link)
• Super
• Cat Run
• Dylan Dog (I also want to check out the obscure comic this is based on.)
• The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

And there's even more coming in May, but we don't need to have a whole blog post based on Thor, now do we?

The Oscars are tonight. I'm trying to avoid them. I'm sure King's Speech will win but I want anything else to win but it because King's Speech seems like the obvious winner. We'll see. Really, I'm trying to hold on to my self-made promise not to care about things like that. What does it matter what awards movie makers give to other movie makers? All I should care about are what movies I like. All you should care about are what movies you like. Screw Hollywood, Bollywood, the indie scene, whoever. Awards are meaningless. Celebrate the art that means something to you tonight.

So certain people will kill me for admitting that I'd never heard "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs before it was on the Glee Super Bowl episode. But, even though that ruins my cred, I think it's embarrassing that YYY fans are scoffing at all of the people who now like the song because they found it through Glee. When did being popular become bad? Why can't we be happy when people discover the things we love? Being first does NOT make you special. It just makes you first.

Now shut up and enjoy the music.

Whenever I see the mug shot of the Jared Loughner, the psycho-killer from Tuscon, I am, of course, freaked out by his expression. Maybe it wouldn't be so scary if we didn't know what he's done but I think he looks pretty crazy regardless. What really frightens me, however, is that he doesn't understand--he has no capacity to understand--what he's done.

Loughner was clearly mentally ill but he wasn't being treated for it. He should have been put into a psychiatric hospital before he could do something like this. Sure, he was kicked out of school but all that did was make the people in that environment feel safe. They didn't go far enough in making sure everyone was safe. I'm not faulting them. How many times have I seen someone who clearly had a problem and just shook my head with pity? Shaking our heads and sweeping madness under the rug isn't good enough. I suspect that a large part of the violence in our society stems from undiagnosed mental illness. We're putting people in jail or, worse, we're letting them roam the streets when they should be somewhere that will provide them with proper medical treatment.

Fitz and the Tantrums - MoneyGrabber

Happy New Year, everyone! To celebrate, here's a song from last year: Money Grabber by Fitz and the Tantrums. It's a huge throwback to soul music--a trend I hope keeps growing and evolving into a genuinely modern movement. While the sound is definitely from the sixties, the look of the band is sixties inspired eighties.

Top 10 Movies of 2010

I go to the movies a lot. Not as much as I want to. Someday I'd like to be a professional movie critic so I could get paid to go to movies but, with newspapers dying and a stigma of elitism attached to film criticism*, that occupation is getting loftier and loftier. But that won't stop me from doing what every professional critic is doing this time of year. So, without further delay and in alphabetical order, here are my 10 favorite films of 2010, and why I think they're great.

• Black Swan - Darren Aronofsky gave us another head trip with his story of a ballerina's transformation from a sweetie-pie girl into a cold but sensual monster.  What's real and what isn't in this movie?  I won't tell you because I'm still not sure what was and wasn't in her head.  What I do know is that Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis proved that they're two of the most exciting young actresses out there, with or without having done the scariest lesbian sex scene ever recorded.
• Get Him to the Greek - Russell Brand and Jonah Hill are boozing and using all across the UK and the USA to get to Los Angeles in time for a concert.  While the movie is raunchy, it's filthier moments feel organic and real, rather than something pushed into the movie just to shock the squares.  The best part of the movie was the music from Russell's character of Aldous Snow (first seen in Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and his band, Infant Sorrow.  They're my favorite fake band.  Even more than Spinal Tap.  Bonus points go to Greek for including Elizabeth Moss, best known as Peggy Olson on Mad Men.  Yeah, I kinda have a crush on her.
• Inception - I can't mention Inception without mentioning a better dream film, Paprika, from the late Satoshi Kon who we lost this year to cancer.  Paprika had the absurdities of dreams down pat while Inception's dreams were on a much more realistic level.  However, that doesn't take away from the excitement of watching Christopher Nolan's well constructed inversion of a heist film.  Leonardo DiCaprio was the star of the show but he had great back up from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ellen Page, Michael Caine and many other stars.  Best of all, we're all still wondering what happened at the end of that movie.  I don't want an answer to that, though.  A sequel--or, better yet, a companion film with new characters--would do just fine.
• Kick Ass - Also known as The Hit Girl Movie because it's Chloe Moritz's Hit Girl character who stole the movie.  While some people whined and cried over it's over-the-top violence, especially that involving the pint sized psychopath, I thought the movie did a great job of deconstructing the comic book superhero while still being funny and fun to watch.  And Nicholas Cage is in it too.  That's not a good thing, but what happens to him makes it all worth it.  (Spoiler: he dies!)
• Machete - Even though I have little patience for B-movies, Machete had all the juvenile, over the top fun that regular B flicks never give me.  Danny Trejo earned his place as one of the great cinematic bad-ass heroes by chopping up bad-ass bad guys on both sides of the US/Mexico border.  The movie also gave us Robert DeNiro as a Janus faced Texas senator (not very bad-ass) and Michelle Rodriguez as a sexy and powerful freedom fighter (totally bad-ass.)  Director Robert Rodriguez usually irritates me with his other films but he definitely won me over here.  He even gave Lindsay Lohan a job between  rehab stays.  Wasn't that nice of him?
• Ondine - Sadly, this is my only real foreign film on the list, but it's a lovely one to have.  A little bit of a fairy tale, Ondine features Colin Farrell as a fisherman who rescues a beautiful woman from the ocean only to discover that she might be a selkie.  I was disappointed that a potentially wonderful family film had too many bits that make it unsuitable for the elementary school crowd but if you're looking for a something to enjoy with adults and teenagers, I think this will be a treat.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - I don't know if this is the best movie of the year but it's probably my favorite.  A crazy, relentless, and joyous tribute to youth culture, Scott faithfully clings to it's source material and, if it doesn't improve upon it, it happily expands upon it buy embracing the visual language of comic books, video games, kung-fu flicks, and a host of other influences.  Made by Edgar Wright, best known as the guy who made Simon Pegg and Nick Frost the comic duo of the decade, this movie should have made him the hottest director in Hollywood.  Instead, it looks like it may take more time for him to earn the recognition he deserves but he will get it..  Even though he plays his usual lovable loser, Michael Cera took a turn for the aggressive with his fight scenes at the titular hero.  And even though he was only on screen for a few minutes, Chris Evans almost stole the movie as evil ex #2, Lucas Lee, and convinced me that he's the right man to play Captain America.  Well, Lucas Lee is the right man, anyway.
• Shutter Island - Another weird film starring Leo DiCaprio, this one also has you questioning what is and isn't real, like Inception.  From one of our living cinema legends, Martin Scorcese, Shutter Island gives us a spooked out mental institution from the 1950s with all of the trimmings.  Once again, you don't really know what happens at the end and I don't want an answer.  But I do want to soak up the disturbing and beautiful images again.  It's one thing to have a wound that sprays blood.  It's far scarier to have a wound that sprays water.
• The Social Network - Once again we have a movie where you don't know what is real and what isn't, but this time it's because a lot of it was all made up even though it's the true story of Facebook's founding.  Time Magazine Man of the Year, Mark Zuckerberg, might have been afraid of the movie's release--which is why he used that time to make some big donations to charity--but the movie accidentally makes him look like a hero, even if he's an overly logical and cold hero.  With Jesse Eisenberg taking on Mark's persona, Mark is shown to outsmart everyone around him without giving a damn about anything other than making his creation the best it can be.  The movie isn't flattering but it made me respect the man and his accomplishments, and it made all those who were burned by Mark look like novices who need to go back to school.  The movie also featured some nice tunes from Trent Reznor, including a mischevous, industrial interpretation of Edvard Grieg's In The Hall of the Mountain King.
• Toy Story 3 - Full confession: I did NOT cry during this movie, but I sure felt sad at it's bittersweet ending.  But it's a Pixar film!  It's always more sweet than bitter.  While I'm not in the belief that everything Pixar does is magic--I'm one of the five people in the world who don't like Up--they certainly made something special here, and they once again proved why they should have bought the Disney company instead of it happening the other way around.  John Lassiter and company also proved that just because they make cute animated films instead of serious live action ones doesn't mean they can't make an engaging and intelligent piece of art.  The entire movie is about leaving--or losing--your home and your family.  It's something so powerful and universal but it's all wrapped up in a candy coating of beautiful CG colors and adorable characters that just touch snarkiness without wallowing in it the way so many other animated movies do (I'm looking at you, anything-made-by-Dreamworks.)  There's a good chance that Toy Story 3 might get a best picture nod... and the win.  it is the highest reviewed movie of the year and it deserves all the praise it gets.

Honorable Mentions go to Hot Tub Time Machine, Babies and Despicable Me.  I also want to shout out a few movies that I, unfortunately haven't gotten to see yet: True Grit, Easy A, and Cyrus.


*That criticism is well deserved, but I wish more people would listen to the critics. They've saved me from seeing more than a few rotten flicks.