Tag: awards

Movie review: Canadian film fest

In the wake of the Genies, we saw the two main contenders on the weekend.

*** Barney’s Version (January 2011) – Theatre
Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike. A movie built around Barney Panofsky’s relationships—with his father, his friends (especially Boogie), and the three Mrs. Panofsky’s.

She says: Very well-acted, engaging, funny in parts, but a lot of tragedy as well. A realistic love story at its heart. Just barely passes the Bechdel Test, though.
He says: I enjoyed it. Paul Giamatti is a really good actor.

? Incendies (April 2011) – Theatre
Lubna Azabal, Rémy Girard. After their mother’s death, her children (twins) are told to locate the father and the brother they knew nothing about. It leads to a tragic voyage of discovery about their mother’s past.

She says: Very well-crafted, completely compelling, but a dark story with a really disturbing twist.
He says: God, that was so depressing. I’m really disturbed now. Why would anyone want to see that?
She says: I think the fact that it’s affecting you so much shows that it’s a good movie.
He says: No. It was terrible.
She says: The story is terrible. (And I’m grateful that the worst of it wasn’t actually shown.) But I still think the movie was good. It was haunting.

Congratulations, Arcade Fire

… On winning Album of the Year at the Grammy’s. Which I actually didn’t realize would be such a shock to everyone who isn’t me. (Cause it was certainly the best 2010 album I heard all year…)

And congratulations, Grammy’s, on giving Neil Young an award for an actual song (not just nice music repackaging), thus eliminating one from your embarrassing top 10 list of people who’ve never won a Grammy.

And to all the people in Twitter-ville so very, very upset that the Grammy’s dared award Album of the Year to a band they’ve never heard of… I gave you my very mature response:

Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah. My band rules.

What is this a list of?

  1. The Beach Boys
  2. Neil Young
  3. Led Zeppelin
  4. Queen
  5. The Who
  6. Jimi Hendrix
  7. Chuck Berry
  8. The Doors
  9. Bob Marley
  10. Curtis Mayfield

Best live acts? Most influential performers? Best albums of all time? Most-played songs on Cathy’s iPod?

No, no, no, and no. It’s actually “Top Ten Who Never Won a Grammy”, courtesy of 411 Music [link removed as the site no longer exists].

This is my favorite quote in the list:

This is another situation where you can’t really find a good reason as to why the group has yet to receive this award; they were popular commercially and critically for not just a brief time but for a long while, and you would think that at some point, one year, in one random category, people could have thought that The Who of all bands did the best job. But that apparently wasn’t the case. Because, as we all should realize by now, these people are morons.

Nevertheless, I do plan to record and watch this year’s Grammy’s. At least they had enough sense to nominate and invite Arcade Fire… And with three nominations, they even have a serious shot at winning one.