*** finding the entertainment in everyday life ***

Monday, March 22, 2010

Movie: Up in the Air

We watched Up in the Air with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga this weekend and both liked it, probably me a bit more than Joe. However, Oscar-worthy??? Don't think so. The writing was solid, the story was semi-original (with a little bit of hokey-predictable woven in, which was ok - not everything can be "Memento"/"Fight Club"/"Usual Suspects" original...I'm not that snobby about it). The music wasn't memorable. I liked the small parts from Danny McBride (who I don't think will be anything other than Eastbound and Down for me forever) and from Jason Bateman, who just excels at sarcastic, dry, dickhead type guys.

I'm glad George didn't get nominated...he did get rave reviews for his role. Don't get me wrong, I thought he was good, but don't you get the impression that his portrayal was just "George Clooney charming"? It didn't seem like that much of a stretch to me. Not that I know that he is truely charming in real life or anything. You just get that idea that he is a charming flirty kind of guy with a lot of charisma that people generally like. I thought Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick were quite enjoyable to watch; but, again, not worthy of an Academy Award in my humble opinion. So, I'm glad they didn't win. Jason Reitman really is kicking ass so far...Thank You for Smoking, Juno, and now this. I look forward to continuing to see his films into the future - also, he looks like Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters so I like him just for that.

I will note that we enjoyed this movie despite the fact that our DVD is broken and all movies are displaying in red and green only. This worked for Brotherhood (the series we just finished) since it is telling the story of an Irish Family and it was St Patricks Day. This does not work moving forward and I just have to get off my lazy ass and get a new player and recycle this one. It's irritating.

Update: I stand corrected, Clooney did get nominated. Thank you, Chris. I reiterate my opinion that he didn't deserve it. Not that it wasn't good or he wasn't good. I just don't think it was much of a stretch.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We once watched a whole movie thinking that it was supposed to be in black & white. Well, it turned out that the DVD player was somehow not hooked up right (I think we had just bought a new TV or TIVO at the time), so after moving things around, all the color came back! Yours does sound like it's had it though. I would make sure that the kids didn't mess with the cables first.
XOXOXO
Aunt Harlee

Chris Archibee said...

Dude, Clooney did get nominated. I liked this one much more than you did. We have several oscar season flciks on the docket from Netflix that we'll watch soon I hope so we can compare notes.