Tag Archives: Rio

27 Days of Old School: #8 “Rio” (by Duran Duran)

Posted on by Arleigh

DuranDuranRio

“Cherry ice cream smile I suppose it’s very nice.”

Yes, I listened to Duran Duran as a wee lad and I must say that they were quite awesome then and even now. “Rio” was the song that I enjoyed listening to the most out of their whole 80’s work.

One thing that Duran Duran could never be accused of would be that they were subtle. The band was a great example of 1980’s excess. From the Miami Vice cocaine-fueled and candy-colored fashion right up to the Gordon Gecko flaunting of wealth and luxury. Whoever said new wave and synthpop was suppose to be all just about happy songs and easy on the eyes videos.

This band and their songs might sound all peppy and such, but they were just as hardcore and debauch as the next hardcore rock band. They just did it in a much different set of fashion style and attitude. No overly hairsprayed glam rocker hair or crotch-tight leather pants. They preferred their attire to be Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs style.

If Lisa Marie Determined The Oscar Nominees….

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Oscar nominations are due to be announced on Tuesday morning so I figured now would be a good time to play a little game that I like to call: “What if Lisa had all the power?”  Below, you will find my personal Oscar nominations.  These are the films and the performers that would be nominated if I was solely responsible for selecting the nominees and the winners. 

For those who are interested, you can check out my picks for last year by clicking on this sentence.

Please understand, as you look over this lengthy list of deserving films and performers, that these are not necessarily the films I expect to see nominated on Tuesday morning.  In fact, I would be hard pressed to think of a year in which I have disagreed more with the critical establishment than I have this year.  For whatever reason, the films that truly touched and moved me in 2011 appear to be the films that are totally and completely off the Academy’s radar.  These are not my predictions.  Instead, they are my personal choices and they should not be interpreted as representing the opinion on anyone else affiliated with this site.  So, if you’re angry that David Fincher’s Girl With The Dragon Tattoo didn’t receive a single imaginary nomination, direct your anger at me and me alone. 

Best Picture

The Artist

Bridesmaids

The Guard

Hanna

Higher Ground

Hugo

Shame

Sucker Punch

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Young Adult

Best Actor

Michael Fassbender for Shame

Brendan Gleeson for The Guard

Gary Oldman for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Michael Shannon for Take Shelter

Rainn Wilson for Super

Best Actress

Kirsten Dunst for Melancholia

Vera Farmiga for Higher Ground

Elizabeth Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene

Saoirse Ronan for Hanna

Charlize Theron for Young Adult

Best Supporting Actor

Albert Brooks for Drive

Bobby Cannivale for Win Win

Jonah Hill for Moneyball

Patton Oswalt for Young Adult

Andy Serkis for Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Best Supporting Actress

Anna Kendrick for 50/50

Melissa McCarthy for Bridesmaids

Carey Mulligan for Shame

Ellen Page for Super

Amy Ryan for Win Win

Best Director

Vera Farminga for Higher Ground

Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist

Steve McQueen for Shame

Martin Scorsese for Hugo

Joe Wright for Hanna

Best Original Sreenplay

Bridesmaids

The Guard

Hanna

Shame

Young Adult

Best Adapted Screenplay

Higher Ground

Hugo

Incendies

One Day

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best Animated Feature

Kung Fu Panda 2

Puss in Boots

Rango

Rio

Winnie the Pooh

Best Foreign Language Film

(Please note that I do this category a bit differently than the Academy.  Whereas the Academy asks nations across the world to submit a nominee, I’m simply nominating the best foreign language films that I saw in a theater last year.  Those who follow the Oscars will note that I’ve both nominated and awarded the brilliant Canadian films Incendies, which actually was nominated for a real Oscar in this same category last year.)

The Double Hour

Incendies

Of Gods and Men

The Skin I Live In

13 Assassins

Best Documentary Feature

Bill Cunningham New York

Buck

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Jig

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Best Original Score

The Artist

A Better Life

The Guard

Hanna

The Tree Of Life

Best Original Song

“The Star-Spangled Man” from Captain America: The First Avenger

“Mujhe Chod Ke” from DAM999

“The Keeper” from Machine Gun Preacher

“Man or Muppet” from The Muppets

“Pop” from White Irish Drinkers

Best Sound Editing

Drive

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Sucker Punch

The Tree of Life

Best Sound Mixing

Drive

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Sucker Punch

The Tree of Life

Best Art Direction

Bunraku

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Sucker Punch

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best Cinematography

The Artist

Hugo

Melancholia

Shame

The Tree of Life

Best Makeup

Beastly

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Insidious

Sucker Punch

X-Men: First Class

Best Costume Design

Bunraku

The Help

Hugo

Sucker Punch

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Best Editing

The Artist

The Guard

Hanna

Hugo

Shame

Best Visual Effects

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Hugo

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Sucker Punch

The Tree of Life

List of Films By Number of Nominations:

10 Nominations – Hugo

7 Nominations – Shame, Sucker Punch

6 Nominations – Hanna

5 Nominations – The Artist; The Guard; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2; Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy; The Tree of Life

4 Nominations – Higher Ground, Young Adult

3 Nominations – Bridesmaids, Drive

2 Nominations – Bunraku, Incendies, Melancholia, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super, Win Win

1 Nomination – Beastly, A Better Life, Bill Cunningham New York, Buck, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, DAM999, The Double Hour, 50/50, The Help, Insidious, Jig, Kung Fu Panda 2, Machine Gun Preacher, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Moneyball, The Muppets, Of Gods and Men, One Day, Puss in Boots, Rango, Ressurect Dead, Rio, The Skin I Live In, Take Shelter, 13 Assassins, X-Men: First Class, White Irish Drinkers, Winnie the Pooh

List of Films By Number of Oscars Won:

3 Oscars – Hanna

2 Oscars – Bunraku, Shame, Sucker Punch

1 Oscar – Beastly, Bridesmaids, The Cave of Forgotten Deams, Dam999, Higher Ground, Hugo Incendies, Melancholia, Puss in Boots, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Super, Young Adult

So, will the Academy agree with my picks?  Well, probably not.  Indeed, it’s probable that they won’t agree at all.  And to that, I say, “Oh well.” 

The Academy Award nominations will be announced Tuesday morning.

Here are the 39 songs eligible for a Best Original Song nomination

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, the Academy announced that the following 39 films are eligible to nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Song of 2011.  Considering how the awards season has gone so far, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that few of the songs that I truly enjoyed hearing this year are eligible.  Still, it is nice to see that Capt. America will have a chance to score a nomination for “Star-Spangled Man.”

Then again, it would also be nice to see something from The Muppets win because I’m sure Bret McKenzie would give a perfectly charming acceptance speech.

One final reaction to this list: there’s a movie called White Irish Drinkers?  

Yay!

  • “The World I Knew” from “African Cats”
  • “Lay Your Head Down” from “Albert Nobbs”
  • “Star Spangled Man” from “Captain America: The First Avenger”
  • “Collision of Worlds” from “Cars 2”
  • “Dakkanaga Dugu Dugu” from “DAM999”
  • “DAM999 Theme Song” from “DAM999”
  • “Mujhe Chod Ke” from “DAM999”
  • “Rainbird” from “Dirty Girl”
  • “Keep On Walking” from “The First Grader”
  • “Where the River Goes” from “Footloose”
  • “Hello Hello” from “Gnomeo & Juliet”
  • “Love Builds a Garden” from “Gnomeo & Juliet”
  • “Bridge of Light” from “Happy Feet Two”
  • “The Mighty Sven” from “Happy Feet Two”
  • “Never Be Daunted” from “happythankyoumoreplease”
  • “Hell and Back” from “Hell and Back Again”
  • “The Living Proof” from “The Help”
  • “Coeur Volant” from “Hugo”
  • “It’s How We Play” from “I Don’t Know How She Does It”
  • “When the Heart Dies” from “In the Land of Blood and Honey”
  • “Ja Nao Estar” from “José and Pilar”
  • “The Keeper” from “Machine Gun Preacher”
  • “Life’s a Happy Song” from “The Muppets”
  • “Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets”
  • “Pictures in My Head” from “The Muppets”
  • “Summer Song” from “The Music Never Stopped”
  • “Imaginary Friends” from “Olive”
  • “Sparkling Day” from “One Day”
  • “Taking You With Me” from “Our Idiot Brother”
  • “The Greatest Song I Ever Heard” from “POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold”
  • “Hot Wings” from “Rio”
  • “Let Me Take You to Rio” from “Rio” 
  • “Real in Rio” from “Rio”
  • “Shelter” from “Take Shelter”
  • “Gathering Stories” from “We Bought a Zoo”
  • “Pop” from “White Irish Drinkers”
  • “Think You Can Wait” from “Win Win”
  • “The Backson Song” from “Winnie the Pooh”
  • “So Long” from “Winnie the Pooh”

The 39th Annual Annie Nominations Have Been Announced

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

And the awards continue…

The 39th annual nominees for the Annie Awards (honoring the best in animated films, television, and video games) were announced earlier today.

The 10 nominees for best animated film of 2011:

A Cat in Paris

The Adventures of TinTin
Arthur Christmas
Arrugas
Cars 2
Chico & Rita
Kung Fu Panda 2
Puss In Boots
Rango
Rio

The nominees for Best Animated Video Game:

  • Bumpy Road – Simogo
  • Catherine – Atlus
  • Gears of War 3 – Epic Games
  • Gesundheit – Konami Digital Entertainment
  • Ghost Trick: “Phantom Detective” – Capcom
  • Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet – Shadow Planet Productions, Gagne/Fuelcell
  • Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One – Insomniac Games
  • Rayman Origins – Ubisoft Montpellier
  • Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – Naughty Dog

A full list of nominees can be found here.

Here Are The 18 Films Eligible For Best Animated Feature Film

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi, everyone!  Well, I am in a much better mood than I was when I wrote my last post and that’s because I just remembered that November is the start of Oscar season!  Yay! 

Now, I know that a lot of people make a big deal about how little they care about the Oscars and they always sit around and bitch about how such-and-such movie didn’t win and how the Academy always honors mediocrity and the Academy is biased towards the mainstream and blah blah blah blah blah.  As I explained many times last year, I am aware of all of this and I don’t care.  On an annual basis, the Oscars prove themselves to be a big, tacky, spectacular train wreck and I love them! 

Anyway, as Oscar season slowly creeps to life (it won’t really be here until the various critic groups start handing out their equally silly awards in December), the Academy has released the list of the 18 films that have qualified to compete for the title of Best Animated Film.  Since there are 18 contenders, that means that we’ll actually have five nominees this year as opposed to just three and I for one say, “Yay!” to that.  Whenever I see only three films listed in a category, I have flashbacks to trying to understand the concept of the Holy Trinity.

Anyway, here are the contenders:

The Adventures of TinTin

“Alois Nebel”

“Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked”
“Arthur Christmas”
“Cars 2”
“A Cat in Paris”
“Chico & Rita”
“Gnomeo & Juliet”
“Happy Feet Two”
“Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil”
“Kung Fu Panda 2”
“Mars Needs Moms”
“Puss in Boots”
“Rango”
“Rio”
“The Smurfs”
“Winnie the Pooh”
“Wrinkles”

I have to admit that this has been kind of a strange year for animated films, largely because, as my fellow contributor Leonard Wilson once pointed out on twitter, this is the first year in which it appears that Pixar might not have a contender.  I recently saw Cars 2 and did not shed a tear and quite frankly, going to a Pixar film and not crying  is a bit like going to New Orleans, flashing your boobs, and not getting any beads.  It just makes you question everything.  Winnie the Pooh made me cry.  So did Rango and Kung Fu Panda 2 for that matter.  I haven’t seen Puss In Boots yet but I expect I’ll love it because it’s about a cat and I love cats.  However, I have a feeling that the award will be given to Adventures of TinTin just to keep Steven Spielberg from throwing a hissy fit after War Horse fails to live up to expectations.

Lisa Marie Goes To Rio (dir. by Carlos Saldahna)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Rio is one of those films that I missed when it had it’s initial run at the theaters.  However, last week, I finally got a chance to see it at the “dollar” theater.  Now, I have to admit that I consider the dollar theater to be something like the sixth ring of Hell and, before the movie started, I posted the following to twitter: “Wow, there’s a lot of ugly and obese children in this theater.”  And indeed, that was the case.  What I forgot to mention is that a lot of them were there with equally ugly and obese parents, the types who talked loudly through the film in accents that carried the dual twang of ignorance and stagnation.  Despite the surroundings though, I found Rio to be a perfectly pleasant little animated film.

Rio is the story of Blu (voice by Jesse Eisenberg), a blue macaw who, though originally from Brazil, has grown up in Minnesota and, as a result, has never learned how to fly.  Blu returns to Brazil with his owner (Lesley Mann) so that he can mate with another macaw, Jewel (Ann Hathaway) and keep the species from dying out.  However, things don’t go exactly as planned as 1) Jewel is more interested in escaping captivity than in mating and 2) both Rio and Jewel are abducted by a psychotic Cockatoo named Nigel (Jermaine Clement).  Nigel works for a bunch of poachers and soon Jewel and the flightless Blu find themselves on the run, looking for their owner while the Rio Carnaval goes on all around them. 

As one of my old theater teachers one said about me, Rio “is not without a certain fun charm.”  The film’s storyline of neurotic animals getting lost in an exotic locale and eventually finding the strength to believe in themselves is pretty much standard animation fare but the action moves along quickly and the movie takes full advantage of the whole Rio mystique.  The film’s animators create the Rio de Janeiro that everyone hopes they’ll discover if they ever make it down to Brazil.  Perhaps most importantly, Rio is child-appropraite without ever being so childish as to inspire adults to start drinking while the little ones laugh.

The voice actors all do a pretty good job distinguishing their individual characters.  Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly neurotic as Blu while Anne Hathway’s vocals are properly headstrong as Jewel.   The real stand-out here is Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. Clement, with his deep, wonderfully dramatic voice, brings a lot of flair to the villainous Nigel and, despite being a psycho Cockatoo, quickly became an audience favorite.  Though the human bird owners don’t get much to do, Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro are so endearing that you actually wish they had more screen time.  On the other hand, if, like me, you found George Lopez to be grating before seeing Rio, this film isn’t going to do much to change your mind.  (Lopez, not surprisingly, plays the know-it-all bird who helps Blu and Jewel make their way through Rio.)

As I watched Rio, I realized just how spoiled we all got last year as far as animated films were concerned.  Last year, I got a chance to see Toy Story 3, How To Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, A Town Called Panic, The Illusionist, Megamind, and Despicable Me.  It was, in many ways, a banner year for cinematic animation.  With the exception of Rango, there haven’t been any animated films so far that can really compare with what we were given last year.  As a result, it’s easy to be dismissive of a straight-forward, relatively simple family film like Rio.  That’s unfortunate because, taken on its own terms, Rio is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes.  Just don’t go into it expecting to see Toy Story 3 and you’ll be fine.