Haiku review:
Tarantino burns
Tate history and hippies
Brad, Margo, Leo
Click the picture below to watch a behind the scenes with Tarantino: 
Scene:
TRAILER:
Rating: earned the R with true Tarantino-esque violence at the end and language throughout.
Tag: Brad Pitt
THE BIG SHORT (2016) movie review
This little big pic with a load of big names was nominated for a number of huge awards this year. I have to admit that this film won me over with its jolting flashes through ’02-’08 memorabilia and music and 4th-wall-breaking fast talking. A steady flow of truth serum on tap, it’s a game of sleuthing out the real bad guys. It’s the love of money preying on the weak-willed while families lose homes and livelihoods. Greed, abased and voracious, feeds on the basic human need for shelter in a market thought completely stable. Banks, originally the lending good guys, began playing Monopoly, gambling with real money, lending until the system imploded on itself. Only the fittest survived, and only the few, the smarter, the brave, the fighters saw what no one else would and bet against the house. They bet on the fringe probability that the future of finance had the dark potential they foresaw.
Based on the true story that few truly understand well, this film offers consistent sidebars with laymen’s tips for digesting the basic inside scoop of heady Wall Street jargon. They make it palpable using Jenga games that represent mortgage company strategies, fish soup comparisons, bubble bath exposition, and famous cameos throughout.
Actors like Bale, Pitt, Gosling, and Carell prove their chops yet again in caricatured roles like the rowdy anger management class drop out and savant mathematician, but each one is also given a level of personal story, history, loss, and heartbreak. We root for the gifted sad guy. Every time.
So, despite crass language and nudity, this is one incredible film. The brilliant script proves its worth every minute as dialogue rings true and exposition hides in plain sight below a universal and personal, visual story. Behind the truth, that in the end, being right and gaining obscene amounts of money can’t buy any of them what they really want: joy.
WORLD WAR Z (2013) movie review
They run faster, stare harder, scale walls, headbang, stick around for a quick bite, and have no feelings. Sound like your last relationship?
This zombie apocalypse has a new face. In our world, the slow moving, cannibalistic, “Walking Dead” reign. However, director Mark Forster, a favorite since his Finding Neverland (2004) and Stranger Than Fiction (2006), and WWZ‘s producer Brad Pitt have reinvented the franchise.
Some criticized the action zoom in at minute 5 or so in the film initiating the continuous conflict, but character development, schmaracter development, right? Pitt and Jolie have laid the foundation for Pitt’s trustworthy, fatherly character by adding a new child to their brood each year. We buy that he is the hatchet-wielding family man with a heart of gold whose war-shredded past shows in each line of his face and in his stringy beard. He is apt for the task, a believable and beautifully clever team player father figure rushing to save the world.
Back to nuts and bolts. To see or not to see. Despite its furious filming foibles and over budget fear-driven rewrites, they succeeded. Zombie flix can easily ring cheesy, but true to genre, it is scary. Rental was a good call for me. I can’t do gore or 2 hours of breathless intensity. So, the catchy bird-like zombie squawk that introduces each toothsome attack became my cue to get up and fold some laundry or send an email. The Zombies weren’t skip-trudging toward their next human meals; they rushed for the bite to turn the next victim. Anxiety comes in ocean waves, then pulls back long enough for audiences to breathe.
Don’t miss Jimmy Fallon’s “Yodel” interview with Brad Pitt: (linked below)
Oscar Predictions 2012
Confession: my Oscar picks rarely match the Academy’s choice winners. I can’t help it if I’m a sucker for the underdog. But, loving a loser in this case still means loving a nominee. Second runners up dodge with dignity but remain eternal favorites.
BEST ACTOR nods to Brad Pitt‘s tux, 
but George Clooney should take it home for his distraught dad in The Descendants. 
Gary Oldman is still too creepy despite his beloved Commissioner Gordon in The Dark Knight.
In the end, Jean Dujardin will accept in French for his perfect Gene Kelly joi de vivre in The Artist.
SUPPORTING ACTOR? Kenneth Branagh in My Week with Marilyn.
Though The Help will put up a good fight, this Oscar for BEST ACTRESS belongs to Michelle Williams for her Marilyn Monroe. 
And Jessica Chastain is up for playing my favorite character in The Help, 
but she should have been nom’d for Tree of Life.
It seems the true battle cry will rise up between the DIRECTORS – all deserving. The Artist Michel Hazanavicius, 
The Descendants Alexander Payne, Hugo Martin Scorsese, 
Midnight in Paris Woody Allen,
The Tree of Life Terrence Malick.
Malick may not show, Payne may be all show, Allen would dance the jig if he got it, H will bring the dog along, but the night will belong to Scorsese.
Hugo might just take BEST PIC’s statue home. But I believe that all the feel-good films that fight or first will sit it out while the little, lower budget, love song of a silent film The Artist takes first.
It’s a good year for Oscars and a decent year in film. They open with the red carpet, and the show begins at 4pm, Feb. 26. Download a ballot and cast your votes, or get the Oscar App free this week.
Splatter: on FILM 