THE RACSO AWARDS

THE MOST POPULAR MOVIE THAT IS NOT LIKEABLE NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY:

The Kids Are All Right

BEST ACTOR WHOSE LOOKS STEAL THE MOVIE:

James Franco, 127 hours

BEST ACTRESS WHOSE GETUP OVERTAKES HER ACTING:

Melissa Leo, The Fighter

GREATEST CRINGE FACTOR, COMEDY:

*Dinner For Schmucks

GREATEST CRINGE FACTOR, DRAMA:

*Movie with that young blond woman nominated for a best actress that is about death or drug addiction, or both

MOVIE THAT YOU SHOULDA/COULDA/WOULDA WALKED OUT ON:

Sex and the City 3

BEST MOVIE NO ONE SEEMS TO HAVE SEEN: 

Cyrus

STUPIDST-LOOKING COMEDY THAT'S SURPRISINGLY FUNNY:

Get Him to the Greek

MOST PRETENTIOUS MOVIE:

Exit Through the Gift Shop

BEST BOOBS, WITH OR WITHOUT CLOTHES:

Barbie, Toy Story 3

*Not viewed

Mikey Mirror: The Frolicking Rock Interview

by I. M. Grate

In this week’s issue, we take a break from our series of interviews of Oscar nominees by talking to one of the actors who has been repeatedly overlooked by the Academy. Mikey Mirror, the co-star of “Black Swan,” is riveting. He is in just about every scene of the movie, each time alongside his co-star, Oscar Nominee Natalie Portman. Yet he is not among the film’s nominees. Mirror chose to meet me in the lobby of "The Swanky Doodle," Beverly Hill's new hippest boutique hotel. He was already there, leaning against the far wall of the swanky black, orange and platinum gold lobby. Mikey is known to be shy and aloof. This reporter found him open and candid.

IMG:  Throughout most of “Black Swan,” the action takes place in front of the mirror.  It is through you that we see Natalie Portman's Nina descend into madness.  It’s as if her actions are not in front of us, but reflected through her reflection.

MM: It's true that my character is important to the movie. Nina feels herself being watched, and she is—she watches herself as she is looking at herself. It is interesting because although my character is as clear as any mirror, what we see of her is distorted.

IMG: Nina sees herself in multiple mirrors.  Sometimes there is a mirror reflecting across from you, so that in your mirror she shows up in a series of images that are decreasing in size.

MM: Yes, that was a technical effect.  Sometimes you'd see smaller mirrors reflected in other mirrors.  Sometimes the mirrors were rectangular, sometimes round.

IMG: Who played the smaller mirrors?

MM: I did. As I said, it was done with special effects. They took my image and transposed it into picture frames. They had me act with no one else there, even though it looks like Natalie's there. It was genius.

IMG: It's your acting that holds the film together. You are not just the dance studio mirror or a random mirror hanging on the wall--or even the one in Nina's dressing room. Why do you think that you were not included in the string of Oscar nominations for “Black Swan”?

MM: That is something that I have become accustomed to, though my friend Marty is trying to organize mirror actors to break from the actor's union.  He says that we have been facing persecution since “Snow White.”

IMG: I can believe that. Will you be joining Marty's faction?

MM: To be honest, I.M., I don't know. I really have to reflect on it.

Frolicking Rock will be covering the Mirror Secession Movement within the Actor’s Union.

Male Angst, Female T & A

     At the beginning of the movie Company Men, I was happy and psyched.  I was flanked on one side by my husband and on the other by his childhood friend. We were sharing a giganto bucket of popcorn that came with free refills.  And Ben Affleck had no Boston accent. The movie poignantly portrays the affect the recession has had on, well, company men.  Since men are the breadwinners in all families, being laid off is especially hard on them.  It’s not so bad for working women because only old, unattractive females are laid off.

     The good news is that behind every great man, there’s a woman. And for two of the three leading men, that’s the truth.  They have their own cheerleaders accompanying them as they face the hard times during a job search in a horrible economy.

     Ben and Tommy Lee Jones have supportive women.  At first Ben’s wife, played by Rosemary DeWitt, is a bitch.  There is tension in their marriage—until the moment that Ben tells her that that he lost his job.  From then on, she grins and bears it.  She is comforting, cheerful, and continuously tells him he can do it, even after their circumstances have caused them to move from their cushy house in a cushy suburb into his parent’s three-bedroom house in a low-income section of Boston.          


     Tommy Lee’s cheerleader is not his wife.  No, his wife is a spoiled bitch who only wants to spend more money from their endless funds.  His cheerleader is the beautiful Maria Bello, whom his wife drives him to have an affair with.  Maria is the only woman in the movie who has a high-powered job as do the three main men in the movie.  But Maria has it really hard.  She has to fire all the guys.  After firing Ben, she is so guilt-ridden that she sits back and actually takes seriously Ben’s vitriolic, curse-laden phone messages—over 20 of them.  The only redeeming part of Maria’s character is that she’s good natured enough to continue to have sex with Tommy Lee and after he’s fired, and, like Rosemary DeWitt, she supports him with a smile and continuous cheerleading.  Maria is so supportive that when Tommy’s bitch wife forces him to divorce her, Maria lets him move in with her.  That way it is easier for her to step up the cheers.

     Don’t worry, no sexism here—not all the females are angels.  Poor Christopher Cooper has a wife who is not only a bitch deluxe, but is also a fat comatose load who lies around in bed or sits around on the couch.  She causes his demise because she’s ashamed of him.  She doesn’t want the neighbors to know that he no longer has a job, so she forces him to leave the house everyday in a suit and carrying a briefcase.  She implicitly forces him to get drunk every day.

     But the real scene stealers, nay, the real co-stars of the movie, are Rosemary DeWitt’s butt and legs, and Maria Bello’s breasts.  In most of Rosemary’s scenes, her back is turned to us and the camera focuses on her shapely butt. In a product-placement coup, she wears the same designer jeans in all of these scenes, as we can see from the signature design on the butt.  I think that the jeans are from the design label, “7 for Mankind”—that would be fitting of course since the movie is only about mankind.

     Rosemary has more than a great butt.  She also has nice legs.  In a beautiful scene between Ben and Rosemary, Ben leans against the doorway of their bedroom and speaks soulfully and honestly with Rosemary as she applies moisturizing lotion to her legs, caressing them over and over.  That lotion is a seminal part to the movie and its underlying theme.

     It is Maria Bello’s naked chest that really pulls the film together.  After they have some afternoon delight, leathery Tommy Lee Jones sits around in bed while Maria rushes to get dressed to go to a work meeting. The reality is that when changing from a sexy top to a work top, a woman would have to take off said sex top, put on a bra and then a shirt over that.  A true artiste, Maria Bello does exactly that. When she peels off her sex-romp top, we see her boobs.  It is the climax of this movie.  The scene is so important that as soon as Maria flashes her chest, the man sitting behind us let out a super-loud, surprised and delighted “Oo!”  The rest of the movie must have been a letdown for him because that’s the only naked moment.

     The movie ends on a bittersweet note: A Boston accent re-emerges in a re-energized, happy Ben Affleck. 

Reality Goes Hollywood

It's not just the actors' hair and makeup that are touched up on the set.  It's the botox too. They must stab those faces silly!  And the needle points-smaller than needle points! Take a look at some of the close-ups on the red carpet: 

http://www.imdb.com/features/globes/2011/gallery/11_critics_arrivals

Some of the celebs actually look like REAL people!  Bad skin, exhausted, sour looks, sweaty, WRINKLED, yes, WRINKLED!

Of course, some don't simply can not take bad pictures.

(Shout out to you, Angelina!)

I'd reproduce the photos, but I may have some copyright lawyers reading this.  Stranger things have happened.

Golden Globes Rant

People,

SO much to say, SO SO much to say.... I can't pour out my brain fast enough onto the page.  I have lobotomized myself and tried to get all the white gook out, right onto my computer screen and into your living rooms,like those movies where the characters jump into a movie that they're watching ("The Purple Rose of Cairo," "Pleasantville," "The Wizard of Oz"*)

*not at all

I did not watch the GG's.  I can only watch the Oscars.  Sorry, but it's just they way I am.

BUT I did go to the Golden Globe Website to see who won the awards.  Pretty much predictable in the movie dept....Social Network. blah blah...Colin Firth blah stutter blah....Natalie Portman blah anorexia-for the-art blah....Melissa Leo BLAH? cool blah.....Anette Benning...blah lesbian blah.....

Reality Goes Hollywood

Speech and Syntax at the Movies

Over the holiday, I saw four 2010 Movies.  All had a focus on speech or syntax, some not as obvious as others--

True Grit: It is a little-known fact that the apostrophe had not been invented until the early 20th Century during Prohibition, when people behind closed doors drank so much that their words slurred together.  True Grit presents an authentic speech pattern.  Cowboys spoke without contractions at a Shakespearean clip with Yoda sentence structure.  Note the copious use of the word "not." Accurate it was.

The King's Speech: An ode to speech therapy, my mother's former profession.  As portrayed by Geoffrey Rush, King George's speech therapist employed a technique I am fascinated with because it will cure the atonality of my singing. The first step to improvement is to believe in yourself.  As you might know from the previews England's King George VI--called Berty by his family--stuttered.  Rush's character shows the future king that he is capable of clear speech by placing headphones on Berty's head and blasting music so loudly that he could not hear himself speak.  Since he could not hear his own stuttering, an uninhibited Berty flawlessly reads Shakespeare aloud.  I am resolved to  blast Black Sabbath on my ipod while singing WILCO.  Then I will finally be able to fulfill one of my life's dreams and become a backup singer in a band.

 The Fighter and The Town: Will Geoffrey Rush please hold up a giant mirror over the city of Boston and show those people how to pronounce their R's? Alternatively, do movies really have to be so authentic? 

Nb. Kudos to The King's Speech and its unspoken homage to Lord Derek Jacobi's brilliant portrayal of Claudius, the Roman Emperor who had a stutter, in PBS' "I Claudius."  Both Claudius and George VI were stutterers until they became the leaders of their empires. (I assume that Derek Jacobi is a Lord.  Pursuant to the 1998 Amendment to the Magna Carta, the Queen must knight all great actors who are aging.)