13 Thoughts About Ocean's 13

I'm a little bit worse for wear today (too much alcohol, too many cigarettes, too much dancing) but I told myself I had to crawl out of bed and stop watching The Closer episodes on DVD and to have a shower and wake myself up. Now that I am I present to you seven pros and six cons about Ocean's 13, which I saw last weekend.

PROS
Scott Caan and Casey Affleck - Somebody give these guys a spinoff or a sitcom where Caan is the lovable slob and Affleck is his finicky, but well-meaning best friend. Caan makes pizzas at his father's pizza place (constantly resulting in hilarious ethnic comedy gold) while Affleck has just finished law school and is trying to become a high powered lawyer. Can they get along? Will it end in tears? Will it win an Emmy? I say YES!

Mexico - I know it's just an extension of the above, but any scene in the Mexican factory was a riot. Seriously. SPINOFF! (okay, not seriously, but you catch my drift.)

Oprah - Because me and my movie-going friend Georgie both turned to each other and went "I've seen that episode!" The one where the woman has, like, 43 kids and so Oprah gives them a house and such. It was pretty awesome.

Ellen Barkin - She's totally bonkers, but she's a hoot.

The Heist - Once it really gets into motion is delightfully entertaining, much like in Ocean's 11. But definitely not like Ocean's 12. I always like seeing (in anything like this) how all the pieces are going to fit together and such. I'm one of those people that likes the "a ha!" moment when you notice something that most people probably caught onto scenes back. But, whatever, y'all don't know me.

The cinematography - "Peter Andrews" always does great work and he does a great job with the widescreen canvas. Loved the shots against the deep blue night sky.

Vincent Cassell - No reason why exactly. I just like looking at him.


CONS
George and Brad - They're sleepwalking to the nth degree. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt to try and get more people to focus on the peripheral character (like, possibly, Affleck and Caan?) but that still doesn't mean they have to look as if they're just biding time between margaritas between takes.

Some of the first half - Much like the one above, it felt like the movie was cruising for a while on the uber-ness of the film itself. Like they were all just making it up as they went along. I'm all for movies to look like the cast was having loads of fun, but when they're having loads of fun off camera it sometimes means they're not as "on" when they're on camera. Get it?

Bernie Mac - The one problem with ensemble films such as this is that they make casting based on who's hot at the time and I guess Mac was popular for a while back in 2001 (hard to believe, but true) which means we have to continue watching him. It's not entertaining, nor will he ever be.

The Godfather jokes - I liked Caan and Affleck playing a characters called Turk and Virgil (as in James Caan's "Virgil the Turk"), but geez, it seemed they shoved half the Godfather dialogue into the film and other references to the films what with Caan, Garcia and now Pacino in on it too.

Bernie Mac - Nope. Still don't like him.

Thirteen - There weren't thirteen members of the plan. Ugh.

IN CONCLUSION
B-

I'm so confused

So, I saw Babel. I think I am the very definition of "mixed". I can see strong points, but I don't see them as that strong. There are bits that don't seem like they should work, but they do. And there a bits that feel like they should work, but they don't. I can see many flaws, yet I don't think it's a bad movie. It's just confused. As confused as I am.

Take for instance the four individual storylines. The Tokyo one has no plot at all, yet it was probably favourite. The Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett doesn't have much more of a plot either. The Mexico storyline probably has the closest the movie comes to a fully fledged plot, but it doesn't feel right. The acting is a mixed bag, too. It's all positive, but people like Brad Pitt don't really have anything to do (Pitt screams for an ambulence a lot but that's it). My favourite was probably Rinko Kikucho, I definitely saw something there with her. But, she was let down by a plot that, as I said, doesn't exist. Adrianna Barraza is impressive too, but yet again, she doesn't have much to do except run around looking crazy in the second half of the film. I would prefer Kikuchi get an Oscar nomination out of the two, but really, I don't think either of the two or Pitt deserve the nominations they seem on the cusp of receiving.

Gustavo Santaolalla's score is good, but the sound design is atrocious. It's incredibly loud and high pitched and terrible to listen to. Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is nice, but there doesn't seem to be a destinct visual style. There are certain scenes that are incredibly well done (the Tokyo drug scene for instance) and then there's just sort of lazy scenes that... well... aren't (the shootout in the hills).

I have my issues with the movie - i doubt Innaritu actually has a reason for all of this stuff, he just dopes it - yet once it was over I didn't not like it. I can't say that I liked it though. Ugh. I'm confused. I don't know. I'll be happy when Innaritu and Arriaga's next films seperately are released. Hopefully they can ditch the "we're all connected" bull and make a proper film in proper linnear order. C+ or a B-.

This movie reminds me another 2006 release 2.37. That movie had all the positives of a good film and I can't say that I didn't like the movie, but the issues I had with it bugged me and I just couldn't possibly give it a higher grade. Aagh. Anyway...

Hah, Fancy that! Brad Pitt could get two Oscar nominations!

There's his supporting performance in Babel, which I don't think is as safe as many seem to believe. But the nomination that seems much more solid is his nomination for The Departed

I was checking out Oscar Watch's FYC gallery and was looking at this one for The Departed (to the left, click to enlarge) and saw Pitt's name as a producer. I can't remember whether that movie that opening credits (why don't more movies have opening credits anymore?!) to notice the name, but... weird. I so didn't know about this until today. Pitt's IMDb page lists it so it is indeed that Brad Pitt.

How surprising. By the end of this year Pitt could have a grand total of three Oscar nods in his career. Two Best Supporting Actor (Twelve Monkeys and Babel) and one for Producer on The Departed.

He was also a producer on Running With Scissors, but let's leave that where it is.

"Have you felt my tingle"

LOL. Last night I watched this weird 1989 movie called Cutting Class. It's a horror comedy. It's really strange though. Not Lynch-strange or anything, just while watching it it felt really weird. Like, I couldn't tell if they were serious or not the whole time. I mean, the movie's villian sprouts the line "Have you felt my tingle" in the big climactic scene and an earlier scene involving Donovan Leitch and Brad Pitt's characters (yes, Brad Pitt!) involves them discussing how they used to be friends and get under cars "Remember when we took that thing out and didn't put it back in" "Yeah, we were screwing around" !!!!

The lead girl was some actress called Jill Schoelen who looked a lot like Shannon Doherty. And it also had Martin Mull, and while that name may not sound familiar check out his IMDb profile. I remember him most as the Principal on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch scarily enough. Remember in Last House on the Left when there were these strange moments where it became almost a slapstick comedy involving two police officers? Well, that's what Mull's character was. He got an arrow in the heart in the first scene but then continues to appear throughout the movie as comedic relief (as if the rest of it wasn't supposed to be). Just... strange. The strangest bit though involved a water cooler, which was just illogical to the nth degree.

**I had two kickass dreams last night though! One of them involved this massive scavenger hunt and, well, I heart scavenger hunts. The other one involved Chandler from Friends going around solving wacky crimes with a high powered lawyer who turned out to be a transexual. It was like The Crying Game just vice versa!**