How did you get past security with those dangerous brown eyes?

Ok, sorry. I know I had that freaky man's face up here for way too long. Even I was starting to not like coming here.



So I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I'm torn. I really thought I was going to loathe it, and I kinda did loathe most of the characters. As far as recent Woody Allen goes, it's fine. The two female leads, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson play fairly lame stereotypes (I'm not knocking the acting...yet), but the former is more interesting. The latter...one-fourth of it is ScarJo's deteriorating acting skills and the rest is a truly pretentious and annoying character.

As Alex so brilliantly put it, more and more she's playing the sorts of characters Lost In Translation's Charlotte would have made fun of. So. True.

The film itself was sort of a pretty train wreck. I did enjoy Vicky's dilemma (trite though it may have been) and the scenery and music made the time pass nicely. But the end especially was just this anti-climatic (which I can normally handle) petering out that sealed its lameness. I don't mean to knock the movie too much, because I never wanted to turn it off and I was certainly compelled to continue. I just wouldn't watch it again.

And Penelope Cruz?



I'm still not on that fan boat yet and this role irritates me that it's even nominated. It's JUST LIKE Marisa Tomei's Wrestler nomination: really? Whereas the Tomei is getting nominated for strutting about topless, I can only guess PC is getting the nod for making out with ScarJo in a darkroom. It's really frustrating. Tomei and Cruz are certainly two talented actresses but give me a fucking break.

(Sure enough, I go online to dig up shots from the film and too many fanboys have, what, taken pictures of their TVs and posted these uber-grainy close-ups of The Kiss. *facepalm*)

But kudos to Javier Bardem.



To be able to do No Country For Old Men and this and be 100% believable as either the scariest motherfucker to walk the earth or the dark, sexy Spanish seducer? That's some talent. (Though in fairness, his No Country haircut really did deserve a large chunk of that Oscar statue...)

Well, Oscars are this weekend and it's really not looking good for my having seen everything. I can't help it. The nominations this year are easily the dullest in years. I just can't be motivated to care. I'm still working on it, though...we'll see.