Remember when I used to do random movie posts?

Yeah! So I'm gonna do that again. Here are the most overrated and underrated movies since 2000.

OVERRATED
2000: Almost Famous
2001: Ghost World
2002: The Hours
2003: Pirates of the Caribbean: Whatever
2004: Finding Neverland
2005: Brokeback Mountain
2006: Babel
2007: Once
2008: Rachel Getting Married (of what I've seen so far)

UNDERRATED
2000: George Washington
2001: Lantana
2002: Morvern Callar
2003: Love Actually
2004: Kinsey
2005: Jarhead
2006: Scoop
2007: Lust, Caution
2008: Iron Man (again, of what I've seen)

So Liam Neeson

is like weirdly professorial-y hot in Kinsey right? I'm not just dirty-minded?

Of course, I don't need to talk about Peter Sarsgaard there. Goddamn, he's hot. He's like a sex slug (I may have made this analogy before, and I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere else, I'm not that clever); he just leaves behind a big ol' visible trail of sex wherever he goes, even despite the fact that we all now know he's not all that gifted... heh.

Excessive "happy birthday celebrities I don't know!!!" posts are so 2006/2007, but...

We must celebrate, as it is the birthday of those who give/gave life to Clyde Martin, Tessa Quayle, and Pam Beesley. LOVE all three - characters, and actors.

I forget how much I liked Kinsey.

2004 was the "year of the biopic," and this one was probably the best of all. It doesn't escape the usual biopic confines, but it's way more well-written, clever, and funny, and subversive (I'm sure the subject matter helps...) than most other standard Oscary biopics. I mean, between this and the utterly saccharine Finding Neverland, the mediocre Ray, and the highly ambitious and technically perfect but empty The Aviator, I'll take Kinsey. Plus, it has Laura Linney. And John Krasinski. And other theater stars galore. And Liam Neeson and Peter Sarsgaard making out. What more could you want?

You Can Count on Her.

I love Laura Linney. Nay...I worship Laura Linney. She's my favorite actress, certainly currently working and perhaps ever. No one is more consistently brilliant. Take, for instance, Kinsey. While most actresses would have only bothered to show up and not truly try to put any effort into the movie, knowing they had the inherently Oscarable role of the "long-suffering yet loyal spouse in a biopic." Instead, Linney puts fire and life (I know it was basically made to be teh Oscar clip, but that "stop using science to justify what you've done" scene is great), as well as her usual sublety, into the role. She never takes that part for granted and her Oscar nomination was completely deserved (as were her other two, but in an ideal world, she'd have at least seven. Yes, I said seven!). Most people, thank God, agree with me on La Linney, but if she ever gets backlash, it's that she "coasts." That's a ludicrous charge. What happens is, Linney almost never wants you to see her acting, unlike, say, Cate Blanchett or Marion Cotillard in La vie en rose, just to name two punching bags of this blog who were the first to come to mind (sorry guys). Instead, she does what should be the goal of every actor/actress: she becomes her characters. Think about what she's best known for - usually, it's playing a complicated woman in a complicated family. That's an outline, yes, but all these families are different. Linney always captures the precise dynamics in every family she portrays, and she always makes it look effortless and incredibly charming. I can see how some say she "coasts" but she just doesn't do it, dammit!

Laura Linney is the patron saint of this blog, and if you don't like it, GTFO.

La Linney.

Debatably, my favorite actress.

1. You Can Count on Me
2. P.S.
3. The Squid and the Whale
4. The Truman Show
5. Kinsey
6. The Life of David Gale
7. The House of Mirth
8. Love Actually
9. Mystic River
10. Primal Fear (the only one of her performances that's not great)

I CANNOT WAIT for The Savages. I love Laura!!

Happy birthday Schindler & the Scoop solution

Happy happy birthday Liam Neeson, AKA Oskar Schindler and Alfred Kinsey. Oh, and Aslan. And Daniel. And Qui-Gonn (ew). And Jean Valjean (he was PERFECT). And Michael Collins. The guy plays a lot of God/Jesus figures, doesn't he? For good reason. He's amazing. Yay!

I'm watching Scoop on TV and I discovered why everyone except me hated it. Scarlett Johansson's character, Sondra Pransky, is basically written as a somewhat drunk, somewhat slutty, female Woody Allen. She delivers her lines almost too perfectly - they are really really Woody-esque. It sounds totally bizarre for Woody Allen stuttering to be coming out of Scarlett Johansson's mouth. The movie is good though! Seriously! Watch it again!