Vareity on Letters From Iwo Jima and Jeffrey Wells' piece.

And I can't wait until you act as if the opinion of a fairly insignificant award season blogger with delusions of grandeur is enough to bury a major motion picture. Wait, you already did.

There were PLENTY of reasons to bury The Good Sheperd long before we heard Tapley's opinion. He just confirmed everything that could have possibly gone wrong from the trailer.

Shitty start for Pursuit - 40% http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pursuit_of_happyness/

Rotten from both Variety and HR.

Happyness, except for Will Smith, is out of the major categories, I'm thinking.

Agreed, and it'll need to see a big upturn in reviews for him to win.

This may just be me being stupid... but doesn't the fact that Iwo Jima's almost entirely in Japanese make it more a foreign language picture nominee than BP?

Academy rules for Foreign Language Film make only Foreign-made films eligible.

So a foreign language film like Letters or Apocalypto, made in the U.S., are not eligible.

Or so I understand.

Hmmm. I didn't think of that. Guess I always assumed its Eastwood, and would open wide (north of 800 theatres).

Kris Tapley on Letters.

That is very high praise to say the least.

As I expected.

I was baffled to see why people thought it was a Picture contender. The Oscars may historically love sap, but it has to be proven sap, which this isn't.

Agreed. It reads more like a four star review than a three and a half.

I don't mind if Iwo Jima gets nominated, I just really fucking hope it doesn't win. I can only assume Eastwood has some bizarre vendetta against Scorsese.

Especially given that he gave a film like Flags which he didnt particually think was great, 3 stars.

Sort of reminds me of I Am Sam's reception where people were expecting it to be a contender

Some NSFC links for upcoming movies:

Children of Men
Curse of the Golden Flower
Dreamgirls
The Good German
The Good Shepherd
Letters From Iwo Jima
Notes on a Scandal
Pan's Labyrinth
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Rocky Balboa
Venus

Actually I think Tapley is psychologically incapable of ever giving an Eastwood movie a higher/equal rating to that of a Scorsese film. I found his praise for Letters genuinely surprising considering his usual condescending, ignorant & pompous attitude towards Eastwood. Could it be even Tapley's growing up a bit?

I think that at least partially balances out those who are incapable of giving an Eastwood movie a bad grade. Kirk Honeycutt from THR shows that quite clearly in his Letters review, where in his last paragraph he admitted the film is slow, but then immediately said "may be part of Eastwood's strategy", showing more willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt than he probably would have to a lesser director.

Well Tapley is very much behind Letters with the way he's been campaigning for it the past week.

Then I await your list of critics who gave good reviews to the likes of Firefox & The Rookie with interest ... oh, wait a minute ...

Eastwood didn't make The Rookie which had some great reviews. And Firefox deserved all the hate it got. But more importantly, Clint Eastwood wasn't always considered this incredible director, that's a more recent development.

Eastwood's directorial talent was evident from his first couple of movies - both Play Misty for Me & High Plains Drifter stand up extremely well, the latter especially so. The Outlaw Josey Wales made TIME magazine's 10 Best list, drew an incredible rave from Orson Welles & routinely ranks amongst his top films, yet that was made in '75. Eastwood's had a varied career - as has any director with as sizable body of work as his - but he's kept trying different things & in the process he's gotten better & better. But the talent was always there so to suggest that Eastwood suddenly became this great director post-Blood Work, as if all of his previous work counted for nothing, is downright ludicrous. Such a view no doubt offers small crumbs of comfort to those who'd presumably prefer damnation rather than have to admit that Eastwood was anything other than some actor pretending to be a director but for everybody else Eastwood as director was a major talent right from the start.

The latest BOF Oscar article:

http://www.teenbachelorproductions.com/ ... pdate.html

Brian and I will be dual covering the awards this year.

Well Pursuit should be gettng atleast one nod come Oscars.

Seal should be getting a best song nod for his song from Pursuit of Happyness "Father's Way" obviously will lose to one of the three Dreamgirls songs, unless theres a split.

His song wasn't particularly memorable and the song competition is so fierce that year that I has a shot at getting in. Score is more likely (as well as Actor and Supporting Actress).