"Twixt" Trailer

You can tell the age of a director by the projects they choose to work on. Clint Eastwood is busy making semi-mediocre films each year that are increasingly plain. Steven Spielberg has gotten honestly lost in the bustle of the new and shiny. Francis Ford Coppola is making films like Twixt, which seem oh so predictable and yet unpredictable in a way. It looks kind of corny, more than a tad stale, and reminds me eerily of Rubber. Yet I'm somehow intrigued. This trailer doesn't play as bad. It plays as unconventional, and as such it has a sense of draw. And then the title card comes up, capping it off well enough.

Honorary Oscar Going to Coppola... And Others!

These next five days are going to be particularly messy, but I'll get the latest film related new to you as soon as I can. Among those worthy events is the announcement of the winners of the Honorary Oscars this year. Obviously they won't be recognized during the actual broadcast, but an award's an award. Francis Ford Coppola, director of such masterpieces as The Godfather, has been chosen to receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. Usually these awards go to people I haven't heard of before, so the fact that this is going to somebody who I've not only heard of, but been inspired by is particularly satisfying.

Then going down the list of the other winners, we reach people I have never heard of or cared about. Jean-Luc Godard has never had a film that's received a nomination, yet he gets one here. Then there's actor Eli Wallach, who has donated his time to a bunch of westerns I haven't had the time or energy to see, like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Finally, who could forget to put in a mention of Kevin Brownlow and his work for the film industry. This is one of the huge problems I have with the Honorary awards. They never seem important enough.