Birdman, J.K. Simmons soar at Oscars

Birdman takes the Oscar for Best Picture.

Congratulations to Birdman for winning the Oscar for Picture.

Glad to see the Academy recognizing creative original films. In the past, films like Birdman might have been considered too strange for mainstream viewers.

Will Birdman take flight at the Oscars?

Michael Keaton and his Birdman alter ego.

Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, was the strangest film I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen strange.

I’m not counting bizarro sci-fi flicks, like Mesa of Lost Women, about a mad scientist who injects spiders with human growth hormone to create a race of beautiful women, or David Croneberg’s Videodrome (David Cronenberg, ’nuff said). Those films are in a strange category all their own.

Birdman falls in line with more mainstream films such as Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda, Barton Fink, Mulholland Drive, and Donnie Darko. Strange films geared toward a general audience. That’s where Birdman feathers its nest as the strangest of them all.

Whiplash: Not quite believable but unbelievably good

Miles Teller with J.K. Simmons as the teacher from Hell, in a scene from Whiplash.

Whiplash is the most captivating film I’ve seen in a long time.

Sure, it has holes in the plot the size of the ones in the Dead Sea, but the movie is so intense, that a climactic concert scene elicited loud audible gasps from the audience.

Throw in some bodacious acting, bodacious jazz, and the bodacious ability to be parodied, and you’ve got yourself one bodacious hit.

James Garner, lovable moments

James Garner as the affable Jim Rockford.

James Garner was such a good actor. You felt like you knew him, and wanted to have a beer and a shish kebab with him. He was so laid back and charmingly funny, anything and everything he did from movies to TV commercials, was worth watching.

Escape to Victory: Say it ain’t so

How football (soccer) won the war…right.

In 1981, I paid $7 to watch the film Victory in a Boston movie theater. I still want my money back.

Alec “Wrong Way” Baldwin

Alec Baldwin and his latest arrest.

What do actors Alec Baldwin and James Cromwell have in common? Both are members of PETA and both have been arrested.

That’s it.

James Cromwell has a history of standing up for animal rights and trying to save the lives of pigs.

Alec Baldwin has a history of being a pig.

Actor James Cromwell walks the walk

Actor James Cromwell was arrested last week after protesting in a cage at Los Angeles International Airport about Air France’s cruelty to monkeys.

James Cromwell was arrested last week. It wasn’t his first time behind bars and likely won’t be his last. The Emmy award-winning actor for American Horror Story placed himself in a shipping crate at LAX to protest the way Air France treats primates when shipping them to laboratories.

It’s a great day for the Irish

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from Judy Garland from her film Little Nellie Kelly.

Inside Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman and Francois Girard at the Quick Center at Fairfield University. —Kate Eisemann photo

One of America’s most successful actors, admits he often feels like a failure.

“Life is a failure, but we keep on trying,” Dustin Hoffman recently told a packed audience at the Quick Center at Fairfield University. The audience was abuzz with university students, faculty members, and Fairfield residents who won free tickets through a lottery drawing to the event, “An Award-Winning Conversation with Dustin Hoffman and Francois Girard.”

Christian schism: Thank you Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey at the Oscars. —Veeoz 360 photo

While hunting down a photo of Matthew McConaughey on the net, I came across an intriguing blog with a post titled “Matthew McConaughey is not my Hero.” It was written by a lady named Melissa. Melissa is a Christian lady. A Very Christian Lady. Surely a lady much more Christian than the likes of myself could ever aspire to be. After the post went viral, she wrote a follow up post, which has also spread like wildfire.