Billy Crystal Nominees for a Billy Crystal Oscars

The nominations for the 84th Academy Awards were announced this morning and they’re perfectly befitting a show that has Billy Crystal for a host. Safe, traditional, hokey, and above all, boring. Hugo led with 11 nominations, with The Artist just behind with 10. Meryl Streep was nominated for The Iron Lady again, and it’s almost guaranteed that she’ll win, even though she didn’t win anything for Doubt or Adaptation. Andy Serkis was (deservedly) snubbed, as were Brendan Gleeson, everyone from 50/50, Ryan Gosling, Michael Shannon, John C. Reilly (for Cedar Rapids, not We Need to Talk about Kevin or Carnage), and probably someone really awesome who I’m forgetting.

It’s nice to see Midnight in Paris get recognized, not because it was the best movie I saw this year (it was cute), but because it was the only one of these not specifically marketed as an Oscar picture. It’s amazing, you just tell Academy voters what they like and they like it! It’s like MANswers for middle-aged faux-intellectuals wearing shawls. I’m not sure if these idiots thought they were judging art or buying cigarettes. “Debonair dudes prefer Moneyball. It’s the smoothest!” The only way to make this telecast watchable is if they put the horse from War Horse in the audience and keep cutting back to it while it sits there pooping and eating hay.

Best Picture
The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

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I’ve talked a lot of crap about the Golden Globes in the past, how they’re run by a shadowy cabal of foreign journalists who work for publications no one’s heard of and have closed membership, and generally choose nominees based on who throws the best parties, but after this year, I may have to rescind my criticism. Aside from bringing back Ricky Gervais to host (guaranteeing it will be more watchable than the Billy Crystal-hosted Oscars), they released their nominations today, and dare I say they’re pleasantly surprising. 50/50 finally got some recognition as a best picture of the year, and Brendan Gleeson got a nomination for The Guard. Even *I* had almost forgotten how awesome The Guard was.

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/obligatory

The Screen Actor’s Guild released their list of nominees for the 18th annual (yay! finally legal!) SAG Awards today, and not surprisingly– in fact, predictably to the point of being nauseating — biopics were the big winner. Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Michelle Williams, Meryl Streep, Kenneth Branagh, Armie Hammer, and Jonah Hill were all nominated for their portrayals of J. Edgar Hoover, Billy Beane, Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher, Sir Laurence Olivier, Clyde Tolson, and Paul DePodesta (fictionalized as Peter Brand) respectively. You’d think a guild made up of actors of all people would recognize that creating a believable personality out of words on a page is harder than just doing an impression of a living person, but I guess not. Daryl Hammond should make his SNL sketches longer, he’d clean up on these.

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This week on the Frotcast, the whole gang is here to take your mailbag questions.We do that for about 20 minutes, then I play about ten minutes of Joe King’s stand-up from our show in LA over the weekend. I think my favorite bit is about his idea for a movie about a 30-foot gay falcon who captures guys to drink their cum. “When that falcon tells you to cum, you damn well better fill his dish.”

At around 38 minutes, we bring on Laremy Legel of Film.com to talk Moneyball, which he liked, Drive, press roundtables and how much they suck, Juggalos, and world politics.

• 9:00 – Listener Brian wants to know what to do with his life
• 16:00 – Listener Matt has a question about comedy school
• 22:00 – Joe King’s stand-up clip — I realize, the audio isn’t great. It starts off bad and rustle-y, but sort of mellows after that. Anyway, if it’s unlistenable to you, you can fast forward. It’s about eleven minutes.
• 38:00 – We bloop in Laremy

Keep the questions coming, we enjoy them greatly (hopefully you do too?). Frotcast@gmail.com. Subscribe on iTunes. Subscribe via RSS.

And now, your video of the week (sent in by one of the Mikes).

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Opinions: I Haz Them. Today’s Topic: The story of how in real life, Hollywood told Billy Beane to go f*ck himself.

I wish I could get straight to my point here, the way Moneyball the movie became the opposite of Moneyball the concept, without first explaining why Moneyball isn’t a good movie. But seeing as how it’s currently tracking 94% recommended on RottenTomatoes, it looks like I owe it some time. So here goes.

At best, Moneyball is inoffensive. It’s one of those movies that’s great at looking like an important movie without coming close to ever being one. It has the trappings of a good movie. It’s a stuffed shirt. It’s Ryan Seacrest, a news anchor you listen to because he’s wearing a suit.

Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane isn’t a character so much as a collection of quirks. He’s always chewing and spitting and pursing his lips, and sometimes he gets mad and throws stuff. He’s stressed, get it? Mainly, he’s a handsome delivery vehicle for expository ideas from the book who never actually connects with any of the other characters (not that I blame Pitt, I normally love him). That’s the problem with Moneyball, the only compelling parts are direct exposition of the moneyball concept from the book, and everything else is cutesy Hollywood bullsh*t.

I realize that’s a loaded phrase, so allow me to unpack it for you.

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