A Very Devo Weekend Part II (Movie time!)

Saw There Will Be Blood, and No Country For Old Men. These were the last two Oscar-nominated movies that I needed to see in order to prepare for the 47th Annual Straight Up Sports Oscar Previews. Some thoughts about each:

DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU PLAN ON SEEING THESE MOVIES IN THE NEAR FUTURE. BUT THEN AGAIN, YOU'RE ALSO PROBABLY ONE OF 5 PEOPLE TO CHECK OUT THIS BLOG, SO PLEASE, KEEP READING REGARDLESS.

-No Country started out amazing. It was 2 hours long. It could've been 1:45 and it would've been my favorite movie this year. It should've ended when Josh Brolin died, but went on for about 15 more minutes. The extra time probably added to the character development and what not, but seemed like a waste of time. A good movie that could've been great. Probably the best Coen Bros' movie not named Big Lebowski.

-This is Josh Brolin's second outstanding acting performance this year. Very solid as a corrupt New York City cop (They aint too smaaart) in American Gangster.

-Javier Bardem was outstanding. If he doesn't get best supporting actor, it should go to his weapon, whatever it was.

-Snuck into There Will Be Blood. Apparently it was sold out, apologies to you, E Street theater viewer whose seat I stole.

-Overall, one of the better movies of the year, and the better of the two seen on this day. Whereas Country started out strong and ended fairly poorly, Blood began very strong, lagged in the middle and had an amazingly dark, bloody, but very solid ending, which reminded me somewhat of Citizen Kane.

-Daniel Day-Lewis turned in another fantastic performance, even if it was a little too similar to his role in Gangs of New York. The weird part about that? For some reason, his 'stache made him look like 1980's Freddie Mercury.

-Also, a surprisingly good performance turned in by Paul Dano, he of Little Miss Sunshine fame. (The kid who didn't talk.)

-There are a few morals to Blood. But the one thing that I took out of this movie is the affirmation of this belief: As far as Republicans go, I trust the big business republicans way more than the religious right. (I'm aware that classifying 50% of the populace isn't that simple, but I'm going with it. Go get your own blog and classify how you want.)

I've had some experience with evangelicals, as most who read this blog are aware. And while many of them are good people, I never trusted most of the evangelicals that I met. I don't like big business republicans either, but at least they don't bother with a false pretense. Many on the religious right are good people; but many on that side are worse people than us liberal heathen and are living a lie. And it's the living lie that gets to me. Wall Street has no bones about being an asshole. Evangelicals preach with one hand, and develop Mark Foley-esque habits with the other. Put it this way: Daniel Day-Lewis' character was a hyyyuge asshole, but I was still rooting for him to beat the faith healer's ass all movie.

Any thoughts about these movies? Comment, mofo.