TrekBBS Academy Awards #13: Best Picture, 1996

[PKTrekGirl]

But I'm alright with The English Patient winning. Turned me on to the hotness of Ralph Fiennes!

Well, there is that!

BABY!

And have you noticed the number of tortured soul kind of roles he seems to play on a somewhat regular basis. He's really good in those kind of roles. I am thinking particularly of Evgeni Onegin in Onegin...but also his role of of Bendrix in The End of the Affair. Both of them roles not all that dissimilar to Count László de Almássy in The English Patient.

Not too long ago I finally saw The White Countess, and that was quite a trip, with him playing an American. He's much better at playing what he is - a Brit. Not that his American accent was bad, because it really wasn't (although you could tell in places if you paid close attention). It just was so...uncharacteristic after seeing him in so many roles speaking as he would normally speak.

Not sure why they just didn't re-write The White Countess for his role to be a Brit. It certainly wasn't essential that the character be American....

 

[CorporalClegg]

Fargo

The English Patient's only redeeming quality is KST in the buff. And Jerry Maguire is just another Cameron Crowe crapfest.

Fargo is absurd, but not in way that's wholly untrue to the Midwest it depicts, at least of what I've experienced visiting Wisconsin and Minnesota. The film takes all the mundane details of suburban Midwestern life and lets them spiral out of control in a twisted, and unbelievable way only the Coen brothers could imagine. But isn't that the point of the opening text--announcing everything you're about to see is true when it plainly isn't sort of lets the audience in on the joke, no?

What do you find so reprehensible about it, stj?

Well, there's really a joke within the joke. After the film came out, people flocked in hoards to that stretch of highway with the shovels in attempt to find the bag of cash because they actually believed it was real. I remember there was a picture in the St. Paul paper of them lined up with their tools. It looked like one giant chain gang.

But what really makes the movie for me is how spot on it is. The idiosyncrasy, the colloquial, and the accent was 100% perfect. I grew up in northern Minnesota and now I can turn it on and just laugh at it. Heck, you could swap Lundegaard's (Macy's) wife with my Mom and not be able to tell the difference.