If you need to rest your eyes at any point during the 146 min. comedy epic Funny People, your best bet is to do it early during a sequence in which Adam Sandler’s character has back to back sex with a couple of female fans. The second of these scenes is mildly amusing, but there’s just no need to put the images in your head of either Sandler with a face full of breasts or the actor taking a girl from behind.

There are some actors we don’t need to see in a sex scene, humorous or otherwise, and Adam Sandler is one of them. He’s of a generation of comedic actors who starred in movies where they get the girl but where there’s no need for gratuitous sex and nudity. Unlike most of his successors, including Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd and Dane Cook, he was never a pin-up in addition to being a funnyman. Even if he was better looking than some of his brethren, such as David Spade, Mike Myers, Chris Farley, Rob Schneider.

Still, Adam Sandler isn’t the last male actor we’d want to see in a sex scene. He’s not even in the bottom ten, which we present in a list below:
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My maternal grandmother passed away over the weekend, so I’d like to pay her tribute with a movie list. I’m not sure how big a fan of movies she was, having not grown up very close to her, physically, but Grandma Gloria can be credited with introducing me to movie hopping, at least. One of the few summers I was able to visit her was in 1992, and I mainly recall the year due to the movie we snuck into, Sister Act. And the movie we legally watched before it, Death Becomes Her. I probably would have forgotten both of these lame films in any other circumstance, but the significance of the event has kept the specific time and place of their viewing in my memory probably forever.

Grandma Gloria certainly wasn’t the most free-spirited grandmother to ever live, but a few things, such as the introduction to movie hopping, always made me think she was a bit cooler than other kids’ grandmas. Then there was the fact that she’d been married four times, which my friends found shocking. Grandmas aren’t supposed to go through husbands like that, apparently. Did it make her cool, though? My cousin would refer to her as “Grandma Get-Around,” and supposedly Grandma Gloria took the nickname as a compliment. I guess that made her a little cooler, proudly acknowledging this decidedly un-grandmotherly trait.

A list of coolest grandmothers in movies may not be the greatest way of honoring Grandma Get-Around, but in a way the fact that most of the following characters aren’t really that cool shows me just how hip my grandma really was. While grandfathers are often portrayed as fun and wise and as great storytellers, grandmothers tend to fall to one of two uncool extremes, traditionally grandmotherly or youthfully lewd. The latter category doesn’t necessarily only consist of unlovable characters, and I hope one day there’s a Who’s the Boss movie so that “Mona” can take the top spot on this list. Until then, here are the ten coolest grandmas I could think of. If you know any that are cooler, please let me know by commenting below.
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I’m always game to devote one of these roundups to Ghostbusters 3 news, but when it relates to a personal favorite list I wrote 7 months ago, I’m especially interested. Maybe you remember I already cast the female version of Ghostbusters with Elizabeth Banks, Anna Faris, Tina Fey, Niecy Nash, Zooey Deschanel and (replacing the original female cast members) Adrian Brody and Jay Baruchel. But I guess Dan Aykroyd’s latest interview spew of G3 hype is worthy of continued casting ideas, because like Bill Murry before him, he’s focusing our attention on the prospects of girl Ghostbusters. Specifically, he’s proposing the names Alyssa Milano and Eliza Dushku as potential costars for him and the elder team.

Are they good choices? Most people are shocked at the bland suggestions. But remember these are just actresses Aykroyd thinks are “amazing.” Let’s see what the rest of the blogosphere thinks, after the jump.

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Two more days until we find out who wins this year’s Academy Awards! Okay, so the exclamation point is more than forced. It’s been quite awhile since we’ve had even an ounce of excitement about the Oscars. But we mustn’t let predictability get us down. Sure, even the still-uncertain races (Penn vs. Rourke; Winslet vs. Streep; Man on Wire vs. Trouble the Water) are anything but interesting, because the everyman of 2009 couldn’t care less about who gave the year’s better performance and would probably be fine shrugging his shoulders at the TV screen in the event of a tie (or, better yet, irresolution). However, there’s one thing people keep forgetting about the Academy: they’re full of surprises.

So, rather than just go with the easy, “predictable” predictions, we attempted to guess who and what will Crash the Oscars this year with a surprise victory — preferably the kind that adds an “ing” to “upset.” And once again, we’d like to extend the forecasting fun to you. What surprises do you expect and/or hope for? Or, if you’re down with the boring route, what “certain” winners do you truly believe in? And why? The most accurate comments will be reprinted in our final Oscar column on Monday.
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Is it possible that Jeff Wells and The Playlist’s shared gloomy outlook on 2009 Oscar bait (or lack thereof) has anything to do with the fact that neither Kate Winslet nor Marisa Tomei has a film coming out this year? And that even if they had something coming soon, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t get naked for it? Probably this fact and subfact have nothing to do with their premature worries, and it’s just a coincidence that the internerds were hit by the misfortunate news that Winslet is giving up onscreen nudity plus the clarification from Tomei that she’s actually not in a nudity phase of her life.

After the jump, some of the more together reactions (meaning the ones not from gossip blogs claiming Winslet hates us).

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Yesterday, for the second time in two weeks, In Contention’s Kristopher Tapley confessed to being done with 2008 and noted a bunch of anticipated 2009 films. These aren’t necessarily titles he’s looking forward to seeing, though; it’s basically a preliminary jump on next year’s Oscar season. Because apparently this year’s Academy Awards are all but handed out, the winners properly predicted and expected, and now it’s time to think about what will be up for what in 2010. Those titles Tapley lists are Rob Marshall’s Nine, Peter Jackson’s Lovely Bones, Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, Clint Eastwood’s “Mandela“ (formerly The Human Factor), Richard Curtis’ The Boat That Rocked, Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart and the latest from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life), Steven Soderbergh (The Informant), Paul Greengrass (Green Zone), Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island) and James Cameron (Avatar).

Oh, and then Jeff Wells had to go and hint that Spielberg’s Lincoln is likely to arrive by year’s end. What and who else is being foreseen as nominated this time next year? Check out the links after the jump.

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With Danny Boyle’s DGA win over the weekend, Slumdog Millionaire achieved a near-impossible feat; it became even more favored to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Once thought to be an underdog, Slumdog has been pretty much unstoppable throughout the awards season, even picking up the undeserved top honor at the SAG Awards, and has never fallen from its position of frontrunner since it took the lead months ago. Yet last week, the internet was populated by talk of a Slumdog backlash, and for the first time in weeks, other Best Picture candidates were seriously being discussed as slightly plausible victors. The two titles considered most likely to be a threat to Boyle’s film are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Milk, with little concern for either Frost/Nixon or The Reader. However, while the former candidate is probably a sure thing to lose, the latter film should not yet be dismissed.

Before the Academy Award nominations were announced last month, The Reader wasn’t even thought to be a contender for any major category except Best Supporting Actress. Now, among its five nominations, it’s up for three higher-tiered Oscars, including Best Picture. So, we can’t rightly continue underestimating its potential. This isn’t to say that we are predicting The Reader to win Best Picture; Slumdog is still the safest bet for the top prize. But odds for The Reader do need to be adjusted, as its chances are a lot closer to, if not better than, secondary favorites Benjamin Button and Milk. Of course, as the it stands now, the film should be an appealing choice for any gamblers out there, because a surprise Best Picture win for The Reader would pay out big time. So, our immediate apologies to betters if the following seven factors have any influence on professional oddsmakers out there.
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In 10 out of 14 years, the winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role has gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress. If this year marks the 11th such congruence, Meryl Streep will take home the Oscar. Yet there is an odd circumstance with the Academy’s nominations that hurts Streep’s chances. Another one of the Academy’s Best Actress contenders also received a SAG Award Sunday night: Kate Winslet, who won the supporting actress trophy for The Reader. At the Oscars, this role has been recognized as a lead performance, one that is likely a favorite to win.

Yes, it is a strange situation, one that shocked and confused Oscar prognosticators (especially this writer) on Thursday morning. Winslet’s Reader performance was campaigned as a supporting role, and she was recognized as such by the Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Chicago Film Critics Association and of course the Screen Actors Guild. A few organizations did nominate her for a lead award for The Reader, though few people take the Satellites seriously, and the BAFTA Awards are different than most in that they permit Winslet to compete against herself in the same category (she is also nominated for Best Leading Actress for Revolutionary Road).

Some now believe the Academy’s deviation will in fact cost Winslet the Oscar she could have won in the supporting field. Either voters will be confused about what film she’s nominated for (unless I’m simply less observant than elderly Academy members, which may indeed be the case), or she will now split the majority vote with Streep and thus allow Anne Hathaway or Melissa Leo to slip ahead (Angelina Jolie is believed to have no shot). Another idea is that voters will dismiss Winslet due to doubts over which category the performance belongs in. But since enough members of the Academy made it a point to nominate her as lead actress in the first place, this is hardly a reasonable theory.

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The nominations for the 81st Annual Academy Awards were announced this morning, and they likely have upset a large number of people in the comic book geek community. Yes, the most obvious snubs have to do with The Dark Knight, which failed to garner nods for Best Picture, Best Director or even Best Screenplay — yes, obviously Heath Ledger was at least nominated. And at least the comic book adaptation did get a few craft awards, including Best Cinematography. Could we blame the Academy’s usual penchant for Holocaust movies? Perhaps, since The Reader was a surprise nominee for Best Picture and Best Director. What else was overlooked and what else was shockingly present? My immediate thoughts after the jump:

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The Golden Globes have been handed out, and the last of Oscar ballots are to be postmarked by today. So, that’s it, the nominations for the 81st Academy Awards are being figured out as we speak, and campaigning is over until the official contenders are announced on January 22. Hopefully a few Academy members took notice of our unlikely last-minute suggestions, but it’s more probable that we’ll be looking at an unsurprising crop of films represented in the major eight categories. As you’ll see after the jump, we predict that two heavily-buzzed supporting performances will be snubbed. Of course you’re likely to disagree with these foreseen omissions. In fact, we welcome all you readers to make your own predictions in the comments section — what you think will be nominated, not what you want nominated. And on Monday, January 19, SpoutBlog will feature a post highlighting the best of these comments and predictions.

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We all like to make fun of the Golden Globes, even when the telecast *doesn’t* involve the bequeathing of an unusual amount of power to Billy Bush. So prepare to have your mind blown: there were eight moments on tonight’s telecast that actually transcended my knee-jerk cynicism over awards in general, and the Hollywood Foreign Press Awards specifically. Some were funny, some were borderline surreal, and all struck me as — gasp! — genuinely unscripted. Join me in counting the moments down to the best — and, in all probability, booziest! If you’re on the West Coast and the show’s going on and you want to avoid spoilers … well, then I don’t know why you’re reading a movie blog, but don’t click through the jump.

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Being that it’s at once an embarrassing failure and an unignorable success, it’s a bit of a shock that Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road has thus far been received with fewer vitriolic open letters and impassioned defenses than shrugs of measured praise. Certainly the best work Mendes has ever produced for the screen, Revolutionary Road works (on the level that it does work) as a showcase for performances: big stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are probably at the top of their game, a star-making performance is registered in less than a handful of scenes from Michael Shannon, and, in the ultimate nagging old lady role, Kathy Bates reminds us why she is the greatest living nagging old lady in all of cinema. That all of this talent is put to the service of an adaptation which fundamentally bastardizes the main project of Richard Yates’ novel and neuters its cruel vision of the inability of the individual to grapple with his/her own soul sickness without projecting toxicity outward, doesn’t diminish the actors’ achievements, but it does force us to question whether masterworks of the literary form should be adapted into prospective Oscar cash-ins to begin with, if it means necessarily stripping said masterworks of the daring that makes them masterful.

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“Who would have guessed that a book only 218 pages long could stir up so many emotions!” That quote, which graces the press notes for Stephen Daldry’s The Reader, is attributed to Oprah Winfrey, who selected the novel on which the film is based for her book club. As always, Oprah means no harm, but her influence makes such off-handed insipidity potentially dangerous. But relax –– in this case, she’s just reflecting the party line of the marketable middlebrow: Art must be Big in order to make you Feel. It’s as an ingrained assumption for one type of cultural arbiter and/or consumer, as knee-jerk suspicion of the tropes of Oscar bait is for another.

In the hands of Daldry, who has to this point never made a film for which he was not nominated for an Oscar, The Reader certainly looks like the kind of Big Art About Feelings worthy of an Oprah seal of approval … and/or a shudder from the cynic’s section. The economy that marked Bernard Schlink’s novel about moral impasses and emotional dysfunction amongst two generations Germans in the decades after the Holocaust goes untranslated. Daldry spoonfeeds feeling through score, he gives us long, indulgent sex scenes with an oft-naked Kate Winslet, years too young for the character she plays, draped in improbably golden light. And yet, within the wrappings of a film clearly, carefully calibrated for Academy favor by a distributor who couldn’t be in greater need of such recognition, The Reader’s unwillingness to clean up the ambiguities that sit at the core of its source surprises. Its classiness gives way to a refreshingly messy, even tawdry honesty about the role of morality in memory.

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