The Academy Awards telecast, seen by most as Hollywood's biggest night, has been enjoying slight upticks in the ratings over the past couple of years. Whether that is due to the producers' choices of popular hosts (Seth MacFarlane and Ellen DeGeneres) or the nominated films posting very healthy box office numbers is up for debate. What matters to the Academy is that people were tuning in to their s

Hounddog suffers from something I've noticed in some other indie films: It's boring and it's too long. Although it's filled with gorgeous scenery, the film just seems to go on and on and on. This was yet another hour and a half long movie awards Games Tips|https://moviefestivalhub.com/ that felt twice as long. The best thing about the film is Dakota Fanning's performance. She really is amazing at the range and subtlety of emotion she can convey at such a young age. I only hope that she is one of the very few child actors who survives the transition to adulthood unscat

In the end the family manages to at least partially gain back the trust of the art world by finally documenting on film themselves Marla creating a painting called "Ocean" from start to finish. Although that particular painting does share similarities to prior paintings, it actually seems less sophisticated than those that have come before. Since then they have documented another painting from start to finish called "Rain", which does seem to be closer to the style of the earlier painti

When she gets back home to the run-down shack where she and her father live, he is hanging all over Robin Wright Penn (whose character name I don't recall) and is apparently a new girlfriend. Lewellan is a huge Elvis fan and she loves to sing his hit song "Hounddog" in particular. What is unsettling about that is that when she sings and really gets into the song she tries to gyrate like Elvis in a very provacative manner, sometimes moving like a dancer from a strip club. Seeing an undeveloped 12 year old moving like that is just plain cre

For much of the evening, Michael Hazanavicius’ black-and-white silent film homage, The Artist , swept the Golden Globes in the comedy category, coming out on top overall with three wins for Best Original Score, Best Actor and Best Picture. Over on the drama side, Alexander Payne's The Descendants t ook home the most awards in the drama category with a Best Actor win for George Clooney and Best Pict

Is the director saying Lewellan was inadvertantly asking for it through her behavior? I doubt that. Is she saying Lewellen should be allowed to act seductively without fear of being attacked? I don't know. My answer is obviously that there can be no justification for taking advantage of a child, but that she should be told that certain ways of acting are inappropriate and there are people out there who will respond to that behavior without giving thought to what is right and what is wr

Amir Bar-Lev, the director of the film, spent an entire year with the Olmsteads shooting this documentary. He became aware of them by reading a story about Marla and her paintings in the New York Times. His initial approach to the documentary was to take a look at the world of modern art, but as things progressed he saw that the real story was what was going on with Marla and her fam

The film shifts gears drastically when we are at home with the Olmsteads watching them as they watch the broadcast of a 60 Minutes piece which they thought was going to be supportive of Marla's work. Instead its purpose was to raise serious doubts about the authenticity of Marla's paintings. Was she coached by her father? Did she paint them herself? Her father is an amateur artist who paints, which is how Marla came to be interested in doing it herself. Immediately afterwards their world begins to cave in on them as people in town now look at them as frauds and the possibility of lawsuits from previous buyers l

The performances all around were fantastic, with Bishil effectively conveying the innocence and confusion of a 13 year old girl, and Macdissi fascinating and funny to watch as he vacillates between authoritarian tyrant and extremely dry comedian. Eckhart was great as well and IMHO took a heck of a risk playing the role of a pedoph

My Kid Could Paint That is a documentary directed by Amir Bar-Lev, exploring the story of Marla Olmstead, a 4-year-old abstract painter whose work garnered international attention and considerable market value. The film examines the ensuing media frenzy, accusations of fraud, and the ethics of exploiting a child prodigy for commercial gain, while questioning the authenticity and value of modern

We soon meet the neighbors, a very WASPish family made up of a whitebread wife, obnoxious and rude 10 year old boy and a bigoted Army reservist father/husband Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart, who plays Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight , in a very risky ro

Other notable wins in the film category were Meryl Streep as Best Actress (drama) for portrayal as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady , Best Actress (comedy or musical) Michelle Williams for My Weekend With Marilyn and Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress in The He