Silver Linings Playbook Nominated for Best Actor

             Previously, I had no interest in seeing this movie. The first wave of trailers to sweep television made the movie appear to be a chick flick. It honestly did the film no justice. If it wasn't so highly recommended by my friends Marissa, Mark, and Alexa I would have continued on with the belief that it was just another chick flick. This just goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover.
             Silver Linings playbook has been nominated for every acting position possible this year. For this weeks post, I will be talking about one Oscar nomination in particular, best actor. Bradley Cooper was nominated best actor for playing Pat.
             Pat is a bipolar man who beat the man sleeping with his wife half to death. As a result, he is put into a mental institution, and when released is obsessed with the belief that he could still be with his wife. He eventually meets an attractive young woman with similar mental problems named Tiffany, whose husband recently died. As they slowly come together he looses his obsession with his ex-wife and moves on to something better.
             Bradley Cooper did a fairly decent job at playing a mentally unstable individual. He did a good job of fitting the abrupt mood swings of a bipolar person with other characteristics of people suffering with aspergers and extreme OCD. His medley of psychotic characters built into one gave the movie a unique, but awkward, feel.
             My favorite scene of the move was carried out by his unstable character. This is the scene where Pat walks Tiffany home for the first time. Tiffany tells Pat that he can come in and make "whoopie" with her if he leaves the lights off. He says that he can't because he's married, to which tiffany rebuts the same thing. Out of confusion he says something like, "No thats impossible. He's dead". This created an element of comedy, where there shouldn't have been one. The placement of the dialogue and the way it was argued made it funny, and resulted in me bursting out in laughter.
            But seriously, Silver Linings Playbook is a great film. Don't let the trailer confuse you.

Moonrise Kingdom: A Masterpiece By Wes Anderson

    Sam and Suzy are two misfit children on New Penzance Island. They fall in love and run away from home to be together in seclusion. Chaos breaks loose as the small island community searches for the young couple.
    Moonrise Kingdom is directed by Wes Anderson, and is one of the best films he's ever made. the movie is filled with his unique art direction and style. He is famous for his quirky visual stile of pans, tracks, and tilts to enhance the story and the flow of the movie.
    The movie uses an array of muted yellow-green and pale blue colors. They give the film a real storybook and nostalgic feel. They help express the emotions of many of the characters and add to the time frame the movie takes place in.
     Like almost all Wes Anderson films, Moonrise Kingdom has a sort of offbeat sense of humor. This is expressed by the eccentric characters such as the Child Services, who acts strictly like a law obeying child services handbook brought to life, or the Bishops, an emotionally distant couple who can only talk to each other if it's about their jobs. A great example of the offbeat comedy characters is Mr. Bishop, who can't cope with his depression. In one scene, he is struggling to deal with his disobedient, runaway, daughter and walks down a flight of stairs shirtless. With a bottle of wine in one hand and a large axe in the other he monotonely says to his boys, "I'm going to go find a tree to chop down."

    Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best examples of an overlooked movie I've ever seen. It is easily in the top three movies of this year, but because it was a summer release it didn't receive even half the credit or praise it deserves. It is only nominated for one Academy Award, best screenplay, yet had so much more potential than that.