Hassles attached

I watched my first movie on my new ipod touch this past week.

It was No Strings Attached, the Ivan Reitman-directed romantic comedy from earlier this year starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman. (I've used the French poster here, because for some reason I've got this funny rule not to use the same poster twice as the sole art for one of my posts. I already used the standard poster for my post on the movie back in January, and there's no alternate English-language poster for it, apparently.)

I did not like it. I consider this strange, because almost every bit of feedback I'd heard about it was that it was better than you'd expect it to be. In fact, I thought it was far worse than I expected. I almost titled this post "How I hate 'the friend,'" and made it a rant about how sick I am of all the secondary characters who exist in romantic comedies only as friends to the romantic leads, their primary purpose being to make the romantic leads seem both popular and ethnically diverse in their choice of social acquaintances. But then I decided to adopt the ipod angle instead.

On the one hand, it was sort of fun to watch a crisp image of a movie playing on the smallest device on which I'd ever watched a movie. So small that it rested in the palm of my hand.

Ah, but that was also one of the problems. I'll name them here, starting with that one:

1) I didn't know what to do with ipod. Holding it worked for short stretches of time, but then my hand got tired, trying to position it so I'd have the best possible viewing angle. I tried to lean it against things, but since I was watching it on the plane, my choices were limited. It would always slide down and end up lying flat. I understand this is why other devices, such as the ipad, come with a "kickstand," for want of a better term.

2) The rental period was too strict. When I rented the movie from itunes, I learned that I had 30 days to watch it. That sounded fine. But then I also learned that once I started watching it, I had to finish within 24 hours. This was a problem, especially since, in the fatherhood era, it sometimes takes watching a movie in spurts over several days to finally finish it. It was especially a problem on vacation, which is where I thought it would be most handy to have a movie available to watch on my ipod. (When I'm not on vacation I have plenty of other options that make an ipod viewing less necessary.) I didn't dare start watching it on the plane ride to Maryland, because that was occurring during the day, and my son was not sleepy. If I started and had to stop 15 minutes later, who knew when I'd get to watch the other 90 minutes? I finally dared to watch it on the ride home, when he was sleeping and when it looked like I'd certainly be able to get in at least an hour of watching. That's about what I got in, but since I forgot to bring the ipod to work with me the next day, meaning I couldn't watch some more during lunch, it was somewhat of a race to finish it by 8:15 that night before the rental expired.

3) The rental was too expensive. I don't know about you, but I never spend $4.99 on a movie rental these days. I either get them from Redbox for $1, or they come as part of my Netflix subscription, where the cost is nebulous. In fact, the only time in recent memory I can recall spending around that amount of money on a rental was when I was desperate to find a BluRay copy of Disney's A Christmas Carol in time to watch it on Christmas Eve. I found one at Blockbuster, but I'd canceled my online subscription, so I couldn't trade an online rental for it -- I had to pay the regular new release price. I didn't care, though, because this was going to be a special Christmas Eve event and I knew it was going to look great on our TV, since I'd already seen it. On the other hand, I knew it was not going to be a particularly dynamic viewing experience to watch the movie on an ipod, so that ruled out movies with cool visuals and left an undemanding romantic comedy like No Strings Attached as the only viewing experience I was willing to have with these tiny dimensions. So I spent $4.99 on a movie I thought I might like, but never expected to like a huge amount, on a really small screen. In the end, I ended up liking it a lot less than that.

So even though I now have the capability, it doesn't look like I'll be watching movies on my ipod all that often.

Oh well, there's always music.

Strings attached - to Portman's Oscar hopes

One of the surest bets on Tuesday is that Natalie Portman will receive her second Oscar nomination for her role in Black Swan. After all, she won the Golden Globe for the role. That's not a guarantee she'll get nominated -- just ask Jim Carrey, whose win (in the musical/comedy category) for Man on the Moon didn't translate to any Oscar love. But it's very close to a guarantee.

In Portman's case, it feels like "her year," so a nomination is one of the best locks for Tuesday morning. Annette Bening will give her the best run for her money, but may settle for second place for at least the third time in her career.

Then again, she may not ... if voters hold Portman's upcoming roles against her when they vote.

Don't think that's possible? Just ask Eddie Murphy.

Murphy was also a Globe winner for his role as James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, and was considered the frontrunner to win his first Oscar in the same supporting actor category. Until Norbit came along and screwed everything up.

There's no way to verify that, of course, but the standard thinking at the time (early 2007) was that voters would have cast a lot more ballots for Murphy if they weren't being simultaneously assaulted by the grotesque Rasputia character from the Norbit ads. That was one of three roles Murphy played in the movie, but either of the other two (the title character and an old Chinese man) would have probably still allowed Murphy to stroll up to the podium on Oscar night. This vile, crude third character, which required every bit of latex in Rick Baker's arsenal, was what did Murphy in. Or so the thinking goes. (The Oscar went to Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, a deserving choice.)

Now, No Strings Attached, which comes out today, is no Norbit, even if you might alphabetize them consecutively. It addresses a perfect topic for a romantic comedy -- fuck buddies, or "friends with benefits" (there's an actual movie called Friends with Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Portman's Swan castmate Mila Kunis, coming out this summer) -- and it looks like it's been made at least half-competently. Let's hope so, because then I won't have to be so disappointed in mumblecore darling Greta Gerwig for "selling out" to be in this movie.

On the other hand, it's pretty far from Oscar material. In fact, has a movie featuring Ashton Kutcher ever been nominated for an Oscar? (The answer is, no, but Emilio Estevez' Bobby did get nominated for a Golden Globe -- a best picture nomination that was about as unjust as this year's nominations of The Tourist and Burlesque.)

But Portman isn't only fighting No Strings Attached when it comes to subliminally influencing the Academy. Her next two features are Your Highness, a Medieval stoner comedy starring James Franco and Danny McBride, and Thor, the ridiculous-looking comic book movie. They release in April and May, respectively, so there isn't much in the way of actual advertising for them just yet. But voters may still be mulling over their ballots around the time of the Super Bowl, when there figures to be ads for at least one if not both of these films. In fact, factoring in Black Swan, that makes this one of the most fertile periods in the career of a woman who once expressed her ambivalence about continuing acting as a profession. It's possible that No Strings Attached would not be enough to sabotage her chances, but the three movies put together could convince Oscar voters that Portman isn't "Oscar material."

Not that there's anything Portman could have/should have done differently. You make the choices you make and you sign on for the projects you think will be fun, challenging, and/or lucrative. Once you're on the dotted line, you're committed, and you have no control over when the studios consider it the perfect time to unleash these films on the world. Unless you decide to play the diva on set just to delay the production -- which is basically career suicide.

In fact, if we'd heard that Portman had stalled the momentum of her own career in order to manage her image in the months immediately following Black Swan, she would instantly drop several notches in our estimation. First off, it would mean she thought she had a good chance at an Oscar -- never a safe thing to assume, and the mere assumption is the kind of thing that seems to jinx it, if you're a superstitious person. But then it would also represent a cold and calculating attempt to finesse the conditions that must be in place for a person to win an Oscar -- which are not only giving a good performance, but also being likable ... and also not tainting your performance by reminding people that you're the kind of person who would consider Norbit an acceptable use of your talents.

Well, there should be a deserving first-time winner come Oscar night, one way or another. If Portman wins for her harrowing performance in Black Swan, she'll deserve it. If Bening finally wins her first Oscar after three previous nominations, spread almost equally throughout a 20-year career, then that'll also be a well-deserved coronation of one of Hollywood's most well-liked actresses. And if someone like Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone manages to sneak in and steal it, that'd be great, too.

As for No Strings Attached ... my affection for Portman and my dislike for Kutcher averages out to me catching this on video sometime in August.