Daily Loaf

The Academy Awards may have come and gone, but this year’s nominees for Best Picture are just now making their way to your home theater. Milk led the pack with a March 10 release date, followed by Oscar winner Slumdog Millionare, which hit DVD and Blu-Ray on March 31. April sees Amy Adams and Meryl Streep do battle with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt (out today); Kate Winslet get swept up in Holocaust romance in The Reader (April 14); and the brilliant Frank Langella resurrects Tricky Dick in Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (April 21). Sorry, Brad Pitt fans, you have to wait until next month to own The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which hits stores May 5.
But enough about these damn movies already! Frankly, after all the pre-Oscar hype, I’m sick of hearing about them. Instead, let’s talk about last year’s Best Picture winner: No Country For Old Men. The Coen Brothers’ dark, new-fangled Western starring Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem’s haircut finally gets the deluxe treatment today with a three-disc DVD and two-disc Blu-ray package.
Originally released last year lacking suitable extras, No Country is done up right this time, with about five hours of bonus material. In addition to the standard “making of” documentary and interviews, the set also boasts cast-and-crew holding forth on what it’s like to work with the revered Coens. One high-tech addition is the inclusion of a downloadable copy of the film for use on your iPod or Windows devices. It’s a cool feature, even though No Country’s bright desert photography needs to be experienced on a screen larger than a deck of cards to be appreciated.

ODDS & ENDS
A few more titles out today that are worth mentioning: Keanu Reeves’ remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still didn’t exactly tank at the box office, but it was no home run either. Skip it and check out the new Blu-Ray of 2010: The Year We Make Contact, director Peter Hyams’ better-than-expected 1984 sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. If neither of those floats your boat, grab Jim Carrey in Yes Man or an animated rat in The Tale of Despereaux, both out today.

Note: If you haven’t done so already, make sure you enter our Oscar contest for a chance at free dinner and a movie from Creative Loafing. And don’t miss our live-blogging of the show itself, starting 7 p.m. on Sunday night, right here on The Daily Loaf.

Now, we continue our countdown to Oscar night with a look at a major award up for grabs on Sunday. (Friday was Best Director.) Today, we break down:

BEST PICTURE
Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire

Vegas odds: Some wacky numbers (Slumdog is 2-19, Button is 9-2) leave no real favorite in the race for Best Picture. What is clear is that a win by Milk (20-1), Frost/Nixon (30-1) or The Reader (30-1) would be stunning to the gambling community.

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Note: If you haven’t done so already, make sure you enter our Oscar contest for a chance at free dinner and a movie from Creative Loafing. And don’t miss our live-blogging of the show itself, starting 7 p.m. on Sunday night, right here on The Daily Loaf.

Now, we continue our countdown to Oscar night with a look at a major award up for grabs on Sunday. (Yesterday was Best Actress.) Today, we break down:

BEST DIRECTOR
Nominees: David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon; Gus Van Sant, Milk; Stephen Daldry, The Reader; Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire
Vegas odds: Another clear favorite, with every $10 bet on Doyle netting only $1 profit if he wins. Fincher is still in the running at 5-1. Van Sant (20-1), Howard (20-1) and Daldry (30-1) would all deliver sweet rewards if they paid off.

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As today is my last here at the Loaf, (you can reach me at anthonyjohn71@yahoo.com) this may well be my final Reel Projections (I know, boo fucking hoo, the end of an era). But rather than cry in my beer (which I really don’t like to drink these days, anyway, and after Benjamin Button, I’ve pretty much dried out my tear ducts), I’ll go out with the shiny, happy enthusiasm that made men admire me and women want me.

So let’s get this might-be-a-farewell party started with the hands-down best trailer I saw last night before the screening of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (did I mention you should bring your hankies?). OK, that’s not saying much, since most of the other 29 trailers were, how do you say, fucking horrible. But The Proposal, yet another rom-com starring the rom-commiest of actresses, Sandra Bullock, was a breath of fresh, frothy air. See if you agree:

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