The end of the year is almost upon us and 2009 has been a great year at the movies. I caught up with E! Entertainment’s Ben Lyons to look back over the highlights of the last twelve months as well as look forward to movies on the horizon.
- How are you and what have you been up to recently?
I’m great. My mother has been to visit me here is Los Angeles so I’m just spending some time with my mom; she’s helping me with the new house. When my mom comes to town good things happen.
- 2009 is drawing to a close so how has it been at the movies?
The movies have been great recently; it’s that time of year when good stuff starts to come back into theatres. It was a bit quiet after the summer time but with Spike Jonze and Where the Wilds Things Are and this wonderful Michael Jackson documentary it’s starting to pick up again so I’m so exciting for the holiday movie period.
- So what have you been enjoying this year?
This I have been enjoying the return, in a way, the movie being the star and not so much actor, movies like District 9 and Paranormal Activity, while I enjoyed it I wasn’t crazy about it, but it was great to see how much money that it made at the box office.
The success of these movies has been based on word of mouth that the film is really good, take District 9 it was a big blockbuster but it didn’t have the household names in it but it didn’t matter people were going to see it because the movie was well done. So I love that about 2009.
- What has been a disappointment?
Well I just saw a movie that I was very disappointed by, 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich and it’s a disaster movie that is a disaster. It’s a lengthy two and a half hours it’s filled with plot holes, it looks fake and I was really disappointed.
It was one of those movies that I had been eagerly anticipating for a long time because I really love disaster movies; end of the world movies, apocalyptic movies but this one was just awful from start to finish.
- There was Knowing as well earlier in the year that wasn’t particularly great either.
Another one but Nic Cage, for whatever reason, seems to find his audience because his movies do very very well. I just saw him in a movie called the Bad Lieutenant and wow he was outstanding in that film. It was a performance that is one of the better cop movies in recent years and he is great in that, but yeah Knowing was terrible.
- We have enjoyed another blockbuster summer so what did you think of them this time around?
I thought it was pretty hit and miss for every Star Trek you had a G.I. Joe or Transformers, which seemed like a regression in the studio blockbuster. After we had Iron Man and The Dark Knight last summer I think that we were a little spoiled and a little comfortable having these films that were incredibly successful and incredibly grand and epic in scale as well as being very intimate and character driven movies and we didn’t really get that this year from blockbusters.
I know that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did very well and G.I. Joe opened well here but both were really just kind of not… not engaging, impressive or quality films.
It’s almost lazy and irresponsible in a way a movie like Transformers, which knows it’s going to have the entire world’s attention, I thought really did a disservice to kids and to parents who are expecting a certain type of entertainment and there’s a rather lazy kind of approach to it with the language, in particular the drug references, that just aren’t necessary and don’t do anything to improve the quality of the story or the experience of going to a movie like that.
Sure visually it was incredible but that’s what you expect from a movie like that, I’m not one to take special effects for granted, but for a movie like Transformers I just thought that they could have done a better job of creating a good movie.
- Well you have kind of touched on my next question really how did the movies compare to those of summer 2008?
Like I said last summer we had The Dark Knight and Iron Man and it was summer of blockbusters that made you think and involved some great performances
If you look at say Harry Potter and the quality of the franchise has sometime been criticised but I thought that this summer’s was one of the best but some of the passionate fans, the Hogwart’s Union if you will, were disappointed because they said it didn’t incorporate enough of the book.
But you have to remember that they are taking the last story and turning it into two movies so I think that some of the stuff that was left out in part six will be included in the next one.
But back to your original question this summer here in the States it was about the underdog movies such as The Hangover of Star Trek that people didn’t think would become as widely popular and commercial as they have.
You can include District 9 and Inglorious Bastards, it was highly anticipated but on one thought it was going to put up the box office numbers that it did, and one of the best performances of the year was Christoph Waltz in that film, my god what a turn and what a villain.
We have been very lucky the last couple of years now from Heath Ledger’s performance in The dark Knight and Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men and now Waltz in Inglorious Bastards we have seen some wonderful villains on screen some great and memorable movie characters.
So the summer was about the smaller movie like The Hangover which no one expected to put a big number and it did something like $250 million here in the States alone and it’s just a great year.
And like we were talking about at the beginning of the interview about those movies that the attraction to go and see the movie is not necessarily because you are huge fan of one of the stars of the movie but you just heard that it was good and the movie itself is the star and The Hangover and District 9 and Star Trek people are going to see the movie for the movie itself, Where the Wilds Things are is another example and it’s been a great year for the movie to be the star.
- And you have touched on Star Trek so what did you think of the re-boot of the franchise?
I think it was incredibly well and done and I think that what J.J. Abrams was able to do was gracefully walk that line between appealing to people who live and i.e. with the characters, the hard core passionate Star Trek fans, and then people who had never seen one episode of the TV show or the any of the films he got them excited too.
But at the end of the day he was able to bring that all together and set it up nicely for hopefully a series of movies with this cast from Chris Pine to Zachary Qunito, it’s just a great and talented bunch of people who were able to create something that was really fun.
- Oscar season is pretty much underway now so have you earmarked any early contenders?
Well this Oscar season is going to be unlike any other because of this ten Best Picture thing so I think the Oscar season is going to be bigger and more intense because with more films you are going to have more film companies vying for their films to get in.
I think that movie like Inglorious Bastards it’s going to be interesting to see how the Academy responds to it, the Academy is traditionally an older voting body and not one necessarily for violence however No Country For Old Men and The Departed have both won Best Picture.
I think that Christoph Waltz is a shoe-in for a Best Supporting Actor and I think that you are going to see The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Mark Wahlberg, do well and I saw a film recently, I don’t think the movie will be nominated but Viggo Mortensen in The Road oh what a performance! He has transformed himself.
Suddenly a year that was slow going and everyone was saying ‘2009 wasn’t what 2008 was’, just in the quality of movies, now all of a sudden we get to November and December and there are some great movies on the horizon, and some really good films have already come out, so it’s going to be interesting with the ten nomination, which I’m not really a fan of.
I don’t know what the true intention for expanding the Best Picture category is some people think it will inspire more viewers of the actual awards as it’s usually the smaller movies that catch the attention of the Academy and often people haven’t seen those movies.
- Do you think that Up has the potential to be in the best picture category this time?
I think it does, Wall-E got really close last year when there was just five nominations, I think Up deserves and will get it, that opening montage is one the great montages in all of movies because it just really moves you.
It’s so well done, I have the privilege of interviewing Ed Asner the other night, after all these years in the business and your career takes all these turns to now be in a movie like this and play a character like that is such a thrill for him.
I hope Up gets in to be a best Picture nomination would be a validation for all the wonderful work that Pixar has been doing the last seven years all bound together in one nomination.
- I was reading a couple of weeks ago that Meryl Streep is the bookies favourite to lift the Best Actress Oscar because there have been so few best Actress worthy turns how far do you agree with that?
For Julie and Julia?
- Yeah
At times the Academy doesn’t seen to honour good work, however they did give her a nomination for A Devil’s Wear Prada, and here she is again in a larger than life role that might very well get her an Oscar win.
Your right it hasn’t been an incredibly strong year for performances but Robin Wright Penn is in a movie now that is getting some early Oscar buzz. I think Mo’Nique will get it in a supporting category for her movie Precious, I’m not sure she will win but she will be nominated.
We always say this around this time and then a couple of movies come out back to back and you realise that there are more people out there then we thought.
- Did you think that the academy got it right this year with Sean Penn winning so close to his last Best Actor gong?
Yeah I think you have to remove one performance from the next if somebody is able to captivate audiences with performances so close to each other that’s just the true testament to their ability.
A film like Milk and a character like Harvey Milk really resonates with the Academy, it’s somebody that lived very recently and member of the Academy were alive to see Harvey Milk’s work and feel how important he was, and to have someone like Sean Penn do his character justice I thought was a tremendous performance and was deserving of it. I was hoping for Mickey Rourke just because it was a brilliant story.
The thing about Mickey Rourke that’s unfortunate is that there are a lot of people out there who are not able to separate the person from the performance on screen, you have to remember that Mickey Rourke burned a lot of bridges in Hollywood and there are some people in this town that were not fans of Mickey Rourke for a long time and I’m sure when it came down to it some of those Academy voters took that into consideration on their vote, I hope that’s not the case.
But boy what a performance as Harvey Milk and fully deserving, but you talk about winning an Oscar so close to the previous one I thought he was overlooked the year before for Best Director for Into The Wild, hi whole movie was overlooked, I thought the Academy really messed up that one and in a way maybe they were trying to redeem themselves with Sean Penn Winning.
But it’s all objective and everyone has there own opinion, everyone is a film critic.
- We are already looking forward to summer 2010 so what is on the horizon?
Iron Man 2, Jon Favreau is in the editing room as we speak, and talking of Mickey Rourke he is Whiplash, Scarlett Johansson in the mix, Don Cheadle, Sam Rockwell an I think that Iron Man 2 is going to be the big movie of next year and it will just blow everything out of the water next summer I can’t wait.
- Away from Iron Man 2 what are you personally looking forward to over the next twelve months?
Long overdue and really disappointing that it wasn’t released this year as scheduled is Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Patricia Clarkson, I think that film looks incredible, it’s a great book, and I can’t wait for anything that martin Scorsese puts his mind to.
- Finally what’s next for you?
I’m interviewing Robert De Niro tonight, that will be a highlight for me I have never had a chance to speak to him, he’s in a movie Everybody’s Fine, and I’m starting to get more into the web space with Twitter, MySpace and E! Online and I have really enjoyed the opportunities I have had in the digital world.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Live From The Red Carpet: The 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards, Sunday 17th January at 11pm only on E! Entertainment Television (Sky: 151/ Virgin Media: 156)
The end of the year is almost upon us and 2009 has been a great year at the movies. I caught up with E! Entertainment’s Ben Lyons to look back over the highlights of the last twelve months as well as look forward to movies on the horizon.
- How are you and what have you been up to recently?
I’m great. My mother has been to visit me here is Los Angeles so I’m just spending some time with my mom; she’s helping me with the new house. When my mom comes to town good things happen.
- 2009 is drawing to a close so how has it been at the movies?
The movies have been great recently; it’s that time of year when good stuff starts to come back into theatres. It was a bit quiet after the summer time but with Spike Jonze and Where the Wilds Things Are and this wonderful Michael Jackson documentary it’s starting to pick up again so I’m so exciting for the holiday movie period.
- So what have you been enjoying this year?
This I have been enjoying the return, in a way, the movie being the star and not so much actor, movies like District 9 and Paranormal Activity, while I enjoyed it I wasn’t crazy about it, but it was great to see how much money that it made at the box office.
The success of these movies has been based on word of mouth that the film is really good, take District 9 it was a big blockbuster but it didn’t have the household names in it but it didn’t matter people were going to see it because the movie was well done. So I love that about 2009.
- What has been a disappointment?
Well I just saw a movie that I was very disappointed by, 2012, directed by Roland Emmerich and it’s a disaster movie that is a disaster. It’s a lengthy two and a half hours it’s filled with plot holes, it looks fake and I was really disappointed.
It was one of those movies that I had been eagerly anticipating for a long time because I really love disaster movies; end of the world movies, apocalyptic movies but this one was just awful from start to finish.
- There was Knowing as well earlier in the year that wasn’t particularly great either.
Another one but Nic Cage, for whatever reason, seems to find his audience because his movies do very very well. I just saw him in a movie called the Bad Lieutenant and wow he was outstanding in that film. It was a performance that is one of the better cop movies in recent years and he is great in that, but yeah Knowing was terrible.
- We have enjoyed another blockbuster summer so what did you think of them this time around?
I thought it was pretty hit and miss for every Star Trek you had a G.I. Joe or Transformers, which seemed like a regression in the studio blockbuster. After we had Iron Man and The Dark Knight last summer I think that we were a little spoiled and a little comfortable having these films that were incredibly successful and incredibly grand and epic in scale as well as being very intimate and character driven movies and we didn’t really get that this year from blockbusters.
I know that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen did very well and G.I. Joe opened well here but both were really just kind of not… not engaging, impressive or quality films.
It’s almost lazy and irresponsible in a way a movie like Transformers, which knows it’s going to have the entire world’s attention, I thought really did a disservice to kids and to parents who are expecting a certain type of entertainment and there’s a rather lazy kind of approach to it with the language, in particular the drug references, that just aren’t necessary and don’t do anything to improve the quality of the story or the experience of going to a movie like that.
Sure visually it was incredible but that’s what you expect from a movie like that, I’m not one to take special effects for granted, but for a movie like Transformers I just thought that they could have done a better job of creating a good movie.
- Well you have kind of touched on my next question really how did the movies compare to those of summer 2008?
Like I said last summer we had The Dark Knight and Iron Man and it was summer of blockbusters that made you think and involved some great performances
If you look at say Harry Potter and the quality of the franchise has sometime been criticised but I thought that this summer’s was one of the best but some of the passionate fans, the Hogwart’s Union if you will, were disappointed because they said it didn’t incorporate enough of the book.