... FOR "CRASHING PLANES AND SUPER-RESCUES"

On Wednesday, CBS released the extended trailer for their upcoming Supergirl series (set to debut this November), to general acclaim from fanboys and network nitpickers alike. Developed by Greg Berlanti (whose production company also oversees The Flash and Arrow for The CW) and Ali Adler (ABC'S No Ordinary Family), Supergirl stars Melissa Benoist as Kara Zor-El, Superman's Kryptonian cousin, who, "after 12 years of keeping her powers a secret on Earth, decides to finally embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be." In short, it's your typical superhero origin story, on a TV budget, with all the comic book existentialism and witty romantic comedy banter we've come to expect from our modern-day pop entertainments.

For her part, Benoist captures the cheerfulness and naivete of the character quite well, thank you very much, especially during the action scenes - check out her obvious glee, for example, at 4:35, when she discovers she's bulletproof. (Speaking of Glee: Benoist and her Flash counterpart, Grant Gustin, are both veterans of Fox's musical melodrama.) The writing, too, takes obvious delight poking at gender stereotypes ("What do you think is so bad about 'girl'? I'm a girl, and your boss, and powerful, and rich, and hot, and smart. So if you perceive 'Supergirl' as anything less than excellent, isn't the real problem... you?"), and, of course, includes its share of Easter Eggs.

... FOR "MORE ACTORS WHO SHOULD PLAY OTHER ACTORS' FAMILY MEMBERS"

So here we are, back for another round of celebrity doppelgangers. Believe it or not, I'd just barely finished up our previous post on the subject when I immediately thought of 15-20 more AWSPOAFMs who could have just as easily made the cut. But that's all for the greater good, I guess, since I was hoping to expand this into a regular column anyway.

As expected, the reaction was a typical one, with enough Facebook friends submitting their own ideas for future brother/sister/parent pair-ups to last us an additional post or two. Also as promised, I will be taking those suggestions and including them here, one per post, in addition to some of my own. As always, your recommendations are welcome, either below or on FTWW's Facebook page. Let's keep this game going for as long as we can!

... FOR "A TALE OF TWO 'POLTERGEIST'(S)"

UPDATE: Via this report from Variety.com, MGM and 20th Century Fox have moved up the release date for Poltergeist to May 22, 2015. The article that follows remains unaltered from its original post.

Excuse me for sounding a little churlish, but the newly-released trailer for 20th Century Fox's Poltergeist remake has my stomach in knots, and I don't mean in a good way. The film, which opens July 24th, has been touted as "a revisionist take" on Tobe Hooper's 1982 horror classic, with "modern" updates including cell phones and flat-screen TVs. Which is fine, I guess - I mean, this is Hollywood, after all, where people aren't truly happy unless they're busy ripping off someone else's work or exploiting the latest adventures of the world's greatest superheroes. And this is hardly the first time Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures label has tried rejiggering a modern classic, with remakes of The Grudge and The Evil Dead burning up theater screens in 2004 and 2013, respectively. My question, though: what's the point in remaking something if you don't have anything new to bring to the table? Why reproduce the same thrills and chills if you can't be bothered to give a fresh spin on old material?

Despite the change in cast (Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt make fine replacements for Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams from the original movie), the new Poltergeist looks to be a rehash of the same exact plot - close-knit family moves into suburban home and is immediately beset by supernatural forces. Again, this is nothing new. Remakes have been a part of our cinematic diet since the days of the earliest films, when Cecil B. DeMille remade his 1914 silent The Squaw Man in 1918 and again in 1931. (Trivia bit: DeMille also directed a silent version of The Ten Commandments in 1923, then later reused some of the same props and sets for his 1956 remake.) True, the marketing gurus behind Poltergeist 2015 could be deliberately trying to goad us into seeing the new movie by plumbing our nostalgia for the previous one. And yes, the final film as released could be entirely different from what the trailer lets on. But the fact that so many elements come directly from Hooper's version suggests a paucity of imagination on the filmmakers' part.

... FOR "HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT" (aka "OSCARS 2015") - UPDATED!

UPDATE: Well, it seems Cracked was absolutely right. In a move that should surprise absolutely no one in retrospect, Oscar bestowed Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore with Best Actor/Actress honors at last night's 87th Annual Academy Awards, for playing disease-ridden screen characters and/or historical figures. Moore's win is especially grating, not because she didn't deserve it, but because she's already given at least a half dozen worthwhile performances, and since this year she happened to play a Columbia University professor suffering from Alzheimer's, the Academy finally decided to give her her due. (Like Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, Moore was awarded for a film people respected but didn't particularly enjoy.)

As for the rest, I guess I really shouldn't be too upset that Birdman took home top honors for Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay. It is, after all, a terrific entertaiment, with stellar performances and knockout cinematography. But its meta-tale of artists under pressure is as old as Fellini's 8½, and the illusion that it's all shot in one long, uninterrupted camera take has been pulled off before, in Sokurov's Russian Ark and Hitchcock's Rope. I'm convinced more than ever that every film today is a copy of something else, and that the only thing "original" about them is the way their stories are told.

So why didn't Boyhood win the Oscar for Best Picture? As far as I'm concerned, it was the only film released last year that broke ground in any way, this 12-year odyssey, shot with the same actors, of a boy growing up and the "moments" that make up his life. The movie may seem uneventful to the average viewer, but then again that isn't the point. (The point is: What do you do with the moments that make up your life? Do the curve balls steer you in the right direction or hold you back?) Boyhood was a labor of love for its director and actors and everyone else involved, and no other film aimed higher or accomplished more by saying so little. And that will be cherished and remembered decades from now while everything else fades into oblivion.

As for the show itself, we were attending a family function so I really didn't get to see much of it. But I managed to stick around long enough to hear host Neil Patrick Harris say of the Oscars, "Or, as I like to call them, the Dependent Spirit Awards." That pretty much summed it all up for me.

A (relatively) short one today, since you've no doubt already formed an opinion of what the Academy Awards do or do not mean to you at this point. To sum up the blog's annual stance on the subject, the Oscars a) are really nothing more than a glorified high school popularity contest, b) pride themselves on celebrating that old "independent spirit," c) sometimes rally around a unified theme, d) try to seem "edgy" and "of the moment" only to revel in time-worn clichés in the end, and e) celebrate everything that's mediocre about American film. And yet, without fail, something will compel me to tune in, at least for a bit, to see if all the tried-and-true traditions still hold. If you can resist the temptation to check out even a part of the telecast for yourself (and, let's be honest, who couldn't use a little Neil Patrick Harris fix every now and then?), then congratulations, you're a better person than I am.

... FOR "MOVIE COINCIDENCE/MARKETING PLOY OF THE DAY (LIAM NEESON EDITION)"

I may be jumping the gun a bit, since the film doesn't officially open until September 19th, but there's just something about Liam Neeson's latest paranoid thriller, A Walk Among The Tombstones, that seems awfully familiar. Check out one if the earlier ads for the movie, still making the rounds on TV, and you'll see what mean:

Did you catch it? True, the plot (adapted from the novel by Robert Block) could be taken from any number of films, about an "off the books" detective hired to find the missing wife of some affluent rich guy in the city. And the action beats are practically recycled from Neeson's recent string of adrenaline-pumping, career-redefining hits. More specifically, though, I'm talking about 0:20 through 0:26, which should be enough to drive Taken fans into an absolute frenzy.

... FOR "HOLLYWOOD'S BIGGEST NIGHT" (aka "OSCARS 2014") - UPDATED!

UPDATED: Well, that's it. Another Oscar show, another 365 days at the movies come and gone. While last night's telecast had its surprises (12 Years A Slave for Best Picture? Did anyone but the politically correct-minded see that one coming?) as well as its foregone conclusions (Frozen for Best Animated Feature and Best Song, plus Alfonso Cuarón nabbing Best Director honors for Gravity), Oscar 2014 will likely go down as the most social media-centric ceremony in the history of ever, with host Ellen DeGeneres' star-studded "selfie" breaking records as Twitter's most retweeted photo of all time. (My favorites: Kevin Spacey and resident sour-puss Angelina Jolie joining in on the fun, or Brad Pitt and Benedict Cumberbatch photobombing Best Actor hopeful Chiwetel Ejiofor mere seconds later.)

From what I watched, the show was every bit as random and rambling as it has been in previous years, with pompous tributes (how, exactly, did The Wizard Of Oz earn a special remembrance for its 75th anniversary, while other classics like Gone With The Wind and Stagecoach did not?) and pointless attempts at grandiosity dominating the night (dedicating the ceremony to "heroes" in film, animated and otherwise, only to show endless clip montages populated mostly by men? Dudes, your women must be so proud!). All this, plus John Travolta hilariously mispronouncing Idina Menzel's name during her otherwise top-notch rendition of "Let It Go"? Oh, the humanity!

Winners have been bolded (with an asterisk) at the end of this post. For anyone who stuck through to the end, what are your thoughts, reminisces, complaints? Did any acceptance speech or musical performance rub you the wrong way? What winner took you most by surprise/had you rolling your eyes? Is anyone else fully on board the McConaissance like I am? Please post your responses below!

 
Oscar, Oscar, what could you possibly be thinking? 

Each year, we're subjected to our share of cop-outs and controversies surrounding the Academy Awards. Often, these range from the obsessively petty (How did that person even get nominated?) to the borderline offensive (celebs who mistake their time at the podium as an opportunity for political grandstanding). Other times, Oscar seems to have an agenda all its own (the 69th Annual Academy Awards, for example, for which The English Patient took home the coveted prize for Best Picture, might have been dubbed The Year of The Independent Film; in 2004, Oscar was all about The Lord of The Rings: The Return Of The King, winning every award for which it was nominated; two years ago, I argued that the nominees for Best Picture at the 84th Academy Awards were steeped in nostalgia for times gone by).

... FOR "MARKETING PLOYS AND THE SORRY STATE OF ADS ON TV"

It's an unwritten rule in the Lundberg home that, when the TV's on and it's time for a station break, the sound on the television must be automatically turned off. We do this for a number of reasons: One, the commercials tend to be 60% louder than the actual program we're watching (why is this?); two, with four kids running the house, the added silence isn't just welcome, but necessary to maintain our sanity; and three, 19 out of every 20 commercials tend to raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels. It's unhealthy, I suppose, to get so infuriated by your average TV commercial that I wind up yelling back at the screen like an idiot, so until we can afford some much-needed psychotherapy, that all-important "mute" button on the remote will have to do.