Oscars 2012: Worst Dressed and Meh (Mostly Meh Though)

This year nobody seemed to make a total fool out of themselves which is a surprise. Then again, the Oscars had never been this safe and predictable in terms of winner which makes the fashion all the more understandable. To kick things off in the meh department we have Miss Angelina Jolie, whose leg seems to have taken on a life of its own in the aftermath of this preposterous look. While we all can agree that she's a beautiful woman, her leg pose was stupid because it made everyone laugh while she thought she was being Jessica Rabbit in terms of sexiness. Perhaps if the leg hadn't been poking out of a boring velvet Atelier Versace, we might've been a bit more impressed by it.

Bérénice Bejo's  Elie Saab is not bad by any means, but the color washes her out in such a way, that not even her fiery hair can spark any life in it.

Jesus Christ, enough with the nude color Kristen Wiig! This J. Mendle might be beautiful but it feels like she's worn it to every awards show she's been to.

This Marchesa is a tricky thing. On one side the combination of colors is quite striking and the beading is quite the handcraft, but it makes poor SaBu look at least twenty years older and twenty pounds heavier. The unflattering mid-section makes it seem as if she just had too much ice cream and wants to conceal her new belly. The lack of drama upstairs (meaning the natural makeup) in this case work against her, because we keep being drawn to the strange ice claws around her waist. Overall this one's a mess.

Melissa Leo is a mess one more time. This time she went for a too informal Reem Acra that slightly recall this ensemble worn by Natalie Portman last year. Portman was pregnant at the time, which explains the fact that she was going for a shapeless look. Leo has no excuse.

Wouldn't Jane Fonda have looked great in this Valentino Couture gown? It's totally up her alley and she's only like 60 years older than Shailene Woodley...

Oy, most people are in love with Viola Davis and think saying something unflattering about her is either being a racist, an idiot or the most insensitive person alive, but not even they will be able to deny that she chose a very bad time to get rid of her wigs. We get it, she's proud of her heritage but the wigs were so beautiful that I'm sure no one really knew they were fake. This new hair gives her a Dennis Rodman look that's beyond unflattering, mostly because she's always pairing it up with dresses that are way too tight in the boob department. The color in this Vera Wang isn't doing anything for her really.

Oh J. Lo, you A-list hoochie. This Zuhair Murad dress is what Octavia Spencer was wearing but unlike what the pattern did for her, it does nothing for Lopez who looks like a hooker from space. The holes on her arms are inexplicable and give the dress a cheap look. Did she run out of fabric?

What do you think of these ladies? Anyone here you would promote to best?

The Descendants *½

Director: Alexander Payne
Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller
Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster
Rob Huebel, Nick Krause

With his rugged handsomeness and sweet puppy eyes, George Clooney has gone from being a "movie star", in that unattainable, gold dusted sense, to becoming the perfect embodiment of the American midlife crisis. In movies like Up in the Air we are asked to suspend our disbelief and consider him not a star but a person: like the rest of us.
Clooney's likability has made this easy, if not entirely convincing and in The Descendants his charm is replaced by suntanned smugness as he plays the ruling patriarch of the Hawaiian King family. He plays Matt, an attorney who also is the sole trustee of a family legacy that owns 25,000 acres of virgin land in the island of Kaua'i.
When the film begins, and we are teased that richer, profounder themes lie ahead, we learn that Matt's family came to own this without making any effort and now, due to a law against perpetuity, they have to get either sell or lose it within the next seven years.
This plot twist suggests that we are about to find ourselves in the midst of a soul search, through which Matt would need to come to terms with his legacy in the midst of the modern world, for who can say they uphold such high values in these days?
The film then becomes something else, as Matt's wife falls in a coma, forcing him to raise his two young daughters: Alexandra (Woodley) and Scottie (Miller). Added to this, Matt begins to learn his wife kept secrets from him, including an affair.
This leaves Matt with no option but to fully become the patriarch his inheritance demands he is, but how can he do it when he's not even in control of his immediate family's life?
Clooney does his best "everyman" act but the film suffers from its imminent vapidity. Why should we care about these people when their problems seem so aristocratic?
The film even jokes when it begins that people think no one in Hawaii has issues but in all honesty can they blame us? When Alexandra learns her mother might die, she isn't in a hospital room but in a pool and when Matt decides to confront his wife's lover (Lillard) he does so through a series of real estate tricks. It's true that some movies have been able to hook and interest us in the lives of kings, queens and the extremely rich, but to try and do so, after hinting at larger themes ahead, isn't only ridiculous, it's an exercise in reverse empathy. Director Payne too, has become a specialist in chronicling the lives of men who can only be described as assholes, as they try to gain the humanity others around them seem to have. In movies like Sideways and About Schmidt, Payne's horrifying heroes have achieved salvation through the help of people around them who have more earthly values (remember Virginia Madsen in Sideways) and there would be nothing wrong if they never achieved it. After all life isn't always perfect and movies should under no circumstances be morality fables. What Payne understood so well in previous movies is that as humans we are flawed and what he does here is try to correct each of them by the time the movie is over. Not only does his practice backfire, it also makes sure we never want to see these people again.