The ReelChange Oscar Drinking Game is the gold standard in Academy Award telecast-based alchohol delivery systems. Having been field tested for years on subjects of varied imbibing prowess, a big thanks goes to our boys in R&D for perfecting this, the finest in all your awards show inebriation needs.

Instead of just a list of common occurrences as social triggers (although it has those too), the heart of The ReelChange Oscar Drinking Game beats with a simple betting structure that rewards risk, shrewd speculation and luck.

Currency:

The currency we are dealing in are drinks, and will be referred to as such throughout these rules. What a drink consists of in your group is subjective and should simply be determined amongst players during the red carpet coverage. A general assumption of a pull of beer on the honor system is sufficient, but measured shots or equivalent amounts of mixed and straight liquors can be substituted depending on tastes and abilities.

Note: The maximum bet that can be made by a player is equal to the number of active players minus one.

Betting:

The core of the game is played thusly: During the telecast when nominees are announced, bets on winners are made. A bet consists of declaring a winner and the number of drinks wagered.

For example, there are five people in the game and a player is confident that Heath Ledger will take Best Actor in a Supporting Role. As the nominees are announced, that player might call out “Four drinks on Ledger.”

If anyone but Ledger wins that player must consume the number of drinks he or she wagered, in this case four. If however Ledger does take the statue that player can distribute the drinks around to the other players in any fashion he or she sees fit. That is to say that winning drink wagers may be assigned in total to an individual or broken up and distributed into any denominations.

Owed drinks must be consumed before that player can bet in the next category.

Players need not wager in every category, but cannot drop in and out of the game without unanimous consent of the group, and therefore are still eligible to be assigned drinks whether they wagered in that category or not.

Also winning a wager does not make one immune to drink assignments. So if there are two winners or more in a category said winners may still end up drinking.

Side Betting:

Side bets on any and all aspects of the telecast are encouraged, but side bets must be met with an acceptance of another player and drinks can only be distributed between those side betters, whereas award wagers are considered automatically accepted by all those who are playing.

Examples of possible side bets:

Who will open or close the In Memoriam montage.

Whether or not the next commercial will feature a celebrity.

Over/under on President Obama references

With side bets the more creative and esoteric the better.

Social Triggers:

These are events that trigger the group to all take a drink. Your group may decide to add more to this list. As long as all are agreed then the trigger is in play.

If you or your group has a good additional trigger let us know in the comments.

Take One Drink:

If a person is indicated with reference to a personal or familial connection.
(e.g “My good friend, Bob Rafelson . . . “)
If the camera cuts to the subject of punchline to make sure they are laughing.
(Two drinks if they are not laughing or if they look around confused.)

If the orchestra cuts off an overlong acceptance speech.

For each member of a group that takes the stage to accept an award who gets no mic time.

For any reference to the “magic of” anything cinematic.

Whenever Host Hugh Jackman’s Australian background is referenced.

Take Two Drinks:

If an award is accepted by someone other than the recipient.

If the camera cuts to someone in the audience to show that the subject matter of a joke is in acceptable taste.
This is also called the Don Rickles-tribute “See if the black guy is laughing” trigger.
(Three drinks if they are not laughing or if they look around confused.)

During any dance or musical number.

Anytime a reference is made to this year’s ceremony being on a tight budget.

If a presentation duo is a reunion of a previous cinematic pairing.

Any time Host Hugh Jackman’s role as Wolverine is referenced.

Take Three Drinks:

For any reference made to Sacheen Littlefeather, Robert Opel (The infamous Oscar Streaker), or Letterman’s Oprah/Uma bit.

If a presentation duo is a pairing from an upcoming film.

If Vin Diesel’s name is spoken.
(If he appears on screen finish your cup)

Any time Host Hugh Jackman’s Broadway experience is referenced.

Those are the rules. Enjoy. Play responsibly, and if you win the party’s Oscar pool kick a little something down the host of your party. Chips ain’t free, ya know?

but I’m really into this cup and ball now.

Spiderman 2 ripped off Superman 2 with the whole “Hero turns his back on herodom to get the girl only to return to the tights to save the day in the end,” so it seems fitting that Spiderman 3 had a little too much comedy and a corrupted dark version of our hero. I was waiting for Thomas Hayden Church to ski down the side of a sky scraper or black suited Spidey to straighten out the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Spidey 3’s excessive running time left a lot of movie to fill, even after ripping off one third franchise film, so let’s pad it out with another. Spiderman is now loved by the public and has become somewhat of a commodity, and it has gone to his head. Sound like a certain part three, which features a drunken Paulie busting up the Rocky Pinball machine? I believe the film was called Rocky 3. Fortunately, Peter teams up with his antagonist from the previous two pictures to get back the Eye of the Tiger and defeat Clubber Lang 2000, also known as The Sandman. You a paper champion, Parker!

If we want to throw a third part 3 rip off to complete the set, I can offer the half-scarred face from Batman Fovever, but there were so many better choices. How about The Green Goblin finally adopting his trademark Hockey Mask? Peter climbing down into that ravine to get the bonsai tree? Or maybe Spiderman in the Old West? There were so many choices, but obviously they had to avoid Return of the Jedi, as that has been reserved to rip off in a few weeks (if last summer’s Pirates entry is any indication).

Bryce Dallas Howard as Gwen Stacy has to have been the worst piece of casting since the ill-fated Betty and Veronica TV Movie that featured Shannon Doherty as Veronica and a bleached and shaven chimpanzee as Betty. Not that the Howard genes boast a whole lot of pin-up potential, but she made cookie bakin’, bugeyed Ursula the sexy choice for Parker’s symbiote-fueled dalliances.

On the other hand, the casting of Topher Grace was inspired. Not only is there the obvious genius of putting the actor who should have gotten the role of Peter Parker in the role of a guy who resents Peter Parker, but Grace’s smarm is some of the best we have sampled since before Jason Lee grew that mustache.

Movie nerd that I am, I enjoyed Aunt May’s little throwaway line about how great Uncle Ben looked in his swim trunks as an obvious nod to Cliff Robertson’s turn as one my all time personal heroes, Big Kahuna. Any dude who’s too cool for Gidget and smokes a cigar while surfing needs more attention than a fleeting reference that almost no one would ever think to translate.

Considering this is a Summer Blockbuster featuring two sitcom stars as supervillains, the film is much better than it has any right to be. Is it a brilliant triumph? Probably not, but Raimi seems to be much more sure footed about to how to make a fairly smart superhero everyfilm. Decent action, some good laughs, an actually interestingly thought-through theme of doppelgangers and split psyches; even the episodic nature of the source material was honored, feeling like the picture could break down nicely into a 5 or 6 issue story arc instead of one long single issue.

The only problem was that the first 2 issues were classic Stan Lee Spidey, and the 2 in the middle were Todd McFarlane in his laziest, most derivitive days of Spidey, and issue 5 and 6 were pounded out by a committee of suits and a 13-year-old girl with a My Chemical Romance boner.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which follows the franchise naming conventions of the last couple of decades by adopting a colon early and eschewing numbers or, god forbid, roman numerals, opens with a shot that sets up my main question for these notes: Do these filmmakers really know what they are doing?

This isn’t a question of blockbuster filmmaking competence. Obviously, these are savvy summer blockbuster, audience-testing, demographic-targeting, opening-weekend-box-office-ruling, advertising tie-in, franchise-stroking business people, but are they filmmakers who are consciously aware of what they are doing?

To start with, almost no write-up on Pirates (including my own coverage of The Curse of the Black Pearl) can resist mentioning that it is based on a Disneyland theme park ride of the same name, and that it seems inevitable as summer movies are often discussed as thrill rides. However, what interested me more than the various references —some charming, some forced—to one of the best attractions at any theme park ever was the opening shot of Dead Man’s Chest: Teacups in the rain. Normally, one would simply see this as a melancholy opening indicating a interrupted joyous occasion, but between the credits of a Disneyland theme park movie, an opening shot of real versions of another whirling Disney ride seems like it’s either super winkingly aware or painfully naïve.

I feel like I should shoehorn in the obligatory praising of Johnny Depp’s Keatonian physical performance, and everything sure perks up when Captain Jack is swishing about, but even behind the countless character faces (apparently cast from the Sergio Leone Sun Damaged School of Grotesques), I couldn’t stop staring at the lumbering machinery behind it all. No, not the pirate ships; the by-committee, second-installment grooming done to avoid The Matrix series’ drop in public interest between the end of Reloaded and beginning of Revolutions.

This again brings us back to my question of awareness. I can ignore and even enjoy the various stolen moments from everything from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to John Carpenter’s The Thing, but with the machinery so exposed, I couldn’t tell if what I had noticed was just the perils of someone who was thinking too much about a movie release in early July even though the first installment yielded a subtext or two, or if these really were bits and pieces plundered from previous middle episodes.

Davy Jones is soothed by a small music box, a memory of a lost love, that he may have stolen from Lee Van Cleef in For a Few Dollars More. Keira Knightley’s warrior princessness works better this time around, but when confronted by two sword-wielding threats, her smug reach to a surprisingly empty scabbard wouldn’t have gotten her through The Temple of Doom, which also famously featured a still-beating heart as a memorable plot point.

Obviously, the main touchstone for these Empire-builders (lame pun intended) is that other blockbusting trilogy about pirates, corrupt imperials, mystic arts, and anachronistic swash buckling.

Mismatched Abbott- and Costello-shaped bickering pair of comic relief? Check.

Love triangle between a feisty high-born lady, a bland do-gooder, and a charming ne’er-do-well? Check; only, in one of their few improvements on the model, at least this time the bland boy and the lady won’t end up related.

Shocking revelations about bland do-gooder’s father? Check.

Charming ne’er-do-well has a price on his head set by a slimy monster? Check.

Natives mistakenly worshiping a main character as a god? Wait, that’s from Return of the Jedi.

An ending that leaves the charming pirate incapacitated, and the other two sides of the love triangle plotting to rescue him with the help of the comic relief duo, the charming pirate’s hirsute first mate, and the former captain of the charming pirate’s ship? Check, check, and double check.

I guess the Spider-Man franchise found box office gold doing the same thing to the Superman franchise, so why not, huh? I’m just saying that if the third installment of Pirates opens with Pintel and Ragetti timidly approaching Davy Jones’ ship, or if Barbossa has already conned his way on board the Flying Dutchman, or even if Elizabeth Swann disguises herself as a bounty hunter at any time… you heard it here first. Hell, was it just me, or did the Kraken have more than a little family resemblance to the Sarlac?

As a way of a simple review of the film, I’ll lazily compare it to the water wheel sword fight sequence. It was a little out of control, went on too long, wasn’t nearly as clever as it thought it was, and it made me a little bit sick, but the question remains: Did they know what they were doing when they gave me such an easy metaphor?

I’d like to start these overwhelmingly positive notes with a negative thought that only cursorily involves Superman Returns. If I read one more “There’s no more originality in Hollywood” ramble by some under-watched film journalist hack, I will make it my life’s work to get that “writer” fired and returned to the Detroit Free Press or some other lame media outlet faster than the proverbial speeding bullet.

There’s nothing original in Hollywood? Everything is either a remake, or a sequel, or an adaptation of something popular?

I have three things to say to you.

1. How can you bitch about originality while writing the same lame piece as bunch of other junket whores who know less about film than the guys at the sports desk?
2. Yes, and that’s how it’s always been.

And finally, bringing us to the subject at hand:

3. That doesn’t mean it has to be bad.

Bryan Singer does everything anyone could have hoped for and more with Superman Returns. He took on the thankless job of making a sequel to a 25-year-old movie sequel, ignored two other sequels, recast a role formerly defined by a man who was later raised to secular sainthood, and, most thankless of all, kept an “uncool” hero uncool. There in square suits is Clark Kent. There in a crystal fortress is Kal-El. There in circus colors is Superman. And, most importantly, there on the screen—least cool of all—is hope.

Few imaginary figures, assuming Jesus was in some way or another real, have had as many theories and readings of their meaning thrown around by so many from every direction as Superman has. Some say he is an obvious symbol of Jewish empowerment. Others say he is the personification of an imperialistic American impulse, Manifest Destiny in a cape and all that. Bill turns it around to say that Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.

While all of these takes on the Last Son of Krypton are intriguing, Bryan Singer pulls an end run on it all and simply gets it right. Sure, he’s standing on the shoulders of giants, but he obviously knows it and is gladly asking us to admire the view with him.

Singer pulls freely from the first two Superman films quite a bit throughout his film, even whole chunks of dialogue, but not without reason. Just as he mines old footage of Brando as the recorded Jor-El, he mines memorable throwaway lines from the original Richard Donner films to reconfigure them into romantic catch phrases. Sure, Singer’s redoing some of these moments because they worked before, but that’s why Superman is doing it too.

Any video and commercial cinematographer with a good agent (read: Ratner) would give Supes the corny hero shot as he reminds the just rescued plane passengers that “statistically speaking of course, it’s still the safest way to travel.” It would be the “Aw shucks” moment that it is in the first Superman film all over again, but look at how Singer cuts it. He has a cutaway to Lois in there. Supes knows he’s saying the same thing he said to Lois after his first rescue of her (Geek Aside: Second, if you count catching the mugger’s bullet) and hopes she will remember the moment too.

Actually, there were more than a few parts of Superman Returns during which I couldn’t help thinking of the old saw about the bar at the top of the Empire State Building:

Two men are drinking in a bar at the top of the Empire State Building.

One turns to the other and says: “You know, last week I discovered that if you jump from the top of this building, by the time you fall to the 10th floor, the winds around the building are so intense that they carry you around the building and back into the window.”

The bartender just shakes his head in disapproval while wiping the bar.

The 2nd man says: “What are you, a nut? There is no way in hell that could happen.”

1st man: “No, it’s true, let me prove it to you.” So he gets up from the bar, jumps over the balcony, and careens toward the street below. When he passes the 10th floor, the high wind whips him around the building and back into the 10th floor window, and he takes the elevator back up to the bar.

The 2nd man tells him: “You know, I saw that with my own eyes, but that must have been a one-time fluke.”

1st man: “No, I’ll prove it again” and again he jumps and hurtles toward the street where the 10th floor wind gently carries him around the building and into the window. Once upstairs, he urges his fellow drinker to try it.

2nd man: “Well what the hell, it works, I’ll try it.” So he jumps over the balcony, plunges downward, passes the 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th floors…and hits the sidewalk with a ’splat.’

Back upstairs, the bartender turns to the other drinker: “You know, Superman, you’re a real asshole when you’re drunk.”

Superman Returns is a story that understands that Superman, regardless of the literal meaning of the phrase, is only human and just as susceptible as anyone to all of the sins of his adopted home, as well as the virtues. He doesn’t have Super Morals, despite what the Batman-lovin’ naysayers would have you believe; he has supra-strong Midwestern American farm boy morals, and they can falter, just like any country mouse when he gets to the big city.

Throughout the film, we see Superman do some super-stalking, Olympic-sized super-torch carrying, and even a smidge of super-homewrecking in spite of himself, and that’s part of why this film works. Superman makes some mistakes. He doesn’t just glide in and save the day; he miscalculates, he readjusts, he acts without thinking, both while rescuing plummeting planes and plummeting relationship odds.

Singer understands, like Donner and John Byrne and so many others before him, that Superman has to be perfect publicly, but Lois is one of the only ones to see him stumble privately. Big Blue can’t save everyone everytime, but if you think he can, you might hold on long enough when chips are so down that all logic would say to give up.

The sinking boat sequence is the perfect example of this. Locked into half of a sinking ship, a man holds his family in either arm, treads water, and bangs on their prison door with all his might. In a world without a Superman, this is a valiant, but hopeless act. In a world with a Superman, you don’t give up for even an instant because he just might be there up in the sky.

That corny Big Blue Boy Scout floats above us not because he’s better than us, but because that’s where we need him: ready to swoop in when our hope and frail earthling bodies come up a little short on results, but we still keep on trying. He’s not perfect, but no one knows that except a select few, because if the citizens of Metropolis knew Superman made a mistake now and again, what hope would they have of getting it right?

On the other hand, we know that Superman is just like us or possibly that we are just like him. Our yellow sun may give him powers far beyond those of mortal men, but he’s not above a little pressure and a broken heart. And still, he never once considers hanging up the tights, no matter what happens to him. So for Superman Returns, I say: Thank you Bryan Singer, and anyone else responsible, for making this pitch perfect Superman movie, from a Supes fan who could give Bibbo Bibbowski a run for his money.

It’s not that Kiss of the Dragon or The Transporter or the original French version of Taxi were masterpieces by any stretch of the imagination, but they are all enjoyable works with a little more smarts and a lot more style than 90% of actioners with higher budgets and more impressive pedigrees.

Here in the States, we have finally been allowed to enjoy the Besson-produced parkour-as-martial-arts buddy picture Banlieue 13 (District B13 here in the USA) directed by Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) and The Transporter cinematographer Pierre Morel. The picture is as trim and nimble as its stars (in a summer that has so far given us unwieldy and unconvincing action pictures) and all on an estimated budget of about $15 mil (or just over Halle Berry’s payday for Catwoman).

The plot of Banlieue 13 could be pitched at a Hollywood lunch meeting before the drink orders get to the bar. “It’s Ong-Bak meets Escape from New York meets 48 Hrs. in France!” That’s really about all there is to say about the picture as it stands. It’s a good hour and a half of what we back in the day called “Super-Action” flicks because that’s the section where Blockbuster kept the John Woo and Jackie Chan pictures.

While it’s a simple film, it’s also a high minded one, touching on angst in the projects, governmental apathy towards the lower classes, and martial arts philosophies. It’s the martial arts theory games that the film toys with that engaged me mentally the way that the kinetic action engaged me viscerally. It’s one of those rare western martial arts films that really seems not only to grasp what makes the genre work, but to truly transfer it to another culture.

Far too often, the western martial arts picture needs to base too much of the plot around the reasons why an easterner with martial arts skills has immigrated to the west, and then tries to get too much mileage from fish out of water antics, a la Shanghai Noon or Bulletproof Monk. Banlieue 13. on the other hand, primarily features parkour chases and parkour-styled fight scenes. Parkour is a physical discipline founded in France by Banlieue 13’s star David Belle.

I’m sure far too many people are thinking of skateboarding pictures like Gleaming the Cube or BMX flicks like RAD right now, and wondering how bad a movie starring Tony Hawk or David Mirra would be, but I would direct you elsewhere, to another physical discipline founder-turned-movie star, who makes a brief poster-based appearance in Banlieue 13: Bruce Lee. He not only developed Jeet Kune Do, but spoke brilliantly on the philosophy behind the movements and the mixing and fluidity of it all.

David Belle isn’t quite as smooth of an interview, but he certainly does have a philosophy behind the urban leaping and climbing that has mostly only been seen in the States in Nike ads and some Mtv bumps. According to Belle, it’s all about escape and freedom in an urban setting, with a focus on “being in the moment” and organically improvising with efficiency that would make your typical Second City teacher cream their shorts.

What’s amazing about Banlieue 13 is that this philosophy, which reclaims built up urban areas in a way that skateboarding only strives for, is actually explored in the text of the film itself. The picture has a 48 Hrs buddy cop set-up: Belle plays the loose cannon criminal, and stuntman Cyril Raffaelli plays the cop whose style is too “by the book.” There more than a few dialogue sequences, some that are a little too drawn out, discussing the difference of styles and, without literally naming it (at least in the subtitles that I was reading), espousing Parkour theory, both in movement and politically.

It should be noted that Banlieue 13 isn’t the first film to feature Parkour-styled action; Besson penned Yamakasi - Les Samouraïs Des Temps Modernes, which put the practitioners of the related style of Yamakasi in the role of the outlaw, while in B13 Belle plays a rebel. The nuances between the two roles were obviously not lost on Belle, who refused to act in Yamakasi for moral reasons. B13 also has sequences that resemble the nimble escape sequences of Jackie Chan’s urban everyman gets involved in craziness pictures like Rumble in the Bronx and Twin Dragons, as well as the recent Thai hit Ong-Bak.

While we’ve seen a few of these moves before on film, never has the spirit of the “Art of Movement” been embodied both physically and textually. The fight sequences feel as organic and improvised as the chases, which is precisely what proves how incredibly choreographed they are. A great fight sequence is just a great dance sequence that mimics combat instead of seduction, and B13 has some of the best we’ve seen in a long while.

This takes us to 6/6/06 with Moore at the helm of another remake. It’s not so much bad as it is dull, but it uses its 95% boring parts to its advantage for 4 cheap, jolting sting scares. So if you are looking for a recommendation, I simply ask: is one decent moment of gore and a sting about every half hour worth your ticket? It ain’t for me, I’ll tell you that.

There’s rarely any more damning with faint praise a reviewer can give a film than to discuss the intentions of the director and how at their core they are admirable. Well if there’s an opposite of that (Praising with faint damns doesn’t quite work), that’s what I’m doing. Moore really seems to be intent on making a serious, grown-up oriented, satanic-inspired thriller, and even tips his hat to that with the stunt casting of Mia Farrow, but he never gets even close.

Off of the faintly rewritten script from David Seltzer, Moore tells his tale with the airs of someone who likes to overuse big words once he learns them, but with no real grasp of context. He namechecks Salome and drops what I’m pretty sure was a Charon and River Styx visual, but with no apparent reason. Much like the grime of See No Evil, all of the overdesigned environments in The Omen feel like they’ve been meticulously arranged and then carefully shellacked.

Perfunctory sequel. X-Men 3: The Last Stand, under the frat boy level supervision of Brett Ratner, does everything that fans feared would happen back when Bryan Singer started the franchise. It would be an Electra of a failure if it weren’t built on the at least competent foundation that the previous two films laid down. For the most part it’s a styleless exercise in plot that skips from point to point with no concern for developing the substance needed to fill the picture’s empty epic scope.