Spider-Man: No Way Home (4/5 Stars)

 

Making that sweet sweet corporate lemonade.

Right at the top, we should talk about the writing of this movie. Our screenwriters are Christ McKenna and Erik Sommers known for some of the best episodes of Community, the first two Marvel Spider-Man movies and the Jumanji reboot. What these two excel at is synthesis and adaptation, the ability to take existing material and turn its seeming limitations into features. The intellectual property of Spider-Man is in a unique place in the realms of moviedom due to the odd financial position of its corporate parentage. Way back in the day before Marvel created its own universe with Iron Man (2008), it was licensing its characters to other movie studies. Its most popular character, Spider-Man, was licensed to Sony, whose first movies in the deal included the Sam Raimi trilogy in the early 2000s that featured Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and such villains as the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), and the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church). These were enormously popular movies, but as soon as Raimi and Maguire seemed to be done with the franchise, Sony rebooted it with Andrew Garfield in the title role, Marc Webb directing, and such villains as Rhys Ihfans as the Lizard and Jamie Foxx as Electro. That is, Sony didn’t continue the story, they restarted it. In the first Andrew Garfield movie, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider etc.

Why? Well two reasons. First, Sony’s contract with Marvel allowed it exclusive rights to make Spider-Man movies just as long as they made at least one Spider-Man movie every five years. Second, Spider-Man’s defining feature is that he is an endearing teenager going through everything for the first time. These two factors combine in Peter Parker getting bitten by a spider in a new blockbuster movie every ten years or so. In 2018, someone at Sony had the great idea of meeting their corporate largess in story-form head on. The resulting animated movie was Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which explained the multitude of variations of Peter Parker’s story over the years with the pseudoscientific application of a physics theory called the multiverse. The idea being that there are a multitude of universes and that there is a Spider-Man for each of them ranging from the traditional Peter Parker-Spiderman to Miles Morales as Spiderman (Peter Parker, but black) to Gwen Stacy as Spiderwoman to Peter Porker as Spider-Ham (a spider that was bitten by a radioactive pig) etc. This worked so well, that Marvel used the multiverse as a plot red herring in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and now in Spider-Man: No Way Home fully engages with it. There is indeed a multiverse and it includes all the villains from the Sony franchises of the last twenty years and...all the Spider-mans.

The last sentence was kept well underwraps by Sony and Marvel the past year with much credit to them. I expect now that everyone has seen this movie, it isn’t much of a spoiler anymore. Anyway back to the writing. With great ability, the screenwriters have sorted out the last twenty years of Spider anthology and put together a movie that makes it seem like the whole thing was planned from the very start. Even more so, they end this movie on a note that allows the whole thing to start all over again in the hands of Sony. It is an especially adept way to maintain and extend a giant money making machine. Chris McKenna and Erik Somners deserve to get paid a lot of money.

For the obvious reason, this movie lacks the originality of the previous movies. Like Infinity War and Endgame it feels more like the culmination of plenty of other movies, not something stand alone. It’s a nostalgia tour and one’s appreciation of it would likely be increased or decreased by one’s appreciation of the older movies. For myself, I only saw the Raimi trilogy and the latest Marvel movies (the ones with Tom Holland as Spider-Man) to the exclusion of the Andrew Garfield movies. I’ve become a little more interested than not interested at all in the Garfield movies now.

To illustrate the enduring appeal of Spider-Man one needs only to briefly summarize the plot. Peter Parker has been outed as Spider-Man by Mysterio and is now the subject of intense press speculation. Since Peter is just a humble kid, he would rather not have his private life and that of his sweet Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) intruded upon. So he goes to Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks him for a spell that will make the entire universe forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. The spell goes haywire and instead of everyone forgetting that Peter is Spider-Man, people from other universes who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man are pulled into this one, namely villains from past movies. So now we have the same villains from the Raimi and Webb movies in this one and because Marvel is made of money, you get the same actors coming back too. In an inferior movie, this would result in a simple plot of Spider-Man fighting and defeating five villains instead of one. But here, the story takes a really nice, dare I say, cute turn. Once Peter Parker realizes what all of these villains have in common, in the previous movies they all die fighting Spider-Man, he goes out of his way to try to help them. Why, because he has the ability to do so and as Aunt May says in this movie (and this is the first time it is said in a Tom Holland movie), “with great power comes great responsibility.”

That line is as effective as ever and the context in which it is spoken (different yet the same) speaks to the seeming timelessness of the Spider-Man story. For me at least, it has not yet become cliché, instead I got chills. I made this point before in a different Spider-Man movie review and I think I’ll make it again. As Llewyn Davis said, If it isn’t new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song. The same applies to Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: Far From Home (5/5 Stars)

“EDITH, is this real?” asks Peter Parker in the denouement of the penultimate scene. Spider-Man has just seemingly vanquished an enemy that was made up of intricate and complex technological illusions, something not unlike what you would see in a Marvel movie. But unlike all those other Marvel movies with spectacular otherworldly dangers, this one was not really there? Or was it? Peter Parker can’t immediately tell. This is a line that could not have existed fifty years or maybe even fifteen years ago. It is very 2019. When the movies can do anything, when video and photography can be so intricately manipulated, how can you tell what is real anymore? We usually say, “I’ll believe it when I see it?” What do we do when we can’t rely on that.

The villainous plot that befalls Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) on his school trip is way over his head. All he wanted to do with go on a school trip to Europe with his friends. He wanted to buy a gift for his secret crush MJ (played by Zendaya) and give it to her on the Eifel Tower. He really deserves such a trip too. Put aside that he is superhero doing superhero things around his friendly neighborhood of Queens. Peter Parker along with half of his high school class were victims of what is being called the Blip, the five years between Infinity War and Endgame where half the life in the neighborhood vanished and then reappeared. The weight of this happening is deftly lifted within the parody of a high-school news program wherein Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow are shown in montage to the tune of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. A particularly interesting development is that the high school has essentially been held back five years and are now sharing classrooms with kids that used to be five years younger. One of the new kids in the class is a guy named Brad Davis (played by Remy Davis) who seems to have used up all his puberty overnight and is now a competitor in love for the affections of Parker’s girl MJ.

This ability to utilize otherworldy and extraordinary events in the service of minor jokes is the hallmark of two of my favorite writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers returning from Spider-Man: Homecoming. (They are also responsible for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and several of the best episodes of the TV show Community). What these two very much excel at is finding a heart of the story amidst special effects sequences and making sure that it isn’t being shunted aside or treated as Story B. Spider-Man: Far From Home has two goals here: Save the Planet and Tell MJ How I Feel. The second story is always as equally important as the first.

It is such a relief that Peter Parker does not have a crush on the head cheerleader at his high school. MJ looks like a normal person. She has a personality, albeit a little dark and sarcastic, but it is her own. It is a credit to Peter Parker that he would like her. And it is a credit to MJ that she would be willing to drop her sarcasm for a moment to become vulnerable enough to like Peter back. I have a running critique of high-school movies where I simply do not believe that the put-upon nerd male protagonist is good enough for the hottest girl in the school. This is not that at all. I found both Peter and MJ endearing as fuck and their entire storyline was really sweet.

Our villain of the week is Mr. Quentin Beck aka Mysterio. He is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor who is one of the best at walking the line between affable and super creepy. Mr. Quentin Beck is from another dimension. He does not seem to be aware of the recent Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, but he could have explained the situation by referencing that movie. Mr. Beck says that a powerful natural force called Elementals are afoot and he is attempting to stop it here before it destroys more Earths. Peter Parker is party correct in thinking that he is not qualified enough for this particular mission. He tries to get out of it but the storyline keeps drawing him back in.

Meanwhile because of all the outside forces revolving around Spider-Man, the school trip gets routinely upset by extraordinary events. In this respect, the continuing Marvel saga shows its utility by bringing in many old characters that do not need to be reintroduced. Among them are agents of S.H.E.I.L.D Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) that had large roles in the Captain America movies. There is Happy Hogan (played by Jon Favreau) from the Iron Man franchise. And then there is Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), side-kick Ned Leeds (Jacob Batolon), and Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr). One of the more pleasurable aspects of this movie is watching Mr. Harrington and the newly introduced Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove) get increasingly frazzled when more and more crazy shit happens on a trip they are ostensibly responsible for all the young lives on.

The one thing to talk about left is EDITH. I was not under the impression that STARK enterprises had this type of technology (basically armed space drones) and that the whole point of Captain America: Winter Soldier was that this type of capability was UnAmerican. Why does a corporation have it now? Why would you will its capabilities to a kid? This isn’t the responsible and democratic Tony Stark I got behind in Captain America: Civil War. Someone should do something about this whole EDITH thing. Maybe break the glasses.

Captain America: Civil War (4/5 Stars)

At least once a year I feel the need to point out the moral ambituity of large-scale action sequences in modern blockbusters, specifically the untold and unfelt thousands of deaths that necessarily must occur when entire cities are reduced to rubble. I had been crying in the wilderness to nobody in parituclar about this for so long that I expected that I would continue to do it indefinitely. Imagine my pleasant surprise then when Marvel’s new movie, “Captain America: Civil War” not only admits the reality of human collateral damage but makes it the focal conflict for the entire story.

It starts with a covert operation in an African country by Captain America, Black Widow, Hawk, and Scarlett Witch (new to me but apparently introduced before). A bad guy is trying to steal a biological weapon. The fight starts in a parking lot moves to an office building and finally ends in a crowded marketplace. The bad guy has a suicide bomb in which he means to kill everybody. Scarlett Witch, whose mutant power is to telekinesis, moves the bomb explosion from the marketplace to the air but miscalculates and ends up killing about fifteen people in an office building. The Avengers given that they are conducting vigilante military operations are held suspect for this outcome. A proposal is passed to give the United Nations oversight over the Avengers.

Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, feels guilty enough for this occurrence (The fifteen dead were charity workers although any fifteen dead people would have been good enough for me) to support the resolution. Captain America, coming out against democracy, believes that the resolution would stop him from taking action for or against whatever he deems himself to be important. It may be obvious whose side I am taking in this conflict. I’m with Iron Man all the way. Captain America apparently thinks he knows better than entire democratic societies. That is the sort of behavior that gives Freedom a bad name.

The amount of characters and superheroes already introduced in this umpteenth of Marvel movies makes listing all of them and the actors playing them time prohibitive, but they line up in equal numbers on each side. Thankfully Thor and The Hulk are somewhere else, as their presence would seriously tip the scale against the more destructible members of the Avengers. The action sequences are better and more entertaining than previous Marvel movies. This is because instead of relying on the spectactles getting bigger and more explosive, the superheroes fight themselves (and thus aren’t nameless pushovers) and thus humor and creativity have to be employed to make sure nobody gets embarrassed. The abandoned airport fight is especially good. Also, as I said before, no massive human collateral occurs. The result is a very enjoyable movie and my favorite Marvel movie so far.

Joining the Marvel universe for the first time is SpiderMan (the other two Sony franchises have not happened in this particular franchise) and Black Panther. Now this is a good opportunity for a compare and contrast between what is considered to be one of the most beloved characters of Marvel and what is sure to be the most boring.

Spiderman, aka Peter Parker, is a dorky teenager who lives with his Aunt May in Queens, New York. Black Panther is the handsome well-mannered prince of the aforementioned African nation. When Stan Lee created Spiderman, his stated intention was to give the character all the regular flaws a teenager generally has like immaturity, acne, and a hopeless crush on a girl. Such honesty and relatability became endearing pushing Spiderman to an upper echelons of popular superheroes. Black Panther, in contrast, seems to be a corporate marketing committee’s response to an outcry for political correctness. He stands in like Two-fer in “30 Rock” as proof that the corporation believes black people can be noble, properly educated, and not sidekicks. It is perhaps a good thing that the effort was made but the fact that they went about it in a way that crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s goes a long way in making the character generally unrelatable and almost as important, boring. He has no flaws and by the end of the movie his one conflict is resolved. I can’t imagine what will happen in the next movie that will allow the character to learn and grow in complexity. Perhaps he will join Thor battling interstellar ice monsters. Peter Parker as we all know has a long journey ahead of him since not incidentally he starts from a far humbler beginning.

(I doubt anyone else has noted this but the term ‘black panther’ refers to the militant wing of an oppressed poor minority group. Is it not culturally insensitive for a wealthy member of a ruling majority class to appropriate the moniker? Or does this not count because they are both black.)

But enough about this. I really liked the movie and would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing a blockbuster. The humor, the action, and most importantly the maturity set it apart from most others. Finally I have added the original Captain America movie to my DVD queue. For the first time I have wanted to see it and fill in that particular gap in my Marvel movie knowledge.

The Ides of March (3/5 Stars)

Coach Clooney benches his star athlete.

 I remember this coach from my youth. He taught our 8th grade basketball team. His son was the star of the team. The father seemed to go out of his way to limit the son’s playing time or to scold him for subpar performances. Nobody had a harder time on the team than the best player on it. It was almost if the father was going the extra distance to not play favorites and in the end probably hurt the team by shortchanging the best player on it. The director of the “Ides of March,” is none other than George Clooney and and Coach Clooney has cast himself in a very important role, the candidate in a presidential election. However, the movie is not so interested in the candidate. It is more interested in the Machiavellian machinations of the people behind the candidates: their chiefs of staff, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, and a young press secretary, played by Ryan Gosling. Now these other actors are very capable, but the story never sticks because the candidate is not put to good use. What did Machiavelli say? The Ends Justify the Means. Now, both campaigns in this story are playing dirty politics. The question should be for which candidate are the dirty tricks justified.  In other words, would Clooney the candidate make a better president than the other guy. Personally, I didn’t really care whether Clooney was elected or not. He exists in the background of the script giving stereotypical liberal platitudes and talking points. His opponent doesn't have more than a couple lines. They are both unformed characters and not up to the task of caring about. In effect, neither is worth what the other characters would do to help or harm them. Who cares what the means are if the ends aren’t justified? Coach Clooney should have given himself a bigger part.

 The story centers on the Ryan Gosling character, a young upcoming press specialist. Whether he is idealistic is not really established as he is very good at his job of saying things and at the same time not saying them. The movie is concerned not with Republicans or Democrats. It is limited only to the Democratic primary in Ohio. In this way, the movie sidesteps real political debate. Since everyone sort of agrees, the focus is on the dirty tricks that will have one candidate gain an advantage over the other. There is a senator who has about 300 pledged delegates in his pocket and is willing to sell them for a choice cabinet position. There is also shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who want to impose Operation Chaos upon Ohio. This is a stunt that urges Republicans to vote for the inferior Democratic candidate in hopes that it will help the democrats during the real presidential election. Finally there is the Paul Giamatti character, the chief of staff for the opposing campaign, who asks young Ryan Gosling for a drink in a bar. Ryan knows he shouldn’t go but does anyway. Giamatti asks Gosling to leave the one campaign and join his. This sets off the main storyline about loyalty and idealism and all those good things that will be shattered by the time the movie ends. Of course none of this should take anyone by surprise. Who looks at politics today or anytime before and doesn’t think of men in backroom smoking cigars and hatching schemes. Well, maybe today they don’t smoke cigars anymore.

 This is all done rather competently, but lately I have found that so many of the dramatic movies I see have been sort of ruined by watching HBO. The political scenes in “The Wire,” are far more detailed and involving than what is seen here. That is the difference between a story of a campaign briefly and competently told in two hours and one brilliantly and comprehensively told in twenty. The “Ides of March” Ohio primary is chump change when compared to the Baltimore politics of “The Wire.” 

Another not so great part of “The Ides of March” is perhaps the obligatory young intern who sleeps with people she shouldn’t be sleeping with. Or is it the other way around and she is a victim. It isn’t very clear the way Evan Rachel Wood, a 24-year-old, plays the teenage character. She looks and acts much more older than she is supposed to. In fact, her relationship with the Ryan Gosling character is mainly comprised of her seducing him not the other way around. When things happen, and something rather dramatic does happen to her at the end, it doesn’t seem like something that would really happen to the strong willed and confident character we've seen for most of the movie. Not that I’m an expert on women or anything.

 Overall the movie is good enough and certainly not crap. You’ve got nice familiar faces doing well jobs with decent material. Is the movie all that memorable? Well, no. You’ve probably seen it before and wouldn’t consider storyline all that shocking or new. Is it probably better than most of everything in theaters right now? Sure, but I think that speaks more to the weakness of this years movies. “Take Shelter” was good. You should see that movie, especially for Halloween.

 

Cyrus (4/5 Stars) July 6, 2010

Comedy on a shoestring budget

Cyrus is the title character of the new comedy by writers/directors Mark and Jay Duplass. It stars John C. Reilly as a man in a post-divorce funk that finally meets the woman, Marissa Tomei, who might just revitalize his life. The only problem is that Tomei has a grown son named Cyrus, played by Jonah Hill, who is, to put it mildly, a bit territorial about his mother’s affections. What results is a sort-of skewed love triangle that starts off in the territory of awkward situations and polite laughs and then veers into the country of outright hostility and comedic threats before settling into a safe conclusion. 

All of it is pretty funny, but the most inspiring and at the same time limiting thing about this movie is the budget. Mark and Jay Duplass seem to have nothing but a camera and some editing equipment to their name. They have no sets, no special effects, no costumes, and no sound effects. The big splurge seems to be the hiring of the cast and the extras for the wedding scene. Other than that the most technically audacious shot is the outside of a car driving down the freeway. In fact, I would venture to bet that the Catherine Keener character, Reilly’s ex-wife, who works as a movie editor is probably using the very computer equipment that the Duplass’s used in post-production of this movie. (I don’t have any evidence. It’s just a hunch. I also think the guy in “Paranormal Activity” used his computer to edit his movie also. Another hunch). The point of all this, of course, is to implore any would be writers and directors with nothing but a camera to go out and watch this movie. There is very little stopping you from doing exactly what the Duplass’s did: Produce a pretty good movie with almost no budget. 

Since the makers of this movie were limited by the ways they could tell the story, they have focused on two very important things that don’t really cost a thing: Writing and Performances. Almost the entire movie is simply people talking, most of the time within one location, Tomei’s and Cyrus’ house. The fact that the movie succeeds on being entertaining the entire time is a testament to both. If you want to see a movie that has everything but Writing and Performances you can watch “Date Night.” That had an enormous budget and utterly failed to be funny. It just goes to show that Comedy is not something that you can throw money at. It is one of the only two genres that are budget irrelevant. (The other is horror, but only because those people have absolutely no standards). 

It’s well known that Oscar nominees John C. Reilly, Marissa Tomei, and Catherine Keener are fine actors, so it isn’t a surprise that they all do a good job in this movie. Only quibble I have is that Tomei is too good-looking to the point where it becomes almost unbelievable that she would fall so hard for a guy with a mug like John C. Reilly. I’m not just being a jerk, Reilly agrees with me. One of his funniest lines is, “Are you flirting with me. I’m like Shrek. What are you doing out here in the forest with Shrek?” It may have been a better idea to cast someone who looked a little more like Reilly but you know I don’t really care all that much. I’m not about to be that hard on an actress because she looks too good. (Now that I think more about it, I feel stupid for even mentioning it.)

The revelation in this movie is that Jonah Hill has some acting chops. He is usually cast as a bombastic blowhard that yells all his lines, but in this movie he takes on much more mature, sensitive, and subversive. The result is a character unlike any he has ever played. Since I enjoy comparing Hill’s career arc with Michael Cera’s as much as I like comparing Matt Damon’s with Ben Affleck’s I will conclude that with this movie, Hill has nudged a lead over his Superbad partner. Whereas Cera is consistently a lead in big movies, he has always played a variation of the same role. Jonah Hill on the other hand has taken on a varied amount of supporting roles and in the meantime seems to have become a more rounded actor. Finally, he has shown a willingness to appear in little movies like this one in order to play roles that should allow him to break his Superbad typecast as an angry loudmouth. The result is his best performance yet. Let’s just see what Cera in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim v. the World has to say about that. 

The Wrestler (4/5 Stars) 02/07/09

As I was watching this movie I couldn’t help but remember the prophetic line in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s final movie Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Faced with a newer sleeker computer generated special effect driven terminator Arnold flatly admits that he is no match for the newer design. “I am obsolete,” he mechanically intones. How true I thought. Just this year several great films have sounded the death knell in the age of the Schwarzenggerian model of the American action hero. The movement reached its height in the eighties with such stars as Ahnold, Sly Stallone, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Segal. But as special effects have taken over the modern day action blockbuster, these great hulking muscle men have been supplanted with newer sleeker models. Twenty years ago the ‘Incredible Hulk’ was a role for the muscle man Luc Ferrigno. Today, aided with computers, that role has been taken over by an actual bona fide actor, Ed Norton. The ascendance of such relatively diminutive actors like Tobey Maguire (Spiderman), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), and Shia Lebouf (Transformers) has made apparent that real acting skill is now more important than steroid-toking ability. Even in the Terminator franchise, Arnold has officially been replaced. In his stead is Christian Bale (Batman) who may have a great physique but is certainly more impressive because of his acting chops. 
The Wrestler is a noble swan song for the eighties muscle man. It would make a great double feature with the fine documentary Bigger, Stronger, Faster* which takes on practically the same subject. It was in the news in December that Mike ‘Mad Dog’ Bell, a has-been wrestler in the documentary, had committed suicide. Knowing this The Wrestler was especially meaningful to watch. The Wrestler is about a wrestler named Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (played beautifully by Mickey Rourke) who had his hey-day in the late eighties. Since then he has fallen on hard times. He now performs in smaller venues like community centers. At his age, wrestling has a very noticeable effect on his body. He walks with so much pain. Wrestling may be fake in the sense that the outcome is determined beforehand, but what this movie really makes apparent is that people are really getting hit in the ring, they really do fall from high places, and when they bleed they really are bleeding. Wrestling, in that sense is very real. So real, in fact, that when Randy suffers a heart attack after an especially brutal bout, it seems like the appropriate reaction to what he has just been through. The Wrestler does for muscle men what Sunset Boulevard did for silent film stars. It is an empathetic story of a person stuck in thier own obsolescence. Even if Randy’s health didn’t fail, he still would have no chance for a comeback. The era is over and he is left behind. What makes the movie a tragedy is that Randy has severed any personal ties he has had with his family and thus has nothing to fall back on now. His only relationship is with a stripper (Marisa Tomei) who maybe is only being nice to him because he’s a customer. His daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) hates him. The movie is comprised of attempted reconciliations and mistakes. But it seems Randy can’t live without wrestling, something the doctor has told him to avoid. 
This is called Mickey Rourke’s comeback movie. That’s ironic to say after his character’s failure to comeback in the movie itself. Still it is a great performance, which should put him in contending for the Best Actor Oscar. Marisa Tomei also is worthy of her nomination. It is my personal opinion that she looks better right now than she did almost fifteen years ago when she first won an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny. My god is she smoking. It’s ridiculous to be in such great shape at her age. Evan Rachel Wood also does good work. The entire movie is wall-to-wall good performances. 
The director for this movie is, quite surprisingly, none other than Darren Aronofsky. Seeing any of his other films you would never have guessed. All the trademark Aronofsky camera moves and edits are gone. What is present is a completely different style. He has completely reinvented himself. Consider for a moment that his last movie was The Fountain. Wow, this is definitely the opposite of that movie in every way. As always I’m very interested in what the guy is doing next. 
One last thing: Bruce Springsteen’s soulful ballad at the end of the film should have been at least nominated for an Oscar. The fact that it isn’t is a true disappointment. If I were NBC I would be so pissed off at the Academy this year. The fact that neither Wall-e nor The Dark Knight was nominated for Best Picture probably cost them 30 million viewers already. To have the chance for Bruce Springsteen to perform at the ceremony and not have him nominated probably cost them another 10 million. What could have been a record setting viewer ship has all but disappeared. Instead we have The Reader and a couple of unknown Indian songs from ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ which frankly I didn’t think were impressive enough to remember. At least Robert Downey Jr. was recognized for Tropic Thunder.