Quick Reviews: Best Picture Nominees, Part 2 of 3

Happy Presidents' Day, readers of Tableau Your Mind (Tableauyers? Tableauniacs?).  We've been very very busy getting ready for the Oscars next Sunday, making sure that we have bought enough streamers and bean dip (Party Hint #536: One Can Never Have Too Much Bean Dip). We've also been looking back at the nine (9!) films nominated for Best Picture. For Valentine's Day, we reviewed Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, and Amour, which are the three films that most clearly focus on what the French call love, or at least they call it that when they're speaking English. We love a theme, so today, in honor of Presidents' Day, we'll be quickly revealing the three films that deal with American history: Lincoln, Argo, and Zero Dark Thirty:

2013 Golden Globes Wrap-Up

Well, the Golden Globes happened, and it was about as unruly and bonkers as a controlled night of self-flattery can be. Hayden Panettiere showed up and looked old, Daniel Day Lewis won and also did the E.T. finger, Anne Hathaway thanked someone for ‘the best string of yesterdays’ she has ever had, and Dog President stars Darcy St. Fudge and Damian Francisco were robbed. Tableau Your Mind is currently in India, so we enlisted the help of guest blogger Bro-sie the Riveter, who is in Seattle, so that we can represent the most easterly and westerly people watching the Golden Globes:

The 'Magic Mike' Trailer Got Us Thinking...

Yesterday saw the release of the first trailer for Magic Mike, the stripper biopic directed by Stephen Soderbergh and starring and based on the life of Channing Tatum, 2012's most ubiquitous film star (This year's Jessica Chastain, or, more aptly, this year's Jude Law).

It got us thinking. Despite the somewhat cyclical nature of Channing Tatum’s career that this trailer represents, the role really opens him up to a whole new world of opportunities. He can dance, he’s funny, and he can sing. He still lacks some complexity in the more dramatic

Quick Reviews: Best Picture Nominees

The Academy Awards are upon us. Starlets are picking out their dresses, Billy Crystal is getting his hair dyed and his forehead injected with some last-minute Botox, and we here at Tableau Your Mind have to review the nine films up for Best Picture. It’s been a strange road, mostly because there are so many movies that we did not want to see. Nothing shows the old, male WASP-iness of the Academy voters like this class of nominees. Almost no independent films made it on the list, veteran directors were rewarded for sub-par work, and schmaltz was praised above all. Unlike last year’s smorgasbord of impressive films, we are given this lackluster collection of nominees. Still, we’re sure we can get through these nominees and find a clear winner. Also, just for kicks, we’re going to include the movies that should have been nominated.

2011 in Review: Part 2

Welcome Back to Part 2 of Tableau Your Mind’s look back at 2011. Be sure to check out Part 1 of our coverage HERE, and feel free to disagree with anything we write. You’ll be wrong, but sometimes it’s just nice to disagree. Like the other day, when one of our guest bloggers had a disagreement with some lutefisk that he had just eaten. Anyway, on to the recap!

Film Review: The Help

Hilly, Skeeter, Minny (with pie), and Aibileen

The Help is about a girl named Skeeter (adorable nickname!) who is really, really miffed about losing the maid who raised her (adorable lost youth!) and who wants a job with a big, fancy publishing house (adorable goals!). When she notices that the maids who work for her childhood friends are being mistreated, she decides to write (and I am using that term