Mark's Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

So I actually heard about this movie quite a while ago. I received an email from one of my brother's pointing out the name of this movie since Sarah Marshall also happens to be my niece's name. Well, then the billboards turned up. Billboards all over LA with sayings like, "Even my Mom hates Sarah Marshall" or "Sarah Marshall is Evil".

Well, the wait is over, Friday night, Kyp, some friends and I met up to check out the latest project from the Apatow machine. To be honest, I figured I'd laugh, but wasn't really looking forward to the film, because I haven't been such a huge fan of the other films (Superbad, Knocked Up, etc). Don't get me wrong, I laughed, and they were good for mindless comedy... but Kyp and I both discussed how they came up short when trying to have serious moments. Something that Forgetting Sarah Marshall was NOT guilty of!

The movie had everything you could want; the silly humor that Apatow's crew has pretty much mastered, as well as the great guy characters that seem to persist through all the films. Something new that the movie brought to the table was a female character who filled the screen as much as Segel. Mila Kunis of That 70's Show absolutely wow'd me. Looking much better than she ever did on T7S, and having what I would argue was the best screen presence in the movie.

What they also managed to do was not overkill the amount of Jonah Hill (who honestly... just annoys me) and Paul Rudd. Paul Rudd was great, but if they had left him in there much longer... it probably would've started to not work for me. Over all, GREAT humor, strong story, and amazing characters. Definately worth checking out.

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Mark's Oscars Reaction

Let's just get this out of the way... Ellen Page got robbed. I'm not too sore about this, because I've heard amazing things about La Vie En Rose (Life in Pink)... however, Juno will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Anyway, as far as Best Picture, and the Male Acting categories there were no surprises. Daniel Day Lewis was no contest, and the same with Javier. Don't get me wrong there were some other fantastic performances, but really... when it came down to it, these two men had the performances of the decade!

As for the women, Tilda Swinton came up big, and I think even she was surprised! Congrats to her. This is the first time since the 60's where the four acting oscars all went to foreign actors.

Bourne picked up a few sound awards and cinematography, and I can't agree with those, while yes the sound editing in the films were good, I disagree that it should've taken the awards.

However, the HIGHLIGHT of the evening... is unquestionably the performance of "Falling Slowly" by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of Once. If you're a member of digg, search for it on digg and digg it (that's a lot of diggs in one sentence) and let's get it to the front page.

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