Word: torino
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stone - Mickey Rourke as the comeback kid, Slumdog Millionaire as the art-house wunderkind, Milk as the timely social commentary (released three weeks after Proposition 8 passed in California). Yet while the critics have been fussing over wrestlers and Mumbai quiz shows, audiences have been flocking to Gran Torino - an Oscar outcast that's been doing laps around the competition at the box office. At some point this week, the Clint Eastwood drama will pass the $100 million mark, easily surpassing the box-office receipts brought in by not only some of the Oscar front-runners (Slumdog Millionaire now totals...
...Originally released Dec. 12 in only six theaters and hyped by Warner Bros. as a major-awards contender, the film won Eastwood early recognition by the National Board of Review as Best Actor, but that's been the exception to the rule. At the glitzy Golden Globes, Gran Torino was mentioned in just one category: original song. When the Oscar nominees were unveiled last week, Gran Torino was shut out of the competition completely. (See TIME's top 10 films...
...certainly one of the least likely blockbusters in some time. Starring Eastwood as a crotchety widower living in Detroit's Highland Park neighborhood - a veteran of the Korean War who eyes his Hmong neighbors suspiciously and launches into racist tirades when provoked - Gran Torino was filmed on location in a mere five weeks on a slim budget of $35 million. The majority of its Hmong characters were played by nonprofessionals. In addressing such tumultuous issues as racial strife, gang warfare and urban blight, it can hardly be categorized as escapist entertainment...
...shame that she was made a Best Actress finalist for her work as the desperate mother in Changeling, a performance so miscalibrated that it yanks the story out of its period whenever she's on screen. (Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood, took three nominations; Eastwood's much superior Gran Torino, none.) It would have made far more sense, though obviously not to the Academy, if she'd been cited as the succulent succubus of the comic-book film Wanted - a true demonstration of star quality.
...there's a sense of pop culture trying to feel its way toward the next thing, the new tone, whatever it might be. On 24, Jack Bauer is getting philosophical about torture. American Idol is trying to be nicer to its bad singers. Even Clint Eastwood's hit Gran Torino--in which a racist retiree snarls at Asian gang bangers to "get off my lawn" as he protects a young Hmong neighbor--is ultimately not the reactionary return of Dirty Harry but the 20th century grouchily giving way to the 21st...