One thing that 3CM hasn't been historically good it has been keeping up with the major Oscar-nominated movies, which is a bit ironic, since I went through a major cinema-phile phase earlier in life. This past year is no different, so I'm way behind on seeing the 2013 Oscar nominees. However, for lack of any other ideas, and since this is Loser's Club, I thought of taking a somewhat loserly tack (natch) on one of the big nominees, American Hustle. If you haven't seen it (or if you have), loserdom abounds in this one, particularly with respect to two of the characters, whose respective actors are both up for Oscar nominations. Will try not to spoil plot points too much for those who haven't seen it, even if it is nominally based on the real-life Abscam scandal from the 1970's, and has this intro framing card:
"Some of this actually happened."
More below the flip.....
One thing to note particularly about the Oscar nominations for American Hustle is that it scored acting nominations in all 4 acting categories, a very rare feat for a single movie in any given year:
Best Actor: Christian Bale (Irving Rosenfeld)
Best Actress: Amy Adams (Sydney Prosser)
Best Supporting Actor: Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso)
Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Roslyn Rosenfeld)
The characters who are the particular losers, although loserdom is present to some degree among all the lead characters, are Richie DiMaso and Roslyn Rosenfeld. By way of backstory with respect to those particular characters, Richie DiMaso is an FBI agent who wants to make it big, and has the idea of a sting operation to nail various Congresscritters in a bribery scheme, involving trying to obtain fast-track citizenship for an Arab sheik with tons of $$ to bankroll the reinvention of Atlantic City as the East Coast equivalent of Las Vegas. (Atlantic City, however, has the advantage, such as it is, of not being a desert city with no natural water supply, but never mind.) To do this, DiMaso tries to recruit con artists Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser, as DiMaso has caught them in a loan scam, but offers them a break if they'll cooperate with him.
However, during the course of the movie, DiMaso reveals his loserness in more ways than one. On the more 'personal' side, he still lives with his mom, and evidently has a secret fiancee about whom he doesn't talk much. This makes things a bit complicated when DiMaso starts falling for Prosser (Prosser had heard a bit of DiMaso family melodrama in the background on the phone once), which is a very understandable reaction, given the low-cut clothes that Prosser is regularly decked out in (not to mention the red hair), and which she might fall out of at any moment. (Of course, 3CM would say that, being a guy who likes redheads, even if they don't like him.)
More dangerously, in terms of the actual plans to try to catch (entrap?) the Congressfolk are a few dumb or borderline dumb moves by DiMaso, like:
(a) Overeagerly pushing a briefcase full of $$ at one point early on towards the mayor of Camden, Carmine Polito (played by Jeremy Renner), causing alarm bells to go off right away.
(b) Subbing one of his FBI colleagues, who doesn't speak Arabic, in place of one of Irving's cohorts, who does speak Arabic, as the fake sheik, without telling anyone in advance.
In a nutshell, DiMaso seems way out of his depth, although there are moments when he does seem to improve and to "get it" a bit better. However, there's one more loser twist for him when it counts the most, but I won't spoil that here, as you need to see the movie for that.
With respect to Roslyn Rosenfeld, Irv's wife, she can be described very superficially, and in the literal and not colloquial sense, as a 'dumb blonde'. But at the risk of sounding un-PC, that is not in the casual sense. Roslyn is genuinely, authentically and dangerously stupid, not just in terms of book-smarts, but also street-smarts. Small cases in point:
(a) At one point, Irving winds up with a new microwave oven, keeping in mind that microwaves were a novelty then. (I also won't spoil how he got said microwave.) Irving takes it home, installs it, and in the process, warns Roslyn not to heat anything metal in it. Guess what she does. (That much I'll spoil.)
(b) At a big gathering, where gangsters are involved, Roslyn tags along with Irving, DiMaso and Prosser at one point in the scheme, much to the latter two characters' distress, since Roslyn isn't in the know about the scheme. Down the line, Roslyn starts getting a bit overly friendly with one of the gangsters, and at a private meal, blabs something about her husband possibly being an IRS plant. It barely needs commenting how stupid that is, to mouth off about something like that to a mafioso (or anyone else, for that matter).
Later on, when Irv confronts Roslyn over this, Roslyn blurts out that she's frustrated because Irv never tells her anything about what he does, and she feels neglected. But the microwave story tells you why Irv never tells her anything: she doesn't listen, and can't follow instructions, not to mention that she doesn't know when to shut up and how to keep secrets. In a nutshell, Roslyn is a movie version of a certain idiot ex-governor of Alaska, who thinks she knows stuff, and actually knows nothing. As well, Roslyn's loose words almost get people killed, which I'll admit is a slight difference with the idiot ex-governor of Alaska, whose mean-spirited attack political ads several years back actually did get people killed.
Of course, these aspects of the characters are not a reflection of the actors themselves, at least one hopes so. I've no idea what Cooper and Lawrence are like as real-life individuals in their own rights, so let's leave that at that. So if you've seen the movie, and want to chit-chat about it below, feel free. Or you can observe the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week......