And this week’s (August 23-29) movie of the week is… Gran Torino!

Maybe Clint didn’t win last week with The Good the Bad and the Ugly, but he won big with this one. If you didn’t watch this one… Wait, that reminds me of something. As a quick aside, sometimes people will tell me that they’ve only seen one of the movies selected, or perhaps they didn’t get involved because they hadn’t seen any of them. Allow me to shed some light on this situation. And another quick aside, it is a huge huge pet peeve of mine when people say “shed some light on the situation” when they turn a light on in a room. If this is you, please stop! Now back to the first aside, you can vote no matter what you’ve watched or not watched. For instance, you might say to yourself, “I’m going to pick this movie because the actor in it is one of my favourites,” or “It was dreary, rainy day today and this movie has the word “rain” in it–gets my vote. Most of us will pick the ones we enjoyed the most, but just so you know, you’re not disqualified as a result of missing out watching any of the picked flicks.

Back to Gran Torino, if you haven’t watched this one, you would have a freaking awesome weekend if you went out and rented it now. I would recommend watching it on Netflix, but I don’t think it’s on there.. This is one of those movies that you can watch alone and it wouldn’t matter. The first thing that I would say makes GT a winner is its treatment of racial dissonance and broadening one’s perspective. It comes across as highly non-politically correct, and though most of us claim to hate political correctness, we often cringe when people and situations are not. The first half hour of the movie makes viewers cringe to the point where they feel bad for continuing to watch. But then you get over it. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean you suddenly become tolerant of racism, nor do you get “numb” to it (kind of an overused term and I’m not 100% sure what it’s supposed to mean), but you settle into the character’s perspective, where it came from, and where it could be going.

This brings me to what I think is the element of the movie that I believe sets it apart: the main character. There are many great characters in movies and TV. There’s the Fonz, Captain Jack Sparrow, George Castanza, Tyler Durden, Kermit the Frog, Ellen Ripley–memorable, lovable, and most of all, they win us over by simply being who they are. I have always felt that the best character in TV history is Archie Bunker. Ironically, he is a lot like Eastwood’s character. Walt Kowalski, is a retired Korean War vet and he is in a perpetual bad mood. He’s old, crotchety, and outrageously prejudiced. But you love him, even early in the movie. Why do we love the grumpy old man character? More specifically, why do we love the close-minded, irritable grumpy old man character? Maybe it’s because he reminds us of someone we know. Throughout life, change is inevitable. Could it be that loving these crusty, grumbling fools (just thought of another one–Carl Fredricksen from Up) give us that weirdly comforting feeling of embracing the need to move ahead with change while still recognizing the beauty and value of our past in spite of its contentious and musty faults. Oh, thought of another one: Stanley Roper.

There are mixed reviews on the acting in this movie–though I can’t imagine why–but Walt Kowalski (which, by the way, is the real life name of the legendary Canadian pro-wrestler Killer Kowalski. He died the year of this movie’s release.) will not only gain your affections, but his redemption (and the movie’s redemption) will cause you to say, “Yeah, that definitely deserves to be movie of the week from August 23-29!”

Congratulations Gran Torino, it’s your week.

Of course, we must acknowledge the two runners up. It should be noted that though Gran Torino was released in 2008, it did not get win (or even get nominated for) best picture at the Oscars. The winner that year was Slumdog Millionaire. This movie was both culturally insightful and refreshingly hopeful. It also possesses one of the greatest soundtracks in all of movie-dom, in my humble opinion. And Eternal Sunshine is a movie that really makes you think. For starters, like Inception, you have to be careful to pay attention in order to keep up. But more importantly, it asks questions without actually spelling the question out for you. Just by watching you are faced with thoughts and feelings to wrestle with. LOVE those kind of movies.

And the winning quote of the week: I was going to choose the “Get off my lawn” line from Gran Torino, but this week’s quote will come from Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine: “Constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating.”

And the Oscar goes to: Actress: How can it not be Kate Winslet? She is, without a doubt, one of the most accomplished and talented actresses of our time. This one was a role that was so different from anything else I’d seen her play. Actor: Well, Clint won last week, but I’m afraid he’s going to have to give it up for Jim Carrey this week. I remember thinking that it was strange that Carrey wasn’t nominated for his role in The Truman Show. Then when he wasn’t nominated for Man on the Moon, well that was just plain stupid. But the straw that broke the Oscar trophy’s back was the snub he got after playing Joel in Eternal Sunshine. This was Carrey’s crowning performance, which says a lot–have you seen Man on the Moon?? Forget that, have you seen Dumb and Dumber??

Oh, the 00’s. A great decade. And now maybe you have more of an idea why everyone loves Dr. House so much.