Graphic Film Analysis #1: The Runaways

You can see how this might be a problem.

FRANCO AND HATHAWAY IN...BIUTIFUL

So, I could write a 10,000 word Oscar preview but my prose is not feeling very sharp. So how about a simple series of lists with the people/movie I think are gonna win in bold and, much more importantly, listed in my order of preference.

BEST PICTURE:

- Toy Story 3 (Genuinely shocking)
- The Social Network (Makes an honest effort to explore the relationship between the public and the personal)
- Black Swan (Wonderful trash horror about the relationship between art and personal sacrifice)
- Winter's Bone (Ozark noir, another sub-genre I never knew I wanted until I got it)
- The Kids Are All Right (It's really funny!)
- The Fighter (D.O.R. doesn't explode the Boston Movie or Boxing Picture, instead lovingly makes great ones)
- True Grit (fun, gorgeous, and well-acted, if not particularly revelatory)
- 127 Hours (50/50 between the great desert/rock scenes and the annoying Boyled flashbacks)
- Inception (Plotted very neatly, but oh how I wish so much of the plot didn't hinge on the Leo/Cotillard love stuff)
- The King's Speech (not all bad, but it looks terrible and doesn't quite attempt to say anything about anything)

BEST ACTOR:

- Jesse Eisenberg (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant)
- James Franco (absolutely nails the big interview scene)
- Colin Firth (better than the material required)
- Jeff Bridges (good, you know)

*Haven't seen the Javier Bardem one, realized I haven't really altogether liked an Iñárittu movie and it probably wouldn't worth it for me

BEST ACTRESS:

- Natalie Portman (uses her Portman-ness to great effect)
- Annette Bening (the Joni Mitchell scene is is jaw-dropping)
- Jennifer Lawrence (works hard throughout the movie for the big emotional payoff at the end)
- Michelle Williams (maybe the structure makes it easier to see what she's doing, but she does it real well)
- Nicole Kidman (the Kidman Forehead isn't altogether unrealistic for the character, actually)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
- Christian Bale (not subtle, obvi, but the physicality is awesome)
- Jeremy Renner (like a little Boston pitbull James Cagney, so entertaining)
- John Hawkes (emotionally mysterious and excellent, like most of the supporting performances in Winter's Bone)
- Mark Ruffalo (subtle Cali bro skills)
- Geoffrey Rush (charming)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
- Amy Adams (plays the Supportive Girlfriend type, but makes sure you know there's more going on than just Standing By Her Man)
- Jacki Weaver (the escalation of menace throughout the movie is gr8)
- Hailee Steinfeld (great shit-talking, though again, this is in every appreciable way a Lead Performance)
- Melissa Leo (fun, but I think less convincing in her mannerism than her opposite number Bale)
- Helena Bonham Carter (a decent performance in a nothing role)

BEST DIRECTOR:
- David Fincher (not an achievement on the level of Zodiac, but shapes the Sorkin script into a super fast yet super clear stunner)
- Darren Aronofsky (great delirium)
- David O. Russell (manages the tone brilliantly, throwing in some screwball along with the inspirational and dramatic)
- Joel and Ethan Coen (pretty landscapes and the usual Coen skill for creating fun supporting characters)
- Tom Hooper (movie is carried by the acting, can't tell that Hooper did anything positive, to be honest)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:
- Toy Story 3 (the dialogue is great, the story is perfect)
- The Social Network (I was very worried when I heard Sorkin was writing this, but he did a great job, though I suspect the editing, acting, and direction aren't getting enough credit for how well they make his writing work)
- Winter's Bone (maintains both an air of mystery and emotional insight)
- True Grit (the broad comedy stuff might be my favorite, actually)
- 127 Hours (a lot of the Franco talking to himself stuff works, a lot of the psychoanalysis really doesn't)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:
- The Kids Are All Right (to say that it's just a family dramedy and not a lesbian family dramedy undersells what it accomplishes)
- Another Year (insightful about aging, and much more insightful about friendship and other complicated interpersonal relationships)
- The Fighter (solid take on the various genres, but I think it's the direction and acting that's really special)
- Inception (the exposition is pretty good under the circumstances, but the character interactions don't interest me all that much)
- The King's Speech (solid prestige movie dialogue, as corny as expected, but solid)

DOCUMENTARY
- Inside Job (Very neatly laid out, super-intense, and even manages to justify its blood thirst)
- Restrepo (the editing is done really well; the quality of and balance between the art and journalism is dope)
- Gasland (makes a very compelling argument against fracking, narrator really sounds like Johnny Depp)
- Exit Through the Gift Shop (quite entertaining, however, there lingers a suspicion that's it's not actually saying anything about anything)

*Didn't get to see Wasteland

OTHER THINGS I HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT:

- Alexandre Desplat will probably win for his score for The King's Speech. He totally deserves it...for his score for The Ghost Writer.
- Alice in Wonderland is not the worst movie ever made (Helena Bonham-Carter is probably actually better in it than she is in The King's Speech), but it might just be one of the ugliest. Any technical awards for it will be sad.
- I don't mind the Art Direction in The King's Speech at all, but the cinematography, with its low angle street shots and slightly off center close-ups, is horrendous. I really hope Roger Deakins finally gets his Cinematography Oscar instead of dude from King's Speech.
- Will be cheering against Let's Pollute for Best Animated Short. It's not nearly as bad as last year's Logorama, whose Political niche it fills, but it does seem to me rather half-baked. All of the other nominees are better than it, including the big-budget, 30 minute long British-Actor-Filled adaptation of kids' book The Gruffalo, Pixar's Day & Night, and especially Madagascar, carnet de voyage, which you should totally watch.

God I hope the King's Speech doesn't win. But it will. Let's drink!

mooooovies (#8) (playing catch-up)

The Ghost Writer (dir. Roman Polanski, 2010)
Anyone hoping for an Auteurist reflection on Polanski's legal flare-ups (are those people out there? I'm prolly just strawmanning) probably won't find much here, but it's definitely a solid thriller that falls apart in the last act (fucking Google) but is still totally worth it. MacGregor is fine, but Brosnan is great whenever he shows up as either a patsy or a master conspirator who's losing it or both. Olivia Williams is great too and Tom Wilkinson comes in at the end to grab a scene with his teeth and take it the hell away from Ewan. Finally, the score is ill.

Leaving Las Vegas (dir. Mike Figgis, 1995)
A few Sundays ago I went to a bar at 11am to watch Liverpool play, then took a cab to a different bar to watch the Bears play, then went home and roommate Sarah wanted to watch this one, which she had on Netflix. I hadn't seen it since the first time I saw it, at which point I was probably way too young to see it. The fact that Nic Cage won an Oscar for this amazes me, cynical Oscar obsessive that I am, because he's really not holding back any of his ridiculousness. The exchange about whether Ben is drinking as a way of killing himself or killing himself as a way of drinking is awesome in how the movie acknowledges the line's cleverness and dismisses it at the same time.

The 19th Wife (dir. Rob Holcomb, 2010)
Of course we were gonna watch a Lifetime Mormon Murder Mystery, though we probably could also have predicted that it might get boring after a while. It did. I'd rather be watching Big Love for my LDSploitation kick (though we are watching TLC's Sister Wives tonight).

Piranha 3D (dir. Alexandre Aja, 2010)
Aja is a talented dude (even Mirrors had like 2 good things in it) and it's nice to see he can do horror-laughs as well as tragic murder/rape/burning alive scenes. This was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be, and Jerry O'Connell is surprisingly hilarious as Joe Francis. The only disappointment is (SPOILERS, but not ones that should make much difference ) that the main character doesn't end up leaving Jessica Szohr (not any more fun here than she is on Gossip Girl) for Kelly Brook. Elizabeth Shue is suitably heroic.

Greenberg (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2010)
I don't think the advertising for this accurately portrays how much of an asshole Ben Stiller's character is. So, for a while, I avoided the movie, thinking, though I don't know why I was being so pessimistic, that they gap between what the movie would expect me to feel for the character and my actual opinion would be huge. It turns out, Stiller's Roger Greenberg is a monster of a character prone to ill-timed freak-outs and being completely inappropriate, and he's not all that charismatic or charming, but Stiller plays him well enough to allow some empathy. and Rhys Ifans and especially Greta Gerwig are king-sized in this. Looks pretty too.

Catfish (dir. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, 2010)
Whether it's faked or not (and if I had to bet money I would bet that at least some of it isn't exactly on the up and up), I'm kind of split on Catfish. On one hand, it does have an interesting subject (the one the fillmmakers "stumble upon", not the protagonist, who is not at all interesting) that raises some good questions about what we do with reality in the virtual space. On the other in hand, the more I think about the movie the more I think that the filmmakers could do better with it. The visual style that constantly reminds you that the movie is about the internet could go, for one. But the worst part for me is the narrators and how, once they find a subject that is obviously more interesting than their original subject (co-director Ariel Schulman's little brother Nev), they can't pull back a little and take themselves further out of it. I would still probably recommend this, but it would probably be better as a short subject that cuts a lot of the stuff with Nev out of it.

Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2010)
Kick-Ass has an oddly similar problem to Catfish, in that if it dumped it's main character for a movie about the endlessly more entertaining Hit-Girl and Big Daddy (the latter played by Nicolas Cage, so obviously he's awesome), it would probably at least stand a chance. As it is, I really disliked most of this. I've never read the graphic novel this is based on and I haven't read Wanted either, so maybe it's just a coincidence, but I think after these two movies it's safe to say that if you're adapting a Mark Millar book for the screen, you should probably just find a way to cut out the voice-over narration.

The Town (dir. Ben Affleck, 2010) (SPOILER below)
I had pretty high expectations for this after Affleck's excellent Gone Baby Gone, and I'm happy to say that I liked it a lot. The acting is the best part, especially from Jeremy Renner as a little pitbull of a man and Affleck as a local-boy-makes-good-makes-bad-tries-to-just-even-out. Blake Lively is a pleasant surprise too, more or less playing a younger version of Amy Ryan's Gone Baby Gone character as filtered through J-Woww. There's a good car chase, the heists are well-staged, and while Affleck is playing with a lot of types here, the characters work. Just like in Good Will Hunting and Gone Baby Gone, the concept of neighborhood is a major theme here, and I really dug the kind of optimistic fantasy of the ending, which has it both ways as Affleck's character is forced/able to leave the neighborhood but is still able to contribute to the neighborhood by donating money to build a new hockey rink. Considering the harsh moral decision at the end of Gone Baby Gone, it caught me off guard in a good way. If Ben wants to keep adapting crime novels or Boston novels or whatever, let 'em do it.

mooooovies (#6)

Dude, Where's My Car? (dir. Danny Leiner, 2000)
Watched this on Saturday night with roommate Sarah and friend Petey, trying to take a drink every time they said "dude", "shibby", or "continuum transfunctioner", which I would imagine is, at worst, the second best way to watch this movie. One thing that seemed drunkenly apparent was that Ashton Kutcher was like ten times more entertaining than Sean William Scott (this might be because of the screenplay, I noticed Kutcher once in a while getting to say something that sounds like it makes sense, and then undo it with something incredibly stupid, whereas SWS just has to be dumb right off the bat). Either way, a Saturday night well spent. And Pete passed out before the movie ended.


The Time Traveller's Wife (dir. Robert Schwentke, 2009)
We decided that this was going to be better than the Emmys, and in the end that was probably the right choice (of a set we limited to two for no real reason). It gets a bit repetitive after a while, but it's not that bad, and the melodrama is at least focused on two very likable people. Bana's affability almost became a joke around the hour mark, actually, but what can I say, I like the dude. Honestly, the fact that it's a sci-fi movie very clearly targeted at the Nicholas Sparks audience is almost enough to make me like it on principle, and while it could be a little clearer on some of the details, it's still not a bad little movie.

mooooovies (#5)

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (dir. Jacques Audiard)
I should note that I watched this in two parts about 3 weeks apart, but I enjoyed this Audiard crime flick almost as much as his Oscar-nominated Un prophète. Like that movie, The Beat... focuses on the development of a young criminal, in this case a not-completely-legit real estate broker named Thomas Seyr and played by Romain Duris with a great nervous grin. Seyr's never altogether realistic dream is to escape a life of shady business to follow in his mother's footsteps as a concert pianist.

The way Audiard, who also co-wrote the movie, uses music is a great variation of a kind of cliche in which a troubled urban character is calmed and refined by art. Seyr never seems as nervous terrorizing squatters as he does trying to get his Bach piece right. Overall, it's an interesting portrayal of the difficulties of changing one's life, more specifically reconciling what one really thinks one wants (concert pianist like yr dead mom) with what one is used to (crook like one's dad, played here by Niels Arestrup, who is good but doesn't quite steal the show like he does in Un prophete).

The Brood (dir. David Cronenberg, 1979)
I'm going to slowly work my way through all the Cronenberg I haven't seen in the fall, I think. I guess it would be spoiling to say who the villain here is exactly, but the way his/her psychological damage is manifested is awesome. The colors, the blood, Oliver Reed's menace, the terrifying children, yes this is very good end-of-the-70s horror.

mooooovies (#4)

The Expendables (dir. Sylvester Stallone, 2010)
It's not fair, really, from a critical standpoint. How could I not like this? Jet Li fights Ivan Drago here. Many modern action movies aim for intertextuality by referencing shots, quips, and cliches, but bringing together so many iconic actors (of so many iconic characters) to do an action movie is a whole different thing altogether.

There are things here that are not so good, the foremost of which is the CGI blood. I wonder what the price point difference is between CGI blood and physical fake blood, and whether it gets bigger for something that necessitates as much blood as this movie does, because this shit looks terrible (the fire isn't so good either).

For the most part, though, Stallone knows how to direct this kind of movie. He spends a lot of time on faces, which is awesome when the faces are so iconic. A speech delivered by Mickey Rourke, for example, is a-ok in its content, but the tight (blue-lit) close-up on his face is fascinating. I would imagine that if this movie sounds like a good idea to you, there is no reason you won't enjoy it (do I even need to say that Statham is great?).

Symbol (dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2009, no US release yet scheduled)
Symbol is partly about a man that wakes up in a mysterious all-white room but it's not a horror movie. Instead, it's a (seemingly) absurdist existential comedy. The story of the man (played in kiddie pajamas by Matsumoto) is cross-cut with the (seemingly) unrelated story of an aging Mexican Wrestler getting ready for a match he is not expected to win (pro wrestling is competitive here). It's kind of hard to describe what happens without spoiling a major development that is presented with awesome cross-cutting about 3/4ths of the way into the movie, but let's just say that the scope of Matsumoto's story expands greatly towards the end.

Even before that revelation, however, I was having a lot of fun. The parts with the man stuck in the room, flicking little switches (which are actually little cherub penises) that make seemingly random objects appear and disappear are a great send-up of a style of video-gamey logic in which completely unrelated tasks eventually lead to a reasonable goal. Symbol really strikes me as quite a brilliant, original work and it's really worth going out of your way (internets) to see.

mooooovies (#3)

The Invention of Lying (dir. Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson, 2009)
This was on HBO On Demand so I watched it on a Sunday night not expecting much, and I don't regret it. It certainly has many funny moments and Jennifer Garner does a very admirable job playing a character who is required by the plot to speak almost entirely in dialogue that would normally be obvious subtext (that's a way to look at this movie, I guess: a society without lies is a society without subtext?). The tone here sometimes edges from surprisingly sad to boringly sad though and, well, is it wrong to ask a comedy to be slightly, I don't know, nerdier? That is to say, if you're creating an alternate reality, shouldn't it be a little more detailed? Everything we know about this reality in which lying hasn't been invented seems to suggest that history for the most part has played out exactly the same as it did in our reality (except for/despite the absence of religion). This might be too much to ask, I dunno.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)
Not being nerdy enough is certainly not a problem for this one and it totally exceeded my expectations, which were basically that I would enjoy some of the form but would be super-turned off by the story. I was happily only half right. From the initial 16-bitty Universal logo, Wright's synthesis of video game and comic imagery is totally fun, full of witty sight gags and useful transitions and characterizations (PS though, with regards to using video game stuff in movies, let's not forget Crank: High Voltage, which does it in a completely different spirit but just as successfully). And my fear that I would find Scott Pilgrim himself to be somewhat of a turd wasn't off, but with pretty much every other character calling him a turd at some point it totally didn't bother me like I thought it would. Basically, the Seven Evil Exes thing was a much more complex metaphor for relationships than I expected it to be (haven't read the books obvi) and this was really fun. (Also there's a scene of Scott Pilgrim talking to himself that made me wonder, who's gonna have the balls to pull the trigger on the Michael Cera/Jesse Eisenberg buddy movie?).

I should probably be spreading these out better.

mooooovies (#2)

Howard's End (dir. James Ivory, 1992)
This was the first Blu-ray I watched on New Roommate Sarah's Blu-ray player (after the HDMI cable came in the mail I basically just bumped up the highest movie in my Netflix queue available on Blu-ray). The first shot, of Vanessa Redgrave walking around the titular, err, End, is maybe the best thing in the movie visually, but it never goes too far downhill. Emma Thompson is A+ great, and I found myself quite selfishly concerned with her Liberal, middle-class character's fascination with the Upper Class as it parallels my love of all things set in beautiful English country estates. I assumed (having never read it) that the book gives a few of the key plot elements (Margaret and Ruth's friendship, Henry and Margaret's courtship) a bit more time to breathe and, perhaps oddly, that assumption being available actually did a lot to make me accept how rushed those things seemed in the film.

Green Zone (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2010)
Greengrass is one of my favorite directors and I liked parts of this a whole lot, but I'm conflicted about it on the whole, mostly because of Brian Helgeland's screenplay and how much it spells things that it has very clearly illustrated out in the dialogue. For example, when, during a climactic scene, an Iraqi character tells an American character "It is not up to you to decide what happens here", it seems a bit much, considering how much a) the theme of how American involvement affects the local people we are "liberating" has been hammered home in the movie b) how much it has become part of the Iraq narrative in general. But then again maybe I'm wrong on point b.

Consider summary of the movie on Netflix:

U.S. Defense Intelligence Agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) doesn't want to hear what Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) has to say about not finding the weapons of mass destruction -- evidence that could launch a war -- he's been sent to Iraq to unearth...

Considering that the movie starts with the invasion of Baghdad and then moves on to Miller and co. looking for the WMDs, "evidence that could launch a war" seems a bit of an odd way to put things. So maybe the story of what happened in Iraq in 2003 does bear repeating and hammering into the ground. And maybe I just wish it was done in a way that didn't introduce it very clearly in the subtext and then hammer it into you again in the dialogue.

Matt Damon is reliably great here, btw, and Amy Ryan does a decent job looking conflicted as the Embodiment of the Failings of the American Press. Also, the colors in the night-time action scenes are absolutely gorgeous, which actually made me feel a little weird in retrospect.

mooooovies

The Kids Are All Right (dir. Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)
The moment I keep coming back to when thinking of this movie's appeal involves Julianne Moore's character being asked why she and her wife would enjoy male gay porn and, before being interrupted, actually trying to answer that question honestly. I was shocked, mostly because "why do you guys watch gay porn" (or however it was phrased) was a good enough punchline that I didn't expect it to be followed by something even funnier. This one is super-successful as a dramedy in that the laughs and the drama come from basically the same place, the brilliantly written and acted characters.

Inception (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2010)
I enjoyed it, but I couldn't help being a little disappointed (not based on my expectations coming in but rather on how cool some parts of it were and how boring I found others). I think the way time works in dreams is a brilliant conceit, and man, if you decide to heavily use Edith Piaf in a movie featuring an actress best known for playing Edith Piaf, that's gonna win you points from me nine times out of ten. But now that I think about it, I probably actually cared about the Leo love story here even less than the one in Shutter Island and, aside from some of the hotel stuff, the actual action here was kind of boring, no? And that one dream that was a kinda shitty Golden Eye level? And Ellen Page's boring-ass character? Tom Hardy's dope tho and on balance I still think there's more to like here than not. Plz no sequel.

Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to see this but wow oh wow was it not at all disappointing. At the risk of hyperbole, everything Jeremy Irons does here is brilliant, and ok, I guess most contemporary stories are in some way explorations of identity, but the ones Cronenberg gets are especially vivid and interestingly explicit with respect to this theme, no? Oddly, the scene in which Bev's "instruments" are exhibited as art, much to his chagrin, made me think it could be interesting to watch this with something like Dr. 90210 or Nip/Tuck, to see if we could possibly compare how "Artist" has become part of the myth of the Plastic Surgeon to anything here.

OSCAR DEATH RACE PART ABRIDGED ENDING

So, because of various factors such as my new job, my computer touch pad going insane, and general laziness, I'm not gonna be able to finish this as thoroughly as I wanted. So here are the rest of my winners, distilled for maximally concentrated anger and accuracy.

Visual Effects: Avatar. If it doesn't win this it won't win anything. But it will win this.

Cinematography: Avatar seems to be the favorite, but I don't have any faith in the Academy being willing to give cinematography to something that's mostly animated. So I'm going with Robert Richardson for Inglourious Basterds, possibly Tarantino's prettiest looking movie ever.

Animated Feature: There's a line of reasoning that says Mr. Fox gets this because Up's reward is the Best Pic nom. That's just not gonna happen. Up wins this, though I'm shocked that the Princess and the Frog isn't getting more Disney Return to Glory hype, regardless of it's quality.

Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. 100%.

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz 100%.

Best Actress: A week ago I still thought there wouldn't be enough people who liked Blind Side enough for Sandy to win. But the closer it gets the more I fall in line. It's actually not even that the competition isn't good this year, it's that I think Meryl, Carey, and Gabby will all get enough votes that none of them will be able to pull ahead of Sandra Bullock.

Best Actor: There's no reason I can see to bet against Jeff Bridges here.

Adapted Screenplay: This will probably be where they honor Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner for the former Best Picture frontrunner, the shallow, offensive, insipid, boring, stale Up in the Air. A win for In the Loop would be one of the most pleasant and shocking surprises in recent Oscar memory.

Original Screenplay: I liked all of the movies in this category, which is pretty crazy. Anyways, this is between Basterds and the Hurt Locker, and as stupid as I feel about picking Basterds for Cinematography and Writing and then Hurt Locker for picture, I just feel better picking the more talky Inglorious Basterds for a screenplay award.

Best Foreign Film: I've only seen the wonderful Un Prophete and the terrible White Ribbon, but we also have Ajami, which deals with the middle east, The Milk of Sorrow, which everyone seems to agree has no chance, and El Secreto de Sus Ojos, which is emerging into a sort of favorite because it's supposedly the most conventional and straightforward of the five, qualities which the Foreign Film voters have gone for in recent years ahead of innovation or critical acclaim. I'll buy that and go with the Argentinian entry, although I'm scared they might give it to Haneke and his ribbon.

Best Director: Even if they don't give Hurt Locker Best Pic, I'd be shocked if Kathryn Bigelow missed out on this award. She deserves it, too, and so much has been made of her potentially being the first woman to win it and the ex-husband narrative that I can't see AMPAS passing this one up.

Best Picture: Gaaaaaaawd I dunno. I'm just gonna say The Hurt Locker and be done with it. I think the backlash came too late.

Enjoy your Oscars, friends. Big party here.

DUNNNNNN

Finally, the big one, expanded to ten movies because there are like twenty deserving ones. I present to you the greatest pair of presenters ever to grace any telecast: Robert Mitchum and Sigourney Weaver!


YR NOMINEES

- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
For Cage's performance, for the iguanas, for gleefully giving in its ending.

- Crank: High Voltage
For the great Statham surviving a fall from a plane, for taking cues from video games and actually meaning it, for sweet, sweet violence.

- Goodbye Solo
For Bahrani's continuing exploration of America, for the chemistry between Solo and Red, for the mountains.

- Hunger
For the shit, for the piss, for the acting.

- The Hurt Locker
For the virtuoso first scene, for William James, for the borrowed scene from Lost.

- Inglourious Basterds
For the gigantic pipe, for the dairy farm and restaurant scenes, for fun with regional accents.

- Pontypool
For the best new virus in quite a while, for Stephen McHattie's voice, for balancing theory, plot, and fun.

- Silent Light
For the sunrise, for the sunset, for everything in between.

- Summer Hours
For making a movie commissioned by a museum that questions the use of museums, for an amazing cast, for looking towards the future.

- Up
For those devastating 10 minutes, for the character design (Doug! Kevin!), for Ed Asner and Christopher Plummer's voices.

FINAL WINNER:
The Hurt Locker. So there.


We're gonna try to do an Oscar Preview next week, but God knows I haven't had anything new to say about movies in days now, so we'll see. (I guess luckily I won't have to talk about movies, just the Oscars. ZING!)

ALMOST DONE

Actors! What can you say about 'em? Here's Halle Berry!


NOMINEES:

- Nicolas Cage for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
It's one of the craziest performances of his career, and you know that's saying something. His hunchback walk, his timing, his eyebrows, they're all excellent.

- Matt Damon for The Informant!
Damon's pretty much always good, but he's never been this funny, nor this good at subtly hinting at darkness even before things start to totally fall apart.

- Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker
The final shot of him here is as iconic an image as an actor can hope to have, I think. He has just enough swagger to pull this character off.

- Sam Rockwell for Moon
This movie had the potential to be dreadfully boring, but Rockwell's performance is hilarious and surprising in its wackiness.

- Souléymane Sy Savané for Goodbye Solo
He plays the title character with a kind of aggressive friendliness, but does wonderfully to make that friendliness not a mask to hide his inner troubles, but a genuine part of his personality.

- AND THE WIENER IS:
To the break of dawn! If you haven't seen Bad Lieutenant, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Cage is an absolute force of nature as usual, and with Herzog's help he gets a movie that fully rewards his madness.

WOMEN

Ladies and gentlemen, to present the Maciej for Best Actress, I have to the honor to introduce two time Oscar winner (sadly neither for Big) and all-around hilarious dude, Mr. Tom Hanks!


- YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN:

- Isabelle Furhman for Orphan
Orphan is a very fun little horror movie that would be considerably less fun if Fuhrman wasn't so charming and evil. Creating a memorable horror villain is not an achievement that should go unrewarded.

- Charlotte Gainsbourgh for Antichrist
I'd assume that Embodiment of the Rage Felt at Thousands of Years of Oppressed Women is a role that many actresses wouldn't mind trying their hand at, but Charlotte attacks it with such a palpable darkness in her eyes that I have a hard time believing many other actresses could pull it off like she has.

- Maria Onetto for The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel's film about a woman who might have run someone over on a country road necessitates a supremely detached acting style, and Onetto, with her eyes, her movements, and her mumbling, very effectively gives the impression of someone who just isn't there anymore.

- Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia
She's so filled with joy here. The Julie parts of Julie & Julia are absolutely terrible, but any time Streep's Julia Child appears the fog is lifted. I just wanted to hear her talk and see her cook, and see her respond to people by leaning in with her head. My friends and I were left just doing the Julia voice for hours on end. If only this movie were just called Julia.

- Tilda Swinton for Julia
Obviously. She spends no time making her character likable and instead works on exploring the drunken mess for over two hours.

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN IN THE SECOND ROUND OF CHOOSING:
Tilda, predictably. She's hella expressive whether she's wearing a black mask or a very shiny dress. The points in the movie at which you can tell she cares about the kid but not as much as she cares about herself are pure, wonderful character development by facial and vocal tics.

TELL ME WOT TO DO

The lovely Liv Ullmann is with us this morning to present an award to the auteurs themselves. I've seen her direct a play and let me tell ya, the woman knows a little something about directing. WOOO!


THE NOMINAMANATED:
- Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
No one else this year synthesized narrative and observation of the everyday life of a community like Bahrani. His subtle nods to melodrama complement his neorealism perfectly.

- Kathryn Bigelow for the Hurt Locker
Who has any superlatives left for what she does here? The pacing, the repetition, the action, you can't fuck with any of it.

- Werner Herzog for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
This screenplay could very easily have been a slightly odd police procedural. Herzog shifts the tone to completely batshit and lets Nic Cage run wild and it comes out the other side as a sort of bizarro masterpiece.

- Steve McQueen for Hunger
Hunger, from the look, to the acting, to the ideas, is a very detailed film, especially considering that McQueen had to basically design three very different parts to it.

- Carlos Reygadas for Silent Light
Reygadas gave us more straight-up beauty this year than anybody else, which might be enough in itself. But he also made a great movie, delivering a story about a group of people I was completely unfamiliar with a nuanced exploration of morality and nature where lesser directors might have gone for exploitation.

- #1
Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow. Bigelow, Bigelow, Bigelow.

Obviously I'm running out of things to write about these movies, so luckily there are only three categories left. Sooon.

(original) WORD UP

Our final award of the night (you think the Oscars take a long time), is presented by the lovely Holly Hunter. Have you seen Copycat? You should see Copycat. Harry Connick Jr.'s great in that too. Here's Best Original Screenplay!


- NOM'D:
- Olivier Assayas for Summer Hours
Whether or not you think Assayas coming back from B-movie Land is good, I'd think you'll be able to find something interesting in his reflection on what objects mean to us. The way he ends it (this is not the type of movie that can really be spoiled) with a new generation is wonderful.

- Bahareh Azimi and Ramin Bahrani for Goodbye Solo
The relationship between Senegalese driver Solo and suicidal old grump Red is written with warmth, grit, and an eye towards realism. It's another great movie from Bahrani (his 2nd co-written with Azami) about, to be purposefully reductive, America.

- Mark Boal for the Hurt Locker
Boal's script gives equal energy to investigating the psychological makeup of its characters and investigating the Action/War Movie Hero as a type.

- Ethan and Joel Coen for A Serious Man
It's some of the most effectively dark comedy they've written in a while, and it's overflowing with great ideas, not the least of which a character who for the first part of the movie is only heard screaming from the bathroom.

- Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds
I don't mean to keep harping on it, but Death Proof really sucked. So that the dialogue here is filled with so much tension, comedy, hell, even relevance to the plot and characters, is both a relief and an immense pleasure.

- WIN'D
I'll give this to The Coen Brothers for taking their style to an even darker place and doing so with a considerable amount of very hard earned laughs. The irony and cynicism not only let the emotion shine through; they enhance it.

(adapted) WORD UP

It was much easier narrowing Adapted Screenplay down to 5 this year than it was narrowing down its Original counterpart category. Nevertheless, these 5 are awesome. Speaking of awesome, here's Gene Hackman to tell you about them.


-I NOMIT8 U
- Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Ianucci, and Tony Roche for In the Loop, spun-off from the TV show The Thick of It
Some characters in In the Loop are written so that you're almost scared for them to come on the screen, because they're gonna say something so darkly and angrily hilarious you might not be able to take it. That's a fucking comedy script.

- Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for District 9, expanded from Neil Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg
It's an excitingly plotted, politically interesting movie. The trope of a character who works for a giant organization or government and slowly discovers its evils is not an uncommon one, especially in movies about the future or alternate timelines, but Wikus totally works as a naive little prick who is in way over his head.

- Tony Burgess for Pontypool, adapted from his own novel Pontypool Changes Everything
Semiotic Zombie Flick is a great hook (if your target audience is me), and Pontypool delivers, even (maybe especially) when the characters have to talk their way through figuring out how they're gonna get out of their besieged radio station.

- Scott Z. Burns for The Informant!, adapted from the Kurt Eichenwald book of the same name
It's not saying too much that The Informant! had the most entertaining inner monologues of the year, but their progression from slightly unhinged and obsessive to completely out there is an achievement in both character development and comedy.

- Henry Selick for Coraline, adapted from the Neil Gaiman novel of the same name
I'm a sucker for kids stories that are both very dark and very gorgeous, what can I say? The differences between the "real world" and "other world" characters are wonderfully written.

- W1NN3RS:
All those In the Loop guys. It was the funniest movie of the year and it's not even close. To reduce it to a lot of cursing doesn't give it nearly enough credit, (though the cursing is really great). There's a wealth of great characters here, and about a billion great lines.

I WAS FRAMED

Marty Scorsese is here. You may know him as that guy who only makes movies with Leo Dicaprio. They do look good though, so let's pretend he's standing next to a gigantic screen and gaze with him at stills from the movies nominated for the Maciej in Best Cinematography.


THE NOMINeeEeEeEES:

- Barry Ackroyd for The Hurt Locker
Ackroyd gets across the general grit of the Iraqi streets well, and the shootout in the desert looks awesome.

- Sean Bobbitt for Hunger
Whether in the harsh prison sequences at the beginning or the more ethereal stuff towards the end, Bobbit captures the texture of his scenes as well as anyone.

- Anthony Dod Mantle for Antichrist
The opening just looks so incredibly beautiful. I don't think think Dod Mantle deserved all the love he got for last year's hand held sprinting in Slumdog, but his black and white prologue is just unimpeachably gorgeous.

- Robert Richardson for Inglourious Basterds
After the disappointment of Death Proof I was very cautious in my optimism for Inglorious Basterds. The opening shot of the dairy farm immediately made me very comfortable.

- Alexis Zabe for Silent Light
You'd think that, after watching local news my whole life, a time-lapse of the sunrise wouldn't be such a big deal. You would obviously be very wrong.

WIN:

Alexis Zabe for Silent Light. There are a lot of wonderful uses of light in the movie, go figure, but it's not just cinematography calling attention to itself, it's absolutely essential to the thematic concerns of the movie. I really wish I had gotten to see this on a big screen and hope to at some point in the future.

AK-TINGH

Two decades after being snubbed for his heroic performance as Balldozer in YMD favorite Vision Quest, Forest Whitaker won an Oscar for a very good performance in the otherwise very boring Last King of Scotland. Good for him. Here he is presenting the Maciej for Best Supporting Actress.


SUPPORT THEM:

- Marion Cotillard for Nine
Please don't take this as any sort of approval of Nine; it's quite the opposite. The fact that Cotillard was able to pull a memorable, human performance out of such a terrible mess of a movie is simply amazing.

- Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
Completely batshit and understandable without being the least bit likable, Mo'Nique's performance is as amazing as everyone says it is.

- Samantha Morton for The Messenger
When you first see Morton's character she is reacting to her husband's death by consoling the messengers. She makes it seem like the most natural reaction one could have.

- Lorna Raver for Drag Me to Hell
Granted, a lot of this is makeup. But a lot of it is also awesome physical and voice acting. It's one of the most fun to watch performances of the year.

- Edith Scob for Summer Hours
As the matriarch in Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours, Scob is lively and thoughtful. Her eyes in an early scene in which she receives b-day presents are more expressive than Oscar Nominee Anna Kendrick's whole body.

MOST SUPPORTED BY ME:
I just can't bring myself to pick against Mo'Nique. Her performance is one of the most genuinely disturbing in years (and to be honest there's definitely residual love from Beerfest and her Real Talk with respect to the Oscar process).

DEE-ZIGN

Moving along, here's Fordham University's own Denzel Washington to present an award to some folks who make fake worlds possible. Here it is, Art Direction and Production Design.



THE NOMINEES:

- Phil Brotherton, Bo Henry, Tom Proost, and Henry Selick for Coraline
Dark, fantastic, and slightly thrift store-y is pretty much what you would expect from Henry Selick and that's what's here. But it's great, and there's not one but two worlds of it.

- Karl Júlíusson and Tim Pannen for Antichrist
If you're gonna make a cabin/forest to stage Woman's explosion/revenge for a history of oppression, you better design the hell out of it. This is dark.

- Jess Gonchor and Nancy Haig for A Serious Man
Rabbi Marshak's office and Larry's neighbor's house are both absolutely perfect.

- Tom McCullugh and Brendan Rankin for Hunger
The shit-stained walls of the Maze cell have an incredible texture. Hypnotic shit.

- David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco for Inglourious Basterds
The claustrophobic farmer's house, the grand theater on fire, the bar (with its tucked-away, villain-hiding corner), the tower in the film-within-the-film. The sets in this are

WIN:
The Wascos win it. I was going to give this to Coraline until the last second, but thinking about how many of the sets in Inglorious Basterds I remembered in detail swung it. It might be Tarantino's overall best looking movie ever.

DRESSY

As at least one of the nominees (not to mention A Single Man) proves, pretty clothes probably won't make a terrible movie worth watching. But they can't hurt. Here to present some gorgeous clothes, the gorgeous Jane Fonda:



YOUR DESIGNERS ARE:

- Bina Deigeler for The Limits of Control
For Isaach de Banknolé's suits and Tilda Swinton's albino outlaw look (it would be gauche to thank for Paz de la Huerta's transparent raincoat and sweater, though the latter is the softest looking garment in the world).

- Monika Jacobs for The Last Station
Maybe I just got so bored of this terrible movie's plot, characters, and "ideas" that I had to focus on something, but I did really like some of the costumes, from some of Hellen Mirren's fancier dresses and hats to James McAvoy's more utilitarian work shirt, with the three buttons on the side of the collar.

- April Napier for Julia
This one gets nominated for the incredibly shiny green dress with gold shoes that Tilda wears in the opening and the solid black mask she uses later.

- Janet Patterson for Bright Star
It's essentially a movie about a fashion designer, so the costumes better be special. They don't disappoint.

- Anna B. Sheppard for Inglourious Basterds
Nazi uniforms are Nazi Uniforms, but Shoshanna's red dress is iconic and Bridget Von Hammersmark's outfits are even better. Her hat looks like it was made for that card to be sitting on it.

THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY ATTIRED:

Janet Patterson wins for Bright Star, which is a pretty good movie, by the way. The plaid worn by Paul Schneider is pretty great, but of course Abbie Cornish gets the best stuff. Her collars and hats help us understand the imagination of Fanny Brawne, who miss Cornish then plays quite well.