Paul's Place > Talkin' 'bout da Movies > Paul's Oscar Pix > 2003

Well! Hard to believe this is the sixth year for this thing, isn't it? I can only hazard a guess at how many hours I've wasted coming up with bad jokes and recording predictions that turned out to be mostly wrong. It is for you, dear reader, that I do these things, because that is how much I love each and every gat-dang one of you. Remember that always.

Overall, 2002 was a pretty good year for movies, at least in comparison to some of the ones we've had lately. In years past I have at times had difficulties coming up with enough films that I truly enjoyed to round out a top ten list, but this year they're fighting for space, and that is as it should be. Of course, having a good year for movies doesn't mean the Oscars won't suck monkeys, but there are signs that the Academy Awards won't be a complete disaster this time. For one thing, I'm pleased that My Big Fat Greek Wedding was not nominated for any major awards, because that means I don't have to see it. More importantly, it's nice to have a year in which all five Best Picture nominees were at least fairly decent, but the bench was fairly decent this year as well, with nice efforts coming from both the independent cinema and the major studios, supplemented by some strong contenders from overseas and Latin America.

Once more with the rules, then, for those of you who are new here or dozed off last time: I largely stick with the Big Eight categories, because what the hell do I know about sound effects editing or short subject documentaries, although I do select a bonus category every year to mix things up a little. I will be making predictions in all eight "major" categories plus a bonus category, Best Documentary Feature, returning this year for the first time since 1998. I offer predictions in these nine categories, supplementing them with whatever else happens to cross my mind as I'm writing. A week or two after the awards show I return with my Oscar Wrap-up to see how I did; last year I reached an all-time high of 67 percent accuracy, which pleases me to no end. Without further ado, then, let's move on to...

A nice mix on the list this year: you got your dramas, you got your comedies, you got your documentaries, you got your big films, you got your small films, tiene su película en Español. Starting with number one:

The Pianist—The story of Warsaw during the Second World War is so remarkable that when I learned it upon my visit there two years ago, it seemed nearly inconceivable that I had never heard it before. After the city fell to the Nazis in 1939 it became home to Europe's largest Jewish ghetto, where 450,000 Jews lived in unimaginable conditions of starvation and disease in an area slightly larger than two square miles. After the Nazis began deporting ghetto inhabitants to Treblinka the Jews rose up and struck back against the occupiers, holding them off for a little less than a month before succumbing in May of 1943, after which the Germans deported the surviving Jews to concentration camps and razed the ghetto. A year later, as Soviet forces advanced through eastern Poland and German control began to weaken, the people of the city and the remnants of the Polish Army—hoping to establish an independent Warsaw before the Soviets could arrive and take over—rose up against the Nazis themselves; using the sewers to travel throughout the city, the Warsovians fought their occupiers for 63 days while the Soviet army camped across the Wisla River doing nothing to help. After the Germans crushed the uprising in October 1944, the Nazis deported the remaining population and set about literally destroying the city: they numbered the city's buildings according to their importance to Polish culture, and then methodically blew them up. On New Year's Day of 1945, the city of Warsaw, founded circa A.D. 1300, prewar population one million, did not exist.

Through it all, concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Pole and a Jew, observed the monstrousness of the Nazi occupation, first from the ghetto and later, after managing to avoid being caught and sent to the concentration camp, from secret apartments maintained by sympathetic Gentiles. Shortly after the war, his family exterminated, Szpilman wrote his autobiography, which fellow occupation survivor Roman Polanski has made into the finest film of 2002.

Wladyslaw Szpilman's story would have been easy to screw up. He is not a fighter, and he is not a hero. Powerless to help anyone but himself, he survives the war through a combination of dumb luck and the altruistic kindness of others. Many have quite naturally compared the film to Schindler's List, but The Pianist, like its namesake, never sets foot inside a concentration camp, and is less about the horrors of the Final Solution than about Szpilman's own maddening boredom: locked in safe houses for most of the war, all he knows of the conflict and the uprising is what he can see from his window and read in the newspapers that are occasionally brought to him by his helpers; unable to make a sound for fear of attracting attention, he spends years sitting inches away from a piano that, in a grand joke of metaphysical proportions, he can never play.

It may be that only Roman Polanski, whose own wartime experiences rather unpleasantly parallel Szpilman's, could do his subject justice. Polanski escaped from the Kraków ghetto as a child, and spent the war years wandering through occupied Poland trying to stay out the way of the Nazis; his mother was sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Years later, in 1969, Polanski was away from home on business when the Charles Manson family entered his house and slaughtered his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, and several of the couple's friends. Perhaps more than any other director, Polanski is in a position to understand just how arbitrary Spilman's survival was, and it is tremendously to his credit that—as with Chinatown, his most famous picture—he has been able to take a bleak, pessimistic story and infuse it with hope, a humanistic outlook, and even a measure of humor.

The rest of the best, in no particular order:

Y Tu Mamá También—A road trip/sex comedy featuring two horny teenage boys and a sexy older woman really has no right to be nearly this good. Alfonso Cuarón's highly explicit masterpiece turns out to have a lot to say about life, death, love, and class difference in modern Mexico, and it kept me thinking long after I walked out of the theater.

Despite directing the decidedly NC-17-level Y Tu Mamá También (the uncut version of the film was actually released unrated in the United States), Alfonso Cuarón, who also helmed the very well regarded children's film A Little Princess, has been tapped to direct the filmed adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book in the series and the one in which it takes a distinctly darker, bleaker turn. After two enjoyable but rather bloodless Harry Potter adaptations from hack director Chris Columbus (Mrs. Doubtfire, Bicentennial Man), I'm very much looking forward to Cuarón's take on what has the potential to be one of the best films of 2004.

Dogtown and Z-Boys—"A movie is not about what it is about," says critic Roger Ebert, in what has become known as Ebert's Law. "It is about how it is about it." This is a documentary about the origins of modern skateboarding in Venice, California in the 1970s, and as such you might assume it has a somewhat limited appeal—I know a lot more about skateboarding than most of the people I know, and everything I know about skateboarding comes from the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. But I saw it in the theater and loved it, and after it came out on video, I rented it and showed it to my parents—if you were to rank all the people in the world according to their affinity for skateboarding, they'd pretty much rank right at the bottom—and they loved it too. The reason the film succeeds so well, I think, is that it is naturally exciting to watch people doing something they love and are very good at. Director Stacy Peralta was himself one of the original "Z-Boys," a group of young outcasts who hung out at the Zephyr surf shop in "Dogtown," a run-down section of Venice, and essentially invented the "vert" style of skateboarding that forms the basis for the sport today. Far from compromising his ability to make a decent film about the movement, Peralta's closeness to the subject matter gives it an infectious energy and raises it above the typical sports doc.

Dogtown and Z-Boys has a rough, unpolished feel to it (at one point narrator Sean Penn blatantly flubs a line, pauses, and gamely continues narrating as if nothing had happened) that in the context of the subject matter and the grainy, 8mm footage is positively exhilarating. It would take a hard-hearted individual indeed to come away from this film without kind feelings towards skateboarding and skateboarders.

Insomnia—Director Christopher Nolan (Memento) proves he wasn't just a one trick pony with this thriller about a murder in a remote Alaskan town, a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name. Set in the middle of the Arctic summer at the time of the year when the sun never sets, Insomnia is a noir film in which the mood is set not by darkness and shadows but by a pervasive, sickly gray light. Great acting by Al Pacino as the guilt-ridden detective, Hilary Swank as a local rookie cop, and Robin Williams as the mild-mannered but chilling suspect.

Minority Report—One of the best science fiction thrillers to come along in a long time, and certainly the most intelligent. The late author Philip K. Dick wrote quite a bit about the fluid and uncertain nature of reality, and in adapting Dick's short story, Steven Spielberg effectively conveys a great deal of Dick's characteristic sense of peril and paranoia. Much of Dick's work has traditionally been considered unfilmable, because he plays with some extremely complicated metaphysical concepts that are difficult for the best of us to understand, and because he puts the reader inside the head of the very characters who are losing their grip on reality in ways that can't really be communicated with simple imagery. It is to the great credit of Spielberg and his actors, notably Tom Cruise as the head of the federal "Department of Precrime" that harnesses the power of three young precognitives—"precogs"—to stop crime before it gets committed, that Minority Report manages to deliver some of these difficult ideas without bogging down. Big-budget blockbusters can be exciting and visceral without being idiotic, and while the film is not without its flaws, Minority Report is People's Exhibit I in support of that argument.

Gangs of New York—Marty's back, after 1999's disappointing Bringing Out the Dead, with a meticulously researched and produced epic about the street gangs in New York's Five Corners area in the 1860s, the most corrupt time in the city's history. Scorsese calls Gangs an "Eastern Western" for its depiction of the lawlessness and violence at the center of America's largest city during the time of the Civil War, and the film indeed may be the truest resurrection of the venerated Western genre that Hollywood has seen in years.

There's a by-now-famous anecdote about George Lucas visiting Scorsese on Gangs' huge, exhaustively detailed set in Italy and scoffing that there was no need for it, that Scorsese could have created the entire thing in a computer. If true, I think that tells you all you need to know about George Lucas, and about Martin Scorsese.

Punch-Drunk Love—When Adam Sandler chooses to use his powers for good instead of evil, he is a very talented and extremely funny actor: his best films, like The Wedding Singer, are the ones in which he resists going for the cheap gag and uses his innate ability to convey dweeby insecurity and repressed rage as the beginning, rather than the end, of his character's definition. Under wünderkind director Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia), Sandler creates his best character yet, a neurotic small-business owner obsessed with collecting Healthy Choice pudding labels for frequent flyer miles and slowly cracking from the stress of his seven sisters' years of casual cruelty. Emily Watson is first-rate as the quirky young woman determined to rescue Sandler, goodness knows why, from a fate of eternal anxiety and loneliness. And of course what would a P. T. Anderson movie be without the great Luis Guzmán? ¡Es bueno!

About Schmidt—Director Alexander Payne (Election) creates a warm, full portrait of Warren Schmidt, a retired Omaha insurance executives who comes to realize quite suddenly that he's lived an entirely unexamined life. Jack Nicholson has justly received a lot of notice for his portrayal of the title character, but it is Payne's good-natured humanism that truly animates the character and gives him life.

Some critics, typically those who live in large cities on the coasts, have criticized About Schmidt for what they perceive as its condescending attitude towards the Midwest, which to my Indiana-raised ears sounds like the words of people who've never been there and probably don't think too highly of the region themselves. Certainly Alexander Payne, a native Nebraskan who lived in Omaha until just last year and has set and filmed all three of his movies there, has spent his career representin' like few other directors have; indeed, at times he appears to be the only filmmaker working today who seems to be aware that there are other cities in the United States besides New York and Los Angeles. And the fact is that About Schmidt, like Citizen Ruth and Election before it, expertly captures the particular feel of normal, everyday life in the Midwest: the pleasant, taciturn people; the flat landscapes and flat accents; the unremarkable, unthreatening cityscapes marked by chain stores and pedestrian architecture; the way everything and everybody seem to be suffused with a certain, well, Lutheran quality. What Payne's coastal critics don't understand is that it's possible to show all this not out of disdain but out of fondness, as a way of saying, well, other people may not think much of this, but it's ours and we like it. And if some of his characters come off as a little simple-minded and trashy, perhaps it's because Payne has earned that right.

Adaptation—Director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) return with another absurdist delight, this time centering around Kaufman's real-life difficulty in adapting Susan Orlean's nonfiction book The Orchid Thief for the screen. Instead of giving up, Kaufman simply wrote a screenplay about his own inability to write the screenplay, and in the process invented himself a fictional twin and had Nicolas Cage play both brothers. Adaptation's ending has confused and angered a lot of people, and for the life of me I can't figure out why; it's the most original and hilarious way to end the film I can think of, and maybe even the only one that would truly work. Hats off to the brothers Kaufman for their comic inventiveness.

New Yorker writer Susan Orlean has suddenly come into vogue in Hollywood, it seems, and indeed Adaptation wasn't even the first movie based on her work released in 2002: her article "Surf Girls of Maui," which has the distinction of being the only essay in Orlean's book The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup that I couldn't finish, was released last summer as Blue Crush—which, needless to say, I didn't see.

Bowling for Columbine—I don't care for Michael Moore as a human being. He's useful, because the combined output of Michael Moore Inc. (this film, Roger & Me, Stupid White Men, etc.) helps mainstream certain facts and ideas that otherwise don't get much play in the media, and he gives people like Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing morons at Fox "News" Channel explosive diarrhea. Overall, though, he's too interested in self-promotion and not interested enough in getting all his facts straight, and as someone who tends to hold grudges for quite a while, I hold him and his indefatigable shilling for Ralph Nader directly responsible for the nightmare currently enveloping this country. So I was hoping to find a reason not to like Bowling for Columbine, and I was therefore disappointed (and therefore, I suppose, pleased) to find it a rich, perceptive, and surprisingly even-handed exploration of the roots of America's troubling love affair with guns and gun violence. There's a lot to love in Bowling for Columbine, and I can't tell you how much that irks me.

HONORABLE MENTION goes to Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the best three-hour movie performed entirely in the Inuktitut language of the Inuit peoples of Arctic Canada that I've ever seen; The Good Girl, in which Jennifer Aniston demonstrates once again that she has a nice future in offbeat independent films if she decides to stop doing the paint-by-numbers romantic comedies that keep getting offered to her; Frida, which could have sucked but didn't, due in large part to strong performances from Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina; Time Out (L'emploi du Temps), a thoughtful French import about a man who gets fired and deals with it through near-total avoidance of responsibility for his situation; Changing Lanes, the better-than-expected film in which Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson attempt to ruin each other's lives after a minor traffic accident; Das Experiment, a creepy German reimagination of Philip Zimbardo's infamous Stanford Prison Experiement, in which ordinary men are assigned to play-act the parts of prisoners and jailers and get into their roles far too well; and One Hour Photo, the latest phase in Robin Williams' project to rescue himself from the hell of crappy movies.

DVD KORNER: I bought a lot of DVDs last year, but very few of them were for movies that actually came out last year. I own the Minority Report 2-disc set, as well as Star Wars: Episode II (forgive me; I'm collecting the complete set), and that's about it. Of the films on my list, I expect to eventually buy The Pianist and possibly a few others, plus I of course will be rounding out a few other collections with discs like The Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Say, that Emma Watson's getting kind of curvy, isn't she? I know I'm seriously not supposed to notice things like that, but damn. Where was I? DVDs, right. Perhaps the biggest DVD news of the year was the release of the Back to the Future Trilogy boxed set, which may have set a record for the films with the longest and most torturous path to a DVD release. First scheduled for release way back in 1997 at the very dawn of the DVD age, the films then plunged into five years of legal hassles and studio bungling, as fans everywhere saw half a dozen "official" release dates breeze by like a fusion-powered DeLorean. In any event, they're here now, finally, and they're damn good.

On to the nominees...

Nominees:
Chicago
Gangs of New York
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist

Who Should Win: The Pianist

So two of my top ten films earned Best Picture nominations, which is about average. It's hard not to notice the absence of About Schmidt and, to a lesser extent, Adaptation and Y Tu Mamá También, which begins to feel like a deliberate snub, given the near-universal acclaim those films garnered upon release. Or maybe I'm just feeling even less charitably-inclined towards than the Academy than I have in the past, if that's possible.

As always, then, taking the nominees in decreasing order of irrationality:

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Yeah, well, whatever. I actually liked the book (well, the second half of it, anyway) better than I liked the first book, but the film really didn't do a whole lot for me. The Fellowship of the Ring honestly blew me away when I saw it in the theater last year, but then I made the crucial mistake of watching it again on DVD; the majesty disappears on the small screen, and the result struck me as being somewhat flat and pedestrian and left me wondering what I'd ever seen in it in the first place. Once the enchantment had worn off, it seems, I was unable to get it back watching The Two Towers in the theater. I'd found the battle of Helm's Deep and the defense of Rohan deathly boring when I read the book, and although director Peter Jackson's desire to introduce at least one positive female character into the story is perhaps commendable, his moves to pump up the Eowyn character beyond Tolkien's window-dressing treatment of her were so excessive and so blatant as to literally be laughable.

That said, the saving grace of The Two Towers, both the book and the film, is the material that deals with the journey of Sam, Frodo, and Gollum to Mordor. Jackson vividly brings the atmosphere of chill and despair from the printed page to the screen, and the character of Gollum—brought to life by actor Andy Serkis and some truly remarkable CGI—actually turned out to be one of the best and most fully realized performances of the year. (Choke on it, Jar Jar! Choke on it big time!)

Ultimately, though, it wasn't enough to elevate the film itself beyond your standard big SFX-laden Event Film, albeit one that was more enjoyable than most. I'm hoping for a better experience with Return of the King this Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Hours—I liked The Hours, which I hadn't been expecting to do, but I was also very aware that it wasn't made for me. If women of a certain age and attitude had the same relationship to their movies and TV shows of choice as do science fiction nerds, there would be The Hours fan pages all over the Web and Pocket Books would be publishing a series of paperbacks set in the universe of The Hours and "Hoursies" everywhere would be writing and exchanging a lot of truly awful slash in which the three protagonists of the film hook up for the occasional fantastic time-traveling lesbian orgy. I'm not really a part of all that, so I mainly just enjoyed what turned out to be a well-written story and some truly terrific acting from all parties.

Chicago—Once again, this is a musical I wanted to hate but didn't. Just the words "Bob Fosse" are enough to give me gas, but Chicago turns out to be a pleasure to watch and isn't the least bit schmaltzy. Clearly this trend of musicals not sucking has got to stop.

Gangs of New York—Gangs was Best Picture material for about the first two hours of its running time, I thought; much of what ultimately derailed it had to do with stylistic decisions made to compress the events that took place in the last 45 minutes of the picture, which had the effect of muddling the plot by delivering a resolution that the film hadn't really earned. (SPOILERS AHOY: I am of course referring to the way the climactic gang battle at the end was intruded upon by the draft riots, which hadn't really been set up properly throughout the picture and therefore felt somewhat tacked on. The draft riots also featured scenes of Irish immigrants savagely attacking innocent blacks; up to this point in the film the immigrants had been depicted as impoverished victims who'd made some degree of common cause with New York's black residents. This depiction of the draft riots is historically accurate, and the moral ambiguity it introduces to the character of the city's Irish community is dramatically compelling, but this ambiguity needed to be either set up and introduced earlier or left out entirely, instead of springing into existence full grown at a time when too much else is going on for it to be fully appreciated.) My understanding is that these problems were introduced after an earlier, longer work print was shown to a few select people, and I have high hopes that Scorsese will release a director's cut DVD so we can see the film as it was meant to be seen. Until and unless that happens, though, we can only go on what we've been shown, and Gangs falls somewhere short of great and must instead settle for near-great.

The Pianist—For the first time since I started doing this, my favorite film of the year was actually nominated for Best Picture—although it was much harder for me to pick a favorite this year than it has been recently, with Y Tu Mamá También and Adaptation providing very strong competition.

Who Will Win: Chicago

I'm not sure exactly how Chicago became the heavy favorite here, but it would be foolish to bet against it regardless. It's the George W. Bush of movies: nobody I know really likes him and most people I know loathe him, but the news media spent so much time before the election telling us he was going to win, and have spent most of the time since then trying to convince us that we all love him, that we feel we have little choice but to sigh and accept the inevitable. That may be an acceptable method for picking presidents, but do we really want to rely on it for something as important as the Oscars?

Nominees:
Adrien Brody, The Pianist
Nicolas Cage, Adaptation
Michael Caine, The Quiet American
Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York
Jack Nicholson, About Schmidt

Who Should Win: Nicolas Cage, Adaptation

I was completely taken with Adrien Brody's star-making turn in The Pianist, but I have to go with Nicolas "No Longer An Actor" Cage for his effortless embodiment of the identical Kaufman twins, one a smart but neurotic wallflower, the other a dim but self-assured ladies' man. Far from being the gimmickry that would imply, Cage's performance is all about the genius of little things, like the way the actor stands and carries himself when portraying one brother versus the other; it's those small differences that make all the difference. Really, this category has strong performances all around, but in my estimation Cage takes it by a nose.

Who Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York

It was my impression that Daniel Day-Lewis was a supporting actor in Gangs of New York, but whatever. Either way, I've decided I don't want him to win, because ever since Gangs came out I haven't been able to think of him in the role without hearing the words "cunny juice," and that's really not what I was hoping to take away from that movie.

Missing: Adam Sandler, Punch-Drunk Love

Sure, what the hell? Maybe if someone gives him an Oscar for a good movie, he'll stop making crap. Or, uh, maybe not.

Nominees:
Salma Hayek, Frida
Nicole Kidman, The Hours
Diane Lane, Unfaithful
Julianne Moore, Far from Heaven
Renée Zellweger, Chicago

Who Should Win: Nicole Kidman, The Hours

I really, really, really like Nicole Kidman as an actress. I really do. I've enjoyed watching her work ever since To Die For, I'm one of the six people in America who liked Eyes Wide Shut, and I'm still pissed at her for making me enjoy Moulin Rouge. She has appeal, talent, and range, and that's really all you can ask of any actor. As Virginia Woolf, she spent the entire film wearing a complex expression that very effectively suggested that there was far more going on inside her head than she ever let on, and I really responded to that. Kudos also to Kidman for managing not to be upstaged by the most amazing prosthetic nose I've ever seen.

Who Will Win: Nicole Kidman, The Hours

My initial impression was that Julianne Moore, whom everybody likes but me, was going to walk away with this category. 2002 was apparently her year for playing repressed 1950s suburban housewives, a stereotype that, if there were a book called Tired-Ass Hollywood Screenwriting Conventions, would occupy the entire first chapter, if not also the second and third. In the Academy's calculus, apparently, one repressed 1950s suburban housewife equals one nomination, because she also got nominated for Supporting Actress for playing the same role in The Hours. I say, get back to me when she plays a 1950s suburban housewife who isn't repressed, which should be a far greater challenge. Actually, persuading someone to even write a part like that would be a greater challenge still. In any event, a lot of critical consensus seems to have built up around Nicole Kidman for this award, so I'm reluctantly, if not exactly unhappily, making her my prediction.

Missing: Maribel Verdú, Y Tu Mamá También

Spanish actress Verdú, who is meltingly desirable as Y Tu Mamá También's Luisa, is largely responsible for the film's success, and it's a shame she hasn't gotten more recognition for it. But hey, we can't go around giving nominations to talented actresses, after all, because then there won't be enough room in the category for Julianne Moore.

Nominees:
Chris Cooper, Adaptation
Ed Harris, The Hours
Paul Newman, Road to Perdition
John C. Reilly, Chicago
Christopher Walken, Catch Me If You Can

Who Should Win: Chris Cooper, Adaptation

Chris Cooper is best known for playing stoic characters like Lone Star's Sheriff Sam Deeds, so it was nice to see him stretch his legs a little as John Laroche, the flamboyant, toothless horticulturist in Adaptation. The retelling of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief was actually a relatively minor subplot for much of the film, and it was Cooper's performance that made it stand out as the equal of Nicolas Cage's "main" plot. Good for him.

Who Will Win: Chris Cooper, Adaptation

This will probably not be much of a contest. Paul Newman gave a good performance in a bad movie; Christopher Walken gave a decent performance in a movie that was harmed by his character's prominence; Ed Harris gave a good male performance in a movie marked by standout female performances. None of them should be competitive.

And John C. Reilly, of course, managed the rather remarkable feat of being in every movie released in 2002. Well, maybe not quite that many, but amazingly enough he appeared in three of the five films nominated for Best Picture (Chicago, Gangs of New York, and The Hours). In addition to playing the ineffectual loser hubby whom Renee Zellweger cheats on and then takes advantage of in Chicago and the ineffectual loser hubby who drives Julianne Moore into a state of repressed 1950s suburban insanity in The Hours, he was also the ineffectual loser hubby whose idiot best friend and constant marijuana use drive Jennifer Aniston into the arms of psycho teenage co-worker Jake Gyllenhaal in The Good Girl. From this we may deduce that, Wladislaw Szpilman's travails notwithstanding, the worst thing in the world is to be married to John C. Reilly.

Nominees:
Kathy Bates, About Schmidt
Queen Latifah, Chicago
Julianne Moore, The Hours
Meryl Streep, Adaptation.
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago

Who Should Win: Kathy Bates, About Schmidt

I've never seen Kathy Bates in any movie in which she did not excel, and About Schmidt is no exception; much of the attention she's gotten for the role has been devoted to her brief, controversial flash of frontal nudity ("controversial" in the sense that woman over the age of 30 are not allowed to show their bodies in Hollywood films, or even to acknowledge that they have them), but I was very impressed by the way she took a character that could have come across as two-dimensional in the wrong hands and made it very real, as she so often does.

Who Will Win: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago

I don't quite get this one, because I thought she was only okay and was outperformed by Renee Zellweger in the movie, but Catherine Zeta-Jones has been soaking up all the buzz in this category, and she did win the BAFTA and the SAG award for the role. So she's my prediction.

Missing: Hilary Swank, Insomnia; Kirsten Dunst, The Cat's Meow

I was halfway expecting Hilary Swank to show up as a nominee in this category, but I guess Insomnia came out too early in the year, or perhaps it's that her character was too unambiguously female this time around. I really liked her in Boys Don't Cry, as I said at the time, but I actually think it's even more gratifying when an actor who's become known for a "difficult" role like the one for which Swank won an Oscar back then demonstrates that she's capable of doing a dynamite job playing someone who's just a regular person.

The Cat's Meow was an okay film that came out early in the year from director Peter Bogdanovich that purported to tell the story of the mysterious death of film director Thomas Ince on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924. Though mainly an interesting curiosity intended for film geeks like myself, the picture is elevated considerably by Kirsten Dunst, who plays Hearst's mistress Marion Davies. Dunst-as-Davies lights up the screen whenever she's on it, and visibly invigorates the aging newspaper mogul, played competently by Edward Herrmann. If the real Marion Davies was anything like Dunst's portrayal of her, it's no wonder she turned so many heads—including, if the rumors that inspired Bogdanovich's film are any indication, some she shouldn't have.

Nominees:
Rob Marshall, Chicago
Martin Scorsese, Gangs of New York
Stephen Daldry, The Hours
Roman Polanski, The Pianist
Pedro Almodóvar, Talk to Her (Hable Con Ella)

Who Should Win: Roman Polanski, The Pianist

Since fleeing the United States in 1978 after being convicted of statutory rape, Roman Polanski has had an interesting career, making films like Pirates (which I have not seen but which is said to be nearly unwatchable) and The Ninth Gate (which I also have not seen owing to its reputation for sheer mediocrity) as well as films like Death and the Maiden (one of my faves, which almost singlehandedly forced me to reevaluate Sigourney Weaver) and The Pianist. Polanski, whose Chinatown owns a permanent place in the firmament of great films, is like a miniature version of Francis Ford Coppola: a famous director with a career of mostly unremarkable movies dotted here and there with some of the best films ever made. One is forced to wonder which films are the flukes—the mediocrities or the masterpieces?

I have the luxury of considering The Pianist in isolation here, of course, which makes this an easy choice. We can legitimately give Polanski credit for giving this difficult film a heart, for resisting the urge to sentimentalize the story or make the protagonist into something he is not. Polanski's own Holocaust survival story and its influence on the film make for good copy, but regardless of where he found his inspiration, he most certainly put it to good use, and he deserves the Oscar for it.

Of course, I would be remiss if I were to gloss over the controversy surrounding Polanski's return to prominence, stemming from his flight from justice in 1978 following his conviction for statutory rape of Samantha Geimer, who was 13 years old at the time. Geimer's 25-year-old grand jury testimony, which was recently unsealed and subsequently made available at the invaluable Web site The Smoking Gun, makes for an unpleasant read, and although Geimer herself says she bears him no hard feelings and has publicly exhorted Oscar voters to give Polanski the Academy Award, her feelings are by no means guaranteed to sway the opinions of the Hollywood film community, which surely faces a strong cultural backlash if it chooses to celebrate him. (It would of course be wrong to publicly speculate on the psychosexual motivations of Polanski's mostly right-wing critics, who seem to get off on breathlessly recounting the story of Geimer's rape in Kenneth Starr-like detail... not that that's gonna stop me from speculating anyway.) I, on the other hand, side with Samantha Geimer, and believe that rejecting an otherwise-deserving director for reprehensible acts he has committed would be the worst thing the Academy could do.

When Elia Kazan, a cowardly rat who squealed to the House Un-American Activities Committee and is unrepentant about it to this day, was awarded a special Oscar in 1999, I was bitterly opposed, as I wrote at the time. These "special" Oscars are essentially given for the totality of the honoree's contribution to the art of film, and by helping to ruin the careers of so many writers, directors, and performers, Kazan was responsible for taking far more away from film than he has ever contributed to it, even if he did make On the Waterfront. The balance is in the negative. My own contribution to film is greater than his when taken in toto. Giving him a special Oscar was wrong, and it reflects exceptionally poorly on everyone involved in the decision.

But I also believe The Pianist deserves to win Best Picture, and that Polanski deserves to win Best Director, because—call me crazy—the Best Picture and Best Director awards should go to the best picture and the best director. Likewise, if Elia Kazan, whom I understand is still getting around, were to make another picture today of the caliber of On the Waterfront or A Streetcar Named Desire, I would have no problem seeing him get all the awards he deserves for it, whatever I may think of the man's character.

Roman Polanski is indeed responsible for some of the best films ever made, but that hardly exempts him from the law; I would expect and hope that he would be taken into custody the moment he steps on US soil, to be sentenced for the crime of which he was convicted in 1978. If that were to prevent him from making more movies of the quality of The Pianist, that would be very unfortunate, but that can't be a consideration. Ultimately, though, we lose much if we choose to filter our views of art based upon whether or not we approve of the lives led by its creators. That way lies madness.

Who Will Win: Rob Marshall, Chicago

Of course, none of this really matters, because Rob Marshall is just going to win anyway. Chicago was a well-directed movie, and Marshall won the Director's Guild of America award, so I predict he'll be part of what will probably be a big night for the musical. Martin Scorsese has an outside chance—his continued lack of an Oscar after three decades of making some of the best movies of all time demeans the Academy and all its voters—but I don't think this is his year.

Missing: Alexander Payne, About Schmidt

About Schmidt was pretty conspicuously snubbed by the Academy this year, which given the film's critical acclaim seems pretty unfair (what, they couldn't have found room for it in Adapted Screenplay, even?). I thought Payne should have won for Election back in 2000, but he wasn't nominated then either. It seems appropriate, with Rob Marshall set to take home the prize, that this category is likely to amount to a bunch of song and dance this year.

Nominees:
Todd Haynes, Far from Heaven
Jay Cocks, Steve Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan, Gangs of New York 
Nia Vardalos, My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Pedro Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar, Talk to Her (Hable Con Ella)
Carlos Cuarón and Alfonso Cuarón, Y Tu Mamá También

Who Should Win: Carlos Cuarón and Alfonso Cuarón, Y Tu Mamá También

Ah, yes: the real Best Picture categories, as far as I'm concerned. I'm pleased that Y Tu Mamá También has shown up here, not least because the screenplay itself is in Spanish. One never knows how one should evaluate a screenplay written in another language, since any translation is bound to lose something from the original, but goodness knows the translated version of Y Tu Mamá También deserves to win the Original Screenplay Award, so I can only imagine how good it must be in the original Spanish.

Who Will Win: Jay Cocks and Steve Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan, Gangs of New York

I talk about the problems that doomed Gangs of New York above, but it seems to me that few if any of them are really the fault of the screenplay. Being the only Best Picture nominee in this category is bound to give it a leg up as well, so I'm going with Gangs as the winner.

Nominees:
Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz, About a Boy
Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, Adaptation
Bill Condon, Chicago
David Hare, The Hours
Ronald Harwood, The Pianist

Who Should Win: Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman, Adaptation

Yes, it's true that I'm not going with my favorite film from last year even though it's been nominated, but I really admired Charlie Kaufman's Möbius strip of a screenplay for Adaptation. As a professional writer myself, I've always enjoyed watching people cheat their way out of writer's block, and this film marks the best treatment of the subject since Barton Fink. Bravo.

With "Donald Kaufman" sharing the nomination, this marks the first time a fictional person has ever been nominated for an Oscar. Unless you count Julia Roberts, of course.

Who Will Win: Ronald Harwood, The Pianist

This category is really hard this year. Chicago may have a lock on Best Picture, but even people who like it aren't likely to say that the screenplay is the best thing about it. I'm guessing The Pianist because it's a way to honor the film without honoring Roman Polanski, who will probably turn out to be too radioactive for the spineless wimps in the Academy to touch.

Nominees:
Michael Moore and Michael Donovan, Bowling for Columbine
Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco, Daughter From Danang
Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender, Prisoner of Paradise
Jeffrey Blitz and Sean Welch, Spellbound
Jacques Perrin, Winged Migration (Le Peuple Migrateur)

Who Should Win: Michael Moore and Michael Donovan, Bowling for Columbine

Well, this is an easy choice for me, because it's the only one of the nominees that I've seen, and also happens to be on my Top Ten list for the year. The documentary branch's serial snubbing of Michael Moore through the years is well known by now, and it's not entirely clear why they should have liked Bowling for Columbine any better than any of his previous works, but I see no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth. Not that he has any chance of winning, of course.

Who Will Win: Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender, Prisoner of Paradise

I don't know who's going to win and, as always, I really don't care. Judging from the titles alone I was ready to pick Daughter from Danang, because it sounds like one of those painfully earnest doccos they air on PBS at strange hours to keep the liberals happy even though none of them actually watch the damn things. Then I found out that Prisoner of Paradise is about the Holocaust, and as we know from years past, Holocaust films have an effect on the documentary branch of the Academy comparable to that of the lead singer at a heavy metal concert asking Pittsburgh if it's ready to rock. Call it, sign it, seal it—this one's in the bag.

Missing: Dogtown and Z-Boys, obviously

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That's about it. Watch the ceremony next week, check back soon thereafter for my Oscar Wrap-up, and hey, let's be careful out there.

—Paul
March 16, 2003

"Catherine? Catherine Keener is in my house?"
"Yeah. We're playing Boggle."
—Charlie and Donald Kaufman (Nicolas Cage), Adaptation