Paul's Oscar Pix 2006

So how well did I do? The answer may surprise you. Go check it out.

When the history of film in the 21st century is written, my friends, 2005 will be remembered as the signal event of what will become known as the Great Depression of Cinema, the year that all the handwriting was finally visible on the wall, the year that television finally and decisively became better than the movies. Here, let me put that remark in the proper context:

The year that television finally and decisively became better than the movies.

I shall explain.

I know I’ve complained before about the quality of today’s movies, quite a lot in fact, but I accept that my tastes are not exactly mainstream. Here, though, I’m talking about something that goes much deeper: not that I don’t want to see today’s movies, but that in a few years, nobody will want to see today’s movies. In fact, I believe Hollywood is entering another period very like the latter half of the 1960s, when the studios no longer knew how to make compelling movies that would draw people into the theaters and were forced to sell off Century City and get bought out by parking lot companies and the like. But oh boy, that era’s gonna look like a walk in the park compared to what’s coming.

Last summer the papers were full of alarming stories about a box-office slump that was going to kill the motion picture industry as we knew it. A lot of those fears are overblown: 2005’s top grosser, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, made $115 million more at the box office than the biggest film of 2000, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (really!). Nonetheless, it’s instructive to look a little deeper. Here, courtesy of the fine folks at the-numbers.com, are the top ten movies in the country during the weekend closest to July 4, a somewhat arbitrary choice for what we may assume is a fairly typical mid-summer weekend for comparison purposes:

The Top Movies, Weekend of July 1, 20055
		Movie	Gross	Change	Thtrs.	Per Thtr.	Total Gross	Days
1	(new)	The War of the Worlds	$64,878,725		3,908	$16,602	$100,561,125	5
2	(1)	Batman Begins	$15,609,638	-43.42%	3,765	$4,146	$151,070,575	19
3	(3)	Mr. And Mrs. Smith	$10,572,608	-37.16%	2,985	$3,542	$143,931,499	24
4	(2)	Bewitched	$9,156,580	-54.52%	3,188	$2,872	$38,663,070	10
5	(4)	Herbie: Fully Loaded	$8,818,055	-30.62%	3,521	$2,504	$35,149,843	12
6	(6)	Madagascar	$5,443,338	-26.79%	2,526	$2,155	$170,872,831	38
7	(new)	Rebound	$5,033,848		2,464	$2,043	$5,033,848	3
8	(7)	Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith	$4,082,150	-33.22%	1,759	$2,321	$365,553,264	46
9	(8)	The Longest Yard (2005)	$3,342,445	-39.53%	1,790	$1,867	$148,030,555	38
10	(5)	George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead	$2,714,865	-73.44%	2,253	$1,205	$16,209,660	10

By comparison, here are the top ten movies from the comparable weekend in 1995, along with adjusted gross figures reflecting the change in ticket prices since then:

The Top Movies, Weekend of June 30, 1995
		Movie	Gross	Adj. Gross	% Change	Theaters	Per Theater	Total Gross	Days
1	(new)	Apollo 13	$25,353,380	$37,269,469		2,197	$11,540	$25,353,380	3
2	(1)	Pocahontas	$15,969,825	$23,475,643	-45.92%	2,577	$6,197	$67,843,479	23
3	(2)	Batman Forever	$15,322,706	$22,524,378	-47.55%	2,893	$5,296	$135,391,292	17
4	(new)	Mighty Morphin Power Rangers	$13,104,788	$19,264,038		2,409	$5,440	$13,104,788	3
5	(new)	Judge Dredd	$12,291,536	$18,068,558		2,204	$5,577	$12,291,536	3
6	(3)	Congo	$4,839,347	$7,113,840	-40.13%	2,221	$2,179	$66,836,196	24
7	(4)	The Bridges of Madison County	$4,412,907	$6,486,973	-28.88%	1,782	$2,476	$54,099,330	31
8	(5)	Casper	$2,782,760	$4,090,657	-43.32%	1,906	$1,460	$81,217,240	38
9	(6)	Braveheart	$2,444,831	$3,593,902	-39.57%	1,419	$1,723	$51,546,928	40
10	(7)	Die Hard: With a Vengeance	$2,171,965	$3,192,789	-44.60%	1,369	$1,587	$89,190,828	45

And now, 1985:

The Top Movies, Weekend of July 5, 1985
		Movie	Gross	Adj. Gross	% Change	Theaters	Per Theater	Total Gross	Days
1	(new)	Back to the Future	$11,332,134	$20,397,841		1,419	$7,986	$14,950,134	5
2	(1)	Pale Rider	$7,032,807	$12,659,053	-22.88%	1,710	$4,113	$21,553,618	10
3	(3)	Rambo: First Blood Part 2	$6,428,108	$11,570,594	-7.61%	1,820	$3,532	$118,333,488	47
4	(2)	Cocoon	$6,333,285	$11,399,913	-13.80%	1,163	$5,446	$31,582,061	17
5	(new)	Emerald Forest, The	$4,345,150	$7,821,270		1,110	$3,915	$5,851,450	5
6	(4)	St. Elmo’s Fire	$4,060,207	$7,308,373	-33.75%	1,207	$3,364	$14,088,021	10
7	(5)	The Goonies	$3,900,191	$7,020,344	-15.57%	1,705	$2,288	$47,563,099	31
8	(6)	Fletch	$2,376,150	$4,277,070	-21.59%	1,022	$2,325	$39,885,835	38
9	(17)	Red Sonja	$2,263,553	$4,074,395	+695.17%	1,091	$2,075	$3,776,131	10
10	(8)	Prizzi’s Honor	$2,049,597	$3,689,275	-12.62%	660	$3,105	$17,161,579	24

The first thing we notice is the astonishing increase in the take from the weekend’s top movie, even when adjusted for inflation: The War of the Worlds took in 174 percent of Apollo 13’s adjusted gross in their first weekends, which itself made 183 percent of Back to the Future’s. That doesn’t seem like much of a slump; if anything, it seems to represent an exponential rate of growth that’s been going on for at least 20 years. But if we look beyond the first line the picture changes. The top ten movies on the weekend of July 1, 2005 took in a total of $129.7 million dollars. That’s actually $15.4 million less than the adjusted gross from the weekend ten years earlier, and only about $39 million more than the adjusted total from the weekend in 1985, at the dawn of the blockbuster era. How does this happen? This graph illustrates the chart trajectory of 1985’s Back to the Future and 2005’s The War of the Worlds in the first ten weeks of each film’s release:

it ain't pretty, folks...

After ten weeks, Back to the Future is still going strong at number 1, while The War of the Worlds has dropped to 24th place, behind such legendary pictures as Broken Flowers and Must Love Dogs. Obviously, Back to the Future is a classic and much-loved film, while Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds... not so much. But this chart is very, very typical. 1984’s top earner, Ghostbusters, was in 2nd place after 10 weeks; 1986’s was Top Gun, which had fallen all the way to 5th by that point. The top grossing film of 2005 was Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which is currently 7th on the list of the highest grossing pictures of all time domestically. It was in 15th place after 10 weeks. King Kong has been a very popular and relatively well-reviewed film this year. The weekend of February 17, its 10th in theaters, saw it at 28th place and falling.

Basically, the economics of the motion picture industry have changed. It’s not that there haven’t always been films that rose to the top of the chart only to flame out and be forgotten in a month; go back up there and check out the trajectory for Pale Rider if you want a giggle. But in the past, successful films have been the ones that have what the industry calls “legs”: positive word of mouth keeps them at the top of the charts week after week, and that’s how they bring in the big bucks. Today, films succeed by opening on five screens at your local 48-plex, racking up mind-boggling numbers in their first weekend of release, then clearing off of four of them to make room for next week’s blockbuster. (In 2002, Spider-Man took in $114.8 million during its first weekend of release.) You might think, hey, as long as they’re bringing in the money, what does it matter how they make it? In fact, this is a foolhardy way of doing business that presages almost certain disaster in the future.

For one thing, the film distribution industry is set up so that the studio gets nearly one hundred percent of the take during a film’s opening week, with the theater’s percentage increasing gradually over subsequent weeks. (As you may have heard, the candy counter is therefore the average movie theater’s main source of revenue.) For the studio, therefore, there’s a huge difference between making $100 million in a week and making the same amount over 5 weeks, which adds up to a pretty big incentive to keep shoveling product through the theaters at a high rate of speed. The downside of this system is that theater companies are forced to operate their glitzy megaplexes with stadium seating and cupholders under such razor-thin margins that when a year like 2000 comes along, which was an unusually bad year at the box office, they start dropping like flies: between 2000 and 2002, eleven of the twelve largest theater chains in the United States declared bankruptcy, resulting in the closing of some two thousand screens nationwide. What are the alternatives? Well, they could charge even more for a small Coke and shower us with even more pre-show ads, but with high definition DVDs on the way people will be even less inclined to put up with that shit, so they’ll stay home and the theaters will close anyway. Or they could convince the studios, which will be suffering themselves, to loosen their grip on the purse strings just a little bit and kick back some more money to the theaters during the first weeks of a film’s release… yeah, good luck with that.

Of course, just because the current system makes it harder for a film to develop legs doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The highest grossing film of all time, 1997’s Titanic, opened modestly but remained in the top slot for an amazing 15 weekends in a row. 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding famously sports a backwards curve: it opened in the #20 slot on April 19, playing on 108 screens, and gradually gained momentum before topping out at #2 in its 20th week of release, two weeks after finally making it to a thousand screens. Studio executives may not know how to make a good movie, but they know money when they smell it: if a movie in theaters start to catch fire through positive word of mouth, they’ll support it by throwing it up on more screens and advertising it heavily in an effort to keep the gravy train moving. So why don’t more genuinely popular films gain legs this way? This, of course, is the point I’ve been heading toward all along: The movies S U C K. Did you see The War of the Worlds? Does it hold a place in your heart that’s even remotely like the one for Star Wars, or Jaws, or Back to the Future, or even The Matrix? The last blockbusters to really find a foothold in popular culture were—God help us—the Lord of the Rings films, and now they’re over and done with, and although it’s too soon to tell how the Narnia franchise is going to work out, there really don’t seem to be any true industry-reviving projects on the horizon right now.

And really, the problem isn’t so much that the movies are bad as that they’re mediocre. Ever since 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, visual splendor has been the tentpole that’s held up the entire film industry. D.W. Griffith gave way to Cecil B. DeMille’s Biblical epics and Errol Flynn’s swashbucklers. The Wizard of Oz ushered in the era of Technicolor, and Gone With the Wind pioneered the style of sweeping epic that would define Hollywood for audiences all over the world until the late 1960s. In 1977, Star Wars reinvented the blockbuster as an effects-laden extravaganza; 1993’s Jurassic Park revolutionized it with modern computer graphics. Today, advances in CGI have made it possible to render, literally, just about anything imaginable inside a computer—and it is this, at long last, that threatens to kill the blockbuster as we know it. Why? Because if anything is possible, none of it is fascinating.

Think about that for a second. Disregarding the story surrounding the visuals, does the promise of a grandiloquent space battle or the sight of thousands of orcs streaming across a hillside even remotely excite you anymore? Can you conceive of anything you could see on screen at this point that would excite you in that primitive, visceral way? Every year brings a dozen new interchangeable CGI extravaganzas, and according to the box office charts we’re still dutifully filing into the theater to see them, but they’re like candy: gone the moment you’re finished with them, no long term value whatsover. For the cinema to regain the visual splendor that has always been its birthright, the studios are going to have to come up with something so wholly unexpected that nobody in the present can even define the criteria it’s going to have to satisfy. After all, as I believe someone has said recently, CGI technology is at the point where it can literally show us almost anything we can imagine; clearly, then, the next step is to imagine it. But it will require a conceptual shift, not a technical one, to get us to the point where that visceral urge is being satisfied again, and it’s going to take a lot of experimentation along the way: combine something like Koyaanisqatsi with a computer, add a big heaping dose of Ingredient X, shake, and serve. What will it look like? Your guess is as good as mine.

Unfortunately, as screenwriter William Goldman famously observed about Hollywood in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, nobody knows anything—no one knows what’s going to work next year, no one knows where the next big thing is going to come from. And so in the meantime, the studios just keep doing what they’ve always done: more of the same. Grander space battles. Weirder zombies. Bigger asteroids. Even as it stops working they just keep doing more of the same, because it’s all they know how to do, like the American automakers who’ve gotten so addicted to gargantuan SUVs that they’ve forgotten how to build anything else, so they keep cranking them out even though the public doesn’t want them anymore.

Can movies survive? Of course. Movies always find a way. But until they do I predict we’re in for a long dry spell ahead. Or rather, the theatrical motion picture industry is in for a long dry spell; we as consumers have more entertainment choices than ever before, so while they figure things out we’ll just keep playing Xbox 360 and discovering clever little films on DVD and, of course, watching good ol’ television.

Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover! Dear lord, what a time to be alive! Find me one picture at the multiplex that has the depth and sophistication of a single episode of Deadwood, or The Sopranos, or Arrested Development, or Battlestar Galactica. Even the second tier of quality TV offers us shows like The Shield, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and hell, even the BBC’s new Doctor Who series (brought to us here in the northern tier of U.S. states through the wisdom and benevolence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, may its name be forever praised) is good clean fun. It’s taken fifty years, but television has finally become a mature dramatic medium in its own right, with producers like David Chase, Ronald D. Moore, David Milch, and their brethren developing an entirely new method of storytelling that combines the sensibility of film with television’s unique ability to present ongoing storylines and gradual character development over time—yes, much like life itself. Where even the best programs of years past were forced by the realities of performer contracts and syndication needs to press the big reset button every week, the proliferation of cable channels like HBO and F/X and the birth of a real market for television shows on DVD allow the tightly-scripted, 13-episode seasons of these new series to feature changes that have real consequences, main characters who could die at any minute and plots that actually go somewhere.

I finally subscribed to Netflix last year, and since then probably more than 80 percent of the discs I’ve ordered have been TV shows, rather than movies. And let me tell you, watching TV shows on DVD has completely spoiled me for TiVo, probably forever. When I watch something I’ve recorded on TiVo, it usually has commercials that I actually have to fast-forward through, which increasingly seems like a lot of work to have to put into watching television. I’ve heard that there are people who don’t even have TiVo and actually have to sit through the commercials, but surely that’s just an urban legend.

The nanny state in full bloom And of course on DVD the upper left quarter of the screen isn’t always obscured with those commie Parental Guideline ratings, which as of last year are now being displayed in the corner of the screen for 15 FULL SECONDS after EVERY SINGLE COMMERCIAL BREAK. Do the parents of America need the FCC to come over and pre-chew their food for them, too? The V-chip has been built into every 13-inch or larger television sold in the United States since January 1, 2000. If you people would take 15 minutes out of your busy schedules and learn to use the damn things, you could display your damn Parental Guidelines on the screen any time you want, and the rest of us wouldn’t have to put up with them. I mean, it would be one thing if the ratings were actually helpful, but most of the time the promised “sexual situations” and “suggestive dialogue” turn out to be big disappointments. If I’m promised cursing and nudity, dammit, I want cursing and nudity!!

Anyway, I suppose that since this is my Oscar Pix I’d probably better get around to picking some Oscar winners. As has become typical, I spent a lot of time staying away from theaters last year, which forced me to see a whole bunch of movies in a row as Oscar time came around. This is always a miserable experience, because at this time of year in the Northwest the weather always looks like this:

Nine days of nothin' but rain

So in addition to having to see a bunch of movies I don’t even want to see, I have to travel to them in the rain, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of “adding insult to injury.” I do not think of myself when I do this, dear reader. I only think of you, for it is for you that I have generated this stream of consciousness every year for nine years in a row, and if that means trudging through the rain to watch a bunch of shitty movies every February for the rest of my life, by God I’ll do it.

I guess it could be worse. At least the Oscars are back in March, the way God intended, although that’s only because they didn’t want to compete with the Winter Olympics—which raises the question: Does anybody actually watch the Winter Olympics anymore? I tried a couple of times. Mostly I got commercials. I did see a few seconds of a hockey game between, like, the Czech Republic and somebody. I don’t like watching hockey on TV because I can never follow the puck. One day I stumbled onto a bobsled competition. That was awesome. I saw most of a run by an Italian team, I think, and then an entire run by a Canadian team. And then there was a commercial, so I stopped watching. When I was a kid I would just sit and watch the Winter Olympics for hours, the speed skating and the giant slalom and the luge, cheering for the US, always keeping one eye on the crude Timing By Honeywell onscreen clock in the corner, enjoying the flags and the national anthems of all the different nations. Back then it was about the sports. Now it’s all just bullshit and figure skating. And I would rather die than watch figure skating, at least in any year that doesn’t involve Tonya Harding trying to cripple someone. It’s always Michelle Kwan this, and Michelle Kwan that, and Michelle Kwan did something she wasn’t supposed to do, or didn’t do something she was supposed to do, and on and on until I want to rip my ears off. I hate Michelle Kwan and I don’t even know what she looks like! Why do they do this to us? I try to be a good person, and I really don’t ask for much. Why can’t they just give me real, honest sports, instead of morons in silly costumes scooting around an ice rink pursuing subjective evaluations from a bunch of stupid and probably crooked judges, making a mockery of genuine sports that have clocks and goals and other genuine sporting accoutrements? It’s just so incredibly… I… I can’t even talk about this anymore, I’m making myself too mad. I’m practically in tears over here, I swear to God. It’s all just so wrong in so many ways.

Where was I? The Oscars, right. As always, and after eight years I really shouldn’t still have to explain this to you, I make predictions in the eight “major” categories plus one bonus category, which this year is… Best Makeup. Weren’t expecting that, were you? Ha! I also express, to the extent that I even give a crap anymore, which nominee I’d actually like to see win the thing in each category, and set the stage for the whole thing with the increasingly joyless task of toting up my own personal favorite films of the year. Woo hoo!

Hoo boy, this is going to be a short Top Ten list this year. Coming in at number one:

Good Night, and Good Luck - George Clooney’s gorgeously-photographed revival of Washington state’s own Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and the Amazing True Story of his showdown with evil Republican senator Joseph McCarthy (himself, in archival footage) is engineered to pluck at the innermost strings of my J-school-graduate heart, and that’s just fine. We travel back to the set of Murrow’s CBS News program See It Now in the early 1950s, when anti-communist hysteria was at its peak and powerful demagogues like McCarthy routinely destroyed people’s lives and careers for even a hint of dissent. (I can’t imagine how anyone might draw a parallel to contemporary times.) Murrow and producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney) come across the story of Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the U.S. Army because his immigrant father subscribed to a newspaper published by a Serbian-American organization the House Un-American Activities Committee had labeled as subversive. Murrow and Friendly run with it; McCarthy retaliates by accusing Murrow of being (you’ll never guess) a communist. Murrow doesn’t back down, and the showdown culminates in the March 9, 1954 edition of See It Now, titled “A Report On Senator Joseph R. McCarthy,” which takes the form of a half hour of footage of McCarthy in all his lunatic glory; offered a half hour of rebuttal time a month later, the senator spends the time ranting crazily, pounding yet another nail into the coffin of his career; ABC’s coverage of the Army-McCarthy hearings later that month would finally finish him off for good. McCarthy would go on to drink himself to death within three years. Good night, and good riddance.

Clooney and Strathairn excellently convey the climate of fear surrounding McCarthy’s witch hunt and the courage it took to resist it. Helping move the film along is a fine cast of actors that includes Robert Downey, Jr., Frank Langella, and Jeff Daniels. My favorite film of the year.

The rest of the best, in no particular order:

Capote - Philip Seymour Hoffman is Truman Capote in the Amazing True Story of how the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author came to meet Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, sentenced to death for the 1959 slaughter of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and turn their story into one of the greatest crime stories of all time, In Cold Blood. Slyly, Capote is structured almost identically to In Cold Blood itself: At the beginning of the film, following Capote and his assistant and childhood friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) from New York to Kansas, we meet the dramatis personae of the story—Hickock and Smith, and the KBI (Kansas Bureau of Investigation) detective who tracked them down—and obtain brief rundowns of them and of the crime that brought them together. As the film progresses, we dig deeper into the minds and motivations of all the main characters, Capote included, gradually learning more about their backstories as well as life in the present. At the end, of course, we finally arrive at the middle of the story: a depiction of the murders, which no one who reads In Cold Blood will ever forget. I’ve read the book and seen both filmed versions (the murder scene in the 1967 version was filmed in the actual Clutter house. Ew.), and on some level I guess I wish I hadn’t; it is a tribute to Capote’s skill as a writer that the scene gets inside your head the way it does. Hoffman and director Bennett Miller masterfully convey Capote’s growing feelings of ambivalence toward his subjects—famously, he even fell in love with Perry Smith—as well as the way the book came to dominate and even help destroy him. Capote did not sugar-coat the murders, and neither does Capote, and as we watch the killers carry out their plans in exacting detail we can see very well how the famous author would have felt a little, to put it mildly, conflicted.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Director Alex Gibney has made the definitive documentary on the mother of all corporate scandals and the jaw-droppingly depraved people at the center of it all. Based primarily on reporting by extremely yummy Fortune magazine writer Bethany McLean (and, okay, her colleague Peter Elkind, who I’m sure is a very nice person. Call me, Bethany.), who got the ball rolling with their 2001 investigative article titled (whimsically, in retrospect) “Is Enron Overvalued?” and later wrote the book after which Gibney’s docco is named, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is notable for the astounding audio and video footage Gibney has assembled from inside the company documenting the brazenness of Ken “Kenny Boy” Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and other Enron executives and employees as they openly loot Wall Street and energy consumers throughout the land. Everyone has their own favorites—the infamous “Grandma Millie” tapes, in which two twentysomething energy traders who you just know were even bigger assholes in college are caught laughing about the millions of kilowatt-hours they’re stealing from California consumers, is a perennial hit—but the one that made the biggest impact on me was video footage of a skit featuring Enron honcho Jeff Skilling and another executive spoofing the company’s controversial (and, as it turned out, crooked) “mark-to-market” accounting practice. (Enron bigwigs, it seems, were big on skits.) The woman in the video with Skilling is your basic non-actor, unconvincingly reciting theoretically funny lines in a Texas-hick accent, but Skilling, playing himself, is… mesmerizing. Seriously. He’s a better actor than some of the people nominated for acting awards this year. He could have made a lot of money in Hollywood—though probably not as much as he stole while he was at Enron, of course. One begins to get a sense of just how these people managed to fool so many intelligent people for so long.

Downfall (Der Untergang) - Before you ask, this German film about a young woman during the Third Reich is not the German film about a young woman during the Third Reich that’s in theaters now and has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film this year. That’s Sophie Scholl. Downfall was Germany’s nominee for Best Foreign Language Film last year. Easy mistake to make. Downfall tells the story of Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara), the subject of the 2002 documentary Blind Spot - Hitler’s Secretary (Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin). You will already have deduced, dear reader, that Traudl Junge was Hitler’s secretary; in fact, she was his final secretary, and was among the small group of people living in the dictator’s bunker at the time of his death in 1945. Bruno Ganz is compelling as Adolf Hitler, ranting dementedly one minute, quiet and enigmatic the next.

Walk the Line - Like last year’s Ray, the Amazing True Story of J. R. “Johnny” Cash (Joaquin Phoenix), the Man in Black, musician, American, friend to the downtrodden, and all-around coolest human being in the history of the world is pure paint-by-numbers musician-biopic porn, and I loved every minute of it. Like all such films, the plot revolves around the adversities faced by the hero as he escapes from an early life of rural poverty to become one of America’s top musical stars. Will Johnny convince Sun Records to sign him to a recording contract? Will he overcome the drug dependency that threatens to ruin his life? Might he, could he, will he ever win the heart of the lovely June Carter, played irresistibly by the fetching Reese Witherspoon? (Hint: For the latter half of her life, she was known as June Carter Cash). These are all questions that could be answered in advance by any moderately attentive moviegoer, even one who has never heard of Johnny Cash, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, because as with all such films the plot is just window dressing for a series of loving recreations of legendary on-stage performances by the subject of the picture.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - I’ve decided that I’m not going to feel obligated to apologize for putting Harry Potter films on my top ten lists anymore in light of how highly the interminable, benumbing Lord of the Rings films are still spoken of by so many adults who really should know better. Director Mike Newell takes the reins for young Harry’s fourth cinematic outing, which has a more grown-up feel than the first three and hints at the dark times that we who have read the next two books know are coming.

Okay, so that’s one, two, three... six. Six movies. Shortest Top Ten List ever. Great.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Good Night, and Good Luck

Well, look at that: another year without a single Best Picture nominee I actively loathe. I must be living right. As always, then, the nominees in decreasing order of irrationality:

Brokeback Mountain - Hey, I’m a liberal. I was queer-friendly before being queer-friendly was cool. I’m thrilled that the gay civil rights bill finally passed this year. And yet Brokeback Mountain reminds me of The Village People Paul Thomas Anderson’s commentary track on the Boogie Nights DVD where he says he put Don Cheadle in Western wear because he thinks cowboys are funny, and black cowboys are even funnier. Well, gay cowboys turn out to be ABSOLUTELY THE FUNNIEST THING EVER, and I guess I don’t fully understand why that should be. Brokeback Mountain could have been about gay airline pilots, or gay soldiers, or gay professional baseball players, and I wouldn’t have found it funny; it would have just been a movie about two dudes gettin’ their freak on, and I’m all for that. But no, they had to go make a movie about gay cowboys, and I’m made to feel like James Dobson (or worse, Tim Eyman) for finding the whole thing hilarious. Anyway, Brokeback Mountain is a thoroughly ordinary and somewhat tedious film about how two men who love each other can be as stupid and thickheaded about it as straight couples can, filled with lots of turgid symbolism involving fillies, and bucking rodeo bulls, and fireworks, and breakin’ th’ rules, and everything else you’d expect in what basically amounts to slash Lonesome Dove fanfic. I’ll tell you what, though, those breathtaking Wyoming vistas sure did make me want to go camping. The last time I went camping was, gosh, almost three years ago, I guess. (With a girl! Yew know ah ain’t no queer, raht?)

Munich - I certainly didn’t hate Steven Spielberg’s Amazing True Story of the elite assassination squad the Mossad assembled to take out the leaders of Black September, the terrorist group that massacred the 1972 Israeli national Olympic team, and there’s really no reason for it to be this low on my list, except that it depressed the hell out of me and this time of year I really don’t need any more of that than I’m already getting.

Crash - New rule: In the future, anyone who sees a movie written or directed by Paul Haggis must wait 48 hours before commenting on it publicly. As with last year’s Million Dollar Baby, which Haggis wrote, I was practically in tears immediately after seeing Crash and was ready to hail it as the best film of the year, and as with Million Dollar Baby, it wasn’t until after I’d had a chance to think about it for a while that I began to gradually resent its manipulativeness and ham-handed moralizing. Crash involves a large and diverse group of Angelinos, including a Persian shopkeeper (Shaun Toub) and his family, a Mexican-American locksmith (Michael Pena), an Odd Couple pairing of a veteran cop and his rookie partner (Matt Dillon, Ryan Philippe), a pair of bickering carjackers (Larenz Tate, Ludacris), a “white-acting” television director and his prickly wife (Terrence Dashon Howard, Thandie Newton), the district attorney of Los Angeles and his prickly wife (Brendan Fraser, Sandra Bullock), and a depressive police detective who seems to be at, or close to, the center of the story (Don Cheadle), all of whose lives intersect throughout the film in the kind of stupendous coincidences that only happen in Hollywood movies. They are all afflicted by racial prejudices, we learn, and they are all capable of redemption and grace. The acting is universally amazing from everyone involves, and helps cover a multitude of sins in the screenplay and the direction.

Capote - A tough call here, but I’m going to have to put Capote in the second slot and Good Night, and Good Luck in the first. Journalism school wasn’t so long ago that I’m not still inclined to give Edward R. Murrow his propers.

Good Night, and Good Luck - My accolades are a poor substitute for an Oscar, but they’ll have to do, because it’s not going to win.

Who Will Win: Brokeback Mountain

I mean, that’s pretty obvious at this point, right? There’s been some talk in the entertainment press lately about Crash making a strong late showing among Academy members, but I don’t see that happening.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck.

It’s just wrong, that’s all there is to it. David Strathairn is one of my favorite actors ever, and he’s finally honored with the first Oscar nomination of his life for what may be his best work to date, and he’s not gonna win. I should just boycott the Oscars and watch Eight Men Out again, but I’m kind of looking forward to learning once and for all how “Strathairn” is supposed to be pronounced. I’ve always favored a stressed first syllable (“stray-thern”), but I heard a nasty rumor that it’s more or less pronounced the way it’s written (“stra-thairn”), which doesn’t seem like it could be right.

Like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, Strathairn plays a reasonably well-known twentieth century figure, so the burden is on the three men to conform to the audience’s expectations. Strathairn perhaps has the better deal, because while Johnny Cash has one of the most distinctive voices in country music and Truman Capote’s mannerisms are a well-known part of popular culture, Edward R. Murrow’s presence isn’t particularly familiar to today’s audiences. (Ironically, of course, Murrow’s face and voice have probably been broadcast to more Americans over the years than the other two put together.) Hoffman and Phoenix have both received positive notices for inhabiting their characters to an almost unsettling degree. Still, mimicry isn’t acting, although I guess it’s, like, a component of acting, or something like that. Strathairn does something that’s at least equally important, which is to bring the audience along on the controversial and risky decision to engage Joe McCarthy head-on in such a way that we can feel the weight of the decision resting on his shoulders, and see the courage it takes. And that’s more than enough for me.

Who Will Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote

Not that I mean to take anything away from Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is also an excellent actor and whose ability to climb inside the head of his odd little character rivals that of the most hardcore Method actor you could name. That said, he’s obviously helped by the showiness of the role, and I don’t see any reason to go with another name here.

Missing: Chris Hope, The Pittsburgh ~~Steelers~~ Stealers

Stealers Logo Late in the first quarter of Super Bowl XL with the score tied at zero, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck threw a perfect pass to wide receiver Darrell Jackson in the Pittsburgh end zone, putting seven points on the board for Seattle. Except... during a quick change of direction seconds before, Jackson had pressed his fingertips lightly against the jersey of ~~Steelers~~ Stealers cornerback Chris Hope, the kind of ticky-tack play that happens in every NFL game, often multiple times. As back judge Bob Waggoner trotted onto the field, Hope dramatically lobbied the official for a penalty. Flag comes out! Offensive pass interference! The touchdown is struck and the ball is sent back ten yards behind the original line of scrimmage. Three plays later the Seahawks are forced to settle for a field goal. Hope’s thespian skills are clearly the equal of those exhibited by any of the gentlemen nominated in this category and the Academy should find some way to honor him.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

This was a pretty easy decision for me to make, because Walk the Line is the only one of these movies that I’ve seen. Still an’ all, the adorable Witherspoon’s dialed-up-to-eleven Dolly Parton hill country twang brings a smile to the face, and she’s really a very good singer too, so kudos all around. If she doesn’t win this year it’s only a matter of time.

Reese Witherspoon, of course, also wins the coveted Actress I’d Most Like To Sleep With award for what is probably the fifth or sixth time at this point. Well done.

Who Will Win: Felicity Huffman, Transamerica

I’m one of a minority of Oscar prognostificatorizers to go with Huffman’s male-to-female transsexual here instead of Witherspoon, but with Brokeback Mountain set to clean up this year, maybe the Academy will choose to cap it by putting the T back in LGBT. Besides, it wouldn’t even be the first time in the last ten years the Lead Actress award went to a woman playing a character with a somewhat complicated gender identity.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Matt Dillon, Crash

You know what’s awesome, is when I see a movie and I say, “Boy, that guy ought to get nominated for best supporting actor this year,” and then he is nominated for best supporting actor, and he was the only actor in a really standout cast who got a nomination at all, and I totally called it. Matt Dillon plays a cop who’s a racist jerk and a hero at the same time, all while getting dicked around by his father’s HMO (and who among us hasn’t been there?) Of all the men and women in Crash, Dillon does the best job of running the gamut from sympathetic to un-, and deserves notice.

Who Will Win: George Clooney, Syriana

The smart money here seems to be on Paul Giamatti, who won the Screen Actors’ Guild award, barely edging out Clooney to take home the statue. Here’s my reasoning: If the Academy wanted to give Paul Giamatti an Oscar, they would have done so last year for Sideways, but he didn’t even get nominated for that movie. Instead, they’re going to give it to George Clooney for Syriana to make up for the one they’re not going to give him for Good Night, and Good Luck, because they have to give it to Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain, to make up for not giving him a Best Director trophy for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and because they’re all sheep who mainly just want to back a winning team. Make sense? Good.

Missing: Ben Roethlishberger, The Pittsburgh Stealers

In the second quarter of Super Bowl XL, with Pittsburgh still scoreless at just under two minutes left in the half, the Stealers had the ball on third down inches from the Seattle goal line after two unimpressive runs by Jerome Bettis. Pittsburgh quarterback “Big” Ben Roethlisberger took the snap and dove into what became a huge goal-line pileup. Head linesman Mark Hittner hesitated, not signaling a touchdown... until Roethlisberger, at the bottom of the pile, reached out his arm and plunked the ball down on the goal line. Hittner immediately raised his arms skyward and the Stealers were credited with a touchdown they never actually scored. Jor-El The replay assistant in the booth, who clearly had not been briefed on the plan before the game, called for a replay, but referee Bill Leavy—who clearly had been briefed—upheld the call. “I don’t think I got in,” “Big” Ben admitted to David Letterman the following evening, something that would have been nice to know at the time.

Great acting is about making your audience believe everything you’re putting out there, and on that Sunday in Detroit, Ben Roethlisberger made a believer out of more than one zebra. He richly deserves consideration as the year’s Best Supporting Actor. (Note: Roethlisberger is ineligible for Lead Actor consideration because his passing performance was overshadowed by that of his own wide receiver, Jor—er, Randle El, who threw one pass for 43 yards and a touchdown, giving Antwaan Randle El a passer rating of 158.3 to Roethlisberger’s 22.6.)

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Catherine Keener, Capote

Oy. This is one of those arid wasteland categories that happens from time to time where I haven’t seen most of the movies, and some of them I haven’t even heard of and, frankly, kind of doubt they’re actually real movies. (“Junebug”? C’mon.) I guess I’ll go with Catherine Keener, because she played Harper Lee, and that’s pretty cool. Boy, that Michelle Williams sure is a cutie, though.

Who Will Win: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Yeah, this is another one of those movies I’m barely aware of, and in fact I don’t want to know anything else about it because it’s too much fun trying to guess what it’s about from the title. A constant… gardener? The mind reels. My pick here is guided purely by the oddsmakers, who don’t seem to be mentioning any other names in this category.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck

George Clooney, bless his little liberal heart, is one of America’s greatest national assets. Here’s a guy who lives at or near the top of the Hollywood food chain, Sexiest Man Alive emeritus, can do pretty much any project he wants, yet he seems to have no interest whatsoever in cookie-cutter action thrillers or brain-killing CGI travesties or any of the other soulless blockbusters that stars of his caliber normally have to do to maintain their box-office viability. What does he do instead? Coen Brothers movies. Weird moody Steven Soderbergh pictures. Chuck Barris’ deranged autobiography. 40-year-late episodes of Playhouse 90. Not only does he essentially tell Hollywood to kiss his grits, but then when he goes and does the projects he wants to do it turns out he’s just a big ol’ egghead film nerd. Basically, he’s me, if I were nine years older and about three times as good looking. (Okay, two and a half.)

Alas, poor George was born half a century too late; as with the live remake of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe he executive-produced for CBS a few years ago, Good Night shows us that he’d love nothing so much as to be working on the live televised dramas of the 1950s, alongside legends like Lumet, John Frankenheimer, and Rod Serling. In Good Night, Clooney helps take us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, with its slightly claustrophobic sets and artificially static camera shots that recall the bulky, restrictive old Philco television cameras that might have been used on both Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now and on General Electric Theater over on the next soundstage; Robert Elswit’s sharp black-and-white cinematography (he received a nomination too) snaps like the pearlescent smoke rising from Murrow’s omnipresent cigarettes. Hang it all, George Clooney turns out to be a pretty good director. Too bad he’s not going to win.

Who Will Win: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

This is going to be a repeat of last year’s Best Director race, wherein a truly gifted director who’s made some of my favorite movies and been snubbed every time finally wins the Oscar for what is arguably his weakest effort yet. Once again I’m called upon to use my active fantasy life to keep reality at bay for another year. In my mind I’ve already reassigned Alexander Payne’s Best Director award from the underwhelming Sideways to the much better Election, and now I’ll have to pretend that Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain trophy is actually for… oh, let’s say The Ice Storm. Maybe I’ll dream up a little scenario where the two of them get together with Martin Scorsese (Best Director, 1990, Goodfellas) and swap war stories.

Missing: Bill Leavy, One For the Thumb: The Amazing True Story of the Glorious Pittsburgh Steelers Plus Some Other Team

It was the feel-good story of the year: those brave boys from Steel City would descend on the Motor City, clad in their secondhand corporate logo and their Really, Really Bad Towels, and after a brief ceremony, be presented with a fifth Super Bowl trophy to go along with the ones they earned in the 1970s back when the team was actually good, as an elderly Jerome Bettis rides into the sunset in his real actual homefuckingtown. The only potential hitch was that they would have to play, and defeat, another team in the process—a formality, really, like playing the Washington Generals, except that in this case the other team would come from some Godforsaken corner of the country far away from the New York-based national sports media, which barely knew they existed and certainly didn’t care. But then the game started, and something terrible happened: this random other team was good. Better than the brave boys from Steel City. They might actually win.

It is the mark of a good director that he can often turn around a troubled production all by himself. Bill Leavy, the head of the officiating team that decided Super Bowl XL, stepped up when things threatened to go awry.

With 12:35 to go in the 4th quarter, Jerramy Stevens landed an 18-yard Matt Hasselbeck pass to down the ball at the Pittsburgh 1-yard line... but then Seahawks RT Sean Locklear was called for holding after he hooked Stealers linebacker Clark Haggans’ right shoulder—technically “holding” in a strict, legalistic sense, but the kind of play that happens dozens of times on any given Sunday without being called. The call moved the ball back to the Pittsburgh 29; three plays later Hasselbeck threw his only interception of the game, ending a 13-play Seahawks drive that began at the Seattle 2-yard line at 2:41 of the third quarter.
Then, with Pittsburgh cornerback Ike Taylor cradling the intercepted ball as he rocketed back up the field, Hasselbeck saved the TD with a good, solid tackle below Taylor’s waist... only to be called for illegal blocking. (In football, “blocking” the ball carrier in such a fashion as to cause him to fall down is generally called a “tackle,” and as watching a few seconds of any football game will demonstrate, it is not illegal to do so below the waist.) The penalty wafted the Stealers 15 yards closer to the goal line, setting up a touchdown four plays later. “At that point,” wrote ESPN’s Skip Bayless, no fan of the Hawks, “[the Seahawks] seemed to be hanging their heads as if they had decided the NFL just couldn’t live with them winning its showcase game.” Hasselbeck was, indeed, credited with a tackle in the official game statistics.

In the end it was Bill Leavy, armed with nothing but a whistle and a little yellow flag, who managed to keep the production on time, on budget, and most importantly, on script. I haven’t seen a better directing job in years.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck

Normally I like the screenplay categories because they offer a moment of glory for some good films that didn’t get nominated for Best Picture, but the only non-Picture nominee that I’ve seen in either category is Syriana, and I just didn’t understand that movie at all. (So, um, who was George Clooney selling the rockets to in Teheran? And who or what was William Hurt supposed to be, exactly? And was Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine older or younger than his billiards-playing loser brother? Didn’t the emir say the brother was supposed to become the next emir? Then what was the deal with the motorcade at the end? And how are the two oil companies connected to all of this? What about the Chinese? And, incidentally, what is “Syriana,” anyway? Is it the name of Dr. Bashir’s country? Then why didn’t they just say that? Give me some time and I’ll come up with some more questions.)

Who Will Win: Paul Haggis, Robert Moresco, Crash

I wish I could say the Cloonster has a better shot at this award than at Best Picture, but if anything the opposite is true. In Best Picture there is at least a miniscule possibility that Brokeback Mountain and Crash will split the electorate and allow Good Night, and Good Luck to fly in under the radar, but Brokeback Mountain isn’t eligible for Original Screenplay, so Crash is all alone here.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Dan Futterman, Capote

I guess I gotta go with Capote here, which is fine. Capote would be my pick for most of these awards if I hadn’t seen Good Night, and Good Luck.

Who Will Win: Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain

I’ve never read any of Annie Proulx’s work, though I’ve understood her to be one of the modern breed of critically acclaimed “literary” authors who can’t write worth a good goddamn—and if lines like “Ah wish ah knew how t’ quit yew!” came from Proulx’s original Brokeback Mountain short story, I have no problem believing that. Larry McMurtry ain’t no slouch, but one must work with the material one is given, I suppose.

Tilda Swinton Nominees:

Who Should Win: Howard Berger, Tami Lane, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I knew I’d be making Best Makeup my bonus category the minute I saw the already otherworldly-looking Tilda Swinton kitted out as the White Witch in Disney’s visually impressive take on C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That’s a pretty cool look for her, heh heh. Man, I kill myself sometimes. I really do.

Who Will Win: Howard Berger, Tami Lane, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Every once in a while I pick a bonus category where the winner’s a sure thing to boost my winning percentage. So be it! Cinderella Man is set less than a hundred years ago, so it won’t win, and everyone’s sick of the Star Wars movies now. Narnia can wrap it up and take it home.

Good grief, I’m tired. Report back here after the Oscars to read my wrap-up and see how I did.

—Paul
March 3, 2006

“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been confusing the public mind as between internal and the external threats of communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck.”
—Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), Good Night, and Good Luck

2006

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