Paul's Oscar Pix 2007

This is a strange year for the Oscars, perhaps the strangest one in recent memory. Two subtitled films nominated for Best Picture. Two Best Supporting Actress nominees who aren’t old enough to drive. A documentary nominated for Best Song. Judi Dench and Meryl Streep nominated for Best Actress… wait, that’s not strange. One hopes that these examples of out-of-the-box thinking might be harbingers of change, not only in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but in the movie industry as a whole, of an industrywide move away from movies that suck and toward movies that don’t.

For you see, dear reader, after spending the last several years complaining in this space about how the cinema is a vast wasteland interrupted from time to time by product placements and requests to please extinguish your cell phone before the show and how Hollywood is a soulless pit of hackery and corporate zombies that couldn’t come up with an original idea if it were tattooed backwards on their eyeballs, I’m thinking that perhaps I should try to have a more positive attitude about the whole thing. I used to like movies, after all, at least in theory, and although it has always been my impression that even the independent filmmakers have been in a severe creative rut since at least the year 2000, it may simply be that I haven’t been disposed to give them a fair shake. Perhaps the time has come for me to end my self-imposed sabbatical from the world of film and actually make an effort to appreciate some of what the studios and indies are producing these days.

And in fact the last couple of months have seen a couple of developments that may make that a less painful, even attractive, prospect. The first is that I finally bought a high-definition television this month, a Samsung LN-S3251D—a long-overdue purchase, although I’m a bit disappointed that it has thus far failed to solve all of my life’s problems. On the contrary, it’s created new ones. For example, now I have a TV that has a boot-up time. I’m just getting adjusted to having to boot my cell phone, and now I have to boot my TV as well. Used to be, I turned the TV on, and it would just turn on. It took a few seconds for the tube to warm up, but at least you knew the thing was on. With the new set, the only indication that you’ve turned it on is that a red light starts blinking. Then, five seconds later, it magically snaps into existence.

That’s annoying, but I can get used to it. Something I expect to have a harder time adjusting to is that standard definition television looks like SHIT on an HDTV. I apologize for the profanity, but I really feel that anything less would not fully convey the magnitude of the situation. On a regular ol’ television, any imperfections in the picture get smoothed over as the 1930s technology underlying broadcast television smears the image onto the screen in a low-tech blur that’s actually somewhat pleasant, or at least we’ve been conditioned to see it that way. When an HDTV encounters a 480-line SDTV signal, on the other hand, it has to upscale it to 768 lines or 1200 lines or however many lines the TV is capable of producing. This results in blur too, obviously, but instead of the low-tech NTSC blur we’re all used to it’s a hideous, uneven digital cacophony that the set attempts to rectify with twelve different kinds of technological abracadabra like interpolation and edge enhancement, none of which improve the situation to even the slightest degree. Most television programs served up today are still in standard definition, of course, including all DVDs and every broadcast and cable program released up until about five years ago. So I’ve spent a thousand dollars to make 90 percent of the TV I watch look like shit. I’m a genius!

The situation is even worse when you consider that I watch everything on TiVo, which doesn’t record high-definition signals, so to see any high-def content at all I need to break that habit and actually watch the naked signal spilling out of the cable into the TV. Unfortunately, I’m now six years out of practice in both paying attention to what time shows are actually broadcast, and in being able to withstand the unyielding barrage of commercials that inevitably accompanies them—the result being that sitting through a broadcast show, even in high-def, is all but intolerable, making for a Hobson’s choice that’s only partially mitigated by the picture-in-picture feature that allows me to watch something on the TiVo while waiting for the commercials for Budweiser and Head-On (“Apply directly to the forehead!”) to finally, mercifully, end. TiVo does sell a high-definition box now, but it costs—are you ready for this?—$800. Before I got my new TV I had the luxury of being able to laugh at the self-evident preposterousness of this price, but now I’m just filled with the depressing realization that I’m eventually going to have to pay it just to maintain my sanity. Although if the price doesn’t come down a lot, it’s going to be much less expensive for me to get my HD-DVR goodness by upgrading one of my old PCs with a giant hard drive and an HDTV card and putting Windows Media Center on it. In fact, when I buy my next PC in about a year or so, that’s probably what I’m gonna do.

And then there’s the remote control situation. Used to be, I could get by on most days with one remote:

Photo: 1 remote

Since I got the new TV, I now find myself juggling 6 remotes:

Photo: 6 remotes

From left to right: I need the TV remote to do things like choose the input source and change the aspect ratio of the video frame. The cable remote is necessary when I want to watch something in high-def. The TiVo remote is the same good ol’ workhorse that it’s always beeen. The Xbox 360 multimedia remote is what I use to watch most DVDs these days (see below). The other DVD remote is for my region-free DVD player, which I use when I want to stick it to the Man by watching imported discs. And the system switcher remote is what makes it possible for me to connect all of these cockamamie devices to the TV without going insane. And that’s not even counting the controllers for my Nintendo Wii, which are famously remote control-shaped. Theoretically, this is all supposed to make me happier than I was before.

On the bright side, high-definition programs really do look absolutely magnificent on the thing, almost like being in a movie theater without having to sit through the Coca-Cola ads at the beginning. Standard DVDs, although they’re not high-definition, look wonderful too. Pop in an anamorphic widescreen disc and it’ll spread itself out all over that big beautiful screen like it owns the place. And as good as a DVD looks in HD when played on a regular player, it looks much better when played on an Xbox 360, which upconverts the DVD output to the native resolution of the TV when connected using the optional VGA cable. (Have you ever wondered why, when you play a DVD on a computer, the picture is much cleaner and smoother than if you play the same DVD on a high-definition TV, even though the resolution of the computer monitor is probably at least as high as that of the TV, if not higher? It’s because the DVD Forum license doesn’t allow the video signal to be upconverted over an ordinary analog connection, requiring the TV itself to do the best it can with the crummy 480p signal the DVD player hands it. Using a VGA connection gets around these restrictions because VGA is considered a computer video connection and not a consumer A/V connection, so the licensing restrictions don’t apply to it. If all this seems deeply idiotic to you, gentle reader, you’re absolutely right.) If you have an Xbox 360 and an HDTV that supports a VGA input (not all of them do) you owe it to yourself to spring for the VGA cable. The resulting upconverted signal is hard to distinguish from true HD and makes watching films on TV a much more pleasant experience. So although the multiplex experience hasn’t gotten any less hellacious, at least staying home is a more realistic alternative now.

The second thing that has happened is that I have a new girlfriend who, among other fine qualities, has tastes in movies that are similar to mine. She also has more energy than I do, so she’s been instrumental in getting me out to the theater on a semi-regular basis again. Whether I actually begin liking the movies again remains to be seen, but either way, dear reader, you’ll hear about it here first. Onward!

Let’s go through the rules again, because the tenth time’s the charm. I make predictions in the eight “major” categories plus one bonus category, which this year is—any guesses? anyone?—Best Animated Short. I also say which of the nominated films I’d like to win in each category, not that anyone ever listens to me about such things. That’s pretty much it. There really aren’t a lot of rules. In the past I also used to list my top ten films of the year, but since the turn of the century it’s gotten more and more depressing to try and compile a list of ten films I feel like gushing over, so lately I’ve just stopped when I ran out of things to say. The header still says “Paul’s Top Ten,” though, because changing it would require making a number of alterations to the site’s back-end code that I don’t particularly feel like doing. Are you excited yet? Wheee!

In fact, I’m not even going to go through the charade this year, because there’s only one movie I feel like gushing about: An Inconvenient Truth.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or watching Fox “News” Channel all year, you know that this is the documentary featuring Vice President Al Gore delivering a presentation on the threat of global warming, an address he has been refining, updating, and delivering to audiences all over the world for more than twenty years. The film itself was the brainchild of producers Laurie David (wife of Larry) and Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction), who watched Gore deliver his presentation to an audience in New York a couple of years ago, were riveted by it, and decided to turn it into a film. Today, it is the third highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history and has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature and, oddly enough, Best Song (Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up”).

Aside from the validity and importance of Gore’s message—which is indisputable; there is literally no disagreement about it within the serious scientific community—the power of words and images to persuade. I mean, when you get down to it, this is a movie about a man giving a 100-minute PowerPoint presentation (or, yes, whatever Apple ~~Computer~~ calls its also-ran presentation software, fine). That’s what it is. That’s pretty much all it is. In fact, in the very few places where director Davis Guggenheim (Deadwood) does cut away from the “action,” it feels like a distraction. Little by little, like an attorney in a courtroom, Gore patiently and persuasively makes his case: global warming is real, here’s how we know, here are its effects, and here’s what we can do about it. Standing before a huge rear-projection video monitor, Gore accents his words not with bullet points, but with stark, striking images: a 1932 shot of Boulder Glacier in Montana’s Glacier National Park, showing a towering ice sheet filling the frame almost completely, fades into a photo taken from the same vantage point in 1988, the mountainside now bare and dry, utterly free of ice. Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, snow-peaked and majestic in 1970, fades into the denuded alien vista that Kilimanjaro is today, which fades into a photograph of a glaciologist standing before a pitiful spire of ice that Gore identifies as the last remnant of one of the mountain’s once-mighty glaciers. “Within the decade,” he says, “there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.” In true Beyond Bullets style, Gore uses a mix of still images, full-motion video, computer animation, maps, charts, and other visuals, all in ways that enhance the message rather than duplicate or distract from it. All of this would mean little, however, if the message itself were unclear, or lost in poor delivery. Fortunately, it is here that Gore really shines. Throughout the modern era, people like Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould have been the interface between the scientific world and the world of ordinary people, and we owe a debt to them for the work they have done to bring complex truths about the universe to a larger audience without misrepresenting them or dumbing them down unduly. What Sagan and Gould did for astronomy and evolutionary biology, Al Gore is now doing for the environment. It just so happens that, whereas Sagan and Gould were scientists themselves, Gore is a former Vice President of the United States.

Okay, look, I admit I have a huge, huge man-crush on Al Gore, and have for a while. But I maintain that An Inconvenient Truth is an authentically great movie, for the same reason that I was able to get my parents to watch and love Dogtown and Z-Boys: there’s something inherently alluring about watching people do something they’re good at and passionate about. Gore’s passion for decades has been the environment, and his genius is in the way he makes you understand why it should be your passion too.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: The Queen

Hey, another year with no egregiously undeserving Best Picture nominees! See, there’s that positive attitude I was talking about. As always, then, the nominees in decreasing order of irrationality:

Babel: Like Crash and Syriana last year, Babel is another entry in an emerging genre of film we might call the Magnolia Movie: an ensemble cast dramatizes several apparently unrelated stories, the action cutting between them frequently, until we get near the end of the movie and the screenplay finally deigns to reveal the one inconsequential element that ties them all together (“Ohhh! The company that dumped the chemicals in the water that gave the little barrio girl birth defects was owned by the rich industrialist with the dying mother, and that’s why the police detective with the dark secret in his past was so intent on bringing him to justice! I see! Very interesting!”), all typically set to a downbeat, vaguely Philip Glass-ish soundtrack for some reason. In Babel, the three unrelated stories involve American tourists (Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett) in Morocco whose lives get upended by a freak shooting; an undocumented nanny (Adriana Barraza) forced by circumstances to take her gringo charges across the border to attend a wedding in Mexico, which turns out to be a really bad decision; and an angsty, hormonal Japanese teenager (Rinko Kikuchi) who is also deaf but is primarily just angsty and hormonal. I don’t want to say Babel isn’t a good movie, because it very much is, with great performances in English, Spanish, Japanese, and Arabic from all the actors. Nonetheless, I feel the Magnolia gimmick is close to being played out at this point; the connective element too often feels like a high-toned MacGuffin offered to the audience as a reward for sitting through the thing, and in the case of Babel it was so arbitrary and unnecessary that it almost felt thrown in at the last minute to justify not having three separate movies in the first place. Oh yeah, and it’s told non-linearly, like Pulp Fiction, although you would be forgiven for not picking up on that because you’d have had to listen very closely to a nearly inaudible phone conversation near the beginning of the film to grasp it—kind of unfair, I thought. That said, I do have to give the film credit for bizarrely, wonderfully finding a place on the soundtrack for the plinky, minor-key instrumental number from the “On the Next Episode” segment of the awesome HBO series Deadwood, making me wonder if Al Swearengen was about to come strolling over the top of one of the Saharan hills with Dan Dority and Mr. Wu in tow. (C’mon over some time and I’ll show you the DVDs.)

Letters from Iwo Jima: A good movie, but I have to agree with the sentiments of my friend Erik, from an e-mail sent a few weeks ago: “As good as ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ may be, Clint Eastwood/Paul Haggis must be stopped.” With the director/writer duo’s Million Dollar Baby winning two years ago, and Haggis’ own Crash winning last year—both films that have been accused, and justifiably so, of relying a little too much on emotional manipulation—I can’t be the only one who thinks that maybe it’s time for them to take a year or two off from this category. Regardless, they’re not going to win this year, which is actually a bit ironic given that Letters is better than either of the previous two films, in my opinion. Filmed almost entirely in Japanese, Letters tells the Amazing True Story of the Imperial Japanese Army’s doomed defense of the island of Iwo Jima from Allied attack in February and March of 1945. Letters shows the other side of the story from Flags of Our Fathers, released a few weeks earlier; Eastwood filmed the two movies back-to-back in the same locations but with two entirely different casts. In a way it brings to mind Lewis Milestone’s landmark 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front, told from the perspective of a young German soldier during World War I. “All war movies,” said Francis Ford Coppola, “are anti-war movies.” (I wonder if he ever talked to Francois Truffaut, who said that all war movies are pro-war movies, about that.) Showing war through the eyes of the “enemy,” making the audience sympathize with enemy troops, tends to support Coppola’s contention by reinforcing the fact that, at the front lines during the immediacy of combat, political and ideological differences tend to fall away and, above all, people are just people.

I was amazed that Letters from Iwo Jima wasn’t nominated for Best Cinematography, because the film owes a lot to some interesting cinematographic techniques employed during production. At a casual glance it appears to be in black-and-white, but it’s not: it’s a color film, but the color is almost totally desaturated, to the point that it actually takes a while to realize that your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you, that those uniforms really are a warmer-looking gray and the hills really are a cooler-looking gray. It’s a cool effect, and one of the things it does is that it makes certain visual elements really pop, like the rising sun on a Japanese flag or the sudden burst of yellow from an exploding bomb. Because the desaturated effect is carried throughout the entire film, it doesn’t look as gimmicky as the similar device used in Schindler’s List, despite carrying just as powerful of a wallop. I guess cinematographers know their jobs better than I do; maybe they did think it was too gimmicky, or maybe the desaturation was added in post-production and perhaps therefore isn’t properly considered cinematography, or maybe they’re all just jealous that they didn’t think of it first. Whatever it is, it’s a shame the film didn’t nab a cinematography nod.

Little Miss Sunshine: I didn’t see this one when it was in theaters, partially because I figured that any film that so prominently features a Volkswagen microbus has to be a little too precious for its own good, wouldn’t you think? The by-now famous poster, with its obviously colorful and quirky cast of characters running for the open door of the aforementioned van, does absolutely nothing to dispel this impression—like, oh, look at us, we’re so offbeat, we’re so It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, please go see our movie. Poster Ironically, the poster itself is absolutely brilliant, the best movie poster I’ve seen in years and years. It’s like Saul Bass came back from the dead just long enough to give us all one last poster, as if on a special assignment from God. The stark, mustard-colored background catches the eye in a way that the typical busy, tedious movie poster of today never will; the stars of the film, major figures including Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Steve Carell, are not shoved in our faces by soulless studio nutsacks in a cynical attempt to put our asses in the seats, but instead are shown in the middle distance in the iconic image from the film, a kinetic left-to-right chain that doesn’t even show us their faces clearly. Even better, the whole thing, from the cast list at the top to the picture title, is set in a light weight of Linotype’s Helvetica, a sublime, aggressively anti-movie-poster typeface that reinforces the minimalism of the background and imagery. You don’t see Helvetica as much as you used to these days, due in large part to competition from its loutish, artless doppelgänger Arial, which Monotype Corporation created (and Microsoft licensed) in what we can only assume was a deliberate attempt to drive all the beauty out of the world and replace it with a horrible, pitiable feeling of emptiness in all our hearts coupled with a cold, brutish reminder of what once was. Where was I? Little Miss Sunshine, right. Anyway, the film isn’t overly precious at all, but is a warm, funny experience I recommend to anyone without reservation. You will not see a better dance routine on film this year. And yes, you can compression-start an older Volkswagen at just about any speed; they’re unusually forgiving that way. (We’re all so used to being swaddled in luxury when driving these days, even in an economy car. Young people today have no appreciation for the kind of close-to-the-metal driving you got to do in those old babies. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people under 30 I know who could drive a stickshift if their life depended on it. Kids these days, I swear.)

The Departed: A Boston cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes deep undercover in the Irish-American mob, just as the Mob is planting one of their own (Matt Damon) in the police department; wackiness ensues. And by “wackiness,” I mean “a lot of guys get whacked.” Calling The Departed a return to form for Martin Scorsese is a bit unfair; only a small handful of the dozens of movies he’s directed are the kind of gritty urban crime dramas he’s often associated with. Still, it is those films that we remember, and if The Departed isn’t quite up to the level of Goodfellas or Taxi Driver, at least it enters the canon in the company of such minor gems as Mean Streets and Casino, which is a lot better than most directors manage. The setting for this go-round is Boston instead of New York, but in practice that just means that the characters have Irish names instead of Italian ones and make the occasional reference to Glostah or Southie. The increasingly geriatric Jack Nicholson is at his hammy best as gangleader Frank Costello, with Martin Sheen ably filling out the comforting-authority-figure role as the police chief, and unknown Vera Farmiga hitting the right notes as the love interest. I was sorely tempted to move The Departed into first place as my favorite, but ultimately it relies a little too much on the kind of incredible coincidences that only happen in movies. Even so, it’s still a fine, fine movie.

The Departed is a remake of a 2002 Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs, which some people claim was better. I haven’t seen Infernal Affairs, but I can nonetheless say with a great deal of confidence that the people who say that are wrong, because The Departed was directed by Martin Scorsese and Infernal Affairs was not. QED.

The Queen: I never cared much for Princess Diana, who always seemed like a foolish and empty-headed person to me, a spoiled rich kid prone to melodrama and self-pity. I certainly never understood the explosion of bathos that followed her untimely death, with the sea of flowers at Buckingham Palace and that godawful Elton John song and all the rest. It was all so… American. Actually, it’s worse than that: even in our celebrity-saturated culture it’s hard for me to imagine the entire United States going quite so balls-to-the-wall crazy with grief over the death of a single person unless she had, y’know, done something with her life.

Her Majesty the Queen (Helen Mirren) couldn’t understand it either, and for a few weeks in 1997 it seemed as though that failure to understand might bring a permanent end to the British monarchy. In The Queen, director Stephen Frears returns to that time with what is probably the most intimate portrayal of Elizabeth II ever told, in fiction or in nonfiction, a production that charmed me to the bottom of my Anglophile heart. A generally popular monarch, the Queen finds the British public turning against her rather strongly during the first few days after Diana’s death, as she resists the various attempts by the media and the public to deify the former princess. To Elizabeth, her actions are all perfectly logical: Diana was no longer a member of the royal family at the time of her death, therefore it is unreasonable to treat her as if she were. Others around her, such as Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) and newly-minted Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) understand that this is a situation that requires a certain amount of flexibility on the part of the Crown, and gently urge the Queen to compromise on certain matters of protocol. Unfortunately, these overtures only serve to further isolate and depress the Queen, who only sees the people closest to her telling her to join in the madness. As the title character, Helen Mirren makes the film great, making a real person out of a very public figure known mostly for frosty inscrutability. As Tony Blair, at the time a popular figure who was still years away from becoming a pitiable shell of a man with his legacy dashed against the rocks of George W. Bush’s incompetence and bad judgment, Michael Sheen ably fills the role of the Queen’s wisest counselor and best conduit to the world outside the bubble. Blair plays the role of the antagonist for much of the story, urging a recalcitrant Queen to make a more public show of mourning for her former daughter-in-law, yet at the root he wishes to save the monarchy instead of ending it; his impassioned dressing down of an anti-royalist subordinate late in the movie is one of the picture’s highlights. A fine supporting cast rounds out the production, especially Sylvia Sims, in a small but meaty role as the Queen Mother, and James Cromwell, who does a humorous turn as Prince Philip, Elizabeth’s well-meaning dunce of a husband.

Who Will Win:The Departed

There’s been talk lately of Babel coming up strong from behind, but I think The Departed is going to pull it out in the end.

I know I listed Babel as my least favorite of the five nominated pictures, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it winning at all; it’s really a rather difficult and somewhat inaccessible picture, with all the subtitles and intercutting between radically different storylines, and director Alejandro González Iñárritu creates an agreeably downbeat, moody atmosphere that resonates with the senses on a deeper than usual level. For Babel to win would be an indication that the Academy is looking a bit beyond the kinds of formulas that usually spell Oscar gold, which along with some other recent trends might suggest that they’re finally becoming a bit less conservative at long last. Or it may just mean that they didn’t understand it and assumed that therefore it must be awesome and they’d better vote for it or risk looking like ignorant Philistines. I suppose either is possible.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Who knew Ugandan dictator Idi Amin would turn out to be the role Forest Whitaker was born to play? Whitaker vividly captures the charisma that made Amin the hero of the people after the 1971 coup that put him in power, as well as the instability, paranoia, and ruthlessness that made him Africa’s bloodiest dictator.

Who Will Win: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

If there’s one sure thing this year, it seems, it’s Forest Whitaker; the popular consensus seems to be that no one else has a chance. After paying his dues for more than 20 years—no, Forest, we haven’t forgotten that that was you as John Travolta’s flunky in Battlefield Earth—it looks like he’s finally going to get the recognition he deserves.

Missing: Kazunari Ninomiya, Letters from Iwo Jima

As Saigo, the hapless baker turned buck private in the Emperor’s army, Kazunari Ninomiya brings us one of the most compelling anti-heroes I’ve seen in a long time. Saigo really doesn’t do anything heroic during the film; before and during the invasion he mainly goes about his assigned duties, complaining about them sometimes, and would certainly much rather surrender to the Americans than die pointlessly, if “honorably,” on Iwo Jima. Like Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist, the only heroic thing he does is survive, partly due to his own actions but mostly through dumb luck, as scores of people around him fail to do so. And why not? He’s got a pregnant wife who needs him to come home and be a father to their child. Sometimes surviving can be the most heroic thing one can do, I guess. A member of the popular J-pop boy band Arashi by day and the only authentically buck-toothed Japanese person I’ve ever seen, “Nino” Kazunari makes a terrific audience identification character, seemingly the only man in the entire Japanese Army who hasn’t gone completely crazy with outdated notions of honor and jingoism.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Helen Mirren, The Queen

Helen Mirren portrays Elizabeth II, perhaps the most inscrutable global figure of modern times, as a fully realized character whose every aspect is colored by the singular circumstances of her life and rule. Watching Mirren, we are reminded that the Queen, at the time approaching her 50th year on the throne of the United Kingdom, is a woman who has never known what it’s like not to have the eyes of the world upon her, who literally has no one who can approach her at her level, and who has therefore had to learn to make her own way in life, strange as that may seem. Some of the best scenes in the film feature the Queen driving her personal Land Rover alone around the spacious grounds of Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the monarch’s summer residence. When the vehicle suffers a breakdown crossing a small creek, she pulls out her cell phone and expertly describes the problem in detail to the groundskeeper back at the castle—as a teenager, we are reminded, Elizabeth was trained as a mechanic in the Women’s Territorial Auxiliary Service at the tail end of World War II. Mirren’s Queen clearly relishes little freedoms like her Land Rover, we can see, and we get the impression that such freedoms are few and far between. As she watches the headlines in Fleet Street’s crude tabloids turn against her it’s hard not to identify with her. None of us is the monarch of sixteen nations, but who among us doesn’t know what it’s like to feel alone?

Who Will Win: Helen Mirren, The Queen

The five nominees in this category have been nominated for Academy Awards a jaw-dropping combined total of 29 times, signifying… something, I’m not sure what, although I can’t imagine it’s good news for any of the other actresses in Hollywood. That said, it should also be noted that these five women are a combined total of 253 years old, signifying that there is in fact a place for women past a certain age in Hollywood, even if it’s only a place on the list of usual suspects to nominate whenever the Oscars come around. The Limey Rule (“When all else fails, go with the limey”) is of no help to us this year, because there are three British actresses among the nominated, which of course only goes to prove the inviolable power of the Limey Rule. We can dispense with the two non-English women, Meryl Streep (who gets nominated all the time because she’s Meryl Streep, but doesn’t have to actually win anymore because she’s already won twice) and Penélope Cruz (who was dumb enough to date Tom Cruise at a time when his insanity was already becoming readily apparent to all, so the hell with her). Of the three remaining, Judi Dench would get a nomination just for showing up, and if the Academy wanted to give Kate Winslet an Oscar, they would have done it one of the other four freakin’ times she’s been nominated for one. That leaves the runaway favorite, Helen Mirren, who played the Queen of All Limeys. Hey, maybe the Rule can help us this year after all!

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine

I haven’t seen three of these movies, so my choices are necessarily a bit restricted. Mark Wahlberg was great in The Departed, but he was barely in it. So I guess I’ll go with Alan Arkin; it wasn’t his best role, but he was pretty good.

Who Will Win: Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

I didn’t see Dreamgirls, because it’s a musical, and by this point you should all already be aware of my feelings about musicals. Eddie Murphy is the clear favorite in this category, so this hasn’t required a whole lot of thought.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Adriana Barraza, Babel

Of all the stories told in Babel, the most affecting was that of Amelia, the Mexican nanny portrayed by Adriana Barraza. Going in we expect her to be a minor character, a piece of set dressing who emits the customary “Yes, Meester Reechard” from time to time to move the plot along but otherwise stays in the background like—well, like a privileged white person would expect from a Mexican servant. As the film proceeds, she moves from the role of servile caretaker to that of a woman with a family, a well-earned dignity, and a mature woman’s sexuality; at last, in the final act, we see her as a panicked protector, forced to pay dearly for a lapse in judgment that anyone could empathize with. Barraza was a bit overshadowed in Babel by fellow nominee Rinko Kikuchi, but I thought Barraza’s performance was ultimately more memorable, which is pretty impressive considering that Rinko Kikuchi spent half the movie naked, or at least bottomless. Between her and Britney Spears, whose well-manicured goodies even remote Masai herders in the Serengeti have seen by now, I think we can well and truly declare 2006 the Year of the Hoo-hah. Well, good! Hoo-hahs deserve their own year.

Who Will Win: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

You know, I saw every episode of the third season of American Idol, yet I really have no memory of Jennifer Hudson. I remember pretty much everything about the second season, but the third is just a blur to me, except for Fantasia Barrino and, of course, William Hung. I have clearer memories of the second season’s Vanessa Olivarez, who didn’t even make the final ten, than I do of season 3’s Jennifer Hudson, who apparently made it all the way to seventh place. When the nominees came out I initially wondered what the little white girl from Almost Famous was doing in a movie based on the Supremes. The third season of American Idol just wasn’t very good. I guess that’s why I stopped watching it after that season.

Anyway, I certainly don’t remember hating Jennifer Hudson, which is a lot better than a lot of AI contestants manage, so… good for her. Like the other acting categories this year, the race seems sufficiently clear-cut that it’s not so much that the smart money is on Jennifer Hudson as that the stupid money is on any of the other nominees. It bears mention that if the four acting awards each go to the popular favorites, and at this point it seems like nothing short of a miracle could prevent that from happening, fully three of the four are set to go to African-American actors—quite a change from a few years ago. Coming a month after two black coaches met in the Super Bowl for the first time, it’s another watershed event that’s long overdue.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

I can’t imagine rooting against Marty in this category at this point, even if his movie sucked, which it very much did not. Who could hope for any other outcome? You? Who the hell do you think you are? Martin Scorsese has been making some of the best movies around for over thirty years with nary a thought for himself and this is how you repay him? You make me sick. Get out of here and don’t ever come back.

Who Will Win: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

It looks like getting back to the mean streets was a good move for Martin Scorsese, a good fella who’s probably as angry as a raging bull about being passed over for the Oscar for so long, but this year any casino could tell you that Marty has the momentum of, uh, a runaway taxi driver and if, er… Cape Fear… oh, screw it. Martin Scorsese for the win, finally. I’m probably wrong about this just like I was two years ago. Whatever.

United 93 might well be the fine movie everyone said it was, but I’ll never know, because I can’t imagine ever being in the mood to watch it, even if I live to be a hundred. And you can’t make me. No one can. So there. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Paul No-Such-Thing-As-Too-Soon Greengrass, you asshole. I hope you never win an Oscar. Grr.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: Peter Morgan, The Queen

I’ve got to go with my Best Picture preference here, but I’m somewhat torn between The Queen and Little Miss Sunshine, which was very well written. Ultimately both movies owe their appeal to both writing and acting.

Who Will Win: Guillermo Arriaga, Babel

It’s hard to draw a bead on the screenplay categories. Most critics and other Oscar prognosticators don’t tend to go down that far, and the ones that do often seem to come up with predictions by pulling them out of their rear ends. Typically the screenwriting Oscars track the WGA Awards pretty closely, and the results are often identical in both categories, especially recently. This year the Writers Guild gave Best Original to Little Miss Sunshine, which would seem to make that picture the favorite. I’m going with Babel for two reasons: the tendency of the Academy to go with “safer” choices (i.e., more traditional Oscar material) than the WGA, which would seem to suggest a dramatic picture here rather than a comedy, and the tendency of the Academy to treat the screenplay categories as consolation Best Picture categories for films they’d like to honor with the big award if they weren’t already giving it to someone else. As I’ve got The Departed down for Best Picture this year, I’m predicting a consolation screenplay Oscar for Babel.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: William Monahan, The Departed

I guess I have to go with The Departed here because it’s the only one of these movies I’ve seen, although I’ve really been keen on seeing Children of Men and wish only good things in life for Alfonso Cuarón. Christina and I were all set to go see it, but then the Oscar nominations came out and it didn’t get nominated for many awards, so I had to prioritize the films that did get nominated even though I wasn’t as interested in them. You see why this feels like work sometimes? I didn’t see Borat, and in fact it was all the people who told me that I absolutely had to see it who made me actively not want to see it. Have to see it? Fuck you! I’ll decide what I have to see and what I don’t have to see! Plus, the way everyone ran around acting like it was not only the funniest movie ever made but also the funniest movie that will ever be made only made me doubt their judgment, rather than come around to their point of view. I’ve never really understood what it is about Sacha Baron Cohen that I’m supposed to find amusing, and it’s mighty hard to imagine that he’s got anything up his sleeve that’s funnier than the peak output of Christopher Guest or the Coen Brothers. Plus I read that a lot of Kazakhstanis thought the movie was pointlessly cruel to their nation, and I’m not aware that Kazakhstan has ever done anything to deserve that kind of treatment. Maybe I’ll see Borat someday, and maybe I won’t. Hard to say, really. If you really want me to see it, consider shutting the hell up about it.

Who Will Win: William Monahan, The Departed

So I guess I’m predicting a semi-landslide for The Departed this year. It’s the only film on the list to even get a Best Picture nomination, so this should be a pretty easy pickup.

Nominees:

Who Should Win: The Danish Poet

I was hoping to pick a bonus category in which I’d seen most of the nominated pictures, but categories like that are few and far between this year. So I turned my attention to the shorts categories, figuring I could at least pick up a few of those on YouTube or something. Indeed, I have been able to pick up bits and pieces of all of the nominees in the Best Animated Short Film category. (I also found clips of several of the Live-Action Short nominees, but ironically they were just too long for me to sit through.) They all looked nice, but I’m going with The Danish Poet, from Norwegian-born Canadian animator Torill Kove. I managed to track down 30-60 second clips from about 3 different parts of the 15-minute short, and frankly I haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s actually about, but Kove’s simple, appealing animation style and low-key slapstick humor mesh well with a lovely score and Liv Ullmann’s narration to create an altogether nice package that I’m sure would make sense to me if I ever get to see the whole thing.

Who Will Win: The Danish Poet

The Danish Poet stands out from the other entries. The CGI entries are Lifted, a Pixar short, to be attached to Ratatouille when it comes out this summer; Maestro, an independent production from Hungary with a Pixar-like feel to it; and No Time for Nuts, a cute, if frantic, set piece featuring Scrat, the hapless proto-squirrel from the Ice Age animated films. The Little Matchgirl, the only other 2-D short nominated, is Disney’s retelling of the classic Hans Christian Andersen story, originally intended as a segment for the canceled Fantasia 2006 project; it’s beautifully realized and scored, but is very much a Walt Disney Pictures production, down to the heroine who looks like Mulan. The Danish Poet gives the Academy a chance to recognize an imaginative, traditionally-animated children’s story that doesn’t carry the gloss of a major studio or reflect the wink-wink sophistication that seems to characterize much of today’s computer animation.

You can see a clip from The Danish Poet here, or if you’d prefer not to subject your Web browser to the cancer known as QuickTime, you can see it on YouTube here. You can see clips from all of the nominated shorts here.

Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it… preferably more so. Report back here in a week or so to read my annual Oscar Wrap-up.

—Paul
February 21, 2007

“We have everything we need, save perhaps political will. But you know what, in America, political will is a renewable resource. We have the ability to do this. Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive. We can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen.”
—Vice President Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth

2007

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