THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH

Jonathan Glazer’s Birth opens with one of the most potent tracking shots in the history of the Steadicam shot. From beyond a darkened screen, we hear a self-described man of science who holds the supernatural in disregard proclaim (to, it will soon become clear, an audience), “If I lost my wife and the next day a little bird appeared on the windowsill, looked me right in the eye and in plain English said, “Sean, it’s me, Anna. I’m back”—What can I say? I guess I’d believe her. Or I’d want to. That’ll have to be the last question. I need to go running before I head home.” Before we can even ask ourselves why it’s important to know about this man’s athletic inclination, the frame fades up out of black, the camera elevated about seven feet above ground and tracking behind a figure in a dark running suit, who we assume to be this same man, contrasted sharply against his surroundings as he jogs across down a snowy path through Central Park. Held aloft by the deceptively light, shimmering flutes expressing the first few passages of Alexandre Desplat’s score, which moves during the film from delight to subliminal disquiet with the ease of a casual brushstroke, the camera, following the runner (and directed by Gus Van Sant’s brilliant cinematographer, Harris Savides), glides along with a forward thrust that will soon come to illustrate, in foreboding comic-sexual visual terms worthy of the finale of North by Northwest, the groundwork on which the rest of the film is built.

The runner, himself cutting a rather phallic figure against the recessive, snow-covered park, moves along a somewhat equally suggestive rock and tree-lined course. His path is soon crossed by a pack of roving dogs that disrupt the continuity and solitude of his run, but his trajectory is never disrupted, and with each moment that the Steadicam take extends in real time the path along which the runner moves from suggestiveness to a more emphatically vaginal quality which complements the consistent (and, as visually imagined, sexually insistent) strength of the jogger. Only a few more seconds pass before the jackpot in this visual strategy is revealed—the upcoming underpass of a small foot bridge, cloaked in shadow and looming in front of the jogger like a waiting lover. The runner (and the camera) pass into the dark recesses of the underpass, and before he emerges out from the other side comes the first cut in the sequence, to a static long shot suddenly from much further down the path. The film’s title card, in that familiarly florid cursive font, appears over the shot, and as it disappears we reestablish the connection with the runner, who now proceeds down the path toward a now-slowly receding Steadicam, the runner’s phallic insistence threatening to assert itself now upon the camera, and the audience, itself. But this time the camera moves only a few feet before it becomes apparent that we are inside another underpass, now awaiting the arrival of the runner. If the first underpass held some visual suggestion of a vaginal destination for the jogger, this new area of darkness along the path, as seen from within, the arch of the bridge fully visible, is far more suggestive of a destination even beyond the immediate pleasures of the vagina—that is, the womblike darkness of the uterine canal. The camera continues to recede into the darkness, the port of light on the other side growing smaller even as the runner re-enters the frame and moves into that darkness, continually silhouetted against the small patch of light at the center of the frame. Suddenly, the runner’s trajectory hitches slightly. He staggers equally slightly, then slows, turns to his right and bends over, obviously stricken and gasping. But it quickly becomes clear that this runner’s condition is far more serious than mere sudden exhaustion. He falls to his knees, becoming lost in the darkness that is so dominant in the frame, and the camera, which has stopped to observe this strange new series of his movements, resumes receding back through the dark. As it begins to finally find its way out the other side, there is a quick lap dissolve back to the inside of this womb—or is it now a tomb—to a close-up of the runner, laying face-down on the ground, dead or dying. Cut to a shot from outside the underpass. The camera has now stopped tracking and instead pulls back in a conventional zoom diagonally across the jogging path, drinking in, even as it pulls away from it, the ominous sight of the bridge and the entrance to the underpass. As yet unbeknownst to anyone, this representation of the womb, a place where life begins, has become the last resting place of the character of Sean, whom we will never see again in this form, but who will propel the rest of the film not through his physical presence, so dominant a factor in the film’s first four minutes, but through his (reincarnated?) spirit. We’re left to recall and ruminate upon the only words we’ve heard Sean speak in the film, and to wonder about what they mean in regard to the shot that finally ends the opening sequence—a cut to the diaphanously rendered image of a newborn baby, as seen through water (are we under water, or is the baby?), perhaps as it is just emerging from its mother into the world. It stretches, gasps for air, and then we realize it is being birthed underwater, and being slowly borne to the surface by the hands of a person (a doctor? a nurse? a father?) whom we will never see. Fade to black, and then to the title card: “Ten Years Later.”

The wonder, the brilliance of Birth is that it completely and satisfyingly, through many virtuoso stylistic sequences to match the one described above, explores a genuinely provocative narrative question. In an inverse of the scenario described by Sean in the otherworldly black of the opening few seconds of the film, is the little boy who presents himself at the doorstep of the soon-to-be-remarried Anna (Nicole Kidman) 10 years after the death of Sean, her first husband, actually who he claims to be— Sean, reincarnated? Or is he merely an incarnation of the real love Anna had for Sean amidst the looming shadow of an upcoming marriage that she seems to think may threaten her memories of what she had with her first husband? Whatever the answer, Birth is hardly, as some of the reviews that turned me off of seeing the film in theaters a year and a half ago suggested, an empty exercise in style— as if style were simply ornamentation to drape over the skeleton of a story, as if style could not, in the right hands, in the hands of an artist, be itself a doorway unto meaning and understanding of the deeper realms in which the story operates. Neither is it a “supernatural thriller,” though it walks the line between representational, logical understanding of its premise and the possibility of supernatural underpinnings far more successfully than did one of its obvious inspirations, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining.


What Birth is, beside being one of the most unjustly overlooked movies of the new decade, is an exceptional flowering of theme and artistic purpose, from the perspective of its director, Jonathan Glazer (whose only previous film was Sexy Beast, but who has had a major career in music video), and a high point in the acting careers of almost everyone involved, from Danny Huston, to Arliss Howard, to Anne Heche (whose appearance here makes you remember why she was once considered to have such potential), and of course, to Nicole Kidman, who I believe has never been better than she is here, subtly modulating the narrow, self-restricted emotional range of a fragile woman who struggles to maintain disbelief at the same time that she so desperately wants to give over to absolute acceptance of the boy’s outlandish, yet eerily believable claims. (There is a sequence here, an unbroken take focusing on her face as she watches an opera with her fiancé, in which all the building conflict and emotion in her character flits across her face, choreographed to the crescendos and lulls in the dramatic music she’s there to hear, that is as much evidence of Kidman’s talent, so infrequently put to full advantage, as anyone need ever see.) The movie gains strength with each sequence, lending power and emotion to scenes that are staged with absolute clarity of purpose and none of the grandstanding sentimentality that might turn it into, as one writer thoughtlessly claimed, Ghost with pretensions to art and intellect. It’s much easier to write off a movie like Birth with glib, snarky pronouncements like that than it is to engage with the movie on its level and explore some of the questions it asks: What constitutes identity? Is it something innate in us, or is it something projected onto us by others to which we acclimate ourselves, becoming versions of a vision others have of us? The movie is startlingly intelligent; it leaves available enough pieces of the puzzle to satisfy the most literal-minded viewer, yet retains a potent ambiguity that calls into question the rational explanation as well as the fanciful. And even though it’s not backloaded with a Shamaylanian revelation that causes you to back-track and reevaluate all that you’ve seen before, you may find yourself reacting as I did—I was so seduced by the spell the movie cast that I simply did not want the sensation of that spell to go away, so I took a walk around the room, returned to my DVD player, pressed “play” and indulged in the entire movie all over again.

I’ve tried to give a sense here of what kind of visual intelligence is at work in Birth, as well as a hint of the philosophical and cinematic sensibility that makes engaging with its narrative such a rewarding experience, without turning this piece into an exegesis of the questions and strategies of the film that will mean little to anyone who hasn’t seen it. My suggestion, if you haven’t already seen Birth, is this: rent it immediately, and if you find yourself similarly moved, follow my example and head over to 24 Lies A Second, where you can read Robert Cumbow’s extensive analysis of the film. That’s where I’m headed now—I wanted to get some of my own fleeting thoughts down before I allowed Cumbow’s much more detailed consideration to wash over me, giving me food for thought, new ideas, perhaps confirming some of my own, and perhaps even giving me cause for argument, just like all good writing should. (I’m assuming it’s good based on the evidence of Cumbow’s book about Sergio Leone, entitled Once Upon a Time, as well as his excellent piece on Altman and Coppola, also available at 24 Lies. If “Why is This Film Called Birth?” is even half as good as those other two works, those who love Jonathan Glazer’s movie are in for a very good bit of reading indeed.)

2005 CATCH-UP: THREE TWISTS OF THE BIOPIC

LAST DAYS Directed by Gus Van Sant


Gus Van Sant’s Gerry set two characters (both referred to as Gerry, played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) on a hypnotically minimalist road to discovery, the thing discovered being their ultimate existential (and physical) dead-end. The troubled, troubling Elephant followed in Gerry’s path, revealing the former to be not a warm-up for the latter Cannes prizewinner, but a stylistically important piece in its own right, and one free of the societal baggage of Elephant’s hot-button subject matter—the murderous impulses lying just below the placid surface of a Portland, Oregon high school-- that ultimately informed and effected that film’s similarly unblinking, long-take style.

In the final piece in Van Sant’s triptych of death, Last Days, shot, as were the other two, by brilliant cinematographer Harris Savides (who is also responsible for the cinematography on display in Birth), there is no movement toward death (Gerry) or examining the environments in which it dwells, sleeping (Elephant). Instead, in chronicling the last days of an irredeemably disconnected rock star (based, obviously enough, on Kurt Cobain), Van Sant makes it clear from the beginning that death’s blanket has already been tossed over the head of his muttering protagonist (Michael Witt), suffocation being not a matter of if but of when. It’s a strategy that at times seems heartbreakingly honest—there is some strange, cold comfort to be had in seeing the musician shuffling about his wooded mansion environs with no appreciable place to go, as if he were swimming freely, and for the first time in his life with some perverse satisfaction, in the churning waters of his own disorientation and muffled sensory perception.

But for all of Van Sant’s haunted tableaux and penetratingly askew sound design (mirroring and mutating the creative impulses soon to be tamped into submission inside the musician’s soul), Last Days ultimately seems the least satisfying of the three aurally-visually experimental features. It substitutes the forward thrust (is “thrust” too strong a word for the languid movement of these films?) of Elephant and Gerry, and Gerry’s openness to the texture and beauty and terror of environment, and to a streak of very dry gallows humor as well, for a very restricted sense of movement—there is no wandering the desert or the halls of a high school here and despite a very tactile and satisfying dive into a nearby creek to lead off the film, Van Sant’s Cobain stand-in has, before the film’s first frame, already been closed off to natural joy or outside influence. He’s incapable of meaningful, or even meaningless connection with other human beings-- there’s a shiveringly funny sequence in which he engages in-- or rather submits to—a presentation by a phone book ad salesman who seems either unaware of unconcerned with just how gone his potential customer really is. He sits across from the salesman in a silk nightgown and tattered fur housecoat, muttering rote responses, not even nodding, until the salesman lets himself out, finally convinced there’s nothing to be gained by continuing the pitch.

But rather than lend sorrow or depth to his last days, the film comes to resemble watching a dying rat as it meanders about in its cage, waiting for it to draw its last breath. There’s perverse interest in that, to be sure, but just as perversely Van Sant has ensured that it does not resonate meaningfully. The director has surrendered to this deadpan observation much of what made the far richer Gerry (a masterpiece) and the flawed, fascinating Elephant interesting, even if taken only as a simple stylistic exercises—the recognizably human element. Last Days is a spectacle of waiting death, with a chipmunk wrapped in night clothes and a furry shroud at its ethereal, hushed center.

CAPOTE Directed by Bennett Miller


Philip Seymour Hoffman embodies the tic-ridden, ready for TV-panel personality of journalist-author Truman Capote probably better than could ever be expected, and the performance, more successful even than Jamie Foxx’s much lauded embodiment of Ray Charles, moves beyond mere impersonation because Capote isn’t yoked to the first act (humble beginnings)-second act (rise to fame)-third act (crumbling life)-epilogue (set back on the road to redemption) structure of the more routine and typical Ray or this year’s Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. In fact, though it has been characterized as one by a press looking for readily acceptable generalizations which with to fuel endless Sunday think pieces, Capote isn’t really a biopic at all. When it begins, Capote, fresh off Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is already enjoying and exploiting his celebrity, holding captive audiences at cocktail parties in sway to his seductively funny, culturally condescending raconteur act. The greatest success of Hoffman’s performance may be that the actor eventually transcends the severe self-consciousness of having to affect that voice and those exaggerated mannerisms, that after a span of about 10 minutes, after only one round of alcohol-spiked anecdotes and wry observations, he forces us to get beyond our own discomfort with that voice and those mannerisms, to fight our natural inclination, so many years after the author’s enshrinement on the talk-show circuit and his death, to look at Capote as anything but a cartoon, a David Frye sketch-in-waiting.

The use to which Capote puts its titular subject, however, is, in its own way, just as routine as those of a biopic’s. The film chronicles Capote’s growing interest (with the help of voice-of-conscience Harper Lee, essayed with equal, far less showy brilliance, by Catherine Keener) in the murders of a Kansas family, the Clutters, and, eventually, in the two drifters, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, who come to be held, tried and put on death row for those murders. As Capote begins to befriend (and perhaps fall in love with) Smith (subtly, powerfully played by Cliftons Collins), he also initiates writing the “nonfiction novel” account of the case and the killers’ fates which becomes In Cold Blood. He quickly realizes that in order for his book to be completed, Smith and his partner must die. But Capote’s celebrity status and closeness to his subjects may also be contributing to the killers’ repeated stays of execution. Left with a choice of supporting Smith or painfully distancing himself from the killer and (tacitly) refusing to help him with outside legal representation, Capote, with much gnashing of teeth and inner turmoil made readily visible for the art house audience, chooses what’s good for his art and (it is implied) pays with his soul—we’re informed that after finishing In Cold Blood, Capote would never finish another book. Capote is well-written and constructed (by Dan Futterman) and tastefully, if none-too-imaginatively directed (by Bennett Miller), but never with enough of Capote’s true tartness or bitchiness as a personality, or his relentless probing intelligence as a writer to truly elevate the proceedings. We’re left with an entertaining, somewhat overly modulated “true-life” wrinkle on the same kinds of journalistic ethical questions covered many times before, sometimes with much more savvy and sharpness (The Front Page and, especially, His Girl Friday), sometimes with much less (Absence of Malice). I ended up looking at Capote in much the same way I ended up looking at Hoffman’s Capote—with much respect and appreciation, but little enduring spark of interest and investigation, and with few of the kinds of questions that might be inspired by a work of genuine, lasting depth.

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK Directed by George Clooney


Another historical drama, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Good Night, and Good Luck, chronicling the clash between seminal television journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and anti-communist zealot Senator Joseph McCarthy (himself, courtesy of kinescope recordings), is a far more satisfying film, visually and narratively. The screenplay (written by Clooney and Heslov, and directed by Clooney, who also plays CBS News head honcho Fred Friendly) chronicles a chapter in American journalism which has been widely documented, its heroes (Murrow and many others) widely celebrated, its villains (McCarthy, crony Roy Cohn and others) duly vilified. And, strangely, the movie itself is being celebrated in some circles (perhaps the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is one of them) for its bravery in “taking on” McCarthyism, as if it were some virulent new political phenomenon. Actually, while dramatically compelling, if the movie were only “about” Murrow and McCarthy, or about the legacy of a broadcasting system that has fallen far from anything resembling the high-mindedness of Murrow’s concerns, it would, at least to me, be still satisfying, simply less so.

Clooney’s facility with the camera (assisted by ace director of photography Robert Elswit, who has rendered the movie all silken black and white and the infinity of shades in between, through a constant haze of cigarette smoke and fluorescent light) and with staging that sometimes approach the Altmanesque is something to be reckoned with-- the nuts and bolts of what happened to lay the groundwork for these two towering figures of recent American history coming to figurative blows is, after all, riveting stuff and Clooney's craft is well applied to it. But on the surface the movie might be just a little too self-contained; while it never really indulges in it to a degree approaching irritation, there is a whiff of self-satisfaction about this group of filmmakers who would seek cultural applause for “taking on” the House Un-American Activities Committee. What really makes Clooney’s movie fly, however, is his admirable insistence on the parallels between McCarthy’s government of political suppression, of guilt by association, of bulldozing machismo aggression, all gilded by a “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” sensibility, and the current administration’s swaggering truck with all of the above. It is one thing for a history lesson to ultimately say that, without vigilance, history may end up repeating itself. Clooney girds his fascinating dramatic entertainment by asserting that history has repeated itself, and wondering aloud whether there’s anyone, in broadcasting or in the general citizenry, willing to try to shake the foundations of an administration ostensibly constructed on moral certitude that has since revealed its own self-righteous belligerence and disregard for simple truth. The hopefulness, and the weariness, of Murrow’s signature “Good night, and good luck” thus becomes a haunting refrain indeed.

THE OFFICIAL SLIFR WEEKEND READING LIST

One of my favorite winter memories of growing up is finding the time on a snowy Saturday afternoon to get settled next to a cracklin’ wood stove, near a window, of course, and gathering up enough reading material—books, magazines, comics, newspapers, whatever—to get me all the way to Sunday evening if need be-- and if I happened to be near enough sympathetic folks who would actually let me be. These were not antisocial moments, just necessary ones, oases of respite, times to let the engines wind down before jetting off on another transcontinental flight plan. Funny how I always cherished those moments when I was a kid, imagining my immediate need for them be all-encompassing, because now, as a grown-up, those moments come few and far between, and I cherish them even more. What’s more, being here in Los Angeles, not only do I rarely get the time to set aside for specifically for reading, there’s absolutely no chance to do it on a snowy day, or even a day cold enough to require lighting a fire. And even if there were, at this point in my life I’d be more likely to settle into that chair, take one look through that window at the weather, close my book and fall asleep.

That said, despite Punxsutawney Phil’s fair-weather warning, something about the approaching weekend compels me to gather up under a blanket with some good reading material. It’s unclear whether I’ll actually get to hunker down or not, but even if I don’t I can at least share what I have in mind. I’ve got Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America just waiting for its spine to be cracked, but there are three other books in line ahead of it: Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, Bruce Campbell’s Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and the one I’m most looking forward to, Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Approaches the Afterlife, a follow-up to her fascinating, funny, and gratifyingly serious investigation Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Congratulations, you say, and thanks for your library list. What good does that do me, Your Gentle Reader?

Well, how about these links? I’m going to be clicking on them like mad this weekend, and I (virtually) guarantee your satisfaction if you choose to do the same.

**********************************************************************
Via our friends at GreenCine Daily comes a recommendation from the online magazine Rouge, a piece by Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) considering the ‘60s films of Andy Warhol called ”The ‘60s Without Compromise: Watching Warhol’s Films.” It begins, tantalizingly:

“The first Andy Warhol movie I saw was Sleep. It was June 1964 at the Cinema Theater on Western Avenue in Los Angeles, the birthplace of Midnight Movies. Sleep didn’t begin at midnight, it began around 6.45pm. It’s a long movie, as I recall, it ended around 12.30am. There were about five hundred people in the theatre when the film began; there were about ten left when the movie ended. I was one of them, although I didn’t watch the whole movie: after four hours or so, I slipped out for a snack at the coffee shop around the corner.

Mike Getz, the theatre manager and programmer, sent a slightly misleading account of the screening to Jonas Mekas, who printed it in his ‘Movie Journal’ column in the Village Voice. Getz described something close to a riot in the lobby of the theater that began only a few minutes after the start of the film. I had noticed that most of the audience had left during the first half-hour, and I could hear from inside the quiet auditorium that something was going on in the lobby. So I got up and checked it out. The lobby was jammed with people, almost all of them screaming at Mike Getz. They all wanted their money back, and he was resisting. There was a sign on the box office window announcing there would be no refunds, and, according to Getz in his letter to Mekas, he told people:

‘... you knew you were going to see something strange, unusual, daring, that lasted six hours ... I believe that Sleep was properly advertised. I said in my ads that it was an unusual six-hour movie. You came here knowing that you were going to see something unusual about sleep and I think you are.’

What his account left out is the ad line that brought five hundred people to watch Sleep: ‘A film so unusual it may never be shown again.’”

**********************************************************************

I often really enjoy the challenge of reading intelligent criticism about films that I revere or that hold a special place in my heart. Roger Corman’s The Premature Burial isn’t by any means a great film, and often it doesn’t even seem like a very good one, but as a key film in my developing appreciation of the horror genre it’s one that I value, and one that I value going back to once in a while. So it was an exciting exercise to encounter Jason Woloski’s fine piece on the film at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, as well as a simple rare opportunity to read a reasoned, non-snarky critique of the film. The entire Not Coming site, if you haven’t discovered it yet for yourself, is a treasure trove of good writing on an astonishing assortment of worthwhile titles. Once you click, be prepared to stay awhile. Here’s just a taste:

”If Corman did not feel comfortable adopting Poe’s restrained approach to storytelling for his own telling, he would have done well to recognize that when complicating material that’s inherently frightening, it is best to emphasize themes surrounding the topic that the viewer may already be aware of, even unconsciously, as opposed to bulking a tale up through frivolous addition and renovation. In preparing a screenplay for an adaptation of Poe’s tale, the fact that a person who’s been buried alive is forced to face their most basic limitations as a corporeal being should not have been overlooked. Besides the pragmatic fears involved in being ensnared by total darkness with little prospect of being saved, namely a fear of enclosed spaces, of losing control, and of certain death, Corman’s screenwriters could have also examined some of the subtler, but no less relevant, rationales that likely emerge in a person’s mind when they have been buried alive.”

*************************************************************************************

Filmbrain, the excellent film blogger who heads up Like Anna Karina’s Sweater, has posted an essential early look at a movie that’s arriving in March in some larger markets, Asia Argento’s second directorial effort, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. Filmbrain got hold of a Dutch DVD and is none too sparing in his assessment of a film based upon material purported to be “true”—a memoir of physical and sexual child abuse-- that has since been exposed as a pack of lies. Filmbrain even pauses to wonder quite plausibly, in consideration of the timeline of the source material’s exposure as falsehood, whether director Argento might not have known, even as she was filming it, that her movie was based not on a fictionalized truth, but indeed pure fiction, and raises some serious questions about her motives:

”There's a self-congratulatory air throughout the whole film, as if Argento is continually reminding us how brave and understanding she is by bringing LeRoy's story to the screen... If Todd Solondz and Gregg Araki went on a three-day crystal meth bender in a locked room with a typewriter, they wouldn't come up with material this vile.”

I’m not generally in favor of passing judgment before the fact, so I will not do so regarding Argento’s film. But I appreciate Filmbrain’s honesty in considering a movie which could very well end up getting positive reviews from a certain segment of the critical establishment and not worrying about whether he falls in line with those points of view. And, as I said in the comments section of his Deceitful post, I feel like Filmbrain took one for the team here. I’m sorry he had to endure it, but I’m very grateful to him that now I will not.

*************************************************************************************

Tangentially related, and more relevant to certain tastes of mine which border on the indefensible, is David Edelstein’s recent piece under his new banner at New York magazine, entitled ”Now Playing At Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn”, which asks, in Edelstein’s familiar, casually brilliant manner, “Why has America gone nuts for blood, guts and sadism?” This isn’t a Medvedian call to arms or anything like that—the writer has had a long love affair with horror films, and he even likes Hostel, sort of—but instead a genuinely interested, interesting, and only slightly alarmed consideration of the difference between Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, say, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects or, even more to the point, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, and how audiences and films got to this point.

*************************************************************************************
My friend Peter Gelderblom at 24 Lies a Second has been prodding me for months to catch up with Jonathan Glazer’s Birth. Peet has been rather insistent because of his unbridled enthusiasm for the film, and because his site recently unveiled a brand-new article by 24 Lies contributor Robert C. Cumbow entitled ”Why Is This Film Called Birth?” that he very much wanted me to read. (Mr. Cumbow is also an expert on the films of Sergio Leone who has published a book on the director entitled Once Upon A Time, which will soon be reissued in a brand-new edition.) I promised Peet I wouldn’t read the piece until after I’d seen the movie and that I would put it atop my Netflix queue. This past Wednesday I finally got a chance to sit down with the movie. To say I loved it would be an understatement—it’s the first time in recent memory that I’ve finished watching a film, took a walk around the room, then sat down, pressed “play” and watched it again from beginning to end. I want to write a little bit about the film myself before I tackle Mr. Cumbow’s prodigious piece of work. Peet assures me that it’ll be worth the wait, and I believe him. Thus, I have no qualms directing those of you already familiar with Glazer’s brilliant movie to 24 Lies for what promises to be a fascinating entertaining exegesis of one of this decade’s most unfairly ignored movies. I’m annoyed as hell that I let some pretty good writers talk me out of seeing this one in the theater, but am exceedingly glad to have been directed back to it by Mssrs. Gelderblom and Cumbow, and I am glad to pass that recommendation on to you now. Look for some words from me on Birth next week, if only because I’m dying to read Cumbow's piece myself!

*************************************************************************************

Peet also just returned from the Rotterdam Film Festival, where he saw the new Takashi Miike film. He wrote about it with great enthusiasm on the 24 Lies forum and sent the comments to me in an e-mail recently:

”I just came back from seeing Takashi Miike’s new film The Great Tokai War at the Rotterdam Film Festival. I knew nothing about this movie going in, and, boy, was I in for a treat! It turned out to be something akin to Japan’s answer to the Harry Potter or Narnia series. You know: Miike, for kids!

Apparently, for the first time in his career, Miike was handed a big-ass budget, and the cult-favorite made sure it showed. This film is massive in scale, as well as quirky as hell and full of the perversities and black humor Miike is known for. For a supposed "family film" it is way too extreme for Western taste (mine anyway: I wouldn’t let my oldest son see it until he’s, like, 11 or 12). But it kicks serious ass! In fact, The Chronicles of Narnia is the undercooked egg The Great Yokai War swallows whole for breakfast!

You won’t hear me declare it a masterpiece. To tell the truth, I don’t know what the hell it is. Something I’ve never seen before, that’s for sure. Miike’s cinema is just too plain weird to satisfy in any conventional manner. This guy re-invented the word “subversive.” Kiddie movie or not, Yokai War goes from gory body-horror to intimate drama, from absurd parody to epic Grand Guignol fantasy, from kinky science fiction to all-out slapstick. It features legions of Asian folktale goblins, the coolest robots I’ve ever seen, and two very sensual female characters young enough to make me uncomfortable to be aroused by. I can imagine Miike envisioning the film with his team of CGI-animators, discarding all tired Hollywood methods and pushing them in every direction his mind could think of. (For those who have seen Audition and Gozu, that should mean something.)

Think Miyazaki, but live-action, with a slightly fetishistic sensibility. Just a few references that popped in my mind while looking at the film: Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Wizard of Oz, Nightbreed, Blade Runner, Akira, The Neverending Story, Metropolis, Labyrinth, Godzilla, The Terminator, Kung Fu Hustle, Lord of the Rings-- all filtered through the prism of the mad filmic genius of our lifetime.

Phew!”

For further investigation of The Great Yokai War, Twitch has English-language trailers and an announcement about how you can purchase the HK DVD, as well as reports from the Toronto and, yes, the Rotterdam film festivals.

And as if that weren’t enough Gelderblom, check out the keen new banner he recently designed for the essential Brian De Palma Web site De Palma a la Mod.

(Thanks, Peet!)

*************************************************************************************

The recent Showgirls Blog-A-Thon was such a success that it looks to become a regular feature amongst some of us in the blogosphere. On tap for next week, Monday, February 13, is a festival of pieces considering Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown, which will be my first encounter with the director’s work (I’ve also got Cache and Funny Games lined up for some context). My article will be posted that Monday, along with pieces from at least 10 or 12 others, and the list could be growing as we speak. If you’re a film blogger and want to participate, or just want more details, you can get ‘em from the ones that started all these shenanigans, Girish and Flickhead. Rumor has it that March will be devoted to not one, but any one or more of the films of Abel Ferrara. Now, that sounds like a party…

*************************************************************************************

Speaking of Flickhead, he’s got a terrific reminiscence about San Francisco’s Strand Theater that was an act of pleasurably voyeuristic nostalgia for me—I’ve never been to the Strand, but Flickhead not only made me feel as if I had, he tells a couple of really good stories about some of the films he saw when he used to frequent the palace, around the time (1978) that Philip Kaufman was in the city shooting his remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

And for total immersion in the cinemas, old and new, revival, retro and festival, please do not miss what Brian has to offer at Hell on Frisco Bay. He’s got direct links to a multitude of Bay Area cinemas, and the site is an invaluable way of keeping up to date on the struggles of the city’s cinemas to stay alive in the age of the multiplex, as well as keeping a finger on the pulse of the city’s vibrant festival and special screening circuit. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again-- Hell on Frisco Bay makes me feel unusually connected to the City by the Bay, and it daily points up reasons why, in addition to San Francisco being where my best friend resides, I’d want to live there. (If only it weren’t also where those damn Giants call home…)

*************************************************************************************

Finally, just for fun, if you’re feeling cinematically frisky try your hand at “The Last Picture Game Show,” updated with fresh, new challenges each Monday for those who feel on top of their powers of visual observation and movie recall. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it completely right. But, strangely, I try it every week…

*************************************************************************************

Have a good weekend, everybody, all hunkered down under that blanket, whether at your computer or (in a dream life, anyway) sitting beside a warm stove and a cool window onto a snowbound world, catching up on your reading. Coming soon, Birth, Robert Altman, that long-rumored baseball movies article, the answers to Professor Brainerd’s Christmas Vacation Quiz, Michael Haneke, and a whole lot more. I leave you with this for now:

CHEWING THE FAT OVER THE OSCAR NOMINATIONS

So, where were we?

First of all, it's time to measure up my guesses against the reality of expensive Oscar campaigns and a season of glad-handing and self-promotion that can only now really kick into high gear.

In the Best Picture and Best Actor categories, I resisted the temptation to let my instincts get the best of me (as they often do in the annual office Oscar pool), thus avoiding embarrassment by leaving A History of Violence and Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale) on the sidelines. In both of those categories I went a stunning five for five, which either makes me a prognosticator of Nostradamian proportions or, as is more likely, a whole lot closer to the mindset of the mainstream Academy voter than I would ever care to admit (I believe it was the philosopher Frederic "Chef" Forrest who once said, of navigating the mainstream, never get out the boat. Absolutely goddamn right.)

I took minor cuts and abrasions in the Best Actor and Actress categories, but still ended up looking okay, my Oscar cred still reasonably intact. As my daughters would say, kudos, kiddo, for correctly guessing Keira Knightley, not exactly a sure thing, and Dame Judi Dench and Felicity Huffman, exclusive representatives of Harvey Weinstein this year. Knightley is poised to become perennial Oscar royalty on the order of Winona Ryder (didn't she used to be Oscar royalty?) or Kate Winslet just by scoring this nomination. And Huffman was, in fact, pretty much a lock, given the kind of notices and buzz she seems to be generating. But, of course, Reese Witherspoon is the lock, the key, the whole treasure chest. It will be an upset on the scale of Truman-Dewey if anyone else steps up into the limelight to pick up the Best Actress trophy.

Which brings us to my one miscue here. I really thought that, by considering the pallid box office returns, the mixed-to-scathing reviews, and the actress's own insistently dour self-promotion, as exemplified by the movie's print ad campaign, North Country's Charlize Theron and her chances at a nomination had been effectively scuttled. I figured that "they" (that nebulous bloc of Academy voters who some seem to insist vote with one mind in order to make statements through nominations and ultimate winners, as if the Oscars were a political convention instead of a popularity contest) wouldn't take the bait offered by North Country's glum purposefulness. I figured "they" would see through the coal-smudged visage of Theron, our newest poster girl for dressing down and uglying up in order to snag awards, and reject this blatant bid for glory out of hand. But instead "they" snapped up the bait as eagerly as if Theron had been smeared head-to-toe with Velveeta and willingly perched herself on the golden hook. And in doing so, "they" stole away that fifth slot from Naomi Watts, who, until I finally drifted off to sleep very early this morning, I still hoped would somehow shake off the stigma of working in an effects-heavy blockbuster and get voters to understand the gargantuan act of soulful empathy that was her performance in King Kong. I've found Watts, in the brief time I've been aware of her, to be enchanting and full of comic talent (Mulholland Dr., I (Heart) Huckabees) as often as I have found her strident and shallow (The Ring films, 21 Grams). But she reached unexpected heights of emotional directness as Ann Darrow, and I do believe the movie really would be the routine adventure tale some already claim it is without her light touch (that desperate, but not too desperate, vaudeville dance was inspired) and shot-to-the-heart immediacy.

I teetered slightly in the Best Director category here, going with the historically reliable formula of one nominee in the Picture and Director categories being orphaned, without a matching nomination in the other category that would give it credibility as a contender. Almost without fail in recent Oscar history, Director/Picture would match up in four, and sometimes only three nominees. Then there would be the odd Best Picture nominee(s) whose director(s) was (were) not nominated, or the Best Director nominee who was apparently not good enough in "their" (the Academy's) eyes to warrant a corresponding nod in the Picture category. This is why, even though my Picture guesses were down the line correct, I varied from the pattern in the director category. I figured that "they" would want to honor Munich in some way without giving the film too much credence in the actual horse race. Leaving its director, Steven Spielberg, out of the Director category might be just the way to say "Thanks for the serious work" while not appearing to overtly endorse Spielberg to the voting body, many of who are ticked at the (Jewish) director for suggesting that Israel might actually bear some moral responsibility for the events his film details. I also figured that "they" might want to fill the vacant slot with someone who is universally respected in the industry as an artist among businessman and hacks-- Terence Malick-- whose films are not always universally praised and adored. Well, I was wrong. For the first time since 1981, all five Best Picture nominees had corresponding nominations for their directors. As Marlee Martin recently put it, what the @#&* do I know?

It was in my predictions for the Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories that I took the most significant hits. The inclusion of Catherine Keener, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, George Clooney, Matt Dillon and Paul Giamatti was no big surprise to me. But I admit walking out on a very shaky, brittle branch when I proclaimed from the treetops Diane Keaton's name for her alternately funny and annoyingly affected work as a dying matriarch in the arch, insistently symmetrical and patronizing dramedy The Family Stone. I was, however, clothes-lined by the nonappearance of Maria Bello, who I thought, until I clicked on that Oscar link this morning, was as solid a lock here as Reese Witherspoon was in the Best Actress category. As for Terrence Howard, I admit being influenced by some crystal ball-gazers who assumed he'd pull a Jessica Lange/Jamie Foxx double-header this year. And I just took a wild guess that Donald Sutherland might slip in as one of those supporting performance nominations that seem to materialize out of thin air (think Jim Broadbent and Iris). Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams are well-respected, non-controversial choices, to be sure, and I think Adams has a chance of emerging out of left field as the only serious threat to Rachel Weisz here. But the inclusion of William Hurt's funny/creepy Hopper-esque turn in A History of Violence seems kind of perverse, especially when Maria Bello was overlooked (I know, I know, "their" right hand routinely knows not what "their" left hand is doing), and Frances McDormand seems to have swung a nomination based almost solely on her being well-liked in the industry-- I don't remember anyone singling out her performance in North Country as being anything remotely special.

A few other observations and questions before putting all this to bed until early March:

Brian expressed relief, in discussing the nominations over at The House Next Door, that Chicken Little was excluded from a nomination for Best Animated Film. I would second that and add my own relief over the absence of Robots and Madagascar, two other box-office hits that were clearly not worthy. In fact, this is easily the best group of nominees in the category since its recent inception. I wouldn't balk at any of them winning, though I think that Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit ought to, and will.

What happened to Tommy Lee Jones? The 2005 Cannes Film Festival award-winner for best actor in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (which he also directed) came up empty, even as Sony Pictures Classics seemed to be doing all the "right things" to roll the movie out, up its prestige quotient and get it seen by the Academy membership. I have to think that most voters weren't willing to leave their houses and schlep to Beverly Hills for the string of special screenings, and I suspect that those screeners mostly stayed anchored at the bottom of the stack near their recipients' DVD players, because the movie, whether it is or not, seems to have been perceived as a bit of an unpleasant drag. Truly, the time is probably not ripe for a morally righteous riff on Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and maybe there are only a few cinephiles who would find such a project tantalizing anyway (we'll see for sure when the movie officially opens next week). But I would have thought that Jones, a tough cookie who still commands respect in an ADD-addled industry a decade removed from his Oscar-winning glory days in The Fugitive, might have snuck into the Best Actor field despite all this, and had there not been such a plethora of strong choices in that category I still think he could have.

Were there some special circumstances I'm unaware of that prevented Grizzly Man from being nominated in the Best Documentary category, or this just another of those egregious, well-documented examples of the nominating committee being hopelessly (willfully?) out of touch? A look at the films that did get nominated (Darwin's Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, Murderball and Street Fight) suggests there is definitely a heightened awareness from the days in which films like The Thin Blue Line and Hoop Dreams could go completely unrecognized. But Werner Herzog's film was one of the most highly praised, formally fascinating documentaries to come along in quite some time (though it was nowhere near the box-office hit that Penguins was, nor does it sport the trenchant topicality of Enron). If anyone can enlighten me as to any convoluted Academy regulations that may have prevented Grizzly Man from being honored, I'd sure appreciate it if you would. Otherwise, I'll just have to assume that we're looking at yet another instance of the documentary branch of the Academy dropping a very high-profile ball.

I'd like to think King Kong is a lock in the technical categories, but there seems to be an inexplicable backlash going on in regard to this movie, and as brilliantly effective as Kong's art direction and sound are, supporters of Peter Jackson's movie can probably only really count on his prodigious effects team being recognized with yet another Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Jackson has found a way to humanize special effects in a way that sets him apart from profligate digital tub-thumpers like James Cameron and George Lucas. He-- gasp-- pays attention to the actors, believes they can find and create ways to connect with the vast green-screenery that translates to the audience in real, powerful ways. This belief is at the heart of the effectiveness of teaming Naomi Watts with Andy Serkis as a physical presence on the set for her to play against and with, above and beyond simply providing a template on which to layer the titular CGI beast. And it must be recognized eventually that Jackson's talent as a creator of spectacular action meshes brilliantly with his talent as a director of actors. This is why King Kong deserves to be the fourth Peter Jackson film in as many years to take home the visual effects award. (Would this not be a record of some sort?) As for the much-derided three hour-plus length of the film, I can only say, the movie drags and sags if you perceive it as doing so. One man's bloat is another man's bounty, and even as I was emotionally (and, yes, physically) exhausted by the movie's finish, I simply did not want it to end. Believe me, there are plenty of 90-minute films I couldn't say that about. Jackson's movie isn't out to topple the untopple-able legacy of the 1933 original. Instead, it seeks to expand on that legacy and co-exist with it as spectacular cinema on its own terms. I wish the Academy went a little further in recognizing that.

Okay, it's time for me to put the Oscars to bed until March. (I'll be putting myself to bed as well, but unfortunately I'll be getting back up a whole lot sooner than Oscar Day.) I'll leave you with a link to blogger Edward Copeland, who has an amazing collection of observations and factoids relating directly to this year's slate of Oscar nominees that's up and available for your perusal and amusement on his home page. In fact, Edward would be a very good person to ask about the Grizzly Man problem and that run of special effects wins. Would four years running in victories in the Best Special Effects category be a record, Edward? And do you know, did Herzog or his distributor simply forget to file the proper paperwork in time?

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK: 11th-HOUR OSCAR NOMINATION PREDICTIONS

UPDATED 1/31/06 12:19pm: Blaaagh has noted that I left Adam Baldwin off my list of pleasurable performances for his work in Serenity. That oversight has been corrected...

UPDATED 1/31/06 9:42 am: Click on the link to see how my Oscar guesses matched up with the actual list.

As I begin writing this post, we're about eight hours away from the announcement of the nominations for the 78th annual Academy Awards. In the days before the dawning of the age of the Internet, I would probably be in bed by now. Because back then I actually had to get up-- actually looked forward to getting up-- at 5:30 a.m. to watch on TV as the nominations were announced by the likes of Arthur Hiller or Frank Pierson or Robert Rehme and whoever it was that won the Best Supporting Actress the previous year (this year, Mighty Aphrodite herself, Mira Sorvino, returns, accompanied by current AMPAS president Sid Ganis). I'd then have to wait until a late edition of something called a newspaper, or perhaps even the next morning's early edition, before a list of the nominations would be available, and then only major papers like the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times or one of the trade papers, like The Hollywood Reporter could be relied upon to provide an accurate and truly complete list.

Of course, in these more enlightened times (and in case the link didn't completely sell it, I was trying to be ironic), the Internet provides instant access to the complete roster of nominees straight from Oscar's mouth. So, alas, no more need to get up even earlier than my rambunctious daughters just to hear the vaunted press gasp and applaud, as if they never would have guessed they'd have heard it, when Heath Ledger's name is announced. And oh, how I'll miss hearing breathless junket whore Sam Rubin and whoever KTLA has chosen to chirp alongside him as they ramble on and on about their own knee-jerk reactions to those who made the final five and those who did not, warming up for when they can really cut loose and embarrass themselves properly on the red carpet during the Oscar pre-show, and filling precious pre-dawn minutes that could instead be devoted to agricultural reports and who's coming to visit Aunt Tillie on the farm in Santa Monica this weekend. But maybe, just maybe, I won't even think about all this tomorrow morning, as I luxuriate in the precious couple of hours of sleep I would have lost had I gotten up to catch the Oscar nominations the old skool way.

So instead, I thought I'd make some 11th-hour predictions for the acting and directing categories, based on nothing so scientific or inside as the methods undoubtedly employed by Entertainment Weekly as they have methodically pored over and updated their own predictions leading up to tomorrow morning. (I'm pretty sure these pop culture gatekeepers started predicting this year's winners sometime mid-Governor's Ball, just after the conclusion of last year's ceremony.) No, where EW has computers and panels of experts and reams of insider information, I have only my own (quite prodigious) gut to rely upon. This year's abdominal resonations have been a whole lot less distinct than ever before, owing to the fact that the crop of movies undoubtedly waiting to be lionized by the Academy this year hold much less interest for me as a whole-- A History of Violence is likely to have minimal representation among the nominees, but I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of anyone from 2046, Kung Fu Hustle, Grizzly Man or The Ice Harvest making waves tomorrow morning (King Kong will make its roar known, but only from the back of the room, where the Academy sticks all the technical award nominees.) And the one movie that I admire almost without reservation-- Good Night, and Good Luck, which I finally saw this past Friday night, and which I would retroactively place fourth on my Top 22 list-- will surely be nominated, but will likely end up the most recognizable body crushed under the speeding locomotive that is Brokeback Mountain. Where Brokeback looks weakest is, ironically, in its most high-profile category-- Best Actor. Until this past weekend, I would have be the sheep herd on Heath Ledger's chances to go all the way to the podium. But given the way the Screen Actors Guild awards shook out this past weekend-- no love for Ledger, much love for Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote-- I have a feeling either Hoffman's Oscar's man this year or, in a situation where Ledger and Hoffman split off enough votes, David Straithairn, unflappable and awesome (in an admittedly less complex role than either of the other two) as Edward. R. Murrow, might be the beneficiary of some Oscar glory.

Here I am talking like I already know who's nominated and, of course, I don't. But I am willing to step out, risk looking stupid, and perhaps even fatally damage my street cred with the Access Hollywood crowd by taking a series of ridiculous wild guesses in these final hours. So, without any further fuss and muss, here's where I pin the donkey's tail on the six picture, actor, actress and director categories before the 78th Academy Award nominations are announced tomorrow morning.


BEST PICTURE
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich


BEST DIRECTOR
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Paul Haggis, Crash
Terence Malick, The New World
Bennett Miller, Capote


BEST ACTRESS
Dame Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice
Naomi Watts, King Kong
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line


BEST ACTOR
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Straithairn, Good Night, and Good Luck


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Diane Keaton, The Family Stone
Catherine Keener, Capote
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
George Clooney, Syriana
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Matt Dillon, Crash
Terrence Howard, Crash
Donald Sutherland, Pride and Prejudice

*******************************************

Okay, now that that filthy business has been taken care of, it's time to invoke the spirit of Siskbert and revisit those same categories, only inserting the names of the pictures, actors, actresses and directors I would include If Only I Nominated the Academy Awards...


BEST PICTURE*
2046
A History of Violence
Good Night, and Good Luck
Kung Fu Hustle
The Ice Harvest

* I have bound myself by Academy rules and included only those movies that could actually be nominated in the respective categories. Therefore Los Angeles Plays Itself, number two on my year-end list, would not receive a nomination because it never received an official release, either last year or any year since its copyrighted date of 2003; also, Grizzly Man, number five on my list, would be in my hypothetical Best Documentary category, Tropical Malady-- retroactively, #6-- would be in the Best Foreign Film category, and Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit (the actual #6) would head up the short roster in the Best Animated Film category.


BEST ACTRESS
Kate Dollenmayer, Funny Ha-Ha
Rachel McAdams, Red Eye
Naomi Watts, King Kong
Reese Witherspoon Walk the Line
Ziyi Zhang, 2046


BEST ACTOR
Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Min-sik Choi, Oldboy
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Viggo Mortenson, A History of Violence
David Straithairn, Good Night, and Good Luck


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Kerry Condon, Unleashed
Catherine Keener, Capote
Gena Rowlands, The Skeleton Key
Faye Wong, 2046


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Clifton Collins, Jr., Capote
Ralph Fiennes, Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit
Oliver Platt, The Ice Harvest
Andy Serkis, King Kong
Mathieu Amalric, Munich


BEST DIRECTOR
Stephen Chow, Kung Fu Hustle
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
David Cronenberg, A History of Violence
Werner Herzog, Grizzly Man
Wong Kar Wai, 2046

And now finally, in the waning hours before there is instituted an official embargo on talk of anything released in 2005 that is not on the Academy's invite card to the Kodak Theater, I just wanted to take a moment to remember one last time the names of the actors, some renowned, some unknown, who gave me pleasure at the cinema in the past year. These were almost all folks who stood not a chance in hell of being recognized by such an august body as the Academy, yet the moments and performances they gave to me, to us, last year were every bit as good and fully rounded and lived-in and exciting, sometimes even more so, than the ones given by the nominees whose names will be announced in about five and a half hours. They were (in no appreciable order whatsoever):

Tony Leung, Gong Li 2046

Ed Harris, Asthon Holmes, William Hurt, A History of Violence

George Clooney, Frank Langella, Ray Wise, Good Night, and Good Luck

Stephen Chow, Kwok Kuen Chen, Qui Yuen, Siu-Lung Leung, Zhi Hua Dong, Kung Fu Hustle

Helena Bonham Carter, Peter Sallis and the entire voice cast of Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit

Banlop Lomnoi, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Tropical Malady

John Cusack, T.J. Jagodowski, Connie Nielsen, Bill Noble, Randy Quaid, Mike Starr, Billy Bob Thornton, The Ice Harvest

Jack Black, Adrian Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, King Kong

Andrew Bujalski, Funny Ha-Ha

Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Mysterious Skin

Eric Bana, Lynn Cohen, Daniel Craig, Ciaran Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Geoffrey Rush, Ayelet Zorer, Munich

Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins, Jet Li, Unleashed

Bradley Cooper, Rebecca De Mornay, Isla Fisher, Henry Gibson, Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, Christopher Walken, Owen Wilson, Dwight Yoakam, Wedding Crashers

Elizabeth Banks, Gerry Bednob, Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Kat Dennings, Jane Lynch, Romany Malco, Shelley Malil, Leslie Mann, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, Katie Holmes, Gus Lewis, Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Linus Roache, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, Batman Begins

Hank Azaria, Shelley Berman, Mario Cantone, George Carlin, Pat Cooper, Wayne Cotter, Phyllis Diller, Susie Essman, Carrie Fisher, Gilbert Gottfried, Dana Gould, Dom Irrera, Paul Krassner, Cathy Ladman, Merrill Markoe, Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Taylor Negron, Trey Parker, Don Rickles, Bob Saget, Sarah Silverman, Matt Stone, larry Storch, The Aristocrats

Jayma Mays, Cillian Murphy, Red Eye

Helena Bonham Carter, James Fox, David Kelly, Freddie Highmore, Christopher Lee, Missi Pyle, Deep Roy, Noah Taylor, Philip Wiegratz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Ginnifer Goodwin, Shelby Lynne, Robert Patrick, Joaquin Phoenix, Dallas Roberts, Walk the Line

Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy, Gerard McSorley, Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Morena Bacarrin, Adam Baldwin, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nathan Fillion, Ron Glass, Summer Glau, Jewel Staite, Alan Tudyk, Serenity

Micahel Angarano, Bruce Campbell, Dave Foley, Cloris Leachman, Kevin MacDonald, Danielle Panabaker, Kelly Preston, Kurt Russell, Steven Strait, Kelly Vitz, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sky High

Tobin Bell, Glenn Plummer, Shawnee Smith, Mark Wahlberg, Saw II

Nicole E. Bradley, Bill Chott, Brian Cox, Leonard Flowers, Katherine Heigl, Johnny Knoxville, Jed Rees, The Ringer

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaughn, Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Dakota Fanning, War of the Worlds

Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman, Stephen Fry, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Maria Bello, Gabriel Byrne, Drea de Matteo, Brian Dennehy, Laurence Fishburne, Ethan Hawke, Aisha Hinds, John Leguizamo, Assault on Precinct 13

Jessica Alba, Michael Ciklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd, Julian McMahon, Fantastic Four

Nicole Abisinio, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Rapp, Sharon Stone, Jeffrey Wright, Broken Flowers

Maxine Barnett, Kate Hudson, John Hurt, Peter Sarsgaard, The Skeleton Key

Jessica Alba, Jude Ciccolella, Rosario Dawson, Benicio Del Toro, Carla Gugino, Jaime King, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke, Nick Stahl, Bruce Willis, Elijah Wood, Sin City

Sasha Baron Cohen, Madagascar

Barry Corbin, Lynda Carter, Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Willie Nelson, The Dukes of Hazzard

Georgie Hensley, Tilda Swinton, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The Handsome Family, Jim White, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

Michael Berryman, Ken Foree, William Forsythe, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, P.J. Soles, The Devil's Rejects

Matt Dillon, Lindsay Lohan, Herbie: Fully Loaded

Jim Broadbent, John Cleese, Tim Curry, Ricky Gervais, Hugh Laurie, Ewan McGregor, Valiant

Steve Buscemi, Djimon Hounsou, Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor, Shawnee Smith, The Island

Jason Statham, Transporter 2

Brendan Gleeson, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Edward Norton, Alexander Siddig, David Thewlis, Kingdom of Heaven

Asia Argento, Eugene Clark, Land of the Dead

Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, The Family Stone

Tony Jaa, Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior

Jennifer Tilly, Saint Ralph

Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

And finally, in the year's worst movie, Duane "The Rock" Johnson, for bursting through a wall and uttering the year's most belabored tough-guy punch line ("Semper Fi, motherfucker!"), and Rosamund Pike, for exhibiting perhaps the worst, least convincing screams of terror ever heard in a "major motion picture," that MMP being, of course, Doom-- she sounds exactly like one of John Travolta's rejects in Blow Out, and you too, like Jack Terry in that film, will want to cover your ears.

UPDATED 1/31/06 9:42 am: Click on the link to see how my Oscar guesses matched up with the actual list.

THE FRIGHT CONNECTION, or How A Snarling Wolf and a Big "Gotcha!" Led To A Perfect Day

One of the most thrilling things about being a parent is seeing a new character trait emerge in one of your children that you can directly link to your own sensibility. I have many wonderful memories of taking both of my girls to the movies-- my oldest was just four months old when the missus and I took her with us in 2000 to the late, lamented Azusa Foothill Drive-in to see Mission: Impossible 2-- her very first visit to a cinema. She was not quite one year old when I took her to see Shrek indoors -- she hung in there for about an hour and then fell asleep, at which point we snuck out. And we had our first real father-daughter bonding experience at a movie when we saw Monsters, Inc. together for the first of what would be three times for her in a theater (I stopped counting when she received the DVD). Somewhere in the middle of the adventures of Mike and Sulley, my daughter reached up, hugged me around the neck and kissed me, then went back to watching the movie, as if to say, "Thanks, Dad, for bringing me here." I knew then that, whether she became a cinephile or not, going to the movies would still be something special for her, and maybe something that would provide a fond and lasting connection with dear old Dad as she got older and way too big to sit on my lap anymore.

The first real movie my youngest sat through with me, however, came in late 2004, when I took the two of them to see The Incredibles. A friend who was also there expressed amazement to me later that she could sit still for such a relatively long movie (two hours) and be obviously enjoying it, following along with it. But it was Pixar, after all-- no lack of wonderful things to see there, no matter what your level of life experience. I was just worried it might be too loud or scary for her, but even at just over two years of age I guess I needn't have worried about her at all.

There have been several since, most notably our return to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory together in a hardtop, after having had to leave the drive-in early the previous week because my oldest got a little freaked out at seeing Augustus Gloop take that chocolate dive and get stuck in a gigantic vacuum tube. The movie's perversities and various levels of creepiness were lost on her-- she just liked the candy colors and the music ("Willy Wonka/Willy Wonka/The amazing chocolatier...") and the oversized wonder of the whole image-and-sound thing.

This afternoon I finally found the time to sneak away with my youngest daughter, age three, to a matinee of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What I'd read about Narnia suggested that there were some potentially scary images and some loud action sequences, and my wife had never supported the idea of the little one seeing it at all. Not much need to worry about whether or not it would be appropriate for our oldest-- she proclaimed her desire not to see it loudly and clearly, at every opportunity. In fact, she is still shaking off the effects of Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-rabbit, as genial and gentle a horror parody as has ever been made, but one in which she immersed herself in the trappings of the films being lampooned, taking at face value the "scary" conventions that older children might at least be able to accept in the context in which the Aardman Animation film offered them. (On the other hand, the little one saw it twice and loved it.)

Finally, my youngest repeatedly expressed enough interest in Narnia that my wife's resistance broke down, the implicit caveat being that if it was too frightening for her I would hustle her right out of the auditorium. So the two of us headed to our local movie emporium right after a (very) late breakfast. We arrived to a darkened theater, the Disney logo already on screen, made our way to our seats. It didn't take long for us to settle in and begin munching popcorn, my arm tucked around her right side, her pony-tailed head tucked under my arm, as we enjoyed the suspenseful build-up to the Pevensie children's discovery of that snowy world at the back of the professor's wardrobe. My daughter was enthralled; I was less so-- I thought the movie competently made, but too generically imagined to sweep me away. Director Andrew Adamson's imagery doesn't pop off the screen or seduce you with lush grandeur and lurid landscapes surging with evil, the way Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films (Narnia's obvious influence and raison d'etre) do as a simple matter of course. Besides, there was far more at stake for me in seeing her reactions to the movie's moments of loudness and children in peril than there was in whether or not I thought the movie itself was a complete success.

But today, during Narnia, came one of those parental moments that made my heart soar, one that really connected me with my daughter, one where a special character trait seemed to pop up out of nowhere, like a roadside sign that assures a driver that he or she is not lost. And my daughter has no idea that it even occurred. There is a sequence where Edmund Pevensie, the boy who will betray his brother and sisters to the White Witch, is creeping through what appears to be a desolate, snowbound garden of statues, granite figures posed in various stages of battle and configurations of distress. The music hits all the right sustained notes and chords as the camera tracks Edmund making his way through this strange and inexplicable museum.

Then, midway through vaulting over what he (and we) takes to be a large rock, the audience is treated to a very effective "gotcha!" moment as the rock turns out to be the hunched figure of a very scary wolf, one of the White Witch's secret police, who leaps toward Edmund (and out toward us in the audience as well), snarling a murderous, meat-eating snarl, read to rip and tear away at Edmund's young flesh. The "gotcha!" made both my daughter and I jump several inches back and out of our seats, and it immediately occurred to me that I didn't ever remember seeing her have that visceral a reaction to a movie before-- most of the stuff she routinely sees at home is pretty genteel. So I turned to her, ready to be the concerned father and head her toward the exit. But before I could say anything, she looked up at me and said, "That scared me!" And then I noticed she was grinning. And then I heard she was laughing. And then I knew that this truly was my daughter, and that I loved her so much more than I could understand, and I began to hope that someday she and I would be looking at scary movies together and laughing as our hearts got caught in throats time and time again.

We left the theater, and my daughter was beaming with excitement, as if she understood on some level that she'd just seen something with a little more meat on it, in terms of what it required of her as a viewer, and what it put her through too, than anything she'd yet seen in her very young movie-going life. As we walked underneath the stained-glass dome that caps the courtyard entryway to the multiplex where we'd just seen The Chronicles of Narnia, my youngest daughter, whom I was carrying, put her arms around my neck, gave me a kiss and said, "That was fun! Thanks, Daddy, for taking me to the movies." I had to choke back more than one tear as I told her how glad I was that she wanted to come. We stood looking up through the dome, marveling at the colors and patterns, and it occurred to me that this had become a perfect day.

A FEARLESS EXPEDITION TO THE NEW WORLD

Last year I implored the Almighty to rain down blessings upon film critic Matt Zoller Seitz of the New York Press for being one of the only critics I knew of to sing the praises of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy on his year-end "best" list. This year I'm again grateful to Seitz, this time for his new blog, The House Next Door, an excellent addition to anyone's daily reading list. In particular, his enthusiasm for Terrence Malick's The New World has, to use his imagery, really poured some gasoline on the smoldering fire of my interest in the film, as well as thrown light on some pretty intriguing conversation about the movie and just how much critical respect this movie seems to be building.

Seitz declares, in his "Just Beautiful" post, that The New World "is this era’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — a musical-philosophical-pictorial charting of history’s slipstream and the individual’s role within it... It is nothing less than a generation-defining event. When your descendants ask you to describe the popular art called movies, this is one of the titles they'll ask about."

That, to me, is walking out on a limb, critically speaking, with only your real convictions to gird that limb, inviting real discussion, and perhaps derision from those who would dismiss the reaction as an emotional oversell. But, to look a the list of smart writers that Seitz provides in the "One World" post who have written eloquently about Malick's film, it appears he's not as alone as all that after all. Not that it would matter if he was, though. Seitz's fervor for The New World exemplifies the kind of criticism that I think is most valuable-- he makes infectious the power of his experience and articulates it with uncommon eloquence and a reliable foundation of close familiarity with the history of film. And he does so without feeling the need to denigrate other works or attempts at artistic expression in the process.

One of the common traps that dog film critics, especially when they first start out (and especially during those periods when there's not much good cinema to consider in the first place), is that writing about what you like is often harder than dashing off some smart-ass remarks about a film that may not even be worth getting angry or frustrated over. I've rediscovered, in writing on my own blog, the joy of expressing enthusiasm for a work and articulating how it goes about doing what it does, something that was always much more difficult for me to do than delineating just how a film failed to work. Of course, expressing the worth of a great film is a much more fulfilling achievement as well, for the reader and the writer, especially when the writer gets it right. And even before having seen The New World myself, I can tell that Seitz has, for himself, gotten this one right. Before reading his review and the subsequent pieces he's posted on his blog, the film was much further down on my list of must-sees. In fact, based on my rather indifferent response to Malick's The Thin Red Line, I had even thought that it would't be so bad if I missed it in theaters and instead caught up with it on DVD. (An asinine thought, I know-- good, bad or indifferent, Malick's movies demand to be seen theatrically.) But having witnessed just how moved Seitz was by the film, through his expressive talent as a film critic, I'm now fully excited to get to a big screen and then join in the discussion about The New World myself. I don't know what my own reaction will be, but I can guess that even if it's closer to how I felt about The Thin Red Line than my appreciation for Days of Heaven, I'll still have had a more enriching time than anyone who sat through Big Momma's House 2 this past weekend. Who says film critics can't make a difference? Who says film criticism is irrelevant? Not me. Critics like Seitz put the lie to those presumptions with almost every column. I look forward to following his thoughts throughout the year, and I hope you will too.