The First of a Couple Posts about Oscar Before the Nominations on Tuesday

I should say first of all (stop me if you've heard this before) that I love Oscar nomination morning. It's my Christmas morning. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it—quite literally—my favorite day of the year. The reason for this is that I love all of the surprises and all of the wealth that gets spread. Oscar night itself, with its glitz and glamor and montages, is relatively lacking in surprises (the ridiculously homophobic display that constituted Crash's win last year excepted). But the morning of the Oscar nominations... there are so many names! And there are so many shockers! I can get so excited when things come through for someone whose performance I think is aces. Last year there were genuine surprises in the nominations for Amy Adams and William Hurt and some years it's downright crazy (remember Keisha Castle-Hughes getting nominated for Best Actress for Whale Rider?) On the west coast, too, there is even more ceremony. To watch the nominations on television in Los Angeles, you have to wake up at 5:30a on a Tuesday... something I know many people are loathe to do. I always do it. In the pre-dawn, I make my coffee and sit with a blanket wrapped around me and yawn while I wait for the president of the Academy to walk out and start reading off names. It's the best day of the year. This year, I'm on the east coast, so I won't have to wake up ridiculously early. I'm sure that will put a glitch in the ceremonial aspect of the morning for me, but I expect the anticipation to be just as pregnant. I can't wait!

A couple more things before I move on to predictions in a day or two (I have a lot of Greeks to read, so forgive me). I want to go over how the nominations work and explain my ballots a little better. The way Oscar nominations work is really weird. First off, everyone votes in their own fields: only actors vote for acting nominations, only cinematographers vote for cinematography nominations and only music composers vote in the music categories. The breakdown of the Academy (this is from Oscarwatch) is as follows:

Actors: 1260
Producers: 461
Executives: 429
Sound: 415
Writers: 396
Art Directors: 378
Directors: 376
Public Relations: 371
Members at Large: 283
Shorts/Feature Animation: 316
Visual Effects: 249
Music: 237
Editors: 224
Cinematographers: 186
Documentary: 134
Makeup: 115
Total: 5830

The way I understand the nomination process to work is like this: each voter picks five names in the order of their preference. For example, my ballot for Best Director would be (in order):

1) Aronofsky, The Fountain.
2) Cuarón, Children of Men.
3) Greengrass, United 93.
4) Almodóvar, Volver.
5) Frears, The Queen.

Next, the ballots are put into piles based on the first choice listed. (My ballot goes into the Aronofsky pile.) From here, the ballots in the pile with the fewest number of votes are removed. Let's say there are ten directors who picked Oliver Stone for World Trade Center as their first choice. If that pile is the smallest, those votes are removed from the Ollie Stone pile and re-distributed based on the second choice on the ballot. This continues until there are only five left. This encourages voters to actually pick the choice that is their favorite as their top choice, because even if their first choice isn't in the popular running, their vote still counts. In this way, too, it makes sense for a voter to weight his or her ballot toward the nominees with the least chance (notice my first Best Actor choice was Melvil Poupaud for Time to Leave, an actor with a snowball's chance in Hell of nabbing a nomination.) So, in my director example, let's say that at some point the Darren Aronofsky pile is the smallest pile, the ballots from that pile are re-distributed and my ballot gets put in the Alfonso Cuarón pile, where it hopefully stays, taking Cuarón to his first Best Director nomination. If Cuarón's pile becomes the smallest pile, my vote will again be re-distributed, this time to Paul Greengrass's pile. The vote only counts once, though, so my vote can really only help one of the directors in question. By this line of thinking, I should be happy if one of my five choices makes it to a nomination on Tuesday morning, since my vote can only count once anyway. This is how I try to approach it. Last year, Amy Adams was my first choice as supporting actress, Philip Seymour Hoffman was my fourth choice as lead actor, Judi Dench was my fourth choice as lead actress and William Hurt was my fourth choice as supporting actor. I try to pick my five favorites and then put the people who I think need the most help at the top of the list. But one person from each of my lists made it on the final ballot, so I have to be happy with that. That's all the say I would've gotten even if I were a proper voting member of the Academy.

That's it for now. I'll have proper predictions later on in the weekend after I see Letters from Iwo Jima and The Last King of Scotland, which both have finally arrived in Tallahassee.

Best Supporting Actress

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote:

SEEMA BISWAS, Water


SHAREEKA EPPS, Half Nelson


CARMEN MAURA, Volver


DIANA RIGG, The Painted Veil


HELEN McCRORY, The Queen

Runners-up in alphabetical order:
Adriana Barraza (Babel)
Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada)
Marylouise Burke (A Prairie Home Companion)
Lola Dueñas (Volver)
Mona Hammond (Manderlay)
Jeanne Moreau (Le Temps Qui Reste [A Time to Leave])
Blanca Portillo (Volver)
Maribel Verdú (El Laberinto del Fauno [Pan's Labyrinth])

And apologies to Luminita Gheorghiu because Netflix refuses to send me The Death of Mr. Lazarescu no matter how many times I put it at the top of my queue.

Related:
My Best Supporting Actress Picks for 2005
My Best Supporting Actress Picks for 2004

Oh Jake.

Three Reviews

I say this to spare you. If you're heterosexual, don't see Another Gay Movie. You will be horrified. Ryan and I watched this movie on Thursday night and both of us were in hysterics and totally mortified as well. It's hilarious and irreverent and ridiculous. A lot of noise has been made about this movie. Most people saying "why do gay people need a movie like this," and I suppose it's dreadfully lowbrow of me to say that I enjoyed the film. My gay friend and I needed a little time together to bond and this movie was so ludicrous, so plotlessly asinine, so deliriously campy, that we laughed our heads off. A good time was had by all: certainly the filmmakers enjoyed themselves making it. This movie has no fear; it goes where you think no movie would be willing to go to find humor and it's definitely worth it.

And I loved Friends with Money. A reviewer in Los Angeles when it came out called Nicole Holofcener the Jane Austen of Los Angeles and I totally understand why. It's a lovely, thoughtful and funny film about Angelenos and their foibles, loves, insecurities, etc. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was sad and romantic and very funny with some running gags that are priceless. There is also a final touching moment at the end that I won't spoil, but was, for me, the icing on the cake of the film. It's a movie about friendships, marriages, loneliness and wealth. Loved it.

And today I finally saw Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang finally has reunited with his muse from the 1990's, Gong Li (they made Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, Ju Dou, and Shanghai Triad together) and the film is quite good. As you may know, I am not a fan of Zhang's recent work. I haven't yet seen Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, but I was mostly bored with both the ridiulously over-praised Hero and the Takeshi Kaneshiro-starring House of Flying Daggers. Golden Flower is not a martial arts movie. Instead, it is a royal melodrama of the Lion in Winter variety. Sons and heirs and incestuous relationships and betrayal. This is a film with tricks and surprises up its sleeve. It's also breathtakingly gorgeous to look at. But (and here's the surprise) it's also a film that actually cares about the thousands of people it slaughters, and takes time to deconstruct the pageantry and beauty of all of those monochromatic court ceremonies. It's high tragedy and high diva stuff. Gong Li is totally fucking fabulous and soars in her role and Jay Chou is fantastic as her loyal son. It's a surprisingly excellent film.

Let's also just take a moment to appreciate how gorgeous Gong Li is:

That's all.

Best Supporting Actor

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote:

ADAM BEACH, Flags of Our Fathers


MARK WAHLBERG, The Departed


ALEC BALDWIN, The Departed & Running with Scissors


MICHAEL SHEEN, The Queen


PAUL DANO, Little Miss Sunshine

Runners-up in alphabetical order:
Michael Caine (Children of Men)
Matthew Goode (Imagine Me & You)
Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls)
Nick Nolte (Clean)
Rufus Sewell (The Illusionist)

Apologies to Ben Affleck. I still haven't seen Hollywoodland. And to Jason Isaacs, one of my favorite actors, whose film, Friends with Money is sitting on my desk, still unwatched.

Related:
My Best Supporting Actor Picks for 2005
My Best Supporting Actor Picks for 2004

Greeks

So my teacher is wrapping up her introduction to the Advanced Theatre History I class (we'll be studying Greeks, Romans, Japanese and Medievals) and she sums up this way:

"Once upon a time there were plays in Ancient Greece. These are not they."

I thought it was brilliant.

Best Actress

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote:

NAOMI WATTS, The Painted Veil


ISABELLE HUPPERT, Gabrielle


PENÉLOPE CRUZ, Volver


MAGGIE CHEUNG, Clean


HELEN MIRREN, The Queen

Runners-up in alphabetical order:
Annette Bening (Running with Scissors)
Judi Dench (Notes on a Scandal)
Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl - die Letzten Tage [Sophie Scholl: the Final Days])
Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada)

Apologies to Gong Li, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Kirsten Dunst, whose films I still haven't seen.

Related:
My Best Actress picks for 2005
My Best Actress picks for 2004

Best Actor

My top choices in the order I would place them on my Academy ballot if I were allowed to vote:

MELVIL POUPAUD, Time to Leave (Le Temps Qui Reste)


CLIVE OWEN, Children of Men


HUGH JACKMAN, The Fountain


RYAN GOSLING, Half Nelson


JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT, Brick

Runners-up in alphabetical order:
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed)
Colin Farrell (Ask the Dust)
Pascal Greggory (Gabrielle)
Brad Pitt (Babel)
Patrick Wilson (Little Children & Hard Candy)

Apologies to Jude Law, Peter O'Toole, Ken Watanabe, James McAvoy and Forest Whitaker, whose films I regrettably have not yet seen.

Discuss!

Related:
My Best Actor picks for 2005
My Best Actor picks for 2004

Formal Exercises

Last night I saw Little Children, the new film from In the Bedroom director Todd Field. I loved In the Bedroom, as you might recall, but Little Children I found difficult, distanced, overly formal, and nowhere near as good as John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore. The actors are wonderful, particularly Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson and Phyllis Somerville. Actually, I loved the entire cast, with the exception of Mary B. McCann's ridiculously played one-note performance as a suburban mother. The film exercises a formal device, namely voice over intended (I assume) to distance the film's viewers from the action of the film, as though the entire thing were an elaborate case study—some kind of microcosm of Americana. The device works if this is the intended effect, but it also put me off the film entirely. I felt far removed from the characters, their petty, suburban problems, and I felt ridicule rise in my gut whenever they expressed any kind of pain. The voice over, by distancing me from the characters' lives, made me think their lives ridiculous. When the final horrifying reveal occurred at the end (a Caché moment like nothing else this year) the whole thing seemed even clearer to me: how dare these happy, gorgeous suburbanites complain about anything when there are people with real problems, real pain, living just next door.

Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle uses an even larger number of formal devices in its exploration of marital unhappiness at the turn of the twentieth century, but this film I responded positively to. Chéreau (whose work I almost always admire) uses black-and-white as well as color photography throughout the picture as well as the astonishing convention of title cards in key emotional moments. It's an incredibly intriguing choice with the resulting creation of very real intimacy with the characters. The film, which is based on The Return, a short story by Joseph Conrad, mines the depths of a relationship's failure after a woman leaves her husband and then returns, incapable of her act, four hours later. Isabelle Huppert (always brilliant) and Pascal Greggory are fantastic as the couple in question and the film is painful, beautiful and, at times, truly disturbing. The score, by Fabio Vacchi, which sounds more than anything like Igor Stravinsky, is passionate, enormous and unquestionably modern. It's a fascinating film.

Some Movie Madness for 2006

It's the first day of school today, so I'm back in super-student mode, but I wanted to put out a couple of movie lists before I head back in to all-studying all-the-time madness levels.

First off, the movie list for 2006:

Loved:
1. Children of Men
2. United 93
3. Half Nelson
4. The Fountain
5. Volver
6. Water
7. Flags of Our Fathers
8. The Queen
9. Brick
10. L'Enfant

11. Fateless
12. Imagine Me & You
13. Sophie Scholl: the Final Days
14. The Painted Veil
15. Pan's Labyrinth
16. C.R.A.Z.Y.


Really Liked:
17. Little Miss Sunshine
18. A Prairie Home Companion
19. Tsotsi
20. Time to Leave
21. Babel
22. Apocalypto
23. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan


Liked More Than I Disliked:
24. Ask the Dust
25. Clean
26. The Departed
27. Thank You for Smoking
28. Dreamgirls
29. Notes on a Scandal
30. Summer Storm
31. Duck Season
32. Monster House
33. X-men: the Last Stand
34. Happy Feet
35. Running with Scissors
36. The House of Sand
37. Lady in the Water


Barely Liked More Than I Disliked:
38. The Pursuit of Happyness
39. The Devil Wears Prada
40. Evil
41. Casino Royale
42. Snakes on a Plane
43. Little Children
44. The Oh in Ohio


Disliked:
45. Eragon
46. For Your Consideration
47. Art School Confidential
48. Don't Tell

Hated:
49. Blood Diamond
50. Manderlay
51. Hard Candy
52. V for Vendetta


Complete and Total Wastes of Time:
53. Scoop
54. The Illusionist
55. Joyeux Noël
56. Superman Returns
57. The Promise
58. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Now, this list is far from complete. In 2002, I saw 68 movies, in 2003 I only saw 61, but then in 2004 I caught 76 films and last year, the total was 87! (Not bad for an amateur, really.) Here's where you all come in, dear readers. I'm gonna list the films I've yet to see for '06 and I need feedback on stuff that I have left off both of these lists: films you think are must-sees for 2006. (Jackass Number Two does not count, .) Anyway, these are the ones on my radar still to see:

1. Letters from Iwo Jima
2. Curse of the Golden Flower
3. The Last King of Scotland
4. The Dead Girl
5. Bobby
6. The Good Shepherd
7. Venus
8. The Good German
9. Breaking and Entering
10. Cars
11. Sherrybaby
12. Another Gay Movie
13. Basic Instinct 2
14. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
15. 13 (Tzameti)
16. Don't Come Knocking
17. Everything's Gone Green
18. Find Me Guilty
19. The Last Kiss
20. Friends with Money
21. Gabrielle
22. Inside Man
23. Miami Vice
24. Moonlight (the Paula van der Oest movie that finally got released in '06)
25. Odete (Two Drifters)
26. Rescue Dawn
27. Shortbus
28. The Lady in Question is Charles Busch
29. The Quiet
30. Three Times
31. The Notorious Bettie Page
32. Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
33. Marie Antoinette
34. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

And, for purists out there, a list of films I saw in 2006 that weren't from 2006 (this is a list that accurately illustrates just what a loner [loser?] I am, though in '05 the total was around 100 and this year it's 44 [just shows how busy I was with school I guess]):

Le Samouraï (The Samurai) 1967
Aparajito (The Unvanquished) 1957
Badlands 1973
The Third Man 1949
Pinky 1949
Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) 1963
Leave Her to Heaven 1945
Metropolitan 1990
Le Fils (The Son) 2002
Son Frère (His Brother) 2003
Kitty Foyle 1940
Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) 1959
Sex, Lies, and Videotape 1989
The Nun's Story 1959
Hope and Glory 1987
The Fallen Idol 1948
Le Souffle au Cœur (Murmur of the Heart) 1971
The Witches of Eastwick 1987
Sons and Lovers 1960
Tequila Sunrise 1988
An Unmarried Woman 1978
Barry Lyndon 1975
L'Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows) 1969
Harry and Tonto 1974
À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) 1960
The Hudsucker Proxy 1994
Angst Essen Seele Auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) 1974
Le Cercle Rouge 1970
Born Yesterday 1950
Sudden Fear 1952
Morocco 1930
L'Avventura 1960
The Informer 1935
Nicholas and Alexandra 1971
Body Heat 1981
After the Thin Man 1936
Mogambo 1953
Yi Yi (A One and a Two) 2000
¿Qué He Hecho Yo para Merecer Esto!! (What Have I Done to Deserve This?) 1984
Walk on the Wild Side 1962
The Big Sleep 1946
The Barefoot Contessa 1954
City Slickers 1991
Rope 1948

Soon: Final Oscar predictions and my favorite performances of 2006.

Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon

John Curran's film of Somerset Maugham's novel The Painted Veil boasts some memorable performances, gorgeous scenery, beautiful costumes, an exotic locale and a heartbreaking score by Alexandre Desplat. It is a film, really in the tradition of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant more than it is anything else. Which is, of course, why I liked it so very much—liked it more, in fact, than Merchant-Ivory's final collaborative effort The White Countess.

This post is part of The Class of 2006 Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon hosted by Stinkylulu, so this post really needs to focus on the actressing at the edges that The Painted Veil (so handsomely) contains. The actress to whom I refer is sixties and seventies sex symbol/glamor icon and eighties and nineties "Mystery!" host Dame Diana Rigg, who, in The Painted Veil gives a lovely, sensitive performance of quiet grief and steely determination.

Naomi Watts' English aristocrat Kitty Fane, having lost her husband's love and relocated deep into the interior of the Chinese mainland, finds herself bored and feckless. She seeks out purpose at an orphanage run by a group of French nuns supervised by Rigg's Mother Superior. Though the relationship between Kitty and her husband Walter (an earnest-as-usual Edward Norton) it is the relationship betweenn Kitty and the Mother Superior that becomes crucial to the way the film works. The Mother Superior is what Kitty didn't have in her own mother back in England and both women accept the relationship quickly.

Rigg's work in these moments is exceptional. The actress is, of course, costumed in the full habit of the brides of Christ and so she has only her face and her voice as instruments. But the character emerges fully formed from the first scene: commanding the consumption of a specially-made madeleine and sternly refusing a male access to her convent. The Mother Superior is worn, exhausted from years of service and yet occasionally, in flashes of superb transformation, her eyes twinkle and hope dances in their spheres. When she talks about love with Kitty, Mother Superior speaks of her relationship with god as difficult but old and comfortable. She speaks of her contentment with her choice, but her actions are at odds slightly with this alleged peace. Mother Superior fights with all her power to bring Kitty and her husband back together and when given the opportunity, she forbids Kity from choosing nobility over her own happiness.

Her last word onscreen is "no," a command after which Kitty offers no argument. The film cuts away after the word. Rigg is so convincing, her character so compelling, we don't even need to see if Kitty has tried to argue. We know she hasn't. Rigg's delivery says that the argument is over. It's a brilliant performance.

SAG nominations

The SAG nominations are out today, being the last precursors to the Oscar nominations for the actors. Academy Award nominations will be announced on January 23rd and the polls close on the 13th, so not even the way everyone looks at the Golden Globes will have an effect on the nominations now. All there is left is Hollywood chatter (of which, as ever, there is a lot.) Anyway, on to today's nominations...

 

Ensemble.

Babel

Bobby

The Departed

Dreamgirls

Little Miss Sunshine

 

Now don’t get to thinking that this is really some kind of Best Picture lineup. I know everyone says that SAG’s ensemble nomination is really some kind of BP precursor. Not so. We have the producer’s guild and the director’s guild for that. Mostly I think this category usually sucks. They do silly things like nominate Babel for this category. While I liked Iñárritu’s film, and it’s probably going to end up with a Best Picture nomination on 1/23, it was filmed separately and that’s been said in numerous interviews and is, well, sort of obvious when watching the film. So it isn’t really ensemble work per se. And that SAG left off The Queen, which is pretty much a shoo-in for a BP nomination is ridiculous, especially with all of those great performances. I would’ve left Bobby off of this list, too, in favor of Children of Men.

 

Best Actor.

Leonardo Dicaprio, Blood Diamond

Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson

Peter O'Toole, Venus

Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness

Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

 

So there was apparently some sort of glitch with DiCaprio for SAG. Warner Bros. was flip-flopping on where to promote him and spent a lot of time promoting DiCaprio for Best Supporting Actor for The Departed (he’s clearly the lead, but they do what they want—remember Jamie Foxx as Supporting Actor for Collateral? Sometimes they’re stupid.) But why has Blood Diamond picked up so much traction? It sucks so bad. Anyone who’s seen the movie must know this. I haven’t heard anyone say they liked it. So the list for Oscar looks like it’s gonna be Smith, Whitaker and O’Toole for sure. Slot four, I think, goes to DiCaprio, but for The Departed (where Warner is now promoting him). Can Gosling hold on to this slot? I loved Half Nelson and I loved him in the film. To be honest, I would be abandoning hope right now that he could hold on to the slot, except that I don’t see anyone else waiting in the wings to take it. The big surprise on 1/23 in this category, though, could be a complete DiCaprio shut-out. Blood Diamond (ugh) and The Departed (yay) could cancel one another out leaving Leo in the cold. But in favor of… I don’t really see anyone coming up. I think this is the lineup, but I think the Academy will favor Leo’s turn in The Departed over the Blood Diamond bomb.

 

Best Actress.

Penélope Cruz, Volver

Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal

Helen Mirren, The Queen

Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada

Kate Winslet, Little Children

 

This is Oscar’s lineup. Period. And it’s a good list. Poor Annette Bening; I love her but it ain’t happening this year. Running with Scissors just wasn’t a good enough movie.

 

Best Supporting Actor.

Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed

Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children

Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond

Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls

 

Murphy is a lock. But I think he’s the only lock in this list. Arkin is probably more of a lock than I give him credit for, but you never know. And (though I hate admitting it) I think Hounsou is in for Blood Diamond. I don’t know why anyone’s talking about this film! DiCaprio’s performance (as I said before) in The Departed is going Lead for Oscar, so he’s definitely out. I also think Haley is shaky although he is getting a lot of traction. I would expect a Jack Nicholson nomination on 1/23. The Academy loves them some Jack, even when he’s overdone and scene-hogging like he is in The Departed. I am also crossing my fingers for Mark Wahlberg’s performance in The Departed. I can’t realistically see him getting a nomination in this crowded category, but I can dream. There is also Michael Sheen in The Queen, a performance I am very fond of which isn’t showing here either. Plus Ben Affleck (Hollywoodland) and Adam Beach (Flags of Our Fathers) and Brad Pitt (Babel). This is a hard one to predict. For now I say Murphy, Nicholson, Hounsou, Pitt, Arkin. Grr.

 

Best Supporting Actress.

Adriana Barraza, Babel

Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal

Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine

Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

 

This list makes me want to go to sleep. Seriously. No Shareeka Epps (Half Nelson). No Seema Biswas (Water). No Carmen Maura (Volver). No Helen McCrory (The Queen). I liked all of these performances more than all of the ones mentioned above. I think this one is a hard one to call for Oscar, too. Hudson is, of course, a lock. The girl is fierce! It’s looking like Barraza and Blanchett are in, too. Breslin, I think, is a dark horse for an Oscar nomination. Kikuchi seems to be a big favorite, too. Expect a surprise here on 1/23. (Hopefully) someone will spoil this pretty list. Maybe Vera Farmiga (The Departed) or maybe Catherine O’Hara (For Your Consideration).

 

That’s it for now. I will have my faves soon.

Ponderous Vacation

Here in Los Angeles for a week or so, I was looking at the Christmas cards that my parents and (by extension, I suppose) I received this year. Most of the cards are accompanied by photographs of families, smiling together at me from glossy paper. The photographs are especially important when new additions have been made to these families, so far away, or so busy, that we don't see each other. We haven't yet been able to picture the new family members, spoken about, perhaps, in letters exchanged or telephone conversations, but with a photograph of the family, new addition welcomingly included in the happy fold, we are able, gratefully, to put faces to names.

I was browsing quickly through the letters and cards--caring mostly for the photographs and less for the notes, with their usual litanies of the year's accomplishments--and I started to wonder about spinsterhood a little. When daughters and sons marry, their spouses are added to the list of family members--this has happened for my brother and his lovely fiancée in our family--and included in the photo. I am terrified, of course, that I won't have anyone to add to the photograph for a long time. But I also wonder whether, if by chance I were to stumble upon a young man who wanted to be my boyfriend, mine would be added to the family along with everyone else's. Certainly he would be... eventually. I wonder, though, how long it would take. Marriage not being an option in most locales, my folks would just have to take my word for our commitment to one another.

I envision a huge scene with an ultimatum from me (one that probably would not turn out in my favor). Or perhaps I wouldn't care at all about being included in the photograph and ask, politely to be excluded, anticipating the inevitable and heading it off at the pass like making the gay joke before the rest of the table does so that I can control how much it hurts.

Four More

My favorite movie so far this year is Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. I caught it on New Year's Eve at The Grove (which is, I guess, the only place it's playing right now). It's a sci-fi piece set in 2027, in a sort of post-apocalyptic Britain. It stars Clive Owen and it--more than anything else--is ostensibly a genre piece: an action/road movie with lots of guns. But it's also a movie about the end of the world, the miracle of birth, and humankind's capacity for both cruelty and generosity. I completely loved it. It's funny and imaginative and brilliantly scripted, not to mention beautifully shot by Emmanuel Lubeszki. Go.

Another Mexican film I saw recently is Guillermo Del Toro's El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth), which is an imaginative fantasy/horror story set against the backdrop of 1944 Spain. The story follows a little girl who escapes from the tyranny of her stepfather by imagining (or is he real) a giant faun who assigns her magical tasks to complete and tells her she's really the daughter of the king of the underworld. It's a magical, beautiful movie full of spectacle and gore. I totally dug it.

Last night I also caught Bill Condon's Dreamgirls. Now, you probably know that I love this musical (the original production was on Broadway in 1982), and while I was very excited for the film version, I wasn't too excited about the way it was looking from all of the clips and interviews I watched about it. The film is pretty much all I expected it to be. Jamie Foxx, as the film's headliner, is near terrible; he is the focus of the film and its empty heart of a center. He pouts and sneers his way through the movie and comes across as unlikeable and frustrated. The character is odious, of course, by the film's end, but it would have been nice had the character had a bit of a journey. Foxx picks a note and keeps playing it for two hours. Eddie Murphy is fantastic as James Thunder Early. He gives a fierce, enjoyable performance that's sure to get awards play with the Academy (about time, too, if you ask me). Beyoncé Knowles is excellent as superstar Deena Jones, and looks gorgeous in the film, almost impossibly so. I forget how beautiful this woman is. She also had a song written for her for the film. It's called "Listen" and she sings it in act three with power and vehemence (it's a touch earnest, but her only real belt number). The person everyone will be talking about after this movie, though, will be Jennifer Hudson, the lead of the film and the person with the biggest voice. She has an extraordinary singing voice and her performance as Effie is a great tribute to the original Effie, Jennifer Holliday. Her two huge numbers are showstopping film moments--the movie's worth it just for her. The film itself is a bit of a mess, I'm afraid. I found myself bored quite a bit. Dreamgirls takes a lot of time focusing on Jamie Foxx's character, and he's so dour that he just can't hold interest. Condon, too, has crafted a musical (the same way he worked Chicago) where the singing doesn't happen organically as a part of the narrative, but happens during specific "singing" moments. He makes the music a realistic part of the story. I thought this technique was sort of clever (though unnecessary) in Chicago, but it doesn't work at all in Dreamgirls. Condon has cut songs and parts of songs in order to force the musical into this construct, but he is compelled to keep certain numbers, particularly the act one finale "And I Am Telling You," and so the musical jumps in and out of Condon's reality in a way that rings false. I'm not sure why Condon tries to make this work in the first place. If the audience will buy the actors singing to one another at certain points, then why not all the time? And we know audiences don't really mind singing as an integral part of the show--pretty much everyone I know enjoyed Moulin Rouge! and it's musical number after musical number--so why does he bother? Anyway, I liked the movie alright, but it's the music that's the star of the show here, and I could probably survive by just listening to the soundtrack over and over again and not revisiting Condon's film.

One more: The Oh in Ohio is a little indie with Parker Posey and Paul Rudd. Parker Posey is a seriously frigid wife who Rudd can't make cum. The film is set in Cleveland (although the Walt Disney Concert Hall makes an appearance) and also stars Mischa Barton, Danny DeVito, Keith David and Liza Minelli. I pretty much rented this because I love Parker Posey, I think Paul Rudd is hot and I wanted to see Liza (she plays a sex therapist who says "vagina" about fifty times.) This movie's fairly stupid and almost totally plotless. It's funny briefly. It was good to see Liza, Paul Rudd is still hot, and Mischa Barton gives a horrible, boring performance as a student who seduces Rudd. Posey and Rudd work hard and provide honest, interesting acting, but there's just nothing happening in this film. It's harmless, but a waste of time.

Happy New Year!

I spent the new year with my dear friends in California, running around visiting everyone and seeing as many movies as I can see before I return to the hustle/bustle of grad school and the black hole of cinema that is Tallahassee.

I feel terribly lazy doing all of this vacationing. (Heaven knows I should be reading plays by Euripides or somesuch, but instead I'm reading a deliciously sexy and brilliantly written novel by Alan Hollinghurst--what can you do?)

AND I think I saw my favorite movie of the year. Hint: it's by a Mexican director and it ain't Babel. I'll write more soon.

Much love for 2007
Aaron

And I am making a resolution this year; two, in fact. I will keep them to myself for now, so as not to jinx them.