All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

When Thom sends you instructions, you follow them. Especially since he finally hit 1946.

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Inspired by Self-Styled Siren's recent review of a biography of Joseph Breen, I had Frank Walsh's Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry close at hand. Page 123, starting with the fifth sentence:

When a studio representative told Gorman¹ he couldn't understand the basis of his request in view of the Chicago rating², the priest airily responded that Fall River made its own decisions³. It was becoming apparent to Quigley⁴ that in Fall River, every priest was becoming his own movie critic. He advised Paramount to tell Gorman that although it was willing to listen to his concerns, it could not hand over the power to decide what movies could be shown to every bishop in the country.

Notes: (1) Father Edward Gorman, a member of the Catholic Legion of Decency and a priest in Fall River, Massachusetts; (2) the Chicago chapter of the Legion of Decency had come up with its own list of condemned films, which included some that the Production Code Administration had passed with the blessing of the national Legion of Decency; in this instance, Gorman wanted Paramount to withdraw from circulation a movie (Four Hours to Kill) that even Chicago had passed; (3) Fall River was banning films—in this case, The Scoundrel, on the basis of the Chicago list, not the national-Legion-approved list; (4) Martin Quigley, editor/publisher of the Motion Picture Herald and one of the architects of the Production Code.

Equidistant was Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, one of the best badly-written books I've ever read. If an author with an ounce of poetry in him had rewritten it, it would have been half as long and twice as good. But I still enjoyed it immensely; Dreiser's cataloging style attracts the archivist and listmaker in me. Page 123, fifth sentence:

Jessica was beginning to feel that her affairs were her own. George, Jr., flourished about as if he were a man entirely and must needs have private matters. All this Hurstwood could see, and it left a trace of feeling, for he was used to being considered—in his official position, at least—and felt that his importance should not begin to wane here.

Notes: Hurstwood is starting to neglect his family's affairs, being more interested in his newfound attraction to Carrie.

Now, the five: Shane, who probably has something on 18th-century British politics nearby; Angela, who doesn't post enough; Shawn, who went so long without posting that I didn't notice that he started again; Kris, who's being tortured by terrorists; and Amy, who has really good taste in books. (Not that the others don't.)

Order Me Around

As a break from the top-down, "I choose all the reviews I'm going to write," autocratic site-management style I've been using since 2000, I've decided to ask readers to pick some movies for me to review. Another way to put this is that I've been having a hard time convincing myself to write reviews lately, but I seem to do all right when I have an externally imposed deadline. However you want to look at it, I'm asking you for reviewing assignments.

Post a suggestion in the comments. When I get five of them, I'll have Random.org's integer generator choose the winner. I'll post a review of that film within two weeks. Then I'll repeat the process with a new batch of suggestions.

Your suggestion should be available on Netflix (while you're at it, become my Netflix friend). Also, it should be something I haven't seen, or at least something I haven't seen in a long time. If I've seen your suggestion, I'll ask you for a replacement.

No Uwe Boll films, please.

The Last Ten

Becket (1964)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Ordinary People (1980)
The Dresser (1983)
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Imitation of Life (1934)
Seventh Heaven (1927)
Nashville (1975)
Gone with the Wind (1939)

(Eleven, really, but The Patriot (1928) is lost, so I'll never see it.)

This is the approximate order in which I plan to watch them. The last two are set in stone; any suggestions/favorites/least favorites among the other eight?

Short Takes

Jet Li is the patron saint of elegant, physics-defying wire-fu. Jackie Chan is the patron saint of a knock-down, drag-out, near-comedic form of the martial art. The prospect that they would finally, near the end of their respective careers (Li is 45, Chan is 54), do a film together was incredibly inviting. I was excited to see such a film. I'd have gone opening night. The fact that the vehicle chosen featured a gawky white kid transported back in time dampened my enthusiasm only a little: it's still Jackie Chan facing off against Jet Li, a battle between philosophies of filmmaking and of stunt work. I imagined an epic battle in which Chan fends off a graceful, flying Li with pieces of a broken stepladder and a dustpan. Then I saw the trailer. Jackie Chan's on wires, doing triple back-flips. I'm crushed; I'm staying home.

Self-Styled Siren offers an impassioned defense of melodrama. I was a tad confused at first; many of the films mentioned in her essay and in the articles she links to wouldn't fit my definition of melodrama. Then I realized that if I love a film, I wouldn't call it a melodrama; thus, it must be that "melodrama" is a label I reserve for films I don't like.

But my real issue is with the Tom O'Neil article that prompted her essay: he says that "Oscar Nazis" (his ill-chosen and hysterically repeated phrase) insist that Sunrise is the first "real" Best Picture Winner, instead of Wings. Of course we know that the Oscars had two apparent "Best" categories back then, and neither of them was called "Best Picture." But the Acadmey has long since cleared up the confusion: Wings won the first Best Picture Oscar, and Sunrise won an award that was discontinued the next year. It's their award ceremony, so they get to decide. My question is, what "Oscar Nazis" are attempting to change this? I know quite a few Oscar obsessives, and none of them has ever made this argument in my presence. Any discussion of the relative importance of the two categories seeks to elevate Sunrise to an equal plane, not a superior one. (Of course I mean in terms of Oscar importance, not in terms of quality.) So who is Tom O'Neil talking to, except himself?

In an attempt to help parents decide whether their children should see a particular film, Kids In Mind catalogs each film's potentially offensive content. It's a noble gesture, I suppose, but it results in unintentionally hilarious reading. The Big Lebowski: "Reckless driving, lots of scenes of property damage. A frenzied ferret is thrown into a tub with a man and nearly scratches and hurts the man as a result. Threatening with a gun." Bad Santa: "A woman wears a low-cut top that reveals cleavage, and a woman wears a short top and low-cut pants that reveal bare abdomen and cleavage. A man lies in a bathtub and we see bare shoulders and legs and a boy sits in the room with him (nothing sexual)."

Best Actress Corrective Drive Volume 1

Unlike many of my favorite bloggers, I am not an actressexual. I unjustly ignore the finest females the Oscars have to offer. There are two notable holes in my Oscar obsession: Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. To put it bluntly, in numbers: I've seen 72% of the Best Supporting Actors but only 65% of the Best Supporting Actresses, and 73% of the Best Actors but a lowly 59% of the Best Actresses. The "why" is easy: the Best Picture nominees, which have been my primary focus, contain more solid, nomination-attracting roles for men than they do for women, and I'm not especially drawn to the kinds of films that tend to earn lone Best Actress nominations. But I'm in the process of repenting by making a concerted effort to watch enough of my remaining Best Actress nominees that I don't have to feel ashamed when the Oscar conversation comes around to percentages (and it always does).

So far, the results have been iffy: one pretty darned good, if overpraised, performance in a film that made me want to throw things at my TV; one nearly unwatchable performance in a film that is nearly unbearable; and an intermittently great performance in a patchy, made-for-TV-style film. Finally, though, a pioneering women-in-prison flick saved me from utter despair.

Diane Lane, Unfaithful (2002)
Lost to Nicole Kidman, The Hours
Performance: 3 goats, film: 0.5 goats

Although she gives it her all, Diane Lane can't save Unfaithful from its need to pin all the problems of the world on women's unfettered sexuality. No, I'm not overstating the case: this film actually sees a moral equivalency between a woman intentionally an affair and a man murdering his wife's lover. "What did you do?" a horrified Lane asks her husband Richard Gere; "What did you do?" he shoots back, and the film is on his side. That said, Lane's performance is half showy and half naturalistic. There are the obvious "Oscar scenes," like her hundred-expression trip down memory lane on the way home from her first assignation and the aforementioned horror at hubby, during which she shows a nice range of mannerisms that all the same announce themselves as mannerisms. She's better in the loose, playful (though sometimes borderline-idiotic) seduction scenes, in which she's basically the only actor in the film, as Olivier Martinez gives her as much to play off as a sculpture would.

Maggie McNamara, The Moon Is Blue (1953)
Lost to herself Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday
Performance: 2.5 goats; film: 2 goats

Maggie McNamara is in full Audrey Hepburn-as-plucky innocent mode; if, by the last reel, you're not calling her "Audrey" in your head, you're a better movie watcher than I. McNamara would have been fine, I guess, if Hepburn hadn't already hoed this row. She's playing a naïf who produces "shocking" statements about sexuality to the delight and/or horror of those surrounding her. Childlike in deportment, dress, and speech, she produces "virgin," "seduce," and "mistress" for the first time on movie screens, but the conceit of her character softens the blow each time: it's a shock, I suppose, but it's the shock of a child asking her mommy "what's intercourse?" instead of the knowing and subversive shock I think the playwright intended. The film repeatedly trips over its self-conscious daring, and William Holden reminds me again why I hate him, with few exceptions, between Sunset Blvd. and The Wild Bunch.

Jane Alexander, Testament (1983)
Lost to Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment
Performance: 3 goats; film: 2.5 goats

I'm going to join the small but distinguished group of people (OK, one other person and his household) who don't share the adoration of Jane Alexander's performance or her film Testament, the tale of domestic nuclear apocalypse that was made for TV but released in theaters. The film itself is barely competent: it contains some great scenes, and then huge misfires, especially that cemetery kiss, the teddy bear hunt, and the gimmicky late-movie reveal of Daddy Devane's Final Call. Blech. Alexander's performance is the best thing in it, but it's a careful, studied performance in search of a real movie to inhabit, and nearly sunk by two ill-advised scenes of histrionics (see above). She's so much better at shell-shocked waiting and quiet determination than she is at screeching. Her performance is clearly the weakest of the '83 nominees I've seen (although I haven't seen Educating Rita).

Eleanor Parker, Caged (1950)
Lost to Billie Holliday, Born Yesterday
Performance: 4 goats; film: 4 goats

And finally, an outstanding film featuring most of a great performance: Eleanor Parker plays a naive girl processed by a corrupt prison machinery into a hardened crook. By "most of a good performance," I mean that the beginning and the ending are exceptional; it's the middle that's lacking. Parker transforms from a quaking child into a flinty con (with a weird but stunning stopover in Falconetti-as-Joan of Arc territory) over the space of a single scene change: she's denied parole, she freaks out, and then she's a spitting tigress, trading hair-pulls with Hope Emerson's formidable prison matron. But it's too sudden; there's no buildup to the transformation. This is more the screenplay's fault than Parker's, of course—given the script's limitations, Parker's inclusion in the best Best Actress lineup in Oscar history (Baxter and Davis in All About Eve, Swanson in Sunset Blvd., and winner Holliday in Born Yesterday) is well deserved.

Children in Exile

My friend Chris Swider's documentary Children in Exile (trailer) has its Chicago premiere at the Gallery Theater next Friday, April 18, at 7:00. Chris will be there to answer questions.

From the press release:

Children in Exile focuses on a lesser-known World War II tragedy, the deportation of millions of Polish children and teenagers to Soviet Siberia. While the atrocities carried out by the Nazis are well documented, this Soviet enacted crime has been relatively ignored by historians and filmmakers alike - until now. Interviews with actual survivors of the tragedy, coupled with historic photographs and artistic renderings of the terrible event, make for a chilling and heart-wrenching movie experience.

Those "artistic renderings" are artworks made by schoolchildren after a classroom visit by some of the survivors. It's a unique way of attempting to show, from a child's-eye view, what life was like in the gulag.

The film has already screened at the 10th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, the San Luis Obispo Film Festival (where it won the Best Short Documentary award), the Anchorage International Film Festival, and several other venues.

Waxing Poetic about BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

For my entry in Lucid Screening's Second Annual White Elephant Blog-a-Thon, I decided against a simple angry rant, which was my first, instinctive response to my assignment, Uwe Boll's BloodRayne 2: Deliverance, which is about a half-vampire fighting against a vampiric Billy the Kid in the Wild West. Instead, I wrote poems: one sonnet (Shakespearean, not Italian), two limericks, a villanelle, and a sestina. I chose these forms (well, except the limericks) to give the impression of structure and perhaps deep thought and skill, which would likely not have resulted had I chosen blank verse. Perhaps they still elude me. On to the poems.

Shall I Compare Thee to an Uwe Boll Film?

The vampire outlaw William Bonney wreaks
a trail of carnage spread across the West
(but of his Slavic accent we'll not speak).
But he's just BloodRayne 2's especial guest:
Natassia Malthe is the "dhamphir" Rayne;
be-sworded, bosomed, clad in leather cloak,
she's out for vengeance, dealing death and pain
to Bill the Kid and his undead cowpokes.
Director Uwe Boll is widely booed:
"incompetent"? Inadequately cruel.
Anachronism reigns! Ineptitude
of acting, scripting, lensing is the rule.
This film's a minor cinematic crime
entirely unworthy of my rhymes.

The Lass from Oslo

There once was an actress named Malthe.
In BloodRayne her presence is paltry.
Her waist is quite slim
but her acting is grim
and quite limited her career shall be.

She's entirely too soft-spoken.
She pales next to Kristanna Lokken.
She's not half as pretty,
her accent is shitty,
and her ass-kicking skills appear broken.

Do Not Go Gentle Into an Uwe Boll Film

My eyes! God damn that Uwe Boll to hell
for bringing forth another BloodRayne flick!
Such horrors from my mind I can't dispel!

I'd rather choose to face armed personnel,
or Montresor to wall me up with bricks.
My eyes! God damn that Uwe Boll to hell!

Each line the actors speak is a death knell;
the overacting hams lay it on thick.
Such horrors from my mind I can't dispel.

Film art is absent, vision, skill as well;
technique's the very opposite of slick.
My eyes! God damn that Uwe Boll to hell!

I'd vote to give this film a Prix Nobel
but there's no prize for cinematic ick.
Such horrors from my mind I can't dispel!

At nothing does the cast or crew excel.
Just watching left me feeling vaguely sick.
My eyes! God damn that Uwe Boll to hell!
Such horrors from my mind I can't dispel!

There Are No Well-Known Sestina Titles to Infest with Uwe Boll

You'll say I'm too hard on this movie
and perhaps you're right.
It's not, after all, trying to be great cinema;
it's just a straight-to-video sequel
that appeals to a certain collection
of people who will excuse its flaws.

But should they excuse those flaws?
Did they? It's in the bottom 100 movies
on the IMDB, an illustrious collection,
and while I'm not sure its placement there is right,
it's certainly a pointless and unskilled sequel
to a film that was itself a blight on the cinema.

(I don't understand the subset of cinema
that's "supposed to be bad"; if the flaws
of this BloodRayne sequel
are intentional, why is the movie
not funny? Because comedy is the only right
venue for intentional gaffes; this collection

of gaffes is unfunny.) So is a growing collection
of BloodRayne films inevitable, then? Will the cinema,
or at least home video, support Uwe Boll's right
(backed up by his fists) to slather his directorial flaws
on the screen in another half-dressed half-vampire movie?
Can he find a distributor for another sequel?

What a stupid question. Another sequel
likely featuring Malthe and a collection
of has-beens will bore and annoy movie
audiences in 2009. I'm sure the cinema
will survive; it's survived more disastrous flaws
than Uwe Boll can perpetrate. That's right:

Uwe Boll is harmless. People in their right
minds ignore him. Real damage comes from mindless sequels
bolstered by kadillion-dollar budgets and a flawed,
strictly commercial mindset. The collected
films of Brett Ratner, Michael Bay, et al. do more harm to the cinema
because studios hold up as triumphs their shitbag movies.

So let Uwe Boll make movies. Let him do a hundred BloodRayne sequels.
It's his right (plus he'll beat you up if you argue). Cinema's
real enemies perpetrate worse flaws. Michael Bay is in the Criterion Collection.

Suffer (from) the Children

(This is my day-late entry for Final Girl's Hey, Internet, Stop Being Such Cynical Effing Douchebags Blog-a-Thon! (which I didn't hear about until today), in which she's encouraged online critics to "wear your heart on your sleeve and tell us all why you love something." In honor of our host's dedication to horror films, I decided to praise a criminally underseen and misunderstood entry in the "scary little kid" subgenre.)

One can only imagine what awful child-related experience prompted Carlton Albright and Edward Terry to write a screenplay as horrific as The Children; perhaps they suspect their kids of being the mailman's progeny. The "scary little kid" subgenre has never been scarier or more nihilistic than this incredibly effective and incredibly nasty bargain-basement shockfest. Its premise is simple: a busload of kids drives through a toxic fog and turns into... into what? They still look like apple-cheeked, sweet-faced munchkins, except their fingernails are black, and if they touch you, they melt the flesh from your bones. To paraphrase the song, I believe the children are our future, and there ain't no future here.

After a prologue that establishes the source of the toxic fog, we follow the sheriff (Gil Rogers) as he tries to figure out why the school bus would be sitting empty on the side of the road. After he finds the first victim (the bus driver), his immediate concern is again with the children: who will protect them from whatever did this to the driver? It takes everyone concerned an inordinately long time to decide, finally, that the kids are the reason behind the rapidly accumulating bodies. But that's natural: we in the audience know we're watching a horror film called The Children, but it's almost against our instincts to suspect children of being capable of killing.

The acting and dialogue are standard for the horror genre, meaning that they're basically sub-par, but that fact doesn't detract from the movie's effectiveness a whit. Director Max Kalmanowicz's staging of scenes is nothing special during the first two acts, when it's still daylight and the adults are still trying to figure out what's going on. But once night falls, his true gifts come into play. Under cover of near-darkness, he exhibits an almost supernatural mastery of simple, evocative, and scary-as-hell shot framing, shock reveals, and pacing. He doesn't make the mistake, common in the slasher genre, of overlighting his shots: the lighting here is the familiar blindness-inducing pitch black of a moonless night, in which headlights, flashlights, and candles illuminate just enough to remind you of how cavern-dark everything else is. It's here, in the dark, where he uses his scary kids brilliantly. Smiling, arms outstretched, calling "mommy, mommy" in their piping voices, they loom out of the blackness like pretty little angels of death: this is the single scariest image I can remember from any horror film.

And if the soul-destroying horror of children turned into monsters weren't enough, the film bravely (if that's the right word; "sadistically" would fit too) follows through on its premise by making the destruction of the children necessary (i.e., there's no cure) and even more awful than the children themselves: only chopping off their hands will stop them. Both hands. That the camera pulls away from the scene of greatest carnage is no salve: the camera tracks slowly, sinuously out of a barn, into the yard, through a house, through the woods, as unearthly screams prompt our imaginations to supply pictures more nauseating than any makeup artist could create. And that's not even the most disturbing, or nihilistic, of the film's little horrors—it saves its biggest kick for last.

The unfair 5.1 rating on IMDB could reflect any number of things: disgust with The Children's awful nihilism, or failure to look past the low-budget aesthetics to the impressive way Kalmanowicz and company embrace and twist the genre's conventions and limitations. It's certainly not for everybody. It's probably not for most people. You know who you are.

Top Ten Films of 2007, or, Time to Move On

Yes, I realize that it's more than one-sixth of the way through 2008: it's still not too late to finally list my top ten films of last year. Especially because, if I don't do it now, I might never do it (see, for example, my incomplete 2006 list). I've recycled some of the descriptions from my unfinished Goaties because otherwise I might have never finished these.

So here goes: the best films I saw last year.

10. Honeydripper, John Sayles's latest, was dumped unceremoniously into the post-Christmas netherworld, and it's a damned shame, because it's among his best in years. Sayles presents an imaginative parable of the birth of rock 'n' roll, lets some of the best African American actors around chew on his meaty dialogue, and doesn't overreach by trying to cram in too many storylines.

9. No Country for Old Men. The Coens won their first Director and Picture Oscars for this modern western that springs from a slick tale of the aftermath of a botched drug deal into convention-busting shifts in tone and ballsy narrative surprises. It helped turn Josh Brolin into Hollywood's new post-ironic man's man, gave Tommy Lee Jones one of (apparently—I still haven't seen In the Valley of Elah) two memorable roles last year, and introduced one of the cinema's most memorable bad guys in Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh.

8. Red Road is a surprising, sometimes opaque non-thriller thriller about revenge and guilt. It's quarterbacked by Kate Dickie, in one of the year's best performances, as one of the people who monitor the countless privacy-sucking cameras that blanket Glasgow; one day, she sees someone who shouldn't be there. And that's all I can say: Andrea Arnold's film is so secretive and enigmatic for most of its running time that I wouldn't dream of revealing more than that.

7. In A Mighty Heart, Angelina Jolie gave the best female performance of the year, and part of what made it so great was her generosity: she and Michael Winterbottom, always an interesting director (except when he's wanking), position Marianne Pearl in the middle of an impressive array of supporting roles, and the film is more interested in how Jolie shares the scenes with her fellow actors than in being The Angie Show. All of this exists in a tense, expertly directed suspense film that was inexplicably dismissed by many critics and ignored by most awards.

6. No End in Sight explains, in agonizing detail (agonizing because it's so completely horrendous), why the situation in Iraq is as screwed up as it is; interviews with such surprisingly high-profile players as George Packer and General Jay Garner, whose short-lived tenure as top American in Baghdad showed the promise of success and whose quick removal illustrated the Bush administration's almost willful destruction of any chance of cleaning up the mess they started with the 2003 invasion. The documentary is insightful, informative, and the most depressing film in a year of notable depressing films.

5. Black Book is a sexy, old-fashioned spy thriller about a not-too-good spy (Carice Van Houlton) who falls in love with the not-too-bad Nazi she's been instructed to seduce. What's great about the film's depiction of this amateur Mata Hari is that Houlton sucks as a spy: she's obvious, nervous, and twitchy, and she doesn't fool anyone; what's great and surprising about Paul Verhoven's script and direction is that it shows the surrounding situation (Nazi occupation of the Netherlands) as oblivious to her merits or demerits as a snoop.

4. There Will Be Blood is an overambitious but fascinating achievement that's dragged through its rough spots by Paul Thomas Anderson's staggeringly assured directorial vision and Daniel Day-Lewis's earth-shaking performance. Its quirky take on American history leaves a lot out, but it succeeds as a parable of the role of greed and religion in American society. It's also frequently, and self-consciously, dazzling.

3. Zoo addresses its topic—men who have sex with horses—elliptically, by refusing to explain it, by almost refusing the very idea that it can be explained to someone who doesn't share that particular desire. There's an enigmatic scene in which one of the actors in the reenactments explains how he connected to his role by thinking of a particularly bad accident he witnessed; I was struck by what a tenuous and false connection he was creating, and I realized that the film was telling us the same thing: you think you can get your head around this, but you're wrong.

2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is a nightmarish odyssey into totalitarianism. Anamaria Marinca gives one of the best performances of the year as a young woman who attempts to procure an illegal abortion for her roommate; guided by Oleg Mutu's unforgiving and unsteady handheld camera, we follow her into a hell that tests the limits of her friendship and our ability to keep from screaming. (I staggered out of this screening, shaken to the core, and then dashed off to see Wes Anderson's candy-coated triviality The Darjeeling Limited, a transition I do not recommend.)

1. Once is the kind of film that the do-it-yourself digital revolution was supposed to provide but so often doesn't: a small, personal, heartbreaking film that emphasizes the interactions between characters in a compelling way. Its music is heavenly, and the characters (played by musicians) who create it on- and offscreen are convincing and lived-in.

Oscar Predictions

Picture
Will Win: I've already blogged about how Juno is a likely upset; although I agree that my prediction is crazy, I'm sticking with it so I can be the guy who was right on this one.
Should Win: I wouldn't be disappointed with either No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, or even Michael Clayton when it comes down to it. But There Will Be Blood is currently highest on my top ten list, so that's what should win.
Better Not Win: Joe Wright's great step backward Atonement certainly is pretty, and some scenes are well acted, but Wright couldn't figure out how to use any of it.

Director
Will Win: Joel and Ethan Coen have never won a directing Oscar, not even for critics' darling Fargo. They're due.
Should Win: This is actually a pretty solid group of nominees. I'm going with Paul Thomas Anderson because he makes his film work by sheer force of directorial vision, but I'd be fine with any of these worthies.
Better Not Win: Despite what a lot of people think, Oscar didn't embarrass himself by nominating Jason Reitman—he shows uncanny skill at coaxing great performances out of his cast—and therefore I abstain.

Actress
Will Win: Call me crazy upset guy, but I'm going with Marion Cotillard, who seems to have narrowed the gap between Julie Christie and the rest of the pack. Did she narrow it enough to take the gold? We'll see.
Should Win: Well, Angelina Jolie should win, but they didn't nominate her. So I'm going with Julie Christie.
Better Not Win: Why, exactly, did Cate Blanchett receive a second nomination for failing to develop one whit on her performance from 11 years ago?

Actor
Will Win: I think this is the only category that's utterly and completely locked up, aside from perhaps Original Screenplay. Daniel Day-Lewis will win his second Oscar, and...
Should Win: I can't say I disagree.
Better Not Win: Part of being in a musical is singing. Johnny Depp forgot that part.
Haven't Seen: Tommy Lee Jones, In the Valley of Elah

Supporting Actress
Will Win: Despite Amy Ryan's winning just about every critics' award, and despite Ruby Dee's status as an un-Oscared elder, Cate Blanchett pulls off the dual feat of playing the opposite sex and doing a bang-up job of it.
Should Win: But where's the love for Tilda Swinton, who's the yin to Clooney's yang, the opposite moral pole of Michael Clayton's universe?
Better Not Win: They nominated the wrong Briony; Saoirse Ronan is a competent child actor, but Romola Garai was nearly great.

Supporting Actor
Will Win: As implacable and unstoppable as his character is Javier Bardem's drive for Oscar; none dare stand in his way.
Should Win: Who am I to argue with the Prince Valiant haircut and the air gun? Javier Bardem.
Better Not Win: In perhaps the biggest instance of category fraud since Pigskin Parade, Casey Affleck, who is the main character of his film, just might win an award he does not deserve. He's good; he's not a supporting actor.

Original Screenplay
Will Win: The biggest lock of the season seems to be Diablo Cody's screenplay for Juno.
Should Win: Beyond all the name-dropping in Juno is a smart, funny, sometimes painful look at a girl floundering between the rules of childhood and the realities of adulthood.
Better Not Win: Abstain. All of the nominees I've seen are worthy.
Haven't Seen: Lars and the Real Girl

Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: There Will Be Blood because this is where Oscar awards the critical darlings? No Country for Old Men because the Best Picture frontrunner almost always wins? I have no clue. Flipping the coin: No Country.
Should Win: I'm going with No Country for Old Men, although I'm not sure how many of the film's narrative and tonal surprises were the Coens' invention.
Better Not Win: The screenplay may have been the least of Atonement's problems, but aside from that first act, it didn't impress.

Animated Feature
Will Win: OK, some things are more locked up than Juno's screenplay award. Ratatouille, of course.
Should Win: I was more impressed with Persepolis; the animation style made up for some narrative weaknesses.
Haven't Seen: Surf's Up

Cinematography
Will Win: Although it doesn't look like there's a front-runner, I could see it going to either No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood. Flipping the coin: No Country
Should Win: I'm going with There Will Be Blood, but I wouldn't be upset if No Country won.
Better Not Win: It's certainly full of pretty pictures, but Atonement can't figure out how to use them. The worst offense is that Dunkirk tracking shot. Why?

Art Direction
Will Win: Ooh, it's a tossup. The only weak nominee here is The Golden Compass, but I'm going to go with There Will Be Blood because a lot of people who know more than I do about art direction have been saying that Jack Fisk needs to finally win.
Should Win: As long as The Golden Compass doesn't win, I am fine with whoever they pick.
Better Not Win: See above.

Costume Design
Will Win: The green dress. I mean Atonement. It has to win something.
Should Win: Dear god I don't know. I'll go with La Vie en Rose.
Better Not Win: We've already seen the costumes for Elizabeth II: Elizabeth Harder, so why bother noticing them again?

Visual Effects
Will Win: Two words: Giant robots. Transformers.
Should Win: But I wanted to see the damn things transform! I abstain.
Better Not Win: Those cartoonish "animals" from The Golden Compass.

Sound Editing
Will Win: Giant. Robots. Remember back in 1999 when The Matrix won the second-most awards, all on the strengths of its special effects? Transformers is going to win the second-most awards on Sunday.
Should Win: The empty whoosh of the air gun, the agonizing hollow clanking of the tentpoles in the HVAC system at the hotel: No Country for Old Men had a wealth of memorable sound effects, which I'm pretty sure this category is supposed to honor.
Better Not Win: I abstain. I could go with any of the nominees.

Sound Mixing
Will Win: Robots. That are giant. Transformers.
Should Win: The entire Bourne series has been unjustly ignored by Oscar, so here's where the sound team behind The Bourne Ultimatum should receive its "series achievement" award.
Better Not Win: I abstain. This is a quality bunch.

Editing
Will Win: Despite the fact that No Country for Old Men will not win Best Picture (see above), this is the kind of award that goes to the Best Picture winner, unless it goes to a whiz-bang action movie. So obviously No Country will win. I think.
Should Win: Let's see some more props for the team behind The Bourne Ultimatum, who have advanced chaotic fight scenes to the point where anything more choppy will induce seasickness.
Better Not Win: I'm not wild about Into the Wild's overreliance on montages.

Makeup
Will Win: There's certainly a lot of makeup in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film.
Should Win: Beautiful Marion Cotillard's transformation into unique-looking Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
Better Not Win: I will not watch that Norbit film.

Best Documentary Feature
Will Win: I have no clue. Will the mainstream non-Iraq documentary win? I haven't seen enough of the nominees to comment on their quality. I'll go with Sicko because people like a good acceptance speech.
Should Win: Of the two I saw, No End in Sight was clearly superior; in fact, it's one of the ten best films of 2007.
Better Not Win: I haven't seen any of the other nominees.

Original Score
Will Win: Can anything beat the typewriter-clacking in Dario Marianelli's Atonement score?
Should Win: I can't say I'd disagree with that choice.
Better Not Win: I shouldn't let my dislike for The Kite Runner influence my opinion of its score, but all I remember about it is vaguely "ethnic" wails.

Original Song
Will Win: "Falling Slowly" from Once just has to be their pick; they insulted it in every other category it deserved.
Should Win: See above.
Better Not Win: The songs in Enchanted fell into three categories: outright parody ("Happy Working Song"), is-it-parody? ("That's How You Know"), and cheeseball slacking by Menken and Schwartz ("So Close").

As for the rest, I haven't seen any nominees, so I'll dispense with the chatter. Here are my completely uninformed predictions.

Foreign Language Film: Katyn
Documentary Short: Salim Baba
Animated Short: Madame Tutli-Putli
Live-Action Short: Tanghi Argentini

So the awards count at the end of the night for fictional films of feature length will be thus:

No Country for Old Men: 5
Transformers: 3
There Will Be Blood: 2
Atonement: 2
Juno: 2
La Vie en Rose: 1
I'm Not There: 1
Ratatouille: 1
Pirates of the Caribbean: 1
Once: 1

It's probably not too late to place your bets in Vegas; tell them goatdog sent you.