Oscar Rant 2005

This is a year of historical milestones. When was the last time a gay cowboy movie was the favorite to win a whole saddlebag full of awards? Never before. When was the last time there was an exact match between the Best Picture and Best Director nominations? 1981. When was the last time an actor-turned-director made a film that garnered as many nominations as George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck? Well, last year, for one. When was the last time the creator of "Walker: Texas Ranger" was nominated for a goddamned thing?

Yes, folks, Paul Haggis, the writer/director of Crash, created "Walker: Texas Ranger." Every year I seem to single out one film that I think bogarted a bunch of undeserved nominations. Last year there were two—Ray and Finding Neverland—and this year it's Crash. You see, it's easy to pick the films you're rooting for, but it's more fun to root against something.

Best Picture
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Crash
Good Night, and Good Luck
Munich

My predictions were decent: I got three, and Crash and Capote took the places of Walk the Line and my foolish pick Memoirs of a Geisha. There's a lot of buzz about how a lot of the acclaim for Brokeback Mountain comes not as a result of its quality but of its subject matter. The argument is that it's a pretty good film being trumpeted by liberals because of its politics. That may very well be true—I don't happen to think it is, because I loved it and I think I loved it not because of what it was about but how it was made, but I might be deluding myself. However, if one wants to level such a charge at a film nominated for Best Picture, a better target is Crash, which isn't even a very good film, but it's much more strident about its politics. That aside, Capote is a bit of a surprise, but Munich is not. Winner: Brokeback Mountain. The other films don't have a gay cowboy's chance in Wyoming.

Director
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Bennett Miller, Capote
Paul Haggis, Crash
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Steven Spielberg, Munich

It's been 24 years since the last time we had an exact match between Picture and Director nominations. There's usually at least one Pedro Almodovar Honorary Nomination for a film that people thought was really good but not quite good enough for Best Picture. This year, everybody thought it would be David Cronenberg for A History of Violence, which I'm conflicted on anyway. Winner: Brokeback Mountain. Remember how confused and sad Ang Lee looked at the 2000 awards, when everyone had told him that his DGA win virtually guaranteed him an Oscar for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but then Steven Soderbergh won instead? The Academy can't bear to make him look that sad again.

Actor
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terrence Howard, Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

When was the last time I didn't have any problems with the Best Actor nominations? 1999. This is a strong group of contenders, and I'm not sure that there's even a front-runner yet. I'm crazy happy that the Academy nominated Terrence Howard, who was the best thing about three subpar films this year. "It's hard out here for a pimp," indeed: he doesn't have a chance, but the nomination is a nice gesture. Strathairn is probably out too, and Ledger (although I'd probably choose him) hasn't bagged any of the major awards yet. Hoffman has a lot of colored plus marks next to his name over at Oscarwatch.com, and I think he's the guy to beat. Winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman, and it's about damned time he won an Oscar.

Supporting Actor
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt, A History of Violence

Paul Giamatti was stunning in... Sideways, which can be the only explanation for his inclusion here. People feel bad: they forgot to nominate him last year, and he's such a sad-looking guy anyway, so let's nominate him for being the best thing about a big flop. And he's gotten a lot of critics' awards, so maybe he'll win. I'd pick Gyllenhaal. Or Clooney. Not William Hurt, the love of whom still mystifies me: although I admit I need to see it again, I think his part in A History of Violence was the worst part of that film. Winner: Paul Giamatti.

Actress
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron, North Country
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

I haven't seen three of these films, and of the two I have seen, Witherspoon was the best, although I was happily surprised by how good Knightley was. But this category features the biggest snub of the awards season: Joan Allen. She was stunning in two films that practically nobody saw, The Upside of Anger and Yes, and she should have gotten some Oscar hardware for Upside (except for the fact that nobody saw it). Winner: Reese Witherspoon.

Supporting Actress
Amy Adams, Junebug
Catherine Keener, Capote
Frances McDormand, North Country
Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

I haven't seen Junebug or North Country, although everyone I know who has seen Junebug raves about the film in general and Adams in particular. It's near the top of my Netflix queue. I think I'll skip North Country. Keener was good in Capote but better in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but Oscar devalues comedy. And when was the last time someone from "Dawson's Creek" received an Oscar nomination? (I promise, I'll get sick of this joke soon.) Michelle Williams almost steals the movie in a few stunning scenes, and she'll get the Oscar. Winner: Michelle Williams.

Adapted Screenplay
Brokeback Mountain, Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
Capote, Dan Futterman
The Constant Gardener, Jeffrey Caine
A History of Violence, Josh Olson
Munich, Tony Kushner and Eric Roth

Ah, here's the sop thrown to A History of Violence. I should have expected this. I'm reading the graphic novel it was based on, and I need to give props to Josh Olson, who changed it dramatically and improved on it in every way possible. Middling actor Dan Futterman (I liked him in Shooting Fish, and haven't really noticed him aside from that) is part of the Capote surprise bandwagon. Is Jeffrey Caine the reason that The Constant Gardener was so disappointing as a thriller? If so, no hardware for him. Winners: Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, Brokeback Mountain.

Original Screenplay
Crash, Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney & Grant Heslov
Match Point, Woody Allen
The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach
Syriana, Stephen Gaghan

It seems odd to nominate Crash for its worst aspect, the screenplay. Those actors struggled mightily, and some of them succeeded in escaping it, but it was definitely the low point of the film. Critics' darling The Squid and the Whale strikes me as one of the most overpraised films of the award season; it was pretty darned good, but not that good. I haven't seen Woody's comeback, and Gaghan's screenplay tried to cover too much ground. Winners: George Clooney & Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck.

Cinematography
Batman Begins, Wally Pfister
Brokeback Mountain, Rodrigo Prieto
Good Night, and Good Luck, Robert Elswit
Memoirs of a Geisha, Dion Beebe
The New World, Emmanuel Lubezki

I haven't seen The New World, but I'm reasonably sure that it has the best cinematography of the year. You can count on Malick's films for that, at least. But there's a special attraction for well-done black-and-white cinematography, and Robert Elswit made the somewhat stagey set of Good Night come alive (the living clouds of smoke helped). Winner: Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck.

Art Direction
Good Night, and Good Luck
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Pride & Prejudice

I always feel like a fumbling idiot when I try to talk about such things as art direction and set decoration. Let me say that I loved the way Pride & Prejudice's sets didn't feel like Masterpiece Theater sets; they were alive and vibrant. Winner: Pride & Prejudice.

Costume Design
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride & Prejudice
Walk the Line

Am I the only one saying huh? about Walk the Line being nominated in this category? There's no creativity involved in putting in a DVD and finding out what Johnny Cash used to wear. I am biased in favor of costuming that requires some historical research (Pride & Prejudice) or some weirdness (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Winner: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Foreign Film
Don’t Tell (Italy)
Joyeux Noel (France)
Paradise Now (Palestine)
Sophie Scholl - The Final Days (Germany)
Tsotsi (South Africa)

The only film I've even heard of is Paradise Now, so I guess I'm picking it. Too bad The Best of Youth, the best film released in American theaters last year, wasn't eligible, since it started life as an Italian miniseries. Winner: Paradise Now.

Animated Feature
Corpse Bride
Howl’s Moving Castle
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Three good picks! No Madagascar or Robots or Chicken Little! In the era of Pixar and 3D animation, we have two claymation films and one traditionally animated film. Bravo, Oscar! Winner: Corpse Bride.

Documentary Feature
Darwin’s Nightmare
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
March of the Penguins
Murderball
Street Fight

I'm boycotting this category because they failed to even shortlist Grizzly Man.

Editing
Cinderella Man
The Constant Gardener
Crash
Munich
Walk the Line

No editing nomination for Brokeback Mountain, which seems odd, just because Best Picture frontrunners usually get a nomination here. When was the last time— oh, fine, it was 1980's Ordinary People. Winner: Munich.

Makeup
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Cinderella Man
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith

I'm baffled by these nominations. Just from the ads for, say, Transamerica, I can tell that there were better makeup jobs out there. And what about Harry Potter? Or Land of the Dead? Winner: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, I guess.

Sound Editing
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
War of the Worlds

What I don't know about sound mixing could fill an introductory course. Winner: King Kong.

Sound Mixing
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
King Kong
Memoirs of a Geisha
Walk the Line
War of the Worlds

See comments for Sound Editing. Winner: King Kong.

Visual Effects
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
King Kong
War of the Worlds

Batman Begins deserved a nomination for the Scarecrow's mask alone. Winner: King Kong.

Original Score
Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla
The Constant Gardener, Alberto Iglesias
Memoirs of a Geisha, John Williams
Munich, John Williams
Pride & Prejudice, Dario Marianelli

The only score that I remember from last year is Gustavo Santaolalla's for Brokeback Mountain, which a lot of people found silly but I liked. It didn't really interfere with the film, which is sometimes all I ask. Winner: Brokeback Mountain.

Original Song
“In the Deep” from Crash, performed by Kathleen “Bird” York
“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle & Flow, performed by Terrence Howard
“Travelin’ Thru” from Transamerica, performed by Dolly Parton

My only hope is that they get some distinguished British elder statesman, like Ian McKellan, to do this category. I want to hear him say "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." Oh, and I hope they get Antonio Banderas to sing all of the songs, badly. If you're going to muck things up, do it in a spectacular manner. Winner: "Travelin' Thru".

Documentary Short
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club
God Sleeps in Rwanda
The Mushroom Club
A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin

For lack of a Holocaust documentary, we have a film about Rwanda. Winner: God Sleeps in Rwanda.

Animated Short
Badgered
The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
9
One Man Band

And the Oscar goes to... the Pixar film! I haven't seen it. I don't need to. Winner: One Man Band.

Live Action Short Film
Ausreisser (The Runaway)
Cashback
The Last Farm
Our Time Is Up
Six Shooter

It is my sad duty to report that my short film Polyspastophobia was not done in time to be submitted for nomination. However, I expect to win next year.

And that's it. I reserve the right to change my predictions before the ceremony.

Safety Switch

In the lower right corner of this image, you'll see a small white slide switch. When you're done recording on your miniDV tape, you slide that little switch over to the side that says "SAVE."

This will keep you from accidentally erasing 45 minutes worth of footage from your most difficult shooting day. It will save you the trouble and expense of flying one of your actors in from Arizona for a weekend to reshoot it. It will protect you from that awful feeling of having wasted your time and the time of those who volunteered to help you.

Update: The image above is the actual tape that I accidentally erased. Join me in cursing it. Because, you know, it's the tape's fault, not mine.

End of an Era

Well, that was fun. I just got word that the weekly paper I've been writing reviews for is kaput. Not that I got a chance to write very many reviews for them (which was a source of constant frustration), but it's too bad I won't get a chance to do any more. I guess this means that if Roger Ebert retires, I'm free to take over for him, now that I don't have a scheduling conflict.

Pen-Ek Interview

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, the director of the wondrous Last Life in the Universe, is interviewed in the Bangkok Post about his new film, Invisible Waves.

I really loved Last Life (it's #4 on my top ten list for 2004), and Pen-Ek says "I like Last Life a lot but I'm not totally happy with it, so with Asano [Tadanobu, the star of Last Life] and Chris [Doyle, the most brilliant cinematographer working today] back on board I thought we all could improve what we did in our previous effort." This film is at the top of my must-see list, whenever they get around to releasing it in the United States.

Metafilter

Metafilter.com is a link-trading and discussion site I frequent. Sometimes I attempt to make posts that will elicit admiring comments because, well, I want these people I've never met to like me.

This one is about the Detroit Riot of 1863, which nobody ever hears of because of the much larger riot that took place in New York City a few months later. I wrote an award-winning paper about it in grad school.

This one is about the Toledo War of 1835, when Michigan decided to invade Toledo to keep Ohio from stealing it from them. (The area was given to Michigan Territory by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.) My friend Duncan wrote a paper about it in grad school.

This one is about the guy who invented the equals sign. Yep.

This one is about the theft of "the Mona Lisa of sculpture," Benvenuto Cellini's salt cellar, which was recently recovered. I learned about this in a book written by my favorite art historian.

And this one is about the Brasher Doubloon, the most valuable American coin ever minted. I learned about it while researching a writeup for the 1947 film of the same name, which we were going to show at my theater.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled interesting reading.

Poor Horace Greeley

We take a break from the regularly scheduled work I'm supposed to be doing to present you with the sad tale of Horace Greeley's campaign for president in 1872. Greeley, a prominent newspaper editor who spent most of the Civil War denouncing Democrats as traitors and secessionists, was chosen by a splinter group of Republicans to run against Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. Surprisingly, the Democrats backed Greeley too, as their main objective was to get Grant out of office.

Grant didn't take part in much stump-speaking (politicians at the time still thought it degrading to beg for votes), but his campaign managers and other Republicans systematically destroyed the aging curmudgeon Greeley. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast lampooned Greeley as a hopeless incompetent, a pumpkin-headed and nearsighted clown. His cartoons depicted Greeley shaking hands with a rebel who has just shot a Union soldier, shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth across Lincoln's grave, and turning over weeping black children to KKK riders after a lynching.

Even Livingston, of Stanley and Livingston fame, got in on the action. Stanley, filling Livingston in on what he had missed while wandering in Africa, told him about Greeley's Democratic support, to which Livingston replied, "You have told me stupendous things, and with a confiding simplicity I was swallowing them peacefully down; but there is a limit to all things, and when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become a Democratic candidate I will be hanged if I believe it."

At first Greeley kept up his good spirits, saying "While there are doubts as to my fitness for president, nobody seems to deny that I would make a capital beaten candidate." But his wife died just before the election, and Greeley said "I am not dead, but I wish I were." When he lost in a landslide, he said "I was the worst beaten man who ever ran for high office."

"Utterly ruined beyond hope, I desire, before the night closes its jaws on me forever, to say that, though my running for president has placed me where I am, it is not the cause for my ruin."

(Source: Paul S. Boller, Presidential Campaigns, 1985.)

First Thoughts on Editing My Movie

Some of you may remember that I am making a movie. Yesterday, I started transferring my footage to my new external hard drive, courtesy of my favorite art historian and her mother, and doing a little bit of editing.

As expected, there were problems. We couldn't find the right cable from the camera to her computer. Then Final Cut locked up every time I tried to transfer the footage, so I ended up using iMovie to do it. Jesus Christ, iMovie is really freaking easy. All you do is hit "import" and it plays your tape, transfering the footage to your hard disk as it plays. It knows where the cuts are, and logs each shot as a separate file automatically. Why can't Final Cut be so easy? Oh, right, they have to justify the price you're paying, and part of that justification is when you figure out how to do it, you're part of an elite group.

Anyway, after I got one tape transfered, I started editing on Final Cut. Thankfully, it will at least let me edit. I started with a scene in the evil crane woman's apartment. It's too dark, which is really funny, since I'm the movie reviewer who always yells "just because you don't have to light doesn't mean you shouldn't" at filmmakers shooting on digital, and then I make an underlit film.

I got this one tiny sequence done relatively quickly. I'm still not done shooting, and there's a lot to be done by people more computer-savvy than I am, and I still don't know whether the final film will be any good. But it sure has been a learning experience. I'll keep you posted.

Zombie Haiku

It's been a while since my last post, and you're probably thinking, "Wow, that Mike guy must be working really hard!" Well, you're right: I've been working hard writing zombie haiku. My friend Brian, webmaster of Zombierama.com, has decided to solicit zombie haiku from his readers. Here are my efforts. Please feel free to add your own zombie haiku in the comments; if it's ok with you (please indicate if it's not), Brian will add them to his zombie haiku page as soon as he gets done making it.

I felt your lips, teeth
brush against my shoulderblade,
but it was not love.

Playing fetch with Spot
is dangerous when the bones
he brings back still move.

Wading, the fish nip
and nibble off my ankles.
Oh, God! Zombie fish!

Zombie Bruce Springsteen
was not "Born to Run"; no, he
was born to eat brains.

And a limerick:

There once was a ravenous zombie
who started chomping on me.
He caused me some pains
as he chewed on my brains
and got blood on my Abercrombie.