2007 Goaties: Stay Tuned for Updates

I couldn't think of anything to say on this blog that others haven't said more eloquently elsewhere, but Heath Ledger's death left me shaken. We've watched him grow from a pretty kid with promise into one of the best actors working, and I'm sad that on Oscar nomination mornings to come, we won't wake up to hear his name listed.

Instead of attempting to write in-depth appreciations of all of my award winners (we saw how well that worked out last year, when I never got around to finishing them), I'm going to post shorter blurbs about them, with the intention of writing less about more films. I'll post them here as I get them done, so check back over the next few days or weeks as I complete them. Recent additions (1/26): Cinematography, Visual Effects

I haven't seen nearly as many films as certain other critics, but I'm faced with the prospect of having to wait until March or later for the chance to see the rest of the award-worthy films. Exactly how good is Lust, Caution? Does Benicio Del Toro give a better lead performance in Things We Lost in the Fire than my pick for Best Actor? I guess I'll find out in March. But for now...

Musical Moment: As a midnight thunderstorm rages outside and Christina Ricci cowers (no longer chained to the radiator) at his feet, Samuel L. Jackson thrashes out the title song of Black Snake Moan on an electric guitar whose overfuzzed tones intermittently turn tinny and metallic when the power flashes on and off. It's the climactic scene in Craig Brewer's deliciously overheated slice of southern-fried ham, and it's about the power of the blues to drive out your demons. Can I get an amen?

Original Song: OK, whereas I think that several of the songs from Once were among the year's best, including the soon-to-be-Oscar-nominated "Falling Slowly" but also the better song "When Your Mind's Made Up," I think that the brilliant "PoP! Goes My Heart" from the deservedly underseen Music and Lyrics deserves mention here. It manages to perfectly parodize 1980s synth-pop while actually being a great example of the music it's picking on. Unfortunately, it's also catchy as hell, and I expect the chorus to be stuck in my head for a few days now.

Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook is getting all the critical raves, but I think he was outshined in Into the Wild by a non-actor named Brian Dierker, a guide and white water rafter who Sean Penn convinced to appear in the film as a middle-aged hippie who trades relationship advice and quiet companionship with Emile Hirsch. Dierker, speaking unscripted lines and guided by one of the best actors alive, brings an easy, unaffected realism to the role; his scenes with Hirsch, who I didn't particularly like, and Keener, who I did, are the best things about the film.

Foreign Language Film: Christian Mungiu's harrowing 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 and running out of the theater.

Original Score: Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood's modernist score for There Will Be Blood was recently disqualified for Oscar, and I'm sure a Goatie is a small consolation prize. His score's shrieking strings and droning chords, like Daniel Day-Lewis's iconic performance and Paul Thomas Anderson's whiz-bang shot compositions, demands to be noticed; it calls attention to itself both as something inseperable from the film it inhabits and as something apart from the film.

Costumes: From Jennifer Garner's J. Jill pastels to Jason Bateman's layered, ratty Soundgarden t-shirts to Michael Cera's bright yellow too-shorts and headbands to Allison Janney's softer side of Sears to J.K. Simmons's worn Carharts, Monique Prudhomme's costumes for Juno work as canny character statements, culminating in Ellen Page's riotous rag-picked ensembles.

Documentary: 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.

Actor: I sure hope there's still room on Daniel Day-Lewis's mantel after awards season is done. As much as I hate to jump on anyone's bandwagon, I can't deny that his performance as avarice personified in There Will Be Blood is such a staggering achievement that calling it one of the greatest male performances of all time doesn't seem so crazy, although I'd rather wait and see how it holds up after a few years.

Visual Effects: As much as I disliked the movie, I can't deny how great 300's visual effects were; it's one of the first films in which the vaguely incorrect feel I usually get from large-scale CGI (e.g., Gladiator, The Golden Compass) was an aid instead of a hindrance: from the giant beasties to the giant Rodrigo Santoro to all those gouts of blood, the general unreality of the effects (which, in fact, looked more "realistic," if that's a useful word here, than anything in The Transformers) added to the comic-book feel of the film. Because there were more visual effects artists listed in the cast than there were Spartans in the battle (or Persians, for that matter), I can't single out any one person's achievement.

Cinematography: Many people (including me, for a long time) think great cinematography is about pretty pictures, but it's really about finding the right images to tell the story. No film did that better this year than 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. Oleg Mutu's wavering handheld camera, so often held in long, shaky, unbroken closeups on Anamaria Marinca's face as she builds the web of half-truths and evasions that will allow her to complete her mission and travels deeper into this film's hell, both gives us special access to Marcina's thoughts and cuts us off from others', adding to the increasing isolation that she feels (and we feel). Highlights (if the definition of "highlight" contains the phrase "made me want to run out of the theater") include the almost-surreal dinner party at Marinca's boyfriend's house and the final dash through Bucharest's labyrinthine, poorly-lit streets.

Earlier: Best Supporting Actress Jennifer Garner
Sooner: I'll get back to you on that
Later: The other 7 categories