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Up The Academy: Screengrab Salutes The All-Time Best & Worst Best Picture Winners (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Forget Christmas: for movie geeks, the period from New Year’s Eve to the third week in February is truly the most wonderful time of the year, from the endless Best of Lists and Golden Globes straight through the Saggies and Spirit Awards to the reddest carpet of all...Mama Oscar.

As per recently made-up tradition, the Screengrab will be live-blogging the Academy Awards this coming Sunday...and while we’re on the subject, can we please call a moratorium on bitching about the length of the show? Do sports fans cry every year about the length of the Super Bowl? Do they squeeze all the punt returns into a 65-second medley to streamline the running time? NO! If you’re a sports fan, you want the Super Bowl to last all day. And if you’re NOT a sports fan, then why the hell are you even watching? Just check out the highlights on the news and leave the rest of us in peace, ferchrissakes!

Sorry...just had to vent. And, if you think about it, strong opinions about trivial nonsense is pretty much the lifeblood of Oscar season. Arguments about who deserved to win and who got robbed have livened up the annual ceremony ever since Sunrise totally stole Best Unique and Artistic Production from Chang in 1928.

Sadly, our recent calls to reinstate the Best Unique and Artistic Production category have fallen on deaf ears (sorry, Synechdoche, New York), but there’s plenty more Oscar opining ahead as we here at the Screengrab salute (and condemn) THE BEST (AND WORST) BEST PICTURES OF ALL TIME!

THE BEST:

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

This wasn't supposed to happen. While they might win the occasional token screenplay award (as they did for Fargo), the Coen Brothers were never going to be respectable and mainstream enough to take home the top Oscar honors. Perhaps emboldened by their belated coronation of Martin Scorsese, however, the Academy saw fit to award this dark, ultra-violent neo-noir with the coveted Best Picture prize. Maybe the literary pedigree helped – after all, even Oprah had given her seal of approval to Cormac McCarthy, author of the novel No Country for Old Men. The film is certainly the most faithful adaptation of the book imaginable, and yet it couldn't be anything other than a Coen Brothers movie. Much of McCarthy's story unfolds through the sort of sardonic, deadpan dialogue that's always been right in the Coens' wheelhouse, and the more action-oriented scenes are rendered with such an uncanny grasp of McCarthy's evocative and precise geography, readers of the book may experience severe déjà vu. Javier Bardem, himself an Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor, is a uniquely malevolent presence as the killing machine Chigurh. While there are several suspense sequences destined for the Coens greatest hits reel (notably an attack dog's pursuit of Josh Brolin's doomed Marlboro Man into the Rio Grande, and a deadly game of 'musical rooms' at a rundown motel), in its final lyrical moments, No Country for Old Men transcends genre and lays waste to any notion of the Coens as the sniggering egghead pranksters of cinema.

THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)

In truth, The Last Emperor is kind of a silly movie: its take on China's 20th century political landscape is kind of vacuous and unenlightening, and it centers around an appropriately blank protagonist played by a totally undistinguished actor who seems to have been cast only because his last name, almost too conveniently, was "Lone." But it's also an apex of Bernardo Bertolucci's unhinged formalism (or, more accurately, of Vittorio Storaro's insane but effective color schemes), and as a lush, consistently gorgeous aesthetic exercise, it's pretty untoppable. If the Academy wanted pretty and inoffensively political, at least they got one out of two.

THE DEER HUNTER (1978)

Michael Cimino’s reputation was so tarnished by the epic financial and critical failure of 1980’s (unjustly vilified) Heaven’s Gate that it’s almost impossible to watch his preceding film, 1978’s The Deer Hunter, without thinking about the once-promising director’s impending fall from grace. Purely on its own merits, however, Cimino’s Best Picture winner holds up remarkably well as a marriage of New Hollywood authenticity and Old Hollywood scope, and as a portrait of not only the Vietnam War’s toll on those who fought it, but of war’s careless misuse of human life, the latter point epitomized by the iconic Russian Roulette finale involving Christopher Walken’s battle-scarred vet. Shot by Vilmos Zsigmond with a haunting, melancholic loveliness that’s at odds with much of the material’s harrowing grimness, Cimino’s film (partially indebted to the work of Visconti) plays like a messy, sprawling novel, intimately evoking its characters’ Russian heritage and Pennsylvania steel town roots, poignantly utilizing rituals and ceremonies to express their bonds of love and friendship, and ably casting its tale as emblematic of America’s post-Vietnam moral and emotional disarray.

OLIVER! (1968)

This adaptation of Lionel Bart's stage musical version of Oliver Twist is one of those Oscar winners that isn't especially well-remembered these days and may be regarded as a fluky choice at best, which is unfair. It represents a late show of mastery by the great British director Carol Reed, who had suffered through a lousy decade since his last successful production, the 1959 Our Man in Havana. Working with a first-rate cast that includes Ron Moody as Fagin, Shani Wallis as Nancy, and non-singing (thank God) Oliver Reed as Bill Sikes, Carol Reed managed to use the rather undistinguished musical as a way to create a stylized version of the Dickens story, utilizing the energy and wit of the performers and his own cinematic brio to compensate for the limitations of Bart's songs. The movie also has its place in history for marking the last moment when Hollywood felt comfortable declaring that an all-ages movie was the best of the year; the next year, the Best Picture award would go to the adults-only Midnight Cowboy.

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)

There’s a case to be made that David Lean’s early, more modestly sized efforts were superior to his later epics, though if the legendary auteur ultimately sacrificed emotional and dramatic tautness in favor of marathon distension, it occurred at some point after 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, a peerless example of larger-than-life filmmaking. As the British military commander who, in a Japanese POW camp during WWII, spearheads the construction of a bridge that his British compatriots plan on destroying, Alec Guinness brilliantly personifies the destructive folly of pride. His army officer, determined to complete the bridge as a means of proving British cultural/political supremacy, is opposed by Sessue Hayakawa’s Japanese colonel, driven to break his Western prisoners’ spirits and terrified that the British will humiliate his own men (and nation) by successfully completing their bridge-building task. Their one-on-one conflict is enlivened, rather than dwarfed, by Lean’s grand direction, culminating in a finale that’s memorable not just for its scale, but for the unforgettable look of sudden awareness, and regret, on Guinness’ face.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six & Seven

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Vadim Rizov, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent

DVD Digest for January 27, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a whole bunch of late-summer/early-fall releases are coming on DVD to help soothe the midwinter moviegoing blues.

Of this week’s bumper crop of recent theatrical releases coming to DVD, the most noteworthy is Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Genius Products, also Blu-Ray), which became the Woodman’s biggest hit in years due in no small part to the promise of hot Penelope Cruz-on-Scarlett Johansson action. That it was also a welcome change of scenery for the filmmaker- shooting for the first time in Spain- helped matters somewhat as well. It’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t seen it yet- come for the sexy stuff, stay for the memorable performances by Oscar nominee Cruz, Javier Bardem playing a character 180 degrees removed from his Anton Chigurh, and the ever-dependable Rebecca Hall.

Also this week, Warner unleashes the cops’n’robbers trifecta of Edward Norton and Colin Farrell in Pride and Glory (also Blu-Ray), Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace (also Blu-Ray), and Guy Ritchie’s Rocknrolla (also Blu-Ray). Other releases include: Rainn Wilson in The Rocker (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Kirk Cameron’s inspirational melodrama Fireproof (Sony), the Iraq War drama The Lucky Ones (Lionsgate); Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (Image), a docuymentary about the filmmaker’s controversial court case; the French thriller Tell No One (MPI); the babes-and-binge-drinking comedy College (Fox); and a pair of direct-to-DVD animated releases, Hulk Vs. (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) and Open Season 2 (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s selection of classics coming to DVD is highlighted by MGM’s The Pink Panther Film Collection (MGM), which includes all of the films including a new pressing of the original, also available in separately as The Pink Panther (1963) Collector’s Edition (MGM, also Blu-Ray). There’s also The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection (MGM), a nine-disc set of the televised Pink Panther shorts. All of this Pink Panther news might be happier if it didn’t portend the release of the second crappy remake starring Steve Martin, but what can you do. Also this week: Mary Poppins 45th Anniversary Edition (Disney).

Finally, the big Blu-Ray only news this week is the release of Universal’s The Bourne Collection, which includes all three theatrical features (sorry, no Richard Chamberlain TV movie), along with a raft of extras. Also this week: Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday Director’s Cut (Warner), the college band drama Drumline Special Edition (Fox), and the annual release of Groundhog Day (Sony).

Andrew Osborne's Top Ten Movies of 2008 (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 22:46:00 GMT

6. THE WACKNESS

Thoughtful, well-made coming-of-age stories are usually popular, and weed has been making a cinematic comeback lately, so I’m not exactly sure why The Wackness in general and Josh Peck’s charming turn as wistful pot dealer Luke Shapiro didn’t make more of a splash in 2008. Writer/director Jonathan Levine’s evocation of Manhattan circa 1994 feels as specific and lived-in as Ben Braddock’s Pasadena or Lloyd Dobler’s Washington suburb, and it’s hard to think of a better first-love interest than Olivia Thirlby. I posted a full review of the movie back in June when it first charmed me at the Provincetown Film Festival, so rather than repeat all that praise, I’ll just paraphrase Thirlby’s character and say the film wound up on my Top Ten because, in a difficult year, it reminded me to look at the dopeness and not just the wackness.

7. FULL BATTLE RATTLE

Full Battle Rattle is a documentary by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber about a simulated Iraqi province in California’s Mojave desert, populated by Iraqi-American citizens and U.S. Army “insurgents” in a full-immersion training scenario where soldiers practice both their combat and diplomacy skills before heading off to the real war in Iraq. At first, it’s funny to watch battles interrupted by visits from the ice cream man as the military combines role-playing and stagecraft to create what seems like a strange, gorey theme park or game show (complete with graphically wounded mannequin “casualties,” designed to prepare fledgling medics for the realities of war). But it’s those harsh realities waiting for the participants beyond all the play-acting that provide the film with its emotional core, as we come to know the various players, including an Iraqi immigrant terrified of being deported and an American combat vet who admits, tellingly, that after returning from a tour of duty, it takes him several days to start viewing his Iraqi colleagues as people again (as opposed to potential enemies). By the time the simulation ends and the soldiers we’ve come to know say goodbye to their families and ship out to an uncertain future, the lady next to me in the movie theater was openly weeping, and there seemed to be something in my eye as well.

8. IRON MAN

I’ve gone on record about my utter bafflement over the messianic fervor surrounding The Dark Knight, a good but occasionally clunky superhero movie featuring an entertaining performance by a talented actor who died far too young. But I still don’t see why Heath Ledger’s Brad Dourif-ian performance as The Joker is considered groundbreaking or revelatory: compare its evocation of evil to Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet and then get back to me. And I’m still not really sure why Batman’s deliberations over civil liberties vs. public safety are especially more profound than Iron Man’s growing awareness of the consequences of war profiteering, except that Jon Favreau’s comic book adaptation takes itself far less seriously while delivering its tightly paced (but not over-written) action payload. Robert Downey Jr.’s performance is nowhere near as flashy or iconic as Ledger’s, of course – a typical downside of playing the good guy – but it’s miles ahead of Christian Bale’s stiff-in-a-suit Caped Crusader. Downey is fun and fascinating to watch, infusing a potentially one-dimensional role with the gravity and humanity of hard-won experience, as well as the humility of a man all too aware he could very easily have shared Ledger’s fate.

9. IN BRUGES

Who is this incredibly engaging, charismatic actor named Colin Farrell, and why haven’t I seen him on the big screen before now? Oh, sure, I’m familiar with his doppelganger: that brooding, constipated Irish guy with the same name who kept threatening to be the next big thing for several years, but never quite arrived thanks to performances in a succession of mezzo-mezzo movies that never quite connected with audiences. But the Farrell who plays the guilt-ridden hit man Ray in Martin McDonagh’s funny, suspenseful crime drama In Bruges is a true movie star, well-paired with Brendan Gleeson as the soulful mentor waiting for the other shoe to drop in the titular Belgian town after a botched assignment brings down the wrath of crime boss Ralph Fiennes (who likewise has never been quite so compelling on screen). The beautiful but claustrophobic confines of the distinctive setting and the pervasive undertow of regret gives Bruges a richer flavor than, say, a fun but ultimately disposable Guy Ritchie offering like RockNRolla, even if McDonagh’s film isn’t ultimately all that much more than the sum of its high quality parts.

10. VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

Until three seconds ago, I was planning to include Slumdog Millionaire in the final slot of this list, if only for the energy and scope of Danny Boyle’s storytelling mojo. But as I started to think and write about it, I realized the film as a whole simply left me cold. On the other hand, there was no lack of heat in Woody Allen’s latest comeback film, which is possibly why I have warmer memories of it. Penelope Cruz's performance as the hot-blooded trois in the ménage between Scarlett Johansson’s feckless American tourist and Javier Bardem’s Spanish art stud is probably better than the movie itself, but Allen still has some interesting things to say about the chimerical nature of love, the conflicting desires of the brain, heart and libido and the way smart people consistently outsmart themselves by refusing to acknowledge what they really want, even when they somehow manage to find it. (And, of course, the fact the movie unfolds against a backdrop of gorgeous Spanish locations doesn’t hurt, either.)

Honorable Mention: Wellness, Goliath, Turn the River, American Teen, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Tell No One, Ghost Town, Burn After Reading, The Bank Job, RockNRolla, Role Models, Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, Doubt

Worst Movies I Actually Saw:
Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, What Just Happened?

Worst Movie I Didn’t See:
An American Carol

Most Overrated:
The Dark Knight (see above)

Most Overcriticized:
The Happening

Respected More Than Liked:
Synechdoche

TOP TV:
The Wire
Mad Men
The Amazing Race
The Daily Show & The Colbert Report
Survivor: Micronesia & Gabon
Breaking Bad
The Soup
Everybody Hates Chris
Recount
Generation Kill
Project Runway
True Blood

2008 SOUNDTRACK
“No One” – Alicia Keyes
“Pretty Blue” – Moonflower
“Paper Planes” – M.I.A.
“Wichita Lineman” – Glen Campbell
“Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” – Beyonce
“Sex Changes” – The Dresden Dolls
“Shoot the Runner” – Kasabian
“Still Alive” – GLaDOS
“Sax Rohmer, Pt. 1” – The Mountain Goats
“M79” – Vampire Weekend
“I Am Commando” – The NorthAtom
“I’m Good. I’m Gone” – Lykke Li
“Belleville Rendezvous” – The Triplets of Belleville (Soundtrack)
“Happy Days Are Here Again” – Barbara Streisand

Click Here For Part One

Screengrab Presents: Cinema's Greatest Comebacks (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:00 GMT

“Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years,” implored L.L. Cool J (shortly before his mother told him to knock us unconscious), raising an interesting point in the endless Hollywood parlor game of career perception: after all, the recent Golden Globe nominations for Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem would seem to mark Vicky Cristina Barcelona as a return to form for Woody Allen...but what then to make of the fact that Match Point, Sweet & Lowdown, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Crimes & Misdemeanors, etc. etc. were all considered phoenix-like returns to form in the Woodman’s prolific (and sometimes crappy) oeuvre? How many times can a person come back if they never really go away?

Sometimes, though (as in the case of pugilist/thespian Mickey Rourke), the weepy entertainment magazine profiles and welcome home parties seem entirely appropriate. After all, the one-time heartthrob used to be a bona fide movie star (and light bondage icon) thanks to hits like Diner and 9 ½ Weeks, and though he’s done interesting work since then in films like Buffalo '66 and Spun, among others, there’s a big difference between co-starring with Eric Roberts and generating Oscar buzz.

Sure, Rourke essentially torpedoed his own career by stomping around like the Pope of Douchebag Village for years and years...but as the auto and financial industries have shown, everybody gets a second chance in America, no matter how bad you fuck up (unless, of course, you’re poor).

So, in honor of this week’s release of The Wrestler, we here at The Screengrab hereby salute...THE GREATEST COMEBACKS OF ALL TIME!

(And stay tuned next week as we ask Santa for THE COMEBACKS WE’D MOST LIKE TO SEE!)

JACK NICHOLSON in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983)

Though you could be forgiven for not believing it, there was a stretch there where it looked touch and go for the continued health of Jack Nicholson's continued career and reputation. After winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Nicholson jumped head first into a series of high-profile ventures -- The Missouri Breaks, Goin' South (which he also directed), The Postman Always Rings Twice, and, yes, friends, The Shining, which did disappointing box office and was badly mauled by most reviewers. However many fans it's racked up in the years since, the reaction to his performance in The Shining was typical: the conventional wisdom was quickly turning towards the direction that a man once capable of sensitive work had turned into an eyeball-rolling self-parodist, and in a Playboy interview published a year before his 1982 death, the gentle-spirited Henry Fonda criticized Nicholson for having thrown away his career and disgracing his profession. The actor's critical reputation began to recover around the time the magazine hit the stands, starting with his supporting performance in Reds and then with his starring role in the little-seen The Border, but it was Terms of Endearment that set the tone for Nicholson's successful reinvention of himself as a post-counterculture elder statesman who styled himself as a broad but soulful entertainer, someone who was still prone to go over the top but could usually make you love him for it. It could be argued that Nicholson lost something beautiful in the process -- as Anthony Lane later wrote, Nicholson rose to stardom as a man who seemed deeply pained by the state of the world, and sustained his stardom into old age by turning into someone who seemed very pleased with himself -- but it was still an audacious pull back from the career abyss. The role of the pear-shaped horndog Garrett Breedlove won him a second Academy Award, this time for Best Supporting Actor, neatly bookending his time of trouble. It also established that he was smarter than Burt Reynolds, who famously turned the role down to honor his commitment to Hal Needham to do Stroker Ace, which in career terms was like honoring his commitment to show up in front of the firing squad at dawn with a cigarette in his mouth and the blindfold in place.

AL PACINO in SEA OF LOVE (1989)

This entertaining, twisty little thriller made the leap to event status on the strength of its announcement that Pacino had returned to functionability. Pacino had entered into a nightmarishly sustained slump after The Godfather, Part II and Dog Day Afternoon, starring in a series of movies that rank among the very worst of their time (Bobby Deerfield, Revolution), films so thoroughly mediocre and tinny that it was impossible to imagine what appeal they'd ever had for him (...And Justice for All, Author! Author!), as well as Cruising and Scarface, which, for whatever cult status they would come to enjoy, earned him more in bad press at the time than they did in good reviews or box office. Compared to some of those misfires, the relative modesty of Sea of Love was part of its appeal at the time: it was a relief to see Pacino, returning to the screen, after a four-year absence, in a clever little cop opera that gave him a chance to look worn-down and middle-aged but not romantically implausible, enjoying the Richard Price-scripted byplay with such solid pros as John Goodman and Richard Jenkins, and -- an eternal Pacino specialty -- demonstrating that he wasn't afraid to pitch on-screen woo with an actress (Ellen Barkin) who looked as if she could fold him up and stick him in her purse. His spirit refreshed, Pacino was back a year later as Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy, happily gnawing the last traces of meat from the hambone.

CHRISTOPHER LEE in THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001) & STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)

Lee has scarcely stopped working since entering movies in the late 1940s, but his ghettoized stardom in horror movies failed to translate into mainstream screen prominence, and as the decades went by, he seemed most likely to appear in high-profile pictures when the director was someone like Joe Dante or Tim Burton, who'd cut his teeth on Hammer films and felt an affectionate debt of gratitude to the old gent. Which is nice, but self-paroding cameos in Gremlins 2 and Sleepy Hollow do not a comeback make. The first real sign in years that the then-78-year-old Lee still had strapping reserves of energy going to waste came when he turned up in the 2000 BBC version of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, where he was dashingly costumed and looked and moved like a man twenty years younger. But the cherries on top of his career came with his villainous performances as Rings' malignant sorcerer Saruman and the abuser of the Force Lord Dooku -- subtle, George -- which, by drawing on memories of his screen past even as they threaded him into the texture of the two biggest multi-part fantasy series of the turn of the century, honored his career while tying it up with a handsome bow. After which, Lee being Lee, he called his agent and went back to work.

DENNIS HOPPER & DEAN STOCKWELL in BLUE VELVET (1986)

For most of his career, Hopper had led the league in blackballings, being driven out of the acting profession by the director Henry Hathaway, then remaking himself as a director and returning in glory with the 1969 Easy Rider. The box office success of that movie was so bewildering to the studios that Hopper was given a big bag with a dollar sign on it and absolute creative freedom to do whatever he wanted for his next movie as director, which resulted in 1971's The Last Movie...and cue blackballing number two. Hopper would spend most of the next fifteen years reeling from his intake of drugs and drink while working on a string of offbeat projects for European and American maverick directors, ranging from Apocalypse Now and Rumble Fish for Coppola and Wim Wenders' The American Friend to Neil Young's Human Highway, Henry Jaglom's Tracks and Orson Welles' unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. His performances in most of them were pretty unsteady; Hopper seemed to have his notion of artistry boiled down to the actor's willingness to do anything, but nobody ever hesitated to hire Dennis Hopper because they were concerned that he might not be crazy enough. He's said that Blue Velvet, one of a string of films he appeared in around 1986 which also includes River's Edge, Hoosiers, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part II, was the first job he'd gotten after getting clean and sober, though he apparently almost talked himself out of it by telling David Lynch that he had to play Frank Booth because he was Frank Booth, after which Lynch considered hiding under the table. It's a measure of how impressed Hollywood was with both Hopper's performance and the sheer feat of rendering himself employable that Entertainment Tonight had a camera installed in Hopper's home when the Academy Award nominees were announced on television so that they could record his reaction, it being a forgone conclusion that his name would be among those read aloud. (It's a measure of just how freaked out Hollywood was by Blue Velvet that the E.T. cameras got to record Hopper's momentary confusion when it turned out that he'd been nominated instead for his work in Hoosiers.) Hopper's long shadow also obscured some of the triumph of his Blue Velvet co-star, one-scene wonder Dean Stockwell, who had also appeared with him in The Last Movie, Tracks, and Human Highway. A child actor back in the 1940s, Stockwell had kept his career going into adulthood, winning the Best Actor award at Cannes for 1959's Compulsion and co-starring with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, and Jason Robards in 1962's Long Day's Journey into Night. He went counterculture and turned his back on Hollywood in the late '60s and '70s, then slowly began creeping back with parts in Paris, Texas and To Live and Die in L.A., as well as Lynch's Dune, which he later told an interviewer was the only role he wanted badly enough to screen test for. (The interviewer next asked if he'd care to explain why he'd wanted it so badly. Stockwell replied that he'd rather not.) But it was his performance in Blue Velvet that made him hot enough that he could quit his second job hustling real estate.

JOHN TRAVOLTA in PULP FICTION (1994)

Travolta may have mixed feelings about having had his career resurrected by Quentin Tarantino, given that he's been known to insist to interviewers that he wasn't that far down the ladder when Pulp Fiction broke -- those Look Who's Talking movies made a lot of darn money, thank you very much! -- but most people who cared knew that Tarantino's dialogue and taste in hair extensions restored cachet and hipness to a star brand that had gotten badly devalued since 1981. Travolta cemented his comeback with Get Shorty, a project that he, yes, turned down before Tarantino called him up and advised him to snap to attention. His filmography since then has more than its fair share of stinkers, but it's better remembered now than it was in 1993 that he really is a terrific actor, and he retains the special dignity of a star who came back after being depicted as having been reduced to tending bar in a '70s nostalgia club on an episode of The Simpsons, an episode on which -- the ultimate indignity! -- he didn't even get to provide his own self-mocking voice. And, lest we forget, he did get to name Harry Knowles's site.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Morning Deal Report: Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci Shacked Up at “Love Ranch”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Taylor Hackford (Ray) is seeking domestic distribution for Love Ranch, “the independently financed drama he directed in which Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci star as the proprietors of Nevada’s first legalized brothel,” Variety reports. “Their characters are loosely based on Joe and Sally Conforte, who ran the Mustang Ranch, where prizefighter Oscar Bonavena was gunned down after being suspected of having an affair with madam Sally.” Aside from a small part in The Good Shepherd, Pesci has been absent from movie screens since 1998’s Lethal Weapon 4.

An unusual contender has emerged as a potential director of The Trial of the Chicago 7 for Dreamworks. Although Steven Spielberg has long considered helming the project himself and Paul Greengrass was also considered, The Hollywood Reporter notes that the “latest well-known director who has met on the project is Ben Stiller; while the discussions for Stiller to helm the film are very much at the exploratory stage, the actor and DreamWorks are mulling whether such a pairing would work for both parties.”

“Javier Bardem will star in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful, the Mexican helmer's first project after his much-publicized bust-up with former screenwriting partner Guillermo Arriaga,” per Variety. “Pic is about a man embroiled in shady dealings who is confronted by a childhood friend, now a policeman.”

Related:
"Chicago Ten": Cartooning the Sixties
The Ten Worst Hairdos in Movie History

Screengrab Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:30:00 GMT

Like Robin William’s out-of-focus actor in Deconstructing Harry, it’s often hard to really see any new Woody Allen film clearly.

For some, the director is a creepy old relic who shot his load in the seventies and eighties, then slept with his not-quite-technically underage not-quite-technically stepdaughter and keeps churning out ever-more-terrible movies to suck whatever money he still can from the wallets of the aging bourgeoisie pseudo-intellectuals willing to pay for his particular brand of nostalgic, non-threatening real estate porn. For others, the Soon-Yi controversy wasn’t as much of a deal-breaker as the sight of Allen snogging comely young co-stars who (to paraphrase Wooderson from Dazed and Confused) kept staying the same age while he kept getting older. Some just never dug his insular, overeducated, upper-class shtick in the first place. And even for die-hard fans, it’s hard not to greet each new Allen film like each new Prince album, hoping against hope that somehow this time it’ll be Purple Rain again, only to be disappointed when it's not (and wondering vaguely why he can’t just save up all his remaining talent for one last masterpiece rather than cranking out so much sub par material).

Like Jacob Marley’s chains, personal and cultural baggage come pre-tangled with Allen’s projects, making it difficult for critics and viewers not to greet them with preconceived notions...and the director’s ritualistic obsession with certain recurring themes, cadences, soundtrack palettes, filmmaking tropes and opening title designs can inspire (usually unfavorable) comparisons between what you’re watching and better earlier work.

So let’s pretend instead for a moment that Vicky Cristina Barcelona was directed by Andrew Bujalski or Joe Swanberg or Jay Duplass or one of those other low blood pressure mumblecore guys, upgrading one of their typically meandering, fitfully amusing Petri dishes of human behavior with better production values, bigger stars and a tighter script. Though trading on certain shopworn but reliable stereotypes about bloodless American yuppies and passionate Spanish artistas, you’d probably find Buswanplass' latest offering a pleasant diversion, a well-paced travelogue of gorgeous locations and philosophical landscapes, from Oviedo and Passeig de Gracia to Rebecca Hall’s Type A realist Vicky and Scarlett Johansson’s fickle, restless Cristina, a spoiled wannabe bohemian who can only define her life in terms of what she doesn’t want. Over the course of the story, Buswanplass demonstrates how the seemingly opposite personalities of American friends Vicky and Cristina ultimately lead to similar frustrations with life and love. But Javier Bardem and (especially) Penelope Cruz are the real stars of the movie, and the best thing about it. Their chemistry as incompatible soul mates is a grown-up refraction of the Vicky/Cristina dynamic, with Bardem cool and sexy as the “reasonable” one and Cruz a total hoot as the hot-blooded free spirit he loves and loathes (and vice-versa).

Do you really need another meandering romantic roundelay sprinkled with New Yorker one-liners, flavored with hints of another director (in this case, Almodovar) and a score free of rock, pop or hip-hop? Well, no, probably not. But as empty summer calories go, Vicky Cristina Barcelona’s probably healthier than another helping of CGI fast-food, and goes down easy like sangria on a long summer weekend.

Related Stories: Take Five - Woody, Penelope Cruz Shows Off Bronzed Woody, Scarlett Johansson-Penelope Cruz Smooch “Least Sexy Thing Ever”

Penelope Cruz Shows Off Bronzed Woody

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Oh, the things you find when you're a pretty young movie star out for a night on the town.

According to World Entertainment News Network, the internet equivalent of magazines only available at grocery store checkout lines, Penelope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson, and Javier Bardem, the harem of talented folks Woody Allen has collected for his latest flick, Vicki Cristina Barcelona, were out for a night on the town in the small Spanish city of Oviedo, when they happened to discover...a bronze statue of Woody Allen. No, they weren't drunk -- or, at least, they weren't just drunk. They'd stumbled upon a statue erected by the Spanish government in 2002 after they awarded the filmmaker with the "Prince of Asturias" award for cultural acheivement. "We took pictures with the sculpture," says Cruz, "hugging it, and gave the pictures to Woody."

Which, if this interview with the Onion's AV Club is any indication, he immediately threw away. Allen, who once was so uncommunicative with the press that he may as well have been a statue himself, tells the AV Club's Scott Tobias that "My walls don't have photographs of me and the actors, I was with, or any of that stuff. If you were in my house in New York, you wouldn't know I was in the movie business. It just looks like a regular house, like the home of a lawyer or something, and I try and keep that disciplined, and just work." The Wood-man also expounds on why he chose to film in spain, what he thinks of the Knicks, and how bad -- to the exact degree -- an actor has to be before he fires him.

Take Five: Bring On the Bad Guys

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

As you may have heard unless you've just gotten back from an alternate dimension with no public relations industry, The Dark Knight opens this weekend, and even our resident skeptic Scott Von Doviak is hailing Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker as one of the pinnacles of big-screen malevolance. Batman is the perfect illustration of the principle that a hero is only as good as his villains; the Clown Prince of Crime is the outstanding member of an unforgettable rogue's gallery that throws the lonely heroism of Bruce Wayne into sharp relief by illustrating the other facets of his personality and demonstrating how terrible he might have been had he not taken the path of righteousness. Indeed, there are any number of genres, from true crime to film noir to serial thrillers to even Shakespearean tragedy, that prove that a story is only as strong as its most detestable character. Crime, as the man once said, is only a left-handed form of human endeavor, and for every enigmatic nihilist like the Joker who simply wants to watch the world burn, there's a figure whose vileness and evil are the result of a good man gone just a little bit bad. If your showing of The Dark Knight is sold out, here's five movies featuring some of our favorite big-screen villains to tide you over until you get to hear Ledger's deadly cackle for yourself.

THE STEPFATHER (1987)

These days, Terry O'Quinn is best known for his portrayal of John Locke, the mysteriously healed castaway from Lost who can be both hero and villain as he attempts to forge a mystical connection with the island. But 20 years ago, when the veteran stage actor first came to the attention of the moviegoing public, it was in this smart little thriller about a man so obsessed with having the perfect family that he was willing to kill to get it. His face an affable blank, O'Quinn goes about his father-knows-best routine with barely a harsh word for anything, until something goes wrong. That's when the devil inside him comes up, and he moves quickly from tearing up his tool room to butchering his whole family. O'Quinn's tightly controlled performance here is what makes the movie, and his quiet intensity is what makes it so devastatingly effective when he temporarily forgets the careful fiction he's made of his life and asks, with genuine confusion, "Who am I here?" -- before remembering, and delivering the news to his new wife in an especially brutal way.

THE MINUS MAN (1999)

Though a flawed movie, The Minus Man -- directed by Hampton Fancher, best known for penning the screenplay to Blade Runner -- is also a compelling one, thanks to the strong performance by Owen Wilson as the main character, Vann Siegert. Turning the usual serial killer narrative on its head, The Minus Man presents Siegert as a kind, handome, likable young man who wants to put down roots, to fit in, to be somebody -- but most of all, to help people. The problem is, he thinks that most people are so miserable that the best way to help them is to kill them (gently, of course, with a fast, painless poison). So decent is this mass murderer that his own conscience has to step in occasionally and remind him that what he's doing is wrong, in the person of two imaginary FBI agents who torment him. And so convincing is Wilson in making Vann a likable figure that more than once, the viewer finds himself wishing they would just go away and leave the poor boy alone.

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984)

Great villains don't always have to be grim, sinister, humorless killing machines. Sometimes, as in this delightful neo-pulp sci-fi musical comedy, they can be goofy, pompous, overblown killing machines with the worst fake Italian accents since Chico Marx. Dr. Emilio Lizardo, the nefarious Red Lectroid living in the body of a long-dead rocket scientist, is played in the film by John Lithgow, who hams it up like there's no tomorrow. He sticks electrodes on his toungue, he tortures helpless women with honey, he gives plagiarized inspirational speeches to his handful of followers, and he deliberately mispronounces the names of his underlings -- and he has a hell of a time doing it. Dressed up in cobbled-together bits and pieces of a dozen pulp archetypes, Lithgow gets support from a colossal cast of veteran character actors, including Dan Hedeya, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli, but he outshines them all, investing each one of his often hilarious lines with hooty gravitas.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

Some critics found the character of Anton Chigurh in the Coen Brothers' masterful adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel to be so over-the-top as to read like a cartoonish supervillain. Others, though, found the understated psychopath, played by a preternaturaly detached Javier Bardem in one of the big screen's most memorable haircuts, to carry surprising depth for someone described by another character in the film as "the ultimate bad-ass". The most compelling thing about Chigurh is that, while everyone else perceives him as totally insane, his madness has the impenetrable integrity of the lunatic. To himself, his actions make perfect sense, and the more time we spend around his insanity, the more we begin to understand it: in the chilling scene near the movie's end where he pays a visit to the tragedy-stricken Carla Jean, we know that he's playing his own deranged interpretation of fair with her, and the terror we feel as the tension mounts comes from the fact that we know and she doesn't.

ROCKY III (1982)

Made at the exact moment in time that the Rocky franchise was becoming a laughable self-parody, but Mr. T had yet to do the same, Rocky III, while more or less a disaster in its second half and filled with hokey, ridiculous moments, does manage to give us some of the most thrilling scenes in the series. Why? Because it also gives us the greatest villain in the series: the brutal, granite-hard, contemptous Clubber Lang, a street-fighting brawler who has nothing but loathing for the soft celebrity smooth-talker that Stallone's Rocky Balboa has become. Patterned partly after the young George Foreman, Clubber Lang is a monster in the ring who lives to destroy his opponents and has developed a line of trash-talk so electrifying that it sends the gregarious Rocky into a rage while providing the most quotable dialogue in the whole Rocky series. And though he never showed himself capable of doing more than he does here, Mr. T is stunning: his hostile, spitting hatred of everyone but himself is so exciting to watch that for the film's first hour, it's hard to take your eyes off him.

When Good Directors Go Bad: Goya's Ghosts (2006, Milos Forman)

Paul Clark — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Note: Two weeks ago, I promised that I would be posting my latest Reviews By Request column this afternoon. However, due to circumstances that can best be summed up by the expression “Netflix issues”, I wasn’t able to obtain a copy of the requested film, Three on a Meathook, in time to view and review it. Apologies to requester “Cameron” and all fans of Reviews by Request. With luck, the review should run next Friday afternoon at the usual time.

Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to attend a talk given by director Milos Forman at Columbus’ Wexner Center for the Arts. The talk followed a screening of Forman’s first American film, Taking Off, and as Forman addressed the crowd, I marveled at how much his personality was reflected in his films. As he spoke, I sensed kindness, generosity of spirit, and a tendency to be amused by the possibilities of life. These qualities come through clearly in his best films, most particularly Taking Off, which has equal empathy for both sides of the generation gap, and Amadeus, which makes Mozart human-sized while giving his “murderer” Salieri a fair shake. However, none of these traits are apparent when one watches Forman’s most recent film, Goya’s Ghosts, an uncharacteristically dour and lifeless film from a filmmaker to whom one wouldn’t normally apply such terms.

From the 1980s onward, Forman has specialized in giving period pieces and biopics a unique flavor that’s a far cry from the extreme reverence afforded most titles in the genre. Look at the way he transformed the potentially tawdry story of Hustler founder Larry Flynt into a seriocomic tale of a most unlikely spokesperson for freedom of speech. Or look at Valmont, a perfectly fine take on Les Liaisons Dangereuses that feels almost humanistic, and which suffered greatly in comparison to Stephen Frears’ earlier version of the material. Forman’s work has always been distinguished by its unconventional point of view, and it was tantalizing to imagine what he would make of the life of Francisco Goya.

It helped that, like Mozart, Larry Flynt, and Andy Kaufman, Goya had a unique life worth recounting in cinematic form. Goya rose to prominence as a painter to Spain’s ruling class, eventually rising to the rank of First Court Painter to King Charles IV. As he grew older, his work became darker and more sinister, a development that coincided with the onset of deafness and a subsequent physical and mental breakdown. After Napoleon’s army invaded Spain, Goya’s work depicted the savagery of war and the internal conflicts of his homeland, especially in his series called Black Paintings and a group of prints referred to as Disasters. But no matter who was in power, Goya’s had an antiauthoritarian streak, something that’s just as apparent in his surprisingly unflattering portraits of the royal family as it is in his macabre portrayals of the wars that consumed his homeland. It was this combination of genius and mischievousness that made Goya an ideal subject for a Milos Forman film.

Unfortunately, there are very few traces of this Goya in Goya’s Ghosts. Oh, Forman’s version of Goya (played by Stellan Skarsgård) has the occasional tendency to defy authority. However, Forman and co-screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière don’t really bother to examine Goya as a person. In a highly unfortunate miscalculation by the filmmakers, Goya’s Ghosts focuses less on its title character than on his relationship with two fictional characters- the opportunistic Inquisitor Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) and a merchant’s daughter and model named Ines (Natalie Portman, with a bizarre accent). The film is so concerned with this plot that it finds little time for the artist himself, to say nothing of his art.

One big problem is that Forman and Carrière barrel through their story like a rampaging bull, trampling all over anything that might potentially make the film, or the people in it, interesting. Consider an early scene in which Goya unveils his latest portrait of the Queen. As Goya proudly shows off his new work, the royals are somewhat less than impressed by the portrayal of Her Majesty as a frail, unattractive old woman, but Goya himself seems fairly amused by what he’s done. Finally- the Goya we came to see! However, after the King (played by Randy Quaid- yes, really) calls Goya to his chamber, he doesn’t even have time to dress him down before a messenger comes bearing news that the French Revolution has killed the King’s cousin, the French King Louis XVI. Then Forman cuts to a black screen bearing the words, “15 Years Later.” What happened in the mean time? Does Forman even care?

Another question I kept asking myself was “what is this movie about?” Clearly, it’s not about Goya. Perhaps Forman and Carrière saw the primary theme of the movie as the human costs of chaotic times. Ines spends fifteen years as the prisoner of the Inquisition, and during that time is impregnated by Brother Lorenzo, who sends the child to an orphanage. After the Inquisition turns on him, Lorenzo reveals himself not to be the true believer he makes himself out to be, but an opportunist who’s quick to join the winning team. It’s a theme that should be close to Forman’s heart, as someone who escaped Czechoslovakia just as the Iron Curtain slammed shut, but if he saw any of himself in the film’s story, I’ll be damned if I can find any evidence of it. In the end, Forman is less concerned with having any kind of stake in the story than with unnecessarily dramatic plot developments like when he reveals that Napoleon’s special counsel in Spain is no other than… Brother Lorenzo! Dun-dun-dunnnnnnnnnn!!!

Adrift in the middle of it all is Goya himself, an almost incidental player in a story that should have been his. As he and his interpreter searched all over for Ines’ long-lost daughter, all I could think of was about what he should have been doing instead. After Napoleon comes to Spain, we barely see Goya holding a brush, even though in actuality this was a prolific period for him. And did you know that Goya was married for almost forty years? You wouldn’t know it from watching Goya’s Ghosts. It’s a shame, because Stellan Skarsgård is quite good as Goya, and it’s easy to imagine him shining in a film that actually took the time to explore the man’s life. I don’t normally try to contrast the film I see to the one I wish I was watching, but Goya’s Ghosts is so dreary and uninspiring- and such a missed opportunity to boot- that I could think of little else.

Cannes Rundown, Day 3: A Christmas Tale and more!

Paul Clark — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:21:00 GMT

Of all the films in competition this year at Cannes, the one that has me most excited was A Christmas Tale, the latest film by the masterful Arnaud Desplechin, whose Kings and Queen was one of the finest films of recent years. Not wanting to have everything spoiled for me before I see it myself, I’ve tried to avoid reading the reviews coming from Cannes too much or too deeply, but based on the little I’ve read my hopes for the film are well-founded. Here’s the one and only Glenn Kenny:

“The creation of such a vivid, individualized group of characters and such a compelling roster of dilemmas is a staggering enough feat. But what makes this movie such a darkly exuberant feast is Desplechin's storytelling. Calling his directorial style "eclectic" simply doesn't do. He has packed himself an almost inexhaustible kit bag of cinematic techniques that he deploys here with an ease that makes his previous film, the incredibly impressive Kings and Queen, look relatively forced. Not only is there not a single dull moment in this two-and-a-half-hour family drama; the film practically teems with ferocious moments, and the novelistic detail offered by Desplechin (here collaborating on the screenplay with longtime writing partner Emmanuel Bourdieu) is always spot-on.”

Thanks, Glenn. Let’s see what others have to say…

Andrew O’Hehir: “Rather than supplying the holiday healing suggested by the title, Desplechin (and co-writer Emmanuel Bourdieu) have constructed a tale as emotionally challenging, fragmentary and unresolved as family life itself. At the press conference after the film, Desplechin said he always aimed to make films that were "strange and personal," and that were singular rather than generic. He has succeeded, perhaps at the cost of demanding too much from his viewers.”

Attaboy, Arnaud! And of course, this being Cannes, several other films screened today as well, though none as intriguing (to me anyway) as Arnaud’s. Let’s check out the rundown:

Time Out London’s Geoff Andrew gives us a second opinion on Three Monkeys- “This fifth feature is arguably the most ambitious film yet from the maker of ‘Uzak’ and ‘Climates’. It has the dry humour, assured pacing, astute psychological insights and sharp sense of moral and dramatic irony that has been conspicuous in all his work, but in many respects the film feels like an expansion upon ‘Climates’, not only in extending that film’s clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment of male-female relationships from a couple to a whole family and its acquaintances, but in exploring the rich potential afforded by digital technology; if you thought Ceylan’s photographer’s eye produced stunning images in ‘Climates’, ‘Three Monkeys’ pushes the envelope still further.”

ScreenDaily’s Lee Marshall weighs in on the out of competition omnibus film Tokyo!- “One out of three ain't bad for this Tokyo-themed directorial three-hander. Whimsical Michel Gondry delivers a thirty-minute segment that resonates, while compatriot Leos Carax spoils an otherwise tasty genre exercise by pressing it into service as a message film. Korea's Bong Joon-ho, meanwhile, delivers an artsy rom-com that is too slight even for its half-hour running time.”

Finally, two opinions on Scarlett and Penelope making out Vicky Cristina Barcelona, a pro from Variety’s Todd McCarthy- “Just as London did when Allen went there for "Match Point," the Catalan capital serves as an evident stimulus for the director. Even if the film provides a strictly tourist's view of the city (a perspective justified by the scenario, in fact), and one just as upscale and heedless of money as ever for Allen, "VCB" is by several degrees more hot-blooded than his usual norm, thanks especially due to the palpable chemistry of Bardem and Cruz in the second half.”

… and a con from (who else?) Jeffrey Wells- “I haven't the time to write any kind of comprehensive review of this sometimes unintentionally comedic, frequently cliche-ridden parody of a Woody Allen film, but it dawned on me early on that it plays exactly like a Ben Stiller Show parody of a typical Allen effort. Allen has been accused of parodying himself for years, but now he's really done it. And it pains me to say this. No one filmmaker has given me greater pleasure for a longer period of time than Allen. I worship the guy, but VCB is agony to sit through at times.”

Ouch. Let’s leave on a high note, shall we? Any positive press for Desplechin’s film counts as good news in my book. So here’s Cineuropa’s Fabien Lemercier on A Christmas Tale- “This exploration of a family – made of viciousness, a tormented past and a painful present – goes straight to the heart, in particular those psychologically unpleasant zones that Desplechin loves to depict. The result is a high-class feature that is both complex and subtle.”

Woohoo!

And Now, Scarlett Johansson Making Out with Penelope Cruz

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Good heavens, has it really been a week since our last pandering Scarlett Johansson post? How time flies! Although Woody Allen has done his best to undermine his own publicists by downplaying the erotic elements of his latest effort, Vicky Christina Barcelona – in response to the rumors of a steamy ménage a trois among Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, the Woodman stoked the flames by telling Entertainment Weekly, “People who come and expect those exaggerations are going to be disappointed” – the marketing team simply isn’t having it. As V.C. Barcelona gets set to launch at the Cannes Film Festival, a teaser chock full o’ steamy smoochin’ has hit the YouTubes. Hit the jump for all the action:

Today’s Reason To Live: The Scarlett Johansson-Penélope Cruz-Javier Bardem Ménage à trois!

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

So, for those of you who haven’t received your Entertainment Weekly Summer Movie Preview yet (or read the news previously at Screengrab), hold onto your freakin’ hats: Woody Allen is filming a new movie in New York City with...deep breath...Larry David!!!

So, yes, despite Scoop and Melinda and Melinda and Hollywood Ending (and, uh, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Small Time Crooks and Celebrity and...well, you get the idea), I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope against hope that America’s favorite bald fuck has the power to resurrect Mr. Konigsberg’s erstwhile comedy mojo.

Oh...and the hot, spicy Johannson-Cruz-Bardem threeway?

Well, they’re all co-starring in Woody Allen’s upcoming summer release, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and because of that, according to the director, “...it got out that there was torrid sex in the picture.” But unfortunately, he cautions, “People who come and expect those exaggerations are going to be disappointed.”

There is, however, “a discretely photographed ménage à trois,” which should at the very least earn the flick a spot on my Netflix list.

Ah, who am I kidding? See you in the popcorn line on August 29th!

George Clooney Leans In, and Other Insights

Phil Nugent — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In a long profile in The New Yorker, Ian Parker calls George Clooney a "Hollywood emperor" and "America’s national flirt," whose "stardom has had an air of earlier, pre-therapeutic times." Parker notes that, while Clooney is often described as the closest thing we have these days to Cary Grant in his prime, "the comparison falters at the level of physical movement. In one’s memory of Grant, he leans back a little. Clooney leans forward. Clooney’s masculinity is ambitious: he is a pickup artist, a flicker of locker-room towels...he is the fellow at the end of the bar, who, on a scale running from James Stewart to Jack Nicholson, has found an enviable midpoint of courteous roguishness." In some of the movies he's made lately that have been closest to his heart, Clooney has also insisted on letting his characters remain alone, in a way that's almost unthinkable for Grant. In both Syriana and Michael Clayton, his love interests wound up on the cutting room floor, a decision that Clooney was all for. Speaking of Michael Clayton, he told Parker, “If he’s loved, then he has a buffer, and somehow it isn’t as awful.”

Clooney comes across as a guy who, having achieved major stardom after many years in the trenches, is intensely aware of his place in the Hollywood pecking order but treats it as a joke, as part of his campaign to be seen as a regular guy. During the buildup to this year's Academy Awards season, he appeared at a Newsweek-sponsored panel discussion where, on behalf of his entire profession, he made an elaborate show of fealty to Daniel Day-Lewis, and here he recounts an evening in the company of other big-time actors, including Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem, where “we got hammered and we all came to the conclusion we wanted to be Javier Bardem.” And though Clooney takes his politics seriously, a few years ago "he seemed to read politics through the prism of his own expertise in handling public perception. He would often mention an unnamed magazine that, before the Iraq war, had his photograph on its cover with the word 'traitor' running 'across my chest.'” Parker was surprised to learn that the slandering rag in question was "the National Examiner, a second-rung supermarket tabloid; its “Traitors!” cover, in late February, 2003, did have a picture of Clooney, along with five other stars, as well as a competing story about the death of Kathie Lee Gifford’s dog. Although it isn’t for anyone but Clooney to say how insulting he found this, it does seem an obscure, even camp, place to find an insult."

These days, Clooney's primary public, non-movie focus is on Darfur, the subject of a speech he recently delivered at the United Nations. Afterwards, "He answered questions, and then moved to a suite of offices on the thirty-second floor, where he gave a dozen separate television interviews, speaking in a very low voice, without taking a break. Clooney’s publicist and a few others borrowed an office, marked 'Situation Room,' until the news that rebel forces were poised to topple the government of Chad caused the U.N. to ask for the room back, and the publicist moved into the corridor." Meanwhile, his professional focus may be drifting to what he'll be doing, perhaps behind the camera, when, as they say in Scorseseland, he ain't pretty no more. (I guess you have to worry about something.) The article is of course timed to coincide with the release of Leatherheads, the third movie he's directed (and the first that he's directed and taken the starring role in), a movie with a period setting a throwback slapstick-romantic-comedy feel that may be Clooney's way of addressing the Cary Grant thing head-on, but on his own macho turf. It's been judged a disappointment, and this has actually occasioned news stories, which may have been in the pipeline since the movie's release date was shoved back from last fall. But Clooney might take some comfort in knowing that there are other famous movie actors who turn out bombs all the time without anybody thinking that it's news.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Sex Change Operation

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Some headlines just write themselves, you know? If that one made you throw up in your mouth a little, fear not. This isn’t a Wachowski Brothers situation, just a creative decision from the set of Tetro, Francis Ford Coppola’s follow-up to his fizzled comeback, Youth Without Youth. Per the Hollywood Reporter: “In what Francis Ford Coppola is calling a ‘sex change’ operation, Carmen Maura is replacing fellow Spaniard Javier Bardem in the family drama Tetro.” See? His words, not mine.

If the name Tetro rings a bell, you may recall an incident from last September: the computer on which Coppola had saved the screenplay was stolen from his home in Buenos Aires. Fortunately the Godfather auteur had backup copies, and production has now commenced in Argentina. “One of the important roles in the script is a mentor and teacher to Tetro (Vincent Gallo), and I originally wrote it for a man,” he said. “As I read and reread (the script), I felt that the interaction between the two characters would be far more intriguing if they were of the opposite sex.”

Other sources claim that Bardem never attended rehearsals for Tetro and “‘became unavailable’ for the project and is reading drafts of the script for his starring role in Rob Marshall's Nine.” Whatever the case, Almodovar regular Maura will now play the “literary critic and mentor to Tetro, whose younger brother (Alden Ehrenreich) searches for him in Argentina's capital city.”

Coppola has been splitting his time between the San Francisco Bay area and his new home in Buenos Aires, where he hopes to make a film a year, taking advantage of Argentina’s “relatively low production costs and the creative inspiration he finds on the streets of its capital,” according to an AP story. “After a while I realized that I was getting further and further away from what my original intentions had been. So at this age I decided, 'Well, why don't I make the kinds of films I wanted to do when I was 18? I'll just do it later in life.'” Nice work if you can get it.

Paul Clark (Kinda) Liveblogs the Oscars

Paul Clark — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Well, it's that time of year again, and unlike last year, I'll actually be posting here as the night goes on. While it's difficult to me to actually "live-blog" because my computer faces away from the television, I'll try to post something over every commercial break. Let's see how this goes. Hopefully I'll at least be more coherent than Harry Knowles usually is, but you never know.

4:30 PM- Just for the record, here's my complete list of predictions, so I won't be able to weasel my way out of them later and declare my predictive powers to be any more awesome than they actually are:

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress: Marion Cotillard
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton
Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Best Original Screenplay: Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country for Old Men
Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille
Best Art Direction: There Will Be Blood (winner: Sweeney Todd)
Best Cinematography: There Will Be Blood
Best Costume Design: Atonement (winner: Elizabeth)
Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight (winner: Taxi to the Dark Side)
Best Documentary Short Subject: Sari's Mother (winner: Freeheld)
Best Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters
Best Makeup: La Vie en Rose
Best Original Score: Atonement
Best Original Song: "Falling Slowly," Once
Best Animated Short: Peter and the Wolf
Best Live-Action Short: Tanghi Argentini (winner: The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Best Sound Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Mixing: No Country for Old Men (winner: The Bourne Ultimatum)
Best Visual Effects: Transformers (winner: Golden Compass)

How will I fare? Stay tuned...

Preshow- Oh, great. Regis is hosting. Better than Joan and Melissa at least.

8:05- Cotillard is so hot. Just wanted to get that out there.

8:06- Host lady to Travolta: "You're not wearing a dress in honor of HAIRSPRAY." Come on, he's not Trey Parker.

8:08- Bardem: "seeking money AND revenge?" All right, did you SEE the movie?

8:10- How many times is Regis going to say "what's wrong with these people?"

8:13- Wow, Mickey Rooney's still alive, and more Yoda-like than ever.

8:13- JUNO: "the little movie that could." Way to go, Fox Searchlight marketing team.

8:23- Uh-oh, there's Hilary Swank. Nobody tell Nathaniel, OK? "People say you can play any kind of role." OK, WHAT? It's Hilary Swank, not Meryl Streep.

8:27- Remember this for next year, ABC- fewer random stars, more Bill Conti.

8:29- XAVIER Bardem? Come on, Regis, you've had time to practice your pronunciations.

8:30- FYI, I'll be boldfacing all the predictions I get right, in case you're keeping score at home.

8:33- Maybe they should hire Arnold to transport the Oscars every year. Would've saved them a big headache back in 2000.

8:34- Jack's next to Javier Bardem. Mothers, lock up your daughters...

8:36- "Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies." Wow, a Dorothy Hamill reference. You definitely don't get this from Whoopi.

8:38- NORBIT- "too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good." OK, Oscar director, where's the Rick Baker cutaway shot? That's just sloppy, buds.

8:40- A stripper named Olympia Dukakis- forget Chigurh and Plainview, that's the most disturbing image we'll get tonight.

8:42- Spike Lee likes the black President joke. You're doing well, Jon.

8:44- Costume Design- I miss the models they had last year. Much better than the diagrams. Gah... ELIZABETH? Lots of costumes, but to what end? At least she kept it short.

8:51- Some of those production numbers are frightening, but none so much as accompanying the montage with Celine Dion. Classy wrap-up with Chaplin though.

8:53- Carell/Hathaway- must we really play the GET SMART theme? Hathaway's pretty smoking though. And Carell's clueless schtick still works. Yes... first correct prediction of the night. Go RATATOUILLE. Fun story too- Brad Bird is so cool.

8:57- Cutting from Heigl to Keri Russell? Is this a pregnancy-movie-themed edit? Yeesh. Also, settle down Heigl. But hey, LA VIE EN ROSE won. Go me. At least it wasn't frickin' NORBIT.

9:01- First song nominee- "Happy Working Song", quite possibly the first Oscar-nominated song with the lyric about scrubbing a toilet. Adams is a charmer, but did we really need to nominate 5 songs this year? 3 ENCHANTED songs seems like a lot of padding in my opinion. At least there's no production number behind her.

9:09- Stop trying so hard to be funny, Rock Dwayne. Yikes... THE GOLDEN COMPASS? Granted, it's the least terrible of the five movies, but the effects weren't all that stellar, except of course for the polar bear ripping the other polar bear's jaw off. That was awesome.

9:12- That's two bum predictions in a row for me. SWEENEY TODD sort of deserves it too though, so I won't complain.

9:14- Yes, Cate's awesome. But why not mention her cameo in HOT FUZZ?

9:17- Much as I love Casey Affleck's performance, this is the wrong category for him... Bardem- what other scene would they have picked? Hoffman, likewise... wow, that's a lot of applause for Holbrook. Could an upset happen? Nope, guess not. Also, I'm guessing Wilkinson will have an Oscar within the next decade. Nice quick speech, Bardem. Too bad most native English-speaking winners can't keep it that brief.

9:24- At least wasting our time with fake montages is more entertaining than wasting our time with real montages. Also, Pee Wee!

9:26- Holy crap, who's responsible for such prosaic and literal-minded lyrics? The little girl's good though, even if she does sound like she's auditioning for Teenage Idol. Still, this better not beat "Falling Slowly".

9:30- Sweet, it's Owen Wilson. He could use some more practice reading the TelePrompter though. Ick... THE MOZART OF PICKPOCKETS won. Probably the least of the nominees, at least in my estimation.

9:32- Wait, BEE MOVIE? Couldn't they afford RATATOUILLE? The bees montage was pretty amusing though. Go MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI! OK, PETER AND THE WOLF wins. I predicted this, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

9:36- Alan Arkin rules. Nice little speech there- don't know if he wrote it, but he made it his own. Hope you were watching folks, you've just watched Ruby Dee's entire performance in AMERICAN GANGSTER. And wow, it must've been tough to find a non-foulmouthed scene for Amy Ryan. Yesssssssss... Tilda wins. Righteous. She's so cool. Much better speeches this year all around, I'd say.

9:45- "The always fantastic Jessica Alba." Unless she's trying to act, that is. At least she's only presenting the Sci-Tech awards, fitting since I'm not entirely convinced she's not a special effects creation herself.

9:47- Brolin, you were robbed bud. At least you got a Muriel Award this year. Pretty obviously, it goes to the Coens. We'll be seeing plenty of them tonight, methinks. "We've only adapted Homer and Cormac McCarthy." Nice.

9:50- Hey, there's Sid Ganis. Time to get myself a drink. Wait, MICHAEL BAY's in the Academy? That explains so much.

9:53- This was a pretty fun production number in the movie, but it's really not that great a song. Chenoweth actually sounds quite a bit like Amy Adams, although she's a more polished singer to be sure. All these dancers look kind of dumb outside the context of the movie, I gotta say.

10:02- Angelina Jolie baby jokes never get old. Right? RIGHT???

10:03- Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill- awesome. Way to liven up the Sound Editing category. I'm calling BOURNE for this one, but who knows? Damn, I got it. How about that? And see, these are the people who should be getting flustered, not the professional actors.

10:06- Oh sweet, "Halle" and "Dame Judi" are doing the Sound Mixing category too. I'm guessing this'll be NO COUNTRY, although maybe Kevin O'Connell might get finally get his for TRANSFORMERS. Nope, this one's BOURNE too. Cool, I guess. And nice shirt, buddy.

10:10- Wait, Best Actress already? Go Carice Van Houten! Oh, never mind. Whitaker's gotten much better at public speaking since last year. Look at Cate cringe- she knows how terrible the movie is. But it's not like she'd say no. Christie, always classy. And you know what would be awesome? If they could use a Cotillard clip where we hear her real voice for more than a second. Wow, Cate was pretty happy about Cotillard winning. And since I predicted her, so am I. I mean, just look at her up there- she's glowing. Only question is whether an American can take home Best Actor, since otherwise the foreign actors are sweeping.

10:19- This commercial lead-in was brought to you by Wii.

10:20- Farrell presents "Falling Slowly." Because, you see, he's Irish, and the movie's Irish, so why not? Sounds good though. Also, nice music shop motif in the background with the guitars and all. At least there aren't any slow-motion dancers. But why the orchestra?

10:24- Come on Jack, try a little harder to sell what's been written for you. You're an actor, right?

10:26- Best Picture montage- yikes, some of these HURT. I won't even say which ones, you know the ones you hate.

10:29- Best Editing. I bet BOURNE, but I'm hoping for NO COUNTRY, just to see what'll happen. Alas, Roderick Jaynes' Oscar will have to wait.

10:32- Nice jab at IMDb, Jon. And holy NECKLACE, Nicole! Cool montage for Robert Boyle- pretty impressive filmography, I gotta say, and looking darn good for 98. I hadn't even heard who had gotten the honorary award, but now that I know I must say they've made a fine choice.

10:43- Holy crap, I forgot Andrzej Wajda's new film was up for Best Foreign-Language Film. And of course the WWII movie wins. Yeesh, that was easy.

10:47- Oh Jesus, THIS song? Boooooooooo-ring. Didn't they have a "Blame Canada"-style spoof song they could've nominated? It would've livened things up, that's for sure. And they say this guy's name is John McLaughlin? I was sort of hoping it'd be the dude from The McLaughlin Group instead of yet another sensitive, blandly hunky singer. If this song beats "Falling Slowly" I'm throwing my shoes at my television. So if the liveblogging stops abruptly, you'll know why.

10:50- This is one of your favorite categories, Travolta? Funny, it's one of my least favorites, since they usually pick sentimental junk. Naturally, I will except "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." WHEW, thank GOD. I was afraid I'd have to use my next Screengrab paycheck to replace my TV.

10:57- A propos of absolutely nothing- I like Stewart well enough, but am I the only one who'd welcome an Oscar ceremony hosted by "Halle" and "Dame Judi"?

10:58- Wow, Stewart just invited Marketa Irglova back to finish her speech. Extremely classy of him. I sort of take back what I just said about Halle and Dame Judi.

11:00- OK Cameron, have you seen SUNRISE? Doesn't sound like it. Almost all these cinematography nominations are awesome- THERE WILL BE BLOOD takes it. Sorry Deakins. And way to recognize everybody else.

11:03- "Two time Academy Award nominee Hilary Swank"- somewhere, Annette Bening cringes.

11:07- Why can't they put the necrology in chronological order by the dates they passed away? By saving the "biggest name" for last, it's like they're making a value judgment on whose death is most notable. For example, I like Heath Ledger, but how is career more worthy of remembrance than Ousmane Sembene? Just a thought.

11:10- This category sucks without THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Predicting ATONEMENT, rooting for RATATOUILLE. And ATONEMENT it is. Wow, I'm actually doing pretty darn well tonight.

11:13- See, we can't bring the soldiers home, or they'd have to come up with a different gimmicky Oscar presentation. The winner is... FREEHELD, about homosexual soldiers. Had I known that I would've predicted that instead of going with the cutest-sounding name.

11:17- I've only seen two of these- SICKO and NO END IN SIGHT. NO END IN SIGHT is the better of the two, but LAKE OF FIRE blows them both away. So does THE KING OF KONG, for that matter. Of course, can you imagine the documentary branch honoring a movie about video games? Well, looks like I'm wrong here too- TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE takes the award.

11:25- Harrison Ford walks onstage to Indiana Jones theme- too obvious? WAKE UP, HARRISON! Wait, think he's drunk? Please MICHAEL CLAYTON... Please MICHAEL CLAYTON... nope, JUNO. Well, that's a point for me in the Oscar contest anyway. Grumble grumble... also, that tattoo is super-classy. I bet Tom Hanks has one just like it.

11:32- Helen Mirren just said "cojones"- she's awesome. Awesome pick for the Day-Lewis clip- powerful and bravura but not the "milkshake" bit everyone knows by heart. Who's that with Viggo? And of course Day-Lewis wins. What else is there to say but "DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINAGE"!!!!!!!!! "The handsomest bludgeon in town"- well put, man. I wonder what he'll be doing next?

11:44- What if the Coens DIDN'T win??? Guess we'll never find out. Whew... I could listen to the Coen brothers talk all day. Some part of me wants to see "Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go" included on the NO COUNTRY DVD.

11:46- Should be NO COUNTRY. Would be awesome if it was THERE WILL BE BLOOD as well, but I doubt it. As I suspected... NO COUNTRY it is. Now we get more of the Coens onstage, which is fine by me. And hey, it's not even midnight yet! Rudin: "with the opportunity for making movies comes the responsibility of making them good." Someone please relay this message to Joel Schumacher.

Well, everything turned out more or less as expected- a solid Oscar ceremony for a year when the very possibility of a ceremony was long in doubt. Good job keeping it moving along, while still finding time to bring back Marketa Irglova, a truly gracious move by Stewart and probably the highlight of the night for me.

No big surprises, but also no bad surprises, and I'll take that. Looks like I got 17 out of 24 categories right. Hope you did as well or better, unless of course you're in the same Oscar pool I'm in this year.

Hope you've enjoyed reading. Sorry I wasn't funnier. Good night.

Screengrab Bets the Oscars: Phil's Picks

Phil Nugent — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Let's make sure we're on the same page on this: if you bet money, household chores, or bragging rights on anything you're about to read in this post, you are out of your mind, and while I pity you, I will not admit in a court of law to ever having met you. I got off the Oscar train when I was eight years old and Sissy Spacek didn't win for Carrie; to have continued our relationship beyond that point would have been madness, madness! I claim no inside knowledge or deep understanding of how they decide these things, and the only thing I could tell you about the winners of recent years is that Jennifer Hudson won last year for Dreamgirls. (How do I know this? I was talking to someone on the phone when it was announced, and the woman I was talking to happened to have her TV set on. When Hudson's name was called out, the woman screamed. It turned out that it was a joyous scream, but until she calmed down enough to tell me what the hell was going on, my best guess was that she had just noticed that her couch was on fire.) Anyway, the only thing more completely charmless than the Oscars may be the ugly spectacle of a writer bragging about how little he cares about what he's paid to weigh in on, so now that we've just established that my opinion in this area counts for about as much as hair styling tips from Paul Wolfowitz, here goes:

BEST SCREENPLAY:

Diablo Cody takes Best Original for Juno because the voters have actually heard her name — it's not like, having come across it once, you can get it out of your head without laser surgery — and Paul Thomas Anderson takes it for Best Adaptation for There Will Be Blood, because that's what you get when you make a great movie but you aren't going to get Best Picture and the Best Director prize already taken.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Apparently this is going to go to Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There, partly because Blanchett is also nominated for a Best Actress award that she is not getting to get and nominating her twice in one year without giving her anything would just seem silly. A good and sound bit of reasoning, and so I will of course reject it. And not only because I don't get the universally accepted logic by which this is agreed to be a "supporting" performance. Who the hell is she supposed to be supporting? The term ought to mean something other than "Big name actor in a role that is frequently off-screen." She's definitely the unquestioned star of her section of the movie, and while I didn't put a stop watch on it, I'll bet that she has as much screen time as any of the other Dylans. And if it turns out that Richard Gere, say, has a little more actual screen time, I'm not sure that the editor did him a favor by it. Until persuaded otherwise, I shall remain convinced that Blanchett's placement in this category is part of some conspiracy to screw over Amy Ryan, who wouldn't win anyway, because you only win an Oscar for playing a character as skanky as her Gone Baby Gone character if the Academy has already seen you in a bunch of glamour-puss roles and so knew for sure that you were acting. It's a moot point anyway, because I boldly predict that the winner will be Ruby Dee, because she has had a long and distinguished career, because she is 83 years old, because her late husband, Ossie Davis, is much missed, and because even though she didn't have much of a role in American Gangster, she did get to slap Denzel Washington, and he needed slapping.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

Hal Holbrook has had a long and distinguished career and is now the same age as Ruby Dee, so if she doesn't win in her category, his chances automatically go up by 50%. But I really don't see it happening. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives the best performance in this category — he's a stone hoot in Charlie Wilson's War, which marks a rare example of an actor giving the Academy three different performances to select for nomination and the Academy choosing the right one. I'd think he had a real chance if it weren't for the fact that he already won not too long ago for Best Actor for Capote, which makes Javier Bardem the needier candidate. Bardem's trigger-happy, unstoppable psycho in a much-discussed hairstyle gave audiences all the fun of watching a Batman villain ply his trade, but it's in an officially certified, critically approved serious film with a literary pedigree, and for this he will be the recipient of much gratitude from voters whose wives dragged them to Atonement. He's already won more than a few awards for this performance, and he'll be throwing one more on the pile.

BEST ACTRESS:

Julie Christie in a lock. Next?

BEST ACTOR:

The conventional wisdom seems to be that this one belongs to Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood. I think that George Clooney has a shot for Michael Clayton, which is the kind of hard-hitting, tough-minded, yet still glamorous-looking movie that Hollywood wishes and expects America to take to its bosom. (Clooney looks worn-down and dissipated in it, and a gorgeous-looking man looking as much like hell as he can is the most glamorous thing in the world.) Some would argue that Clooney himself gave the award to Day-Lewis at a recent Newsweek-sponsored gathering where he serenaded his shy British colleague by saying that all actors "bow low to this motherfucker." Indeed, the whole of the media has been going wild these last couple of months about Day-Lewis's position as the great screen actor of our time. I do not disagree. But I happen to be one of those suspicious types who, when I hear conservative pundits on Fox News go on and on about how fearsome a candidate Barack Obama would be against a Republican challenger in November, and how they think that any Republican would just chew Hillary Clinton up and spit her out, I can't help thinking, Okay, would they say that out loud if they really believed it? Hasn't anyone ever heard the one about wanting to be thrown in the brier patch? So, on this baseless idiot notion, I have just decided the media have been building Day-Lewis up in preparation for the shocking upset to come when Clooney takes the prize. Remember, you read it here first! Unless I'm wrong, in which case you can just forget that I said anything.

BEST DIRECTOR:

The Coens, for No Country for Old Men, in a bigger lock than Julie Christie.

BEST PICTURE:

The big pictures here are obviously No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and I think they're going to cancel each other out. Both are impressive, violent movies that actually alienate as many potential voters as they attract. For the same reasons that I think George Clooney is an attractive candidate for Best Actor, his movie, Michael Clayton, has the smell of a loser to it. So the contrarian, can't-we-all-just-get-alone vote will go to putting either Juno or Atonement over the top. After it won at the Golden Globes, I thought that Atonement, with its period romance and literary prestige, was a shoo-in, but since then I have shifted over to favoring Juno, partly because I got bored with my previous position, partly because Juno is this year's Little Miss Sunshine, and Little Miss Sunshine lost last year. That means that the partisans of indie-flavored whimsy will be harder-driving this year. Also, it came out later in the year than Little Miss Sunshine, and is lucky in its timing: I calculate that the backlash against the backlash against Juno is now on a rising wave and will crest in time for the awards Sunday. It will flatten out the next morning and the papers will be full of "What were we thinking" pieces for the next two weeks.

Screengrab Bets the Oscars: Paul's Picks

Paul Clark — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:00:00 GMT

All right, Screengrab regulars. You've no doubt taken a gander at the Oscar predictions from Leonard Pierce and Scott Von Doviak, which if nothing else have demonstrated that Screengrab's sense of humor remains intact. Now have a gander at — well, I was going to say the REAL predictions, but since you've already seen my nomination predictions, I can't in good conscience make such a grandiose claim. But Leonard has sent out a call, and I have no choice but to answer it.

Here goes nothing. . .

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Ryan has been racking up critics' awards, but I think Hollywood insiders could be turned off by her unpleasant character. Saoirse Ronan might have had a shot with a bigger Atonement groundswell, but I don't see it happening now. Ruby Dee, SAG Award or no, should be happy just to be nominated. This brings us to Cate Blanchett as not-quite-Dylan, and Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. This is Blanchett's to lose. . . or would be had she not won just three years ago. The performance — more than a stunt — is might impressive, but I think Swinton sneaks in for the upset here.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Bardem's still the one to beat here, friend-o. If anyone beats him, it'll be Grand Old Actor Hal Holbrook, although his chances would've been better had Into the Wild gotten a Best Picture nomination.

BEST ACTRESS: Leonard and Scott are all about Christie, but I think this is a closer race than they're predicting. Juno lives and dies by Ellen Page's performance, but the voters might find her too young to get behind. I'm going out on a limb and predicting Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, though any of these three could take home the Oscar.

BEST ACTOR: You know, had Sweeney Todd made any money at the box office, this could have been Johnny Depp's year. But as it is, Daniel Day-Lewis is untouchable, and anyone who denies it is a bastard from a basket.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Much as I'd love to see a Ratatouille upset, this race comes down the Hollywood veteran vs. the feisty newcomer. Good as the Michael Clayton screenplay is, this award almost always goes to the most show-offy screenplay, which this year is almost certainly Juno. Add in a Hollywood-friendly backstory and Diablo Cody's sudden ubiquity, and you've got an Oscar waiting to happen.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece, but it's more of a directorial and acting showcase than a triumph of screenwriting. Atonement has all the ingredients of an Oscar-bait literary adaptation, but will have to make do with a few technical awards. Which means No Country for Old Men will bring the Coen brothers their second Oscar to date — or third, should the film win Best Editing.

BEST DIRECTOR: Of the nominated directors, the Coens are the Oscar veterans, and are well-liked in the industry. How else to explain an out-of-nowhere screenplay nomination for O Brother, Where Art Thou? back in the day. If anyone has a shot, it's Paul Thomas Anderson, but don't bet on it. Even if there's an upset for Best Picture, when it comes to this category, you can't stop what's coming.

BEST PICTURE: No Country is the favorite here, partly because nobody can seem to agree on what might upset it. I'm still predicting No Country to take this prize, but allow me to float my theory for a possible spoiler: Michael Clayton. Think about it — it's both a thriller and a serious drama, starring an immensely popular movie star and a supporting cast full of familiar and talented character actors. The film contains a lot of appeal for the actor-heavy voting body, especially when you consider that it earned three acting nominations this year while no other film received more than one. If the voting members of the Academy choose to forego the darkness of No Country for something more Hollywood, count on this (more so than Juno, which skews too young and feels too lightweight to be Best Picture material) to be their alternative of choice. Could be worse — at least it's not Crash.

Screengrab Bets The Oscars: Scott’s Picks

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

My colleague Mr. Leonard Pierce has thrown down the gauntlet, so now it’s up to me to pick it up and swat him about the face with it. Don’t get me wrong, Leonard is a good friend and well-meaning individual, but he is also a very crazy person with some very crazy Oscar picks. If you want to win your office pool, you need to stick with me.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

Here we go by the double nomination rule. There is no chance Cate Blanchett will win for her lead role in Elizabeth II: Electric Boogaloo, so her performance as Bob Dylan…er, excuse me, Jude Quinn should bring home the gold this year.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

There is no safer bet this year than Javier Bardem winning for his chilling turn in No Country for Old Men. Let’s just hope he remembers to thank his hairdresser.

BEST ACTRESS:

I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know anything about Away from Her or Julie Christie’s performance in it. I do know she’s already won a bunch of awards for it, however, and I don’t see any reason for that to change now.

BEST ACTOR:

Daniel Day-Lewis will drink George Clooney’s milkshake! He will drink it up!

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Atonement is a prestige literary adaptation, but I’m not sensing any momentum (or Atonementum, if you will). There Will Be Blood is adapted from the first part of a book nobody has read. Cormac McCarthy is the big name here, and even if No Country for Old Men isn’t his most acclaimed work, there’s no denying it was adapted about as well as could be imagined; it’s my pick.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

The backlash to the Juno backlash will begin once Diablo Cody takes home this award, followed shortly by the backlash to the backlash backlash.

BEST DIRECTOR:

I don’t see any candidates strong enough to take this one away from the Coens. They look like the grand old men of cinema next to P.T. Anderson, and the remaining nominees are horses ranging from dark (Gilroy) to darkest (Reitman).

BEST PICTURE:

Don’t make me use the term Atonementum again. The big enchilada is going home with No Country for Old Men.

Screengrab Bets The Oscars: Leonard's Picks

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

With the 80th annual Academy Awards less than two weeks away, and with the WGA strike apparently near its end (assuring that there actually will be an Oscar ceremony, and not just a handful of star-struck entertainment journalists trying to figure out who the TelePrompTer works), it's time for us here at the Screengrab to suck it up. It's time for us to do what every other film writer in the world, self-respecting or otherwise, is doing, and lay down our picks for the big to-do. Since I've always had a knack for making a jackass out of myself on the internet, I'll be the first: under the cut, you'll find my picks for who deserves to take home a statuette come Oscar night in eigh different categories, and who's going to walk away with the gold, regardless of merit. Over the next thirteen days, I'm hoping my Screengrab colleagues will join me in this endeavor, and then, come March, at least one of us can strut around talking about how smart we are.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:

There's a fine crowd of candidates this time around, and it's hard to pick a winner — there's no obvious failings just as there's no obvious standouts. All told, Cate Blanchett should win for her turn as Dylan in I'm Not There, but I'm predicting it will actually end up in the hands of Amy Ryan for the surprising Gone Baby Gone.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

If, as I'm predicting, the Coen Brothers are shut out again this year, that means even more that Javier Bardem should win for his performance as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. However, given his spate of terrific roles towards the end of the year, I'm predicting it will go to Philip Seymour Hoffman for Charlie Wilson's War.

BEST ACTRESS:

Ellen Page surely deserves recognition for the breakout performance she delivered in Juno, and there's a slight possibility she'll get it. However, I think the Academy will go the other direction — since Hal Holbrook won't be getting an old-timer's award, Julie Christie will take home the gold for the little-seen Away from Her.

BEST ACTOR:

Although there's an off chance that George Clooney will take home the gold, I'm picking Daniel Day-Lewis' colossal performance in There Will Be Blood as both my should-win and will-win. Past performance and academy voting patterns be damned: it's a towering, masterful job of acting that carries the entire movie.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:

Traditionally, the screenplay categories are the thanks-for-playing awards for the year's best movies, but which for whatever reason aren't going to get one of the big awards. As such, it's a dead heat between No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, and my money's on Paul Thomas Anderson this year.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:

If ever there are a sold-gold, lead-pipe lock in the history of solid-gold, lead-pipe locks, it's Diablo Cody winning Oscar gold this year for Juno. Bet the farm on it.

BEST DIRECTOR:

For filmmakers as talented and distinctive as the Coen Brothers never to have won an Oscar is a crime, but this isn't their Departed year. They'll be shut out again, though, leaving open the question of who gets it. P.T. Anderson seems obvious, but I'm gonna say this is a divisive year and Tony Gilroy takes it for Michael Clayton.

BEST PICTURE:

If Juno wins, the very balance of nature will be forever thrown askew. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are the most deserving, but are perceived as overly nihilistic and grim. Michael Clayton could be the winner by default, but I think it'll go to Atonement, the very definition of an Academy prestige picture.

The Ten Worst Hairdos In Movie History, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Yeah, we know, we know, that haircut soon-to-be-Oscar-winner Javier Bardem sports in the soon-to-be-Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men is pretty disturbing and awful. But that's not even the worst haircut of Javier Bardem's career. (Read on!) Indeed, thinking about No Country got us thinking about some of the other truly monstrous 'dos we've encountered over the years on the screen. Here's our list of the Ten Worst Hairdos in Movie History.

Mickey Rourke, YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985)

In his shambling youth, Mickey Rourke had a tough veneer with a sensitive undertone. He might have become a major movie star (as opposed to an object of cult worship in France and some of your better dorm rooms) in the Hollywood Heartthrob, Good-Bad-but-Not-Evil division, if he'd found a few more roles like the Baltimore honeydripper he played in Diner. But he drove his career into a ditch in a misguided effort to show what a tough, hard-slugging badass he was. His performance in this descent into the Michael Cimino-Oliver Stone Thunderdome tells you everything about what went wrong, and much of it is concentrated on his hair. Twenty-eight years old when the film was shot, Rourke seemed a little young for the role of a much-decorated NYPD veteran who learned about the deviousness of the Asian criminal mind while serving in Vietnam, more than ten years earlier. So the decision was made to send him down to the high school and have the erasers clapped together over his head. His chalk-encrusted tresses here make his entrance a guaranteed laugh-getter, especially since he wears a hat that he must have borrowed from a flatfoot in a Bogart movie; when he plops it down onto his noggin, you expect a cloud of white dust to envelop the room. (In some scenes his hair darkens to a grayish tint and then goes white again, suggesting that the testosterone release of beating up Chinese punks and having sex with Dutch-Japanese-supermodel-slash-godawful-actress "Ariane" has youth-restoring benefits, but they wear off fast.)

Sean Penn, CARLITO'S WAY (1993)

Penn's performance as Al Pacino's fast-talking lawyer, who lusts after the bad-boy cred and sleazy thrills that his client has outgrown, is a beautiful comic turn, and the selflessness that makes it possible extends fully to his scalp. With a little mop of frizzy curlicues that suggest that he's had his pubic hair transplanted onto his head, he looks like Art Garfunkel, Superstar. (This effect was especially funny back in 1993, when it was possible to go from this movie to see Jennifer Lynch's Boxing Helena and see that the actual Art Garfunkel had turned into Larry Fine, C.P.A.) His red mop grows more excitable and unruly as his character grows ever more dangerously unhinged. At the end, we hear a gunshot that signals that his character has been put out of Carlito's misery, and it is a great disappointment that the camera cuts away without showing his hair scurrying away under its own power. Nobody in Hollywood knows how to set up a sequel anymore.

Javier Bardem, PERDITA DURANGO (1997)

You think his hair in No Country for Old Men is bad? Pfft. For some of us, our first impression of Javier Bardem was with another bad hair cut, the one he had in Alex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango (aka Dance With the Devil). Playing a homicidal, kidnapping voodoo priest, Bardem sports an unholy mullet that could scar your eyeballs. It's a scary character, and the hair cut makes him scarier because you know he knows he can get away with it. And you fear what would happen if you accidentally made fun of it. Nobody's making "business in front, party in the back" jokes around him, we guarantee you.

Anne Bancroft in THE HINDENBURG (1975)

In 1937, a German passenger zeppelin caught fire and exploded as it was preparing to land in New Jersey. The catastrophe was captured on film by a newsreel cameraman, and in 1975, some master of taste and sensitivity got the inspiration of trying to tap into the mid-'70s "disaster movie" fad by making a period melodrama leading up to the horror. Looking to tone this idea up a little, the movie posits that the explosion was set off deliberately, as an act of anti-Nazi sabotage. An alternate theory is that the saboteur felt that it was necessary to wipe Anne Bancroft's hair off the face of the Earth, whatever the cost. Bancroft plays a German countess who is also a morphine addict, which must be pretty mild stuff compared to whatever the hell her hairdresser is on. Since this is the kind of movie that tries to impress you with the historical accuracy of its fashions and knick knacks, Bancroft's grisly coiffure must have been the result of intense research. But could the researchers not have kept it to themselves that the stylish German junkie of 1937 walked around looking, as Pauline Kael put it with baleful accuracy, as if she had "black potato chips stuck to her head"?

Keith Carradine in TROUBLE IN MIND (1986)

Every once in a while, the writer-director Alan Rudolph feels the need to make a movie so strange that all his other movies will consider reporting it to Homeland Security if it threatens to move into their neighborhood. At present, the holder of this title is probably his 1999 Kurt Vonnegut adaptation Breakfast of Champions, but Trouble in Mind, a sort-of-futuristic daydream set in "Rain City", a drizzly place where the local criminal kingpin is played by Divine, took on all comers for quite a while there. This is one of the few times Divine played a non-drag role, but he must have brought his make-up case with him, because it looks as if Carradine got into it and made a hell of a mess. He plays a dopey young punk from the sticks who falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes overly enamored of the decadent thrills that Rain City has to offer. The most garish of these are apparently dispensed at the local Supercuts, because he keeps disappearing for awhile and then returning with his hair drenched in sticky-looking glop and twisted into fun house shapes, with his face painted as if he'd gotten a job as David Bowie's stunt double on the cover of Aladdin Sane. All in all, this may have been Keith Carradine's unstudliest hour.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Vern, Bryan Whitefield

Click here for Part 2!

Paul Clark Predicts the Oscar Nominees

Paul Clark — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"Nobody knows anything." Screenwriter William Goldman immortalized that phrase a few decades ago, and it's as true this Oscar season as it's always been. Perhaps even more so — not only are many Oscar races still wide-open, but the status of the ceremony itself is up in the air. But for now the show is still happening, which means the nominations are set to be announced tomorrow morning. Here are my hasty, shot-in-the-dark predictions in the top six categories:

Best Picture:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Into the Wild
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country for Old Men

I think we can all agree that No Country is in, right? Beyond that, it's something of a crap shoot. Michael Clayton is the kind of classy star vehicle the Academy usually responds to, and audience favorite Juno has become too big a word of mouth phenomenon to ignore. At one point, Atonement was looking like a front-runner for the win, but its Oscar buzz has subsided. On the other side of the coin, There Will Be Blood may be too bleak for the voters to embrace — it would have a better chance were it the year's undisputed critical champ, but with No Country in the mix, PTA's masterpiece could be shut out here. Instead, I'm predicting The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, an acclaimed true-life story that's only gaining momentum, and Into the Wild, the year's most Oscar-baity film directed by a respected actor, which is something that tends to go over well with the actor-filled Academy membership.

Best Actor:
George Clooney, Michael Clayton
Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild
Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises

Even if the Academy decides to overlook There Will Be Blood, they won't be able to deny the awesomeness of Day-Lewis' blazing performance as Plainview. Likewise, Clooney and Depp have recently become Academy favorites, and I dare say that had Sweeney Todd done more business Depp would've been the one to beat here. Hirsch is a bit iffier here given his age, but he carries Into the Wild on his capable shoulders, and if the film gets nominated I'm guessing he will be too. With the recent groundswell for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I think Matthieu Amalric should be seen as a contender here, although not nearly as much as if he was an American star. Instead, I'm going with Mortensen — Eastern Promises didn't exactly set the world on fire, but his performance was the highlight, and I think voters will take the opportunity to honor him not only for this role but also for his overlooked turns in A History of Violence and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Best Actress:
Amy Adams, Enchanted
Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Ellen Page, Juno

Throughout this awards season, three names kept popping up in this rare — Christie, Cotillard, and Page. So it's pretty safe to assume they'll make it in. That leaves us two spots in a relatively weak year for buzzed-about performances (sadly, Black Book's Carice Van Houten has no traction whatsoever). With very little competition, Jolie should make the cut — the film didn't make much of a dent, but her stardom has kept her in the race. The final spot is anyone's guess. High-profile star turns (Jodie Foster in The Brave One, Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth: The Golden Age) have flopped at the box office, while respected performers in independent films (notably Laura Linney in The Savages) have been lost in the year-end shuffle. That leaves Amy Adams in Enchanted, a star-making performance by a previous nominee in a hit movie that's still fresh in people's minds.

Best Director:
Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men
Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton
Sean Penn, Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

At this point, Best Director is the Coens' to lose. Even if someone else takes home Best Picture, I think it's still their year in this category. I also think the Directors Branch will be impressed by Sean Penn's metamorphosis into serious filmmaker, as well as Schnabel's unconventional, inspired filmmaking choices in Diving Bell. For this year's semi-obligatory non-Best Picture-nominated director, I'm predicting Anderson, a respected maverick whose filmmaking chops in There Will Be Blood are undeniable even if the film itself is too much for some audiences. Of the two remaining Best Picture nominees, I think Gilroy has the edge over Juno's Jason Reitman for two reasons: (1) crowd-pleasing comedies tend to get shut out of this category, and (2) Gilroy is a veteran screenwriter makes an impressive directorial debut. But don't be surprised if another "lone director" — say, Sidney Lumet for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, or Tim Burton for Sweeney Todd — gets the nod instead.

Best Supporting Actor:
Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War
Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild
Tommy Lee Jones, No Country for Old Men
Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton

In a year without Bardem, this race might have come down to Grand Old Actor Holbrook vs. veteran character actor Wilkinson. But Bardem casts a long shadow over this category, with Chigurh the creepiest villain in an Oscar-feted film since Hannibal Lecter. Charlie Wilson's War wasn't the Oscar juggernaut that it was predicted to be, but I still think Hoffman's scene-stealing turn will make it in. I think this year's biggest surprise will be the absence of Casey Affleck's performance in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Affleck's the only serious competition Bardem has had among the precursor awards, but Jesse James was a box-office flop and Affleck's performance could give voters the willies. Max Von Sydow's affecting turn in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might have had a chance here — as a means of honoring one of the world's most esteemed actors and, by extension, his recently-departed longtime collaborator Ingmar Bergman — except that he might not have enough screentime to be a contender. Instead, I'm giving the edge to Jones, an Academy favorite who came roaring back this year to give two acclaimed performances after a decade's worth of commercial crap.

Best Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Catherine Keener, Into the Wild
Kelly MacDonald, No Country for Old Men
Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton

Once again, three names keep popping up in this category: Blanchett, Ryan, and Swinton. I think they'll all get nominated, though who will win remains to be seen (early shot-in-the-dark prediction: a Swinton upset). The other two spots are less certain. But consider that, more than any other category, the Best Supporting Actress nominees are largely composed of performers who starred opposite other Oscar nominees. In this respect, I think contenders such as Ruby Dee in American Gangster, Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and especially Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, are at a disadvantage here. Instead, I'm predicting the fourth spot to go to Catherine Keener, getting her third nomination in this category for her moving turn in Into the Wild. The final slot comes down to Jennifer Garner in Juno and Kelly MacDonald in No Country for Old Men. Despite Garner's greater name recognition, I'm giving the edge to MacDonald, both for No Country's frontrunner status and for playing one of Oscar's favorite characters, the supportive, long-suffering wife. But honestly, it could go either way.

Watch for the Oscar nominations tomorrow, January 22. And remember, nobody knows anything.

Globes Without Glitter

Phil Nugent — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 18:43:00 GMT

The 65th annual Golden Globes were announced last night, getting the awards season off to a wobbly start. After much speculation about whether No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood might be the front runner as the Oscar race heats up, the Golden Globe for Best Drama went to the Ian McEwan adaptation Atonement, a sturdy vote for respectable literary source material, period romance, and clipped accents in these confusing times. (Another perceived front-runner competition that's been heating up movie message boards, the one between Julie Christie in and Marion Cotillard in Ma Vie en Rose, was effectively defused in this round by the Globes' method of breaking up its movie categories into as many different sub-categories as possible: Christie won the award for Best Actress in a Drama, Cotillard won for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy.) Daniel Day-Lewis did won for Best Actor in a Drama for his work in There Will Be Blood, while No Country took home prizes for Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem) and for its Coen brothers screenplay. The Best Director award went to Julian Schabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which also won for Best Foreign Language Film. Rounding out the big winners were Sweeney Todd (Best Musical or Comedy) and its star, Johnny Depp (Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy), Cate Blanchett (Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There), and Ratatouille (Best Animated Feature Film).

Of course, as the strike by the Writers' Guild of America drags on into its third month, the big question was whether there would be any awards ceremony or not. NBC, which had the rights to this year's presentation, grimly held to its plans to broadcast something, but it wasn't until last Friday that it was announced that union picketers would not show up to protest the event. By that time, most celebrities who might otherwise have attended had made other plans. The awards were given out, but in a press-conference-style format presided over by announcers from entertainment-news shows such as and Inside Edition. The winners will have news of their glad tidings duly Incorporated into the ads for those movies that are still playing, but the general feeling is that, compared to the impact of previous years' awards ceremonies, the whole thing was a wash. Daniel Battsek, president of Miramax Films, laments that "you can’t replace having the clips and the people who made the films on television. It’s impossible to predict the impact of the lack of a full-on ceremony. But we are all in the same boat. No one will get an advantage.”

Nothing But Dark Skys From Now On

Phil Nugent — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

"Imagine," Gary Giddins writes, "having only one great film in you, and that film being The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." That Tobe Hooper classic, along with the lesser 1977 Eaten Alive, in which Neville Brand plays a hotel keeper who feeds people to his pet crocodile if he doesn't like what they've written on their comment cards, are now available on handsomely packaged DVDs from Dark Sky, a company that Giddins salutes for doing yeoman's work in the specialized field of retrieving rough gems and striking obscurities from the pop junk pile of half-forgotten and poorly received horror pictures. Dark Sky's catalog includes Trilogy of Terror, the 1974 anthology TV-movie that's legendary for its concluding segment, in which Karen Black, entering the screen-queen pantheon in a tatty bathrobe and a flying cloud of auburn hair, raced around her '70s bacheleorette pad pursued by a spear-wielding Zuni tribal doll with the "Check, please!" name of "He Who Kills." Giddins notes that, as an example of the nifty bonus extras that are a Dark Sky trademark, the Trilogy disc boasts a new interview with Karen Black: "Rolling her eyes in recollection of the filmmaking incompetence, she recalls the spills she had to take while pretending to wrestle the doll and offers her own analysis of the film's cult following: 'Women are afraid of vaginal entry'."

Other Dark Sky discs include Mario Bava's 1966 Kill Baby, Kill, John McNaughton's art-gore shocker Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Curtis Harrington's The Killing Kind (made in 1973 with a cast that includes Ann Sothern, John Savage, Luana Anders, and Cindy Williams), and the unclassifiable Spider Baby, a 1964 film by cult director Jack Hill that makes The Addams Family look like The Brady Bunch. (It features a young Sid Haig channeling Hank Wordern and the star, Lon Chaney, Jr., singing, for lack of a better word, the opening theme song.) Coming soon from Dark Sky: the 1973 Ricco the Mean Machine, described by Giddins as "a Mafia revenge film in which Christopher Mitchum sets out to destroy a mob with his pageboy flip and a few awkward karate chops." An as yet undiscovered influence on Javier Bardem's haircut in No Country for Old Men? Duty compels me to check it out.

Top Ten of 2007: Paul Clark

Paul Clark — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Note: Like Leonard, I don’t live in one of what Hollywood would consider a major cinematic market, so I have yet to see some of the year’s best-reviewed films, such as There Will Be Blood and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But I think it’s better to post this now rather than waiting until I’ve seen all the major movies, which for all I know won’t happen for months.

10. The Hunting Party

It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again- 2007 was a damn fine year to be a movie lover. Because of this, there were probably a dozen films competing for the final spot on this list, but in the end I had to go with a sentimental favorite, one that deserves much more love than it’s gotten so far. Richard Shepard's darkly comic tale of three journalists (Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg) searching for a Bosnian warlord succeeds not so much because of its story as for its salty, unironic portrait of male friendship. As in Shepard’s last film The Matador, The Hunting Party is a story about men drawn to violence who booze and bond in outposts far off the beaten path. At a time when Brokeback Mountain is still a punchline, it takes real chutzpah to write a scene in which one man tells another, “that’s why I love you,” without going for a laugh.

9. Time

Korea’s prolific and controversial director Kim Ki-duk has become something of a whipping boy for the cinematic cognoscenti, but there’s no denying that the guy’s got skills. Time, his best film to date, appears on the surface to be a response to Korea’s plastic-surgery craze, but at its heart it’s a story of amour fou, like Seconds played for tragedy rather than thrills. In Kim’s hands, plastic surgery becomes a metaphor for how self-conscious we’ve become, so insecure in our skin that we’re no longer able to simply give ourselves over to others, not even those we love. Also, Kim’s gift for astonishing imagery is as keen as ever, especially in his use of a seaside sculpture park.

8. I’m Not There

The premise- six actors playing six different versions of Bob Dylan- sounds like an academic exercise only a semiotics major could love. But each onscreen Dylan is only a pawn in the game of director Todd Haynes, a piece of the puzzle that has become the Dylan mythos. With his ingenious structure, Haynes highlights the contradictions, tall tales, and outright fabrications of Dylan’s legend, revealing him to be less a self-conscious chameleon reinventing his image for the public as a lifelong searcher who cared little whether we wanted to follow. The wonder is that I'm Not There is so much fun- sometimes electrifying, sometimes goofy, but always fascinating.

7. Offside

The idea that Iranian women aren’t allowed to attend soccer games would seem to be the setup for a dour polemic, but director Jafar Panahi has other plans for their story. In Panahi’s eyes, the law isn’t so much an injustice as a colossal pain for all involved, and by highlighting the absurdity of the situation, Offside becomes the stuff of high comedy. And a rousing crowd-pleaser to boot- Panahi shot much of the film in the bowels of the stadium during an actual World Cup qualifying match, and even at a distance from the field, the energy is palpable. In the end, football is a uniter, not a divider, and once the detained women escape their captors to mingle with their celebrating countrymen, they’re able to share in the victory that their laws had tried to deny them.

6. Joshua

In a year that saw Rob Zombie’s Michael-heavy remake of Halloween, one might be excused for wondering what an evil-kid thriller was doing on my list. But George Ratliff’s Joshua is another breed altogether- a genre movie in the abstract, but a particularly chilly and thematically-rich one. Moreover, Joshua is very much an of-the-moment bad seed, not some pint-sized supernatural boogeyman but the product of ineffectual and indulgent parenting. Jacob Kogan is creepy in the title role, but the real revelation is Sam Rockwell, giving the performance of the year as his father, a man whose parenting skills are limited at best, and who is ill-equipped to deal with a son whose behavior goes so sharply against his own. When he finally realizes what he’s up against it’s too late to stop it, and thanks to Ratliff and Rockwell, this realization hits with the power of a gut punch.

5. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

In Assassination, director Andrew Dominik plays a tricky game- to make a Western that doesn’t so much de-mythologize the genre as re-mythologize it by making explicit the undercurrent of mythmaking that was always a part of the West. It could have been a disaster, but somehow it works beautifully, thanks not only to the beauty of the filmmaker but also the performances. Brad Pitt is fine as a Jesse James who is all too mindful of the larger-than-life figure he cut in the West, but the film belongs to Casey Affleck as Ford, the youngster whose boyish hero worship festered into violent obsession. Ford was foolish enough to believe that he could create his own legend, but all he did was to be swallowed up by Jesse’s, and because of Affleck’s performance this reviled figure becomes downright tragic.

4. The Host

The best giant monster to attack theatres this past year didn’t stomp Tokyo, but Seoul, in the superior Korean creature feature The Host. With a flair for showmanship and populist storytelling that nearly equal those of Spielberg in his Jaws days, director Bong Joon-ho has made a monster movie to stand alongside the greats in the genre. Part of the credit should go to the effects wizard who created the disgusting yet somehow lovable monster, but I dare say the movie wouldn’t work so well if not for the endearingly flawed family at the movie’s center. Even on a list this full of darkness and despair, there’s always a place for pure, unadulterated entertainment, and The Host gave me more sheer moviegoing pleasure than any film of 2007.

3. Gone Baby Gone

Most of the praise for Gone Baby Gone has centered on the film’s performances- especially the much-feted Amy Ryan- and the surprising amount of thematic resonance to be found in the film. But I think director Ben Affleck deserves a great deal more credit for how powerful this film is than he’s been getting. Most obviously, Affleck has a real feel for his setting- a working-class South Boston neighborhood- and the people who inhabit it. But while this location seems at first like backdrop to a mystery involving a kidnapped child, it eventually takes center stage in the story, which turns into an breathlessly compelling study in the consequences of tribalism. “Guys take pride in where they’re from, like it was something they did,” states protagonist Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck- again!) in the film’s opening voiceover. The tragedy is that Kenzie- thinks himself above it all- buys into this idea as much as anybody.

2. No Country for Old Men

For most of its running time, No Country for Old Men works primarily as an uncommonly exciting chase thriller, in which the overmatched Lewellyn Moss struggles to stay ahead of stone-cold killer Chigurh (Javier Bardem). But while first two acts of the film are enough to mark it as the Coen brothers’ best work in years, it’s the final act, which avoids the expected confrontation between Chigurh and Lewellyn in favor of something more philosophical, that the film to another level of greatness altogether. An observer for most of the story, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) suddenly comes face to face with the idea that even if you run from the evil that you fear may be hiding behind one door, there’s no guarantee that it won’t be waiting for you behind another. “You can’t stop what’s coming,” indeed.

1. Zodiac

From the beginning, David Fincher’s evocation of the still-unsolved case of the Zodiac killer has been something of an anomaly. It’s a serial-killer movie that practically never goes for cheap thrills, and a three-hour fact-based period piece that’s almost bereft of epic sweep. In short, it’s tough to put my finger on what exactly makes Zodiac such a masterpiece. For me, the most awe-inspiring aspect of the film is its near-obsessive attention to detail, one that’s downright fanatical even by the standards of the true-crime genre. But using the thousands of tiny clues and incidental pieces of business that surrounded the Zodiac case, Fincher immerses us fully in the world of the case, one in which the crime-solving technology and interdepartmental procedures of the day were always several steps behind the schemes of the killer.

Also worth mentioning: Everything Will Be OK (sorry, no trailer)

When I was making this list, I decided to restrict myself to feature-length films. However, taking into account all new movies I saw this past year, none hit me quite as hard as Don Hertzfeldt’s thrilling new animated short, Everything Will Be OK. In little more than fifteen minutes, Hertzfeldt tells the story of a man who is doomed to die. His doctors give up on him, his mother moves in to help, and the man himself goes off the deep end. And then, without warning, he suddenly gets better, much to everyone's annoyance. Everything Will Be OK has the feel of an especially good Raymond Carver story, both in its sense of irony and its reliance on small but significant detail, but the twisted sense of humor and unique animation style is all Hertzfeldt. Call it number zero in my top 10.

Many Animals Were Harmed In The Production Of This Film

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The previously publicity-shy Coen Brothers are practially media darlings with the release of No Country for Old Men, but one of the most enjoyable interviews they've done as part of the blitz is this one, with the Guardian's always-reliable John Patterson. The boys seem downright gleeful -- giddy, even -- discussing the ultraviolence they bring to the screen in the Cormac McCarthy adaptation; likewise, they seem well aware of the inevitable comparisons to the works of Sam Peckinpah that the western setting and over-the-top bloodshed is likely to draw. Ethan says "We were aware of the basic link just by virtue of the setting, the southwest, and this very male aspect of the story. Hard men in the south-west shooting each other - that's definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing...you show a hard-on guy in a western-cut suit and it already looks like a Peckinpah movie. Same kind of shorthand." Over the course of the interview, they also provide insight into Javier Bardem's inhuman haircut, why they're not likely to ever take on a science fiction movie despite dabbling in almost every other genre, and the surprisingly high death toll of animals (cows, lizards, rabbits, dogs) in their films. In fact, it's that thread of the conversation that leads to a surprising preview of their next, and still unnamed, film project: "It's a proper western, a real western," Ethan explains, "set in the 1870s. It's got a scene that no one will ever forget because of one particular chicken."

Top 10 of 2007: Scott Von Doviak

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

People say I’m a weenie for thinking this, but I feel these year-end top ten lists should be handled like the Hall of Fame: there should be a five-year waiting period in order to avoid any embarrassing blunders. Believe me, I have a record of top tens dating back to 1999 preserved forever on the Internet, and never fail to experience twinges of regret, shivers of shame and head-scratching moments of pure bewilderment when I look back at them. I’d feel much better right now if I were compiling my favorites of 2002, but rules are rules, so here are 10 movies I hope I won’t feel terrible about praising when 2012 rolls around:

10. Zodiac

For about three-quarters of its running time, David Fincher’s serial killer procedural is about as engrossing, stylish and smartly assembled as mainstream cinema gets, expertly evoking the 1970s (Mark Ruffalo, in particular, transforms himself into a broody ’70s actor in the De Niro/Pacino mode) and humanizing a story that could have been run-of-the-mill exploitation. It’s penalized a few notches here for running out of gas in the final reels: those scenes between the obsessed investigator and his long-suffering wife were already old and tired in the ’70s.

9. Juno

The first five minutes of Juno are so overloaded with quirkiness, it’s as if director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody are desperate enough to make an immediate impression that they’ll settle for making a bad one. That the movie is able to not only recover but go on to become an affecting (and very funny) story about real people making difficult choices is a tribute to their talent, and especially that of Ellen Page in a star-making performance as the titular pregnant teen.

8. Knocked Up

Why settle for one unplanned pregnancy comedy when 2007 was fertile enough to produce twins? You could quibble about gender politics, but then you’d miss out on some of the year’s biggest laughs courtesy of the ever-expanding Apatow Comedy Empire. (Honorable mention: Superbad. Not so much: Walk Hard.)

7. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Speaking of movies that recover from the opening five minutes, here’s one that treats you to the sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s heaving, flabby buttocks obscuring some delightful Marisa Tomei nudity (don’t worry, though – there’s plenty of that later). In what is not so much a comeback as a rejuvenation, octogenarian Sidney Lumet has crafted a twisty tale of familial betrayal enlived by a Hoffman performance so vivid, you can smell the desperation.

6. Breach

Billy Ray makes his own special brand of what one friend of the Screengrab refers to as “guys in suits” movies. Like Ray’s debut Shattered Glass, Breach is a low-key yet subtly gripping thriller about a man whose life of lies crumbles within the institution that has defined him. In this case, that man is contradictory CIA agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper, never better), a deeply religious, sexually kinky traitor to his country. No 007-style glamour and action here; the suspense emerges from the mundane but meticulously detailed life of a Cold War spy trying to stay one step ahead of his colleagues.

5. Deep Water

Sure, having too much money and free time sounds like fun, but that way of life is not without its pitfalls. This fascinating, disquieting documentary details a 1968 solo sailboat race around the world, and the amateur sailor, Donald Crowhurst, who pinned his family’s future on the whim of winning it. Pieced together from newsreels, Crowhurst’s original 16mm film and contemporary interviews, what begins as a bracing tale of men against the sea becomes a full-blown descent into madness.

4. Killer of Sheep

I am assured by publicists that Charles Burnett’s 1977 thesis film counts as a 2007 release, so there’s no reason not to include it here. This stark slice of inner city life finds drama in the smallest moments; even the routine purchase of a used motor becomes an exercise in heartbreaking futility. Never stooping to heavy-handed message-making, Sheep packs an emotional wallop in the end.

3. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Don’t wait for the inevitable scripted remake of this simple tale of two men vying for the world’s record high score in Donkey Kong. It won’t begin to capture the wit, drama and humanity of Seth Gordon’s outrageously entertaining documentary. Pitting an ’80s relic coasting on past glories against a regular guy with a history of failures in life, overseen by an indelible gallery of game-geeks and marked with unexpected developments and reversals of fate, it’s the most purely joyful movie experience of the year.

2. No Country for Old Men

For much of the decade Joel and Ethan Coen looked like they were heading down the long road of diminishing returns, but they came all the way back with this transcendent thriller set on the Texas border. The most faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel imaginable, it still couldn’t be anything other than a Coen Brothers movie. The brilliant suspense sequences and Javier Bardem’s chilling turn as a malevolent killer are the obvious attractions, but it’s the final lyrical moments that linger when the lights come up.

1. I’m Not There

Less perfect in every way than No Country, this fractured Bob Dylan biopic is nonetheless my pick for movie of the year. Scrambling the singer-songwriter’s legend and bouncing it off a series of funhouse mirrors, director Todd Haynes delights in the ever-more distorted reflections that result. Six different actors embody various aspects of the Bard, none more memorably than Cate Blanchett, who virtually channels Dylan’s hipster-dandy incarnation. It’s a dazzling mind-fuck for hardcore Dylan fans and perhaps a complete trainwreck for anyone else, but as a biography of an artistic sensibility – warts and all – it can’t be topped.

Austin Goes for "Blood"

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:30:00 GMT

Did you know there’s an Austin Film Critics Association? I live in Austin and this is news to me. Nonetheless, the AFCA has weighed in on the year in movies and handed its major awards to a film that won’t reach area screens until 2008. According to Variety, There Will Be Blood takes the honors for Best Film, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Cinematography (Robert Elswit) and Original Score (Johnny Greenwood). Ellen Page and Allison Janney collect acting kudos for their work in Juno, while Javier Bardem continues his rampage through the awards season with yet another Best Supporting Actor nod. It’s good to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters get some richly deserved recognition in the Documentary category, but couldn’t the Austin Film Award bestowed upon Grindhouse be put to better use? Sure, that carpetbagger Tarantino made effective use of local landmarks like Guero’s Taco Bar and the Texas Chili Parlor, but Robert Rodriguez has been coasting on his favorite son status for too long. Consider this a belated vote for the homegrown Hell on Wheels, Bob Ray’s surprisingly compelling documentary on the contentious Austin roller derby scene. It’s wheeling its way through the film festival circuit, so keep your eyes peeled.

The Ten Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Nicole Kidman's Nose in THE HOURS (2002)

Can a fake nose win an Oscar? Some might say it already did, when Nicole Kidman's turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours was awarded the golden statue for Best Actress. We've got nothing against Kidman's performance in that film, but judging by the reams of press that her lightly reoriented schnozz got at the time, you'd think that it was the nose that was wearing Kidman, instead of the other way around. Of course, this was yet another award in a long series of Best Actress Oscars that went to Beautiful Women Doing Unglamorous Things — whether it was playing a tarted-up legal secretary (Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich), having sex with Billy Bob Thornton (Halle Berry in Monster's Ball) or looking like a burn victim (Charlize Theron in Monster). Which is, really, the only way we can explain Kidman's decision to use such a subtle prosthetic in the first place; it's not like the American moviegoing public had any idea what Virginia Woolf looked like in the first place.

Jeff Goldblum's Jaw, Cheeks, Eyes, His Very Fucking Being, in THE FLY (1986)

Some of us were prohibited from watching more than two hours of TV a week as children. Luckily, some of us were also latch-key kids, so naturally, whenever no one was home, we gorged, often on both food and shlocky afternoon TV movies. And those of us who were unlucky enough to see The Fly at this time didn't quite grasp the extent of our mistake until it was too late. There you are, happily eating your delivery pizza, and in the middle of a big, meaty bite, you're confronted by the spectacle of one of Brundlefly's eyes falling off, like an egg yolk dripping into batter. You assume that's the most disgusting scene they're gonna throw at you. Again, big mistake. Jeff Goldblum's Brundlefly is possibly the single most hideous, repugnant creature ever seen on film — worse than the Alien mother, worse than any other close competitor. Every negative trait of Jeff Goldblum's physiognomy is brought into stark relief onto an insect face; when it decays, we dare you to keep eating. We certainly didn't.

Penelope Cruz's Ass, VOLVER (2006)

Since her Hollywood debut, Cruz has been the poster child for foreign-born performers who aren't half as compelling in English as they are in their native tongue. Which is why her reunion with Pedro Almodovar was a cause for celebration — not only would she be working in Spanish again, but she was collaborating with a filmmaker who always brought out the best in her. But strangely enough, much of the buzz around Penelope's role in 2006's Volver focused less on the performance than around the generous fake derrière she strapped on for the role. According to Almodovar, the padded rump was necessary for the character, an earthy, hard-working mother in the Anna Magnani tradition, and this makes sense, since Penelope Cruz is lovely, but talk about bun cakes — she ain't got 'em. But then a funny thing happened. Instead of drawing undue attention to Penelope's prodigious prosthetic posterior, the hype allowed moviegoers to grow accustomed to the sight of the suddenly callipygian Cruz, much in the same way Alejandro Amenabar leaked stills of a heavily made-up Javier Bardem to the Spanish press so the public would get used to his appearance in The Sea Inside. The gimmick paid off in the end, as Cruz's full-bodied (sorry) performance made the rockin' world go 'round, garnering her unprecedented critical praise and a rare (for a foreign-language performer) Best Actress Oscar nomination. In fact, after the success of Volver, the only question that remains for Penelope Cruz's career is: how can she leave this behind?

Vincent Gallo's Penis in THE BROWN BUNNY (2003)

When people actually got around to seeing Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny rather than just making fun of it (which isn't to say that they stopped making fun of it afterwards, or that many people actually got around to seeing it), the scene that generated the most buzz was what is delicately referred to as "the blowjob", where Gallo's lodge pole is climbed by Chloe Sevigny, for whom one has never felt more pity. The scene's verite qualities and (literally) naked emotional power are what most people talked about, although we think they were just grateful that something was actually happening in the movie after endless shots of Gallo driving aimlessly across country. Gallo, who tends to be pretty sensitive about things like this, has always claimed that the hog in question belongs to him; French director Claire Denis, on the contrary, claims that it is an artificial wang, and that, worse yet, it isn't even Vince's artificial wang — she says he stole it off the set of her 2001 film Trouble Every Day, in which he had a large part, but not that large part. In the absence of, er, concrete evidence from Gallo, we're going to go with Claire Denis' version of events; we figure that since she's not on record as hoping Roger Ebert gets cancer for giving one of her films a bad review, she's got the moral high ground.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Body in SHALLOW HAL (2001)

Hollywood's relationship with the overweight isn't exactly a history of sensitivity and kindness. Particularly where women are concerned, the mere suggestion of being a few pounds beyond anorexic means you're virtually unemployable; and in a city where people like Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears can be attacked in the press for being fat, roles for actual human women, let alone fat women, are few and far between. When the Farrelly brothers decided to make a movie about a shallow womanizer who falls in love with a 300-pound woman to prove that he can see 'inner beauty,' they had a casting decision to make: hire two people to play Rosemary Shanahan — one a beautiful, thin Hollywood blonde, to portray Hal's perception of her, and one a genuine 300-pound actress to portray the 'real' character — or just stick Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit? (It didn't help the whole unpleasant aftertaste of the movie that its male lead was Jack Black, an actor who gets romantic leads despite his own flabby physique; no actress with a body like Black's would ever nail down a leading-lady part.) Perhaps it's too much to expect anything like insight from filmmakers whose reputation is built on the gross-out comedy, but the fat suit is already a ethical minefield (representing, as it does, a sort of physical proof of Hollywood's allergy to hiring anyone genuinely overweight to appear in a prominent role) without filling it with an actress who probably weighed 110 pounds soaking wet when she was filming the role.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Willem Dafoe's Teeth in WILD AT HEART (1990)

The whole world seems to be rotting in David Lynch's nightmare road movie, and nowhere is this clearer than in the misbegotten mouth of white-trash villain Bobby Peru, played by Willem Dafoe in full-moon mode. Unholy, irredeemable, and defiantly unflossed, Bobby Peru is meant to be the ultimate dark void awaiting the young lovers at the end of their road to nowhere, and no Satanic movie character ever displayed a less welcoming smile. Perverse to the end, the still-smiling Bobby finally slides a shotgun beneath his chin and blows his own head off, after which the part of his body above the gum line must have felt a certain amount of relief.

Goldie Hawn's Fat in DEATH BECOMES HER (1992)

In this special-effects comedy, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play lifelong rivals who achieve "undead" immortality and spend the rest of the movie blowing holes in each other, twisting each other's necks into pretzels, knocking their heads into their chest cavities, and generally behaving as if Chuck Jones were their stunt coordinator. But the most effective physical mutation in the picture may come when Hawn slips into an old-fashioned fat suit and layers of latex makeup to depict her character's depressive obesity after Streep has waltzed off with her fiancee. Nothing in the movie is funnier than Hawn's expression of malicious satisfaction, with her features sunk deep in the mass of her cream puff head, as she imagines raining destruction down on her gal pal. At the time, Hawn was forty-six years old and had spent a quarter of a century doing her damndest to hang onto the body and mannerisms of a teenage girl. Maybe she felt wickedly giddy at even pretending to have let herself go.

Dennis Hopper's False Leg in RIVER'S EDGE (1987)

Dennis Hopper, fresh from his comeback in Blue Velvet, lays claim to the being the counterculture's answer to Walter Brennan in this generation-gap study of alienated youth. John Heard made a good grab for the position in Cutter's Way, where he staggered around pretending to be one-legged and wore an eye patch to boot, but that was nothing compared to what you get when you equip Hopper with an artificial leg, an inflatable sex doll, and the name "Feck", and sit back to watch him rock. When Hopper, who deals dope to the local teenagers, sits down to remove his false leg, it symbolizes the loss of his own youthful innocence and the disconnect between the older characters and the young people, which is fed by their use of his own product. Or something like that. And did we mention that his character's name is Feck!?

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov

Hair Today, Coen Tomorrow

Peter Smith — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:00:00 GMT

After largely triumphant tour of the festival circuit — it premiered at Cannes last spring and recently played at the New York Film Festival — the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men has now started trickling into commercial theaters. With a cast headed by Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem, adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, and widely hailed as a "return to form" for the Coens after a couple of poorly received comedies (the doomed remake of The Ladykillers and the sharp, cruelly underappreciated Intolerable Cruelty) the picture does not lack for talent, cultural cachet, and the news hook. Yet from the very first reports from Cannes, one detail has tended to dominate the coverage: the hair helmet that Bardem sports in his role as the borderlands Terminator, Anton Chigurh. The first notices the movie received simply described it as a "pageboy haircut", which is accurate enough but fails the convey the full, shocking impact of the sight of the thing.

But the people who've been waiting these past months for the movie to open so they could weigh in on it have no intention of being left out. Paste magazine calls the character "splendidly coiffed", but that's either sarcasm or the minority opinion weighing in. More typically, Dana Stevens of Slate calls him "a bob-haired golem," while Jan Stuart of Newsday refers to his "forklift mop of hair." Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, Keith Phipps of the Onion AV Club, and David Edelstein of New York magazine have all invoked Prince Valiant, but Salon's Andrew O'Hehir thought Bardem looked more like Ringo Starr. In the Village Voice, Scott Foundas invoked Cousin Itt. (New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott, a man with a literary background who understands the value of understatement, simply described Chigurh as "a deadpan sociopath with a funny haircut.")

This is hardly the first time that a Coen brothers movie has attracted attention of a tonsorial nature. The corny-surreal tone of Raising Arizona was quickly established by Nicolas Cage's haircut, which suggested an attempted imitation of Kevin Bacon's tastefully spiky 'do as executed by an epileptic barber with the blind staggers. As the title character of Barton Fink, a leftist playwright who seemed to be a cartoon of Clifford Odets, John Turturro wore a pop-top hairdo that actually made him look more like George S. Kauffman by way of Eraserhead. We may never know for sure whether this was a deliberate attempt to make the Odets-like character seem more "universal" or if the hairdresser on the picture was working from a miscaptioned photograph. In The Big Lebowski, all the political and cultural battles of the 1960s seemed to have come down, decades later, to an uneasy truce between Jeff Bridges' hippie-burnout look and the squared-off cropping of Walter, the reactionary Vietnam vet played by John Goodman [and inspired by John Milius! — ed.], who looks like a cinder block wearing tinted shades. "I'm a hair actor and proud of it!" George Clooney once insisted, and maybe the Coens wish there were more performers out there willing to define their characters somewhere above their eyebrows. After all, it was the Coens who, in O Brother Where Art Thou?, established that George Clooney isn't just a fine actor, a major star, and the unashamed voice of show business liberalism: he's a Dapper Dan man! — Phil Nugent