The Best Movies of the Decade

Either last week or a couple weeks ago Kevin J. Olson at Hugo Stiglitz Makes a Movie counted down his fifty favourite movies of the decade which struck me as strange considering how almost half a year has passed since those decade nostalgia lists were all the rage. But alas, never settling for half measures, Kevin decide to write the best of all the decade lists I've read since January. Don't believe me? Check it out.

Whether it was excitement over the vast array of great films that Kevin focused on that I have since put more towards the back of my mind or just simple jealousy that his 50 picks completely overshadowed by mere 10 back from at the end of December will maybe never be known.

Regardless, with no intention of ever outdoing Kevin, I wanted to create a list of all the films that came out over the last decade that I either did or would have given five stars. They'll be in alphabetical order because, quite frankly, to rank them would be just a headache and no descriptions or justification will be given. You'll just need to accept that I loved them all for the right reasons (which essentially means my own reasons) and leave it at that. If you want a numbered list with explanations check out the posting of my ten favourite films of the decade, which was posted long before anyone really followed this blog.

Now that that's out of the way here is the list (if you really do want some justification or just want to disagree please feel free to do so in the comments and I will gladly comply):

• 500 Days of Summer


• 13 Conversations About One Thing


• 25th Hour


• 28 Days Later


• About a Boy


• Adaptation


• Akeelah and the Bee


• All the Real Girls


• Amelie


• American Gangster


• Astronaut Farmer


• Avatar


• Aviator


• Baadasssss!


• Babel


• Bad Education


• Bad Santa


• Batman Begins


• Bee Season


• Before Sunset


• Before the Devil Knows Your Dead


• Best of Youth


• Black Hawk Down


• Bourne Ultimatum


• Brokeback Mountain


• Broken Flowers


• Brothers (the Danish original)


• Bully


• Capote


• Catch and Release


• Charlotte's Web


• Closer


• Conversation(s) With Other Women


• The Cooler


• The Dark Knight


• Dear Frankie


• Diggers


• Dopamine


• Elephant


• Fever Pitch


• Friday Night Lights


• Fubar


• George Washington


• Great Debaters


• Hairspray


• Half Nelson


• Happy-go-Lucky


• High Fidelity


• In America


• In Bruges


• Inglouris Basterds


• Intermission


• Jersey Girl


• Juno


• Keane


• The Kid


• Kill Bill


• The King


• The Kite Runner


• Knowing


• Lord of War


• Lost in Translation


• Made


• Man on the Train


• Margot at the Wedding


• Match Point


• May


• Mean Creek


• Melinda and Melinda


• Million Dollar Baby


• Millions


• Monster


• Moonlight Mile


• Mulholland Dr.


• The New World


• No Country for Old Men


• Nobody Knows


• Northfork


• Nowhere in Africa


• Palindromes


• The Pianist


• The Polar Express


• Punch Drunk Love


• Rachel Getting Married


• Raising Victor Vargas


• Ratatouille


• Requiem for a Dream


• Russian Ark


• Saint Ralph


• Saraband


• Session 9


• The Shape of Things


• Shut Up and Sing


• Sin City


• The Son


• Squid and the Whale


• Stevie


• Stranger than Fiction


• Strangers with Candy


• Sweeney Todd


• Sweet Sixteen


• Synecdoche, New York


• Talk to Her


• The Terminal


• There Will be Blood


• Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story


• Undertow


• United 93


• Up


• The Upside of Anger


• Waking Life


• Wall-e


• Watchmen


• Weather Man


• Winter Passing


• Wit


• The Woodsman


• The Wrestler


• You Can Count on Me


• Zodiac

So what does this prove other than that I watch a lot of movies? Nothing really other than you are maybe one step closer to understanding my tastes. Have I, by naming so many films, in some way, softened the impact of a list that requires you to pick 10 (or even 50) of your most favouratist films and stick to that? Maybe, but I loved all of these films for their own individual reasons, to be forced to pick one above the other would simply be cruelty.

Chloe (4.5 out of 5)

Chloe is both a film of eroticism and thrills but it is not an erotic thriller. It’s surprising to see how many critics and viewers have mistaken it as such. It is however, like the majority of Canadian master Atom Egoyan’s work, a dark and penetrating tale of a group of wounded people whose fears, pains, anxieties, what have you, slowly trickle out into sight as a result of their connections together that seem, as they always do in Egoyan, arbitrary at first until the truth is slowly revealed. The film has been compared to Fatal Attraction by some, but to what end, when Egoyan has so meticulously avoided every opportunity the story had of falling into that rhythm? There is no black and white in Egoyan’s work and, even though Chloe tells its story in more straight-forward a narrative manner than Egoyan has ever risked using (he didn’t write it after all), there is none in it either. Here is a melodrama that is, once penetrated, dark, complex, mature, erotic and penetrating that has been, by and large, mistaken as camp.

The story revolves around Catherine (Julianne Moore) who is a Toronto gynaecologist. As such, sex to her is procedural: it’s all part of the job. However, when she discovers a cell phone photo which may indicate her flirty professor husband David (Liam Neeson) of cheating she doesn’t know what to do. Caught in a marriage that has become more routine than romance and raising a son who has grown out of her, Catherine tracks down an escort named Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) and hires her to induce contact with David in order to see if he will take the bait.

That’s all I will say of the story as it begins to spiral off in directions that are not all that unexpected if one listens closely to Chloe’s voice-over narration in the first scene, but that I dare not reveal regardless. It is in these areas where the film has elicited its harshest criticism and yet Egoyan is a great filmmaker and knows that the heart of the matter lies not in the conclusion, but in how the film gets to that point and the emotional impact along the way.

Conservative and frigid, Catherine knows nothing of true eroticism: she plays the part of the wife and the doctor, but is devoid of the same sexual promiscuity that she blames her husband for. In a way her fears are more jealously than concern and as such, employing Chloe into her life is more a symbol of her own attempt at sexual reawakening than as a means to spy on her husband. Soon, the stories that Chloe relates back to Catherine act to unearth a dormant sexual desire in her just as much as they complicate her personal world, which quickly spirals out of her grasp. The relationship that eventually sparks between them (in a scene of passion rare by today’s standards) is just as much about a need to fill the voids in two lives than about titillation.

Chloe herself is not so much a prostitute, as the ultimate simulacrum: a composite image without an original. She has no past, no present, no identity and simply exists to fulfill the needs that she perceives of any of the men that come into her life. To her sex is a business transaction followed by a role-play.

However, to her, Catherine is a lost soul who she perceives can be set straight through her efforts to create whatever it is she needs in her life, but also who can make her into something more than an actor. That Catherine is truly turned on by Chloe’s recounting of her exploits with David is, in light of third act revelations, only half ironic as the other half, which may actually be the truth, veers somewhere towards confusion and tragedy.

Chloe and Catherine truly need each other, that much is true, but in such completely different ways that neither of them ever grasps the effect that their actions toward each other will have on each other in the long-run. And even then, in the film’s final image, Egoyan once again pulls everything out from under his audience in order to make them reassess if what they think they know, is really what they know at all.

And finally, Chloe is erotic in a way in that few films have time to be any more. Egoyan knows the difference between eroticism and exploitation and here makes a film that is sexy without being profane, mature without being explicit and complex without being complicated. It’s not then a film about prostitutes or infidelity or lesbianism, madness or revenge. It’s a beautiful, haunting, well acted film about emotionally crippled people who have their lives shaken up because of and in spite of one other. Has an Egoyan film ever been about anything else?

Read more about Egoyan in my mini review of Adoration

Farewell, For Now

I'm taking the weekend off, and since I don't have class on Friday's that means my weekend starts now. That's a lie actually, I still have a one-minute review in me and I'm going to see Atom Egoyan's Chloe sometime this weekend so maybe that review can be up before Monday but no promises. That said, I haven't done the whole link thing in a while and since I now follow so many blogs that it's hard to keep tabs on or make comments on all of them I figured I should give some a shout out.

• Burning Reels weighs in on David Cronenberg's Dead Ringer (which he liked a lot more than me) and has an interesting debate going in the comments about Canadian film.
• Kevin at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies is counting down his 50 favourite movies of the decade and it's one of the best, most in-depth lists of this nature I've yet to come across.
• Jemery at Moon in the Gutter found a cheapie horror movie that may actually be worth seeing.
• Andrew at Encore's World of TV and Film changed his banner and it sent everyone into a spiral of confusion until someone guessed what movie it was from. He also wrote a review of Agora, a movie I read and covered last year and enjoyed. He enjoyed it too. That's a good sign.
• Simon at Four of Them wants to know what movie makes you sad.
• Univarn takes a day off from Kurosawa to weigh in on a film I liked but not many others seemed to.
• Lucky guy that he is, Mad Hatter has access to Hot Docs, the biggest documentary film festival in North America, which is taking place in Toronto very soon. Make sure to keep up with his coverage.
• Jude at All That Film thinks we'll be remembering Nine more in five years than Precious. Do you agree?
• Yojimbo tackles Spielberg in depth and I agree with almost everything he says.
• CS at Big Thoughts from a Small Mind continues to split the critical vote on Alice in Wonderland

My Life As A Movie

Because there has never been a great idea that hasn't been worth stealing (although he said to copy and paste it so really, I'm just following instructions) Andrew over at Encore's World of Film and TV posted this fun little game, to which I replied, hey, why not? So, here goes:

Gender: Commando
Describe Yourself: All or Nothing
How Do You Feel Right Now: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Where Do You Live: Toronto Stories
What's the Weather Like There: Before the Rain
Where Would You Like To Go Right Now: Nowhere in Africa
What's Your Biggest Fear: Exit Wounds
Your Life Is A Film, Give It A Name: 13 Conversations About One Thing
What Will You Be Doing Today: The Class
Give Us A Piece of Advice: Boys Don't Cry

One Minute Review: Dead Snow (2 out of 5)

I've always wondered whether, if a bad movie knows it bad, that somehow negates it's badness? After all, a stinker by any other name...as Shakespeare one said. If we were to take Dead Snow as measure of this question, the answer would be no, badness does not compensate for badness. Even worse, this low budget Norwegian gore-fest is also painfully self-reflexive. It knows it's a movie and wants you to know it too. "How many movies can you think of where a bunch of teenagers go to a cabin in the woods without cell phones?" Asks one of the characters, which almost leads to a debate about whether or not Evil Dead 2 is actually a sequel to or rather just a remake of Evil Dead. Then, during a game of Twister someone asks why they even bother to play such a game. "Because Hollywood has taught us it's the best game ever," is the reply. I can't remember the last, or even the first time I've seen a Hollywood film pine over the brilliance of Twister. And then the gore starts as a group of hapless medical students are attacked by zombie cannibal Nazis after being warned of the evil that lurks near them by an ominous old man who looks kind of like Harvey Keitel and is apparently only out in the woods to tell these kids how dangerous it is to be out in the woods. Based on that description you should know if this movie is for you. If not, it's basically the same ol' thing.

Michael Bay Shows Restraint

There's a great article running over at Deadline Hollywood today about how studios are getting all hot and bothered over converting their big movies into 3D at the last minute. Personally, I've never seen a movie in 3D because A) I'm too cheap to pay extra for the gimmick, B) I've never seen a movie that gave me a burning desire to see it in 3D and C) in a post-Avatar world, 3D has stopped being about quality and is now just about studios desperately raking in as many spare dollars as they can.

James Cameron himself says it best in the article when he notes how after Toy Story theaters were flooded with sub par 3D animated films as if someone got it in their head that the success of that movie was in seeing cute things brought to life by computer animation and not say because of quality, originality, characters, story, etc. Now it seems that every movie is being converted into 3D at the last minute in order to capitalize on the success of Avatar, as if Avatar wasn't a big success because of quality, originality, characters...you see what I mean? It especially struck me that Warner Bros. made the announcement that all of their big tentpole releases will go through the 3D conversion process, especially considering when theaters didn't even care if they boycotted Alice in Wonderland a few weeks before its release because, as Mad Hatter mentioned in my comments section once, there are so many 3D movies lined up that exhibitors are sweating just trying to find enough 3D enhanced screens to get them onto.

And then Michael Bay weighs in on the pressure he is feeling on converting his Transformers 3 into 3D. Bay says that he tried to shoot the film using a real 3D camera so that the technique would feel authentic and have an air of professionalism about it, but it was too bulky to work with his complex, high speed style of action filmmaking. He proceeds to discuss, with a large degree of truth, that, despite what you may think of his movies, he always delivers a technically sophisticated product and he's not going to jeopardize that by giving it up to a technically unproven gimmick that he isn't sold on. Good for him. Like him or not, it's up to director's like Bay, who have clout within the studio, to ensure that the quality of their pictures don't suffer under the narrow-sightedness of a studio that thinks people will flock to anything just because it's 3D. And plus, if Transformers 3 is anything like Transformers 2, adding 3D into the mix will only result in leading to faster, more severe migraines.

In an age where studio tentpole pictures are getting worse and worse (Marmaduke? Yogi Bear? Battleship? Come on now) Hollywood is now trying to cut corners once again by not taking the time and effort that Cameron did to make Avatar's 3D process such a success, instead resorting to after-the-fact rush jobs. When will studios ever learn that fads become so because they possess a large degree of specificity and when you saturate the marketplace they will simply die off because audiences are bored with them? Personally, I can wait to see Warner Bros. shooting itself in the foot once 3D films start to bomb at the box office and to be honest, I see that happening sooner then later (Piranha 3D anyone?).

Check out the full article here.

Have You Ever Regretted A Review?

One of the most frequent question any critic gets is whether or not they have ever changed their minds about something after the review has been written and published. I think about this sometimes as I read back over my old work but the only conclusion I ever come to is that, although I would change the wording, the grammer, the flow, and the overall mechanics of some reviews, I would still pretty much convey those same ideas today as I did on the day the review was written. Except once.

Back in the tail end of 2009 I got an e mail through Suite101.com from a producer from Florida asking me if I would review his new indie film. Of course I felt for his cause, know how hard it is for small films to make a name for themselves, and know that every little bit of good publicity counts. When you're an indie filmmaker one of the things you find out quickly is that you basically need to get out there and get every audience member you can, one at a time.

So I agreed and some weeks later a screener showed up in my mailbox. It was a film called Patsy. So, I set all my schoolwork aside and popped it into my DVD player. The film ran less than an hour and a half and was nearly unwatchable. What was I to do? Here was this guy who was waiting for me to post a review of his film, which he must obviously be proud of, and I was going to publish on the Internet how badly this thing sucked?

So I did something I've never done in a review before. I lied. I said, while trying to heap as little praise in it's direction as possible, that the film was a good first effort, that people who like David Lynch might enjoy it, that it was funny in a strange sort of way and so on. Although the Lynch comparison was a just one, Patsy was a combination as all of Lynch's worst qualities: pretentious, annoying, unfunny, nonsensical. I'd try to tell you what Patsy is about but I have no idea. The story spins out of control towards nowhere in particular, the comedic moments are juvenile and unfunny and kill whatever tone the film is working for, and the acting is bad, bad, bad. Apparently other people feel into the same trap as me because I was shocked to find a lot of positive publicity for the movie on IMDB after it showed at a film festival in Florida.

In a way, I feel bad that I didn't like the film, but I feel even worse that I was dishonest with myself. As a critic I have the freedom to voice my true experience of a film and for the first (and last) time in my life I had not done that. There is a lesson here that I want to depart upon anyone willing to take it: Always stay true to yourself and your voice, never doubt your craft and don't be afraid to call a bad film a bad film. That's our job as film reviewers. That's our obligation.

Read my Patsy review here

One Minute Review: Adoration (4 out of 5)

Atom Egoyan is one of Canada's premier directors and although Adoration does not present as tightly wound a narrative as one usually expects from Egoyan, it is still nonetheless a strange, powerful, twisted meditation on Egoyan's personal fascinations. The film once again takes up Egoyan's preferred narrative structure of starting in close-up and gradually pulling back, revealing how a group of seemingly random people and events are actually all intertwined. This is also the first film where Egoyan doesn't seem to be hopelessly pining for his Armenian homeland and instead presents a more gentle and subtle reflection on religion and technology and how both work together and in opposition to create new pasts and presents out of thin air, to the point where we become consumed with them and they begin controlling our lives. I'm not sure all of these opposing elements fit together as well as Egoyan would like them to, but this is still a mature and though-provoking film.

The Celebrity Connection: Jesse James

It's no secret by now that Jesse James has been caught cheating on the lovely, beautiful Sandra Bullock with some tatooed skag that looks like he picked her out of some dumpster, just weeks after Bullock sent him a heartfelt thank you at the Oscars, who can now sit easily next to other huge celebrity talents like Kate Gosselin on the cover of supermarket tabloids. Then I found a picture that just might explain quite a bit:

Is Jesse James just this guy in disguise? You decide.

Is God to be Blamed for Racism?

I was born and raised Catholic, but I'm not so sure I quite believe in God. I'm a seeing-is-believing kind of guy and believe that everything that is worth explaining can be by the logical hand of science. The answers to everything haven't been found yet, but I believe even they are still out there, waiting for discovery. I like to believe in something that I can reach out and touch and feel with my own hand. On most days God is just too intangible for me to wrap my head around.

I bring this up because I was watching Paul Saltzman's documentary Prom Night in Mississippi, in which a small town in Mississippi, in 2008, still has segregated high school proms. Basically, the white people have one prom, the black people have a different prom and all the parents are happy that their poor virginal daughters are not being stolen away from them by hulking black savages, or something like that. When Morgan Freeman, who grew up in the same town and still considers himself a resident catches wind of this he makes a proposal to the school: have one prom and he'll pick up the tab.

I'm not sure Prom Night in Mississippi is a great documentary. My criteria is that a documentary must be better than a dramatized version of the same material and I'm not so sure this film passes that. It certainly would have been more powerful if it has spent more time focusing on the parents and how their racism is passed down through the generations and affects their children.

But, no matter. What struck me about the film is a line that a white teenage girl says that her grandmother told her, which is that, if God wanted all people to be together and equal he would have made them all the same colour. This line strikes me because, once again, God has been used as the scapegoat in which to justify human weakness and ignorance. Wars are fought in God's name, people are killed in God's name and now (and probably since forever) racism is being justified in God's name. Even if you believe in God, is this use of his name to perpetuate ugly feelings of superiority, hatred and discrimination acceptable? Some days it's enough to not even want to believe in a God just by knowing how some people abuse His name.

What disgusted me most about this comment is that, when you argue this woman's point by taking God out of the equation, she is proven to simply be ignorant and terribly short sighted in her thinking. Let's talk about race from a scientific standpoint. The reason some people have black skin is because of a dark pigment called melanin. Melanin absorbs UV radiation, controlling the amount that penetrates the skin. This pigment is found in sun rich places like Africa where people were exposed to heavy amounts of sunlight and needed to adapt to the climate in order to survive. That's why God made some men black: to protect them from the sun, not keep them from having sex with white girls and having mixed babies which would ultimately lead to the complete annihilation of the white race.

Maybe that's a simplification of things, I don't know. The point is though that sometimes people try to hide behind things that they don't understand and use their beliefs as a way to justify the things that they are afraid of or just plain don't understand. That's why I enjoy films that unmask hidden prejudices and bring them into the light. If nothing else, Prom Night in Mississippi does that much.

Boogie Nights

“What can you expect when you're on top? You know? It's like Napoleon. When he was the king, you know, people were just constantly trying to conquer him, you know, in the Roman Empire. So, it's history repeating itself all over again.”- Dirk Diggler, Boogie Nights.

If Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1996 debut film Hard Eight planted the seeds for a great talent to grow from, his 1997 sophomore feature Boogie Nights was the sum of that greatness coming into full fruition. Hard Eight worked to establish Anderson with a strong visual aesthetic (sweeping tracking shots, abrupt push-ins, much akin to those of Scorsese and Altman), a knack for sharp dialogue, and a laying of the foundations for the overarching themes that would pulsate under the skin of the rest of the director’s works. However, unlike the great American auteurs of the 70s whom Anderson idolized, the visual symbols in Hard Eight lacked cohesion, and were mostly played as sight gags, as when a book of matches spontaneously combusts in main character John’s pocket as he waits in line at the movies.

Boogie Nights would be the film that changed all of that as it was the film where Anderson learned to string his images together in order to create a coherent understanding of the overriding themes within his narratives. Every subsequent Anderson narrative from Boogie Nights on would be structured around one or two central images or visual motifs that would tie the entire film together, and in Boogie Nights it’s a doozey.

The themes are familiar: a young teenager leaves his unsupportive family in order to venture off and acquire a new surrogate one that will support his true talents, and how the shifting cultural currents were changing the way the world of porn (a metaphorical symbol in itself, which stands in for society as a whole) functioned. All of this is framed around the simple image of main character Dirk Diggler’s penis.

In order to understand how all of the thematic elements of Boogie Nights could revolve around thirteen inches of prosthetic rubber, it seems a fruitful task to first analyze how the main themes of the film are themselves presented. The first is the porn industry itself, which stands in as an allegorical representation of the shifting cultural currents that lead America into Ronald Regan’s 1980s. James Mottram in his book The Sundance Kids describes Dirk Diggler’s rise to fame as, “Living proof that, in America, you can reinvent yourself and live out the Dream, Dirk soon pampers himself with the trappings of success” (188). The irony of Dirk’s rise to fame though is twofold. Dirk is at the height of his popularity at the end of the 70s, a time of freedom and revolution, when, as Roger Ebert states, “A director can dream of making [a porno] so good that the audience members would want to stay in the theater even after they had achieved what they came for” (1997).

However, all of this changes on News Years Eve as Dirk and his newfound family welcome in the 80s at his plush new house, as two specific events occur that suggest the death of the 70s freedom and the entering of the closed-minded yuppiedom of 80s Reganonmics; a transition that Sharon Waxman in her book Rebels on the Backlot describes perfectly as, “A vehicle for telling a story about a reconstructed family, devolving from the 70s party into the hangover of drug addiction and broken lives” (118). The two images Anderson gives us are firstly the character of Floyd Gondolli, the man with the money, who crashes the party to inform director Jack Horner that the future of porn lies in video. Floyd’s presence builds a bridge not only for the transition between years but for the transition of the porn industry from art form to assembly line commodification, produced cheap, in low quality and to serve only one purpose: to provide orgasm.
Gondolli acts as a trigger for the second image, which most literally visualizes the death of the porn industry and the surrogate family, as assistant director Lil' Bill pulls a gun at the party and shoots his wife before turning it on himself. That Anderson films this ironic act of startling violence straight on, with Bill standing in front of a blank white wall, signals almost imminent doom for Diggler, who now has the bloodstains of the past covering the walls of his home. From this moment on, there is no escape.

As 80s capitalism wages war on Diggler, he begins to drown in the haze of drug addiction, is beaten after reducing himself to offering cheap sexual favors for men in the confines of their vehicles, the family is broken up by greed and flaring egos, and pornography is reduced to no more than, as Mottram suggests, a perverse way for guys to get a quick fix (194). No wonder 1979 literally ended with a bang of tragedy instead of celebration.

Of course Diggler is not the only one to be brought down by the 80s. Dirk’s friend Todd Parker is gunned down in one of the films most brilliant scenes after a drug deal goes awry, suggesting that, where drug use in the 70s was seen as a way to experiment with freeing ones mind, it has transformed into a breeding ground for paranoia and violence in the 80s; Jack Horner has capitalism forced on him when he begins shooting cheap films on the video format; the Colonel is put in jail of charges of sex with a minor; porn star Amber Waves is denied the right to see her children while her lawyer, in one of those detailed tongue-in-cheek winks from Anderson, is placed in the frame between portraits hanging on the wall behind of Richard Nixon on the left and Ronald Regan on the right (the side of the table her conservative, anti-porn husband inhabits); and Buck Swope who, in Anderson’s most striking image of the corruption of 80s culture, has a heavy burden put upon him.

After surviving an armed robbery in a convenience store that ends in bloodshed, Swope, who earlier that day was denied a loan from the bank in order to help him open his own business, stands surrounded by death, covered in blood, the camera slowly zooming in on the blood soaked bag of money which the burglar tried to make off with. The implications that arise from Anderson’s focus on the bag are both bleak and powerful. After being denied the means that would enable Buck to chase the American Dream by opening his own business, by an institution organized to help people do just that, Buck is forced to such extremes that he is willing to steal a bag of money which is covered with the blood of a stranger. The message is clear: chasing the American Dream in the 80s comes at the expense of your fellow man.

This brings us back full circle to Dirk’s penis, which acts as the ultimate symbol for the transition between the glamour and artistic freedom of the 70s and the cold conservative capitalism of the 80s. This is in part due to the way Anderson uses the penis within the framework of the narrative. In the 70s it remains totally elusive to the audience. We hear talk of it, and we learn of its greatness through the employment of reaction shots of Roller Girl, the Colonel, etc. However, it isn’t until the 80s (the last shot of the film to be exact) after Diggler has battled addiction, lost his second family, and been beaten down and throw away by society that we actually get to see the coveted member. By waiting until the last scene to show us the penis, Anderson has provided a sly, if tragic, dig at the pathetic institution the porn industry and Diggler have become in the 80s. Just as video acted in the New Years Eve sequence, Dirk’s penis, when we finally see it, provides the perfect image of capitalist commodifiction. By the time the penis rears its head, its greatness has been muted as it no longer possesses a unique individual quality. Size is no longer more important than mass production, as quality is no longer more important than quantity. Diggler may have rejoined his family at the end of the film, but he is no longer a star, rather a simple cog in the capitalist machine, installed to produce an assembly line product.
If Anderson had shown us the penis during the 70s, we would have been blinded by its magnificent power. However, now at the end of the film, its luster has faded and we can look at it without harm because it is no longer one of a kind. Diggler, like Napoleon, has been conquered, as all great men of excess eventually are, and the unveiling of his anatomy reveals this. Even more tragic is Dirk’s failure to realize his fall from grace as he declares to the mirror in the same scene “I am a big, bright, shining star.” Thus, the penis and all the other symbols that revolve around it (the surrogate family, the bloody money, the video tapes, Lil' Bill’s suicide) show the tragedy that befell many in the 80s. With many people out of jobs and the deskilling of labour on the rise, many people who, along with Dirk Diggler, were reduced to mere interchangeable parts in a vast capitalist machine.

Read about Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love

Magnolia

Yesterday, after reading a post on Punch-Drunk Love, I had my love of Paul Thomas Anderson re-awoken and therefore got the desire to take a section out of an essay I wrote on him in university and post it. Reading over that section of the essay then made me want to take out the other two sections on Magnolia and Boogie Nights and post them to, because, well, what's the point in neglecting 2/3s of a perfectly good essay? So here is the section on Magnolia, with the section on Boogie Nights soon to follow.
And it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that strange things happen all the time. And so it goes, and so it goes. And the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."- Narrator, Magnolia

It is these musing by the narrator of Magnolia, Anderson’s third, epic masterpiece of a film, that outline the very essence of both the dominant themes within the film’s narrative: that the sins of the past will be passed on to the recipients of the present, and that, as James Mottram explains, “The universe is made up of chance events. Human life is accidental- or…we live in a world where human actions have meaning and consequences, for better or worse” (261).

In order to explore the theme of a father passing on his misgivings to his son, Anderson, much like Altman in Short Cuts (1993) or Nashville (1975), creates a vast labyrinth of characters whose connections, in one way or another, all revolve around the television game show What do Kids Know?
The show, although a celebration of children and their knowledge, is also a front for the breakdown of the relationship between parent and child. The show’s producer is dying of cancer (a symbol used to represent the atonement of one’s sins as it isn’t until after contracting the disease that both Earl Partridge and Jimmy Gator attempt to reconcile with their estranged children) and hated by his alienated son who feels he was abandoned and forced to tend to his dying mother. The show’s host is also dying and is hated by his drug addicted daughter who accuses him of molesting her when she was younger; the former star of the show has refused to grow up and instead boozes uncontrollably, exploiting his minimal celebrity in order to make a living; and his mirror image, the current star of the show, whose father seems to care more about personal glory than the well being of his son.
This child character, Stanley, provides one of the film’s many key metaphors for the fractured relationship between parent and child as he wets his pants after being refused access to the bathroom during a commercial break, after which he becomes introverted and refuses to continue playing the game. Anderson cross cuts with images of Stanley’s father throwing a tantrum in the dressing room when Stanley misses questions he should know, as if to suggest that his son’s refusal to play the game acts as his own personal embarrassment. When the father approaches Stanley during a commercial break, he is unsympathetic in regards to the child’s urine soaked pants, warning him to get back in the game, as if his own personal pride depends on it. Stanley’s refusal to continue playing is Anderson’s way of showing the deteriorating of Stanley’s feeling of self worth; why after all, should he exist in a world where his simple needs, like going to the washroom, are placed below the pride of winning a petty game show?
This is an important image because it also works in comparison to Former Wiz Kid Donnie Smith’s grand emotional scene, in which he announces that it is “alright to confuse children with angels,” and ends with Smith vomiting into a toilet while uttering a barely audible biblical reference (Exodus 20:5) about how the sins of the father will be passed on to his children. The scene acts as a call for intervention; a summation of Anderson’s theme regarding how the actions of one person have consequences on another. The scene is a symbol of hope that Stanley will break the cycle and not go down the same path: to end up with his head in a toilet at a bar like the pathetic, miserable Donnie Smith, who was once in the exact same position as him. Anderson is once again showing us that the consequences of one person’s actions have a severe affect on another because we are all interconnected in some way. If Stanley’s dad continues to treat him so lowly, his future will not be much better than Donnie’s.
The central symbol in Magnolia however, is also its most infamous: the frogs. Anderson, much like Altman does with his earthquake in Short Cuts, has it rain frogs over all of the characters in order to provide them all with a religious cleansing. The incident happens without build up, (although Anderson sneakily litters hidden references to the plague of frogs from Exodus 8:2 throughout the entire film), and ends without explanation. Sharon Waxman, with the help of Anderson himself attempts to explain the significance of the frog rain: “When [Anderson] heard about the frogs, he thought they could represent a sign in the story, or a warning. ‘There are certain moments in your life when things are so fucked-up and so confused that someone can say to you, ‘it’s raining frogs’ and that makes sense,’ Anderson said” (195). Where the frogs act as a warning sign in the Bible, here they also function as a means to cleanse the characters of their sins and provide them with a new beginning, especially for naive cop Jim Kurring (the peacekeeper of the cast), whose lost gun also falls from the sky after the frogs stop, who thus gives Donnie Smith a second chance at life, after catching him breaking in to his former place of employment in order to steal money; showing once again how our own actions always effect those around us.



Another function of the frog sequence is to unite the entire cast through a common emotional thread. The second sequence to do this, it acts in combination with the first in which, in one of the most bold and beautiful uses of music ever committed to film, has all of the characters frozen in time, singing in unison the lyrics to Amiee Man’s “Wise Up” which also plays on the soundtrack. The chorus proclaims that “It’s not going to stop, until you wise up,” providing an insightful moment of self-reflection in which the characters realize that their lives have all begun to spin out of control and it is their job to reflect on their past sins in order to “wise up” and live better in the future. This provides Anderson with a bridge that leads right into the frog sequence, where the characters are all metaphorically anointed by the frogs, an act of God that allows them to step outside of themselves and be reminded that sometimes life becomes so tumultuous that we forget that there are greater forces working in the universe, which are beyond ourselves. It’s a reminder we all could use every once in a while.

One Minute Review: Year One (1 out of 5)

So if you don't know, I only tend to review movies that I see in the theater. It's mainly because the theater is the most ideal setting to engage with a film and when I go to the theater I am seeing (for the most part) a film I want to see. At home I'm more often than not just seeing one to add to my mental library, or database, or filing cabinet, whatever metaphor works best for you. So, since I'm strapped for time this month due to mounting school work, I've decided to do these one minute reviews, which try to sum up a movie to the best of my abilities with the fewest words possible. Let's see how it goes.

Rumour has it that, when Harold Ramis co-hosted At the Movies a few years ago when it was still Ebert & Roeper, as a fill in for Roger Ebert, he turned to Richard Roeper after taping was complete and said, "You call this work?" You could ask Ramis the same thing after seeing Year One, a stupid, lazy comedy from the man who made Groundhog Day. It feels like an uninspired Saturday Night Live skit that has been painfully blown up to feature length. Not to mention, as Biblical epic spoofs go, nothing in it are nearly half as funny as this:



Or this:

Punch-Drunk Love

Today Kevin J. Olson over at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies (check it out!) wrote a post about Punch-Drunk Love which A) reminded me how much I love that movie and B) made me remember that I wrote an essay in University about how Paul Thomas Anderson is a director who tells his stories through images and one section of that essay was dedicated to Punch-Drunk Love. Unfortunately the bulk of the essay focuses on Boogie Nights, but I think what I wrote provides a nice contast to the ideas that Olson brings forth. Check it out and then go check his out.

I have a love in my life. That makes me stronger than you could ever imagine- Barry Egan, Punch-Drunk Love

After a, expansive epic like Magnolia, a film like 2002s Punch-Drunk Love, at a mere ninety minutes, feels like a minor work from Paul Thomas Anderson. However, upon closer inspection, one finds that PDL is Anderson’s most focused and coherent film, while also managing to be his most artistically daring. Not only is the running time of the film the opposite of Anderson’s two previous epics, but it also plays like their backwards reflection, as it opens with the film’s key image and instead of being about the desire to repair family relations, its main character seeks to break away from them as they are an agent of torment for him. PDL is also an experiment of sorts for Anderson because, instead of using his images to tell the story, he uses them instead to provide a physical projection of Barry’s inner psyche onto the world around him. When Barry Egan is trapped in his office, trying to engage in conversation with possible love interest Lena, his sisters constantly demanding his attention on the phone, his crew experience chaos as a fork lift crashes into a self, sending boxes crashing to the ground, we get to realizing that Anderson is giving us a physical reenactment of what it must be like to be living inside Barry’s head at any given moment. It is a jarring and daring method of metaphysical filmmaking.

The key image in PDL, much like the frogs in Magnolia, appears without warning or explanation. It is a small piano, latter identified be Lena as a harmonium (an ironic twist, as the harmonium is the key object that Barry clings to in moments of unbearable chaos. It, much like her, is the sole object that can sooth Barry’s soul), which is mysteriously ejected from a cab and placed on the sidewalk in front of Barry’s place of business after a van flips over due to a violent explosion and then instantly disappears. Here Anderson is setting up a metaphorical divide in Barry’s psyche. By providing us with a violent image, followed by an innocent one, Anderson shows us the dual nature of Barry who is both a naive child with no true sense of how human communication works in the everyday world, but also a ball of burning rage that oozes beneath the surface just waiting to explode. This is a contradiction we see constantly recurring throughout the film, most notably in a delicate scene where Barry tells Lena that she is so beautiful he just wants to get a hammer and smash her face in.

That scene, although seemingly violent by design, actually provides a startling moment of revelation when placed in comparison with the story his seven sisters tell of the time he smashed the sliding glass door at home with a hammer. By expressing his love for Lena via wishing to smash her face with a hammer, Anderson is showing us a shift in Barry, who no longer desires to put his energy into bursts of violent rage but rather, to putting all of his energy into loving Lena with all his heart.

That scene segues perfectly into the film’s second key image (the phone) and the final scene in which Barry encounters the mattress man Dean Trumbell who harasses Barry after having called a phone sex line, and whose goons also put Lena in the hospital after crashing into Barry’s car. The phone is a cause for much anxiety in Barry’s life, like how his sisters constantly harass him at work with their insistent calls. Also the phone is the sole object that stands between Barry and his ability to fully commit himself to Lena because it acts as a constant reminder of Barry’s relationship to Trumbell. It is only with slight irony that, when going to see Trumbell, Barry arrives with the receiver of his home phone in hand, the cord dragging behind. It is here that Barry mutters the classic line about having a love in his life, and, in the films most uplifting dedication of love, finally hands the phone off to a spare employee after threatening to “beat the hell” from Trumbell.

Another use of symbols worth exploring is the way Anderson uses colour in PDL, especially red and white, as discussed by Cubie King in his essay Punch-Drunk Love: The Budding of an Auteur. Cubie assess that, “Red serves as the colour that leads to Barry’s happiness” (2005). Cubie could be on to something as he recalls significant moments of red being used: the woman dressed in red in the background at the supermarket as Barry looks for items he can earn frequent flyer miles off of, the red cab that drops the harmonium onto the sidewalk, the stewardesses dressed in red who wait at the end of the terminal for Barry to board the plane to Hawaii, and the red arrow which shows Barry the way to escape from the four blonde brothers (2005); all signs leading to Barry’s happiness.

White on the other hand, according to Cubie, acts as the opposite. It is his “oppressor” (2005). The white walls of Barry’s headquarters entrap him, the white phone receiver which is the cause of much anxiety for Barry, and the white hallways which Barry must frantically run through in order to get back to Lena for their first kiss, etc. Thus, further exemplifying Anderson’s desire to make PDL play like a physical representation of his main character’s fragmented psychological state, and, as a result, crafting a film that has come closer to any since Scorseses’ After Hours (1986), to providing an in depth representation of character psychology entirely through images.

Why Charles S. Dutton Should be in Every Movie

I was watching Rudy the other day, which is an underdog story of a kid who dreams of playing football for the University of Notre Dame's Flying Irish. I watched most of the movie with specks of tears in my eyes, not because I've had the privilege of visiting the University of Notre Dame campus to present a paper at a film conference held there, but because the movie is so nice and honest and uplifting. Movies aren't nice very often anymore (or honest for that matter), so I cherish the ones that are when I stumble across them.

More to the point, Roger Ebert often writes about actors who are so good in such a wide variety or roles that, when they come on screen, people perk up in their seats because you know something good is coming. Often included on this list are Christopher Walken (my favourite actor, by the way), William H. Macy, Peter Dinklidge, Richard Jenkins, and a slew of others that don't come instantly to mind. I'd like to add another one: Charles S. Dutton. You may not know him by name, but I guarantee you've seen him before and, despite his being in some bad movies, I've never seen him give a bad performance.

Just look at him as the Notre Dame caretaker in Rudy and how much life and emotion he brings to this scene without once pandering to the camera or announcing himself as an actor in the midst of a big dramatic moment. Even more impressive is the way he holds himself. You never once believe that he isn't actually a caretaker.



And now look at him in the trailer for John Sayles' underrated The Honeydripper playing a totally different role.



He's also played a hard-as-nails sheriff in A Time to Kill, a wise father with one or two powerful scenes in Menace II Society, a doctor in Gothika, and a man on the bus in Spike Lee's Get On The Bus, along with many, many others. My question is: the man is so talented and has such a wide range of notes that he can play, when is he going to get a really juicy lead role? All he needs is a film like The Visitor of Crazy Heart and he'll be set. Fingers crossed.

Nice, But A Little Too Late

Last night Nicole Eggert and Corey Feldman were on Larry King Live to talk about the death of their friend Corey Haim. When asked how they felt about how years of Internet mocking were turned around into times of reflection and nostalgia over the actor upon his death, Eggert made the comment that it is nice, but a little too late.

Of course I am sad to hear of Haim's death because it's unfortunate when people die young, although, let's be fair, as far as Hollywood tragedy's go, this one ranks fairly low. I understand that Feldman is trying to call the media out on their hypocrisy in turning years of mockery into loving tribute over the man's death, but really, even if the media was nice to him over those past years, so what? I find things like TMZ as shallow and useless as the next guy but King's response to Feldman hit the nail on the head: what did you want them to do? It's not surprising that he doesn't really have an answer.

Don't celebrities sign some sort of unspoken contract when they get into the business? Is any celebrity so detached from reality that they don't know the pitfalls of living a life of excess and indulgence before getting into the game? Drugs, alcohol and promiscuity have always been documented as a part of Hollywood life, even before the emergence of tabloids and cultural fixation on celebrity gossip. Avoiding these things is up to the willpower of the individual alone.

Also, celebrities must know that, by becoming public figures, they give up some of their personal rights. Celebrity fascination has also never been something new. People live in awe of celebrities. They want to meet them and touch them and get as close to them as possible. That's reality. When people like Kristen Stewart go on record talking about how much they don't like their life anymore because they have no privacy, I wonder, well, why did you decide to take a leading role in a film based on a novel that has become a huge cultural phenomenon (or should I say fad)? What was she expecting? The media has always been ruthless when it comes to dissecting celebrities. Again, I don't condone gossip but it's an inescapable part of celebrity culture. Haim signed on for the life, why should his treatment have been any different?

The other thing that bothers me is that, it's a known fact that celebrity does not last forever. Stars reach their expiration dates, especially ones like Haim who seem only recruited to fill a niche in the current market. The simple fact of the matter is, not many, if any, of Haim's films are timeless and, really, he wasn't that good of an actor to begin with. He was just a cute and likable teenager who grew into something no one really cared for anymore.

Feldman also talks about how Hollywood likes to put people up on a pedestal and then walk away from them when they aren't popular anymore. I don't mean to sound insensitive but in reality Hollywood is a business and businesses are all dollars and cents. You don't promote the guy who has the lowest productivity in the workforce, so why keep a star in the spotlight who's not turning a profit anymore? That's why Corey Haim disappeared from the spotlight, plain and simple. I imagine, as a human being that must be hard to deal with, but it's not a new trend and no actor, no matter how good, is exempt from the risk of it happening to them. In a perfect world, Feldman's wish would come true and the media would be kind and sensitive to Hollywood's fallen stars. But again, Haim wasn't an outstanding actor, his movies were cheesy and being mocked just goes along with the business; you sign up for it the moment you embrace success.

Thus brings me back to Feldman's point about how the media was not there for Haim when he needed them. Where was Feldman? I don't want to go off making assumptions about something I know next to nothing about but, as a friend who also struggled with his own drug addictions, could Feldman not see the signs? Having battled with his own demons, did he not understand the possible damage that leaving an addict untreated could lead to? He says that during the past little while Haim had been in the best state of mind he'd been in for a long time. Why then, just weeks ago, was he given an offer to appear on Celebrity Rehab?

Is the media cruel, vicious and heartless? Yes, it can be, but regardless of how they portrayed him over the years, the media didn't kill Corey Haim. Corey Haim did.

Depressing Day

Joel Axler, the co-founded of popular Canadian comedy club Yuk Yuks once told me that the entertainment business is a great one to be in but you need to be prepared to deal with a lot of death. He told me he would cringe every time owner Mark Breslin would call him for fear that it would be news of another death.

I suppose most people have heard of Corey Haim's death by drug overdose by now. He was 38. Haim was an iconic teen star of the 80s who, along with constant collaborator Corey Feldman, who also struggled with drug addiction, made some likable if wholly forgettable films. Haim had been out of the spotlight for a while, being most recently seen in the A&E reality show Two Corey's, which, not surprisingly, I never watched. I'm not really affected or surprised by news of this death, Haim has been out of the spotlight for too long to get nostalgic over and unlike John Hughes, who's work also dominated the 80s, his films have not aged into memorable classics. Still it is always sad to hear of the death of someone much before their time. It seems that these celebrity deaths happen in groups of three. A couple years ago it was Brad Renfro followed by Heath Ledger and Anthony Minghella. This year it has been Brittany Murphy and now Haim. Who will be the third?

In other depressing, albeit more ironic news, the LA Times is reporting that someone was stabbed in the neck during a screening of Shutter Island, a film about an institution for the criminally insane, at the Lancaster Cinemark 22. The story goes that the man was upset by a woman seated close to him who was talking on her cellphone during the film. When he confronted her she left with two other men who returned several minutes later and stabbed him in the neck with a mean thermometer. No word is given on the man's condition except that his wounds are serious and the suspects have not been found. Yikes, what is the world coming to when it's not even safe to go to the theater anymore?

Can You Spot A Great Film?: A Justification of Shutter Island

There are two director's working today who, above all others, have managed to rise above just being great filmmakers and into the realms of pop culture phenomenons. One is Quintin Tarantino and the other is Martin Scrosese. The problem with great filmmakers reaching this status though is that hordes of viewers flock to their movies for no better reason than because everything attached to their name must be brilliant by default. This isn't based on any critical logic, any in-depth thought or any knowledge about the trajectory of the filmmaker's career; it's just generally accepted pop culture wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. I know hundreds of people who think Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas are masterpieces, and they are, but I can count on one hand roughly how many people have been able to provide a decent explanation as to why this is the case.

Therefore kids, and adults too, will go to these movies and declare them masterpieces because well, isn't that what Tarantino and Scorsese do: make masterpieces, as if they have exceeded mere morality and are instead a brand name known for quality every time. And, in fact, they are known for quality. I've only seen one Scrosese movie I didn't like (The Colour of Money) and two Tarantino movies I didn't like (Reservoir Dogs and Death Proof), but I could sit down and conduct a conversation or debate, justifying my loves and disappointments for every film each director has helmed. After seeing Inglourious Basterds in August I went to the McDonald's across the street from the theater to get a McFlurry when some kid I knew vaguely from high school, who had apparently also seen the movie, explained to his friends with vigour all the ins and outs of Tarantino's oeuvre without ever once saying anything useful about the aesthetic texture of his films, the brilliance of their construction, the subtlety of using dialogue to create the kind of drama that no physical representation could, and so on. Every time I hear conversations going on like this I think feel like interrupting and saying, "Hey kid, Tarantino is more than just hip dialogue and references to other films." And then I think of French critic Pierre Rissient who said that 'It is not enough to like a film. Oe must like it for the right reasons."

I'm not trying to be some sort of film snob here, but what Rissient says is true: it's not enough to like films because the vast majority of their viewers have deemed them good. You have to have a justifiable reason, otherwise, your opinion is a moot point that is being set up to be knocked down. That's why bad films like The Usual Suspects, The Boondock Saints and Fight Club have gotten so popular: a lot of people started to say they were good simply because they were different until the point where it would be considered taboo to cast a bad word against them (see my reconsideration of Donnie Darko to see what I am talking about).

But now I have gotten off topic because those kids are talking about movies they liked. I'm talking about good movies: movies where you can see a masterful director making the best out of what they have been given. I'm talking about appreciating good lighting and editing and camera angles; all that stuff that lead to a films overall style. Too often people confuse movies they like with movies that are good. Anyone can express if they likeed something to some sort of extent, but few people have the knowledge to judge whether a film is actually good or not.

That finally brings me to Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island which is the kind of film that really tests Scorsese's (or any great filmmaker's) audience and separates the film "viewers" from the film "watchers." I say this because as I was watching Shutter Island, someone in the back of the theater was laughing as each new revelation of the story was revealed, clearly so disgusted with the path the story had taken that he just had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Then, after the screening, I heard some teenage girl declare it the "gayest" movie she had ever seen. Really, I thought, these are the people who go to see Scrosese's movies?

But you see, Shutter Island is a good movie. It's actually a masterpiece if you don't take the story into consideration. It's a masterpiece in film style, perfectly evoking a long forgotten time and genre of filmmaking. Scorsese flawlessly evokes the look and feel of the 50s film noir and uses that as a grounds to create the suspense of horror of the story. How does it do it? Well how about the brilliant overhead lighting, casting long shadows up walls and across floors, the shot that begins as a close up of Leonardo DiCaprio's face until pulling up to reveal the vastness of a cliff side lurking just behind him, one wrong move leading to death. Then there's my favourite shot in the movie. It takes place in Ward C and is an overhead shot on a low angle that shows a maze of steel stairs and corridors hitning that the story starting to come apart by perfectly representing the main character's state of mind: cold, dark, confused, and going in an endless tangle of directions all at once. The examples could go on for days.

That's great filmmaking. If the story isn't up to Scrosese's standards, well at least he still brought his A-game to the table. That's the problem with Scrosese as a pop culture icon: everyone can see the brilliance of the tracking shot in Goodfellas because tracking shots are big and obvious and draw attention to themselves, but when Scrosese goes subtle, pays homage to a past film genre, creates for his film the style it deserves and not the one that announces itself as film style, the movie is passed off or thrown away, as if it never occurred to these people to ask why Scrosese is considered, after all, one of America's best living filmmakers in the first place, because, believe it or not, there is a justifiable reason. It's the job (and the fun) of movie lovers to figure it out.

And the Oscar Went To...

The Oscars are over. What will Nataniel R write about now over at Film Experience considering he was averaging around an ungodly 3-5 Oscars posts a day? So what did I think of the Oscars? They were okay. Some things worked, some didn't. There was a lack of drama except for one interrupted acceptance speech for best short documentary. That said, I just wanted to share a couple of random observations I made throughout the night.

• Steven Martin and Alec Baldwin are funny guys. Hopefully though, if there is ever a pair of hosts again they can have dialogue that sounds more like a routine and not an improv at Second City. The picture of them backstage in a couple's Snuggie was a huge laugh though, as was Martin's comments about writing Geoffrey Fletcher's speech.


• Not only was Neil Patrick Harris' opening song completely unglamourous and mostly unfunny, but what was with the lighting in the audience? The camera was cutting to people in the darkness as he was singing about them.


• Robert Downey Jr. could make a funeral funny. Best presenter of the night.


• Sean Penn managed to go the whole night without kicking or punching anyone but still couldn't manage a coherent introduction to the Best Actress nominees. *Update* I haven't even published this post and I'm eating my own words.


• Jeff Bridges is a rare kind of star: he dedicated his Best Actor award to his late parents, he's been in a marriage for over 30 years, he's acting has never been undermined, to my knowledge, by any personal drama and he's a heck of a great actor on top of it. Did his speech ramble on? Sure it did, but he deserved the moment.


• Tyler Perry: "I'm on stage at the Oscars. I better make the most of it because it probably won't happen again." My thoughts exactly.


• I don't know what's worse, a pointless montage paying homage to horror films or the fact that it included scenes from Twilight. And to think, this is why no original songs were performed.


• Although it was an impressive display of physical acrobatics, Mad Hatter said it: if I wanted to watch America's Next Dance Crew, I could have changed the channel to it. I think it's safe to say we can thank Adam Shankman for that number.


• Precious won Best Adapted Screenplay. I picked Up in the Air to win. I guess I learned a valuable lesson: don't pick the better film to win because it probably won't.


• Mo'Nique's acceptance speech was one of the best and most heartfelt. She thanked Hatti McDaniel, the first black actress to win an award for Gone With the Wind, for going through when she had to go through so she wouldn't have to. Back then awards were given out during dinner and McDaniel was forced to sit at a table by herself.


• I don't know if she deserved to win or not, but Sandra Bullock's speech was good too.


• Thinking about Best Actress, Oprah almost had me sold on Gabby Sidibe and then I realized that she probably won't have much of a career after Precious because, not to sound course or anything but, she's can't really play anything but fat black girls.


• Did you see that moment before she read the winner when Barbara Streisand said "It's finally happened," giving Lee Daniels just one second of hope?


• Kathryn Bigelow is 58 and still looks better than most of the young stars in attendance. Good for her. Also nice to see her take home the big awards as she hasn't exactly been the kind of filmmaker you'd expect to make award winning films in the past.


• I was strangely unmoved by the John Hughes tribute. The montage of his work was weak and, outside of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Sixteen Candles I've never found his work anything more than simply entertaining and this tribute didn't do anything to change my mind about him, or his deserving a separate honour all to himself
  
• Speaking of honouring late celebrities: where the hell was Farah Fawcett in the montage?


• Ben Stiller bounced back this year after his tasteless parody of Joaquin Phoenix last year. He played the Avatar get-up perfectly, as a man who looked like a jackass and knew it. That said, where was all the other big comic talent like Will Farrell and Jack Black? Did Shankman sacrifice them for Taylor Lautner and Kristien Stewart?


• Next year, how about going back to five Best Picture nominations? That's all anyone really needs.
  
• Why is Pedro Almodovar introducing a category that he clearly deserved to be nominated in?


• Speaking of Best Foreign Film: do voters just pull names out of a hat for this category? Remember a few years ago when Pan's Labyrinth won every award it was nominated for except Best Foreign Film? I think Almodovar got the shaft that year too.


• While we are on this topic: why does Quintin Tarantino feel the need to start yelling into the mic at every awards show? He did it at the Grammys and now he has done it here too.


• I long for a year when Jason Reitman will actually be the frontrunner. He really deserves some wins.


• I got three of my predictions wrong. Not bad.

With that said, I noticed two big Celebrity Connections last night. Check 'em out:

Could T-Bone Burnett really just be James Cameron in disguise? You Decide.

Could Hurt Locker writer Mark Boal be Jason Reitman in disguise? You Decide

My Last Word on the Oscars

I'll be glad when tonight is over because it will be the longest possible time until the blog world is bombarded with ceaseless posts about everything Oscars again. It's not that I blame people, we have to find our inspiration somewhere, but really, once you reach a certain point, there's only so much Oscar coverage one can take.

This doesn't mean that people out there who I respect didn't do a good job in their writing and it doesn't mean I didn't read it, I just didn't comment about it very much. That said, I recognize the ugly double standard that is going on here right now as I myself give my final word on the Oscars, which are happening, as probably everyone knows, tonight.

That said, if you don't want to read this or put too much thought into it, well, I don't blame you, but I haven't written much this past week and figure I might as well cap it off with something now that I'm back in Toronto. And, if nothing less, maybe you'll just read it because you like me and find my style somewhat entertaining and want to know how good I am at this whole political voting thing. Hey, it's a possibility. So I won't prolong it anymore: here's my predictions on who will win tonight, who should win, and anything else that comes to mind.

Best Documentary: The Cove will win because it has the most prolific reputation amongst the nominees. It's that simple really, although Food Inc. may have a shot too.

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon because it took the Golden Globe and the Golden Palm at Cannes, plus it's the only one of the nominees I've heard of so that has to count for something, no?

Best Animation: I'll say this: Disney is taking home a prize in this category tonight. What I'm curious about though is whether or not Up's place in the Best Picture category will mean a split vote for the film and The Princess and the Frog will take it? Oscar certainly does love a comeback and Dinsey's first 2D animated feature since Home on the Range certainly falls into that category, even if it didn't do quite the business it should have. My vote's still on Up though. Pixar just seems too unstoppable.

Beat Visual Effects: Avatar. Duh.

Best Original Song: Crazy Heart's got this one covered. When a film has more than one song nominated it tends to split the vote, as is the case with Princess and the Frog; Nine was uninspired and Crazy Heart took the Golden Globe award. Personally though, I prefer Flyin' and Fallin' from Crazy Heart, but that's just me.




Best Adapted Screenplay: A tough category. I'm going to eliminate District 9, An Education and In the Loop right away. It seems to be an even draw between Precious and Up in the Air. Precious has the advantage in that it pretentiously announces that it is based on a book right in it's full title, which I refuse to type out in whole, but Up in the Air is the better film, so I'll vote for it.

Best Original Screenplay: It's unfortunate that Inglourious Basterds came out in a year of hugely prolific films because, on any other year it would have been a no-brainer to give it this award. I'd still like to see Tarantino go home with this one. He is, after all, the best writer of all those nominated. I think it will probably go to The Hurt Locker out of default though. Inglourious Basterds doesn't seem like it will win anything else in the major categories except best supprting actor, which means it doesn't really have much of a shot here either.

Best Director: I know Kathryn Bigelow is going to win unless the Academy goes against the Director Guild by not picking the same winner, but that rarely happens. In theory though, the best choice would be Lee Daniels. Not because Precious has the best direction (and really, does Daniels really need anything to increase his already pompously sized ego?), but because the Academy is sometimes accused of trying to atone for their past mistakes (Paul Giamatti is nominated for Cinderella Man after being overlooked for Sideways, etc.). This then reminds me of several years back in which the Academy were deemed homophobic for letting Crash win Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain (people seem to have forgotten though that they gave Phillip Seymour Hoffman the acting trophy for playing an openly gay man in Capote that same year). I also assume that if Brokeback Mountain had won people would have cried that the Academy is racist too. How better to atone for this than giving the award to a gay, black director? It's just a thought.

Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique. Don't argue, just accept the inevitable.

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz. See above.

Best Actress: A lot of people are rooting for Merly Streep, but I don't know, her performance as Julia Child came off more as imitation to me than actual acting. It also doesn't help that Julie and Julia was a wholly uninspired film. Therefore I'm voting for Sandra Bullock. We'll forget All About Steve and say that 2009 was a huge comeback year for Bullock and we all know Oscar loves a comeback.

Best Actor: It seems like Jeff Bridges is the forerunner in this category for Crazy Heart and his performance certainly does deserve the award. However, Oscar is sometimes know for pulling some fast ones in this category (Alan Arkin over Eddie Murphy, Sean Penn over Mickey Rourke), so could the award maybe go to Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus? I haven't seen the film myself so I can't comment on the quality of the performance, but Freeman is the only nominee who played a real-life character and Oscar history dictates that the Academy seems to favour actors who play real people. My vote's still on Bridges though.

Best Picture: It's between Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'm going with Avatar. It made billions of dollars, revolutionized film technology and The Hurt Locker may have shot itself in the foot over the controversy caused by it's producer writing stupid letters basically begging Academy members for votes. Also, considering how Oscar seems to be going for viewers this year instead of prestige, Avatar is the best bet.

With that out of the way I hope everyone enjoys the show and (partially) hope Tarantino can refrain from spitting on people during the red carpet. It still irks me that John Hughes will be getting his own tribute when Patrick Swayze and Eric Rohmer will simply be limited to getting their picture in a montage. Oh well, I'll live, I think.

THe Celebrity Connection: Zooey Deschanel

The past three times I have done this has been purely in jest (although I'm still holding out that Michael Bolton and Michael Bay are the same guy). This time I've found an honest-to-goodness resemblance that is so uncanny that if you told me they were the same person and I didn't know any better I'd believe you. A lot of people say Zooey Deschanel looks a lot like Katy Perry. They're not even close:





Could Zooey Deschanel really be Debra Winger in disguise? You Decide.