Chazzbot's Oscar Picks (Updated with Winners)

I was hoping I'd be able to see all the best picture nominees before today, but with only hours left before the beginning of the awards ceremony, I figured I'd better get my picks posted so I don't spend Monday morning fielding calls from angry bookies. So here goes.

For a complete and printable list of nominees, here's a convenient PDF file. I'll check back in tomorrow to see how my choices fared.

Animated Feature: Persepolis
I wouldn't be upset if Ratatouille won, but I don't know many animation fans who would say that Pixar has gone unrecognized for its features in the last few years. Persepolis sends an important message in this election year. And in this perpetually frustrating category, how does Surf's Up get nominated rather than The Simpsons Movie?

Art Direction: Sweeney Todd
A stylish looking film, and more interesting than the other nominees. WINNER!

Cinematography: No Country for Old Men
The gorgeous, haunting, desolate photography of this film is what makes it an Oscar contender in the first place. If you're a fan of this category, check out this fun list of the year's best shots.

Costume Design: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
I get a charge out of watching Cate Blanchett prance around in, well, in pretty much anything, but especially those Elizabethan (redundant?) horse-riding, sword-wielding outfits. Once more unto the breach, with corsets tight! WINNER!

Documentary Feature: No End in Sight
We're running out of time to remind anyone who's still unaware that George W. Bush is a fucking twit.

Film Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Did you see that shot where Jason crashes through the window? Holy shit! Even Indiana Jones has got to give up props for that. WINNER!

Foreign Language Film
I don't have a pick in this category because nobody saw any of the fucking nominees. When are the rules for this category going to be revised to reflect, you know, movies that actually get screened in the United States?

Makeup: Norbit
Remember how pissed off Eddie Murphy got last year when he was denied Oscar gold? I think it would be a hoot to see Norbit advertised as an Oscar winning film. Let the devaluation of the Academy continue!

Original Score: Ratatouille
Evidently, the Academy changed the rules this year so voters in this category no longer get copies of the nominated scores on CD. Voters now have to consider the score only within the context of the film. What kind of bullshit is that? Way to devalue composing, Academy dorks! Anyway, the score for Ratatouille is a worthy addition to the grand tradition of creative, amusing and ADD-pleasing animation music. Raymond Scott and Carl Stalling would be pleased by this wonderful score.

Original Song
Who cares? I'm not even looking forward to hearing these songs performed during the ceremony. Meh.

Sound Editing: Ratatouille
Layers upon layers of sound delight. A 5.1 surround sound aficionado's dream.

Sound Mixing: No Country for Old Men
There are many passages in this film in which the camera gazes out at vast, lonely landscapes of geographic and/or human desolation, and these passages are emphasized by an exquisitely delicate soundtrack. Think of Chigurh slowly treading outside Llewelyn Moss' hotel room, a scene in which dramatic tension is almost entirely conveyed by the not-quite-absence of light and sound. Think of the wind whistling around the corpses of drug dealers. Think of the distinctive slap of Chigurh's palm on his ever-present decision-making coins. Genius is at work here.

Visual Effects: Transformers
Jesus, can you beat giant freakin robots fighting on the interstate? Well, turns out you can, but Sunshine wasn't nominated.

Adapted Screenplay: There Will Be Blood
The screenplay for No Country for Old Men hit almost all the right notes from Cormac McCarthy's novel, but anyone who's tried to slog through Upton Sinclair knows how tricky it would be to mine dialogic gold (or, in this case, oil) from that turgid prose. Plus, I can say with confidence that I will be quoting the milkshake speech for at least the next ten years, to the increasing annoyance of my friends and co-workers.

Original Screenplay: The Savages
I know Juno is probably the favorite here, and props must be given to the audacity of Lars and the Real Girl's premise, but The Savages surprised me by taking what could be an easily sentimentalized concept and wringing honest human emotions out of both its characters and its audience.

Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Cate Blanchett as 60's-era Bob Dylan? I don't even care that she's not wearing a corset!

Leading Actress: Laura Linney (The Savages)
A surprisingly layered and complex performance. Not surprising because I wouldn't expect Linney to deliver such a performance, but because it would be easy to end up pitying her character, and I ended up cheering her.

Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men)
Not even close, friendo. WINNER!

Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Tommy Lee Jones gave two outstanding performances this year, and I would not be averse to seeing him win for his less-visible role from In the Valley of Elah. Ultimately, however, I don't think Jones' quiet dignity can compete with the complete bugfuck insanity of Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview. He is the Third Revelation, muthafucka! WINNER!

Directing: There Will Be Blood
I noted elsewhere on this blog that with this film Paul Thomas Anderson had entered the pantheon of great film directors. Additionally, though I'm not sure how much direction an actor like Daniel Day-Lewis needs, Anderson deserves credit for eliciting equally notable performances from the rest of his cast, who are not diminished by the lead actor. And Anderson deserves to win just for the balls-out brilliance of one of the most unique films I've seen in some time. Accordingly:

Best Picture: There Will Be Blood
I drink it up! WTF?

Hurry, Oscar fans! Only 3 1/2 hours left to argue with me!

Recently Viewed

There Will Be Blood *****
Mulholland Drive ****
The Savages ****

For Christmas this year, my brother gave me a box set of Twin Peaks, that wonderfully eccentric late-80's television series that began as a murder mystery and ended up as, well, there's some confusion about that. As I've been watching and re-watching episodes from the series, I've found myself on a kind of David Lynch jag, revisiting some of his earlier films and seeing others for the first time.

I suppose most people either love Lynch's directing style or find it needlessly obtuse and self-indulgent. Those in the latter category will find no joy in Mulholland Drive, a moody tone poem that offers nothing like a straightforward narrative, but offers much in the way of tonality and imagery that many contemporary films lack. If it's meaning you're looking for, there have been several attempts to find it, most notably in this lengthy review from Salon. I tend to prefer Roger Ebert's interpretation of the film as a collection of evocative scenes, and enjoy the film as I would a full-length album. With the best albums, one finds that different songs may stir different feelings, but collectively the songs contribute to a dominant mood or theme (listen to Springsteen's Nebraska, U2's The Joshua Tree, or Radiohead's OK Computer).

The scenes in Mulholland work in that way. I find myself less interested in "making sense" of the film than in just going along for the ride and, more engagingly, thinking about how masterfully Lynch manipulates the viewer's emotions. On a similar note, Lynch's choice of two absolutely gorgeous actors, Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring, easily captivates the attention of moviegoers who enjoy looking at beautiful people. Lynch complicates this easy pleasure with, as you might expect, disturbing and frightening and just plain goofy images and scenarios. Mulholland Drive is perhaps not the best film to choose for a night of casual viewing, but those with an addiction to Lynch's unique combinations of image and mood will find much to celebrate here.

A few years ago, I watched a man slowly die in a "rehabilitation" center, a facility that he had little hope of leaving. Parapalegic and beset by a series of health problems, he died at a relatively young age, surrounded, for the most part, by people working their day jobs with little time for an old man. This experience resurfaced while watching The Savages, a film that finds a surprising amount of humor, love, and even joy in the process of placing a loved one in what will likely be the last building they ever occupy. The initial appeal of the film to me was its cast. Laura Linney (who's been nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film) and Philip Seymour Hoffman portray over-educated siblings whose somewhat lonely routines are interrupted by the news that their father--living with his elderly girlfriend in the retirement community of Sun City, Arizona--has taken to writing on the bathroom walls with his own excrement. From there, the film takes the viewer on a sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, mostly poignant journey as the siblings confront the state of their familial and sexual relationships while their father begins the last stages of his life in a generic rest home.

Doesn't exactly sound like a date movie, does it? And yet, the film resists the easy sentimentality of its subject and becomes a story more about renewing one's life than ending it. A small gem, with excellent performances by the cast.

The film miraculously appeared (and is currently still playing) in St. George, a town not generally known as a mecca for independent cinema. All that has hopefully changed now with the arrival of the Salt Lake Film Society in St. George, and the society's "takeover" of a slightly rundown 4-screen mall cinema. They have my eternal thanks and regular patronage, and now I may get to see more films like The Savages before they are released on DVD. Woo-hoo!

StoryCorps Marches into Logan; Finds Perfect Couple

If you listen to NPR with any regularity, you are probably familiar with StoryCorps, a project funded by National Public Radio and the Library of Congress that works to preserve the oral histories of "regular" Americans. A few months ago, StoryCorps made a stop in Logan, Utah, where, years ago, I met the regular Americans pictured above. According to the Utah Public Radio website, about 240 other individuals recorded their stories and histories during this Logan visit.

The story Lynne (L) and Stephen (R) tell concerns Stephen's proposal to Lynne on the deck of the White Owl, Logan's beer pub and lunch site of choice for discerning gourmands who don't mind eating things that are fried.

I was there to witness this event, and I later journeyed to Italy to attend the wedding itself. Each event was a mere social formality, since I have never known either Lynne or Stephen to express anything but the sincerest devotion to one another. Theirs is a truly loving relationship, one that has endured for their entire adult (and at least part of their pre-adult) lives. I'm glad some of their story has been preserved through the efforts of StoryCorps because they seem to represent an increasingly rare example of a couple that was truly meant to be together. Weird.

BTW, Stephen is only wearing that t-shirt because he saw me wearing it first. Douche!

You can listen to their story here. (As far as I know, the story has not been broadcast nationally.) They are really quite lovely human beings, even if they never call and seldom read this blog.

Majoring in Violence & Death

When shit like this happens four times in a week, it can no longer be called a "tragedy." It is a disease. The tragedy is that we continue to accept it, by virtue of the fact that no one has taken any concrete steps to prevent it from happening again. Our noblest efforts have been devoted to campus alert systems, urgent pleas for students to register their cell phone numbers with university security or student services offices so that students can be sent a text message alerting them to the danger of a roving gunman. A text message! Think about that.

This could all happen again tomorrow, could be the next day, but more likely it will be both. And even as this bloodshed continues, we will shrug, perhaps pause a moment, chalk it all up to another day of violence on an American campus and move on. Nothing really new here, unless it's the novelty of seeing a different campus, in a different season, painted in the crimson hues of America's rampant gun violence, our favorite and most cherished sport.

I've written about this before. The echoes of apathy in our government institutions and even in the newsrooms are overwhelming. School shootings have become an accepted component of American life. Think about that.

One of my students had a question this morning about the murders at Northern Illinois University. He had missed the news and was just hearing about it from me. "Was it as many as Virginia Tech?" he asked. I told him no, his interest waned, and we moved on with the day's lesson, comforted in the knowledge that the bar had not been raised, no record had been broken. Think about that. Think about that for one goddamn minute.

Released from a World He Never Made

Steve Gerber, a leading light in 1970s American comic books, a singular writer of odd and affecting comics for mainstream publishers, an advocate for and icon of creators rights, and the creator and co-creator of several characters including Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, died Sunday in a Las Vegas hospital. The cause of death is believed to be pneumonia, although he had been suffering from a long-term illness, pulmonary fibrosis. He was 60 years old.

Tom Spurgeon's obituary of Gerber continues here.

Mike Sterling offers a remembrance and a linked history of Gerber's marvelous creations.

Mark Evanier's personal thoughts on his friend here.

Here's a cover gallery of the original run of Gerber's Howard the Duck.

If you only know of Howard the Duck through the craptacular 1986 film, you owe it to yourself to read the bitingly satiric and surprisingly subversive (for a mainstream publisher) comic book series. Ten bucks at Amazon will get you a complete run of the series.

Waugh.

1984's Hot New Bands (Part 1)

The March 29, 1984 issue of Rolling Stone featured an article highlighting "the future of rock & roll" via "ten new bands you'll be hearing from soon." Most of the featured bands have now faded into obscurity, but for the sake of nostalgia, Chazzbot brings you their names and their respective write-ups in the magazine, and seeks to find any trace of them on the internetz.

The individual profiles do not credit specific authors, though a byline on the first page of the article notes that the profiles "were reported and written by Kurt Loder, Debby Miller, Steve Pond, David Fricke and James Henke."

Band #1!

Breakfast Club

"We write very quirky love songs," says the Breakfast Club's drummer, Steve Bray. "The songs are really sad, lyrically, but they sound up." As the band's first single, "Rico Mambo," amply demonstrates, the Breakfast Club's forte is dance music: jumping rhythms, modern textures and smart, funny lyrics.

The songs may be about sorry situations, but they certainly aren't mopey. "Now, you want to hear about people who have their emotional armor intact," says Dan Gilroy, who, like his brother Eddie, sings and plays guitar in the band. Previously, the Gilroy brothers had been fooling around with weirder, more comedic stuff as the Acme Band and Voidville. But when Bray, who used to work with Madonna, came to New York from Detroit, his funkier influences were the perfect foil to the Gilroys' artier roots. "The chemistry is great," says bassist Gary Burke, "because we're coming from two different directions."

With Bray supplying the dance-groove tracks and Dan and Eddie concentrating on lyrics "with humor running through them, humanizing them," says Dan, the Breakfast Club is recording its first album. After the LP's done, they'll be performing live again. In pajamas, of course. "The Eighties," Dan says, "will be Thriller and Breakfast Club."

So, where are they now?

Steve Bray has an interesting web page that features lyrics to his "Ballad to Madonna" and some of his other thoughts about Hollywood. (Warning: Page features automatic music and some photos of Steve's ass.)

This page, linked from the band's Wikipedia entry, features video and audio clips of Madonna performing with the band. (Warning: automatic music)

The perhaps slightly better known film, The Breakfast Club, was released on February 15, 1985. If one assumes Dan is referring to the film, rather than his band, in the article's final quote, he wasn't half wrong.

Chazzbot Recognition Factor: Zero. I've never heard anything by this band.

Next up: Lone Justice

Downloads of the Month

When I was a teenager, I used to compile monthly lists of all the albums that had received reviews in Rolling Stone of 3 1/2 stars or higher. Then I would take the list to the local record store (located in the Layton Hills Mall) and buy the two lowest-priced albums on the list (in the popular cassette format). I eventually managed to build up a fairly decent music collection that way (even if my cassettes are now obsolete), but, fuck, I'm glad those days are over.

I like these songs. I bet you'll like them too. It's a low-risk wager!

The Way We Live: "King Dick II"
Chicken Legs Weaver: "Your Enemy Cannot Harm You"
Aaron Neville: "Hercules"
Beirut: "Elephant Gun"
The Bluetones: "My Neighbour's House"
Air feat. Jarvis Cocker: "One Hell of a Party"
Amy Winehouse: "Fuck Me Pumps"
Fake Problems: "Motion of the Ocean"
Timbaland feat. One Republic: "Apologize"
The Last Town Chorus: "Modern Love"
Interpol: "Obstacle 1 (Arthur Baker Return to New York Mix)"

In other music news, I changed the Last FM widget on the site from a playlist to a list of songs I've listened to while on the computer. Turns out a lot of Last FM's songs are only available in 30-second snippets, which seems to defeat the purpose of compiling a playlist. Anyway, now you can contemplate the wisdom of the last five songs I heard. (The list is taken from songs played either on my laptop at home or my office computer.)

And, since this post seems to be all about the music I listen to and how cool it is, here are the 10 most played songs on my laptop, as of this evening:

1. Dexy's Midnight Runners: "Plan B"
(Who knew? Turns out they did other decent songs besides "Come On, Eileen"!)

2. Hot Chip: "Baby Said"

3. Vanilla, Jade & Ebony: "Graduation Rap" (from the Ghost World soundtrack)

4. Alabama 3: "Woke Up This Morning" (from The Sopranos, which I am still missing)

5. Avril Lavigne: "The Best Damn Thing"
(I know, and fuck you.)

6. Badly Drawn Boy: "Once Around the Block"

7. Ben E. King: "Spanish Harlem"
(I enjoy this mostly because I get some childish glee out of constantly singing the first line thusly: "I picked my nose/in Spanish Harlem.")

8. The Blue Jays: "Lover's Island"
(You can't beat old doo-wop.)

9. Oasis: "Don't Look Back in Anger"

10. R.E.M.: "Get Up"
(I'm psyching myself up for the possibility that the new R.E.M. album will blow.)

Enough with the music. I'm going to go watch tonight's episode of Lost. What are you listening to?

Super Tuesday

"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope."

Don't forget to vote. History will be made in this election.

There Will Be Blood

With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson enters the pantheon of great film directors. Although this is an American film, and tells a story that perhaps could only be told in America, Blood is a film with literary aspirations, one that speaks to many people and tells many different stories.

Though the film is dedicated to Robert Altman, Anderson has already made his homage to Altman. That was Magnolia, a sprawling, engaging, but not always coherent film about the random, often invisible threads that connect us all. Blood, by way of contrast, is a film about a willful severing of all those threads, an abandonment of all that one man perceives is preventing him from achieving enough power to remove himself from society.

In this and many other regards, the film reminded me most of Stanley Kubrick's work. That is not to suggest that this film is derivative. (It is certainly not as derivative as, say, Magnolia.) Where Kubrick's alienated characters are often contrasted by opulent or overwhelming environments--the grand hotel of The Shining, the palace rooms and battlefields of Barry Lyndon or Paths of Glory, or the planet Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey--the characters or, more precisely, character of There Will Be Blood is surrounded by an environment that is just as bleak, lifeless, and uninviting as his own heart. To his credit, Anderson's director of photography, Robert Elswit, does nothing to pretty up the oil fields and isolated towns of the film's milieu. Even the Pacific Ocean ends up looking like a wading pool, an all-too-miniscule oasis in an otherwise uncompromising land.

The film's lead character, Daniel Plainview, brilliantly and harshly portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis, is similarly barren. "There are times," he states in an isolated confessional moment, "when I look at people and see nothing worth liking." As the film progresses, we watch Plainview abandon nearly all of the pretenses (what we might call "social niceties" or, more directly, "humanity") that have helped him become an extremely rich man. In the end, we are left with a character who loves no one but himself, and even that may be a misguided assumption on our part. But at no moment does Day-Lewis fail to be anything but absorbing. His is a frightening, disturbing portrayal, and I can't think of another actor who would dare play a character as singularly unredeeming as Daniel Plainview. One is reminded of his Bill the Butcher in Scorsese's Gangs of New York, but even Bill had a rougish gleam about him, if only during his rousing speeches of racial hatred. Plainview has no such gleam, nor does Day-Lewis ever wink at the audience to reassure us that Plainview should not be judged too harshly.

There are many possible ways to interpret the film, which is one of its many strengths. It is perhaps too pat to say that the film reflects whatever light the audience shines on it, but I found myself considering, at various points during its 2 1/2 hour length, issues relating to America's claim to moral strength and how such attitudes were able to develop, the seemingly eternal yet ultimately futile struggle humans endure between faith and material comfort, the need for men to place themselves above their presumed subordinates, the desire men have to place themselves beyond issues of family while still craving its societal securities, and why our culture finds such men--even men as ethically impoverished as Plainview--to be prime candidates for leadership roles. This last theme, of course, led me to think of Bush and Cheney, their own ethical bankruptcy, and the tremendous pit they have dug for us, our children, and the reputation of our nation.

I don't want to suggest that this is an overtly politicized film, for Bush and Cheney are merely the latest insidious endpoint for trends in our culture that had their origin, as the film suggests, in the industrialization of America, specifically by means of oil development and the greed any similarly-scaled endeavour naturally engenders. Even Eli Sunday, the film's second most prominent character, a man of "faith", cannot escape the demands and expectations of America's quest for power. Plainview and Sunday engage in a increasingly personal battle of wills, one which instills them both with the need to humiliate each other, particularly in two scenes which are among the most disturbing and emotionally wrenching moments I have seen in recent films, scenes that left me trembling.

There are many other aspects of the film that are worth discussing, which only serve to remind me that so few films these days are worth discussing in anything but the most obvious narrative terms. This is a film that sticks on you, much like the blood and oil that coats the bodies of the men killed in Plainview's wells, or the cloth crosses stuck on the hearts of the ignorant settlers who think that either Plainview or Sunday will redeem their miserable lives. This is a film that you will take with you outside the theatre as you contemplate the casual indignities of the housing crisis, or the cynicism of a president who uses torture and lies as a means of personal enrichment, or the promise of a candidate who dares to offer hope, rather than anger, as a way to empowerment. The film offers little in the way of hope or optimism for our curiously mythologized assumptions about power and its consequences. What it does offer, as we approach what may be a way off of the dark path we've been led down these last seven years, is a time to reflect--in the dark, among strangers--whether our national myths are based on anything other than the callous self-interest of hateful men.

******

Though it is perhaps the most deserving, this is not the kind of film that wins the Academy Award for Best Picture. Anderson may get a nod for his direction, but this is a hard film to celebrate, at least in terms of the self-congratulatory tone of the Oscars, the very tone, ironically, on which the film turns its cold, uncompromising eye. Don't let that stop you from seeing it, as soon as possible.

Why You Should Care About FISA

Blistering commentary from Keith Olbermann's Countdown. Even now, with less than a year remaining in Bush's occupation of the White House, Olbermann remains one of the very few mainstream commentators who is willing to call bullshit on the continual manipulation of Americans by the Bush administration. Required viewing before Super Tuesday (and beyond).