Best Film Editing (and Thelma Sighting)

So the ACE (American Cinema Editors) nominations were announced. Awards Daily, what would we do without ye? We've got...

Drama The Bourne Ultimatum, Into the Wild, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood

...and while we're on the subject of Blood this is making me laugh. (God, that's catching on quickly) As for The Bourne Ultimatum. I agree it's a rush to watch but I worry about honoring this film with editing trophies. It's not that I don't think it's well edited. I do. It's that should it prove as influential, I worry. To me Bourne's editing has already achieved the pinnacle of the jarring "I don't know where I am or where the camera is or how any of this is happening spatially or timing wise...but...I'm excited anyway" thing. That's as good as it gets. From here on out, if editors and DPs keep pushing this type of lensing & cutting in combination, the movies --especially action movies --will become total abstractions. No relation to actual physical events, even violent ones, should be assumed. As ludicrous as some of the action sequences are in Live Free or Die Hard (a bit more old school) I found them especially fun to watch because you can (sort of) mostly tell where the characters are standing, running, being thrown to and where the vehicles / weapons are and where the walls of the building or elevator shaft are in relation to both characters and weapons. You know? I like to know where I am is what I'm saying.

Comedy Hairspray, Juno, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World End, Ratatouille and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The editing nominations basically just go to the popular awardsy films... editing being one of the most difficult processes to judge since voters will never know what footage the editors ever had to work with. I like Juno well enough but I'm not so certain that its editing is anything special. I can get behind Hairspray and Ratatouille here, though. Their pacing, flow and energy seem well shaped or boosted. I was especially heartened to see that Adam Shankman as a director was not an unimaginative slave to the reaction shot during musical numbers. I H-A-T-E it when musicals take you out of the number repeatedly to make sure you know that people are watching the number. Ugh (I'm talking to Chris Columbus and Rent)

While on the subject of editors, I forgot to mention that I sat but one row behind the magnificent Thelma Schoonmaker at that Paul Thomas Anderson DGA event I posted about. Thelma of the three Oscar wins (The Departed, The Aviator and Raging Bull) and razor sharp eye for which frames to delete or splice together! While exiting the screening she was assaulted (in the non dangerous way) by a fan who stopped her to tell her how absolutely brilliant she was. She thanked him kindly, said goodbye to her movie-going companions and exited for the brisk night air on 57th street. I didn't have any particular disruptive inclination to follow suit or shout "Thelma, you rock!" as accompaniment for her exit, but my heart was beating a little faster as I left the building, I do freely admit.

Oscar Prediction Page (for the technicals)
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Supporting Actress 2007, Mine

Before the season truly began, I wrote an article questioning why so many Oscar watchers felt the supporting actress category was a weak one in 2007. But, come time to choose my own five I understood. Not in the sense that there was no good work but in the realization that there was a ton of good work that all felt roughly equal in quality. In other words: tons of troupers, too few undeniable standouts. So many women were doing interesting or moving things but their films didn't ask enough of them in some way or another (screen time, character complexity, etc...).

You may be surprised to see Cate Blanchett on my list for I'm Not There. It was something I puzzled over and fought with myself about (I take awards a wee bit too seriously, you know) but I saw the film again recently and she's not there. My hurdle was separating my own feelings about the way people react to her from her actual work. It's tough to do when someone is as revered and ubiquitous as she. So while I still find critical and public reaction to her as an actress annoyingly over reverent and undiscerning and I don't think she should win the Oscar for it and I think she's getting credit for things that don't involve her (the casting, the energy of the film around her --her section of I'm Not There is super charged) I still have to be honest and say that she's pretty damn good in it. It's a stunt. It's a parlor trick. But damn, it's a good one. I'm calling it "authentically fake". The performance behind the performance --you can see Blanchett doing Dylan as opposed to Blanchett being Dylan no matter what people tell you. But I came to see this as a good thing. It's yet another winking layer on the impossibility of fixed identity and the natural "look at me" shape shifting of entertainers. She was having fun rather than trying to "be" and I had a much better time watching her work when I went in for this reevaluation.

epilogue: for my fellow Todd Haynes enthusiasts who were hoping that I'd learn to love the movie more (my previous review) with a repeat viewing --something I hoped for myself --I am sad to report that I felt exactly the same. I maybe liked it even less. I just can't really connect to it. Fine ideas, fun imagery, great music all free float within but for me at least it doesn't cohere and overworks its admittedly great thesis.

Click here for the complete list of FiLM BiTCH Award Supporting Actress nominees. Then share your "if I had a ballot" names in the comments
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Listen. Love. Subscribe.

I've received a few notes from people who've listened to the brand new TFE podcast and for those who've given me feedback, I thank you. It's much appreciated. If your ears are still untouched by the starlight twinkle of Marisa Tomei's laughter, what are you waiting for? Click on over to iTunes and subscribe so you can hear the interview. It's free. If you don't have iTunes you can get the enhanced podcast (with photos) with an RSS feed here. And if you don't know what the hell I'm talking about with iTunes this and RSS that, you can simply listen to or download the mp3 version right here.

I'm hoping to have episode 2 out at the end of the month. But you know how notorious those sophomore projects are...

Vote for The Film Experience ~ Last Chance

The 2008 Bloggies are coming

voting has now closed. thanks to all who voted for the film experience
I'm hoping to catch the nominating committee's eye for "best entertainment blog" and "best kept secret" or "best writing" categories. I know I don't feel like a secret to any of you reading but in the grand scheme of things I'm a tiny individual voice in the collective and increasingly corporatized interweb din.

You need to nominate more than one blog when you go there. May I suggest the following:

Entertainment Blog and/or Best Kept Secret

http://filmexperience.blogspot.com

That's me!

Other blogs worth looking at if your voting on either of these categories (plus, take a look at the sidebar for other ideas)

http://modernfabulousity.blogspot.com

http://www.therecshow.com

http://stinklulu.blogspot.com

http://stalepopcornau.blogspot.com

http://sunsetgun.typepad.com

http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com

Best Writing

here are some blogs I think have a great "voice" ...besides mine ;)

http://sunsetgun.typepad.com

http://acidemic.blogspot.com

http://fourfour.typepad.com

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com

http://www.nicksflickpicks.com/blog

In unhumble moments I sometimes feel like a blogging fusion of Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Johnny Depp (prior to Pirates of the Caribbean, natch) in that I can't get nominated for anything to save my life. Despite heaps of talent (unhumble moment, remember) It's so weird. Maybe its a blackly comic cosmic punishment since I write about awardage so often?

Fight for your Film Experience Blog

I'm working my ass off here

Next: Who knows? Something's coming, though. Something always is right here.

WGA: Not Striking From Honoring Their Own

You've probably already seen them but here ya go. The Writers Guild of America nominations:

Original Screenplay
Juno , Knocked Up , Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton , The Savages

Three films that have had a degree of awards season traction but were still snubbed: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, American Gangster and Ratatouille (this last one so deserved to be here) --we'll see if any of them can rally and knock one of these out with Oscar's different set of writers branch voters.

Adapted Screenplay
The Diving Bell and Butterfly , Into the Wild , No Country For...
There Will Be Blood , Zodiac

I'm thrilled to see Zodiac show up and I hope that we see a repeat with Oscar since the film has been unfairly ignored (save for the OFCS Nominations) during awards season. This list is not that far off from the Oscar Predictions I posted yesterday. This list is, though, another stumbling block for Atonement. Seems the Best Picture shorlisting dream was all in little Briony's overactive imagination ...and ours.

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Links

My New Plaid Pants finally caved for a "best of 07" feature
Sunset Gun looks at truth & illusion in off kilter biopics
Gallery of the Absurd Remember when I did that "exquisite corpse" game here with movie stills? 14 is doing it with other artists. Fun
Critic Watch on the "top" blurb whores of 2007
Reverse Shot, always bitchy, puts that tendency to proper use for its '11 Offenses of 2007'
Thompson on Hollywood 10 Directors to Watch ~ Sundance Party
Low Resolution There Will Be Blood is ruining Joe's awards season!
Out in Hollywood Another John Barrowman Torchwood kiss. This time with Spike (James Marsters) from Buffy. I started watching this show a little while back. Any fans in here?

The NeverEnding Strike
LA Times a writer who is done with the strike. (Is it just me or does it seem like the writers are beginning to bleed public support now that this has gone on so long, disrupting entire Hollywood benefiting things like The Globes as well as the many peripheral industries?)
Hollywood Elsewhere has a particular nasty quote. Will this strike ever end? Will everyone in Hollywood loathe each other before long?
Variety This title chills me "Globes Eclipse Shadows Oscar" ...as much as I hate the Oscars sometimes I also can't really live without them. I'm getting worried

Hud

A movie I completely love that I've never written about. If you haven't seen it, please do so. We'll discuss soon (i.e. a month from now)

There's a Mouse in My Apartment...

...and now I don't think Ratatouille is such a cute movie after all. Can I remove it from my Best Picture nominees? Cause... gross. When last seen, late last night, it was entering the kitchen with Monty in hot pursuit. The kitchen is where I make delicious omelettes (Remy aint the only one who does). The kitchen is where I stumble barefoot in the morning. The kitchen is where the glorious coffee lives. I can't live without coffee. And I can't live with a mouse.

8th Use of Magic in Order of the Phoenix

So, I had this bright idea for a series in 2008 called 8th. Where I count out the 8th something of something. Whoa, specific! We'll play on every 8th / 16th / 24th unless you think it's stoopid. [I know it's the 9th. I'm tardy]

The movies, like the books, in the Harry Potter franchise use magic as wallpaper. It's always there in the background adding flavor. This is the interesting part (I love those newspapers with moving pictures. Why can't my blog shapeshift like that? ) Once you get to the spells, the big ones in the battle sequences, it's just boring CGI energy ball hurling. So I thought I'd count to the 8th use of magic in Order of the Phoenix, figuring they'd stack up quickly. It wouldn't take long.

After the Petronus charm, a prissy talking letter, a flashback to a sad Avada Kedrava, a little illuminating wand, some broomstick escapades, the unveiling of a hidden house, and teleporting twins... we get to a Weasley novelty magic, the extendable ear. Our heroes want to know what the adults are talking about in the other room. So they drop this nifty magic down the stairwell to listen in at the door.

Maybe I'm too old for these movies because I only vaguely remember wanting to hear what adults were saying behind closed doors when I was a kid... but now I know what you'd hear in most households and it's boring. You're better off watching TV, kids.


They hadn't count on Crookshanks' feline urges. Of course he's going to pounce at dangling objects anywhere near him. That's what pussycats do.

In a lick lipping cutaway in the next scene it's suggested that he ate the ear. ewww. But yeah, they'll eat anything... or at least consider doing so. But because all movies bleed into one in my cinephiliac hippocampus, I immediately pictured Crookshanks running off with the ear only to deposit it in Little Lumberton, causing all sorts of problems in a whole 'nother film.


Crookshanks, you ginger devil!

Hey, maybe David Lynch should direct Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows*
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Oscar Prediction Readjustments

Read them and weep! or rejoice... Depending on how much you like the films in question. Discuss. You know what to do.

OFCS Winners !

A little birdy told me... that these are the winners of the ONLINE FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION. They officially announce sometime today January 9th. But I am still awake when "today" is just beginning, so before I sleep...

give me all your awards ... friendo

Picture: No Country For Old Men
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen - No Country for Old Men
Actor: Daniel Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood
Actress: Julie Christie - Away From Her (just barely over Ellen Page -Juno)
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men
Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan - Gone Baby Gone
Original Screenplay: Juno
Adapted Screenplay: No Country For Old Men
Cinematography: No Country for Old Men
Editing: No Country For Old Men
Original Score: There Will Be Blood
Documentary: The King of Kong
Foreign Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Animated Film: Ratatouile
Breakthrough Filmmaker: Sarah Polley - Away From Her (in a squeaker over Ben Affleck -Gone Baby Gone)
Breakthrough Performer: Nikki Blonsky -Hairspray

I know what you're thinking. How Very Original! Sticking their virtual necks out there for performances and films that have gone home empty-handed so far this year. In all seriousness, though, despite a fun and fairly open race for nominations in various categories with different awards bodies all season long, the actual winners circle has been a copy and paste snoozefest. My own top ten list has a lot of consensus choices in it I'm the first to admit (that kind of year I guess) but if the last couple of days (BFCA & OFCS win) following the rather uniform critics organizations are any indication, we'll hear the same winners all the way through the Globes and on to Oscar night.

Year in Review Pt 3: The Top Ten of 2007

In order to get this up... I'm just publishing as I go. Ah, the rough draft magic of online publishing. The year's best films (13 will be name-checked --you gotta include those honorable mentions) stretch across the Globe from dusty American landscapes to sterile Romanian dormitories. There's milkshakes, damning legal documents, one particularly gobsmacking green dress, and a sensitive hoover repairmen among other things.


Honorable Mentions

If, when you look at the three titles that didn't quite make my top ten list, you feel as if someone has stifled your civil liberties, slit your throat or shot you in the back for fame and existential fortune, please console yourself with the fantasy that all three are tied for 10th place. If I believed in ties they probably would be....

Read the rest...
10... 9... 8... 7... 6... and the top five. My Best Picture Ballot
the film bitch awards have begun
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Where Am I?

Your host (Nathaniel) is soon emerging from his BFCA/DGA /PersonalLife induced fog and will be back to finish his top ten list, update his Oscar predictions (finally...so overdue) and start the FB Awards and the other usual blogging festivities. Seriously. Or else he's fired. Should he survive his various indecisions and overbookings all of this starts happening tonight. Not that you should wait up.
________~signed, the management.

DGA Nominations

and the nominees are...
Paul Thomas Anderson -There Will Be Blood
The Coen Bros -No Country For Old Men
Tony Gilroy -Michael Clayton
Sean Penn -Into the Wild
Julian Schnabel -The Diving Bell and Butterfly

how'd I do on my predictions?
4/5 from the predix I submitted to Tom O'Neill's panel of experts, missing only Julian Schnabel (I still didn't quite believe that Diving Bell had garnered enough steam to compete for Best Picture at the Oscars --I could be wrong) thinking that maybe Reitman would get his first notice for Juno instead --even though I didn't see him making it to Oscar's shortlist.

what it means
The Best Picture race at the Oscars has been combative all season but this is a very good sign for Michael Clayton ... I've been confident about its prospects for months but others haven't so it's nice to see some vindication. Into the Wild and No Country still look like the frontrunners for the win. Schnabel (Diving Bell) and Anderson (Blood) are most definitely in contention for the directors' shortlist --they always were-- even if their films don't come through for Best Picture. Prediction updates will be up tonight in both categories. (my time is finally freeing up this evening)

previous blather
...will be announced very shortly. Refresh your screen to see the results when they come in. The DGA sometimes offers up twists. Complicating the matter is that their list often reads closer to Oscar's eventual Best Picture list than what you'd think of as a directorial list. So you might see names you haven't been hearing under "best director" like, say, Jason Reitman for Juno or Tony Gilroy for Michael Clayton. Or you might just hear the usual suspects: Anderson, Burton, Coen Bros, Penn, Schnabel or Wright. That's 8 names already and we haven't mentioned DGA favorite Ridley Scott. We shall see. News should be up around 1:00 PM EST.
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BFCA, Yes. The Globes, No. Has the Whole World Lost Its Head?

I know that people don't exactly "respect" the Golden Globes or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that vote on them but I remain aghast that they haven't been able to work anything out in terms of the WGA strike and might not even be televised or televised in odd form and yet the BFCA is allowed to go on (tonight in fact on VH1). What a world... The Golden Globes, even at their dumbest, are hella fun. They're the only red carpet show with any real sense of suspense. I'm having trouble imagining awards season without the Golden Globe party, both the one televised and the one I love to throw. It'll just be so... incomplete.

UPDATE: I blame the BFCA for interrupting the previously scheduled top ten posting. They both distracted me and bored me silly and I ended up on some other project entirely. Once again the BFCA thwarted any desire one may generously have to take them seriously by again baldly stating that they exist to predict the Oscars rather than to honor the best of the year. They actually said in the scripted intro for both lead actor and lead actress that they were trying to predict. Shameless.

So here were their Oscar predictions (i.e. winners)
PIC: No Country For Old Men
DIR: The Coen Bros, No Country For Old Men
ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Away From Her
SUPP ACTOR: Javier Bardem, No Country For Old Men
SUPP ACTRESS: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone
WRITER: Diablo Cody, Juno
COMPOSER: Johnny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
SONG: "Falling Slowly," Once

and their awards that don't try to predict Oscars (different rules or category names)
JOEL SIEGEL HUMANITARIAN AWARD: Don Cheadle
I didn't know that Joel Siegel was a humanitarian but cool. Cheadle and Clooney and Pitt and that compassionate gang: Love them.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: The Diving Bell and Butterfly
DOCUMENTARY: Sicko
FAMILY FILM: Enchanted
COMEDY: Juno
ENSEMBLE: Hairspray
YOUNG ACTOR: Ahmad Kahn Mahmoodzada, The Kite Runner
YOUNG ACTRESS: Nikki Blonsky, Hairspray

Related Posts: BFCA Noms & Golden Globe Coverage
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Link Therapy

sane
MTV Movies Blog on David Fincher's immediate future
Broadway Abridged destroys Young Frankenstein in one witty image
Filmmaker David Lynch on the iPhone

insane
Fabulon Catherine O'Wacky
IFC on the critical wrangle over There Will Be Blood's gushing finale
pullquote Cinetrix skewers that LDS lovin' DVD censorship machine "Clear Play". It horrifies me that people are dumb enough to think that you don't miss anything if you edit out language and sex scenes. Try A History of Violence without the mirrored sex scenes and you go from a movie of utter genius to a bizarre and intermittently violent thriller. I hate stupid people.

no brain activity whatsoever
<--- The Cashmere Mafia. Did anyone watch that new Lucy Liu TV show last night? Utter catastrophe. I don't care if it does have some of the same team as Sex & The City. It's a creatively bankrupt soulless rip off. It even steals shots and sound. Did it have to come complete with little plinky musical beats and actual worms eye shots of clouds zooming by above Manhattan skyscrapers? And that's just window dressing. Four hot women/best friends and their man troubles, one with crazy fashion sense! Dear lord this thing was unimaginative. And offensive too, offering up condescending age old sexual politics: the message --women really can't have it all. Successful women are very hard for men to be with. Feel bad for the men (the poor emasculated things) and watch the women blame themselves. Yay! Everyone involved (Miranda Otto excluded --I can almost never believe its her she's so different in everything I see her in) should be ashamed of themselves.
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FYC: Marisa Tomei in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

This post is part of the Supporting Actress Class of 2007 Blog-a-Thon @ StinkyLulu

You've heard the names. Or rather you've heard the name. OK, two names. If you've been listening to pre-Oscar taste makers, you'd believe that only two supporting actresses turned in valuable work this year: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) and Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There). But don't be fooled. The talent pool runs deeper than two. Oscar voters will eventually choose five. I'd like to celebrate one. She begins her film famously on all fours; not an auspicious introduction, perhaps, but when you cast a strong actor they'll make the most of any position you place them in.


Marisa Tomei is a strong actor. She won a surprise Oscar early in her career by stomping comically through My Cousin Vinny (1992). Nine years later she sailed to new heights with an aching turn as a guilt ridden woman in In the Bedroom (2001) earning a second and well deserved Oscar nomination. And that's just scratching the surface of what's been a solid and varied career in television, stage and the big screen.

Too few hosannas have greeted her latest turn in the Sidney Lumet film Before the Devil Knows You're Dead . I suspect that that's because the film itself doesn't always know quite what to do with her, all caught up as it is in the downward spiral of two brothers (very grim) played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. Gina happens to be sleeping with both of them, but despite her central trophy girl status she is often barely in the frame and sometimes suspiciously out of it -- the film's major error to my mind is that in its many frequent loops backwards to revisit the horrific family tragedy (a deadly robbery) at its center, it denies Gina her own chapter. She's the only major character who never gets to claim her own section of the film. Yet whenever she's onscreen, interest is piqued.

Tomei gifts Before the Devil with a welcome diversion from its often ugly and sweaty humanity with her physical beauty and Gina's flirtatious demeanor. More importantly, the actress rescues what could have been a nonsensical and blank character on the page. How she does it might seem counter intuitive but it works: she zeroes right in on the confusion, she bravely illuminates that very same blankness. Who is this woman exactly? In her first scene sudden tears and mood swings serve as red herring hints at depth and mystery -- but the performance, a sly one, keeps on denying any true reveal. Maybe she's just not there. The closer you get to looking at who Gina is, the more she seems to slip away.

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Marisa Tomei and I was nervous to ask her about what I saw as surprising emptiness in Gina. I loved the performance but I was afraid that I had misread it. I was relieved to hear Tomei confirm my suspicions. I'll use her own words here since they're more coherent than my own:

I always felt that she [Gina] was quite shallow. He [Sidney Lumet] felt that she had at least some of a heartbeat compared to the rest of the people in the piece...

Ultimately, she really just is a leaf in the wind. I--I... you don't even have to say 'is she shallow or is she not?' She just doesn't have a center. She doesn't have a lot of self worth. She doesn't have a way of holding on to herself, particularly beyond her body.

It all comes back to the body, doesn't it? Most discussions of her role in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead frequently reference her nudity. People like to refer to conspicuous movie nudity as "gratuitous" but when a character connects almost exclusively to others as a sexual object, it feels like an accurate display of the character's soul.


When she's not in flagrante she's often seen watching the other characters. Typical movie wisdom would suggest that this marks her as the outsider who longs to be inside, forever tragically an in-law rather than a true family member. But one of the nifty dualities of the performance is that one begins to sense that Gina is only observant so as to not be truly observed, so as not to actually be involved. She can't get too close.

In bed she teases her husband "tell me what you're thinking. tell me what you're thinking", while rocking her hips suggestively. He stays mum. But in a post funeral sequence later in the film she gets her wish. Her husband actually does bare his soul, crying and needy. Her response? Embarrassment, fear, frustration, boredom. Her reaction shots are an almost comic mask of childlike discomfort mixed with adult pain. She might love him but ohmygod she wants out of that car.


She didn't want to know what he was thinking after all.

Even her exit scene, my favorite, is a difficult read. It might be the most awkward "storming out" scene in the movies. She's leaving! But Gina just kind of stands there, fumbling with her suitcase, feeling her way through the situation, desperate to provoke a reaction. She even asks for money. She wants to leave, doesn't she? Or perhaps she wanted a different reaction. When she doesn't get the reaction she wants, back inside her body she goes and out come the sexual barbs, self reassurances about her own desirability and guilty confessions.

Gina starts the movie on all fours and ends it defiantly on her own two feet but the effect will be temporary. This woman is still flailing around. As Marisa says, she's just "a leaf in the wind".

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For more of my interview with Marisa Tomei (Talking Oscars, My Cousin Vinny, In the Bedroom and more), please check out the premiere episode of the Film Experience Podcast ! If you don't have access to iTunes you can download the mp3 version of the podcast with this link. Safari and RSS users can use this xml feed for the enhanced version.
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Giant "100 Times Better Than I Remembered"

I had the pleasure of attending a DGA event for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood the other night. I was just as mesmerized the second time through this mysteriously potent monster and --oops, I didn't take notes. But a couple of things from the interview afterwards stuck with me.


Martin Scorsese was the interviewer, Paul Thomas Anderson the interviewee. Their conversation vacillated from working with Daniel Day-Lewis (both seemed rather awed by him and from the examples cited he sounds more than a little bit like a co-director on his films rather than just an actor) to the difficulties of location shooting and the complex tasks of cinematography, scoring and editing. Scorsese was such a fine choice to interview Anderson and he was well prepared with fascinating questions and anecdotes of his own. It was also amusing to see an old school filmmaking giant paired with a still rising young auteur, both coasts represented. NY: Scorsese; LA: Anderson. One of the draws for Anderson to make There Will Be Blood was that the history of California (his home) has always fascinated him.

They talked influences as artists often do. Robert Altman, to whom There Will Be Blood is dedicated, was cited (of course) and Anderson talked about his understudy gig on A Prairie Home Companion. Though he was there for insurance purposes, Altman too frail during filming to be properly insured, the young director didn't get to do anything but watch. During the conversation they name checked so many films I lost track but I remember hearing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre mentioned a few times and they spent some time discussing the great epic Giant (1956) which is also about oil men.


P.T. said that he rewatched Giant (1956) before filming and found it "a hundred times better" than he had remembered it being though he'd always liked it. I wanted to pop Giant in the DVD player right then and there. It's been ages since I've seen it, too. During the recent screening Anderson found himself most impressed by Rock Hudson. Liz Taylor was also praised but he revealed that he had, as a younger film fanatic, always been firmly focused on James Dean whenever he watched it.

The best movies always do that though, don't they? They shift and shape change, growing right along with us. The best ones reveal themselves anew whenever we pop in for a visit.

National Society of Film Critics Get Bloody

The last important critical organization awarded their best of the year this weekend. I was too caught up in my own year end summary to be paying attention. Here are their choices.

PICTURE: There Will Be Blood
DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood
SCREENPLAY: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages
ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Away From Her
"SUPPORTING" ACTOR: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days
DOCUMENTARY: No End in Sight
BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM: Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
FILM HERITAGE AWARD: Ford @ Fox, the box set from Fox Home Video
FILM HERITAGE AWARD: Ross Lipman, UCLA, for the restoration of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep

Gold Derby has the voting particulars including runners up

Year in Review ~ Part Deux

All right all right, I know what you're hear for. The Lists!

2007: Year in Review
Part 1 -"It's a Gusher"
Part 2 -Underappreciated Films / Special Citations

Read on for odes to paranoid hysterics, dog lovers, Danish eyeball fetishists and the depressing lack of curiousity found in today's movie-going audiences.
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Filmmakers, please don't kill off sexy characters mere minutes after you've introduced them

It's just not right.

(This message has been brought to you by Nathaniel's recent screening of Black Book)

Can someone please find some more work for Michiel Huisman, pronto? Thanks for listening.
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Year in Review "It's a Gusher"

The story is familiar. The calendar year begins and there's dross in the movie theaters apart from a few platforming highlights from the previous year. Minor pleasures follow in the spring and summer. They valiantly struggle to catch public attention amidst cacophonous 8 figure ad budgets of vapid blockbusters. The weather cools and then, as suddenly as people stop going to the theater in droves, real cinematic triumphs arrive. (Funny how that's so backwards. Like leaving a party as soon as the A list guests show). And then a curious but predictable thing happens: the holidays hit and all the remaining movies are viewed sight unseen as "the best" of the year. Until they open that is. Inevitably, November and December feel a little flat. All buildup and no delivery; Christmas morning with so-so gifts.

But not 2007. This year the movies Hollywood stingily withheld actually delivered. Well, most of them at any rate. As a result, the year kept getting better as it went, gathering speed as it barrelled towards its rather cataclysmic end. December had three major offerings emblematic of this tendency: Sweeney Todd's bloodbath, Atonement's guilty backwards glance and There Will Be Blood's implosion were all shocking and rather final finales in their own ways.

"You Can't Stop What's Coming"

...continue reading for more on the emotional disintegrations and mass destruction of this just-wrapped film year. Next up: underappreciated, honorable mentions and the ten best pictures of 2007 according to Nathaniel.
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Oh Lord I Am Sick of Hopping Between Two Computers Apple Leopard Pie

...hold the Leopard.

That's the first and last reference /homage to Waitress's twee comic motif you'll find on this blog. But seriously... this is no time (film bitch time) for me to be having such problems with my brand spanking new computer --for whatever reason, it won't upload my film experience dreamweaver files to the internet. I have to go back to my old computer to do it. so I'm totally confused as to what I'm doing at any given moment and unplugging and replugging back up systems and whatnot. I know Apple people --I've been one for 10 years-- are supposed to love all things Apple without question. But hold the kool-aid, too. I'm not so sure about this Leopard system.

F/Xtra F/Xtra...

As many readers already know some less publicized Oscar categories have what’s referred to as “bake offs” in which the field of potential nominees is whittled down by committee. In some cases the remaining candidates show ‘vote for me!’ best-of clip reels before nominating members of the AMPAS vote for the official Oscar Nominee shortlist. Varying methods of this winnowing process happen in categories such as makeup and effects. Recently the always hotly debated foreign film category adopted the semi-finals game.

This year in Visual Effects (the one category that annually rewards the biggest blockbusters) seven finalists have survived the bakeoffs. Three of the following will be named nominees by the end of January.

300
The Bourne Ultimatum
Evan Almighty
<---The Golden Compass
I Am Legend
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Transformers

Did you just doze off? Are you nodding your head with sleepy eyes in awards fatigue induced apathy.

A little context might help wake you up. It’s far more interesting to view these finalists through the prism of what's already been vetoed. AMPAS voters wisely ignored the tacky CGI fests that were The Rise of the Silver Surfer and Stardust (neither of which made the semi-finals) . But among the semi-finalists that did not make the finals what is it that Spider-Man 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Ratatouille, Beowulf, Sunshine, Live Free or Die Hard and National Treasure: Book of Secrets and The Waterhorse: Legend or the Deep are lacking in relation to um... Evan Almighty?

Some of the rejected are givens. Few probably want to hear Waterhorse with a preface like "The Oscar Nominated..." But among the booted eight are some eye-popping wonders. What, pray tell, is lacking in Sunshine's visuals? Nothing I'd argue. Animated films never fare well here but my guess is Pixar's annual advancements in the CG Animation medium are statue worthy. It's nice to see old school effects like Bourne Ultimatum in the running but given the complete Casino Royale shut out last year, Bourne enthusiasts shouldn't get their hopes up.

And while we're on the subject of bake-offs, wouldn't it be great to have "best of" clip reels for all the categories for voters to ponder. Or, since 2007 cinema has been so retrograde about gender politics, how about a literal bake off for Best Actress. Angelina Jolie is an awesome movie star and humanitarian but can she bake a cherry pie?

Nominations ~ Bookish and Interwebby

USC Scripter Nominations are announced. In otherwords: Best Screenplays based on books.

• Atonement ~Hampton does McEwan
  
• Into the Wild ~Penn wanders with Krakauer
  
• No Country For Old Men ~The Coen Bros worship at the pen of Cormac McCarthy
  
• There Will Be Blood ~ P.T.A from Upton Sinclair
• Zodiac ~Vanderbilt dissects Graysmith
  

This is not quite the same thing as "Best Adapted Screenplay" at the Oscars but people view it as such. The Oscar category has a wider definition: your screenplay can be based on a short story (Away From Her, Lust Caution), older films (Rescue Dawn), stage plays (Bug, Hairspray, Sweeney Todd) --basically any previously published material. That's a solid list the USC has drawn up there though I personally think Into the Wild's spot could have gone to Jesse James or Diving Bell or A Mighty Heart

The Online Film Critics Society have also spoken. Their Best Picture list, quite sturdy, comes down to these (nearly identical) five...

• Atonement ~directed by Joe Wright
  
• Juno ~ directed by Jason Reitman
  
• No Country For Old Men ~ directed by the Coen Bros
  
• There Will Be Blood ~ directed by Paul Genius Anderson
  
• Zodiac ~ directed by David Fincher
  

Antagony & Ecstacy has the complete roster of their nominees. The Lovely Laura Linney (FINALLY!) is in for The Savages and Jennifer Garner also gets her first real awards notice for her somewhat sneaky and well handled turn as a baby hungry would be mom in Juno.

Points to the OFCS for their "breakthrough performer" list, too: Blonsky -Hairspray, Hansard -Once, Riley -Control, Van Houten -Black Book, Wei -Lust, Caution; not a single one of those performances isn't worth applauding and putting on your "to see" list right now. Seriously, load up that Netflix queue. The big disappointment for me in their nominated lineups: looks like I'll still be the only one to deny the lie of Casey Affleck as a "supporting" actor. [seriously people... if he's that good --just boot somebody out of Best Actor and make room for him -ed.]

One While You're Out. One at Home.

Over @ Zoom-In I've written a brief piece on DVD rental suggestions to pair up with movies you may have just seen in the theaters. In this case: There Will Be Blood (even better the second time!), Sweeney Todd and The Bucket List. But I'd love to hear other suggestions.

Which rentals would you suggest for a makeshift interesting conversation with, say, Atonement, I Am Legend or Charlie Wilson's War?

An Actressy Distraction. What's Next?

More than once I've thought of renaming my whole site "Best Actress" on account of my, um, alternate lifestyle of actress worship. Since you'll have to wait (im)patiently a couple more days for my top ten list and massive awards orgy --I'm going to a There Will Be Blood event tonight that I can't really pass up-- so, to keep you engaged I thought I'd throw up a quartet of distracting images of next year's possible Oscar contenders...


That's Meryl Streep in the adaptation of the Pulitzer and TONY winning Doubt (thx, Modfab), Angelina Jolie in the new Clint Eastwood film The Changeling, Kate Winslet (reteaming with DiCaprio) in the 50s marital drama Revolutionary Road and Julianne Moore as seeing eye person in Fernando Meirelles adaptation of Blindness (a lot more on the latter very soon). And this is, I'm sure you know, only the tip of the iceberg. We always hear about the A List projects first. Who knows what lower lights will be going supernova next year (witness what this past calendar year did for Ellen Page and Amy Adams among others) All of these delicious actressy edibles can be devoured in less than a year... or rather in a year. If I know Hollywood they'll jam all of them into Christmas '08. [grumble, grumble]

Other lead actresses that might be coming at'cha in 2008 include: Drew Barrymore (Grey Gardens), Cate Blanchett (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Alice), Anne Hathaway (Dancing with Shiva), Nicole Kidman (Australia / The Reader), Keira Knightley (The Duchess), Jessica Lange (Grey Gardens), Rachel McAdams (The Time Traveller’s Wife), Julianne Moore (Savage Grace), Meg Ryan (The Women) and Renee Zellweger (Leatherheads)

But back on topic. i.e. this is nothing but a distraction --a beautiful one but still... You can take these upcoming "dates" with a grain of salt. It's a one man show here people. Be kind. I will do my best to stay on this self-imposed schedule (which means that by January 8th carpel tunnel syndrome will set in, my shoulder will be experience sharp pangs from all the sitting at my desk monotony and I'll also need a massage or three, with or without hot stones, body scrubs and other spa amenities ...if you are a certified massage therapist in the NYC area and you read the film experience, why haven't you called me yet to offer a donation to the site in the form of a freebie or permanent discount? It would possibly be the kindest thing you have ever done. Think of the karmic value!

Fri, Jan 4th: Year in Review Intro
Sat Jan 5th: 2007 Top Ten List plus: Undistributed, Underloved, Honorable Mentions
Sun, Jan 6th: Oscar Predictions updated, my contribution to the Supporting Actress Blog-a-Thon (hosted by StinkyLulu) and the launch of the 8th annual massive undertaking known as the FiLM BiTCH Awards.


Also in Jan & Feb: The launch of the podcast (episode #1 is finished -whew, it'll be up soon), Total Oscar Mania, FB Nominees and Medalists in all categories, and the 3rd Annual Oscar Symposium (prev symposiums: Feb 2006 & Feb 2007), a new series premieres and you'll also see the return of the blog's regularly scheduled programming --it's not a matter of over promising as the "regular series" go [see: side bar] it just genuinely helps me to have channels of inspiration and deadlines ... even if I don't always meet them.
March: More exciting unexpected blog goodies and the launch of the next big 'year in advance' Oscar contest for your repetitive amusement
April-Dec: The Film Experience conquers the world with its best year ever. Reviews each and every week. Fundraising requests granted without any procrastination whatsoever. Great movies become massive blockbusters, Michelle Pfeiffer grants me an audience, and I become wildly rich and mildly famous. You'll be here in record numbers to celebrate with me and watch it all unfold...

I'm going for total unfettered delusional optimism this year. Why the hell not?

The Beautiful Decay of Helena Bonham-Carter

It's the premiere of the 4th Season of "Hump Day Hottie" -Every Wednesday @ the Experience

So I was listening to Radio Allegro's very rowdy very funny and very long movie special and not too far into that queer beast, there was what sounded like an unplanned but communal dissing of Helena Bonham-Carter's star turn in Sweeney Todd. Typical of my gemini nature I found myself wanting to both join in and defend her. For you see, I also have issues with the performance but I have deep love for "Miss Lucy Honeychurch" in all phases of her career.

Mrs. Lovett, one of the musical theater's unquestionably great roles, is more flexible than Sweeney Todd's new naysayers will have you believe. I've only seen three incarnations but in just those three she's been played with the emphasis on outre comic lunacy (Angela Lansbury), a vampy desperation (Patti Lupone) and now she's like a practical reserved vampire (Helena). Whether the new approach works is a matter up to individual interpretation, of course. But rather than debate the merits of the performance here I want to focus on the woman in all her glory.

To quote her suitor in A Room With a View, the film which brought her international fame at the sparkling age of 19 "Beauuuuutttyyyyy"


She's been one of the screen's most striking women ever since. Consider that round impossibly delicate face, the huge haunting brown orbs we'll call eyes and, as Tim Burton and his cameramen are proud to point out, an ample and inviting bosom.

Helena was also the star attraction in not one but two of the greatest sex scenes of the past decade of film (Wings of the Dove and Fight Club) and yet filmmakers, even her real life love Tim Burton, don't often seem to capitalize on her eroticism. At least not in pleasurable ways. It's both fascinating and disturbing to me that so many of her films have taken care to either dismantle or desecrate the beauty. She meets a gruesome uglifying ending in more than one of her features: Frankenstein and Sweeney Todd are birds of a feather in this sick way and both were directed by men she was sleeping with. Hmmm....

Grafting death and decay onto her doll like prettiness have made her into something of a goth icon (Fight Club and the relationship with Tim Burton didn't hurt) but that came as a surprise to this early adopter. Who among us that fell in love with her royal prettiness in Lady Jane or her ornery loveliness in A Room With a View, knew that the darkness would eventually engulf her?

This is now the Helena movie equation...

...is it not?

related: Last season on Hump Day Hottie and my Sweeney Todd Review
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Better Get to Linking

It's no secret... I'm not much of a "new years" guy. I don't like the pressure. In most years the first few days of January make me panicky, as in 'ohmygodwhat canyoudo tomakethisyeargreat? whyarent youexercizingthis morning? youpromised tochange yourways do something----ohgod nathaniel get it together! dosomethingimportant timeiswasting! itsday2already and... whathaveyoudone? gah. Nothing' so while I attempt to work around this specific self sabotage quirk, enjoy these links...

Acidemic fascinating piece on the year of Apocalyptic Texas Cinema
In Contention Gerard Kennedy dissects the year's best film scores
Sunset Gun's top ten list
IMDB Tilda Swinton gets her polyamorous freak on
Radio Allegro has a new podcast up and it's all movies. I didn't guest this time but I'll be an enthusiastic listener
The Reeler liveblogs 699 minutes with the king of meandering greatness Paul Thomas Anderson. A worthy but surely destabilizing adventure

European Films Boyd has his top ten 2007 list up. You'll recognize some of the titles even if the movies themselves prove elusive in theaters
Joe's Movie Corner the "endings" blog-a-thon. Finis
The Rec Show, which professes a mysterious dislike of year in reviews, gives a shout out to Cyndi Lauper for a live music highlight from last year. Everybody I ever have known who's had the pleasure to see her live knows she's wondrous. It continues to be one of the top ten mysteries of my entertainment watching life that she's never had a mainstream comeback.

Happy New Year

Happy new calendar year that is. We all know that the film year doesn't end until the Best Picture Oscar is handed out. The movie year calendar is reset along with it. But happy new year anyway --there's more to life than movies.

or so I hear...