An Evening With Oscar

It's the gay Super Bowl, and Los Angeles pretty much shuts down during it, so I'll be incapacitated for the next few hours. We're making Indian food in honor of Slumdog Millionaire, although I am part of the backlash and don't think it's a particularly good film. Last year's entrants blow this year's away, but I agree with Nate Silver that it's virtually assured of victory. I liked the film when I saw it and promptly forgot everything about it the moment it ended. The Wrestler was my favorite film of the year.

In the documentary feature category, which I call the real award, I think Werner Herzog will get what amounts to a lifetime achievement award for "Encounters At The End Of The World," which will be the 2nd film about penguins to win in this category in four years. I thought Trouble The Water was the best I saw this year, though I haven't seen Man On Wire yet. If everyone in Los Angeles were required to see The Garden, nobody in LA would be re-elected (particularly Antonio Villaraigosa). But I like films that look like a modicum of thought went into shooting them.

Enjoy wonderful, dazzling Oscar.

Oscars

I've seen 2 of the 5 Best Picture nominees, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk (The others are Frost/Nixon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and in a bit of a surprise, The Reader). Slumdog's going to win, but I was more partial to Milk. Benjamin Button got 13 nominations, but that's mainly because it sits in that "Best Picture bait and Visual Effects bait" space, and ultimately it will probably be disappointed throughout the ceremony. Odds and ends on the nominees:

• Mickey Rourke should win Best Actor for The Wrestler, though that's a very strong category. Marisa Tomei, who was just not that good in that movie but somehow has cachet because she implausibly won an Oscar before, got nominated as well.

• That Best Animated Film category has ghetto-ized those movies, despite Wall-E probably being as good as any Best Picture nominee.

• Great to see the amazing Trouble The Water up for Best Documentary Film. I've actually only seen one of these five, which is bad for me. Man On Wire and Encounters At The End of the World (the second Werner Herzog film for the little studio I used to work at to be nominated) have had great reviews. Don't know anything about The Betrayal or The Garden.

• Waltz With Bashir is going to win Best Foreign Film. I have to go see that.

• No Best Song for Bruce Springsteen's original for The Wrestler, which is surprising, but Slumdog is likely to sweep the musical categories.

• A couple pleasant surprises in the writing categories. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh got a nomination for In Bruges, which I just saw over the weekend, and which I found extremely good. Wall-E got a writing nod as well.

...This is hilarious. I knew that Benjamin Button (or Forrest Gump II) looked familiar.

There Will Be A Review

I know "No Country For Old Men" swept the key awards this weekend, an augur of Oscar success, but "There Will Be Blood" is a better film, a masterpiece, a showcase for an almost otherworldly acting performance, a film with the best score I have heard in my lifetime, and the telling of a story that is timeless.

Daniel Day-Lewis appears in virtually every frame of its two and a half hours, and his Daniel Plainview is a man with demons, with inadequacies, with shortcomings, with the inability to connect or even tolerate other human beings, to the extent that he uses his most cherished fellow human being, his adopted son H.W., as a prop, a way to ingratiate himself to communities out of whom he wants to swindle their natural resources. He eventually comes to resent his son, for an event that makes him rich. An oil well gushes and blows out H.W.'s eardrum, an oil well that will reap untold fortunes for Daniel. Not being able to relate to his son, to communicate with him, he rejects him, sends him away, breeds anger and a final rift. Here's that key moment, as recounted by Premiere's Glenn Kenny:

H.W. has been the only person Plainview has ever really confided in. Now he can’t communicate with him. Plainview’s exchange with his right hand man Fletcher Hamilton (Cieran Hinds) is telling in a number of ways. “Is H.W. okay?” Fletcher asks. “No, he’s not okay,” Plainview says. Soon, he looks again at Fletcher. “What are you so miserable about? We’ve got an ocean of oil under our feet…and only I can get at it!” Note the use of the first person singular here. Of course it suggests Plainview’s selfishness, callousness…but it also suggests a sundered partnership. Had H.W. been standing with Plainview and Fletcher, uninjured and whole, Plainview would have been speaking to H.W., and he would have said “we.”

The movie is less about the oil business and its historical underpinnings, and the wildcatters and businessmen who built it, than about one man and his family, including the surrogate family of the Sundays, particularly the brothers Eli and Paul, played by Paul Dano. Paul only shows up in the first moments, to tip Plainview off to a fertile tract of land in the Little Boston area. Eli is the preacher who becomes Plainview's nemesis from thereafter. There's a lot of talk about the ending of the film, which some have found discordant. I found it perfectly relevant. Eli becomes the son that Plainview can lash out at, unlike H.W., who is closer to his flesh and blood. In a movie full of real family and fake family, only by the end and only to Eli can all of the emotions of humiliation and self-loathing and anger be displaced. Daniel Plainview, by the end, an alcoholic, insular, closed figure, eventually devours himself.

The Glenn Kenny review is more of a spoiler, by the way.

Oscar Nods

Pretty surprising. I've only seen one of the Best Picture nominees, but seeing No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and especially Juno up there makes an indie lover feel good. Maybe this is finally the year the Coen Brothers get the Best Picture Oscar they deserve.

Based on quick projections, I'd say No Country for Best Picture, Julie Christie (Away From Her) for Best Actress, Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) for Best Actor, Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) for Best Supporting Actor, Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There) for Best Supporting Actress, The Coens or P.T. Anderson for Best Director, The Coens or P.T. Anderson for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Diablo Cody (Juno) for Best Original Screenplay.

The documentary nominees are pretty good too:

“No End in Sight” (Magnolia Pictures) A Representational Pictures Production: Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
“Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience” (The Documentary Group) A Documentary Group Production: Richard E. Robbins
“Sicko” (Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company) A Dog Eat Dog Films Production: Michael Moore and Meghan O’Hara
“Taxi to the Dark Side” (THINKFilm) An X-Ray Production: Alex Gibney and Eva Orner
“War/Dance” (THINKFilm) A Shine Global and Fine Films Production: Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine

I hear Taxi To The Dark Side is amazing.

Oh Oscar

Seen on Highland Avenue last night: "Left Lane - Limos Only."

It amused the heck outta me.

I'm as little a fan of The Departed as I am any remake that has no reason to be remade (DiCaprio isn't Asian? Americans aren't into reading? Was this the reason?), I'm glad Marty Scorsese got his long-overdue Oscar. Same for Al Gore (except he DIDN'T win the award! The director did! Saying that a Best Documentary award goes to the subject would be like saying that the pedolphile priest is an Oscar winner, if Deliver Us From Evil won). But personally, The Queen was the best picture I saw this past year. But it would have been out of the top ten the year before, so it was a bad lot.

And I won my Oscar pool. So there.