Completed Category: International Feature

I greatly enjoy foreign films. One of my favorite categories! 

International Feature Film
Flow
Emilia Perez
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
I'm Still Here
The Girl With The Needle

This year? Not easy, my friends. 

There are four incredible cinematic accomplishments and one travesty of a nomination. I do not see how any member of this or any other Academy who watches all five of these could even consider voting for the abject mess that is Emilia Perez.

Flow is a sweet little cat film 🐈‍⬛️ and misfit friends story with no dialogue and lots of struggles and success, as we have mentioned elsewhere. Welcome to this party,  Latvia! If Flow loses both here and in Animated, I'll be devastated.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is such a well-done look at Iran; it skillfully incorporates real-life videos of protests from recent years while placing you into this family's little world, then creating tension that sneaks up on you and builds to a fever pitch. 

I'm Still Here, also nominated for Actress in a Leading Role (Fernanda Torres) and freaking Best Picture is incredible - except that it depicts a true Brazil story - and I've not felt sadder in some time than I did after watching this loving family experience man-made tragedy. 

And then last night I watched The Girl With The Needle, which is a slow burn but then dear gods will it mess you up. There are so many questions to contemplate about these characters and their choices. What should we do, what can we do, why are men, why are humans, why any of it? Go see it knowing absolutely nothing! Other than: humans, poverty, Denmark, war, devastation, black and white -- the film, not life choices. But prepare for heart palpitations. 

Order I want them to win:  Any of the three, seriously. Maybe Seed of the Sacred Fig, I'm Still Here, The Girl With The Needle. Next Flow only because it better freaking be winning Animated. And then a giant huge gap bigger than sixty- four Grand Canyons, and then gtfo E.P.

Order I think they will win:
I'm Still Here maybe possibly please. Then stupid freaking E. Perez because humans are the worst. Then the others... although if the voters have the sense the gods gave a goose then they'll do the right thing here. Which is to say, do anything but the worst thing. 

Completed Category: Cinematography

 This is my first post about a category completed AFTER the nominations were announced -- on Oscar noms night, in fact, at the theatre down the street, seeing Nosferatu. As of the announcement that morning, I had already completed three: Directing, Editing, and Supporting Actress. That night, the weirdo vampire helped me complete two more! 

Cinematography

The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Perez
Maria
Nosferatu

First of all, I always hasten to point out that this is the category that, without it, you couldn't have a film. All the others, it's theoretically possible to make a movie without it - you could have a movie with no Supporting Actor, or no Original Song, or no Sound, or no Visual Effects.  You could even do something totally weird and indie and avant garde and, like, make a movie fully improvised on the street with no Screenplay and no Production Design, or even no Directing. But Cinematography IS the filming. We wouldn't be here without it!

Second of all, when you look at these five nominees, you just might go... Huh?!

On nominations morning, I sat there hoping against hope that Angelina Jolie, she of the declining buzz, would swoop back in to the conversation, get a Lead Actress nomination, and take the place of the man (Gascon) who got nominated instead. When Cinematography was announced and Maria was included, I thought, Wow! That bodes well for Angelina! Alas, it did not. It boded unwell. 

The movie Maria was bizarre, unsettling, fascinating (if, like me, you didn't know how messed up Maria Callas was nor how much of a jackwad Ari Onassis was), and a real dig-deep endeavor for Angelina.  While she was overlooked (which I would accept, if not for the whole man thing), the movie did manage to snag this nomination. Cinematographer Ed Lachman has been here (nominated) before, for Far From Heaven (ugh), Carol (ugh), and last year's weirdo El Conde (manic pixie exorcist movie). He explained the following to the Los Angeles Times about shooting the film: "We have the 35mm black-and-white for her memory of the past, Super 8 to show the intimacy with the people closest to her, 16mm is of this documentary crew filming her and then 35mm color is the master point of view."  Wow, right! Did I notice all that as I watched it?  I surely did not. But, I did notice, as an amateur viewer, that it was really cool and interesting how they went into the flashbacks, and how we were carried through the different parts of this movie. It is truly an interesting and compelling cinematography accomplishment. 

But, you know we are going to hear a lot about a few other flicks here, so let's take a quick look. The ugh of ughs, Emilia Perez, is here. Blah blah blah it transcends narrative filmmaking blah blah.  Too bad its end result is a big ol' mess. Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume has a lot of jabber to say about how the camera depicted the movement and vision and characters' thoughts and all sorts of other mumbo jumbo and who cares. If this wins here on Oscar night, it's time to start worrying about this dumb flick collecting way too many awards. 

Luckily it has some very stiff competition in Dune: Part Two and The Brutalist.  Greig Fraser was not only nominated for first Dune, he won! Can he repeat?  I'd like that. Dune is so pretty! And Dune: Part Two was better than the first. But #TIL that our man Greig did not read the book Dune - he purposefully, specifically did not read it, nor watch any other interpretations or anything else anyone had done with Dune, so that he was only reckoning with the script and then working with Denis Villenueve and company. I find that fascinating!  

As for The Brutal-est, the cinematographer is named Lol! That's a fun name. Lol Crawley certainly contributed to the intense pummeling that the film gives the viewer, and he seriously might win just on the strength of that looking up askew at the Statue of Liberty, alone! I won't be that mad if he does win. 

Lastly, after seeing those four films above and after the nominations announcement, I headed to my local cool old theatre down the road on nominations night and watched Nosferatu.   Let me be the first to say that I did NOT love this film but that I found it incredibly lush and visual and very cool to look at.  And cinematographer Jarin Blaschke talked about what a challenge it was to shoot so many scenes in darkness, and how he really played with moonlight and shooting people for "page after page of dialogue" in no lights. This is all quite an accomplishment.  However, he was previously nominated for The Lighthouse, which is an Oscar nominee that I have not seen and am actually terrified of seeing. So should I hold this against him?  (ha) 

Well, there is a lot of great work going on here, so, once again, it's totally OK for four of these flicks to win, but one will cause me to throw things at the TV. 

What's your Cinematography nominee of choice? 

Order I want them to win:  Nosferatu or Maria, Dune: Part Two or The Brutalist, then E.P.

Order I think they will win:  The Brutalist, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu, Emilia Perez, Maria  

Do I even remember how to blog?

 I seriously don't know! 

But what I do know is that throughout the past decade I have offered up my thoughts, consistently, on the Book of Face, and where does that get me? Shares, likes, and peeks into the lives of people I haven't seen in years are all fun and algorithm games -- until suddenly it's not as fun anymore. It seems that fb is trying to steer us more into groups; why is that? Can anyone explain it to me from the monetary perspective?  Sure, I could quit all my fb groups and then fb would have to show me individual fbriends (amid the ads) but, thing is, I WANT the group info, just not at the cost of the people. Also, I am quite curious about things I can never know, like whether fewer people are seeing my posts since I started posting gender critical rants, which is my totally unconfirmed suspicion. And the flip side of that coin being how very many individuals who have swallowed the prevailing not-wisdom public discourse about various ideologies are less fun to interact with in the first place with their repeat-the-catechism politics. The trumptydumpty era was awful and consumed so much of my book of face even when I refused to type his name. I want us to make it better and fun again...but I don't know if that's likely to happen as big tech works toward its data-grabbing post-human singularity or whatever. 

On that note, I still am not a TV watcher  (and still not a binge-er) but Silicon Valley remains a thing that I love and that makes me laugh out loudest with both a sense of maddening absurdity and recognition. I have also got a season or two into The Good Place, whose philosophy I was assured I would very much love, and it's true! I do! I am more like Chidi than anyone I have ever met. And the ways I am not like Chidi? Are the ways I'm like Eleanor. I love that show. 

See, this is making me sad.  I wish I had spent the pandemic blogging instead of facebooking. 

Things I should have blogged about instead of posting to the book of face: 

1. My 100 Days of Nature Walks -- now with 10% more walking! (Because I ended up doing 110 days)  I spent last summer taking a walk outside every day in a different park/nature preserve/hike from my 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles - Chicago book/other outdoor nature walking locale. It was an amazing streak! 

2. Quarantine life -- WHICH I LOVE. And no, I did not make any sourdough or watch your stupid T*ger K*ng. I did not binge anything.  I did not get bored. I thoroughly enjoyed ceasing commuting, came to appreciate teaching online, and discovered the greatness of working remotely is working from various locations around the country. 

3. Black Lives Matter. Our nation's long overdue reckoning with white privilege matters. 

4. I reached my escape velocity from Chicago and flew South for the winter, where I am enjoying my #Atlantaresidency. Why am I not blogging about it? 

5. Recent film projects! 

At some point in quarantine summer, I finished watching all of the Best Picture Oscar Winners! One of my many-years-in-the-making off-and-on projects! I even talked about it on the O.C.C.: Oscar Category Completist podcast episode #35: all-Time Oscar Completist -- Best Picture with Linda Napikoski. 

Then, over the winter I finished up the AFI Top 100 original list of 100 Years...100 Movies that I have been slooowly sporadically working on since 1998. I had a lot of opinions about some of these flicks!  

And then, during this most recent awards season, I did not step foot in a movie theaters but I watched Every. Single. Oscar. Nominee. In my living room. What an interesting year! 

Why should only people who are on fb with me get to hear about these things? 😅

So, I say, let's remember how to blog. 

Of course I have questions. Among them : 

Who's still blogging? 

What blogs and web sites do you read regularly?  

What questions do you have? 

Twelve Days of Oscars, Day 11: Documentary Feature and Documentary Shorts

Let's talk docs!

I love documentary film. Love, love, love. This is one of my favorite Academy Awards categories, and I love seeking out and watching the nominated films, though they can occasionally be a little harder to come by than the feature fiction film noms. It has definitely gotten easier over the years, what with Netflix and online streaming and more web site accessibility to the filmmakers and whatnot. It was fifteen years ago that I really started paying tons of attention to this category, specifically with my boy Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, and that very memorable Oscar win which happened the same week we (Dubya/"we") went to war in Iraq and I quit smoking and... that's a story I tell elsewhere.

Here, let's look at this year's nominees:

Documentary Feature:
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, Faces Places, Icarus, Last Men in Aleppo, Strong Island

Documentary Short:
Heroin(e), Edith + Eddie, Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, Knife Skills, Traffic Stop

Unfortunately, I have been busy and scattered and unable to complete my Oscars checklist before today's ceremony, and the Documentary Feature category, despite being one of my favorites, is my least complete. I've only seen Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which I really liked. It's about a family-owned bank in New York City that serves the Chinese immigrant community and was prosecuted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis for, well, nothing to be guilty of, really, while "too big to fail" banks kept on doing their greedy illegal things. The family in Abacus... is so awesome and it's a really good documentary. I'm so lame for not having seen the others; I've been hearing about Faces Places for months, and I have Last Men in Aleppo recorded off of PBS but haven't found time to watch... I don't know if Icarus or Strong Island will be able to beat the appeal of voting for Agnes Varda's Faces Places, because she is getting an honorary Oscar this year and she would be the first woman to get an honorary and competitive Oscar in the same year. That would be such a fun fact. (Some men have done that, including Walt Disney.)

Documentary shorts, though, I saw. I love Heroin(e) a lot. It follows people, including three main women, dealing with the heroin epidemic and overdose crises in Huntington, West Virginia. The three women are helping heroin addicts in very different ways, some through official work, some through less official outreach, all through compassion, problem-solving, and tackling the problem in ways our societal systems are clearly not. You'll find yourself smiling so big while watching drug court scenes. It's great. But it's also a sobering reminder of how desperately this good work is needed. I would love for this short to win the Oscar.

Knife Skills also documents outreach to people who've had trouble, in this case former convicts who go through a culinary training program and work at a fancy restaurant, and the troubles that ensue along the way. Traffic Stop, very timely, is about a black woman body slammed to the ground by a cop during her traffic stop, and I think it does a really good job of exploring how that was preventable while doing more than issuing general platitudes. It was a strength of that film that you watch what happens and then later hear the cop describe what happened. He never speaks a lie or distorts the facts, really, and when you hear them from him perspective you're like -- oh my god. Yes, that's what happened. And why couldn't you - or thousands of other cops - in that situation make it better instead of worse? It was very interesting. I think a lot of people like Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, which has very little to do with traffic and is instead a weird, trippy examination of a traumatized woman who grapples with her life and issues, among them childhood and mental health issues, with art and other tactics. Edith + Eddie is a sad story - an old newlywed couple (like 95, seriously) separated when the daughter and legal guardian of the woman take over because she is judged not competent to make her own legal decisions. It wasn't as well made of a film, but was kind of like watching a long, fairly interesting news story.

All right, who's going to win?

Documentary Feature: I can't pick mine, because I'm ignorant here. I think Faces Places might win.
Documentary Short: I want Heroin(e).  It could be that or either of the Traffic ones though.

This is Oscar weekend, people! My own personal "New Year's Eve"-level festivity!

Twelve Days of Oscar, Day 6: Cinematography and Directing

For a lot of people, such as, you know, the people who maybe AREN'T obsessed with making a checklist of Academy Award nominees each year and being sure to watch them all (except when the song from Fifty Shades of What-the-hell-ever gets nominated because just no), there are categories that are variously called technical, minor, obscure, other... and then are the "big" ones. Setting aside the obsessive ones among us (ahem) for a moment, it does sadden me to divide things up that way, number one, because the creative, proficient, talented human being who did the work in a "lesser" category is just as valuable as the one who did the work in a "major" category, and number two because sometimes the winner in a "lesser" category delivers the coolest or most heartfelt speech of the night while the actors just rattle off a list of names which is SO ANNOYING but not quite as annoying as playing people off in the first place and have I mentioned that shut the fuck up please about how "long" and "boring" the annual ceremony is because no one is forcing you to watch please thanks?

My point (and yes, I do!) is that today we are looking at what is routinely considered a "major" category, Directing, along with Cinematography, which would never be considered lesser by anyone who likes film but is maybe a bit less paid attention to among the plebes.

Cinematography: Blade Runner 2049, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Mudbound, The Shape of Water

Directing:  Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan; Get Out - Jordan Peele; Lady Bird - Greta Gerwig; Phantom Thread - Paul Thomas Anderson; The Shape of Water - Guillermo del Toro

Well, we have two overlappers, Dunkirk and The Shape of Water. And as much as I have been reiterating everywhere and to anyone who will listen (and some who won't) that The Shape of Water is goddamn weird and so not my thing, I actually will have zero problem if Guillermo wins here for Directing, because I think he actually perfectly realized his (weird!) vision, with both finesse and technical competence and creativity. Even though it's just not necessarily for me.  That said, I would not award Cinematography to The Shape of Water. I think Directing is pretty much the only category I'd want it to win. As for Dunkirk, it could get Cinematography, which was definitely an achievement and a half, involving as it did big battle scenes, airplanes, cramped boat quarters, vast waterscapes, and just all kinds of skill.

But. There were other fantastic Cinematography nominees, specifically Blade Runner 2049 and Mudbound. I am pulling for Blade Runner 2049 in other technical categories but I think I'm totally behind Mudbound here. I thought that movie was just wonderful.Well done, and really visually engaging - there were some simply gorgeous shots of farm vistas and, well, mud... which looked a lot cooler than you might think!  The more I think about that film, the more I want it to win stuff.

Also, I would be letting you down as an Oscar trivia aficionado and feminist if I didn't mention here the fun fact that Mudbound cinematographer Rachel Morrison is the first woman ever nominated in this category and WHAT THE HECK TOOK SO LONG?!

Additionally, a new CNN story reports that she at first didn't even want to win because she wanted her competition, Roger Deakins, who is nominated for Blade Runner 2049, to win; this is his 14th nomination and he still has never won. Basically, I guess we can all be happy if either of those films wins for Cinematography, eh?

Darkest Hour is a weird nom here and I think it's a non-factor...I guess all the filming in underground spaces was skilled work and all, but...I don't think it will win.

Now, if Guillermo del Toro does not win for directing The Shape of Water, another distinct possibility is Get Out's Jordan Peele. There is a lot of love for this film and for the somewhat out-of-nowhere-ness of it, and for the fun-fact-ness of  Peele being the first African-American to be nominated at once for Best Picture (as a producer), Directing, and Screenplay. I don't personally think Get Out is the best film of the year, but I am not opposed to a Directing win here... I just think I'm a tiny bit more behind Guillermo's (weird!) visionary directing achievement. This category is very interesting because it also has Greta Gerwig, and we all know (don't we, though) how damn rare Directing nominations for women are, sheesh. I feel the same about her Lady Bird achievement as I do about Peele's, I think - it was great. I won't be mad and throw things if it wins, but I just don't think it was necessarily the best. While this category did have diversity this year, and thanks for that Hollywood amiright?!, there are still a couple of white guys - the aforementioned Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson. Here's what I think about PTA winning for Phantom Thread: no. Just no, please. That movie is also weird, but more annoying weird than bizarre-o visionary fable weird. I am well aware that there are people, including a person I live with, who vehemently disagree with me on this point. Don't care. I'm 100% not about Phantom Thread.

And so....
Cinematography: My pick is Mudbound.  I think it might go to her or to Blade Runner 2049...but, hard to call. It's not out of the question that The Shape of Water sweeps a ton of categories, so...
Directing: I'm good with Guillermo for The Shape of Water. I think it will be him or possibly Nolan or Peele.

My Previous Days of Oscar:
Day 5: Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay
Day 4: Supporting Actor and Lead Actress
Day 3: Production Design and Costume Design
Day 2: Editing and Original Score
Day 1: Sound Mixing and Sound Editing

Who Should Win the World Cup?

World Cup Fever: catch it! No, I didn't make that up (duh) but Brian and I have been saying that to each other for the past few weeks to amuse ourselves as we watch the 32 teams whittle themselves down to a mere four via the process of football aka soccer aka fútbol aka #becausefútbol matches. The benefit to being unemployed a part-time freelancer (me) and between jobs (him) is that we can watch pretty much every game and do the other things we need to do at other times of the day. Bosses are for suckers! Ha!

But seriously, folks. The World Cup is great fun, especially if you like soccer and if you like it when nations get together for peaceful endeavors instead of to blow one another to bits with guns and bombs. I'm big on the whole Make Sports Not War idea. Now, the USA sadly failed to advance to the quarter-finals, despite the Tim-Howard-and-his-many-saves performance, and some of Brian's and my other chosen teams are also out:  Mexico, where we lived and where the fútbol spirit is always fun, lost to the Netherlands and thus did not make the quarter-finals, while my good friends (Republic of) Korea and Honduras failed to make it out of their groups. The Honduras national team is always my first second choice (after my patriotic duty), ever since I happened to be in Honduras in 2008 for a Habitat for Humanity trip and we attended a World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula. Vamos catrachos! Alas, they did not see fit to do any winning this year.And France, Brian's other-other team, lost to Germany the other day, while our CONCACAF solidarity pick Costa Rica, despite a noble effort, went down to the Netherlands. Since those Dutchies also beat Mexico, and even Chile (my other-other-other pick, although that was early and didn't eliminate Chile), I am basically against the Netherlands right now, my fondness for Curaçao and the former Netherlands Antilles notwithstanding. (And despite the fact that I like the color orange.)

Which means I need to cheer for Argentina against the Netherlands tomorrow. What about the other match, today's exciting encounter between Germany and Brazil? Well, folks, I have nothing against Brazil (in fact, I really want to go there, AND we've been drinking caipirinhas during several of the games...) but Brazil beat both Chile and Colombia, which was annoying, plus when it comes to choosing between a massively hyped superpower home team favorite and their opponent, I'm generally going to go for the opponent. Guten tag, Deutschland!

In honor of the World Cup, I've already added a film from each of the eight quarterfinals teams to my Netflix queue, and I've also decided to add a book from each of the final four countries' literature to my to-read list. Do you have any suggestions for a great book by any authors from Brazil, Germany, Argentina, or the Netherlands?

Blatant racism lives on

From the "You Must Be Kidding Me" files, I share with you a review of Pieces of April posted on Netflix by user "DH 1531296" of Alexandria, VA:

"Just a warning, If you do not approve of interracial relationships do not rent this film. The review by NF said nothing of her 'new' boyfriend being black, therefore making it a wasted rental for us. Turned it off after 2 minutes."

I am astonished. My mind has been 100% blown here today, folks.

And lest you think this person is a naive, sheltered soul who just emerged from the cult compound into reality, I clicked on DH 1531296's profile. He has rated 1130 movies, giving FIVE stars to, among others, The Silence of the Lambs, A History of Violence, In Bruges, Shaun of the Dead, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he wrote a four-star review of last year's Swedish vampire critical favorite Let the Right One In. Obviously, I can't dismiss him as someone who never recognizes quality, or watches only insipid films, or anything like that. I mean, he did give five stars to Gone With the Wind. Is that also where he learned all his lessons about race?

And the thing is, there are SO MANY movies that depict killing, Satanic possession, heists and other crimes, slavery, and so forth on this person's viewing list. Obviously - so painfully obviously - when you watch things in movies it doesn't mean that you like/respect/do them. Thus, even if it were acceptable to oppose interracial dating, which I daresay is not just racist and antiquated but also seriously impractical and limiting in a world whre more and more people are of mixed race, why would your personal dating habits prevent you from watching a film anyway? Unless you were so thoroughly stupid that you also had to take your immoral opposition to the next level.

I still can't figure out if I'm more astonished that someone feels that way or that he would so matter-of-factly post it on Netflix, as if he is doing others a favor by offering up the "warning" about Katie Holmes' character dating Derek Luke's.

Here we go number ten!

Fittingly, on this Presidents Day holiday, we begin with a movie about a man who thought he was our president!

10. W
Of course, Dubya was never my president and never legitimately President at all, but his father George Sr is in this film, too, so there is at least one president in there. When I first heard Oliver Stone was next tackling George Dubya I felt so happy inside. All I have asked over the past eight years is that you people (er...I mean, we the people, of course) do just a tiny bit of critical thinking, but that appears to have been too much for, among others, about 50% of the populace and 99% of the mass media. Because a tiny bit of critical thinking would have led to outrage about the war in Iraq back in 2003 when I was outraged by it and it would have led to the election of anyone but Dubya Kerry in 2004. A tiny bit of any thinking, critical or otherwise, and we could have had some outrage in 2000 when all this nonsense started and the Supreme Court selected Dubya to go to the White House. Instead, we got an eight-year nightmare which all too many were willing to endure, lying down and rolling over and taking all the crap given by the Bush Administration. And you know what? It IS totally satisfying to watch this film depict the story of this guy who should never have left baseball but instead changed the world for the worse, and it's satisfying partly because it's totally understated and not strident and gives me more sympathy than I've ever had for him and it STILL SHOWS how wrong anyone was to ever listen to anything he or any of his maniacal cronies said or did. I am so smug about what I've always known about Bush and not afraid to admit it. Oliver Stone is not so smug in this flick, so go watch it. With the exception of Thandie Newton as Condoleezza, who is just caricature, each character is perfectly done. Hurrah!

9. Revolutionary Road
So I think all this "bleak, depressing" talk is from people who are in denial of their own feelings about that "hopeless emptiness" discussed in the film. I love films that are smart and thoughtful and intense and just talk to you on and on about how messed up everyone is. These people do not listen to one another, and they lie to themselves and to their mates, and they all screw up their lives, and the crazy guy is the only one who offers the sane, shrewd analysis, and it's all just harsh and fantastic. Loved it!

8. The Visitor
This brings a little tear. I relate to a lot of this film, as it reminds me of the last year or two of my life: New York, subways, Union Square, Queens, and immigration law. But I do not relate to the sad story of Tariq, who did nothing wrong but is unfortunate enough to encounter our justice system anyway. Everyone is so likable and it's so realistic about what happens. Richard Jenkins is astounding in a subtle performance as the professor who needs to be jolted awake; he nails it. A true little gem, this one.

7. Tropic Thunder
It's not only Robert Downey Jr who is excellent, although he is and he completely deserves his Oscar nomination. What if he ties with Heath? Won't that be ten kinds of awesome? Tropic Thunder has so much to say, and I'm sure a lot of it will be lost on a bunch of people. From the fake previews to the agent's response to "Amanda"/a panda, from the repeated oh-so-dramatic shots of the choppers soaring over the jungle to the twigman Oscar, it is all pure genius, and it satires Hollywood brilliantly. I love Jack Black. I love the stunt guy! I pretty much love every second of this film. Oh my I forgot to say I love Nick Nolte. See? Every second.

6. Frozen River
It's so hard to make a top ten list. (Kudos to Dave Letterman eh!) (joke) Anyway, while I do agree with Roger Ebert that trying to make a list of 1-20, with each movie ranked just above the next, is in some ways a ridiculous endeavor and nobody watches and enjoys movies that way, I also do enjoy the challenge of it. Furthermore, when I think about if I had to send you out to rent just one movie tonight (or, preferably, to add just one movie to your Netflix queue tonight) (which is of course in itself nonsensical, unless your queue is full as mine so often is, but let's just pretend you could add only one for the sake of my hypothetical, OK?) (this is what we do in law school: play with hypotheticals all day) ... catch your breath after all those parentheses ... and I had to choose between Tropic Thunder and Frozen River, I would probably sigh and tell you to see Frozen River, and that is why it places just above Tropic Thunder. This film is beautiful. It features at least two wondrous performances, from Melissa Leo (nominated!) and Charlie McDermott, as her son. It features a meditation on justice. It is entertaining, suspenseful, dramatic, small, and powerful. If you live under an Oscar-nominations-lacking rock, you may not know that it, too, ponders immigration as Melissa Leo's struggling-to-pay-the-bills dollar-store employee in upstate New York somehow comes to be driving aliens across the border from Canada. But there is oh-so-much more going on here. Parenting, policing, economic struggles, apologies, the tribal council: all of these are considered in the film and you just might walk away with a new perspective on what you thought you knew about the rules. But before that you will be totally engrossed.

Ready for the top five tomorrow?

Real Things

So, I liked Rachel Getting Married. I don't think it was perfect, but I liked it a lot. I just thought it was so real. I liked the screenplay, although it was flawed. I liked the story and how real it was. I read one assessment of it that it "added something new to this overdone genre." I could sort of get behind that statement. I'm not sure I agree with the premise that this is an overdone genre, but I have from time to time thought that there are a lot of gritty, independent movies out there that come off as very knowingly provocative about drug use and it's annoying, like, "Ooooh, I'm going to show someone shooting up and it's going to be so EDGY and daring and AWEsome." This movie has zero of that, but not just because it's about the recovery side of addiction but also because I feel like that attitude is entirely missing: it's saying real things about the addict and, crucially, her family instead of just trying to be all knowing about the worldliness of drug use.

In fact, I would say this film does a lot to point out that for all her being "out there" the addict didn't get too much out of her worldly life, whereas the non-addict sister seems to have truly seen the world.

I liked the performances. I am not really in the Anne Hathaway camp, but I at least like her a little better when she's all dressed in black and messed up instead of this princess/sweet girl nonsense. I am going to have to draw a line, however, on the "fat" thing. Anne Hathaway is not fat, and this is the second movie in a row (did she do anything between this and The Devil Wears Prada?) where she prattles on about being fat, and then it's sort of "part of the story" as if she really is not fat but maybe a few pounds over whatever ideal weight she has in her head. It's crap. In this one, it was all "Oh, rehab makes you fat" and it's passed off as just this character's neurotic thing, but it's suspiciously similar to Devil...Prada when she is, ostensibly, the "fatter" one compared to Emily Blunt's character who's on a starvation diet. No wonder people have unrealistic bullshit body image concepts if they go around accepting the likes of Anne Hathaway as overweight. It bugs me. It has no purpose in either movie whatsoever. It tries to pretend it does in each case, but I swear it's like Anne putting it in there or something.

Anyway, bonuses include Robyn Hitchcock in the movie, and he sings! plus a fun blue elephant wedding cake.

I am nearly through with the "major" categories of the Oscar noms. Still two more Best Actress to see, Angelina Jolie in Changeling and Melissa Leo in Frozen River, and they are waiting atop my Netflix queue for when they are released on DVD the next two Tuesdays. In theaters, I still have to see Happy-Go-Lucky (screenplay), Defiance (score), and whatever foreigns and shorts I can get.

So that's the movie update. What else? Finished Ishmael (see my literary supplement)and am trying to get all caught up and ahead in my law school things so I don't have to worry about school. I am totally opposed to worrying about school right now; I just want to coast along in my senioritis learning but not fretting.

However, I have to do a great deal of fretting about where/how to get a job. How tiresome. I'm leaning more and more toward moving to a cheaper city as soon as humanly possible, but then it's like, why am I taking the bar exam in New York? Not that I know where else to take it -- so that's why I'm taking it in New York. It's a big vicious circle.

Oh yeah, and I find it really hard to care about the Grammys. But I am on the verge of officially becoming a fan of Taylor Swift. Just putting that out there.