It's Fitzmas in March!

HA HA HA!

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby had little reaction to the verdict. He stood expressionless as the jury left the room. The verdict was read on the 10th day of deliberations. Libby faces up to 30 years in prison, though under federal sentencing guidelines likely will receive far less.

One proto-fascist down, eleventy billion to go.

The Lives of Others and Black Book

The Lives of Others

There was a video floating around the Net a few months back of a UCLA student being violently Tasered by Campus Police Officers, for the serious offense of not showing them his student ID in the library. I wrote about it, along with some other issues, here. What was so shocking was not just the brutality of Tasering a young person for the crime of not having a proper ID, but the fact that the cops continued to shock the guy long after he was clearly incapacitated. Other students are crying out, begging for them to stop, but they do not.

If I had to guess why, I'd say it's the same reason that Police Departments across the nation have been having trouble with Taser-happy officers. It's human nature. Give one group of individuals supreme, unchecked power over another group of individuals, and they will use it. Now that police are being issued Tasers in greater numbers, they are using them more. Because they can.

It's a pretty simple principle, one of the best arguments against the sort of invasive, aggressive Executive Power to which Dick Cheney and George W. Bush aspire. Those in power, I suppose, will always want to increase the level of control they can exert over as many other individuals as possible, which is why no single person or small group should ever be given unrestricted, unmonitored access to our nation's terrifying intelligence-gathering infrastructure. It's an Orwell novel waiting to happen (or, depending on your view, already past the prologue and well into its introductory chapter).

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to the recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film of 2006) The Lives of Others, the story of a committed socialist and Stasi (East German Secret Police) officer who slowly discovers he's devoted his life to a sham. In the East Berlin of the '80s, Hauptmann Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) takes his surveillance job too seriously, running into an essential paradox. To excel at watching, he must pay attention, but the system of which he is a part cannot stand up to scrutiny. In serving his nation, he becomes compelled to destroy it.



Wiesler's been assigned by the odious Cabinet Minister Hempf (Thomas Thieme) to make trouble for the State's favorite playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). As an artist, Dreyman associates with a few subversives, but he's not much of a radical himself, contenting himself with writing safe, pro-Socialist plays starring his beautiful actress wife, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck). Hempf doesn't want him taken down because he's a genuine threat; he just wants Dreyman out of the picture so he can pursue the man's wife.

At first, Wiesler doesn't let this information bother him. He's a good follower and a devoted Stasi officer. Muhe does a terrific job of combining a fierce intelligence with a learned obedience. Wiesler's clearly a man that could have excelled in a real job, doing something more important than spying on strangers in the hopes of ruining their lives. But over time, watching Hempf and the cruel beurocratic apparatus at his disposal destroy Dreyman becomes too much to bear. (It's also hinted at that Wiesler's a lonely man who fantasizes about relationships with Christa-Maria and Dreyman to fill a void in his own life, but let's see it's the cruel beurocratic apparatus for the purposes of this review).

At about the halfway point, the film shifts from a thoughtful historical drama into a full-blown Hitchcockian thriller. Wiesler winds up taking some incredible risks, concealing the nature of his surveillance from Dreyman and Christa-Maria while keeping the majority of his findings out of the hands of his superiors at the Stasi. Tightly-wound, perfectly shot and edited suspense sequences pepper the film's entire second half, culminating in a fevered search for a hidden typewriter that's reminiscent of the Master's work in Rope.

Writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (making his audacious debut with this film) cleverly uses Wiesler's dilemma to mirror the paranoid duplicity in which all East Germans have been forced to exist. His applied scrutiny has placed countless other people into this very situation, watching as someone methodically and pointlessly condemns you to a life in prison or even execution, and now it is Wiesler's turn to sweat.

One brilliant scene has Wielser sharing an elevator with a precocious child, who asks if he's really a member of the Secret Police. When the child lets slip that his father has sternly warned him about speaking to the Stasi, going so far as to pepper the entire organization with insults, Wiesler is tempted to ask for the father's name. He holds back, but we sense that, just as easily, he could have the man reported, questioned and potentially destroyed. Over a child's mistake.

The final 20 minutes or so of the film is taken up with a largely unnecessary epilogue. To his credit, Von Donnersmarck closes the film on an emotional beat that feels significant, with a nice freeze-frame profile of his hero in a rare moment of happiness. But he could have ended the film without all of this last-minute business and it would have been as effective, if not more so. I'm just not a big fan of ending a film with a "Four Years Later" or whatever, unless it's really really urgent to do so. (Another, significantly worse, film that annoyed me with its epilogue was Matchstick Men. What the hell do we need that endless little scene in the carpet store for? Just end that sucker already, Rid!)

But this is a nitpick. Lives of Others deserved its Oscar (way more than Pan's Labyrinth), and it's a fairly remarkable debut for Von Donnersmarck with a lot of resonance at this moment in history.

Black Book

Lots of similarities between these two films. Both European films from 2006, produced or co-produced by Germany. Both feature Sebastian Koch in significant roles. Both include what, for me, felt like unnecessary epilogues. And both deal with dying totalitarian systems, pressing down on the main characters with greater and greater force as its last glimmers of hope fade out.
Set in Occupied Holland during the waning days of the Third Reich (several mentions are made of Russian troops positioning outside Berlin), Paul Verhoeven's brutal, pulpy WWII adventure Black Book tells a remarkable (and mostly fictional) story about a remarkable woman who quite simply refuses to die, despite considerable efforts to bring this about.

Combining the bleak desperation of Resistance classics like Army of Shadows with the high-flying '60s war/action genre, Verhoeven has made an extraordinarily entertaining, even brisk, epic. It's historically accurate, bold and intelligent, sure, but it's real strength is watchability. The film's 150 minutes absolutely flew by.



Rachel Stein (Carice van Houton) fully expects to wait out the war in her attic hiding spot until its blown up by a passing German plane. Setting out with her family in tow for asylum in Belgium, she is ambushed by Nazi soldiers. Though Rachel escapes with her life, everyone she cared about has died.

Eventually, she finds her way into the Dutch Resistance, who want her to seduce a high-ranking Gestapo official, Ludwig Muntze (Koch again) and bug his office. She agrees. The remainder of the film is a war film, a detective story, a romance and a thriller all wrapped into one blood-soaked, delirious little Verhoeven package of joy. This guy's films are just alive, bursting with energy and surprises.

He spoke at the Aero Theater after the film last night, and confessed at one point that he doesn't consider how an audience will react when making a film. He thinks about what works on him, and simply assumes that some in his audience will feel the same way. All I can say is, PV and I are on the same wavelength.

There are so many double-crosses, close calls and unexpected turns, I wouldn't even know how to ruin the movie for you if I wanted to. It opens in April and you should just go see it for yourself.

Van Houten does an amazing job as Rachel (who goes by Ellis de Vries for most of the film), who like every other character is essentially a mass of contradictions posing as a confident individual. She has recently watched Nazis gun down an entire family, yet finds a way to feel compassion for Muntze. And though she's sleeping with this man out of duty and not for pleasure, Van Houten brings an unexpected playfulness to the love scenes. Could she be enjoying the very transgressiveness of the act of fucking a Nazi? Or is it the inherent thrill of espionage, the opportunity to not only lie but to live within a false identity?

When Rachel/Ellis reveals her true identity to fellow Nazi girlfriend Ronnie (Halina Reijn), the reaction she finds is not anger or shock but curiosity. "You're a spy? How exciting? What's that like, then?"

The cinematography by Karl Walter Lindenlaub is also stellar. Verhoeven discussed how they attempted to give the film kind of an Old Hollywood, '40s vibe to match the period in which the film is set. I felt, as I said before, that it more closely resembled the gritty '60s WWII action film. Movies like Where Eagles Dare and The Great Escape introduce noble characters fighting small-scale but extremely significant battles against massive, nearly-unstoppable and thoroughly evil regimes, and that's what we have here. Minus the nobility. Verhoeven and co-writer Gerard Soeteman (who first devised this story when they were working on Soldier of Orange some 25 years ago) have fashioned several mini-missions of his characters, each progressively more difficult and of more dire importance, and the result is just one propulsive, edgy sequence after another.

In place of those older film's relatively straightforward good-vs-evil dichotomy, Verhoeven refuses to oversimplify. Some Nazis are incredibly evil, sure, but they're all human as well. Some of them don't seem to take the whole Nazi thing all that seriously, even. Likewise, the Dutch Resistance are not, to a man, likable and noble and impressive of character. Dolf de Vries in particular does great work as a lawyer who never seems totally trustworthy, but who gives no reason to doubt his sincere intentions.

Even the happy ending isn't really all that happy. Without blowing the final sequence, it ends on a decidedly ambiguous note, implying that even if Rachel can escape the horrors of the Nazi Occupation, neither she nor anyone else can ever really find real safety in this world of violence. It's one of a few truly chilling, immediate moments in the film, another being a torture sequence in which Nazis hold a man underwater to simulate the sensation of drowning. That Verhoeven dares to jolt an audience in this fashion, to introduce remarkably pointed social commentary in the midst of what's ostensibly a period adventure film, to me speaks to his bravery and confidence as a filmmaker.

Here's the somewhat NSFW international trailer, with relatively poor but somewhat amusing English subtitles:

The Good, The Bad, The Queen and The Mouse

Check out this video for a slowed-down version of Okkervil River's "No Key No Plan," from the Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP. The video itself is just shots of lead singer Will Scheff traveling through an airport and some city too blurry for me to identify, but I really dug this rendition of the song.

I've also been listening to the new Modest Mouse album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, all week. The one with Johnny Marr. It's coming in anywhere between strong and quite strong. I'm pretty sure I like it significantly more than Good News For People Who Love Bad News.

First single, "Dashboard," comin' at ya:



As you can probably tell from this song, the addition of Marr hasn't significantly changed The Mouse's sound. Naturally, the guitars are emphasized this time around, but not once was I reminded of "Boy With the Thorn In His Side." In fact, it feels very much like a follow up to Good News, although the songs are a bit looser and more dynamic this time around. Less tight little pop songs like "Float On" and one-off Tom Waits-inspired oddities, more intensely spacey rock songs. My favorite track, to which I can't seem to find a legitimate link, is "Parting of the Sensory," which definitely has a "Cowboy Dan" kind of vibe. And "Cowboy Dan" remains one of my favorite Modest Mouse tracks.

Having said all that, I think the above video is pretty stupid. I also didn't really like the "Float On" video. Oh well...

I'm kind of split on The Good, The Bad and The Queen, the latest weird side project from Damon Albarn, aka The Dude From Blur.

On the one hand, it's kind of a cool concept album. Low-key songs about quotidian London life with an occasionally sinister, even supernatural, undertone, performed by Albarn, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, the guitarist from The Verve and drummer Tony Allen. According to Wikipedia, Albarn said the album's actually a mystery play in interviews. Also according to Wikipedia, and contrary to what I had been told, the album was apparently not co-produced with DJ Danger Mouse, thus preventing this post from having a cool rodent theme.

I've found that it's pretty good background music for when I'm working on the computer. But to just sit down and give it a complete listen...well, I get kind of bored.

It's the sort of thing that might very well grow on me over time. My iTunes does inform me, now that I'm checking, that I've listened to lead-off single "Herculean" and the first track, "History Song," a significant number of times. What I'm saying is, I reserve the right to reverse this opinion at any time, and you should probably give the thing a listen to judge for yourself if you have any interest in Albarn's music or contemporary British rock.

Here's the video for the album's most Blurry track, "Kingdom of Doom." Watch this video while squinting and it's almost like Albarn and Graham Coxon have gotten back together!



The last thing I want to talk about music-wise is the big Police reunion. They're playing in LA, but it's at Dodger Stadium. Who the hell wants to go see live music at Dodger Stadium?

I HATE DODGER STADIUM! And not only because I hate baseball, although that's part of it. It's just inconveniently located and uncomfortable and gross and the parking lot ranks among the most ungainly and difficult to navigate I have ever utilized. It takes hours to get your car out of Dodger Stadium, even following a typical, poorly-attended Dodger game. Imagine after a sold-out concert! With everyone leaving at once, unlike the crowds that begin to trickle out at the bottom of the Fifth when they realize they are at a Dodger game.

And sitting way the hell up in the nosebleed seats trying to enjoy a band's performance? No thanks. Not to mention, I'm certain decent seats will only cost several hundred thousand dollars by the time WMA's finished buying up the entire loge section for its preening millionaire client roster.

So, I won't bother to see The Police this summer, even though it would be awesome to see all those old songs again. I mean, I saw Sting play at what was then Irvine Meadows several years back with my parents (who are massive fans of Sting solo albums for some reason), and he did a lot of Police songs, and that was cool. But it's not the same as seeing the complete old band getting back together.

Sigh...

It Is An Honor Just to be Dominated

Now, I know San Francisco has a reputation as something of a haven for gay living, but this may be going too far.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's administration will change its policy on issuing laudatory proclamations after a gay porn studio was honored last week without the mayor's knowledge, city officials said Friday.

Conservative activists and pundits nationwide belittled the city after Newsom's office declared Feb. 23 to be Colt Studio Day, honoring the 40th anniversary of a San Francisco movie company whose Web site invites visitors to "come inside to experience the hottest man-on-man action."

I don't know what's more unbelievable. That the mayor wouldn't be aware that his staff members are issuing laudatory proclamations in honor of the local gay porn factory...or that any politician would knowingly do such a thing. Now, I'm not saying that this is the wrong move because it's gay porn specifically. A mayor honoring any producer of fine pornographics, be they gay, fetish, scheisse, mature or nun-themed, would be equally ill-advised.

The official document, bearing Newsom's name, was presented by a representative of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services to the company during its anniversary party. It said Colt Studio "has produced movies that have entertained the gay community over the past 40 years" and has contributed to the city by bringing in "hundreds of millions of dollars in business" and "stimulating the job market and the local economy in general."

Oh, the local job market was stimulated alright. In fact...

Nah, you know what? Never mind. That joke is beneath me.

Newsom's office issues nearly 2,000 proclamations a year, most covering such innocuous topics as Australian Heritage Day and Graffiti Watch Day. They are typically issued by the Neighborhood Services Office without the mayor or his top aides reviewing their content, which was the case with the document honoring the gay porn studio, Newsom's spokesman said Friday.

Oh, man. Someone is so fired.

What I wouldn't give for some kind of clandestine recording of this brainstorming session.

"Hey, you know? We really ought to honor Colt Studios! They've been making quality gay porn for over 40 years!"

"Well, normally I'd say that sounds like a pointless gesture sure to do nothing but generate hate mail and faux-outrage from conservative evangelical assholes. But the studio's remarkable masterpiece Beary Lyndon simply cries out for recognition."

But in the wake of attacks by conservative media figures such as talk show host Bill O'Reilly -- who said the proclamation reinforced San Francisco's reputation as the nation's "Sodom and Gomorrah" -- Newsom has decided to change the policy and have any potentially controversial proclamation cleared by either his chief of staff or director of government affairs.

"If there are any questions about proclamations, they will be reviewed," said Newsom spokesman Nathan Ballard. "There's just going to be a stricter review process from now on."

Totally wrong move here by Newsom. You don't cave to pressure from Billy O. That just makes him feel vital and relevant. Sure, it was probably a mistake to officially recognize a gay porn studio, but now that you have done it, you have no choice but to stick by the decision. In fact, forget sticking by it. Embrace it! That'll throw Bill for a loop. As to be permitted on his program with the founder of Colt to discuss what a positive influence it has had on the community.

Conservative evangelical assholes are always going to think of San Francisco as a modern "Sodom and Gomorrah," mainly because most of them don't understand that Bible story beyond the observative that those two places were "bad" and full of citizens with what Ann Coulter might term "John Edwards-like tendencies" in her usual charming, effervescent manner. There's nothing Newsom or anyone else can do about that.

My hope is that you could push their outrage so far as to make it look ridiculous. Because it is ridiculous. Hey, I'm not saying the mayor's office needs to honor pornography producers, but I have no problem with the notion of gay porno, unlike Bill and his loathsome audience. Their agenda's all about hatred, and maybe by attaching one's self to a position on another extreme, one could tease this reality out.

Newsom should shower Colt Studios with praise at every opportunity. Speak at length about their high production values, about their talented stable of performers, about how they really pay attention to things like narrative structure and mise-en-scene while other homosexual pornographic purveyors focus exclusively on the sex and, depending on the sub-genre, the costumes.

How could Bill respond to something like that?

"Your city government is essentially supporting gay pornography."

"We sure are, Bill."

"But doesn't that violate the rights of the families and innocent children who live in your city."

"I want to educate our children, so that when they grow up and have to make their own choices about gay pornography, they make the right ones."

"But...but..."

"To me, there's nothing more beautiful or arousing than the sight of a cock ring gently grazing the backside of a well-maniured pair of testicles. And I want to share that with my city's future generations."

He'd guarantee a classic bit of YouTubery, I can tell you that much.

LA Whinin'

This is my eleventh year living in Los Angeles. Traffic has always been a problem. It's the number one complaint of just about every LA resident, except maybe those unfortunate individuals who reside in the direct flight path of LAX. Or Van Nuys. For some reason, I have known, like, eight different people who have personally related horror stories of life in Van Nuys. I have no idea what's going on over there in the Porn Capital, but if you can manage to avoid settling there, I would highly recommend doing so.

Anyway, I know that it's difficult to be impartial when gauging such things, but I think LA's traffic problem has grown considerably worse in the past year or so. It used to take 45 minutes to an hour in heavy traffic to get across town. I can distinctly recall, as a UCLA student, leaving Westwood at 5 pm to get to a 6:30 screening at the Paramount lot in Hollywood, and having enough time upon arriving to get through the front gate, park and walk to the screening room. If I were making that same drive today, I would leave no later than 4 pm to make sure I had adequate time.

Don't believe me? The other day, I had to travel from my new office (all part of the SMPWCNBN, which I'll actually be able to de-M-ify here in a few weeks) in Santa Monica to the Arclight in Hollywood for the Zodiac screening. 1 hour, 45 minutes it took. The 10 was completely shut down and every single surface street I tried (large and small) was at a standstill. There was no way to go North, South or East.

Lewis Black does a comedy routine about visiting Los Angeles. Eventually, he predicts, the traffic will be so bad, the roads will simply shut down. You will just sit stationary in your driveway forever waiting for nonexistent space to clear for your automobile. He's joking, but it's actually not that far off. It's 6 pm right now and I'm essentially locked in my immediate neighborhood until 8. It's not that it would take a long time or be generally irritating to try and venture any further. It's simply not possible. I would just sit, essentially stationary, in my car on Venice or Overland or the 405 or the 10 until around 7:30.

Last night, my father and brother went to go see the Mighty Ducks play in Orange County. (Don't ask me why, but they're both quite taken with the spectacle of large, toothless Canucks slamming into one another at high speeds in frigid, tightly-packed arenas.) My brother left Santa Monica (I may work there now, but I'll never use the familiar form, San Mo) at 4 in order to make a 7 o'clock hockey game. Now, bear in mind, that's 3 hours. To go less than 50 miles. 3 hours, folks. With open roads, you can get to Vegas in around 4. He was still considerably late to the game, by the way.

My question is...what's the flaw in Black's humorous logic? If the population continues to explode, not only in Los Angeles but every major US city, will we not eventually reach a point where there's just no more room for the excess people? And I don't mean figuratively, like we'll all get a bit more crowded and it will be noisier and more unpleasant and living conditions will worsen. I mean, won't we physically run out of room soon? Will we all just have to start sharing rooms? Is now a good time to invest in bunk bed futures?

And before anyone tries to twist this into a lame right-wing anti-immigration thing, I don't blame an influx of Mexicans into California for this problem. They have as much a right to be here as anybody, and this is a problem all LA residents are facing, not just the poor and disenfranchised.

So here's what I suggest. We have to be practical about this thing. Why do so many people move to Los Angeles? Here are my theories:

(1) The entertainment industry

Not only to talentless morons hoping to be the next Gwen Stefani move to LA, but so do all the Business School and Management assholes hoping to be the next Ari Emanuel or Sherry Lansing. It's fucking scary out there. You can usually tell these people immediately because they will only discuss workout routines or film industry gossip. Often at the same time.

The solution? Legally mandate 1/2 of all entertainment-related companies to Holbrook, Arizona. I've been to Holbrook, and I can tell you, that is a charming little community. While there, I ate at a small diner and met a desert dweller breathing out of an oxygen tank who had come inside to escape the dust storm that had completely shut down the only road out of town!

Anyway, what with Blackberriess and such, all these industry assholes don't need to occupy the same 10 square blocks any more (plus the unwashed masses who have been banished to Burbank). Why not ship half of them to lovely, sparsely populated AZ? let them video conference about the first-weekend grosses of Primeval instead of meeting for six-hour lunches at The Counter?

(2) The beautiful weather

Give climate change a few years and this isn't even going to matter any more. For forward looking investors, might I recommend Duluth and Fargo? A decade or two from now, they'll be downright balmy.

(3) The vibrant culture and sense of community

Nah, I'm just kidding

(4) Scientology

Let's face it...Hollywood is not an appropriate headquarters for a major world religion. If the Hubbardites want us to take them more seriously, they should relocate to somewhere that feels more sacred and holy. Jerusalem, perhaps? Medina? I'm just throwing ideas out there.

(5) UCLA and USC

This is what brought me to Los Angeles (though I grew up just south of here in Irvine). I had a great time at UCLA, and I learned a few things I suppose, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend the school now to an incoming freshman. UCLA (and, to a lesser extent, USC) are simply too crowded.

And not even in a "you'll get lost in the shuffle" kind of way. I sort of think that the need to make a mark in order to separate myself from the teeming crowds drove me to do more with my time at UCLA than I might have otherwise. Right away after arriving there, I joined the school paper, just out of a need to meet some people and develop some kind of stable, familiar strucutre for my life in that chaotic maelstrom.

No, I just mean that it's too goddamn crowded. When I was a student there, approximately one-third of my waking life was spent parking my car, walking back to my dorm from parking my car or worrying about where I was going to park. The student population has exploded since I graduated in 2000, so I can only imagine how much worse it must be now. Likewise, I can recall many days in which I would be unable to find a seat in a common area or student union during a break between classes. Morning walks to class, that might otherwise be pleasant strolls, instead become grim mass marches, with thousands of students proceeding down the same narrow paths in lockstep. Forget finding the library book you need, or even any space to study in the library. And students live absolutely on top of one another. When I was a student, over a decade ago, the school ran out of dorm rooms and forced groups of students to live in open, common rooms that had been set aside for socializing. Six, eight people, squatting in what is essentially a den.

The solution? These schools should accept less kids. Hey, I'm sorry, I know lots of kids want UCLA diplomas and want to come to Los Angeles to study. I did. But no one's getting the most out of these universities under these conditions. I'm sure UC Davis could use a little uptick in admissions. Send some of the underachievers there (particularly if they're passionate about, you know, cows).

Finally, I think it's clear that LA needs some kind of futuristic, super-mass-transit system. Perhaps the magnetic highway from Minority Report? You're telling me that shit's not possible? We've had magnets for centuries already! Or what about some kind of underground bullet train dealie? Just as long as it doesn't run under Paramount studios. That's where they keep the hideous radioactive bloodthirsty cannibal freaks.

Zodiac

Zodiac belongs in the genre known as the "police procedural," but few films take that title so literally. David Fincher's atmospheric, lengthy and complex new film looks at the infamous Zodiac Killer murders from every conceivable angle, examining every last shred of evidence. Just as the trio of protagonists - a reporter, a cartoonist and a cop - grow increasingly obsessed with the case, Fincher's film too lingers on every crime scene photo, visits and revisits every key witness, scrutinzes every connection for some minor, overlooked nuance that might shed some light on this bizarre tangle of events.

The film can be an exhausting experience. For 150 minutes, Fincher piles on the facts, figures and details of the case, rarely coming up for air. It's a rare cop film, or any film for that matter, that's so willing to abandon all structure and storytelling conventions in the service of accurately following an investigation. James Vanderbilt's screenplay is absolutely relentless, and even brave in a way. It counts on an audience to remain actively engaged with an unsolvable mystery for nearly three hours, without ever pandering or breaking the tension. Watching Zodiac is like reading the SFPD police file on the Zodiac case - informative, grim and fascinating.

That's not to say it's dry. In fact, the film's quite funny, with some terrific dialogue and a slew of memorable, lived-in performances. And as I pointed out, this is not a film with a lot of down time. It's captivating, particularly for a film of its length, fast-forwarding through a decade's worth of strange events as succinctly as possible.

I'm just saying, horror and suspense fans looking for Seven Part 2, or anything else looking for a fun movie for a Saturday night, consider yourself warned. This film's closer to Oliver Stone's JFK than Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs.

Why the fascination with catching Zodiac? Reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) notes at one point that more local citizens will lose their life commuting to work that month than were ever killed by the mysterious man in a mask. SFPD Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) muses that 200 San Franciscans have been murdered during the time he's spent seeking out the Zodiac Killer. And yet both of these men devote years of their lives to the case.

If pressed, they'd probably give some stock response. It's their job to find the killer. He needs to be stopped before kills again. The only one who's even remotely honest with himself is cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who hovers around Avery's desk all day absorbing clues and information. Graysmith likes puzzles and begins working out the complicated, coded messages the killer sends to the newspaper after every murder.

For him, what begins as an intellectual exercise - am I more clever than a serial killer? - soon becomes a fixation. Under the guise of writing a book about the case, Graysmith completely loses himself in the piles of forensic evidence, the tiniest details, of all the individual crimes. The positions in which the bodies were found. The pattern of phone calls made the day of the first murder. The handwriting on a promotional poster for a film screening. (In one of the film's many creative passing-of-time montages, Fincher superimposes Zodiac's scrawlings and Graysmith's handwritten notes over the newsroom walls, filling every last corner of space around him with facts, figures and data.)

Graysmith admits to his beleaguered wife Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) that his passion for the Zodiac is borne of his own vanity. A lowly cartoonist in an office full of massive egos who can't wait to remind him how little he matters, Graysmith at first sees the murders as a way to prove his own worth. He needs to conquer this man, who has made such a display of boastful superiority. The Zodiac states repeatedly that he is smarter and more capable than the police and the reporters and anyone else who could try to catch him (and what are random, motiveless murders but repeated demonstrations of ones mastery over others)?

Some of the most disturbing of his letters to the San Francisco Chronicle detail his warped personal mythology, in which his victims become his slaves in the afterlife, giving him not one but two opportunities to rule over their fate. Fincher and cinematographer Harris Savides occasionally shoot the film from what could be considered the delusional Zodiac's point of view, looking down upon the city of San Francisco from an omniscient birds-eye view. (At one point, the camera looks down from an impossible angle on the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. In another sequence, we watch the TransAmerica Pyramid being built in sped-up motion.)

So it's only natural, in a way, that others would respond to this grandiose show of dominance with equal fervor and determination. And perhaps what Vanderbilt and Fincher do best in the film is reflect just how hopeless and soul-sucking an enterprise chasing the Zodiac Killer really was. The film eventually zeroes in on one or two likely suspects, but neither of them seem quite capable of the elaborate scope and craftiness of these crimes. The Zodiac manages to commit several murders, phone the homes of witnesses and journalists, appear by voice on a TV chat show and repeatedly taunt several high-ranking SFPD detectives, all without ever coming close to being caught.

Worse yet, every piece of evidence that comes along in the multiple decades of the investigation seems to contradict all the other evidence. Avery suggests on multiple occasions that the real Zodiac Killer may be taking credit for crimes he did not commit. Was he really the sicko who threatened a mother and her baby on the road near Modesto?

These kinds of uncertainties come to haunt all three men, bringing each of them to a state of mental collapse. All three performers do solid work in the film's final stretch, but Mark Ruffalo in particular stands out. His Toschi, verbally and physically, is utterly unlike any other character the man has ever played. And though Gyllenhaal does a nice job of capturing Graysmith's manic, paranoid intensity in pursuing 10-year old leads, and Downey Jr. has a stark, knowing grace playing a fading alcoholic cokehead, this felt like Ruffalo's movie all the way. He's absolutely heartbreaking when he rejects all of Graysmith's new evidence. He wants to get reinvigorated and finally solve this thing, but knows deep down that the case will never be closed. It has, at this point, already destroyed his career and possibly his life.

Aside from these three strong central performances, Fincher has filled every minute of screen time with great character actors and familiar faces. (I wasn't kidding with those JFK comparisons). The underappreciated Elias Koteas does a nice, subtle job as a canny small town sheriff. Brian Cox is hilarious as the infamous Hollywood lawyer (and Jack Ruby's attorney) Melvin Belli, to whom the Zodiac reaches out in a time of need. Phillip Baker Hall has a few great scenes and a questionable fingerprint expert.

As potential subject Arthur Leigh Allen, John Carroll Lynch gives perhaps the film's best, and certainly most unsettling, performance. Allen's so creepy, Toschi wants to arrest him on the spot, but of course there's no crime against generally being an oddball. I recognized Lynch from his relatively small role as Norm Gunderson in the Coen Brothers' Fargo, but there's absolutely nothing folksy or sweet about Allen. His interrogation is one of the film's most startling, well-written scenes.

Rewatching Silence of the Lambs about a year ago, I noticed its corniness for the first time. The movie scared me shitless when I first saw it years ago, and I have always thought of it as an effective, chilling horror film. Rewatching it, I still admired the Jodie Foster performance and the subtle ways that Demme constantly notes the thinly-veiled sexual harrassment to which all female law enforcement officers become accustomed. But I found the Hopkins performance silly and not particularly frightening, and his increasingly gory antics ludicrous in the extreme. (The human face-mask scene didn't work for me at all. It looks incredibly fake.)

Demme's film takes the business of catching serial murderers and turns it into a cartoon for our entertainment, inspiring an entire generation of mundane TV series and cheap B-grade knockoffs. (Suspect Zero, I'm looking in your direction...) It works alright as a fantasy.

But that's not what Fincher has done here. He already played that game once with Seven, a film I enjoy for its style and performances but don't feel strongly about.

Instead, Zodiac looks at police work clinically, pausing occasionally to note the personality types drawn to this practice and the ensuing fallout on their private lives. In the first third, we see how criminals are generally caught. In the second third, we see why these methods don't work on the Zodiac, and finally, we see how resiliance and pluck and creativity may be able to overcome even his considerable preparation and unique genius. It's a turbulent but ultimately rewarding ride, and one hell of an entertaining film. Probably Fincher's best work yet, and certainly his smartest.

How Convenient!

You guys remember that "Mr. Show" sketch with the Medieval "educational science filmstrip"? If I remember correctly, all science begins when a wizard has an idea. Then, the wizard is drowned, and if he sinks, the idea becomes a theory. Then, the king is told and he consults with his menagerie of birds, and if they approve, it becomes an "old wives' tale" and science marches forward.

This is much the same process wherein dumb mudslinging bullshit travels through the magical portal of The Drudge Report and becomes "conventional wisdom." (No, I'm not linking to Matt Drudge. That asshat gets enough traffic.)

Upset that Al Gore won an Oscar last night for his documentary film while Matt Drudge has only won "Outstanding Achievement in Being a Weasely Guy in an Old-Fashioned Hat,"* today the Internet's answer to Robert Wuhl from Batman dropped a real bombshell on the world. Al Gore has a significantly higher-than-average gas bill!

OMFG SMD WTF1111! 111!!!1!!!11!!1

But he says we should conserve energy! That lying hypocritical hypocrite! Plus, I think he's gained some weight recently!

The surprisingly conservative blogger at What Would Tyler Durden Do reprints Drudge's smear, so I still don't have to link directly to the source. Which means I won't have to take that second shower today after all. (WWTDD's Headline: Al Gore is a Jackass)

Gore’s mansion consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES). The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average. Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359. Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006. Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year … In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

Oh my gosh! It's almost as if he's a prominant statesman and former US Vice President using his celebrity and stature to raise global awareness of a dire and pressing issue to which he has dedicated a significant portion of his life!

Now, far be it from me to question the wisdom of a man who spends the better part of his day posting partial Fergie nipple slips, but I think WWTDD and all the thousands of other bloggers I viewed via the magic of Technorati are maybe not grasping the real situation here. Sure, it's easy to say that Gore uses more power than the rest of us, therefore he's leaving more of a so-called "carbon footprint" on the planet than we are, therefore he's a hypocrite for telling us to conserve energy.

But this overlooks some pretty important points. Mainly, that we don't know what Gore does to counterbalance his significant energy use, we don't know what he's using all that energy for and we don't know the sum total effect he has had on the world's climate situation. I'll leave it to the Black Sun Journal, who know more about this stuff than I:

Al Gore is a global diplomat and former U.S. Vice President. He has crisscrossed the world with his message, and it’s getting through. Even while Vice-President, his use of Air Force Two raised hackles. But let’s review: The United States is the world’s leading fossil-fuel consumer, and it is an empire. The tools of statecraft are hugely expensive and polluting, but no politician can succeed without them. It’s clearly a lesser of evils situation: leaders can sit with the status quo and do nothing, or they can use the tools at their disposal to raise consciousness. Gore is clearly doing the latter. Despite all his flying and consumption, Gore’s consciousness-raising has set in motion events which have single-handedly removed more CO2 from the atmosphere than any other politician in world history.

It would be a welcome step if Gore could convert his personal electricity usage to renewable energy. But he is involved with a network of organizations who support green energy. Many of these companies deal in REC’s, a method of offsetting the CO2 effects of power consumption through support of wind projects, greenhouse gas disposal, and methane reductions from feedlots, etc.. I researched this for my own energy usage, and last year carbon-neutralized both my vehicles and all my business electricity and gas usage through a company called Terrapass for $243.90.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that Gore and his supporters also offset their energy usage this way. (It was in the credits of An Inconvenient Truth that the film was made with a zero carbon footprint.) As savvy politicians, they’d be insane not to.

I mean, I'm working temporarily out of someone's home these days, along with a few other employees, and I'm certain that our combined efforts are running up an exceptionally high energy bill. It happens. Can our relatively small operation even compare with the publicity machine that must be operating around Al Gore? He's a hugely famous celebrity who's traveling all around the world spreading what he sees as a desperately important message.

Now, of course, anyone's free to disagree with Al Gore about climate change or anything else. I might think you're kind of myopic and stupid, but it's your right to be so. But how can Americans so begrudge his efforts? Do they genuinely doubt his sincerity on this issue after all this time? Could he still just be opportunistically using the environment to get elected to some hypothetical office some time in the future? The man's been making these arguments publicly for decades now!

You know, I don't even blame Matt Drudge and his scummy Rethuglican cohorts around the Internet for hyping this story. It's what they do. Gore just had a big night, he's under consideration for a Nobel Prize this year, global warming deniers are on the brink of looking very very stupid to the few Americans silly enough to still take them seriously. Time to do what guys like Drudge do best: sling some mud, even in a frivolous, purely symbolic way, in the hopes of buying more time.

Honestly, Al Gore may be a hypocrite. I don't know enough about this situation to say one way or the other. (Although considering the sheer, naked, unbalanced enthusiasm of rightards to embrace this story, combined with the fact that the only sources on any of this information are a paid hack from Tennessee and one Mr. Matt Drudge, it's dubious). But does it matter? Does it have anything to do with the sheer tonnage of information and evidence in that movie? Doesn't it say something significant about the global warming nonbelievers that their only argument is a personal attack on the character of Al Gore?

It's just depressing in the extreme to read some of these kneejerk blog posts in response to the Drudge story. In this age where there's so much data and information out there, it's truly tragic that so few Americans have any comprehension of media literacy. You're being spoonfed these talking points, guys, and you eat it up like delicious banana pudding, stuffed with Nilla Wafers of Ignorance.

Steve's MySpace blog opens with this charming headline:

NEWS FLASH: I continue to hate Al Gore.

Hate? Hate. Steve hates Al Gore. And this story allows him to continue doing so without reservation. How convenient!

I mean, really...How dare Al Gore attempt to save all our lives! (I mean, even if you disagree about global warming, you surely must agree that Al Gore thinks he's trying to save our lives. Right? I mean, is he just a pathological liar?)

At a LiveJournal regrettably-yet-accurately titled Farewell-Sanity we find the following statement. This is actually kind of chilling.

Sometimes I want to drown people.... today that person is pathetic Mr. Gore

So it's not just a clever name!

"Guys, did you hear? Al Gore has three fridges! Let's go drown him!"

Here's the writer from Negative99 (otherwise unidentified, from what I could find) with his take on Al Gore's efforts.

This post could have also been called: Global Hysteria is Man-Made - Part Two [Inconvenient ReMiX]

Last night at the Democratic National Conven- err… I mean at the Academy Awards, Al Gore’s well-made yet scientifically shady documentary called An Inconvenient Truth won for best documentary (or something like that). I have trouble believing a guy who parades around the world on private jets to persuade people to “use less fuel”. While I’m at it why doesn’t Rosanne Barr invite me to Old Country Buffet to pitch me a low calorie diet.

I'm guessing the unnamed Mr. 99 is some kind of environmental scientist, or something like that, what with him reporting that fears of global warming are, in fact, hysterical, and that the film An Inconvenient Truth is scientifically "shady."

(I'm also going to just go ahead and assume that he's using "shady" in some elevated, scientific sense of which I am wholly unaware, and not just calling out some of the world's most respected climate experts using a term generally reserved for questionable pot dealers. Perhaps it's Latin.)

He provides no evidence of these claims, but instead links to an article about a company that wants to clean up the harmful environmental effects of your cat's farts. No, really. Cat farts. After the Roseanne Barr fat joke lead in. And they say there's no great conservative comedy any more...

*To be fair, Drudge has won "Outstanding Achievement in Being a Weasely Guy in an Old-Fashioned Hat" for the past six years running.

FINALLY!

The Ellen Show

Ellen DeGeneres? Really? I just don't see the whole "get a TV host to host the Oscars" theory. All this talk about Hollywood's Big Night, all the Glamour and whatever of the Academy Awards, and then they turn the show over to someone who's constantly blathering on TV every other night. I thought Jon Stewart did an okay job, certainly an improvement over Billy Crystal and David Letterman, but he's just out of his element on the Oscars.

I think they should give it to an old timer. Have Martin Scorsese host the Oscars. Or Warren Beatty (or Beatty and Annette Benning together). Lauren Bacall. They don't have to be goddamn comedians, after all. Some opening comedy sketch that someone else (not Bruce Vilanch) writes, a brief introduction, BOOM, right into the show. Why not give it a try? It's got to be better than a desperate, grasping Chris Rock or Steve Martin or (ugh) Whoopi Goldberg bookending each and every commercial break with painful, "improvised" one liners.

Anyway, here are all the nominees:

BEST PICTURE

The Departed
The Queen
Little Miss Sunshine
Babel
Letters From Iwo Jima

It's a rare year when I don't see all the Oscar nominees for Best Picture, usually based on hype before they're even officially nominated. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch Letters From Iwo Jima. I just don't care. I'm not even saying it's not great. Maybe it's great? But Clint Eastwood's stately earnestness has just worn me out over the course of the past few years.

I'm sure I'll catch it on DVD.

Anyway, out of the other four, my choice would be The Departed, though I wouldn't mind seeing The Queen win (it won't). I liked Little Miss Sunshine, but the suggestion that it's one of the five best pictures of the past year is ludicrous on its face. Almost as ludicrous as, I don't know, suggesting that Steve Carell is the world's foremost Proust scholar.

I mean, where's Children of Men? Where's Borat? Both films are far more interesting and had more of an impact on the culture than Babel or Little Miss Sunshine. Nevertheless, I think Babel will win.

Letters from Iwo Jima is in Japanese, featuring an all Japanese cast, and Clint Eastwood already won big two years ago. (Of course, I'm biased. If Letters From Iwo Jima wins Best Picture, its producer, Paul Haggis, will accept that award a staggering three years in a row. He wrote and produced Million Dollar Baby, wrote and directed Crash, and produced Iwo Jima. Holy shit, this cannot happen.)

Little Miss Sunshine isn't really all that great, and it's pretty slight. I don't think Academy voters would feel right about themselves in the morning if they cemented its place in the American canon with an Oscar win.

The Queen is incredibly British and unseen by almost anyone not in Britain or coastal America.

The Departed could win. It was a huge box office success, Scorsese has been denied over and over again, and pretty much everyone loves it.

Then there's the whole "it's the best movie nominated" thing. As you faithful readers know, this means absolutely nothing. In fact, I'd say the biggest strike against Departed is that it's the best film nominated, and the best film nominated never wins. I also think its frequent, gory violence will give the aging Academy voters pause.

In many ways, the Best Picture is seen as representing the Hollywood "brand" to the rest of the world. Think Titanic. That was an easy choice. That's pure 100% Hollywood escapist filmmaking entertainment. That's the brand. The Departed makes us look like psychopaths.

I guess you could say that Gladiator is a violent movie that won Best Picture, ditto Braveheart, but they give heavy spoonfuls of uplift and pomp along with their bloodletting. Departed is just a brutal, nihilistic bloodbath. I mean, a great one. But still...you get what I'm saying.

What's left? Innaritu's non-controversial, not-particularly-exciting ensemble drama. Some social commentary, but tinged with hope. Some solid performances. Some big stars. Some critical praise. And it has a diverse cast, a Latin director. I think it's the safest, surest pick, and I think it's how the voters will go. But what do I know?

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Leonardo DiCaprio, Blood Diamond
Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Peter O'Toole, Venus
Will Smith, The Pursuit of Happyness
Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

I have not seen any of these movies. Wow. A first, definitely. Still, I think Whitaker will win.

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Penelope Cruz, Volver
Judi Dench, Notes on a Scandal
Helen Mirren, The Queen
Meryl Streep, The Devil Wears Prada
Kate Winslet, Little Children

Mirren will win. I would say hers was probably the best out of the four performances I have seen (still haven't caught Volver), but Winslet and Dench were both terrific as well. Ironically, Dench is nominated all the time and won previously for a movie in which she barely appeared. (Shades of Streep's nomination this year for Prada, a film defined by her absence.) This year, she has the leading role in a great film with several nominations, and has no shot at winning.

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jackie Earle Haley, Little Children
Djimon Hounsou, Blood Diamond
Eddie Murphy, Dreamgirls
Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

I'd give it to Wahlberg, who was arguably the best part of The Departed. Which means he was showing up Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen and Ray Winstone. No easy task. I mean, granted, his character got all the best dialogue, but that's really Marky Mark dominating the focus whenever he's on screen. Totally unexpected and awesome.

I'm inclined to say it's going to Alan Arkin or Eddie Murphy though. This is probably the hardest category to call. Both guys have had huge careers, and Arkin was actually nomianted for his first film role ever in Norman Jewison's The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming. (It's not very good!) And though I haven't seen Dreamgirls, I understand Murphy's great. Arkin's easily the best part of Little Miss Sunshine, and they do tend to give the Supporting Actor award to the greatly loved, popular, audience favorite movie (like Jack Palance in City Slickers).

So I'm going to guess Arkin, with slight reservations.

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel

My favorite performance, believe it or not, was Kikuchi's in Babel. If the Japanese segments had been removed from all that other stuff (particularly the wandering, ambiguous and ultimately inscrutible Mexican oddessy), it would have been a great film. A brief one, but still. It was subtle and strange and centered entirely on Kikuchi's wordless, manic turn as the deaf and defiant Chieko.

But I think it'll go to Jennifer Hudson. Which will mean that it only took "American Idol" six years to go from silly teen sensation to an Oscar and Grammy factory. How weird. Why not just eliminate the middle man and start giving Oscars to reality TV stars? Seriously, Trishelle deserves some recognition.

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Cars
Happy Feet
Monster House

I'd go with Monster House, all the way. It was a really good scary movie for kids and the first time I have seen the motion capture technique used effectively as a storytelling device. These characters did not have the glassy-eyed, uncanny stiffness that plagued the evil Polar Express, which looks like a Christmas movie co-directed by Satan and Dr. Caligari. You'd better watch out, indeed.

But Happy Feet seems the obvious choice. A bonafide sleeper hit that continued the penguin's peculiar dominance of the American box office. Unfortunately, as in all his other entertainment projects, Bob Saget's Farce of the Penguins somehow failed to capitalize on this wave. He was on "Full House," though. Remember "Full House"?

ART DIRECTION

Dreamgirls
The Good Shepherd
Pan's Labyrinth
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
The Prestige

I've only seen three of these. And to be honest, Dreamgirls looks like it has awesome art direction from the trailers. I kind of wish I had gotten around to that one, but my theater-going has been off this past month.

Out of the ones I have seen, I'm inclined to go with The Prestige. I wasn't all that taken with the film, but it looked amazing, really capturing the detail of the period without romanticizing it. So many period films look upon their settings with awe; look at how wondrous and elegant everything looked back then! 2006 was a year in which many films, from The Proposition to Marie Antoinette to The Prestige kind of rejected this vision. Its late 19th-century London is a world of iron and grime. Only when the setting moves to the Rocky Mountains, and the strange experiments of Tesla, does Nolan's camera open up to find room for beauty and wonder.

Pirates looked great as well and had some truly remarkable sets. The Flying Dutchman, the fortune teller's hideout, the tropical kingdom. Great stuff.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Black Dahlia
Children of Men
The Illusionist
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige

Two period magician films in the same category? Odd.

The Illusionist is a pretty stupid film that nonetheless looks AMAZING. Time-worn and underlit and just gorgeous. I remarked when I reviewed the film that it resembled a Rembrandt come to life. I have since read that cinematographer Dick Pope used gaslights to light some scenes to get that perfect, amber effect. It works.

Black Dahlia as well was beautifully shot, and it's nice to see the movie get some recognition despite being universally reviled.

I think, however, this award should go to Children of Men. Some of these films are about magic, but Lubieski's camera in this film is legitimately magical. Alfonso Cuaron and Emanual Lubieski won't even talk about how they accomplished some of these extended shots (some appearing to last several minutes in length and filled with chaotic action and effects). This film should win in pretty much every category in which its nominated and some in which it isn't. And I think it will win, at least in this category.

COSTUME DESIGN

Curse of the Golden Flower
The Devil Wears Prada
Dreamgirls
Marie Antoinette
The Queen

Marie Antoinette probably should win (though, again, haven't seen Dreamgirls or Golden Flower), but it very well may go to Devil Wears Prada. The whole point of that movie was the clothes, anyway.

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Scorsese, The Departed
Stephen Frears, The Queen
Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Babel
Paul Greengrass, United 93
Clint Eastwood, Letters from Iwo Jima

I think it's Marty's year. He deserves it, he directed the hell out of this movie. What more is there to say?

Outside chance Eastwood will get it again, because the Academy loves him, and I could even see Greengrass receiving the award as a dark horse. Man, I hope not. That would really piss me off. If only because his film seemed to scream "Give me an award! I am Paul Greengrass, the lens through which Americans view themselves and their world!" and we would be walking right into his trap. Just like George W. walked into Osama bin Laden's.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Deliver Us From Evil
An Inconvenient Truth
Iraq in Fragments
Jesus Camp
My Country, My Country

I think Gore's film will probably win. It was pretty well-made, I suppose, but hardly the BEST documentary film of the year. (That's The Devil and Daniel Johnston). Perhaps the fact that it's about the most important issue and had the biggest influence on American opinion is enough. Out of these, bearing in mind that I haven't seen My Country, My Country, I'd say Deliver Us From Evil is the best film. But it'll be nice to see Gore up there getting an Oscar. Maybe if he gets the Nobel as well, he'll run for President.

FILM EDITING

Babel
Blood Diamond
Children of Men
The Departed
United 93

Children of Men, all the way. Though I could see Babel or Departed or United 93 or even Blood Diamond winning this as well. Always a hard category to pick. I think they'll give this one to Children of Men because it won't win much else and it was easily among the year's most impressive technical achievements.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

After the Wedding
Days of Glory
The Lives of Others
Pan's Labyrinth
Water

Pan's Labyrinth is clearly the favorite and will almost assuredly win. I preferred Germany's entry, The Lives of Others, which I really ought to review on here in full one of these days. I know Days of Glory was also supposed to be spectacular, but I haven't had a chance to see it yet.

BEST MAKE UP

Apocalypto
Click
Pan's Labyrinth

Didn't see Apocalypto, but nothing about Click was award-worthy. I repeat, NOTHING. If they were giving an award for Best Film of 2006 About a Magic Remote Control Starring Adam Sandler, I would abstain from voting.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Babel
The Good German
Notes on a Scandal
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

Notes on a Scandal had one of the year's worst scores, a Phillip Glass abomination that continually intruded on the main action with its droning repetition. (And, yes, I know it's supposed to be repetitive but that didn't make it less annoying). I have liked Glass scores in the past (Truman Show has a great one), but this one nearly ruins several scenes fo the film.

I thought the music in Pan's Labyrinth was effective. That's how I would probably vote. Can't say how it'll go, though, as I really have no idea which of these five is more or less likely to win.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Poseidon
Superman Returns

Except for Pirates, which is filled with eye-popping effects work throughout, these other two films have been nominated for specific scenes. The only part of Poseidon that was in any way enjoyable was the brief scene in which the boat sinks. Everything after that is (pun intended) a wash. Superman Returns has that one tremendous sequence where he saves the shuttle-plane, although that's such a retarded idea, to attack a launching space shuttle to a plane in flight, that you almost feel like the Man of Steel should let them crash to teach humanity a thing or two about physics and aerodynamics.

So I think you have to go with Pirates. No movie this year was bigger or had more going on visually. The entire crew of the Flying Dutchman must have required painstaking months of work. Plus, the Kraken scenes were ridiculously cool.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
Pan's Labyrinth
The Queen

My choice would be The Queen, a very wry, unexpectedly funny take on the clash between tradition and progress in modern England. I thought the weakest aspect of Pan's Labyrinth was Del Toro's distracted, oddly conventional screenplay, and that the script for Babel is downright incoherent, saved by Innaritu's sharp direction and the skill of his actors. And I'm sorry, I know a lot of people felt strongly about it, but Little Miss Sunshine is slight. It's a good vehicle for some very talented actors and a lot of the gags work well, but this is hardly original or award-worthy work. In spots, it's downright hacky. (Who could believe Carell runs into his ex-boyfriend and colleague on a random highway turn-off in middle America at that exact moment? That's almost insulting.)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Children of Men
The Departed
Little Children
Notes on a Scandal

These are all pretty strong contenders. Little Children DQ's itself for the totally unnecessary use of narration. In fact, one need only see the beautiful, perfectly-scripted narration in Notes on a Scandal to realize all that is wrong with the dry, flat narration of Little Children, in which a disembodied, kind of creepy voice, tells us what's happening, in the hopes that we don't forget this movie was based on a really excellent novel that the screenwriter also wrote.

Naturally, I'd like to see my Movie of 2006, Borat, take the prize. I will say, however, that its nomination in this category is nonsensical. The best moments in Borat were improvisational. Even though Baron Cohen created the character and obviously pre-scripted many of the character's trademark one-liners and witticisms (you don't just improvise the phrase "liquid sexytime explosion"...it takes hours of careful preparation), it's obvious that his genius lies in performance, not writing.

He should be nominated for Best Actor and he should win. I'm thinking Departed will, quite deservingly, take this category. Monahan's script was brilliant and hilarious and near-flawlessly executed. Like Batman Begins or Big Lebowski, it's one of those scripts that's, to me, kind of awe inspiring. How could any human being have the patience to concoct something so intricate and ceaselessly creative?

Post-Recreational Paranoia is the Sport of Now

I've almost seen LA rapper Busdriver (real name: Regan Farquhar) live on more than one occasion over the last few years. He used to open for The Unicorns, the short-lived French-Canadian psychedelic pop trio, and joined the group for their even-shorter-lived hip-hop offshoot Th' Corn Gangg. Unfortunately, it never worked out (the only time I did see the Unicorns perform, at the Knitting Factory if I'm not mistaken, the opening act was a different rapper named Subtitle).

His new record, RoadKillOvercoat, has been dominating my playlists for the better part of February. Without a doubt, this is my favorite album of the year thus far. It's pretty much hip-hop, I suppose, but songs like "Sun Showers" and "Go Slow" sound almost like really percussive indie rock songs. ("Go Slow," in fact, is much closer to something like Broadcast than, say, Ludacris). He's one of the few musicians I think could be legitimately compared to TV on the Radio.

Like Beck or Anthony Burgess, Busdriver creates his own version of English from scratch here. Words with absolutely no business together intermingle within his nonsense collages. The title of this post, part of the chorus to a song called "Kill Your Employer," typifies his lyrical style. Absolute gibberish that nonetheless sounds compelling, even deep, under closer consideration.

"Sun Showers" is perhaps the album's least successful track. It's cool, but it does kind of feel like something off of a B-grade Young Liars. On an album defined by genre-smashing and experimentation, t's the only time Busdriver sounds a bit out of his element. "Secret Skin," opener "Casting Agents and Cowgirls" and my personal favorite track, the head-bopping extravaganza of pop sugar "The Troglodyte Wins," which sounds like Fatlip guesting on a Soul Coughing record, are the highlights.

You can grab two mp3's from the album plus some promo videos shot by a friend of my brother's at Epitaph Records. Here's the first promo, featuring "Troglodyte Wins."



The Arcade Fire's awesome new record is called Neon Bible. Here's a link to the official website. It's exceptionally creepy and strange.

I only, um, obtained the disc last week, so I'm still finding my way around. My instinct is to say that it's not quite up to the ridiculously high standard set by Funeral, but that it's a great collection of songs. The band hasn't really altered its sound tremendously. These are more immediate, swelling pop songs about pain, anxiety and loss performed with a eye towards theatricality and lots of strings.

Nevertheless, Neon Bible does mute some of the previous album's spazzy energy, opting for classic rock throwbacks like "(Antichrist Television Blues)," which could have been written by Tom Petty, or piano ballads like "Ocean of Noise" over the first album's more propulsive, glam-rock powerhouses. Right off the bat, opening track "Black Mirror" and the title track find the band in a somewhat more emo, softer mode than the anthemic Funeral.

My one nitpick is the inclusion of "No Cars Go," a mediocre song from The Fire's first album (the pre-Funeral tiny label one) and a staple of their live shows (they've played it both times I have seen the band, at least). The lyrics are repetitive and silly, the music is predictable and not particularly catchy and it's easily the weakest track on Neon Bible. Why keep resurrecting this old song when the songwriting on both of their subsequent albums has improved considerably?

Anyway, I'm otherwise really digging the whole album. Here's a video of the band playing "Black Mirror" at a show in Montreal.



A guy in the comments over at YouTube implies that the song rips off David Bowie's "Changes." I don't hear it...Leave your comments below.

Finally, like everyone else around the Inter-Web, I'm disappointed in the new Bloc Party, A Weekend in the City. These songs just kind of suck. That one, "Prayer," is alright, I guess. But the whole album just kind of sits there. I had to go back and listen to the first record just to remind myself why I had even liked these guys. Not to worry..."Banquet" still rocks. I'm not quite sure what happened to this band, if it's just a sophomore slump or whatever. Maybe they were touring so much that they didn't get around to writing songs until the last minute.

Judge for yourself. Here's the video for "Prayer."

Little Chidren

The worldview espoused in Todd Field movies troubles me. It may not be fair to evaluate his filmmaking on these terms, I know. Should film reviewers shelve their personal erspective when writing about a movie? Is it appropriate to only praise or discuss or analyze the technical/practical aspect of the filmmaking and simply "agree to disagree" on the thematic content?

Field absolutely demonstrates some ability here with a camera and he's good with actors. By no means do I think he's a bad director. (In person, though, kind of a tool...)

He's made two films now - In the Bedroom and Little Children - and based solely on them, I believe we share profoundly opposed ideologies. As a result, I'm not sure I'll be able to fairly evaluate the movies as movies. So keep that in mind as you read. Oh, also, I'll refrain from "giving away" the ending of Little Children, but I fully reserve the right to give away the ending of In the Bedroom. If you cared, you'd have seen it already.

Both of Field's films take on the same basic question: Does it make any sense for human beings to deny ourselves?

In the Bedroom opens with an impetuous May-December romance which is brutally interrupted by a poorly-planned murder and it closes with an aging couple making a decision to violate the law in the name of justice. These characters are AWARE from the beginning that they are breaking the rules, but they do so anyway because they can not deny themselves pleasure or satisfaction.

The mismatched couple could listen to reason, but they don't want to. Likewise, the angry ex-husband could pick up the shattered pieces of his life and move on, but he never does. Finally, the mourning couple could accept their son's death and process their anger in a healthy fashion, but it proves too difficult. So instead of bottling up their dangerous, buried desires, they're forced to act.

My problems with the film were numerous. I didn't really find its conclusion realistic and I didn't care for its reliance on silly old patriarchial stereotypes.

Real quick...The patriarchy thing, cause I know that's a strong charge to just throw out there. Sissy Spacek's character is lame. She's got the sinister Lady MacBeth thing going on, taunting his husband to act out violently without being willing to do any dirty work herself. PLUS, if you think about her actual on-screen action, it's all this lame '50s housewife imagery. Smashing plates, slapping young women in the face...It's like an episode of "The Donna Reed Show" gone horribly, horribly wrong. Why couldn't her character actually ever DO anything strong or determined? Why must she be so shrill?

I'm reminded of Chan-Wook Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Here, the women are still encouraging their men to commit savage acts of revenge, but they at least they get to take part. It's not such a Victorian send-out-the-menfolk-to-exterminate-the-brutes kind of deal.

But I also objected to what Ricky Roma might call Field's "middle-class morality." Namely, it's okay for a well-off suburban white couple to kill a man, if they feel like he really really deserves it. Would the film play the same for audiences if it was a young Latin couple? Or a poor white trash couple? Or just a single father? And what if the guy didn't kill their son, but only paralyzed him? Or what if he hit his intended target and killed their son's girlfriend? I mean, once you agree that vigilante revenge killing is acceptable...

Anyway, on to Little Children, which in its own way is even more disagreeable than In the Bedroom. The film centers around two crumbling marriages and a mother-son relationship in a wealthy suburban enclave. (I won't go into this subject any more, but it's possibly the whitest movie of the modern American era.)

Sarah Pierce (Oscar-nominated Kate Winslet) has grown so bored and frustrated with the life of a doting mother and housewife, she walks around with a permanent look of weary disdain and can barely manage to speak to her daughter without contempt. At the playground one afternoon, she meets the hunky father whom the other catty moms have dubbed "The Prom King." He's Brad (Patrick Wilson), a law student who can't pass the bar exam who spends his days caring for his young son while his successful wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) makes documentary films.

Sparks fly immediately between Sarah and Brad, so as responsible married people, they try to avoid one another for a while. But it becomes clear soon enough that there's more here than a passing, shared attraction. As soon as the smallest speed bumps in their marriages arise, it's an excuse to begin a passionate love affair.

This story of forbidden love mirrors another, somewhat more perverse narrative about paroled sex offender Ronnie McGorvey (Oscar-nominated Jackie Earle Haley). It's mentioned in passing that McGorvey did time for "indecent exposure," but he's pretty much an all-around creepy weirdo. In the film's best sequence, he goes on a very sweet date with a mentally ill woman, played perfectly by Jane Adams, before degrading her and making a fool of himself. He could be a normal guy with a normal life, but because he can't control his taboo sexual urges, he's a freak living with his mother (Phyllis Somerville) and being harrassed by an unstable ex-cop (Toby Noah Emmerich).

Unless they yield to their compulsions, Brad and Sarah and Ronnie cannot find peace. But once they have actually indulged, slept with the stranger or masturbated in public, their initial feelings of desperation don't subside. Instead, these inescapable, negative obsessions are enhanced by newfound feelings of guilt and shame.

These are not easy dilemmas, and the actors do a terrific job at physically embodying anxious tension, sexual frustration and panic. Kate Winslet doesn't even look very much like her old self as Sarah. Little Children is one of those movies that would never get nominated for Costume Design, because its style is so contemporary and subtle, but the art department nails every aspect of Sarah's look exactly right. (On the subject of award season, I would have thought Somerville as Ronnie's mother was the obvious choice for a supporting performance. She only has a few big scenes, but she's stellar, and we all know how Oscar loves a rascally, charming old lady.)

Adapating Tom Perrotta's novel, Field's starting with some fertile, interesting material. (They wrote the script together). And he's working with a very strong cast all around, save Toby Noah Emmerich, whose bullying ex-cop feels gratuitous and motivated purely by the needs of the plot. He's like a refugee from a Paul Haggis movie, alternating over-the-top moustache-twirling histrionics with mawkish sentimentality. Cinematographer Antonio Calvache likewise gets off some interesting shots, including a virtuoso sequence at a public swimming pool where a month's worth of events are coalesced into what looks like one, unbroken take.

But regrettably, the film still falls kind of flat. It's not a bad film by any stretch. I rather enjoyed watching it, actually. But Field on some level seems to lack confidence in his own ability. For a guy whose movies can come off as pretentious, it's strange to likewise feel that he's holding back and selling himself short. But here we are.

Perhaps the worst decision anyone made with regards to Little Children was in Field's and Perrotta's inclusion of a voice-over narration, with actor Will Lyman intrusively reading to the audience key passages from the book. (I can understand why a novelist might want to keep some of his own voice in the story, as it's such a big part of any book. But that's just not how film works.) Not once, not one single time, does the narrator prove himself useful. Lyman has a smokey, almost ominous tone as he reads Perrotta's words, so it somewhat helps to set a tone early on, I guess, but all he's doing is telling us exactly what's happening in a scene while it's happening. Like we don't get it.

Todd, that's what actors are for. We can see them experience these situations in dazzling Technicolor. Why would we want Will Lyman putting it into his own words for our benefit? Perhaps no scene boasts less compelling narration than the awkward dinner party, when Brad and Kathy invite Sarah and her lame ad exec husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) over for dinner. (Kathy suggests the meal on the pretense of their children's friendship, but she's obviously trying to figure out if Brad and Sarah are having sex.)

Kathy makes a sudden revelation and Connelly does a beautiful job of selling the moment. She doesn't say a word, but her eyes well up and she tenses and we in the audience, because we are human beings with fully functioning eyes and brains, can tell that she has figured something out that's upsetting to her. But Lyman's got to tell us all about it anyway. "All of the sudden, Kathy knew, and she felt..."

Bogus. Totally bogus. Repetitive, silly, completely uncinematic. It just pulls you right out of the moment and reminds you that you're watching a movie that would probably work better as a novel.

Field needs to trust his actors and his camera to tell the story. Simple as that.

I likewise say his film lacks confidence because his last act is a complete cop-out. Characters experience sudden changes of heart that not only stretch the limits of believability, but directly violate the logical sense of the film's first half. And it's not only that I doubt the likelihood of the outcome to Brad and Sarah's infidelity. It's that I think it's an ugly, mean-spirited and almost inhuman way to end the movie.

Without blowing too much, Field wants us to accept what his entire movie seems to argue against. For 120 minutes, he shows us characters struggling with negative urges who eventually lose the fight. It is inevitable, Little Children posits, that we will slowly give in to our base desires. Such is the life of a human being. Then his ending expects us to believe that the deserving characters can turn their urges on and off like a switch, can one night simply decide to be nice people and have their appetites permanently quenched. I call bullshit.

It's not that the movie has to have a bleak ending necessarily, although an all-around bleak movie like Little Children kind of paints itself into that corner. But Field begins the movie with a problem he has no interest in solving, doesn't solve anything and then pretends he has made a film with a happy ending. Too bad he hasn't. At least, I wasn't happy.

Joe Rogan FTW

Hilarious, awesome video from iFilm, courtesy of What Would Tyler Durden Do, in which Joe Rogan humiliates faux-comic Ned Holness (a.k.a. Carlos Mencia) in front of large crowds. I can't recommend the following 10 minutes of pure joy enough. As if Rogan calling out Mencia for stealing jokes and otherwise being a complete fucking hack wasn't enough, it features a cameo by Don Barris, the genius responsible for Windy City Heat.

(Have I talked about Windy City Heat before to you people? Holy shit, if I haven't, I have done you all a great disservice. Go and Netflix it immediately. Or, if you lack Netflix, buy it. Buy several copies, because you'll want to give it to a few friends afterwards. I don't want to ruin any of the fun you're about to have watching the greatest reality/prank film ever made, so I shall say no more).



Mencia's supposed to be a comic. Think about it...does he get in one good line on Rogan the entire time? Rogan's annihilating him on video, in front of an audience, and all Mencia can do is repeat the same dumb two-word insults over and over again. "Why do you care about me so much? You're a bitch!"

What the hell kind of comedian is that? Start riffing, motherfucker! What do you think you're doing on stage, trying out for "American Idol"? Crack a few jokes on the fly and maybe people will stop saying you can't write material.

10 Movies About the Soul-Crushing Horror of Love

Sam Cooke's "Cupid" is a great song that has been ruined by overuse. Now, when I hear it, I think about all the stupid commercials and bad movies in which it has appeared, and not the heartfelt, simple sentiment at its core or Cooke's impeccably smooth vocals. Which sucks.

That's how I feel about the entire Valentine's holiday. Unlike most bullshit annual American festivities, there's a very sweet, straightforward sentiment at its core. You should take time out to recognize the unlikely, wholly remarkable gift of having love in your life. Because most people don't. We're all pretty much alone in this life, when all is said and done, so having one person out there who you truly care about and who reciprocates those feelings is damn special.

Unfortunately, marketing executives, overeager newspaper editors and other assorted assholes have morphed this extremely basic, natural idea into something deformed and hideous. A consumerist nightmare in which an individual is expected to somehow demonstrate his or her affection via fiduciary extravagance. In other words, you don't really love, Mr. and Mrs. Modern American, unless you buy all this useless crap. How will your spouse/partner/fuck buddy know that you really care unless you get them a plush bear in a necktie that was hand-sewn by Malaysian 8 year olds?

I rarely have girlfriends when Valentine's Day comes around. (I rarely have girlfriends, so it's just a matter of percentages.) So I don't really feel that pressure that some seem to feel when February 14th rolls around. I never have to worry about going all-out to impress someone, in the vain hope that they won't leave me for someone they haven't had mediocre sex with so many times. And I'm well past the point of feeling alienated or left out of holiday celebrations. I'm a childless unpatriotic atheist Jew with a small family composed entirely of other childless unpatriotic atheists. My year is defined by being left out of holiday celebrations.

Still, a holiday seems as good a time as any for a themed movie list. So here are 10 Films About the Delicious Agony of Love. Okay, or Lust.

The 4th Man

Jeroen Krabbé stars as a gay writer who seduces a mysterious but hot blonde (Renée Soutendijk) intending to mooch off of her, but slowly grows obsessed with her. Then he begins to suspect that she might have killed her past three husbands. Paul Verhoeven's cheesy erotic thriller Basic Instinct tells a similar story, but he nailed the mixture of swooning Hitchcockian suspense and gallows humor better the first time around with this 1983 Dutch-language film.

White

The frequently overlooked mid-section to Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, this pitch-black comedy's bleak outlook perfectly suits its titular lack of pigment. Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) marries Dominique (Julie Delpy) and moves with her to Paris. He's unable to perform in bed so she quickly grows tired of him. This break-up ruins Karol's entire life, forcing him to return to Poland with nothing but a twisted scheme for revenge. Kieslowski somehow manages to present a creepy, unrequited, vengeful love as both funny and tender.

Y Tu Mama Tambien


Alfonso Cuaron's films leave a lot unsaid. As in real-world human relationships, most of the truly crucial information in his screenplays exists outside of the dialogue. In Y Tu Mama Tambien, the thrill of the road trip undertaken by two impetuous adolescents (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal) and their glamorous older lady friend (Maribel Verdú) is in the mystery. The trio is unsure of where they're going; not all of them even know why they are going or what's really going on. And we in the audience are fed information slowly, in wayward glances and knowing assents. (Though the title provides a bit hint as to the backstory).

Almost as a sly joke, the film's voice-over narration never once clarifies the on-screen action, but instead provides the Mexican landscape with historical and social context. Cuaron thus simulates the daze of our waking lives in his cinema, extending our ignorance about the motives and thoughts of those real people around us to his fictional characters, about whom we expect to be informed. You can never really know anyone, the film seems to suggest, and that may be a good thing. Because if you get to know someone too well, they stop being any fun.

(NOTE: I'm told that much of the Spanish-language dialogue consists of idiomatic language and puns, so it's very possible that a native speaker would have a completely different take on the style of the film's storytelling.)

Notorious

Of course we come around to Hitch on the anti-Valentine's Day film list. He's quite possibly the least romantic director of all time. Notorious focuses on one of his trademark fucked up, manipulative, creepy love affairs. British agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) asks an old flame, Alicia (Ingrid Bergman), to ingratiate herself with a group of Nazi sympathizers living in South America. By, you know, fucking an oily Claude Raines. Of course, Devlin's still in love with Alicia, so even as she does precisely what he has asked her to do, he feels the need to torment her and make her feel cheap. Most of Hitchcock's films in some way deal with an obsessed man who wants to utterly possess another person (usually a woman, but not necessarily), but nowhere is the desperation to subjugate a woman as intense, needly or unsettling as in the last half hour of Notorious.

That Obscure Object of Desire

Luis Bunuel has two actresses trade off scenes as the romantic lead in this snide, sarcastic take on obsessive love. Mathieu (Fernando Rey) falls desperately in love with Conchita (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina), who does not seem to feel the same way. Or maybe she does. Anyway, she decides to flirt with him and keep him around, but never lets him get too far. Naturally, the more Conchita taunts Mathieu, the more driven he becomes in his pursuit, oblivious to all save his lustful desires. (There are hints about the crumbling world around Mathieu, an encroaching anarchy aided by frequent terrorist bombings, but he's squarely focused on getting laid.)

Bunuel sees us all trapped in this ceaselessly repeating, hopeless pattern. Just about all of his films deal in the comic futility of the human experience. We all want to love, but we absolutely cannot stand to be loved. As soon as someone demonstrates his or her undying devotion to us, we lose interest. And should we meet a person who cannot stand our very presence, whom no amount of pleading or flattering or wooing can win over to our side, we become obsessed. Oops.

The Locket

This brilliant film noir isn't available on DVD for some reason. It's an intricately structured mystery in which groom Harry Blair (Brian Aherne) is approached the night before his wedding and warned off his future wife. A complicated series of flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks makes Nancy (Laraine Day) appear to be a kleptomaniac and a liar, but how can Blair find out the real truth before it's too late?


There's a lot to love about this film - John Brahm's stylish Otto Preminger-esque direction, a great droopy performance from Robert Mitchum, truly excellent black and white cinematography. But, as with a lot of other films of the WWII-era, what I'm really attracted to is the essential pessimism of the enterprise. Because it's extremely Freudian (the central motif is a locket, as in unlocking repressed memories), it's also a bit didactic, and very cynical about human nature. Given the right circumstnaces, we're all thieves and liars, The Locket suggests. So the secret to a successful courtship is sorting out the damaged goods from the rest of the pile.

All the Real Girls

Though it still has a downer second half, this is probably the most uplifting film on the list. Zooey Deschanel and Paul Schneider play a young Appalachian couple experiencing true love for the first time. At first, it's all sunshine and eskimo kisses and bucolic splendor, but as they always do, things grow complicated and the affair ends. Painfully. Director David Gordon Green and cinematographer Tim Orr turn this small town slice of life into a real visual feast, one of the most sensitively and subtly composed modern American films. This film makes Garden State look like "Bananas in Pyjamas."

In the Mood for Love

Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung) are next-door neighbors and close friends. Then they discover their spouses are having an affair with one another. This presents a real Catch-22. They clearly have chemistry together, and now they have a perfect excuse to break their marriage vows. But to commit adultery would make them every bit as bad as their traitorous significant others. So self-satisfaction and martyrdom win the day, at least for a while.


That asshat Christopher Doyle's gorgeous cinematography and the vibrant, lived-in '60s period detail make the movie Kar-Wai's most aesthetically pleasing, but it's the modulated, withdrawn Leung and Cheung performances that give the film its woozy, breathless energy.

Closer

Mike Nichols started his directorial career with the most savage takedown of marriage ever made, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I was among the cynics who felt he'd never again make a film worthy of mention alongside the classics of his early career, but he got there with this adaptation of Patrick Marber's play. Two sets of unfaithful couples battle it out over the course of a year, and no one is left unscathed. All the actors (even Julia Roberts!) do solid work, but Clive Owen's got the most fascinating arc. Simultaneously the most perverse and romantic character, his Larry realizes that falling in love is exactly like dying, only it takes a lot longer.

Shampoo

Warren Beatty plays himself in every movie, but he really really plays himself in Hal Ashby's Shampoo. Hairdresser George Roundy, drifting in and out of the beds of Los Angeles' most eligible bachelorettes and trophy wives, is Warren Beatty with a less impressive resume. Let's faec it. Screenwriter Robert Towne does a simply amazing job of making George's quandry, not exactly one shared by the bulk of humanity, feel universal.

To give up womanizing and stick with one woman would be to grow up, which means getting older, which means getting closer to death, which is something George is not prepared to do. So he continues to screw up his life by chasing momentary pleasures and cheap thrills, getting less and less out of them each time. The final shot, with Beatty watching Julie Christie drive away and out of his life, gets me every single time, and I've seen the movie at least 5 or 6 times.