Best Picture

This is the first time in a while that I have actually seen all five films nominated for best picture in a timeframe anywhere close to the Oscars. As such, I feel exceptionally qualified to dish out my opinions on this collection of films like the lunch lady gives out canned peas.

First of all, that I even wanted to see all the films when they came out is noteworthy. It either means that I am getting increasingly gullible and susceptible to marketing, or that the pictures being nominated are actually good. I am hoping for the latter, but not without acknowledging it could be the former.

Second, it hasn't been since Million Dollar Baby that I've been totally repulsed by the actual winner (Thank you, The Departed and Crash). Sadly, that was actually part of a long trend of recognizing films for other reasons than them being the best picture of the year: Return of the King won because it was the last film in a commercially successful trilogy (at least Seabiscuit didn't win), Chicago won because apparently nobody watched Gangs of New York or The Pianist and someone forgot that this was a film award, A Beautiful Mind won because nobody wanted to give Peter Jackson three Oscars in a row, and Gladiator won partly because nobody likes the French or the Chinese.

It is more of the same before that- with the possible exception of American Beauty- with Million Dollar Baby winning because they needed to acknowledge that Clint Eastwood is an amazing director, and they fucked up when they didn't give him one for Mystic River (which they could have if they'd given Peter Jackson one for Fellowship of the Ring).

I belabor the point because the problem needs to be apparent for this to work: The Best Picture is usually not the Best Picture, but rather something else. With that in mind, here are this year's nominees, er winners.

Quite obviously, this year's Award for Best Picture by a Recently or Previously Snubbed Director or Directors goes to: No Country for Old Men. As much as I don't want to admit it, No Country for Old Men was not last year's best picture. It is a technical beauty, and it tells a great story, but how can a movie where you can barely understand one of the primary actors possibly win? Also, for anyone who read the book, the movie is merely an exercise in repetition.¹ To be fair, I can't believe The English Patient won in 1996 instead of Fargo.

Also Received: Best Adapted Screenplay (har har)

Do you know how many movies Daniel Day-Lewis has been in since 1992? You know Daniel Day-Lews, that good actor who's been in all of those movies? Thirty? Forty? The answer, actually, is eight- six of which were nominated for Academy Awards and the other two were nominated for other "lesser awards." By contrast, Phillip Seymour Hoffman (another great actor with three names) was in seven over the last two years and forty-two since 1992. It is no secret that Day-Lewis prefers quality over quantity. He is a serious method actor and he feels he can only give a masterful performance to excellent roles in excellent films (I presume).² Point being, if Daniel Day-Lewis is in a movie, it is probably good. So, the Award for Best Daniel Day-Lewis Movie Since the Last One goes to: There Will Be Blood. Another solid movie, to be sure, but I think that ultimately this movie wants to be more important than it is. By so tediously setting up Daniel Plainview's rise to preeminent oilman, the focus is removed from any larger point Paul Thomans Anderson was trying to make. Actually, I am not even certain he was trying to make one (no, it isn't THAT interesting).

Also Received: Best Blatant Titling to Draw an Audience Who Was Expecting Something Between Shoot 'Em Up and 300.

Over the past year or so, movies like American Pie and Road Trip have grown up into movies like Knocked Up and Superbad, which have actually been legitimately good movies (either that, or my standards are lowering, as above). These movies appeal to a broad range of audiences, and so they are commercially and critically successful. It is probably about time that these movies were recognized, so the Award for the Best Film that Will Make it Seem Like We're Not Just a Bunch of Old Codgers goes to: Juno. I loved this movie, really. But, I also feel like it was a younger, hipper, smarter rehash of Knocked Up and blatantly so.³

Also Received: Best Use of Not Special Effects.

The ultimate purpose of movies is to tell stories. Unfortunately, some times those stories are boring, even if they have an important moral or truth to expose. Some people go the Michael Moore approach, while others take a slightly more tactful and tasteful one. The Award for Best Movie that Seems Like a Documentary or Dramatization of True Events but Actually Isn't goes to: Michael Clayton. Ultimately, what the movie had to say was great, but I would have preferred a documentary so I that I didn't get my hopes up.⁴

Also Received: Best Misappropriation of Great Performances in Supporting Male and Female Roles (Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton, respectively).

I personally don't feel that a movie can really be the Best Picture of the year if it doesn't move the art forward. More precisely, if you think that the Best Picture of the year is one that didn't do anything to make movies better, then you aren't encouraging growth- that seems like bad mojo. If there were Academy Awards for paintings, I am certain this year's winner wouldn't be Baroque. This year's winner would be something fresh, something familiar, but that we hadn't seen before. Something dreamlike. The kind of movie we would want to make. Of the nominees, only one movie really fits the bill. My Award for Best Picture goes to: Atonement. Honestly, I wasn't set on giving any of the films that commendation, but I was stunned by how well-crafted this movie is. The scope of the film careens out of control, but the focus never leaves the proverbial star-crossed lovers. Set against dreamy landscapes (sometimes aided by supremely executed long-takes), even at their most violent, the story takes a lovely shape, and subtly sets up the movie's turn. It also dares to fly against the winds of a traditional love story, while outpacing any that I've seen in recent memory.⁵ It should be noted that I typically find movies about making movies pretentious, and so a movie based on a book about writing the book is way off the pretentious and unnecessarily self-referential charts.

Also Received: Best Use of Accents. Best Unexpected Use of Keira Knightly as an Actress Rather than a Sex Symbol.

Lastly, a few Snubs.

For doing a better job at what Michael Clayton tried to do, American Gangster got supremely snubbed. How can you snub Russell Crowe AND Denzel Washington, two of the most Oscar friendly actors ever, at the same time?!

For a lifetime of snobbish snubbery, The Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson still gets no Academy Love, and should have been where the Coen Brothers were.

I really can't see how 3:10 to Yuma didn't get a nod. Mind boggling.

Notes:

1 I am not one of those people that believes movies should be strictly true to their source material. Movies and books are two different things, and No Country for Old Men proves that a straight transition from book to movie is often very boring.

2 I am not saying here that Phillip Seymour Hoffman has low standards, just that Daniel Day-Lewis has really high ones. I also realize there is a bit of contradiction in gauging a film's goodness by how many awards it has been nominated for or won, but I don't think I am being irrational.

3 Sure, it dealt with different issues, but I also feel that if someone blatantly ripped off something so closely after it came out, and in the same Oscar year, it really shouldn't be considered.

4 My hopes were really high when I realized we were going to see some Tranatino-esque non-linear story-telling coupled with two guys losing their minds. Throw in a movie about a fixer, and I was hooked. Hooked!

5 Not that I've seen many.

Three Little Birds

1.

Last year, I taught a student who seemed like a smart kid who had some issues. I feel as though he was over-medicated, under-motivated, and socially awkward. I also feel that, in many ways, he had a wider view of things than other students. All the same, he struggled through my class as he struggled through many other classes, and by the end of the year it was of great concern whether or not he would pass the requisite classes and graduate.

During that second semester, the student came to the idea that he should perhaps enter into the military and one of the other faculty members encouraged him. In some respects, I agreed that the structure and order would be of great benefit to this particular student. On the other hand, and as the aforementioned faculty member said so... delicately.., "if you enlist now, you are getting sand in your boots."

It became an interesting dilemma to me thinking about the situation where this particular student was close to passing my class, but perhaps fell a little short. The ethical question that arose was both fascinating and disturbing: "Do I pass this student, who is marginally undeserving, so that he can go into the army and have a decent chance of getting killed (I am not certain that they give you Ritalin there if you say you need it), or do I fail him, because that is the grade he earned, which is potentially ruinous, but may ultimately save his life."

In the end, I didn't have to make the decision because he came through and brought his grade up to an appropriate and non-borderline level.

As I am walking up from my classroom today, I walk past this brand-new bright-blue, BMW (it rhymes! I am so ecstatic) while simultaneously walking past one of the deans. Sad to say, BMWs aren't uncommon on the campus, and the dean and I are taking about other things, but still standing next to it. A few minutes go by and another faculty member shouts something to the dean, and I don't quite understand what it is. The dean says "OK," then turns to me and then proceeds to tell me that the BMW is the student who barely passed my low-level math class last year. He just finished some sort of milestone in the army, earned his $40,000, and promptly bought a car.

2.

There is a breezeway that separates my building from a set of faculty apartments. I live on the third floor and, luckily, the breezeway is blessed with windows running the full length on both sides. Some of the windows have screens over them, and some do not, just like some of the windows are sometimes opened and sometimes closed.

I was walking through the breezeway to a friend's apartment an afternoon this weekend, and when I arrived, he asked if I got attacked by the bird. Frankly, I didn't know what he was talking about and I said as much. He explained that a bird had flown in through one of the open windows and couldn't get out (bird intelligence appears up for debate).

Later, I make a quick run back to my apartment, and lo and behold, there is a bird sitting there (I believe it to be a mourning dove). As soon as I entered the breezeway, the bird become frightened and started flying around, banging against the glass. I decided that I should try and get it out of there, since it was obviously having trouble, so once it settled down, I tried to slowly move in behind it. It took flight again, and after we had repeated the process several times, it eventually became stuck in-between a window and a screen. After some effort, I eventually settled its wings with my hands, and carried it over to the ledge.

The dove sat there for quite some time, and after I while I feared that it was hurt (either because it had been banging against the windows and been stuck several times, or that I had somehow hurt it). So after my fourth or fifth time checking on it, I moved in close for visual inspection, and it took off, singing as it went.

3.

In case you hadn't heard, my Jayhawks are in the Final Four.

More Than Meets the Eye

I think alien movies are really interesting, and much like zombie movies, there are fascinating human undertones embedded in the films' very natures. For instance, it is quite odd that in the vast majority of alien movies the aliens are of a single moral/ethical viewpoint- the aliens are either good and benevolent (ET, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact), or, more frequently, evil and malevolent (Predator, Independence Day, War of the Worlds). It should be noted that when I say "alien movies" I don't mean "space movies." Alien movies generally involve a one or more extra-terrestrial intelligences visiting our world. Space movies involve aliens and (generally) humans interacting in space, and quite necessarily, those aliens have a range of moral/ethical viewpoints. I think that the nearly unanimous portrayal of aliens visiting earth as strictly "good" (they want to be friends with us or share ideas) or strictly "evil" (they want to kill us for fun or to consume our resources) is extremely telling of where we are as a people today.

It is assumed in nearly all alien movies that the visitors are of a technologically superior background than we are; after all, we can't very well pack off to some inhabited alien planet on a whim. This naturally sets up an interesting premise for either the "us vs. them" alien movie, or the "us & them" alien movie: "How do we stand up to the awesome destructive power of [whatever]?" or "What characteristics do we share in spite of our vast differences?" Take one of these, top with a thin-layer of plot, find some CGI guys, and we'll see you next summer.The fact that they are technologically superior isn't what makes them interesting, but the fact that they have come so far borne of a single mindset is.

This singularity of thought is either encouraging or disturbing, but in all likelihood the most unrealistic thing about all alien movies. The aliens in Independence Day, for example, are unanimously fine with systematically killing every living thing on the planet. Not one single alien stands up and says, "you know, those earthlings seem like real nice, albeit quaint, organisms; we might be better off moving along." Of course, it wouldn't have been a very interesting movie if they had (or would it... more on that in a bit), but the fact that we take it for granted that they won't and that we immediately know that our salvation must come from us and not a moral objection from our would-be oppressors is disturbing on many levels, not to mention relevant in today's (and our recent past's ) tumultuous ethical climate (e.g. does preventing Iran from acquiring the potential to make nuclear weapons protect us, protect others, or enable us to enforce our will upon them?). Or for an trickier ethical tango, consider the benign aliens of ET. Is it all plausible that if your child became lost and was tortured by strangers, that you would simply pick them up and leave, especially if you possessed the capability to extract vengeance on those responsible? You might say yes, but when actually faced with this situation, I am guessing you wouldn't.

The single-mindedness of aliens in alien movies serves as either a way to pit our own virtues against something intrinsically foreign and evil, or as an implausibly perfect model to which we can hold ourselves up. Each way of thinking presents its own set of problems; the first allows us to justify our actions and continue along our devastating way until either we're dead or we become the destroyers, while the second sets us up for failure at every step or forces us into unresolvable moral dilemmas. Yet there are a few alien movies that manage to shuck the singularity. I say there are a few, but I can only think of one1 at the moment: Transformers (the new one).

Now, I understand that the movie was not critically acclaimed or universally loved (apparently, Optimus Prime's lips are more important than the actual merits of the movie), but I think that this might be one of the best, and definitely most distinctive, alien movies ever made. However, this is not a review of the movie, but rather an exploration of the "alien movie sub-genre," a term which, by the way, I loathe almost as much as the pretentious people who would use it (not to mention the movie critics). Transformers is unique (or at least, pretty unique) in that there are two distinct groups of aliens who visit the planet, and whose morals, while not running the entire good-evil spectrum, are quite a bit more varied than the single-dimensional ones found in other movies of the ilk.

The Decepticons (those are the bad guys) are not without their wiles. In fact, they spend much of the movie sneaking about trying to solve the mystery of where their leader is. They do cause some havoc, however, but even in the heat of battle, they are more concerned with achieving their main objective than killing everything in sight. Not only does this make them more interesting as characters, and better villains, but it also makes it easier to identify with a Decepticon. You might be thinking that is a bad thing, but if you are, for example, a child, who is sneaking around being mischievous, you might think better of it if you recognized your actions as similar to a Decepticon. Similarly, Autobots (those are the good guys) demonstrate a wider range of moral and ethical thinking than your average alien. ET, for instance never really considered if it was right or wrong to rely on his human friends for help. The Autobots certainly have a code that they act by- don't hurt humans- but it isn't dogmatic. In fact, some of them have to be reminded of it, which implies they have a choice about it. They even have to consider rescuing one of their own over achieving their other goals- "no Autobot left behind" isn't a phrase in their operations manual.2

(to be continued... check for edits, footnotes, and a conclusion soon)

The Phone is Ringing

It was nice talking to you... Yes, maybe I will see you soon... Oh- that's sweet of you... You too... OK. Bye.

That last 'bye' is spoken like the distance between it and when we would see one another again was unbearably vast.

I snap my phone closed and turn towards the woman sitting next to me. We've been together for a while, but the look on her face tells me that the nature of our relationship is about to change.

"How is She?" There isn't anger there, but there isn't curiosity either. Only a hint of sorrow- like one of those flavors hidden in a nice wine.

The problem with the question is that the answer is unimportant. No matter what I say, things are going to be bad, and yet I still have to answer. I know the response before I even know what I am going to say.

The best thing that could have happened would have been if there was no question. If the sound of my phone snapping shut didn't stab the moment, but rather signaled the resumption of our intimacy as if I had just talked to someone of no consequence. But that didn't happen. Our moment is gone.

"She's doing well," honesty and policy. I begin to rapidly recount Her end of the conversation, but I've been infected by Her rambles. I try as hard as I can to spin our similarities as something other than similarities, but I know what I am saying sounds like.

It sounds like we grew into adulthood together, that we were each other's first love, that we've known each other for a decade. It sounds like we are the closest two people to ever live on separate coasts.

But the part that isn't understood is the Bob Barker part. Closest two people, without going over. We will never spill into one another as we once did. We have been back to the well and the water was like poison to us. We never said as much, but we both know that we know it was.

The problem is, as my rambling is almost complete, that the silence across from me- so far away now, though she hasn't moved- doesn't know, and will never know, that. I've been nothing but truthful, but I know if I told her, she would hear a lie. I know, because she asked the question to begin with.

I finish and start probing her eyes with mine. I am looking- hoping- for love there.

Here comes the flood of disbelief, jealousy, and anger. Here it is, all wrapped up in a nice little package.

"That's nice."

"It IS nice, isn't it?" I've worked myself up at this point. Quite uncharacteristically.

The silence is stunned.

"You know, if She were He, you would actually be interested in what I said, but instead you sit there and feign indifference. I'm here, with you, and happy. Happy for what we have, and eager for what we could have. Your passive aggressiveness is killing me."

I go on, but over the tirade I hear the phone ring. I continue through it.

It rings and rings, but I am red with passion. I care. I'm emotive. I'm so red that the silent, stunned face has faded. I can't see it, and I don't really care. But there's something weird about the ringing. Seems so far away...

And a voice. A calm, inquisitive voice. So familiar. But it is with the phone, so far away...

I rage on and on, explaining everything about She and I there is to know. I explain how it will never work. The silence is gone by now, and all is red. But I can still hear that distant phone and voice. Is it getting closer?

Suddenly, I feel a jolt. The red drops away to reveal the silence with her hand gently on my shoulder.

"Hey goofy- you nodded off- answer your phone."

I pick it up; She is calling. I don't answer. I wait until it stops ringing and turn it off. She knows I'm home tonight, but I also know that She knows why I didn't answer.

"Sorry about that."

"Don't be," she says softly, calmly, with tired affection. "Maybe it isn't such a bad idea." She moves me onto my back and rests her head on my shoulder as we run our legs down the couch together.

She's asleep first, and as I am falling back again, I realize that she didn't even ask me who it was.

Standing in Line

I'm standing in line again, and I'm yellow today- the only yellow I have.

I've seen you in that shirt before, she says, what's it about?

I point to my shirt:

Well, I used to stand in line at this place.

That should have been the end, but she can tell there is more to it than that, but doesn't say anything.

I would stand in line and on most mornings, She would serve me.

As soon as the words spill out, I realize that I've crossed some boundary

She? Oh- I see... she trails off, but in an encouraging way.

I'd known Her for a while then. We spent a summer standing in line at that very same place together. That summer was cool during the days and hot at night. She had this apartment right above the town square. Her bedroom was all windows and in it we floated over many of those summer nights together. The curtains, the sweat, and the sound of the waterfall.

I shrug and point back at my shirt

But that was all before She worked here. When She served me, she served me like the guy who never tips. But I did tip, and I tipped well. I tipped like a man in church- filling the Offering- hoping to buy back his soul. But, She was the tender and I the patron and our talk was ever on the present and never on the past. Finally, I moved on, and on my way out, I bought this shirt. I liked the design, the color, and the irony. I liked to remember that place.

Yes, it is sort of funny that way, isn't it? She smiled and continued, What ever happened to She?

Well, turns out She contacted me after a while. We hadn't spoken in a long time- besides, I had moved on- so I told her I thought that speaking to me now was very odd. But She pressed the matter, and soon a summer past seemed more present. We started growing close again, cautiously, but definitely.

But hadn't you moved away?

I had, but it didn't seem to matter to either of us. We spoke of our similar, transient situations, and that connection seemed to smooth our path. Of course, she opened up more than I did. Not surprising- that was always the problem. But we moved forward together. And a few months later I had to go back for a few days. We decided to meet.

Wow! And did you?

We did. A couple of times, actually. I took her to a fancy dinner. I never told her, but a pen broke while in my pocket and I went to buy new clothes right before we were to meet. The dinner went well. We talked. There was wine. We left, and I left a good tip. But at her doorstep, it was clear that even with all of our talking, we still hadn't communicated. I had asked for too much, even though all I wanted was a few more moments. During the aftermath and final fallout I told her we had come so far, but she had retreated. She forgives me- though for being open, I don't know why I asked it of her- but I doubt we'll speak again.

Is that sad for you?

Hard to say. Maybe if I burned this shirt, I would know.

What would you say?

I laugh.

I'd say,"Goodbye Blue Monday."